Barclay's "Ship of Fools," however, is not only important as a picture of the English life and popular feeling of his time, it is, both in style and vocabulary, a most valuable and remarkable monument of the English language. Written midway between Chaucer and Spenser, it is infinitely more easy to read than either. Page after page, even in the antique spelling of Pynson's edition, may be read by the ordinary reader of to-day without reference to a dictionary, and when reference is required it will be found in nine cases out of ten that the archaism is Saxon, not Latin. This is all the more remarkable, that it occurs in the case of a priest translating mainly from the Latin and French, and can only be explained with reference to his standpoint as a social reformer of the broadest type, and to his evident intention that his book should be an appeal to all classes, but especially to the mass of the people, for amendment of their follies. In evidence of this it may be noticed that in the didactic passages, and especially in the L'envois, which are additions of his own, wherever, in fact, he appears in his own character of "preacher," his language is most simple, and his vocabulary of the most Saxon description.
In his prologue "excusynge the rudenes of his translacion," he professes to have purposely used the most "comon speche":—
"My speche is rude my termes comon and rural
And I for rude peple moche more conuenient
Than for estates, lerned men, or eloquent."
He afterwards humorously supplements this in "the prologe," by:—
"But if I halt in meter or erre in eloquence
Or be to large in langage I pray you blame not me
For my mater is so bad it wyll none other be."
So much the better for all who are interested in studying the development of our language and literature. For thus we have a volume, confessedly written in the commonest language of the common people, from which the philologist may at once see the stage at which they had arrived in the development of a simple English speech, and how far, in this respect, the spoken language had advanced a-head of the written; and from which also he can judge to what extent the popularity of a book depends, when the language is in a state of transition, upon the unusual simplicity of its style both in structure and vocabulary, and how far it may, by reason of its popularity, be influential in modifying and improving the language in both these respects. In the long barren tract between Chaucer and Spenser, the Ship of Fools stands all but alone as a popular poem, and the continuance of this popularity for a century and more is no doubt to be attributed as much to the use of the language of the "coming time" as to the popularity of the subject.