CHAPTER IV.

N our last chapter we went back to the latter

IN

edge of the thirteenth century and to the City of Oxford, that we might find in that time and place a Franciscan Friar- known as Roger Bacon, who had an independence of spirit which brought him. into difficulties, and a searchingness of mind which made people count him a magician. I spoke of Langlande and Wyclif: and of how the reforming spirit of the first expressed itself in the alliterative rhythm of the Piers Plowman allegory; and how the latter declared against Papal tyranny and the accepted dogmas of the Church: he too, set on foot those companies of "pore priests," who in long russet gowns reaching to their heels, and with staff in hand, traversed the highways and byways of England, preaching humility and charity; he gave to us moreover that Scriptural quaintness of language,

which from Wyclif's time, down to ours, has left its trail in every English pulpit, and colored every English prayer.

Then we came to that great poet Chaucer, who wrote so much and so well, as first and most of all contemporary or preceding writers - to make one proud of the new English tongue. He died in 1400, and was buried at Westminster. not a stone's

throw away His tomb, under its Gothic screen, may be found in the Poet's Corner of the Abbey, a little to the right, on entering from the Old Palace Yard; and over it, in a window that looks toward the Houses of Parliament, has been set- in these latter years, in unfading array the gay company of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims.

from the site of his last London home.

*

In the same year in which the poet died, died also that handsome and unfortunate Richard the Second (son of the Black Prince) who promised bravely; who seemed almost an heroic figure when in his young days, he confronted Wat Tyler so coolly; but he made promises he could not or would

* His dethronement preceded his death, by a twelvemonth

or more.

not keep slipped into the enthralment of royalties against which Lollard and democratic malcontents bayed in vain: there were court cabals that overset him; Shakespeare has told his story, and in that tragedy lighted with brilliant passages-John of Gaunt, brother to the Black Prince, appears, old, and gray and near his grave; and his son the crafty but resolute Henry Bolingbroke - comes on the stage as Henry IV. to take the "brittle glory" of the crown.

Of Gower and Froissart.

But I must not leave Chaucer's immediate times, without speaking of other men who belonged there: the first is John Gower- a poet whom I name from a sense of duty rather than from any special liking for what he wrote. He was a man of learning for those days having a good estate too, and living in an orderly Kentish home, to which he went back and forth in an eight-oared barge upon the Thames. He wrote a long Latin poem Vox Clamantis, in which like Langlande he declaimed against the vices and pretensions of the clergy; and he also treated in the high-toned conservative way of a

well-to-do country gentleman, the social troubles of the time, which had broken out into Wat Tyler and

Jack Straw rebellions; — people should be wise and discreet and religious; then, such troubles would not come.

A better known poem of Gower because written in English-was the Confessio Amantis: Old Classic, and Romance tales come into it, and are fearfully stretched out; and there are pedagogic Latin rubrics at the margin, and wearisome repetitions, with now and then faint scent of prettinesses stolen from French fabliaux: but unless your patience is heroic, you will grow tired of him; and the monotonous, measured, metallic jingle of his best verse is provokingly like the "Caw-caw" of the prim, black raven. He had art, he had learning, he had goodwill; but he could not weave words into the thrushlike melodies of Chaucer. Even the clear and beautiful type of the Bell & Daldy edition* does not make him entertaining. You will tire before

*Edited by Dr. Reinhold Pauli Morley (Eng. Writers, IV., p. 238) more of existing MSS. of the poem. tion was that of Caxton, 1483.

London, 1857. Henry enumerates a score or The first printed edi

you are half through the Prologue, which is as long,

and stiff as many a sermon.

And if you skip to

the stories, they will not win you to liveliness: Pauline's grace, and mishaps are dull; and the sharp, tragic twang about Gurmunde's skull, and the vengeance of Rosemunde (from the old legend which Paul the Deacon tells) does not wake one's blood.

In his later years he was religiously inclined; was a patron and, for a time, resident of the Priory which was attached to the church, now known as St. Saviour's, and standing opposite to the London Bridge Station in Southwark. In that church may now be found the tomb of Gower and his effigy in stone, with his head resting on "the likeness of three books which he compiled."

Perhaps I have no right to speak of Froissart, because he was a Fleming, and did not write in English; but Lord Berners' spirited translation of his Chronicle (1523) has made it an English classic: * moreover, Froissart was very much in London; he was a great pet of the Queen of Ed

*A more modern and accepted translation - by a wealthy Welsh gentleman, Thos. Johnes - was luxuriously printed on his private press at Hafod, Cardiganshire, in 1803.