FOURTEENTH CENTURY.
Prince one day, when this man and Dante were both present, highly extolled the former, and, Umung to the poet^ said, " I wonder that this foolish fellow should have found out the secret of fleaang us all, and nmking himself admired, while jou, who are a man of great sense, are in little esteem." To \»hioh, Dante freely replied, "You would cease to wonder at this, if you knew how much conformity of character is the real xmice of firiendship."
Dante wrote before we began to be at all lefiaed ; and, of course, his celebrated poem is a sort of Gothic work. He is very singular and reiT beautiful in his similies, and more like Homer than any of the Italian poets. He was pradigioasly learned for die times that he lived m, and knew all that a man could then know. Homer, in his time, was unknown in Italy ; and Petrarch boasts of being the first poet that had heard him explained. Indeed, in Dtmte's time, there were not above three or four people in all ItaJv that could read Greek (one, in particular, atViterbo, and two or three elsewhere.) But, although he had never seen Homer, he had oraveised much with the works of Virgil. His poem got the name of Comedia, after his death. He somewhere calls Virgil's Work Tragedia (or sublime poetry ;) and, in deference to him, callkl his own Comedia (or low :) and hence was that «o(d used afterwards, by mistake, for die title of Us poem. — Spenee.
1322. April 15. Fitz-Simeon, and Hugh the Ubtmutator, two fiiars of Dublin, commenced their pQgrimage to the holy sepulchre. Hugh died at Cairo, on the 22nd of October following.
1326. The first appearance of ylraMc nummSt in England, was in a large folio entitled Albion, written by Richard of Wallingford, a monk, and afterwards abbot of SL Albans, it consisted of astronomical canons, or rules and tables.
1327. The schohus and citizens of Oxford tssaolted and entirely pillaged the opulent bene- dictiDe abbey of the neighbouring town of Abing- don. Among the books they found there, were (me hundred psalters, as many grayles, and for^- sa. uussbIs, which undoubtedly belonged to the chra of the church, and twenty-two books on eommoD subjects.
1328. The Chester Mysteries, being plays of
the Old and New Te»tammt, are ascribed to Ra-
nnhih Higden, compiler of the Polychronicon,
«na » benedictine monk of that city, where they
wwe performed at the expense of the incorporated
todes, with a thousand days of pardon fimm the
pope, and forty days of pardon from the bishop of
Chester, to all who attended the representation.
In the Harleian manuscripts, in the British
maienm, it is related of these Chester Mysteries
that the author " was thrice at Rome before he
could obtain leave of the pope to have them in the
English tongue," from which fact, Mr. Waxton
thinks, a presumptive proof arises that all our
wmsteria before that penod were in Latin ; these
jjlays wQl, therefore, have the merit of behig the
liist EngUtk interludes. Hone, in his work on
Myttria and Religunu Show$, however, says,
" After the well known fondness of our ancestors for shows, it is too much, perhaps, to say, that un their church festivals tmd occasions of public rejoicing, they had no interludes in English; seeing too that Fitzstephen writing in 1174, says, that ' London, for its theatrical exhibitions, has religious plays, either the representations of mi. racles wrougnt by holy -confessors, or the suffer- ings of martyrs ;' these must have been in English to have been understood ; and so must the miracle play of St. Catherine, in 1110, if, as was pro- bably the case, it was publicly performed on some feast day." During the celebration of the festival of the boy bishop, moralities were presented, and shows of miracles, with farces and other sports ; it is reasonable to suppose that Englith interludes of some kind, if not coeval with die boy bishop, were at least cotemporaneous with him for a long time before Edward I.
" What could occasion the author of the Ches- ter plays," asks Mr. Hone, " to take a journey thrice to Rome, before he could obtain leave of the pope to have them in the Englitk tongue i The subjeeU of these plays ' from the Old and New Testament,' seem to me to supply the rea- sons for the difficulty in obtaining the pope's consent. Scripture in English had been scrupu- lously withheld from the people, and the pope probably anticipated diat if they were made acquainted with a portion of it, the remainder would be demanded." The Chester Mysteries were performed for the last time in 1574.*
1330. About this period Lewis Beaumont was bishop of Durham. He was a very lame and illiterate French nobleman, so incapable of read- ing and spelling, that he could not, although he had studied them, read the bulls announced to the people at his consecration. This, amongst many other instances, induced the king (Edwurd III.) to address a strong remonstrance to the pope, against his enactments, in which he represented that " the encouragement of religion were bes- towed upon unqualified, mercenary -foreigners, who neither resided in the country, nor under- stood its language ; and that the treasures of the kingdom were carried off by strangers, and the jurisdiction of the courts baffled by constant appeals to a foreign authority, &c. — Andrew/.
At his coronation the word "Metropoliticee" occuied, the bishop paused, tried in vam to re- peat it, and at last said, " Soit pour dit," (tuppote that laid,) Then he came to " In .Snigmate ;" this puzzled him again. " Par St. Lewis," said he, " il n'est pas courtois qui a escrit cette parole id," (by St. Lewis, it could be no gentleman wKo v>rote thit ttuff.)
An instance of the state of literary acquire- ments of many of the clergy, at this period, and for a long time afterwards, may be proved by the following fact : — ^At an entertainment given at Rome, to the pope and cardinals, by Andrew
- Abondantljr cnrioiu and OBcful infonnation coocem-
iOK Myiteries in genend, will be found in Dngdile'i War- tHekMre ; Ormcrod's HUtorf of Ckakm ; Drue's HUtorg of York i llone on Mgtterin ami Retigiotu Skowt ; Wmzton's HUtorf of BngliMk Poetry i mai *lso a venr aUe article in the Retrotpeciivt Revietti vol. 1 .
