more real inspiration or poetical enthusiasm in their compositions.  One cannot read the works of this author, or Chaucer, without lamenting the unhappiness of a fluctuating language, that buries in its ruins even genius itself; for like edifices of sand, every breath of time defaces it, and if the form remain, the beauty is lost.  The piece from which I shall quote a few lines, is a work of great length and labour, of the allegoric kind; it is animated with a lively and luxurious imagination; pointed with a variety of pungent satire; and dignified with many excellent lessons of morality; but as to the conduct of the whole, it does not appear to be of a piece; every vision seems a distinct rhapsody, and does not carry on either one single action or a series of many; but we ought rather to wonder at its beauties than cavil at its defects; and if the poetical design is broken, the moral is entire, which, is uniformly the advancement of piety, and reformation of the Roman clergy.  The piece before us is entitled the Vision of Piers the Plowman, and I shall quote that particular part which seems to have furnished a hint to Milton in his Paradise Lost, b. 2. 1. 475.

Kinde Conscience tho’ heard, and came out of
the planets,
And sent forth his sorrioues, fevers, and fluxes,
Coughes, and cardicales, crampes and toothaches,
Reums, and ragondes, and raynous scalles,
Byles, and blothes, and burning agues,
Freneses, and foul euyl, foragers of kinde!
* * * * *
There was harrow! and help! here cometh Kinde
With death that’s dreadful, to undone us all
Age the hoore, he was in vaw-ward
And bare the baner before death, by right he it
claymed! 
Kinde came after, with many kene foxes,
As pockes, and pestilences, and much purple
shent;
So Kinde, through corruptions killed full many: 
Death came driving after, and all to dust pashed
Kyngs and bagaars, knights and popes.

* * * * * Milton.

----------Immediately a place
Before his eyes appear’d, sad, noisom, dark,
A lazar-house it seem’d; wherein were laid

  Numbers of all diseased:  all maladies
  Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms
  Of heartsick agony, all fev’rous kinds,
  Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,
  Intestine stone and ulcer, cholic-pangs
  Demoniac phrenzy, moping melancholy
  And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy,
  Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence,
  Dropsies and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums;
  Dire was the tossing! deep the groans! despair
  Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch: 
  And over them, triumphant death his dart
  Shook.  P. L. b. xi. 1. 477.

* * * * *

Sir JOHN GOWER