"Pers of Langtoft, a chanon,
Schaven in the house of Bridlyngton,
O Frankis style this storie he wrote,
Of Inglis kinges," &c.
About the middle of the fourteenth century William Langland, a secular priest of Oxford, wrote a famous satirical allegory against persons of all professions, called "The Vision of Piers Plowman." This is written in alliterative verse, and its language appears to be of a purposely archaic type. This is precisely what Spenser did in his "Faery Queen," in the reign of Elizabeth; he went backwards in his diction, so that now it is nearly obsolete, while the language of his contemporary, Shakespeare, is still sterling English, and likely to continue so. Who could imagine that these lines were written in the same age as those which we shall place beside them by a contemporary?
"Hunger in hast tho' hint Wastour by the maw,
And wrong him so by the wombe that both his eies watered.
He buffeted the Briton about the chekes
That he loked lyke a lanterne al his life after."
Take now these few lines from John Barbour, of the same period:—