[CHAPTER X.]
"PIERS PLOWMAN." GOWER.
Contemporary with Chaucer, and in perfect contrast with Chaucer, whom he probably never met, was the author of the alliterative "rum, ram, ruff," poem "Piers Plowman". This author is generally supposed to have been named William Langley or Langland. By piecing together many detached pieces of evidence the conjecture is reached that William first saw the light at Cleobury in Shropshire or at Wychwood in Oxfordshire, about the year 1332, was well educated, was in minor orders, and a married man. But if everything that the author of "Piers Plowman" makes his dreamer say about himself is also true of the author, he must have been a strange and unhappy character.
His poem, following the convention of dreams and allegories, is the record of dreams into which he fell, first on the Malvern hills; later, wherever he chanced to be. The poem exists in three forms (A, B, C), and, from the allusions to contemporary events (such as the peace of Bretigny, with France (1360), and a great tempest of January, 1362), the A version may have been composed in 1362. The B version, much altered and enlarged, is dated, from its allusions to events, in 1377; and the C version, also enlarged, from its references to the unpopularity of Richard II, must be later than 1392.
If the poet drew his dreamer and narrator from study of his own character, he must have been, in some ways, not unlike Mr. Thomas Carlyle. Though he had a noble appreciation of the dignity and duty of manual labour,—the honest and pious ploughman was his favourite character,—he never did toil with his hands. In reply to the remonstrances of Reason, he says:—
I am too weak to work with sickle or with scythe.
Over-education in youth has sapped his manhood: and, since his friends who paid for his schooling died, he has never joyed. He praised the country, but, as Dr. Johnson said, "hung loose upon the town," a man of a modern type.