At all such men and at all such things, Langland thunders anathema. Lack of sincerity, all the shapes and sorts of "faux semblants," or "merveilleux semblants," as Rutebeuf said, fill him with inextinguishable hatred. In shams and "faux semblants" he sees the true source of good and evil, the touchstone of right and wrong, the main difference between the worthy and the unworthy. He constantly recurs to the subject by means of his preachings, epigrams, portraits, caricatures; he broadens, he magnifies and multiplies his figures and his precepts, so as to deepen our impression of the danger and number of the adherents of "Fals-Semblant." By such means, he hopes we shall at last hate those whom he hates. Endlessly, therefore, in season and out of season, among the mists, across the streets, under the porches of the church, to the drowsy chant of his orations, to the whistle of his satires, ever and ever again, he conjures up before our eyes the hideous grinning face of "Fals-Semblant," the insincere. Fals-Semblant is never named by name; he assumes all names and shapes; he is the king who reigns contrary to conscience, the knight perverted by Lady Meed, the heartless man of law, the merchant without honesty, the friar, the pardoner, the hermit, who under the garment of saints conceal hearts that will rank them with the accursed ones. Fals-Semblant is the pope who sells benefices, the histrion, the tumbler, the juggler, the adept of the vagrant race, who goes about telling tales and helping his listeners to forget the seriousness of life. From the unworthy pope down to the lying juggler, all these men are the same man. Deceit stands before us; God's vengeance be upon him! Whenever and wherever Langland detects Fals-Semblant, he loses control over himself; anger blinds him; it seems as if he were confronted by Antichrist.
No need to say whether he is then master of his words, and able to measure them. With him, in such cases, no nuances or extenuations are admissible; you are with or against Fals-Semblant; there is no middle way; a compromise is a treason; and is there anything worse than a traitor? And thus he is led to sum up his judgment in such lines as this:
He is worse than Judas · that giveth a japer silver.[659]
If we allege that there may be some shade of exaggeration in such a sentence, he will shrug his shoulders. The doubt is not possible, he thinks, and his plain proposition is self-evident.
No compromise! Travel through life without bending; go forward in a straight line between the high walls of duty. Perform your own obligations; do not perform the obligations of others. To do your duty over-zealously, to take upon you the duty of others, would trouble the State; you approach, in so doing, the borderland of Imposture. The knight will fight for his country, and must not lose his time in fasting and in scourging himself. A fasting knight is a bad knight.
Many joys are allowed. They are included, as a bed of flowers, between the high walls of duty; love-flowers even grow there, to be plucked, under the blue sky. But take care not to be tempted by that wonderful female Proteus, Lady Meed, the great corruptress. She disappears and reappears, and she, too, assumes all shapes; she is everywhere at the same time: it seems as if the serpent of Eden had become the immense reptile that encircles the earth.
This hatred is immense, but stands alone in the heart of the poet. Beside it there is place for treasures of pity and mercy; the idea of so many Saracens and Jews doomed wholesale to everlasting pain repels him; he can scarcely accept it; he hopes they will be all converted, and "turne in-to the trewe feithe"; for "Cryste cleped us alle.... Sarasenes and scismatikes ... and Jewes."[660] There is something pathetic, and tragic also, in his having to acknowledge that there is no cure for many evils, and that, for the present, resignation only can soothe the suffering. With a throbbing heart he shows the unhappy and the lowly, who must die before having seen the better days that were promised, the only talisman that may help them: a scroll with the words, "Thy will be done!"[661]
The truth is that there was a tender heart under the rough and rugged exterior of the impassioned, indignant, suffering poet; and thus he was able to sum up his life's ideal in this beautiful motto: Disce, Doce, Dilige; in these words will be found the true interpretation of Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest: "Learn, Teach, Love."[662]
The poet's language is, if one may use the expression, like himself, above all, sincere. Chaucer wished that words were "cosyn to the dede;" Langland holds the same opinion. While, in the mystic parts of his Visions, he uses a superabundance of fluid and abstract terms, that look like morning mists and float along with his thoughts, his style becomes suddenly sharp, nervous, and sinewy when he comes back to earth and moves into the world of realities. Let some sudden emotion fill his soul, and he will rise again, not in the mist this time, but in the rays of the sun; he will soar aloft, and we will wonder at the grandeur of his eloquence. Whatever be his subject, he will coin a word, or distort a meaning, or cram into an idiom more meaning than grammar, custom, or dictionary allow, rather than leave a gap between word and thought; both must be fused together, and made one. If the merchants were honest, they would not "timber" so high—raise such magnificent houses.[663] In other parts he uses realistic terms, noisy, ill-favoured expressions, which it is impossible to quote.
His vocabulary of words is the normal vocabulary of the period, the same nearly as Chaucer's. The poet of the "Canterbury Tales" has been often reproached with having used his all-powerful influence to obtain rights of citizenship in England for French words; but the accusation does not stand good, for Langland did not write for courtly men, and the admixture of French words is no less considerable in his work.