BOOKS•
WILLIAM LANGLAND.*
Tax poems analysed and compared with Langland's by Miss Dorothy L. Owen in Piers Plowman : a Comparison with some Earlier and Contemporary French Allegories are Li Romans de 'Carite, by Barthelemy, Renclus de Moiliens, Le Songe d'Enfer by Raoul de Houdene, La Voie de Paradis, possibly by the same author, Le Roman de la Rose, by Guillaume de Lorris, with its continuation by Jean de Meun, Le Tournoiement de t'Antechrist, by Huon de Meri, Rutebeuf's Voie de Paradis, Le .Felerinage de Vie Humaine, by Deguileville, and two short anonymous -poems, De Dame Guile and Salut d'Enfer. Warton, in his History of English Poetry, pointed out the resemblance between Huon de Men's Tournoiement and the last passus of Piers Plowman; the other poems, with the exception of the first and the last two, which Miss Owen has taken up on her own initiative, have previously been suggested as possible sources by Dr. Skeat and M. Jusserand. We must con- gratulate Miss Owen upon the ability and learning which she has brought to the task of a more detailed comparison of the French and English poems, and upon the scrupulous and scholarly way in which she has handled her materiaL Perhaps her manner is a little too austere, austere, in places, to the point of severity ; but her method, at least, is economical and precise. As the author says in her introduction : " The cluestion of the influence of these French allegories on Piers Plow-
man has recently been rendered more interesting and also more complicated by Professor Manly's suggestion that Piers Plowman is the work, not of one writer, but of five. . . . For if it can be shown, first, that the - allegorical onaterial used in all texts of the poem bears so strong a resemblance to that of the French allegories as to suggest that it is in part, at least, derived from them ; and, secondly, that the manner in which the material is treated is similar in all texts and, at the same time, very different from that of the French writers, the result of the investigation will be at least a contributory argument in favour of the unity of authorship." Miss Owen admits that the allegorical material may have been
(1) Piers Plowman. By Dorothy L. Owen, M.A. London: Hodder and Stongbtori. [5e. net.]—(2) Piers Plowman a Version for the Modern Asaeler.
• 'Everyman's Library." London: J. N. Dent and Sons. [Is. net.]
derived from common sources in the patristic and theological literature, which was the chief object- of medieval study, and which tended to make European literature; to a great extent, "all of one piece." In consequence the employment of similar allegorical actions and devices is taken:to suggest, though not to prove, a direct literary influence. The sug0stion, hoVvever, has almost the force of proof, so strong is the cumulative effect of the similarities which the author has remarked ; and since this possible influence is noticeable in all the parts of Piers Plowman it may be said to support the old theory that they are all the work of one man. The second argument, as to the manner, seems to us the stronger line; and Miss Owen points out that "the writers of the French allegories do not lose sight of the general character of the abstractions they personify. Speaking generally, and recognizing that there are exceptions to every generalization, it, may be said that the didactic instinct of the expositor is stronger in them than the individualizing tendency of the creator. . . . In the author or authors of Piers Plowman the creative is stronger than the didactic impulse. . . All the personifications are living persons." This particular feature, the characteristic• treat- ment of personification, which distinguishes Piers Plowman from the French allegories, is, moreover, a feature common to the different texts. _ Our purpose is sufficiently served if we have drawn atten- tion to Miss Owen's book by this summary of her argument, and it is obviously impossible for us to discuss the wealth of detail with which it is supported. We appreciate her clear- ness the more when we turn to a volume in "Everyman's Library," Piers Plowman : the Vision of a People's Christ, by Mr. Arthur Burrell. The book is, in its author's words, "a version for the modern reader." Though Mr. Barrel tells us in his introduction that he is inclined to accept Professor Manly's theory of a composite authorship, he attempts at the same time "to reconstruct from a careful reading what manner of man or men penned these visions." We are unable to con- gratulate him upon the result.- It was inevitable that such a portrait should be of a purely general character, and that all signs of individuality should be suppressed in it. Mr. Burrell tells us, for instance, that the writer's "humorous description of himself," since it occurs only in one text, " may have been added at any date and by any chantry priest or other person, and it is impossible to say what he means by it." One feature mentioned in this description, however, is repeated in all the texts : in the A text Thought is "a muche mon . . , lyk to my-seluen," in the B text we read, " I haue. lyued in londe, quod I, • my name is Longs. Wille," and inthe C text, "I am to walk to worche • with sykel other with sythe, And to long, leyf me, lowe for to stoupe." In all the texts, too, the dreamer gives his name as Will. Upon another point Mr. Burrell says, "There is no word in the latest recension of this poem to describe, praise, or condemn the movement of Wat Tyler, John Straw, or the Rev. John Ball "; and he omits from his version the following lines :— " Enupe herd this • and beet freres to go to stole, And lerne logyk and lawe • and eke contemplacioun, And preche men of Plato • and preue it by Seneca, That alle thinges under heuene oughte to ben in comune.
And pit he lyeth, as I leue, • that to the lewed so precheth For god made to men a lawe • and Moyses it taughte.
Non cupisces rem proximi tui."
Dr. Skeat tells us in his notes to "observe this emphatic renunciation, on the poet's part, of the principles of com- munism. It is clear that he protests here against the scandalous, yet not unnatural, use that had been made of his poem by John Ball and other such preachers, and here plainly disavows all sympathy with unprincipled rioters." What Mr. Burrell has said in his introduction, however, he himself has contradicted in his comment at the end of the book. Blit why was the passage omitted ? It is a little depressing to think of " the versions for modern readers " which these cheap and popular series disseminate among a. public incapable of subjecting them to any critical test. Mr. Burrell has the following passage : "Piers Plowman is regarded as the poor mansbook. But, though I hope the spirit is preserved, I have resolutely avoided by any phrase reading into it a special message for to-day. A comment with notes inwoven has indeed called attention to singular survivals, parallels in social life; but these parallels would, even without the reference to them, force themselves upon the attention of any one." Turning to the comment we find Mr. Masterman and -Mr. Wells and Mr. Pett Ridge described as " the Langlands of to-day." Could anything be more bele?
For our part we find no difficulty in accepting the whole of Piers Plowman as the work of one man. The very incoherence of the visions only throws into relief the character and tem- perament of the mind which conceived them. When Miss Owen speaks of "the creative impulse," by which the author realized his personifications, we are reminded that Dr. Whitaker says : "He paints with all the truth and dis- tinctness of a Dutch master." But he not only Writes "with his eye upon the subject," he has that passionate vision which pierces to the essential nature of a thing or action, and the language that best reflects itagain, terse and uncompromising ; his satire is the satire of Dante and Swift; he burns with something of their Ham indignatio. These are not common qualities, and it is extremely improbable that, within the space of thirty years, England should have produced five poets possessed of them in such an eminent degree. Such incon- sistencies as there are between the different texts, in our opinion, are sufficiently accounted for by a suggestion of Dr. Whitaker, which Dr. Skeet would seem to accept " A man of his genius would not submit to the drudgery of mere tran- scription; his invention and judgment would always be at work ; new abuses, and therefore new objects of satire, would emerge from time to time; and as a new language began to be spoken, he might, though unwillingly, be induced to adopt its modernisms in order to make his work intelligible to a second or third generation of readers." As to its incoherence, its lack of organic unity, which are common in poems of this kind, we must remember that few mystics have the con- structive power of Dante. Langland certainly did not have this power, neither did he have Dante's systematic mind, which gives to the Divina Comm,edia the sequence and unity of a system. His poem reflects another type of mind, without the Florentine's indomitable will, restless and sceptical.
"Bote Teologye hath tamed me ten score tymes ; For the more I muse thereon the mistiloker hit semeth, And the deppore I divined • the derkore me thougte."
And then in a later version he makes the distinction : "Hit is no science sothliehe • bete a sothfast by-leyue
The opposition of the ideal and the real world, of the divine and natural law, is always present to him ; he has the melancholy, and the habit of self-analysis, which, some foreign critics tell us, are characteristic of our race ; but at the same time, as M. Jusserand has pointed out in his admir- able study, L'Apople Mystique de William, Langland, all his political ideas are informed by a -sound common sense ; and these ideas are not those of any particular class or party, they are simply the aspirations of the whole people; they express the English ideas of good government. It is not his attitude, however, toward the affairs of his own day that interests us. It is his attitude toward the eternal conditions of life. The poem is the record of a man's whole spiritual experience; the record not of a- single incident or of the development of a single action to any culminating crisis, but of a con- tinuous flux of ideas, moods, images, desires, and dreams, bent, broken, or extinguished entirely by the irrational element of life ; and such unity as the poem has is the unity, not of an artistic work, but of a human life. We see him " lef to lerne, but loth for to stodie," and we knoiv that his desire is beyond any mortal grasp. Life, which broke and defeated his ideals, became to him, as to so many idealists, an object of hatred; reality awakens his fierce satire ; it is the abstract that he desires. It is characteristic of him that all his individuals should be the objects of his bitter mockery, while for humanity as a whole his love and his pity should be unwavering. To realize the complete greatness of the man we have to read the account of Sir Glutton in the tavern and then turn from it to that wonderful passage, perhaps - the most poignant in English literature, which begins "Ioye that nenere bop bad • of rigtful Iugge he axeth " ; and -closes :
"Ac poor peple, thi prisoneres • lorde, in the put of myschief, Conforte the creatures • that- moche care saffron
Thorw derth, thorw drouth • elle her &yes here, . . . domforte thi careful • Csyst, in thi ryche."
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