the warning in the Apocalypse,
"If any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy,
God shall take away his part out of the book of life," Wiclif followed
the Latin order of construction so literally as to make rather awkward
English, translating, for example, _Quib sibi vult hoc somnium?_ by
_What to itself wole[8] this sweven?_[9] Purvey's revision was somewhat
freer and more idiomatic. In the reigns of Henry IV. and V. it was
forbidden to read or to have any of Wiclif's writings. Such of them as
could be seized were publicly burned. In spite of this, copies of his
Bible circulated secretly in great numbers. Forshall and Madden, in
their great edition (1850), enumerate one hundred and fifty MSS. which
had been consulted by them. Later translators, like Tyndale and the
makers of the Authorized Version, or "King James's Bible" (1611),
followed Wiclif's language in many instances; so that he was, in truth,
the first author of our biblical dialect and the founder of that great
monument of noble English which has been the main conservative influence
in the mother-tongue, holding it fast to many strong, pithy words and
idioms that would else have been lost. In 1415, some thirty years after
Wiclif's death, by decree of the Council of Constance, his bones were
dug up from the soil of Lutterworth chancel and burned, and the ashes
cast into the Swift. "The brook," says Thomas Fuller, in his _Church
History_, "did convey 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."

[Footnote 7: Pigs.]
[Footnote 8: Will.]
[Footnote 9: Dream.]

Although the writings thus far mentioned are of very high interest to
the student of the English language and the historian of English manners
and culture, they cannot be said to have much importance as mere
literature. But in Geoffrey Chaucer (died 1400) we meet with a poet of
the first rank, whose works are increasingly read and will always
continue to be a source of delight and refreshment to the general reader
as well as a "well of English undefiled" to the professional man of
letters. With the exception of Dante, Chaucer was the greatest of the
poets of mediaeval Europe, and he remains one of the greatest of English
poets, and certainly the foremost of English story tellers in verse. He
was the son of a London vintner, and was