of St. Jerome from the "Legenda Aurea" and from letters which had passed between St. Augustine and St. Cyril, in order that this lady and others might learn therefrom how to live and how to die. Again, a monk, who probably wrote in the north-eastern Midlands-and who excuses himself, in a postscript, for his admixture of south and north English linguistic forms-translated, at the request of his prior, the legends of four female saints from Latin into his own language; he was cautious enough simply to omit the more obscure passages from the Scriptures which he found quoted in his originals. In the Lives of these Saints -three of whom are Belgian women of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, one of them being Christina Mirabilis, another an Italian, Catherine of Siena-there is distinct evidence of the above-mentioned tendency to asceticism and mysticism.

Various districts in England were engaged in the production of prose-legends; Western England, however, especially distinguished itself in this domain at an early date, and, as we have already seen, produced Trevisa and Pecock. It was on the borders of Wales that, among other things, the first cycle of prose-legends arose. The author, John Mirkus, was a regular canon of the Augustinian friary at Lilleshall, in Shropshire. Mirkus had also tried. his hand at verse, and— drawing from a Latin source—wrote his Instructions for Parish Priests in very readable rhymedcouplets. He seems, however, to have thought that prose was more suitable for the people, there being a kind of transition to it in the alliterative verse (indigenous to that part of the country), when presented without archaisms and without any claim to a higher form of poetry. In prose, accordingly, he wrote his Festial, at the beginning of the fifteenth century-again a book intended in the first instance for the use of priests, but also well adapted for being communicated verbally to the congregation; its aim was to be a comfort to preachers, to provide them throughout the ecclesiastical year with homilies and legends for Sundays and Church festivals. The "Golden Legend," the distribution and influence of which were still on the increase, was also the source and prototype of "Festial," though Mirkus followed it with freedom and discrimination, in detail as

JOHN MIRKUS.

DEVOTIONAL LITERATURE.

5

well as a whole. The number of legends with him is smaller than in the collection of Jacobus of Genoa, although supplemented by several new ones, such as that of St. Alkmund, patron saint of Lilleshall Church, and of St. Winifred of Wales. On the other hand, the number of homilies is considerably increased, and several new stories, from the "Gesta Romanorum" and other sources, were incorporated. How opportune this undertaking of the pious Augustinian monk was, is proved by the success it met with. The demand for "Festial" was extraordinarily great; new copies were perpetually being made, and on such occasions the language, and in many cases the contents, experienced all sorts of modifications and amplifications, and in the course of time even the arrangement of the parts was altered.

About a generation after the version made by Mirkus, the "Legenda Aurea," in 1438, found a more faithful translator, whose name and profession are unknown. The anonymous writer calls himself a "pore sinner"; one of his copyists, however, had the happy thought-not rare in those days of substituting for him a number of "worthy scholars and doctors of divinity." Such appellations would scarcely have suited the pious "sinner." Perhaps he was even unacquainted with Latin; at all events he did not make his translation from the original, but from one of the two existing French versions, and, indeed, from the earlier one by Jehan de Vignay, which he has followed carefully upon the whole, and in many passages word for word.

French influence, together with that which proceeded from Latin sources, is also apparent in the devotional literature of allegorico-mystical tendency. A name specially often met with in this domain, is that of Guillaume de Deguileville, whom we first came across when discussing the religious bent of Chaucer's mind.* Deguileville, a monk and prior of the Cistercian Abbey of Chalis, in the diocese of Senlis, wrote his "Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine" between 1330 and 1331, when about "midway on life's ," and it was followed, after a short interval, by his Pèlerinage de l'Âme Humaine." In 1335 he remodelled both poems, and then (in 1358) added the "Pèlerinage de *Vol. ii. p. 60.

66

Jesu Christ" as a final part to his trilogy. Deguileville wrote under the sway of the "Roman de la Rose," which so powerfully influenced the literature of the declining Middle Ages. He himself connects his own vision, of which he gives an account in his first "Pèlerinage," with the mental state produced upon him by reading the famous poem. It may not only have fertilized his imagination, but have also aroused in him the distinct intention of creating a religious pendant to a poem which was wholly secular in character, and, in many respects, full of trivial matter, by a work of equally deep-rooted significance. The author of the "Pèlerinages" had at his disposal knowledge of various kinds, he was rich in inward experience, and was by no means wanting in imagination. Still, he was not the sort of man able, in all cases, to throw life into the artistic form in which he expressed his thoughts; like most allegorical writers, he makes his personifications hold discourses of too great length, and allows them too little scope for action; the more correct he is in his sentiments and ideas, the more equal the construction of his plan, and the more choice his diction, the less his work impresses us with any direct force. Still, a book must not be judged only by itself, but in connection with the readers for whom it is written. And how well de Deguileville hit the spirit of his day is shown by the immense and lasting success his poem met with.

A French priest, Jean Gallopes, surnamed le Galoys, and said to have been of English extraction, turned the first two "Pèlerinages" into prose towards the beginning of the fifteenth century (previous to 1435), having made use of the earlier versions. About the same time, the original text of the "Pèlerinage de la Vie Humaine" was turned into prose in the South-English dialect, and at a later period another English prose version was produced in the northern dialect, also based upon the earlier form of the poem, possibly, however, upon the version by Gallopes. In 1426, as we learn from Lydgate, the first "Pèlerinage"-based upon the version of 1355-was turned into English in short rhymed-couplets, at the request of the Earl of Salisbury, who was residing in Paris at the time. All of these translations adopt the A B C Hymn to the Virgin in the form which Chaucer had given it, or, at all events, were meant so to reproduce it; in the

INFLUENCE OF GUILLAUME DE DEGUILEVILLE.

7

Cotton Manuscript containing Lydgate's work, the space for the Master's poem-which in the text is expressly mentioned and praised-has remained a blank. In the mean time, in 1413, a free English adaptation had been made, under the title of " Pylgremages of the Sowle," and a certain share in this work is again ascribed to Lydgate; it was subsequently printed by Caxton.

The influence of Guillaume de Deguileville did not remain confined to the Middle Ages. As late as the seventeenth century, an abbreviated version of his "Pilgrimage of Human Life" enjoyed a certain circulation in manuscript, and probably may have come into Bunyan's hands and have thus suggested his "Pilgrim's Progress."

Less far-reaching, but even more intense, within a narrower sphere, was the influence exercised upon English spiritual life in the fifteenth century by a work of German mysticism. Somewhere about the same date, when the first English version of the French" Pylgremages" also appeared, the famous Dominican, Heinrich Suso, wrote his "Büchlein der Weisheit," which, during the Middle Ages, enjoyed an even wider circulation in Germany than the "De Imitatione Christi,” a work which has remained much more closely in touch with the present day. Those acquainted with-let us frankly say those who admire—“ The Imitation of Christ" would find Suso's "Booklet" frequently remind them of a favourite work not only do we find it pervaded by the same mental and spiritual atmosphere, and, in many instances, the thoughts clothed in the self-same language, but we find, above all, the same depth of insight, the same intensity of emotion. But what in Suso appears linked with a youthful exuberance of poetic feeling, and thus-like everything visionary on the borderland between the natural and spiritual-exhibits a morbid touch, in Thomas à Kempis † strikes one as wisdom, purified and mellowed by rich experience.

Suso had translated his "Booklet of Wisdom" into Latin, under the title of "Horologium Sapientiæ," before 1341, and had dedicated it to Hugo of Vaucemane, the General of his

It appears to be based upon the above-mentioned South-English version. The name of à Kempis I make use of here only as a familiar symbol, and do not mean to express any literary conviction; books with which I have been intimately acquainted from early youth-such as "The Imitation of Christ," and others-I have never made the subjects of learned inquiry.

Order at the time. In its Latin form, the little book found a circulation both in France and England. It was the spiritual need of a noble and pious woman in this case again, that called forth an English version of Suso's booklet. The English translator begins the Prologue to his adaptation with its characteristic title of Ye Sevene Poyntes of Trewe Love and Everlastyng Wisdame, with the following words: "My most worshipfull lady after your hygh worthynesse, and derest loved goostly dougter after your vertuous mekenes, I youre symple trew chapeleyne unworthy to have name of fader, consideryng youre excellent wisdom bothe to god and to the worlde, and felynge in experience by the sparcles of goostly communicatyon the hete of the fyre of love to oure lorde Jhû, that he of his grace hath sete in youre herte for to norrysshe sumwhat and fede that gracyous fyre of love, and to comforte youre goostly wysdome, namely in thys wickyd worlde that is full of decevable wisdom and faste feyned love, I am styred to write after my symple cunnynge to you, as ye devoutly desyre, a lytyll shorte treatyse of everlastynge wysdom and the trew love of Jhesu, drawen oute in englysshe of that devoute contemplatyf boke writen clergealye in latyn the whyche is clepid the Orologe of wysdom." The little treatise deserves our fullest consideration here; for we have to deal not merely with a translation-whether strict or free -nor with a mere careless compilation such as the Middle Ages delighted in and, unfortunately, our own age favours,

we have here to deal with a reproduction based upon an intimate acquaintance with the original, and carried out with clear insight and great skill. In taking the several parts and passages of the English version and comparing them with the plan of the original, we are amazed at the wanderings to and fro, backwards and forwards, we are compelled to make in our own examination; it seems as if we were endeavouring to gather up, without the help of pagination, the loose leaves of a book which had got into disorder. And yet our difficulty and the impression of arbitrariness. made by the English version arise solely from our own defective knowledge of the subject. What seems in the first instance to be a confused and capriciously arranged mosaic from the "Horologium Sapientiæ," on closer inspection appears a mosaic still, it is true, but one that,