--He look'd around, and saw the world he left When to that visionary realm of song His spirit fled from bonds of flesh bereft; And on the vision he lay musing long, As o'er his soul rude minstrel-echoes throng, Old measures half-disused; and grasp'd his pen, And drew his cottage-Christ for homely men. Thus Langland also took his pilgrimage; Rough lone knight-errant on uncourtly ways, And wrong and woe were charter'd on his page, With some horizon-glimpse of sweeter days. And on the land the message of his lays Smote like the strong North-wind, and cleansed the sky With wholesome blast and bitter clarion-cry, Summoning the people in the Ploughman's name. --So fought his fight, and pass'd unknown away; Seeking no other praise, no sculptured fame Nor laureate honours for his artless lay, Nor in the Minster laid with high array;-- But where the May-thorn gleams, the grasses wave, And the wind sighs o'er a forgotten grave. Langland, whom I have put here in contrast with Chaucer, is said to have lived between 1332 and 1400. His _Vision of Piers the Plowman_ (who is partially identified with our blessed Saviour), with some added poems, forms an allegory on life in England, in Church and State, as it appeared to him during the dislocated and corrupt age which followed the superficial glories of Edward the Third's earlier years. _Took the toll_; Amongst other official employments, Chaucer was Comptroller of the Customs in the Port of London. See his _House of Fame_; and the beautiful picture of his walks at dawning in the daisy- meadows: Prologue to the _Legend of Good Women_. _His of Certaldo, . . . in Scythia_; Boccaccio:--and Ovid, who died in exile at Tomi:--to both of whom Chaucer is greatly indebted for the substance of his tales. _Picture-like_; 'It is chiefly as a comic poet, and a minute observer of manners and circumstances, that Chaucer excels. In serious and moral poetry he is frequently languid and diffuse, but he springs like Antaeus from the earth when his subject changes to coarse satire or merry narrative' (Hallam, _Mid. Ages_: Ch. IX: Pt. iii). _The Tabard_; Inn in Southwark whence the pilgrims to Canterbury start. _Down the Strand_; It is thus that Langland describes himself and his feelings of dissatisfaction with the world. _That worst woe_; Literature, even ancient literature, has no phrase more deeply felt and pathetic than the words which the Persian nobleman at the feast in Thebes before Plataea addressed to Thersander of Orchomenus:--[Greek text]: (_Herodotus_, IX: xvi). _One morn he lay_; The _Vision_ opens with a picture of the poet asleep on Malvern Hill: the last of the added poems closing as he wakes with the Easter chimes. _Old measures_; Langland's metre 'is more uncouth than that of his predecessors' (Hallam, _Mid. Ag_. Ch. IX: Pt. iii). _In the Minster_; Chaucer was buried at the entrance of S. Benet's Chapel in Westminster Abbey. JEANNE D'ARC 1424