238 KANSAS UNIVERSITY QUARTERLY. 



declares that he lives in London. But he has so often shown a 

 facility in making sudden transitions of thought, that we may still be 

 permitted to think that the reference in the beginning of the passage 

 is to an early time spent in a sort of vagabondage. He also accuses 

 himself elsewhere, and in a very sweeping way, of having devoted 

 altogether too much time to the world, the flesh, and the devil. But 

 on the other hand, the passage quoted may mean only what is dis- 

 tinctly implied in another (C, VI., 91), that Langland was at no time 

 formally attached to priory or minster; and his self-accusation may 

 be a natural expression from one who despises the things of the 

 world. If this be the case, he probably obtained his knowledge of 

 country life upon the farm held by his father, and by later inspection 

 while journeying about in his long robe, as too many clerics were 

 wont to do. The most that can be said is that there is a possibility 

 that some of the days of his youth were wild and idle, and a proba- 

 bility that others of them were spent in acquiring a practical know- 

 ledge of seeds and seasons (C, XIII., 177-192), and of farming ope- 

 rations in general (C, XXII). 



■iifcmKM'M ^^^ "^^y attain to something more of certainty in 



ri-niii niiiiNioiiN regard to the scene of Langland's life and labors 

 '* "* " "*■ taken as a whole. The total number of allusions to 



to places in Knglanil outside of London, as tabulated in Professor 

 Skeat's inde.x, is but sixteen; a surprisingly small number. These 

 indicate a general acquaintance with the country lying between 

 Shropshire and London, a territory that is very nearly the geograph- 

 ical cmter of England; and the places mentioned seldom lie far away 

 from a line drawn from Langland's birthplace to London. Extended 

 to the northwest, such a line would pass near Chester, and to the 

 southeast, not far from Canterbury. A few names carry us from 

 London northeastward into Norfolk; but these are of a general or 

 proverbial character, not usually indicating actual acquaintance. It 

 is otherwise with allusions to places between Shropshire and London. 

 There are also some rather specific references to places in Hampshire, 

 southwest of London; while if we take account of the poem of 

 "Richard the Redeless," Langland in 1399 had passed westward as 

 far as Bristol. Apparently the greater part of his life was spent near 

 London; the earlier part of it in a gradual moving down from the 

 Malvern Hills to London; and perhaps its latest years in a journey 

 westward. Without doubt the entire action of the poem we are 

 to study, so far as that action lies in England, lies between and about 

 London and the Malvern Hills; while of other parts of his country, 

 Langland knew little, save by hearsay. 



