The author once alludes to the nickname of Long Will bestowed upon him from Es tallness of stature—just as the poet Gascoigne was familiarly called Long George. Though there is mention of the Malvern hills more than once near the beginning of the poem, the poet lived for "many years in Cornhill (London), with his wife Kitte and his daughter Calote." He seems to have come to London soon of ter the date of the first commencement of his work, and to have long continued there. He describes himself as being a tall man, one who was loath to reverence lords or ladies or persons in gay apparel, and not deigning to say "God save you" to the sergeants whom he met in the street, insomuch that many people took him to be a fool. He was very poor, wore long robes, and had a shaven crown, having received the clerical tonsure. But he seems only to have taken minor orders, and earned a precarious living by singing the placebo, dirige and seven psalms for the good of men's souls. The fact that he was married may explain why he never rose in the church. But he had another source of livelihood in his ability to write out legal documents, and he was extremely familiar with the law courts at Westminster. His leisure time must have been entirely occupied with his poem, which was the work of a lifetime. He was not satisfied with re writing it once, but he actually re-wrote it twice, and from the abundance of the MSS. which still exist we can see its develop merit from the earliest draught (A-text), written about 1362, to its latest form (C-text), written about In 1399, just before the deposition of Richard II., appeared a poem addressed to the king, who is designated as "Richard the Redeless," i.e., devoid of counsel. This poem, occurring in only one MS. [of the B-text] in which it is incomplete, breaking off abruptly in the middle of a page, may safely be attributed to Langland, who was then in Bristol. As he was at that time about sixty-seven years of age, we may be sure that he did not long survive the accession of Henry IV. It may here be observed that the well-known poem entitled Pierce Ploughman's Crede, though excellently written, is certainly an imitation by another hand; for the Pierce Ploughman of the Crede is very different in con ception from the subject of "William's Vision." Professor Manly's View.—On the other hand, the view taken by Professor J. M. Manly, which has obtained increasing accep tance among scholars, is that the early popularity of the Piers Plowman poems has resulted in "the confusion of what is really the work of five different men," and that Langland himself is "a mythical author." The argument for the distinction in authorship rests on internal evidence, and on analysis of the style, diction and "visualizing" quality within the different texts. Whereas
Skeat, regarding the three texts as due to the same author, gives most attention to the later versions, and considers B the inter mediate form, as on the whole the best, Manly recognizes in A the real poet, and lays special stress on the importance of attention to the A-text, and particularly pass. i.–viii. In this A-text the two first visions are regarded as by a single author of genius, but the third is assigned to a continuator who tried to imitate him, the whole conclusion of the 12th passus being, moreover, by a third author, whose name, John But, is in fact given towards the end, but in a way leading Skeat only to credit him with a few lines. The same process of analysis leads to crediting the B-text and the C-text to separate and different authors, B working over the three visions of the A-text and making additions of his own, while C again worked over the B-text. The supposed references to the original author A, introduced by B and C, are then to be taken as part of the fiction. Who were the five authors? That question is left unsolved. John But, according to Professor Manly, was "doubtless a scribe" or "a minstrel." B, C and the continuator of A "seem to have been clerics, and, from their criticisms of monks and friars, to have been of the secular clergy," C being "a better scholar than either the continuator of A or B." A, who "exempts from his satire no order of society except monks," may have been himself a monk, but "as he exhibits no special technical knowl edge or interests" he "may have been a layman." As regards Richard the Redeless, Professor Manly attributes this to another imitator; he regards identity of authorship as out of the question, in consequence of differences in style and thought, apart from the conclusion as to the authorship of Piers the Plowman.
See the editions already referred to: The Deposition of Richard II., ed. T. Wright (Camden Society), which is the same poem as Richard the Redeless; Warton, Hist. of Eng. Poetry; Rev. H. H. Milman, Hist. of Latin Christianity; G. P. Marsh, Lectures on English; H. Morley, English Writers; B. ten Brink, Early English Literature; J. J. Jusserand, Observations sur la vision de P. P. (Paris, 1879) ; Les Anglais an moyen age: L'Epopie mystique de William Langland (1893, Eng. trans. Piers Plowman, revised and enlarged by another ; J. M. Manly in Cambridge Hist. of English vol. ii. and bibliography. A long and careful summary of the poem is given in Morley's English Writers, and is repeated in his Illustrations of English Religion, ch.