As far as literature is concerned the poetry of the period which we have been considering is infinitely more important than the prose. For most prosaic purposes, Englishmen still wrote in Latin: Richard Rolle, that eccentric hermit, and Wyclif, the premature Reformer, were even more prolific in Latin than in English. Prose was used in writing of science, as in Chaucer\'s treatise concerning the Astrolabe; for translation out of Latin, as in Chaucer\'s translation of Bo?thius, and Trevisa\'s rendering of Higden\'s chronicles; in sermons, and by Wyclif and his followers for their tracts against the rich; against the Friars; against the endowments of the Church (constantly threatened in Parliament); and against the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist; and for their translations from the Latin Bible.
Wyclif.
John Wyclif (born about 1329) was a man of great influence in his day; and the Reformation, when many of his ideas revived, probably found the embers of the fire which he had tended still glowing. He is said to have been born at Hipswell, near Richmond in Yorkshire, and certainly was of the Diocese of York. He was Master of Balliol College, Oxford, in 1361. In 1372 Wyclif took the degree of Doctor in Theology: he had already written not a few Latin treatises on philosophical subjects. As a philosopher he was a believer in predestination (on which much might be said), but averse to the theory of the disintegration of matter; indeed his views on this subject controlled his theory of the Eucharist. His desire to reform the Church by reducing her[Pg 116] endowments endeared him to a political party in the State; and when he was summoned before Convocation in 1377, he was supported by John of Gaunt, uncle of Richard II.
The affair ended in a brawl; and in a later examination his ideas were not pronounced heretical. The London mob as well as some persons of high rank were on his side, and when one Pope, Urban, proclaimed a crusade against the other Pope, Clement, Wyclif opposed it in manuscript pamphlets. He had, about 1378, started a kind of order of "poor priests" who spread his doctrines, and, in regard to the unlawfulness of owning private property, went beyond him.
The Bible, not the tradition of the Church, was the centre of Wyclif\'s inspiration: it would be a mistake to suppose that the Bible was then generally ignored, the literature of the time is full of quotations from Scripture. There was no authorized translation of the Latin Bible, but many separate books of Scripture were circulating in English. There is much controversy as to whether or not Wyclif translated, or caused to be translated, the entire Bible, as a chronicler declares that he did: certainly he made much of it known in English tracts and sermons.
In 1382 he was suspended from teaching at Oxford; he retired to his rectory at Lutterworth, continued to write, and died on Old Year\'s Day, 1384.
It is impossible, here, to enter into theological details, but Wyclif anticipated many of the great multitude of ideas which flooded Western Europe at the beginning of the Reformation. If we open his sermons at random, we find him preaching on Lazarus and Dives, "how richessis be perilouse, for lightli wole a riche man use hem unto moche lust," that is, luxury. Words of Latin origin are nearly as common in his style as in that of Chaucer or Piers Plowman. In his Englishing of the Bible, Wyclif uses "And" at the beginning of many sentences, just as Mandeville does in his amusing and fabulous "Travels". The sermons have the double merit of being very short, and very plain, with no rhetorical flowers. The tracts can scarcely be called amiable: the word "stinking," for example, is not thought by Wyclif too strong to apply to "proud priests of Rome and Avignon".
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All these brave and earnest men, the Wyclifite pamphleteers and "poor priests," and Piers Plowman, with their socialism and their doubts, their "New Theology," were rehearsing in mediaeval costume the drama of to-day; while Chaucer was arraying the heroes of the Fleece of Gold, of Troy, and of the Ach?ans, in the armour of the men who fought at Crécy and Poitiers. What remains as a gain to literature is the art of Chaucer.
Sweet reasonableness and urbane irony are not to be expected from men full of righteous indignation, and in great danger of being burned alive; for by this penalty did the Church and State suppress the preachers of doctrines which were apt to cause dangerous popular tumults. The Wyclifite Biblical translations look like a canvas later embroidered on by the authors of King James\'s authorized version, that immortal monument of English prose.
Chaucer\'s Prose Style.
It was not in the nature of these Reformers to follow the counsel of Chaucer\'s good Parson in the "Parson\'s Tale" (the spelling may here be modernized, as an example of the poet\'s prose).
"Certainly chiding may not come but out of a villain\'s heart, for after the abundance of the heart speaketh the mouth full often. And ye should understand that I Look ever when any man shall chastise another, that he beware of chiding and reproving, for truly, unless he be wary, he may full lightly kindle the fire of anger and of wrath which he should quench, and peradventure slayeth him whom he might chastise with benignity.... Lo, what saith saint Augustine, \'there is nothing so like the Devil\'s child as he that often chideth\'. Now cometh the sin of them that sow and make discord among folk; which is a sin that Christ hateth utterly, and no wonder it is; for he died to make concord. And more sin do they to Christ, than did they that him crucified; for God loveth better that friendship be among folk than he did his own body, which he gave for unity."
Chaucer\'s country-priest, not the chiding Wyclifite Sons of Thunder, is the true Christian. There is more of the spirit of the Master in the caressing words of Chaucer\'s address to "little Louis[Pg 118] my son... pray God save the king that is Lord of this lande, and all that him faith beareth and obeyeth, each in his degree, the more, and the less," than in torrents of bitter chiding, and a hail of unpublishable vituperation.
The English of Chaucer\'s treatise of "The Astrolabe," despite its difficult astronomical matter, is pellucid, and there is a charm of rhythm in his prose translations of the verses in Bo?thius.
Trevisa.
The English prose of John Trevisa, a Cornish priest, educated at Oxford, and a traveller on the continent (died 1412), was entirely given to translation from the Latin. He is said, by Caxton, to have translated the Bible: he certainly made an English version of the "Polychronicon" of Ranulf Higden, the monk of Chester, which begins with the Creation, and is rich in geographical and social information.
Trevisa occasionally inserts notes of his own. His versions of Higden, and of the mythical popular science and prodigious fables contained in the "De Proprietatibus Rerum" ("Concerning the Properties of Things") of Bartholom?us the Englishman, were very popular, as their amusing nature deserved, and the "Polychronicon" was printed by Caxton. Trevisa himself tells us that in his day English boys in grammar schools were ceasing to learn French, and there was a public for English books supposed to be educational.
Mandeville.
The most famous and by far the most interesting of these adapters of foreign books is the so-called Sir John Mandeville, with his "Voiage and Travaile". The author of this book was not an Englishman, at least he did not write in English, and did write in French, at Liège, about the end of the fourteenth century. It is impossible and unnecessary to discuss here the fables about Mandeville. The author of the book declares that he himself is "Sir John to all Europe," is an Englishman born at St. Albans, that he passed the sea in 1322, that he travelled in Tartary, Persia, Armenia, Lybia, Chald?a, the land of the Amazons, India, and[Pg 119] so forth. In fact he resembles Widsith in the ancient Anglo-Saxon poem—he has been almost everywhere and knows almost everything. He especially writes for pilgrims to Jerusalem; he first wrote his book in Latin, then translated it into French, and finally into English. There are countries that he has not seen; and he says that he could not play a part in the deeds of arms which he beheld. Now he suffers from arthritis, "gowtes artetykes," and he amuses himself by writing his adventures in 1357.
Another version of Sir John\'s career is given by Jean d\'Outremeuse, a writer of histories, who had the............