popular manuals of
devotion increased in numbers and copiousness. In this the time of the
Black Death is, as in other aspects of our story, a deep dividing line.

The note of increasing strain and stress is fully expressed in the
earlier forms of _The Vision of Piers Plowman,_ which were composed
before the death of Edward III. Its author, William Langland, a clerk in
minor orders, debarred by marriage from a clerical career, came from the
Mortimer estates in the march of Wales: but his life was mainly spent in
London, and he wrote in the tongue of the city of his adoption. The
first form of the poem is dated 1362, the year of the second visitation
of the Black Death, while the troubles of the end of the reign perhaps
inspired the fuller edition which saw the light in 1377. It is a
commonplace to contrast the gloomy pictures drawn by Langland with the
highly coloured pictures of contemporary society for which Chaucer was
gathering his materials. Yet this contrast may be pressed too far.
Though Langland had a keen eye to those miseries of the poor which are
always with us, the impression of the time gathered from his writings is
not so much one of material suffering, as of social unrest and
discontent. The poor ploughman, who cannot get meat, still has his
cheese, curds, and cream, his loaf of beans and bran, his leeks and
cabbage, his cow, calf, and cart mare.[1] The very beggar demanded
"bread of clean wheat" and "beer of the best and brownest," while the
landless labourer despised "night-old cabbage," "penny-ale," and bacon,
and asked for fresh meat and fish freshly fried.[2] There is plenty of
rough comfort and coarse enjoyment in the England through which "Long
Will" stalked moodily, idle, hopeless, and in himself exemplifying many
of the evils which he condemned. The England of Langland is bitter,
discontented, and sullen. It is the popular answer to the class
prejudice and reckless greed of the lords and gentry. Langland's own
attitude towards the more comfortable classes is much that of the
self-assertive and mutinous Londoner whom Froissart looked upon with
such bitter prejudice. He boasts that he was loath to do reverence to
lords and ladies, or to those clad in furs with pendants of silver, and
refuses to greet "sergeants" with a "God save you". Every class of
society is flagellated in his scathing criticisms. He is no
revolutionist with a new gospel of reform, but, though content to accept
the old traditions,