udgel as vigorously to the priest's pate as to the
Lolardes back. But he disliked modern innovation as much as ancient abuse,
in this also faithfully reflecting the mind of the people, and he is as
emphatic in his censure of the one as in his condemnation of the other.

Barclay's "Ship of Fools," however, is not only important as a picture of
the English life and popular feeling of his time, it is, both in style and
vocabulary, a most valuable and remarkable monument of the English
language. Written midway between Chaucer and Spenser, it is infinitely more
easy to read than either. Page after page, even in the antique spelling of
Pynson's edition, may be read by the ordinary reader of to-day without
reference to a dictionary, and when reference is required it will be found
in nine cases out of ten that the archaism is Saxon, not Latin. This is all
the more remarkable, that it occurs in the case of a priest translating
mainly from the Latin and French, and can only be explained with reference
to his standpoint as a social reformer of the broadest type, and to his
evident intention that his book should be an appeal to all classes, but
especially to the mass of the people, for amendment of their follies. In
evidence of this it may be noticed that in the didactic passages, and
especially in the L'envois, which are additions of his own, wherever, in
fact, he appears in his own character of "preacher," his language is most
simple, and his vocabulary of the most Saxon description.

In his prologue "excusynge the rudenes of his translacion," he professes to
have purposely used the most "comon speche":--

"My speche is rude my termes comon and rural
And I for rude peple moche more conuenient
Than for estates, lerned men, or eloquent."

He afterwards humorously supplements this in "the prologe," by:--

"But if I halt in meter or erre in eloquence
Or be to large in langage I pray you blame not me
For my mater is so bad it wyll none other be."

So much the better for all who are interested in studying the development
of our language and literature. For thus we have a volume, confessedly
written in the commonest language of the common people, from which the
philologist may at once see the stage at which they had arrived in the
development of a simple English speech, and how far, in this respect, the
spoken language had advanced a-head of the written; and from which also he
can judge to what extent the popularity of a