Handbook of Universal Literature, From the Best and Latest Authorities

by Anne C. Lynch Botta

In poetical literature, "The Vision of Piers Plowman," written (1362) by a priest named Robert Langland, is one of the highest works in point of genius and one of the most curious as illustrating manners and opinions. The poet supposes himself falling asleep on Malvern Hills, and in his vision he describes the vices of the times in an allegorical form, which has been compared to "The Pilgrim's Progress." The poetical vigor of many passages is extraordinary.

John Gower (d. 1408), a contemporary and friend of Chaucer, is chiefly remembered for his "Confessio Amantis," or Lover's Confession, a long English poem, containing physical, metaphysical, and ethical reflections and stories taken from the common repertories of the Middle Ages. It is tedious, and often feeble, but it has many excellences of language and description.

Geoffrey Chaucer (1328-1400) was born in London. He was early thrown into public life and intimacy with men of high rank. John of Gaunt was his chief patron, and he was several times employed in embassies to France and Italy. A very large proportion of Chaucer's writings consists of free versions from the Latin and French, and perhaps also from the Italian; but in some of these he has incorporated so much that is his own as to make them the most celebrated and valuable of his works. His originals were not the chivalrous romances, but the comic Fabliaux, and the allegorical poetry cultivated by the Trouvères and Troubadours. Three of his largest minor works are thus borrowed; the "Romance of the Rose," from one of the most popular French poems of the preceding century; "Troilus and Cressida," a free translation, probably, from Boccaccio; and the "Legend of Good Women," founded on Ovid's Epistles. The poetical immortality of Chaucer rests on his "Canterbury Tales," a series of stories linked together by an ingenious device. A party of about thirty persons, the poet being one, are bound on a pilgrimage to the tomb of Thomas à Becket, at Canterbury; each person is to tell two tales, one in going, and the other in returning. Twenty-four only of the stories are related, but they extend to more than 17,000 lines. In the prologue, itself a poem of great merit, the poet draws up the curtain from a scene of life and manners which has not been surpassed in subsequent literature, a picture whose figures have been studied with the truest observation, and are outlined with the firmest, yet most delicate pencil. The vein of sentiment in these tales is always unaffected, cheerful, and manly, the most touching seriousness varying with the keenest humor. In some the tone rises to the highest flight of heroic, reflective, and even religious poetry; while in others it sinks below coarseness into positive licentiousness of thought and sentiment.

LITERATURE IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.—The fifteenth century, usually marked in continental history as the epoch of the Revival of Classical Learning, was not in England a period of erudition or of original invention. The unwise and unjust wars with France, the revolts of the populace, and the furious struggles between the partisans of the rival houses desolated the country, and blighted and dwarfed all intellectual growth. For more than a hundred years after the death of Chaucer, scarcely any names of mark distinguish the literary annals of England, and the poetical compositions of this period are principally valuable as specimens of the rapid transition of the language into modern English. Almost all the literary productions previous to the time of Chaucer were designed only for a limited audience. Neither comprehensive observation of society nor a wish to instruct or please a wide circle of readers was observable before this period. Chaucer was indeed a national poet, an active and enlightened teacher of all classes of men who were susceptible of literary instruction.

John Lydgate (d. 1430), a Benedictine monk, the best and most popular poet of the fifteenth century, began to write before the death of Chaucer, but in passing from the works of the latter to those of Lydgate, we seem to be turning from the open highway into the dark, echoing cloisters. If he was the pupil of Chaucer in manner and style, his masters in opinion and sentiment were the compilers of the "Gesta Romanorum."

Stephen Hawes, who wrote in the reign of Henry VII., is the author of "The Pastime of Pleasure," an allegorical poem in the same taste as the "Romance of the Rose." This allegorical school of poetry, so widely spread through the Middle Ages, reappears in the Elizabethan age, where the same turn of thought is seen in the immortal "Faerie Queene."

In leaving this period we bid adieu to metrical romances, which, introduced into English in the latter half of the thirteenth century, continued to be composed until the middle of the fifteenth century, and were to the last almost always translations or imitations. Chivalrous stories next began to be related in prose. The most famous of these, one of the best specimens of Old English, and the most delightful of all repositories of romantic fiction is the "Mort Arthur," in which Sir Thomas Mallory, a priest in the reign of Edward IV., combined into one narrative the leading adventures of the Round Table.

As the romances ceased to be produced, the ballads gradually took their place, many of which indeed are either fragments or abridgments of them. The ballad-poetry was to the popular audience what the recital of the romances had been among the nobles. The latter half of the fifteenth century appears to have been fertile in minstrels and minstrelsy. "Chevy Chase," of which Sir Philip Sidney said it would move him like the blast of a trumpet, is one of the most ancient; but, according to Hallam, it relates to a totally fictitious event. The ballad of "Robin Hood" had probably as little origin in fact.

Towards the close of the fifteenth century, a mighty revolution took place. William Caxton, a merchant of London residing abroad, became acquainted with the recently invented art of printing, and embraced it as a profession. He introduced it into England about 1474, and practiced it for nearly twenty years. He printed sixty-four works in all, and the low state of taste and information in the public for which they were designated is indicated by the selection. But the enterprise and patience of Caxton hastened the time when this mighty discovery became available in England, and his name deserves to stand with honor at the close of the survey of English literature in the Middle Ages. Thenceforth literary works were to undergo a total change of character, brought about by many causes, but none more active than the substitution of the printed book for the manuscript.

6. THE FOURTEENTH AND FIFTEENTH CENTURIES IN SCOTLAND.—From the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there might be collected the names of a few scholastic theologians of Scottish birth, whose works have survived; but they spent their lives mostly on the continent, as was the case with Michael Scott, who gained his fame as a wizard at the court of the Emperor Frederic II. His extant writings are wholly inferior to those of Friar Bacon, his contemporary.