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especially in the volume from which Mr. Shirley has made his selections were more or less pointed out to Mr. Lewis by those writers. Mr. Lewis very naturally availed himself of their guidance, and brought together a number of papers already in print, and with them several valuable contributions from manuscripts. The following is Mr. Lewis's account of the assistanee he obtained in this good work :—

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By the favour of his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, I had the perusal of Wiclif's Trialogus, and of a volume of MSS., which his Grace had transcribed for his use from the Bodleian Library. Grace's librarian, the learned Dr. Wilkins, was so kind as himself to copy for me the process of the dispute between the Archbishop of Canterbury and Dr. Wiclif about the Wardenship of Canterbury Hall. To my faithful friend, Dr. Elias Sydal, canon of Christchurch, Canterbury, I owe the having had the liberty of making use of whatever is in the library of that church for my purpose. The copy of the collection of Wiclif's English MSS., in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, of which I have made so much use, was procured for me by the Rev. Mr. Charles Sheldrake, fellow of that college. The account of the other MSS. in the libraries at Cambridge, I had by the favour and the kind assistance of the Rev. Thomas Denn, fellow of the same college. What account I have had of the MSS. in Ireland, I thankfully acknowledge to have received it from the Right Rev. the Lord Bishop of Kilmore, and the Rev. Dr. Howard, Fellow of Trinity College, near Dublin.'-Preface xv.

The papers transcribed for Mr. Lewis from the Registry in Canterbury, touching the matter of Canterbury Hall, were not, it seems, transcribed very accurately, and they added little to what was before known.* We have seen in part how scanty was the information supplied from Ireland. In Oxford, Mr. Lewis no doubt examined for the most part for himself, and what he knew of real value about the Cambridge MSS. he knew in the same way. It is not pleasant to say anything to the disadvantage of a man whose intentions were so good, and whose labours were in many respects so praiseworthy, and, we may add, so valuable. But it has not been ours to force comparisons in relation to him. We shall, however, only advert to one or two points, for the purpose of showing that something better than Mr. Lewis had done on this subject was desirable, and that something better has been accomplished.

Mr. Lewis's chief merit was that of a collector of materials. His German critics say that his book can hardly be called a life, that it should rather be described as consisting of materials for a

Seeley's Edition of Foxe, edited by the Rev. Josiah Pratt. Vol. ii. App. pp. 922-938.

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English Biographies of Wycliffe.

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But even in this view its defects are sometimes serious. In a work printed in Oxford in 1697, intitled, Catalogus Librorum Manuscriptorum Angliæ et Hibernia-a work by the way which answers but poorly to its title is the following entry concerning MSS. in Trinity College, Dublin. No. 814. Jno. Wickliffe's Works to the Duke of Lancaster in 1368. Quarto. Parch. It must be remembered that the year 1368 was only two years after the discussion about the King John tribute, and nine years before Wycliffe's appearance with the Duke of Lancaster and the Earl Marshal in St. Paul's-that is, nine years before the first open movement of authority against him on account of his opinions and teaching. Now we surely might have supposed that one of the first efforts of a man intending to write a Life of Wycliffe would be to make himself acquainted with this volume. Its supposed date made a knowledge of its contents most important; and its being dedicated to a layman and a statesman seemed to promise that it would be of great practical worth. Mr. Lewis does get one or two brief extracts from one piece in this volumebut how the volume has come to be described as John Wickliffe's Works to the Duke of Lancaster, and how this tract, written evidently in 1368, from which he gets his extracts, has come to be attributed to Wycliffe, he never learns. This significant title, 'John Wickliffe's Works to the Duke of Lancaster in 1368,' is handed down without questioning in Mr. Lewis's narrative for the next hundred years, and it is copied in all directions during that interval. That Mr. Lewis should have been content to leave this matter in such a posture, is evidence enough, we think, that to do what needed to be done for the memory of Wycliffe demanded some attention to the subject beyond what Mr. Lewis had been able to bestow upon it.

Dr. Vaughan examined this manuscript volume for himself. He found that the title, Jno. Wickliffe's Works to the Duke of Lancaster in 1368, was no part of the original manuscript; that this title is written upon one of the pieces by another and a much later hand; that the piece on which it happens to be written bears internal evidence of having been written not earlier than 1381; and concerning the one short tract which was evidently written in 1368, and from which Mr. Lewis gets his brief extracts, Dr. Vaughan's ultimate opinion is that it ought not to be attributed to Wycliffe at all. On this last point Mr. Shirley is of Dr. Vaughan's judgment; concerning the other points he can have no judgment, for he has no knowledge.

On a subject of this nature, next in importance to the industry and enterprise which brings home material, is the discernment which knows how to make the best use of it when obtained.

In this respect, Mr. Lewis's ability-to use Mr. Shirley's expression is very poor.' There are men who become manifestly rich by their acquisitions, and there are men who are not so much enriched as bewildered by them. The power to arrange, construct, and build up is not their power. In a life, there should be what belongs to all life-progress. Development, and how that development has been brought about, belong to the essence of such a theme. But Mr. Lewis had no such conception of his work. What Wycliffe did, what happened to him, in this year or that these ideas as relating to mere matters of fact, Mr. Lewis could in some sort apprehend, but his intelligence rarely goes beyond that limit. To look at these facts in their relation to growth, and especially in their relation to the growth of such a mind as Wycliffe's, was not at all in his way. He did not attempt it-it becomes ridiculous to think of him as attempting it.

But

The original material in relation to Wycliffe that was most familiar to Mr. Lewis, was the collection of the Reformer's English works preserved in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. But the plan on which he has used those documents is most unsatisfactory and misleading. He has contented himself with culling a few extracts from them which are meant to illustrate a few of the Reformer's opinions. It might have been supposed that Mr. Lewis would at once have seen that the value of all such extracts for the purposes of biography would depend very much on what might be known as to when those opinions were avowed, or when those feelings were expressed, so as to allow of their being estimated in relation to their antecedents and circumstances. scarcely a thought of this kind would seem to have entered the mind of Mr. Lewis. With a little effort for the purpose he might have ascertained the date of nearly all those English treatises-certainly of the more important among them. Fortunately, the sermons of Wycliffe, and most of his English works, are pregnant with allusions to passing events. Mr. Lewis might have carefully marked all such allusions, and by thus fixing the dates of the several works he might have presented them as indications of the growth of the man in its season. But Mr. Lewis does nothing of the kind. Without care about dates, without attempting to set forth the general contents of such works, it is enough for him to show from them that Dr. Wycliffe taught or believed thus and thus, but whether the Wycliffe who so taught and believed was the Wycliffe of thirty years of age, of fifty, or of sixty, is a point which does not seem to have presented itself to his mind as of any great importance. We shall give an illustration.

Wycliffe's return from the negotiation with the Papal Commis

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English Biographies of Wycliffe.

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sioners at Bruges belongs to the year 1374. Mr. Lewis, speaking of the Reformer's disappointment at the result of that embassy, says, that, on his return he did all he could to expose the pride, covetousness, ambition, and tyranny of the Pope.' (P. 37.) In proof of this statement, passages of a very impassioned description are adduced from four of the Reformer's English treatises, as though they were certainly the productions of that period, while in fact, if he had looked with only ordinary care and intelligence into those writings, he must have seen that they could no one of them have come into existence until some seven or ten years later. They all belong to that closing period of the Reformer's career, when, having withdrawn from Oxford, he gave himself with so much intensity to the translation of the Scriptures, to the labours of the pulpit, and to the multiplication of treatises and tracts in the language of the people.

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One of the treatises thus inaptly appealed to by Mr. Lewis is intitled The Great Sentence of the Curse Expounded. It is distributed into seventy-nine chapters, and extends to nearly a hundred quarto pages. Its reference to the Papal schism determines that it could not have been written earlier than 1379:-its reference to the war going on in Flanders for the love of two false priests who are open Antichrists,' determines that it could not have been written before 1383-while Lewis appeals to it as written on his return to England in 1374, or immediately afterwards. Another of the treatises cited by Mr. Lewis is that intitled On Prelates, and here again there is a reference to the war in Flanders under Bishop Spencer, which is said to show that the use of the clerks of Antichrist is not to make peace but dissensions and wars.' (C. 13.) A third work so cited is that known under the title of Servants and Lords; and the fourth is the well-known treatise named Of Clerks Possessioners -both these pieces, from their references to the Reformer's 'poor priests, and to the persecutions directed against them, could not have been written earlier than 1382. These works accordingly give us the ultimate convictions and feelings of the Reformer, and are no certain guide as to his impressions and opinions so far back as 1374. The proceedings against him at St. Paul's, at Lambeth, and in Oxford were all then to come, and their effect upon him to be realized. Most important, too, is it to bear in mind, that, if Wycliffe had written the works in 1374, which Mr. Lewis has virtually attributed to him at that time, then the articles of impeachment against him in 1377 would hardly have stopped where they did, and, what is more, Wycliffe's defence of himself on that occasion could not be reconciled with honesty. The language of that defence, and the language of these treatises,

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could not have come consistently from the same man at the same time. By this inattention to the chronological order of the Reformer's writings, Mr. Lewis has not only failed to do justice to the character of Wycliffe, he has-however unintentionally or unwittingly done serious injury to his memory. A cast of inconsistency and contradiction has thus been made to rest on his history, of which his enemies have not been slow to take advantage. Dr. Vaughan has been especially careful to guard against negligence in this respect, and unless a host of competent judges have been mistaken, he has thus done for the character and the career of Wycliffe much of the service which it was important some one should have done. He has had the results of Mr. Lewis's inquiries to begin with. He has bestowed not a little time and toil of his own on researches bearing upon this subject. His only competitor has been a man whom even his friends describe as a person of the smallest literary ability. It would, therefore, have been marvellous if, as Mr. Shirley generously intimates, the end of all this had been to leave the subject just as it was. It would be easy to describe in the right words the course which Mr. Shirley has taken on this subjectbut it is not worth while.

Mr. Shirley, indeed, intimates that the chronology of Wycliffe's English works can hardly be determined until his earlier Latin works shall have been more carefully examined (p. xlii.). It is easy to see what this means. But such talk is idle. Wycliffe's English works, with rare exceptions, determine their own date, and nothing can disturb the historical conclusions in relation to him which have thus become settled. Enough is known of his earlier Latin works, such as the De Veritate Scripture and the earlier portions of the Trialogus, to show that the germs of the reforming thought which are so largely developed in his English works, will be found more or less sown in those somewhat earlier productions-but it will be thought in the germ, as compared with the later growth. We shall not extend these criticisms further. We have said more than we wished to have said about Mr. Baber's catalogue of the Reformer's works, and about Mr. Lewis's volume on his life. Both were highly estimable men, and imperfect as their performances have been, both have a real claim on the gratitude of thoughtful Englishmen.

But it certainly becomes the Master of the Rolls, and the Lords Commissioners of her Majesty's Treasury, to consider whether it is fitting that the series of valuable works which they hope to make accessible to the English student at the public cost should be entrusted to men as editors capable of desecrating them, after Mr. Shirley's manner, to the meanest personal and party

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