It was not in the nature of these Reformers to follow the counsel of Chaucer's good Parson in the "Parson's Tale" (the spelling may here be modernized, as an example of the poet's prose).
"Certainly chiding may not come but out of a villain's heart, for after the abundance of the heart speaketh the mouth full often. And ye should understand that I Look ever when any man shall chastise another, that he beware of chiding and reproving, for truly, unless he be wary, he may full lightly kindle the fire of anger and of wrath which he should quench, and peradventure slayeth him whom he might chastise with benignity.... Lo, what saith saint Augustine, 'there is nothing so like the Devil's child as he that often chideth'. Now cometh the sin of them that sow and make discord among folk; which is a sin that Christ hateth utterly, and no wonder it is; for he died to make concord. And more sin do they to Christ, than did they that him crucified; for God loveth better that friendship be among folk than he did his own body, which he gave for unity."
Chaucer's country-priest, not the chiding Wyclifite Sons of Thunder, is the true Christian. There is more of the spirit of the Master in the caressing words of Chaucer's address to "little Louis my son... pray God save the king that is Lord of this lande, and all that him faith beareth and obeyeth, each in his degree, the more, and the less," than in torrents of bitter chiding, and a hail of unpublishable vituperation.
The English of Chaucer's treatise of "The Astrolabe," despite its difficult astronomical matter, is pellucid, and there is a charm of rhythm in his prose translations of the verses in Boëthius.
Trevisa.
The English prose of John Trevisa, a Cornish priest, educated at Oxford, and a traveller on the continent (died 1412), was entirely given to translation from the Latin. He is said, by Caxton, to have translated the Bible: he certainly made an English version of the "Polychronicon" of Ranulf Higden, the monk of Chester, which begins with the Creation, and is rich in geographical and social information.
Trevisa occasionally inserts notes of his own. His versions of Higden, and of the mythical popular science and prodigious fables contained in the "De Proprietatibus Rerum" ("Concerning the Properties of Things") of Bartholomæus the Englishman, were very popular, as their amusing nature deserved, and the "Polychronicon" was printed by Caxton. Trevisa himself tells us that in his day English boys in grammar schools were ceasing to learn French, and there was a public for English books supposed to be educational.
Mandeville.
The most famous and by far the most interesting of these adapters of foreign books is the so-called Sir John Mandeville, with his "Voiage and Travaile". The author of this book was not an Englishman, at least he did not write in English, and did write in French, at Liège, about the end of the fourteenth century. It is impossible and unnecessary to discuss here the fables about Mandeville. The author of the book declares that he himself is "Sir John to all Europe," is an Englishman born at St. Albans, that he passed the sea in 1322, that he travelled in Tartary, Persia, Armenia, Lybia, Chaldæa, the land of the Amazons, India, and so forth. In fact he resembles Widsith in the ancient Anglo-Saxon poem—he has been almost everywhere and knows almost everything. He especially writes for pilgrims to Jerusalem; he first wrote his book in Latin, then translated it into French, and finally into English. There are countries that he has not seen; and he says that he could not play a part in the deeds of arms which he beheld. Now he suffers from arthritis, "gowtes artetykes," and he amuses himself by writing his adventures in 1357.
Another version of Sir John's career is given by Jean d'Outremeuse, a writer of histories, who had the felicity of hearing from an old man with a beard in 1472, that he was the genuine Mandeville: but that the author was really Jean d'Outremeuse is not so certain. The author, whoever he was, stole from a manuscript of the time of the First Crusade, and from the book of Odoric, a Franciscan missionary, and the Itinerary of William of Boldensele, (1332-1336) from a History of the Mongols, from a forged letter of Prester John—from every source whence he could pick amusing stories. He fabled with a direct and honourable simplicity which is comparable to that of Defoe, and to the straightforward and moderate statements of Swift's Captain Lemuel Gulliver. With the spelling modernized it is thus that the good knight tells the story of the Pygmies who were known to Homer for their battles with the cranes.