Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/265

 , that the writers were three-tongued men, who more or less pedantically used new-fangled words from the Latin and French, whereas the English speakers who knew no Latin would allow a marked predominance to French or to English types, according to their descent and early associations.

"For als moche," Mandeville writes, "as it is longe tyme passed that there was no generalle passage ne vyage over the see, and many men desiren for to here speke of the holy lond, and han therof gret solace and comfort; I John Maundevylle, Knyght, alle be it I be not worthi, that was born in Englond, in the town of Seynt Albones, passede the see in the year of our Lord Jhesu Christ MCCCXXII, in the day of Seynt Michelle; and hidreto have ben longe tyme over the see, and have seyn and gon thorghe manye dyverse londes, and many provynces and kingdomes and iles . . . where dwellen many dyverse folkes, and of dyverse maneres and lawes, and of dyverse schappes of men."

It is almost entirely a matter of spelling whether this language is plain and simple to us or not. In most essentials the three-tongued men of the fourteenth century spoke and wrote the colloquial speech of to-day.

Wyclif's Bible, though it occupied several hands, is fairly homogeneous throughout. Probably the whole of it passed under his review; and moreover the complete text was subsequently revised by Purvey, who had been his fellow-worker from the beginning. But we are most certain to find Wyclif's English in the Gospels, which were his special and