And al the web after.
For who so hath moore than I
That angreth me soore,
And thus I lyve love-lees,
Like a luther [mad] dogge;
That al my body bolneth [swelleth]
For bitter of my galle.
—vers. 2667.
It is a savage picture; and as savagely true as was ever drawn of Envy. Those who cultivated the elegancies of letters, and delighted in the pretty rhyming-balance of Romance verse, would hardly have relished him; but the average thinker and worker would and did. It is specially noteworthy that the existing MSS. of this poem, of which there are very many, are without expensive ornamentation by illuminated initial letters, or otherwise, indicating that its circulation was among those who did not buy a book for its luxuries of “make-up,” but for its pith. A new popularity came to the book after printing was begun, and made it known to those who sympathized with its protesting spirit;—most of all when the monasteries went down and readers saw how this old grumbler had prophesied truly—in saying “the Abbot of Abingdon and all his people should get a knock from a king”—as they did; and a hard one it was.
Langlande was born in the West, and had wandered over the beautiful Malvern hills of Worcestershire in his day but he went afterward to live in London, which he knew from top to bottom; had a wife there, “Kytte,” and a daughter, “Calote;”[37] shaved his head like a priest; was tall—so tall he came to be called “Long Will.” He showed little respect for fine dresses, though he saw them all; he was in London when Chaucer was there and when the greater poet was writing, and had higher-placed friends than himself; but he never met him,—from anything that appears; never met Wyclif either, with whom he must have had very much thinking in common, and who also must have been in London many a time when tall Will Langlande sidled along Fenchurch Street, or Cornhill. Yet he is worthy to be named with him as representing a popular seam in that great drift of independent and critical thought, which was to ripen into the Reformation.