in two passages from writers of Edward’s and Richard’s reigns.  “Children in school,” says Higden, a writer of the first period, “against the usage and manner of all other nations be compelled for to leave their own language and for to construe their lessons and their things in French, and so they have since the Normans first came into England.  Also gentlemen’s children be taught for to speak French from the time that they be rocked in their cradle, and know how to speak and play with a child’s toy; and uplandish (or country) men will liken themselves to gentlemen, and strive with, great busyness to speak French for to be more told of.”  “This manner,” adds John of Trevisa, Higden’s translator in Richard’s time, “was much used before the first murrain (the Black Death of 1349), and is since somewhat changed.  For John Cornwal, a master of grammar, changed the lore in grammar school and construing of French into English; and Richard Pencrych learned this manner of teaching of him, as other men did of Pencrych.  So that now, the year of our Lord 1385 and of the second King Richard after the Conquest nine, in all the grammar schools of England children leaveth French, and construeth and learneth in English.  Also gentlemen have now much left for to teach their children French.”

[Sidenote:  Chaucer]

This drift towards a general use of the national tongue told powerfully on literature.  The influence of the French romances everywhere tended to make French the one literary language at the opening of the fourteenth century, and in England this influence had been backed by the French tone of the court of Henry the Third and the three Edwards.  But at the close of the reign of Edward the Third the long French romances needed to be translated even for knightly hearers.  “Let clerks indite in Latin,” says the author of the “Testament of Love,” “and let Frenchmen in their French also indite their quaint terms, for it is kindly to their mouths; and let us show our fantasies in such wordes as we learned of our mother’s tongue.”  But the new national life afforded nobler materials than “fantasies” now for English literature.  With the completion of the work of national unity had come the completion of the work of national freedom.  The vigour of English life showed itself in the wide extension of commerce, in the progress of the towns, and the upgrowth of a free yeomanry.  It gave even nobler signs of its activity in the spirit of national independence and moral earnestness which awoke at the call of Wyclif.  New forces of thought and feeling which were destined to tell on every age of our later history broke their way through the crust of feudalism in the socialist revolt of the Lollards, and a sudden burst of military glory threw its glamour over the age of Crecy and Poitiers.  It is this new gladness of a great people which utters itself in the verse of Geoffrey Chaucer.  Chaucer was born about 1340, the son of a London vintner who lived in Thames Street; and it was in London that