Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/264

 same jealous feeling in regard to the preference given to the Norman-French at Court, in public offices of all kinds, and in trials at law, as well as to the use of Latin in religious services. It is easy to conceive the wonderful reaction which would follow the adoption of English where French had formerly been used, and the definite recognition of the national tongue for almost every public purpose. And nowhere would the reaction and relief be greater than in the religious domain, when Wyclif's Poor Priests brought the gospel home to the poor, and "monkish Latin" gave place to the English Bible.

Wyclif's prose was a little more scholastic than Mandeville's, and takes more of an academic character from the original text out of which it was translated. It is true that Mandeville's work is a translation, as he expressly states, for he seems to have made his first observations in Latin. "Ye shall understand," he says, "that I have put this book out of Latin into French, and translated it again out of French into English, that every man of my nation may understand it." But a version from the Latin Vulgate was not likely to be so free or supple as a traveller's version from his own Latin text.

Before taking a few samples of Wyclif's English, it may be interesting to quote a short passage from The Voiage and Travaile of Mandeville, in order that the style of these two pioneers of written prose may be compared. Evidently the language which they wrote was the familiar language spoken by educated Englishmen of their day, with this