poem of the English people, and for them; not for their entertainment merely, but to animate and encourage them in the great struggles for truth and freedom which were before them. Veiling its purposes under a profound allegory, it probably escaped proscription. It seems never to have been fully understood until two centuries after, when its principles blossomed in the Reformation, and when it became suddenly and for a long period a popular poem. The Creed of Piers Ploughman, which is generally associated with it, was a later production by at least a quarter of a century, and represented the same great popular movement in riper forms. Its merits as a poem are greatly inferior to those of the Vision. These poems, the Vision and the Creed, bring us down to the period of Chaucer. We must close these illustrations with a few extracts from the Vision, which may serve to furnish some idea of its scope and character.

It thus commences:

In a somer seson,

Whan softe was the sonne,

I shoop me into shroudes,

As I a sheep weere,

In habite as an heremite,

Unholy of werkes,

Wente wide in this world

Wondres to here;

Ac on a May morwenynge,

On Malverne hilles

Me bifel a ferly,

Of fairye me thoghte,
I was wery for-wandred,
And wente me to reste,
Under a brood banke
By a bournes syde;
And as I lay and lenede,
And loked on the watres,
I slombered into a slepyng,
It sweyed so murye.
Thanne gan I meten

A marvellous swevene,

That I was in a wildernesse,

Wist I nevere where,

And as I biheeld into the eest,

An heigh to the sonne,

I seigh a tour on a toft
Trieliche y-maked,
A deep dale byneethe,
A dongeon therinne,
With depe diches and derke
And dredfulle of sighte.
A fair feeld ful of folk,
Fond I ther bitwene,
Of alle manere of men,
The mene and the riche,
Werchynge and wandrynge,

As the world asketh.

The poet having thus cast himself into a sleep, proceeds to describe" alle manere of men" who appeared before him in his vision. The brief lines in which he characterizes the various classes, indicate the popular interest, political and religious, in which the poem was written.

Some putten hem to the plough,
Pleiden ful selde,

In settynge and sowyenge

Swonken ful harde,

And wonnen that wastours

With glotonye destruyeth.

And somme putten hem to pride,

Apparailed hem thereafter,

In contenaunce of clothynge

Çomen degised.

Pilgryms and palmeres

Plighten hem togidere,

For to seken seint Jame,

And seintes at Rome.

They wenten forth in hire wey,

With many wise tales,

And hadden leve to lyen

Al hire life after.

I seigh some that seiden

They hadde y-sought seintes;
To ech a tale that thei tolde

Hire tong was tempred to lye,

Moore than to seye sooth,

It semed by hire speche.

*

I fond there freres,

Alle the foure ordres
Prechynge the peple
For profit of hemselve;
Glosed the gospel

As hem good liked,

For coveitise of copes

Construwed it as thei wolde.

Ther preched a pardoner,

As he a preest were;

Broughte forth a bulle

With many bisshopes seles,
And seide that himself myghte
Assoillen hem alle,

Of falshede, of fastynge,
Of avowes y-broken.
Lewed men leved it wel,
And liked hise wordes;
Comen up knelynge

To kissen his bulles. *

When such a poem was an echo of the popular feeling, we cannot be surprised to find the poet, when he has depicted the vices of the religious orders, uttering prophecies which at a later day were marvellously fulfilled, nor shall we wonder at the popularity of the poem at the period of the Reformation. Ac ther shall come a kyng,

And confesse yow religiouses,

And bete yow as the Bible telleth

For brekynge of youre rule;
And amende monyals,

Monkes and chanons,

And puten to hir penaunce.t

Line 146.

+ Line 6245.

ARTICLE VIII.-RALPH WALDO EMERSON AND HIS WRITINGS.

The Conduct of Life. By RALPH WALDO EMERSON. Boston: Ticknor & Fields.

A NEW book from Mr. Emerson cannot be altogether new. It is now a score of years since he put his first volume of Essays into print, and he began to publish five years earlier. This is the seventh volume of his collected writings. He has produced slowly, and in pieces; but there is in them all the continuity and likeness which belong to one mind. Whatever he has now to offer cannot very much change the judgment which all this time has been making in regard to him. He is now in the fulness of his years, of years ample with opportunity of thought, experience, travel, culture. He has reached "the years which bring the philosophic mind,” and we may now expect the ripest, sincerest, best thoughts he has to offer. He has led the life of a student and a philosopher; recluse enough for meditation, and yet enough in the world for observation and experience; unstained by any self-indulgence; unexhausted by any responsible part in affairs; letting his genius run at its own sweet will, and never wanting the encouragement of a ready audience for whatever he may have to say. He comes to judgment in no new character, unless it be that the title of his book intimates something a little more didactic than usual. This, however, is only in appearance, for though most of his writings are of the nature. of lectures, they have very little reference to instruction, or any immediate impression. The desire or attempt to win pupils, or converts, does not appear in them. They have the air rather of a confession and a testimony.

They are utter

ances, not arguments. They are not organic and continuous

courses of thought, but single perceptions-swift, piercing, subtle, and entirely individual. It is not the truth of things so much as his vision of it. Their fit title and preface is, sic loquitur, R. W. E. This is rather the salient feature of his philosophy, and of his temper. He stands fast for the individual soul. He remands every man to that, and intends to stick there himself. It is Protestantism in its last stage, the sufficiency of the individual to itself. The soul is equal to its own wants. Let it stay at home and heaven will come to its door. Solitude is his grand prescription. In the end, all things are made out of the soul. Travel is needless. History you can find in the laws of your own being.

"We receive but what we give,

And in our life alone does nature live,

Ours is her wedding-garment, ours her shroud."

This is no more a principle, and the very bottom of his philosophy, as we shall soon see, than it is the manner of his mind. Its processes are those of insight rather than of reasoning. He simply announces and counts what he says sufficient of itself, without any logic of connection with before or after, without any support of proofs and reasons. It is a mind of much culture and little discipline, impatient of the laws of thought, excursive, liable, like Ixion, to embrace a cloud for a divinity. It has never been sifted and shaken by vigorous discipline in logic. It trusts to extemporaneous sallies into the unknown, and often the inane. Of course to such a mind it is not necessary to be consistent. He disclaims, if he does not disdain it. System is foreign to all his intellectual processes. He holds himself bound by nothing he or anybody else has said. He only holds to the right to say or gainsay anything, according to his present intuition. "Do not set the least value on what I do, or the least discredit on what I do not, as if I pretended to settle anything as true or false. I unsettle all things. No facts are to me sacred: none are profane: I simply experiment; an endless seeker, with no Past at my back." (Essays, 1st series, p. 262.)

With this individualizing, is also an ideal tendency of mind, Vol. xxvii-41