Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/260

 and the Vision of Piers Plowman is most probable; for copies would surely be at Oxford, and such as were not there he would hardly fail to see in London. It would be rash, however, to assume that the ardent devotee of scholastic theology, the earnest-minded student whose ambition was to earn distinction amongst the secular clergy, the prominent ecclesiastic whose soul was immersed in the stern realities of the day, was attracted to any sort of profane writing outside the limits of religious exposition and devotion. There is little evidence in his own writings of a taste for dealing with lighter topics, or for greater freedom of imagination and treatment. On the other hand, this is not what we should expect to find in connection with the serious controversies in which he was engaged. We know that Wyclif was a bright and pleasant companion in everyday life and at the table, for his enemies twisted it into a charge against him. There is no reason why he should not have read the diverting fables of Sir John Mandeville, or even some of the sugared lays and translations of the courtly Chaucer. It is not out of the bounds of possibility that he should have seen before he died one or more of the stories which Chaucer subsequently collected in the Canterbury Tales.

Be this as it may, there is no room for doubting that Wyclif had pored over the manuscripts at Balliol and Merton, and the costly treasures of Bishop Aungervile, better known as Richard de Bury, lately removed for safe keeping to Durham College, hard by Balliol, where two centuries nearer