Popularity fell to
Piers Plowman. Apart from the large currency given to it
by ballad singers, many manuscripts were in existence, for
even now forty-five of them, more or less complete, remain.
As M. Jusserand aptly remarks: "This figure is the more
remarkable when we consider that, contrary to works written
in Latin or in French, Langland's book was not copied
and preserved outside his own country."[2] Again, but a
few years after the writing of the Canterbury Tales, a copy
of it was bequeathed, among other books, by a clerk named
Richard Sotheworth of East Hendred, Berks (1417).[3]
The impression is left upon one's mind that this work had
found its way quickly and in many copies into country
places.
[1] Camb. Lit., i. 262.
[2] Piers Plowman, 186.
[3] "Quendam libru' meu' de Canterbury Tales."--N. & Q., II ser.
ii. 26.
But as only a few books had a comparatively large
circulation, these few had a disproportionately powerful
influence. The Bible was paramount. Aristotle dominated
the whole mental horizon of the schoolmen. Alfred of
Beverley tells us that Geoffrey of Monmouth's book "was so
universally talked of that to confess ignorance of its stories
was the mark of a clown.
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