Around him the idle sleep, the careless sing; they pretend to cheer others by their humming; they trill: "Hoy! troly lolly!" Piers shall feed every one, except these useless ones; he shall not feed "Jakke the jogeloure and Jonet ... and Danyel the dys-playere and Denote the baude, and frere the faytoure, ..." for, all whose name is entered "in the legende of lif" must take life seriously.[656] There is no place in this world for people who are not in earnest; every class that is content to perform its duties imperfectly and without sincerity, that fulfils them without eagerness, without passion, without pleasure, without striving to attain the best possible result and do better than the preceding generation, will perish. So much the more surely shall perish the class that ceases to justify its privileges by its services: this is the great law propounded in our own day by Taine. Langland lets loose upon the indolent, the careless, the busybodies who talk much and work little, a foe more terrible and more real then than now: Hunger. Piers undertakes the care of all sincere people, and Hunger looks after the rest. All this part of the poem is nothing but an eloquent declaration of man's duties, and is one of the finest pages of this "Divine Comedy" of the poor. IV. Langland speaks as he thinks, impetuously; a sort of dual personality exists in him; he is the victim and not the master of his thought. And his thought is so completely a separate entity, with wishes opposed to his desires, that it appears to him in the solitudes of Malvern; and the melody of lines heard not long ago occurs to the memory: Je marchais un jour a pas lents Dans un bois, sur une bruyere; Au pied d'un arbre vint s'asseoir Un jeune homme vetu de noir Qui me ressemblait comme un frere ...[657] Filled with a similar feeling, the wandering dreamer had met, five hundred years before, in a "wilde wildernesse and bi a wode-syde," a "moche man" who looked like himself; who knew him and called him by name: And thus I went wide-where | walkyng myne one (alone), By a wilde wildernesse | and bi a wode-syde ... And under a lynde uppon a launde | lened I a stounde ... A moche man, as me thoughte | and lyke to my-selve Come and called me | by my kynde name, "What artow," quod I tho (then) | "that thow my name knowest?" "That thow wost wel," quod he | "and no wyghte bettere." "Wote I what thow art?" | "Thought," seyde he thanne, "I have suwed (followed) the this sevene yere | sey thow me no rather (sooner)?"[658]