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legged race, whose one foot was so large that they used it to shade themselves from the sun with. The language, as used by Maundevile, appears almost precisely similar to that of Chaucer in his prose works. As a physician, Maundevile belonged to a class of men not usually addicted to superstition, or overburdened with religious veneration; a trait which Chaucer, with his profound knowledge of mankind, hits off in his account of the Doctor of Phisike : '

His studie was but litel on the Bible.

But the superstitious credulity of Maundevile is unbounded; nor did it tend to make his work unpopular. On the contrary, there is scarcely any old English book of which the manuscript copies are so numerous; and it is certain that it was held in high estimation all through the fifteenth century-down, in fact, to the time when, foreign travel having become more common, the existence of the eight-toed men, &c., began to be doubted.

Much attention has been paid to Maundevile's book of late years, both in Germany and at home; and the new edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica contains an exhaustive article (by Colonel Yule and Mr. E. B. Nicholson) which demolishes the knight's claim, not only to originality, but even to common honesty. One portion of the work, the description of the Holy Land, may represent personal observation; though even here Maundevile appears to have been under obligations to a German traveller, Baldensele, whose book appeared in 1336. As to his more distant travels, the account of them is appropriated from the itinerary of the blessed Odoric of Pordenone, a Franciscan friar, whose wanderings over many countries of Asia lasted sixteen years, almost till his death in 1331. This work may be read in the Acta Sanctorum, under January 14. It is in the main a rational and credible narrative, but Maundevile has stuffed it out with fabulous stories of all kinds, borrowed largely from Pliny and Solinus. He has also 'taken bodily' a good deal from the travels of Hayton the Armenian, a Præmonstratensian monk, who wrote in 1307. Much that he says about the Tartars is taken without acknowledgement from the Franciscan friar Carpini. Furthermore, the English version of the work is said to exist in no MS. earlier than 1400; and there is no solid reason for believing it to have been made by Maundevile himself, for the passage asserting this is not found in the French, i.c. the original version, dated in 1371. Thus the claim, so long made for him, that he was the carliest writer of English prose on secular subjects, appears to fall to the ground; that honour must be transferred to Chaucer. [1884.]

76. Chaucer's prose works consist, besides the two Canterbury Tales already described, the Tale of Melibaus, and the Persones Tale,-of a translation of Boethius' De Consolatione Philosophia, the Astrolabie, and the Testament of Love. In translating Boethius, Chaucer was renewing for the men of his

own day the service rendered by Alfred to his West-Saxon countrymen. The Astrolabie is a treatise on astronomy, composed in 1391, for the use of the poet's second son, Louis, who was at the time ten years old. It opens thus: 'Lytel Lowys my sonne, I perceive well by certain evidences thyne abylytè to lerne sciences touching nombres and proporcions.' The Testament of Love is divided into three parts. It professes to be an imitation of the work of Boethius. In the first part, Love bequeaths instructions to her followers, whereby they may rightly judge of the causes of cross fortune, &c. In the second, 'she teacheth the knowledge of one very God, our Creator; as also the state of grace, and the state of glory.' Throughout these two parts are scattered allusions, or what seem to be such, to the circumstances under which Chaucer lost his official employment, and was reduced to poverty. The third part is a remarkable discourse on necessity and free-will, in which the doctrine laid down by St. Augustine and expounded by the schoolmen is eloquently set forth. Professor ten Brink believes that the Testament of Love is wrongly ascribed to Chaucer, 1. because the writer speaks of Chaucer in the third person, 2. because he praises him without measure, 3. because the passage in the Troylus about God's foreknowledge and man's free-will is erroneously quoted, 4. on the ground that it is incredible that Chaucer, after having translated Boethius, should now paraphrase him in this tedious fashion, 5. because with this writer Love is female, but with Chaucer always male. Some of these considerations have much force. On the other hand, Gower, in the passage quoted above (§ 21), says that the Muse had bidden him to enjoin Chaucer, that he

Do make his Testament of Love.

Such a work might therefore be looked for from Chaucer's pen. It may be said that the forger adopted this name because of the passage in Gower; but in that case he would surely have taken more care to remove from the work all appearance of its having been written by another than Chaucer.

77. Among the English writings of John Wyclif, his translation of the Bible must be first considered. The subject is surrounded with difficulties, and cannot be fully discussed here. A fine edition of the Wycliffite Versions of the Holy Scriptures was issued in 1850, under the care of the Rev. J. Forshall and Sir F. Madden, from the Oxford University Press. In the preface to this work the following passage occurs, and represents probably the real state of the case:

'Down to the year 1360, the Psalter appears to be the only

book of Scripture which had been entirely rendered into English. Within less than twenty-five years from this date a prose version of the whole Bible, including as well the ароcryphal as the canonical books, had been completed, and was in circulation among the people. For this invaluable gift England is indebted to John Wyclif. It may be impossible to determine with certainty the exact share which his own pen had in the translation, but there can be no doubt that he took a part in the labour of producing it, and that the accomplishment of the work must be attributed mainly to his zeal, encouragement, and direction.'

The version here referred to is the older of the two versions printed by Forshall and Madden. The later one appeared some years after Wyclif's death, being thought necessary by his Lollard followers on account of the inequality existing between different parts of the original work. However, the general agreement between the two versions is very close.

The other English writings of Wyclif consist of Sermons, Exegetical treatises, Controversial treatises, and Letters. A selection of these, edited by the present writer, was published for the Clarendon Press in 1871. The Sermons, which are very short, are based upon the gospels and epistles read in the church service. The explanations of the New Testament parables are often racy and original; many curious traditional interpretations are given; and now and then, though it is but seldom, the tone rises to real eloquence. In the case of the other writings, interesting as many of them are, there is unfortunately much difficulty in distinguishing between those which are genuine and those which are more or less doubtful. The controversial tracts are directed chiefly against the four orders of friars, whose monasteries Wyclif called 'Caym's [i.e. Cain's] castles; '-in a minor degree they assail the pope, the monks, and the higher orders of the secular clergy. Of one of the exegetical tracts, On the Paternoster, a portion of the striking peroration is here subjoined :

'Whanne a man seith, My God, delyvere me fro myn enemyes, what othir thing saith he than this, Delyvere us from yvel? And if thou rennest aboute bi alle the wordis of holy praieris, thou schalt fynde nothing whiche is not conteyned in this praier of the Lord. Whoevere seith a thing that may not perteyne to this praier of the Gospel, he praieth bodili and unjustli and unleeffulli, as me thenkith. Whanne a man saieth in his praier, Lord, multiplie myn richessis, and encrease myn honouris, and seith this, havynge the coveitise of hem, and not purposynge the profit of hem to men, to be bettir to Godward, I gesse that he may not fynde it in the Lordis praier. Therfore be it schame to aske the thingis whiche it is not leefful to coveyte. If a man schameth not of this, but coveytise overcometh him, this is askid, that he delyvere fro this yvel of coveytise, to whom we seyn, Delyvere us from yvel.'

1 Select English Works of John Wyclif. Oxford. 1871.

John Trevisa translated Higden's Polychronicon (Prel. Ch. II. § 29) into English; his own words (cited in Warton's Hist. of Eng. Poetry, i. 5.) show that he was engaged on this work in 1385. This, and also another translation of about the same date, are in course of publication in the Rolls series, side by side with Higden's Latin.

A curious English-Latin dictionary, the Promptorium Parvulorum, was compiled in 1440 by one Geoffrey, a recluse in the Dominican monastery of Lynn in Norfolk, for the use both of young clerics studying for ordination and older members of the clergy who had forgotten their Latin. The form of English employed is the Norfolk dialect. The book was first printed by Pynson (1499); then by Wynkyn de Worde (1516); of late years (1843, 1865) it has been well edited for the Camden Society by Mr. Albert Way.

William Lyndewode, official of the archbishop's court, and afterwards bishop of St. David's, wrote about 1425 a Provinciale, i.e. a collection of the synodal decrees of archbishops of Canterbury, from Stephen Langton to Henry Chicheley. It is arranged in five books, like the decretals of Gregory IX., and gives a general view of canon law as applied to the circumstances of the Church in England. The thirteenth-century constitutions of the legates Otho and Othobon are given at the end.

143

CHAPTER 11.

REVIVAL OF LEARNING.

1450-1558.

1

1. M. SISMONDI, in his admirable work on the Literature of the South of Europe, has a passage, explaining the decline of Italian literature in the fifteenth century, which is so strictly applicable to the corresponding decline of English literature for a hundred and seventy years after Chaucer, that we cannot forbear quoting it :

'The century which, after the death of Petrarch, had been devoted by the Italians to the study of antiquity, during which literature experienced no advance, and the Italian language seemed to retrograde, was not, however, lost to the powers of imagination. Poetry, on its first revival, had not received sufficient nourishment. The fund of knowledge, of ideas, and of images, which she called to her aid, was too restricted. The three great men of the fourteenth century, whom we first presented to the attention of the reader, had, by the sole force of their genius, attained a degree of erudition, and a sublimity of thought, far beyond the spirit of their age. These qualities were entirely personal; and the rest of the Italian bards, like the Provençal poets, were reduced, by the poverty of their ideas, to have recourse to those continual attempts at wit, and to that mixture of unintelligible ideas and incoherent images, which render the perusal of them so fatiguing. The whole of the fifteenth century was employed in extending in every direction the knowledge and resources of the friends of the Muses. Antiquity was unveiled to them in all its elevated characters-its severe laws, its energetic virtue, and its beautiful and engaging mythology; in its subtle and profound philosophy, its overpowering eloquence, and its delightful poetry. Another age was required to knead afresh the clay for the formation of a nobler race. At the close of the century, a

1 Vol. ii. p. 400 (Roscoe).

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