women; of rocks of adamant in the Indian seas, which draw to them with irresistible force any ships sailing past that have any iron bolts or nails in them; of a tribe of people with hoofs like horses, of people with eight toes, of dwarfs, and of a onelegged 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 crédulity 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.

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 abylyte 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 apocryphal 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 1871.1 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 word is 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 encreese 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.

133

CHAPTER II.

REVIVAL OF LEARNING.

1450-1558.

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

'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. 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 divine breath animated the finished statue, and it started into life.'

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

Mutatis mutandis, these eloquent sentences are exactly applicable to the case of English literature. Chaucer's eminence was purely personal; even more so, perhaps, than that of the great Italians, for the countrymen of Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio at least possessed a settled and beautiful language, adapted already to nearly all literary purposes; while the tongue of Chaucer was in so rude and unformed a condition that only transcendent genius could make a work expressed through it endurable. The fifteenth century seems to have been an age of active preparation in every country of Europe. Though no great books were produced in it, it witnessed the invention of the art of printing, the effect of which was so to multiply copies of the masterpieces of Greek and Roman genius, to reduce their price, and to enlarge the circle of their readers, as to supply abundantly new materials for thought, and new models of artistic form, and thus pave the way for the great writers of the close of the next century.

2. Printing, invented at Metz by Gutenberg about the year 1450,was introduced into England by William Caxton, who learned the art in the Low Countries, where he lived for some years in the service of Margaret, Duchess of Burgundy, a sister of our Edward IV. The first books printed in English are believed to have been, 'The Recueil of the Historyes of Troye,' and 'The Game and Play of the Chesse.' These translations from the French were made by Caxton himself, and seem to have been printed under his direction at Bruges in 1475. In the course of the next year he probably came over to England. The first book indisputably printed in England was the 'Dictes and Sayinges of the Philosophers,' on the title-page of which we read, 'Enprynted by me, William Caxton, at Westmestre, the yere of our Lord mcccclxxvii.' His press was set up in the Almonry near Westminster Abbey; it is clear therefore that the Church regarded his proceedings with approval, and was disposed to further them by substantial aid. The patronage also of two enlightened noblemen, Anthony Woodville Earl Rivers, and John Tiptoft Earl of Worcester, greatly aided Caxton in his enterprise.

This century was also signalized by the foundation of many schools and colleges, in which the founders desired that the recovered learning of antiquity should be uninterruptedly and effectually cultivated. Eton, the greatest of the English schools, and King's College at Cambridge, were founded by Henry VI. between 1440 and 1450. Three new universities arose in Scotland-that of St. Andrews in 1410, of Glasgow in 1450, of Aberdeen in 1494;-all under the express authority of different