Langlande is a little mixed and raw oftentimes; but he is full of shrewdness and of touches of a rough and unwashed humor. There is little tenderness of poetic feeling in his verse; and scarcely ever does it rise to anything approaching stateliness; but it keeps a good dog-trot jog, as of one who knew what he was doing, and meant to do it. What he meant was--to whip the vices of the priests and to scourge the covetousness of the rich and of the men in power. It is English all over; English[36] in the homeliness of its language; he makes even Norman words sound homely; English in spirit too; full of good, hearty, grumbling humor--a sort of predated and poetic kind of Protestantism. Plums might be picked out of it for the decoration of a good radical or agrarian speech of to-day. Of his larger religious and political drift no extracts will give one a proper idea; only a reading from beginning to end will do this. One or two snatches of his verse I give, to show his manner: And thanne cam coveitise, Kan I hym naght discryve, So hungrily and holwe Sire Hervy hym loked. He was bitel-browed, And baber-lipped also With two blered eighen As a blynd hagge; And as a letheren purs Lolled his chekes, Well sidder [wider] than his chyn Thei chyveled [shrivelled] for elde; And as a bonde-man of his bacon His berd was bi-draveled, With an hood on his heed. A lousy hat above And in a tawny tabard Of twelf wynter age. --2847 _Pass. V._ And again, from the same _Passus_ (he dividing thus his poem into _steps_ or _paces_) I cite this self-drawn picture of Envy: Betwene manye and manye I make debate ofte, That bothe lif and lyme Is lost thorugh my speche. And when I mete hym in market That I moost hate, I hailse hym hendely [politely] As I his frend were; For he is doughtier than I, I dar do noon oother: Ac, hadde I maistrie and myght. God woot my wille! And whanne I come to the kirk And sholde kneel to the roode, And preye for the peple … Awey fro the auter thanne Turne I myne eighen And bi-holde Eleyne Hath a newe cote; I wisshe thanne it were myn, And al the web after. For who so hath moore than I That angreth me soore, And thus I lyve love-lees, Like a luther [mad] dogge; That al my body bolneth [swelleth] For bitter of my galle. --_vers._ 2667.