The "Vision of Piers Plowman" is every way a singular production. Clothed in the then almost obsolete verse of a past age, it breathes wholly the spirit of the time in which it was written. The work of a monk, it is unsparing in its attacks on the monastic orders. Intended for the reading or hearing of the middle and lower classes, it gives more frequent glimpses of the social condition of all ranks of people than any other work of that age. As a philological monument, it is of great value; as a poem, it contains many passages of merit; and as a storehouse of allusions to the social life of the people in the fourteenth century, it is invaluable.
The poem consists of a series of visions or dreams, of an allegorical character, in which the dreamer seeks to find Truth and Righteousness on earth, meeting with but little success. The allegorical idea cannot be followed without weariness, and, in fact, the intentions of the writer are by no means clear, the allegory being frequently involved and contradictory. The beauty of the poem lies in its detached passages, its occasional poetic touches, its graphic pictures, biting satire, and withering denunciation of fraud, corruption, and tyranny. The measure adopted is the unrhymed alliterative, characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon literature, and which had long been disused, but which retained its hold on the affections of the common people, who were of Anglo-Saxon stock. In the extracts we give from the poem, the measure is retained, but the words modernized, so far as can be done without injuring the sense or metre.
The opening passage of the "Vision" has been so frequently reproduced, as a specimen of the poet's style, that it is probably familiar to many readers, but its exquisite naturalness and simplicity tempt us to quote it here.
"In a summer season,
When soft was the sun,
I shaped me into shrouds[3]
As I a shep[4] were;
In habit as an hermit
Unholy of works
Went wide in this world
Wonders to hear:
And on a May morwening
On Malvern hills
Me befell a ferly,[5]
Of fairy methought.
I was weary for-wandered,
And went me to rest
Under a broad bank
By a bourne's[6] side;
And as I lay and leaned,
And looked on the waters,
I slumbered into a sleeping
It swayed so merry."
The first scene in the visions that visited the sleep of the dreaming monk gives a view of the social classes of that time, beginning with the humblest, whose condition was uppermost in his mind. The picture is not only painted with vigorous touches, but affords a better idea of society in the fourteenth century than can be elsewhere obtained. There is the toiling ploughman, who "plays full seldom," winning by hard labor what wasteful men destroy; the mediæval dandy, whose only employment is to exhibit his attire; the hermit, who seeks by solitude and penitential life to win "heaven's rich bliss"; the merchant, who has wisely chosen his trade,—
"As it seemeth in our sight
That such men thriveth."
There are minstrels, who earn rich rewards by their singing; jesters and idle gossips; "sturdy beggars," wandering with full bags; pilgrims and palmers, who
"Went forth in their way
With many wise tales,
And had leave to lie
All their lives after";
counterfeit hermits, who assumed the cloak and hooked staff in order to live in idleness and sensuality; avaricious friars, selling their religion for money; cheating pardoners; covetous priests; ambitious bishops; lawyers who loved gain better than justice; "barons and burgesses, and bondmen also," with
"Bakers and brewers,
And butchers many;
Woollen websters,
And weavers of linen;
Tailors and tinkers,
And toilers in markets;
Masons and miners,
And many other crafts.
Of all kind living laborers
Leaped forth some;
As ditchers and delvers,
That do their deeds ill,
And driveth forth the long day
With Dieu save dame Emme.
Cooks and their knaves
Cried, 'Hot pies, hot!
Good geese and grys,[7]
Go dine, go!'"