HOl'RINS: CHARACTER AND OPINIONS OF WILLIAM LANGLAND. 287 



same point. The church fathers could never have made Langland a 

 poet; but a reflective habit and a sympathetic and earnest disposition 

 aided by a ready ear, a quick wit, a retentive memory, and the study 

 of men as well as of books, could and did. 



His legal learning was extensive, appearing in the form of copious 

 allusions to facts of law so exact as to indicate more than common 

 familiarity. Many of these are of a character to be picked up easily 

 by attendance at courts; others, such as the knowledge of legal forms, 

 imply some study and practice. Perhaps he was more than a looker 

 on at Westminister; at least he must have attended there, probably 

 for the purpose of acquiring knowledge that would be of practical 

 use outside, as well as a knowledge of human nature; and had any oc- 

 cupation offered itself there, he would doubtless have seized upon it 

 and turned it to good account. 



As to the source of Langland's literary and religious training, I find 

 that in my own mind, in the light of the preceding investigation, 

 opinion has deepened into positiveness that he never saw the inside of 

 university walls, scarcely even as a casual visitor. The list just given 

 of his positive attainments would not of itself afford satisfactory evi- 

 dence on either side; what he knew he might have learned within a uni- 

 versity, though a student as earnest and conscientious as Langland 

 should it seems have learned more and learned it more systematically. 

 And even if university training was not so systematic in Langland's 

 time as it has since become, there is still nothing in Langland's stock 

 of knowledge which he could not have gained in the ordinary monastic 

 schools and from contact with men. 



But the strongest argument is that there is nowhere in either text 

 the slightest reference to any university, or the slightest reflection of 

 university life. The scene of the poem taken as a whole does re- 

 flect, unless with this exception, all the life that Langland had pre- 

 sumably lived; there are the fields and hills and streams of his boy- 

 hood days, and there are the crowded streets and questionable tavern 

 society of London, the greedy crowd of the law court, and the rever- 

 ent throng at the church. There is ample support for the common 

 theory as to Langland's connection with the church and his position 

 in it. If therefore we find all this reflected even to detail, and know 

 that to Langland the place of study was a heaven upon earth, I cannot 

 escape the conclusion that even a brief experience of university life 

 would have so impressed itself upon his mind that we should have evi- 

 dence of it again and again. Not finding this evidence I conclude 

 that Langland's education, after a comparatively early age, was due 

 to his own unaiiled efforts. A self taught man might easily feel the 

 pride in a little knowledge of grammar and of French that he allows 



