Worldly Wiseman, and even of such
Puritan names as Praise-God Barebones, and Zeal-of-the-land Busy. The
poem is full of English moral seriousness, of shrewd humor, the hatred
of a lie, the homely English love for reality. It has little unity of
plan, but is rather a series of episodes, discourses, parables, and
scenes. It is all astir with the actual life of the time. We see the
gossips gathered in the ale-house of Betun the brewster, and the pastry
cooks in the London streets crying "Hote pies, hote! Good gees and
grys.[7] Go we dine, go we!" Had Langland not linked his literary
fortunes with an uncouth and obsolescent verse, and had he possessed a
finer artistic sense and a higher poetic imagination, his book might
have been, like Chaucer's, among the lasting glories of our tongue. As
it is, it is forgotten by all but professional students of literature
and history. Its popularity in its own day is shown by the number of
MSS. which are extant, and by imitations, such as _Piers the Plowman's
Crede_ (1394), and the _Plowman's Tale_, for a long time wrongly
inserted in the _Canterbury Tales_. Piers became a kind of typical
figure, like the French peasant, _Jacques Bonhomme_, and was appealed to
as such by the Protestant reformers of the 16th century.
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