Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 5.djvu/527

ENGLAND poetic power, one of them, "The Pearl", of great beauty and of deep religious feeling. To this alliterative class belongs too the well-known "Piers the Plowman". Chaucer's work, coming almost at the same time, has to some extent overshadowed this poem, but as a picture of the society and ideals of the time it forms a complement to Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales". In "Piers the Plowman" we have that grave outlook upon life which marks the English character at its best, carried almost to excess. The author (or authors, we ought now to say, for it has been recently proved that at least three writers must have had a hand in its making) looks upon the society of his time as a "realist". He describes the world almost entirely on its dark side, and though the remedies he offers are good ("Love is the physician of Life"), and though he never altogether loses his belief in a Divine over-ruling order, yet there is an accent of uncertainty and sometimes of despair in his voice.

Chaucer (1340-1400), on the other hand, does not care for problems of life or dark thinking. His picture of society is, on the whole, from its bright side, when men are out on holiday, and when over-seriousness would seem out of place. Poetically, and in its structure, "Piers the Plowman" is much below Chaucer's work, but its forcefulness, its pathos, its sincerity, its grim humor, its realistic descriptiveness, and its dramatic moments make it a great poem. Chaucer's work marks the full flowering of English literature in the Middle Ages, and it was he who first raised English poetry to a European position. It is the custom of historians of literature to divide the literary life of Chaucer into a French, an Italian, and an English period, according as his work was influenced by the manner of each national literature. This division represents a fact if it be remembered that he carried on, all through his career, certain of the lessons he had learned from the foreign source in the earlier time. There is little doubt that the impulse to write verse came to Chaucer from France. Old English literature was practically unknown to him, but he was saturated with French poetry, for the literature of France was then, outside the classics, the most influential in Europe. Among many shorter poems of this early time, the very first of which is a hymn to the Blessed Virgin, the translation (in part) of the long French allegorical poem of the "Romance of the Rose", and his original and most interesting elegy on the "Death of Blanche the Duchess", are the most important. It is, however, after he has come upon the literature of Italy—Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio—that his true genius begins to show itself. "Troilus and Cressida", "The Parlement of Foules", "The House of Fame", and "The Legend of Good Women" (the two last unfinished), as well as some of the "Canterbury Tales", belong to this time. They show him as a true artist, feeling his way through experiment to greater perfection of work and developing his unique sense of humor. Then, in the later years of his life, he strikes upon the fruitful idea of the Canterbury pilgrimage as a framework in which to show the full power of his art in his picture of the life of his own, and, to some extent of all, time; and into this frame he fitted tales he had already written, as well as new ones. But, of it all, nothing exceeds the power and truth of the "Prologue" to the "Tales". His picture of life and the commentary upon it comes straight out of his own observation and character. As he saw men so he fearlessly portrays them, the good, the bad, the indifferent. A few of his tales reflect the coarseness of the time, and it is just possible that the apology placed at the end of the MS. of "The Parson's Tale" was written by himself at the close of his life. But, however that may be, over all he writes he throws his own sunny humor and wide charity, and in this as in the width of his sympathies he is not unworthy to be named with Shakespeare. He is the one supreme literary artist before Spenser, and the best brief summary of him and his work is given in that proverb quoted by Dryden in his criticism of Chaucer, "Here is God's plenty". The name of John Gower (1330-1408) is linked by custom with that of Chaucer, but we recognize now what his contemporaries did not, that Gower's lengthy books in verse are the work rather of an expert journeyman than of a genius. But we may legitimately class together the two writers in their influence on the language. Both being widely read, they helped to make the East Midland dialect in which they wrote the literary language of England, and by their choice or rejection of French words welded the language into greater stability and unity. The English language, at the end of the fourteenth century, had begun to assume nearly that modern form we know. People, language, and literature had now become wholly English.

After reviewing this brilliant half-century of poetry, the prose of the same time seems a poor matter. There is no great progress to record, nothing really original of importance was written, and the style follows Latin models rather than the simpler natural manner of the Old English prose. Chaucer wrote prose which in its mediocrity is a curious contrast to his poetry. Sir John Mandeville's "Travels" was a translation of an amusing book, and Wyclif's translation or paraphrase of the Vulgate (in which, however, several other hands than his own had a share), together with his vigorous but heretical tracts and sermons, form the chief prose work of this time.

After the death of Chaucer, poetry declined in quality with strange swiftness. For the next one hundred and fifty years there is no great poet; the art of poetry, chiefly owing to the scarcity of native poetical genius, but also partly to the swift changes the language was undergoing and to the carelessness of those who attempted verse, ceased to be finely exercised. The tradition of Chaucer almost disappeared. In the earlier part of the fifteenth century Lydgate (1370?-1451?) and Hoccleve (1370-1450?) tried to follow in the footsteps of the master they revered, but frankly recognized their own failure. Their voluminous and mediocre work, especially Lydgate's, is not without