HOPKINS: CHARACTER AND OPINIONS OF WILLIAM LANGLAND. 239 



The Content of the Poem. 



While materials for the history of Langland's outer life are very 

 scanty, as may appear from the preceding discussion, the mass of 

 those bearing upon his inner or mental life is proportionately great, 

 and to give a complete exposition of them would require a volume. 

 The results which follow have been obtained, after tabulation, by 

 endeavoring to compress into a few words the substance of many 

 citations, and to substantiate each point by a single appropriate 

 reference. 



I. SCIENTIFIC INFORMATION. 



Langland's attitude toward real and pretended science is less 

 satirical than that of Chaucer, perhaps because Langland had given 

 the subject less attention; still in speaking of the arts which pertain 

 to magic, he does express considerable distrust. To the "seven arts" 

 which comprised the circle of scientific knowledge of his time, he 

 twice refers (C, XII., 98; C, XIII., 93); but the character of his work 

 would not indicate that he had been a very diligent student of any 

 of these arts, except perhaps grammar. The seven arts mentioned 

 are the trivium, — grammar, logic, and rhetoric, and the quadriv- 

 ium, — music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy. 



It is evident that this circle of arts does not include all human 

 knowledge, nor is it broad enough to cover all the learned allusions 

 made by Langland himself. To make the classification more com- 

 plete, it will perhaps be best to refer to the source from which popu- 

 lar knowledge upon matters of science and philosophy was largely 

 derived, the "Secretum Secretorum" (Morley, English Writers, IV., 

 227); a book which Langland appears not to have known. This 

 work is summarized by Govver in the seventh part of the " Confessio 

 Amantis," and his summary may answer our purpose. Knowledge is 

 arranged in three classes, — Theoretic, Rhetoric, and Practic. 

 Theoretic includes theology, physics, and mathematics; mathematics 

 in its turn comprising arithmetic, music, geometry, and astronomy, 

 or the quadrivium. Rhetoric includes grammar and logic, and 

 Practic includes ethics, economics, and politics. 



Gower discusses the constitution of created things as if the subject 

 belonged to mathematics rather than to physics. It is necessary also 

 to find a place for alchemy and medicine in the scheme of knowledge 

 before we can give a logical place to Langland's remarks upon those 

 subjects. Perhaps the shortest road is this, that astronomy includes 

 astrology; from astronomy, astrology, and geometry, comes alchemy; 

 and medicine is the application of astronomy, astrology, geometry, 



