inglorious, nay infamous, to the people and republic of Florence? Bread, I hope, will not fail me."

Yet bread, it is said, did fail him. Poverty, nay worse, dependence, was his mournful lot. Even after his death (1321) his persecutors were not appeased, for his thoughts yet lived immortal. The pope held that his work, "De Monarchia," struck at the root of priestly power, and it was ordered to be burnt.

were

Dante set an admirable example to his contemporaries and successors, by writing chiefly in his own vernacular language. To this cause, probably, may be attributed the circumstance that even the common people of Florence knew somewhat of the scope and purport of his awful poem; and that his thoughts, once set free, alighted like electric fire on many a mind, kindling up into a flame the smouldering embers of discontent, and stimulating inquiry. The example thus set was worthily followed.

General readers women more particularlyhave a very indistinct idea of the service rendered to literature by the two great Italians who adorned the period immediately following the death of Dante-Petrarch and Boccaccio. They think of the first as merely a writer of elegant and romantic love sonnets to his Laura, and of the other as the author of some stories that he had better not have

written. This is merely a one-sided view of the great men in question. They were reformers in literature. Ripe scholars, they despised the puerilities of monkish legends and the barbarous style in which they were written, -matter and manner each alike despicable. They resolved to lead the mind of the age back to the treasures of classic antiquity; and, for this purpose, commenced a diligent search after the dispersed writings of the philosophers, poets, and orators of Greece and Rome. Petrarch, in particular, sought to rouse his countrymen from their slumbers: it is said, "He never passed an old convent or monastery without searching its library, or knew of a friend travelling in those quarters where he supposed books to be concealed, without entreaties to procure for him some classical manuscripts." And Boccaccio restored the study of the Greek language at a time when it was not only dead, but well nigh forgotten.

These two great men arose just in time to save the literary treasures of antiquity from complete destruction. In which latter case, supposing they had excited a love of literature among their countrymen, they could not have gratified it, or have presented models of composition that would form the taste and correct the judgment of that and succeeding ages.

The great cause of the destruction of the writ

ings of sages of antiquity during the dark ages, was the scarcity and dearness of materials to write upon. The parchment used by ancient writers was of so tough a texture that the writing could be erased or peeled off; and this was often done to make room for some superstitious trash or monkish legend. It is said that ignorant and unprincipled monks not only did this when they wanted to increase their stock of religious works, by original writings: but when they wanted to raise money, they used to sell the parchments on which Greek or Latin works were written, to the bookbinders and racket-makers. Several eminent works were rescued by scholars, that had been sold in this way; others lay neglected and dropping to pieces in monasteries: so that Petrarch and Boccaccio engaged in a noble crusade when they set about rescuing the long-imprisoned and almost forgotten worthies of classic antiquity.

No country can be said to have a national literature so long as their writers choose a foreign language as the medium to convey their thoughts. We have seen that Dante wrote in his own native language, in opposition to the custom then prevailing, that regarded Latin as the language of the ecclesiastic and the scholar, and the Provençal as the language of poetry. Petrarch and Boccaccio, great scholars as they were, and writing admirably in other languages, yet composed in their verna

cular those works on which their fame principally rests, though probably not those on which they most prided themselves.

The revival of letters in the South of Europe, caused by the grand and marvellous poem of Dante, and by the subsequent literary labours and researches of Petrarch and Boccaccio, had its influence, not only on Europe generally, but on our own island in particular. We also had great men in that age, and were on the eve of great changes of opinion and great triumphs of mind. It was the age of Wickliffe the Reformer, and Chaucer the poet, also a reformer. The first-who was four years the senior-held that the people of England should have the Scriptures in their own tongue, as a means both of the highest spiritual and temporal good. Wickliffe had the honour to be the first man in Europe who questioned the spiritual supremacy of the Pope and the infallibility of the Church of Rome. He denied the real presence in the eucharist, the merit of monastic vows, maintained that the Scriptures were the sole rule of faith, and that the numerous ceremonies of the Church were hateful to true piety. He made a translation of the Scriptures, and upheld his opinions by most powerful and frequent preaching; while his writings also were very voluminous, amounting to a hundred and fifty-six treatises, some in Latin, others in English.

Wickliffe, strangely enough, the prejudices of his age being considered,-died a natural death at his rectory of Lutterworth; but after his decease Fleming, Bishop of London, having procured a papal bull from Martin V., exhumed and burnt his bones, throwing the ashes into a brook; of which transaction Fuller nobly says: "This brook hath conveyed the ashes into Avon, Avon into Severn, Severn into the narrow seas, they into the main ocean; and thus the ashes of Wickliffe are the emblem of his doctrine, which is now dispersed all the world over."

Chaucer deserves to be venerated as a patriot quite as much as a poet, because he may be said to have re-conquered our language for us, when it had long lain under ban and interdict. Geoffrey Chaucer was born in 1328, seven years after the death of Dante, and twenty-four years after the birth of Petrarch. There has been a lengthened controversy as to the place of his birth; but he himself-surely the best authority-asserts it to have been London. "The City of London, that is to me so dear and sweet, in which I was forthgrown-and more kindly love have I to that place than to any other in earth (as every kindly creature hath full appetite to that place of his kindly ingendure)." The rank of his parents has equally been the subject of dispute. Four biographers give different testimonies. Speght asserts his father was a vintner, Hearne that he was a