Bolingbroke, in the early part of his life, seems to have entertained some free opinions respecting the property of the church. He seemed not unfavourable to Wickliffe's doctrines, and, when Earl of Derby, once declared that " princes had too little and religious houses too much." This unguarded expression, which was not to be forgotten, we are told, occasioned one of the rebellions during his reign. But when Henry Bolingbroke usurped the throne, age and prudence might have come together; the monarch balanced the dread of a turbulent aristocracy, and the uncertain tenure of dominion to be held at their pleasure, against the security of sheltering the throne under the broad alliance of a potent prelacy; a potent prelacy whose doom was fixed, though the hour had not yet struck! The monarch affixed a bloody seal to this political convention, by granting a statute which made the offence of heresy capital; a crime which heretofore in law was as unknown as it seemed impossible to designate, and described only in figurative terms, as something very alarming, but which any prudent heretic might easily, if not explain, at least recant. To give it more solemnity, the statute is delivered in Latin, and the punishment of burning was to be inflicted "coram populo, in eminente loco."* The visions of Piers Ploughman, when the day which his prescience anticipated arrived, were eagerly received; it is said the work passed through three editions in one year, about 1550, in the reign of the youthful monarch of the Reformation; the readers at that early period of printing would find many passages congenial to the popular sentiments, and our nameless author was placed among the founders of a new era. The "VISIONS OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN" will always offer studies for the poetical artist. This volume, and not Gower's nor Chaucer's, is a well of English undefiled. SPENSER often beheld these Visions; MILTON, in his sublime description of the Lazar House, was surely inspired by a reminiscence of Piers Ploughman. Even Dryden, whom we should not suspect to be much addicted to black-letter reading beyond his Chaucer, must have carefully conned our Piers Ploughman; for he has borrowed one very striking line from our poet, and possibly may have taken others. BYRON, though he has thrown out a crude opinion of Chaucer, has declared that "the Ploughman" * Barrington's Observations on the more ancient Statutes. excels our ancient poets. And I am inclined to think that we owe to Piers Ploughman an allegorical work of the same wild invention, from that other creative mind, the author of Pilgrim's Progress. How can we think of the one, without being reminded of the other? Some distant relationship seems to exist between the Ploughman's Dowell and Dobet, and Dobest, Friar Flatterer, Grace the Portress of the magnificent Tower of Truth viewed at a distance, and by its side the dungeon of Care, Natural Understanding, and his lean and stern wife Study, and all the rest of this numerous company, and the shadowy pilgrimage of the "Immortal Dreamer" to "the Celestial City." Yet I would mistrust my own feeling, when so many able critics, in their various researches after a prototype of that singular production, have hitherto not suggested what seems to me obvious.* Why our rustic bard selected the character of a ploughman as the personage adapted to convey to us his theological mysteries, we know not precisely to ascertain; but it probably occurred as a companion fitted to the humbler condition of the apostles themselves. Such, however, was the power of the genius of this writer, that his successors were content to look for no one of a higher class to personify their solemn themes. Hence we have "The Crede of Piers Ploughman ; "The Prayer and Complaint of the Ploughman;" "The Ploughman's Tale," inserted in Chaucer's volume; all being equally directed against the vicious clergy of the day. "The Crede of Piers Ploughman," if not written by the author of the Vision, is at least written by a scholar who fully emulates his master; and Pope was so deeply struck with this little poem, that he has very carefully analysed the whole. * For the general reader I fear that "The Visions of Piers Ploughman" must remain a sealed book. The last edition of Dr. WHITAKER, the most magnificent and frightful volume that was ever beheld in the black letter, was edited by one whose delicacy of taste unfitted him for this homely task: the plain freedom of the vigorous language is sometimes castrated, with a faulty paraphrase and a slender glossary; and passages are slurred over with an annihilating &c. Much was expected from this splendid edition; the subscription price was quadrupled, and on its publication every one would rid himself of the mutilated author. The editor has not assisted the reader through his barbarous text interspersed with Saxon characters and abbreviations, and the difficulties of an obscure and elliptical phraseology in a very antiquated language. Should ever a new edition appear, the perusal would be facilitated by printing with the white letter. There is an excellent specimen for an improved text and edition in Gent. Mag., April 1834. OCCLEVE; THE SCHOLAR OF CHAUCER. * WARTON passed sentence on OCCLEVE as "a cold genius, and a feeble writer." A literary antiquary, from a manuscript in his possession, published six poems of Occleve; but that selection was limited to the sole purpose of furnishing the personal history of the author. Ritson's sharp snarl pronounced that they were of" peculiar stupidity;" George Ellis refused to give "a specimen ;" and Mr. Hallam, with his recollection of the critical brotherhood, has decreed, that "the poetry of Occleve is wretchedly bad, abounding with pedantry, and destitute of grace or spirit." We could hardly expect to have heard any more of this doomed victim-this ancient man, born in the fourteenth century, standing before us, whose dry bones will ill bear all this shaking and cuffing. A literary historian, who has read manuscripts with the eagerness which others do the last novelty, more careful than Warton, and more discriminate than Ritson, has, with honest intrepidity, confessed that " OCCLEVE has not had his just share of reputation. His writings greatly assisted the growth of the popularity of our infant poetry."+ Our historian has furnished from the manuscripts of OCCLEVE testimonies of his assertion. Among the six poems printed, one of considerable length exhibits the habits of a dissipated young gentleman in the fourteenth century. OCCLEVE for more than twenty years was a writer in the Privy Seal, where we find quarter-days were most irregular; and though briberies constantly flowed in, yet the golden + 66 "Poems by THOMAS HOCCLEVE, never before printed, selected from a manuscript in the possession of George Mason, with a preface, notes, and glossary, 1796." The notes are not amiss, and the glossary is valuable; but the verses printed by Mason are his least interesting productions. The poet's name is here written with an H, as it appeared in the manuscript; but there is no need of a modern editor changing the usual mode, because names were diversely written or spelt even in much later times. The present writer has been called not only Occleve, but Occliffe, as we find him in Chaucer's works. Turner's History of England, v. 335. shower passed over the heads of the clerks, dropping nothing into the hands of these innocents. Our poet, in his usual passage from his "Chestres Inn by the Strond" to "Westminster Gate," by land or water-for "in the winter the way was deep," and "the Strand" was then what its name indicates--often was delayed by "The outward signe of Bacchus and his lure, Exciteth Folk to taste of his moisture So often that they cannot well say Nay!" There was another invitation for this susceptible writer of the Privy Seal. "I dare not tell how that the fresh repair There he loitered, 66 "To talk of mirth, and to disport and play." He never "pinched" the taverners, the cooks, the boatmen, and all such gentry. "Among this many in mine audience, Methought I was ymade a man for ever- He stinteth never till his purse be bare." He is at length seized amid his jollities, "By force of the penniless maladie, Ne lust had none to Bacchus House to hie. And hevé purse with Herté liberál Quencheth the thirsty heat of Hertés drie, Where chinchy Herté† hath thereof but small." This "mirror of riot and excess" effected a discovery, and it was, that all the mischiefs which he recounts came from the high reports of himself which servants bring to their lord. The Losengour or pleasant flatterer was too * No desire, Niggardly heart. lightly believed, and honied words made more harmful the deceitful error. Oh! babbling flattery! he spiritedly exclaims, author of all lyes, that causest all day thy lord to fare amiss. Such is the import of the following uncouth verse: "Many a servant unto his Lord saith That all the world speaketh of him, Honoúr, The Combre worldés ‡ 'clept been Enchantóúrs OCCLEVE was a shrewd observer of his own times. That this rhymer was even a playful painter of society we have a remarkable evidence preserved in the volume of his great master. "The Letter of Cupid," in the works of Chaucer, was the production of Occleve, and appears to have been overlooked by his modern critics. He had originally entitled it, "A treatise of the Conversation of Men and Women in the Little Island of Albion." It is a caustic, "polite conversation ;" and deemed so execrably good, as to have excited, as our ancient critic Speght tells, "such hatred among the gentlewomen of the Court, that Occleve was forced to recant in that boke of his called Plenetas Proprius."S The Letter of Cupid is thus dated :— "Written in the lusty month of May, In our Paléis where many a millión The yere of grace joyfull and jocúnd, A thousand four hundred and second." * A Chaucerian word, which well deserves preservation in the language. FAVELL, author of Lyes. FAVELL, the editor of Hoccleve, explains as cajolerie, or flattery, by words given by Carpentier in his supplement to Du Cange. Favel is personified by Piers Ploughman, and in Skelton's Bouge of Court. FAVELE in langue Romane is Flattery-hence Fabel, Fabling.-Roquefort's Dictionnaire. The Italian FAVELLIO, parlerie, babil, caquet-Alberti's Grand Dictionnaire-does not wholly convey the idea of our modern Humbug, which combines fabling and caquet. The encumbrances to the world. In another poem he calls death, "that Coimbre-world." It was a favourite expression with him, taken from Chaucer. See Warton, ii. 352, note. § A title which does not appear in the catalogue of his writings by Ritson, in his Bibliographia Poetica. |