5 1350. It consists of xx Passus or Breaks, exhibiting a series of visions, which he pretends happened to him on Malvern Hills in Worcestershire. The author excels in strong allegoric painting, and has with great humour, spirit, and fancy, censured most of the vices incident to the several professions of life; but he particularly inveighs against the corruption of the clergy, and the absurdities of superstition. Of this work I have now before me four different editions in black-letter quarto. Three of them are printed in 1550 by Robert Crowley dwelling in Elye rentes in Holburne. It is remarkable that two of these are mentioned in the title-page as both of the second impression, though they contain evident variations in every page. The other is said: to be newly impryuted after the authors õlde copy . by Owen Rogers, Feb. 21, 1561. As Langland was not the first, so neither was he the last that used this alliterative species of versification. To Rogers' edition of the Visions is subjoined a poem, which was probably writ in imitation of them, entitled Pierce the Plowman's Crede. It begins thus: "Cros, and Curteis Christ, this beginning spede For the Faders Frendshipe, that Fourmed heaven, And through the Special Spirit, tnat Sprong of hem tweyne, The author feigns himself ignorant of his Creed, to be instructed in which he applies to the four religious orders, viz. the gray friers of St. Francis, the black friers of St. Dominic, the Carmelites or white friers, and the Augustines. This affords him occasion to describe, in very lively colours, the sloth, ignorance, and immorality of those reverend: drones. At length he meets with Pierce, a poor ploughman, who resolves his doubts, and instructs him in the principles of true religion. The author was evidently a follower of Wiccliff, whom he mentions (with honour) as no longer living.' Now that reformer died in 1384. How long after his death this poem was written, does not appear. In the Cotton Library is a volume of ancient English poems, two of which are written in this alliterative metre, and have the division of the lines into distichs distinctly marked by a point, as is usual in old poetical MSS. That which stands first of the two (though perhaps the latest written) is entitled The Sege of I Erlam [i. e. Jerusalem], being The poem properly contains xxi. parts: the word Passus, adopted by the author, seems only to denote the break or division between two parts, though by the ignorance of the printer applied to the parts themselves. -See vol. ii. book vii. preface to ballad iii., where Passus seems to signify Pause. 6 That which seems the first of the two, is thus distinguished in the titlepage, nowe the secande tyme imprinted by Roberte Crowlye: the othe thus, nowe the second timê imprinted by Robert Crowley. In the former, the folios are thus erroneously numbered, 39, 39, 41, 63, 43, 42, 45, &c. The booksellers of those days were not ostentatious of multiplying editions. Signature C ii. Caligula A. ij. fol. 109, 123.. an old fabulous legend composed by some monk, and stuffed with marvellous figments concerning the destruction of the holy city and temple. It begins thus: "In Tyberius Tyme. the Trewe emperour Syr Sesar hymself. beSted in Rome Whyll Pylat was Provoste. under that Prynce ryche And Jewes Justice also. of Judeas londe Herode under empere as Herytage wolde Kyng," &c. the other is entitled Chevalere Assigne [or De Cigne], that is, "The Knight of the Swan," being an ancient romance, beginning thus: "All-Weldynge God. Whene it is his Wylle Wele he Wereth his Werke. With his owene honde 9 Among Mr. Garrick's Collection of old Plays is a prose narrative of the adventures of this same Knight of the Swan, "newly translated out of Frenshe into Englyshe, at thinstigacion of the puyssaunt and illustryous prynce, lorde Edward duke of Buckynghame." This lord, it seems, had a peculiar interest in the book, for in the preface the translator tells us, that this "highe dygne and illustryous prynce my lorde Edwarde by the grace of god Duke of Buckyngham, erle of Hereforde, Stafforde, and Northampton, desyrnge cotydyally to encrease and augment the name and fame of such as were relucent in vertuous feates and triumphaunt actes of chyvalry, and to encourage and styre every lusty and gentell herte by the exemplyficacyon of the same, havyng a goodli booke of the highe and miraculous histori of a famous and puyssaunt kynge, named Oryant, sometime reynynge in the parties of beyonde the sea, havynge to his wife a noble lady; of whome she conceyved sixe sonnes and a daughter, and chylded of them at one only time; at whose byrthe echone of them had a chayne of sylver at their neckes, the whiche were all tourned by the provydence of god into whyte swannes, save one, of the whiche this present hystory is compyled, named Helyas, the knight of the swanne, of whom linially is dyscended my sayde lorde. The whiche ententifly to have the sayde hystory more amply and unyversally knowen in thys hys natif countrie, as it is in other, hath of hys hie bountie by some of his faithful and trusti servauntes cohorted mi mayster Wynkin de Worde1 to put the said vertuous hystori in prynte at whose instigacion and stiring I (Roberte Copland) have me applied, moiening the helpe of god, to reduce and translate it into our maternal and vulgare english tonge after the capacitè and rudenesse of my weke entendement.” ? K. vol. x. 1 W. de Worde's edit. is in 1512.-See Ames, p. 92. Mr. G.'s copy is ¶ Emprinted at London by me Wylliam Copland.” -A curious picture of the times! While in Italy literature and the fine arts were ready to burst forth with classical splendour under Leo. X., the first peer of this realm was proud to derive his pedigree from a fabulous knight of the swan. 2 To return to the metre of Pierce Plowman. In the folio MS. so often quoted in these volumes are two poems written in that species of versification. One of these is an ancient allegorical poem entitled Death and Life (in two fitts or parts, containing 458 distichs), which, for aught that appears, may have been written as early, if not before, the time of Langland. The first forty lines are broke, as they should be, into distichs, a distinction that is neglected in the remaining part of the transcript, in order, I suppose, to save room. It begins, "Christ Christen king, that on the Crosse tholed that Rann from thy side." The subject of this piece is a vision, wherein the poet sees a contest for superiority between "our lady Dame LIFE" and the "ugly fiend Dame DEATH;" who, with their several attributes and concomitants, are personified in a fine vein of allegoric painting. Part of the description of Dame LIFE is, "Shee was Brighter of her Blee, then was the Bright sonn: Her Rudd Redder then the Rose, And as shee came by the Bankes, They Lowted to that Ladye, and Layd forth their branches; Blossomes and Burgens Breathed full sweete; Flowers Flourished in the Frith, DEATH is afterwards sketched out with a no less bold and original pencil. 2 He is said in the story-book to be the grandfather of Godfrey of Boulogne, through whom I suppose the duke made out his relation to him. Th's duke was beheaded May 17, 1521, 13 Henry VIII. The other poem is that which is quoted in page 266 of vol. i., and which was probably the last that was ever written in this kind of metre in its original simplicity, unaccompanied with rhyme. It should have been observed above, in page 266, that in this poem the lines are throughout divided into distichs, thus: "Grant Gracious God, Grant me this time," &c. It is entitled Scottish Fielde (in 2 FITTS, 420 distichs), containing a very circumstantial narrative of the battle of Flodden, fought Sept. 9, 1513: at which the author seems to have been present, from his speaking in the first person plural: "Then WE Tild downe OUR Tents, that Told were a thousand." In the conclusion of the poem he gives this account of himself: The village of Bagily or Baguleigh is in Cheshire, and had belonged to the ancient family of Legh for two centuries before the battle of Flodden. Indeed, that the author was of that country, appears from other passages in the body of the poem, particularly from the pains he takes to wipe off a stain from the Cheshiremen, who, it seems, ran away in that battle; and from his encomiums on the Stanleys, Earls of Derby, who usually headed that county. He laments the death of James Stanley, Bishop of Ely, as what had recently happened when 8 Jest. MS. • Probably corrupted for-" Says but as he Saw." 5 Yearded, i. e. buried, earthed, earded. It is common to pronounce "earth," in some parts of England, "yearth," particularly in the North.— Pitscottie, speaking of James III., slain at Bannockburn, says, "Nae ma wot whar they yearded him." us.' MS. In the second line above, the MS. has 'bidding.' this poem was written; which serves to ascertain its date, for that prelate died March 22, 1514 -5. Thus have we traced the Alliterative Measure so low as the sixteenth century It is remarkable, that all such poets as used this kind of metre, retained along with it many peculiar Saxon idioms, particularly such as were appropriated to poetry: this deserves the attention of those who are desirous to recover the laws of the ancient Saxon Poesy, usually given up as inexplicable: I am of opinion that they will find what they seek in the metre of Pierce Plowman." About the beginning of the sixteenth century, this kind of versification began to change its form: the author of Scottish Field, we see, concludes his poem with a couplet in rhyme: this was an innovation that did but prepare the way for the general admission of that more modish ornament: till at length the old uncouth verse of the ancient writers would no longer go down without it. Yet when rhyme began to be superadded, all the niceties of alliteration were at first retained along with it, and the song of Little John Nobody exhibits this union very clearly. By degrees, the correspondence of final sounds engrossing the whole attention of the poet, and fully satisfying the reader, the internal embellishment of alliteration was no longer studied, and thus was this kind of metre at length swallowed up and lost in our common Burlesque Alexandrine, or Anapestic verse, now never used but in ballads and pieces of light humour, as in the following song of Con. science, and in that well-known doggrel, 8 "A cobler there was, and he lived in a stall." But although this kind of measure hath with us been thus degraded, it still retains among the French its ancient dignity; their grand And in that of Robert of Gloucester.-See the next note. 8 Consisting of four anapests (~~) in which the accent rests upon every third syllable. This kind of verse, which I also call the burlesque Alexandrine (to distinguish it from the other Alexandrines of eleven and fourteen syllables, the parents of our lyric measure: see examples, vol. i., p. 345, &c.) was early applied by Robert of Gloucester to serious subjects. That writer's metre, like this of Langland's, is formed on the Saxon models (each verse of his containing a Saxon distich); only instead of the internal alliterations adopted by Langland, he rather chose final rhymes, as the French poets have done since. Take a specimen : "The Saxons tho in ther power, tho thii were so rive, Robert of Gloucester wrote in the western dialect, and his language differs exceedingly from that of other contemporary writers, who resided in the metropolis, or in the midland counties. Had the Heptarchy continued, our English language would probably have been as much distinguished for its different dialects as the Greek; or at least as that of the several independent states of Italy |