The next runneth upon ‘h,’ as thus: 

    ‘In habite as an Hermite unholy of workes.’

This thing being noted, the metre shall be very pleasant to read.  The English is according to the time it was written in, and the sense somewhat dark, but not so hard but that it may be understood of such as will not stick to break the shell of the nut for the kernel’s sake.”

This printer also says in his preface that the book was first written in the time of King Edward III, “In whose time it pleased God to open the eyes of many to see his truth, giving them boldness of heart to open their mouths and cry out against the works of darkness. . . .  There is no manner of vice that reigneth in any estate of man which this writer hath not godly, learnedly, and wittily rebuked."*

R.  Crowley is his preface to Piers Ploughman, printed in 1550.

I hope that you will be among those who will not “stick to break the shell of the nut for the kernel’s sake,” and that although the “sense be somewhat dark” you will some day read the book for yourselves.  Meantime in the next chapter I will tell you a little more about it.

Chapter XX “PIERS THE PLOUGHMAN” —­ continued

WHEN Langland fell asleep upon the Malvern Hills he dreamed a wondrous dream.  He thought that he saw a “fair field full of folk,” where was gathered “all the wealth of the world and the woe both.”

    “Working and wondering as the world asketh,
    Some put them to the plough and played them full seldom,
    In eareing and sowing laboured full hard.”

But some are gluttons and others think only of fine clothes.  Some pray and others jest.  There are rogues and knaves here, friars and priests, barons and burgesses, bakers and butchers, tailors and tanners, masons and miners, and folk of many other crafts.  Indeed, the field is the world.  It lies between a tower and a dungeon.  The tower is God, the dungeon is the dwelling of the Evil One.

Then, as Langland looked on all this, he saw

    “A lady lovely in face, in linnen i-clothed,
    Come adown from the cliff and spake me fair,
    And said, ’Son, sleepest thou?  Seest thou this people
    All how busy they be about the maze?’”

Langland was “afeard of her face though she was fair.”  But the lovely lady, who is Holy Church, speaks gently to the dreamer.  She tells him that the tower is the dwelling of Truth, who is the lord of all and who gives to each as he hath need.  The dungeon is the castle of Care.

    “Therein liveth a wight that Wrong is called,
    The Father of Falseness.”

Love alone, said the lady, leads to Heaven,

    “Therefore I warn ye, the rich, have ruth on the poor. 
    Though ye be mighty in councils, be meek in your works,
    For the same measure ye meet, amiss or otherwise,
    Ye shall be weighed therewith when ye wend hence.”