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PART II.

ENGLISH PROSE WRITERS IN

HISTORICAL

ORDER.

CHAPTER I

PROSE WRITERS BEFORE 1580.

FOURTEENTH CENTURY.

Sir John Mandeville, 1300-1371.-The earliest book of prose able to take for itself a place in our literature, was a book of Travels by Sir John Mandeville.

In the various manuscript collections of Early English compositions are to be found prose fragments written before Mandeville's work. Some of these have been printed by the Early English Text Society-namely, Homilies of the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries; the Ayenbyte of Inwyt, illustrating the Kentish dialect in 1340; also, from a MS. of the fifteenth century, some fragments by the ascetic Yorkshire preacher, Richard Rolle de Hampole, who died in 1349. But these fragments are inconsiderable; and seeing that they had not vitality enough to keep themselves alive, they must not be allowed to take away from Mandeville the honour of being the Father of English Prose. Mr Henry Morley calls him "our first prose writer in formed English," and says "that with him and Wiclif begins, at the close of the period of the Formation of the Language, the true modern history of English Prose."

Mandeville professes to write what he had seen and heard in the course of thirty-four years of travel in the East. Nearly all that is known of his life may be given in his own words :

"I, John Maundevylle, knyght, alle be it I be not worthi, that was born in Englond, in the Town of Seynt Albones, passed the See in the Zeer of our Lord Jesu Crist MCCCXXII., in the day of Seynt Michelle; and hidre to have ben longe tyme over the See, and have seyn and gon thorghe manye dyverse Londes, and many Provynces and Kingdomes, and Iles, and have

passed thorghe Tartarye, Percye, Ermonye the litylle and the grete; thorghe Lybye, Caldee, and a gret partie of Ethiope; thorghe Amazoyne, Inde the lasse and the more, a gret partie; and thorghe out many othere Iles, that ben abouten Inde; where dwellen many dyverse Folkes, and of dyverse Maneres and Lawes, aud of dyverse Schappes of Men.”

Besides this, we know that before leaving England he studied physic, a branch of knowledge that the traveller would find serviceable wherever he went. He is said to have returned to England in 1356, and to have then written his book in Latin, in French, and in English

"And zee schulle undirstonde, that I have put this Boke out of Latyn into Frensche, and translated it azen out of Frensche into Englyssche, that every man of my Nacioun may undirstonde it."

His book completed, he seems to have been again seized with his passion for travel. He is said to have died at Liège in 1371.

There being no printing-press in England till the last quarter of the fifteenth century, Mandeville's book of Travels was not printed till more than a century after his death; but immediately upon its composition, it began to circulate widely in manuscript. It was translated into Italian by Pietro de Cornero, and printed at Milan in 1480. It was first printed in England in 1499, when an edition was issued by Wynkyn de Worde.

Geoffrey Chaucer, 1328-1400.—Of the 'Canterbury Tales' two are in prose-the "Parson's Tale" and the "Tale of Melibous." The "Parson's Tale" is a long and somewhat tedious discourse on the Seven Deadly Sins; the "Tale of Meliboeus" (and his wife · Prudence) is an allegory, closely translated from a French treatise. Neither of them has the spirit of Chaucer's verse, and they would hardly have been preserved had they appeared in less illustrious company.

Besides these tales, he wrote in prose a translation of the 'De Consolatione Philosophia' of Boethius, date unknown; and a "Treatise on the Astrolabe,' addressed to his son Lewis, conjectured date 1391.

John de Wycliffe, Wicliffe, or Wyclif, the Reformer, 1324-1384, although he wrote mostly in Latin, and probably wrote little in English till near the close of his life, was the most eminent and influential writer of English prose in the fourteenth century. Mr Shirley's conjecture is that he did not begin to use the vernacular in controversy till after the great Western Schism under the antipope Clement in 1378. In his opinion "half the English religious tracts of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries have been assigned to him in the absence of all external, and in defiance of all internal evidence." The reader may be referred to Mr Arnold's 'Select English Works of Wyclif' for examples of what may reasonably be

JOHN, DE WYCLIFFE, WICLIFFE, OR WYCLIF.

185

ascribed to the pen of the great reformer, when every allowance is made for the extreme difficulty of identifying works that have remained in manuscript till within recent years. Mr Matthew's edition for the English Text Society of certain other writings may also be recommended, as well for the interest of the subjects, as for the careful and thorough introductory biography.

In

In the account of Wycliffe's life, prefixed to his edition of the 'Fasciculi Zizaniorum,' Mr Shirley argued strongly against several traditional views. One of his chief points was that Wycliffe has been confounded with another man of the same name, and that it was this other Wycliffe whose appointment to the Wardenship of Canterbury Hall in 1365 was disputed, and finally set aside by the Pope. This theory, however, has by no means been unanimously adopted. Mr Matthew follows Lechler in rejecting it. Many of the incidents in Wycliffe's life are still matter of dispute. He was a Yorkshireman, born in 1324 at Spreswell or Ipswell, near Wyclif. He studied at Oxford; but no particulars of his life are known till 1361, when he appears as Master of Balliol. In this year he was presented to the rectory of Fylingham in Lincolnshire, and shortly after went there to reside. 1363, having taken a doctor's degree, he used the privilege of lecturing in divinity at Oxford. At this date he broached no doctrinal heresy, but assailed abuses in Church government, especially recommending himself to the Court by his attacks on the temporal power of the Pope, and by defending Parliament's refusal to recognise the Pope's claim for arrears of tribute. In 1368, to be nearer Oxford, he obtained the living of Ludgershall in Buckinghamshire. In 1374 he was one of a legation sent by Edward III. to arrange some difficulties with the Pope. On his return he was presented to the living of Lutterworth in Leicestershire, which was his home for the remainder of his life. From 1378 Mr Shirley dates a new stage in the reformer's career. He then became more exclusively theological. At what date he began his great enterprise of translating the Bible into English is not ascertained. So long as he attacked only the pretensions of Church dignitaries, he was supported by the Court against their attempts at revenge. But when in 1380 he began to attack the doctrines of the Church, and proclaimed his heresy on transubstantiation, the Court dared no longer support him. He was banished from Oxford; and nothing but his death in 1384 could have saved him from further persecutions.

That it should be difficult to identify Wycliffe's writings is not to be wondered at, when we remember that in those days tracts and books circulated only in manuscript. Wycliffe towering so high above other theologians of the time, his name could not fail to become a nucleus for all writings of a reforming tenor. His

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