THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
[1.] The opening of the fourteenth century saw the death of the great and able king, Edward I., the “Hammer of the Scots,” the “Keeper of his word.” The century itself—a most eventful period—witnessed the feeble and disastrous reign of Edward II.; the long and prosperous rule—for fifty years—of Edward III.; the troubled times of Richard II., who exhibited almost a repetition of the faults of Edward II.; and the appearance of a new and powerful dynasty—the House of Lancaster—in the person of the able and ambitious Henry IV. This century saw also many striking events, and many still more striking changes. It beheld the welding of the Saxon and the Norman elements into one—chiefly through the French wars; the final triumph of the English language over French in 1362; the frequent coming of the Black Death; the victories of Crecy and Poitiers; it learned the universal use of the mariner’s compass; it witnessed two kings—of France and of Scotland—prisoners in London; great changes in the condition of labourers; the invention of gunpowder in 1340; the rise of English commerce under Edward III.; and everywhere in England the rising up of new powers and new ideas.
[2.] The first prose-writer in this century is Sir John Mandeville (who has been called the “Father of English Prose”). King Alfred has also been called by this name; but as the English written by Alfred was very different from that written
by Mandeville,—the latter containing a large admixture of French and of Latin words, both writers are deserving of the epithet. The most influential prose-writer was John Wyclif, who was, in fact, the first English Reformer of the Church. In poetry, two writers stand opposite each other in striking contrast—Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langlande, the first writing in courtly “King’s English” in end-rhyme, and with the fullest inspirations from the literatures of France and Italy, the latter writing in head-rhyme, and—though using more French words than Chaucer—with a style that was always homely, plain, and pedestrian. John Gower, in Kent, and John Barbour, in Scotland, are also noteworthy poets in this century. The English language reached a high state of polish, power, and freedom in this period; and the sweetness and music of Chaucer’s verse are still unsurpassed by modern poets. The sentences of the prose-writers of this century are long, clumsy, and somewhat helpless; but the sweet homely English rhythm exists in many of them, and was continued, through Wyclif’s version, down into our translation of the Bible in 1611.
[3.] Sir John Mandeville, (1300-1372), “the first prose-writer in formed English,” was born at St Albans, in Hertfordshire, in the year 1300. He was a physician; but, in the year 1322, he set out on a journey to the East; was away from home for more than thirty years, and died at Liège, in Belgium, in 1372. He wrote his travels first in Latin, next in French, and then turned them into English, “that every man of my nation may understand it.” The book is a kind of guide-book to the Holy Land; but the writer himself went much further east—reached Cathay or China, in fact. He introduced a large number of French words into our speech, such as cause, contrary, discover, quantity, and many hundred others. His works were much admired, read, and copied; indeed, hundreds of manuscript copies of his book were made. There are nineteen still in the British Museum. The book was not printed till the year 1499—that is, twenty-five years after printing was introduced into this country. Many of the Old English inflexions still survive in his style. Thus he says: “Machamete was born in Arabye, that was a pore knave (boy) that kepte cameles that wenten with marchantes for marchandise.”
[4.] John Wyclif (his name is spelled in about forty different ways)—1324-1384—was born at Hipswell, near Richmond, in Yorkshire, in the year 1324, and died at the vicarage of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, in 1384. His fame rests on two bases—his efforts as a reformer of the abuses of the Church, and his complete translation of the Bible. This work was finished in 1383, just one year before his death. But the translation was not done by himself alone; the larger part of the Old Testament version seems to have been made by Nicholas de Hereford. Though often copied in manuscript, it was not printed for several centuries. Wyclif’s New Testament was printed in 1731, and the Old Testament not until the year 1850. But the words and the style of his translation, which was read and re-read by hundreds of thoughtful men, were of real and permanent service in fixing the language in the form in which we now find it.
[5.] John Gower (1325-1408) was a country gentleman of Kent. As Mandeville wrote his travels in three languages, so did Gower his poems. Almost all educated persons in the fourteenth century could read and write with tolerable and with almost equal ease, English, French, and Latin. His three poems are the Speculum Meditantis (“The Mirror of the Thoughtful Man”), in French; the Vox Clamantis (“Voice of One Crying”), in Latin; and Confessio Amantis (“The Lover’s Confession”), in English. No manuscript of the first work is known to exist. He was buried in St Saviour’s, Southwark, where his effigy is still to be seen—his head resting on his three works. Chaucer called him “the moral Gower”; and his books are very dull, heavy, and difficult to read.
[6.] William Langlande (1332-1400), a poet who used the old English head-rhyme, as Chaucer used the foreign end-rhyme, was born at Cleobury-Mortimer in Shropshire, in the year 1332. The date of his death is doubtful. His poem is called the Vision of Piers the Plowman; and it is the last long poem in our literature that was written in Old English alliterative rhyme. From this period, if rhyme is employed at all, it is the end-rhyme, which we borrowed from the French and Italians. The poem has an appendix called Do-well, Do-bet, Do-best—the three stages in the growth of a Christian. Langlande’s writings remained in manuscript until the reign of Edward VI.; they were printed then, and went through three editions in one year. The English used in the Vision is the Midland dialect—much the same as that used by Chaucer; only, oddly enough, Langlande admits into his English a
larger amount of French words than Chaucer. The poem is a distinct landmark in the history of our speech. The following is a specimen of the lines. There are three alliterative words in each line, with a pause near the middle—
“A voice loud in that light · to Lucifer criëd,