of creating a work of literary art; and accordingly the English of Mandeville is straightforward and unadorned, and probably a fair example of the spoken language of the day. As compared with Robert of Gloucester, it shows a great increase of French words. No work of the age was more popular. It exists in a large number of MSS. The earliest printed edition, in English, is that of Wynkyn de Worde, Westminster, 1499, 8vo.; but an Italian translation, by Pietro de Cornero, had been previously printed at Milan, 1480, 4to. The sta idard English edition is that printed at London, 1725, 8vo., and reprinted, with an Introduction, Notes, and Glossary, by Mr. Halliwell, London, 1839, 8vo. The translation of the Latin Polychronicon of Ralph Higden (see p. 30), by JOHN DE TREVISA, Vicar of Berkeley, completed in the year 1385, is chiefly interesting as having been printed by Caxton, 1482, with an additional book bringing down the narrative from 1357 to 1460. It was also It is a printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1485. curious proof of the change which a single century made in the language, that Caxton thought it neces"somewhat to change the rude and old English, that is to wit, certain words which in these days be neither used ne understood." Several other translations, made by Trevisa from the Latin, exist only in MS. sary The great Scottish Poet of this age, JOHN BARBOUR, Archdeacon of Aberdeen (b. about A. D. 1316, d. A. D. 1396), was rather a contemporary than a precursor of Chaucer, like whom he deserves to rank as the father of a national literature. His Bruce, in 13,000 rhymed octosyllabic lines, is a chronicle of the adventures of King Robert I., of very high merit. The lowland Scottish dialect was formed under exactly the same influences as the English, from which it differed rather less than in the present day. To confound it with the language of the aboriginal Celts is an error akin to painting Wallace in tartans and a kilt. Barbour also paid several visits to England, and studied at Oxford in his mature age. Before this time there are hardly any names in Scottish literature, except the schoolman MICHAEL SCOT, who resided abroad, and was scarcely known at home except by his fabulous reputation as a wizard; THOMAS LERMONT, the Rhymer, of Ercildoune, erroneously called the author of the romance of Sir Tristram; and the Latin chronicler, JOHN OF FORDUN, a canon of Aberdeen, whose Scoti-chronicon contains the legendary and historical annals of his country to the death of David I. The later and less celebrated ontemporary of Barbour, ANDREW WYNTOUN .b. about A. D. 1350, d. after 1420), Prior of Lochieven, wrote a metrical chronicle in nine books, of Scottish and general history. BLIND HARRY, the Minstrel, belongs to the following century. B.-JOHIN GOWER. The transition made in our language and literature about the middle of the fourteenth century cannot be better illustrated than by the writings of John Gower, the contemporary and friend of Chaucer, and the author of three great poetical works, the first in French, the second in Latin, and the wird in English. Gower is assumed to have been somewhat older than Chaucer, as the old writers generally name him first; he survived him by eight years, Chaucer having died in A. D. 1400, and Gower in A. D. 1408. But the precedence must be awarded to Chaucer, not only for the vast superiority of his genius, but as the earlier writer in English. It may be questioned whether Gower would have written in English at all, except in conformity to the taste created by Chaucer. Their early friendship is evinced by Chaucer's dedication of Troilus and Creseyde to Gower, by a title which became fixed epithet of the latter poet:- "O MORAL GOWER! this booke I direct To thee, and to the philosophicall Strode, To vouchsafe there need is to correct Of your benignities and zeales good.” And the continuance of their friendship (in spite of conjectures founded on insufficient evidence) is attested by the compliment paid to Chaucer in Gower's Confessio Amantis (finished in 1393), where Venus greets Chaucer "As my disciple and my poete," and after speaking of "the dittees and songes glad," composed "in the floures of his youth" for her sake, and of which "The land fulfilled is ouer all," exhorts him to employ his old age in writing his "Testament of Love." Two of the Canterbury Tales, those of the Man of Law and the Wife of Bath, are borrowed from Gower, unless both poets derived them from a common source. Caxton made Gower a native of Gowerland in South Wales, and Leland claimed him as a member of the family of Gower of Stittenham, in Yorkshire, from which are sprung the noble houses of Sutherland and Ellesmere. But Sir Harris Nicolas and others have proved, from existing deeds, and from the comparison of seals with the arms on Gower's tomb, that the poet was an esquire of Kent, and probably of the same family as Sir Robert Gower of Multon (Moulton) and Kentwell, in Suffolk, who died in or before A. D. 1349, and whose daughter and coheiress Joan conveyed the manor of Kentwell to John Gower (the poet) on June 28, 1368. From this and similar evidence it appears that Gower was sprung from a family of knightly rank, and that he possessed estates in Kent, Norfolk, Suffolk, and probably in Essex; though he lived much in London, and apparently in close connection with the court. There is no ground for the common statement that he followed the legal profession. About the year 1400, he speaks of himself as both old and blind. His will still exists, made on the 15th of August, 1408, and proved by his widow, Agnes, on the 24th of October following, so that he must have died between those two dates. There can be little doubt that his wife was the sams as the Agnes Groundalf whose marriage to John Gower, at St. Mary Magdalen's, Southwark, on the 28th of January, 1397, is recorded in the register of William of Wykeham, preserved at Winchester. If so, the poet married in his old age. His will leaves it doubtful whether he had issue. He lies buried, according to his own directions, in St. Mary Overy's (now St. Saviour's), Southwark, of which church he is said to have been a benefactor, beneath a splendid canopied tomb, bearing his arms and effigy, the head resting on his three volumes; the wal within the three arches being painted with figures of Charity, Mercy, and Pity. The story of his having been a fellow-student with Chaucer, either at Oxford or Cambridge, is as unfounded as most of Leland's other statements about him, but his works furnish proof of his having received the best education his age could bartow, and of his command of the languages then in use. Gower's three great works were the Speculum Meditantis, in French; the Vox Clamantis, in Latin; and the Confessio Amantis, in English. (1.) The Speculum Meditantis is now entirely lost; the short French poem which Warton describes under the title being an entirely different work. It was a collection of precepts on chastity, enforced by examples. But there are still extant Fifty French Ballads by Gower, in a MS. belong-❘ ing to the Duke of Sutherland, and edited by the late duke for the Roxburghie Club, in 1818. "They are," says Pauli (Introd. Essay, p. xxvi.), “tender in sentiment, and not unrefined with regard to language and form, especially if we consider that they are the work of a foreigner. They treat of Love in the manner introduced by the Provençal poets, which was afterwards generally adopted by those in the north of France. A few specimens cannot fail to give a favorable idea of Gower's skill and expression." These were about the last works of any importance written in the Anglo-Norman French, which was now so fully regarded as a foreign language, that Gower apologizes for his French, saying, "I am English," while he gives as a reason for using the language, that he was addressing his ballads "Al Universite de tout le monde." Some verses addressed to Henry IV., after his accession, prove that Gower continued to write in French to the end of his life. (2.) Of Gower's great Latin poem, the Vox Clamantis, Dr. Pauli gives the following account:"Soon after the rebellion of the commons in 1381 [under Richard II.], an event which made a great impression on his mind, he wrote that singular work in Latin distichs, called Vox Clamantis, of which we possess an excellent edition by the Rev. H. O. Coxe, printed for the Roxburghe Club, in 1850. The name, with an allusion to St. John the Baptist, seems to have been adopted from the general clamor and cry then abroad in the country. The greater bulk of the work, the date of which its editor is inclined to fix between 1382 and 1384, is rather a moral than an historical essay; but the first book describes the insurrection of Wat Tyler in an allegorical disguise; the poet having a dream, on the 11th of June, 1381, in which men assume the hape of animals. The second book contains a long rmon on fatalism, in which the poet shows himself no friend to Wicliffe's tenets, but a zealous advocate for the reformation of the clergy. The third book points out how all orders of society must suffer for their own vices and demerits; in illustration of which he cites the example of the secular clergy. The fourth book is dedicated to the cloistered clergy and the friars; the fifth to the military; the sixth contains a violent attack on the lawyers: and the seventh subjoins the moral of the whole, represented in Nebuchadnezzar'e dream, as inter preted by Daniel." (Introd. Essay, p. xxix.) There are also some smaller Latin poems, in leoning hexameters; among them one addressed to Henry IV., in which the poet laments his blindness. (3.) Gower's latest poem, the Confessio Amantis, was written in English, with a running marginal commentary in Latin, something like that to the Ancient Mariner of Coleridge. Its composition seems to be due to the success of Chaucer. We again quote from Dr. Pauli: "The exact date of the poem has not been ascertained, but there is internal evidence, in certain copies, that it existed in the year 1392-3. As this point involves a question of grave importance with respect to the author's behavior and position in the political events of the day, it will be necessary to enter more fully into the subject. He unquestionably issued two edition! of the work, which, however, as will be distinctly seen in the present edition, vary from each other only at the commencement and at the end; the one being dedicated to King Richard II., the other to his cousin, Henry of Lancaster, Earl of Derby. In the king's copy the poet describes at length how he came rowing down the Thames at London one day, and how he met King Richard, who, having invited him to step into the royal barge, commanded him to write a book upon some new matter. In that addressed to Henry he says, that the book was finished, the yere sixteenth of King Richard (A. D. 1392-3), an important fact, which has been hitherto ovefooked by all writers on the subject, including even Sir H. Nicolas (Life of Chaucer, p. 39), who states that Gower did not dedicate his work to Henry until he had ascended the throne." Having shown that the dedication was made when Henry was not yet King, or even Duke of Lancaster, but Earl of Derby, a title which he bore in 1392-3, - Pauli proceeds: "The one version abounds in expressions of the deepest loyalty towards his sovereign, for whose sake he intends to write some newe thing in English; the other mentions the year of the reign of King Richard II., is full of attachment to Henry of Lancaster, 'with whom my herte is of accorde,' and purports to appear in English for England's sake." The inference from all this is, that Gower, sccing the fatal tendency of Richard's course, early there is still extant a record of his receiving a collar attached himself to Henry of Lancaster, from whom in 1394 (probably in acknowledgment of the dedication of his poem), and whom he more than once pieces. Hence the commencement of the Confessio addresses with affection and respect in his mino Amantis would fall before 1386, when Richard came of age, and began his arbitrary government. Chaucer at the end of the poem, in the edition inHence, also, the omission of the compliment & scribed to Henry, may be explained by motives of policy, without inferring any personal alienation. The Prologue is in the same strain of dissatisfaction with the existing order of things, which pervades the Vox Clamantis; and the poet comforts himself with the same rescurce, the divine government of the world, as revealed in the vision of Nebuchadnezzar. Yet how little he shares the op 'nions of Wicliffe is proved by his reference to "This new secte of lolls die." Pauli gives the following outline of the work: "The poem opens by introducing the author himself, in the character of an unhappy lover in despair, smitten by Cupid's arrow. Venus appears to him, and after having heard his prayer, appoints her priest called Genius, like the mystagogue in the Picture of Cebes, to hear the lover's confession. This is the frame of the whole work, which is a singular mixture of classical notions, principally borrowed from Ovid's Ars Amandi, and of the purely medieval idea, that as a good Catholic the unfortunate lover must state his distress to a father confessor. This is done, in the course of the con✯ssion, with great regularity and even pedantry; all the passions of the human heart, which generally stand in the way of love, being systematically arranged in the various books and subdivisions of the work. After Genius has fully explained the evil affection passion, or vice under consideration, the lover confesses on that particular point, and frequently urges his boundless love for an unknown beauty, who treats him cruelly, in a tone of affectation which would appear highly ridiculous in a man of more than sixty years of age, were it not a common characteristic of the poetry of the period. After this profession, the confessor opposes him, and exemplifies the fatal effects of each passion by a variety of apposite stories, gathered from many sources. At length, after a frequent and tedious recurrence of the same process, the confession is terminated by some final injunctions of the priest -the lover's petition in a strophic poem addressed to Venus-the bitter judgment of the goddess, that ne should remember his old age, and leave off such fooleries; "For loves lust and lockes hore In chambre accorden neuer more his cure from the wound caused by the dart of love, and his absolution, received as if by a pious Roman Catholic. The materials for this extensive work [more than 30,000 lines], and the stories inserted as examples for and against the lover's passion, are drawn from various sources. Some have been taken from the Bible; a great number from Ovid's Metamorphoses, which must have been a particular favorite with the author; others from the medieval histories of the siege of Troy, of the feats of Alexander the Great-from the oldest collection of novels, known under the name of the Gesta Romanorum, chiefly in its form as used in England —from the Pantheon and Speculum Regum of Godfrey of Viterbo, from the romance of Sir Lancelot and the Chronicles of Cassiodorus and Isidorus." (Introd. Essay, pp. xxxiii. xxxiv.) There is also a vast amount of alchemical learning from the Almagest, and an exposition of the pseudo-Aristotelian philosophy of the middle ages. The author's fancy lies almost buried under the mass of his learning, and his laborious composition shows none of Chaucer's humor, or passion, or love of nature. In the language of the new school of poetry, to which Chaucer's genius had given birth, Gower embodies most of the faults of the romance writers. Still he has his merits. "The vivacity and variety of his short verses evince a correct ear and a happy power, by the assistance of which he enhances the interest in a tale, and frequently terminates it with satisfaction | | to the reader." (W. W. Lloyd in Singer's Shakspeare, vol. iv. p. 261.) The Saxon element is at conspicuous in his language as in Chaucer's; but he uses a larger number of French words, as might have been expected from his early habits of composition. The frequent want of skill in the construction of his sentences shows that it was no easy task for him to write so long a work in English. There are some forms peculiar to him, as I sigh for I saw, and nought for not. He seldom uses alliteration. We have a long chain of testimony to Gower's popularity, from his own age to that of Shakspeare, who speaks of him thus: "To sing a song that old was sung, To glad our ear and please our eyes." The Confessio Amantis was first printed by Caxton, Lond. 1483, fol. (the British Museum has two copies of this rare work), and by F. Berthelette, Lond. 1532, fol., reprinted 1554, fol. (both in black letter). None of the modern editions deserve men tion in comparison of that by Dr. Reinhold Pau:i, Lond. 1857, 3 vols., 8vo., whose Introductory Essay contains all that is known of the poet and his works. C.-WICLIFFE AND HIS SCHOOL. The revolution effected by Chaucer in poetry was accompanied and aided by an entirely new development of religious literature, which, besides its higher fruits, rendered a similar service to our prose literature. The new liberty of thought, which found expression in popular literature, showed itself also in a sifting of ecclesiastical pretensions, which ted to a direct appeal to Scripture; and the reforming teachers satisfied this demand by translating the Bible into the mother tongue. In the other Protestant countries of Europe, the revival of national literature has been connected with a similar work, and, if the German Bible of Luther, and the Danish version of 1550, exerted a more powerful influence over the respective languages than the Wicliffite translations, one chief reason is, that they appeared after the invention of printing, by which art they were immediately and indefinitely multiplied. In England this great work is ascribed to JOHN DE WIOLIF, WICLIFFE, or WYCLIFFE (b. about A. D. 1324, d. A. D. 1384). He was born at Wicliffe, near Richmond, in Yorkshire; studied at Oxford; became the priest of Fylingham, in Lincoln; and successively Master and Warden of Balliol College and Canterbury Hall, Oxford. He began early to attack the corruptions of the Church; and after his deposition from the latter post by Archbishop Langham, and the Pope's rejection of his appeal, ne gave all his energies to the work of reform, both by his writings and by theological lectures at Oxford. For a long time he was not only unmolested, but was regarded as a champion of the Anglican Church. In 1374 he was a member of a commission sent to Avignon, which obtained concessions from the Pope on the question of induction into benefices. He was rewarded by the crown with a prebend at Worcester, and the vicarage of Lutterworth, in Leicestershire, which he held till his death, being secured from the storm of persecution, which soon arose, by the protection of the king's son, John of Gaunt. It was in the retirement of Lutterworth, after he had been driven from his chair at Oxford,* that Wicliffe, aided by his friends | and disciples, undertook the work of Bible translation. Their version was the basis of that of Tyndale, as the latter was of the Authorized Versions of 1535 (Coverdale's) and 1611 (King James's, which is still in use); but three centuries and a half elapsed before the original translation of the New Testament, and nearly five centuries before the whole, appeared in print. The New Testament was edited by the Rev. John Lewis, 1731, fol.; by the Rev. H. H. Baker, 1810, 4to.; and in Bagster's Eng- | Fish Hexapla, 1841 and 1846, 4to. The Old Testament has only lately been published, in the splendid | edition of the Rev. J. Forshall and Sir Frederick Madden, Oxf. 1850, 4 vols. 4to. The authorship of the several parts has long been the subject of discussion. According to the latest editors, the Old Testament and Apocrypha, from Genesis to Baruch (in the order of the LXX.), was translated by a priest named HEREFORD, and the rest of the Old Testament and Apocrypha, as well as the whole of the New Testament, by Wicliffe. The whole work was revised, in a second edition, by PURVEY, who has left us a very interesting essay on the principles * Regular professorships not being yet established, Wicliffe taught at Oxford by that right which, though now dormant, is still inherent, as their names imply, in the Degrees of Decter and Magister. of translation. The first version seems to have been completed about A. D. 1380, and the edition of Purvey before 1390; so that this English Bible was generally circulated, so far as the jealousy o the church would permit, by the end of the fourteenth century. Its excellence is to be ascribed to two chief causes, the religious sensibility of the translators, whose spirit was absorbed in thei work, and the simple vocabulary and structure o the language, which presented itself newly formed to their hand. Translated as it was from the Vuigate, it naturalized, chiefly in a Latin form, a large stock of religious terms, almost confined before t、 theologians, and at the same time enlarged and modified them. Above all, by preserving the uniformity of diction and grammar, suited to the sacred dignity of the work, and which is not found in nearly so high a degree in Wicliffe's own treatises, it laid the foundation of that religious or sacred dialect, which has contributed to secure dignity and earnestness as prevailing characters of our common speech. While satires of the type of Piers Ploughman gratified the popular disgust at the corruptions in high places, the newly-opened well-spring of truth taught them the cure for these evils; and their eager reception of both classes of works enriched their language as well as influenced their thoughts. Chaucer, imbued with popular sympathies, and connected with the political party that protected Wicliffe, could not but be subject to these influences: CHAPTER III. FROM THE DEATH OF CHAUCER TO THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. A. D. 1400-1558. 1. Sicw progress of English literature from Chaucer to the age of Elizabeth Introduction of printing by CAXTON. Improvement of prose. § 2. Scottish «iterature in the fifteenth century: KING JAMES I.; DUNBAR; GAWIN DOUGLAS; HENRYSON; BLIND HARRY. § 3. Reign of Henry VII., sterile in literature. HENRY VIII.; SIR THOMAS MORE. § 4. Religious Literature: Translations of the Bible; Book of Common Prayer; LATIMER; FOXE. § 5. Chroniclers and Historians: LORD BERNERS' Froissart; FABYAN; HALL, § 6. Philosophy and Education: WILSON'S Logic; SIR JOHN CHEKE; Ro GER ASCHAM's Schoolmaster and Toxophilus. §7. Poets: SKELTON; BAR KLAY and HAWES; WYATT and SURREY. § 8. Ballads of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries: their sources, metre, and modes of circulation. Moderr collections by Percy, Scott, &c. Influence on the revival of romantic literature. Ballads of the Scottish borders and of Robin Hood. § 1. THE progress of English Literature, inaugurated in so splendid a manner by the genius of Chaucer, though uninterrupted, was for a long time comparatively slow. Many social and political causes contributed to retard it for a time, or rather to accumulate the nation's energies for that glorious intellectual burst which distinguishes the Age of Elizabeth, making that period the most magnificent in the history of the English people, if not in the annals of the human race. The causes just alluded to were the intestine commotions of the Wars of the Roses, the struggle between the dying energies of Feudalism and the nascent liberties of our municipal institutions, and the mighty transformation resulting from the Reformation. In point of splendor, fecundity, intense originality, and national spirit, none of the most brilliant epochs in the history of mankind can be considered as superior to the Elizabethan. In universality of scope and in the influence it was destined to exert upon the thoughts and knowledge of future generations, no other epoch can be brought into comparison with it. Neither the age of Pericles nor that of Augustus in the ancient world, nor those of the Medici and of Louis XIV. in modern history, can be regarded as approaching in importance to that period which, independently of a multitude of brilliant but inferion luminaries, produced the Prince of Poets and the Prince of Philosophers William Shakespeare and Francis Bacon. But the interval between the end of the fourteenth century and the latter part of the sixteenth, though destitute of any names comparable for creative ener gy to that of Chaucer, was a period of great literary activity. The importation into England of the art of printing, first exercised among us by CAXTON, who was himself a useful and laborious author, and |