It was a mighty gain for the language and the people when, in the middle of the fourteenth century, by permission of the Pope, the miracle-plays, most probably hitherto represented in Norman-French, as Mr. Collier supposes, began to be represented in English. Most likely there had been dramatic representations of a sort from the very earliest period of the nation’s history; for, to begin with the lowest form, at what time would there not, for the delight of listeners, have been the imitation of animal sounds, such as the drama of the conversation between an attacking poodle and a fiercely repellent puss? Through innumerable gradations of childhood would the art grow before it attained the first formal embodiment in such plays as those, so-called, of miracles, consisting just of Scripture stories, both canonical and apocryphal, dramatized after the rudest fashion. Regarded from the height which the art had reached two hundred and fifty years after, “how dwarfed a growth of cold and night” do these miracle-plays show themselves! But at a time when there was no printing, little preaching, and Latin prayers, we cannot help thinking that, grotesque and ill-imagined as they are, they must have been of unspeakable value for the instruction of a people whose spiritual digestion was not of a sort to be injured by the presence of a quite abnormal quantity of husk and saw-dust in their food. And occasionally we find verses of true poetic feeling, such as the following, in “The Fall of Man:”-- _Deus._ Adam, that with myn handys I made, Where art thou now? What hast thou wrought? _Adam._ A! lord, for synne oure floures do ffade, I here thi voys, but I se the nought; implying that the separation between God and man, although it had destroyed the beatific vision, was not yet so complete as to make the creature deaf to the voice of his Maker. Nor are the words of Eve, with which she begs her husband, in her shame and remorse, to strangle her, odd and quaint as they are, without an almost overpowering pathos:-- “Now stomble we on stalk and ston; My wyt awey is fro me gon: Wrythe on to my necke bon With, hardnesse of thin honde.” To this Adam commences his reply with the verses,-- “Wyff, thi wytt is not wurthe a rosche. Leve woman, turn thi thought.” And this portion of the general representation ends with these verses, spoken by Eve:-- “Alas! that ever we wrought this synne. Oure bodely sustenauns for to wynne, Ye must delve and I xal spynne, In care to ledyn oure lyff.”