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 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."

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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, and 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.

The work has been several times reprinted. The standard edition is of date 1725. The latest edition is a reprint of this by Mr J. O. Halliwell, with an Introduction, Notes, and Glossary, 1839.

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 Melibous" (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 Philosophiæ of Boethius,' date unknown; a 'Treatise on the Astrolabe,' addressed to his son Lewis, conjectured date 1391; and 'The Testament of Love.'

The translation of Boethius is reprinted by the Early English

JOHN DE WYCLIFFE, WICLIFFE, OR WICLIF.

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Text Society; the other two treatises are printed in the earlier editions of the poet's works.

John de Wycliffe, Wicliffe, or Wiclif, the Reformer, 1324-1384, is usually mentioned among writers of English prose in the fourteenth century. But if we trust recent researches and they have every appearance of being trustworthy he can keep this place only by courtesy and repetition. He wrote mostly in Latin; and the few English pieces usually ascribed to him are no longer his by undivided consent. His latest biographer, Mr Shirley, maintains that “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;" and, in particular, affirms that writings against the mendicant orders, universally ascribed to Wicliffe, are ascribed to him against contemporary authority. As regards the translation of the Bible associated with Wicliffe's name, in that he would seem to have received assistance; and we have no certain means of distinguishing Wicliffe's own work from the work of his assistants.

In the narrative of Wicliffe's life, Mr Shirley is at variance with some traditional views. One of his chief points is that Wicliffe has been confounded with another man of the same name, and that it was this other Wicliffe whose appointment to the Wardenship of Canterbury Hall in 1365 was disputed, and finally set aside by the Pope. According to Mr Shirley, the following are the chief facts in Wicliffe's life :-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. In 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. 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 1381 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 Wicliffe's writings is not to be wondered at, when we remember that in those days tracts and books circulated only in manuscript. Wicliffe 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 translation of the Bible, completed in 1383, and used as the basis for subsequent versions, was not printed for centuries. His New Testament first appeared in 1731, and the Old Testament was never printed till so late as 1850.

The whole of the New Testament is said to be by Wicliffe's own hand. It can be conveniently seen and compared with other early versions in Bagster's 'English Hexapla.'

The only other name usually mentioned among the prose writers of the fourteenth century is John de Trevisa, who in 1387 translated Higden's 'Polychronicon.' The translation

was printed in 1482 by Caxton, who took upon him “to change the rude and old English"-an evidence of the rapid growth of the language. Trevisa is said to have made other translations from the Latin. Of a translation of the Scriptures said to have been executed by him nothing is now known.

FIFTEENTH CENTURY.

Prose writers in this century are not numerous, and their works contain little to tempt anybody but the antiquary. Indeed, up to the last quarter of this century there was little inducement to cultivate the vernacular. A work, as we have said, circulated only in manuscript; and the learned, chiefly clergymen, addressed their brethren in Latin. Doubtless hundreds of Latin manuscripts have perished; we cannot suppose that the itch for writing was altogether extinct. The following are the most famous of those that wrote in the mother tongue.

Reynold Pecock, 1390-1460.-The Bishop of St Asaph is no unworthy successor to Wicliffe, and stands alone in his