THE PARDONERE. vender of indulgences, more flattering. He sells — to the great contempt of the poet a piece of the Virgin's veil, a bit of the sail of St. Peter's boat, holy pigges' bones, and with these relics he made more money in each parish in one day than the parson himself in two months. Nor is his picture of the pardoner, or Thus taking advantage of his plot to ridicule these characters, and to make them satirize each other—as in the rival stories of the sompnour and friar-he turns with pleasure from these betrayers of religion, to show us that there was a leaven of pure piety and devotion left. THE POOR PARSON. - With what eager interest does he portray the lovely character of the poor parson, the true shepherd of his little flock, in the midst of false friars and luxurious monks! poor himself, but Wide was his parish and houses fer asonder, That first he wrought and afterward he taught. Chaucer's description of the poor parson, which loses much by being curtailed, has proved to be a model for all poets who have drawn the likeness of an earnest pastor from that day to ours, among whom are Herbert, Cowper, Goldsmith, and Wordsworth; but no imitation has equalled this beautiful model. When urged by the host, Tell us a fable anon, for cocke's bones, he quotes St. Paul to Timothy as rebuking those who tell fables; and, disclaiming all power in poetry, preaches them such a stirring discourse upon penance, contrition, confession, and the seven deadly sins, with their remedies, as must have fallen like a thunderbolt upon this careless, motly crew; and has the additional value of giving us Chaucer's epitome of sound doctrine in that bigoted and ignorant age: and, eminently sound and holy as it is, it rebukes the lewdness of the other stories, and, in point of morality, neutralizes if it does not justify the lewd teachings of thể work, or in other words, the immorality of the age. This is the parson's own view: his story is the last which is told, and he tells us, in the prologue to his sermon: To knitte up all this feste, and make an ende; And Jesu for his grace wit me sende In an addendum to this discourse, which brings the Canterbury Tales to an abrupt close, and which, if genuine, as the best critics think it, was added some time after, Chaucer takes shame to himself for his lewd stories, repudiates all his "translations and enditinges of worldly vanitees," and only finds pleasure in his translations of Boethius, his homilies and legends of the saints; and, with words of penitence, he hopes that he shall be saved "atte the laste day of dome." JOHN WICLIF. The subject of this early reformation so clearly set forth in the stories of Chaucer, cannot be fully illustrated without a special notice of Chaucer's great contemporary and co-worker, John Wiclif. What Chaucer hints, or places in the mouths of his characters, with apparently no very serious intent, Wiclif, himself a secular priest, proclaimed boldly and as of prime import1 Spelled also Wycliffe, Wicliff, and Wyklyf. ance, first from his professor's chair at Oxford, and then from his forced retirement at Lutterworth, where he may well have been the model of Chaucer's poor parson. Wiclif was born in 1324, four years before Chaucer. The same abuses which called forth the satires of Langland and Chaucer upon monk and friar, and which, if unchecked, promised universal corruption, aroused the martyr-zeal of Wiclif; and similar reproofs are to be found in his work entitled "Objections to Friars," and in numerous treatises from his pen against many of the doctrines and practices of the Church. Noted for his learning and boldness, he was sent by Edward III. one of an embassy to Bruges, to negotiate with the Pope's envoys concerning benefices held in England by foreigners. There he met John of Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster. This prince, whose immediate descendants were to play so prominent a part in later history, was the fourth son of Edward III. By the death of the Black Prince, in 1376, and of Lionel, Duke of Clarence, in 1368, he became the oldest remaining child of the king, and the father of the man who usurped the throne of England and reigned as Henry IV. The influence of Lancaster was equal to his station, and he extended his protection to Wiclif. This, combined with the support of Lord Percy, the Marshal of England, saved the reformer from the stake when he was tried before the Bishop of London on a charge of heresy, in 1377. He was again brought before a synod of the clergy at Lambeth, in 1378, but such was the favor of the populace in his behalf, and such, too, the weakness of the papal party, on account of a schism which had resulted in the election of two popes, that, although his opinions were declared heretical, he was not proceeded against. After this, although almost sick to death, he rose from what his enemies had hoped would be his death-bed, to "again declare the evil deeds of the friars." In 1381, he lectured openly at Oxford against the doctrine of transubstantiation; and for this, after a presentment by the Church- and a partial recantation, or explaining away-even the liberal king thought proper to command that he should retire from the university. Thus, during his latter years, he lived in retirement at his little parish of Lutterworth, escaping the dangers of the troublous time, and dying-struck with paralysis at his chancel-in 1384, sixteen years before Chaucer. TRANSLATION of the Bible. - The labors of Wiclif which produced the most important results, were not his violent lectures as a reformer, but the translation of the Bible into English, the very language of the common people, greatly to the wrath of the hierarchy and its political upholders. This, too, is his chief glory: as a reformer he went too fast and too far; he struck fiercely at the root of authority, imperilling what was good, in his attack upon what was evil. In pulling up the tares he endangered the wheat, and from him, as a progenitor, came the Lollards, a fanatical, violent, and revolutionary sect. But his English Bible, the parent of the later versions, cannot be too highly valued. For the first time, English readers could search the whole Scriptures, and judge for themselves of doctrine and authority: there they could learn how far the traditions and commandments of men had encrusted and corrupted the pure word of truth. Thus the greatest impulsion was given to a reformation in doctrine; and thus, too, the exclusiveness and arrogance of the clergy received the first of many sledge-hammer blows which were to result in their confusion and discomfiture. "If," says Froude,' "the Black Prince had lived, or if Richard II. had inherited the temper of the Plantagenets, the ecclesiastical system would have been spared the misfortune of a longer reprieve." THE ASHES OF WICLIF. - The vengeance which Wiclif es1 Am. ed., i. 94. caped during his life was wreaked upon his bones. In 1428, the Council of Constance ordered that if his bones could be distinguished from those of other, faithful people, they should "be taken out of the ground and thrown far off from Christian burial." On this errand the Bishop of Lincoln came with his officials to Lutterworth, and, finding them, burned them, and threw the ashes into the little stream called the Swift. Fuller, in his Church History, adds: "Thus this brook has conveyed his ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean; and thus the ashes of Wiclif are the emblem of his doctrine, which now is dispersed all the world over; or, in the more carefully selected words of an English laureate of modern days,' . . . this deed accurst, An emblem yields to friends and enemies, How the bold teacher's doctrine, sanctified By truth, shall spread, throughout the world dispersed. 1 Wordsworth, Ecc. Son., xvii. |