Therefore whoso doth them accuse Of any double intentión, To speaké rown, other to muse, I dare right well the soth express, So well fortunéd is their chance, With sice and cinque they can advance, And then by revolution They set a fell conclusión Of lombés,3 as in sothfastness, Sampson yhad experience That women were full true yfound; With shearés 'gan his hair to round ;4 Single thing is not ypraised, L'Envoye. O ye women! which be inclinéd [Last Verses of Chaucer, written on his Deathbed.] Pain thee not each crooked to redress That 20 thee is sent receive in buxomness ;21 Waiveth thy lust and let thy ghost thee lead, And truth thee shall deliver 't is no drede. However far the genius of Chaucer transcended that of all preceding writers, he was not the solitary light of his age. The national mind and the national language appear, indeed, to have now arrived at a certain degree of ripeness, favourable for the production of able writers in both prose and verse.* Heretofore, Norman French had been the language of education, of the court, and of legal documents; and when the Normanised Anglo-Saxon was employed by literary men, it was for the special purpose, as they were usually very careful to mention, of conveying instruction to the common people. But now the distinction between the conquering Normans and subjected Anglo-Saxons was nearly lost in a new and fraternal national feeling, which recognised the country under the sole name of England, and the people and language under the single appellation of English. Edward III. substituted the use of English for that of French in the public acts and judicial proceedings; and the schoolmasters, for the first time, in the same reign, caused their pupils to construe the classical tongues into the vernacular. The consequence of this ripening of the national mind and language was, that, while English heroism was gaining the victories of Cressy and Poitiers, English genius was achieving milder and more beneficial triumphs, in the productions of Chaucer, of Gower, and of Wickliffe. JOHN GOWER. JOHN GOWER is supposed to have been born some time about the year 1325, and to have consequently been a few years older than Chaucer. He was a gentleman, possessing a considerable amount of property in land, in the counties of Nottingham and Suffolk. In his latter years, he appears, like Chaucer, to have been a retainer of the Lancaster branch of the royal family, which subsequently ascended the throne; and his death took place in 1408, before which period he had become blind. Gower wrote a poetical work in three parts, which were respectively entitled Speculum Meditantis, Vox Clamantis, and Confessio Amantis; the last, which is a grave discussion of the morals and metaphysics of love, being the only part written in English. The solemn sententiousness of this work caused Chaucer, and sub 1 Spirit. *It is always to be kept in mind that the language employed in literary composition is apt to be different from that used by the bulk of the people in ordinary discourse. The literary language of these early times was probably much more refined than the colloquial. During the fourteenth century, various dialects of English were spoken in different parts of the country, and the mode of pronunciation also was very far from being uniform. Trevisa, a historian who wrote about 1380, remarks that, Hit semeth a grete wonder that Englyssmen have so grete dyversyte in their owin langage in sowne and in spekyin of it, which is all in one ilonde.' The prevalent harshness of pronunciation is thus described by the same writer: Some use straunge wlaffing, chytryng, harring, garrying, and grysbyting. The langage of the Northumbres, and specyally at Yorke, is so sharpe, slytting, frotyng, and unshape, that we sothern men maye unneth understande that langage.' Even in the reign of Elizabeth, as we learn from Holinshed's Chronicle, the dialects spoken in different parts of the country were exceedingly various. Mr Hallam mentions, on the authority of Mr Stevenson, sub-commissioner of public records, that in England, all letters, even of a private nature, were written in Latin till the beginning of the reign of Edward I., soon after 1270, when a sudden change brought in the use of French.-Hallam's Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth cen 8 Security. 11 Be satisfied with thy wealth. 14 Taste. 13 Prosperity has ceased. 16 Without fear. 17 Nail. 18 Earthen pitcher. 20 That (which). 21 Humility, obedience. | turies, i. 63. sequently Lyndsay, to denominate its author "the moral Gower;" he is, however, considerably inferior to the author of the Canterbury Tales, in almost all the qualifications of a true poet. Gower. Mr Warton has happily selected a few passages from Gower, which convey a lively expression of natural feeling, and give a favourable impression of the author. Speaking of the gratification which his passion receives from the sense of hearing, he says, that to hear his lady speak is more delicious than to feast on all the dainties that could be compounded by a cook of Lombardy. These are not so restorative As bin the wordes of hir mouth; He adds (reduced spelling)— * That when her list on nights wake,4 When she chooses. 2 Physician. 3 A dainty dish. When she chooses to have a merry-making at night. [Episode of Raniphele.] [Rosiphele, princess of Armenia, a lady of surpassing beauty, but insensible to the power of love, is represented by the poet as reduced to an obedience to Cupid, by a vision which befell her on a May-day ramble. The opening of this episode is as follows:-] When come was the month of May, And that was ere the sun arist, She saw the sweet flowers spring, She saw beasts in their kind, The buck, the doe, the hart, the hind, Might not have bought, after the worth: [In the rear of this splendid troop of ladies, the princess beheld one, mounted on a miserable steed, wretchedly adorned in everything excepting the bridle. On questioning this straggler why she was so unlike her companions, the visionary lady replied that the latter were receiving the bright reward of having loved faithfully, and that she herself was suffering punishment for cruelty to her admirers. The reason that the bridle alone resembled those of her companions was, that for the last fortnight she had been sincerely in love, and a change for the better was in consequence beginning to show itself in her accoutrements. The parting words of the dame are-] Now have ye heard mine answer; Of love that they be not idle. And bid them think of my bridle. [It is scarcely necessary to remark, that the hard heart of the princess of Armenia is duly impressed by this lesson.] 1 Then. 2 Say. What thing he was most disposed to crave. The language at this time used in the lowland districts of Scotland was based, like that of England, in the Teutonic, and it had, like the contemporary English, a Norman admixture. To account for these circumstances, some have supposed that the language of England, in its various shades of improvement, reached the north through the settlers who are known to have flocked thither from England during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. Others suggest that the great body of the Scottish people, apart from the Highlanders, must have been of Teutonic origin, and they point to the very probable theory as to the Picts having been a German race. They further suggest, that a Norman admixture might readily come to the national tongue, through the large intercourse between the two countries during the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. Thus, it is presumed, our common language was separately formed in the two countries, and owed its identity to its being constructed of similar materials, by similar gradations, and by nations in the same state of society." Whatever might be the cause, there can be no doubt that the language used by the first Scottish vernacular writers in the fourteenth century, greatly resembles that used contemporaneously in England. that office in 1357. Little is known of his personal history: we may presume that he was a man of political talent, from his being chosen by the bishop of Aberdeen to act as his commissioner at Edinburgh when the ransom of David II. was debated; and of learning, from his having several times accompanied men of rank to study at Oxford. Barbour probably formed his taste upon the romance writers who flourished before him in England. A lost work of his, entitled The Brute, probably another in addition to the many versions of the story of Brutus of Troy, first made popular by Geoffrey of Monmouth, suggests the idea of an imitation of the romances; and his sole remaining work, The Bruce, is altogether of that character. It is not unlikely that, in The Brute, Barbour adopted all the fables he could find: in writing The Bruce, he would, in like manner, adopt every tradition respecting his hero, besides searching for more authoritative materials. We must not be surprised that, while the first would be valueless as a history, the second is a most important document. There would be the same wish for truth, and the same inability to distinguish it, in both cases; but, in the latter, it chanced that the events were of recent occurrence, and therefore came to our metrical historian comparatively undistorted. The Bruce, in reality, is a complete history of the memorable transactions by which King Robert I. asserted the independency of Scotland, and obtained its crown for his family. At the same time, it is far from being destitute of poetical spirit or rhythmical sweetness and harmony. It contains many vividly descriptive passages, and abounds in dignified and even in pathetic sentiment. This poem, which was completed in 1375, is in octo-syllabic lines, forming rhymed couplets, of which there are seven thousand. Barbour died at an advanced age in 1396. [Apostrophe to Freedom.] [Barbour, contemplating the enslaved condition of his country, breaks out into the following animated lines on the blessings of liberty.-Ellis.] A fredome is a nobill thing! [Death of Sir Henry De Bohun.] [This incident took place on the eve of the Battle of Bannockburn.] And when the king wist that they were In hale battle, comand sae near, His battle gart' he weel array. He rade upon a little palfrey, Lawcht and joly arrayand His battle, with an ax in hand. And knew the king, for that he saw Him sae range his men on raw, 1 Caused, ordered In this and the subsequent extract, the language is as far as possible reduced to modern spelling. And by the crown that was set Saw him come, forouth all his fears, He thought that he should weel lichtly Sae smartly that gude knicht has slain, Blamed him, as they durst, greatumly, [The Battle of Bannockburn.] When this was said The Scottismen commonally Sir Ingram said, ' Ye say sooth now- Mony a wicht man and worthy, Ready to do chivalry. Thus were they bound on either side; Governt and led, held straight their way. And mony gude man borne doun and slain; The gude earl4 thither took the way, That men micht hear had they been by, A great frush of the spears that brast. * * * While through the harness burst the bleed, That they wan place ay mair and mair The grass waxed with the blude all red. For till help them they held their way. That their faes felt their coming weel. There micht men hear mony a dint, Almighty God! wha then micht see And the gude Douglas, that was sae stout, He sould say that till all honour There micht men see mony a steed And Scottismen cry hardily, On them! On them! On them! They fail!' With that sae hard they gan assail, And slew all that they micht o'erta'. And the Scots archers alsua2 Shot amang them sae deliverly, That what for them, that with them faucht, And pressit them full eagerly; And what for arrows, that fellonly * [The appearance of a mock host, composed of the servants of the Scottish camp, completes the panic of the English army; the king flies, and Sir Giles D'Argentine is slain. The narrative then proceeds.] They were, to say sooth, sae aghast, 4 Shut up. 2 Also. 5 Rabble. • Slime, mud. Lost amidst so great a multitude. • Exchanged. |