LONGLAND, or LANGELANDE, 110B1.11T, the reputed author of the Visions of Piers Plowman.' He was a secular priest, born at Mortimer's Cleobury in Shropshire, and afterwards Fellow of Oriel College in Oxford. He lived in the reigns of Edward III. and Richard IL; and, as Bale assures us, was one of the earliest disciples of Wycliffe. Longlaud, according to the same author, completed the 'Visions' in 1369, when John Chichester was mayor of Louder). The poem here named consists of ' XX. Paseus' (pauses or breaks), exhibit ing a series of dreams supposed to have happened to the author on the Malvern Hills in Worcestershire. It abounds in strong allegorical painting, and censures with great humour and fancy most of the vices Incident to the several professions of life, and particularly inveighs against the corruptions of the clergy and the absurdities of super stition ; the whole written, not iu rhyme, but in an uncouth allitera tive versification. Of the Visions of Piers Plowman' there are two distinct versions, or rather two sets of manuscripts, each distinguished from tho other by peculiar readings. Of one, no fewer than three
editions were printed in 1550, by Robert Crowley ; and one in 1561, by Owen Rogers, to which is sometimes subjoined a separate poem, entitled Pierce the Plowman's Credo,' a production of a later date than the ' Visions,' inasmuch as Wycliffe, who died in 1384, is men tioned (with honour) in it as no longer living. Of the other version of the Visions,' the first edition was that published by Dr. Thomas Dunham, Whitaker, 4to, London, ]813, who, in the following year, republished the 'Credo,' from the first edition of that poem printed by Reynold Wolfe, in 1553. The best edition of the ' Visions of Piers Plowman' is one admirably edited by Mr. T. Wright, and published in a very couveuierit form, and at a remarkably moderate price, by Mr. Russell Smith.
(Bale, Script. Illustr., 4to, Bas., 1559, cent. vi. p. 474: Percy, Relives, edit. 1794, ii. 272; Ellis, Specim. of Engl. Poet, i. 147; Whit aker and Wright'. editions of P. Ploughman, Introd.)