The Press.
London, England, 1858-08-07 00:00:00

754

She bids him keep in view the straight and only
-entrance, that wicket-gate, which none ever entered till
they ha•i put off their own clothing—that is, mortality ;
and then only by her grace and favour.
He is then led to her h mac (i.e., the Church),
but before reaching it has to wade through a
stream, which signifies, of course, Baptism. After
this purification he is admitted, and finds assembled
a number of pilgrims, and personages who offer
them what may be useful on the journey. One
of the latter is Moses, who stands for " Law," as
opposed to " Grace," and is reproved accordingly.
Moses is succeeded by personifications of Reason
or Prudence, and of Nature ; of Sapience or Dis-
cretion, Repentance, Piety, and Charity,
the latter presenting to her auditory the last Will and
Testament of Him who, for love of mankind, died rpm
the Cross ; which runs thus :
" I, who am the way, ;he truth, and the life, make this
maylest testament, and voluntarily bequeath my soul to my
Father, to be in his safe keeping, whilst I descend int 3
hell to release those who love me. My body I bequeath
to be interred in the sepulchre Joseph has made, and to
the pilgrims who keep in the right way, in order that they
may be nourished by it, and helped on their way. My
bent I leave to those who love anti keep my command.
meats. To John I leave the care of my mother, and my
blood I leave for the salvation of all those who had compas-
sion on me."
There is something in the quaintness of this
formal will which one might be inclined to trace
to the influence of the " Bazochiens " or lawyers'
clerks, who had invented the entertainments called
Moralities, not long before Dc Guileville wrote.
These pieces he had no doubt seen performed, and
it is not difficult to imagine that the language in
which they were couched would reflect in many
instances the calling of the actors. The same
remark applies to a very professional conversa-
tion (at p. xxxvii. of the appendix) between
Avarice " and the Pilgrim on the subject of a
purchase of growing timber.
After presenting the Pilgrim with the mail-
armour of Patience, the helmet of Temperance,
the gorget of Sobriety, the gauntlets of Conti-
nence, the sword of Righteousness, the scabbard
of Humility. and the shield of Prudence, she pro-
sides him with an attendant called Memory, who
is to produze any of these weapons as often as
occasion may require. The Pilgrim proceeds on
his road, and soon arrives at the "parting of the
ways." This "point" in the allegory is repre-
sented by our old friend the Pythagorean Y,
apropos of which the editors have a learned note,
where every parallel passage bearing on the sub-
ject appears to be industriously cited. At the en-
trance of one path is seated Industry, engaged as a
" natte-maker " (crochet ?); at the other, Idleness,
playing with her gloves ; but by a curious slip of
the mediaeval artist it is the former who is placed
at the broad, and the latter at the narrow way.
The Pilgrim of course chooses the proper one,
which does not, however, prevent him from meet.
ing on his journey with Tribulation and Avarice,
the latter of whom favours him with a long and
cynical discourse on the wickedness of mankind,
which reads somewhat like a bit of Rabelais
deodorized. Atter having passed through the
temptations of Worldly Gladness and of Flattery,
and conversed with several other allegorical per-
sonages, he falls into the clutches of Infirmity
and Old Age, who are succeeded by Death, repre-
sented as an old woman bearing a wooden coffin
and a scythe. (We may observe that almost
all the abstract ideas are personified by women,
so that the Pilgrim—lucky dog !—enjoys a good
deal of female society in the course of his jour-
ney.) Gracedieu ultimately appears, and re-
assures her protege at this crisis of his fate ;
after which, he says,

Death seemed to run him through the body with her
ey:he ; and he awoke with a start, scarcely knowing whether
he were dead or alive, until he was certified of the fact of
his being alive by the sound of the convent bell and the
crowing of the cocks. Hereupon he would have arisen,
but lay still in bed musing upon his wondrous dream;
cuncer ll ill g which, lie informs the reader, that, if there be
anything in it which seems to savour of vanity or untruth,
it must be taken as the straw and the chaff is with wheat,
and the whole so sifted that the good and true may remain
and be remembered, whilst the light and worthless is for-
gotten and dismissed ; and, finally, he concludes by re-
aammending his (work to all those who, like good win-
no are skilled in separating reality from error, and
truth fro m falsehood.

That the poem of which we have given a brief
account was very popular in England, appears
from the imitations of it occurring in Chaucer,
whose " A, 13, C," or "Priere de Nostre Dame,"
is almost a literal translation from De Guileville's
Prayer to the Virgin; and from the fact that