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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 20:05:30 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 20:05:30 -0700 |
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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre> +<p>Title: Amenities of Literature</p> +<p> Consisting of Sketches and Characters of English Literature</p> +<p>Author: Isaac Disraeli</p> +<p>Release Date: June 1, 2011 [eBook #36298]</p> +<p>Language: English</p> +<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p> +<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMENITIES OF LITERATURE***</p> +<p> </p> +<h3>E-text prepared by Marius Masi, Jonathan Ingram,<br /> + and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br /> + (http://www.pgdp.net)</h3> +<p> </p> +<table border="0" cellpadding="10" style="background-color: #dcdcdc; color: #696969; " summary="Transcriber's note"> +<tr> +<td style="width:25%; vertical-align:top"> +Transcriber’s note: +</td> +<td class="norm"> +A few typographical errors have been corrected. They +appear in the text <span class="correction" title="explanation will pop up">like this</span>, and the +explanation will appear when the mouse pointer is moved over the marked +passage. +</td> +</tr> +</table> +<p> </p> +<hr class="pg" /> +<p> </p> + +<p class="pt2"> </p> + +<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both;" summary="Illustration"> +<tr><td class="figcenter"><img style="width:700px; height:578px" src="images/img1.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr> +<tr><td class="caption">London, Frederick Warne & C<span class="sp">o</span>.</td></tr></table> + +<p class="pt2"> </p> + +<p class="center ptb1 sc" style="color: #c11B17; font-size: 250%;">AMENITIES OF LITERATURE,</p> + +<p class="center f80">CONSISTING OF</p> + +<p class="center">SKETCHES AND CHARACTERS OF ENGLISH +LITERATURE.</p> + +<p class="center pt1 f80">BY</p> + +<p class="center ptb1 f120">ISAAC DISRAELI.</p> + +<p class="center f90 fo">A New Edition,</p> +<p class="center f80">EDITED BY HIS SON,</p> +<p class="center">THE EARL OF BEACONSFIELD.</p> + +<div class="center pt2"><img style="width:100px; height:126px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img3.jpg" alt="" /></div> + +<p class="center" style="letter-spacing: 0.2em;">LONDON:<br /> +FREDERICK WARNE AND CO.,</p> +<p class="center f90">BEDFORD STREET, STRAND.</p> + +<p class="pt2"> </p> + +<p class="center f80">LONDON:<br /> +BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.</p> + +<p class="pt2"> </p> + +<p class="chap2 center">PREFACE.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">A history</span> of our vernacular literature has occupied my +studies for many years. It was my design not to furnish +an arid narrative of books or of authors, but following the +steps of the human mind through the wide track of Time, +to trace from their beginnings the rise, the progress, and +the decline of public opinions, and to illustrate, as the +objects presented themselves, the great incidents in our +national annals.</p> + +<p>In the progress of these researches many topics presented +themselves, some of which, from their novelty and +curiosity, courted investigation. Literary history, in this +enlarged circuit, becomes not merely a philological history +of critical erudition, but ascends into a philosophy of +books where their subjects, their tendency, and their immediate +or gradual influence over the people discover their +actual condition.</p> + +<p>Authors are the creators or the creatures of opinion; +the great form an epoch, the many reflect their age. +With them the transient becomes permanent, the suppressed +lies open, and they are the truest representatives +of their nation for those very passions with which they +are themselves infected. The pen of the ready-writer +transmits to us the public and the domestic story, and +thus books become the intellectual history of a people. +As authors are scattered through all the ranks of society, +among the governors and the governed, and the objects of +their pursuits are usually carried on by their own peculiar +idiosyncrasy, we are deeply interested in the secret connexion +of the incidents of their lives with their intellectual +habits. In the development of that predisposition which +is ever working in characters of native force, all their +felicities and their failures, and the fortunes which such +men have shaped for themselves, and often for the world, +we discover what is not found in biographical dictionaries, +the history of the mind of the individual—and this constitutes +the psychology of genius.</p> + +<p>In the midst of my studies I was arrested by the loss of +sight; the papers in this collection are a portion of my +projected history.</p> + +<p>The title prefixed to this work has been adopted to connect +it with its brothers, the “Curiosities of Literature,” +and “Miscellanies of Literature;” but though the form +and manner bear a family resemblance, the subject has +more unity of design.</p> + +<p>The author of the present work is denied the satisfaction +of reading a single line of it, yet he flatters himself that he +shall not trespass on the indulgence he claims for any +slight inadvertences. It has been confided to <span class="scs">ONE</span> whose +eyes unceasingly pursue the volume for him who can no +more read, and whose eager hand traces the thought ere it +vanish in the thinking; but it is only a father who can +conceive the affectionate patience of filial devotion.</p> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /> +</div> + +<p class="chap2 center">CONTENTS.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" width="80%" summary="Contents"> + +<tr><td class="tcr" colspan="2">PAGE</td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE DRUIDICAL INSTITUTION</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page1">1</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">BRITAIN AND THE BRITONS</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page12">12</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE NAME OF ENGLAND AND OF THE ENGLISH</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page24">24</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE ANGLO-SAXONS</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page28">28</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">CÆDMON AND MILTON</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page37">37</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">BEOWULF; THE HERO-LIFE</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page51">51</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE ANGLO-NORMANS</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page59">59</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE PAGE, THE BARON, AND THE MINSTREL</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page70">70</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">GOTHIC ROMANCES</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page81">81</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">ORIGIN OF THE VERNACULAR LANGUAGES OF EUROPE</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page96">96</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page111">111</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">VICISSITUDES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page128">128</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">DIALECTS</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page142">142</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">MANDEVILLE; OUR FIRST TRAVELLER</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page151">151</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">CHAUCER</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page158">158</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">GOWER</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page177">177</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">PIERS PLOUGHMAN</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page183">183</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">OCCLEVE; THE SCHOLAR OF CHAUCER</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page191">191</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">LYDGATE; THE MONK OF BURY</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page196">196</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE INVENTION OF PRINTING</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page203">203</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE FIRST ENGLISH PRINTER</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page214">214</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">EARLY LIBRARIES</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page221">221</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">HENRY THE SEVENTH</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page228">228</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">FIRST SOURCES OF MODERN HISTORY</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page234">234</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">ARNOLDE’S CHRONICLE</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page240">240</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE FIRST PRINTED CHRONICLE</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page243">243</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">HENRY THE EIGHTH; HIS LITERARY CHARACTER</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page250">250</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">BOOKS OF THE PEOPLE</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page256">256</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE DIFFICULTIES EXPERIENCED BY A PRIMITIVE AUTHOR</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page268">268</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">SKELTON</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page276">276</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE SHIP OF FOOLS</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page285">285</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTER OF SIR THOMAS MORE</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page289">289</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE EARL OF SURREY AND SIR THOMAS WYATT</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page303">303</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE SPOLIATION OF THE MONASTERIES</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page316">316</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">A CRISIS AND A REACTION; ROBERT CROWLEY</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page322">322</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">PRIMITIVE DRAMAS</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page339">339</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE REFORMER BISHOP BALE; AND THE ROMANIST JOHN HEYWOOD, +THE COURT JESTER</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page353">353</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">ROGER ASCHAM</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page359">359</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">PUBLIC OPINION</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page368">368</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">ORTHOGRAPHY AND ORTHOEPY</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page381">381</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE ANCIENT METRES IN MODERN VERSE</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page393">393</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">ORIGIN OF RHYME</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page399">399</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">RHYMING DICTIONARIES</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page403">403</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE ARTE OF ENGLISH POESIE</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page405">405</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE DISCOVERIE OF WITCHCRAFT</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page413">413</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE FIRST JESUITS IN ENGLAND</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page423">423</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">HOOKER</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page439">439</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">SIR PHILIP SIDNEY</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page451">451</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">SPENSER</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page460">460</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE FAERY QUEEN</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page475">475</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">ALLEGORY</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page487">487</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE FIRST TRAGEDY AND THE FIRST COMEDY</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page502">502</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE PREDECESSORS AND CONTEMPORARIES OF SHAKESPEARE</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page514">514</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">SHAKESPEARE</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page529">529</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE “HUMOURS” OF JONSON</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page578">578</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">DRAYTON</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page584">584</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE PSYCHOLOGICAL HISTORY OF RAWLEIGH</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page590">590</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE OCCULT PHILOSOPHER, DR. DEE</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page617">617</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE ROSACRUSIAN FLUDD</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page642">642</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">BACON</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page650">650</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE FIRST FOUNDER OF A PUBLIC LIBRARY</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page661">661</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">EARLY WRITERS, THEIR DREAD OF THE PRESS,—THE TRANSITION +TO AUTHORS BY PROFESSION</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page670">670</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE AGE OF DOCTRINES</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page681">681</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">PAMPHLETS</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page685">685</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE OCEANA OF HARRINGTON</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page692">692</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE AUTHOR OF “THE GROUNDS AND REASONS OF MONARCHY”</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page709">709</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">COMMONWEALTH</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page712">712</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE TRUE INTELLECTUAL SYSTEM OF THE UNIVERSE</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page714">714</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">DIFFICULTIES OF THE PUBLISHERS OF CONTEMPORARY MEMOIRS</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page724">724</a></td></tr> + +<tr><td class="tcl">THE WAR AGAINST BOOKS</td> <td class="tcrb"><a href="#page738">738</a></td></tr> +</table> + +<p class="pt2"> </p> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page1" id="page1"></a>1</span></p> + +<p class="center ptb1 sc" style="color: #c11B17; font-size: 250%;">AMENITIES OF LITERATURE.</p> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /> +</div> +<p class="chap2 center">THE DRUIDICAL INSTITUTION.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">England,</span> which has given models to Europe of the most +masterly productions in every class of learning and every +province of genius, so late as within the last three centuries +was herself destitute of a national literature. Even enlightened +Europe itself amid the revolving ages of time is +but of yesterday.</p> + +<p>How “that was performed in our tongue, which may be +compared or preferred, either to insolent Greece or haughty +Rome,”<a name="fa1c1" id="fa1c1" href="#ft1c1"><span class="sp">1</span></a> becomes a tale in the history of the human +mind.</p> + +<p>In the history of an insular race and in a site so peculiar +as our own, a people whom the ocean severed from all +nations, where are we to seek for our <span class="sc">Aborigines</span>? A +Welsh triad, and a Welsh is presumed to be a British, has +commemorated an epoch when these mighty realms were +a region of impenetrable forests and impassable morasses, +and their sole tenants were wolves, bears, and beavers, and +wild cattle. Who were the first human beings in this +lone world?</p> + +<p>Every people have had a fabulous age. Priests and +poets invented, and traditionists expatiated; we discover +gods who seem to have been men, or men who resemble +gods; we read in the form of prose what had once been a +poem; imaginations so wildly constructed, and afterwards +as strangely allegorised, served as the milky food of the +children of society, quieting their vague curiosity, and +circumscribing the illimitable unknown. The earliest +epoch of society is unapproachable to human inquiry. +Greece, with all her ambiguous poetry, was called “the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page2" id="page2"></a>2</span> +mendacious;” credulous Rome rested its faith on five +centuries of legends; and our Albion dates from that unhistorical +period when, as our earliest historian, the Monk of Monmouth, aiming at probability, affirms, “there were +but a few giants in the land,”<a name="fa2c1" id="fa2c1" href="#ft2c1"><span class="sp">2</span></a> and these the more melancholy +Gildas, to familiarise us with hell itself, accompanied +by “a few devils.” Every people however long acknowledged, +with national pride, beings as fabulous, in those +tutelary heroes who bore their own names.</p> + +<p>The landing of Brutus with his fugitive Trojans on +“the White Island,” and here founding a “Troynovant,” +was one of the results of the immortality of Homer, +though it came reflected through his imitator Virgil, +whose Latin in the mediæval ages was read when Greek +was unknown. The landing of Æneas on the shores of +Italy, and the pride of the Romans in their Trojan ancestry, +as their flattering Epic sanctioned, every modern +people, in their jealousy of antiquity, eagerly adopted, and +claimed a lineal descent from some of this spurious progeny +of Priam. The idle humour of the learned flattered the +imaginations of their countrymen; and each, in his own +land, raised up a fictitious personage who was declared to +have left his name to the people. The excess of their +patriotism exposed their forgeries, while every pretended +Trojan betrayed a Gothic name. France had its Francion, +Ireland its Iberus, the Danes their Danus, and the Saxons +their Saxo. The descent of Brutus into Britain is even +tenderly touched by so late a writer as our <span class="sc">Camden</span>; for +while he abstains from affording us either denial or assent, +he expends his costly erudition in furnishing every refutation +which had been urged against the preposterous +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page3" id="page3"></a>3</span> +existence of these fabulous founders of every European +people.</p> + +<p>Such is the corruption of the earliest history, either to +gratify the idle pride of a people, or to give completeness +to inquiries extending beyond human knowledge. Even +<span class="sc">Buchanan</span>, to gratify the ancestral vanity of his countrymen, +has recorded the names of three hundred fabulous +monarchs, and presents a nomenclature without an event; +and in his classical latinity we must silently drop a thousand +unhistorical years. Even <span class="sc">Henry</span> and <span class="sc">Whitaker</span>, in +the gravity of English history, sketched the manners and +the characteristics of an unchronicled generation from the +fragmentary romances of Ossian.</p> + +<p>Cæsar imagined that the inhabitants of the interior of +Britain, a fiercer people than the dwellers on the coasts, +were an indigenous race. But the philosophy of Cæsar +did not exceed that of Horace and Ovid, who conceived no +other origin of man than <i>Mater Terra</i>. Man indeed was +formed out of “the dust of the ground,” but the Divine +Spirit alone could have dictated the history of primeval +man in the solitude of Eden. To Cæsar was not revealed +that man was an oriental creature; that a single locality +served as the cradle of the human race; and that the +generations of man were the offspring of a single pair, +when once “the whole earth was of one language and of +one speech.” “And there is no antiquity but this that +can tell <i>any other beginning</i>,” exclaims our honest +<span class="sc">Verstegan</span>, exulting in his Teutonic blood, while furnishing +an extraordinary evidence of the retreat of Tuisco +and his Teutons from the conspiracy against the skies.<a name="fa3c1" id="fa3c1" href="#ft3c1"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page4" id="page4"></a>4</span></p> + +<p>The dispersion of Babel, and, consequently, the diversity +of languages, is the mysterious link which connects +sacred and profane history. There is but a single point +whence human nature begins—the universe has been populated +by migrations. Wherever the human being is found, +he has been transplanted; however varied in structure +and dissimilar in dialect, the first inhabitants of every +land were not born there: unlike plants and animals, +which seem coeval with the region in which they are +found, never removing from the soil they occupy. Thus +the miracle of Holy Writ solves the enigmas of philosophical +theories; of more than one Adam, of distinct stocks +of mankind, and of the mechanism of language—vague +conjectures, and contested opinions! which have left us +without even a conception how the human being is white, +or tawny, or sable; or how the first letters of the alphabet +are Aleph and Bêt, or Alpha and Beta, or A and B!</p> + +<p>In tracing the origin of nations later speculators have +therefore more discreetly, though not wanting in hardy +conjectures or fanciful affinities, conducted people after +people, from the mysterious fount of human existence in +the Asian region. Through countless centuries they have +followed the myriads who, propelling each other, took the +right or the left, as chance led them: vanished nations +may have received names which they themselves might +not have recognised. Kelt or Kimmerian, Scandinavian +or Goth, Phœnician or Iberian, have been hurried to +the Isles of Britain. Their tale is older, though less +“divine,” than the tale of Troy; and the difficulty remains +to unravel the reality of the fabulous. The learned +have rarely satisfied their consciences in arranging their +dates in the confusion of unnoted time; nor in that other +confusion of races, often mingling together under one +common appellative, have they always agreed in assigning +that ancient people who were the progenitors of the modern +nation; and the aborigines have been more than once +described as “an ancient people whose name is unknown.” +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page5" id="page5"></a>5</span> +In the pride of erudition, and the irascibility of confutation, +they have involved themselves in interminable discussions, +yet one might be seduced to adopt any hypothesis, +for more or less each bears some ambiguous evidence, or +some startling circumstance sufficient to rock the dreaming +antiquary, and to kindle the bitter blood of pedantic +patriots. The origin of the population of Europe and +the first inhabitants of our British Isles has produced +some antiquarian romances, often ingenious and amusing, +till the romances turn out to be mere polemics, and give +us angry words amid the most quaint fancies. This theme, +still continued, becomes a cavern of antiquity, where many +waving their torches, the light has sometimes fallen on an +unperceived angle; but the scattered light has shown the +depth and the darkness.</p> + +<p>Among those shadows of time we grasp at one certainty. +Whoever might be the first-comers to this solitary island, +when we obtain any knowledge of the inhabitants, we are +struck by their close resemblance to those tribes of savage +life whom our navigators have discovered, and who are +now found in almost a primitive state among that innumerable +cluster of what has recently been designated the +Polynesian Isles. The aborigines of Britain took the same +modes of existence, and fell into similar customs. We discover +their rude population divided into jealous tribes, in +perpetual battle with one another; they lived in what +Hobbes has called the <i>status belli</i>, with no notion of the +<i>meum</i> and <i>tuum</i>; in the same community of their women +as was found in Otaheite;<a name="fa4c1" id="fa4c1" href="#ft4c1"><span class="sp">4</span></a> and with the same ignorance +of property, when its representative in some form was not +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page6" id="page6"></a>6</span> +yet invented. Our aborigines resembled these races even +in their personal appearance; a Polynesian chief has been +drawn and coloured after the life, and the figure exhibits +the perfect picture of an ancient Briton, almost naked, the +body painted red; the British savage chose blue, and made +deep incisions in the flesh to insert his indelible woad.<a name="fa5c1" id="fa5c1" href="#ft5c1"><span class="sp">5</span></a> +The fierce eye, and the bearded lip, with the long hair +scattered to the waist, exhibit the Briton as he was seen +by Cæsar, and, a century afterwards, as the British +monarch Caractacus appeared before the Emperor Claudius +at Rome: his sole ornaments consisted of an iron collar, +and an iron girdle; but as his naked majesty had his skin +painted with figures of animals, however rudely, this was +probably a distinctive dress of British royalty. These +Britons lived in thick woods, herding among circular huts +of reed, as we find other tribes in this early state of +society; and submissive to the absolute dominion of a +priesthood of magicians, as we find even among the +Esquimaux; and performing sanguinary rites, similar to +those of the ancient Mexicans: we are struck with the +conviction that men in a parallel condition remain but +uniform beings.</p> + +<p>It seems a solecism in the intellectual history of man to +discover among such a semi-barbarous people a government +of sages, who, we are assured, “invented and +taught such philosophy and other learning as were never +read of nor heard of by any men before.”<a name="fa6c1" id="fa6c1" href="#ft6c1"><span class="sp">6</span></a> This paradoxical +incident deepens in mystery when we are to be +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page7" id="page7"></a>7</span> +taught that the druidical institution of Britain was Pythagorean, +or patriarchal, or Brahminical. The presumed +encyclopedic knowledge which this order possessed, and +the singular customs which they practised, have afforded +sufficient analogies and affinities to maintain the occult and +remote origin of Druidism. Nor has this notion been the +mere phantom of modern system-makers. It was a subject +of inquiry among the ancients whether the Druids +had received their singular art of teaching by secret initiation, +and the prohibition of all writing, with their doctrine +of the pre-existence and transmigration of souls, from +Pythagoras; or, whether this philosopher in his universal +travels had not alighted among the Druids, and had passed +through their initiation?<a name="fa7c1" id="fa7c1" href="#ft7c1"><span class="sp">7</span></a> This discussion is not yet +obsolete, and it may still offer all the gust of novelty. A +Welsh antiquary, according to the spirit of Welsh antiquity, +insists that the Druidical system of the Metempsychosis +was conveyed to the Brahmins of India by a former +emigration from Wales; but the reverse may have +occurred, if we trust the elaborate researches which +copiously would demonstrate that the Druids were a scion +of the oriental family.<a name="fa8c1" id="fa8c1" href="#ft8c1"><span class="sp">8</span></a> Every point of the Druidical history, +from its mysterious antiquity, may terminate with +reversing the proposition. A recent writer confidently +intimated that the knowledge of Druidism must be +searched for in the Talmudical writings; but another, in +return, asserts that the Druids were older than the Jews.</p> + +<p>Whence and when the British Druids transplanted +themselves to this lone world amid the ocean, bringing +with them all the wisdom of far antiquity, to an uncivilized +race, is one of those events in the history of man +which no historian can write. It is evident that they +long preserved what they had brought; since the Druids +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page8" id="page8"></a>8</span> +of Gaul were fain to resort to the Druids of Britain to +renovate their instruction.</p> + +<p>The Druids have left no record of themselves; they +seem to have disdained an immortality separate from the +existence of their order; but the shadow of their glory is +reflected for ever in the verse of Lucan, and the prose of +Cæsar. The poet imagined that if the knowledge of the +gods was known to man, it had been alone revealed to +these priests of Britain. The narrative of the historian +is comprehensive, but, with all the philosophical cast of +his mind and the intensity of his curiosity, Cæsar was not +a Druid;<a name="fa9c1" id="fa9c1" href="#ft9c1"><span class="sp">9</span></a> and only a Druid could have written—had he +dared!—on <span class="sc">Druidheacht</span>—a sacred, unspeakable word +at which the people trembled in their veneration.</p> + +<p>The British Druids constituted a sacred and a secret +society, religious, political, and literary. In the rude mechanism +of society in a state of pupilage, the first elements +of government, however gross, or even puerile, were +the levers to lift and to sustain the unhewn masses of the +barbaric mind. Invested with all privileges and immunities, +amid that transient omnipotence which man in his +first feeble condition can confer, the wild children of +society crouched together before those illusions which +superstition so easily forges; but the supernatural dominion +lay in the secret thoughts of the people; the marauder +had not the daring to touch the open treasure as it +lay in the consecrated grove; and a single word from a +Druid for ever withered a human being, “cut down like +grass.” The loyalty of the land was a religion of wonder +and fear, and to dispute with a Druid was a state crime.</p> + +<p>They were a secret society, for whatever was taught +was forbidden to be written; and not only their doctrines +and their sciences were veiled in this sacred obscurity, but +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page9" id="page9"></a>9</span> +the laws which governed the community were also oral. +For the people, the laws, probably, were impartially administered; +for the Druids were not the people, and without +their sympathies, these judges at least sided with no +party. But if these sages, amid the conflicting interests +of the multitude, seemed placed above the vicissitudes of +humanity, their own more solitary passions were the +stronger, violently compressed within a higher sphere: +ambition, envy, and revenge, those curses of nobler minds, +often broke their dreams. The election of an Arch-Druid +was sometimes to be decided by a battle. Some have been +chronicled by a surname which indicates a criminal. No +king could act without a Druid by his side, for peace or +war were on his lips; and whenever the order made +common cause, woe to the kingdom!<a name="fa10c1" id="fa10c1" href="#ft10c1"><span class="sp">10</span></a> It was a terrible +hierarchy. The golden knife which pruned the mistletoe +beneath the mystic oak, immolated the human victim.</p> + +<p>The Druids were the common fathers of the British +youth, for they were the sole educators; but the genius of +the order admitted of no inept member. For the acolyte +unendowed with the faculty of study all initiation +ceased; nature herself had refused this youth the glory of +Druidism; but he was taught the love of his country. +The Druidical lyre kindled patriotism through the land, +and the land was saved—for the Druids!</p> + +<p>The Druidical custom of unwritten instruction was ingeniously +suggested by Cicero, as designed to prevent their +secret doctrines from being divulged to those unworthy or +ill fitted to receive them, and to strengthen the memory of +their votaries by its continued exercise; but we may suspect, +that this barbarous custom of this most ancient sodality +began at a period when they themselves neither read +nor wrote, destitute of an alphabet of their own; for when +the Druids had learned from the Greeks their characters, +they adopted them in all their public and private +affairs. We learn that the Druidical sciences were contained +in twenty thousand verses, which were to prompt +their perpetual memory. Such traditional science could +not be very progressive; what was to be got by rote no +disciple would care to consider obsolete, and a century +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page10" id="page10"></a>10</span> +might elapse without furnishing an additional couplet. +The Druids, like some other institutions of antiquity, by +not perpetuating their doctrines, or their secrets, in this +primeval state of theology and philosophy, by writing, have +effectually concealed their own puerile simplicity. But +the monuments of a people remain to perpetuate their +character. We may judge of the genius or state of the +Druidical arts and sciences by such objects. We are told +that the Druids were so wholly devoted to nature, that +they prohibited the use of any tool in the construction of +their rude works; all are unhewn masses, or heaps of +stones; such are their cairns and cromleches and corneddes, +and that wild architecture whose stones hang on one another, +still frowning on the plains of Salisbury.<a name="fa11c1" id="fa11c1" href="#ft11c1"><span class="sp">11</span></a> A circle +of stones marked the consecrated limits of the Druidical +tribunal; and in the midst a hillock heaped up for the +occasion was the judgment-seat. Here, in the open air, +in “the eye of light and the face of the sun,” to use the +bardic style, the decrees were pronounced, and the Druids +harangued the people. Such a scene was exhibited by the +Hebrew patriarchs, from whom some imagined these +Druids descended; but whether or not the Celtic be of +this origin we must not decide by any analogous manners +or customs, because these are nearly similar, wherever we +trace a primitive race—so uniform is nature, till art, infinitely +various, conceals nature herself.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page11" id="page11"></a>11</span></p> + +<p>In the depth of antiquity, misty superstition and pristine +tradition gave a false magnitude to the founders of +human knowledge; and our own literary historians who +have been over-curious about “the Genesis” of their antiquities, +have inveigled us into the mystic groves of +Druidism in all their cloudy obscurity. The “Antiquities +of the University of Oxford” open with “the Originals of +Learning in this Nation;” and our antiquary discerns the +first shadowings of the University of Oxford in “the +universal knowledge” of the Druidical institution in +“ethics, politics, civil law, divinity, and poetry.” Such +are the reveries of an antiquary.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c1" id="ft1c1" href="#fa1c1"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Ben Jonson.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c1" id="ft2c1" href="#fa2c1"><span class="fn">2</span></a> The existence of these <i>giants</i> was long historical, and their real +origin was in the fourth verse of the fifth chapter of Genesis, which no +commentator shall ever explain. <span class="sc">Aylet Sammes</span> in his “Britannia +Antiqua Illustrata, or the Antiquities of Ancient Britain derived from +the Phœnicians,” has particularly noticed “two teeth of a certain giant, +of such a huge bigness, that two hundred such teeth as men now-a-days +have might be cut out of them.” Becanus and Camden had however observed, +that “<i>the bones of sea-fish</i> had been taken for <i>giants’ bones</i>;—but +can it be rationally supposed that men ever entombed fishes?” +triumphant in his arguments, exclaims Aylet Sammes. The revelations +of geology had not yet been surmised, even by those who had discovered +that giants were but sea-fish. So progressive is all human knowledge.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c1" id="ft3c1" href="#fa3c1"><span class="fn">3</span></a> The miraculous event was perpetuated by the whole Teutonic +people, “while it was fresh in their memories,” as our honest Saxon +asserts; hence to this day we in our Saxon <i>English</i>, and our Teutonic +kinsmen and neighbours in their idiom, describe a confusion of idle +talk by the term of <i>Babel</i>, now written from our harsh love of supernumerary +consonants <i>Babble</i>; and any such workmen of Babel are +still indicated as <i>Babblers</i>.—“A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence,” +138, 4to. Antwerp, 1605.</p> + +<p>The erudite Menage offers a memorable evidence of the precarious +condition of etymology when it connects things which have no other +affinity than that which depends on <i>sounds</i>. See his “Dictionnaire +Etymologique, ou Origines de la Langue Françoise,” ad verbum <span class="sc">Babil</span>. +Not satisfied with the usual authorities deduced from <i>Babel</i>, this verbal +sage appeals to us English to demonstrate the natural connexion +between <i>Babbling and Childishness</i>; for thus he has shrewdly opined +“The English in this manner have <i>Babble</i> and <i>Baby</i>!”</p> + +<p>After all the convulsion of lips at Babel, and confusion among the +etymologists, the word is Hebrew, which with a few more such are +found in many languages.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c1" id="ft4c1" href="#fa4c1"><span class="fn">4</span></a> Julia, the empress of Severus, once in raillery remonstrated with +a British female against this singular custom, which annulled every +connubial tie. The British woman, whose observation had evidently +been enlarged during her visit to Rome, retorted by her disdain of the +more polished corruption of the greater nation. “We British women +greatly differ from the Roman ladies, for we follow in public the men +whom we esteem the most worthy, while the Roman women yield +themselves secretly to the vilest of men.”</p> + +<p>Such was the noble sentiment which broke forth from a lady of +savage education—it was, however, but a savage’s view of social life. +This female Briton had not felt how much remained of life which she +had not taken into her view; when the attractions of her sex had +ceased, and the season of flowers had passed, she was left without her +connubial lord amid a progeny who had no father.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c1" id="ft5c1" href="#fa5c1"><span class="fn">5</span></a> This practice of savage races may have originated in a natural +circumstance. The naked body by this slight covering is protected +from the atmosphere, from insects, and other inconveniences to which +the unclothed are exposed. But though it may not have been considered +merely as personal finery, which seems sometimes to have been +the case, it became a refinement of barbarism when they painted their +bodies frightfully to look terrible to the enemy.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c1" id="ft6c1" href="#fa6c1"><span class="fn">6</span></a> See Mr. Tate’s twelve questions about the Druids, with Mr. +Jones’s answers; a learned Welsh scholar who commented on the +ancient laws of his nation.—Toland’s “History of the Druids.”</p> + +<p>A later Welsh scholar affirms, “beyond all doubt there has been an +era when science diffused a light among the Cymry—in a very early +period of the world.”—Owen’s “Heroic Elegies of Llywarç Hen.” +Preface, xxi.</p> + +<p>This style is traditional and still kept up among Welsh and Irish +scholars, who seem familiar with an antiquity beyond record.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c1" id="ft7c1" href="#fa7c1"><span class="fn">7</span></a> Toland’s “History of the Druids” in his Miscellaneous Works, +ii. 163.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c1" id="ft8c1" href="#fa8c1"><span class="fn">8</span></a> “The Celtic Druids, or an Attempt to show that the Druids were +the Priests of Oriental Colonies, who emigrated from India.” By Godfrey +Higgins, Esq. London, 1829.</p> + +<p>This is a quarto volume abounding with recondite researches and +many fancies. It is more repulsive, by the absurd abuse of “the +Christian priests who destroyed their (the Druids’) influence, and unnerved +the arms of their gallant followers.” There are philosophical +fanatics!</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c1" id="ft9c1" href="#fa9c1"><span class="fn">9</span></a> Cæsar was a keen observer of the Britons. He characterizes the +Kentish men, <i>Ex his omnibus longè sunt humanissimi</i>,—“Of all this +people the Kentish are far the most humane.” Cæsar describes the +British boats to have the keel and masts of the lightest wood, and their +bodies of wicker covered with leather; and the hero and sage was +taught a lesson by the barbarians, for Cæsar made use of these in Spain +to transport his soldiers,—a circumstance which Lucan has recorded. +In the size and magnitude of Britain, confiding to the exaggerated accounts +of the captives, he was mistaken; but he acknowledges, that +many things he heard of, he had not himself observed.</p> + +<p><a name="ft10c1" id="ft10c1" href="#fa10c1"><span class="fn">10</span></a> Toland’s “Hist. of the Druids,” 56.</p> + +<p><a name="ft11c1" id="ft11c1" href="#fa11c1"><span class="fn">11</span></a> The origin of Stonehenge is as unknown as that of the Pyramids. +As it is evident that those huge masses could not have been raised and +fixed without the machinery of art, Mr. Owen, the Welsh antiquary, +infers, that this building, if such it may be called, could not have been +erected till that later period when the Druidical genius declined and +submitted to Christianity, and the Druids were taught more skilful +masonry in stone, though without mortar. It has been, however, considered, +that those masses which have been ascribed to the necromancer +Merlin, or the more ancient giants, might have been the work of the +Britons themselves, who, without our knowledge of the mechanical +powers in transporting or raising ponderous bodies, it is alleged, were +men of mighty force and stature, whose co-operation might have done +what would be difficult even to our mechanical science. The lances, +helmets, and swords of these Britons show the vast size and strength +of those who wore them. The native Americans, as those in Peru, +unaided by the engines we apply to those purposes, have raised up such +vast stones in building their temples as the architect of the present +time would not perhaps hazard the attempt to remove. “Essays by a +Society at Exeter,” 114.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page12" id="page12"></a>12</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">BRITAIN AND THE BRITONS.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Britain</span> stood as the boundary of the universe, beyond +Which all was air and water—and long it was ere the +trembling coasters were certain whether Britain was an +island or a continent, a secret probably to the dispersed +natives themselves. It was the triumphant fleet of +Agricola, nearly a century after the descent of Cæsar, +which, encircling it, proclaimed to the universe that Britain +was an island. From that day Albion has lifted its white +head embraced by the restless ocean, but often betrayed +by that treacherous guardian, she became the possession +of successive races.</p> + +<p>Nations have derived their names from some accidental +circumstance; some peculiarity marking their national +character, or descriptive of the site of their country. The +names of our island and of our islanders have exercised the +inquiries, and too often the ingenuity, of our antiquarian +etymologists. There are about half a hundred origins of +the name of Britain; some absurd, many fanciful, all uncertain.<a name="fa1c2" id="fa1c2" href="#ft1c2"><span class="sp">1</span></a> +Our primitive ancestors distinguished themselves, +in pride or simplicity, as <i>Brith</i> and <i>Brithon</i>; +<i>Brith</i> signified stained, and <i>Brithon</i>, a stained man, according +to Camden.<a name="fa2c2" id="fa2c2" href="#ft2c2"><span class="sp">2</span></a> The predilection for colouring their +bodies induced the civilized Romans to designate the +people who were driven to the Caledonian forests as <i>Picts</i>, +or a painted people.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page13" id="page13"></a>13</span></p> + +<p>That the native term of <i>Brith</i> or <i>Brithon</i>, by its curt +harshness, would clash on the modulating ear of the +Greek voyager, or the Latin poet, seems probable, for by +them it was amplified. And thus we owe to sonorous +antiquity the name now famous as their own, for <span class="sc">Britannia</span> +first appeared in their writings, bequeathed to us +by the masters of the world as their legacy of glory.</p> + +<p>To the knowledge of the Romans the island exceeded in +magnitude all other islands; and they looked on this land +with pride and anxiety, while they dignified Britain as +the “Roman island.” The Romans even personified the +insular Genius with poetic conceptions. Britannia is represented +as a female seated on a rock, armed with a +spear, or leaning on a prow, while the ship beside her +attests her naval power. We may yet be susceptible of +the prophetic flattery, when we observe the Roman has +also seated her on a globe, with the symbol of military +power, and the ocean rolling under her feet.<a name="fa3c2" id="fa3c2" href="#ft3c2"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> + +<p>The tale of these ancient Britons who should have been +our ancestors is told by the philosophical historian of antiquity. +Under successive Roman governors they still +remained divided by native factions: “A circumstance,” +observes Tacitus, “most useful for us, among such a powerful +people, where each combating singly, all are subdued.” +A century, as we have said, had not elapsed from the +landing of Cæsar to the administration of Agricola. That +enlightened general changed the policy of former governors; +he allured the Britons from their forest retreats and reedy +roofs to partake of the pleasures of a Roman city—to +dwell in houses, to erect lofty temples, and to indulge in +dissolving baths. The barbarian who had scorned the +Roman tongue now felt the ambition of Roman eloquence; +and the painted Briton of Cæsar was enveloped in the +Roman toga. Severus, in another century after Agricola, +as an extraordinary evidence of his successful government, +appealed to Britain—“Even the Britons are quiet!” +exclaimed the emperor. The tutelary genius of Rome +through four centuries preserved Britain—even from the +Britons themselves; but the Roman policy was fatal to +the national character, and when the day arrived that +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page14" id="page14"></a>14</span> +their protector forsook them, the Britons were left among +their ancient discords: for provincial jealousies, however +concealed by circumstances, are never suppressed; the fire +lives in its embers ready to be kindled.</p> + +<p>The island of Britain, itself not extensive, was broken +into petty principalities: we are told that there were nearly +two hundred kinglings, the greater part of whom did not +presume to wear crowns. Sometimes they united in their +jealousies of some paramount tyrant, but they raged +among themselves; and the passion of Gildas has figured +them as “the Lioness of Devonshire” encountering a +“Lion’s Whelp” in Dorsetshire, and “the Bear-baiter,” +trembling before his regal brother, “the Great Bull-dog.” +“These kings were not appointed by God,” exclaims the +British Jeremiah; he who wrote under the name of +Gildas. Thus the Britons formed a powerless aggregate, +and never a nation. The naked Irish haunted their +shores, covering their sea with piracy; and the Picts +rushed from their forests—giants of the North who, if +Gildas does not exaggerate, even dragged down from their +walls the amazed Britons. Such a people in their terrified +councils were to be suppliants to the valour of foreigners; +from that hour they were doomed to be chased from their +natal soil. They invited, or they encouraged, another race +to become their mercenaries or their allies. The small and +the great from other shores hastened to a new dominion. +Britain then became “a field of fortune to every adventurer +when nothing less than kingdoms were the prize of +every fortunate commander.”<a name="fa4c2" id="fa4c2" href="#ft4c2"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> + +<p>We have now the history of a people whose enemies inhabited +their ancient land: the flame and the sword ceaselessly +devouring the soil; their dominion shrinking in space, +and the people diminishing in number; victory for them +was fatal as defeat. The disasters of the Britons pursued +them through the despair of almost two centuries; it +would have been the history of a whole people ever retreating, +yet hardly in flight, had it been written. Shall +we refuse, on the score of their disputed antiquity the +evidence of the Welsh bards? The wild grandeur of the +melancholy poetry of those ancient Britons attests the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page15" id="page15"></a>15</span> +reality of their story and the depth of their emotions.<a name="fa5c2" id="fa5c2" href="#ft5c2"><span class="sp">5</span></a></p> + +<p>We have spun the last thread of our cobweb, and we +know not on what points it hangs, such irreconcileable +hypotheses are offered to us by our learned antiquaries, +whenever they would account for the origin or the disappearance +of a whole people. The mystery deepens, and +the confusion darkens amid contradictions and incredibilities, +when the British historian contemplates in the perspective +the Fata Morgana of another Britain on the +opposite shores of the ancient Armorica, another Britain +in La Brétagne.</p> + +<p>The ancient Armorica was a district extending from the +Loire to the Seine, about sixty leagues, and except on the +land side, which joined Poictou, is encircled by the ocean. +Composed of several small states, in the decline of the +Roman empire they shook off the Roman yoke, and their +independence was secured by the obscurity of their sequestered +locality.</p> + +<p>The tale runs that Maximus, having engaged his provincial +Britons in his ambitious schemes, rewarded their +military aid by planting them in one of these Armorican +communities. To give colour to this tradition, the story +adds that this Roman general had a considerable interest +in Wales, “having married the daughter of a powerful +chieftain, whose chapel at Carnarvon is still shown.”<a name="fa6c2" id="fa6c2" href="#ft6c2"><span class="sp">6</span></a> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page16" id="page16"></a>16</span> +The marriage of this future Roman emperor with a Welsh +princess would serve as an embellishment to a Welsh +genealogy. This event must have occurred about the +year 384. When the Britons were driven out of their +country by faithless allies, Armorica would offer an easy +refuge for fugitives; there they found brothers already +settled, or friends willing to receive them.<a name="fa7c2" id="fa7c2" href="#ft7c2"><span class="sp">7</span></a></p> + +<p>In this uncertainty of history, amid the dreams of theoretical +antiquaries, we cannot doubt that at some time +there was a powerful colony of Britons in Armorica; they +acquired dominion as well as territory. They changed +that masterless Armorican state to which they were transplanted +from an aristocracy into a monarchy—that government +to which they had been accustomed; they consecrated +the strange land by the baptism of their own +national name, and to this day it is called Brétagne, or +Britain; and surely the Britons carried with them all +their home-affections, for they made the new country an +image of the old: not only had they stamped on it the +British name, but the Britons of Cornwall called a considerable +district by their own provincial name, known in +France as “Le Pays de Cornouaille;” and their speech +perpetuated their vernacular Celtic. At the siege of Belleisle +in 1756, the honest Britons of the principality +among our soldiers were amazed to find that they and the +peasants of Brittany were capable of conversing together. +This expatriation reminds us of the emotions of the first +settlers in the New World. Ancient Spain reflected herself +in her New Spain; and our first emigrants called +their “plantations” “New England;” distributing local +names borrowed from the land of their birth—undying +memorials of their parent source!</p> + +<p>This singular event in the civil annals of the ancient +Britons has given rise to a circumstance unparalleled in the +literary history of every people, for it has often involved in a +mysterious confusion a part of our literary and historical +antiquities. The Britain in France is not always discriminated +from our own; and this double Britain at times +becomes provokingly mystifying. Two eminent antiquaries, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page17" id="page17"></a>17</span> +Douce and Ritson, sometimes conceived that +Bretagne meant England; a circumstance which might +upset a whole hypothesis.</p> + +<p>In the fastnesses of Wales, on the heights of Caledonia, +and on the friendly land of Armorica, are yet tracked the +fugitive and ruined Britons. It is most generally conceded +that they retreated to the western coasts of England, +and that, often discomfited, they took their last +refuge in those “mountain heights” of Cambria.</p> + +<p>Their shadowy Arthur has left an undying name in +romance, and is a nonentity in history. Whether Arthur +was a mortal commander heading some kings of Britain, +or whether religion and policy were driven to the desperate +effort for rallying their fugitives by a national name, and +“a hope deferred,” like the Sebastian of Portugal, this far-famed +chieftain could never have been a fortunate general; +he displayed his invincibility but in some obscure and +remote locality; he struck no terror among his enemies, +for they have left his name unchronicled: nor living, have +the bards distinguished his pre-eminence. “The grave of +Arthur is a mystery of the world,” exclaimed Taliessin, +the great bard of the Britons. But the mortal who +vanished in the cloud of conflict had never seen death; +and to the last the Britons awaited for the day of their +Redeemer when Arthur should return in his immortality, +accompanied by “the Flood-King of the Deluge,” from +the Inys Avallon, the Isle of the Mystic Apple-tree, their +Eden or their Elysium. Arthur was a myth, half Christian +and half Druidical. In Armorica, as in Wales, his coming +was long expected, till “Espérance brétonne” became +proverbial for all chimerical hopes.</p> + +<p>Thus the aborigines of this island vanished, but their +name is still attached to us. The Anglo-Saxons became +our progenitors, and the Saxon our mother-tongue. Yet +so complex and incongruous is the course of time, that we +still call ourselves Britons, and “true Britons;” and the +land we dwell in Great Britain. Nor is it less remarkable, +that the days of the Christian week commemorate the names +of seven Saxon idols.<a name="fa8c2" id="fa8c2" href="#ft8c2"><span class="sp">8</span></a> There are improbabilities and incongruities +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page18" id="page18"></a>18</span> +in authentic history as hard to reconcile as any +we meet with in wild romance.</p> + +<p>During six centuries the Saxons and the Normans combined +to banish from the public mind the history of the +Britons: it was lost; it did not exist even among the +Britons in Wales. In the reign of Henry the First, an +Archdeacon of Oxford, who was that king’s justiciary, +being curious in ancient histories, opportunely brought out +of “Britain in France,” “a very ancient book in the +British tongue.” This book, which still forms the gordian +knot of the antiquary, he confided to the safe custody and +fertile genius of Geoffry, the Monk of Monmouth. It +contained a regular story of the British kings, opening +with Brute, the great grandson of Priam in this airy +generation; kings who, Geoffry “had often wondered, +were wholly unnoticed by Gildas and Bede.” “Yet,” +adds our historian, “their deeds were celebrated by many +people in a <i>pleasant manner</i>, and <i>by heart, as if they had +been written</i>.” This remarkable sentence aptly describes +that species of national songs which the early poets have +always provided for the people, traditions which float +before history is written. Whether this very ancient +British book, almost five centuries old, was a volume of +these poetical legends, which our historian might have +arranged into that “regular history” which is furnished +by his Latin prose version, we are left without the means +of ascertaining, since it proved to be the only copy ever +found, and was never seen after the day of the translation. +The Monk of Monmouth does not arrogate to himself any +other merit than that of a faithful translator, and with +honest simplicity warns of certain additions, which, even +in a history of two thousand years contained in a small +volume, were found necessary.</p> + +<p>We are told that the Britons who passed over into +France carried with them “their archives.” But there +were other Britons who did not fly to the sixty leagues of +Armorica; and of these the only “archives” we hear of +are those which the romancers so perpetually assure us +may be consulted at Caerleon, or some other magical residence +of the visionary Arthur. The Armorican colony +must have formed but a portion of the Britons; and it +would be unreasonable to suppose, that these fugitives +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page19" id="page19"></a>19</span> +could by any human means sequestrate and appropriate +for themselves the whole history of the nation, without +leaving a fragment behind. Yet nothing resembling the +Armorican originals has been traced among the Welsh. +Our Geoffry modestly congratulates his contemporary +annalists, while he warns them off the preserve where lies +his own well-stocked game. And thus he speaks:—“The +history of the kings who were the successors in +Wales of those here recorded, I leave to Karadoc of +Lancarven, as I do also the kings of the Saxons to +William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon; hut +I advise them to be silent concerning the British kings, +since they have not that book written in the British +tongue which Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, brought out +of Britain.” Well might Geoffry exult. He possessed the +sole copy ever found in both the Britains.</p> + +<p>The British history is left to speak for itself in a great +simplicity of narrative, where even the supernatural offers +no obstacle to the faith of the historian—a history which +might fascinate a child as well as an antiquary. These +remote occurrences are substantiated by the careful dates +of a romantic chronology. Events are recorded which +happened when David reigned in Judea, and Sylvius +Latinus in Italy, and Gad, Nathan, and Asaph prophesied +in Israel. And the incidents of Lear’s pathetic story +occurred when Isaiah and Hosea flourished, and Rome was +built by the two brothers. It tells of one of the British +monarchs, how the lady of his love was concealed during +seven years in a subterraneous palace. On his death, his +avengeful queen cast the mother and her daughter into +the river which still bears that daughter’s name, Sabrina, +or the Severn, and was not forgotten by Drayton. +Another incident adorns a canto of Spenser; the Lear came +down to Shakspeare, as the fraternal feuds of Ferrex and +Porrex created our first tragedy by Sackville. There are +other tales which by their complexion betray their legendary +origin.</p> + +<p>Whatever assumed the form of history was long deemed +authentic; and such was the authority of this romance of +Geoffry, that when Edward the First claimed the crown +of Scotland in his letter to the pope, he founded his right +on a passage in Geoffry’s book; doubtless this very passage +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page20" id="page20"></a>20</span> +was held to be as veracious by the Scots themselves, only +that on this occasion they decided to fight against the +text. Four centuries after Geoffry had written, when +Henry the Seventh appointed a commission to draw up his +pedigree, they traced the royal descent from the imaginary +Brutus, and reckoning all Geoffry’s British kings in the +line—the fairies of history—made the English monarch +a descendant in the hundredth degree. We now often +hear of “the fabulous” History of Geoffry of Monmouth; +but neither his learned translator in 1718, nor the most +eminent Welsh antiquaries, attach any such notion to a +history crowded with domestic events, and with names +famous yet unknown.</p> + +<p>After the lapse of so many centuries, the scrutinising +investigation of a thoughtful explorer in British antiquities +has demonstrated, through a chain of recondite +circumstances, that this History of Geoffry of Monmouth, +and its immediate predecessor, the celebrated Chronicle of +the pseudo-Archbishop Turpin, were sent forth on the +same principle on which to this day we publish party +pamphlets, to influence the spirit of two great nations +opposed in interest and glory to each other; in a word, +that they were two Tales of a Tub thrown out to busy +those mighty whales, France and England.<a name="fa9c2" id="fa9c2" href="#ft9c2"><span class="sp">9</span></a></p> + +<p>One great result of their successful grasp of the popular +feelings could never have been contemplated by these +grave forgers of fabulous history. The Chronicle of Archbishop +Turpin and the British History of Geoffry of +Monmouth became the parents of those two rival families of +romances which commemorate the deeds of the Paladins +of Charlemagne, and the Knights of Arthur, the delight +of three centuries.</p> + +<p>The Welsh of this day possess very ancient manuscripts, +which they cherish as the remains of the ancient Britons. +These preserve the deep strains of poets composed in +triumph or in defeat, the poetry of a melancholy race. +Gray first attuned the Cymry harp to British notes, more +poetical than the poems themselves, while others have +devoted their pens to translation, unhappily not always +master of the language of their version. These manuscripts +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page21" id="page21"></a>21</span> +contain also a remarkable body of fiction in the +<span class="sc">Mabinogion</span>, or juvenile amusements, a collection of prose +tales combining the marvellous and the imaginative. Some +are chivalric and amatory, stamped with the manners and +customs of the middle ages; others apparently of a much +higher antiquity, like all such national remains, are considered +mythological; some there are not well adapted, +perhaps, to the initiation of youth. Obviously they are +nothing more than short romances; but we are solemnly +assured that the Mabinogion abound with occult mysteries, +and that simple fiction only served to allure the +British neophyte to bardic mysticism. A learned writer, +who is apt to view old things in a new light, and whose +boldness invigorates the creeping toil of the antiquary, +reveals the esoteric doctrine—“the childhood alluded to +in their title is an early and preparatory stage of initiation; +they were calculated to inflame curiosity, to exercise +ingenuity, and lead the aspirant gradually into a state of +preparation for things which ears not long and carefully +disciplined were unfit to hear.”<a name="fa10c2" id="fa10c2" href="#ft10c2"><span class="sp">10</span></a></p> + +<p>Every people have tales which do not require to be +written to be remembered, whose shortness is the salt +which preserves them through generations. Our ancestors +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page22" id="page22"></a>22</span> +long had heard of “Breton lays” and “British tales,” +from the days of Chaucer to those of Milton; but it was +reserved for our own day to ascertain the species, and to +possess those forgotten yet imaginative effusions of the +ancient Celtic genius. Our literary antiquaries have +discovered reposing among the Harleian manuscripts the +writings of Marie de France,<a name="fa11c2" id="fa11c2" href="#ft11c2"><span class="sp">11</span></a> an Anglo-Norman poetess, +who in the thirteenth century versified many old Breton +lais, which, she says, “she had heard and well remembered.” +Who can assure us whether this Anglo-Norman poetess +gathered her old tales, for such she calls them, in the +French Britain or the English Britain, where she always +resided?</p> + +<p>It is among the Welsh we find a singular form of artificial +memory which can be traced among no other people. +These are their <span class="scs">TRIADS</span>. Though unauthorized by the +learned in Celtic antiquities, I have sometimes fancied that +in the form we may possess a relic of druidical genius. A +triad is formed by classing together three things, neither +more nor less, but supposed to bear some affinity, though +a fourth or fifth might occur with equal claim to be +admitted into the category.<a name="fa12c2" id="fa12c2" href="#ft12c2"><span class="sp">12</span></a> To connect three things +together apparently analogous, though in reality not so, +sufficed for the stores of knowledge of a Triadist; but to +fix on any three incidents for an historical triad discovered +a very narrow range of research; and if designed as an +artificial memory, three insulated facts, deprived of dates +or descriptions or connexion, neither settled the chronology, +nor enlarged the understanding. It is, however, +worthy of remark, that when the Triad is of an ethical +cast, the number <i>three</i> may compose an excellent aphorism; +for three things may be predicated with poignant concision, +when they relate to our moral qualities, or to the +intellectual faculties: in this capricious form the Triad has +often afforded an enduring principle of human conduct, or +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page23" id="page23"></a>23</span> +of critical discrimination; for our feelings are less problematical +than historical events, and more permanent than +the recollection of three names.<a name="fa13c2" id="fa13c2" href="#ft13c2"><span class="sp">13</span></a></p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c2" id="ft1c2" href="#fa1c2"><span class="fn">1</span></a> See the opening of Speed’s “Chronicle.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c2" id="ft2c2" href="#fa2c2"><span class="fn">2</span></a> The historian of our land in the solemnity of his high office, unwilling +that an obscure Welsh prince named <i>Prydain</i> should have left +his immemorable name to this glorious realm, as a Welsh triad professes, +was delighted to draw the national name out of the native +tongue, appositely descriptive of the prevalent custom. But when, +seduced by this syren of etymology, our grave Camden, to display the +passion of a painted people for colours, collects a long list of ancient +British names of polysyllabic elongation, and culls from each a single +syllable which by its sound he conceives alludes to blue, or red, or +yellow, our sage, in proving more than was requisite, has encumbered +his cause, and has thrown suspicion over the whole. The doom of the +etymologist, so often duped by affinity of <i>sounds</i>, seems to have been +that of our judicious Camden.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c2" id="ft3c2" href="#fa3c2"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Evelyn’s “Numismata.” Pinkerton has engraven ten of these +Britannias struck by the Romans in his “Essay on Medals.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c2" id="ft4c2" href="#fa4c2"><span class="fn">4</span></a> Milton.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c2" id="ft5c2" href="#fa5c2"><span class="fn">5</span></a> See Mr. Turner’s able “Vindication of the Genuineness of the +Ancient British Bards.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c2" id="ft6c2" href="#fa6c2"><span class="fn">6</span></a> Warton draws his knowledge from Rowland’s “Mona Antiqua;” +Geoffry of Monmouth would have extended his inquiry. Camden, +judicious as he was, has actually bestowed the kingdom, as well as the +princess, on this Roman general; and Gibbon has sarcastically noticed +that Camden has been authority for all “his blind followers.” The +source of this sort of history lies in the volume of the “Monk of Monmouth,” +where Gibbon might have found the number of the numerous +army of Maximus. Rowland’s “Mona Antiqua Restaurata” is one of +the most extraordinary pieces of our British Antiquities. It is written +with the embrowned rust of our old English Antiquaries, where nothing +on a subject seems to be omitted; but our author, unlike his contemporary +antiquaries, is sceptical even on his own acquisitions; he asserts +little and assumes nothing. One may conceive the native simplicity of +an author, who having to describe the Isle of Anglesey, opens his work +with the history of Chaos itself, to explain by the division of land and +water the origin of islands. I have heard that this learned antiquary +never travelled from his native island.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c2" id="ft7c2" href="#fa7c2"><span class="fn">7</span></a> “L’Art de vérifier les Dates,” article <i>Brétagne</i>, is thrown into +utter confusion. It seems, however, to indicate that there were many +migrations; but all is indistinct or uncertain.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c2" id="ft8c2" href="#fa8c2"><span class="fn">8</span></a> Verstegan has finely engraved these idols in his “Restitution,” so +delighted was this Teutonic Christian with these hideous absurdities of +his pagan ancestors, and so proud of his Saxon descent.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c2" id="ft9c2" href="#fa9c2"><span class="fn">9</span></a> Turner’s “History of England during the Middle Ages,” iv. 326.</p> + +<p><a name="ft10c2" id="ft10c2" href="#fa10c2"><span class="fn">10</span></a> “Britannia after the Romans.” The literary patriotism of Wales +has been more remarkable among humble individuals than among the +squirearchy, if we except the ardent Pennant. Mr. Owen Jones, an +honest furrier in Thames-street, kindled by the love of father-land, +offered the Welsh public a costly present of the “Archæology of +Wales,” containing the bardic poetry, genealogies, triads, chronicles, +&c. in their originals: the haughty descendant of the Cymry disdained +to translate for the Anglo-Saxon. To Mr. William Owen the lore of +Cambria stands deeply indebted for his persevering efforts. Under the +name of Meirion he long continued his literal versions of the Welsh +bards in the early volumes of the “Monthly Magazine;” he has furnished +a Cambrian biography and a dictionary.</p> + +<p>Some years ago, a learned Welsh scholar, Dr. Owen Pughe, issued +proposals to publish the “Mabinogion,” accompanied by translations, +on the completion of a subscription list sufficient to indemnify the costs +of printing.—See Mr. Crofton Croker’s interesting work on “Fairy +Legends,” vol. iii. He appealed in vain to the public, but the whole +loss remains with them. Recently a munificent lady [Lady Charlotte +Guest] has resumed the task, and has presented us in the most elegant +form with two tales such as ladies read. Since this note was written +several cheering announcements of some important works have been +put forth. [Many have since been published.]</p> + +<p><a name="ft11c2" id="ft11c2" href="#fa11c2"><span class="fn">11</span></a> See Warton and Ellis. “Poésies de Marie de France” have been +published by M. de Roquefort, Paris, 1820.</p> + +<p><a name="ft12c2" id="ft12c2" href="#fa12c2"><span class="fn">12</span></a> “The translators do the triadist an injustice in rendering <i>Tri</i> by +‘<i>The Three</i>’ when he has put no <i>The</i> at all. The number was accounted +fortunate, and they took a pleasure in binding up all their +ideas into little sheaves or fasciculi of three; but in so doing they did +not mean to imply that there were no more such.”—“Britannia after +the Romans.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft13c2" id="ft13c2" href="#fa13c2"><span class="fn">13</span></a> As these artificial associations, like the topics invented by the +Roman rhetoricians, have been ridiculed by those who have probably +formed their notions from unskilful versions, I select a few which might +enter into the philosophy of the human mind. They denote a literature +far advanced in critical refinement, and appear to have been composed +from the sixth to the twelfth century.</p> + +<p>“The three foundations of genius; the gift of God, human exertion, +and the events of life.”</p> + +<p>“The three first requisites of genius; an eye to see nature, a heart +to feel it, and a resolution that dares follow it.”</p> + +<p>“The three things indispensable to genius; understanding, meditation, +and perseverance.”</p> + +<p>“The three things that improve genius; proper exertion, frequent +exertion, and successful exertion.”</p> + +<p>“The three qualifications of poetry; endowment of genius, judgment +from experience, and felicity of thought.”</p> + +<p>“The three pillars of judgment; bold design, frequent practice, and +frequent mistakes.”</p> + +<p>“The three pillars of learning; seeing much, suffering much, and +studying much.” See Turner’s “Vindication of the Ancient British +Bards.”—Owen’s “Dissertation on Bardism, prefixed to the Heroic +Elegies of Llywarç Hen.”</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page24" id="page24"></a>24</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE NAME OF ENGLAND AND OF THE +ENGLISH.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Two</span> brothers and adventurers of an obscure Saxon tribe +raised their ensign of the White Horse on British land: +the visit was opportune, or it was expected—this remains +a state secret. Welcomed by the British monarch and +his perplexed council amid their intestine dissensions, as +friendly allies, they were renowned for their short and +crooked swords called <i>Seax</i>, which had given the generic +name of Saxons to their tribe.</p> + +<p>These descendants of Woden, for such even the petty +chieftains deemed themselves, whose trade was battle and +whose glory was pillage, showed the spiritless what men +do who know to conquer, the few against the many. +They baffled the strong and they annihilated the weak. +The Britons were grateful. The Saxons lodged in the +land till they took possession of it. The first Saxon +founded the kingdom of Kent; twenty years after, a +second in Sussex raised the kingdom of the South-Saxons; +in another twenty years appeared the kingdom of the +West-Saxons. It was a century after the earliest arrival +that the great emigration took place. The tribe of the +Angles depopulated their native province and flocked to +the fertile island, under that foeman of the Britons whom +the bards describe as “The Flame Bearer,” and “The +Destroyer.” Every quality peculiar to the Saxons was +hateful to the Britons; even their fairness of complexion. +Taliessin terms Hengist “a white-bellied hackney,” and +his followers are described as of “hateful hue and hateful +form.” The British poet delights to paint “a Saxon +shivering and quaking, his <i>white hair</i> washed in blood;” +and another sings how “close upon the backs of the <i>pale-faced</i> +ones were the spear-points.”<a name="fa1c3" id="fa1c3" href="#ft1c3"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p>Already the name itself of <i>Britain</i> had disappeared +among the invaders. Our island was now called “Saxony +beyond the Sea,” or “West Saxon land;” and when the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page25" id="page25"></a>25</span> +expatriated Saxons had alienated themselves from the land +of their fathers, those who remained faithful to their +native hearths perhaps proudly distinguished themselves +as “the old Saxons,” for by this name they were known +by the Saxons in Britain.</p> + +<p>Eight separate but uncertain kingdoms were raised on +the soil of Britain, and present a moveable surface of fraternal +wars and baffled rivals. There was one kingdom +long left kingless, for “No man dared, though never so +ambitious, to take up the sceptre which many had found +so hot; the only effectual cure of ambition that I have +read”—these are the Words of Milton. Finally, to use +the quaint phrase of the Chancellor Whitelock, “the +Octarchy was brought into one.” At the end of five centuries +the Saxons fell prostrate before a stronger race.</p> + +<p>But of all the accidents and the fortunes of the Saxon +dynasty, not the least surprising is that an obscure town +in the duchy of Sleswick, <i>Anglen</i>, is commemorated by the +transference of its name to one of the great European +nations. The <i>Angles</i>, or <i>Engles</i>, have given their denomination +to the land of Britain—<i>Engle-land</i> is <i>England</i>, and +the <i>Engles</i> are the <i>English</i>.<a name="fa2c3" id="fa2c3" href="#ft2c3"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p>How it happened that the very name of <i>Britain</i> was +abolished, and why the Anglian was selected in preference +to the more eminent race, may offer a philosophical illustration +of the accidental nature of <span class="scs">LOCAL NAMES</span>.</p> + +<p>There is a tale familiar to us from youth, that Egbert, +the more powerful king of the West Saxons, was crowned +the first monarch of England, and issued a decree that +this kingdom of Britain should be called England; yet an +event so strange as to have occasioned the change of the +name of the whole country remains unauthenticated by +any of the original writers of our annals.<a name="fa3c3" id="fa3c3" href="#ft3c3"><span class="sp">3</span></a> No record +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page26" id="page26"></a>26</span> +attests that Egbert in a solemn coronation assumed the +title of “King of England.” His son and successor never +claimed such a legitimate title; and even our illustrious +Alfred, subsequently, only styled himself “King of the +West Saxons.”</p> + +<p>The story, however, is of ancient standing; for Matthew +of Westminster alludes to a similar if not the same incident, +namely, that by “a common decree of all the Saxon +kings, it was ordained that the title of the island should +no longer be Britain, from Brute, but henceforward be +called from the English, England.” Stowe furnishes a +positive circumstance in this obscure transaction—“Egbert +caused the brazen image of Cadwaline, King of the Britons, +to be thrown down.” The decree noticed by Matthew of +Westminster, combined with the fact of pulling down the +statue of a popular British monarch, betrays the real +motive of this singular national change: whether it were +the suggestion of Egbert, or the unanimous agreement of +the assembled monarchs who were his tributary kings, it +was a stroke of deep political wisdom; it knitted the members +into one common body, under one name, abolishing, +by legislative measures, the very memory of Britain from +the land. Although, therefore, no positive evidence has +been produced, the state policy carries an internal evidence +which yields some sanction to the obscure tradition.</p> + +<p>It is a nicer difficulty to account for the choice of the +Anglian name. It might have been preferred to distinguish +the Saxons of Britain from the Saxons of the Continent; +or the name was adopted, being that of the far +more numerous race among these people. Four kingdoms +of the octarchy were possessed by the Angles. Thus +doubtful and obscure remains the real origin of our national +name, which hitherto has hinged on a suspicious +fact.</p> + +<p>The casual occurrence of the <span class="sc">Engles</span> leaving their name +to this land has bestowed on our country a foreign designation; +and—for the contingency was nearly occurring—had +the kingdom of Northumbria preserved its ascendancy +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page27" id="page27"></a>27</span> +in the octarchy, the seat of dominion had been altered. +In that case, the Lowlands of Scotland would have +formed a portion of England; York would have stood +forth as the metropolis of Britain, and London had been but +a remote mart for her port and her commerce. Another +idiom, perhaps, too, other manners, had changed the whole +face of the country. We had been Northmen, not +Southerns; our neighbourhood had not proved so troublesome +to France. But the kingdom of Wessex prevailed, +and became the sole monarchy of England, Such local +contingencies have decided the character of a whole +people.<a name="fa4c3" id="fa4c3" href="#ft4c3"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> + +<p>The history of <span class="scs">LOCAL NAMES</span> is one of the most capricious +and fortuitous in the history of man; the etymologist +must not be implicitly trusted, for it is necessary to +be acquainted with the history of a people as much as the +history of languages, to be certain of local derivations. +We have recently been cautioned by a sojourner in the +most ancient of kingdoms,<a name="fa5c3" id="fa5c3" href="#ft5c3"><span class="sp">5</span></a> not too confidently to rely on +etymology, or to assign too positively any reason for the +origin of <span class="scs">LOCAL NAMES</span>. No etymologist could have accounted +for the name of our nation had he not had recourse +to our annals. Sir <span class="sc">Walter Raleigh</span>, from his +observations in the New World, has confirmed this observation +by circumstances which probably remain unknown +to the present inhabitants. The actual names +given to those places in America which they still retain, +are nothing more than the blunders of the first Europeans, +demanding by signs and catching at words by which +neither party were intelligible to one another.<a name="fa6c3" id="fa6c3" href="#ft6c3"><span class="sp">6</span></a></p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c3" id="ft1c3" href="#fa1c3"><span class="fn">1</span></a> “Britannia after the Romans,” 62, 4to.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c3" id="ft2c3" href="#fa2c3"><span class="fn">2</span></a> It is a singular circumstance that our neighbours have preserved +the name of our country more perfectly than we have done by our +mutilated term of <i>England</i>, for they write it with antiquarian precision, +<i>Angle-terre</i>—the land of the Angles. Our counties bear the +vestiges of these Saxons expelling or exterminating the native Britons, +as our pious Camden ejaculates, “by God’s wonderful providence.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c3" id="ft3c3" href="#fa3c3"><span class="fn">3</span></a> The diligent investigator of the history of our Anglo-Saxons concludes +that this unauthorised tale of the coronation and the decree of +Egbert is unworthy of credence.</p> + +<p>Camden, in his first edition, had fixed the date of the change of the +name as occurring in the year 810; in his second edition he corrected +it to 800. Holinshed says <i>about</i> 800. Speed gives a much later +date, 819. It is evident that these disagreeing dates are all hazarded +conjectures.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c3" id="ft4c3" href="#fa4c3"><span class="fn">4</span></a> Mitford’s “Harmony of Language,” 429. I might have placed +this possible circumstance in the article “A History of Events which +have not happened,” in “Curiosities of Literature.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c3" id="ft5c3" href="#fa5c3"><span class="fn">5</span></a> Sir <span class="sc">Gardner Wilkinson</span>, in the curious volume of his recondite +discoveries in the land of the Pyramids.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c3" id="ft6c3" href="#fa6c3"><span class="fn">6</span></a> “History of the World,” 167, fol. 1666. We have also a curious +account of the ancient manner of naming persons and places among our +own nation in venerable Lambarde’s “Perambulations of Kent,” 349, +453.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page28" id="page28"></a>28</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE ANGLO-SAXONS.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">The</span> history and literature of England are involved in the +transactions of a people who, living in such remote times +at the highest of their fortunes, never advanced beyond a +semi-civilization. But political freedom was the hardy +and jealous offspring nursed in the forests of Germany; +there was first heard the proclamation of equal laws, and +there a people first assumed the name of Franks or Freemen. +Our language, and our laws, and our customs, originate +with our Teutonic ancestors; among them we are +to look for the trunk, if not the branches, of our national +establishments. In the rude antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon +church, our theoretical inquirers in ecclesiastical +history trace purer doctrines and a more primitive discipline; +and in the shadowy Witenagemot, the moveable +elements of the British constitution: the language and +literature of England still lie under their influence, for +this people everywhere left the impression of a strong +hand.</p> + +<p>The history of the Anglo-Saxons as a people is without +a parallel in the annals of a nation. Their story during +five centuries of dominion in this land may be said to have +been unknown to generations of Englishmen; the monuments +of their history, the veritable records of their customs +and manners, their polity, their laws, their institutions, +their literature, whatever reveals the genius of a +people, lie entombed in their own contemporary manuscripts, +and in another source which we long neglected—in +those ancient volumes of their northern brothers, who +had not been idle observers of the transactions of England, +which seems often to have been to them “the land +of promise.” The Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, those +authentic testimonies of the existence of the nation, were +long dispersed, neglected, even unintelligible, disfigured by +strange characters, and obscured by perplexing forms of +diction. The language as well as the writing had passed +away; all had fallen into desuetude; and no one suspected +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page29" id="page29"></a>29</span> +that the history of a whole people so utterly cast into +forgetfulness could ever be written.</p> + +<p>But the lost language and the forgotten characters +antiquity and religion seemed to have consecrated in the +eyes of the learned Archbishop <span class="sc">Matthew Parker</span>, who +was the first to attempt their restitution by an innocent +stratagem. To his edition of Thomas Walsingham’s +History in 1574, his Grace added the Life of Alfred by +this king’s secretary, Asser, <i>printed in the Saxon character</i>; +we are told, as “an invitation to English readers +to draw them in unawares to an acquaintance with the +<i>handwriting of their ancestors</i>.”<a name="fa1c4" id="fa1c4" href="#ft1c4"><span class="sp">1</span></a> “The invitation” was +somewhat awful, and whether the guests were delighted +or dismayed, let some Saxonist tell! <span class="sc">Spelman</span>, the great +legal archæologist, was among the earliest who ventured +to search amid the Anglo-Saxon duskiness, at a time when +he knew not one who could even interpret the writing. +This great lawyer had been perplexed by many barbarous +names and terms which had become obsolete; they were +Saxon. He was driven to the study; and his “Glossary” +is too humble a title for that treasure of law and +antiquity, of history and of disquisition, which astonished +the learned world at home and abroad—while the unsold +copies during the life of the author checked the continuation; +so few was the number of students, and few they +must still be; yet the devotion of its votary was not the +less, for he had prepared the foundation of a Saxon professorship. +Spelman was the father; but he who enlarged +the inheritance of these Anglo-Saxon studies, appeared in +the learned <span class="sc">Somner</span>; and though he lived through distracted +times which loved not antiquity, the cell of the +antiquary was hallowed by the restituted lore. <span class="sc">Hickes</span>, +in his elaborate “Thesaurus,” displayed a literature which +had never been read, and which he himself had not yet +learned to read. These were giants; their successors were +dwarfs who could not add to their stores, and little heeded +their possessions. Few rarely succeeded in reading the +Saxon; and at that day, about the year 1700, no printer +could cast the types, which were deemed barbarous, or, as +the antiquary Rowe Mores expresses it, “unsightly to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page30" id="page30"></a>30</span> +politer eyes.” A lady—and she is not the only one who +has found pleasure in studying this ancient language of +our country—Mrs. <span class="sc">Elstob</span>, the niece of Hickes, patronised +by a celebrated Duchess of Portland, furnished +several versions; but the Saxon Homilies she had begun to +print, for some unknown cause, were suspended: the unpublished +but printed sheets are preserved at our National +Library. These pursuits having long languished, seemed +wholly to disappear from our literature.</p> + +<p>None of our historians from <span class="sc">Milton</span> to <span class="sc">Hume</span> ever +referred to an original Saxon authority. They took their +representations from the writings of the monks; but the +true history of the Anglo-Saxons was not written in +Latin. It was not from monkish scribes, who recorded +public events in which the Saxons had no influence, that +the domestic history of a race dispossessed of all power +could be drawn, and far less would they record the polity +which had once constituted their lost independence. The +annalist of the monastery, flourishing under another dynasty, +placed in other times and amid other manners, was +estranged from any community of feeling with a people +who were then sunk into the helots of England. <span class="sc">Milton</span>, +in his history of Britain, imagined that the transactions +of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, or Octarchy, would be as +worthless “to chronicle as the wars of kites or crows +flocking and fighting in the air.” Thus a poet-historian +can veil by a brilliant metaphor the want of that knowledge +which he contemns before he has acquired—this was +less pardonable in a philosopher; and when <span class="sc">Hume</span> observed, +perhaps with the eyes of Milton, that “he would +hasten through the obscure and uninteresting period of +Saxon Annals,” however cheering to his reader was the +calmness of his indolence, the philosopher, in truth, was +wholly unconscious that these “obscure and uninteresting +annals of the Anglo-Saxons” formed of themselves a complete +history, offering new results for his profound and +luminous speculations on the political state of man. Genius +is often obsequious to its predecessors, and we track +<span class="sc">Burke</span> in the path of Hume; and so late as in 1794, we +find our elegant antiquary, Bishop <span class="sc">Percy</span>, lamenting the +scanty and defective annals of the Anglo-Saxons; naked +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page31" id="page31"></a>31</span> +epitomes, bare of the slightest indications of the people +themselves. The history of the dwellers in our land had +hitherto yielded no traces of the customs and domestic +economy of the nation; all beyond some public events was +left in darkness and conjecture.</p> + +<p>We find <span class="sc">Ellis</span> and <span class="sc">Ritson</span> still erring in the trackless +paths. All this national antiquity was wholly unsuspected +by these zealous investigators. In this uncertain +condition stood the history of the Anglo-Saxons, when a +new light rose in the hemisphere, and revealed to the +English public a whole antiquity of so many centuries. +In 1805, for the first time, the story and the literature of +the Anglo-Saxons was given to the country. It was our +studious explorer, <span class="sc">Sharon Turner</span>, who first opened +these untried ways in our national antiquities.<a name="fa2c4" id="fa2c4" href="#ft2c4"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p>Anglo-Saxon studies have been recently renovated, but +unexpected difficulties have started up. A language whose +syntax has not been regulated, whose dialects can never +be discriminated, and whose orthography and orthoepy +seem irrecoverable, yields faithless texts when confronted; +and treacherous must be the version if the construction +be too literal or too loose, or what happens sometimes, +ambiguous. Different anglicisers offer more than one +construction.<a name="fa3c4" id="fa3c4" href="#ft3c4"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> + +<p>It is now ascertained that the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts +are found in a most corrupt state.<a name="fa4c4" id="fa4c4" href="#ft4c4"><span class="sp">4</span></a> This fatality was +occasioned by the inattention or the unskilfulness of the +caligrapher, whose task must have required a learned pen. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page32" id="page32"></a>32</span> +The Anglo-Saxon verse was regulated by a puerile system +of alliteration,<a name="fa5c4" id="fa5c4" href="#ft5c4"><span class="sp">5</span></a> and the rhythm depended on accentuation. +Whenever the strokes, or dots, marking the accent +or the pauses are omitted, or misplaced, whole sentences +are thrown into confusion; compound words are disjoined, +and separate words are jumbled together. “Nouns have +been mistaken for verbs, and particles for nouns.”</p> + +<p>These difficulties, arising from unskilful copyists, are +infinitely increased by the genius of the Anglo-Saxon +poets themselves. The tortuous inversion of their composition +often leaves an ambiguous sense: their perpetual +periphrasis; their abrupt transitions; their pompous inflations, +and their elliptical style; and not less their portentous +metaphorical nomenclature where a single object +must be recognised by twenty denominations, not always +appropriate, and too often clouded by the most remote +and dark analogies<a name="fa6c4" id="fa6c4" href="#ft6c4"><span class="sp">6</span></a>—all these have perplexed the most +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page33" id="page33"></a>33</span> +skilful judges, who have not only misinterpreted passages, +but have even failed to comprehend the very subject of +their original. This last circumstance has been remarkably +shown in the fate of the heroic tale of <span class="sc">Beowulf</span>. +When it first fell to the hard lot of <span class="sc">Wanley</span>, the librarian +of the Earl of Oxford, to describe “The Exploits of +Beowulf,” he imagined, or conjectured, that it contained +“the wars which this Dane waged against the reguli, or +petty kings of Sweden.” He probably decided on the +subject by confining his view to the opening page, where +a hero descends from his ship—but for a very different +purpose from a military expedition. Fortunately Wanley +lauded the manuscript as a “tractatus nobilissimus,” and an +“egregium exemplum” of the Anglo-Saxon poetry. Probably +this manuscript remained unopened during a century, +when <span class="sc">Sharon Turner</span> detected the error of Wanley, +but he himself misconceived the design of these romantic +“Exploits.” Yet this diligent historian carefully read and +analysed this heroic tale. <span class="sc">Conybeare</span>, who had fallen +into the same erroneous conception, at length caught up a +clue in this labyrinth; and finally even a safer issue has +been found, though possibly not without some desperate +efforts, by the version of Mr. <span class="sc">Kemble</span>.</p> + +<p>Even the learned in Saxon have not always been able +to distinguish this verse from prose; the verse unmarked +by rhyme being written continuously as prose.<a name="fa7c4" id="fa7c4" href="#ft7c4"><span class="sp">7</span></a> A diction +turgid and obscure was apparent; but in what consisted +the art of the poet, or the metrical system, long baffled +the most ingenious conjectures. <span class="sc">Ritson</span>, in his perplexity, +described this poetry or metre as a “rhymeless +sort of poetry, a kind of bombast or insane prose, from +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page34" id="page34"></a>34</span> +which it is very difficult to be distinguished.” <span class="sc">Tyrwhit</span> +and <span class="sc">Ellis</span> remained wholly at a loss to comprehend the +fabric of Anglo-Saxon poesy. <span class="sc">Hickes</span>, in the fascination +of scholarship, had decided that it proceeded on a metrical +system of syllabic quantities, and surmounted all difficulties +by submitting the rhythmical cadences of Gothic +poesy to the prosody of classical antiquity. This was a +literary hallucination, and a remarkable evidence of a +favourite position maintained merely by the force of +prepossession.</p> + +<p>To what cause are we to ascribe the complex construction +of the diction, and the multiplied intricacies of the +metres of the poetry of the Northmen? Bishop Percy +noticed, that the historian of the Runic poetry has +counted up among the ancient Icelandic poets one hundred +and thirty-six different metres. The Icelandic and the +Anglo-Saxon are cognate languages, being both dialects +of the ancient Gothic or Teutonic. The genius of the +Danish Scalds often displays in their Eddas<a name="fa8c4" id="fa8c4" href="#ft8c4"><span class="sp">8</span></a> a sublime +creative power far out of the reach of the creeping and +narrow faculty of the Saxon, yet the same mechanism +regulated both; the fixed recurrence of certain letters or +syllables which constitutes that perpetual alliteration, +which oftener than rhyme gratified the ear of barbaric +poesy, and a metaphorical phraseology or poetical vocabulary +appropriated by the bards, furnishing the adept with +phrases when he had not always ready any novel conceptions. +Shall we deem such arbitrary forms and such +artificial contrivances, the mere childishness of tastes, to +have been invented in the wintry years of these climates, +to amuse themselves in their stern solitudes; or rather, +may we not consider them as a mystery of the Craft, the +initiation of the Order? for by this scholarlike discipline +in multiplying difficulties the later bards separated themselves +from those humbler minstrels who were left to their +own inartificial emotions.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page35" id="page35"></a>35</span></p> + +<p>Such prescribed formulæ, and such a mechanism of +verse, must have tethered the imagination in a perpetual +circle; it was art which violated the free course of nature. +In this condition we often find even the poetry of the +Scandinavians. The famous death-song of Regner Lodbrog +seems little more than an iteration of the same ideas. An +Anglo-Saxon poem has the appearance of a collection of +short hints rather than poetical conceptions, curt and +ejaculative: a paucity of objects yields but a paucity of +emotions, too vague for detail, too abrupt for deep passion, +too poor in fancy to scatter the imagery of poesy. The +Anglo-Saxon betrays its confined and monotonous genius: +we are in the first age of art, when pictures are but +monochromes of a single colour. Hence, in the whole +map of Anglo-Saxon poetry, it is difficult to discriminate +one writer from another.<a name="fa9c4" id="fa9c4" href="#ft9c4"><span class="sp">9</span></a></p> + +<p>Their prose has taken a more natural character than +their verse. The writings of Alfred are a model of the +Anglo-Saxon style in its purest state; they have never +been collected, but it is said they would form three octavo +volumes; they consist chiefly of translations.</p> + +<p>The recent versions in literal prose by two erudite +Saxonists of two of the most remarkable Anglo-Saxon +poems, will enable an English reader to form a tolerable notion +of the genius of this literature. <span class="sc">Conybeare’s</span> poetical +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page36" id="page36"></a>36</span> +versions remained unrivalled. But if a literal version of +a primitive poetry soon ceases to be poetry, so likewise, if +the rude outlines are to be retouched, and a brilliant +colouring is to be borrowed, we are receiving Anglo-Saxon +poetry in the cadences of Milton and “the orient hues” +of Gray.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c4" id="ft1c4" href="#fa1c4"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Bp. Nicholson’s Eng. Lib.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c4" id="ft2c4" href="#fa2c4"><span class="fn">2</span></a> It is pleasing to record a noble instance of the enthusiasm of +learned research. “The leisure hours of sixteen years” furnished a +comprehensive history of which “two-thirds had not yet appeared.”—<i>Mr. +Turner’s Preface.</i></p> + +<p><a name="ft3c4" id="ft3c4" href="#fa3c4"><span class="fn">3</span></a> A sufferer, moreover, fully assures us that some remain, which +“must baffle all conjecture;” and another critic has judicially decreed +that, in every translation from the Anglo-Saxon that has fallen under +his notice, “there are blunders enough to satisfy the most unfriendly +critic.” “The Song of the Traveller,” in “The Exeter Book,” was +translated by <span class="sc">Conybeare</span>; a more accurate transcript was given by Mr. +<span class="sc">Kemble</span> in his edition of Beowulf; and now Mr. <span class="sc">Guest</span> has furnished a +third, varying from both. We cannot be certain that a fourth may not +correct the three.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c4" id="ft4c4" href="#fa4c4"><span class="fn">4</span></a> “Without exception!” is the energetic cry of the translator of +Beowulf.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c4" id="ft5c4" href="#fa5c4"><span class="fn">5</span></a> The first line contains two words commencing with the same letter, +and the second line has its first word also beginning with that letter. +This difficulty seems insurmountable to a modern reader, for our +authority confesses that, “In the Saxon poetry; as it is preserved in +manuscripts, the first line often contains but one alliterating word, and, +from the negligence of the scribes, the alliteration is in many instances +entirely lost.”—<i>Dissertation on Anglo-Saxon Poetry, Fraser’s Magazine</i>, +xii. 81.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c4" id="ft6c4" href="#fa6c4"><span class="fn">6</span></a> A striking instance how long a universal error can last, arising +from one of these obscure conceits, is noticed by Mr. <span class="sc">Grenville Pigott</span> +in his “Manual of Scandinavian Mythology.”</p> + +<p>These warlike barbarians were long reproached that even their religion +fomented an implacable hatred of their enemies; for in the future +state of their paradisiacal Valhalla, their deceased heroes rejoiced +at their celestial compotations, <i>to drink out of the skulls of their +enemies</i>.</p> + +<p>A passage in the death-song of Regner Lodbrog, literally translated, +is, “Soon shall we <i>drink</i> out of the <i>curved trees of the head</i>;” which +Bishop Percy translates, “Soon, in the splendid hall of Odin, we shall +drink beer out of the skulls of our enemies.” And thus also have the +Danes themselves, the Germans, and the French.</p> + +<p>The original and extraordinary blunder lies with Olaus Wormius, the +great Danish antiquary, to whose authority poets and historians bowed +without looking further. Our grave Olaus was bewildered by this +monstrous style of the Scalds, and translated this drinking bout at +Valhalla according to his own fancy,—“Ex concavis crateribus craniorum;”—thus +turning the “trees of the head” into a “skull,” and +the skull into a hollow cup. The Scald, however, was innocent of this +barbarous invention; and, in his violent figures and disordered fancy, +merely alluded to the branching horns, growing as trees, from the +heads of animals—that is, the curved horns which formed their drinking +cups. If Olaus here, like Homer, nodded, something might be +urged for his defence; for who is bound to understand such remote, if +not absurd conceits? but I do not know that we could plead as fairly +for his own interpolating fancy of “drinking out of the skulls of their +enemies.”</p> + +<p>This grave blunder became universal, and a century passed away +without its being detected. It was so familiar, that Peter Pindar once +said that the booksellers, like the heroes of Valhalla, drank their wine +out of the skulls of authors.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c4" id="ft7c4" href="#fa7c4"><span class="fn">7</span></a> <span class="sc">Hickes</span> and <span class="sc">Wanley</span> mistook the “Ormulum,” a paraphrase of +Gospel history, as mere prose; when in fact it is composed in long lines +of fifteen syllables without rhyme.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c4" id="ft8c4" href="#fa8c4"><span class="fn">8</span></a> See “A Manual of Scandinavian Mythology,” by Mr. Grenville +Pigott. 1839. “The Northern Mythology” will be found here not +only skilfully arranged, but its wondrous myths and fables elucidated +by modern antiquaries. It is further illustrated by the translation of +the poem of Œhlenschläger, on “The Gods of the North;” whose genius +has been transfused in the nervous simplicity of the present version.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c4" id="ft9c4" href="#fa9c4"><span class="fn">9</span></a> Such is the critical decision of <span class="sc">Conybeare</span>, a glorious enthusiast. +“Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry,” by John Josiah Conybeare. +1826.</p> + +<p>The late Mr. Price, the editor of Warton’s History, announced an +elaborate work on the Anglo-Saxon poetry. The verse of <span class="sc">Conybeare</span> +and the disquisitions of <span class="sc">Price</span> would have completed this cycle of our +ancient poetry. But a fatal coincidence marked the destiny of these +eminent votaries of our poetic antiquity—both prematurely ceasing to +exist while occupied on their works. <span class="sc">Conybeare</span> has survived in his +brother, whose congenial tastes collected his remains; <span class="sc">Price</span>, who had +long resided abroad, and there had silently stored up the whole wealth +of Northern literature, on his return home remained little known till +his valued edition of Warton announced to the literary world the acquisitions +they were about to receive. He has left a name behind him, but +not a work, for Price had no fraternal friend.</p> + +<p>Since this chapter was written, Mr. Thos. Wright has published +“An Essay on the State of Literature and Learning under the Anglo-Saxons.” +It displays a comprehensive view taken by one to whose +zealous labours the lovers of our ancient literature are so deeply +indebted.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page37" id="page37"></a>37</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">CÆDMON AND MILTON.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Cædmon,</span> the Saxonists hail as “the Father of English +Song!”</p> + +<p>The personal history of this bard is given in the taste +of the age. Cædmon was a herdsman who had never read +a single poem. Sitting in his “beership,” whenever the +circling harp, that “Wood of Joy!” as the Saxon gleemen +have called it, was offered to his hand, all unskilled, +the peasant, stung with shame, would hurry homewards. +Already past the middle of life, never had the peasant +dreamt that he was a sublime poet, or at least a poet +composing on sublime themes, incapable as he was even of +reading his own Saxon.</p> + +<p>As once he lay slumbering in a stall, the apparition of a +strange man thus familiarly greeted him:—“Cædmon, sing +some song to me!” The cowherd modestly urged that he was +mute and unmusical:—“Nevertheless thou shalt sing!” +retorted the benignant apparition. “What shall I sing?” +rejoined the minstrel, who had never sung. “Sing the +origin of things!” The peasant, amazed, found his tongue +loosened, and listened to his own voice; a voice which +was to reach posterity!</p> + +<p>He flew in the morning to the town-reeve to announce +a wonder, that he had become a poet in the course of a +single night. He recited the poem, which, however—for +we possess it—only proves that between sleeping and +waking eighteen lines of dreamy periphrasis may express +a single idea. Venerable Bede held this effusion as a pure +inspiration: the modern historian of the Anglo-Saxons +indulgently discovers three ideas: Conybeare, more critical, +acknowledges that “the eighteen lines expand the mere +proposition of ‘Let us praise God, the maker of heaven +and earth.’” But this was only the first attempt of a +great enterprise—it was a thing to be magnified for the +neighbouring monastery of Whitby, who gladly received +such a new brother.</p> + +<p>For a poet who had never written a verse, it was only +necessary to open his vein: a poet who could not read +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page38" id="page38"></a>38</span> +only required to be read to. The whole monkery came +down with the canonical books; they informed him of all +things, from “Genesis” down to “the doctrine of the +apostles.” “The good man listened,” as saith Venerable +Bede, “like a clean animal ruminating; and his song and +his verse were so winsome to hear, that his teachers wrote +them down, and learned from his mouth.” These teachers +could not have learned more than they themselves had +taught. We can only draw out of a cistern the waters +which we have poured into it. Every succeeding day, +however, swelled the Cædmonian Poem; assuredly they +wanted neither zeal nor hands—for the glory of the +monastery of Whitby!</p> + +<p>Such is a literary anecdote of the seventh century conveyed +to us by ancient Bede. The dream of the apparition’s +inspiration of this unlettered monk was one more +miracle among many in honour of the monastery; and +it was to be told in the customary way, for never yet in +a holy brotherhood was found a recusant.</p> + +<p>Even to this day we ourselves dream grotesque adventures; +but in the days of monachism visions were not +merely a mere vivid and lengthened dream, a slight delirium, +for they usually announced something important. +A dream was a prognostic or a prelude. The garrulous +chroniclers, and saintly Bede himself, that primeval +gossiper, afford abundant evidence of such secret revelations. +Whenever some great act was designed, or some +awful secret was to be divulged, a dream announced it to +the world. Was a king to be converted to Christianity, +the people were enlightened by the vision which the +sovereign revealed to them; was a maiden to take the +vow of virginity, or a monastery to be built, an angelical +vision hovered, and sometimes specified the very spot. +Was a crime of blood to be divulged by some penitent +accessory, somebody had a dream, and the criminal has +stood convicted by the grave-side, which gave up the +fatal witness in his victim. In those ages of simplicity +and pious frauds, a dream was an admirable expedient by +which important events were carried on, and mystification +satisfactorily explained the incomprehensible.</p> + +<p>The marvellous incident on which the history of Cædmon +revolves may only veil a fact which has nothing extraordinary +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page39" id="page39"></a>39</span> +in itself when freed from the invention which +disguises it. Legends like the present one were often +borrowed by one monastery from another, and an exact +counterpart of the dream and history of our Saxon bard, +in a similar personage and a like result, has been pointed +out as occurring in Gaul. A vernacular or popular version +of the Scriptures being required, it was supplied by a +<i>peasant wholly ignorant of the poetic art till he had been +instructed in a</i> <span class="scs">DREAM</span>.<a name="fa1c5" id="fa1c5" href="#ft1c5"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p>Scriptural themes were common with the poets of the +monastery.<a name="fa2c5" id="fa2c5" href="#ft2c5"><span class="sp">2</span></a> The present enterprise, judging from the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page40" id="page40"></a>40</span> +variety of its fragments from both Testaments and from +the Apocrypha, in its complete state would have formed +a chronological poem of the main incidents of the Scriptures +in the vernacular Saxon. This was a burden of +magnitude which no single shoulder could have steadily +carried, and probably was supported by several besides +“the Dreamer.” Critical Saxonists, indeed, have detected +a variation in the style, and great inequalities in the work; +such discordances indicate that the paraphrase was occasionally +resumed by some successor, as idling monks at a +later period were often the continuators of voluminous +romances. I would class the Cædmonian poem among +the many attempts of the monachal genius to familiarize +the people with the miraculous and the religious narratives +in the Scriptures, by a paraphrase in the vernacular idiom. +The poem may be deemed as equivocal as the poet; the +text has been impeached; interpolations and omissions are +acknowledged by the learned in Saxon lore. The poem is +said to have been written in the seventh century, and the +earliest manuscript we possess is of the tenth, suffering in +that course of time all the corruptions or variations of the +scribes, while the ruder northern dialect has been changed +into the more polished southern. If we may confide in a +learned conjecture, it may happen that Cædmon is no +name at all, but merely a word or a phrase; and thus the +entity of the Dreamer of the Monastery of Whitby may +vanish in the wind of two Chaldaic syllables!<a name="fa3c5" id="fa3c5" href="#ft3c5"><span class="sp">3</span></a> Be this +as it may, for us the poem is an entity, whatever becomes +of the pretended Dreamer.</p> + +<p>It has become an arduous inquiry whether <span class="sc">Milton</span> has +not drawn largely from the obscurity of this monkish +Ennius? “In reading Cædmon,” says <span class="sc">Sharon Turner</span>, +“we are reminded of Milton—of a ‘Paradise Lost’ in rude +miniature.” Conybeare advances, “the pride, rebellion, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page41" id="page41"></a>41</span> +and punishments of Satan and his princes have a resemblance +to Milton so remarkable that <i>much of this portion +might be almost literally translated by a cento of lines +from the great poet</i>.”<a name="fa4c5" id="fa4c5" href="#ft4c5"><span class="sp">4</span></a> A recent Saxonist, in noticing +“the creation of Cædmon as beautiful,” adds, “it is still +more interesting from <i>its singular correspondence even in +expression with ‘Paradise Lost</i>.’”</p> + +<p>The ancient, as well as the modern, of these scriptural +poets has adopted a narrative which is not found in the +Scriptures. The rebellion of Satan before the creation of +man, and his precipitation with the apostate angels into a +dungeon-gulf of flame, and ice, and darkness, though an +incident familiar to us as a gospel text, remains nothing +more than a legend unhallowed by sacred writ.</p> + +<p>Where are we, then, to seek for the origin of a notion +universal throughout Christendom? I long imagined +that this revolt in heaven had been one of the traditions +hammered in the old rabbinical forge; and in the Talmudical +lore there are tales of the fallen angels; but I am +assured by a learned professor in these studies, that the +Talmud contains no narrative of “the Rebellion of Satan.” +The Hebrews, in their sojourn in Babylon, had imbibed +many Chaldean fables, and some fanciful inventions. At +this obscure period did this singular episode in sacred +history steal into their popular creed? Did it issue from +that awful cradle of monstrous imaginings, of demons, of +spirits, and of terrifying deities, Persia and India? In +the Brahminical Shasters we find a rebellion of the angels +before the creation, and their precipitation from light into +darkness; their restoration by the clemency of the Creator, +however, occurs after their probationary state, during +millions of years in their metamorphoses on earth. But +this seems only the veil of an allegory designed to explain +their dark doctrine of the metempsychosis. The rebellion +of the angels, as we have been taught it, is associated with +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page42" id="page42"></a>42</span> +their everlasting chains and eternal fire; how the legend +became universally received may baffle inquiry.<a name="fa5c5" id="fa5c5" href="#ft5c5"><span class="sp">5</span></a></p> + +<p>But the coincidence of the Cædmonian with the Miltonian +poem in having adopted the same peculiar subject +of the revolt of Satan and the expulsion of the angels, is +not the most remarkable one in the two works. The +same awful narrative is pursued, and we are startled at +the opening of the Pandemonium by discovering the same +scene and the same actors. When we scrutinise into +minuter parts, we are occasionally struck by some extraordinary +similarities.</p> + +<p>Cædmon, to convey a notion of the ejection from heaven +to hell, tells that “the Fiend, with all his comrades, fell +from heaven above, through as long as <i>three nights and +days</i>.” Milton awfully describes Satan “confounded, +though immortal,” rolling in the fiery gulf—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p><i>Nine times the space that measures day and night</i></p> +<p>To mortal men.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>Cædmon describes the Deity having cast the evil angel +into that “House of perdition, down on that new bed; +after, gave him a <i>name</i> that the highest (of the devils +which they had now become) should be called <i>Satan</i> +thenceforwards.” Milton has preserved the same notice +of the origin of <i>the name</i>, thus—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p class="i6">To whom the <i>Arch-Enemy</i>,</p> +<p>And thence in heaven called <i>Satan</i>—</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">Satan in Hebrew signifying “the Enemy,” or “the +Adversary.”</p> + +<p>The harangue of Satan to his legions by the Saxon +monk cannot fail to remind us of the first grand scene +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page43" id="page43"></a>43</span> +in the “Paradise Lost,” however these creations of the +two poets be distinct. “The swart hell—a land void of +light, and full of flame,” is like Milton’s—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p class="i6">——yet from these flames</p> +<p>No light, but rather darkness visible.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">The locality is not unlike, “There they have at even, +immeasurably long, each of all the fiends a renewal of +fire, with sulphur charged; but cometh ere dawn the +eastern wind frost, bitter-cold, ever fire or dart.” This +torment we find in the hell of Milton—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p class="i10">The bitter change</p> +<p>Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,</p> +<p>From beds of raging <i>fire</i> to starve in <i>ice</i>.</p> + +<p class="i8 s">The parching air</p> +<p><i>Burns frore</i>, and <i>cold performs the effect of fire</i>.<a name="fa6c5" id="fa6c5" href="#ft6c5"><span class="sp">6</span></a></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">The “Inferno” of Dante has also “its eternal darkness for +the dwellers in fierce <i>heat</i> and in <i>ice</i>.”<a name="fa7c5" id="fa7c5" href="#ft7c5"><span class="sp">7</span></a> It is evident +that the Saxon, the Italian, and the Briton had drawn +from the same source. The Satan of Cædmon in “the +torture-house” is represented as in “the dungeon of perdition.” +He lies in chains, his feet bound, his hands +manacled, his neck fastened by iron bonds; Satan and his +crew the monk has degraded into Saxon convicts. Milton +indeed has his</p> + +<p class="center ptb1 f90">Adamantine chains and penal fire,</p> + +<p class="noind">and</p> + +<p class="center ptb1 f90">A dungeon horrible on all sides round.</p> + +<p class="noind">But as Satan was to be the great actor, Milton was soon +compelled to find some excuse for freeing the evil spirit +from the chains which Heaven had forged, and this he +does—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Chain’d on the burning lake, <i>nor ever thence</i></p> +<p><i>Had ris’n or heaved his head, but that the will</i></p> +<p><i>And high permission of all-ruling Heaven</i></p> +<p><i>Left him at large to his own dark designs</i>,</p> +<p>That with reiterated crimes he might</p> +<p>Heap on himself damnation, while he sought</p> +<p>Evil to others.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The Saxon monk had not the dexterity to elude the +difficult position in which the arch-fiend was for ever fixed; +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page44" id="page44"></a>44</span> +he was indissolubly chained, and yet much was required +to be done. It is not, therefore, Satan himself who goes +on the subdolous design of wreaking his revenge on the +innocent pair in Paradise; for this he despatches one of +his associates, who is thus described: “Prompt in arms, +he had a crafty soul; this chief set his helmet on his +head; he many speeches knew of guileful words: wheeled +up from thence, he <i>departed through the doors of hell</i>.” +We are reminded of</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>The infernal doors, that on their hinges grate</p> +<p>Harsh thunder.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The emissary of Satan in Cædmon had “a strong mind, +lion-like in air, <i>in hostile mood he dashed the fire aside with +a fiend’s power</i>.”<a name="fa8c5" id="fa8c5" href="#ft8c5"><span class="sp">8</span></a> That demon flings aside the flames +of hell with the bravery of his sovereign, as we see in +Milton—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool</p> +<p>His mighty stature; <i>on each hand the flames</i></p> +<p><i>Driv’n backward, slope their pointing spires, and roll’d</i></p> +<p><i>In billows</i>, leave in the midst a horrid vale.<a name="fa9c5" id="fa9c5" href="#ft9c5"><span class="sp">9</span></a></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>Cædmon thus represents Satan:—“Then spoke the +haughty king, who of angels erst was <i>brightest, fairest in +heaven</i>—beloved of his master—<i>so beauteous was his form</i>, +he was like to the light stars.”</p> + +<p>Milton’s conception of the form of Satan is the same.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p class="i6">His form had not yet lost</p> +<p>All her <i>original brightness</i>, nor appear’d</p> +<p>Less than archangel ruin’d.<a name="fa10c5" id="fa10c5" href="#ft10c5"><span class="sp">10</span></a></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">And,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>His countenance as the <i>morning star</i> that guides</p> +<p>The starry flock, allured them.<a name="fa11c5" id="fa11c5" href="#ft11c5"><span class="sp">11</span></a></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>Literary curiosity may be justly excited to account for +these apparent resemblances, and to learn whether similarity +and coincidence necessarily prove identity and +imitation; and whether, finally, Cædmon was ever known +to Milton.</p> + +<p>The Cædmonian manuscript is as peculiar in its history +as its subject. This poem, which we are told fixed +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page45" id="page45"></a>45</span> +the attention of our ancestors “from the sixth to the +twelfth century,” and the genius of whose writer was +“stamped deeply and lastingly upon the literature of our +country,”<a name="fa12c5" id="fa12c5" href="#ft12c5"><span class="sp">12</span></a> had wholly disappeared from any visible existence. +It was accidentally discovered only in a single +manuscript, the gift of Archbishop Usher to the learned +Francis <span class="sc">Junius</span>. During thirty years of this eminent +scholar’s residence in England, including his occasional +visits to Holland and Friesland, to recover, by the study +of the Friesic living dialect, the extinct Anglo-Saxon, he +devoted his protracted life to the investigation of the +origin of the Gothic dialects. A Saxon poem, considerable +for its size and for its theme, in a genuine manuscript, +was for our northern student a most precious acquisition; +and that this solitary manuscript should not he liable to +accidents, Junius printed the original at Amsterdam in +1655, unaccompanied by any translation or by any notes.</p> + +<p>We must now have recourse to a few dates.</p> + +<p>Milton had fallen blind in 1654. The poet began +“Paradise Lost” about 1658; the composition occupied +three years, but the publication was delayed till 1667.</p> + +<p>If Milton had any knowledge of Cædmon, it could only +have been in the solitary and treasured manuscript of +Junius. To have granted even the loan of the only +original the world possessed, we may surmise that Junius +would not have slept through all the nights of its absence. +And if the Saxon manuscript was ever in the +hands of Milton, could our poet have read it?</p> + +<p>We have every reason to believe that Milton did not +read Saxon. At that day who did? There were not +“ten men to save the city.” In Milton’s “History of +England,” a loose and solitary reference to the Saxon +Chronicle, then untranslated, was probably found ready at +hand; for all his Saxon annals are drawn from the Latin +monkish authorities: and in that wonderful list of one +hundred dramatic subjects which the poet had set down +for the future themes of his muse, there are many on +Saxon stories; but all the references are to Speed and +Hollinshed. The nephew of the poet has enumerated all +the languages in which Milton was conversant—“the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page46" id="page46"></a>46</span> +Hebrew, (and I think the Syriac,) the Greek, the Latin, +the Italian, the Spanish, and French.” We find no allusion +to any of the northern tongues, which that votary of +classical antiquity and of Ausonian melody and fancy +would deem—can we doubt it?—dissonant and barbarous. +The Northern Scalds were yet as little known as our own +Saxons. A recent discovery that Milton once was desirous +of reading Dutch may possibly be alleged by the +Saxonists as an approach to the study of the Saxon; but +at that time Milton was in office as “the Secretary for +Foreign Tongues,” and in a busy intercourse with the +Hollanders.<a name="fa13c5" id="fa13c5" href="#ft13c5"><span class="sp">13</span></a></p> + +<p>“Secretary Milton” at that moment was probably +anxious to con the phrases of a Dutch state-paper, to +scrutinise into the temper of their style. Had Milton +ever acquired the Dutch idiom for literary purposes, to +study Vondel, the Batavian Shakspeare,<a name="fa14c5" id="fa14c5" href="#ft14c5"><span class="sp">14</span></a> from whom some +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page47" id="page47"></a>47</span> +foreigners imagine our poet might have drawn his +“Lucifer,” it could not have escaped the nephew in the +enumeration of his uncle’s philological acquirements. +But even to read Dutch was not to read a Saxon manuscript, +whose strange characters, uncouth abbreviations, +and difficult constructions, are only mastered by long +practice. To have known anything about the solitary +Cædmon, the poet must have been wholly indebted to +the friendly offices of its guardian; a personal intimacy +which does not appear. The improbability that this +scholar translated the manuscript phrase by phrase is +nearly as great as the supposition that the poet could +have retained ideas and expressions to be reproduced in +that epic poem, which was not commenced till several +years after.</p> + +<p>The personal habits of Junius were somewhat peculiar; +to his last days he was unrelentingly busied in pursuits of +philology, of which, he has left to the Bodleian such +monuments of his gigantic industry. Junius was such a +rigid economist of time, that every hour was allotted to +its separate work; each day was the repetition of the +former, and on a system he avoided all visitors. Such a +man could not have submitted to the reckless loss of many +a golden day, in hammering at the obscure sense of the +Saxon monk, which the critics find by his own printed +text he could not always master; nor is it more likely +that Milton himself could have sustained his poetic excitement +through the tedious progress of a verbal or +cursory paraphrase of Scripture history by this Gothic +bard. At that day even Junius could not have discovered +those “elastic rhythms,” which solicit the ear of a more +modern Saxon scholar in his studies of Cædmon,<a name="fa15c5" id="fa15c5" href="#ft15c5"><span class="sp">15</span></a> but +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page48" id="page48"></a>48</span> +which we entirely owe to the skill, and punctuation, and +accentuation of the recent editor, Mr. Thorpe.</p> + +<p>Be it also observed, that Milton published his “Paradise +Lost” in the lifetime of Junius, the only judge who +could have convicted the bard who had daringly proposed</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p class="i8">————to pursue</p> +<p>Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme—</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">of concealing what he had silently appropriated.</p> + +<p>There are so many probabilities against the single possibility +of Milton having had any knowledge of Cædmon, +that we must decide by the numerical force of our own +suggestions.</p> + +<p>The startling similarities which have led away critical +judgments, if calmly scrutinised, may be found to be +those apparent resemblances or coincidences which poets +drawing from the same source would fall into. There +is a French mystery of “The Conception,” where the +scene is hell; Lucifer appeals to its inmates in a long +address. This Satan of “The Conception” strikingly reminds +us of the Prince of Darkness of Milton, and +indeed has many creative touches; and had it been +written after the work of Milton, it might have seemed a +parody.<a name="fa16c5" id="fa16c5" href="#ft16c5"><span class="sp">16</span></a></p> + +<p>Similarity and coincidence do not necessarily prove +identity and imitation. Nor is the singular theme of +“the Rebellion of the Angels” peculiar to either poet, +since those who never heard of the Saxon monk have constructed +whole poems and dramas on the celestial revolt.<a name="fa17c5" id="fa17c5" href="#ft17c5"><span class="sp">17</span></a></p> + +<p>We may be little interested to learn, among all the +dubious inquiries of “the origin of ‘Paradise Lost,’” +whether a vast poem, the most elaborate in its parts, and +the most perfect in its completion—a work, in the words +of the great artist—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p class="i4">——who knows how long</p> +<p>Before had been contriving?—P. L., ix. 138.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page49" id="page49"></a>49</span></p> + +<p class="noind">was or could be derived from any obscure source. The +interval between excellence and mediocrity removes all +connexion; it is that between incurable impotence and +genial creation. A great poet can never be essentially +indebted even to his prototype.</p> + +<p>If we may still be interested in watching the primitive +vigour of the self-taught, compared with the intellectual +ideal of the poetical character, we must not allow ourselves, +as might be shown in one of the critics of the Saxon +school, to mistake nature in her first poverty, bare, meagre, +squalid, for the moulded nudity of the Graces. The nature +of Ennius was no more the nature of Virgil than the nature +of Cædmon was that of Milton, for what is obvious and +familiar is the reverse of the beautiful and the sublime. +We have seen the ideal being,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Whose stature reach’d the sky, and on his crest</p> +<p>Sat Horror plumed—</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">by the Saxon monk sunk down to a Saxon convict, +“fastened by the neck, his hands manacled, and his feet +bound.”</p> + +<p>Cædmon represents Eve, after having plucked the fruit, +hastening to Adam with the apples,—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Some in her hands she bare,</p> +<p>Some in her bosom lay,</p> +<p>Of the unblest fruit.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">However natural or downright may be this specification, +it is what could not have occurred with “the bosom” of +our naked mother of mankind, and the artistical conception +eluded the difficulty of carrying these apples—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>————from the tree returning, in her hand</p> +<p><i>A bough of fairest fruit</i>.—ix. 850.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>In Cædmon, it costs Eve a long day to persuade the +sturdy Adam, an honest Saxon, to “the dark deed;” and +her prudential argument that “it were best to obey the +pretended messenger of the Lord than risk his aversion,” +however natural, is very crafty for so young a sinner. In +Milton we find the Ideal, and before Eve speaks one may +be certain of Adam’s fall—for</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p class="i2">————in her face excuse</p> +<p>Came prologue, and apology too prompt,</p> +<p>Which with bland words at will, she thus address’d.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page50" id="page50"></a>50</span></p> + +<p class="noind">A description too metaphysical for the meagre invention of +the old Saxon monk!</p> + +<p>We dare not place “the Milton of our forefathers” by +the side of the only Milton whom the world will recognise. +We would not compare our Saxon poetry to Saxon art, for +that was too deplorable; but, to place Cædmon in a parallel +with Milton, which Plutarch might have done, for he was +not very nice in his resemblances, we might as well compare +the formless forms and the puerile inventions of the +rude Saxon artist, profusely exhibited in the drawings of +the original manuscript of Cædmon,<a name="fa18c5" id="fa18c5" href="#ft18c5"><span class="sp">18</span></a> with the noble conceptions +and the immortal designs of the Sistine Chapel.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c5" id="ft1c5" href="#fa1c5"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Sir Francis Palgrave’s “Dissertation on Cædmon,” in the Archæologia.</p> + +<p>In another work this erudite antiquary explains the marvellous part +of Cædmon’s history by “natural causes;” and such a principle of investigation +is truly philosophical; but we must not look over imposture +in the search for “natural causes.” “Cædmon’s inability to perform +his task,” observes our learned expositor, “appears to have arisen +rather from the want of musical knowledge than from his dulness, and +therefore it is quite possible that, <i>allowing for some little exaggeration</i>, +his poetical talents may have been <i>suddenly developed in the manner +described</i>.”—“Hist. of England,” i. 162. Thus the Saxon Milton rose +in one memorable night after a whole life passed without the poet once +surmising himself to be poetical; and thus, for we consent not to yield +up a single point in the narrative of “the Dream,” appeared the +patronising apparition and the exhilarating dialogue. A lingering lover +of the Mediæval genius can perceive nothing more in a <i>circumstantial +legend</i> than “a little exaggeration.” I seem to hear the shrill +attenuated tones of Ritson, in his usual idiomatic diction, screaming, +“It is a <i>Lie</i> and an <i>Imposture</i> of the stinking <i>Monks</i>!”</p> + +<p>The Viscount de Chateaubriand is infinitely more amusing than the +plodders in the “weary ways of antiquity.” The mystical tale of the +Saxon monk is dashed into a glittering foam of enigmatical brevity. +“<i>Cædmon rêvait en vers et composait des poèmes en dormant; Poésie +est Songe.</i>” And thus dreams may be expounded by dreams!—“Essai +sur la Litérature Anglaise,” i. 55.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c5" id="ft2c5" href="#fa2c5"><span class="fn">2</span></a> “The Six Days of the Creation” offered a subject for an heroic +poem to Dracontius, a Spanish monk, in the fifth century, and who +was censured for neglecting to honour the seventh by a description of +the Sabbath of the Divine repose. It is preserved in “Bib. Patrum,” +vol. viii., and has been published with notes. Genesis and Exodus—the +fall of Adam—the Deluge—and the passage of the Red Sea, were +themes which invited the sacred effusions of Avitus, the Archbishop of +Vienne, who flourished in the sixth century. His writings were collected +by Père Sirmond. This Archbishop attacked the Arians, but +we have only fragments of these polemical pamphlets; as these were +highly orthodox, what is wanting occasioned regrets in a former day. +Other histories in Latin verse drawn from the Old Testament are recorded.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c5" id="ft3c5" href="#fa3c5"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Among our ancestors all proper names were significant; and when +they are not, we have the strongest presumptive reasons for suspecting +that the name has been borrowed from some other tongue. The piety +of many monks in their pilgrimages in the Holy Land would induce +them to acquire some knowledge of the Hebrew or even the Chaldee—Bede +read Hebrew. A scholar who has justly observed this, somewhat +cabalistically has discovered that “the initial word of Genesis in +Chaldee,” and printed in Hebraic characters בהדסין, exhibits the presumed +name of the Saxon monk.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c5" id="ft4c5" href="#fa4c5"><span class="fn">4</span></a> This sort of cento seems to have been a favourite fancy with this +masterly versifier; for of another Anglo-Saxon bard who composed on +warlike subjects, this critic says—“If the names of Patroclus and +Menelaus were substituted for Byrthnoth and Godric, some of the scenes +might be almost literally translated into a cento of lines from Homer.” +Homer’s claim to originality, however, is secure from any critical collation +with the old Saxon monk.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c5" id="ft5c5" href="#fa5c5"><span class="fn">5</span></a> Notwithstanding the information with which I was favoured, I +cannot divest myself of the notion that “the rebellion of the angels” +must be more explicitly described among the Jewish traditions than yet +appears; because we find allusions to it in two of the apostolical writings. +In the epistle of Jude, ver. 6: “<i>The angels which kept not +their first estate</i>, but left their own habitation, He hath reserved in +everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.” +And in Peter, ii. 4: “<i>God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast +them down to Hell</i>, and delivered them unto chains of darkness to be +reserved unto judgment.” These texts have admitted of some dispute; +but it seems, however, probable that the apostles, just released from +their Jewish bondage, had not emancipated themselves from the received +Hebraical doctrines.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c5" id="ft6c5" href="#fa6c5"><span class="fn">6</span></a> Paradise Lost, ii. 594.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c5" id="ft7c5" href="#fa7c5"><span class="fn">7</span></a> Inferno, Canto iii. 5.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c5" id="ft8c5" href="#fa8c5"><span class="fn">8</span></a> Cædmon, p. 29.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c5" id="ft9c5" href="#fa9c5"><span class="fn">9</span></a> Paradise Lost, i. 221.</p> + +<p><a name="ft10c5" id="ft10c5" href="#fa10c5"><span class="fn">10</span></a> Paradise Lost, i. 592.</p> + +<p><a name="ft11c5" id="ft11c5" href="#fa11c5"><span class="fn">11</span></a> Paradise Lost, v. 798.</p> + +<p><a name="ft12c5" id="ft12c5" href="#fa12c5"><span class="fn">12</span></a> Guest’s “History of English Rhythms,” ii. 23.</p> + +<p><a name="ft13c5" id="ft13c5" href="#fa13c5"><span class="fn">13</span></a> This curious literary information has been disclosed by <span class="sc">Roger +Williams</span>, the founder of the State of Rhode Island, who was despatched +to England in 1651, to obtain the repeal of a charter granted to Mr. +Coddington. I give this remarkable passage in the words of this +Anglo-American:—“It pleased the Lord to call me for some time and +with some persons to practise the Hebrew, the Greek, Latin, French +and Dutch. <i>The secretary of the council, Mr. Milton, for my Dutch +I read him, read me many more languages.</i> Grammar rules begin to +be esteemed a tyranny. I taught two young gentlemen, a parliament-man’s +sons, as we teach our children English—by words, phrases, and +constant talk, &c.” This vague &c. stands so in the original, and +leaves his “wondrous tale half-told.” “Memoirs of Roger Williams, +the Founder of the State of Rhode Island, by James D. Knowles, +Professor of Pastoral Duties in the Newton Theological Institution,” +1834, p. 264.</p> + +<p>I am indebted for this curious notice to the prompt kindness of my +most excellent friend <span class="sc">Robert Southey</span>; a name long dear to the public +as it will be to posterity; an author, the accuracy of whose knowledge +does not yield to its extent.</p> + +<p><a name="ft14c5" id="ft14c5" href="#fa14c5"><span class="fn">14</span></a> Mr. <span class="sc">Southey</span> observes, in a letter now before me, that “<span class="sc">Vondel’s</span> +‘Lucifer’ was published in 1654. His ‘Samson,’ the same subject as +the ‘Agonistes,’ 1661. His ‘Adam,’ 1664. <span class="sc">Cædmon</span>, <span class="sc">Andreini</span>, and +<span class="sc">Vondel</span>, each or all, may have led Milton to consider the subject of +his ‘Paradise Lost.’ But Vondel is the one who is most likely to +have impressed him. Neither the Dutch nor the language were regarded +with disrespect in those days. Vondel was the greatest writer +of that language, and the <i>Lucifer</i> is esteemed the best of his tragedies. +Milton alone excepted, he was probably the greatest poet then +living.”</p> + +<p>This critical note furnishes curious dates. Milton was blind when +the <i>Lucifer</i> was published; and there is so much of the personal feelings +and condition of the poet himself in his “Samson Agonistes,” that +it is probable little or no resemblance could be traced in the Hollander. +The “Adam” of Milton, and the whole “Paradise” itself, was completed +in 1661. As for Cædmon, I submit the present chapter to Mr. +Southey’s decision.</p> + +<p>No great genius appears to have made such free and wise use of his +reading as Milton has done, and which has led in several instances to +an accusation of what some might term plagiarism. We are not certain +that Milton, when not yet blind, may not have read some of those +obscure modern Latin poets whom Lauder scented out.</p> + +<p><a name="ft15c5" id="ft15c5" href="#fa15c5"><span class="fn">15</span></a> Guest’s “History of English Rhythms.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft16c5" id="ft16c5" href="#fa16c5"><span class="fn">16</span></a> This speech, in which Satan appeals to and characterises his Infernals, +may be read in Parfait’s analysis of the Mystery.—<i>Hist. du +Théâtre François</i>, i. 79.</p> + +<p><a name="ft17c5" id="ft17c5" href="#fa17c5"><span class="fn">17</span></a> <i>L’Angeleida</i> of <span class="sc">Valvasone</span>, the <i>Adamo</i> of <span class="sc">Andreini</span>, and others.—Hayley’s +Conjectures on the Origin of “Paradise Lost.” See also +Tiraboschi, and Ginguéné.</p> + +<p><a name="ft18c5" id="ft18c5" href="#fa18c5"><span class="fn">18</span></a> These singular attempts at art may be inspected in above fifty +plates, in the Archæologia, vol. xx. We may rejoice at their preservation, +for art, even in the attempts of its children, may excite ideas +which might not else have occurred to us.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page51" id="page51"></a>51</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">BEOWULF; THE HERO-LIFE.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">The</span> Anglo-Saxon poetical narrative of “The Exploits of +Beowulf” forms a striking contrast with the chronological +paraphrase of Cædmon. Its genuine antiquity unquestionably +renders it a singular curiosity; but it derives an +additional interest from its representation of the primitive +simplicity of a Homeric period—the infancy of customs +and manners and emotions of that Hero-life, which the +Homeric poems first painted for mankind:—that Hero-life +of which Macpherson in his Ossian caught but imperfect +conceptions from the fragments he may have collected, +while he metamorphosed his ideal Celtic heroes into those +of the sentimental romance of another age and another +race.</p> + +<p>The northern hordes under their petty chieftains, cast +into a parallel position with those princes of Greece whose +realms were provinces, and whose people were tribes, often +resembled them in the like circumstances, the like characters, +and the like manners. Such were those kinglings +who could possess themselves of a territory in a single incursion, +and whose younger brothers, stealing out of their +lone bays, extended their dominion as “Sea-Kings” on the +illimitable ocean.<a name="fa1c6" id="fa1c6" href="#ft1c6"><span class="sp">1</span></a> The war-ship and the mead-hall bring +us back to that early era of society, when great men knew +only to be heroes, flattered by their bards, whose songs are +ever the echoes of their age and their patrons.</p> + +<p>We discover these heroes, Danes or Angles, as we find +them in the Homeric period, audacious with the self-confidence +of their bodily prowess; vaunting, and talkative +of their sires and of themselves; the son ever known by +denoting the father, and the father by his marriage +alliance—that primitive mode of recognition, at a period +when, amid the perpetual conflicts of rival chieftains, +scarcely any but relations could be friends; the family bond +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page52" id="page52"></a>52</span> +was a sure claim to protection. Like the Homeric heroes, +they were as unrelenting in their hatreds as indissoluble in +their partisanship; suspicious of the stranger, but welcoming +the guest; we find them rapacious, for plunder was +their treasure, and prodigal in their distributions of their +golden armlets and weighed silver, for their egotism was +as boundless as their violence. Yet pride and glory fermented +the coarse leaven of these mighty marauders, who +were even chivalric ere chivalry rose into an order. The +religion of these ages was wild as their morality; few +heroes but bore some relationship to Woden; and even in +their rude paganised Christianity, some mythological name +cast its lustre in their genealogies. In the uncritical +chronicles of the middle ages it is not always evident +whether the mortal was not a divinity. Their mythic +legends have thrown confusion into their national annals, +often accepted by historians as authentic records.<a name="fa2c6" id="fa2c6" href="#ft2c6"><span class="sp">2</span></a> But +if antiquaries still wander among shadows, the poet cannot +err. <span class="sc">Beowulf</span> may be a god or a nonentity, but the +poem which records his exploits must at least be true, true +in the manners it paints and the emotions which the poet +reveals—the emotions of his contemporaries.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page53" id="page53"></a>53</span></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Beowulf</span>,<a name="fa3c6" id="fa3c6" href="#ft3c6"><span class="sp">3</span></a> a chieftain of the Western Danes, was the +Achilles of the North. We first view him with his followers +landing on the shores of a Danish kingling. A +single ship with an armed company, in those predatory +days, could alarm a whole realm. The petty independent +provinces of Greece afford a parallel; for Thucydides has +marked this period in society, when plunder well fought +for was honoured as an heroic enterprise. When a vessel +touched on a strange shore, the adventurers were questioned +“whether they were thieves?” a designation +which the inquirers did not intend as a term of reproach, +nor was it scorned by the valiant;<a name="fa4c6" id="fa4c6" href="#ft4c6"><span class="sp">4</span></a> for the spoliation of +foreigners, at a time when the law of nations had no +existence, seemed no disgrace, while it carried with it +something of glory, when the chieftain’s sword maintained +the swarm of his followers, or acquired for himself an +extended dominion.</p> + +<p>Beowulf was a mailed knight, and his gilded ensign +hung like a meteor in the air, and none knew the fate it +portended. The warder of the coast, for in those days +many a warder kept “ocean-watch” on the sea-cliffs, takes +horse, and hastens to the invader; fearlessly he asks, +“Whence, and what are ye? Soonest were best to give +me answer.”</p> + +<p>The hero had come not to seek feud, nor to provoke +insult, but with the free offering of his own life to relieve +the sovereign of the Eastern Danes, whose thanes, for +twelve years, had vainly perished, struggling with a mysterious +being—one of the accursed progeny of Cain—a foul +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page54" id="page54"></a>54</span> +and solitary creature of the morass and the marsh. In +the dead of the night this enemy of man, envious of glory +and abhorrent of pleasure, glided into the great hall of +state and revelry, raging athirst for the blood of the brave +there reposing in slumber. The tale had spread in songs +through all Gothland. This life-devourer, who comes +veiled in a mist from the marshes, may be some mythic +being; but though monstrous, it does little more than +play the part of the Polyphemus of antiquity and the Ogre +of modern fairyism.</p> + +<p>In the timber-palace chambers were but small and few, +and the guests of the petty sovereign slept in the one great +hall, under whose echoing roof the Witenagemot assembled, +and the royal banquet was held; there each man had his +“bed and bolster” laid out, with his shield at his head, +and his helmet, breastplate, and spear placed on a rack +beside him—“at all times ready for combat both in house +and field.”</p> + +<p>This scene is truly Homeric; and thus we find in the +early state of Greece, for the historian records this continual +wearing of armour, <i>like the barbarians</i>, because +“their houses were unfenced, and travelling was unsafe.”<a name="fa5c6" id="fa5c6" href="#ft5c6"><span class="sp">5</span></a></p> + +<p>The watchman of the seas leaves not the coast, duteous +in his lonely cares; while Beowulf, with his companions, +marches onwards. They came to where the streets were +paved; an indication in that age of a regal residence. The +iron rings in their mailed coats rang as they trod in their +“terrible armour.” They reach the king’s house; they +hang up their shields against the lofty wall. They seat +themselves on a bench, placing in a circle their mailed +coats, their bucklers, and their javelins. This warlike +array called forth an Ulysses, “famed for war and +wisdom;” they parley; the thane hastens to announce +the warlike but the friendly visitor; and the hero, so famed +for valour, yet would not obtrude his person, standing +behind the thane, “for he knew the rule of ceremony.” +The prince of the East Danes joyfully exclaims, that “he +had known Beowulf when a child; he remembered the +name of his father, who married the only daughter of +Hrethel the Goth. It is said that he has the strength of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page55" id="page55"></a>55</span> +thirty men in the grip of his hand. God only could have +sent him.”</p> + +<p>Beowulf, he whose beautiful ship had come over “the +swan-path,” may now peacefully show himself in his warlike +array. Beowulf stood upon the dais; his “sark of +netted mail” glittered where the armourer’s skill had +wrought around the war-net. Here we discover the ornamental +artist as in the Homeric period. He found the +prince of the East Danes, “old and bald” like Priam, +seated among his earls. Our hero, whom we have observed +so decorous in “his rule of ceremony,” now launches forth +in the commendation of his own prowess.</p> + +<p>He who had come to vanquish a fiend exulted not less +in a swimming-match in the seas, “when the waves were +boiling with the fury of winter,” during seven whole days +and nights, combating with the walruses.</p> + +<p>The exploits of Beowulf are of a supernatural cast; and +this circumstance has bewildered his translator amid +mythic allusions, and thus the hero sinks into the incarnation +of a Saxon idol,—a protector of the human race. +It is difficult to decide whether the marvellous incidents +be mythical, or merely exaggerations of the northern +poetic faculty. We, however, learn by these, that corporeal +energies and an indomitable spirit were the glories +of the hero-life; and the outbreaks of their self-complacency +resulted from their own convictions, after many a fierce +trial.</p> + +<p>Such an heroic race we deem barbarous; but what are +the nobler spirits of all times but the creatures of their +age? who, however favoured by circumstances, can only +do that which is practicable in the condition of society.</p> + +<p>Henforth, the son of Eglaff, sate at the feet of the king; +jealousy stirred in his breast at the prowess of “the proud +seafarer.” This cynical minister of the king ridicules his +youthful exploits, and sarcastically assured the hero, that +“he has come to a worse matter now, should he dare to +pass the space of one night with the fiend.” This personage +is the Thersites of our northern Homer—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>With witty malice studious to defame,</p> +<p>Scorn all his joy, and laughter all his aim.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">And like Thersites, the son of Eglaff receives a blasting +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page56" id="page56"></a>56</span> +reproach:—“I tell thee, son of Eglaff, drunken with +mead, that I have greater strength upon the sea than any +other man. We two (he alludes to his competitor), when +we were but boys, with our naked swords in our hands, +where the waves were fiercest, warred with the walruses. +The whale-fish dragged me to the bottom of the sea, grim +in his gripe; the mighty sea-beast received the war-rush +through my hand. The sea became calm, so that I +beheld the ocean promontories, as the light broke from the +east. Never since have the sea-sailors been hindered of +their way; never have I heard of a harder battle by night +under the concave of heaven, nor of a man more wretched +on the ocean-streams. Of such ambushes and fervour of +swords I have not heard aught of thee, else had the fiend I +come to vanquish never accomplished such horrors against +thy prince. I boast not, therefore, son of Eglaff! but +never have I slaughtered those of my kin, for which hast +thou incurred damnation, though thy wit be good.”</p> + +<p>In this state of imperfect civilization, we discover +already a right conception of the female character. At +the banquet the queen appears; she greeted the young +Goth, bearing in her own hand the bright sweet liquor in +the twisted mead-cup. She went among the young and +the old mindful of their races; the free-born queen then +sate beside the monarch. There was laughter of heroes. +A bard sung serene on “the origin of things,” as Iopas +sang at the court of Dido, and Demodocus at that of +Alcinous. The same bard again excites joy in the hall by +some warlike tale. Never was banquet without poet in +the Homeric times.</p> + +<p>Here our task ends, which was not to analyse the tale +of Beowulf, but solely to exhibit the manners of a primeval +epoch in society. The whole romance, though but +short, bears another striking feature of the mighty minstrel +of antiquity; it is far more dramatic than narrative, +for the characters discover themselves more by dialogue +than by action.</p> + +<p>The literary history of this Anglo-Saxon metrical romance +is too remarkable to be omitted. It not only cast a +new light on a disputed object in our own literary history, +but awoke the patriotism of a foreign nation. Beowulf +had shared the fate of Cædmon, being preserved only +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page57" id="page57"></a>57</span> +in a single manuscript in the Cottonian Library, where it +escaped from the destructive fire of 1731, not, however, +without injury. In 1705, Wanley had attempted to describe +it, but he did not surmount the difficulty. Our +literary antiquaries, with Ritson for their leader, stubbornly +asserted that the Anglo-Saxons had no metrical +romance, as they opined by their scanty remains. The +learned historian of our Anglo-Saxons, in the progress of +his ceaseless pursuit, unburied this hidden treasure—which +at once refuted the prevalent notions; but this literary +curiosity was fated to excite deeper emotions among the +honest Danes.</p> + +<p>The existing manuscript of “The Exploits of Beowulf” +is of the tenth century; but the poem was evidently +composed at a far remoter period; though, as all the personages +of the romance are Danes, and all the circumstances +are Danish, it may be conjectured, if it be an original +Anglo-Saxon poem, that it was written when the +Danes had a settlement in some parts of Britain. At +Copenhagen the patriotism of literature is ardent. The +learned there claimed Beowulf as their own, and alleged +that the Anglo-Saxon was the version of a Danish poem; +it became one of the most ancient monuments of the early +history of their country, and not the least precious to them +for its connexion with English affairs. The Danish antiquaries +still amuse their imagination with the once Danish +kingdom of Northumbria, and still call us “brothers;” as +at Caen, where the whole academy still persist in disputations +on the tapestry of Bayeux, and style themselves +our “masters.”</p> + +<p>It was, therefore, a national mortification to the Danes +that it was an Englishman who had first made known +this relic; and further, that it existed only in the library +of England. The learned <span class="sc">Thorkelin</span> was despatched on +a literary expedition, and a careful transcript of the manuscript +of Beowulf was brought to the learned and patriotic +Danes. It was finished for the press, accompanied +by a translation and a commentary, in 1807. At the siege +of Copenhagen a British bomb fell on the study of the +hapless scholar, annihilating “Beowulf,” transcript, translation, +and commentary, the toil of twenty years. It +seemed to be felt, by the few whose losses by sieges never +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page58" id="page58"></a>58</span> +appear in royal Gazettes, as not one of the least in that +sad day of warfare with “our brothers.” <span class="sc">Thorkelin</span> +was urged to restore the loss. But it was under great +disadvantages that his edition was published in 1815. +Mr. Kemble has redeemed our honour by publishing a +collated edition, afterwards corrected in a second with a +literal version. Such versions may supply the wants of +the philologist, but for the general reader they are doomed +to be read like vocabularies. Yet even thus humbled and +obscured, <span class="sc">Beowulf</span> aspires to a poetic existence. He appeals +to nature and excites our imagination—while the +monk, <span class="sc">Cædmon</span>, restricted by his faithful creed, and his +pertinacious chronology—seems to have afforded more delight +by his piety than the other by his genius—and remains +renowned as “the Milton of our forefathers!”</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c6" id="ft1c6" href="#fa1c6"><span class="fn">1</span></a> See the curious delineation of the Vikings of the North, in Turner’s +“Hist. of the Anglo-Saxons,” i. 456, third edition.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c6" id="ft2c6" href="#fa2c6"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Mr. <span class="sc">Kemble</span>, the translator of <span class="sc">Beowulf</span>, has extricated himself +out of an extraordinary dilemma. The first volume, which exhibits +the Anglo-Saxon text, furnished in the preface, with an elaborate +abundance, all the historical elucidations of his unknown hero. Subsequently +when the second volume appeared, which contains the translation, +it is preceded by “A Postscript to the Preface,” far more important. +Here, with the graceful repentance of precipitate youth, he +moans over the past, and warns the reader of “the postscript to cut +away the preface root and branch,” for all that he had published was +delusion! particularly “all that part of my preface which assigns dates +to one prince or another, I declare to be null and void!” The result +of all this scholar’s painful researches is, that Mr. Kemble is left in +darkness with Beowulf in his hand; an ambiguous being, whom the +legend creates with supernatural energies, and history labours to reduce +to mortal dimensions.</p> + +<p>The fault is hardly that of our honest Anglo-Saxon, as trustful of the +Danes as his forefathers were heretofore. It is these, our old masters, +who, with Count Suhm, the voluminous annalist of Denmark, at their +head, have “treated mythic and traditional matters as ascertained +history. It is the old story of Minos, Lycurgus, or Numa, furbished +up for us in the North.” What a delightful phantasmagoria comes out +while we remain in darkness! But a Danish Niebuhr may yet illuminate +the whole theatre of this Pantheon.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c6" id="ft3c6" href="#fa3c6"><span class="fn">3</span></a> These Teutonic heroes were frequently denominated by the names +of animals, which they sometimes emulated: thus, the hero exulting +in bone and nerve was known as “the Bear;” the more insatiable, as +“the Wolf;” and “the Wild Deer” is the common appellative of a +warrior. The term “Deer” was the generic name for animal, and not +then restricted to its present particular designation.</p> + +<p class="center">“Rats and Mice, and such <span class="sc">small Deer</span>,”</p> + +<p class="noind">baffled our Shakspearean commentators, who rarely looked to the great +source of the English language—the Anglo-Saxon, and, in their perplexity, +proposed to satisfy the modern reader by a botch of their own—and +read <i>geer</i> or <i>cheer</i>. Percy discovered in the old metrical romance +of “Sir Bevis of Southampton,” the very distich which Edgar had parodied.—Warton, +iii. 83.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c6" id="ft4c6" href="#fa4c6"><span class="fn">4</span></a> Thucydides, Lib. i.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c6" id="ft5c6" href="#fa5c6"><span class="fn">5</span></a> Thucydides.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page59" id="page59"></a>59</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE ANGLO-NORMANS.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">The</span> Anglo-Saxon dominion in England endured for more +than five centuries.</p> + +<p>A territorial people had ceased to be roving invaders, +but stood themselves in dread of the invasions of their +own ancient brotherhood. They trembled on their own +shores at those predatory hordes who might have reminded +them of the lost valour of their own ancestors. +But their warlike independence had passed away. And, +as a martial abbot declared of his countrymen, “they had +taken their swords from their sides and had laid them on +the altar, where they had rusted, and their edges were +now too dull for the field.”<a name="fa1c7" id="fa1c7" href="#ft1c7"><span class="sp">1</span></a> They could not even protect +the soil which they had conquered, and often wanted +the courage to choose a king of their own race. Sometimes +they stood ready to pay tribute to the Dane, and +sometimes suffered the throne to be occupied by a Danish +monarch. In a state of semi-civilization their rude luxury +hardly veiled their unintellectual character. Feeble sovereigns +and a submissive people could not advance into national +greatness.</p> + +<p>When the Duke of Normandy visited his friend and +kinsman, Edward the Confessor, he beheld in England a +mimetic Normandy; Norman favourites were courtiers, +and Norman soldiers were seen in Saxon castles. Edward, +long estranged from his native realm, had received +his education in Normandy; and the English court affected +to imitate the domestic habits of these French +neighbours—the great speaking the foreign idiom in their +houses, and writing in French their bills and accompts.<a name="fa2c7" id="fa2c7" href="#ft2c7"><span class="sp">2</span></a> +Already there was a faction of Frenchified Saxons in the +court of the unnational English sovereign.</p> + +<p>William the Norman surveyed an empire already half +Norman; and in the prospect, with his accustomed foresight, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page60" id="page60"></a>60</span> +he mused on a doubtful succession. A people who +had often suffered themselves to fall the prey of their +hardier neighbour, lie open for conquest to a more intelligent +and polished race.</p> + +<p>The victory of Hastings did not necessarily include the +conquest of the people, and William still condescended to +march to the throne under the shadow of a title. After a +short residence of only three months in his newly-acquired +realm, “the Conqueror” withdrew into his duchy, and +there passed a long interval of nine months. William left +many an unyielding Saxon; a spirit of resistance, however +suppressed, bound men together, and partial insurrections +seemed to be pushing on a crisis which might have reversed +the conquest of England.<a name="fa3c7" id="fa3c7" href="#ft3c7"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> + +<p>During this mysterious and protracted visit, and apparent +abandonment of his new kingdom to the care of +others, was a vast scheme of dominion nursed in the +councils of Norman nobles, and strengthened by the +boundless devotion of hardy adventurers, who were all to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page61" id="page61"></a>61</span> +share in the present spoliation and the future royalty? In +his prescient view did William there anticipate a conquest +of long labour and of distant days; the state, the nobles, +the ecclesiastics, the people, the land, and the language, +all to be changed? Hume has ventured to surmise that +the mind of the Norman laboured with this gigantic +fabric of dominion. It is probable, however, that this +child of a novel policy was submitted to a more natural +gestation, and expanded as circumstances favoured its +awful growth. One night in December the King suddenly +appeared in England, and soon unlimited confiscations +and royal grants apportioned the land of the Saxons +among the lords of Normandy, and even their lance-bearers. +It seemed as if every new-comer brought his castles +with him, so rapidly did castles cover the soil.<a name="fa4c7" id="fa4c7" href="#ft4c7"><span class="sp">4</span></a> These +were strongholds for the tyrant foreigner, or open retreats +for his predatory bands; stern overlookers were +they of the land!</p> + +<p>The Norman lords had courts of their own; sworn +vassals to their suzerain, but kinglings to the people. +Sometimes they beheld a Saxon lord, whose heart could +not tear itself from the lands of his race, a serf on his +own soil; but they witnessed without remorse the rights +of the sword. Norman prelates were silently substituted +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page62" id="page62"></a>62</span> +for Saxon ecclesiastics, and whole companies of claimants +arrived to steal into benefices or rush into abbeys. It was +sufficient to be a foreigner and land in England, to become +a bishop or an abbot. Church and State were now indissolubly +joined, for in the general plunder each took their +orderly rank. It was the triumph of an enlightened, +perhaps a cunning race, as the Norman has been proverbially +commemorated, over “a rustic and almost an illiterate +generation,” as the simplicity of our Saxon prelates, +who could not always speak French, is described by +Ordericus Vitalis, a monk who, long absent from England, +wrote in Normandy. Ingulphus, the monk of Croyland, +though partial to “the Conqueror,” however, honestly +confesses that when the English were driven from their +dignities, their successors were not always their superiors.</p> + +<p>All who were eager to court their new lords were +brought to dissemble their native rusticity. They polled +their crowns, they cut short their flowing hair, and throwing +aside the loose Saxon gown, they assumed the close +vest of the more agile Norman. “Mail of iron and coats +of steel would have better become them,” cried an indignant +Saxon. We have seen what a martial Saxon abbot +declared to the Conqueror, while he mourned over his +pacific countrymen. This was the time when it was held +a shame among Englishmen to appear English. It became +proverbial to describe a Saxon who ambitioned some +distinguished rank, that “he would be a gentleman if he +could but talk French.”</p> + +<p>Fertile in novelties as was this amazing revolution, the +most peculiar was the change of the language. The style +of power and authority was Norman; it interpreted the +laws, and it was even to torment the rising generation of +England; children learned the strange idiom by construing +their Latin into French, and thus, by learning +two foreign languages together, wholly unlearned their +own. Not only were they taught to speak French, but +the French character was adopted in place of their own +alphabet. It was a flagrant instance of the Conqueror’s +design to annihilate the national language, that finding a +College at Oxford with an establishment founded by Alfred +to maintain divines who were “to instruct the people in +their own vulgar tongue,” William decreed that “the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page63" id="page63"></a>63</span> +annual expense should never after be allowed out of the +King’s exchequer.”<a name="fa5c7" id="fa5c7" href="#ft5c7"><span class="sp">5</span></a></p> + +<p>The Norman prince on his first arrival could have entertained +no scheme of changing the language, for he +attempted to acquire it. The secretary of the Conqueror +has recorded that when the monarch seemed inclined to +adopt the customs of his new subjects, which his moderate +measures at first indicated, the Norman prince had tried +his patience and his ear to babble the obdurate idiom, till +he abhorred the sound of the Saxon tongue. If because +the Conqueror could not learn the Saxon language he +decided wholly to abolish it, this would seem nothing +more than a fantastic tyranny; but in truth, the language +of the conquered is usually held in contempt by the conquerors +for other reasons besides offending the delicacy of +the ear. The Normans could not endure the Saxon’s untunable +consonants, as it had occurred even to the unlettered +Saxons themselves; for barbarians as their hordes +were when they first became the masters of Britain, they +had declared that the British tongue was utterly barbarous.<a name="fa6c7" id="fa6c7" href="#ft6c7"><span class="sp">6</span></a></p> + +<p>But not at his bidding could the military chief for ever +silence the mother-tongue. Enough for “this stern man” +to guard the land in peace, while every single hyde of +land in England was known to him, and “put at its worth +in <span class="scs">HIS BOOK</span>,” as records the Saxon chronicler. The language +of a people is not to be conquered as the people +themselves. The “birth-tongue” may be imprisoned or +banished, but it cannot die—the people think in it; the +images of their thoughts, their traditional phrases, the +carol over the mead-cup, and their customs far diffused, +survived even the iron tongue of the curfew.</p> + +<p>The Saxons themselves, who had chased the native +Britons from their land, still found that they could not +suppress the language of the fugitive people. The conquerors +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page64" id="page64"></a>64</span> +gave their Anglo-Saxon denominations to the +towns and villages they built; but the hills, the forests, +and the rivers retain their old Celtic names.<a name="fa7c7" id="fa7c7" href="#ft7c7"><span class="sp">7</span></a> Nature +and nationality will outlast the transient policy of a new +dynasty.</p> + +<p>The novel idiom became the language of those only +with whom the court-language, whatever it be, will ever +prevail—the men who by their contiguity to the great +affect to participate in their influence. In that magic +circle of hopes and fears where royalty is the sole magician +of the fortunes of men, the Conqueror perpetuated +his power by perpetuating his language. Ignorance of +the French tongue was deemed a sufficient pretext for +banishing an English bishop pertinacious in his nationality, +who had for a while been admitted to the royal +councils, but whose presence was no longer necessary to +the dominant party.</p> + +<p>To the successors of the Norman William it might +appear that the English idiom was wholly obliterated +from the memories of men; not one of our monarchs and +statesmen could understand the most ordinary words in +the national tongue. When Henry the Second was in +Pembrokeshire, and was addressed in English—“Goode +olde Kynge,” the King of England inquired in French of +his esquire what was meant? Of the title of “Kynge,” +we are told that his majesty was wholly ignorant! A ludicrous +anecdote of the chancellor of Richard the First is a +strange evidence that the English language was wholly a +foreign one for the English court. This chancellor in his +flight from Canterbury, disguised as a female hawker, +carrying under his arm a bundle of cloth, and an ell-measure +in his hand, sate by the sea-side waiting for a +vessel. The fishermen’s wives inquired the price of the +cloth; he could only answer by a burst of laughter; for +this man, born in England, and chancellor of England, +did not know a single word of English! One more evidence +will confirm how utterly the Saxon language was +cast away. When the famous Grosteste, bishop of Lincoln +(who would no doubt have contemned his Saxon +surname of “Great-head”), a voluminous writer, once condescended +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page65" id="page65"></a>65</span> +to instruct “the ignorant,” he wrote pious +books for their use in French; the bishop making no +account of the old national language, nor of the souls of +those who spoke it.</p> + +<p>When the fate of conquest had overthrown the national +language, and thus seemed to have bereaved us of all our +literature, it was in reality only diverging into a new +course. For three centuries the popular writers of England +composed in the French language. Gaimar, who wrote +on our Saxon history; Wace, whose chronicle is a rhymed +version of that of Geoffry of Monmouth; Benoit de +Saint Maur (or Seymour); Pierre Langtoft, who composed +a history of England; Hugh de Rotelande (Rutland), +and so many others, were all English; some were +descendants from Norman progenitors, but in every other +respect they were English. Some were of a third generation.</p> + +<p>Our Henry the Third was a prodigal patron of these +Anglo-Norman poets. This monarch awarded to a romancer, +Rusticien de Pise, who has proclaimed the regal +munificence to the world, a couple of fine “chateaux,” +which I would not, however, translate as has been done +by the English term “castles.” Well might a romancer +so richly remunerated promise his royal patron to finish +“The Book of Brut,” the never-ending theme to the ear +of a British monarch who, indeed, was anxious to possess +such an authentic state-paper. Who this Rusticien de +Pise was, one cannot be certain; but he was one of a +numerous brood who, stimulated by “largesses” and fair +chateaux, delighted to celebrate the chivalry of the British +court, to them a perpetual fountain of honour and preferment. +We may now smile at the Count de Tressan’s +querulous nationality, who is indignant that the writers +of the French romances of the Round Table show a +marked affectation of dwelling on everything that can +contribute to the glory of the throne and court of England, +preferring a fabulous Arthur to a true Charlemagne, +and English knights to French paladins.<a name="fa8c7" id="fa8c7" href="#ft8c7"><span class="sp">8</span></a> When Tressan +wrote, this striking circumstance had not received its true +elucidation; the hand of these writers had only flowed +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page66" id="page66"></a>66</span> +with their gratitude; these writers composed to gratify +their sovereign, or some noble patron at the English +court, for they were English natives or English subjects, +long concealed from posterity as Englishmen by writing +in French. It had then escaped the notice of our literary +antiquaries at home and abroad, that these Englishmen +could have composed in no other language. How imperfect +is the catalogue of early English poets by Ritson! +for it is since his day that this important fact in our own +literary history has been acknowledged by the French +themselves, who at length have distinguished between +Norman and Anglo-Norman poets. M. Guizot was enabled +by the French government to indulge his literary +patriotism by sending a skilful collector to England to +search in our libraries for Norman writings; and we are +told that none but Anglo-Norman writers have been +found—that is, Englishmen writing on English affairs, +and so English that they have not always avoided an +unguarded expression of their dislike of foreigners, and +even of Normans!</p> + +<p>It is worthy of observation, that even those Norman +writers who came young into England soon took the +colour of the soil; and what rather surprises us, considering +the fashion of the court at that period, studied the +original national language, translated our Saxon writings, +and often mingled in their French verse phrases and terms +which to this day we recognise as English. Of this we +have an interesting evidence in an Anglo-Norman poetess, +but recently known by the name of “Marie de France;” +yet had she not written this single verse accidentally—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Me nummerai par remembrance,</p> +<p><i>Marie ai num, si sui de France</i>—</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">we should from her subjects, and her perfect knowledge +of the vernacular idiom of the English, have placed this +Sappho of the thirteenth century among the women of +England. This poetess tells us that she had turned into +her French rhymed verse the Æsopian Fables, which one +of our kings had translated into English from the Latin. +This royal author could have been no other than Alfred, +to whom such a collection has been ascribed. We learn +from herself the occasion of her version. Her task was +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page67" id="page67"></a>67</span> +performed for a great personage who read neither Latin +nor English; it was done for “the <i>love</i> of the renowned +Earl William Longsword”—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p class="i4">——Cunte Willaume,</p> +<p>Le plus vaillant de cest Royaume.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">Who would calculate the “largesse” “Count William,” +this puissant Longsword, cast into the lap of this living +muse when she offered all this melodious wisdom; whose +beautiful simplicity a child might comprehend, but whose +moral and politic truths would throw even the Norman +Longsword into a state of rational musing? Her “Lais,” +short but wild “Breton Tales,” which our poetess dedicated +to her sovereign, our Henry the Third, are evidence +that Marie could also skilfully touch the heart and amuse +the fancy.</p> + +<p>In her poems, Marie has translated many French terms +into pure English, and abounds with allusions to English +places and towns whose names have not changed since the +thirteenth century. Her local allusions, and her familiar +knowledge of the vernacular idiom of the English people, +prove that “Marie,” though by the accident of birth she +may be claimed by France, yet by her early and permanent +residence, and by the constant subjects of her +writings, her “Breton Tales,” and her “Fables” from +the English, by her habits and her sympathies, was an +Englishwoman.</p> + +<p>At this extraordinary period when England was a foreign +kingdom, the English people found some solitary friends—and +these were the rustic monk and the itinerant minstrel, +for they were Saxons, but subjects too mean and remote for +the gripe of the Norman, occupied in rooting out their +lords to plant his own for ever in the Saxon soil.</p> + +<p>The monks, who lived rusticated in their scattered +monasteries, sojourners in the midst of their conquered +land, often felt their Saxon blood tingle in their veins. +Not only did the filial love of their country deepen their +sympathies, but a more personal indignation rankled in +their secret bosoms at the foreign intruders, French or +Italian—the tyrannical bishop and the voluptuous abbot. +There were indeed monks, and some have been our +chroniclers, base-born, humiliated, and living in fear, who +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page68" id="page68"></a>68</span> +in their leiger-books, when they alluded to their new +masters, called them “the conquerors,” noticed the year +when some “conqueror” came in, and recorded what “the +conquerors” had enacted. All these “conquerors” designated +the foreigners, who were the heads of their houses. +But there were other truer Saxons. Inspired equally by +their public and their private feeling, these were the first +who, throwing aside both Latin and French, addressed +the people in the only language intelligible to them. The +patriotic monks decided that the people should be reminded +that they were Saxons, and they continued their history +in their own language.</p> + +<p>This precious relic has come down to us—the “Saxon +Chronicle”<a name="fa9c7" id="fa9c7" href="#ft9c7"><span class="sp">9</span></a>—but which in fact is a collection of chronicles +made by different persons. These Saxon annalists had +been eye-witnesses of the transactions they recorded, and +this singular detail of incidents as they occurred without +comment is a phenomenon in the history of mankind, like +that of the history of the Jews contained in the Old +Testament, and, like that, as its learned editor has ably +observed, “a regular and chronological panorama of a +people described in rapid succession by different writers +through many ages in their own <span class="scs">VERNACULAR LANGUAGE</span>.” +The mutations in the language of this ancient chronicle +are as remarkable as the fortunes of the nation in its progress +from rudeness to refinement; nor less observable are +the entries in this great political register from the year +One of Christ till 1154, when it abruptly terminates. The +meagreness of the earlier recorders contrasts with the more +impressive detail of later enlarged and thoughtful minds. +When we come to William of Normandy, we have a character +of that monarch by one who knew him personally, +having lived at his court. It is not only a masterly delineation, +but a skilful and steady dissection. The earlier +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page69" id="page69"></a>69</span> +Saxon chronicler has recorded a defeat and retreat which +Cæsar suffered in his first invasion, which would be difficult +to discover in the Commentaries of Cæsar.</p> + +<p>The true language of the people lingered on their lips, +and it seemed to bestow a shadowy independence to a +population in bondage. The remoter the locality, the +more obdurate was the Saxon; and these indwellers were +latterly distinguished as “Uplandish” by the inhabitants +of cities. For about two centuries “the Uplandish” held +no social connexion; separated not only by distance, but +by their isolated dialects and peculiar customs, these +natives of the soil shrunk into themselves, intermarrying +and dying on the same spot; they were hardly aware that +they were without a country.</p> + +<p>It was a great result of the Norman government in +England that it associated our insular and retired dominion +with that nobler theatre of human affairs, the Continent of +Europe. In Normandy we trace the first footings of our +national power; the English Sovereign, now a prince of +France, ere long on the French soil vied in magnitude of +territory with his paramount Lord, the Monarch of France. +Such a permanent connexion could not fail to produce a +conformity in manners; what was passing among our +closest neighbours, rivals or associates, was reflected in the +old Saxon land which had lost its nationality.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c7" id="ft1c7" href="#fa1c7"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Speed, 441. This was said to “the Conqueror,” and this Abbot +of St. Alban’s paid dearly for the patriotism which had then become +treason.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c7" id="ft2c7" href="#fa2c7"><span class="fn">2</span></a> A circumstance which Milton has recorded.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c7" id="ft3c7" href="#fa3c7"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Our great lawyers probably imagined that the honour of the country +is implicated in the title usually accorded to William the Norman; +<span class="sc">Spelman</span>, the great antiquary, and <span class="sc">Blackstone</span>, the historian and the +expounder of our laws, have absolutely explained away the assumed +title of “the Conqueror” to a mere technical feudal term of “<i>Conquestor, +or acquirer of any estate out of the common course of inheritance</i>.” +The first purchaser (that is, he who brought the estate +into the family which at present owns it) was styled “the Conqueror,” +<i>and such is still the proper phrase in the law of Scotland</i>. <span class="sc">Ritson</span> is +indignant at what he calls “a pitiful forensic quibble.”</p> + +<p>But another great lawyer and lord chancellor, the sedate <span class="sc">Whitelocke</span>, +positively asserts that “William only conquered Harold and his army; +for he never was, nor <i>pretended to be</i>, the conqueror of England, +although the <i>sycophant monks of the time</i> gave him that title.”—Whitelocke’s +“Hist. of England,” 33.</p> + +<p>In a charter, granting certain lands for the church of St. Paul’s, +which Stowe has translated from the record in the Tower, William +denominates himself, “by the grace of God, <i>King of Englishmen</i>” +(Rex Anglorum), and addresses it “to all his well-beloved <i>French and +English people</i>, greeting.”—Stowe’s “Survey of London,” 326, Edit. +1603. Did William on any occasion declare that he was “the Conqueror” +as well as the sovereign of England? When William +attempted to learn the Saxon language, it is obvious that he did not +desire to remind his new subjects that he ruled as Voltaire sang of his +hero,—</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>—————————qui regna sur la France,</p> +<p>Par droit de Conquête et par droit de Naissance.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><a name="ft4c7" id="ft4c7" href="#fa4c7"><span class="fn">4</span></a> The final history of these citadels may illustrate that verse of +Goldsmith which reminds us—</p> + +<p class="center">“To fly from <span class="scs">PETTY TYRANTS</span>—to <span class="sc">the Throne</span>!”</p> + +<p class="noind">In the short space of seventy years the owners of those castles bearded +even majesty itself; these lords, by their undue share of power, were in +perpetual revolt; till two royal persons, though opposed to each other, +Stephen and Maude, decreed for their mutual interest the demolition +of fifteen hundred and fifteen castles. They were razed by commission, +or by writs to the sheriffs; and a law was further enacted that “none +hereafter, without license, should embattle his house.” And thus was +broken this aristocracy of castles. See two dissertations on “Castles,” +by Sir <span class="sc">Robert Sutton</span>, and by <span class="sc">Agard</span>; “Curious Discourses by Eminent +Antiquaries,” i. 104 and 188.</p> + +<p>This number of castles seems incredible; possibly many were “embattled +houses.” My learned friend, the Rev. Joseph Hunter, an antiquary +most versant in manuscripts, inclines to think there may be some +scriptural error of the ancient scribe, who was likely to add or to leave +out a cipher, without much comprehension of the numerals he was +transcribing without a thought, like what happened to the eleven thousand +virgins of St. Ursula.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c7" id="ft5c7" href="#fa5c7"><span class="fn">5</span></a> Speed, 440.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c7" id="ft6c7" href="#fa6c7"><span class="fn">6</span></a> A curious fact discovered by Mr. Turner in a Cottonian manuscript +has brought this circumstance to our knowledge. In a grant of land +in Cornwall, an Anglo-Saxon king, after mentioning the Saxon name of +the place, adds, “which the inhabitants there called, <i>barbarico nomine</i>, +by the barbarous name of Pendyfig;” which was the British or Welsh +name.—“Vindication of the Ancient British Poems,” 8.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c7" id="ft7c7" href="#fa7c7"><span class="fn">7</span></a> Camden has noticed this striking circumstance in his “Britannia.” +See also Percy’s Preface to Mallett’s “Northern Antiquities,” xxxix.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c7" id="ft8c7" href="#fa8c7"><span class="fn">8</span></a> See his Preface to the prose romance of “La Fleur des Batailles.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c7" id="ft9c7" href="#fa9c7"><span class="fn">9</span></a> Miss Gurney, who has honourably been hailed as “the Elstob of +her age,” privately printed her own close version of the “Saxon +Chronicle” from the printed text, 1810. Happy lady! who, when +sickness had made her its prisoner, opened the “Saxon Chronicle;” +and she learned that she might teach the learned.</p> + +<p>The Rev. Dr. <span class="sc">Ingram</span>, principal of Trinity College, Oxon, has since +published his translation, accompanied by the original, a collation of +the manuscripts, and notes critical and explanatory. 1823. 4to. A +volume not less valuable than curious.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page70" id="page70"></a>70</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE PAGE, THE BARON, AND THE MINSTREL.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">When</span> learning was solely ecclesiastical and scholastical, +there were no preceptors for mankind. The monastery +and the university were far removed from the sympathies +of daily life; all knowledge was out of the reach of the +layman. It was then that the energies of men formed a +course of practical pursuits, a system of education of their +own. The singular institution of chivalry rose out of a +combination of circumstances where, rudeness and luxury +mingling together, the utmost refinement was found compatible +with barbaric grandeur, and holy justice with +generous power. In lawless times they invented a single +law which included a whole code—the law of knightly +honour. <i>L’Ordenne de Chevalerie</i> is the morality of +knighthood, and invests the aspirant with every moral and +political virtue as every military qualification.<a name="fa1c8" id="fa1c8" href="#ft1c8"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p>Destitute of a national education, the higher orders +thus found a substitute in a conventional system of +manners. Circumstances, perhaps originally accidental, +became customs sealed with the sign of honour. In this +moral chaos order marshalled confusion, as refinement +adorned barbarism. A mighty spirit lay as it were in disguise, +and it broke out in the forms of imagination, +passion, and magnificence, seeking their objects or their +semblance, and if sometimes mistaken, yet still laying the +foundations of social order and national glory in Europe.</p> + +<p>A regular course of practical pursuits was assigned to +the future noble “childe” from the day that he left the +parental roof for the baronial hall of his patron. In these +“nurseries of nobility,” as Jonson has well described such +an institution, in his first charge as varlet or page, the boy +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page71" id="page71"></a>71</span> +of seven years was an attendant at the baron’s table, and +it was no humiliating office when the youth grew to be the +carver and the cupbearer. He played on the viol or +danced in the brawls till he was more gravely trained in +“the mysteries of woods and rivers,” the arts of the chase, +and the sciences of the swanery, and the heronry, and the +fishery; the springal cheerily sounded a blast of venery, +or the falconer with his voice caressed his attentive hawk, +which had not obeyed him had he neglected that daily +flattery.</p> + +<p>At fourteen the varlet became an esquire, vaulting on +his fiery steed, and perfecting himself in all noble exercises, +nicely adroit in the science of “courtesie,” or the +etiquette of the court; and already this “servant of love” +was taught to elect <i>La dame de ses pensées</i>, and wore her +favour and her livery for “the love of honour, or the +honour of love,” as Sir Philip Sydney in the style of +chivalry expressed it.</p> + +<p>At the maturity of twenty and one years the late varlet, +and now the esquire, stood forth a candidate to blazon his +shield by knighthood—the accomplished gentleman of +these Gothic days, and right learned too, if he can con +his Bible and read his romance. Enchanting mirror of all +chivalry! if he invent songs and set them to his own +melodies. Yet will the gentle “batchelor” he dreaming +on some gallant feat of arms, or some martial achievement, +whereby “to win his spurs.” On his solemn entrance into +the church, laying his sword upon the altar, he resumed +it by the oath which for ever bound him to defend the +church and the churchmen. Thus all human affairs then +were rounded by the ecclesiastical orbit, out of which no +foot dared to stray. All began and all ended as the +romances which formed his whole course of instruction—with +the devotion which seemed to have been addressed to +man as much as to Heaven.</p> + +<p>After the termination of the Crusades, the grand incident +in the life of the <span class="sc">Baron</span> was a pilgrimage to the holy +city of Jerusalem; what the penitent of the Cross had +failed to conquer, it seemed a consolation to kneel at and +to weep over: a custom not obsolete so late as the reigns +of our last Henries; and still, though less publicly avowed, +the melancholy Jerusalem witnesses the Hebrew and the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page72" id="page72"></a>72</span> +Christian performing some secret vow, to grieve with a +contrition which it seems they do not feel at home.</p> + +<p>In these peregrinations a lordly Briton might chance to +find some French or Italian knight as rash and as haughty; +it was a law in chivalry that a knight should not give +way to any man who demanded it as a right, nor decline +the single combat with any knight under the sun; a challenge +could not therefore be avoided. But a <i>pas d’armes</i> +was not always a friendly invitation, for often under the +guise of chivalry was concealed the national hostility of +the parties.</p> + +<p>But when no crusade nor pilgrimage in the East, nor +predatory excursion in the West, nor even the blazonry of +a tournament, which fed his eyes with a picture of battle, +summoned to put on his mail-coat, how was the vacant +Lord to wear out his monotonous days in his castle of +indolence? The domestic fool stood beside him, archly +sad, or gravely mirthful, as his master willed, with a proverb +or a quip; and, with his licensed bauble, was the +most bitterly wisest man in the castle. Patron of the +costly manuscript which he could not himself read, the +romancer of his household awaited his call; the great then +had fabulators or tale-tellers, as royalty has now, by title +of their office—its readers. But this Lord was too +vigorous for repose, and the tranquillity of chess was too +trying for his brain; the chess-board was often broken +about the head of some mute dependent, or perchance on +one who returned the dagger for the board. There was +little peace for his restlessness, when, weary in his seat, his +priceless Norway hawk perched above his head,<a name="fa2c8" id="fa2c8" href="#ft2c8"><span class="sp">2</span></a> and his +idle hounds spread over the floor, ceaselessly reminded him +of those wide and frowning forests which were continually +encroaching on the tillage of the contemned agriculturist, +offering a mimetic war, not only against the bird and +the beast, but man himself; for the lairs of the forest +concealed the deer he chased, and often the bandit who +chased the Lord—the terrible Lord of this realm of wood +and water, where, whoever would fowl a bird or strike a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page73" id="page73"></a>73</span> +buck, might have his eyes torn from their sockets, or on +the spot of his offence mount the instant gallows.<a name="fa3c8" id="fa3c8" href="#ft3c8"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> + +<p>There was a disorderly grandeur about the castellated +mansion which should have required the ukase of this +Sovereign of many leagues, surrounded by many hundreds +of his retainers; but rarely the cry of the oppressed was +allowed to disturb the Lord, while all within were exact in +their appointments, as clock-work movements which were +wound up in the government of these immense domestic +establishments. Great families had their “household +books,” and in some the illegible hand of the lordly master +himself, when the day arrived that even barons were +incited to scriptural attempts, may yet be seen.<a name="fa4c8" id="fa4c8" href="#ft4c8"><span class="sp">4</span></a> These +nobles, it appears, were more select in their falconer and +their <i>chef de cuisine</i> than in their domestic tutor, for such +there was among the retainers of the household. This +humiliated sage, indeed, in his own person was a model for +the young varlets, on whom it was his office to inculcate +that patient suppleness and profound reverence for their +Lord and their superiors, which seemed to form the single +principle of their education. At this period we find a +domestic proverb which evidently came from the buttery. +As then eight or ten tables were to be daily covered, it is +probable the chivalric epicures sometimes found their tastes +disappointed by the culinary artists; it would seem that +this put them into sudden outbreakings of ill-humour, for +the proverb records that “the minstrels are often beaten +for the faults of the cooks.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page74" id="page74"></a>74</span></p> + +<p>Too much leisure, too many loungers, and the tedium +of prolonged banquets, a want of the pleasures of the +luxurious sedentary would be as urgent as in ages more +intellectual and refined; those pleasures in which we participate +though we are passive, receiving the impressions +without any exertion of our own—pleasures which make us +delighted auditors or spectators. The theatre was not yet +raised, but the listlessness of vacuity gave birth to all the +variegated artists of revelry. If they had not comedy +itself, they abounded with the comic, and without tragedy +the tragic often moved their emotions. Nor were they +even then without their scenical illusions, marvels which +came and vanished, as the Tregetour clapped his hands—enchantments! +which though Chaucer opined to be only +“natural magic,” all the world tremblingly enjoyed as +the work of devils; a sensation which we have totally lost +in the necromancy of our pantomimes. And thus it was +that in the illumed hall of the feudal Lord we discover a +whole dramatic company; which, however dissimilar in their +professional arts, were all enlisted under the indefinite +class of <span class="sc">Minstrels</span>; for in the domestic state of society +we are now recalling, the poetic minstrel must be separated +from those other minstrels of very different acquirements, +with whom, however, he was associated.</p> + +<p>There were minstrels who held honourable offices in +the great households, sometimes chosen for their skill +and elocution to perform the dignified service of heralds, +and were in the secret confidence of their Lord; these +were those favourites of the castle, whose guerdon was +sometimes as romantic as any incident in their own +romance.</p> + +<p>No festival, public or private, but there the minstrel poet +was its crowning ornament. They awakened national +themes in the presence of assembled thousands at the installation +of an abbot, or the reception of a bishop.<a name="fa5c8" id="fa5c8" href="#ft5c8"><span class="sp">5</span></a> +Often, in the Gothic hall, they resounded some lofty +“Geste,” or some old “Breton” lay, or with some gayer +Fabliau, indulging the vein of an improvvisatore, altering +the old story when wanting a new one. Delightful rhapsodists, +or amusing tale-tellers, combining the poetic with +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page75" id="page75"></a>75</span> +the musical character, they displayed the influence of +the imagination over a rude and unlettered race—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p class="i3">——They tellen Tales</p> +<p>Both of <span class="scs">WEEPYING</span> and of <span class="sc">Game</span>.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>Chaucer has portrayed the rapture of a minstrel excited +by his harp, a portrait evidently after the life.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Somewhat he <i>lisped</i> for his wantonness</p> +<p><i>To make the English swete upon his tonge</i>;</p> +<p>And in his Harping when that he had songe,</p> +<p><i>His Eyen twinkled in his Hed aright,</i></p> +<p><i>As don the Sterrés in a frosty night</i>.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The minstrel more particularly delighted “the Lewed,” +or the people, when, sitting in their fellowship, the harper +stilled their attention by some fragment of a chronicle of +their fathers and their father-land. The family harper +touched more personal sympathies; the ancestral honours +of the baron made even the vassal proud—domestic traditions +and local incidents deepened their emotions—the +moralising ditty softened their mind with thought, and +every county had its legend at which the heart of the +native beat. Of this minstrelsy little was written down, +but tradition lives through a hundred echoes, and the +“reliques of ancient English poetry,” and the minstrelsy +of the Scottish Border, and some other remains, for the +greater part have been formed by so many metrical narratives +and fugitive effusions.</p> + +<p>There were periods in which the minstrels were so +highly favoured that they were more amply rewarded than +the clergy—a circumstance which induced Warton to +observe with more truth than acuteness, that “in this age, +as in more enlightened times, the people loved better to +be pleased than to be instructed.”<a name="fa6c8" id="fa6c8" href="#ft6c8"><span class="sp">6</span></a> Such was their +fascination and their passion for “Largesse!” that they +were reproached with draining the treasury of a prince. +It is certain that this thoughtless race have suffered from +the evil eye of the monkish chroniclers, who looked on the +minstrels as their rivals in sharing the prodigality of the +great; yet even their monkish censors relented whenever +these revellers appeared. It was a festive day among so +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page76" id="page76"></a>76</span> +many joyless ones when the minstrel band approached the +lone monastery. Then the sweet-toned Vielle, or the +merry Rebeck, echoed in the hermit-hearts of the slumbering +inmates; vaulters came tumbling about, jugglers +bewitched their eyes, and the grotesque Mime, who would +not be outdone by his tutored ape. Then came the stately +minstrel, with his harp borne before him by his smiling +page, usually called “The Minstrel’s Boy.” One of the +brotherhood has described the strolling troop, who</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p class="i1">Walken fer and wyde,</p> +<p>Her, and ther, in every syde,</p> +<p class="i1">In many a diverse londe.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The easy life of these ambulatory musicians, their ample +gratuities, and certain privileges which the minstrels enjoyed +both here and among our neighbours, corrupted +their manners, and induced the dissipated and the reckless +to claim those privileges by assuming their title. A +disorderly rabble of minstrels crowded every public +assembly, and haunted the private abode. At different +periods the minstrels were banished the kingdom, in +England and in France; but their return was rarely +delayed. The people could not be made to abandon these +versatile dispensers of solace, amid their own monotonous +cares.</p> + +<p>At different periods minstrels appear to have been persons +of great wealth—a circumstance which we discover +by their votive religious acts in the spirit and custom of +those days. The Priory of St. Bartholomew in Smithfield, +in 1102, was founded by “Rahere,” the king’s +minstrel, who is described as “a pleasant-witted gentleman,” +such as we may imagine a wealthy minstrel, and +moreover “the king’s,” ever to have been.<a name="fa7c8" id="fa7c8" href="#ft7c8"><span class="sp">7</span></a> In St. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page77" id="page77"></a>77</span> +Mary’s Church at Beverley, in Yorkshire, stands a noble +column covered with figures of minstrels, inscribed, “This +Pillar made the Minstrels;” and at Paris, a chapel dedicated +to St. Julian of the Minstrels, was erected by them, +covered with figures of minstrels bearing all the instruments +of music used in the middle ages, where the violin +or fiddle is minutely sculptured.<a name="fa8c8" id="fa8c8" href="#ft8c8"><span class="sp">8</span></a></p> + +<p>If in these ages of romance and romancers the fair sex +were rarely approached without the devotion of idolatry, +whenever “the course of true love” altered—when the +frail spirit loved too late and should not have loved, the +punishment became more criminal than the crime; for +there was more of selfish revenge and terrific malignity +than of justice, when autocratical man became the executioner +of his own decree. The domestic chronicles of +these times exhibit such harrowing incidents as those of +<i>La Châtelaine de Vergy</i>, where suddenly a scene of immolation +struck through the devoted household; or that of +“La Dame du Fayel,”<a name="fa9c8" id="fa9c8" href="#ft9c8"><span class="sp">9</span></a> who was made to eat her lover’s +heart. And those who had not to punish, but to put to +trial, the affections of women who were in their power, had +their terrible caprices, a ferocity in their barbarous loves. +Year after year the Gothic lord failed to subdue the +immortalised patience of Griselda, and such was our +“Childe Waters,” who put to such trials of passion, +physical and mental, the maiden almost a mother. In +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page78" id="page78"></a>78</span> +the fourteenth century, one century later than the histories +of the “<i>Châtelaine</i>” and the “<i>Dame</i>,” either the +female character was sometimes utterly dissolute, or the +tyranny of husbands utterly reckless, when we find that +it was no uncommon circumstance that women were +strangled by masked assassins, or walking by the riverside +were plunged into it. This drowning of women gave +rise to a popular proverb—“It is nothing! only a woman +being drowned.” La Fontaine, probably without being +aware of this allusion to a practice of the fourteenth +century, has preserved the proverbial phrase in his “La +Femme noyée,” beginning,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Je ne suis pas de ceux qui disent ce n’est rien,</p> +<p>C’est une Femme qui se noye!<a name="fa10c8" id="fa10c8" href="#ft10c8"><span class="sp">10</span></a></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The personages and the manners here imperfectly +sketched, constituted the domestic life of our chivalric +society from the twelfth century to the first civil wars of +England. In this long interval few could read; even +bishops could not always write; and the Gothic baron +pleaded the privilege of a layman for not doing the one +nor the other.</p> + +<p>The intellectual character of the nation can only be +traced in the wandering minstrel and the haughty ecclesiastic. +The minstrel mingling with all the classes of +society reflected all their sympathies, and in reality was +one of the people themselves; but the ecclesiastic stood +apart, too sacred to be touched, while his very language +was not that either of the noble or of the people.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page79" id="page79"></a>79</span></p> + +<p>A dense superstition overshadowed the land from the +time of the first crusade to the last. It may be doubtful +whether there was a single Christian in all Christendom, +for a new sort of idolatry was introduced in shrines, and +relics, and masses; holy wells, awful exorcisms, saintly +vigils, month’s minds, pilgrimages afar and penances at +home; lamp-lighting before shrines decked with golden +images, and hung with votive arms and legs of cripples +who recovered from their rheumatic ails. The enthusiasm +for the figure of the cross conferred a less pure sanctity +on that memorial of pious tribulation. Everywhere it +was placed before them. The crusader wore that sign on +his right shoulder, and when his image lay extended on +his tomb, the crossed legs were reverently contemplated. +They made the sign of the cross by the motion of their +hand, in peril or in pleasure, in sorrow and in sin, and +expected no happy issue in an adventure without frequently +signing themselves with the cross. The cross +was placed at the beginning and at the end of their +writings and inscriptions, and it opened and closed the +alphabet. The mystical virtues of the cross were the +incessant theme of the Monachal Orders, and it was kissed +in rapture on the venal indulgence expedited by the papal +Hierophant. As even in sacred things novelty and +fashion will perversely put in their claim, we find the +writers and sculptors varying the appearance of the cross; +its simple form <img style="width:16px; height:15px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img4.jpg" alt="" /> became inclosed in a circle <img style="width:15px; height:15px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img5.jpg" alt="" />, and +again varied by dots <img style="width:15px; height:15px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img6.jpg" alt="" />.<a name="fa11c8" id="fa11c8" href="#ft11c8"><span class="sp">11</span></a> The guardian cross protected +a locality; and in England, at the origin of parishes, the +cross stood as the hallowed witness which marked the +boundaries, and which it had been sacrilege to disturb. +It was no unusual practice to place the sign at the head +of private letters, however trivial the contents, as we find +it in charters and other public documents. In one of the +Paston letters, the piety of the writer at a much later +period could not detail the ordinary occurrences of the week +without inserting the sacred letters I.H.S.; and similar +invocations are found in others.<a name="fa12c8" id="fa12c8" href="#ft12c8"><span class="sp">12</span></a></p> + +<p>The material symbol of Christianity had thus been +indiscriminately adopted without conveying with it the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page80" id="page80"></a>80</span> +virtues of the Gospel. The cross was a myth—the cross +was the <i>Fetish</i><a name="fa13c8" id="fa13c8" href="#ft13c8"><span class="sp">13</span></a> of an idolatrous Christianity—they +bowed before it, they knelt to it, they kissed it, they +kissed a palpable and visible deity; never was the Divinity +rendered more familiar to the gross understandings of the +vulgar; and in these ages of unchristian Christianity, +the cross was degraded even to a vulgar mark, which +conveniently served for the signature of some unlettered +baron.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c8" id="ft1c8" href="#fa1c8"><span class="fn">1</span></a> St. Palaye, to whom we owe the ideal of chivalry, has truly observed, +“Toutes les vertus recommandées par la Chevalerie tournoient +au bien public, au profit de l’Etat.” It was when the causes of its institution +ceased, and nothing remained but its forms without its motive, +that altered manners could safely ridicule some noble qualities which, +though now displaced, have not always found equal substitutes. In the +advancement of society we may count some losses.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c8" id="ft2c8" href="#fa2c8"><span class="fn">2</span></a> I recollect this trait in Chaucer. The Norway hawk was among +the most valuable articles of property, valued at a sum equal to £300 +of the present day.—Nicholls, “History of Leicestershire,” xxxix.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c8" id="ft3c8" href="#fa3c8"><span class="fn">3</span></a> The Norman William punished men with loss of eyes for taking his +venery.—Selden’s notes to “Drayton’s Polyolbion,” Song ii.</p> + +<p>An instant execution of two youths by the gamekeepers, at the command +of their Lord, appears in an ancient romance recently published +in France.—<i>Journal des Savans</i>, 1838.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c8" id="ft4c8" href="#fa4c8"><span class="fn">4</span></a> A curious specimen of these “Household Books,” though of a +later period, is that of the Northumberland family, printed by Bishop +Percy. Many exist in manuscript, and contain particulars more valuable +than the prices of commodities, for which they are usually valued; +they offer striking pictures of the manners of their age. [The Wardrobe +accounts of Edward the Fourth, the Privy Purse expenses of Edward +IV. and Henry VIII., have been since published by Sir Harris Nicolas; +and those of the Princess Mary, afterwards Queen, by Sir Frederick +Madden. The judicious notes and dissertations of these editors render +them of much use in illustration of the history of each era.—<span class="sc">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c8" id="ft5c8" href="#fa5c8"><span class="fn">5</span></a> “Warton,” i. 94.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c8" id="ft6c8" href="#fa6c8"><span class="fn">6</span></a> “Warton,” ii. 412.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c8" id="ft7c8" href="#fa7c8"><span class="fn">7</span></a> Stowe’s “Survey by Strype,” book iii. 235. We might wish to +learn the authority of Stowe for ascribing this “pleasant wit” to +Rahere of the eleventh century! As the pen of venerable Stowe never +moved idly, our antiquary must have had some information which is +now lost. “The king’s minstrel” is also a doubtful designation: was +the founder of this priory “a king of the minstrels?” an office which +the French also had, <i>Roy des Ménéstraulx</i>, a governor instituted to +keep order among all minstrels. Our Rahere, however “pleasant-witted,” +seems to have fallen into penance for his “wit,” for he became +the first prior.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c8" id="ft8c8" href="#fa8c8"><span class="fn">8</span></a> <i>Antiquités Nationales</i>, par Millin, xli. Two plates exhibit this +Gothic chapel and the various musical instruments.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c8" id="ft9c8" href="#fa9c8"><span class="fn">9</span></a> Both these romantic tales may be considered as authentic narratives, +though they have often been used by the writers of fiction. <i>La +Châtelaine de Vergy</i> has been sometimes confounded with <i>Le Châtelaine +de Coucy</i>, the lover of <i>La Dame du Fayel</i>. The story of the Countess +of Tergy (on which a romance of the thirteenth century is founded, +Hist. Litt. de France, xviii. 779) has been a favourite with the tale-tellers—the +Queen of Navarre, Bandello, and Belle Forest, and is +elegantly versified in the “Fabliaux, or Tales,” of Way. That of the +Dame du Fayel, one of the fathers of French literary history, old +Fauchet, extracted it from a good old chronicle dated two centuries before +he wrote. The story is also found in an ancient romance of the +thirteenth century, in the Royal Library of France.—Hist. Litt. de la +France, xiv. 589; xvii. 644. The story of Childe Waters in Percy’s +Collection has all the pathetic simplicity of ancient minstrelsy, which is +more forcibly felt when we compare it with the rifaccimento by a Mrs. +Pye, in Evans’s Old Ballads.</p> + +<p><a name="ft10c8" id="ft10c8" href="#fa10c8"><span class="fn">10</span></a> Montaigne was so well acquainted with this practice, that he has +used it as a familiar illustration of the obstinacy of some women—which +I suppose the good man imagined could not be paralleled by +instances from the masculine sex; however, his language must not be +disguised by a modern version. “Celui qui forgea le conte de la femme +qui, pour aucune correction de ménaces et bastonnades, ne cessait +d’appeler son mari, Pouilleux, et qui, précipité dans l’eau, haussoit +encore, en s’étouffant, les mains et faisoit au-dessus de sa tête signe de +tuer des poux, forgea un conte duquel en vérité tous les jours on voit +l’image expresse de l’opiniâtreté des femmes.”</p> + +<p>The punishment of our “Ducking-stool” for female brawlers possibly +originated in this medieval practice of throwing women into the river: +but this is but an innocuous baptism, while we find the obstinate wife +here, who probably spoke true enough, <i>s’étouffant</i>,—merely for correcting +the filthy lubbard, her lord and master.</p> + +<p><a name="ft11c8" id="ft11c8" href="#fa11c8"><span class="fn">11</span></a> Leland’s “Itinerary,” ii. 126.</p> + +<p><a name="ft12c8" id="ft12c8" href="#fa12c8"><span class="fn">12</span></a> Paston’s “Letters,” v. 17.</p> + +<p><a name="ft13c8" id="ft13c8" href="#fa13c8"><span class="fn">13</span></a> See the very curious chapter on the “Fetish Worship,” in that +very original and learned work “The Doctor,” v. 133.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page81" id="page81"></a>81</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">GOTHIC ROMANCES.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">A new</span> species of literature arose in the progress of that +practical education which society had assumed; a literature +addressed to the passions which rose out of the circumstances +of the times; dedicated to war, to love, and to +religion, when the business of life seemed restricted to the +extreme indulgence of those ennobling pursuits. In too +much love, too much war, too much devotion, it was not +imagined that knights and ladies could ever err. If +sometimes the loves were utterly licentious, wondrous +tales are told of their immaculate purity; if their religion +were then darkened by the grossest superstition, their +faith was genuine, and would have endured martyrdom; +and if the chivalric valour often exulted in its ferocity and +its rapacity, its generous honour amid a lawless state of +society maintained justice in the land, by the lance which +struck the oppressor, and by the shield which covered the +helpless.</p> + +<p>Everything had assumed a more extended form: the +pageantry of society had varied and multiplied; the banquet +was prolonged; the festival day was frequent; the +ballad narrative, or the spontaneous lyric, which had +sufficed their ruder ancestors to allure attention, now demanded +more volume and more variety; the romance with +a deeper interest was to revolve in the entangling narrative +of many thousand lines. There was a traditional +store, a stock of fabling in hand, heroical panegyrics, satirical +songs, and legendary ballads; all served as the stuff +for the looms of mightier weavers of rhyme, whose predecessors +had left them this inheritance. The marvellous +of Romance burst forth, and this stupendous fabric of invention +bewitched Europe during three centuries.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Romance</span>, from the light fabliau to the voluminous fiction, +has admitted, in the luxury of our knowledge and +curiosity, not only of critical investigation, but of its invention, +by tracing it to a single source. The origin of +Romance has been made to hinge on a theoretical history; +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page82" id="page82"></a>82</span> +and by maintaining exclusive systems, mostly fanciful and +partly true, it has been made complicate. Whether invention +in the form of <span class="sc">Romance</span> came from the oriental +tale-teller or the Scandinavian Scald, or whether the fictions +of Europe be the growth of the Provençal or the +Armorican soil, our learned inquirers have each told; nor +have they failed in considerably diminishing the claims of +each particular system opposed to their own; but the +greatest error will be found in their mutual refutations.<a name="fa1c9" id="fa1c9" href="#ft1c9"><span class="sp">1</span></a> +While each stood entrenched in an exclusive system, they +were only furnishing an integral portion of a boundless +and complicate inquiry. They scrutinised with microscopic +eyes into that vast fabric of invention, which the +Gothic genius may proudly oppose to the fictions of antiquity, +and they seemed at times forgetful of the vicissitudes +which, at distant intervals, and by novel circumstances, +enlarged and modified the changeful state of romantic +fiction among every people.</p> + +<p>In the attempt to retrace the Nile of Romance to a +solitary source, in the eagerness of their discoveries they +had not yet ascertained that this Nile bears many far-divided +heads, and some from which Time shall never remove +its clouds; for who dares assign an origin to the +ancient Milesian tales, the tales and their origin being +alike lost?<a name="fa2c9" id="fa2c9" href="#ft2c9"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p>Warton, encumbered by his theory of an Eastern +origin, opened the map to track the voyage of an Arabian +tale: he landed it at Marseilles, that port by which ancient +Greece first held its intercourse with our Europe, +and thence the tale was sent forwards through genial +Italy, but forced to harbour in this voyage of Romance at +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page83" id="page83"></a>83</span> +the distant shores of Brittany, that land of Romance and +of the ancient Briton. The result of his system startled +the literary world by his assumption, that “the British +history” of Geoffry of Monmouth entirely consists of +Arabian inventions! the real source of the airy existence +of our British Arthur! Bishop Percy had been nearly as +adventurous in his Gothic origin, by landing a number of +the northern bards with the army of Rollo in Normandy; +an event which contributed to infuse the Scaldic +genius into the romances of chivalry, whose national hero +is Charlemagne—the tutelary genius of France and Germany.</p> + +<p>They had looked to the east, and to the north—and +wherever they looked for the origin of Romance it was +found. They had sought in a corner of the universe for +that which is universal.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Romance</span> sprang to birth in every clime, native +wherever she is found, notwithstanding that she has been +a wanderer among all lands, and as prodigal a dispenser as +she has been free in her borrowings and artful in her concealments.</p> + +<p>The art of fabling may be classed among the mimetic +arts—it is an aptitude of the universal and plastic faculties +of our nature; and man might not be ill defined and +charactered as “a mimetic and fabling animal.”</p> + +<p>The earliest Romances appear in a metrical form about +the middle of the twelfth century. The first were “Estoires,” +or pretended chronicles, like that of the Brut of +Wace; the Romances of martial achievement then predominated, +those of the Knights of Arthur, and the +Paladins of Charlemagne; the adventures of love and +gallantry were of a later epoch. In the mutability of +taste an extraordinary transition occurred; after nearly +two centuries passed in rhyming, all the verse was to be +turned into prose. Whether voluminous rhymes satiate +the public ear, or novelty in the form was sought even +when they had but little choice, the writers of Romance, +a very flexible gentry, who of all other writers servilely +accommodate themselves to the public taste, with more +fluent pens loitered into a more ample page; or, as they +expressed themselves, “translatés de rime en prose,” or +“mis en beau langage.” Many of the old French metrical +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page84" id="page84"></a>84</span> +Romances, in the fourteenth century, were disguised +in this humbled form; but their “mensogne magnanime,” +to use Tasso’s style, who loved them, lost nothing in +number or in hardihood. On the discovery of the typographic +art, in the fifteenth century, many of these prose +Romances in manuscript received a new life by passing +through the press; and these, in their venerable “lettres +Gothiques,” are still hoarded for the solace of the curious +in fictions of genuine antiquity, and of invention in its +prime, both at home and abroad; and in a reduced form +we find them surviving among the people on the Continent. +It is singular that the metrical Romances seem +never to have received the honours conferred on the +prose.<a name="fa3c9" id="fa3c9" href="#ft3c9"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> + +<p>These Romances, in their manuscript state, were cherished +objects;<a name="fa4c9" id="fa4c9" href="#ft4c9"><span class="sp">4</span></a> the mighty tomes, sometimes consisting +of forty or fifty thousand lines, described as those “great +books of parchment,” or “the great book of Romances,” +were usually embellished by the pen and the pencil with +every ornament that fancy could suggest; bound in crimson +velvet, guarded by clasps of silver, and studded with +golden roses; profuse of gorgeous illuminations, and +decorated with the most delicate miniatures, “lymned +with gold of graver’s work” on an azure ground; or the +purple page setting off the silvery letters;—objects then +of perpetual attraction to the story-believing reader, and +which now charm the eye which could not as patiently +con the endless page. The fashions of the times are +exactly shown in the dresses and the domestic furniture; +as well as their instruments, military and musical.</p> + +<p>Studies for the artist, as for the curious antiquary,<a name="fa5c9" id="fa5c9" href="#ft5c9"><span class="sp">5</span></a> we +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page85" id="page85"></a>85</span> +may view the plumage in a casque curved and falling with +peculiar grace, and a lady’s robe floating in its amplitude; +and ornaments of dress arranged, which our taste might +emulate. A French amateur who possessed <i>le Roman de +la Violette</i>, a romance of a fabulous Count of Nevers, was +so deeply struck by its exquisite and faithful miniatures, +that he employed the best artists to copy the most interesting, +and placed them in his collection of the costume +and fashions of the French nation; a collection preserved +in the Royal Library of France.<a name="fa6c9" id="fa6c9" href="#ft6c9"><span class="sp">6</span></a> If their hard outline +does not always flow into grace, their imagination worked +under the mysterious influence of the Romance through +all their devoted labour. In a group of figures we may +observe that the heads are not mechanically cast by one +mould, but the distinct character looks as if the thoughtful +artist had worked out his recollections on which he +had meditated. In some of the heads, portraits of distinguished +persons have been recognised. Not less observable +are the arabesques often found on the margins, +where the playful pencil has prodigally flung flowers and +fruit, imitating the bloom, or insects which look as if they +had lighted on the leaf. These margins, however, occasionally +exhibit arabesques of a very different character; +figures or subjects which often amused the pencil of the +monastic limners, satirical strokes aimed at their brothers +and sisters—the monks and the nuns! I have observed a +wolf, in a monk’s frock and cowl, stretching its paw to +bless a cock bending its submissive head; a cat, in the +habit of an abbess, holding a platter in its paws to a +mouse approaching to lick it, alluding to the allurements +of abbesses to draw young women into the convents; and +a sow, in a nun’s veil, mounted on stilts. A pope appears +to be thrown by devils into a cauldron, and cardinals are +roasting on spits. All these expressions of suppressed +opinion must have been executed by the monks themselves. +These reformers before the Reformation sympathised +with the popular feeling against the haughty prelate +and the luxurious abbot.</p> + +<p>The great Romance of Alexander, preserved in the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page86" id="page86"></a>86</span> +Bodleian Library, reveals a secret of the cost of time +freely bestowed on that single and mighty tome. The +illuminator, by preserving the date when he had completed +his own work compared with that of the transcriber +when he had finished his part, appears to have +employed nearly six years on the paintings which embellish +this precious volume.<a name="fa7c9" id="fa7c9" href="#ft7c9"><span class="sp">7</span></a></p> + +<p>Such a metrical Romance was a gift presented to royalty, +when engrossed by the rapturous hand of the Romancer +himself; the autograph, in a presentation copy, might +count on the meed of “massy goblets” when the munificent +patron found the new volume delectable to his +taste, which indeed had been anticipated by the writer. +This incident occurred to Froissart in presenting his +Romance to Richard the Second, when, in reply to his +majesty’s inquiry after the contents, the author exultingly +told that “the book treated of Amour!”</p> + +<p>To the writers of these ancient Romances we cannot +deny a copious invention, a variegated imagination, and, +among their rambling exuberances and their grotesque +marvels, those enchanting enchantments which the Greeks +and Romans only partially and coldly raised. We may +often, too, discover that truth of human nature which is +not always supposed to lie hid in these desultory compositions. +Amid their peculiar extravagances, which at least +may serve to raise an occasional smile, the strokes of +nature are abundant, and may still form the studies of the +writers of fiction, however they may hang on the impatience +of the writers and the readers of our duodecimos. +Ancient writers are pictorial: their very fault contributes +to produce a remarkable effect—a fulness often overflowing, +but which at least is not a scantiness leaving the +vagueness of imperfect description. Their details are +more circumstantial, their impressions are more vivid, and +they often tell their story with the earnestness of persons +who had conversed with the actors, or had been spectators +of the scene. We may be wearied, as one might +be at a protracted trial by the witnesses, but we are often +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page87" id="page87"></a>87</span> +struck by an energetic reality which we sometimes miss +in their polished successors. Their copiousness, indeed, is +without selection; they wrote before they were critics, +but their truth is not the less truth because it is given +with little art.</p> + +<p>The dilations of the metrical Romances into tomes of +prose, Warton considered as a proof of the decay of invention. +Was not this censure rather the feeling of a +poet for his art, than the decision of a critic? for the +more extended scenes of the Romances in prose required +a wider stage, admitted of a fuller dramatic effect in the +incidents, and a more perfect delineation of the personages +through a more sustained action. If the prose Romances +are not epics by the conventional code of the Stagyrite, at +least they are epical; and some rude Homers sleep among +these old Romancers, metrical or prosaic. A living poetic +critic, one best skilled to arbitrate, for he is without any +prepossessions in favour of our ancient writers, has honestly +acknowledged their faithfulness to nature in their touching +simplicity; “nor,” he adds, “do they less afford, by +their bolder imagination, adequate subjects for the historical +pencil.” And he has more particularly noticed +“Le bone Florence de Rome,”—thus written by our ungrammatical +minstrels. “Classical poetry has scarcely ever +conveyed in shorter boundaries so many interesting and +complicated events as may be found in this good old +Romance.”<a name="fa8c9" id="fa8c9" href="#ft8c9"><span class="sp">8</span></a> This indeed is so true, that we find these +romantic tales were not only recited or read, but their +subjects were worked into the tapestries which covered the +walls of their apartments. The Bible and the Romance +equally offered subjects to eyes learned in the “Estoires” +never to be forgotten.</p> + +<p>Our master poets have drawn their waters from these +ancient fountains. <span class="sc">Sidney</span> might have been himself one +of their heroes, and was no unworthy rival of his masters: +<span class="sc">Spenser</span> borrowed largely, and repaid with munificence: +<span class="sc">Milton</span> in his loftiest theme looked down with admiration +on this terrestrial race,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>————and what resounds</p> +<p>In fable or romance of Uther’s son,</p> +<p>Begirt with British or Armoric knights.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page88" id="page88"></a>88</span></p> + +<p class="noind">“In ‘Amadis of Gaul,’” has said our true laureate, “may +be found the Zelmane of the ‘Arcadia,’ the Masque of Cupid +of the ‘Faery Queen,’ and the Florizel of the ‘Winter’s Tale.’ +Sidney, Spenser, and Shakspeare imitated this book: was +ever book honoured by three such imitators?”<a name="fa9c9" id="fa9c9" href="#ft9c9"><span class="sp">9</span></a></p> + +<p>A great similarity is observable among these writers +of fiction, both in their incidents and the identity of +their phrases; an evidence that these inventors were often +drawing from a common source. In these ages of manuscripts +they practised without scruple many artifices, and +might safely appropriate the happiest passages of their +anonymous brothers.<a name="fa10c9" id="fa10c9" href="#ft10c9"><span class="sp">10</span></a> One Romance would produce many +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page89" id="page89"></a>89</span> +by variations; the same story would serve as the groundwork +of another: and the later Romancer, to set at rest +the scruples of the reader, usually found fault with his +predecessors, who, having written the same story, had not +given “the true one!” By this innocent imposture, or +this ingenious impudence, they designed to confer on their +Romance the dignity of History. The metrical Romances +pretend to translate some ancient “Cronik” which might +be consulted at Caerleon, the magical palace of the +vanished Arthur: or they give their own original Romance +as from some “Latyn auctour,” whose name is cautiously +withheld; or they practise other devices, pretending to +have drawn their work from “the Greek,” or “the +English,” and even from an “unknown language.” In +some Colophons of the prose Romances the names of real +persons are assigned as the writers;<a name="fa11c9" id="fa11c9" href="#ft11c9"><span class="sp">11</span></a> but the same +Romance is equally ascribed to different persons, and +works are given as translations which in fact are originals. +Amid this prevailing confusion, and these contradictory +statements, we must agree with the editor of Warton, +that we cannot with any confidence name the author of +any of these prose Romances. <span class="sc">Ritson</span> has aptly treated +these pseudonymous translators as “men of straw.” We +may say of them all as the antiquary <span class="sc">Douce</span>, in the +agony of his baffled researches after one of their favourite +authorities, a Will o’ the Wisp named Lollius, exclaimed, +somewhat gravely—“Of Lollius it will become every one +to speak with diffidence.” Ariosto seems to have caught +this bantering humour of mystifying his readers in his +own Gothic Romance, gravely referring his extravagances +to “the Chronicle of the pseudo Archbishop Turpin” for +his voucher! What was with the Italian but a playful +stroke of satire on the pretended verity of Turpin himself, +may have covered a more serious design with these +ancient romance-writers. Père Menestrier ascribed these +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page90" id="page90"></a>90</span> +productions to Heralds, who, he says, were always selected +for their talents, their knowledge and their experience; +qualifications not the most essential for romance-writing. +“According to the bad taste of those ignorant ages,” he +proceeds, “it is from them so many Romances on feats +of arms and on chivalry issued, by which they designed +to elevate their own office, and to celebrate their voyages +in different lands.”<a name="fa12c9" id="fa12c9" href="#ft12c9"><span class="sp">12</span></a> St. Palaye, in adopting this notion +of these Heraldical Romancers, with more knowledge of +the ancient Romancers than the good Father possessed, +has added a more numerous body, the <i>Trouvères</i>, who, +either in rehearsing or in composing these poetical narratives, +might urge a stronger claim.</p> + +<p>When Père Menestrier imagined that it was the intention +of these Heralds, by these Romances, “to celebrate +their voyages in different lands,” it seems to have escaped +him that “the voyages” of these Romancers to the +visionary Caerleon, to England, or to Macedonia, were but +a geography of Fairy Land.</p> + +<p>In the History of Literature we here discover a whole +generation of writers, who, so far from claiming the +honour of their inventions, or aspiring after the meed of +fame, have even studiedly concealed their claims, and, +with a modesty and caution difficult to comprehend, +dropped into their graves without a solitary commemoration.</p> + +<p>These idling works of idlers must have been the +pleasant productions of persons of great leisure, with +some tincture of literature, and to whom, by the peculiarity +of their condition, fame was an absolute nullity. +Who were these writers who thus contemned fame? Who +pursued the delicate tasks of the illuminator and the +calligrapher? Who adorned Psalters with a religious +patience, and expended a whole month in contriving the +vignette of an initial letter? Who were these artists +who worked for no gain? In those ages the ecclesiastics +were the only persons who answer to this character; and +it would only be in the silence and leisure of the monastery +that such imaginative genius and such refined art +could find their dwelling-place. I have sometimes thought +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page91" id="page91"></a>91</span> +that it was Père Hardouin’s conviction of all this literary +industry of the monks which led him to indulge his +extravagant conjecture, that the classical writings of +antiquity were the fabrications of this sedentary brotherhood; +and his “pseudo-Virgilius” and “pseudo-Horatius” +astonished the world, though they provoked its +laughter.</p> + +<p>The Gothic mediæval periods were ages of imagination, +when in art works of amazing magnitude were produced, +while the artists sent down no claims to posterity. We +know not who were the numerous writers of these +voluminous Romances, but, what is far more surprising, +we are nearly as unacquainted with those great and +original architects who covered our land with the palatial +monastery, the church, and the cathedral. In the religious +societies themselves the genius of the Gothic architect +was found: the bishop or the abbot planned while they +opened their treasury; and the sculptor and the workmen +were the tenants of the religious house. The devotion of +labour and of faith raised these wonders, while it placed +them beyond the unvalued glory which the world can +give.<a name="fa13c9" id="fa13c9" href="#ft13c9"><span class="sp">13</span></a></p> + +<p>We cannot think less than Père Hardouin that there +were no poetical and imaginative monks—Homers in +cowls, and Virgils who chanted vespers—who could compose +in their unoccupied day more beautiful romances than +their crude legends, or the dry annals of the Leiger book +of their abbey. Some knowledge these writers had of the +mythological, and even the Homeric and Virgilian fictions, +for they often gave duplicates of the classical fables of +antiquity. Circe was a fair sorceress, the one-eyed Polyphemus +a dread giant, and Perseus bestrode a winged +dragon, before they were reflected in romances. But what +we discover peculiar in these works is a strange mixture of +sacred and profane matters, always treated in a manner +which scents of the cloister. Before he enters the combat, +the knight is often on his knees, invoking his patron-saint; +he proffers his vows on holy relics; while ladies +placed in the last peril, or the most delicate positions, by +their fervent repetitions of the sign of the cross, or a vow +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page92" id="page92"></a>92</span> +to found an abbey, are as certainly saved: and for another +refined stroke of the monachal invention, the heroes often +close their career in a monastery or a hermitage. The +monkish morality which sat loosely about them was, however, +rigid in its ceremonial discipline. Lancelot de Lac +leaves the bed of the guilty Genevra, the Queen of the +good king Arthur, at the ring of the matin-bell, to assist +at mass; so scrupulous were such writers that even in +criminal levities they should not neglect all the offices of +the Church. The subject of one of these great romances +is a search after the cup which held the real blood of +Christ; and this history of the <i>Sang-real</i> forms a series of +romances. Who but a monk would have thought, and +even dared to have written it down, that all the circumstances +in this romance were not only certain, but were +originally set down by the hand of Jesus himself? and +further dared to observe, that Jesus never wrote but twice +before—the Lord’s Prayer, and the sentence on the woman +taken in adultery. Such a pious, or blasphemous fraud, +was not unusual among the dark fancies of the monastic +legendaries.</p> + +<p>Some of these Homers must have left their lengthening +Iliad, as Homer himself seems to have done, unfinished; +tired, or tiring, for no doubt there was often a rehearsal, +“the tale half told” was resumed by some Elisha who +caught the mantle his more inspired predecessor had let +fall. It appears evident that several were the continuators +of a favourite romance; and from deficient attention or +deficient skill a fatal discrepancy has been detected in +the identical characters—the ordinary fate of those who +write after the ideas of another, with indistinct conceptions, +or with fancies going contrary to those of the first +inventor.</p> + +<p>These metrical romances in manuscript, and the printed +prose in their original editions, are now very costly. By +the antiquary and the poet these tomes may be often +opened. With the antiquary they have served as the +veritable registers of their ages. The French antiquaries, +and Carte in England, have often illustrated by those +ancient romances many obscure points in geography and +history. Except in the mere machinery of their fancy, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page93" id="page93"></a>93</span> +these writers had no motive to pervert leading facts, for +these served to give a colour of authenticity to their +pretended history, or to fix their locality. As they had not +the erudition to display, nor were aware of the propriety +of copying, the customs and manners of the age of their +legendary hero, they have faithfully transmitted their +own; we should never have had but for this lucky absurdity +the “Tale of Thebes” turned into a story of the +middle ages; while Alexander the Great is but the ideal +of a Norman baron in the splendour and altitude of the +conception of the writers. It was the ignorance of the +illuminators of our Latin and Saxon manuscripts of any +other country than their own which enabled <span class="sc">Strutt</span> to +place before the eye a pictorial exhibition of our Anglo-Saxon +fathers. Compared with the realities of these +originals, with all their faults of tediousness, the modern +copiers of ancient times, in their mock scenes of other +ages, too often reflect in the cold moonlight of their fancy +a shadowy unsubstantial antiquity.</p> + +<p>The influence of these fabulous achievements of unconquerable +heroes and of self-devoted lovers over the intellect +and the passions of men and women, during that vast +interval of time when they formed the sole literature, was +omnipotent. In the early romances of chivalry, when +their genius was purely military, and directed to kindle a +passion for joining the crusades, we rarely find adventures +of the tender passion; but, since women cannot endure +neglect, and the female character has all the pliancy of +sympathy, and has performed her part in every age on +the theatre of society, we discover the extraordinary fact +that many ladies assumed the plumy helmet and dexterously +managed the lance. The ladies rode amid armed knights +resistless as themselves. It was subsequently, when we +find that singularly fantastic institution of “The Courts +of Love,” which delivered their “Arrets” in the style of +a most refined jurisprudence, that these beautiful companions-at-arms +were satisfied to conquer the conquerors by +more legitimate seductions, and that the romances told +of little but of loves. Ariosto and Tasso are supposed +to have drawn their female warriors from the Amazonian +Penthesilea and the Camilla of Homer and Virgil; but +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page94" id="page94"></a>94</span> +it would seem that the prototype of these feminine +knights these poets also found among those old romances +which they loved.</p> + +<p>It is unquestionable that these martial romances of +chivalry inflamed the restlessness of those numerous +military adventurers who found an ample field for their +chivalry after the crusades, in our continued incursions +into France, of which country we were long a living +plague, from the reign of Edward III. to that of Henry +V., nearly a century of national tribulation. Many “a +gentyl and noble esquyer,” if perchance the English +monarch held a truce with France or Scotland, flew into +some foreign service. Sir Robert Knolles was known to +the French as “le véritable démon de la guerre;” and +Sir John Hawkwood, when there was no fighting to be +got at home, passed over into Italy, where he approved +himself to be such a prodigy of “a man-at-arms,” that +the grateful Florentines raised his statue in their cathedral; +this image of English valour may still be proudly +viewed. This chivalric race of romance-readers were not, +however, always of the purest “order of chivalry.” If +they were eager for enterprise, they were not less for its +more prudential results. A castle or a ransom in France, +a lordly marriage, or a domain in Italy, were the lees +that lie at the bottom of their glory.</p> + +<p>We continued long in this mixed state of glory clouded +with barbarism; for at a time when literature and the fine +arts were on the point of breaking out into the splendour +of the pontificate of Leo the Tenth, in our own country +the great Duke of Buckingham, about 1500, held the old +romance of “The Knight of the Swan” in the highest +estimation, because the translator maintained that our +duke was lineally descended from that hero; the first peer +of the realm was proud of deriving his pedigree from a +fabulous knight in a romantic genealogy.</p> + +<p>But all the inventions and fashions of man have their +date and their termination. For three centuries these +ancient romances, metrical or prose, had formed the reading +of the few who read, and entranced the circle of eager +listeners. The enchantment was on the wane; their +admirers had become somewhat sceptical of “the true +history” which had been so solemnly warranted; another +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page95" id="page95"></a>95</span> +taste in the more chastened writings of Roman and +Grecian lore was now on the ascendant. One last effort +was made in this decline of romantic literature, in that +tesselated compilement where the mottled pieces drawn +out of the French prose romances of chivalry were finely +squared together by no unskilful workman, in Sir <span class="sc">Thomas +Malory</span>, to the English lover of ancient romance well +known by the title of <i>La Morte d’Arthur</i>. This last of +these ancient romances was finished in the ninth year of +the reign of Edward IV., about 1470. <span class="sc">Caxton</span> exulted +to print this epical romance; and at the same time he had +the satisfaction of reproaching the “laggard” age. +“What do ye now,” exclaimed the ancient printer, “but +go to the <i>Bagnes</i>, and play at dice? Leave this! leave +it! and read these noble volumes.” Volumes which not +many years after, when a new system of affairs had occurred +to supplant this long-idolised “order of chivalry,” +<span class="sc">Roger Ascham</span> plainly asserted only taught “open manslaughter +and bold bawdry.” Such was the final fate of +Love and Arms!</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c9" id="ft1c9" href="#fa1c9"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Warton and Percy, Ritson and Leyden, Ellis and Turner and +Price, and recently the late Abbé de la Rue.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c9" id="ft2c9" href="#fa2c9"><span class="fn">2</span></a> A profound and poetic genius has thrown out a new suggestion on +the origin of these Eastern tales. “I think it not unlikely that the +‘Milesian Tales’ contained the germs of many of those <i>now in the</i> +‘Arabian Nights.’ The Greek empire must have left deep impressions +on the Persian intellect—so also many of the Roman Catholic <i>Legends</i> +are taken from <i>Apuleius</i>. The exquisite story of Cupid and Psyche +is evidently a philosophical attempt to parry Christianity with a quasi +Platonic account of the fall and redemption of man.”—Coleridge’s +“Literary Remains,” i. 180. Whatever were these “Milesian Tales,” +they amused the Grecian sages in the earliest period of their history.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c9" id="ft3c9" href="#fa3c9"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Ritson and Weber have elegantly printed some of the best English +metrical romances. In France they have recently enriched literature +with many of these manuscript romances. See “Gentleman’s Magazine,” +Oct. 1839.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c9" id="ft4c9" href="#fa4c9"><span class="fn">4</span></a> It is a curious fact, that in 1390 Sir James Douglas, of Dalkeith, +the ancestor of the Earl of Morton, apparently valued them as about +equal to the statutes of the realm; for he bequeathed in his will to his +son, “Omnes libros meos tam <i>Statutorum</i> Regni Scocie quam <i>Romancie</i>.”—Laing’s +“Early Metrical Tales,” Edinburgh, 1826.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c9" id="ft5c9" href="#fa5c9"><span class="fn">5</span></a> A collection of these romances formed into three folio tomes in +manuscript was enriched by seven hundred and forty-seven miniatures, +<i>avec les Initiales peintes en or et couleurs</i>. 6093, Roxburgh Cat.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c9" id="ft6c9" href="#fa6c9"><span class="fn">6</span></a> Cat. of the Duke de la Vallière, 4507. Strutt would have done +as much for ourselves, but he worked in unrequited solitude with all +the passion of the French amateur, but without his “best artists.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c9" id="ft7c9" href="#fa7c9"><span class="fn">7</span></a> This romance was composed about the year 1200; the present +copy was made in 1338. There is also a splendid manuscript with +rich and delicate illuminations of the ancient romance of Alexander in +prose in the Brit. Mus., Bib. Reg. 15, E. 6.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c9" id="ft8c9" href="#fa8c9"><span class="fn">8</span></a> Campbell’s “Essay on English Poetry.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c9" id="ft9c9" href="#fa9c9"><span class="fn">9</span></a> Our vernacular literature owes to the unremitting ardour of our +laureate recent editions of “La Morte d’Arthur,” “Palmerin of England,” +and a new translation from the Portuguese of “Amadis of Gaul.” +For readers who are not antiquaries, and who may recoil from the prolixity +of the ancient romances, there is a work of their species which +may amply gratify their curiosity, and it is of easy acquisition. It is +not an unskilful compilation from the romances of chivalry made by +<span class="sc">Richard Johnson</span>, a noted bookwright in the reign of Elizabeth; it +has passed through innumerable editions, and has at last taken its +station in the popular library of our juvenile literature. I suspect +that the style has been too often altered in the modern editions, which +has injured its raciness. It is well known as “The Renowned History +of the Seven Champions of Christendom.” The compiler has metamorphosed +the Rowland, Oliver, Guy, Bevis, &c., into seven saints or +champions of Christendom; but “he has preserved some of the most +capital fictions of the old Arabian romance.”—Warton, iii. 63, Ed. 8vo. +It may serve as a substitute for the old black-letter romances, being a +compendium of their rich or their grotesque fancies; or, as Ritson observes +with his accustomed energetical criticism, “It is a compound of +superstition, and, as it were, all the lyes in Christendom in one lye, +and is in many parts of the country believed at this day to be as true +as the gospel.”—“Dissertation on Romance,” xxxiv.</p> + +<p><a name="ft10c9" id="ft10c9" href="#fa10c9"><span class="fn">10</span></a> One of the most celebrated romantic histories is “the Troy-book +of Guido delle Colonne,” which has been considered as the original of +all the later tales of Troy. On the acute suggestion of Tyrwhit, Douce +ascertained that this fabulous history, by many regarded as original, is +only a Latin translation of a Norman poet,* which Guido passes off as +a history collected from Dares and other fictitious authorities, but disingenuously +conceals the name of Benoit de Saint Maur, whose works +he appears to have found when he came to England. It was a prevalent +practice in the middle ages to appropriate a work by a cautious suppression +of any mention of the original. Tiraboschi might now be +satisfied that Guido delle Colonne was in England, which he doubted, +since he now stands charged with only turning into Latin prose the +poem of a Norman, that is, an English poet at the court of our Henry +the Second.</p> + +<p class="f90">   * Douce’s “Illustrations of Shakspeare.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft11c9" id="ft11c9" href="#fa11c9"><span class="fn">11</span></a> In the curious catalogue of these romances in the Roxburgh +Library, the cataloguer announced three or four of these pretended +authors as “names unknown to any literary historians,” and considered +the announcement a literary discovery.</p> + +<p><a name="ft12c9" id="ft12c9" href="#fa12c9"><span class="fn">12</span></a> Père Menestrier, “Chevalerie Ancienne et Moderne,” chap. v. +On <span class="sc">Heralds</span>.</p> + +<p><a name="ft13c9" id="ft13c9" href="#fa13c9"><span class="fn">13</span></a> See Bentham’s “History and Antiquities of Ely,” 27.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page96" id="page96"></a>96</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">ORIGIN OF THE VERNACULAR LANGUAGES +OF EUROPE.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">The</span> predominance of the Latin language, during many centuries, +retarded the cultivation of the vernacular dialects +of Europe. When the barbarous nations had triumphed +over ancient Rome, the language of the Latins remained +unconquered; that language had diffused itself with the +universal dominion, and, living in the minds of men, +required neither legions nor consuls to maintain its predominance.</p> + +<p>From accident, and even from necessity, the swarming +hordes, some of whom seem to have spoken a language +which had never been written, and were a roving people +at a period prior to historical record, had adopted that +single colloquial idiom which their masters had conveyed +to them, attracted, if not by its beauty, at least by its +convenience. This vulgar Latin was not, indeed, the +Latin of the great writers of antiquity; but in its corrupt +state; freed from a complex construction, and even from +grammar, had more easily lent itself to the jargon of the +ruder people. Teutonic terms, or Celtic words with corrupt +latinisms, were called “the scum of ancient eloquence, +and the rust of vulgar barbarisms,” by an indignant critic +in the middle of the fifth century.<a name="fa1c10" id="fa1c10" href="#ft1c10"><span class="sp">1</span></a> It was amid this +confusion of races, of idioms, and of customs, that from +this heterogeneous mass were hewed out those <span class="scs">VERNACULAR +DIALECTS</span> of Europe which furnished each people with +their own idiom, and which are now distinguished as the +<span class="sc">Modern Languages</span>.</p> + +<p>In this transference and transfusion of languages, Italy +retained the sonorous termination of her paternal soil, and +Spain did not forget the majesty of the Latin accent; +lands favoured by more genial skies, and men blessed with +more flexible organs. But the Gothic and the Northern +races barbarously abbreviated or disfigured their Latin +words—to sounds so new to them they gave their own +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page97" id="page97"></a>97</span> +rude inflections; there is but one organ to regulate the +delicacy of orthoepy—a musical and a tutored ear. The +Gaul,<a name="fa2c10" id="fa2c10" href="#ft2c10"><span class="sp">2</span></a> in cutting his words down, contracted a nasal +sharpness; and the Northmen, in the shock of their hard, +redundant consonants, lost the vowelly confluence.</p> + +<p>This vulgar or corrupt Latin, mingled with this diversity +of jargons, was the vitiated mother of the sister-languages +of Europe—sisters still bearing their family likeness, of +the same homely origin, but of various fortunes, till some +attained to the beauty and affluence of their Latin line. +From the first the people themselves had dignified their +spurious generation of language as <i>Romans</i>, or <i>Romance</i>, +or <i>Romaunt</i>, still proud perhaps of its Roman source; +but the critical Latins themselves had distinguished it +as <i>Rustic</i>, to indicate a base dialect used only by those +who were far removed from the metropolis of the world.</p> + +<p>But when these different nations had established their +separate independence, this vernacular idiom was wholly +left to the people; it was the image of their own barbaric +condition, unworthy of the studies, and inadequate to the +genius, of any writer. The universal language maintained +its pre-eminence over the particular dialect, and as the +course of human events succeeded in the overwhelming +of ancient Rome, another Rome shadowed the world. +Ecclesiastical Rome, whence the novel faith of Christianity +was now to emanate, far more potent than military +Rome, perpetuated the ancient language. The +clergy, through the diversified realms of Europe, were +held together in strict conformity, and by a common bond +chained to the throne of the priesthood—one faith, one +discipline, one language!</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page98" id="page98"></a>98</span></p> + +<p>The Latin tongue, both in verse and prose, was domiciliated +among people of the most opposite interests, customs, +and characters. The primitive fathers, the later +schoolmen, the monkish chroniclers, all alike composed in +Latin; all legal instruments, even marriage-contracts, +were drawn in Latin: and even the language of Christian +prayer was that of abolished paganism.</p> + +<p>The idiom of their father-land—or as we have affectionately +called it, our “mother-tongue,” and as our +ancient translator of the “Polychronicon” energetically +terms it, “the birth-tongue”—those first human accents +which their infant ear had caught, and which from their +boyhood were associated with the most tender and joyous +recollections, every nation left to fluctuate on the lips of +the populace, rude and neglected. Whenever a writer, +proposing to inform the people on subjects which more +nearly interested them, composed in the national idiom, +it was a strong impulse only which could induce him thus +to submit to degrade his genius. One of the French +crusaders, a learned knight, was anxious that the nation +should become acquainted with the great achievements of +the deliverers of Jerusalem; it was the command of his +bishop that induced him to compose the narrative in the +vernacular idiom; but the twelve years which he bestowed +on his chronicle were not considered by him as employed +for his glory, for he avows that the humiliating style +which he had used was the mortifying performance of a +religious penance.</p> + +<p>All who looked towards advancement in worldly affairs, +and were of the higher orders in society, cultivated the +language of Rome. It is owing to this circumstance, +observes a learned historian of our country, that “the +Latin language and the classical writers were preserved +by the Christian clergy from that destruction which has +entirely swept from us the language and the writings of +Phœnicia, Carthage, Babylon, and Egypt.”<a name="fa3c10" id="fa3c10" href="#ft3c10"><span class="sp">3</span></a> We must +also recollect that the influence of the Latin language +became far more permanent when the great master-works +of antiquity were gradually unburied from their concealments. +In this resurrection of taste and genius, they +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page99" id="page99"></a>99</span> +derived their immortality from the imperishable soul of +their composition. All Europe was condemned to be +copiers, or in despair to be plagiarists.</p> + +<p>It is well known how the admirable literatures of Greece +and Rome struck a fresh impulse into literary pursuits at +that period which has been distinguished as the restoration +of letters. The emigration of the fugitive Greeks +conveyed the lost treasures of their more ancient literature +to the friendly shores of Italy. Italy had then to learn +a new language, and to borrow inspiration from another +genius.</p> + +<p>The occupation of disinterring manuscripts which had +long been buried in dungeon-darkness, was carried on with +an enthusiasm of which perhaps it would be difficult for +us at this day to form an adequate conception. Many +exhausted their fortunes in remote journeys, or in importations +from the East; and the possession of a manuscript +was considered not to have been too dearly purchased by +the transfer of an estate, since only for the loan of one +the pledge was nothing less.<a name="fa4c10" id="fa4c10" href="#ft4c10"><span class="sp">4</span></a> The discovery of an author, +perhaps heard of for the first time, was tantamount to the +acquisition of a province; and when a complete copy of +“Quintilian” was discovered, the news circulated throughout +Europe. The rapture of collation, the restoration of +a corrupt text, or the perpetual commentary, became the +ambition of a life, even after the era of printing.</p> + +<p>This was the useful age of critical erudition. It furnished +the studious with honours and avocations; but they +were reserved only for themselves: it withdrew them from +the cultivation of all vernacular literature. They courted +not the popular voice when a professorial chair or a dignified +secretaryship offered the only profit or honour the +literary man contemplated. Accustomed to the finished +compositions of the ancients, the scholar turned away from +the rudeness of the maternal language. There was no +other public opinion than what was gathered from the +writings of the Few who wrote to the Few who read; +they transcribed as sacred what authority had long established; +their arguments were scholastic and metaphysical, +for they held little other communication with the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page100" id="page100"></a>100</span> +world, or among themselves, but through the restricted +medium of their writings. This state was a heritage of +ideas and of opinions, transmitted from age to age with +little addition or diminution. Authority and quotation +closed all argument, and filled vast volumes. University +responded to university, and men of genius were following +each other in the sheep-tracks of antiquity. Even to so +late a period as the days of Erasmus, every Latin word +was culled with a classical superstition; and a week of +agony was exhausted on a page finely inlaid with a +mosaic of phrases.<a name="fa5c10" id="fa5c10" href="#ft5c10"><span class="sp">5</span></a> While this verbal generation flourished, +some eminent scholars were but ridiculous apes of +Cicero, and, in a cento of verses, empty echoes of Virgil. +All native vigour died away in the coldness of imitation; +and a similarity of thinking and of style deprived the +writers of that raciness which the nations of Europe +subsequently displayed when they cultivated their vernacular +literature.</p> + +<p>It is remarkable of those writers who had already distinguished +themselves by their Latin works, that when +they began to compose in their native language, those +classical effusions on which they had confidently rested +their future celebrity sank into oblivion; and the writers +themselves ceased to be subjects either of critical inquiry +or of popular curiosity, except in that language in which +they had opened a vein of original thought, in a manner +and diction the creation of their own feelings. Here +their natural power and their freed faculties placed them +at a secure interval from their imitators. Modern writers +in Latin were doomed to find too many academical +equals; but those who were inimitable in their vernacular +idiom could dread no rival, and discovered how the productions +of the heart, rather than those of the lexicon, +were echoed to their authors in the voice of their contemporaries.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page101" id="page101"></a>101</span></p> + +<p>The people indeed were removed far out of the influence +of literature. The people could neither become intelligent +with the knowledge, nor sympathise with the emotions, +concealed in an idiom which had long ceased to be +spoken, and which exacted all the labour and the leisure +of the cloistered student.</p> + +<p>This state of affairs had not occurred among the +Greeks, and hardly among the Romans, who had only +composed their immortal works in their maternal tongue. +Their arts, their sciences, and their literature were to be +acquired by the single language which they used. It was +the infelicity of their successors in dominion, to weary out +the tenderness of youth in the repulsive labours of acquiring +the languages of the two great nations whose +empire had for ever closed, but whose finer genius had +triumphed over their conquerors.</p> + +<p>With the ancients, instruction did not commence until +their seventh year; and till they had reached that period +Nature was not disturbed in her mysterious workings: +the virgin intellect was not doomed to suffer the violence +of our first barren studies—that torture of learning a +language which has ceased to be spoken by the medium +of another equally unknown. Perhaps it was owing to +this favourable circumstance that, among the inferior +classes of society in the two ancient nations, their numerous +slaves displayed such an aptitude for literature, eminent +as skilful scribes, and even as original writers.</p> + +<p>One of the earliest prose writers in our language when +style was beginning to be cultivated, has aptly described, +by a domestic but ingenious image, the effect of our youth +gathering the burdens of grammatical faggots in the Sylva +of antiquity. It is Sir <span class="sc">Thomas Elyot</span> who speaks, in +“The Boke of the Governor,” printed in 1531: “By that +time the learner cometh to the most sweet and pleasant +rendering of old authors, the sparks of fervent desire are +extinct with the burthen of grammar, like as a little fire +is even quenched with a great heap of small sticks, so +that it can never come to the principal logs, where it +should burn in a great pleasant fire.”</p> + +<p>It was Italy, the Mother and the Nurse of Literature +(as the filial zeal of her sons has hailed her), which first +opened to the nations of Europe the possibility of each +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page102" id="page102"></a>102</span> +creating a vernacular literature, reflecting the image not of +the Greeks and of the Romans, but of themselves.</p> + +<p>Three memorable men, of the finest and most contrasted +genius, appeared in one country and at one period. With +that contempt for the language of the people in which the +learned participated, busied as they were at the restoration +of letters by their new studies and their progressive discoveries, +<span class="sc">Petrarch</span> contemned his own Italian “Rime,” +and was even insensible to the inspiration of a mightier +genius than his own,—that genius who, with a parental +affection, had adopted the orphan idiom of his father-land; +an orphan idiom, which had not yet found even a +name; for it was then uncertain what was the true language +of Italy. <span class="sc">Dante</span> had at first proposed to write in +Latin; but with all his adoration of his master Virgil, he +rejected the verse of Virgil, and anticipated the wants of +future ages. A peculiar difficulty, however, occurred to +the first former of the vernacular literature of Italy. In +the state of this unsettled language—composed of fragments +of the latinity of a former populace, with the corruptions +and novelties introduced by its new masters—deformed +by a great variety of dialects—submitted, in the +mouths of the people, to their caprices, and unstamped by +the hand of a master—it seemed hopeless to fix on any +idiom which, by its inherent nobleness, should claim the +distinguished honour of being deemed Italian. <span class="sc">Dante</span> +denied this envied grace to any of the rival principalities +of his country. The poet, however, mysteriously asserted +that the true Italian “volgare” might be discovered in +every Italian city; but being common to all, it could not +be appropriated by any single one. Dante dignified the +“volgare illustre” which he had conceived in his mind, by +magnificent titles;—it was “illustrious,” it was “cardinal,” +it was “aulic,” it was “courtly,” it was the language +of the most learned who had composed in the +vulgar idiom, whether in Sicily, in Tuscany, in Puglia, +even in Lombardy, or in the marshes of Ancona! This +fanciful description of the Italian language appeared enigmatical +to the methodical investigations of the cold and +cautious <span class="sc">Tiraboschi</span>. That grave critic submitted the +interior feeling of the poet to the test of facts and dates. +With more erudition than taste, he marked the mechanical +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page103" id="page103"></a>103</span> +gradations—the stages of every language, from rudeness to +refinement. The mere historical investigator could conceive +no other style than what his chronology had furnished. +But the spirit of <span class="sc">Dante</span> had penetrated beyond +the palpable substances of the explorer of facts, and the +arranger of dates. <span class="sc">Dante</span>, in his musings, had thrown a +mystical veil over the Italian language; but the poet presciently +contemplated, amid the distraction of so many +dialects, that an Italian style would arise which at some +distant day would be deemed classical. <span class="sc">Dante</span> wrote, and +<span class="sc">Dante</span> was the classic of his country.</p> + +<p>The third great master of the vernacular literature of +Italy was <span class="sc">Boccaccio</span>, who threw out the fertility of his +genius in the <i>volgare</i> of nature herself. This Shakspeare +of a hundred tales transformed himself into all the conditions +of society; he touched all the passions of human +beings, and penetrated into the thoughts of men ere he +delineated their manners. Even two learned Greeks acknowledged +that the tale-teller of Certaldo, in his variegated +pages, had displayed such force and diversity in his +genius, that no Greek writer could be compared with his +“volgare eloquenza.”</p> + +<p>The Italian literature thus burst into birth and into +maturity; while it is remarkable of the other languages +of Europe, that after their first efforts they fell into decrepitude. +Our Saxon rudeness seems to have required +more hewing and polishing to be modelled into elegance, +and more volubility to flow into harmony, than even the +genius of its earliest writers could afford. Dante, Petrarch, +and Boccaccio were the contemporaries of Gower, +of Chaucer, and of “the Ploughman;” they delight their +nation after the lapse of many centuries; while the critics +of the reign of Elizabeth complained that Piers Ploughman, +Chaucer, and Gower then required glossaries; and +so, at a later period, did Ronsard, Baif, and Marot in +France. In prose we had no single author till the close +of the sixteenth century who had yet constructed a style; +and in France Rabelais and Montaigne had contracted the +rust and the rudeness of antiquity, as it seemed to the refinement +of the following generation.</p> + +<p>It cannot be thought that the genius of the Italians +always excelled that of other countries, but the material +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page104" id="page104"></a>104</span> +which those artists handled yielded more kindly to their +touch. The shell they struck gave a more melodious +sound than the rough and scrannel pipe cut from the +northern forests.</p> + +<p>Custom and prejudice, however, predominated over the +feelings of the learned even in Italy. Their epistolary +correspondence was still carried on in Latin, and their first +dramas were in the language of ancient Rome. <span class="sc">Angelo +Politian</span> appears to have been the earliest who composed +a dramatic piece, his “Orfeo,” in “stilo volgare,” and for +which he assigns a reason which might have occurred to +many of his predecessors—“perchè degli spettatori fusse +meglio intesa,” that he might be better understood by the +audience!</p> + +<p>The vernacular idiom in Italy was still so little in +repute, while the prejudice in favour of the Latin was so +firmly rooted, that their youths were prohibited from reading +Italian books. A curious anecdote of the times which +its author has sent down to us, however, shows that their +native productions operated with a secret charm on their +sympathies; for <span class="sc">Varchi</span> has told the singular circumstance +that his father once sent him to prison, where he +was kept on bread and water, as a penance for his inveterate +passion for reading works in the vernacular tongue.</p> + +<p>The struggle for the establishment of a vernacular +literature was apparent about the same period in different +countries of Europe; a simultaneous movement to vindicate +the honour and to display the merits of their national +idiom.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Joachim de Bellay</span>, of an illustrious literary family, +resided three years with his relative the Cardinal at +Rome; the glory of the great vernacular authors of Italy +inflamed his ardour; and in one of his poems he developes +the beauty of “composing in our native language,” by the +deeper emotions it excites in our countrymen. Subsequently +he published his “Defense et Illustration de la +Langue Françoise,” in 1549, where eloquently and learnedly +he would persuade his nation to write in their own language. +<span class="sc">Ferreira</span>, the Portuguese poet, about the same +time, with all the feelings of patriotism, resolved to give +birth to a national literature; exhorting his countrymen +to cultivate their vernacular idiom, which he purified and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page105" id="page105"></a>105</span> +enriched. He has thus feelingly expressed this glorious +sentiment—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Eu desta gloria so’ fico contente</p> +<p>Que a minha terra amei, e a minha gente.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>In Scotland we find Sir <span class="sc">David Lyndsay</span>, in 1553, +writing his great work on “The Monarchie,” in his vernacular +idiom, although he thought it necessary to apologise, +by alleging the example of Moses, Aristotle, Plato, Virgil, +and Cicero, who had all composed their works in their own +language.</p> + +<p>In our own country Lord <span class="sc">Berners</span> had anticipated this +general movement. In 1525, when he ventured on the +toil of his voluminous and spirited Froissart, he described +it as “translated out of Frenshe into our <i>maternal English +tongue</i>;” an expression which indicates those filial yearnings +of literary patriotism which were now to give us a +native literature.</p> + +<p>The predominant prejudice of writing in Latin was first +checked in Germany, France, and England by the leaders +of that great Revolution which opposed the dynasty of the +tiara. It was one of the great results of the Reformation, +that it taught the learned to address the people. The versions +of the Scriptures seemed to consecrate the vernacular +idiom of every nation in Europe. Peter Waldo began to +use the vernacular language in his version, however coarse, +of the Bible for the Vaudois, those earliest Reformers of +the Church; and though the volume was suppressed and +prohibited, a modern French literary historian deduces the +taste for writing in the maternal tongue to this rude but +great attempt to attract the attention of the people. The +same incident occurred in our own annals; and it was the +English Bible of Edward the Sixth which opened the sealed +treasures of our native language to the multitude. Calvin +wrote his great work. “The Institute of the Christian +Religion,” at the same time in the Latin language and in +the French; and thus it happens that both these works +are alike original. Calvin deemed that to render the +people intelligent their instructor should be intelligible; +and that if books are written for a great purpose, they are +only excellent in the degree that they are multiplied. +Calvin addressed not a few erudite recluses, but a whole +nation.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page106" id="page106"></a>106</span></p> + +<p>It is unquestionable that the Reformation began to +diminish the veneration for the Latin language. Whether +from the love of novelty, or rather by that transition to a +new system of human affairs, the pedantry of ancient +standing was giving way to the cultivation of a national +tongue. A great revolution was fast approaching, which +would give a new direction to the studies of the scholastic +gentry, and introduce a new mode of addressing the +people. It was a revolution alarming those who would +have walled in public opinion by circumscribing all knowledge +to a privileged class. A remarkable evidence of this +disposition appears in an incident which occurred to Sir +<span class="sc">Thomas Wilson</span>, the author of two English treatises on +the arts of Logic and of Rhetoric. An emigrant in the +days of the Papistic Mary, he was arraigned at Rome +before the Inquisition, on the general charge of heresy, but +especially for having written his “Arts of Logic” and “of +Rhetoric” in a language which, at least we may presume, +the whole conclave could not have criticised. The torture +was not only shown to him, but he tells us that “he had +felt some smart of it.” The dark inquisitors taught our +critic a new canon in his own favourite arts; and our English +Aristarchus soon discovered how far those perfidious +arts of reasoning and of eloquence may betray the hapless +orator, when his words are listened to by malicious judges, +equally skilled in mutilating sentences, or catching at loose +words. “They brought down my great heart by telling +me plainly that my <i>defence</i> had put me into further peril.” +Our baffled rhetorician saw that his only safety was to +abstain from using the great instrument of his art, which +was now locked up in silence. He was left, as he expresses +himself, “without all help and without all hope, not only +of liberty, but also of life.” He escaped by a strange +incident. It would seem that in an insurrection of the +populace they set fire to the prison, and in a burst of +popular freedom, forgetful of their bigotry, or from the +spirit of vengeance on their hateful masters, they suffered +the heretics to creep out of their cells; an ebullition of +public spirit in “the worthy Romans,” which the luckless +English expounder of logic and rhetoric might well account +as “an enterprise never before attempted.” On Wilson’s +return to England be was solicited to revise his admirable +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page107" id="page107"></a>107</span> +“Art of Rhetoric,” but he strenuously refused to “meddle +with it, either hot or cold.” Still smarting from the torture +which his innocent progeny had occasioned, he seems +to have alleviated his martyrdom with the quaint humour +of a querulous prologue.</p> + +<p>In these awful transitions from one state of society to +another, even the most sagacious are predisposed to discover +what they secretly wish. Erasmus foresaw that a +great change was approaching; but although he has +delivered a prediction, it seems doubtful whether he had +discerned the object aright. “I see,” he writes, “a certain +golden age ready to arise, which perhaps will not be +my lot to partake of, yet I congratulate the world, and the +younger sort I congratulate, in whose minds, however, +Erasmus shall live and remain, by the remembrance of +good offices he hath done.” These “good offices” were +restricted to his ardent labours in classical literature; but +did Erasmus foresee in the change the subversion of the +papal system by which Luther had often terrified the timid +quietness of our gentle recluse, or the rise of the vernacular +literature which had yet no existence? Erasmus, indeed, +was so little sensible of this approaching change, that his +amusing Colloquies, and his Panegyric on Folly, whose +satirical humour had been so happily adapted to open the +minds of men, he confined to the lettered circles; as Sir +Thomas More did his “Utopia,” which, had it been intelligible +to the people, might have impressed them with +some principles of political government. The Sage of +Rotterdam imagined that the great movement of the age +was to restore the classical pursuits of antiquity, and never +dreamed of that which, in opposition to the ancient, soon +obtained the distinction of “the New Learning,” as it is +expressed by Roger Ascham—the knowledge which was +adapted to the wants and condition of the people. Erasmus +would have been startled at the truth, that the +language of antiquity would even be neglected by the +generality of writers; that every European nation would +have classics of their own; and that the finest geniuses +would make their appeals to the people in the language of +the people.</p> + +<p>The predilection for composing in the Roman language +long continued among the most illustrious writers both +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page108" id="page108"></a>108</span> +at home and abroad. A judicious critic in the reign of +James I., Edmund Bolton, in his “Nero Cæsar,” recommends +that the history of England should be composed in +Latin by the classical pen of the learned Sir Henry Saville, +the editor of “Chrysostom.” It is indeed a curious circumstance +that when an English play was performed at +the University of Cambridge before Queen Elizabeth, the +Vice-Chancellor was called on to remonstrate with the +ministers of Elizabeth against such a derogation of the +learning and the dignity of the University. This very +Vice-Chancellor, who had to protest against all English +comedies, had, however, himself been the writer of +“Gammer Gurton’s Needle,” which was long considered +to be the first attempt at English comedy.<a name="fa6c10" id="fa6c10" href="#ft6c10"><span class="sp">6</span></a> This conduct +of the University offered no encouragement to men +of learning and genius to compose in their vernacular +idiom.</p> + +<p>The genius of <span class="sc">Verulam</span>, whose prescient views often +anticipated the institutions and the discoveries of succeeding +times, appears never to have contemplated the future +miracles of his maternal tongue. Lord <span class="sc">Bacon</span> did not +foresee that the English language would one day be +capable of embalming all that philosophy can discover +or poetry can invent; that his country, at length, would +possess a national literature, and exult in models of its +own. So little did Lord Bacon esteem the language of +his country, that his favourite works are composed in +Latin; and what he had written in English he was +anxious to have preserved, as he expresses himself, in +“that universal language which may last as long as +books last.” It might have surprised Lord Bacon to +have been told that the learned in Europe would one +day study English authors to learn to think and write, +and prefer his own “Essays,” in their living pith, to the +colder transfusions of the Latin versions of his friends. +The taste of the philosophical Chancellor was probably +inferior to his invention. Our illustrious <span class="sc">Camden</span> partook +largely of this reigning fatuity when he wrote the +reign of Elizabeth—the history of his contemporaries, and +the “Britannia”—the history of our country, in the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page109" id="page109"></a>109</span> +Latin language; as did <span class="sc">Buchanan</span> that of Scotland, and +<span class="sc">De Thou</span> his great history, which includes that of the +Reformation in France. All these works, addressed to +the deepest sympathies of the people, were not imparted +to them.</p> + +<p>There was a peculiar absurdity in composing modern +history in the ancient language of a people alike foreigners +to the feelings as well as to the nature of the transactions. +The Latin had neither proper terms to describe modern +customs, nor fitting appellatives for titles and for names +and places. The fastidious delicacy of the writers of +modern latinity could not endure to vitiate their classical +purity by the Gothic names of their heroes, and of the +barbarous localities where memorable transactions had +occurred. These great authors, in their despair, actually +preferred to shed an obscurity over their whole history, +rather than to disturb the collocation of their numerous +diction. Buchanan and De Thou, by a ludicrous play on +words, translated the proper names of persons and of +places. A Scottish worthy, <i>Wiseheart</i>, was dignified by +Buchanan with a Greek denomination, <i>Sophocardus</i>; so +that in a history of Scotland the name of a conspicuous +hero does not appear, or must be sought for in a Greek +lexicon, which, after all, may require a punster for a reader. +The history of De Thou is thus frequently unintelligible; +and two separate indexes of names and places, and the +public stations which his personages held, do not always +agree with the copy preserved in the family. The names +of the persons are latinised according to their etymology, +and all public offices are designated by those Roman ones +which bore some fancied affinity. But the modern office +was ill indicated by the ancient; the constable of France, +a military charge, differed from the <i>magister equitum</i>, and +the marshals of France from the <i>tribunus equitum</i>. His +equivocal personages are not always recognised in this +travesty of their Roman masquerade.</p> + +<p>A remarkable instance of the gross impropriety of composing +an English history in Latin, and of the obstinate +prejudice of the learned, who imagined that the ancient +idiom conferred dignity on a theme wholly vernacular, +appeared when the delegates of Oxford purchased <span class="sc">Anthony +Wood’s</span> elaborate work on “The History and Antiquities +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page110" id="page110"></a>110</span> +of the University of Oxford.” Our honest antiquary, +with a true vernacular feeling, had written the history of +an English university, during an uninterrupted labour of +ten years, in his artless but natural idiom. The learned +delegates opined that it was humiliating the Oxford press, +to have its history pass through it in the language of the +country; and Dr. Fell, with others, was chosen to dignify +it into Latin. What was the result of this pompous and +inane labour? The author was sorely hurt at the sight +of his fair offspring disguised in its foreign and fantastic +dress. What was clear in English, was obscure in the +circumlocution of rotund periods and affected phraseologies; +the circumstantial narrative and the local descriptions, +so interesting to an English reader, were not only +superfluous, but repulsive to the foreigner. <span class="sc">Anthony +Wood</span> indignantly re-transcribed the whole of his English +copy, and left the fair volumes to the care of the university +itself, not without the hope which has been +realized, that his work should be delivered to posterity +stamped by its author’s native genius.<a name="fa7c10" id="fa7c10" href="#ft7c10"><span class="sp">7</span></a></p> + +<p>Such was the crisis, and such the difficulties and the +obstructions of that native literature in whose prosperous +state every European people now exults. Homogeneous +with their habitual associations, moulded by their customs +and manners, and everywhere stamped by the peculiar +organization of each distinct race, we see the vernacular +literature ever imbued with the qualities of the soil whence +it springs, diversified, yet ever true to nature. Had the +native genius of the great luminaries of literature not +found a vein which could reach to the humblest of their +compatriots, they who are now the creators of our vernacular +literature had remained but pompous plagiarists +or frigid babblers, and the moderns might still have been +pacing in the trammels of a mimetic antiquity.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c10" id="ft1c10" href="#fa1c10"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Sidonius Apollinaris.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c10" id="ft2c10" href="#fa2c10"><span class="fn">2</span></a> An ingenious literary antiquary has given us a copious vocabulary, +as complete evidence of Latin words merely abbreviated by omitting +their terminations, whence originated those numerous monosyllables +which impoverish the French language. In the following instances the +Gauls only used the first syllable for the entire word, damnum—<i>damn</i>; +aureum—<i>or</i>; malum—<i>mal</i>; nudum—<i>nud</i>; amicus—<i>ami</i>: vinum—<i>vin</i>; +homo—<i>hom</i>, as anciently written; curtus—<i>court</i>; sonus—<i>son</i>; +bonus—<i>bon</i>: and thus made many others.</p> + +<p>The nasal sound of our neighbours still prevails; thus Gracchus +sinks into <i>Gracque</i>; Titus Livius is but <i>Tite Live</i>; and the historian of +Alexander the Great, the dignified Quintus Curtius, is the ludicrous +<i>Quinte Curce</i>!—Auguis, “Du Génie de la Langue Françoise.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c10" id="ft3c10" href="#fa3c10"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Turner’s “History of England.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c10" id="ft4c10" href="#fa4c10"><span class="fn">4</span></a> See “Curiosities of Literature,” article Recovery of Manuscripts.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c10" id="ft5c10" href="#fa5c10"><span class="fn">5</span></a> <span class="sc">Erasmus</span> composed a satirical dialogue between two vindictive +Ciceronians; it is said that a duel has been occasioned by the intrepidity +of maintaining the purity of a writer’s latinity. The pedantry +of mixing Greek and Latin terms in the vernacular language is ridiculed +by <span class="sc">Rabelais</span> in his encounter with the Limousin student, whom he +terrified till the youngster ended in delivering himself in plain French, +and left off “Pindarising” all the rest of his days.—“Pantagruel,” +lib. ii. c. 6.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c10" id="ft6c10" href="#fa6c10"><span class="fn">6</span></a> Collier’s “History of Dramatic Poetry,” ii. 463.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c10" id="ft7c10" href="#fa7c10"><span class="fn">7</span></a> We now possess this valued literary history, which none, perhaps, +but Anthony à Wood could have so fervently pursued: “The History +and Antiquities of the University of Oxford,” in five volumes, quarto. +Edited by John Gutch. It is a distinct work from the far-known +“Athenæ Oxonienses.” Why did this great work, as well as some +others, come forth with a Latin title? This absurdity was a remaining +taint of the ancient prejudice. But an English work was not the more +classical for bearing a Latin title.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page111" id="page111"></a>111</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Johnson</span> pronounced it impossible to ascertain when our +speech ceased to be Saxon and began to be English; and +although since his day English philology has extended its +boundaries, the lines of demarcation are very moveable +for the literary antiquary. At whatever point we set out, +we may find that something which preceded has been +omitted; a century may pass away and leave no precise +epoch; and transitions of words and styles, like shades +melting into each other, may elude perception. Too often +wanting sufficient data, the toil of the antiquary becomes +baffled, and the microscopic eye of the philologist pores +on empty space. The learned have their theories; but in +darkness we are doomed to grope, and in a circle we can +fix on no beginning.</p> + +<p>The elegant researches of Ellis, the antiquarian lore of +Ritson, the simplicity of taste of Percy, the poetic fervour +of Campbell, the elaborate diligence of Sharon Turner, and +more recent names skilled in Saxon lore, have given opposite +hypotheses, conjectures, and refutations. “A modification +of language is not in reality a change,” observes +a powerful researcher in literary history,<a name="fa1c11" id="fa1c11" href="#ft1c11"><span class="sp">1</span></a> who is at a loss +“whether some compositions shall pass for the latest offspring +of the mother, or the earliest fruit of the daughter’s +fertility”—a shrewd suspicion which the genealogists of +words may entertain concerning the legitimate and the +illegitimate, or the pure and the corrupt.</p> + +<p>The Saxon language had been tainted by some Latin +terms from the ecclesiastics, and some fashionable Normanisms +from the court of the Confessor; when the +Norman-French, fatal as the arrow which pierced Harold, +by a single blow struck down that venerable form—and +never has it arisen! And now, with all its pomp, such +as it was, it lies entombed and coffined in some scanty +manuscripts.</p> + +<p>We indeed triumph that the language of our forefathers +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page112" id="page112"></a>112</span> +never did depart from the land, since it survived among +the people. What survived? It soon ceased to be a +written tongue, for no one cared to cultivate an idiom no +longer required, and utterly contemned. After the Conquest, +the miserable Saxons lost their “book-craft.” We +find nothing written but the continuation of a meagre +chronicle. A few pietists still lingered in occasional +homilies, and a solitary charter has been perpetuated; +but the style was already changed, and as a literary +language the Anglo-Saxon had for ever departed! It +had sunk to the people, and they treated the ancient +idiom after their fashion—the language of books served +not simple men; laying aside its inflections, and its inversions, +and its arbitrary construction, they chose a +shorter and more direct conveyance of their thoughts, +and only kept to a language fitted to the business of daily +life. This getting free from the encumbrances of the +Anglo-Saxon we may consider formed the obscure beginnings +of <span class="sc">the English Language</span>. All the gradual +changes or the sudden innovations through more than +two centuries may not be perceivable by posterity; but +philologists have marked out how first the inversion was +simplified, and then the inflections dropped; how the final +E became mute, and at length was ejected; how ancient +words were changed, and Norman neologisms introduced. +As this English cleared itself of the nebulosity, the anomalies, +and all the complex machinery of the mother +idiom, a natural style was formed, very homely, for this +vaunted Saxon now came from the mouths of the people, +and from those friends of the people, the monks, who only +wrote for their humble brother-Saxons. The English +writers who were composing in French, and the more +learned who displayed their clerkship by their Latinity, +had a standard of literature which would regulate or +advance their literary workmanship; but there was no +standard in the language of bondage: it had mixed, as +Ritson oddly describes it, “with one knows not what,” a +disorganization of words and idioms. Numerous <span class="scs">DIALECTS</span> +pervaded the land; the east and the west agreed as ill +together as both did with the north and the south; and +they who wrote for the people each chose the dialect of +their own shire.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page113" id="page113"></a>113</span></p> + +<p>The “Saxon Chronicle,” which closes with the year +1155, had been continued at progressive intervals by +different writers; this authentic document of the Anglo-Saxon +diction exhibits remarkable variations of style; and +a critical Saxonist has detected the corruptions of its +idiom, its inflections, and its orthography—in a word, that +through successive periods it had suffered a material alteration +in its character.<a name="fa2c11" id="fa2c11" href="#ft2c11"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p>Somewhat more than a century after the Norman invasion, +about 1180, Layamon made an English version of +Wace’s “Brut”—that French metrical chronicle which +the Anglo-Norman had drawn from the Latin history of +“Geoffry of Monmouth.” Here we detect an entire +changeableness of style, or rather a transformation; but +what to call it the most skilful have not agreed. George +Ellis drew a copious specimen of a writer unnoticed by +Warton; but, confounded by “its strange orthography,” +and mournfully doubtful of his own meritorious glossary, +he considered the style, “though simple and unmixed, yet +a very barbarous Saxon.” A recent critic opines that +Layamon “seems to have halted between two languages, +the written and the spoken.” Mr. Campbell imagines it +“the dawn” of our language; while some Saxonists have +branded it as semi-Saxon. It seems a language thrown +into confusion, struggling to adapt itself to a new state +of things; it has no Norman-French, it is saturated with +Saxon, but the sentences are freed from inversions.<a name="fa3c11" id="fa3c11" href="#ft3c11"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> + +<p>About the same period as Layamon’s version of Wace, +we have a very original attempt of a writer, in those days +of capricious pronunciation, to convey to the reader the +orthoepy by regulating the orthography. As it is only +recently that we have obtained any correct notion of a +writing which has suffered many misconceptions from our +earlier English scholars, the history of this work becomes +a bibliographical curiosity.</p> + +<p>An ecclesiastic paraphrased the Gospel-histories. He +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page114" id="page114"></a>114</span> +was a critical writer, projecting a system to which he +strictly adhered, warning his transcribers as punctually to +observe, otherwise “they would not write the word right;” +they were therefore “to write those letters twice which +he had written so.” The system consisted in doubling +the consonant after a short vowel to regulate the pronunciation. +He wrote broth<i>err</i> and afft<i>err</i>; is <i>iss</i>, and +it <i>itt</i>.<a name="fa4c11" id="fa4c11" href="#ft4c11"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> + +<p>It is evident that this critical was also a refined writer; +for it indicated some delicacy, when we find him apologising +for certain additions in his version, which was +metrical, not found in the original, and merely used by +him for the convenience of filling up his metre. The first +literary historians to whose lot it fell to record this +anomalous work, among whom were <span class="sc">Hickes</span> and <span class="sc">Wanley</span>, +judging by appearances, in the superabundance of the +rugged consonants, deemed this refined Anglo-Saxon’s +writing as the work of an ignorant scribe, or as a rude +provincial dialect, or harsh enough to be the work of an +English Dane; its metrical form eluded all detection, as +the verses were a peculiar metre of fifteen syllables, all +jumbled together as prose: as such they gave some extracts, +but it is evident that this was done with little +intelligence of their author. <span class="sc">Tyrwhit</span>, occupied on his +“Chaucer,” had a more percipient ear for these Anglo-Saxon +metres, and discovered that this prose was strictly +metrical; but he surely advanced no farther—he did not +discover the writer’s design that “the Ennglisshe writ” +was for “Ennglisshe menn to lare”—to learn. Indeed, +Tyrwhit, who complains that Hickes in noticing this +peculiarity of spelling “has not explained the author’s +reason for it,” himself so little comprehended the system +of the double consonants, that in his extract, humorously +“begging pardon” of this old and odd reformer whom the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page115" id="page115"></a>115</span> +critic was not only offending, but massacring, “for not +following his injunctions,” he discards “all the superfluous +letters!” not aware that it was the intention of the +writer to preserve the orthoepy. Even our Anglo-Saxon +historian missed the secret; for he has remarked on the +words, that they were “needlessly loaded with double +consonants.” Yet he was not wholly insensible to the +substantial qualities of the writer, for he discovered in the +diction that “the order of words is uniformly more natural, +the inflections are more unfrequent, and the phrases of +our English begin to emerge.” And, finally, our latest +authority decides that this work, so long misinterpreted, +is “the oldest, the purest, and by far the most valuable +specimen of our old English dialect that time has left +us.”<a name="fa5c11" id="fa5c11" href="#ft5c11"><span class="sp">5</span></a></p> + +<p>What is “old English” is the question. The title of +this work may have perplexed the first discoverers as +much as the double consonants. The writer was an ecclesiastic +of the name of <span class="sc">Orm</span>, and he was so fascinated with +his own work for the purity of its diction, and the precision +of its modulated sounds, that in a literary rapture +he baptized it with reference to himself; and <i>Orm</i> fondly +called his work the <i>Ormulum</i>! One hardly expected to +meet with such a Narcissus of literature in an old Anglo-Saxon, +philologist of the year so far gone by, yet we now +find that Orm might fairly exult in his Ormulum!</p> + +<p>Nearly a century after Layamon, in the same part of +England, the monk, <span class="sc">Robert of Gloucester</span>, wrote his +“Chronicle,” about 1280. This honest monk painfully +indited for his brother-Saxons the whole history of +England, in the shape of Alexandrine verse in rhyme; +the diction of the verse approaches so nearly to prose, +that it must have been the colloquial idiom of the west. +The “Ingliss,” as it was called in the course of the century +between Layamon and Robert of Gloucester, betrays +a striking change; and modern philologists have given +the progressive term of “middle English” to the language +from this period to the Reformation.<a name="fa6c11" id="fa6c11" href="#ft6c11"><span class="sp">6</span></a> Our chronicler +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page116" id="page116"></a>116</span> +has fared ill with posterity, of whom probably he never +dreamt. Robert of Gloucester, who is entirely divested +of a poetical character, as are all rhyming chroniclers, has +had the hard hap of being criticised by two merciless +poets; and, to render his uncouthness still more repulsive, +the black-letter fanaticism of his editor has vauntingly +arrayed the monk whom he venerated in the sable Gothic, +bristling with the Saxon characters.<a name="fa7c11" id="fa7c11" href="#ft7c11"><span class="sp">7</span></a> It has therefore +required something like a physical courage to sit down to +Robert of Gloucester. Yet in the rhymer whom Warton +has degraded, Ellis has discovered a metrical annalist +whose orations are almost eloquent, whose characters of +monarchs are energetic, and what he records of his own +age matter worthy of minute history.</p> + +<p>Another monk, <span class="sc">Robert Mannyng</span>, of Brunne, or +Bourne, in Lincolnshire, who had versified <span class="sc">Piers Langtoft’s</span> +“Chronicle,” has left a translation of the “Manuel +des Péchés,” ascribed to Bishop Grosteste, who composed +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page117" id="page117"></a>117</span> +it in politer French. In this “Manual of Sins,” or, as he +terms it, “A Handlyng of Sinne,” according to monkish +morality and the monkish devices to terrify sinners, our +recreative monk has introduced short tales, some grave, +and some he deemed facetious, which convey an idea of +domestic life and domestic language. It is not without +curiosity that we examine these, the earliest attempts at +that difficult trifle—the art of telling a short tale, Robert +de Brunne is neither a Mat Prior nor a La Fontaine, +but he is a block which might have been carved into one +or the other, and he shows that without much art a tale +may be tolerably told.<a name="fa8c11" id="fa8c11" href="#ft8c11"><span class="sp">8</span></a> His octosyllabic verse is more +fluent than the protracted Alexandrine of his “Chronicle.” +The words fall together in natural order, and we seem to +have advanced in this rude and artless “Ingliss.” But +the most certain evidence that “the English” was engaging +the attention of those writers who professedly were +devoting their pens to those whom they called “the +Commonalty,” is, that they now began to criticise; and +we find Robert de Brunne continually protesting against +“strange Ingliss.” This phrase has rather perplexed our +inquirers. “Strange Ingliss” would seem to apply to +certain novelties in diction used by the tale-reciters and +harpers, for so our monk tells us,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i7">“I wrote</p> +<p>In symple speeche as I couthe,</p> +<p>That is <i>lightest in manne’s mouthe</i>.</p> +<p>I mad (made) nought for no disoúrs (tale-tellers),</p> +<p>Ne for no seggers nor harpoúrs,</p> +<p>Bot for the luf (love) of symple menu</p> +<p>That <i>strange Inglis</i> cann not ken.”</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>It was about this time that the metrical romances, +translated from the French, spread in great number, and +introduced many exotic phrases. In the celebrated romance +of “Alisaundre” we find French expressions, unalloyed +by any attempt at Anglicising them, overflowing +the page. The phrase is, however, once applied to certain +strange metres which our monk avoided, for many “that +read English would be confounded by them.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page118" id="page118"></a>118</span></p> + +<p>Whatever Robert de Brunne might allude to by his +“strange Ingliss,”<a name="fa9c11" id="fa9c11" href="#ft9c11"><span class="sp">9</span></a> the same cry and the identical expressions +are repeated by a writer not many years afterwards—<span class="sc">Richard +Rolle</span>, called “the Hermit of Hampole.” +He produced the earliest versions of the Psalms into +English prose, with a commentary on each verse; and a +voluminous poem in ten thousand lines, entitled “The +Prikke of Conscience,” translated from the Latin for +“the unletterd men of Engelonde who can only understand +English.” In the prologue to this first Psalter in +English prose he says, “I seke no <i>straunge Ynglyss</i>, bot +<i>lightest</i> and <i>communest</i>, and wilk (such) that is most like +unto the Latyn; and thos I fine (I find) no proper Inglis +I felough (follow) the wit of the words, so that thai that +knowes noght (not) the Latyne, be (by) the Ynglys may +come to many Latyne wordys.” Here we arrive at open +corruption! Already a writer appears refined enough to +complain of the poverty of the language in furnishing +“proper Inglis” or synonymes for the Latin; the next +step must follow, and that would be in due time the +latinising “the Ynglys.”</p> + +<p>A great curiosity of the genuine homeliness of our +national idiom at this time has come down to us in a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page119" id="page119"></a>119</span> +manuscript in the Arundel Collection, now in our national +library. It is a volume written by a monk of St. Austin’s +at Canterbury, in the Kentish dialect, about a century +and a half after Layamon, and half a century after Robert +of Gloucester, in 1340. This honest monk, like others +of the Saxon brotherhood, was writing for his humbled +countrymen, or, as he expresses himself, with a rude Doric +simplicity,</p> + +<p class="center ptb1 f90">Vor Vader and for Moder and for other Ken.</p> + +<p>I throw into a note what I have transcribed of this +specimen of the old Saxon-English, or, as it is called, +“Semi-Saxon.”<a name="fa10c11" id="fa10c11" href="#ft10c11"><span class="sp">10</span></a> In this specimen of the language as +spoken by the people the barbarism is native, pure in its +impurity, and unalloyed by any spurious exotic. This +English spoken in the Weald of Kent, Caxton tells us, in +his time, was “as broad and rude English as is spoken in +any place in England.” When contrasted with the diction +of a northern bard, whom a singular accident retrieved +for us,<a name="fa11c11" id="fa11c11" href="#ft11c11"><span class="sp">11</span></a> it offers a curious picture of the English +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page120" id="page120"></a>120</span> +language, so different at precisely the same period. The +minstrel’s flow of verse almost anticipates the elegance of +a writer of two centuries later.</p> + +<p>The poems of <span class="sc">Laurence Minot</span> consist of ten narrative +ballads on some of the wars of Edward the Third in +Scotland and in France. The events this bard records +show that his writings were completed in 1352. His +editor is surprised that “the great monarch whom he so +eloquently and so earnestly panegyrised was either ignorant +of his existence or insensible of his merit.” Minot +was probably nothing more than a northern minstrel, +whose celebrity did not extend many leagues. His verses +convey to us a perfect conception of the minstrel character, +throwing out his almost extemporaneous “Lays” +on the predominant incidents of his day. All these narrative +poems open by soliciting the attention of the +auditors:—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p><span class="sc">Lithes</span>! and I sall tell you tyll</p> +<p>The bataile of Halidon Hyll.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">And in another,—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p><span class="sc">Herkins</span> how long King Edward lay,</p> +<p>With his men before Tournay.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The singularity of these “Lays” consists in coming +down to us in a written form, evidently with great care +and fondness, bearing their author’s unknown name. +They might have appropriately been preserved in Percy’s +“Reliques of English Poetry.”<a name="fa12c11" id="fa12c11" href="#ft12c11"><span class="sp">12</span></a></p> + +<p>Three centuries had now passed, and still the national +genius languished in the Norman bondage of the language. +But the commonalty were increasing in number and in +weight, and an indignant sense of the destitution of a +national language was not confined to the laity; it was +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page121" id="page121"></a>121</span> +attracting the attention of those who thought and who +wrote. Richard of Bury, Bishop of Durham, who put +forth the first bibliographical treatise by an Englishman, +and may he ranked among the earliest critical collectors of +a private library, in his celebrated treatise on the love of +books, the “Philo-biblion,”<a name="fa13c11" id="fa13c11" href="#ft13c11"><span class="sp">13</span></a> breathes all the enthusiasm +of study; but while he directs our attention to the classical +writers of antiquity, he stimulates his contemporaries +to emulate them by composing new books. Although +he himself wrote in Latin, he regrets that no institution +for children in the English language existed; and he complains, +that our English youth “first learned the French, +and from the French the Latin.” Our youth were sent +into France to polish their nasal Norman. This writer flourished +about 1330, and thus ascertains, that in the beginning +of the reign of Edward III. no English was taught. +The “Polychronicon,” a Latin chronicle compiled by the +monk Higden, was finished somewhat later, about 1365; +and we find the complaint more bitterly renewed. “There +is no nation,” wrote this honest monk, “whose children +are compelled to leave their own language, as we have +since the Normans came into England. A gentleman’s +child must speak French from the time that he is rocked +in a cradle, or plays with a child’s breche.”</p> + +<p>The Latin Chronicle of Higden, twenty years later, +was translated into English by John de Trevisa. On +this passage the translator furnishes the important observation, +that, since this was written, a revolution had +occurred through our grammar-schools: the patriotic +efforts of one Sir John Cornewaile, in teaching his pupils +to construe their Latin into English, had been generally +adopted; “so that now,” proceeds Trevisa, “the yere of +our Lorde 1385, in all the grammere scoles of Engelond, +children leaveth Frensche and construeth and lerneth in +Englische.” The innovation had startled our translator, +for, like all innovations, there was loss as well as profit, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page122" id="page122"></a>122</span> +when, quitting what we are accustomed to, we launch +dubiously into a new acquisition. The disuse of the +French would detriment their intercourse abroad, and, on +great occasions, at home. This was a time when Trevisa +himself, in selecting some Scriptural inscriptions for the +chapel of Berkley Castle, where he was chaplain, had +them painted on boards in Norman-French, and Latin, in +alternate lines. They are still visible. English itself was +yet too base for the service of God.</p> + +<p>It was still a debateable question, as appears by the +prefatory dialogue between Trevisa and his patron, +Lord Berkley, whether any translation of the Chronicle +were at all necessary, Latin being the general language. +It was, however, a noble enterprise, being the first great +effort in our vernacular prose. This mighty volume is a +universal history, which, in its amplitude and miscellaneous +character, seemed to contain all that men could +know; and the version long enjoyed the favour of all +readers as the first historical collection in the English +language. It bears the seal of the monkish taste, being +equally pious and fabulous. It not only opens before the +days of Adam, but, like the creation, has its seven divisions; +it has monsters, however, which are not found in Genesis. +The monk is doubtful whether they came of Adam or of +Noah. They, indeed, came from the elder Pliny, to whose +puerile wonders and hasty compilation we owe the foundation +of our natural history.</p> + +<p>It was about the period that Higden concluded his +labours, that Sir John Mandeville deemed it wise, having +written his Travels in Latin and French, to compose them +also in the vernacular idiom;—a strong indication of the +rising disposition to cultivate the national tongue. The +policy of our Government now accorded with the general +disposition; and hence originated the noble decision of +Edward III., in 1362, to banish from our courts of law +the Norman-French; but so awkward seemed this great +novelty, that the statute is written in the very language +it abolishes,<a name="fa14c11" id="fa14c11" href="#ft14c11"><span class="sp">14</span></a> and, indeed, to which our great lawyers, the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page123" id="page123"></a>123</span> +timid slaves of precedents, long afterwards clung in their +barbarous law-French phrases mingled with their native +English.</p> + +<p>A mightier movement even than the royal decree in +favour of fostering the national language was a translation +of the Scriptures, by the intrepid spirit of Wickliffe. +This had been done with the pledge of his life, for that +was often in peril while he thus struck the first impulse +of that reformation which not only influenced his own +age, but one more remote. The translation of Wickliffe +was a new revelation of the Word of God in the language +of many. The streets were crowded with Lollards, as his +followers were denominated, of which, like similar odious +names attached to a rising party, the origin remains uncertain; +Lollardy was, however, a convenient term to +describe treason in the Church and the State. Wickliffe’s +translation of the Old Testament still lies in numerous +manuscripts, for our cold neglect of which we have incurred +the censure of the foreigner. The New Testament +has happily been printed.<a name="fa15c11" id="fa15c11" href="#ft15c11"><span class="sp">15</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page124" id="page124"></a>124</span></p> + +<p>If we place by the side of the text of Wickliffe our +later versions, we may become familiar with that Saxon-English +which our venerable Caxton subsequently considered +was “more like to Dutch than English.”</p> + +<p>But the picturesque language of our emotions, the +creative diction of poetry, appeared in the courtly style +of Chaucer, who nobly designed to render the national +language refined and varied, while his great contemporaries, +the author of Piers Ploughman lingered in a rude dialect, +and Gower was still composing alternately in Latin and +in French.</p> + +<p>The emancipation of the national language was subsequently +confirmed by another monarch. A curious anecdote +in our literary history has recently been disclosed of +Henry V. To encourage the use of the vernacular tongue, +this monarch, in a letter missive to one of the city companies, +declared that “<i>the English tongue hath in modern +days begun to be honourably enlarged and adorned, and for +the better understanding of the people</i> the common idiom +should be exercised in writing:” this was at once setting +aside the Norman-French and the Latin for the daily +business of civil life. By this record it appears that many +of the craft of brewers, to whose company this letter was +addressed, had “knowledge of writing and reading in the +English idiom, but Latin and French they by no means +understood.” We further learn that now “the <span class="sc">Lords</span> +and the <span class="sc">Commons began</span> <i>to have their proceedings noted +down in the mother tongue</i>;” and this example was therefore +to be followed by the city companies.<a name="fa16c11" id="fa16c11" href="#ft16c11"><span class="sp">16</span></a></p> + +<p>At this advanced age of transition, so unsettled was the +language of ordinary affairs, that the same document +bears evidence of three different idioms. We find the +petition of an Irish chieftain, a prisoner in the Tower, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page125" id="page125"></a>125</span> +written in the French language, while the endorsed royal +answer is in English, and the order of the council in +Latin.<a name="fa17c11" id="fa17c11" href="#ft17c11"><span class="sp">17</span></a> The bulletins of Henry V. to the mayor and +aldermen of London are written in English, but endorsed +in French.</p> + +<p>As if they designed to hold out a model to their subjects +and to sanction the use of their native English, both this +prince, and his father, Henry IV., left their wills in the +national language,<a name="fa18c11" id="fa18c11" href="#ft18c11"><span class="sp">18</span></a> at a time when the nobles employed +Latin or French for such purposes.</p> + +<p>There has often existed a sympathy between ourselves +and our near neighbours of France, when not disturbed +by war. This great movement of establishing a national +language, and freeing themselves from the Roman bondage, +was tried at a later period by the French government, +who were nearly baffled in the attempt. An ordinance of +Louis XII. was issued <i>to abolish the use of the Latin +tongue</i>; but such was the prejudice in favour of the +ancient language, that notwithstanding that the Latin of +the bar had degenerated into the most ludicrous barbarism, +the lawyers were unwilling to yield to the popular wish. +The use of Latin in France in all legal instruments lasted +till the succeeding reign of Francis I., who, by two +ordinances, declared that <span class="sc">The French Language</span> should +be solely used in all public acts. It was, however, as late +as forty years after, in 1629, that at length the public +offices consented to draw their instruments in their vernacular +language.<a name="fa19c11" id="fa19c11" href="#ft19c11"><span class="sp">19</span></a> So long has general improvement to +contend with the force of habit and the passion of prepossession; +and such were the difficulties which the vernacular +style of both these great empires had to overcome.</p> + +<p>When the learned <span class="sc">Hickes</span>, in his patriotic fervour to +trace the legitimacy of the English from its parent language, +adjudged that “nine-tenths of our words were of +Saxon origin,” he exultingly appealed to the Lord’s +Prayer, wherein there are only three words of French or +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page126" id="page126"></a>126</span> +Latin extraction. This startled <span class="sc">Tyrwhit</span>, then busied on +his Chaucerian glossary, and who in that labour had +before him a different aspect of our mottled English. +That was not the day when writers would maintain opinions +against authority. Awed by the great Saxonist, the +poetical antiquary compromised, alleging that “though +the <i>form</i> of our language was still Saxon, yet the <i>matter</i> +was in a great measure French.” His successor in English +philology, <span class="sc">George Ellis</span>, still further faltered and +arbitrated; suggesting that the great Saxonist, to complete +his favourite scheme, would trace some <i>old Gaulish</i> +French to a <i>Teutonic</i> origin. In tracing the formation of +the English language, we are sensible that the broad and +solid foundations lie in the Saxon, but the superstructure +has often, with a magical movement, varied in its architecture. +An enamoured Saxonist has recently ventured to +assert that “English is but another term for Saxon;” but +an ocular demonstration has been exhibited in specimens +of the <i>modern English</i> of our master-writers, marking by +italics all the words of Saxon derivation. By these it +appears that the translators of the Bible have happily +preserved for us the pristine simplicity of our Saxon-English, +like the light in a cathedral through its storied and +saintly window, shedding its antique hues on hallowed +objects. But as we advance, we discover in our most +eminent writers the anglicisms diminish; and <span class="sc">Sharon +Turner</span> has observed that a fifth of the Saxon language +has ceased to be used. A recent critic<a name="fa20c11" id="fa20c11" href="#ft20c11"><span class="sp">20</span></a> has curiously calculated +that the English language, now consisting of +about 38,000 words, contains 23,000, or nearly five-eighths, +Anglo-Saxon in their origin; that in our most +idiomatic writers, there is about one-tenth <i>not</i> Anglo-Saxon, +and in our least about one-third.<a name="fa21c11" id="fa21c11" href="#ft21c11"><span class="sp">21</span></a> A cry of our +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page127" id="page127"></a>127</span> +desertion of our Saxon purity has been raised by those +who have not themselves practised it in their more elevated +compositions; but are we to deem that English +corrupted which recedes from its Saxon character, and +compels the daughter to lose the likeness of her mother? +Are we to banish to perpetuity those foreigners who have +already fructified our Saxon soil? In an age of extended +literature, conversant with objects and productive of associations +which never entered into the experience of our +forefathers, the ancient language of the people must +necessarily prove inadequate; a new language must start +out of new conceptions. Look into our present “exchequer +of words;” there lies many a refined coinage struck +out of the arts and the philosophies of Europe. Every +word which genius creates, and which time shall consecrate, +is a possession of the language which must be inscribed +into that variable doomsday book of words—the +English Dictionary. Devotees of Thor and Woden! the +day of your idolatries has passed, and your remonstrances +are vain as your superstitions.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c11" id="ft1c11" href="#fa1c11"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Mr. Hallam.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c11" id="ft2c11" href="#fa2c11"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Dr. Bosworth.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c11" id="ft3c11" href="#fa3c11"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Of this recondite writer Ellis has said, “probably Layamon never +will be printed;” but we live in an age of publication, and Layamon +is said to be actually in the press. [Since this was written, the work +has been published at the cost of the Society of Antiquaries, under the +editorial care of Sir Frederick Madden.]</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c11" id="ft4c11" href="#fa4c11"><span class="fn">4</span></a> Dr. Bosworth, or Mr. Thorpe, has explained this attempt more +fully. “From this idea of doubling the consonant after a short vowel, +as in German, we are enabled to form some tolerably accurate notions +as to the pronunciation of our forefathers. Thus, Orm (or Ormin) +writes <i>min</i> and <i>win</i> with a single <i>n</i> only, and <i>lif</i> with a single f, because +the i is long, as in <i>mine</i>, <i>wine</i>, and <i>life</i>. On the other hand, +wherever the consonant is doubled, the vowel preceding is sharp and +short, as <i>winn</i>, pronounced <i>win</i>, not <i>wine</i>.”—“Origin of the Germanic +and Scandinavian Languages,” 24.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c11" id="ft5c11" href="#fa5c11"><span class="fn">5</span></a> Guest’s “Hist. of English Rhythms,” ii. 186.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c11" id="ft6c11" href="#fa6c11"><span class="fn">6</span></a> During the thirteenth century, the organic change proceeded so +rapidly that there is quite as wide a difference between the language of +Layamon and that which was written at the beginning of the fourteenth +century (about the time of Robert of Gloucester), as there is between +the English language of the reign of Edward the Second and the tongue +of the present day.—See Mr. Wright’s learned “Essay on the Literature +of the Anglo-Saxons,” 107.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c11" id="ft7c11" href="#fa7c11"><span class="fn">7</span></a> Hearne, in his preface, exclaims in ecstacy—“This is the <i>first +book</i> ever printed in this kingdom, it may be in <i>the whole world, in the +black letter</i>, with a mixture of <i>the Saxon characters</i>, which is the very +garb that was in vogue in the author’s time, that is, in the thirteenth +century.” Hearne often claims our gratitude, while his earnest simplicity +will extort a smile. On our ancient Bibles he could not refrain +from exclaiming—“Though I have taken so much pleasure in perusing +the English Bible of the year 1541, yet ’tis nothing equal to that I +should take in turning over that of the year 1539.” His antiquarianism +kindled his piety over Cranmer’s Bible.</p> + +<p>Thomas was haunted by a chimera that whatever was obsolete +deserved to be revived. This honest spirit of antiquarianism, working +on a most undiscerning intellect, seems to have kindled into a literary +bigotry in his sateless delight of “the black-letter of our grandfathers’ +days.” Hearne set this unhappy example of printing ancient writers +with all their obsolete repulsiveness in orthography and type. He was +closely followed by <span class="sc">Ritson</span>, and by <span class="sc">Whitaker</span> in his edition of “Piers +Ploughman;” and these editors assuredly have scared away many a +neophyte in our vernacular literature. <span class="sc">Ritson</span> printed his “Ancient +Songs” with the Saxon characters and abbreviations, which render +them often unintelligible. This literary antiquary lived to regret this +superstitious antiquarianism. He had prepared a new edition entirely +cleared of these offences, but which unfortunately he destroyed at the +morbid close of his life.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c11" id="ft8c11" href="#fa8c11"><span class="fn">8</span></a> Turner’s “History of England,” v. 217, will furnish the curious +reader readily with several of these specimens of the modes of thinking +and of acting of the middle ages, when monks only were the preceptors +of mankind.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c11" id="ft9c11" href="#fa9c11"><span class="fn">9</span></a> This term of “strange Ingliss” has yet been found so obscure as to +occasion some strictures, which, like the Interpreter in the Critic, are +the most difficult to comprehend. I must refer to Monsieur Thierry’s +very delightful “History of the Conquest of England,” ii. 271, for a +very refined speculation on our Robert de Brunne’s unlucky obscurity. +Monsieur Thierry imagines that the “strange Ingliss” was the refined +English which had flown into Scotland, and there become the cultivated +language of the minstrels and the court, and which our hapless Saxons +on <i>this side of the Tweed</i> had sunk into a dialect only fitted for serfs. +This finer and more elevated English could not be understood by a base +commonalty; this was “strange Ingliss” to them. A very interesting +event in the history of both nations had transplanted the purer English +to the Scottish court:—Malcolm, whom the usurpation of Macbeth had +driven from the Scottish throne, was expatriated in England during an +interval of near twenty years; the affection of the monarch for the +English was such, that he adopted their language, and when the royal +family of England was expelled by the Conqueror, the king received +them and the emigrant Saxons, and married the English princess. This +gave rise to that intercourse with the south of Scotland, of which the +result in our literary, if not in our civil, history is remarkable. +Certain it is that much broad Scotch is good old English, and the +noblest minstrelsy cometh “fra the North Countrie.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft10c11" id="ft10c11" href="#fa10c11"><span class="fn">10</span></a> On the leaf appears, in the handwriting of the author, “This +Boc is Dan Michelis of Northgate ywrite an Englis of his ozene hand +that hatte <i>Ayenbyte of inwyt</i>, and is of the boc-house of Seynt Austyn’s +of Cantorberi.” The writer was seventy years of age; and he tells us +that he was not—</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>“Blind, and dyaf, and alsuo dumb,</p> +<p class="i05">Of zeventy yer al not rond,</p> +<p class="i05">Ne ssette by draze to the grond,</p> +<p class="i05">Uor peny nor mark, ne nor pond.”</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">At the end the monk tells us for whom he writes—</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>“Nou ich wille that ye ywite hou hitt is ywent</p> +<p class="i05">Thet this Boc is ywrite mid Engliss of Kent.</p> +<p class="i05">This Boc is ymade vor lewede men,</p> +<p class="i05">Vor Vader and vor Moder and vor other Ken,</p> +<p class="i05">Ham vor to berze uram alle manyere Zen</p> +<p class="i05">Thet ine have inwytte ne bleue no uoul wen.</p> +<p class="i05">Huo ase God is his name yzed</p> +<p class="i05">Thet this Boc made God him yeue that bread</p> +<p class="i05">Of Angles of Hauene and thereto his red,</p> +<p class="i05">And underuongè his Zoule, huanne that is dyad.”</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><a name="ft11c11" id="ft11c11" href="#fa11c11"><span class="fn">11</span></a> While Tyrwhit was busied on the “Canterbury Tales” his attention +was excited by the old cataloguer of the Cottonian manuscripts to +a <i>Chaucer exemplar emendate scriptum</i>. On a spare leaf the name of +Richard Chawfer had been scrawled, which might have been that of +some former possessor. There are two fatalities which hang over the +pen of a slumbering cataloguer—ignorance and indolence. Our present +one caught an immortal name and never travelled onwards; and, struck +by the fairness of the writing, inferred that it was a copy of Chaucer +critically accurate. It turned out to be the compositions of an unknown +poet who not willingly relinquished his claim on posterity, for he has +subscribed his name, <span class="sc">Laurence Minot</span>. [The manuscript is marked +Galba, E. IX.; specimens were first published from it by Tyrwhit and +Warton, and the entire series ultimately by Ritson.]</p> + +<p><a name="ft12c11" id="ft12c11" href="#fa12c11"><span class="fn">12</span></a> Ritson’s first edition (1795) of Minot having become very difficult +to procure, an elegant re-impression, and apparently a correct one, was +published in 1825.</p> + +<p><a name="ft13c11" id="ft13c11" href="#fa13c11"><span class="fn">13</span></a> “Philobiblion, sive de Amore Librorum et Institutione Bibliothecæ,” +ascribed to Richard of Bury, Bishop of Durham; but Fabricius +says it was written by Robert Holcot, a learned friar, at his desire.—Fab. +“Bib. Med. Ævi,” vol. i. It is the bishop, however, who was +the collector, and always speaks in his own person. It has been recently +translated by Mr. Inglis.</p> + +<p><a name="ft14c11" id="ft14c11" href="#fa14c11"><span class="fn">14</span></a> Barrington on the Statutes.</p> + +<p>In Blackstone’s “Commentaries,” book iii. chap. 21, we find much +curious information, and some philosophical reflections. The use of +the technical law-Latin is adroitly defended. Under Cromwell the +records were turned into English; at the Restoration the practisers declared +they could not express themselves so significantly in English, +and they returned to their Latin. In 1730, a statute ordered that the +proceedings at law should be done into English, that the common people +might understand the process, &c. But after many years’ experience +the people are as ignorant in matters of law as before, and suffer the +inconveniences of increasing <i>the expense of all legal proceedings</i> by +being bound by the stamp-duties to write only a stated number of +words in a sheet, <i>and the English language, through the multitude of +its particles, is so much more verbose than the Latin, that the number +of sheets is much augmented</i>. Two years subsequently it was necessary +to make a new act to allow all technical terms to continue Latin, which +were too ridiculous to be translated, such as <i>nisi prius, fieri facias, +habeas corpus</i>. This last act, in 1732, has defeated every beneficial +purpose intended by the preceding statute of 1730.</p> + +<p>One hardly expected to find philological acumen in the dry discussion +of law-Latin, but when the <i>three</i> words, “<i>secundum formam statuti</i>,” +require <i>seven</i> in English, “according to the form of the statute,” one +easily comprehends the heavy weight of the <i>stamp-duty</i> for <i>writing +English</i>. The Saxons, who made no use of particles of speech, had +more merit than we were aware of.</p> + +<p><a name="ft15c11" id="ft15c11" href="#fa15c11"><span class="fn">15</span></a> By the Rev. <span class="sc">John Lewis</span>, 1731, fo., and republished by the Rev. +<span class="sc">H. H. Baber</span>, 1810, 4to.</p> + +<p>The censure of Fabricius deserves our notice. After mention of +Wickliffe’s version of the Bible, he adds, “Mirum est Anglos eam (versionem) +tam diu neglexisse quum vel linguæ causa ipsis in pretio esse +debeat.”—“Bib. Lat.,” v. 321.</p> + +<p>It is provoking to be reminded of our neglected duties by a foreigner. +We might assuredly be curious to learn how the sublimity and the colloquial +and narrative parts of this vast treasure of our ancient language +were produced under the primitive pen of Wickliffe. A fine copy of +Wickliffe’s Bible was in the library of Mr. Douce, and I have heard, +with great satisfaction, that it will probably be edited by Sir Francis +Madden.</p> + +<p><a name="ft16c11" id="ft16c11" href="#fa16c11"><span class="fn">16</span></a> Herbert’s “History of the City Companies.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft17c11" id="ft17c11" href="#fa17c11"><span class="fn">17</span></a> I derive this curious fact from Mr. Tyler’s “History of Henry of +Monmouth,” ii. 245.</p> + +<p><a name="ft18c11" id="ft18c11" href="#fa18c11"><span class="fn">18</span></a> These wills are preserved in Mr. Nichols’ “Collection of Royal +Wills.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft19c11" id="ft19c11" href="#fa19c11"><span class="fn">19</span></a> Le Comte de Neufchateau, “Essay on French Literature,” prefixed +to the late edition of Pascal’s works.</p> + +<p><a name="ft20c11" id="ft20c11" href="#fa20c11"><span class="fn">20</span></a> “Edinburgh Review,” Oct., 1839.</p> + +<p><a name="ft21c11" id="ft21c11" href="#fa21c11"><span class="fn">21</span></a> See “Quarterly Rev.,” lix. 34.—The critic is deeply imbued with +his delight of Saxon-English. “The first bursts in our literature (probably +the noblest are meant) are in almost pure Saxon.” The critic +particularly appeals to Milton for two instances; yet surely the Greekised, +the Latinised, and even the Italianised Milton will not serve to assert +the pre-eminence of our venerable dialect. “A country congregation” +is its more certain test; where the language of the people is the only +language required. Cobbett’s writings throughout are Saxon-English. +Coleridge considered Asgill and De Foe the most idiomatic writers.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page128" id="page128"></a>128</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">VICISSITUDES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">The</span> vicissitudes of the English language are more evident +than its origin. In the history of a language we are perpetually +reminded, by the remonstrances of the critics, of +the corruptions of its purity, the perils of innovation, and +the obtrusion of neologisms, while we find these same +critics fastidiously rejecting what they deem the antiquated +and the obsolete; many causes are constantly operating +these changes of language. The style of one age +ceases to be that of another; new modifications of +thought create new modes of expression; and as knowledge +enlarges its sphere, and society changes its manners, +novel objects imperiously demand adequate terms.</p> + +<p>Our language has been subjected to those dominant +events in the history of our country which have so +powerfully influenced our genius and our destiny; and, +our insular position occasioning a general intercourse with +all the Continental nations, our national idiom has been +mottled by foreign neologisms.</p> + +<p>For more than five centuries was the Saxon language +the language of England; the awful revolution of 1066 +produced novelties of all kinds, but none greater than the +entire change in our Saxon language, which, however, our +Norman masters could never eradicate from among the +people. During three centuries most of our English +writers composed in French. When Greek was first +studied in the reign of Henry the Seventh, it planted +many a hellenism in our English; the translation of the +Scriptures in that of Edward the Sixth, while it transmitted +many latinisms, at the same time revived the simplicity +of the Saxon-English, which seemed to bear a sort +of evidence that a primitive language was most suitable +for primitive Christianity in contrast with the pompous +corruptions of Rome.</p> + +<p>Under Elizabeth favourite phrases were insinuated into +the dialect by over-refined travellers, who spoke “minionlike,” +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page129" id="page129"></a>129</span> +while the revolution of the Netherlands incorporated +among us many a rough but vigorous inmate. In +the days of James and Charles, the long residence of the +Spanish Gondomar at our court, and the romantic pilgrimage +of love to Madrid, and the political ties which +bound the two nations, framed the style of courtesy, as +well as set the fashions.</p> + +<p>The puritanic commonwealth under Cromwell sunk +down the language to its basest uses. Stripped to +nakedness, the jargon of the market and the shop hid +itself under the gibberish of its cant. Writers then +abounded equally illiterate and fanatical. Perhaps we owe +to these mean scribblers the scorn and pride with which +Milton constructed on the Latin model of inversions and +involutions of sentences his artificial and learned prose, +unlike the style of his contemporaries, and which was +never to be that of his successors; it was a machinery too +costly for its price, and too unwieldy for the handling of +an ordinary workman. Under the second Charles we see +the nation and the language equally gallicised, and so it +remained to the days of Anne. Suppose for a moment +that when the first Georges were appointed to the English +throne, the Germany of that day had been the Germany +of the present. What would have been the result? +Instead of two torpid Germans, destitute of every sensibility +to literature and art, we might have seen an accomplished +Duke of Weimar at St. James’s, and a Wieland, +a Schiller, and a Goethe at our court; our authors +had been impressed by the German genius, in our emulation +and delight. Such is the simple history of the English +language as it has been, or might have been, subjected +to our national events.</p> + +<p>The history of the vernacular language of other European +nations discovers the same mutability, though not +always produced by those great public incidents which +may have been peculiar to ourselves. In Spain, however, +we find that the possession of that land by the Moors +has left in the Castilian language a whole dictionary of +Arabic words which now mingle with the vernacular idiom, +and for ever shall bear witness of the triumphs of their +ancient masters. But in the history of a vernacular language +it may also happen that the first writers, combining +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page130" id="page130"></a>130</span> +in a singleness of taste, may construct a particular style. +The earliest writers of France had modelled their taste by +the Greek; Jodelle, Ronsard, Du Bartas, and others, +imbued with Attic literature, Greekised the French idiom, +by their compounds, their novel terms, and their sonorous +periphrases. The Court and the ladies were adopting this +new style, and, as usual, the unskilful were diverging into +the most ridiculous affectations. But it was possible that +the French language might have acquired a concision and +vigour of which it is now destitute, for those early writers +threw out a more original force than their tame successors. +The artificial delicacy of the French critics has condemned +these attempts as barbarisms; but to have transplanted +these atticisms into the native soil, partook more of boldness +than of barbarism. The attempt failed, if it could +ever have succeeded, by the civil wars which soon drew off +the minds of men from the placable innovators of language.</p> + +<p>The French, though not an insular people, have been +subject to rapid revolutions in their language. The ancient +Gaulish-French has long been as unintelligible to a modern +Frenchman as our Saxon is to us; even those numerous +poets of France who at a later period composed in their +<i>langue Romane</i>, are strewed in the fields of their poesy +only as carcasses, which no miracle of antiquarian lore shall +ever resuscitate. Compare the style of one writer with +another only two centuries later, or Rabelais with Voltaire! +The age of Louis XIV. effected the most rapid change in +the vernacular style, insomuch that the diction of the +writers of the preceding reign of Louis XIII. had fallen +obsolete in the short space of half a century. And yet the +chastened style of the age of Louis XIV., with its cold +imitation of classical antiquity, was to receive a higher +polish from the hand of a Pascal, a novel brilliancy from +the touch of a Montesquieu, and a more numerous prose +from the impassioned Rousseau. The age of erudition and +taste was to be succeeded by the more energetic age of +genius and philosophy. An anecdote recorded of Vaugelas +may possibly be true, and is a remarkable evidence of this +perpetual mobility of style. This writer lived between +1585 and 1650, and during thirty years had been occupied, +<i>more suo</i>, on a translation of Quintus Curtius. It was +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page131" id="page131"></a>131</span> +during this protracted period that the French style was +passing through its rapid transitions. So many phrases +had fallen superannuated, that this martyr to the purity +of his diction was compelled to re-write the former part of +his version to modernise it with his later improved composition. +The learned Menage lived to be old enough to +have caught alarm at this vicissitude of taste, and did not +scruple to avow that no work could last which was not +composed in Latin.</p> + +<p>The languages of highly cultivated nations are more +subject to this innovation and variableness than the language +of a people whose native penury receives but rare +accessions. Hence the ancient and continued complaints +through all the generations of critics, from the days of +Julius Cæsar and Quintilian to those in which we are now +writing.<a name="fa1c12" id="fa1c12" href="#ft1c12"><span class="sp">1</span></a> The same hostility against novelty in words or +in style is invariably proclaimed. The captiousness of +criticism has usually referred to the style of the preceding +authors as a standard from which the prevalent style of its +contemporaries has erringly diverged. The preceptors of +genius at all times seem to have been insensible to the +natural progress of language, resisting new qualities of +style and new forms of expression; in reality, this was inferring, +that a perfect language exists, and that a creative +genius must be trammelled by their limited and arbitrary +systems. This prejudice of the venerable brotherhood +may, I think, be traced to its source. Every age advantageously +compares itself with its predecessor, for it has +made some advances, and rarely suspects that the same +triumph is reserved for its successor; but besides this +illusion in regard to the style, which, like the manners of +the time, is passing away, the veteran critic has long been +a practised master, and in the daring and dubious novelties +which time has not consecrated, he must descend to a new +pupilage; but his rigid habits are no longer flexible; and +for the matured arbiter of literature who tastes “the bitterness +of novelty,” what remains but an invective against +the minting of new words, and the versatility of new +tastes?</p> + +<p>The fallacy of the systematic critics arises from the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page132" id="page132"></a>132</span> +principle that a modern language is stationary and stable, +like those which are emphatically called “the dead languages,” +in which every deviation unsupported by authority +is legally condemned as a barbarism. But the truth is, +that every modern language has always existed in fluctuation +and change. The people themselves, indeed, are no +innovators; their very phrases are traditional. Popular +language can only convey the single uncompounded notions +of the people; it is the style of facts; and they are intelligible +to one another by the shortest means. Their +Saxon-English is nearly monosyllabic, and their phraseology +curt. Hence we find that the language of the mob +in the year 1382 is precisely the natural style of the mob +of this day.<a name="fa2c12" id="fa2c12" href="#ft2c12"><span class="sp">2</span></a> But this popular style can never be set up +as the standard of genius, which is mutable with its age, +creating faculties and embodying thoughts which do not +enter into the experience of the people, and therefore cannot +exercise their understandings.</p> + +<p>A series of facts will illustrate our principle, that the +language of every literary people exists in a fluctuating +condition, and that its vaunted purity and its continued +stability are chimerical notions.</p> + +<p>In this history of the vicissitudes of the English language, +we may commence with our remote ancestors the +Anglo-Saxons. When their studies and their language +received a literary character, they coveted great pomposity +in their style. They interlarded their staves with Latin +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page133" id="page133"></a>133</span> +words; and, even in the reign of the Confessor, the French +language was fashionable. “The affectation of the Anglo-Saxon +literati was evidently tending to adulterate their +language; and even if the Conquest had not taken place, +the purity of the English language would have been +speedily destroyed by the admixture of a foreign vocabulary.”<a name="fa3c12" id="fa3c12" href="#ft3c12"><span class="sp">3</span></a> +Thus early were we perilling our purity!</p> + +<p>In 1387, John de Trevisa, translating the Latin Polychronicon +of Higden, tells us he avoids what he calls “the +old and ancient English.” A century afterwards, Caxton, +printing this translation of Trevisa, had to re-write it, to +change the “rude and old English, that is, to wit, certain +words which in these days be neither used nor understood.” +It might have startled Master Caxton to have suspected +that he might be to us what Trevisa was to him, as it had +equally amazed Trevisa, when he discovered archaisms +which had contracted the rust of time, to have imagined +that his fresher English were to be archaisms to his printer +in the succeeding century.</p> + +<p>At the period at which our present vernacular literature +opened on us, Eliot, More, and Ascham maintained great +simplicity of thought and idiom; yet even at this period, +about 1550, the language seemed in imminent danger; it +raised the tone of our primitive critics, and the terrors of +neologism took all frightful shapes to their eyes!</p> + +<p>A refined critic of our language then was the learned Sir +<span class="sc">John Cheke</span>, who at this early period considered that the +English language was capable of preserving the utmost +purity of style, and he was jealously awake to its slightest +violations. A friend of his, Sir <span class="sc">Thomas Hoby</span>, a courtly +translator of the “Courtier of Castiglione,” had solicited his +critical opinion. The learned Cheke, equally friendly and +critical, insinuated his abhorrence of “an unknown word,” +and apologises for his corrections, lest he should be accounted +“overstraight a deemer of things, by marring his +handywork.” Hoby had evidently alarmed, by some +sprinklings of Italianisms—some capriccios of “new-fangled” +words—the chaste ear of our Anglican purist. +I preserve this remarkable letter to serve as a singular +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page134" id="page134"></a>134</span> +specimen of our English, unpolluted even by a Latinism.<a name="fa4c12" id="fa4c12" href="#ft4c12"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> + +<p>“Our own tongue should be written <i>clean</i> and <i>pure</i>, +unmixt and unmangled with borrowing of other tongues, +wherein, if we take not heed, by time, ever borrowing and +never paying, she shall be fain to keep her house as bankrupt. +For then doth our tongue naturally and praisably +utter her meaning, when she borroweth no counterfeitness +of other tongues to attire herself withal; but used plainly +her own, with such shift as nature, craft, experience, and +following of other excellent, doth lead her unto; and if +she want at any time (as, being imperfect, she must), yet +let her borrow with such bashfulness that it may appear, +that if either the mould of our own tongue could serve us +to fashion a word of our own, or if the old denizened words +could content and ease this need, we would not boldly +venture on unknown words. This I say, not for reproof +of you, who have scarcely and necessarily used, where +occasion seemeth, a strange word so, as it seemeth to grow +out of the matter, and not to be sought for; but for my +own defence, who might be counted overstraight a deemer +of things, if I give not this account to you, my friend, of +my marring this your handy work.”</p> + +<p>Such was the tone even of our primitive critics! the +terrors of neologism were always before their eyes. All +those accessions of the future opulence of the vernacular +language were either not foreseen or utterly proscribed, +while, at the same time, the wants and imperfections of +the language, amid all its purity or its poverty, were felt +and acknowledged. We perceive that even this stern +champion of his vernacular idiom confesses that “he may +want at time, being imperfect, and must borrow with bashfulness.” +The cries of the critics suddenly break on us. +Another contemporary critic of not inferior authority +laments that “there seemed to be no mother-tongue.” +“The far-journeyed gentlemen” returned home not only +in love with foreign fashions, but equally fond “to powder +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page135" id="page135"></a>135</span> +their talk with over-sea language.” There was French-English, +and English Italianated. Professional men +disfigured the language by conventional pedantries; the +finical courtier would prate “nothing but Chaucer.” +“The mystical wisemen and the poetical clerks delivered +themselves in quaint proverbs and blind allegories.”<a name="fa5c12" id="fa5c12" href="#ft5c12"><span class="sp">5</span></a> The +pedantic race, in their furious Latinisms, bristling with +polysyllabic pomposity, deemed themselves fortunate when +they could fall upon “dark words,” which our critic aptly +describes “catching an ink-horn term by the tail.” The +eloquence of the more volatile fluttered in the splendid +patches of modern languages. It seemed as if there were +to be no longer a native idiom, and the good grain was +choked up by the intruding cockle which flourished by its +side. Another contemporary critic announces that “our +English tongue was a gallimaufry or hodge-podge of all +other speeches.” <span class="sc">Arthur Golding</span> grieves over the disjected +members of the language:—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>“Our English tongue driven almost out of kind (nature),</p> +<p>Dismember’d, hack’d, maim’d, rent, and torn,</p> +<p>Defaced, patch’d, marr’d, and made in scorn.”</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">A critic who has left us “An Arte of English Poetry,” +written perhaps about 1550 or 1560, exhorting the poet +to render his language, which, however, he never could in +his own verses, “natural, pure, and the most usual of all +his country,” seemed at a loss where to fix on the standard +of style. He would look to the Court to be the modellers +of speech, but there he acknowledges that “the preachers, +the secretaries, and travellers,” were great corrupters, and +not less “our Universities, where scholars use much +peevish affectation of words out of the primitive languages.” +The coarse bran of our own native English was, +however, to be sifted; but where was the genuine English +idiom to be gathered? Our fastidious critic remonstrates +against “the daily talk of northern men.” The <i>good +southern</i> was that “we of Middlesex or Surrey use.” +Middlesex and Surrey were then to regulate the idiom of +all British men! and all our England was doomed to barbarism, +as it varied from “the usual speech of the Court, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page136" id="page136"></a>136</span> +and that of London within sixty miles, and not much +above.” But was our English more stable within this +assigned circumference of the metropolis than any other +line of demarcation? About 1580, <span class="sc">Carew</span> informs us +that “Within these sixty years we have incorporated so +many Latin and French words as the third part of our +language consisteth in them.”</p> + +<p>Some there were among us who, alarmed that such +ceaseless infusions were polluting the native springs of +English, would look back with veneration and fondness +on our ancient masters. Our great poet <span class="sc">Spenser</span>,<a name="fa6c12" id="fa6c12" href="#ft6c12"><span class="sp">6</span></a> then +youthful, declared that the language of <span class="sc">Chaucer</span> was +the purest English; and our bard hailed, in a verse often +quoted by the critics—</p> + +<p class="center ptb1 f90">Dan Chaucer, well of English undefiled.</p> + +<p class="noind">But in this well are deposited many waters. Chaucer has +been accused of having enriched the language with the +spoils of France, blending the old Saxon with the Norman-French +and the modern Gallic of his day, for which he +has been vehemently censured by the austerity of philological +antiquaries. Skinner and his followers have condemned +Chaucer for introducing “a waggon-load of +words,” and have proclaimed that Chaucer “wrote the +language of no age;” a reproach which has been transferred +to our Spenser himself, who has transplanted many +an exotic into the English soil, and re-cast many an +English word for the innocent forgery of a rhyme! So +that two of the finest geniuses in our literature, for recasting +the language, must lay their heads down to receive +the heavy axe of verbal pedantry.</p> + +<p>Descending a complete century, in 1656 we are surprised +at discovering <span class="sc">Heylin</span>, at a period relatively +modern, reiterating the language of his ancient predecessors. +This latter critic published his animadversions +on the pedantic writings of <span class="sc">Hamon L’Estrange</span>, who +had opened on us a floodgate of Latinisms. Heylin +observes: “More French and Latin words have gained +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page137" id="page137"></a>137</span> +ground upon us since <i>the middle of Queen Elizabeth’s +reign</i> than were admitted by our ancestors, not only since +the Norman, but the Roman conquest.” This was written +before the Restoration of Charles the Second, when we were +to be overrun by Gallicisms. This complaint did not +cease with Heylin, for it has often been renewed. Heylin +drew up in alphabetical order the uncouth and unusual +words which are to be found in Hamon L’Estrange’s +“History,” and yet many of these foreigners since the +days of Heylin have become denizens. So unsettled were +the notions of our philology with regard to style, that +L’Estrange could venture in his rejoinder, which contains +sufficient vinaicre, as he writes it, a defence of these hard +words, which is entertaining. “As to those lofty words, +I declare to all the world this not uningenuous acknowledgment, +that having conversed with authors of the +noblest and chief remark in several languages, not only +their notions but their very words especially being of the +most elegant import, became at length so familiar with +me, as when I applied myself to this present work I found +it very difficult to renounce my former acquaintance with +them; but as they freely offered themselves, so I entertained +them upon these considerations. First, I was +confident that among learned men they needed no other +passe than their own extraction; and for those who were +mere English readers I saw no reason they should wonder +at them, considering that for their satisfaction I had sent +along with every foreigner his interpreter, to serve instead +of a dictionary.” Hamon L’Estrange’s “Life of Charles I.” +was certainly a piece of infelicitous pedantry, as we may +judge by this specimen.<a name="fa7c12" id="fa7c12" href="#ft7c12"><span class="sp">7</span></a></p> + +<p>Even great authors glanced with a suspicious eye on +these vicissitudes of language, not without a conviction +that they themselves were personally interested in these +uncertain novelties. It would seem as if Milton, from the +new invasion of Gallic words and Gallic airiness which +broke in at the Restoration, had formed some uneasy anticipations +that his own learned diction and sublime form +of poetry might suffer by the transition, and that Milton +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page138" id="page138"></a>138</span> +himself might become as obsolete as some of his great +predecessors appeared to his age. The nephew of Milton, +in the preface to his “Theatrum Poetarum,” where the +critical touch of the great master so frequently betrays +itself, pleads for our ancient poets, who are not the less +poetical because their style is antiquated. Writing in the +reign of Charles II., in 1675, he says: “From Queen +Elizabeth’s reign, the language hath not been so unpolished +as to render the poetry of that time ungrateful to such +as at this day will take the pains to examine it well. If +no poetry should please but what is calculated to every +refinement of a language, of how ill consequence this +would be for the future let him consider, and make it his +own case, who, being now in fair repute, shall, two or +three ages hence, when the language comes to be double-refined, +understand that his works are come obsolete and +thrown aside. I cannot—” he, perhaps Milton, continues—“I +cannot but look upon it as a very pleasant humour +that we should be so compliant with the French custom +as to follow set fashions, not only in garments, but in +music and poetry. For clothes, I leave them to the discretion +of the modish; breeches and doublet will not fall +under a metaphysical consideration. But in arts and +sciences, as well as in moral notions, I shall not scruple +to maintain, that what was ‘<i>verum et bonum</i>’ once, continues +to be so always. Now whether the trunk-hose +fancy of Queen Elizabeth’s days, or the pantaloon genius +of ours be best, I shall not be hasty to determine.”</p> + +<p>Would we learn the true history of a modern language, +we must not apply to the <span class="sc">Critics</span>, who only press for +conformity and appeal to precedents; but we must look +to those other more practical dealers in words, the <span class="sc">Lexicographers</span>, +who at once reveal to us all the incomings +and outgoings of their great “exchequer of words.” +Turn over the prefaces of our elder lexicographers. Every +one of them pretends to prune away the vocabulary of his +predecessors, and to supply, in this mortality of words, +those which live on the lips of contemporaries. In the +great tome of his record of archaisms and neologisms, +the grey moss hangs about the oak, and the graft shoots +forth with fresh verdure. <span class="sc">Baret</span>, one of our earliest +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page139" id="page139"></a>139</span> +lexicographers, in the reign of Elizabeth thus expresses +himself:—“I thought it not meete to stuffe this worke +with old obsolete words which now a daies no good writer +will use.”<a name="fa8c12" id="fa8c12" href="#ft8c12"><span class="sp">8</span></a> Words spurned at by the lexicographer of +1580 had been consecrated by the venerable fathers of our +literature and of the Reformation, not a century past; +yet another century does not elapse when another dictionary +throws all into confusion. <span class="sc">Henry Cockram</span>, +whose volume has been at least twelve times reprinted, +boldly avows that “what any before me in this kind have +begun, I have not only fully finished, but thoroughly perfected;” +and, presuming on the privilege of “an interpreter +of hard English words,” the language is wrecked in +a stormy pedantry of Latin and Greek terms, which however +indicate that new corruption of our style which some +writers and speakers, as Hamon L’Estrange, were attempting.<a name="fa9c12" id="fa9c12" href="#ft9c12"><span class="sp">9</span></a> +What a picture have we sketched of the mortality +of words, through all the fleeting stages of their decadency +from <span class="sc">Trevisa</span> to <span class="sc">Caxton</span>, from <span class="sc">Caxton</span> to <span class="sc">Baret</span>, from +<span class="sc">Baret</span> to <span class="sc">Cockram</span>, and from <span class="sc">Cockram</span> to his numerous +successors!</p> + +<p>Thus then has our language been in perpetual movement, +and that “purity of style,” whose presumed violation +has raised such reiterated querulousness, has in reality +proved to be but a mocking phantom, fugitive or unsubstantial. +Our English has often changed her dress, to +attract by new graces, and has spoken with more languages +than one. She has even submitted to Fashion, +that most encroaching usurper of words, who sends them +no one knows how and no one knows why, banishing the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page140" id="page140"></a>140</span> +old and establishing the new; and who has ever found +her legitimacy unquestioned when in her matured age +we recognise Fashion under the consecrated name of +<span class="sc">Custom</span>.</p> + +<p>But let us not quit this topic of “purity of style” +without offering our sympathies for those who have suffered +martyrdom in their chimerical devotion. In the +days of my youth there were some who would not write +a word unwarranted by Swift or Tillotson; these were to +be held fast for pure idiomatic prose, by those who felt +insulted by the encumbering Lexiphanicisms of the ponderous +numerosity of Johnson; and recently a return to +our Saxon words, diminutive in size, has been trumpeted +in a set oration at the University of Glasgow by a noble +personage. This taste is rife among critics of limited +studies. Charles Fox, a fine genius who turned towards +the pursuits of literature too late in life, was a severe sufferer, +and purified his vocabulary with a scrupulosity unknown +to any purist, so nervously apprehensive was this +great man lest he should not write English. Addison, +Bolingbroke, and Middleton were not of sufficient authority, +for he would use no word which was not to be found +in Dryden. Alas! what disappointments await the few +who creep along their Saxon idiom, or who would pore on +the free gracefulness of Dryden as a dictionary of words +and phrases! Could the chimerical purity which these are +in search of be ever found, never would it lend enchantment +to their page, should their taste be cold or their +fancy feeble. The language of genius must be its own +reflection, and the good fortune of authors must receive +the stamp used in their own mint.</p> + +<p>It happens with the destiny of words, as in the destiny +of empires. Men in their own days see only the beginnings +of things, and more sensibly feel the inconvenience +of that state of transition inflicted by innovation, in its +first approaches often capricious, always empirical. These +vicissitudes of language in their end were to produce a +vernacular idiom more wealthy than our native indigence +seemed to promise. All those vehement cries of the critics +which we have brought together were but the sharp pangs +and throes of a parturient language in the natural progress +of a long-protracted birth.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page141" id="page141"></a>141</span></p> + +<p>A national idiom in its mighty formation, struggling +into its perfect existence, encumbered by the heavy mass +in which it lies involved, resembles the creation of the lion +of the Bard of Paradise, when</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i4">————Half appear’d</p> +<p>The tawny Lion, <span class="sc">pawing to get free</span></p> +<p><span class="sc">His hinder parts</span>.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c12" id="ft1c12" href="#fa1c12"><span class="fn">1</span></a> “Curiosities of Literature,” Art. “<span class="sc">History of New Words</span>.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c12" id="ft2c12" href="#fa2c12"><span class="fn">2</span></a> These are political squibs thrown out by the mobocracy in the +reign of Richard the Second. They are preserved in Mr. Turner’s +“History of England.” I print them in their modern orthography. +The first specimen runs in familiar rhymes:—</p> + +<p>“Jack the Miller asked help to turn his mill aright. He hath +ground small, small! The King’s son of Heaven he shall pay for all. +Look thy Mill go aright with the four sails, and the post stand in steadfastness. +With Right and with Might, with Skill and with Will, let +Might help Right, and Skill go before Will, and Right before Might, +then goes our Mill aright, and if Might go before Right, and Will before +Skill, then is our Mill mis adyght.”</p> + +<p>Now we have plain, intelligible prose—</p> + +<p>“Jack Carter prays you all that ye make a good end of that ye have +begun, and do well, and still better and better; for at the even men +near the day. If the end be well, then is all well. Let Piers the +ploughman dwell at home, and dyght us corn. Look that Hobbe the +robber be well chastised. Stand manly together in truth, and help the +truth, and truth shall help you.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c12" id="ft3c12" href="#fa3c12"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Sir Francis Palgrave’s “Rise and Progress of the English Common +wealth;” Proofs and Illustrations, ccxiii.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c12" id="ft4c12" href="#fa4c12"><span class="fn">4</span></a> This letter to the translator Hoby has been passed over by those +who collected the few letters of the learned <span class="sc">Cheke</span>; and, what seems +strange, appears only in the first edition of Hoby’s translation, having +been omitted in the subsequent editions. Perhaps the translator was +not enamoured of his excellent critic.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c12" id="ft5c12" href="#fa5c12"><span class="fn">5</span></a> Sir Thomas Wilson’s “Arte of Rhetoric,” 1553.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c12" id="ft6c12" href="#fa6c12"><span class="fn">6</span></a> Spenser’s protest against the Innovators of Language may be seen +in his “Three Letters,” which are preserved unmutilated in Todd’s +“Spenser;” they are deficient in Hughes’ edition.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c12" id="ft7c12" href="#fa7c12"><span class="fn">7</span></a> Heylin’s “Observations on the Historie of the Reign of King +Charles.” L’Estrange’s rejoinder may be found in the second edition of +his History.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c12" id="ft8c12" href="#fa8c12"><span class="fn">8</span></a> “Alvearie, or quadruple Dictionary of Four Languages,” 1580.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c12" id="ft9c12" href="#fa9c12"><span class="fn">9</span></a> “The English Dictionary, or an Interpreter of Hard English +Words,” by H. C., gent., 1658. The eleventh and twelfth editions are +before me. The last, edited by another person, is not so copious as the +former. In Cockram’s own edition we have a first “Book” of his +“Hard Words,” followed by a second of what he calls “Vulgar +Words,” which are English. The last editor has wholly omitted the +second part. Of the first part, or the “Hard Words,” Cockram +observes that “They are the <i>choicest words now in use</i>, and wherewith +our language is enriched and become so copious, to which words the +common sense is annexed.” [See note on this Dictionary, with some +few specimens of its contents, in “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. iii.]</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page142" id="page142"></a>142</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">DIALECTS.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Dialects</span> reflect the general language diversified by +localities.</p> + +<p>A dialect is a variation in the pronunciation, and necessarily +in the orthography of words, or a peculiarity of +phrase or idiom, usually accompanied by a tone which +seems to be as local as the word it utters. It is a language +rarely understood out of the sphere of the population +by whom it is appropriated. A language is fixed +in a nation by a flourishing metropolis of an extensive +empire, a dialect may have existed coeval with that predominant +dialect which by accident has become the standard +or general language; and moreover, the contemned dialect +may occasionally preserve some remains or fragments of +the language which, apparently lost, but hence recovered, +enable us rightly to understand even the prevalent idiom.</p> + +<p>All nations have had dialects. Greece had them, as +France, and Italy have them now. Homer could have +included in a single verse four or five dialects; but though +the Doric and the Ionic were held the most classical, none +of them were barbarous, since their finest writers have +composed in these several dialects. Even some Italian +poets and comic writers have adopted a favourite dialect; +but no classical English author could have immortalised +any one of our own.</p> + +<p>Ancient Greece, as Mitford describes, “though a narrow +country, was very much divided by mountains and politics.” +And mountains and politics, which impede the general +intercourse of men, inevitably produce dialects. Each isolated +state with fear or pride affected its independence, not +only by its own customs, but by its accent or its phrase. +In France the standard language was long but a dialect. +There potent nobles, each holding a separate court and +sovereignty in his own province, offered many central points +of attraction. The Counts of Foix, of Provence and of +Toulouse, and the Dukes of Guienne, of Normandy and of +Brétagne, were all munificent patrons of those who cultivated +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page143" id="page143"></a>143</span> +what they termed “l’art du beau parler,” each in +their provincial idiom. These were all subdivisions of the +two rival dialects to which the Romane language had +given birth. But the river Loire ran between them; and +a great river has often been the boundary of a dialect: +France was thus long divided. On the south of the Loire +their speech was called the language of <i>Oc</i>, and on the +north the language of <i>Oil</i>; names which they derived +from the different manner of the inhabitants pronouncing +the affirmative <i>Oui</i>. The language of the poetical Troubadours +on the south of the Loire had not the happier +destiny of its rival, used by the Trouvères on the north. +It was this which became the standard language, while +the other remains a dialect. Here we have a remarkable +incident in the history of dialects in a great country; it +was long doubtful which was to become the national language; +and it has happened, if we may trust an enthusiast +of Languedoc, that his idiom, expressing with more vowelly +softness and <i>naïveté</i> the familiar emotions of love and +friendship, and gaiety and <i>bonhomie</i>, gave way to a harsher +idiom and a sharp nasal accent; and all ended by the +Parisian detecting the provincials by their shibboleth, and +calling them all alike Gascons, and their taste for exaggeration +and rhodomontade gasconades; while the southerns, +who hold that what is called the French language is only +a perversion of their own dialect, like our former John +Bull, fling on the Parisian the old Gaulish appellative of +<i>Franchiman</i>.<a name="fa1c13" id="fa1c13" href="#ft1c13"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p>The dialects of England were produced by occurrences +which have happened to no other nation. Our insular site +has laid us open to so many masters, that it was long +doubtful whether Britain would ever possess a uniform +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page144" id="page144"></a>144</span> +language. The aboriginal Britons left some of their +words behind them in their flight, as the Romans had +done in their dominion,<a name="fa2c13" id="fa2c13" href="#ft2c13"><span class="sp">2</span></a> and even the visiting Phœnician +may have dropped some words on our coasts. The Jutes, +the Angles, and the Saxons brought in a new language, +and, arriving from separate localities, that language came +to us diversified by dialects; and the Danes, too, joined +the northern brotherhood of pirate-kings who planted +themselves in our soil. The gradual predominance of the +West-Saxon over the petty kingdoms which subdivided +Britain first approached to the formation of a national +language. The West-Saxon was the land of Alfred, and +the royal cultivation of its dialect, supreme in purity as +the realm stood in power, rendered it the standard language +which we now call Anglo-Saxon.</p> + +<p>“Had the Heptarchy (Octarchy) continued,” observed +Bishop Percy, “our English language would probably +have been as much distinguished for its dialects as the +Greek, or at least as that of the several independent states +of Italy.” In truth, we remained much in that condition +while a power hostile to the national character assumed +the sovereignty. So unsettled was the English language, +that a writer at the close of the fourteenth century tells +us that different parts of the island experienced a difficulty +to understand one another. A diversity of pronunciation, +as well as a diversity in the language, was so prevalent, +that the Northern, the Southern, and the Middle-land men +were unintelligible when they met; the Middle-land understood +the Northern and the Southern better than the +Northman and the Southman comprehended one another; +the English people seemed to form an assemblage of distinct +races. Even to this day, a scene almost similar +might be exhibited. Should a peasant of the Yorkshire +dales, and one from the vales of Taunton, and another from +the hills of the Chiltern, meet together, they would require +an interpreter to become intelligible to each other; +but in this dilemma what county could produce the Englishman +so versed in provincial dialects as to assist his +three honest countrymen?</p> + +<p>If etymology often furnishes a genealogy of words +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page145" id="page145"></a>145</span> +through all their authentic descents, so likewise a map of +provincial idioms might be constructed to indicate the +localities of the dialects. There we might observe how +an expansive and lengthened river, or intervening fells and +mountains which separate two counties, can stop the +course of a dialect, so that the idiom current on one side, +when it passes the borders becomes intrusive, little regarded, +and ere it reaches a third county has expired in +the passage. Thus the Parret, we are told, is the boundary +of the Somersetshire dialect; for words used cast of +the Parret are only known by synonyms on the west side. +The same incident occurs in Italy, where a single river +runs through the level plain; there the Piedmontese peasant +from the western end meeting with a Venetian from +the eastern could hold but little colloquial intercourse +together; a Genoese would be absolutely unintelligible to +both, for, according to their proverb, “Language was the +gift of God, but the Genoese dialect was the invention of +the devil.” In those rank dialects left to run to seed in +their wild state, without any standard of literature, we +hardly recognise the national idiom; the Italian language +sprung from one common source—its maternal Latin; but +this we might not suspect should we decide solely by its +dialects: and we may equally wonder how some of our +own could ever have been mangled and distorted out of +the fair dimensions of the language of England.</p> + +<p>All who speak a dialect contract a particular intonation +which, almost as much as any local words, betrays their +soil; these provincial tones are listened to from the +cradle; and, as all dialects are of great antiquity, this +sounding of the voice has been bequeathed from generation +to generation.<a name="fa3c13" id="fa3c13" href="#ft3c13"><span class="sp">3</span></a> It is sometimes a low muttering in the +throat, a thick guttural like the Welsh, or a shrill nasal +twang, or a cadence or chant; centuries appear not to +have varied the tone more than the vocable. The Romance +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page146" id="page146"></a>146</span> +of “Octavien Imperator,” which was written possibly +earlier than the reign of Henry VI., is in the +Hampshire dialect nearly as it is spoken now. The speech +of a Yorkshireman is energetically described by our ancient +Trevisa. “It is so sharpe, slytting, frotyng, and +unshape, that we sothern men maye unneth understond +that language.” As we advance in the North, the tones +of the people are described as “round and sonorous, broad +open vowels, and the richness and fulness of the diphthongs +fill their mouths” with a firm, hardy speech.</p> + +<p>A striking contrast is observable among those who by +their secluded position have held little intercourse with +their neighbours, and have contracted an overweening +estimation of themselves, and a provincial pride in their +customs, manners, and language. Norfolk, surrounded on +three sides by the sea, remains unaltered to this day, and +still designates as “Shiremen” all who are born out of +Norfolk, not without “some little expression of contempt.” +There is “a narrowness and tenuity in their +pronunciation,” such as we may fancy—for it is but a +fancy—would steal out of the lips of reserved, proudful +men, and who, as their neighbours of Suffolk run their +common talk into strange melancholy cadences, have characterised +their peculiar intonation as “the Suffolk +whine!” In Derbyshire the pronunciation is broad, and +they change the G into K. The Lancashire folk speak +quick and curt, omit letters, or sound three or four words +all together; thus, <i>I wou’didd’n</i>, or <i>I woudyedd’d</i>, is a +cacophony which stands for <i>I wish you would</i>! When +the editor of a Devonshire dialect found that it was +aspersed as the most uncouth jargon in England, he appealed +to the Lancashire.<a name="fa4c13" id="fa4c13" href="#ft4c13"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> + +<p>But such vile rustic dissonance or mere balderdash concerns +not our vernacular literature, though it seems that +even such agrestic rubbish may have its utility in a provincial +vocabulary; for the glossary to the “Exmoor language” +was drawn up for the use of lawyers on the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page147" id="page147"></a>147</span> +western circuit, who frequently mistook the evidence of +a rustic witness for want of an interpretation of his +words. Some ludicrous misconceptions of equivocal terms +or some ridiculous phraseology have been recorded in other +counties, among the judges and the bar at a county assize.</p> + +<p>But it is among our provincial dialects that we discover +many beautiful archaisms, scattered remnants of our language, +which explain those obscurities of our more ancient +writers, singularities of phrase, or lingual peculiarities, +which have so often bewildered the most acute of our +commentators. After all their voluminous research and +their conjectural temerity, a villager in Devonshire or in +Suffolk, and, more than either, the remoter native of the +North Countree, with their common speech, might have +recovered the baffled commentators from their agony. +The corrections of modern editors have often been discovered +to be only ingenious corruptions of their own +whenever the original provincial idiom has started up.</p> + +<p>These provincial modes of speech have often actually +preserved for us the origin of English phraseology, and +enlightened the philologist in a path unexplored. In one +of the most original and most fanciful of the dramas of +Ben Jonson, “The Sad Shepherd,” the poet designed to +appropriate a provincial dialect to the Witch Maudlin’s +family. He had consulted Lacy the comedian, who was a +native of Yorkshire, respecting the northern phraseology. +Unfortunately, this drama was never finished; and the consequence +is, that the dialects are incorrectly given, and are +worsened by the orthography of the printer. Yet it was +from this imperfect attempt to convey some notion of our +dialects that Horne Tooke was able to elucidate one of his +grammatical discoveries, in regard to the conjunction <span class="sc">if</span>, +which, from “The Sad Shepherd,” is demonstrated to be +anciently the imperative of the verb <span class="sc">gif</span>, or give. Thus it +was, by apparently very rude dialects, this famous philologist +was enabled to substantiate beyond doubt a signification +which had occurred to no one but himself.<a name="fa5c13" id="fa5c13" href="#ft5c13"><span class="sp">5</span></a></p> + +<p>A language in the progress of its refinement loses as +well as gains in the amount of words, and the good fortune +of expressive phrases. Some become equivocal by changing +their signification, and some fall obsolete, one cannot +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page148" id="page148"></a>148</span> +tell why, for custom or caprice arbitrate, guided by no law, +and often with an unmusical ear. These discarded but +faithful servants, now treated as outcasts, and not even +suspected to have any habitation, are safely lodged in some +of our dialects. As the people are faithful traditionists, +repeating the words of their forefathers, and are the longest +to preserve their customs, they are the most certain antiquaries; +and their oral knowledge and their ancient observances +often elucidate many an archæological obscurity. +Hence, two remarkable consequences have been discovered +in the history of our popular idioms; many words and +phrases used in the land of Cockney, now deemed not only +vulgar but ungrammatical, are in fact not corruptions of +the native tongue, but the remains of what was anciently +at different periods the established national dialect.<a name="fa6c13" id="fa6c13" href="#ft6c13"><span class="sp">6</span></a> This +transmitted language descended to the humbler classes, +unimpaired and unaugmented, through a long line of ancestry. +Again, it is often probable that the provincial +word which in its pronunciation merely reverses the order +of the letters, as now uttered, and which is only heard +from the mouths of the people, may convey the original +spoken sound, and be the genuine English. Are we quite +sure that the polishers may not often have been the corrupters +of our language? Nor let us be positive that the +metropolitan taste has always fixed on the most felicitous +or the most forcible of our idiomatic words or phrases, +since we may discover some lingering among our provincial +dialects which should never have been dismissed, and which +claim to be restored. When <span class="sc">Johnson</span> compiled his “Dictionary,” +he was not aware of the authentic antiquity of +our dialectic terms and phrases. Our literary antiquities +had not yet engaged the attention of general scholars. +Provincialisms were not deemed by the legislator of our +language legitimate words; he did not recognise their +primitive claims, nor their relative affinities, but ejected +them as vagabonds. But words are not barbarous nor +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page149" id="page149"></a>149</span> +obsolete because no longer used in our written composition, +since some of the most exquisite and picturesque, +which have ceased to enrich our writings, live in immortal +pages. After the issue of Johnson’s great labour, our +national literature began to attract the studies of literary +men, who soon perceived how this neglected but existing +stock of idiomatic English in our provincialisms more +certainly explained our elder writers in verse and prose. +Amid the murmurs raised by the archæologists, <span class="sc">Ash</span> +attempted to supply the palpable deficiency of Johnson; +but the matter was too abundant, and his space too contracted. +In vain he attempted his “Supplement;” all +the counties in England seemed to rise against the luckless +glossarist; but notwithstanding its limited utility, his +vocabulary was often preferred for its copiousness to the +more elaborate lexicon. The spirit of inquiry was now +abroad after the “winged words;” and ingenious persons, +within these twenty years,<a name="fa7c13" id="fa7c13" href="#ft7c13"><span class="sp">7</span></a> have produced a number of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page150" id="page150"></a>150</span> +provincial glossaries; but several are still wanting, particularly +those of Kent, and Sussex, and Hampshire. All +these glossaries collected together might form a provincial +lexicon marking each county. A few might be allowed +to enter into the great dictionary of the English language; +but that would not be their safest place, for they would +then lie at the mercy of successive editors, who would not +always discern a precious archaism amid the baseness and +corruption of language. The origin, the nature, and the +history of our provincial idioms have yet never been +investigated, though the subject, freed from its mere barbarisms, +opens a diversified field to the philosopher, the +antiquary, and the philologist.</p> + +<p>Grose, who wrote in 1785, notices the state of those +counties which were remote from the metropolis, or which +had no immediate intercourse with it before “newspapers +and stage-coaches imported scepticism, and made every +ploughman and thresher a politician and a freethinker.” +The accelerated intercourse of the people has long passed +beyond the diurnal folio and the evanescent stage-coach, +and in a century of railroads and national schools the provincial +glossary will finally vanish away.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c13" id="ft1c13" href="#fa1c13"><span class="fn">1</span></a> “Dictionnaire Languédocien-françois,” par l’Abbé de Sauvages. +“<i>Franchiman</i> est formé de l’Allemand, et signifie <i>homme de France</i>.” +The Abbé wrote in 1756, when he did not care to translate too literally; +the Frank-man meant the <i>Free man</i>, for the Franks called themselves +so, as “the free people.” This learned Gascon, in his zeal for the +<i>Langue d’oc</i>, explains, “<i>Parla Franchiman</i>,” means “parler avec +l’accent (bon ou mauvais) des provinces du nord du royaume:” an insinuation +that the French accent might not be positively the better one. +The good Abbé had such a perfect conviction of the superiority of his +Languedocians, that he would have no other servants not only for their +superior integrity, but for that of their language.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c13" id="ft2c13" href="#fa2c13"><span class="fn">2</span></a> “Palgrave,” 174. They also received some in exchange, many +words in Cæsar being British.—Hearne’s “Leland’s Itinerary,” vi.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c13" id="ft3c13" href="#fa3c13"><span class="fn">3</span></a> In that very curious “Logonomia Anglica” of the learned Alexander +Gill—the father, for his son of the same name succeeded him as +master of St. Paul’s—we have the orthoepy of our dialects given with +great exactness. This work was produced about 1619, and we find the +peculiar provincial pronunciation of the present day. A work so curious +in the history of our vernacular tongue should not have been composed +in Latin. Mr. Guest has carefully translated a judicious extract,— +“History of English Rhythms,” ii, 204.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c13" id="ft4c13" href="#fa4c13"><span class="fn">4</span></a> The late Dr. Valpy told me that Mr. Walker, the orthoepist, had +so intimate a knowledge of the provincial peculiarities of pronunciation, +that in a private course of reading at Oxford with twelve undergraduates, +he told each of them the respective place of their birth or +early education.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c13" id="ft5c13" href="#fa5c13"><span class="fn">5</span></a> Tooke’s “Diversions of Purley,” p. 141.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c13" id="ft6c13" href="#fa6c13"><span class="fn">6</span></a> In “Anecdotes of the English Language,” by Samuel Pegge, an +antiquary, who called himself “an old modern,” the reader will find +several curious exemplifications of the vulgar dialect, sometimes fancifully, +but often satisfactorily ascertained. It is amusing to detect what +we call <i>vulgarisms</i> composing the language of Chaucer and Shakspeare, +and even our Bibles and Liturgies.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c13" id="ft7c13" href="#fa7c13"><span class="fn">7</span></a> <span class="sc">Ray</span> was the first who collected “Local Words, <i>North Country</i> +and <i>South</i> and <i>East Country</i>.” “The Exmoor Scolding and Courtship” +is an authentic specimen of the <i>Exmoor Language</i>. The words were +collected by a blind fiddler, and the dialogues were written by a clergyman +with the fiddler’s assistance, before 1725. We have a glossary of +Lancashire words and phrases, contained in the humorous works of Tim +Bobbin. Other county glossarists have appeared within the last fifteen +years:—<span class="sc">Brockett’s</span> “North Country Words;” “Suffolk Words and +Phrases,” by Major <span class="sc">Moor</span>; Mr. <span class="sc">Roger Wilbraham’s</span> “Attempt at a +Glossary of Cheshire Words;” Mr. <span class="sc">Jennings’</span> “Dialect of the West of +England,” particularly the Somersetshire words; Mr. <span class="sc">Britton</span> on those +of Wiltshire; and the Rev. <span class="sc">Joseph Hunter</span> has given “The Hallamshire +Glossary,” to which are appended “Words used in Halifax,” by +the Rev. <span class="sc">John Watson</span>, and also an addition to the “Yorkshire +Words,” by <span class="sc">Thoresby</span>, the Leeds antiquary.</p> + +<p>An investigation of the origin, nature, and history of <span class="sc">Dialects</span> was +proposed by the late Dr. <span class="sc">Boucher</span> for a complete glossary of all the +dialects of the kingdom. But these precious stores, not only of the +vocables but of the domestic history of England—its manners, occupations, +amusements, diet, dress, buildings, and other miscellaneous +topics—rich in all the affluence of the laborious readings of more years +than the siege of Troy, was but bread cast away on the waters, and was +never given to the public for want of public support. After the author’s +death, two eminent editors zealously resumed the work, which was +already prepared; but the public remained so little instructed of its +value, it suddenly ceased! Works of national utility should be consecrated +as national property, and means should be always ready to avert +such a calamity to the literature of England, and to the information of +Englishmen, as was the suppression of the labours of <span class="sc">Boucher</span>.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page151" id="page151"></a>151</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">MANDEVILLE; OUR FIRST TRAVELLER.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Mandeville</span> was the Bruce of the fourteenth century, as +often calumniated and even ridiculed. The most ingenuous +of voyagers has been condemned as an idle fabulist; the +most cautious, as credulous to fatuity; and the volume of +a genuine writer, which has been translated into every +European language, has been formally ejected from the +collection of authentic travels. His truest vindication will +be found by comprehending him; and to be acquainted +with his character, we must seek for him in his own age.</p> + +<p>At a period when Europe could hardly boast of three +leisurely wayfarers stealing over the face of the universe; +when the Orient still remained but a Land of Faery, and +“the map of the world” was yet unfinished; at a time +when it required a whole life to traverse a space which +three years might now terminate, Sir <span class="sc">John Mandeville</span> +set forth to enter unheard-of regions. Returning home, +after an absence of more than thirty years, he discovered +a “mervayle” strange as those which he loved to record—that +he was utterly forgotten by his friends!</p> + +<p>He had returned “maugre himself,” for four-and-thirty +years had not satiated his curiosity; his noble career had +submitted to ordinary infirmities—to gout and the aching +of his limbs; these, he lamentably tells, had “defined the +end of my labour against my will, God knoweth!” The +knight in this pilgrimage of life seems to have contracted a +duty with God, that while he had breath he should peregrinate, +and, having nothing to do at home, be honourable +in his generation by his enterprise over the whole earth. +And earnestly he prays “to all the <i>readers</i> and <i>hearers</i> of +my book,” (for “hearers” were then more numerous than +“readers,”) “to say for him a <i>Pater-Noster</i> with an <i>Ave-Maria</i>.” +He wrote for “solace in his wretched rest;” but +the old passion, the devotion of his soul, finally triumphed +over all arthritic pangs. The globe evidently was his true +home; and thus Liege, and not London, received the bones +of an unwearied traveller, whose thoughts were ever +passing beyond the equator.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page152" id="page152"></a>152</span></p> + +<p>With us, to whom an excursion to “the Londe of +Promyssioun or of Behest” has sometimes arisen out of +a morning engagement—we who impelled by steam go +“whither we list,” with those billets which might serve +as letters of recommendation in the steppes of Tartary,—we +may wonder how our knight, who would not win his +way by the arts of commerce, like his predecessor Marco +Polo, bore up his chivalry; for in his traversing he had +nothing to offer but his honourable sword, and probably +his medical science, which might be sometimes as perilous. +But difficulties insuperable to us could not enter into the +emotions, nor were they the accidents which impeded the +traveller, “who, on the day of St. Michael, in the year of +our Lord 1322, passed the sea, and went the way to Hierusalem, +and to behold the mervayles of Inde.” A deep +religious emotion, an obscure indefinite curiosity, and a +courageous decision to wander wherever the step of man +could press on the globe, to tell the world “the mervayles” +it unconsciously holds within its orb, were the inspiration +of a journey which stood next in solemnity to a departure +to the world of spirits. Sir John had prepared himself, +for he was learned not only in languages, but in authentic +romance, and in romantic history; and he honestly resolved +to tell all “the mervayles” which he had seen, and those +which he had not; and these last were not the least.</p> + +<p>Sir John Mandeville’s probity remains unimpeached; +for the accuracy of whatever he relates from his own +personal observation has been confirmed by subsequent +travellers. On his return to Europe he hastened to Rome +to submit his book to the Pope, and to “his wise council,” +and “those learned men of all nations who dwell at that +court.” The volume was critically reviewed; and his +holiness “ratified and confirmed my book in all points,” +by referring to an account in Latin: this account +was probably written by some missionary; Rubriquis had +been dispatched on an unsuccessful mission to Christianize +the great Khan of Tartary in 1230; or it was the writings +of Marco Polo, which could not be unknown at Rome. In +that day all real information was consigned to the fugitive +manuscript, partially known, and often subject to the interpolations +and capricious alterations of its possessor, and +what sometimes occurred, to the silent plagiarisms of other +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page153" id="page153"></a>153</span> +writers—of which even Mandeville himself has been suspected.</p> + +<p>The Pope decreed that not only all that Mandeville +related was veracious, but that the Latin book which his +holiness possessed contained <i>much more</i>, and from whence +the Mappa Mundi had been made. Indeed Mandeville +has himself told us that he wrote only from his recollections +as they “would come into his mind;” these +necessarily were often broken and obscure. Some “mervayles” +remained unrecorded, and hereafter were to be +“more plainly told;” but I fear these are lost for us.</p> + +<p>In this “true” book we find many things very untrue, +but we may doubt whether any in that day were as positive +in this opinion. The author himself designed no +imposition on his readers; he tells us what he believed; +part of which he had seen and the rest he had heard, and +sometimes had transcribed from sources deemed by him +authentic. Who can suspect the knight of spotless +honour, and whose piety would not relinquish his <i>Ave-Marias</i> +for a dominion? Having fought during two years +under the ensign of the Sultan of Egypt, and being offered +in marriage the Sultan’s daughter and a province, he +refused both, when his Christianity was to be exchanged +for Mahometanism.</p> + +<p>This was a period when the marvellous never weakened +the authenticity of a tale. The mighty tome of Pliny, +that awful repository of all the errors of antiquity, and +other writers of equal name, detail prodigies and legends, +and so do the Fathers. Who would not have rejoiced to +transcribe Pliny or St. Austen? Who imagined that all +the delectable adventures of the romances, over which they +passed many a dreamy day, with the very names of the +personages and the very places where they occurred, were +solely chimeras of the brain? The learned Mandeville was +evidently not one of these sceptics: for he observes, that +“the trees of the sun and of the moon are well known to +have spoken to King Alisaundre, and warned him of his +death.” The unquestioned fact is in that famed romance; +and others might be referred to if we required additional +authority. I have read of these talking trees of the sun +and moon in <i>Guarino detto il Meschino</i>, who lived a year +among them to learn his own genealogy, and then was +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page154" id="page154"></a>154</span> +graceless enough to laugh at these timber-oracles. Mandeville +forgot not in the island of Lango, not distant from +Crete, the legend of the unfortunate “Lady of the Land,” +who remained a dragoness, because no one had the hardihood +to kiss her lips to disenchant her. He tells likewise +of the Faery Lady who guarded the sparrow-hawk; whoever +ventured to assist that lady during three days and +nights, was rewarded by the boon of having whatever he +wished. A king who, not wanting anything, had the +audacity to wish to have the lady herself, was fairly warned +that he did not know what he asked, as happens to the +reckless; but, persisting in his absolute will, he incurred +the curse of perpetual war to the last of his race!</p> + +<p>We trace such tales among the romances, with all their +circumstances; and some may have reached the listener +from the Arabian tale-teller. The monsters he describes +Mandeville never invented; these, human and animal, +he gave as some of his predecessors had done, from +Pliny, or Ælian, or Ctesias,<a name="fa1c14" id="fa1c14" href="#ft1c14"><span class="sp">1</span></a> who have sent them down to +be engraven in the Great Nuremberg Chronicle, and +adorned in the immortal page of Shakspeare. Marco +Polo had noticed that portentous bird which could lift an +elephant by its claws; he does not tell us that he had seen +any bird of this wing, but we all know where it is to be +found—in the Arabian Tales! Sir Thomas Browne accuses +Mandeville of <i>confirming</i> the fabulous accounts of +India by Ctesias; but, in truth, our knight does not +“confirm these refuted notions of antiquity;” he only +repeats them, with the prelude of “men seyn.” No one +was more honest than Mandeville, for when he had to +describe the locality of paradise, he fairly acknowledges +that “he cannot speak of it properly, for I was not there; +it is far beyond, but as I have <i>heard say</i> of wise men, it is +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page155" id="page155"></a>155</span> +on the highest part of the earth, nigh to the circle of the +moon.” However, he has contrived to describe the wall, +which is not of stone, but of moss, with but a single +entrance, “closed with brennynge fyre;” and though no +mortal could enter, yet it was known that there was a +well in paradise, whence flowed the four floods that run +through the earth. “Wise men,” he tells us, said this; +some of these “wise men” were the Rabbins; and three +centuries afterwards, the accounts of paradise, by a finer +genius than Mandeville, the illustrious Rawleigh, remained +much the same.</p> + +<p>To explain some of those incredible incidents which +occurred to the author himself might exercise some +critical ingenuity. Mandeville’s adventure in “the Valley +Perilous,” when he saw the Devil’s head with eyes of +flame, great plenty of gold and silver, which he was too +frightened to touch, and, moreover, a multitude of dead +bodies, as if a battle had been fought there, might probably +be resolved into some volcanic eruption, the rest +supplied by his own horrifying imagination; for he tells, +with great simplicity, “I was more devout then than +ever I was before or after, and all for the dread of fiends +that <i>I saw in divers figures</i>;” that is, at the <i>shapes</i> of +the disparted rocks. The travellers were beaten down by +tempests, winds, and thunder, which raged in this pent-up +vale. As he marks the locality, the spot may yet be +ascertained.</p> + +<p>There was no imposition practised in all such legends; +it is we who are startled by the supernatural in a personal +narrative; but in the fourteenth century the more wonderful +the tale, the more authentic it appeared, as it sunk +into the softest and richest moulds of the most germinating +imagination. The readers, or the hearers, were as well +prepared to believe, as the writers prompt to gather +up, their fictions. Collections of “Mirabilia Mundi,” +“Wonders,” were a fashionable title applied to any single +country, as well as to the world—to England or Ireland, +to the Holy Land or the Indies. The “Mirabilia” +might be the running title for a whole system of geography. +The age of imagination has long been unfurnished +of all its ingenious garniture, and yet we still +catch at some evanescent hour of fancy susceptible of those +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page156" id="page156"></a>156</span> +ancient delights. We have lost something for which we +have no substitute. Would not the modern novelist +rejoice in the privilege of intermingling supernatural +inventions to break the level of his every-day incidents +and his trivial passions so soon forgotten? But that +glowing day has set, leaving none of its ethereal hues in +our cold twilight. Mandeville may still be read for those +wild arabesques which so long unjustly proved fatal to his +authentic narrative. His simplicity often warrants its +truth; he assures us that Jerusalem is placed in the +middle of the earth, because when he stuck his staff in +the ground, exactly at noon, it cast no shadow; and +having ascertained the spherical form of the globe, he +marvels how the antipodes, whose feet are right upwards +towards us, yet do not fall into the firmament! When +he describes the elegant ornaments of “a vine made of +gold that goeth all about the hall, with many bunches of +grapes, some white, and the red made of rubies,” he tells +what he had seen in some divan; but when he records +that “the Emperor hath in his chamber a pillar of gold, +in which is a ruby and carbuncle a foot long, which +lighteth all his chamber by night,” it may be questioned +whether this carbuncle be anything more than an Arabian +fancy, a tale to which he had listened. Some of his +ocular marvels have been confirmed by no questionable +authority. Mandeville’s description of a magical exhibition +before the Khan of Tartary is a remarkable instance +of the strange optical illusions of the scenical art, and the +adroitness of the Indian jugglers—a similar scene appears +in a recent version of the autobiography of the Emperor +Akber. What seemed the spells of magic to the Europeans +of that age, and of which some marvellous descriptions +were brought to Europe by the crusaders or the +pilgrims, and embellished the romances, our exquisite +masques and our grand pantomimes have realized. Three +centuries were to elapse ere the court of England could +rival the necromancy of the court of Tartary.</p> + +<p>Mandeville first composed his travels in the Latin +language, which he afterwards translated into French, and +lastly out of French into English, that “every man of +my nation may understand it.” We see the progressive +estimation of the languages by this curious statement +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page157" id="page157"></a>157</span> +which Mandeville has himself given. The author first +secured the existence of his work in a language familiar +to the whole European world; the French was addressed +to the politer circles of society; and the last language +the author cared about was the vernacular idiom, which, +at that time the least regarded, required all the patriotism +of the writer in this devotion of his pen.</p> + +<p>Copies of these travels were multiplied till they almost +equalled in number those of the Scriptures; now we may +smile at the “mervayles” of the fourteenth century, and +of Mandeville, but it was the spirit of these intrepid and +credulous minds which has marched us through the +universe. To the children of imagination perhaps we owe +the circumnavigation of the globe and the universal intercourse +of nations.<a name="fa2c14" id="fa2c14" href="#ft2c14"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c14" id="ft1c14" href="#fa1c14"><span class="fn">1</span></a> <span class="sc">Ctesias</span>, a physician in high repute at the Persian Court, and often +referred to by Diodorus. He has been universally condemned as a +fabulous writer, to which charge his descriptions of some animals was +liable. But a naturalist of the highest order, the famous <span class="sc">Cuvier</span>, has +perhaps done an act of justice to this fabricator of animals. Ctesias +reported the mythological creations which he had witnessed in hieroglyphical +representations as actual living animals. It is glorious to remove +from the darkened name of a writer, unjustly condemned, the +obloquy of two thousand years.—“Theory of the Earth,” translated by +Professor Jameson, 76.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c14" id="ft2c14" href="#fa2c14"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Of modern editions of Mandeville’s “Travels in England,” that of +1725, printed by Bowyer, is a large octavo. There are numerous +manuscripts of Mandeville in existence. An edition collated might discover +either omissions or interpolations. This might serve as the labour +of an amateur. Mandeville has not had the fortune of his predecessor +Marco Polo, to have met with a Marsden, learned in geographical and +literary illustration.</p> + +<p>Long subsequently to the time that this article was written, this +edition of 1725 has been reprinted, with the advantage of a bibliographical +introduction by Mr. Halliwell, and a collation of texts. [It was +published in 1839, in an octavo volume of 326 pages, with illustrative +engravings from manuscripts and printed books.]</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page158" id="page158"></a>158</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">CHAUCER.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">In</span> the chronology of our poetical collectors, <span class="sc">Gower</span> +takes precedence of <span class="sc">Chaucer</span> unjustly, for Chaucer had +composed many of his works in the only language which +he has written before the elder claimed the honours of an +English vernacular poet, and, probably, then only emulating +the success of him who first set the glorious example. +Nor less in the rank of poetry must Chaucer +hold the precedence. The first true English poet is +Chaucer; and notwithstanding that the rhythmical cadences +of his unequal metre are now lost for us, Chaucer is the +first modeller of the heroic couplet and other varieties of +English versification. By the felicity of his poetic +character, Chaucer was not only the parent, but the +master, of those two schools of poetry which still divide +its votaries by an idle rivalry, and which have been traced, +like our architecture, the one to a Gothic origin, and the +other to a classical model.</p> + +<p>The personal history of <span class="sc">Chaucer</span>, poetical and political, +might have been susceptible of considerable development +had the poet himself written it, for his biographers +had no life to record. Speght, one of the early editors, +in the good method of that day, having set down a +variety of heads, including all that we might wish to +know of any man, when this methodiser of commonplaces +came to fill up these well-planned divisions concerning +Chaucer, he could only disprove what was accepted, +and supply only what is uncertain. The “Life of +Chaucer” by Godwin is a theoretical life, and, as much as +relates to Chaucer himself, a single fatal fact, when all +was finished, dispersed the baseless vision.<a name="fa1c15" id="fa1c15" href="#ft1c15"><span class="sp">1</span></a> The whole +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page159" id="page159"></a>159</span> +rested on the unauthenticated and contradictory statements +of Leland, who, writing a century after the times +of Chaucer, hastily collected unsubstantial traditions, +and, what was less pardonable in Leland, fell into some +anachronisms.</p> + +<p>This defective chronology in the life of the poet has +involved the more important subject of the chronology of +his works. Posterity may be little concerned in the dates +of his birth and his burial—his unknown parentage—his +descriptive name—and, above all, his suspicious shield, +which the heralds opined must have been blazoned out of +the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth propositions of the +first book of Euclid, from the poet’s love of geometry, or, +more obviously, from having no coat-of-arms to show of +“far more ancient antiquity.” But posterity would have +been interested in the history of the genius of Chaucer, +who having long paced in a lengthened circuit of verbal +version and servile imitation, passed through some remarkable +transitions, kindling the cold ashes of translation +into the fire of invention; from cloudy allegory +breaking forth into the sunshine of the loveliest landscape-painting; +and from the amatory romance gliding +into that vein of humour and satire which in his old age +poured forth a new creation. All this he might himself +have told, or Gower might have revealed, had the elder +bard who lauded the lays and “ditties” of the youth of +“the Clerk of Venus” loved him as well in his old age. +But elegant literature, as distinguished from scholastic, +was then without price or reward. The few men of +genius who have written at this early period are only +known to us by their writings, and probably were more +known to their contemporaries by the station which they +may have occupied, than by that which they maintain +with posterity.</p> + +<p>By royal patents and grants to the poet, we trace his +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page160" id="page160"></a>160</span> +early life at court, his various appointments, and his +honourable missions to Genoa and to France—we must +not add as confidently his visit to Petrarch.</p> + +<p>Chaucer, in his political life, was bound up with the +party of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; and, by a +congenial spirit, with the novel doctrines of his friend, +Dr. Wickliffe. The sister of his lady finally became the +third Duchess of Lancaster, and the family alliance +strengthened the political bond. How the Lancastrian +exploded in the poet, something we know, but little we +comprehend; and those who have attempted to lift the +veil have not congratulated themselves on their success. +The poet himself has not entrusted his secret to posterity, +except, as is usual with poets, by eloquent lamentations. +The exposition of a political transaction is never without +some valued results; and though deprived of names and +dates, we are not without some dim lights: the palpable +truth may not be obvious, but it may happen that we +may stumble on it.</p> + +<p>Chaucer himself has stated, “In <i>my youth</i> I was drawn +in to be assenting to certain <i>conjurations</i> and other <i>great +matters of ruling of citizens</i>, and those things have been +my <i>drawers in and exciters</i> in the matters <i>so painted and +coloured</i>, that <i>first</i> to me seemed then <i>noble and glorious +for all the people</i>.”</p> + +<p>Here the tale is plain, for this is the language of one +who early in life had engaged in some popular scheme, +and these early indications of the temper of the Wickliffite +or the Lancastrian, or both, had subsequently led +to some more perilous attempts. They were, like all +reforms, something “noble and glorious for the people,” +and as sometimes happens among reformers, what <i>at first</i> +appeared to promise so well, ended in disappointment and +“penance in a dark prison.”</p> + +<p>The locality of this patriotic act was the city of London. +He alludes to “free elections by great clamours of much +people,” for great disease of misgovernment in the hands of +“<i>torcentious citizens</i>.” When the fatal day arrived that +he openly joined with a party for “the people,” against +those citizens whom he has so awfully denounced, it is +evident, though we have no means to discriminate factions +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page161" id="page161"></a>161</span> +in an age of factions,<a name="fa2c15" id="fa2c15" href="#ft2c15"><span class="sp">2</span></a> that he and his “conjurors” +discovered that “all the people” were not of one mind. +This votary or this victim of reform suddenly flings his +contempt at “the hatred of the mighty senators of London +or of its commonalty,” and closes with a painful +remembrance of “the janglings of <span class="scs">THE SHEEPY PEOPLE</span>!” +The style of Chaucer bears the stamp of passionate emotions; +words of dimension, or of poignant sarcasm. The +“torcentious citizens” is an awful bolt, and “the sheepy +people” is sufficiently picturesque.</p> + +<p>In dismay the whole party took flight. Chaucer, in +Zealand, exhausted his means to supply the wants of his +political associates, till he himself found that even the +partnership of common misery does not always preserve +men from ingratitude. Returning home, potent persecutors +cast him into a dungeon. Was the Duke of Lancaster +absent, or the Duke of Gloucester in power? Let +us observe that in all these dark events the loyalty of the +poet is never impeached, for Chaucer enjoyed without interruption +the favour of both his sovereigns, Edward III. +and Richard II.; and we discover that once when dismissed +from office, Richard allowed him to serve by +deputy, which was evidence that Chaucer had never been +dismissed by the king himself. The whole transaction, +whatever it was, was a political movement between two +factions. Chaucer indeed pleads that whatever he had +done was under the control of others, himself being but +“the servant of his sovereign.” At that period the factions +in the state were more potent than the monarch. +In the convulsive administration of a youthful prince, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page162" id="page162"></a>162</span> +they who oppose the court are not necessarily opposing +the sovereign.</p> + +<p>It was behind the bars of a gloomy window in the +Tower, where “every hour appeared to be a hundred +winters,” that Chaucer, recent from exile, and sore from +persecution, was reminded of a work popular in those days, +and which had been composed in a dungeon—“The Consolations +of Philosophy,” by Boethius—and which he himself +had formerly translated. He composed his “<span class="sc">Testament +of Love</span>,” substituting for the severity of an abstract +being the more genial inspiration of love itself. +But the fiction was a reality, and the griefs were deeper +than the fancies. In this chronicle of the heart the poet +mourns over “the delicious hours he was wont to enjoy,” +of his “richesse,” and now of his destitution—the vain +regret of his abused confidence—the treachery of all that +“summer-brood” who never approach the lost friend in +“the winter hour” of an iron solitude. The poet energetically +describes his condition; there he sate “witless, +thoughtful; and sightless, looking.” This work the poet +has composed in prose; but in the leisure of a prison the +diction became more poetical in thoughts and in words +than the language at that time had yet attained to, and +for those who read the black letter it still retains its impressive +eloquence.</p> + +<p>But this apology which Chaucer has left of his conduct +in this political transaction has incurred a fatal censure. +“Never,” observes Mr. Campbell, “was an obscure affair +conveyed in a more obscure apology.” His political integrity +has been freely suspected. Chaucer has even been +struck by the brilliant arrow of the Viscount de Chateaubriand. +“Courtisan, Lancastrien, Wickliffist, infidèle à +ses convictions, traitre à son parti, tantôt banni, tantôt +voyageur, tantôt en faveur, tantôt en disgrace.” No, thou +eloquent Gaul! Chaucer never was out of favour, however +he may have been more than once dismissed from his +office; nor can we know whether the poet was ever “infidèle +à ses convictions.”</p> + +<p>Obscure must ever remain the tale of justification in a +political transaction which terminated on the part of the +apologist by revealing “disclosures for the peace of the +kingdom,” denied by those whom they implicated, though +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page163" id="page163"></a>163</span> +their truth was offered to be maintained by the accuser, in +the custom of the times, by single combat; and by confessions +which acknowledge errors of judgment, but not of +intention; and by penitence, which, if the patriot designed +what was “glorious to all the people,” he should never +have repented of.</p> + +<p>This obscure apology conceals the agony of conflicting +emotions—indignation at ungrateful associates, and a base +desertion of ancient friends, who were plotting against +him. Whether Chaucer was desirous of burying in obscurity +a story of torturous details, or one too involved in +confused motives for any man to tell with the precision of +a simple statement, we know of no evidence which can +enable us to decide with any certainty on an affair which +no one pretends to understand. Chaucer might have been +the scapegoat of the sovereign, or the champion of the +people. We can rather decide on his calamity than his +conduct. Many are the causes which may dissolve the +bonds of faithless “conjurations;” and it is not always he +who abandons a party who is to be criminated by political +tergiversation.</p> + +<p>The circumstances of Chaucer’s life had combined with +his versatile powers. He had mingled with the world’s +affairs both at home and abroad: accomplished in manners, +and intimately connected with a splendid court, Chaucer +was at once the philosopher who had surveyed mankind in +their widest sphere, the poet who haunted the solitudes of +nature, and the elegant courtier whose opulent tastes are +often discovered in the graceful pomp of his descriptions. +It was no inferior combination of observation and sympathy +which could bring together into one company the +many-coloured conditions and professions of society, delineated +with pictorial force, and dramatised by poetic conception, +reflecting themselves in the tale which seemed +most congruous to their humours. The perfect identity +of these assembled characters, after the lapse of near five +centuries, make us familiar with the domestic habits and +modes of thinking of a most interesting period in our +country, not inspected by the narrow details of the antiquarian +microscope, but in the broad mirror reflecting that +truth or satire which alone could have discriminated the +passions, the pursuits, and the foibles of society. Thus +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page164" id="page164"></a>164</span> +the painter of nature, who caught the glow of her skies +and her earth in his landscape, was also the miniature portrayer +of human likenesses. When Chaucer wrote, the +classics of antiquity were imperfectly known in this country—the +Grecian muse had never reached our shores; this +was, probably, favourable to the native freedom of Chaucer. +The English poet might have lost his raciness by a cold +imitation of the Latin masters; among the Italians, Dante, +Petrarch, and Boccaccio, Chaucer found only models to +emulate or to surpass. Hence the English bard indulged +that more congenial abundance of thoughts and images +which owns no other rule than the pleasure it yields in +the profusion of nature and fancy. A great poet may +not be the less Homeric because he has never read Homer.</p> + +<p>Nature in her distinct forms lies open before this poet-painter; +his creative eye pursued her through all her +mutability, but in his details he was a close copier. In +his rural scenery there is a freshness in its luxuriance; for +his impressions were stamped by their locality. This +locality is so remarkable, that Pope had a notion, which +he said no one else had observed, that Chaucer always +described real places to compliment the owners of particular +gardens and fine buildings. Let us join him in his +walks—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>When that the misty vapour was agone,</p> +<p>And clear and fair was the morníng,</p> +<p>The dews, like silver, shiníng</p> +<p>Upon the leaves.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">The flowers sparkle in “their divers hues”—he sometimes +counts their colours—“white, blue, yellow, and red”—on +their stalks, spreading their leaves in breadth against the +sun, gold-burned. His grass is “so small, so thick, so +fresh of hue.” The poet goes by a river whose water is +“clear as beryl or crystal;” turning into “a little way” +towards a park in compass round, and by a small gate.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Whoso that would freely might gone (go)</p> +<p>Into this Park walled with green stone.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The owner of that park, probably, was startled when he +came to “the little way,” and to “the small gate.” This +was either the park of some great personage, or possibly +Woodstock Park, where stood a stone lodge, so long known +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page165" id="page165"></a>165</span> +by the name of “Chaucer’s House,” that in the days of +Elizabeth it was still described as such in the royal grant. +If poets have rarely built houses, at least their names have +consecrated many.</p> + +<p>His</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Garden upon a river in a green mead;</p> +<p>The gravel gold, the water pure as glass,</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">and “the eglantine and sycamore arbour, so thickly woven, +where the priers who stood without all day could not discover +whether any one was within,” was assuredly some +particular garden. The stately grove has all the characters +of its trees—the oak, the ash, and the fir—to “the +fresh hawthorn,”</p> + +<p class="center ptb1 f90">Which in white motley that so swote doth smell.</p> + +<p class="noind">In all these lovely scenes there was a delicious sense of +joyous existence; the inmates of the forest burst forth, +from “the little conies, the beasts of gentle kind,” to +“the dreadful roe and the buck,” and from their green +leaves they who “with voice of angels” entranced the +poet-musician—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>So loud they sang that all the woodés rung</p> +<p>Like as it should shiver in pieces small,</p> +<p>And as methought that the Nightingale</p> +<p>With so great might her voice out-wrest,</p> +<p>Right as her heart for love would brest (burst).</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">So true is the accidental remark of the celebrated Charles +Fox, that “of all poets Chaucer seems to have been the +fondest of the singing of birds.” These were the peculiar +delights in the poetic habits of Chaucer, who was an +early riser, and often mused on many a rondel in gardens, +and meads, and woods, at earliest dawn. This poet’s sun-risings +are the most exhilarating in our poetry.</p> + +<p>We may doubt if the vernal scenes of Chaucer can be +partaken by his more chilly posterity. Did England in +the seasons of Chaucer flourish with a more genial May +and a more refulgent June? Or should we suspect that +the travelled poet clothed our soil with the luxuriance of +Provençal fancy, and borrowed the clear azure of Italy to +soften the British roughness even of our skies?</p> + +<p>Tyrwhit, the able commentator of Chaucer, has thrown +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page166" id="page166"></a>166</span> +out an incidental remark, which seems equally refined and +true. “Chaucer in his serious pieces often follows his +author with the servility of a mere translator; and in consequence +his narration is jejune and constrained (as often +appears in the “Romaunt of the Rose” and his translations +of Dante), whereas in the comic he is generally satisfied +with borrowing a slight hint of his subject, which he +varies, enlarges, and embellishes at pleasure, and gives +the whole the air and colour of an original; a sure sign +that his genius rather led him to compositions of the latter +kind.”</p> + +<p>This remark is an instance of critical sagacity. The +creative faculty in Chaucer had not broken forth in his +translations, which evidently were his earliest writings. +The native bent of his genius, the hilarity of his temper, +betrays itself by playful strokes of raillery and concealed +satire when least expected. His fine irony may have +sometimes left his commendations, or even the objects of +his admiration, in a very ambiguous condition. The +learned editor of the second part of the “Paston Letters” +hence has been induced to infer that the spirit of +chivalry, from the reign of the third Edward, had entirely +declined, and only existed in the forms of conventional +and fashionable society, and had sunk into a mere foppery, +a system of forms and etiquettes, because Chaucer, a court-poet, +treats with irony the chivalric manners. Whether +this ingenious inference will hold with literary antiquaries, +I will not decide; but I am inclined to suspect that +Chaucer’s indulgence of his taste for irony was not in the +mind of this learned editor. Our poet has stamped with +his immortal ridicule the tale told in his own person—“The +Rime of Sir Thopas,” which is considered as a +burlesque of the metrical romances. In those days there +was an inundation of these romances, as “the thirst and +hunger” of the present is accommodated with as spurious +a brood. We have our “drafty prose” as they had their +“drafty riming.” But shall we infer from this ludicrous +effusion of the great poet, that he held so light the +venerable fablers, the ancient romancers, with whose +“better parts” he had nourished his own genius? This +is his own confession. Often in his years of grief, when +the poet wondered</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page167" id="page167"></a>167</span></p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>How he lived, for day ne night,</p> +<p>I may not sleep—</p> +<p>Sitting upright in my bed,</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">then it was that he prescribed for his “secret sorrows” +that medicine which, “drunk deeply,” makes us forget +ourselves. In those hours the poet</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Bade one reach me a Boke,</p> +<p>A <span class="sc">Romance</span>, and he it me took</p> +<p>To read, and drive the Night away;</p> +<p>For methought it better play</p> +<p>Than play either at Chess or Tables.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">And assuredly Chaucer found many passages in the old +fablers not less entrancing than some of his own. Our +poet indulged this vein of playful irony on persons as well +as on things. A sly panegyric, sufficiently ambiguous for +us to accept as a refined stroke, we find on the abstruse +and interminable question of predestination; on which the +Nonne’s priest declares—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>But I ne cannot boult it to the bren,</p> +<p>As can the holy doctor Augustín,</p> +<p>Or Bœcé, or <i>the bishop Bradwardín</i>.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>As this bishop, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury, +was the first who treated theology on mathematical principles, +and likewise wrote on the “Quadrature of the +Circle,” we may presume “Bishop Bradwardin” rather +perplexed the poet. Chaucer discovers his ironical manner +when gravely stating the different theories of dreaming—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>————What causeth Suevenes<a name="fa3c15" id="fa3c15" href="#ft3c15"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> +<p>On the morrow or on evens?</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">he playfully concludes, and modern philosophy could no +better assist the inquiry—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>————Whoso of these Miracles</p> +<p>The causes know bet<a name="fa4c15" id="fa4c15" href="#ft4c15"><span class="sp">4</span></a> than I</p> +<p>Define he, for I certainly</p> +<p>Ne can them not, ne never thinke</p> +<p>To busie my witte for to swinke</p> +<p>To know why this is more than that is,</p> +<p>Well worthé of this thing Clerkés,</p> +<p>That treaten of this and of other werkés,</p> +<p>For I, of none opinion</p> +<p>Nil.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page168" id="page168"></a>168</span></p> + +<p>It is with the same pleasantry he avoids all commonplace +descriptions, by playfully suggesting his pretended +unskilfulness for the detail, or his want of learning—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Me list not of the chaf, ne of the stre,</p> +<p>Maken so long a tale, as of the corn.</p> + <p class="i9">“Man of Lawe’s Ta’e.”</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>Yet humour and irony are not his only excellences, +for those who study Chaucer know that this great poet +has thoughts that dissolve in tenderness; no one has +more skilfully touched the more hidden springs of the +heart.</p> + +<p>The Herculean labour of <span class="sc">Chaucer</span> was the creation of +a new style. In this he was as fortunate as he was likewise +unhappy. He mingled with the native rudeness of +our English words of Provençal fancy, and some of +French and of Latin growth. He banished the superannuated +and the uncouth, and softened the churlish +nature of our hard Anglo-Saxon; but the poet had nearly +endangered the novel diction when his artificial pedantry +assumed what he called “the ornate style” in “the +Romaunt of the Rose,” and in his “Troilus and Cressida.” +This “ornate style” introduced sesquipedalian Latinisms, +words of immense dimensions, that could not hide their +vacuity of thought. Chaucer seems deserted by his genius +when “the ornate style” betrays his pangs and his +anxiety. As the error of a fine genius becomes the error +of many, because monstrous protuberances may be copied, +while the softened lines of beauty remain inimitable, this +“ornate style” corrupted inferior writers, who, losing all +relish of the natural feeling and graceful simplicity of +their master, filled their verse with noise and nonsense. +This vicious style, a century afterwards, was resumed by +<span class="sc">Stephen Hawes</span>. We have, however, a glorious evidence, +amid this struggle both with a new and with a false style, +of Chaucer’s native good taste; he finally wholly abandoned +this artificial diction; and his later productions, no +longer disfigured by such tortured phrases and such +remote words, awaken our sympathy in the familiar +language of life and passion.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Tyrwhit</span> has ingeniously constructed a metrical +system to arrange the versification to the ear of a modern +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page169" id="page169"></a>169</span> +reader; by this contrivance he would have removed +all obstructions in the pronunciation and in the syllabic +quantities. He maintained that the lines were regular +decasyllabics. But who can read this poet for any length, +even the “Canterbury Tales” in the elaborated text of +Tyrwhit, without being reminded of its fallacy? Even the +<span class="sc">E</span> final, on which our critic has laid such stress, though +often sounded, assuredly is sometimes mute. Dan Chaucer +makes at his pleasure words long or short, and dyssyllabic +or trisyllabic; and this he has himself told us—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>But for the rime is light and lewde,</p> +<p>Yet make it somewhat agreáble,</p> +<p>Though some verse fail in a sylláble.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>Our critic was often puzzled by his own ingenuity, for +in some inveterate cases he has thrown out in despair an +observation, that “a reader who cannot perform such +operations for himself (that is, helping out the metre) had +better not trouble his head about the versification of our +ancient authors.” The verse of Chaucer seems more carefully +regulated in his later work, “the Tales;” but it is +evident that Chaucer trusted his cadences to his ear, and +his verse is therefore usually rhythmical, and accidentally +metrical.</p> + +<p>On a particular occasion the poet submitted to the restraint +of equal syllables, as we discover in “The Court +of Love,” elaborately metrical, and addressed to “his +princely lady,” with the hope that she might not refuse +it “for lack of ornate speech.” It is evident, therefore, +that Chaucer had a distinct conception of the heroic or +decasyllabic verse, but he did not consider that the +mechanical construction of his verse was essential to the +free spirit of his fancy. “I am no metrician,” he once +exclaimed; he wrote</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Books, songs, ditees</p> +<p>In <span class="scs">RIME</span>, or else in <span class="scs">CADENCE</span>.</p> + <p class="i6">“The House of Fame.”</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">This circumstance arose from the custom of the age, when +poems were <i>recited</i>, and not <i>read</i>; readers there were +none among the people, though auditors were never wanting; +it was much the same among the higher orders. +Poems were usually performed in plain chant, and a verse +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page170" id="page170"></a>170</span> +was musical by the modulation of the harp. There was +no typographical metre placed under the eye of the reciter; +the melody of the poet too often depended on the +adroitness of the performer; and the only publishers of +the popular poems of Chaucer were the harpers, who, in +stately halls on festal days, entranced their audience with +Chaucer’s Tale, or his “Ballade.” His poem of “Troilus +and Cressida,” although almost as long as the Æneid, was +intended to be <i>sung</i> to the harp as well as <i>read</i>, as the +poet himself tells us, in addressing his poem—</p> + +<p class="center ptb1 f90">And <i>redde</i> where so thou be, or elles <i>sung</i>.</p> + +<p>In the most ancient manuscripts of Chaucer’s works +the cæsura in every line is carefully noted, to preserve the +rhythmical cadence with precision; without this precaution +the harmony of such loose versification would be +lost. In the later editions, when the race of roaming +minstrels had departed, and our verse had become solely +metrical, the printers omitted this guide to the ancient +recitation. We perceive this want in the uncertain measures +of Chaucer’s versification; and a dexterous modulation +is still required to catch the recitative of Chaucer’s +poems.</p> + +<p>Are the works of our great poet to be consigned to the +literary dungeon of the antiquary’s closet? I fear that +there is more than one obstruction which intervenes between +the poet’s name, which will never die, and the +poet’s works, which will never be read. A massive tome, +dark with the Gothic type, whose obsolete words and +difficult phrases, and, for us, uncadenced metre, are to be +conned by a glossary as obsolete as the text, to be perpetually +referred to, to the interruption of all poetry and all +patience, appalled even the thorough-paced antiquary, +Samuel Pegge, as appears by his honest confession. +Already a practised bibliosopher proclaims, alluding to the +edition by Tyrwhit of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,” +“And who reads any other portion of the poet?” Yet +the “Canterbury Tales” are but the smallest portion of +Chaucer’s works! But some skilful critics have perpended +and decided differently: even among the projected labours +of Johnson was an edition of Chaucer’s works; and +Godwin, when diligently occupied on this great poet, with +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page171" id="page171"></a>171</span> +just severity observed that “a vulgar judgment had been +propagated by slothful and indolent persons, that the +‘Canterbury Tales’ are the only part of the works of +Chaucer worthy the attention of a modern reader, and +this has contributed to the wretched state in which his +works are permitted to exist.”</p> + +<p>Are we then no longer to linger over the visionary +emotions of the great poet in the fine portraitures of his +genius from his youthful days, when the fever of his soul, +not knowing where to seek for its true aliment, careless of +life, fed on its own sad musings, in Chaucer’s “<span class="sc">Dreme</span>,” +or, onwards in life, in the “<span class="sc">Testament of Love</span>,” that +chronicle of the heart in a prison solitude? And are we +no longer interested in those personal traits Chaucer has so +frequently dropped of his own tastes and humours, so that +we are in fact better acquainted with Chaucer than we +are with Shakspeare? Even during his official occupations, +this poet loved his studious solitary nights, and frequently +alludes to his passion. Must we close that +“<span class="sc">House of Fame</span>,” with whose fragments Pope reared +“The Temple?” Has all the enchantment of the moonlight-land +of chivalry and fairyism in “<span class="sc">The Floure and +the Leafe</span>” vanished? Are we no longer to listen to +“<span class="sc">The Complaint of the Black Knight</span>,” which +touched a duchess or a queen? or the stanzas of “<span class="sc">The +Cuckoo and the Nightingale</span>,” which musically resound +that musical encounter? Is the legend of pathetic +tenderness in the impassioned “<span class="sc">Troilus</span>,” and “the sillie +woman who falsed Troilus,” ever to be closed? there may +we pursue the vicissitudes of love, in what the poet calls +“a little tragedy;” and we find Ovidian graces amid its +utter simplicity. There are, indeed, vicissitudes of taste +as well as of love. “Troilus and Cressida” was the favourite +in the days of Henry VIII. over the “Canterbury +Tales” and “The Floure and the Leafe;” it was, too, the +model of Sidney in the court of Elizabeth; Love triumphed +at court over Humour and Fancy.</p> + +<p>It is true that the language of Chaucer has failed, but +not the writer. The marble which Chaucer sculptured +has betrayed the noble hand of the artist; the statue was +finished; but the grey and spotty veins came forth, +clouding the lucid whiteness.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page172" id="page172"></a>172</span></p> + +<p>For the poet or the poetical, the difficulty of the language +may be surmounted with a reasonable portion of +every-day patience. I know, from several of my literary +contemporaries, that this, however, has not been conceded. +The more familiar I became with Chaucer, the more I +delighted in the significance of the Chaucerian words. +From some modern critics, occasionally the name of +Chaucer startles the ear. One, indeed, has recently complained +that “Chaucer’s divine qualities are languidly acknowledged +by his unjust countrymen;”<a name="fa5c15" id="fa5c15" href="#ft5c15"><span class="sp">5</span></a> and Coleridge +emphatically said, “I take unceasing delight in Chaucer. +His manly cheerfulness is especially delicious in my old +age. How exquisitely tender he is!”<a name="fa6c15" id="fa6c15" href="#ft6c15"><span class="sp">6</span></a></p> + +<p>But the popularity of this gifted child of nature, and +this shrewd observer of mankind, is doomed to another +obstruction than that of his curious diction. The playfulness +of his comic invention, and the freedom of his +simplicity, will no longer be allowed to atone for the +levity of some of his incidents. When Warton, to display +the genuine vein of the Chaucerian humour, imprudently +analysed the “Miller’s Tale,” having reached the middle, the +critic, recollecting himself, suddenly breaks off with a curt +remark—“The sequel cannot be repeated here!” In a +recklessness of all knowledge, and in an unhappy hour, the +poet of “Don Juan” decided, while he probably would have +started from Chaucer’s black-letter tome, that “Chaucer, +notwithstanding the praises bestowed on him, I think +obscene and contemptible. He owed his celebrity merely +to his antiquity.” As if the greatest of our poets had +only been celebrated in the day when Byron wrote! Yet +in all the unfettered invention and nudity of style, there +was no grossness in the temper, and less in the habits, of +the poet. He addressed his own age as his contemporaries +were doing in France and in Italy, and from whom +he had borrowed the very two tales on which this censure +has fallen. In telling “a merrie tale,” Chaucer could not +have anticipated this charge; and, in truth, for subjects +which are obscene and disgustful he had no taste, as he +showed in his reproof of Gower for having selected two +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page173" id="page173"></a>173</span> +repulsive ones—the unnatural passions of Canace and +Apollonius Tyrius. Of these our Chaucer cries,—</p> + +<p class="center ptb1 f90">Of all swiche cursed stories I say, Fy!</p> + +<p>Our poet has himself pleaded that having fixed on his +personage, he had no choice to tell any other tale than +what that individual would himself have told. Before we +immolate Chaucer on the altar of the Graces, we should +not only listen to his plea, but to his own easy remedy for +this disorder produced by his too faithful copy after +nature.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>————Whoso list not to hear,</p> +<p>Turn over the leaf, and chese another tale!</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>Our notions and our customs of delicacy are the result +of a change in our manners of no distant period; and, +compared with our neighbours, many are still but conventional. +They are so even in respect to ourselves, for, +not to go back to the golden days of Elizabeth, the language +and the manners of the court of Anne would have +startled modern decorum. The “polite conversation” of +Swift has fortunately preserved for us specimens which +we could not have imagined. Our poems, our comedies, +and our tales, so late as the days of Swift and Pope, have +allusions, and even incidents and descriptions, which we +no longer tolerate. How far our fastidiousness lies on the +surface of our lesser morals, I will not decide; but men +of genius have complained that this fastidiousness has become +too restrictive, by contracting the sphere of inventive +humour, which flashes often in such small matters as +ludicrous tales and playful levities, which must not lie on +our tables.</p> + +<p>Chaucer long remained a favourite in the most polite +circles; Aubrey, at the close of the seventeenth century, +in his “Idea,” recommends the study of Chaucer, as the +poet in full reputation. At a later period, the days of +Dryden and Pope, our versifiers were continually renovating +his humour and his more elegant fictions. <span class="sc">Ogle</span>, +with others, attempted to modernize Chaucer; but it is as +impossible to give such a version of Chaucer as to translate +the Odes of Horace. They corrupted by their interpolations, +and weakened by their diffusion; Chaucer was not +discernible in the dimness of their paraphrase. The great +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page174" id="page174"></a>174</span> +beauties of Chaucer spring up from the soil in which they +lie embedded; and the most skilful hand will discover that +in gathering the flower it must cease to live without its +root.</p> + +<p>We never possessed a tolerably correct edition of this +master-poet; and the very circumstance of the continued +popularity of the poems with the many has occasioned +their present wretched condition. When works circulated +in their manuscript state, before the era of printing, the +popularity of a poet made his text the more liable to corruption. +Multiplied transcripts were produced by heedless +or licentious scribes, whose careless omissions, and whose +perpetuated blunders and even interpolations can only be +credited by the collators of the manuscripts of Chaucer. +This happened with the very first printed edition by +Caxton. Our patriarchal publisher discovered that he had +printed from a very faulty manuscript, and, in that primitive +age of simplicity and printing, nobly suppressed the +edition which dishonoured the author, and substituted an +improved one. Doubtless <span class="sc">Gower</span>, a grave and learned +poet, whose copies are remarkably elegant, has descended +to us in a purer condition than <span class="sc">Chaucer</span>, for he was +rarely transcribed. Speght was the first editor who gave +a more complete edition of Chaucer, with the useful appendage +of a glossary, the first of its kind, and which has been +a fortunate acquisition for later glossographers. But +Speght, with the aid of Stowe, who was equally industrious, +was so deficient in critical acumen, as to have impounded +any stray on the common stamped with the initials of +Chaucer. Thus our poet has suffered all the mischances +of faithless scribes, unintelligent printers, and uncritical +editors. To make the bad worse, the last modern edition +of Chaucer, by <span class="sc">Urry</span>, though recommended by the white +letter, offering this bland relief to a modern reader, is a +showy volume, of which we are forbidden to read a line! +The history of this edition is an evidence how ill our +scholars, at no remote period, were qualified to decide on +the fate of a great vernacular author. Urry, the pupil of +Dean Aldrich, and the friend of Bishop Atterbury, appears +to have been one of that galaxy or confederacy of wits +called “the Wits of Christ Church.” The “Student of +Christ Church, Oxon,” offered a title and a place which +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page175" id="page175"></a>175</span> +would sanction an edition of Chaucer; one object of which +was to contribute five hundred pounds to finish Peckwater +Quadrangle. The pompous folio appeared heralded by the +queen’s licence for the exclusive sale for fourteen years. +Our editor at first seems to have been reluctant and +modest, till instigated by his great patrons to divest himself +of all fear of the author. In his innocence conceiving +that the strokes of his own pen would silently improve an +obsolete genius, this merciless interpolator, changing words +and syllables at pleasure, has furnished a text which +Chaucer never wrote!<a name="fa7c15" id="fa7c15" href="#ft7c15"><span class="sp">7</span></a> If the worst edition that was +ever published contributed to finish Peckwater Quadrangle, +it is amusing to be reminded that causes are often strangely +disproportionate to their effects.</p> + +<p>The famous portion of Chaucer’s Miscellaneous Volume +has been fortunate in the editorial cares of <span class="sc">Tyrwhit</span>. +Tyrwhit, a scholar as well as an antiquary, was an expert +philologer; his extensive reading in the lore of our vernacular +literature and our national antiquities promptly +supplied what could not have entered into his more classical +studies; and his sagacity seems to have decided on the +various readings of all the manuscripts, by piercing into +the core of the poet’s thoughts.<a name="fa8c15" id="fa8c15" href="#ft8c15"><span class="sp">8</span></a></p> + +<p>It is remarkable that some of the most lively productions +of several great writers have been the work of their maturest +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page176" id="page176"></a>176</span> +age. Johnson surpassed all his preceding labours in his last +work, the popular Lives of the Poets. The “Canterbury +Tales” of Chaucer were the effusions of his advanced age, +and the congenial verses of Dryden were thrown out in +the luxuriance of his later days. Milton might have been +classed among the minor poets had he not lived to be old +enough to become the most sublime. Let it be a source +of consolation, if not of triumph, in a long studious life of +true genius, to know that the imagination may not decline +with the vigour of the frame which holds it; there has been +no old age for many men of genius.</p> + +<p>We must lament that at such an early period in our +vernacular literature, we have to record that the two +fathers of our poetry, congenial spirits as they were, too +closely resembled most of their sons—in one of the most +painful infirmities of genius. I have said elsewhere that +jealousy, long supposed to be the offspring of little minds, +is not, however, confined to them. We do not possess the +secret history of the two great poets, Chaucer and Gower; +but we are told by Berthelet in his edition of Gower’s +“Confessio Amantis,” when he quotes the commendatory +lines on Gower by Chaucer, that the poets “were both excellently +learned, <i>both great friendes together</i>.” Ancient +biographers usually fall into this vague style of eulogy, +which served their purpose rather than a more critical +research. True it is that “they were both great friends,” +but, what Berthelet has not told, they became also “both +great enemies.” We know that Chaucer has commemorated +the dignified merits of “the moral Gower,” and that +Gower has poured forth an effusion not less fervid than +elegant from the lips of Venus, who calls Chaucer “her +own clerk, who in the flower of his youth had made ditees +and songes glad which have filled the land.” Did this +little passion of poetic jealousy creep into their great souls? +Else how did it happen that Chaucer, who had once solicited +the correcting hand of his friend, in his latest work, +reprehended the sage and the poet, and that Gower, who +had not stinted the rich meed of his eulogy which appeared +in the first copies of his “Confessio Amantis,” erased the +immortality which he had bestowed. The justice of their +reciprocal praise neither of these rivals could efface, for +that outlives their little jealousies.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c15" id="ft1c15" href="#fa1c15"><span class="fn">1</span></a> After Godwin had sent to press his biography of Chaucer, a deposition +on the poet’s age in the Herald’s College detected the whole +erroneous arrangement: as the edifice so ingeniously constructed had +fallen on the aërial architect, he alleged truly that the deposition +“contradicted the received accounts of all the biographers;” in fact, +they had repeated original misstatements. The appendix, therefore, to +the history of this modern biographer stands as a perpetual witness +against its authenticity;—there are some histories to which an appendix +might prove to be as fatal. In this dilemma, our bold sophist +was “absurd and uncharitable enough” to add one more conjecture +to his “Life of Chaucer,”—that “the poet, from a motive of vanity, +had been induced <i>to state on oath</i> that he was about forty when, in +truth, he was fifty-eight!”—Hippisley’s “Chapters on Early English +Literature,” 85.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c15" id="ft2c15" href="#fa2c15"><span class="fn">2</span></a> It has been alleged by more than one writer, that this mysterious +affair relates to the election for the mayoralty of John of Northampton, +a Wickliffite and a Lancastrian. But Mr. Turner, whose researches are +on a more extended scale than any of his predecessors, truly observes +that—“There are other periods besides the one usually selected to +which the personal evils which Chaucer complains of are applicable.”—“Hist. +of England,” v. 296. It is as likely to have occurred when +Nicholas Brambre, a confidential partisan of government in the City, +appointed to the mayoralty by his party, caught “the Freemen” by +ambushes of armed men, and turned the Guildhall into a fortress. At +such a time “Free Elections” might have been considered by Chaucer +as something “noble and glorious for all the people.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c15" id="ft3c15" href="#fa3c15"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Dreams.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c15" id="ft4c15" href="#fa4c15"><span class="fn">4</span></a> Better.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c15" id="ft5c15" href="#fa5c15"><span class="fn">5</span></a> Autobiography of an Opium-Eater.—“Tait’s Mag.” August, +1835.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c15" id="ft6c15" href="#fa6c15"><span class="fn">6</span></a> Coleridge’s “Table-Talk.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c15" id="ft7c15" href="#fa7c15"><span class="fn">7</span></a> So unskilful or so incurious was Warburton in the language of our +ancient poets, that in his notes on Pope he quotes the following lines of +Chaucer—</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>“Love wol not be <i>constreined</i> by maistrie.</p> +<p>Whan maistrie cometh, the <i>God</i> of love anon</p> +<p><i>Beteth</i> his wings, and <i>farewel</i>, he is gon”—</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">from Urry’s edition, in which they appear thus transformed and +corrupted:</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Love will not be <i>confined</i> by maisterie.</p> +<p>When maisterie comes, the <i>Lord</i> of love anon</p> +<p><i>Flutters</i> his wings, and <i>forthwith</i> is he gone.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>[An excellent example of the superior vigour of Chaucer may be seen +in an original passage of his “Palamon and Arcite,” contrasted with +Dryden’s tamer modernization of the same, in “Curiosities of Literature,” +vol. ii. p. 107.—<span class="sc">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c15" id="ft8c15" href="#fa8c15"><span class="fn">8</span></a> This “sagacity” has been much and justly questioned by the +more advanced students of medieval literature. Sir Harris Nicolas has +produced an excellent edition of the poet; but the best text of the +“Canterbury Tales” has been published by Mr. Thos. Wright, from a +careful collation of the oldest manuscript.—<span class="sc">Ed.</span></p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page177" id="page177"></a>177</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">GOWER.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">In</span> the church of St. Saviour in Southwark may be +viewed an ancient monument with its sculptured and +Gothic canopy; pictured on its side the three visionary +virgins, Charity, Mercy, and Pity, solicit the prayer of +the passenger for the soul of the suppliant whose image +lies extended on the tomb, with folded hands, and in his +damask habit flowing to his feet. His head reposes on +three mighty tomes, and is decked with a garland, either +of roses which proclaim his knighthood, or the wreath of +literature which would more justly distinguish the wearer,—<span class="sc">John +Gower</span>, the poet.</p> + +<p>In the life of this poet, almost the only certain incident +seems to be his sepulchral monument: and even this it +had been necessary to repair after the malignity of the +Iconoclasts; and of the three sculptured volumes which +support the poet’s head, a single one only has been opened +by the world, for the tomb has perpetuated what the press +has not.</p> + +<p>The three tomes on the tomb of Gower represent his +three great works; but what is remarkable, and shows the +unsettled state of our literature, each of these great works +is written in a different language, though equally graced +with Latin titles. The first, in French, is the “Speculum +Meditantis;” the moral reflections relieved by historical +examples. The second, in Latin verse, is “Vox Clamantis;” +this “Voice” comes not from the desert, for it is that of +the clamours of the people; a satire on all ranks, and +an exhortation to the youthful monarch to check his own +self-indulgence; it includes a chronicle of the insurrection +of the populace, or “the clowns,” as they were called +in Richard the Second’s reign. The vernacular style, +rather than Latin verse, would have more aptly +celebrated the feats of Wat Tyler, or Bet and Sim, Gibbe +and Hyke, Hudde and Judde, Jack and Tib. The +reporter had no doubt been present at the active scene. +The swarm rush on to the call of one another, in hexameters +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page178" id="page178"></a>178</span> +and pentameters. The singularity of the subject, +which gives no bad picture of the hurry of a disorderly +mob, and the felicity of an old translation, induce me to +preserve a partial extract from the manuscript. Our own +age has witnessed similar scenes.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Watte vocat, cui Thome venit, neque Symme retardat,</p> + <p class="i1">Betteque, Gibbe simul Hyke venire jubent.</p> +<p>Colle furit, quem Gibbe juvat nocumenta parantes,</p> + <p class="i1">Cum quibus ad dampnum Wille coire vovet.</p> +<p>Grigge rapit, dam Dawe strepit, comes est quibus Hobbe,</p> + <p class="i1">Lorkin et in medio non minor esse putat.</p> +<p>Hudde ferit, quos Judde terit, dum Tebbe juvatur,</p> + <p class="i1">Jacke domos que viros vellit, et ense necat.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Tom comes, thereat, when called by Wat, and Simon as forward we find;</p> +<p>Bet calls as quick to Gibb, and to Hyck that neither would tarry behinde.</p> +<p>Gibbe, a good whelp of that litter, doth help mad Coll more mischief to do,</p> +<p>And Will he doth vow, the time is come now, he’ll join with their company too.</p> +<p>Davie complains whiles Grigg gets the gains, and Hobb with them doth partake;</p> +<p>Lorkin aloud, in the midst of the crowd, conceiveth as deep is his stake.</p> +<p>Hudde doth spoil, whom Judde doth foile, and Tebbe lends his helping hand,</p> +<p>But Jack, the mad-patch, men and horses doth snatch, and kills all at his command.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The third and greater work, and the only printed one +of Gower, is the “Confessio Amantis,” an English poem of +about thirty thousand lines; a singular miscellany of +allegory, of morality, and of tales. It is studded with +sententious maxims and proverbs, and richly diversified +with narrations, pleasant and tragic; but the affectation of +learning, for learning in its crude state always obtrudes itself, +even in works of recreation, has compressed the Aristotelian +philosophy, to edify and surprise the readers of the poet’s +fairy or romantic tales. Robert de Brunne, to illustrate +monachal morals, interspersed domestic stories; and amidst +the prevalent penury of imagination, that rhyming monk +affords the most ancient specimens of English tales in +verse: and as Gower’s single printed work is of the same +species of composition, a system of ethics illustrated by +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page179" id="page179"></a>179</span> +tales, it has been thought that the monk who rhymed in +1300 was the true predecessor of the poet who flourished +at the close of that century, however Gower may have +purified the “rime doggrel,” and elevated the puerile +tale. The straw-roof must be raised before the cupola. +Genius in its genealogy must not blush at its remote +ancestor; the noblest knight may often go back to the +mill or the forge. If this rude moralising rhymer really +be the poetical father of Gower, then is this antiquated +monk the inventor of that narrative poetry which Chaucer, +Spenser, Dryden, and even some of our contemporaries, +have so delightfully diversified. But story-telling has +been of all periods.</p> + +<p>There is a portion in this volume which concerns the +personal history of the poet.</p> + +<p>This work was composed at the suggestion of Richard +the Second himself, who among other luxuries loved +Froissart’s romance and Chaucer’s rhymes, and was even +willing to be taught the grave lessons which he could not +practise. As Gower one day was rowed in his boat on the +Thames, he met his “liege lord” in the royal barge, who +commanded the poet to enter, and, in a long unrestrained +conversation, desired him “to book some new thing in the +way he was used.” Probably the youthful monarch +alluded to the “Vox Clamantis,” in which the poet had +exhorted his “liege lord” to exercise every kingly +virtue, and had without reserve touched on too many +imperfections of a court-life. It was to be “a book,” +added the young monarch, “in which he himself might +often look.” The poet aspired to fix the honour which +he had received, and resolved, in his own words,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>To write in such a manner-wise,</p> +<p>Which may be wisdom to the wise,</p> +<p>And play to them that list to play.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">In a word, we have here the great Horatian precept by +the intuition of our earliest poet.</p> + +<p>The political admonitions, and the keen satire on the +youthful favourites of the youthful monarch of a luxurious +court, and the relaxed morals of the higher ranks, the +clergy, and the judges, were all offered with more than the +freedom of a poet—they sound the deep tones of the patriot. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page180" id="page180"></a>180</span> +The sage had solemnly contemplated on the discontents +and clamours of the people, and presciently observed the +rising of that state-tempest, which in an instant dethroned +this magnificent and thoughtless prince.</p> + +<p>In the course of the reign of Richard the Second it +appears that several alterations were made in the poem. +The dedicatory preface was suppressed. Berthelet, the +ancient printer of the “Confessio Amantis,” discovered that +“the prologue” had disappeared, though the same number +of lines were substituted, “cleane contrary both in +sentence and in meaning.” Gower has therefore incurred +the reproach of a disloyal desertion of his hapless +master to court a successful usurper. One critic tells that +“he was given to change with the turns of state.” +Bishop Nicholson, with dull levity, has a fling at all poets, +for he censures Gower for “making too free with his +prince—a liberty, it seems, allowed to men of his profession;” +while Thomas Hearne, the blind bigot of passive +obedience, in editing a monkish life of Richard the Second, +would have all Gower condemned to oblivion, because “he +had treated the monarch’s memory ill, and spoke with +equal freedom of the clergy.” This vacillating conduct +of “the moral Gower,” however, need not leave any stain +on his memory. We see he had never at any time adulated +the youthful monarch; however his tales may have +charmed the royal ear, the verse often left behind a wholesome +bitterness. Gower had praised Henry of Lancaster +at a period when he could not have contemplated the +change of dynasty; and when it happened, the poet was +of an age far too advanced either to partake of the hopes +or the fears that wait on a new reign.</p> + +<p>But this tale of Gower’s free and honest satire on courts +and courtiers is not yet concluded. The sphere of a poet’s +influence is far wider than that of his own age; and however +we may now deem of this grave and ancient poet, he +still found understanding admirers so late as in the reign +of Charles the First. In the curious “Conference” which +took place when Charles the First visited the Marquess of +Worcester, at Ragland Castle, with his court, there is the +following anecdote respecting the poet Gower.</p> + +<p>The marquess was a shrewd though whimsical man, and +a favourite of the king for his frankness and his love of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page181" id="page181"></a>181</span> +the arts. His lordship entertained the royal guest with +extraordinary magnificence. Among his rare curiosities +was a sumptuous copy of Gower’s volume.</p> + +<p>Charles the First usually visited the marquess after +dinner. Once he found his lordship with the book of +John Gower lying open, which the king said he had never +before seen. “Oh!” exclaimed the marquess; “it is a +book of books! and if your majesty had been well versed +in it, it would have made you a king of kings.” “Why +so, my lord?” “Why, here is set down how Aristotle +brought up and instructed Alexander the Great in all the +rudiments and principles belonging to a prince.” And +under the persons of Aristotle and Alexander, the marquess +read the king such a lesson that all the standers-by +were amazed at his boldness.</p> + +<p>The king asked whether he had his lesson by heart, or +spake out of the book? “Sir, if you would read my +heart, it may be that you might find it there; or if your +majesty pleased to get it by heart, I will lend you my +book.” The king accepted the offer.</p> + +<p>Some of the new-made lords fretted and bit their +thumbs at certain passages in the marquess’s discourse; +and some protested that no man was so much for the +absolute power of a king as Aristotle. The marquess +told the king that he would indeed show him one remarkable +passage to that purpose; and turning to the place, +read—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>A king can kill, a king can save;</p> +<p>A king can make a lord a knave;</p> +<p>And of a knave, a lord also.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">On this several new-made lords slank out of the room, +which the king observing, told the marquess, “My lord, +at this rate you will drive away all my nobility.”</p> + +<p>This amusing anecdote is an evidence that this ethical +poet, after two centuries and a half, was not forgotten; +his spirit was still vital, his volume still lay open on the +library table; it afforded a pungent lesson to the courtiers +of Charles the First as it had to those of Richard the +Second.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Gower</span> was learned, didactic, and dignified. The manuscripts +of his works are usually noble and sumptuous +copies; more elegantly written and more richly illuminated +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page182" id="page182"></a>182</span> +than the works of other poets. His commonplaces +and his legendary lore seem to have awed the simplicity +of the readers of two centuries, whose taste did not yet +feel that failure of the poet who narrated a fable from +Ovid with the dull prolixity of a matter-of-fact chronicler. +His fictions are rarely imaginative; yet critics, far abler +judges of his relative merits than ourselves, since they +lived within the sphere of his influence, hailed this grave +father of our poesy. Leland, the royal antiquary of Henry +the Eighth, expressed his ideas with great elegance and +sensibility, when he said of Gower that “his diligent +culture of our poesy had extirpated the ordinary herbs; +and that the soft violet and the purple narcissus were now +growing, where erst was nothing seen but the thistle and +the thorn.” There are indeed some graceful flowers in +his desert. But all criticism is usually relative to the +age, and excellence is always comparative. <span class="sc">Gower</span> +stamped with the force of ethical reasoning his smooth +rhymes; and this was a near approach to poetry itself. +If in the mind of <span class="sc">Chaucer</span> we are more sensible of the +impulses of genius—those creative and fugitive touches—his +diction is more mixed and unsettled than the tranquil +elegance of <span class="sc">Gower</span>, who has often many pointed sentences +and a surprising neatness of phrase. A modern +reader, I think, would find the style of Gower more +easily intelligible than the higher efforts of the more inventive +poet.</p> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page183" id="page183"></a>183</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">PIERS PLOUGHMAN.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Contemporary</span> with <span class="sc">Gower</span> and <span class="sc">Chaucer</span> lived the +singular author of “The Visions of William concerning +<span class="sc">Piers Ploughman</span>;” singular in more respects than one, +for his subject, his style, and, we may add, for the intrepidity +and the force of his genius.</p> + +<p>This extraordinary work is ascribed to one whose name +is merely traditional, to Robert Langland, a secular priest +of Salop; when he wrote, and where he died, are as dubious +as his text, the authenticity of which is often uncertain +from the variations in all the manuscripts. But the real +life of an author, at least for posterity, lies beyond the +grave; and no writer is nameless whose volume has descended +to us as one of the most memorable in our ancient +vernacular literature.</p> + +<p>In character, in execution, and in design, “The Visions +of William of <span class="sc">Piers Ploughman</span>” are wholly separated +from the polished poems of <span class="sc">Gower</span> and <span class="sc">Chaucer</span>; the +work bears no trace of their manner, nor of their refinement, +nor of their versification; and it has baffled conjectural +criticism to assign the exact period of a composition +which appears more ancient than any supposed +contemporary writings. Those who would decide of the +time in which an author wrote by his style, here are at a +loss to conceive that the splendid era of romantic chivalry, +the age of Edward the Third and his grandson, which +produced the curious learning and the easy rhymes of the +“Confessio Amantis,” and the pleasantry and the fine +discriminations of character of the “Canterbury Tales,” +could have given birth to the antiquated Saxon and rustic +pith of this genuine English bard. Either his labour was +concluded ere the writings of the court poets had travelled +to our obscure country priest in his seclusion in a +distant county, or else he disdained their exotic fancies, +their Latinisms, their Gallicisms, and their Italianisms, +and their trivial rhymes, that in every respect he might +remain their astonishing contrast, with no inferiority of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page184" id="page184"></a>184</span> +genius. There was no philosophical criticism in the censure +of this poet by Warton, when he condemns him for +not having “availed himself of the rising and rapid improvements +of the English language,” and censures him +for his “affectation of obsolete English.” These rising +improvements may never have reached our bard, or if they +had he might have disdained them; for the writer of the +“Visions concerning Piers Ploughman” was strictly a +national poet; and there was no “affectation of obsolete +English” in a poet preserving the forms of his native +idiom, and avoiding all exotic novelties in the energy of +his Anglo-Saxon genius. His uncontaminated mind returned +to or continued the Anglo-Saxon alliterative metre +and unrhymed verse; he trusted its cadence to the ear, +scorning the subjection of rhyme. <span class="sc">Webbe</span>, a critic of +the age of Elizabeth, considered this poet as “the first +who had observed the quantity of our verse without the +curiosity of rhyme.”</p> + +<p>It is useless to give the skeleton of a desultory and +tedious allegorical narrative. The last editor, Dr. Whitaker, +imagined that “he for the first time had shown that +it was written after a regular and consistent design,” +notwithstanding that he himself confesses, that “the +conclusion is singularly cold and comfortless and <i>leaves +the inquirer, after a long peregrination, still remote from +the object of his search</i>”—a conclusion where nothing is +concluded! The visionist might have been overtaken by +sleep among the bushes of the Malvern Hills for twenty +cantos more, without at all deranging anything which +he had said, or inconveniencing anything which he might +say. In truth, it is a heap of rhapsodies, without any +artifice of connexion or involution of plot, or any sustained +interest of one actor more than another among the +numerous ideal beings who flit along the dreamy scenes.</p> + +<p>The true spirit of this imaginative work is more comprehensible +than any settled design. That mysterious +or mythical personage, “Piers Ploughman,” is the representative +of “the Universal Church,” says Dr. Whitaker; +or “Christian life,” says Mr. Campbell. What he +may be is very doubtful, for we have “True Religion,” a +fair lady, who puts in surely a higher claim to represent +“the Universal Church,” or “Christian life,” than “the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page185" id="page185"></a>185</span> +Ploughman,” who has to till his half-acre and save his +idling companions from “waste” and “wane.” The most +important personage is “Mede,” or bribery, who seems to +exert an extraordinary influence over the Bench, and the +Bar, and the Church, and through every profession which +occurred to the poet.</p> + +<p>The pearls in these waters lie not on the surface. The +visionist had deeper thoughts and more concealed feelings +than these rhapsodical phantoms. In a general survey of +society, he contemplates on the court and the clergy, +glancing through all the diversified ranks of the laity, not +sparing the people themselves, as their awful reprover. +It was a voice from the wilderness in the language of the +people. The children of want and oppression had found +their solitary advocate. The prelacy, dissolved in the +luxuriousness of papal pomp, and a barbarous aristocracy, +with their rapacious dependents, were mindless of the +morals or the happiness of those human herds, whose +heads were counted, but whose hearts they could never +call their own.</p> + +<p>We are curious to learn, in this disordered state of the +Commonwealth, the political opinions entertained by this +sage. They are as mysterious as Piers Ploughman himself.</p> + +<p>Passive obedience to the higher powers is inculcated +apparently rather for its prudence than its duty. This we +infer from his lively parable of “the Cat of a Court,” and +“A Route of Ratones and Small Mice.” “Grimalkin, +though sometimes apt to play the tyrant when appetite +was sharp, would often come laughing and leaping among +them. A rat, a whisker of renown, cunningly proposed to +adorn the cat with an ornament, like those which great +lords use who wear chains and collars about their necks; +it should be a tinkling bell, which, if cats would fancy the +fashion, would warn us of their approach. We might +then in security be all lords ourselves, and not be in +this misery of creeping under benches. But not a raton +of the whole rout, for the realm of France, or to win +all England, would bind the bell round the imperial neck. +A mouseling, who did not much like rats, concluded that if +they should even kill the cat, then there would come another +to crunch us and our kind; for men will not have their +meal nibbled by us mice, nor their nights disturbed by the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page186" id="page186"></a>186</span> +clattering of roystering rats. Better for us to let the cat +alone! My old father said a kitten was worse. The cat +never hurt me; when he is in good-humour, I like him +well,—and by my counsel cat nor kitten shall be grieved. +I will suffer and say nothing. The beast who now chastiseth +many, may be amended by misfortune. Are the +rats to be our governors? I tell ye, we would not rule +ourselves!” The poet adds, “What this means, ye men +who love mirth interpret for me, for I dare not!”</p> + +<p>The parable seems sufficiently obvious. The ratons represent +a haughty aristocracy, and “the small mouse” is +one of the people themselves, who in his mouse-like wisdom +preferred a single sovereign to many lords. But the poet’s +own reflection, addressed to “the men of mirth,” seems +enigmatic. Is he indulging a secret laugh at the passive +obedience of the prudential mouse?</p> + +<p>Our author’s indignant spirit, indeed, is vehemently +democratic. He dared to write what many trembled to +whisper. Genius reflects the suppressed feelings of its age. +It was a stirring epoch. The spirit of inquisition had +gone forth in the person of Wickliffe; and wherever a +Wickliffe appears, as surely will there be a Piers Ploughman. +When a great precursor of novel opinions arises, +it is the men of genius in seclusion who think and write.</p> + +<p>But our country priest, in his contemplative mood, was +not less remarkable for his prudence than for his bold freedom, +aware that the most corrupt would be the most +vindictive. The implacable ecclesiastics, by the dread +discipline of the church, would doom the apostle of +humanity, but the apostate of his order, to perpetual +silence—by the spell of an anathema; and the haughty +noble would crush his victim by the iron arm of his own, +or of the civil power. The day had not yet arrived when +the great were to endure the freedom of reprehension. +The sage, the satirist, and the seer, for prophet he proved +to be, veiled his head in allegory; he published no other +names than those of the virtues and the vices; and to +avoid personality, he contented himself with personification.</p> + +<p>A voluminous allegory is the rudest and the most insupportable +of all poetic fictions; it originates in an early +period of society—when its circles are contracted and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page187" id="page187"></a>187</span> +isolated, and the poet is more conversant with the passions +of mankind than with individuals. A genius of the +highest order alone could lead us through a single perusal +of such a poem, by the charm of vivifying details, which +enables us to forget the allegory altogether—the tedious +drama of nonentities or abstract beings. In such creative +touches the author of Piers Ploughman displays pictures of +domestic life, with the minute fidelity of a Flemish painting; +so veracious is his simplicity! He is a great satirist, +touching with caustic invective or keen irony public +abuses and private vices; but in the depth of his emotions, +and in the wildness of his imagination, he breaks forth +in the solemn tones and with the sombre majesty of +Dante.</p> + +<p>But this rude native genius was profound as he was +sagacious, and his philosophy terminated in prophecy. At +the era of the Reformation they were startled by the discovery +of an unknown writer, who, two centuries preceding +that awful change, had predicted <i>the fate of the religious +houses from the hand of a king</i>. The visionary seer seems +to have fallen on the principle which led Erasmus to predict +that “<i>those who were in power</i>” would seize on the +rich shrines, because <i>no other class of men</i> in society could +mate with so mighty a body as the monks. Power only +could accomplish that great purpose, and hence our Vaticinator +fixed on the highest as the most likely; and the +deep foresight of an obscure country priest, which required +two centuries to be verified, became a great moral and +political prediction.</p> + +<p>Without, however, depreciating the sagacity of the predictor, +there is reason to suspect that the same thought +was occurring to some of the great themselves. The Reformation +of Henry the Eighth may be dated from the +reign of Richard the Second. That mighty transition +into a new order of events in our history would then have +occurred, for the stag was started, and the hunt was up. +It was an accidental and unexpected circumstance which +turned aside the impending event, which was to be future +and not immediate. Henry Bolingbroke, in the early +part of his life, seems to have entertained some free +opinions respecting the property of the church. He +seemed not unfavourable to Wickliffe’s doctrines, and, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page188" id="page188"></a>188</span> +when Earl of Derby, once declared that “princes had too +little, and religious houses too much.” This unguarded +expression, which was not to be forgotten, we are told, +occasioned one of the rebellions during his reign. But +when Henry Bolingbroke usurped the throne, age and +prudence might have come together; the monarch +balanced the dread of a turbulent aristocracy, and the +uncertain tenure of dominion to be held at their pleasure, +against the security of sheltering the throne under the +broad alliance of a potent prelacy; a potent prelacy whose +doom was fixed, though the hour had not yet struck! +The monarch affixed a bloody seal to this political convention +by granting a statute which made the offence of +heresy capital; a crime which heretofore in law was as +unknown as it seemed impossible to designate, and described +only in figurative terms, as something very +alarming, but which any prudent heretic might easily, if +not explain, at least recant. To give it more solemnity, +the statute is delivered in Latin, and the punishment of +burning was to be inflicted “<i>corum populo, in eminente +loco</i>.”<a name="fa1c16" id="fa1c16" href="#ft1c16"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p>The “Visions of Piers Ploughman,” when the day which +his prescience anticipated arrived, were eagerly received; +it is said the work passed through three editions in one +year, about 1550, in the reign of the youthful monarch of +the Reformation; the readers at that early period of +printing would find many passages congenial to the popular +sentiments, and our nameless author was placed among the +founders of a new era.</p> + +<p>The “<span class="sc">Visions of Piers Ploughman</span>” will always +offer studies for the poetical artist. This volume, and not +Gower’s nor Chaucer’s, is a well of English undefiled. +<span class="sc">Spenser</span> often beheld these Visions; <span class="sc">Milton</span>, in his +sublime description of the Lazar House, was surely inspired +by a reminiscence of Piers Ploughman. Even Dryden, +whom we should not suspect to be much addicted to black-letter +reading beyond his Chaucer, must have carefully +conned our Piers Ploughman; for he has borrowed one +very striking line from our poet, and possibly may have +taken others. <span class="sc">Byron</span>, though he has thrown out a crude +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page189" id="page189"></a>189</span> +opinion of Chaucer, has declared that “the Ploughman” +excels our ancient poets. And I am inclined to think that +we owe to Piers Ploughman an allegorical work of the same +wild invention, from that other creative mind, the author +of the “Pilgrim’s Progress.” How can we think of the +one, without being reminded of the other? Some distant +relationship seems to exist between the Ploughman’s +<i>Dowell</i> and <i>Dobet</i>, and <i>Dobest</i>, Friar <i>Flatterer</i>, <i>Grace</i> +the Portress of the magnificent Tower of <i>Truth</i> viewed at +a distance, and by its side the dungeon of <i>Care</i>, <i>Natural +Understanding</i>, and his lean and stern wife <i>Study</i>, and all +the rest of this numerous company, and the shadowy pilgrimage +of the “Immortal Dreamer” to “the Celestial +City.” Yet I would mistrust my own feeling, when so +many able critics, in their various researches after a prototype +of that singular production, have hitherto not suggested +what seems to me obvious.<a name="fa2c16" id="fa2c16" href="#ft2c16"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p>Why our rustic bard selected the character of a +ploughman as the personage adapted to convey to us his +theological mysteries, we know not precisely to ascertain; +but it probably occurred as a companion fitted to the +humbler condition of the apostles themselves. Such, +however, was the power of the genius of this writer, that +his successors were content to look for no one of a higher +class to personify their solemn themes. Hence we have +“The Crede of Piers Ploughman;” “The Prayer and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page190" id="page190"></a>190</span> +Complaint of the Ploughman;” “The Ploughman’s +Tale,” inserted in Chaucer’s volume; all being equally directed +against the vicious clergy of the day.</p> + +<p>“The Crede of Piers Ploughman,” if not written by +the author of the “Vision,” is at least written by a +scholar who fully emulates his master; and Pope was so +deeply struck with this little poem, that he has very +carefully analysed the whole.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c16" id="ft1c16" href="#fa1c16"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Barrington’s “Observations on the more ancient Statutes.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c16" id="ft2c16" href="#fa2c16"><span class="fn">2</span></a> For the general reader I fear that “The Visions of Piers Ploughman” +must remain a sealed book. The last edition of Dr. <span class="sc">Whitaker</span>, +the most magnificent and frightful volume that was ever beheld in the +black letter, was edited by one whose delicacy of taste unfitted him for +this homely task: the plain freedom of the vigorous language is sometimes +castrated, with a faulty paraphrase and a slender glossary; and +passages are slurred over with an annihilating &c. Much was expected +from this splendid edition; the subscription price was quadrupled, and +on its publication every one would rid himself of the mutilated author. +The editor has not assisted the reader through his barbarous text +interspersed with Saxon characters and abbreviations, and the difficulties +of an obscure and elliptical phraseology in a very antiquated language. +Should ever a new edition appear, the perusal would be facilitated by +printing with the white letter. There is an excellent specimen for an +improved text and edition in “Gent. Mag.,” April, 1834. [This improved +text of the “Vision” and “Crede” has, since this note was +originally written, been published with notes by T. Wright, M.A.; and +has been again reprinted recently.]</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page191" id="page191"></a>191</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">OCCLEVE; THE SCHOLAR OF CHAUCER.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Warton</span> passed sentence on <span class="sc">Occleve</span> as “a cold genius, +and a feeble writer.” A literary antiquary, from a manuscript +in his possession, published six poems of Occleve; +but that selection was limited to the sole purpose of furnishing +the personal history of the author.<a name="fa1c17" id="fa1c17" href="#ft1c17"><span class="sp">1</span></a> Ritson’s +sharp snarl pronounced that they were of “peculiar +stupidity;” George Ellis refused to give “a specimen;” +and Mr. Hallam, with his recollection of the critical brotherhood, +has decreed, that “the poetry of Occleve is +wretchedly bad, abounding with pedantry, and destitute +of grace or spirit.” We could hardly expect to have +heard any more of this doomed victim—this ancient man, +born in the fourteenth century, standing before us, whose +dry bones will ill bear all this shaking and cuffing.</p> + +<p>A literary historian, who has read manuscripts with the +eagerness which others do the last novelty, more careful +than Warton, and more discriminate than Ritson, has, +with honest intrepidity, confessed that “<span class="sc">Occleve</span> has not +had his just share of reputation. His writings greatly +assisted the growth of the popularity of our infant +poetry.”<a name="fa2c17" id="fa2c17" href="#ft2c17"><span class="sp">2</span></a> Our historian has furnished from the manuscripts +of <span class="sc">Occleve</span> testimonies of his assertion.</p> + +<p>Among the six poems printed, one of considerable +length exhibits the habits of a dissipated young gentleman +in the fourteenth century.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Occleve</span> for more than twenty years was a writer in +the Privy Seal, where we find quarter days were most +irregular; and though briberies constantly flowed in, yet +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page192" id="page192"></a>192</span> +the golden shower passed over the heads of the clerks, +dropping nothing into the hands of these innocents.</p> + +<p>Our poet, in his usual passage from his “Chestres Inn +by the Strond” to “Westminster Gate,” by land or water—for +“in the winter the way was deep,” and “the +Strand” was then what its name indicates—often was +delayed by</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>The outward signe of Bacchus and his lure,</p> +<p>That at his dore hangeth day by day,</p> +<p>Exciteth Folk to taste of his moistúre</p> +<p>So often that they cannot well say Nay!</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>There was another invitation for this susceptible writer +of the Privy Seal.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>I dare not tell how that the fresh repaír</p> +<p>Of Venus femel, lusty children dear,</p> +<p>That so goodlý, so shapely were, and fair,</p> +<p>And so pleasánt of port and of manére.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>There he loitered,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>To talk of mirth, and to disport and play.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>He never “pinched” the taverners, the cooks, the +boatmen, and all such gentry.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Among this many in mine audience,</p> +<p>Methought I was ymade a man for ever—</p> +<p>So tickled me that nyce reverénce,</p> +<p>That it me made larger of dispence;—</p> +<p>For Riot payeth largely ever mo;</p> +<p>He stinteth never till his purse be bare.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>He is at length seized amid his jollities,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>By force of the penniless maladíe,</p> +<p>Ne lust<a name="fa3c17" id="fa3c17" href="#ft3c17"><span class="sp">3</span></a> had none to Bacchus House to hie.</p> +<p>Fy! lack of coin departeth compaigníe;</p> +<p>And hevé purse with Herté liberál</p> +<p>Quencheth the thirsty heat of Hertés drie,</p> +<p>Where chinchy Herté<a name="fa4c17" id="fa4c17" href="#ft4c17"><span class="sp">4</span></a> hath thereof but small.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>This “mirror of riot and excess” effected a discovery, +and it was, that all the mischiefs which he recounts came +from the high reports of himself which servants bring to +their lord. The Losengour or pleasant flatterer was too +lightly believed, and honied words made more harmful the +deceitful error. Oh! babbling flattery! he spiritedly exclaims, +author of all lyes, that causest all day thy lord to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page193" id="page193"></a>193</span> +fare amiss. Such is the import of the following uncouth +verse:—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Many a servant unto his Lord saith</p> +<p>That all the world speaketh of him, Honoúr,</p> +<p>When the contrarie of that is sooth in faith;</p> +<p>And lightly leeved is this Losengoúr,<a name="fa5c17" id="fa5c17" href="#ft5c17"><span class="sp">5</span></a></p> +<p>His hony wordés wrapped in Erroúr,</p> +<p>Blindly conceived been, the more harm is,</p> +<p>O thou, <span class="sc">Favele</span>, of lesynges auctoúr,<a name="fa6c17" id="fa6c17" href="#ft6c17"><span class="sp">6</span></a></p> +<p>Causest all day thy Lord to fare amiss.</p> +<p>The Combre worldés;<a name="fa7c17" id="fa7c17" href="#ft7c17"><span class="sp">7</span></a> ’clept been Enchantoúrs</p> +<p>In Bookes, as I have red——.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="sc">Occleve</span> was a shrewd observer of his own times. +That this rhymer was even a playful painter of society we +have a remarkable evidence preserved in the volume of his +great master. “The Letter of Cupid,” in the works of +Chaucer, was the production of Occleve, and appears to +have been overlooked by his modern critics. He had originally +entitled it, “A Treatise of the Conversation of +Men and Women in the Little Island of Albion.” It is a +caustic “polite conversation;” and deemed so execrably +good, as to have excited, as our ancient critic Speght tells, +“such hatred among the gentlewomen of the Court, that +Occleve was forced to recant in that boke of his called +‘Planetas Proprius.’”<a name="fa8c17" id="fa8c17" href="#ft8c17"><span class="sp">8</span></a> The Letter of Cupid is thus +dated:—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Written in the lusty month of May,</p> +<p>In our Paléis where many a millión</p> +<p>Of lovers true have habitatión,</p> +<p>The yere of grace joyfull and jocúnd,</p> +<p>A thousand four hundred and secónd.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page194" id="page194"></a>194</span></p> + +<p>Imagery and imagination are not required in the school +of society. Occleve seems, however, sometimes to have +told a tale not amiss, for <span class="sc">William Brown</span>, the pastoral +bard, inserted entire a long story by old Occleve in his +“Shepherd’s Pipe.” To us he remains sufficiently uncouth. +The language had not at this period acquired even +a syntax, though with all its rudeness it was neither +wanting in energy nor copiousness, from that adoption of +the French, the Provençal, and the Italian, with which +Chaucer had enriched his vein. The present writer seems +to have had some notions of the critical art, for he requests +the learned tutor of Prince Edward, afterwards +Edward the Fourth, to warn him, when,—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Metring amiss;</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">and when</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i3">He speaks unsyttingly,<a name="fa9c17" id="fa9c17" href="#ft9c17"><span class="sp">9</span></a></p> +<p>Or not by just peys<a name="fa10c17" id="fa10c17" href="#ft10c17"><span class="sp">10</span></a> my sentence weigh,</p> +<p>And not to the order of enditing obey,</p> +<p>And my colours set ofté sythe awry.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>We might be curious to learn, with all these notions of +the suitable, the weighty, the order of enditing, and the +colours often awry, whether these versifiers had really any +settled principles of criticism. Occleve is a vernacular +writer, bare of ornament. He has told us that he knew +little of “Latin nor French,” though often counselled by +his immortal master. His enthusiastic love thus exults:—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Thou wer’t acquainted with Chaucer?—Pardie!</p> +<p>God save his soul!</p> +<p>The first findér of our faire langáge!</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>There is one little circumstance more which connects +the humble name of this versifier with that of Chaucer. +His affectionate devotion to the great poet has been recorded +by Speght in his edition of Chaucer. “Thomas +Occleve, for the love he bare to his master, caused his picture +to be truly drawn in his book ‘De Regimine Principis,’ +dedicated to Henry the Fifth.” In this manuscript, +with “fond idolatry,” he placed the portraiture of +his master facing an invocation. From this portrait the +head on the poet’s monument was taken, as well as all +our prints. It bears a faithful resemblance to the picture +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page195" id="page195"></a>195</span> +of Chaucer painted on board in the Bodleian Library.<a name="fa11c17" id="fa11c17" href="#ft11c17"><span class="sp">11</span></a> +Had Occleve, with his feelings, sent us down some memorial +of the poet and the man, we should have conned his +verse in better humour; but the history of genius had +not yet entered even into the minds of its most zealous +votaries.<a name="fa12c17" id="fa12c17" href="#ft12c17"><span class="sp">12</span></a></p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c17" id="ft1c17" href="#fa1c17"><span class="fn">1</span></a> “<i>Poems by</i> <span class="sc">Thomas Hoccleve</span>, <i>never before printed, selected +from a manuscript in the possession of George Mason, with a preface, +notes, and glossary</i>,” 1796. The notes are not amiss, and the glossary +is valuable; but the verses printed by Mason are his least interesting +productions. The poet’s name is here written with an H, as it appeared +in the manuscript; but there is no need of a modern editor changing +the usual mode, because names were diversely written or spelt even in +much later times. The present writer has been called not only <i>Occleve</i>, +but <i>Occliffe</i>, as we find him in Chaucer’s works.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c17" id="ft2c17" href="#fa2c17"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Turner’s “History of England,” v. 335.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c17" id="ft3c17" href="#fa3c17"><span class="fn">3</span></a> No desire.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c17" id="ft4c17" href="#fa4c17"><span class="fn">4</span></a> Niggardly heart.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c17" id="ft5c17" href="#fa5c17"><span class="fn">5</span></a> A Chaucerian word, which well deserves preservation in the +language.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c17" id="ft6c17" href="#fa6c17"><span class="fn">6</span></a> <span class="sc">Favell</span>, author of “Lyes.” <span class="sc">Favell</span>, the editor of Hoccleve, +explains as <i>cajolerie</i>, or flattery, by words given by Carpentier in his +supplement to “Du Cange.” Pavel is personified by “Piers Ploughman,” +and in Skelton’s “Bouge of Court.” <span class="sc">Favele</span> in langue Romane +is Flattery—hence <i>Fabel</i>, Fabling.—Roquefort’s “Dictionnaire.” The +Italian <span class="sc">Favellio</span>, parlerie, babil, caquet—Alberti’s “Grand Dictionnaire”—does +not wholly convey the idea of our modern <i>Humbug</i>, which +combines <i>fabling</i> and <i>caquet</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c17" id="ft7c17" href="#fa7c17"><span class="fn">7</span></a> The encumbrances to the world. In another poem he calls death +“that Coimbre-world.” It was a favourite expression with him, taken +from Chaucer. See “Warton,” ii. 352, note.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c17" id="ft8c17" href="#fa8c17"><span class="fn">8</span></a> A title which does not appear in the catalogue of his writings by +Ritson, in his “Bibliographia Poetica.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c17" id="ft9c17" href="#fa9c17"><span class="fn">9</span></a> Unfittingly.</p> + +<p><a name="ft10c17" id="ft10c17" href="#fa10c17"><span class="fn">10</span></a> Weight; probably from the French <i>poids</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="ft11c17" id="ft11c17" href="#fa11c17"><span class="fn">11</span></a> It is in Royal MS. 17 D. 6. The best is in the Harleian MS. 4866. +There is also a very curious full-length preserved in a single leaf of +vellum, Sloane MS. 5141; which has been copied in Shaw’s “Dresses +and Decorations of the Middle Ages,” vol. i.—<span class="sc">Ed.</span></p> + +<p><a name="ft12c17" id="ft12c17" href="#fa12c17"><span class="fn">12</span></a> A single trait, however, has come down to us from that other +scholar of Chaucer, whom we are next to follow. Lydgate assures us, +from what he heard, that the great poet would not suffer petty criticisms +“to perturb his reste.” He did not like to groan over, and +“pinch at every blot,” but always “did his best.”—</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>My master Chaucer that founde ful many spot,</p> +<p>Hym lyste not gruche, nor pynch at every blot;</p> +<p>Nor move himself to perturb his reste;</p> +<p>I have perde tolde, but seyd alway his beste.</p> + +<p class="i12"><span class="sc">Lydgate</span>’s “Troy.”</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page196" id="page196"></a>196</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">LYDGATE; THE MONK OF BURY.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Lydgate,</span> the monk of Bury, was also the scholar of +Chaucer: our monk had not passed a whole sequestered +life in his Benedictine monastery; he had journeyed +through France and Italy, and was familiar with the +writings of Dante, and Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and of +Alain Chartier. The delectable catalogue of his writings, +great and small, exceeds two hundred and fifty, and may +not yet be complete, for they lie scattered in their manuscript +state. A great multitude of writings, the incessant +movements of a single mind, will at first convey to us a +sense of magnitude; and in this magnitude, if we observe +the greatest possible diversity of parts, and, if we may use +the term, the flashings of the most changeable contrasts, +we must place such a universal talent among the phenomena +of literature.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Lydgate</span> composed epics, which were the lasting favourites +of two whole centuries—so long were classical repetitions +of “Troy” and of “Thebes” not found irksome.<a name="fa1c18" id="fa1c18" href="#ft1c18"><span class="sp">1</span></a> +In his graver hours he instructed the world by ethical +descants, Æsopian fables, and quaint proverbs; fixed their +wonder by saintly legends and veracious chronicles; and +disported in amorous ditties, and many a merrie tale: +translating or inventing, labour or levity, rounded the +unconscious day of the versifying monk. We descend +from the “Siege of Troy,” a romance of nearly thirty +thousand lines, which long graced the oriel window, to +the freer vein of humour of “London Lick-penny,” which +opens the street scenery of London in the fourteenth +century, and “The Prioresse and her Three Wooers,” +that exquisitely ludicrous narrative ballad for the people.<a name="fa2c18" id="fa2c18" href="#ft2c18"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page197" id="page197"></a>197</span></p> + +<p>Ritson, whose rabid hostility to the clerical character +was part of his constitutional malady, whether it related +to “a mendacious prelate” or “a stinking monk,” after +having expended twenty pages in the mere enumeration +of the titles of Lydgate’s writings, heartlessly hints at +the “cart-loads of rubbish of a voluminous poetaster; a +prosaic and drivelling monk.” And this is greedily seized +on by the hand of the bibliographer. Percy and Ellis, +too, mention <span class="sc">Dan Lydgate</span> with contempt. Critics +often find it convenient to resemble dogs, by barking one +after the other, without any other cause than the first +bark of a brother, who had only bayed the moon. It +now seemed concluded that the rhyming monk was to be +dismissed for ever. A very credible witness, however, at +last deposed that “Lydgate has been oftener abused than +read.”<a name="fa3c18" id="fa3c18" href="#ft3c18"><span class="sp">3</span></a> And now Mr. Hallam tells us that “<span class="sc">Gray</span>, no +light authority, speaks more favourably of Lydgate than +either Warton or Ellis;” and this nervous writer, with +his accustomed correct discernment, has alleged a valid +reason why Gray excelled them in this criticism; for +“great poets have often the taste to discern, and the +candour to acknowledge, those beauties which are latent +amidst the tedious dulness of their humbler brethren.”</p> + +<p>Warton has, however, afforded three copious chapters +on Lydgate, which are half as much as his enthusiasm +bestowed on Chaucer. A Gothic monk, composing ancient +romances, was a subject too congenial to have been neglected +by the historian of our poetry, and he has limned +and illuminated the feudal priest with the love of the +votary, who deemed, in his “lone-hours,”</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Nor rough nor barren are the winding ways</p> +<p>Of hoar Antiquity, but strown with flowers.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page198" id="page198"></a>198</span></p> + +<p class="noind">His miniature is exquisitely touched. “He was not only +the poet of his monastery, but of the world in general. +If a <i>disguising</i> was intended by the company of goldsmiths, +a <i>mask</i> before his majesty, a <i>may-game</i> for the +sheriffs and aldermen of London, a <i>mumming</i> before the +lord-mayor, a procession of <i>pageants</i> for the festival of +Corpus Christi, or a <i>carol</i> for the coronation, Lydgate was +consulted, and gave the poetry.”<a name="fa4c18" id="fa4c18" href="#ft4c18"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> + +<p>Mr. <span class="sc">Hallam</span> objects that “the attention fails in the +school-boy stories of Thebes and Troy; but it seems +probable that Lydgate would have been a better poet in +satire upon his own times, or delineation of their manners—themes +which would have gratified us much more than +the fate of princes.”</p> + +<p>This is relatively true—true as regards some of us, but +not at all as respects Lydgate, nor the people of his age, +nor the king and the princes who commanded themes +congenial with their military character, and their simple +tastes, romantically charming the readers of two centuries. +If our critic, in the exercise of his energetic faculties, lives +out of the necromancy of the old Romaunt, afar from +Thebes and Troy, Thomas Warton was cradled among +the children of fancy, and in his rovings had tasted their +wild honey. The only works of Lydgate which attracted +his attention were precisely these tedious “Fate of Princes” +and “The Troy Book.”</p> + +<p>The other modern critics—Ritson, Percy, and Ellis—had +but a slight knowledge of <span class="sc">Dan<a name="fa5c18" id="fa5c18" href="#ft5c18"><span class="sp">5</span></a> Lydgate</span>. They +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page199" id="page199"></a>199</span> +have generally acted on the pressure of the moment, to +get up a hasty court of <i>Pie-poudre</i>—that fugitive tribunal +held at fairs—to determine on the case of a culprit even +before they could shake the dust off their feet. But time +calls for an arrest of hasty judgments, or brings forward +some illustrious advocate to reverse the judicial decision, +or set forth the misfortunes of the accused. Two, most +eminent in genius, stand by the side of the monk of Bury—<span class="sc">Coleridge</span> +and <span class="sc">Gray</span>. Coleridge has left us his protest +in favour of Lydgate, for he deeply regrets that in +the general collection of our poets, the unpoetic editor +“had not substituted <i>the whole of Lydgate’s works from +the manuscript extant</i>, for the almost worthless Gower.”<a name="fa6c18" id="fa6c18" href="#ft6c18"><span class="sp">6</span></a> +Gray alone has taken an enlarged view of the state of our +poetry and our language at this period. When that +master-spirit abandoned the history of our poetry from +his fastidious delicacy or from his learned indolence, because +Warton had projected it, English literature sustained +an irreparable loss.<a name="fa7c18" id="fa7c18" href="#ft7c18"><span class="sp">7</span></a> In Gray surely we have lost +a literary historian such as the world has not yet had; +so rare is that genius who happily combines qualities +apparently incompatible. In his superior learning, his +subtle taste, his deeper thought, and his more vigorous +sense, we should have found the elements of a more philosophical +criticism, with a more searching and comprehensive +intellect, than can be awarded to our old favourite, +<span class="sc">Thomas Warton</span>. In the neglected quartos of <span class="sc">Gray</span> +we discover that the poet had set earnestly to work on +the archæology of our poetry; we also find in his works +those noble versions of the northern Scalds, and the +Welsh bards, which he designed to have introduced into +his history; thus to have impressed on us a perfect notion +of a national poetry, by poetry itself; a rare good fortune +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page200" id="page200"></a>200</span> +which does not enliven the toil of prosaic critics or verbal +interpreters. Gray had found the manuscripts of Lydgate +at Cambridge, and has made them a vehicle for the most +beautiful disquisitions. On a passage in Lydgate, the +poet-critic developes a curious occurrence in the history +of the poetic art—namely, that proneness to minute circumstances +which lengthens the strains of our elder poets, +and which the impatience of modern taste rejects as +tediousness; yet this will be found to be “the essence of +poetry and oratory.” This topic is important; and as I +can neither add nor dare to take away from this perfect +criticism, I submit to the task of transcribing what I am +sure will come to most of my readers in all its freshness +and novelty.</p> + +<p>Our ancient poet seems to be apologising for telling +long stories, which he asserts cannot be told “in wordes +few”—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>For a storye which is not plainly told,</p> +<p>But constreyned under <i>wordes few</i></p> +<p>For lack of truth, wher they ben new or olde,</p> +<p>Men by reporte cannot the matter shewe;</p> +<p>These oakés greaté be not down yhewe</p> +<p>First at a stroke, but by a <i>long prócesse</i>;</p> +<p>Nor long stories a word may not expresse.</p> + +<p class="i10"><span class="sc">Lydgate</span>, in his “Fall of Princes.”</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>On this Gray has delivered the following observations:—“These +‘long processes,’ indeed, suited wonderfully with +the attention and simple curiosity of the age in which +<span class="sc">Lydgate</span> lived; many a <i>stroke</i> have he and the best +of his contemporaries spent upon <i>a sturdy old story</i>, till +they had blunted their own edge and that of their +readers—at least a modern reader will find it so: but it is +a folly to judge of the understanding and patience of those +times by our own. They loved, I will not say tediousness, +but <i>length</i> and a train of circumstances in a narration. +The vulgar do so still: it gives an air of reality to facts; +it fixes the attention; raises and keeps in suspense their +expectation, and supplies the defects of their little and +lifeless imagination; and it keeps pace with the slow motion +of their own thoughts. Tell them a story as you +would tell it to a man of wit; it will appear to them as +an object seen in the night by a flash of lightning: but +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page201" id="page201"></a>201</span> +when you have placed it in various lights and in various +positions, they will come at last to see and feel it as well +as others. But we need not confine ourselves to the vulgar, +and to understandings beneath our own. Circumstance +ever was and ever will be the life and the essence both of +oratory and of poetry. It has in some sort the same effect +upon every mind that it has upon that of the populace; +and I fear the <i>quickness and delicate impatience of these +polished times</i> in which we live are but the forerunners of +the decline of all those beautiful arts which depend upon +the imagination. Homer, the father of <i>circumstance</i>, has +occasion for the same apology which I am making for +Lydgate and for his predecessors.”<a name="fa8c18" id="fa8c18" href="#ft8c18"><span class="sp">8</span></a></p> + +<p>At the monastery of Bury we might have listened to +that Gothic monk’s “goodly tale,” or “notable proverb +of Æsopus” for the nonce; or saintly legend, or “merrie +balade;” or the story of “Thebes,” which the scholar +took up from his master Chaucer: or that from “Bochas,” +and Guido Colonna’s “Troy Book:” but too numerous +were the volumes to tell, and too voluminous was many a +volume. Verbose and diffuse, yet clear and fluent, ran his +page; too minutely copious were his descriptions, yet the +delineations seemed the more graphical; his verse, too +long or too short, halts in his measures till we fall into the +minstrel’s “metring,” and lines break forth, beautiful as +any in our day. He expands the same image, and loses +all likeness in a prolix simile, for his readers were not so +impatient as ourselves. These poets suffered or enjoyed a +fatal facility of rhyming, lost for us, from the use of polysyllabic +words from the French and the Latin accented on +the last syllable, a custom continued by the Scots; and +these provided them with too ready an abundance of poetic +terminations or rhymes, tending to make their poems voluminous. +The art of selection is the art of an age less +florid and more fastidious, but not always more genial or +more inventive. The pruning-hook was not in use when +planters were too eager to gather the first fruits from the +trees which their own hands had put into the earth.</p> + +<p>Alas! apologies only leave irremediable faults as they +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page202" id="page202"></a>202</span> +were! The tediousness of Dan Lydgate remains as languid, +his verse as halting, and “Thebes” and “Troy” as +desolate, as we found them!</p> + +<p>Let us, however, be reminded, that he who wholly +neglects the study of our ancient poets must submit to +the loss of knowledge which a philosopher would value; +the manners of the age, the modes of feeling, the stream +of thought, the virgin fancies, and that position which the +human character takes in distant ages—these will imbue +his memory with the genius of his country and the eternal +truth of authentic nature. No English poet should wholly +resign these masses of vernacular poetry to the lone closet +of the antiquary; he who loves the gain of labour will +excavate these quarries for their marble, for we know they +are marble, since many a noble column has been raised +from these shapeless and unhewed blocks.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c18" id="ft1c18" href="#fa1c18"><span class="fn">1</span></a> “The Troy Tale” was composed at the command of the King, +Henry the Fifth; as “the Fall of Princes,” from Boccace, was at the +desire of Humphrey, the good Duke of Gloucester. He wrote regal poems +for kings, while he dispersed wisdom and merriment for their subjects.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c18" id="ft2c18" href="#fa2c18"><span class="fn">2</span></a> While this volume is passing through the press, “A Selection +from the Minor Poems of Lydgate” has been edited by Mr. Halliwell. +The versatility of Lydgate’s poetical skill is advantageously shown in +his comic satire, and his ethics drawn from a deep insight into human +nature. The editor suggests a new reading for the title of the ballad +of “London <i>Lick-penny</i>,” more suitable to the misadventures of its +hero,—“London <i>Lack-penny</i>,” for London could not lick a penny +from the forlorn hero who had not one to offer to it. <span class="sc">Grose</span>, probably taken +by the humorous designation, has placed it among his local proverbs.</p> + +<p>The tale of the “Prioress and her Three Wooers” is one of the happiest +fabliaux. Mr. Campbell transcribed “the merrie tale” for his +Specimens, when he discovered that a preceding forager had anticipated +him in Mr. Jamieson, who has preserved it in his “Popular +Ballads,” i. 253.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c18" id="ft3c18" href="#fa3c18"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Turner’s “Hist. of England,” v.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c18" id="ft4c18" href="#fa4c18"><span class="fn">4</span></a> I may point out the raw material which our poetical antiquary has +here worked up with such perfect effect in this picturesque enumeration. +Appended to Speght’s “Chaucer,” that editor furnished a very +curious list of about a hundred works by Lydgate, which were in his +own possession. Most of the singular poetical exhibitions here enumerated +are mentioned towards the end of that list, and which Warton +has happily appropriated, and so turned a dry catalogue into a poetical +picture. [A selection of Lydgate’s Poems, 44 in number, were printed +by the Percy Society in 1840.]</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c18" id="ft5c18" href="#fa5c18"><span class="fn">5</span></a> <span class="sc">Dan</span>, as Ritson tells us, is a title given to the individuals of certain +religious orders, from the barbarous Latin <i>Domnus</i>, a variation of +<i>Dominus</i>, or the French <i>Dam</i>, or <i>Dom</i>. <i>Dan</i> became a corruption of +<i>Don</i> for <i>Dominus</i>. The title afterwards extended to persons of respectable +condition, as vague as our complimentary esquire. It was applied +to Chaucer by Spenser, and when obsolete it became jocular; for we have +“Dan Cupid.” Prior renewed it with ludicrous gravity when telling a +tale which he had from “Dan Pope.” It is still used in an honourable sense +by the Spaniards in their <span class="sc">Don</span>.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c18" id="ft6c18" href="#fa6c18"><span class="fn">6</span></a> “Literary Remains,” ii. 130.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c18" id="ft7c18" href="#fa7c18"><span class="fn">7</span></a> The great poet has left two or three most precious fragments; but +these have long been buried in those ill-fated quartos, consisting chiefly +of notes on Greek and on Plato, which Matthias published with extraordinary +pomp; and, so he used to say, as a monument for himself as +well as the bard—a monument which, his egregious self-complacency +lived to witness, partook more of the properties of a tombstone than +the glory of a column.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c18" id="ft8c18" href="#fa8c18"><span class="fn">8</span></a> “Gray’s Works,” by Matthias, ii. p. 60.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page203" id="page203"></a>203</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE INVENTION OF PRINTING</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Printing</span> remained, as long as its first artificers could keep +it, a secret and occult art; and it is the only one that +ceaselessly operates all the miracles which the others had +vainly promised.</p> + +<p>Who first thought to carve the wooden immoveable +letters on blocks?—to stamp the first sheet which ever +was imprinted? Or who, second in invention, but first in +utility, imagined to cast the metal with fusile types, separate +from each other?—to fix this scattered alphabet in a +form, and thus by one stroke write a thousand manuscripts, +and, with the identical letters, multiply not a single work, +but all sorts of works hereafter? Was it fortunate chance, +or deliberate meditation, or both in gradual discovery, +which produced this invention? In truth, we can neither +detect the rude beginnings, nor hardly dare to fix on +the beginners. The <i>Origines Typographicæ</i> are, even at +this late hour, provoking a fierce controversy, not only +among those who live in the shades of their libraries, but +with honest burghers; for the glory of patriotism has connected +itself with the invention of an art which came to +us like a divine revelation in the history of man. But +the place, the mode, and the person—the invention and +the inventor—are the subjects of volumes! Votaries of +Fust, of Schöffer, of Gutenberg, of Costar! A sullen +silence or a deadly feud is your only response. Ye jealous +cities of Mentz, of Strasburg, and of Haarlem, each of ye +have your armed champion at your gates!<a name="fa1c19" id="fa1c19" href="#ft1c19"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p>The mystical eulogist of the art of printing, who declared +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page204" id="page204"></a>204</span> +that “the invention came from Heaven,” was not +more at a loss to detect the origin than those who have +sought for it among the earliest printers.<a name="fa2c19" id="fa2c19" href="#ft2c19"><span class="sp">2</span></a> Learned but +angry disputants on the origin of printing, what if the art +can boast of no single inventor, and was not the product +of a single act? Consider the varieties of its practice, the +change of wood to metal, the fixed to the moveable type; +view the complexity of its machinery; repeated attempts +must often have preceded so many inventions ere they terminated +in the great one. From the imperfect and contradictory +notices of the early essays—and of the very +earliest we may have no record—we must infer that the +art, though secret, was progressive, and that many imperfect +beginnings were going on at the same time in different +places.</p> + +<p>Struck by the magnitude and the magnificence of the +famous Bible of Fust, some have decided on the invention +of the art by one of its most splendid results; this, however, +is not in the usual course of human affairs, nor in the +nature of things. “The Art of Printing,” observes Dr. +Cotton, in his introduction, “was brought almost to perfection +in its infancy; so that, like Minerva, it may be +said to have sprung to life, mature, vigorous, and armed +for war.” But in the article “Moguntia, or Mentz,” this +acute researcher states that “after all that has been written +with such angry feelings upon the long-contested +question of the <i>origin of the Art of Printing</i>, Mentz appears +still to preserve the best-founded claim to the honour +of being the <i>birth-place of the Typographic Art</i>; because,” +he adds, “the specimens adduced in favour of +Haarlem and Strasburg, even if we should allow their +genuineness, are confessedly of <i>a rude and imperfect execution</i>.” +We require no other evidence of the important +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page205" id="page205"></a>205</span> +fact, that the art, in its early stages, had to pass through +many transitions—from the small school-books, or Donatuses, +of Costar, to the splendid Bible of Fust. Had the +art been borrowed or stolen from a single source, according +to the popular tradition, the works would have borne a +more fraternal resemblance, and have evinced less inferiority +of execution; but if several persons at the same +time were working in secrecy, each by his own method, +their differences and their inferiority would produce “the +rude and imperfect specimens.” Mr. Hallam has suffered +his strong emotion on the greatness of the invention +to reflect itself back on the humble discoverers themselves; +and, unusual with his searching inquiries, calls +once more on Dr. Cotton’s Minerva, but with a more +celestial panoply. “The <i>high-minded inventors</i> of this +great art tried, at <i>the very outset</i>, so bold a flight as the +printing <i>an entire Bible</i>. It was Minerva leaping on +earth, in her divine strength and radiant armour, ready at +the moment of her nativity to subdue and destroy her +enemies.”<a name="fa3c19" id="fa3c19" href="#ft3c19"><span class="sp">3</span></a> The Bible called the Mazarine Bible, thus +distinguished from having been found in the Cardinal’s +library, remains still a miracle of typography, not only for +its type, but for the quality of the paper and the sparkling +blackness of its ink.<a name="fa4c19" id="fa4c19" href="#ft4c19"><span class="sp">4</span></a> The success of the art was established +by this Bible; but the goldsmith Fust, who himself +was no printer, was no otherwise “high-minded,” +than by the usurious prices he speculated on for this innocent +imposture of vending what was now a printed book +for a manuscript copy!</p> + +<p>No refined considerations of the nature and the universal +consequences of their discovery seem to have instigated +the earliest printers; this is evident by the perpetual +jealousy and the mystifying style by which they +long attempted to hide that secret monopoly which they +had now obtained.</p> + +<p>The first notions of printing might have reached +Europe from China. Our first block-printing seems imitated +from the Chinese, who print with blocks of wood +on one side of the paper, as was done in the earliest essays +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page206" id="page206"></a>206</span> +of printing; and the Chinese seem also to have suggested +the use of a thick black ink. European traders might +have imported some fugitive leaves; their route has even +been indicated, from Tartary, by the way of Russia; and +from China and Japan, through the Indies and the Arabian +Gulf. The great antiquity of printing in China has been +ascertained. Du Halde and the missionary Jesuits assert +that this art was practised by the Chinese half a century +before the Christian era! At all events, it is evident that +they exercised it many centuries before it was attempted +in Europe. The history of gunpowder would illustrate +the possibility of the same extraordinary invention occurring +at distinct periods. Roger Bacon indicated the terrible +ingredients a hundred years before the monk +Schwartz, about 1330, actually struck out the fiery explosion, +and had the glory of its invention. Machines to +convey to a distance the thunder and the lightning described +by their discoverers were not long after produced. +But it would have astonished these inventors to have +learnt that guns had been used as early as the year 85 +<span class="sc">A.D.</span>, and that the fatal powder had been invented previously +by the Chinese. Well might the philosophical +Langles be struck by “the singular coincidence of the +invention in Europe of the compass, of gunpowder, and of +printing, about the same period, within a century.” +These three mighty agents in human affairs have been +traced to that wary and literary nation, who, though they +prohibit all intercourse with “any barbarian eye,” might +have suffered these sublime inventions to steal away over +“their great wall.”</p> + +<p>What has happened to the art of printing also occurred +to the sister-art of engraving on copper. Tradition had +ascribed the invention as the accidental discovery of the +goldsmith Maso Finiguerra. But the Germans insist that +they possess engravings before the days of the Italian +artist; and it is not doubtful that several of the compatriots +of Finiguerra were equally practising the art with +himself. Heinecken would arbitrate between the jealous +patriots; he concedes that Vasari might ascribe the invention +of the art in Italy to Finiguerra, yet that engraving +might have been practised in Germany, though +unknown in Italy. Buonarotti, the great judge of all +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page207" id="page207"></a>207</span> +art, was sensible that in this sort of invention every artist +makes his own discoveries. Alluding to the art of engraving, +he says, “It would be sufficient to occasion our +astonishment, that the ancients did not discover the art of +chalcography, were it not known that <span class="scs">DISCOVERIES OF +THIS SORT</span> generally occur <span class="scs">ACCIDENTALLY</span> to the mechanics +in the exercise of their calling.”<a name="fa5c19" id="fa5c19" href="#ft5c19"><span class="sp">5</span></a> On this principle +we may confidently rest. All the early printers, like +the rivals of Finiguerra at home, and his unknown concurrents +in Germany, were proceeding with the same art, +and might urge their distinct claims.</p> + +<p>The natural magic of concave and convex lenses, those +miracles of optical science, one of which searches Nature +when she eludes the eye, and the other approximates the +remotest star—the microscope and the telescope; who +were their inventors, and how have those inventions happened? +These instruments appeared about the same +time. The Germans ascribe the invention of the microscope +to a Dutchman, one Drebell; while the Neapolitan +Fontana claims the anterior invention; but which +Viviani, the scholar of Galileo, asserts, from his own +knowledge, was presented to the King of Poland by that +father of modern philosophy long anterior to the date +fixed on by the Germans. The history of the telescope +offers a similar result. Fracastorius may have accidentally +combined two lenses; but he neither specified the form +nor the quality; and in these consisted the real discovery, +which we find in Baptista Porta, and which subsequently +was perfected by Galileo. The invention of the art of +printing seems a parallel one. It appeared in various +quarters about the same time; and in the process of successive +attempts, by intimation, by conjecture, and by experiment, +each artificer insensibly advanced into a more +perfect invention; till some fortunate claimant for the +discovery puts aside all preceding essayists, who, not +without some claims to the invention, leave their advocates +in another generation to dispute about their rights, +which are buried in oblivion, or falsified by traditional +legends.</p> + +<p>Thus it has happened that obscure traditions envelope +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page208" id="page208"></a>208</span> +the origin of some of the most interesting inventions. +Had these ingenious discoveries been as simple and as +positive as their historians oppositely maintain, these +origins had not admitted of such interminable disputes. +We may therefore reasonably suspect that the practitioners +in every art which has reached to almost a perfect +state, such as that of printing, have silently borrowed +from one another; that there has often existed a secret +connexion in things, and a reciprocal observation in the +intercourse of men alike intent on the same object; that +countries have insensibly transferred a portion of their +knowledge to their neighbours; that travellers in every +era have imparted their novelties, hints however crude, +descriptions however imperfect; all such slight notices +escape the detection of an historian; nothing can reach +him but the excellence of some successful artist. In vain +rival concurrents dispute the invention; the patriotic historian +of the art clings to his people or his city, to fix the +inventor and the invention, and promulgates fairy tales to +authenticate the most uncertain evidence.<a name="fa6c19" id="fa6c19" href="#ft6c19"><span class="sp">6</span></a></p> + +<p>The history of printing illustrates this view of its origin. +The invention has been long ascribed to <span class="sc">Gutenberg</span>, yet +some have made it doubtful whether this presumed father +of the art ever succeeded in printing a book, for we are +assured that no colophon has revealed his name. We +hear of his attempts and of his disappointments, his +bickerings and his lawsuits. He seems to have been a +speculative bungler in a new-found art, which he mysteriously +hinted was to make a man’s fortune. The +goldsmith, Fust, advanced a capital in search of the novel +alchymy—the project ends in a lawsuit, the goldsmith +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page209" id="page209"></a>209</span> +gains his cause, and the projector is discharged. Gutenberg +lures another simple soul, and the same golden dream +vanishes in the dreaming. These copartners, evidently +tired of an art which had not yet found an artist, a young +man, probably improving on Gutenberg’s blunders, one +happy day displayed to the eyes of his master, Fust, a +proof pulled from his own press. In rapture, the master +confers on this Peter Schœffer a share of his future fortunes; +and to bind the apprentice by the safest ties of +consanguinity, led the swart youth, glorious with printer’s +ink, to the fair hand of his young daughter. The new +partnership produced their famed Psalter of 1457; and +shortly followed their magnificent Bible.</p> + +<p>While these events were occurring, <span class="sc">Costar</span>, of Haarlem, +was plodding on with the same “noble mystery,” but only +printing on one side of a leaf, not having yet discovered +that a leaf might be contrived to contain two pages. The +partisans of Costar assert that it was proved he substituted +moveable for fixed letters, which was a giant’s footstep +in this new path. A faithless servant ran off with +the secret. The history of printing abounds with such +tales. Every step in the progress of the newly-invented +art indicates its gradual accessions. The numbering of +the pages was not thought of for a considerable time; the +leaves were long only distinguished by letters or signatures—a +custom still preserved, though apparently superfluous.</p> + +<p>There is something attractive for rational curiosity in +the earliest beginnings of every art; every slight improvement, +even though trivial, has its motive, and supplies +some want. On this principle the history of punctuation +enters into the history of literature. Caxton had the +merit of introducing the Roman pointing as used in Italy; +and his successor, Pynson, triumphed by domiciliating the +Roman letter. The dash, or perpendicular line, thus, | +was the only punctuation they used. It was, however, +discovered that “the craft of poynting well used makes +the sentence very light.” The more elegant comma supplanted +the long uncouth |; the colon was a refinement, +“showing that there is more to come.” But the semicolon +was a Latin delicacy which the obtuse English +typographer resisted. So late as 1580 and 1590 treatises +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page210" id="page210"></a>210</span> +on orthography do not recognise any such innovator; the +Bible of 1592, though printed with appropriate accuracy, +is without a semicolon; but in 1633 its full rights are +established by Charles Butler’s “English Grammar.” In +this chronology of the four points of punctuation it is +evident that Shakspeare could never have used the semicolon—a +circumstance which the profound George Chalmers +mourns over, opining that semicolons would often +have saved the poet from his commentators.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Fust</span> had bound his workmen to secrecy by the solemnity +of an oath; but at the siege of Mentz that freemasonry +was lost. These early printers dispersed, some +were even bribed away. Two Germans set up their press +in the monastery of Subiaco, in the vicinity of Naples, +whose confraternity consisted of German monks. These +very printers finally retreated to Rome for that patronage +they had still to seek; and at Rome they improved the +art by adopting the Roman character. Not only the +invention of the art was progressive, but the art itself +was much more so.</p> + +<p>We have other narratives of printers romantically spirited +away from the parent-presses; one of the most +extraordinary is the history of printing set up at Oxford, +ten years before the art was practised in Europe, except +at Haarlem and Mentz. Henry VI., by advice of the +Archbishop of Canterbury, despatched a confidential agent +in disguise, under the guidance of Caxton, in his trading +journeys to Flanders. The Haarlemites were so jealous +of idling strangers who had come on the same insidious +design, that foreigners had frequently been imprisoned.</p> + +<p>The royal agent never ventured to enter the city, but +by heavy bribes in a secret intercourse with the workmen, +one dark night he smuggled a printer aboard a vessel, and +carried away Frederick Corsellis. That printer, on landing +in England, was attended by a guard to Oxford. +There he was constantly watched till he had revealed the +mysterious craft. The evidence of this unheard-of history +hinged on a record at Lambeth-palace authenticating the +whole narrative, and on a monument of Corsellis’s art, +which any one might inspect at the Bodleian, being a +book bearing a date six years prior to any printing by +Caxton. The record at Lambeth, however, was never +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page211" id="page211"></a>211</span> +found, and never heard of, and the date of the book +might have been accidentally or designedly falsified. An +x dropped in the date of the impression would account +for the singularity of a book printed before our Caxton +had acquired the art. The tale long excited a sharp controversy, +when Corsellis at Oxford was considered as the +first printer in England. The possibility of the existence +of this person at Oxford, and even of the book he printed, +appears by a lively investigation of Dr. Cotton;<a name="fa7c19" id="fa7c19" href="#ft7c19"><span class="sp">7</span></a> and I +have been assured of a circumstance which, if true, would +render the story of Corsellis probable; it is that a family +of this name may still be found in Oxfordshire. The +whole history has, however, by some been considered as +supposititious, standing on the single evidence of a Sir +Richard Atkyns, a servile lawyer and royalist of no great +character in the days of Charles the Second.<a name="fa8c19" id="fa8c19" href="#ft8c19"><span class="sp">8</span></a> Grafting +his tale on the accident of the date of this book, he had +a covert design—to maintain a theory or a right that +printing was “a flower of the crown,” constituting the +sovereign the printer of England! all others being his +servants. This enormous prevention of the abuses of the +press was not deemed too extravagant for those desperate +times.</p> + +<p>The only certainty in the history of printing, after all +the fables of its origin, is its native place. It is a German +romance enlivened by some mysterious adventures, wanting +only the opening pages, which no one can supply.<a name="fa9c19" id="fa9c19" href="#ft9c19"><span class="sp">9</span></a> +Even the most philosophic of bibliographers, Daunou, +utters a cry of despair, and moreover, at this late day, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page212" id="page212"></a>212</span> +seems at a loss to decide on the nature of the influence of +the art of printing! “We live too near the epoch of the +discovery of printing to judge accurately of its influence, +and too far from it to know the circumstances which gave +birth to it.” Our sage seems to think that another cycle +of at least a thousand years must pass away ere we can +decide on the real influence of printing over the destinies +of man: this new tree of knowledge bears other fruit than +that of its own sweetness, source of good and evil, of sense +and of nonsense! whence we pluck the windy fruitage of +opinions, crude and changeable!</p> + +<p>How has it happened that such a plain story as that of +the art of printing should have sunk into a romance? +Solely because the monopolisers dreaded discovery. It +originated in deception, and could only flourish for their +commercial spirit in mysterious obscurity. Among the +first artisans of printing every one sought to hide his +work, and even to blind the workmen. After their operations, +they cautiously unscrewed the four sides of their +forms, and threw the scattered type beneath, for, as one +craftily observed to his partner, “When the component +parts of the press are in pieces, no one will understand +what they mean.” One of the early printers of the +fifteenth century at Mutina, or Modena, professes his press +to have been <i>in ædibus subterraneis</i>—doubtless, if possible, +still further to darken the occult mystery. They delivered +themselves in a mystical style when they alluded to their +unnamed art, and impressed on the marvelling reader that +the volume he held in his hand was the work of some supernatural +agency. They announced that the volumes in this +newly-found art were “neither drawn, nor written with a +pen and ink, as all books before had been.” In the +“Recuyel of the Historyes of Troye,” our honest printer, +plain Caxton, caught the hyperbolical style of the dark +monopolising spirit of the confraternity. I give his words, +having first spelt them. “I have practised and learned at +my great charge, and dispense to ordain (put in order) +this said book in print after the manner and form as ye +may here see, and is not written with pen and ink as other +books be, to the end that <i>every man may have them</i> AT +ONCE; for all the books of this story, thus imprinted +as ye see, were <i>begun in one day, and also finished in</i> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page213" id="page213"></a>213</span> +<i>one day</i>.” A volume of more than seven hundred folio +pages, “begun and finished in one day,” was not the less +marvellous for being impossible. But for the times was +the style! Caxton would keep up the wonder and +the mystery of an art which men did not yet comprehend; +and because a whole sheet might have been printed in one +day, and was <i>all at once</i> pulled off, and not line by line, +our venerable printer mystified the world. And all this +was said at a time when so slow was the process of transcription, +that one hundred Bibles could not be procured +under the expense of seven thousand days, or of nearly +twenty years’ labour. Honest men, too eager in their zeal, +particularly when their personal interests are at stake, +sometimes strain truth on the tenter-hooks of fiction. +The false miracle which our primeval printer professed he +had performed we seem to have realized: it is amusing to +conceive the wonderment of Caxton, were he now among +us, to view the steam working that cylindrical machine +which disperses the words of a speaker throughout the +whole nation, when the voice which uttered them is still +lingering on our ear!</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c19" id="ft1c19" href="#fa1c19"><span class="fn">1</span></a> The city of Haarlem designs to erect a statue of <span class="sc">Costar</span> [since +this was written the statue has been placed in the great square]; thus +publicly, in the eyes of Europe, to vindicate the priority of this inventor +of typography. But a statue is not the final argument which, like the +cannon of monarchs (that <i>ultima ratio regum</i>), will carry conviction on +the spot it is placed. Mentz has already erected a statue of <span class="sc">Gutenberg</span>. +I have no doubt that, in the present state of agitation, both +these statues will have much to say to one another, as the mystical +Pasquin and Marforio of typography.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c19" id="ft2c19" href="#fa2c19"><span class="fn">2</span></a> “Some Observations on the Use and Original of the noble Art and +Mystery of Printing,” by F. Burges. Norwich, 1701. This is declared +to be the first book printed at Norwich; where it appears that the +establishment of a printing-office, so late as in 1701, encountered a +stern opposition from its sage citizens. The writer did not know that +as far back as 1570 a Dutch printer had exercised the novel art by +printing religious books for a community of Dutch emigrants who had +taken refuge at Norwich, according to the recent discovery of Dr. Cotton, +in his “Typographical Gazetteer”—a volume abounding with the +most vigorous researches.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c19" id="ft3c19" href="#fa3c19"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Hallam’s “Introduction to the Literature of Europe,” i. 211.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c19" id="ft4c19" href="#fa4c19"><span class="fn">4</span></a> Twenty copies of this famous Bible exist; one is preserved in our +Royal Library.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c19" id="ft5c19" href="#fa5c19"><span class="fn">5</span></a> Ottley’s “Inquiry into the Early History of Engraving.” See also +note in “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. i, p. 43.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c19" id="ft6c19" href="#fa6c19"><span class="fn">6</span></a> Dr. <span class="sc">Wetter</span>, of Mentz, has lately shown that, contrary to the +common opinion, Gutenberg himself printed long with <i>wooden blocks</i>; +and that, instead of the invention of moveable types having been the +result of long study, <i>it arose out of a “sudden fancy.”</i></p> + +<p>How the Doctor has authenticated “the sudden fancy,” I know not, +but the apotheosis has passed. In three successive days, in the month +of August, 1837, all Mentz congregated to worship the statue, by Thorwaldsen, +of their ancient citizen in the square that henceforward bears +his name. A chorus of 700 voices resounded the laud of the German +printer; the flags in the regatta waved to his honour; and the festival +rejoiced the city: and when the figure of Gutenberg was unveiled, the +artillery, the music, and the people’s voices, blending together, seemed +to echo in the skies.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c19" id="ft7c19" href="#fa7c19"><span class="fn">7</span></a> Dr. Cotton’s curious “Typographical Gazetteer,” art. <span class="sc">Oxonia</span>. +Of a class of the earliest printed books, having no printer’s name, +he observes, “These may have been printed by Corsellis, or any one +else.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c19" id="ft8c19" href="#fa8c19"><span class="fn">8</span></a> Atkyns on the “Original and Growth of Printing.” This quarto +pamphlet is highly valued among collectors for Loggan’s beautiful print +of Charles the Second, Archbishop Shelden, and General Monk. Dr. +Middleton refuted this ridiculous tale of an ideal printer, one Corsellis, +in his “Dissertation on the Origin of Printing in England,” first published +1735, and which now may be seen in his works.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c19" id="ft9c19" href="#fa9c19"><span class="fn">9</span></a> The fourth day of the “Bibliographical Decameron” of Dr. Dibdin +exhibits an ample view of the pending controversies on the “Origines +Typographicæ.” Every bibliographer has his favourite hero. The +reader will observe that I have none! And yet possibly my tale may +be the truest.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page214" id="page214"></a>214</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE FIRST ENGLISH PRINTER.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">The</span> ambitious wars of a potent aristocracy inflicted on +this country half a century of public misery. Our fields +were a soil of blood; and maternal England long mourned +for victories she obtained over her own children—lord +against lord, brother against brother, and the son against +the father. Rival administrations alternately dispossess +each other by sanguinary conflict; a new monarch attaints +the friends of his predecessor; conspiracy rises against +conspiracy—scaffold against scaffold; the king is re-enthroned—the +king perishes in the Tower; York is +triumphant—and York is annihilated.</p> + +<p>Few great families there were who had not immolated +their martyrs or their victims; and it frequently occurred +that the same family had fallen equally on both sides, for +it was a war of the aristocracy with the aristocracy: “Save +the commons and kill the captains,” was the general war-cry. +The distracted people were perhaps indifferent to the +varying fortunes of the parties, accustomed as they were to +behold after each battle the heads of lords and knights +raised on every bridge and gate.</p> + +<p>During this dread interval, all things about us were +thrown back into a state of the rudest infancy; the illiterature +of the age approached to barbarism; the evidences of +history were destroyed; there was such a paucity of +readers, that no writers were found to commemorate contemporary +events. Indeed, had there been any, who could +have ventured to arbitrate between such contradictory accounts, +where every party had to tell their own tale? +Oblivion, not history, seemed to be the consolation of those +miserable times.</p> + +<p>It was at such an unhappy era that the new-found art +of printing was introduced into England by an English +trader, who for thirty years had passed his life in Flanders, +conversant with no other languages than were used in those +countries.</p> + +<p>Our literature was interested in the intellectual character +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page215" id="page215"></a>215</span> +of our first English printer. A powerful mind might, by +the novel and mighty instrument of thought, have created +a national taste, or have sown that seed of curiosity without +which no knowledge can be reared. Such a genius +might have anticipated by a whole century that general +passion for sound literature which was afterwards to distinguish +our country. But neither the times nor the man +were equal to such a glorious advancement.</p> + +<p>The first printed book in the English language was not +printed in England. It is a translation of Ráoul le Fevre’s +“Recuyel of the Historyes of Troye,” famed in its own +day as the most romantic history, and in ours, for the +honour of bibliography, romantically valued at the cost of +a thousand guineas. This first monument of English +printing issued from the infant press at Cologne in 1471, +where Caxton first became initiated in “the noble mystery +and craft” of printing, when printing was yet truly “a +mystery,” and Caxton himself did not import the art +which was to effect such an intellectual revolution till a +year or two afterwards, on his return home. The first +printer, it is evident, had no other conception of the +machine he was about to give the nation than as an +ingenious contrivance, or a cheap substitute for costly +manuscripts—possibly he might, in his calculating prudence, +even be doubtful of its success!</p> + +<p>At the announcement of the first printed book in our +vernacular idiom, the mind involuntarily pauses: looking +on the humble origin of our bibliography, and on the +obscure commencement of the newly-found art of printing +itself, we are startled at the vast and complicated results.</p> + +<p>The contemporaries of our first printer were not struck +by their novel and precious possession, of which they +participated in the first fruits in the circulation and multiplication +of their volumes. The introduction of the art +into England is wholly unnoticed by the chroniclers of +the age, so unconscious they were of this new implement +of the human mind. We find Fabian, who must have +known Caxton personally—both being members of the +Mercers’ Company—passing unnoticed his friend; and +instead of any account of the printing-press, we have +only such things as “a new weathercock placed on the +cross of St. Paul’s steeple.” Hall, so copious in curious +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page216" id="page216"></a>216</span> +matters, discovered no curiosity to memorialize in the +printing-press; Grafton was too heedless; and Holinshed, +the most complete of our chroniclers, seems to have had +an intention of saying something by his insertion of a +single line, noticing the name of “Caxton as the first +practiser of the art of printing;” but he was more +seriously intent in the same paragraph to give a narrative +of “a bloody rain, the red drops falling on the sheets +which had been hanged to dry.” The history of printing +in England has been vainly sought for among English +historians; so little sensible were they to those expansive +views and elevated conceptions, which are now too commonplace +eulogies to repeat.</p> + +<p>By what subdolous practices among the first inventors +of this secret art Caxton obtained its mastery, we are not +told, except that he learnt the new art “at his own great +cost and expense;” and on his final return home, he was +accompanied by foreigners who lived in his house, and +after his death became his successors. Wynkyn de Worde, +Pynson, Machlinia and others, by their names betray their +German origin. We have recently discovered that we had +even a French printer who printed English books. Francis +Regnault (or Reynold, anglicised) was a Frenchman who +fell under the displeasure of the Inquisition for printing +the Bible in English. He resided in England, and had in +hand a number of primers in English and other similar +books, which at length excited the jealousy of <i>the Company +of Booksellers in London</i>—in the reign of Henry the +Eighth. To allay this bibliopolic storm, the affrighted +French printer, with all his stock in hand, procured +Coverdale and Grafton to intercede with Cromwell to +grant him a licence to sell what he had already printed, +engaging hereafter “to print no more in the <i>English +tongue</i> unless he have an <i>Englishman</i> that is learned to +be his corrector;” and further, he offers to cancel and +reprint any faulty leaf again.<a name="fa1c20" id="fa1c20" href="#ft1c20"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p>Caxton did not extend his views beyond those of a +mercantile printer and an indifferent translator. As a +writer, Caxton had reason to speak with humility of the +style of his vernacular versions. His patroness, the Lady +Margaret, sister to our Edward the Fourth, and Duchess +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page217" id="page217"></a>217</span> +of Burgundy, after inspecting some quires of his translation +of the “Recuyel of the Historyes of Troye,” +returned them, finding, as Caxton ingenuously acknowledges, +“some defaut in his English which she commanded +him to amend.” Tyrwhit sarcastically observes, that the +duchess might have been a purist. As we are not told +what were these “defauts,” we cannot decide on the good +taste or the fastidiousness of the sister of Edward the +Fourth. But the duchess was not the only critic whom +Caxton had to encounter, for we learn by his preface to +his “Boke of Æneydos compiled by Virgil,” now metamorphosed +into a barbarous French prose romance, and +the French translation translated, that there were “gentlemen +who of late have blamed me that in my translations +I had over-curious terms which could not be understood +by common people. I fain would satisfy every man.” +He apologises for his own style by alleging the unsettled +state of the English language, of which he tells us that +“the language now used varieth far from that which was +used and spoken when I was born.” An absence of thirty +years from his native land did not improve a diction which +originally had been none of the purest. We find in his +translations an abundance of pure French words, and it is +remarkable that the printer of the third edition of the +Troy history, in 1607, altered whole sentences “into +plainer English,” alleging, “the translator, William +Caxton, being, <i>as it seemeth</i>, no Englishman!”</p> + +<p>The “curious” prices now given among the connoisseurs +of our earliest typography for their “Caxtons,” as his +Gothic works are thus honourably distinguished, have +induced some, conforming to traditional prejudice, to +appreciate by the same fanciful value “the Caxtonian +style.” But though we are not acquainted with the “defauts” +which offended the Lady Margaret, nor with the “terms +which were not easily understood,” as alleged by “the +gentlemen,” nor with “the sentences improperly Englished,” +as the later printer declared, we shall not, I +suspect, fall short of the mark if we conclude that the +style of a writer destitute of a literary education, a prolix +genius with a lax verbosity, and almost a foreigner in his +native idiom, could not attain to any skill or felicity in the +maternal tongue.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page218" id="page218"></a>218</span></p> + +<p>As a printer, without erudition, Caxton would naturally +accommodate himself to the tastes of his age, and it was +therefore a consequence that no great author appears +among “the Caxtons.” The most glorious issues of his +press were a Chaucer and a Gower, wherein he was simply +a printer. The rest of his works are translations of +fabulous histories, and those spurious writings of the +monkish ages ascribed by ignorant transcribers to some +ancient sage. He appears frequently to have been at a +loss what book to print, and to have accidentally chosen +the work in hand; so he tells us—“Having no work in +hand, I sitting in my study, where as lay many diverse +paunflettes and bookys, happened that to my hand came +a lytel boke in French, which late was translated out of +Latin by some noble clerk of France, which book is +named Æneydos.” And this was the origin of his puerile +romance! He exercised no discrimination in his selection +of authors, and the simplicity of our first printer far exceeded +his learning. One of his greater works is “The +noble History of King Arthur and of certain of his +Knights.” Caxton, who had charmed himself and his +ignorant readers with his authentic “Æneydos,” hesitated +to print “this history,” for there were different opinions +that “there was no such Arthur, and that all such books +as be made of him be but feigned and fables.” It would +be difficult to account for the scepticism of one who +always found the marvellous more delectable than the +natural, and who had published so many “feigned” histories—as +“The veray trew History of the valiant Knight +Jason,” or the “Life of Hercules,” and all “The Merveilles +of Virgil’s Necromancy,” solemnly vouching for +their verity! His sudden scruples were, however, relieved, +when “a gentleman” assured our printer that “it was +great folly and blindness in the disbelievers of this true +history.”</p> + +<p>In the early stage of civilization men want knowledge +to feel any curiosity; like children, they are only affected +through the medium of their imagination. But it is a +phenomenon in the history of the human mind, that at a +period of refinement we may approximate to one of barbarism. +This happens when the ruling passion wholly +returns to fiction, and thus terminates in a reckless disregard +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page219" id="page219"></a>219</span> +for all other studies. Whenever history, severe +and lofty, displaying men as they are, is degraded among +the revels and the masques of romance; and the slow +inductions of reasoning, and the minute discoveries of +research, and the nice affinities of analogy, are impatiently +rejected, while fiction in her exaggerated style swells every +object into a colossal size, and raises every passion into +hyperbolical violence; a distaste for knowledge, and a +coldness for truth, which must follow, are fatal to the +sanity of the intellect. And thus in the day of our refinement +we may be reverting to our barbarous infancy.</p> + +<p>Caxton, mindful of his commercial interests and the +taste of his readers, left the glory of restoring the classical +writers of antiquity, which he could not read, to the +learned printers of Italy.<a name="fa2c20" id="fa2c20" href="#ft2c20"><span class="sp">2</span></a> The Orator of Cicero, the +histories of Herodotus and Polybius, the ethics of Seneca, +and the elaborate volumes of St. Austin, were some of the +rich fruits of the early typography of the German printers +who had conveyed their new art to the Neapolitan +monastery of Subiaco. Our English printer, indeed, might +have heard of their ill-fortune, when, in a petition to the +Pope, they sent forth this cry—“Our house is full of +proof-sheets, but we have nothing to eat!” The trivial +productions from Caxton’s press, romantic or religious +legends, and treatises on hunting and hawking, and the +moralities of the game of chess, with Reynard the Fox, +were more amusing to the ignorant readers of his country; +but the national genius was little advanced by a succession +of “merveillous workes;” nor would the crude, unformed +tastes of the readers be matured by stimulating +their inordinate appetites. The first printing-press in +England did not serve to raise the national taste out of +its barbarous infancy. Caxton was not a genius to soar +beyond his age, but he had the industry to keep pace with +it, and with little judgment and less learning he found no +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page220" id="page220"></a>220</span> +impediment in his selection of authors or his progress in +translation.</p> + +<p>Our earliest printed works consist of these translations +of French translations; and the historian of our poetry +considered that this very circumstance, which originated +in the general illiteracy of the times, was more favourable +to our vernacular literature than would have been the +publication of Roman writers in their original language. +Had it not been for these French versions, Caxton could +not have furnished any of his own. The multiplication of +English copies multiplied English readers, and when at +length there was a generation of readers, an English press +induced many to turn authors who were only qualified to +write in their native tongue.</p> + +<p>Venerable shade of Caxton! the award of the tribunal +of posterity is a severe decision, but an imprescriptible +law! Men who appear at certain eras of society, however +they be lauded for what they have done, are still liable to +be censured for not doing what they ought to have done. +Patriarch of the printing-press! who to thy last and +dying day withdrew not thy hand from thy work, it is +hard that thou shouldst be amenable to a law which thy +faculties were not adequate to comprehend; surely thou +mayst triumph, thou simple man! amid the echoes of thy +“Caxtonians” rejoicing over thy Gothic leaves—but the +historian of the human mind is not the historian of +typography.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c20" id="ft1c20" href="#fa1c20"><span class="fn">1</span></a> “State Papers of Henry the Eighth,” vol. i. 589.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c20" id="ft2c20" href="#fa2c20"><span class="fn">2</span></a> We have Caxton’s own confession in his preface to “The Book of +Æneydos,” or the Æneid of Virgil, where, in soliciting the late-created +poet-laureat in the University of Oxford, John Skelton, to oversee +his prose translation of the French translation, he notices the translations +of Skelton of “The Epistles of Tully,” and the “History of Diodorus +Siculus,” <i>out of Latin into English</i>, and as “one that had read +Virgil, Ovid, Tully, and all the other noble poets and orators to <i>me +unknown</i>.”</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page221" id="page221"></a>221</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">EARLY LIBRARIES.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">There</span> probably was a time when there existed no private +libraries in the kingdom, nor any save the monastic; that +of Oxford, at the close of the thirteenth century, consisted +of “a few tracts kept in chests.” In that primeval age +of book-collecting, shelves were not yet required. Royalty +itself seems to have been destitute of a royal library. It +appears, by one of our recently published records, that +King John borrowed a volume from a rich abbey, and the +king gave a receipt to Simon his Chancellor for “the book +called Pliny,” which had been in the custody of the Abbot +and Convent of Reading. “The Romance of the History +of England,” with other volumes, have also royal receipts. +The king had either deposited these volumes for security +with the Abbot, or, what seems not improbable, had no +established collection which could be deemed a library, +and, as leisure or curiosity stimulated, commanded the +loan of a volume.</p> + +<p>The borrowing of a volume was a serious concern in +those days, and heavy was the pledge or the bond required +for the loan. One of the regulations of the library of the +Abbey of Croyland, Ingulphus has given. It regards +“the lending of their books, as well the smaller without +pictures as the larger with pictures;” any loan is forbidden +under no less a penalty than that of excommunication, +which might possibly be a severer punishment than the +gallows.</p> + +<p>Long after this period, our English libraries are said to +have been smaller than those on the Continent; and yet, +one century and a half subsequently to the reign of John, +the royal library of France, belonging to a monarch who +loved literature, Jean le Bon, did not exceed ten volumes. +In those days they had no idea of establishing a library; +the few volumes which each monarch collected, at great +cost, were always dispersed by gifts or bequests at their +death; nothing passed to their successor but the missals, the +<i>heures</i>, and the <i>offices</i> of their chapels. These monarchs +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page222" id="page222"></a>222</span> +of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, amid the prevailing +ignorance of the age, had not advanced in their +comprehension of the uses of a permanent library beyond +their great predecessor of the ninth, for Charlemagne had +ordered his books to be sold after his death, and the money +given to the poor.</p> + +<p>Yet among these early French kings there were several +who were lovers of books, and were not insensible of the +value of a studious intercourse, anxious to procure transcribers +and translators. A curious fact has been recorded +of St. Louis, that, during his crusade in the East, having +learned that a Saracen prince employed scribes to copy the +best writings of philosophy for the use of students, on his +return to France he adopted the same practice, and caused +the Scriptures and the works of the Fathers to be transcribed +from copies found in different abbeys. These +volumes were deposited in a secure apartment, to which +the learned might have access; and he himself passed +much of his time there, occupied in his favourite study, +the writings of the Fathers.<a name="fa1c21" id="fa1c21" href="#ft1c21"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p>Charles le Sage, in 1373, had a considerable library, +amounting to nine hundred volumes. He placed this collection +in one of the towers of the Louvre, hence denominated +the “Tour de la Librarie,” and entrusted it to the custody +of his valet-de-chambre, Gilles Malet, constituting him his +librarian.<a name="fa2c21" id="fa2c21" href="#ft2c21"><span class="sp">2</span></a> He was no common personage, for great as +was the care and ingenuity required, he drew up an inventory +with his own hand of this royal library. In that +early age of book-collecting, volumes had not always titles +to denote their subjects, or they contained several in one +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page223" id="page223"></a>223</span> +volume,<a name="fa3c21" id="fa3c21" href="#ft3c21"><span class="sp">3</span></a> hence they are described by their outsides, their +size, and their shape, their coverings and their clasps. +This library of Charles the Fifth shines in extreme splendour, +with its many-coloured silks and velvets, azure and +vermeil, green and yellow, and its cloths of silver and of +gold, each volume being distinctly described by the colour +and the material of its covering. This curious document +of the fourteenth century still exists.<a name="fa4c21" id="fa4c21" href="#ft4c21"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> + +<p>This library passed through strange vicissitudes. The +volumes in the succeeding reigns were seized on, or purchased +at a conqueror’s price, by the Duke of Bedford, +Regent of France. Some he gave to his brother Humphrey, +the Duke of Gloucester, and they formed a part of +the rich collection which that prince presented to Oxford, +there finally to be destroyed by a fanatical English mob; +others of the volumes found their way back to the Louvre, +repurchased by the French at London. The glorious missal +that bears the Regent’s name remains yet in this country, +the property of a wealthy individual.<a name="fa5c21" id="fa5c21" href="#ft5c21"><span class="sp">5</span></a></p> + +<p>Accident has preserved a few catalogues of libraries of +noblemen in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, more +pleasant than erudite. In the fourteenth century, the +volumes consisted for the greater part of those romances +of chivalry, which so long formed the favourite reading of +the noble, the dame and the damoiselle, and all the lounging +damoiseaux in the baronial castle.<a name="fa6c21" id="fa6c21" href="#ft6c21"><span class="sp">6</span></a></p> + +<p>The private libraries of the fifteenth century were restricted +to some French tomes of chivalry, or to “a merrie +tale in Boccace;” and their science advanced not beyond +“The Shepherd’s Calendar,” or “The Secrets of Albert +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page224" id="page224"></a>224</span> +the Great.” There was an intermixture of legendary lives +of saints, and apocryphal adventures of “Notre Seigneur” +in Egypt; with a volume or two of physic and surgery +and astrology.</p> + +<p>A few catalogues of our monastic libraries still remain, +and these reflect an image of the studies of the middle +ages. We find versions of the Scriptures in English and +Latin—a Greek or Hebrew manuscript is not noted down; +a commentator, a father, and some schoolmen; and a writer +on the canon law, and the mediæval Christian poets who +composed in Latin verse. A romance, an accidental classic, +a chronicle and legends—such are the usual contents of +these monastic catalogues. But though the subjects seem +various, the number of volumes were exceedingly few. Some +monasteries had not more than twenty books. In such +little esteem were any writings in the vernacular idiom +held, that the library of Glastonbury Abbey, probably the +most extensive in England, in 1248, possessed no more +than four books in English,<a name="fa7c21" id="fa7c21" href="#ft7c21"><span class="sp">7</span></a> on religious topics; and in +the later days of Henry the Eighth, when Leland rummaged +the monasteries, he did not find a greater number. +The library of the monastery of Bretton, which, owing to +its isolated site, was among the last dissolved, and which +may have enlarged its stores with the spoils of other collections +which the times offered, when it was dissolved in +1558, could only boast of having possessed one hundred +and fifty distinct works.<a name="fa8c21" id="fa8c21" href="#ft8c21"><span class="sp">8</span></a></p> + +<p>In this primitive state of book-collecting, a singular +evidence of their bibliographical passion was sometimes +apparent in the monastic libraries. Not deeming a written +catalogue, which might not often be opened, sufficiently +attractive to remind them of their lettered +stores, they inscribed verses on their windows to indicate +the books they possessed, and over these inscriptions +they placed the portraits of the authors. Thus +they could not look through their windows without +being reminded of their volumes; and the very portraits +of authors, illuminated by the light of heaven, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page225" id="page225"></a>225</span> +might rouse the curiosity which many a barren title would +repel.<a name="fa9c21" id="fa9c21" href="#ft9c21"><span class="sp">9</span></a></p> + +<p>To us accustomed to reckon libraries by thousands, these +scanty catalogues will appear a sad contraction of human +knowledge. The monastic studies could not in any degree +have advanced the national character; they could only +have kept it stationary; and, excepting some scholastic +logomachies, in which the people could have no concern, +one monkish writer could hardly ever have differed from +another.</p> + +<p>The monastic libraries have been declared to have +afforded the last asylums of literature in a barbarous era; +and the preservation of ancient literature has been ascribed +to the monks: but we must not accept a fortuitous occurrence +as any evidence of their solicitude or their taste. +In the dull scriptorium of the monk, if the ancient +authors always obtained so secure a place, they slept in +comparative safety, for they were not often disturbed by +their first Gothic owners, who hardly ever allude to them. +If ancient literature found a refuge in the monastic establishments, +the polytheistical guests were not slightly +contemned by their hosts, who cherished with a different +taste a bastardised race of the Romans. The purer +writers were not in request; for the later Latin verse-makers +being Christians, the piety of the monks proved to +be infinitely superior to their taste. Boethius was their +great classic; while Prudentius, Sedulius, and Fortunius, +carried the votes against Virgil, Horace, and even Ovid; +though Ovid was in some favour for his marvellous Romance. +The polytheism of the classical poets was looked +on with horror, so literally did they construe the allegorical +fables of the Latin muse. Even till a later day, +when monkery itself was abolished, the same Gothic taste +lingered among us in its aversion to the classical poets of +antiquity, as the works of idolaters!</p> + +<p>Had we not obtained our knowledge of the great ancients +by other circumstances than by their accidental +preservation by the monks, we should have lost a whole +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page226" id="page226"></a>226</span> +antiquity. The vellum was considered more precious than +the genius of the author; and it has been acutely conjectured +that the real cause of the minor writers of antiquity +having come down to us entire, while we have to lament +for ever the lacerations of the greater, has been owing to +the scantiness of the parchment of a diminutive volume. +They coveted the more voluminous authors to erase some +immortal page of the lost decades of Livy, or the annals of +Tacitus, to inscribe on it some dull homily or saintly +legend. That the ancients were neglected by these guardians +appears by the dungeon-darkness from which the +Italian Poggio disinterred many of our ancient classics; +and Leland, in his literary journey to survey the monastic +libraries of England, often shook from the unknown +author a whole century of dust and cobwebs. When +libraries became one source of the pleasures of life, the +lovers of books appear to have been curious in selecting +their site for perfect seclusion and silence amid their noble +residences, and also in their contrivances to arrange their +volumes, so as to have them at instant command. One of +these Gothic libraries, in an old castle belonging to the +Percys, has been described by Leland with congenial delight. +I shall transcribe his words, accommodating the +reader with our modern orthography.</p> + +<p>“One thing I liked extremely in one of the towers; +that was a <span class="scs">STUDY</span> called <span class="scs">PARADISE</span>; where was a closet in the +middle of eight squares latticed ‘abrate;’ and at the top +of every square was a desk ledged to set books on, on +coffers within them, and these seemed as joined hard to +the top of the closet; and yet by pulling, one or all would +come down breast-high in rabbets (or grooves), and serve +for desks to lay books on.”</p> + +<p>However clumsy this invention in “Paradise” may +seem to us, it was not more so than the custom of chaining +their books to the shelves, allowing a sufficient length +of chain to reach the reading-desk—a mode which long +prevailed when printing multiplied the cares of the +librarian.</p> + +<table class="nobctr" style="clear: both;" summary="Illustration"> +<tr><td class="figcenter"><img style="width:700px; height:516px" src="images/img2.jpg" alt="" /></td></tr> +<tr><td class="caption">London, Frederick Warne & C<span class="sp">o</span>.</td></tr></table> + +<p>All these libraries, consisting of manuscripts, were necessarily +limited in their numbers; their collectors had no +choice, but gladly received what occurred to their hands; +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page227" id="page227"></a>227</span> +it was when books were multiplied by the press, that the +minds of owners of libraries shaped them to their own +fancies, and stamped their characters on these companions +of their solitude.</p> + +<p>We have a catalogue of the library of Mary Queen of +Scots, as delivered up to her son James the Sixth, in +1578,<a name="fa10c21" id="fa10c21" href="#ft10c21"><span class="sp">10</span></a> very characteristic of her elegant studies; the +volumes chiefly consist of French authors and French +translations, a variety of chronicles, several romances, a few +Italian writers, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Ariosto, and her +favourite poets, Alain Chartier, Ronsard, and Marot. +This library forms a striking contrast with that of Elizabeth +of England, which was visited in 1598 by Hentzner, +the German traveller. The shelves at Whitehall displayed +a more classical array; the collection consisted of +Greek, Latin, as well as Italian and French books.</p> + +<p>The dearness of parchment, and the slowness of the +scribes, made manuscripts things only purchasable by +princely munificence. It was the discovery of paper from +rags, and the novel art of taking copies without penmen, +which made books mere objects of commerce, and dispersed +the treasures of the human mind free as air, and +cheap as bread.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c21" id="ft1c21" href="#fa1c21"><span class="fn">1</span></a> “Essai Historique sur la Bibliothèque du Roi,” par M. Le Prince.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c21" id="ft2c21" href="#fa2c21"><span class="fn">2</span></a> This Gilles Malet, who was also the king’s reader, had great +strength of character; he is thus described by Christine de Pise:—“Souverainement +bien lisoit, et bien ponttoit, et entendens homs +estoit;” “he read sovereignly well, with good punctuation, and was an +understanding man.” She has recorded a personal anecdote of him. +One day a fatal accident happened to his child, but such was the discipline +of official duties, that he did not interrupt his attendance on the +king at the usual hour of reading. The king having afterwards heard +of the accident which had bereaved the father of his child, observed, +“If the intrepidity of this man had not exceeded that which nature +bestows upon ordinary men, his paternal emotion would not have +allowed him to conceal his misfortune.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c21" id="ft3c21" href="#fa3c21"><span class="fn">3</span></a> The reader may form some idea of the discordant arrangement of a +volume of manuscripts by the following entries:—“Un Livre qui +commence de Genesis, et aussi traite des fais Julius Cesar, appelle +Suetoine.” “Un Livre en François, en un volume, qui ce commence +de Genesis, et traite du fait des Romains, de la vie des SS. Peres Hermites, +et de Merlin.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c21" id="ft4c21" href="#fa4c21"><span class="fn">4</span></a> “Hist. de l’Académie Royale des Inscriptions,” tome i. 421, +12mo.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c21" id="ft5c21" href="#fa5c21"><span class="fn">5</span></a> It has, within the last few years, been added to the British +Museum.—<span class="sc">Ed.</span></p> + +<p><a name="ft6c21" id="ft6c21" href="#fa6c21"><span class="fn">6</span></a> <i>Dame</i> was the lady of the knight; the <i>Damoiselle</i>, the wife of an +esquire; <i>Dameisel</i>, or <i>Damoiseau</i>, was a youth of noble extraction, +but who had not yet attained to knighthood.—Rocquefort, “Glossaire +de la Langue Romane.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c21" id="ft7c21" href="#fa7c21"><span class="fn">7</span></a> Ritson’s “Dissertation on Romance and Minstrelsy,” lxxxi.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c21" id="ft8c21" href="#fa8c21"><span class="fn">8</span></a> See an “Essay on English Monastic Libraries,” by that learned +and ingenious antiquary, the Rev. Joseph Hunter.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c21" id="ft9c21" href="#fa9c21"><span class="fn">9</span></a> Some of these extraordinary window-catalogues of the monastic +library of St. Albans were found in the cloisters and presbytery of +that monastery, and are preserved in the “Monasticon Anglicanum.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft10c21" id="ft10c21" href="#fa10c21"><span class="fn">10</span></a> Dibdin’s “Bibliographical Decameron,” iii. 245.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page228" id="page228"></a>228</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">HENRY THE SEVENTH.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">There</span> was a state of transition in our literature, both +classical and vernacular, which deserves our notice in the +progress of the genius of the nation.</p> + +<p>A prudent sovereign in the seventh Henry, amid factions +rather joined together than cemented, gave a +semblance of repose to a turbulent land, exhausted by its +convulsions. A martial rudeness still lingered among the +great; and we discover by a curious conversation which +the learned Pace held with some of the gentry, with +whom, perhaps, he had indiscreetly remonstrated, attempting +to impress on their minds the advantages of study, +that his advice was indignantly rejected. Such pursuits +seemed to them unmanly, and intolerable impediments in +the practice of those more active arts of life which alone +were worthy of one of gentle blood; their fathers had been +good knights without this idling toil of reading.</p> + +<p>Henry the Seventh, when Earl of Richmond, during his +exile in France from 1471 to 1485, had become a reader of +French romances, an admirer of French players, and an +amateur of their peculiar architecture. After his accession +we trace these new tastes in our poetry, our drama, and in +a novel species of architecture which Bishop Fox called +Burgundian, and which is the origin of the Tudor style.<a name="fa1c22" id="fa1c22" href="#ft1c22"><span class="sp">1</span></a> +A favourer of the histrionic art, he introduced a troop of +French players. Wary in his pleasures as in his politics, +this monarch was moderate in his patronage either of poets +or players, but he was careful to encourage both. The +queen participated in his tastes, and appears to have +bestowed particular rewards on “players”, whose performances +had afforded her unusual delight; and among +the curious items of her majesty’s expenditure, we find +that many of these players were foreigners—“a French +player, an Italian poet, a Spanish tumbler, a Flemish +tumbler, a Welshman for making a ryme, a maid that came +out of Spain and danced before the queen.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page229" id="page229"></a>229</span></p> + +<p>This monarch had suffered one of those royal marriages +which are a tribute paid to the interests of the State. +Henry had yielded with repugnance to a union with Elizabeth +the Yorkist; the sullen Lancastrian long looked on +his queen with the eyes of a factionist. Toward the latter +years of his life this repugnance seems to have passed +away, as this gentle consort largely participated in his +tastes. It was probably in their sympathy that the personal +prejudices of Henry melted away. This indeed was +a triumph of the arts of imagination over the warped feelings +of the individual; it marked the transition from +barbaric arms to the amenities of literature, and the +softening influence of the mimetic arts; it was the presage +of the magnificence of his successor. The nation was +benefited by these new tastes; the pacific reign made a +revolution in our court, our manners, and our literature.</p> + +<p>We may date from this period that happy intercourse +which the learned English opened with the Continent, +and more particularly with literary Italy; our learned +travellers now appear in number. Colet, the founder of St. +Paul’s School, not only passed over to Paris, but lingered +in Italy, and returned home with the enthusiasm of +classical antiquity. Grocyn, to acquire the true pronunciation +of the Greek, which he first taught at Oxford, +domesticated with Demetrius Chalcondyles and Angelo +Politian, at Florence. Linacre, the projector of the College +of Physicians, visited Rome and Florence. Lilly, the +grammarian, we find at Rhodes and at Rome, and the +learned Pace at Padua. We were thus early great literary +travellers; and the happier Continentalists, who rarely +move from their native homes, have often wondered at the +restless condition of those whom they have sometimes +reproached as being <i>Insulaires</i>; yet they may be reminded +that we have done no more than the most ancient philosophers +of antiquity. Our reproachers fortunately possessed +the arts, and even the learning, which we were +willing by travel and costs to acquire. “The Islanders” +may have combined all the knowledge of all the world, +a freedom and enlargement of the mind, which those, however +more fortunately placed, can rarely possess, who +restrict their locality and narrow their comprehension by +their own home-bound limits.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page230" id="page230"></a>230</span></p> + +<p>The king, delighting in poetry, fostered an English +muse in the learned rhyme of <span class="sc">Stephen Hawes</span>, who was +admitted to his private chamber, for the pleasure which +Henry experienced in listening to poetic recitation. It was +probably the taste of his royal master which inspired this +bard’s allegorical romance of chivalry, of love, and of science. +This elaborate work is “The Pastime of Pleasure, or +the History of Graunde Amour and la bell Pucell, +containing the knowledge of the seven sciences and the +course of man’s life.” At a time when sciences had no +reality, they were constantly alluding to them; ignorance +hardily imposed its erudition; and experimental philosophy +only terminated in necromancy. The seven sciences of +the accomplished gentleman were those so well known, +comprised in the scholastic distich.</p> + +<p>In the ideal hero “Graunde Amour,” is shadowed forth +the education of a complete gentleman of that day. From +the Tower of “Doctrine,” to the Castle of “Chivalry,” +the way lies equally open, but the progress is diversified by +many bye-paths, and a number of personified ideas or +allegorical characters. These shadowy actors lead to +shadowy places; but the abounding incidents relieve us +among this troop of passionless creatures.</p> + +<p>This fiction blends allegory with romance, and science +with chivalry. At the early period of printing, it was +probably the first volume which called in the graver’s art +to heighten the inventions of the writer, and the accompanying +wood-cuts are an evidence of the elegant taste of +the author, although that morose critic of all poesy, +honest Anthony à Wood, sarcastically concludes that these +cuts were “to enable the reader to understand the story +better.” This once courtly volume, our sage reports, “is +now thought but worthy of a ballad-monger’s stall.”<a name="fa2c22" id="fa2c22" href="#ft2c22"><span class="sp">2</span></a> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page231" id="page231"></a>231</span> +“The Pastime of Pleasure” was even despised by that +great book-collector, General Lord Fairfax, who, on the +copy he possessed, has left a memorandum “that it should +be changed for a better book!” The fate of books vacillates +with the fancies of book-lovers, and the improvements +of a later age. In the days of Fairfax, the gloom of the +civil wars annihilated their imaginations.</p> + +<p>But the gorgeousness of this romance struck the Gothic +fancy of the historian of our poetry, magic, chivalry, and +allegory! In the circumstantial analysis of Warton, the +reader may pursue his “course of man’s life” through +the windings of the labyrinth. It seems as if the patience +of the critic had sought a relief amid his prolonged chronicle +of obscure versifiers, in a production of imagination, +the only one which had appeared since Chaucer, and which, +to the contemplative poetic antiquary, showed him the +infant rudiments of the future Spenser.</p> + +<p>This allegorical romance is imbued with Provençal +fancy, and probably emulated the “Roman de la Rose,” +which could not fail to be a favourite with the royal patron, +among those French books which he loved. Fertile in +invention, it is, however, of the old stock; fresh meads +and delicious gardens,—ladies in arbours,—magical trials +of armed knights on horses of steel, which, touched by a +secret spring, could represent a tourney. We strike the +shield at the castle-gate of chivalry, and we view the +golden roof of the hall, lighted up by a carbuncle of prodigious +size; we repose in chambers walled with silver, +and enamelling many a story. There are many noble +conceptions among the allegorical gentry. She, whom +Graunde Amour first beheld was mounted on her palfrey, +flying with the wind, encircled with tongues of fire, and +her two milkwhite greyhounds, on whose golden collars +are inscribed in diamond letters, <i>Grace</i> and <i>Governance</i>. +She is Fame, her palfrey is Pegasus, and her burning +tongues are the voice of Posterity! There are some +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page232" id="page232"></a>232</span> +grotesque incidents, as in other romances; a monster +wildly created, the offspring of Disdain and Strangeness—a +demon composed of the seven metals! We have also a +dwarf who has to encounter a giant with seven heads; +our subdolous David mounts on twelve steps cut in the +rock; and to the surprise of the giant, he discovered in +“the boy whom he had mocked,” his equal in stature, and +his vanquisher, notwithstanding the inconceivable roar of +his seven heads!</p> + +<p>Warton transcribed a few lines to show this poet’s +“harmonious versification and clear expression;” but this +short specimen may convey an erroneous notion. Our +verse was yet irregular, and its modulation was accidental +rather than settled; the metrical lines of Hawes, for the +greater part, must be read rhythmically, it was a barbarism +that even later poets still retained. He also affected an +ornate diction; and Latin and French terms cast an air +of pedantry, more particularly when the euphony of his +verse is marred by closing his lines with his elongated +polysyllables; he probably imagined that the dimensions +of his words necessarily lent a grandeur to his thoughts. +With all these defects, Hawes often surpasses himself, and +we may be surprised that, in a poem composed in the court of +Henry the Seventh, about 1506, the poet should have left +us such a minutely-finished picture of female beauty as +he has given of La Pucelle; Hawes had been in Italy, and +seems with an artist’s eye to have dwelt on some picture +of Raphael, in his early manner, or of his master Perugino, +in his hard but elaborate style.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Her shining hair, so properly she dresses,</p> +<p>Aloft her forehead, with fayre golden tresses;</p> +<p>Her forehead stepe, with fayre browés ybent;</p> +<p>Her eyen gray; her nosé straight and fayre;</p> +<p>In her white cheeks, the faire bloudé it went</p> +<p>As among the white, the reddé to repayre;</p> +<p>Her mouthe right small; her breathe sweet of ayre;</p> +<p>Her lippes soft and ruddy as a rose;</p> +<p>No hart alive but it would him appose.</p> +<p>With a little pitte in her well-favoured chynne;</p> +<p>Her necke long, as white as any lillye,</p> +<p>With vaynés blewe, in which the bloude ranne in;</p> +<p>Her pappés rounde, and thereto right pretýe;</p> +<p>Her armés slender, and of goodly bodýe; + <span class="pagenum"><a name="page233" id="page233"></a>233</span></p> +<p>Her fingers small, and thereto right longe,</p> +<p>White as the milk, with blewé vaynes among;</p> +<p>Her feet propér; she gartred well her hose;</p> +<p>I never sawe so fayre a créatúre.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The reign of Henry the Seventh was a misty morning +of our vernacular literature, but it was the sunrise; and +though the road be rough, we discover a few names by +which we may begin to count—as we find on our way a +mile-stone, which, however rudely cut and worn out, serves +to measure our distances.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c22" id="ft1c22" href="#fa1c22"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Speed’s “History,” 995.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c22" id="ft2c22" href="#fa2c22"><span class="fn">2</span></a> This forlorn volume of Anthony’s “Stalls” is now a gem placed +in the caskets of black-letter. This poetic romance, by its excessive +rarity,—the British Museum is without a copy,—has obtained +most extraordinary prices among our collectors. A copy of the first +edition at the Roxburgh sale reached 84<i>l.</i>, which was sold at Sir +M. M. Sykes’ for half the price; later editions, for a fourth. A +copy was sold at Heber’s sale for 25<i>l.</i> It may, however, relieve the +distress of some curious readers to be informed that it may now +be obtained at the most ordinary cost of books. Mr. <span class="sc">Southey</span>, with +excellent judgment, has preserved the romance in his valuable volume +of “Specimens of our Ancient Poets,” from the time of Chaucer; it is +to be regretted, however, that the text is not correctly printed, and +that the poem has suffered mutilation—six thousand lines seem to have +exhausted the patience of the modern typographer. [A more perfect +and accurate edition, from that printed in 1555, was published by the +Percy Society in 1845, under the editorship of Mr. Thos. Wright.]</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page234" id="page234"></a>234</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">FIRST SOURCES OF MODERN HISTORY.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Society</span> must have considerably advanced ere it could have +produced an historical record; and who could have furnished +even the semblance but the most instructed class, +in the enjoyment of uninterrupted leisure, among every +people? History therefore remained long a consecrated +thing in the hands of the priesthood, from the polytheistical +era of the Roman Pontiffs who registered their annals, +to the days that the history of Christian Europe became +chronicled by the monastic orders.<a name="fa1c23" id="fa1c23" href="#ft1c23"><span class="sp">1</span></a> Had it not been for +the monks, exclaimed our learned Marsham, we should not +have had a history of England.</p> + +<p>The monks provided those chronicles which have served +both for the ecclesiastical and civil histories of every +European people. In every abbey the most able of its +inmates, or the abbot himself, was appointed to record +every considerable transaction in the kingdom, and sometimes +extended their views to foreign parts. All these +were set down in a volume reserved for this purpose; and +on the decease of every sovereign these memorials were +laid before the general chapter, to draw out a sort of +chronological history, occasionally with a random comment, +as the humour of the scribe prompted, or the +opinions of the whole monastery sanctioned.</p> + +<p>Besides these meagre annals the monasteries had other +books more curious than their record of public affairs. +These were their Leiger-books, of which some have escaped +among the few reliques of the universal dissolution of the +monasteries. In these registers or diaries they entered +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page235" id="page235"></a>235</span> +all matters relating to their own monastery and its dependencies. +As time never pressed on the monkish secretary, +his notabilia runs on very miscellaneously. Here were +descents of families, and tenures of estates; authorities of +charters and of cartularies; curious customs of counties, +cities, and great towns. Strange accidents were not uncommon +then; and sometimes, between a miracle or a +natural phenomenon, a fugitive anecdote stole in. The +affairs of a monastery exhibited a moving picture of domestic +life. These religious houses, whose gate opened to +the wayfarer, and who were the distributors of useful +commodities to the neighbouring poor—for in their larger +establishments they included workmen of every class—did +not, however, maintain their munificence untainted by +mundane passions. Forged charters had often sealed their +possessions, and supposititious grants of mortuary donations +silently transferred the wealth of families. These +lords of the soil, though easy landlords, still cast an “evil +eye” on the lands of their neighbour. Even rival monasteries +have fought in meadows for the ownership; the +stratagems of war and the battle-array of two troops of +cudgelling monks might have furnished some cantos to an +epic, less comic perhaps than that of “The Rape of the +Bucket.”</p> + +<p>In the literary simplicity of the twelfth to the fourteenth +century, while every great monastery had its historian, +every chronicle derived its title from its locality; +thus, among others, were the Glastonbury, the Peterborough, +and the Abingdon Chronicles: and when +Leland, so late as the reign of Henry the Eighth, in his +search into monastic libraries, discovered one at St. +Neot’s, he was at a loss to describe it otherwise than as +“The Chronicle of St. Neot’s.” The famous Doomsday +Book was originally known as “Liber de Winton,” or +“The Winchester Book,” from its first place of custody. +The same circumstance occurred among our neighbours, +where <i>Les grandes Chroniques de Saint Denys</i> were so +called from having been collected or compiled by the +monks of that abbey. An abstract notion of history, or +any critical discrimination of one chronicle from another, +was not as yet familiar even to our scholars; and in the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page236" id="page236"></a>236</span> +dearth of literature the classical models of antiquity were +yet imperfectly contemplated.</p> + +<p>It is not less curious to observe that, at a time when +the literary celebrity of the monachal scribe could hardly +pass the boundaries of the monastery, and the monk himself +was restricted from travelling, bound by indissoluble +chains, yet this lone man, as if eager to enjoy a literary +reputation, however spurious, was not scrupulous in practising +certain dishonest devices. Before the discovery of +printing, the concealment of a manuscript for the purpose +of appropriation was an artifice which, if we may decide +by some rumours, more frequently occurred than has been +detected. Plagiarism is the common sin of the monkish +chronicler, to which he was often driven by repeating a +mouldy tale a hundred times told; but his furtive pen +extended to the capital crime of felony. I shall venture +to give a pair of literary anecdotes of monkish writers.</p> + +<p>Matthew of Paris, one of these chroniclers, is somewhat +esteemed, and Matthew of Westminster is censured, for +having copied in his “Flores Historiarum” the other +Matthew; but we need not draw any invidious comparison +between the two Matthews, since Matthew the first +had himself transcribed the work of Roger the Prior +of Wendover. The famous “Polychronicon,” which long +served as a text-book for the encyclopædic knowledge of the +fourteenth century, has two names attached to it, and one, +however false, which can never be separated from the +work, interwoven in its texture. This famed volume is +ascribed to Ranulph, or Ralph Higden of St. Werberg’s +Monastery, now the Cathedral of Chester. Ralph, that +he might secure the tenure of this awful edifice of +universal history for a thousand years, most subdolously +contrived that the initial letter of every chapter, when +put together, signified that Ralph, a monk of Chester, +had compiled the work. Centuries did not contradict the +assumption; but time, that blabber of more fatal secrets +than those of authors, discovered in the same monastery +that another brother Roger had laboured for the world +their universal history in his “Polycratica Temporum.” +On examination, the truth flashed! For lo! the peccant +pen of Ralph had silently transmigrated the “Polycratica” +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page237" id="page237"></a>237</span> +into the “Polychronicon,” and had only laid a trap +for posterity by his treacherous acrostics!<a name="fa2c23" id="fa2c23" href="#ft2c23"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p>These universal chroniclers usually opened, <i>ab initio</i>, +with the Creation, dispersed at Babel reach home, and +paused at the Norman Conquest. This was their usual +first division; it was a long journey, but a beaten path. +Whatever they found written was history to them, for +they were without means of correcting their aptitude for +credence. Their anachronisms often ludicrously give the +lie to their legendary statements.</p> + +<p>Most of these monastic writers composed in a debased +Latinity of their own, bald and barbarous, but which had +grown up with the age; their diction bears a rude sort of +simplicity. Yet though they were not artists, there were +occasions when they were inevitably graphic—when they +detail like a witness in court. These writers have been +lauded by the gratitude of antiquaries, and valued by +philosophical historians. A living historian has observed +of them, that “nothing can be more contemptible as compositions; +nothing can be more satisfactory as authorities.” +But it is necessary that we should be reminded of the +partial knowledge and the partial passions of these sources +of our earlier modern history. Lift the cowl from the +historiographers in their cells recording those busy events +in which they never were busied, characterising those +eminent persons from whom they were far removed; +William of Malmesbury, not one of the least estimable of +these writers, confesses that he drew his knowledge from +public rumours, or what the relaters of news brought to +them.<a name="fa3c23" id="fa3c23" href="#ft3c23"><span class="sp">3</span></a> In some respects their history sinks to the level +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page238" id="page238"></a>238</span> +of one of our newspapers, and is as liable to be tinged +with party feelings. The whole monastery had as limited +notions of public affairs as they had of the kingdom itself, +of which they knew but little out of their own county.</p> + +<p>No monastic writer, as an historian, has descended to +posterity for the eminence of his genius, for the same +stamp of mind gave currency to their works. Woe to the +sovereign who would have clipt their wings! then +“tongues talked and pens wrote” monkish. There was a +proverb among them, that “The giver is blessed, but he +who taketh away is accursed.” None but themselves +could appeal to Heaven, and for their crowned slaves they +were not penurious of their beatitude. They knew to +crouch as well as to thunder. They usually clung to the +reigning party; and a new party or a change of dynasty +was sure to change their chronicling pen. <span class="sc">Hall</span>, the +chronicler of Henry the Eighth, at the first moment when +it was allowable to speak distinctly concerning these +monkish writers, observed, “These monastical persons, +learned and unliterate, better fed than taught, took on +them to write and register in the book of fame the arts, +and doings, and politic governance of kings and princes.” +It seems not to have occurred to the chronicler of Henry +the Eighth that, had not those monks “taken on them to +write and register,” we should have had no “Book of +Fame.” It is a duty we owe to truth to penetrate into +the mysteries of monkery, but the monks will always retain +their right to receive their large claims on our +admiration of their labours.</p> + +<p>There was also another class of early chroniclers throughout +Europe; men who filled the office of a sort of royal +historiographer, who accompanied the king and the army +in their progress, to note down the occurrences they +deemed most honourable or important to the nation. But +incidents written down by a monk in his cell, or by a +diarist pacing the round with majesty, would be equally +warped, by the views of the monastery in the one case, or +by a flattering subservience to the higher power in the +other.</p> + +<p>In this manner the early history of Europe was written; +the more ancient part was stuffed with fables; and when it +might have become useful in recording passages and persons +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page239" id="page239"></a>239</span> +of the writer’s own times, we have a one-sided tale, +wherein, while half is suppressed, the other is disguised by +flattery or by satire. Such causes are well known to have +corrupted these first origins of modern history, a history +in which the commons and the people at large had very +little concern, till the day arrived, in the progress of +society, when chronicles were written by laymen in the +vernacular idiom for their nation.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c23" id="ft1c23" href="#fa1c23"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Archbishop Plegmund superintended the Saxon Annals to the year +891. The first Chronicles, those of Kent or Wessex, were regularly +continued by the Archbishops of Canterbury, or by their directions, as +far as 1000, or even 1070.—“The Rev. Dr. Ingram’s preface to the +Saxon Chronicle.”</p> + +<p>These were our earliest Chronicles; the Britons possibly never +wrote any.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c23" id="ft2c23" href="#fa2c23"><span class="fn">2</span></a> We have a remarkable instance among the Italian historians of +this period. Giovanni Villani wrote about 1330; Muratori discovered +that Villani had wholly transcribed the ancient portion of his history +from an old Chronicle of Malespini, who wrote about 1230, without +any acknowledgment whatever. Doubtless Villani imagined that an +insulated manuscript, during a century’s oblivion, had little chance of +ever being classed among the most ancient records of Italian history. +Malespini’s “Chronicle,” like its brothers, was stuffed with fables; +Villani was honest enough not to add to them, though not sufficiently +so not silently to appropriate the whole chronicle—the only one Dante +read.—“Tiraboschi,” v. 410, part 2nd.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c23" id="ft3c23" href="#fa3c23"><span class="fn">3</span></a> We have an elegant modern version of this monk’s history by the +Rev. J. Sharpe.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page240" id="page240"></a>240</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">ARNOLDE’S CHRONICLE.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Very</span> early in the sixteenth century appeared a volume +which seems to have perplexed our literary historians by +its mutable and undefinable character. It is a book without +a title, and miscalled by the deceptive one of +“Arnolde’s Chronicle, or the Customs of London;” but +“the Customs” are not the manners of the people, but +rather “the Customs” of the Custom-House, and it in no +shape resembles, or pretends to be “a chronicle.” This +erroneous title seems to have been injudiciously annexed +to it by Hearne the antiquary, and should never have been +retained. This anomalous work, of which there are three +ancient editions, had the odd fate of all three being sent +forth without a title and without a date; and our bibliographers +cannot with any certainty ascertain the order or +precedence of these editions. One edition was issued from +the press of a Flemish printer at Antwerp, and possibly +may be the earliest. The first printer, whether English +or Flemish, was evidently at a loss to christen this monstrous +miscellaneous babe, and ridiculously took up the +title and subjects of the first articles which offered themselves, +to designate more than a hundred of the most +discrepant variety. The ancient editions appeared as +“The names of the Baylyfs, Custos, Mayres, and Sherefs +of the Cyte of London, with the Chartour and Lybartyes +of the same Cyte, &c. &c., with other dyvers matters good +and necessary for every Cytezen to understand and know;”—a +humble title equally fallacious with the higher one of a +“Chronicle,” for it has described many objects of considerable +curiosity, more interesting than “mayors and sheriffs,” +and even “the charter and liberties” of “the cyte.”</p> + +<p>In conveying a notion of a jumble,<a name="fa1c24" id="fa1c24" href="#ft1c24"><span class="sp">1</span></a> though the things +themselves are sufficiently grave, we cannot avoid a ludicrous +association; yet this should not lessen the value of +its information.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page241" id="page241"></a>241</span></p> + +<p>A considerable portion of this medley wholly relates to +the municipal interests of the citizens of London—charters +and grants, with a vast variety of forms or models of +public and private instruments, chiefly of a commercial +description. Parish ordinances mix with Acts of Parliament; +and when we have conned the oath of the beadle +of the ward, we are startled by Pope Nicholas’ Bull. We +have the craft of grafting trees and altering of fruits, as +well in colour as in taste, close to an oration of the messenger +of “the Soudan of Babylon” to the Pope in 1488. +Indeed, we have many more useful crafts, besides the +altering of the flavour of fruits, and the oration of the +Mahometan to the representative of St. Peter; for here +are culinary receipts, to keep sturgeon, to make vinegar +“shortly,” “percely to grow in an hour’s space,” and to +make ypocras, straining the wine through a bag of spices—it +was nothing more than our mulled wine; and further, +are receipts to make ink, and compound gunpowder, to +make soap, and to brew beer. Whether we may derive +any fresh hints from our ancestor of the year 1500 exceeds +my judgment; but to this eager transcriber posterity owes +one of the most passionate poems in our language; for +betwixt “the composition between the merchants of England +and the town of Antwerp,” and “the reckoning to +buy wares in Flanders,” first broke into light “A Ballade +of the Notbrowne Mayde.” Thus, when an indiscriminating +collector is at work, one cannot foresee what +good fortune may not chance to be his lot.</p> + +<p>Warton has truly characterised this work as “the most +heterogeneous and multifarious miscellany that ever existed;” +but he seems to me to have mistaken both the +design of the collector, and the nature of the collection. +Some supposed that the collector, Richard Arnolde, intended +the volume to be an antiquarian repertory; but as the +materials were recent, that idea cannot be admitted; and +Warton censures the compiler, who, to make up a volume, +printed together whatever he could amass of notices and +papers of every sort and subject. The modern editor of +“Arnolde’s Chronicle” was perplexed at the contents of +what he calls “a strange book.”</p> + +<p>The critical decision of Warton is much too searching +for a volume in which the compiler never wrote a single +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page242" id="page242"></a>242</span> +line, and probably never entertained the remotest idea of +the printer’s press. This book without a name is, in fact, +nothing more than a simple collection made by an English +merchant engaged in the Flemish trade. Nor was such a +work peculiar to this artless collector; for in a time of rare +publications, such men seemed to have formed for themselves +a sort of library, of matters they deemed worthy of +recollection, to which they could have easy recourse.<a name="fa2c24" id="fa2c24" href="#ft2c24"><span class="sp">2</span></a> By +the internal evidence, Arnolde was no stranger at Antwerp, +nor at Dordrecht. Antwerp was then a favourite residence +of the English merchants; there the typographic art +flourished, and the printers often printed English books; +and as this collection was printed at Antwerp by Doesborowe, +a Flemish printer, we might incline with Douco +to infer that the Flemish was the first edition; for it +seems not probable that a foreign printer would have +selected an English volume of little interest to foreigners, +to reprint; although we can imagine that from personal +consideration, or by the accident of obtaining the manuscript, +he might have been induced to be the first publisher. +Whoever was the first printer, the collector himself seems +to have been little concerned in the publication, by the +suppression of his name, by the omission of a title, by not +prefixing a preface, nor arranging in any way this curious +medley of useful things, which he would familiarly turn to +as his occasions needed, and—if we may compare a grave +volume with the lightest—was of that class which ladies +call their “scrap-books,” and assuredly not, according to +its fallacious title, a <span class="scs">CHRONICLE</span>.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c24" id="ft1c24" href="#fa1c24"><span class="fn">1</span></a> In Oldys’ “British Librarian” there is an accurate analysis of the +work, in which every single article is enumerated.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c24" id="ft2c24" href="#fa2c24"><span class="fn">2</span></a> A similar volume to Arnolde’s may be found in the “Harl. MSS.,” +No. 2252.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page243" id="page243"></a>243</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE FIRST PRINTED CHRONICLE.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">The</span> first chronicle in our vernacular prose, designed for +the English people, was the earnest labour of one of themselves, +a citizen and alderman, and sometime sheriff of +London, <span class="sc">Robert Fabyan</span>. Here, for the first time, the +spectacle of English affairs, accompanied by what he has +called “A Concordance of Stories,” which included separate +notices of French history contemporaneous with the +periods he records, was opened for “the unlettered who +understand no Laten.” Our chronicler, in the accustomed +mode, fixes the periods of history by dates from +Adam or from Brute. He opens with a superfluous +abridgment of Geoffry of Monmouth—the “Polychronicon” +is one of his favourite sources, but his authorities +are multifarious. His French history is a small stream +from “La Mere des Chroniques,” and other chronicles of his +contemporary Gaguin, a royal historiographer who wandered +in the same taste, but who, Fabyan had the sagacity +to discover, carefully darkened all matters unpleasant +to Frenchmen, but never “leaving anything out of +his book that may sound to the advancement of the +French nacyon.”</p> + +<p>It was a rare occurrence in a layman, and moreover a +merchant, to have cultivated the French and the Latin +languages. Fabyan was not a learned man, for the age of +men of learning had not yet arrived, though it was soon +to come. At that early day of our typography, when our +native annalists lay scattered in their manuscript seclusion, +it was no ordinary delving which struck into the +dispersed veins of the dim and dark mine of our history. +So little in that day was the critical knowledge of our +writers, that Fabyan has “quoted the same work under +different appellations,” and some of our historical writers +he seems not to have met with in his researches, for the +chronicles of Robert of Gloucester and of Peter Langtoft, +though but verse, would have contributed some freshness +to his own. In seven unequal divisions, the chronicle +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page244" id="page244"></a>244</span> +closes with the days of the seventh Henry. These seven +divisions were probably more fantastical than critical; the +number was adopted to cheer the good man with “the +seven joys of the Virgin,” which he sings forth in unmetrical +metre, evidently participating in the rapturous termination +of each of his own “seven joys.”</p> + +<p>Our grave chronicler, arrayed in his civic dignities, +seems to have provoked the sensitiveness of the poetical +critic in Warton, and the caustic wit in Horace Walpole. +“No sheriff,” exclaims Walpole, “was ever less qualified +to write a history of England. He mentions the deaths +of princes and revolutions of government with the same +phlegm and brevity as he would speak of the appointment +of churchwardens.”</p> + +<p>We may suspect that our citizen and chronicler, however +he might be familiar with the public acts of royalty, +had no precise notions of the principles of their government. +We cannot otherwise deem of an historical recorder +whose political sagacity, in that famous interview +between our Edward the Fourth and Louis the Eleventh, +of which Comines has left us a lively scene, could not +penetrate further than to the fashion of the French +monarch’s dress. He tells us of “the nice and wanton disguised +apparel that the King Louys wore upon him at the +time of this meeting, <i>I might make a long rehearsal</i>, apparalled +more like a minstrel than a prince.” Fabyan shared +too in the hearty “John Bullism” of that day in a +mortal jealousy of the Gaul, and even of his <i>Sainte +Ampoule</i>. Though no man had a greater capacity of faith +for miracles and saints on English ground, yet for those +of his neighbours he had found authority that it was not +necessary for his salvation to believe them, and has ventured +to decide on one, that “they must be folys (fools) +who believe it.” Had the <i>Sainte Ampoule</i>, however, +been deposited in Westminster Abbey for our own coronations, +instead of the Cathedral at Rheims for a French +king, Fabyan had not doubted of the efficacy of every +drop of the holy oil.</p> + +<p>But the dotage of <span class="sc">Fabyan</span> did not particularly attach +to him; and though his intellectual comprehension was +restricted to the experience of an alderman, he might have +been the little Machiavel of his wardmote—for he has +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page245" id="page245"></a>245</span> +thrown out a shrewd observation, which no doubt we owe +to his own sagacity. In noticing the neglect of a mayor +in repairing the walls which had been begun by his predecessor, +he observes that this generally happens, for “one +mayor will not finish that thing which another beginneth, +for then they think, be the deed ever so good and profitable, +that the honour thereof shall be ascribed to the +beginner, and not to the finisher, which lack of charity +and desire of vainglory causeth many good acts and deeds +to die, and grow out of mind, to the great decay of the +commonwealth of the city.” A profound observation, +which might be extended to monarchs as well as mayors.</p> + +<p>Indulging too often the civic curiosity of “a citizen and +alderman,” <span class="sc">Fabyan</span> has been taunted for troubling posterity. +“<span class="sc">Fabyan</span>,” says Warton, “is equally attentive to +the succession of the mayors of London and the monarchs +of England. He seems to have thought the dinners at +Guildhall and the pageantries of the city companies more +interesting transactions than our victories in France and +our struggles for public liberty at home.”</p> + +<p>This seems to be a random stricture. The alderman, +indeed, has carefully registered the mayors and the sheriffs +of London; and the scientific in “high and low prices” +perhaps may be grateful that our pristine chronicler has +also furnished the prices of wheat, oxen, sheep, and +poultry—but we cannot find that he has commemorated +the diversified forms these took on the solemn tables of +the Guildhall, nor can we meet with the pasteboard pomps +of city pageants, one only being recorded, on the return of +Henry the Sixth from France.</p> + +<p>Our modern critic, composing in the spirit of our day, +alludes to “the struggle for public liberty”; but “public +liberty” must have been a very ambiguous point with the +honest citizen who had been a sad witness to the contests +of two murderous families, who had long sought their +mutual destruction, and long convulsed the whole land. +We may account for the tempered indifference, and “the +brief recitals” for which this simple citizen is reproached, +who had lived through such changeful and ensanguined +scenes, which had left their bleeding memories among the +families of his contemporaries.</p> + +<p>The faculties of Fabyan were more level with their +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page246" id="page246"></a>246</span> +objects when he had to chronicle the “tempestuous weathering +of thunder and lightning,” with the ominous fall +of a steeple, or “the image of our Lady” dashed down +from its roof; or when he describes the two castles in the +air, whence issued two armies, black and white, combating +in the skies till the white vanished! Such portents lasted +much later than the days of Fabyan, for honest Stowe +records what had once ushered in St. James’s night, when +the lightning and thunder coming in at the south window +and bursting on the north, the bells of St. Michael +were listened to with horror, ringing of themselves, while +ugly shapes were dancing on the steeple. Their natural +philosophy and their piety were long stationary, yet even +then some were critical in their remarks; for when Fabyan +recorded “flying dragons and fiery spirits in the air,” this +was corrected by omitting “the fiery spirits,” but agreeing +to “the flying dragons.” Fabyan, however, has preserved +more picturesque and ingenious visions in some +legends of saints or apparitions—still delightsome. These +legends formed their “Works of Fiction,” and were more +affecting than ours, for they were supernatural, and no one +doubted their verity.</p> + +<p>Our pristine chronicler, as we have seen, has received +hard measure from the two eminent critics of the eighteenth +century, who have censured as a history that which is +none. Chronicles were written when the science of true +history had yet no existence; a chronicle then in reality is +but a part of history. Every fact dispersed in its insulated +state refuses all combination; cause and effect lie remote +and obscured from each other; disguised by their ostensible +pretexts, the true motives of actions in the great actors +of the drama of history cannot be found in the chronological +chronicler. The real value of his diligence consists +in copiousness and discrimination; qualities rather adverse +to each other. <span class="sc">Fabyan</span> betrays the infirmities of the +early chronicler, not yet practised even in the art of simple +detail, without distinction of the importance or the insignificance +of the matters he records: his eager pen +reckoned the number without knowing to test the weight; +to him all facts appeared of equal worth, for all alike had +cost him the same toil; and thus he yields an abundance +without copiousness. In raising the curiosity which he +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page247" id="page247"></a>247</span> +has not satisfied for us, his mighty tome shrinks into a +narrow scope, and his imperfect narratives, brief and dry, +offer only the skeletons of history. The mere antiquarian +indeed prefers the chronicle to the history; the acquisition +of a fact with him is the limit of his knowledge, and he is +apt to dream that he possesses the superstructure when he +is only at work on the foundations.</p> + +<p>The Chronicle of <span class="sc">Fabyan</span> attracts our notice for a +remarkable incident attending its publication. The Chronicle +was finished in 1504, and remained in manuscript +during the author’s life, who died in 1512. The first +edition did not appear till 1516. The cause which delayed +the printing of an important work, for such it was in that +day, has not been disclosed; yet perhaps we might have +been interested to have learned whether this protracted +publication arose out of neglect difficult to comprehend, or +from the printer, reluctant to risk the cost, or from any +impediment from a higher quarter.</p> + +<p>Be this as it may, we possess the writer’s genuine +work, for the printer, Pynson, was faithful to his author. +The rarity of this first edition Bale, on a loose rumour +which no other literary historian has sanctioned, ascribes to +its suppression by Cardinal Wolsey, who is represented in +his fury to have condemned the volume to a public ignition, +which no one appears to have witnessed, for its “dangerous +exposition of the revenues of the clergy,” which is not +found in the volume. <span class="sc">Fabyan</span> truly was <i>ter Catholicus</i>; +he was of the old religion, dying in the odour of sanctity, +and was spared the trial of the new. The alderman’s +voluminous will is now for us at least as curious as anything +in his chronicle.<a name="fa1c25" id="fa1c25" href="#ft1c25"><span class="sp">1</span></a> We here behold the play of the +whole machinery of superstition, when men imagined that +they secured the repose of their souls by feeing priests +and bribing saints by countless masses. This funereal rite +was then called “the month’s mind,” and which, at least +for that short period, prolonged the memory of the departed. +For this lugubrious performance were provided +ponderous torches for the bearers, tapers for shrines, and +huge candlesticks to be kept lighted at the altar. Three +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page248" id="page248"></a>248</span> +trentballs—that is, thirty masses thrice told—were to be +chorused by the Grey Friars; six priests <span class="correction" title="amended from swere">were</span> to perform +the high mass, chant the requiem, and recite the <i>De Profundis</i> +and the <i>Dirige</i>; and for nine years, on his mortuary +day, he charges his “tenement in Cornhill” to pay +for an <i>Obite</i>! But not only friars and priests were to pray +or to sing for the repose of the soul of Alderman Fabyan, all +comers were invited to kneel around the tomb; and at +times children were to be called in, who if they could not +read a <i>De Profundis</i> from the Psalter, the innocents were +to cry forth a <i>Pater-Noster</i> or an <i>Ave</i>! There was a +purveyance of ribs of beef and mutton and ale, “stock-fish, +if Lent,” and other recommendations for “the comers +to the <i>Dirige</i> at night.” The Alderman, however, seems +to have planned a kind of economy in his “month’s mind,” +for not only was the repose of his soul in question, but +also “the souls of all above written”—and these were a +bead-roll of all the branches of Fabyan’s family.</p> + +<p>The Chronicle of <span class="sc">Fabyan</span> was not long given to the +world when it encountered the doom of a system at its +termination, just before the beginnings of a coming one; +that fatal period of a change in human affairs and human +opinions, usually described as a state of transition. But +in this particular instance, the change occurred preceded +by no transitional approach; for within the small circuit +of thirty years it seemed as if the events of whole +centuries had been more miraculously compressed, than +any in those “lives of the saints” whose legendary lore, +provided the saints were English, Master <span class="sc">Fabyan</span> had +loved to perpend. It was Henry the Eighth who turned +all the sense of our chronicler into nonsense, all his honest +faith into lying absurdities, all his exhortations to maintain +“religious houses” into treasonable matters.</p> + +<p>Successive editors of the editions of 1533, 43, and +55, surpassed each other in watchfulness, to rid themselves +of the old song. Never was author so mutilated in parts, +nor so wholly changed from himself; and when, as it +sometimes happened, neither purgation nor castration +availed the reforming critics, the author’s sides bore their +marginal flagellations. The corrections or alterations +were, however, dexterously performed, for the texture of +the work betrayed no trace of the rents. The omission +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page249" id="page249"></a>249</span> +of a phrase saved a whole sentence, and the change of an +adjective or two set right a whole character. It is true +they swept away all his delightful legends, without +sparing his woful metres of “the seven joys of the +Blessed Virgin,” and his appreciation of some favourite +relics. They disbanded all the saints, or treated them as +they did “the holy virgin Edith,” of whom Fabyan has +recorded that “many <i>virtues</i> be rehearsed,” which they +delicately reduced to <i>verses</i>. His Holiness the Pope is +simply “the Bishop of Rome;” and on one memorable +occasion—the Papal interdiction of John—this “Bishop” +is designated in the margin by the reformer as “that +monstrous and wicked Beast.” The narrative of Becket +cost our compurgators, as it has many others, much +shifting, and more omissions. In the tale of the hardy +and ambitious Archbishop murdered by knightly assassins, +Fabyan said, “They <i>martyred</i> the blessed Archbishop;” +our corrector of the press simply reads, “They slew the +traitorous Bishop.” The <i>omissions</i> and the commissions +in the Chronicle of <span class="sc">Fabyan</span> are often amusing and always +instructive; but these could not have been detected but +by a severe collation, which has been happily performed. +When the antiquary Brand discovered that <span class="sc">Fabyan</span> had +been “<i>modernized</i>” in later editions, his observation would +seem to have extended no further than to the style: but the +style of <span class="sc">Fabyan</span> is simple and clear even to modern +readers: modernized truly it was, not however for phrases, +but for notions—not for statements, but for omissions—not +for words, but for things.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c25" id="ft1c25" href="#fa1c25"><span class="fn">1</span></a> We are indebted to the zealous research of Sir Henry Ellis for the +disinterment of this document as well as for the collations which +appear in his edition.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page250" id="page250"></a>250</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">HENRY THE EIGHTH; HIS LITERARY +CHARACTER.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Peace</span> and policy had diffused a halcyon calmness over +the land, and the people now discerned the approach of +another era. Henry the Eighth, who appears with such +opposite countenances in the great gallery of history, gave +the country more glorious promises of an accomplished +sovereign than England had yet witnessed; and however +he may appear differently before the calm eye of posterity, +the passions of his own times secured his popularity even +to his latter days. Youthful, with all its vigorous and +generous temper, and not inferior in the majesty of his +intellect any more than in that of his person—learned in +his closet, yet enterprising in action—this sovereign impressed +his own commanding character on the nation. +Such a monarch gave wings to their genius. Long pent +up in their unhappy island, they soon indulged in a +visionary dominion in France, and in rapid victories in +Scotland; insular England once more aspired to be admitted +into the great European family of states; and +Henry was the arbiter of Francis of France, and of +Charles of Germany. The awakened spirit of the English +people unconsciously was preparatory to the day which +yet no one dreamed of. The minds of men were opening +to wider views; and he who sate on the throne was one +who would not be the last man in the kingdom to be +mindless of its progress.</p> + +<p>This lettered monarch himself professed authorship, and +a sceptre was his pen. When he sent forth a volume +which all Europe was to read, and was graced by a new +title which all Europe was to own, who dared to controvert +the crowned controversialist, or impugn the validity +of that airy title? His majesty alone was allowed to +confute himself.<a name="fa1c26" id="fa1c26" href="#ft1c26"><span class="sp">1</span></a> Trained from his early days in scholastic +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page251" id="page251"></a>251</span> +divinity, for he was designed to be an archbishop, +the volume, however aided by others, was the native +growth of his own mind. The king’s taste for this learning +was studiously flattered by the great cardinal, who +gently recommended to his restless master a perusal of the +nineteen folios of Thomas Aquinas, possibly with the hope +of fixing the royal fly in the repose of the cobwebs of the +schoolmen. Such, indeed, were his habits of study, that +he could interest himself in compiling a national Latin +grammar, when the schools succeeded to the dissolved +monasteries. The grammar was issued as an act of parliament; +no other but the royal grammar was to be +thumbed without incurring the peril of a premunire.<a name="fa2c26" id="fa2c26" href="#ft2c26"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p>It is to be regretted that we are supplied with but few +literary anecdotes of this literary monarch. Some we may +incidentally glean, and some may be deduced from inference. +The age was not yet far enough advanced in civilization +to enjoy that inquisitive leisure which leaves its +memorials for a distant posterity in the court tattle of a +Suetonius, or the secret history of a Procopius. It has, +however, been recorded that certain acts of parliament and +proclamations were corrected by the royal pen, and particularly +the first draught of the act which empowered +the king to erect bishoprics was written by his own hand; +and he was the active editor of those monarchical pamphlets, +as they may be classed, on religious topics, which +were frequently required during his reign.</p> + +<p>This learned monarch was unquestionably the first +patron of our vernacular literature; he indulged in a literary +intercourse with our earliest writers, and evinced a +keen curiosity on any novelty in the infant productions of +the English press. On frequent occasions he took a personal +interest in the success, and even in the concoction, +of literary productions. He fully entered into the noble +designs of Sir Thomas Elyot to create a vernacular style, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page252" id="page252"></a>252</span> +and critically discussed with him the propriety of the use +of new words, “apt for the purpose.” And on one occasion, +when Sir Thomas Elyot projected our first Latin +dictionary, the king, in the presence of the courtiers, commended +the design, and offered the author not only his +royal counsel, but a supply of such books as the royal +library possessed.</p> + +<p>The king was not offended, as were some of the courtiers, +with the freedom displayed by Elyot in some of his +ethical works. Elyot tells us—“His grace not only took +it in the better part, but with princely words, full of +majesty, commended my diligence, simplicity, and courage, +in that I spared no estate in the rebuking of vice.” The +king, at the same time that he protected Elyot from his +petty critics, rewarded the early efforts of another vernacular +author, who had dedicated to him his first work +in English prose, by a pension, which enabled the young +student, Roger Ascham, to set off on his travels. A +remarkable instance of Henry’s quick attention to the +novelties of our literature appears by his critical conversation +with the antiquary, Thynne, who had presented to +him his new edition of Chaucer. His Majesty soon discovered +the novelty of “The Pilgrim’s Tale,” a bitter +satire on the pride and state of the clergy, which at the +time was ascribed to Chaucer. The king pointing it out +to the learned editor, observed, in these very words—“William +Thynne! I doubt this will not be allowed, for +I suspect the bishops will call thee in question for it.” +The editor submitted, “If your grace be not offended, I +hope to be protected by you.” The king “bade him go! +and fear not!” It is evident that his majesty was “not +offended” at a severe satire on the clergy. But even +Henry the Eighth could not always change at will his +political position—the minister in power may find means +to counteract even the absolute king. A great stir was +made in Wolsey’s parliament; it was even proposed that +the works of Chaucer should be wholly suppressed—some +good-humoured sprite rose in favour of the only poet in +the nation, observing that all the world knew that Dan +Chaucer had never written anything more than fables! +The authority of Wolsey so far prevailed that “The Pilgrim’s +Tale” was suppressed, and it seems that the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page253" id="page253"></a>253</span> +haughty prelate would willingly have suppressed the +editor in his own person. <span class="sc">Thynne</span> was an intimate +acquaintance of <span class="sc">Skelton</span>, whose caustic rhymes of +“Colin Clout” had been concocted at his country-house. +<span class="sc">Thynne</span>, in this perilous adventure of publishing “The +Pilgrim’s Tale,” was saved from the talons of the cardinal, +for this monarch’s royal word was at all times +sacred with him.</p> + +<p>A literary anecdote of this monarch has been recently +disclosed, which at least attests his ardour for information. +When Henry wanted time, if not patience, to read a new +work, he put copies into the hands of two opposite characters, +and from the reports of these rival reviewers the +king ventured to deduce his own results. This method +of judging a work without meditating on it, was a new +royal cut in the road of literature, to which we of late +have been accustomed; but it seemed with Henry rather +to have increased the vacillations of his opinions, than +steadied the firmness of his decisions.</p> + +<p>The court of Henry displayed a brilliant circle of literary +noblemen, distinguished for their translations, and some +by their songs and sonnets. Parker, Lord Morley, was a +favourite for his numerous versions, some of which he +dedicated to the king; the witty Wyat, who always sustained +the anagram of his name, was a familiar companion; +nor could Henry be insensible to the elegant effusions of +Surrey, unless his political feelings indisposed his admiration. +It was at the king’s command that Lord Berners +translated the “Chronicles of Froissart,” and the volume +is adorned by the royal arms. Sternhold, the memorable +psalm-enditer, was a groom of the chamber, and a personal +favourite with his master; and Henry appointed the illustrious +Leland to search for and to preserve the antiquities +of England, and invested him with the honourable title of +“The King’s Antiquary.”</p> + +<p>Scholars, too, stood around the royal table; and the +company at the palace excelled that of any academy, as +Erasmus has told us. Learning patronised by a despot +became a fashionable accomplishment, and the model for +the court was in the royal family themselves. It is from +this period that we may date that race of learned ladies +which continued through the long reign of our maiden +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page254" id="page254"></a>254</span> +queen. Yet, before the accession of Henry the Eighth, +half a century had not elapsed when female literature was +at so low an ebb that Sir Thomas More noticed as an +extraordinary circumstance that Jane Shore could read +and write. When Erasmus visited the English court, +he curiously observed that “The course of human affairs +was changed; the monks, famed in time passed for learning, +are become ignorant, and <span class="scs">WOMEN LOVE BOOKS</span>.” +Erasmus had witnessed at the court of Henry the Eighth +the Princess Mary and Elizabeth, both of whom held an +epistolary correspondence in Latin; the daughter of Sir +Anthony Cook, and Lady Jane Grey, versed in Greek; +and the Queen Catherine Parr, his fervent admirer for his +paraphrase on the four gospels. Erasmus had frequented +the house of the More’s, which he describes as a perfect +<i>musarum domicilium</i>. The venerable Nicholas Udall, a +contemporary, has also left us a picture of that day. “It +is now a common thing to see young virgins so nouzeld +(nursed) and trained in the study of letters, that they +willingly set all other vain pastimes at nought—reading +and writing, and with most earnest study, both early and +late.” The pliable nobility of Henry the Eighth easily +took the bend of the royal family, and among their +daughters, doubtless, there were more learned women than +are chronicled in Ballard’s “Memoirs.” Lady Jane Grey +meditating on Plato was not so uncommon an incident as +it appears to us in the insulated anecdote. The learning +of that day must not be held as the pedantry of a later, +for it was laying the foundations of every knowledge in +the soil of England.</p> + +<p>The king’s more elegant tastes diffused themselves +among the finer arts at a time when they were yet +strangers in this land; his father’s travelled taste had +received a tincture of these arts when abroad, in Henry +the Eighth they burst into existence with a more robust +aptitude. He eagerly invited foreign artists to his court; +but the patronage of an English monarch was not yet +appreciated by some of the finest geniuses of Italy; we +lay yet too far out of their observation and sympathies; +and it is recorded of one of the Italian artists, a fiery +spirit, who had visited England, that he designated us as +<i>quelle bestie Inglesi</i>. Raphael and Titian could not be +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page255" id="page255"></a>255</span> +lured from their studios and their blue skies; but, fortunately, +a northern genius, whose name is as immortal as +their own, was domiciliated by the liberal monarch, the +friend of Erasmus and of More—Hans Holbein.</p> + +<p>Among the musicians of Henry we find French, Italians, +and Germans; he was himself a musician, and composed +several pieces which I believe are still retained in +the service of the Royal Chapel.<a name="fa3c26" id="fa3c26" href="#ft3c26"><span class="sp">3</span></a> He had a taste for the +gorgeous or grotesque amusements of the Continent, +combining them with a display of the fine arts in their +scenical effects. One memorable night of the Epiphany, +the court was startled by a new glory, where the king +and his companions appeared in a scene which the courtiers +had never before witnessed. “It was a mask after +the manner of Italy, a thing not seen afore in England,” +saith the chronicler of Henry’s court-days. Once, to +amaze a foreign embassy, and on a sudden to raise up a +banqueting-house, the monarch set to work the right +magicians; an architect, and a poet, and his master of the +revels, were months inventing and labouring. The regal +banqueting-house was adorned by the arts of picture and +music, of sculpture and architecture; all was full of illusion +and reality; the house itself was a pageant to exhibit +a pageant. The magnificent prince was himself so +pleased, that he anxiously stopped his visitors at the +points of sight most favourable to catch the illusion of +the perspective. A monarch of such fine tastes and gorgeous +fancies would create the artists who are the true +inventors.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c26" id="ft1c26" href="#fa1c26"><span class="fn">1</span></a> The manuscript of Henry the Eighth reposes in the Vatican, witnessed +by his own hand in this inscription:—“Anglorum Rex, +Henricus Leoni X. ‘mittit hoc opus et fidei testem et amicitiæ.’”—I +found this inscription in one of the notes of Selden to the “Polyolbion” +of Drayton.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c26" id="ft2c26" href="#fa2c26"><span class="fn">2</span></a> The famous Grammar of Lilly was the work of a learned association, +in which it appears that both the king and the cardinal had the +honour to co-operate. Sir Thomas Elyot has designated Henry “as +the chief author.”—Preface to “The Castle of Health.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c26" id="ft3c26" href="#fa3c26"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Sir John Hawkins’ “History of Music,” vol. ii.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page256" id="page256"></a>256</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">BOOKS OF THE PEOPLE.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">The</span> people of Europe, who had no other knowledge of +languages than their own uncultivated dialects, seem to +have possessed what, if we may so dignify it, we would +call a fugitive literature of their own. It is obvious that +the people could not be ignorant of the important transactions +in their own land; transactions in which their +fathers had been the spectators or the actors, the sons +would perpetuate by their traditions; the names of their +heroes had not died with them on the battle-field. Nor +would the villain’s subjection to the feudal lord spoil the +merriment of the land, nor dull the quip of natural facetiousness.</p> + +<p>Before the people had national books they had national +songs. Even at a period so obscure as the days of Charlemagne +there were “<i>most ancient songs</i>, in which the acts +and wars of the old kings were sung.” These songs +which, the secretary of Charlemagne has informed us, +were sedulously collected by the command of that great +monarch, are described by the secretary, according to his +classical taste, as <i>barbara et antiquissima carmina</i>; “barbarous,” +because they were composed in the rude vernacular +language; yet such was their lasting energy that +they were, even in the eighth century, held to be “most +ancient,” so long had they dwelt in the minds, of the +people! The enlightened emperor had more largely comprehended +their results in the vernacular idiom, on the +genius of the nation, than had the more learned and diplomatic +secretary. It was an ingenious conjecture, that, +possibly, even these ancient songs may in some shape have +come down to us in the elder northern and Teutonic romances, +and the Danish, the Swedish, the Scottish, and +the English popular ballads. The kindling narrative, and +the fiery exploits which entranced the imagination of +Charlemagne, mutilated or disguised, may have framed the +incidents of a romance, or been gathered up in the +snatches of old wives’ tales, and, finally, may have even +lingered in the nursery.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page257" id="page257"></a>257</span></p> + +<p>Our miserable populace had poets for themselves, whose +looser carols were the joy of the streets or the fields. +Unfortunately we only learn that they had such artless +effusions, for these songs have perished on the lips of the +singers. The monks were too dull or too cunning to +chronicle the outpourings of a people whom they despised, +and which assuredly would have often girded them +to the quick. A humorous satire of this kind has stolen +down to us in that exquisite piece of drollery and grotesque +invention, “The Land of Cokaigne.”<a name="fa1c27" id="fa1c27" href="#ft1c27"><span class="sp">1</span></a> They had +historical ballads which were rehearsed to all listeners; +and it was from these “old ballads, popular through succeeding +times,” that William of Malmesbury tells us that +“he learned more than from books written expressly for +the information of posterity,” though he will not answer +for their precise truth. They had also political ballads. A +memorable one, free as a lampoon, made by one of the adherents +of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, in the +fugitive day of his victory in 1264, occasioned a statute +against “slanderous reports or tales to cause discord betwixt +king and people,” a spirit which by no means was +put down by that enactment.<a name="fa2c27" id="fa2c27" href="#ft2c27"><span class="sp">2</span></a> This was a ballad sung to +the people, as appears by the opening line,—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Sitteth all stille, and harkeneth to me!</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>This ballad strikingly contrasts with another of unnerving +dejection, after the irreparable defeat of the party, +and the death of the Earl of Leicester, which, it is remarkable, +is written in French, having been probably addressed +solely to that discomfited nobility who would +sympathise with the lament.<a name="fa3c27" id="fa3c27" href="#ft3c27"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> + +<p>The people, or the inferior classes of society, who despised +the courtly French then in vogue, formed such a +multitude, that it was for them that <span class="sc">Robert</span> of <span class="sc">Gloucester</span> +wrote his Chronicle, and that <span class="sc">Robert</span> of <span class="sc">Brunne</span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page258" id="page258"></a>258</span> +translated the Chronicle of Peter Langtoft, and a volume +of recreative tales from the French. The people even then +were eager readers, or, more properly, auditors; and this +further appears in the naïveté of our rhymer’s prologue to +this Chronicle. The monk tells us, that this story of +England which he now shows in English, is not intended +for the learned, but the illiterate; not for the clerk, but +the layman;</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Not for the lerid, but the lewed;<a name="fa4c27" id="fa4c27" href="#ft4c27"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">and he describes the class, “they who take solace and +mirth when they sit together in fellowship,” and deem it +“wisdom for to witten” (to know)</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>The state of the land, and haf it written.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The Hermit of Hampole expressly wrote his theological +poems for the people, for those who could understand +only English.</p> + +<p>At a period when we glean nothing from any literature +of the people, we find that it had a positive existence; for +two chronicles and a collection of tales and theological +poems were furnished for them in their native idiom, by +writers who unquestionably sought for celebrity. The +people, too, had what in every age has been their peculiar +property,—all the fragmentary wisdom of antiquity in +those “Few words to the Wise,” so daily useful, or so +apt in the contingencies of human life; proverbs and +Æsopian fables, delightedly transmitted from father to +son. The memories of the people were stored with short +narratives; for a startling tale was not easily forgotten. +They had songs of trades, appropriated to the different +avocations of labourers. These were a solace to the solitary +task-worker, or threw a cheering impulse when many +were employed together. Such <span class="sc">Hall</span> aptly describes as</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Sung to the wheel, and sung unto the payle.<a name="fa5c27" id="fa5c27" href="#ft5c27"><span class="sp">5</span></a></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page259" id="page259"></a>259</span></p> + +<p>These songs are found among the people of every country; +and these effusions were the true poetry of the +heart, which kept alive their social feelings. The people +had even the greater works brought down for them to a +diminutive size; the lays of minstrelsy were usually fragments +of the metrical chronicles, or a disjointed tale from +some romance;<a name="fa6c27" id="fa6c27" href="#ft6c27"><span class="sp">6</span></a> such as the popular Fabliaux, which form +the amusing collection of Le Grand.</p> + +<p>These proverbs and these fables, these songs and these +tales, all these were a library without books, till the day +arrived when the people had books of their own, open to +their comprehension, and responding to their sympathies. +That this traditional literature was handed down from +generation to generation appears from the circumstance, +that hardly had the printing-press been in use when a +multitude of “the people’s books” spread through Europe +their rude instruction or their national humour. They +were even rendered more attractive by the expressive +woodcuts which palpably appealed to a sense which required +no “cunning” to comprehend. Their piety and +their terror were long excited by that variety of Satan and +his devils, which were exhibited to their appalled imaginations—the +the mouth of hell gaping wide, and the crowd of +the damned driven in by the flaming pitchforks. “The +Calendar of Shepherds,” originally a translation from the +French, was a popular handbook, and rich were its contents—a +perpetual almanac, the saints’ days, with the +signs of the zodiac, a receptacle of domestic receipts, all +the wisdom of proverbs, and all the mysteries of astrology, +divinity, politics, and geography, mingled in verse +and prose. It was the encyclopædia for the poor man, and +even for some of his betters.</p> + +<p>The courtly favourites of a former age descended from +the oriel window to the cottage-lattice; perpetuated in +our “chap-books,” sold on the stalls of fairs, and mixed +with the wares of “the chapman,” they became the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page260" id="page260"></a>260</span> +books of the people. “The Gestes” of Guy of Warwick +and Sir Bevis of Hampton, and other fabulous heroes of +chivalry, have been recognised in their humble disguise of +the “Tom Thumb,” and “Tom Hickathrift,” and “Jack +the Giant-Killer” of the people.</p> + +<p>In France their “bibliothèque bleue,” books now in the +shape of pamphlets, deriving their name from the colour +of their wrappers, preserves the remains of the fugitive +literature of the people; and in Italy to this day several +of the old romances of chivalry are cut down to a single +paul’s purchase, and delight the humble buyers.<a name="fa7c27" id="fa7c27" href="#ft7c27"><span class="sp">7</span></a> Guerin +Meschino, of native origin, still retains his popularity. In +Germany some patriotic antiquaries have delighted to collect +this household literature of the illiterate. The Germans, +who, more than any other nation, seem to have +cherished the hallowed feelings of the homestead, have a +term to designate this class of literature; they call these +volumes <i>Volksbücher</i>, or “the people’s books.”</p> + +<p>There existed a more intimate intercourse between the +vernacular writers of Germany and our own than appears +yet to have been investigated. “The Merry Jests of +Howleglas,” most delectable to the people from their +grossness and their humour, is of German origin; and it +has been recently discovered that “The History of Friar +Rush,” which perplexed the researches of Ritson, is a +literal prose version of a German poem, printed in 1587.<a name="fa8c27" id="fa8c27" href="#ft8c27"><span class="sp">8</span></a> +“Reynard the Fox”—a most amusing Æsopian history—an +exquisite satire on the vices of the clergy, the devices +of courtiers, and not sparing majesty itself—an intelligible +manual of profound Machiavelism, displaying the trickery +of circumventing and supplanting, and parrying off opponents +by sleights of wit—was translated by Caxton from +the Dutch.<a name="fa9c27" id="fa9c27" href="#ft9c27"><span class="sp">9</span></a></p> + +<p>This political fiction has been traced in several languages +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page261" id="page261"></a>261</span> +to an earlier period than the thirteenth century. +The learned Germans hold it to be a complete picture of +the feudal manners; and Heineccius, one of the most able +jurists, declares that it has often assisted him in clearing +up the jurisprudence of Germany, and that for the genius +of the writer the volume deserves to be ranked with the +classics of antiquity. The writer probably had good reasons +for concealing his name, but his intimacy with a Court-life +is apparent. He has dexterously described the wiles +of Reynard, whose cunning overreached his opponents; +his wit, his learning, his humour, and knowledge of mankind, +are of no ordinary degree; and this favourite satire +contributed, no less than the works of Erasmus, of +Rabelais, and of Boccaccio, to pave the way for the Reformation. +It was among the earliest productions of the +press in Germany and in England, and became so popular +here that on the old altar-piece of Canterbury cathedral +are several paintings taken from this pungent satire. The +modern Italian poet, <span class="sc">Casti</span>, seems to have borrowed the +plan of his famous political satire “Gl’ Animali Parlanti” +from Reynard the Fox.</p> + +<p>The Germans have occasionally borrowed from us, as +we also from the Italian jest-books, many of our “tales +and quick answers;” the facetiæ of Poggius and Domenichi, +and others, have been a fertile source of our +own.</p> + +<p>All tales have wings, whether they come from the east +or the north, and they soon become denizens wherever +they alight. Thus it has happened that the tale which +charmed the wandering Arab in his tent, or cheered the +Northern peasant by his winter-fire, alike held on its +journey toward England and Scotland. Dr. Leyden was +surprised when he first perused the fabliaux of “The +Poor Scholar,” “The Three Thieves,” and “The Sexton +of Cluni,” to recognise the popular stories which he had +often heard in infancy. He was then young in the poetical +studies of the antiquary, or he would not have been at a +loss to know whether the Scots drew their tales from the +French, or the French from their Scottish intercourse; or +whether they originated with the Celtic, or the Scandinavian, +or sometimes even with the Orientalists.</p> + +<p>The genealogy of many a tale, as well as the humours +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page262" id="page262"></a>262</span> +of native jesters, from the days of Henry the Eighth to +those of Joe Miller, who, as somebody has observed, now, +too, begins to be ancient, may be traced not only to +France, to Spain, and to Italy, but to Greece and Rome, +and at length to Persia and to India. Our most familiar +stories have afforded instances. The tale of “Whittington +and his Cat,” supposed to be indigenous to our country, +was first narrated by Arlotto, in his “Novella delle Gatte,” +in his “Facetie,” which were printed soon after his death, +in 1483; the tale is told of a merchant of Genoa. We +must, however, recollect that Arlotto had been a visitor at +the Court of England. The other puss, though without +her boots, may be seen in Straparola’s “Piacevoli Notti.” +The familiar little Hunchback of the “Arabian Nights” +has been a universal favourite; it may be found everywhere; +in “The Seven Wise Masters,” in the “Gesta +Romanorum,” and in Le Grand’s “Fabliaux.” The +popular tale of Llywellyn’s greyhound, whose grave we +still visit at Bethgelert, Sir William Jones discovered in +Persian tradition, and it has given rise to a proverb, “As +repentant as the man who killed his greyhound.” In +“Les Maximes des Orientaux” of Galland, we find several +of our popular tales.</p> + +<p>“Bluebeard,” “Red-riding Hood,” and “Cinderella,” +are tales told alike in the nurseries of England and +France, Germany and Denmark; and the domestic warning +to the Lady Bird, the chant of our earliest day, is +sung by the nurse of Germany.<a name="fa10c27" id="fa10c27" href="#ft10c27"><span class="sp">10</span></a> All nations seem alike +concerned in this copartnership of tale-telling; borrowing, +adulterating, clipping, and even receiving back the identical +coin which had circulated wherever it was found. +Douce, one of whose favourite pursuits was tracing the +origin and ramification of tales, to my knowledge could +have afforded a large volume of this genealogy of romance; +but that volume probably reposes for the regale +of the next century, that literary antiquary being deterred +by caustic reviewers from the publication of his useful +researches.</p> + +<p>The people, however, did not advance much in intelligence, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page263" id="page263"></a>263</span> +even after the discovery of printing, for new +works, which should have been designed for popular purposes, +were still locked up in a language which none +spoke and only the scholar read; and this, notwithstanding +a noble example had been set by the Italians to the +other nations of Europe. In the early days of our +printing, the vernacular productions of the press were +thrown out to amuse the children of society, fashioned as +their toys. We have an abundance of poetical and prose +facetiæ, all of which were solely adapted to the popular +taste, and some of the writers of which were eminent +persons. Few but have heard of “The Merry Tales of +the Madmen of Gotham,” and of “Scogin’s Jests, full of +witty mirth and pleasant shifts.” These facetious works +are said to be “gathered” by Andrew Borde,<a name="fa11c27" id="fa11c27" href="#ft11c27"><span class="sp">11</span></a> a physician +and humorist of a very original cast of mind, and who professedly +wrote for “the Commonwealth,” that is, the +people, many other works on graver topics, not less seasoned +with drolleries. He was the first who composed +medical treatises in the vernacular idiom. His “Breviarie +of Health” is a medical dictionary, and held to be a +“jewel” in his time, as Fuller records. In this alphabetical +list of all diseases, his philosophy reaches to the +diseases of the mind, whose cure he combines with that +of the body, the medicine and the satire often pleasantly +illustrating each other. From the “Dietarie of Health” +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page264" id="page264"></a>264</span> +the modern apostles of regimen might expand their own +revelations; it contains many curious matters, not only +on diet, but on the whole system of domestic economy, +even to the building of a house, regulating a family, and +choosing a good air to dwell in, &c. Another of his books, +“The Introduction of Knowledge,” is a miscellany of +great curiosity, describing the languages and manners of +different countries; in it are specimens of the Cornish, +Welsh, Irish, and Scotch languages, as also of the Turkish +and Egyptian, and others, and the value of their coins. +The apt yet concise discrimination of the national character +of every people is true to the hour we are writing.</p> + +<p>The writings of Borde incidentally preserve curious +notices of the domestic life and of the customs and arts +of that period. Whitaker, in his history of Whalley, has +referred to his directions for the construction of great +houses, in illustration of our domestic architecture. In +all his little books much there is which the antiquary and +the philosopher would not willingly pass by.</p> + +<p>Andrew Borde was one of those eccentric geniuses who +live in their own sphere, moving on principles which do +not guide the routine of society. He was a Carthusian +friar; his hair-shirt, however, could never mortify his unvarying +facetiousness; but if he ever rambled in his wits, +he was a wider rambler, even beyond the boundaries of Christendom, +“a thousand or two and more myles;” an extraordinary +feat in his day. He took his degree at Montpelier, +was incorporated at Oxford, and admitted into the +College of Physicians in London, and was among the +physicians of Henry the Eighth. His facetious genius +could not conceal the real learning and the practical knowledge +which he derived from personal observation. Borde +has received hard measure from our literary historians. +This ingenious scholar has been branded by Warton as a +mad physician. To close the story of one who was all his +days so facetious, we find that this Momus of philosophers +died in the Fleet. This was the fate of a great humorist, +neither wanting in learning or genius.</p> + +<p>It is said that such was his love of “the commonwealth,” +that he sometimes addressed them from an open +stage, in a sort of gratuitous lecture, as some amateurs of +our own days have delighted to deliver; and from whence +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page265" id="page265"></a>265</span> +has been handed down to us the term of “<span class="sc">Merry-Andrew</span>.”</p> + +<p>In the limited circles which then divided society, the +taste for humour was very low. We had not yet reached +to the witty humours of Shakspeare and Jonson. Sir +Thomas More’s “Long Story,” in endless stanzas, which +Johnson has strangely placed among the specimens of the +English language, was held as a tale of “infinite conceit,” +assuredly by the great author himself, who seems to have +communicated this sort of taste to one of his family. +Rastall, the learned printer, brother-in-law of More, and +farther, the grave abbreviator of the statutes in English, +issued from his press in 1525, “The Widow Edith’s +Twelve Merrie Gestys.” She was a tricking widow, renowned +for her “lying, weeping, and laughing,” an ancient +mumper, who had triumphed over the whole state spiritual, +and the temporality: travelling from town to town in the +full practice of dupery and wheedling, to the admiration of +her numerous victims. The arts of cheatery were long +held to be facetious; most of the “Merrie Jests” consist +of stultifying fools, or are sharping tricks, practised on the +simple children of dupery. There is a stock of this base +coinage. This taste for dupery was carried down to a +much later period; for the “Merrie conceited jests of +George Peele,” and of Tarleton, are chiefly tricks of +sharpers.</p> + +<p>“The Hye Way to the Spyttel Hous,” or as we should +say, “the road to ruin,” exposes the mysteries and craft of +the venerable brotherhood of mendicancy and imposture; +their ingenious artifices to attract the eye, and their secret +orgies concealed by midnight; all that flourishes now in St. +Giles’s, flourished then in the Barbican. Not long after +we have the first vocabulary of cant language of “The +Fraternitye of Vacabondes:” whose honorary titles cannot +be yet placed in Burke’s Extinct Peerage.</p> + +<p>There were attacks on the fair sex in those days which +were parried by their eulogies. We seem to have been +early engaged in that battle of the sexes, where the perfections +or the imperfections of the female character offered +themes for a libel or a panegyric. From the days of +Boccaccio, the Italians have usually paid their tribute to +“illustrious women,” notwithstanding the free insinuations +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page266" id="page266"></a>266</span> +of some malicious novelists; that people preceded in the +refinement of social life the tramontani. England and +France, in their ruder circle of society, contracted a +cynicism which appears in a variety of invectives and +apologies for the beautiful sex.</p> + +<p>One of the most popular attacks of this sort was “The +School-house of Women,” a severe satire, published anonymously. +One of the heaviest charges is their bitter +sarcasm on the new dresses of their friends. The author, +one Edward Gosynhyll, charmed, no doubt, by his successful +onset, and proud in his victory, threw off the mask; +mending his ambidextrous pen for “The Praise of all +Women,” called “Mulierum Pean,” he acknowledged +himself to be the writer of “The School-house.” Probably +he thought he might now do so with impunity, as +he was making the <i>amende honorable</i>. Whether this saved +the trembling Orpheus from the rage of the Bacchantes, +our scanty literary history tells not; but his defence is +not considered as the least able among several elicited by +his own attack.</p> + +<p>“The Wife lapped in Morels’ Skins, or the Taming of +a Shrew,” was the favourite tale of the Petruchios of +those days, where a haughty dame is softened into a +degrading obedience by the brutal command of her mate; +a tale which some antiquaries still chuckle over, who have +not been so venturous as this hero.<a name="fa12c27" id="fa12c27" href="#ft12c27"><span class="sp">12</span></a></p> + +<p>All these books, written for the people, were at length +consumed by the hands of their multitudinous readers; +we learn, indeed, in Anthony à Wood’s time, that some +had descended to the stalls; but at the present day some +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page267" id="page267"></a>267</span> +of these rare fugitive pieces may be unique. This sort of +pamphlet, Burton, the anatomist of melancholy, was delighted +to heap together: and the collection formed by +such a keen relish of popular humours, he actually +bequeathed to the Bodleian Library, where, if they are +kept together, they would answer the design of the donor; +otherwise, such domestic records of the humours and +manners of the age, diffused among the general mass, +would bear only the value of their rarity.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c27" id="ft1c27" href="#fa1c27"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Mr. Ellis has preserved it entire, with notes which make it intelligible +to any modern reader.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c27" id="ft2c27" href="#fa2c27"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Percy’s “Reliques of Ancient English Poetry,” ii. 1.—“The +liberty of abasing their kings and princes at pleasure, assumed by the +good people of this realm, is a privilege of very long standing.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c27" id="ft3c27" href="#fa3c27"><span class="fn">3</span></a> The Political Songs of England have been recently given by Mr. +Thomas Wright, to whom our literature owes many deep obligations. +[In the series of volumes published by the Camden Society.]</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c27" id="ft4c27" href="#fa4c27"><span class="fn">4</span></a> <i>Lewed</i> Mr. Campbell interprets <i>low</i>, which is not quite correct. +Hearne explains the term as signifying “the laity, laymen, and the +illiterate.”—The <i>layman</i> was always considered to be <i>illiterate</i>, by the +devices of the monks.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c27" id="ft5c27" href="#fa5c27"><span class="fn">5</span></a> It is to be regretted that Mr. <span class="sc">Jamieson</span>, in his “Popular Ballads,” +was unavoidably prevented enlarging this class of his songs. He has +given the carols of the <i>Boatmen</i>, the <i>Corn-grinders</i>, and the <i>Dairy-women</i>.—Jamieson’s +“Popular Ballads,” ii. 352. [See also “Curiosities +of Literature,” vol. ii., p. 142, for an article on Songs of Trades, or +Songs of the People. A volume of “Songs of the English Peasantry” was +published by the Percy Society; and several others are given with the +tunes in Chappell’s “Popular Music of the Olden Time.”]</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c27" id="ft6c27" href="#fa6c27"><span class="fn">6</span></a> Hearne’s “Preface to Peter Langtoft’s Chronicle,” xxxvii.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c27" id="ft7c27" href="#fa7c27"><span class="fn">7</span></a> The curious researches of a French antiquary in this class of +literature are given in the two octavo volumes entitled “Histoire des +Livres Populaires, ou de la Littérature du Colportage,” (Paris, 1854,) +by M. Chas. Nisard, who was appointed to the task by a Royal Commission.—<span class="sc">Ed.</span></p> + +<p><a name="ft8c27" id="ft8c27" href="#fa8c27"><span class="fn">8</span></a> “Foreign Quarterly Review,” vol. 18. [It is reprinted in the first +Volume of Thoms’ “Early English Prose Romances.”]</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c27" id="ft9c27" href="#fa9c27"><span class="fn">9</span></a> It has been frequently reprinted, and recently in Germany, as a +<i>livre de luxe</i>, illustrated with admirable designs by Kaulbach.—<span class="sc">Ed.</span></p> + +<p><a name="ft10c27" id="ft10c27" href="#fa10c27"><span class="fn">10</span></a> Weber. “Brit. Bib.,” vol. iv.—The German song of the Ladybird +is beautifully versified in the preface to “German Popular Stories,” +by the late Edgar Taylor.</p> + +<p><a name="ft11c27" id="ft11c27" href="#fa11c27"><span class="fn">11</span></a> A calamity to which wits are incident is that of having their names +prefixed to collections to give them currency. I do not know whether +this has not happened to our author. “The Merry Tales of the Madmen +of Gotham” are no doubt of great antiquity; they are characterised +by a peculiar simplicity of silliness. “Scogin’s Jests,” of the sixty +which we have, a very few tradition may have preserved, but they +must have received in the course of time the addition of pointless jests, +tales marred in the telling, and some things neither jest nor tale; and +it is remarkable that these are always accompanied by an inane moralisation, +while the more tolerable appear to be preserved in their original +condition. Some future researcher may be so fortunate as to compare +them with the first editions if they exist.</p> + +<p>John Scogin was a gentleman of good descent, who was invited to +court by Edward the Fourth for the pleasantry of his wit; he was a +caustic Democritus, and gave rise to a proverbial phrase, “What says +Scogin?” If he usually said two-thirds of what is ascribed to him in +this volume, he had never given rise to a proverb. “The Merry Tales +of the Madmen of Gotham” have been recently reprinted by Mr. +Halliwell.</p> + +<p><a name="ft12c27" id="ft12c27" href="#fa12c27"><span class="fn">12</span></a> Several of these pieces are preserved in Mr. Utterson’s “Select +Pieces of Early Popular Poetry.” This attack on women proved not a +theme less fertile among our neighbours; how briskly the skirmish +was carried on the notice of a single writer will show:—“Alphabet de +l’Imperfection et Malice des Femmes, par J. Olivier, licencier aux loix, +et en droit-canon,” 1617; three editions of which appeared in the +course of two years. This blow was repelled by “Defense des Femmes +contre l’Alphabet de leur pretendue Malice,” by Vigoureux, 1617; +the first author rejoined with a “Réponse aux Impertinences de +l’Aposté Capitaine Vigoureux,” by Olivier, 1617. The fire was kept +up by an ally of Olivier, in “Réplique à l’Anti-Malice du Sieur +Vigoureux,” by De la Bruyere, 1617. At a period earlier than +this conflict, the French had, as well as ourselves, many works on the +subject.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page268" id="page268"></a>268</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE DIFFICULTIES EXPERIENCED BY A +PRIMITIVE AUTHOR.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Sir</span> Thomas Elyot is the first English prose writer +who avowedly attempted to cultivate the language of his +country. We track the prints of the first weak footsteps +in this new path; and we detect the aberrations of a mind +intent on a great popular design, but still vague and uncertain, +often opposed by contemporaries, yet cheered by +the little world of his readers.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Elyot</span> for us had been little more than a name, as have +been many retired students, from the negligence of contemporaries, +had he not been one of those interesting +authors who have let us into the history of their own +minds, and either prospectively have delighted to contemplate +on their future enterprises, or retrospectively have +exulted in their past labours.</p> + +<p>This amiable scholar had been introduced at Court early +in life; his “great friend and crony was Sir Thomas +More;” so plain Anthony à Wood indicates the familiar +intercourse of two great men. Elyot was a favourite with +Henry the Eighth, and employed on various embassies, +particularly on the confidential one to Rome to negotiate +the divorce of Queen Katherine. To his public employments +he alludes in his first work, “The Governor,” which +“he had gathered as well of the sayings of most noble +authors, Greek and Latin, as by his own experience, he +being continually trained in some daily affairs of the public +weal from his childhood.”</p> + +<p>A passion for literature seems to have prevailed over +the ambition of active life, and on his return from his last +embassy he decided to write books “in our vulgar +tongue,” on a great variety of topics, to instruct his +countrymen. The diversity of his reading, and an unwearied +pen, happily qualified, in this early age of the literature +of a nation, a student who was impatient to diffuse +that knowledge which he felt he only effectually possessed +in the degree, and in the space, which he communicated it.</p> + +<p>His first elaborate work is entitled, “The Boke of the Governor, +devised by Sir Thomas Elyot,” 1531,—a work once +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page269" id="page269"></a>269</span> +so popular, that it passed through seven or eight editions, +and is still valued by the collectors of our ancient literature.</p> + +<p>“The Governor” is one of those treatises which, at an +early period of civilization, when general education is imperfect, +becomes useful to mould the manners and to +inculcate the morals which should distinguish the courtier +and the statesman. Elyot takes his future “Governor” +in the arms of his nurse, and places the ideal being amid +all the scenes which may exercise the virtues, or the +studies which he developes. The work is dedicated to +Henry the Eighth. The design, the imaginary personage, +the author and the patron, are equally dignified. The +style is grave; and it would not be candid in a modern +critic to observe that, in the progress of time, the good +sense has become too obvious, and the perpetual illustrations +from ancient history too familiar. The erudition +in philology of that day has become a schoolboy’s +learning. They had then no other volumes to recur to of +any authority, but what the ancients had left.</p> + +<p>Elyot had a notion that, for the last thousand years, +the world had deteriorated, and that the human mind had +not expanded through the course of ages. When he compared +the writers of this long series of centuries, the +babbling, though the subtle, schoolmen, who had chained +us down to their artificial forms, with the great authors +of antiquity, there seemed an appearance of truth in his +decision. Christianity had not yet exhibited to modern +Europe the refined moralities of Seneca, and the curious +knowledge of Plutarch, in the homilies of Saints and +Fathers; nor had its histories of man, confined to our +monkish annalists, emulated the narrative charms of Livy, +nor the grandeur of Tacitus. Of the poets of antiquity, +Elyot declared that the English language, at the time he +wrote, could convey nothing equivalent, wanting even +words to express the delicacies, “the turns,” and the +euphony of the Latin verse.</p> + +<p>A curious evidence of the jejune state of the public +mind at this period appears in this volume. Here a +learned and grave writer solemnly sets forth several +chapters on “that honest pastime of dancing,” in which +he discovers a series of modern allegories. The various +figures and reciprocal movements between man and woman, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page270" id="page270"></a>270</span> +“holding each other by the hand,” indicate the order, +concord, prudence, and other virtues so necessary for the +common weal. The <i>singles</i> and <i>reprinses</i> exhibit the +virtue of circumspection, which excites the writer to a panegyric +of the father of the reigning sovereign. These ethics +of the dance contain some curious notices, and masters in +the art might hence have embellished their treatises on +the philosophy of dance; for “in its wonderful figures, +which the Greeks do call <i>idea</i>, are comprehended so many +virtues and noble qualities.” It is amusing to observe +how men willingly become the dupes of their fancies, by +affecting to discover motives and analogies, the most unconnected +imaginable with the objects themselves. Long +after our polished statesman wrote, the Puritan excommunicated +the sinful dancer, and detected in the graceful evolutions +of “the honour,” the “brawl,” and the “single,” +with all their moral movements, the artifices of Satan, +and the perdition of the souls of two partners, dancing +too well. It was the mode of that age thus to moralise, +or allegorise, on the common acts of life, and to sanction +their idlest amusements by some religious motive. At +this period, in France, we find a famous <i>Veneur</i>, Gaston +Phebus, opening his treatise on “hunting” in the spirit +that Elyot had opened to us the mysteries of dancing. +“By hunting, we escape from the seven mortal sins, and +therefore, the more we hunt, the salvation of our souls +will be the more secure. Every good hunter in this world +will have joyance, glee, and solace, (<i>joyeuseté, liesse, et +deduit</i>,) and secure himself a place in Paradise, not perhaps +in the midst, but in the suburbs, because he has shunned +idleness, the root of all evil.”</p> + +<p>“The Boke of the Governor” must now be condemned +to the solitary imprisonment of the antiquary’s cell, who +will pick up many curious circumstances relative to the +manners of the age—always an amusing subject of speculation, +when we contemplate on the gradations of social +life. I suspect the world owed “The Governor” to a book +more famous than itself—the <i>Cortegiano</i> of Castiglione, +which appeared two years before the first edition of this +work of Elyot, and to whose excellence Elyot could have +been no stranger in his embassies to his holiness, and to +the emperor. But of “The Governor,” and “The Cortegiano,” +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page271" id="page271"></a>271</span> +what can we now say, but that three centuries are +fatal to the immortality of volumes, which, in the infancy +of literature, seemed to have flattered themselves with a +perpetuity of fame.</p> + +<p>It was, however, a generous design, in an age of Latin, +to attempt to delight our countrymen by “the vulgar +tongue;” but these “first fruits,” as he calls them, gave +their author a taste of the bitterness of “that tree of +knowledge.”</p> + +<p>In a subsequent work, “Of the Knowledge which +maketh a Wise Man,” Elyot has recorded how he had +laid himself open to “the vulgar.” In the circle of a +Court there was equal peril in moralising, which was +deemed to be a rebuke, as in applying rusty stories, which +were considered as nothing less than disguised personalities. +“The Boke” was not thankfully received. The +<i>persifleurs</i>, those butterflies who carry waspish stings, +accounted Sir Thomas to be of no little presumption, that +“in noting other men’s vices he should correct <i>magnificat</i>.” +This odd neologism of “magnificat” was a mystical coinage, +which circulated among these aristocratic exclusives +who, as Elyot describes them, “like a galled horse abiding +no plaisters, be always knapping and kicking at such examples +and sentences as they do feel sharp, or do bite +them.” The chapters on “The Diversity of Flatterers,” +and similar subjects, had made many “a galled jade +wince;” and in applying the salve, he got a kick for the +cure. They wondered why the knight wrote at all! “Other +much wiser men, and better learned than he, do forbear to +write anything.” They inscribed modern names to his +ancient portraits. The worried author exclaims—“There +be Gnathos in Spain as well as in Greece; Pasquils in +England as well as in Rome, &c. If men will seek for +them in England which I set in other places, I cannot let +(hinder) them.” But in another work—“Image of Governance,” +1540—when he detailed “the monstrous living +of the Emperor Heliogabalus,” and contrasted that gross +epicurean with Severus, such a bold and open execration +of the vices of a luxurious Court could not avoid being +obvious to the royal sensualist and his companions, however +the character and the tale were removed to a bygone age.</p> + +<p>In this early attempt to cultivate “the vulgar tongue,” +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page272" id="page272"></a>272</span> +some cavilled at his strange terms. It is a striking instance +of the simplicity of the critics at that early period +of our language, that our author formally explains the word +<i>maturity</i>—“a Latin word, which I am constrained to +usurp, lacking a name in English, and which, though it +be strange and dark, yet may be understood as other +words late comen out of Italy and France, and made +denizens among us.” Augustus Cæsar, it seems, had frequently +in his mouth this word <i>matura</i>—do maturely! +as “if he should have said, Do neither too much nor too +little—too swiftly nor too slowly.” Elyot would confine +the figurative Latin term to a metaphysical designation of +the acts of men in their most perfect state, “reserving,” +as he says, “the word ripeness to fruit and other things, +separate from affairs, as we have now in usage.” Elyot +exults in having augmented the English language by the +introduction of this Latin term, now made English for +the first time! It has flourished as well as this other, +“the <i>redolent</i> savours of sweet herbs and flowers.” But +his ear was not always musical, and some of his neologisms +are less graceful—“<i>an alective</i>,” to wit; “<i>fatigate</i>,” to +fatigue; “<i>ostent</i>,” to show, and to “<i>sufficate</i> some disputation.” +Such were the first weak steps of the fathers +of our language, who, however, culled for us many a flower +among their cockle.</p> + +<p>But a murmur more prejudicial arose than the idle +cavil of new and hard words; for some asserted that “the +Boke seemed to be overlong.” Our primeval author considered +that “knowledge of wisdom cannot be shortly declared.” +Elyot had not yet attained, by sufficient practice +in authorship, the secret, that the volume which he +had so much pleasure in writing could be over tedious in +reading. “For those,” he observes sarcastically, “who +be well willing, it is soon learned—in good faith sooner +than primero or gleek.” The nation must have then consisted +of young readers, when a diminutive volume in +twelves was deemed to be “overlong.” In this apology +for his writings, he threw out an undaunted declaration of +his resolution to proceed with future volumes.—“If the +readers of my works, by the noble example of our most +dear sovereign lord, do justly and lovingly interpret my +labours, I, during the residue of my life, will now and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page273" id="page273"></a>273</span> +then set forth such fruits of my study, profitable, as I +trust, unto this my country, leaving malicious readers with +their incurable fury.” Such was the innocent criticism +of our earliest writer—his pen was hardly tipped with +gall.</p> + +<p>As all subjects were equally seductive to the artless +pen of a primitive author, who had yet no rivals to +encounter in public, Elyot turned his useful studies to +a topic very opposite to that of political ethics. He put +forth “The Castle of Health,” a medical treatise, which +passed through nearly as many honourable editions as +“The Governor.” It did not, however, abate the number, +though it changed the character of his cavillers, who were +now the whole corporate body of the physicians!</p> + +<p>The author has told his amusing story in the preface +to a third edition, in 1541.</p> + +<p>“Why should I be grieved with reproaches wherewith +some of my country do recompense me for my labours, +taken without hope of temporal reward, only for the +fervent affection which I have ever borne toward the +public weal of my country? ‘A worthy matter!’ saith +one; ‘Sir Thomas Elyot has become a physician, and +writeth on physic, which beseemeth not a knight; he +might have been much better occupied.’ Truly, if they +will call him a physician who is studious of the weal of his +country, let men so name me.”</p> + +<p>But there was no shame in studying this science, or +setting forth any book, being—</p> + +<p>“Thereto provoked by the noble example of my noble +master King Henry VIII.; for his Highness hath not +disdained to be the chief author of an introduction to +grammar for the children of his subjects.</p> + +<p>“If physicians be angry that I have written physic in +English, let them remember that Greeks wrote in Greek, +the Romans in Latin, and Avicenna in Arabic, which were +their own proper and maternal tongues. These were +paynims and Jews, but in this part of charity they far +surmounted us Christians.”</p> + +<p>Several years after, when our author reverted to his +“Castle of Health,” the Castle was brightened by the +beams of public favour. Its author now exulted that “It +shall long preserve men, be some physicians never so +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page274" id="page274"></a>274</span> +angry.” The work had not been intended to depreciate +medical professors, but “for their commodity, by instructing +the sick, and observing a good order in diet, preventing +the great causes of sickness, or by which they +could the sooner be cured.” Our philosopher had attempted +to draw aside that mystifying veil with which +some affected to envelope the arcana of medicine, as if they +were desirous “of writing in cypher that none but themselves +could read.” Our author had anticipated that +revolution in medical science which afterwards, at a distant +period, has been productive of some of the ablest treatises +in the vernacular languages of Europe.</p> + +<p>The patriotic studies of Elyot did not terminate in +these ethical and popular volumes, for he had taxed his +daily diligence for his country’s weal. This appeared in +“The Dictionary of Sir Thomas Elyot, 1535,” a folio, +which laid the foundation of our future lexicons, “declaring +Latin by English,” as Elyot describes his own +labour.</p> + +<p>Elyot had suffered some disappointments as a courtier +in the days of Wolsey, who lavished the royal favours on +churchmen. In a letter to Lord Cromwell, he describes +himself with a very narrow income, supporting his establishment, +“equal to any knight in the country where I +dwell who have much more to live on;” but a new office, +involving considerable expense in its maintenance, to which +he had been just appointed, he declares would be his ruin, +having already discharged “five honest and tall personages.”—“I +wot not by what malice of fortune I am constrained +to be in that office, whereunto is, as it were, +appendent loss of money and good name, all sharpness +and diligence in justice now-a-days being everywhere +odious.” And this was at a time when “I trusted to live +quietly, and by little and little to repay my creditors, +and <i>to reconcile myself to mine old studies</i>.”</p> + +<p>This letter conveys a favourable impression of the real +character of this learned man; but Elyot had condescended +abjectly to join with the herd in the general +scramble for the monastic lands; and if he feigned poverty, +the degradation is not less. There are cruel epochs in a +great revolution; moments of trial which too often exhibit +the lofty philosopher shrinking into one of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page275" id="page275"></a>275</span> +people. It is probable that he succeeded in his petition, +for I find his name among the commissioners appointed to +make a general inquiry after lands belonging to the Church, +as also to the colleges of the universities, in 1534.</p> + +<p>But in this day of weakness Elyot sunk far lower than +petitioning for suppressed lands. Elyot was suspected of +inclining to Popery, and being adverse to the new order +of affairs. His former close intimacy with Sir Thomas +More contributed to this suspicion, and now, it is sad to +relate, he renounces this ancient and honourable friendship! +Peter denied his Master. “I beseech your good lordship +now to lay apart the remembrance of the amity betwixt +me and Sir Thomas More, which was but <i>usque ad aras</i>, +as is the proverb, considering that I was never so much +addicted unto him as I was unto truth and fidelity towards +my sovereign lord.” Was the influence of such illustrious +friendships to be confined to chimney-corners? Had +Elyot not listened to the wisdom, and revered the immutable +fortitude, of “his great friend and crony?”—he, the +stern moralist, who, in his “Governor,” had written a +remarkable chapter on “the constancy of friends,” and +had illustrated that passion by the romantic tale of Titus +and Gesippus, where the personal trials of both parties +far exceed those of the Damon and Pythias of antiquity, +and are so eloquently developed and so exquisitely narrated +by the great Italian novelist.</p> + +<p>The literary history of Sir <span class="sc">Thomas Elyot</span> exhibits the +difficulties experienced by a primitive author in the earliest +attempts to open a new path to the cultivation of a +vernacular literature; and it seems to have required all +the magnanimity of our author to sustain his superiority +among his own circle, by disdaining their petulant criticism, +and by the honest confidence he gathered as he proceeded, +in the successive editions of his writings.</p> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page276" id="page276"></a>276</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">SKELTON.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">At</span> a period when satire had not yet assumed any legitimate +form, a singular genius appeared in Skelton. His +satire is peculiar, but it is stamped by vigorous originality. +The fertility of his conceptions in his satirical or his +humorous vein is thrown out in a style created by himself. +The Skeltonical short verse, contracted into five or six, +and even four syllables, is wild and airy. In the quick-returning +rhymes, the playfulness of the diction, and the +pungency of new words, usually ludicrous, often expressive, +and sometimes felicitous, there is a stirring spirit which +will be best felt in an audible reading. The velocity of +his verse has a carol of its own. The chimes ring in the +ear, and the thoughts are flung about like coruscations. +But the magic of the poet is confined to his spell; at his +first step out of it he falls to the earth never to recover +himself. Skelton is a great creator only when he writes +what baffles imitation, for it is his fate, when touching +more solemn strains, to betray no quality of a poet—inert +in imagination and naked in diction. Whenever his muse +plunges into the long measure of heroic verse, she is +drowned in no Heliconian stream. Skelton seems himself +aware of his miserable fate, and repeatedly, with great +truth, if not with some modesty, complains of</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Mine homely rudeness and dryness.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">But when he returns to his own manner and his own +rhyme, when he riots in the wantonness of his prodigal +genius, irresistible and daring, the poet was not unconscious +of his faculty; and truly he tells,—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Though my rime be ragged,</p> +<p>Tattered and jagged,</p> +<p>Rudely rain-beaten,</p> +<p>Rusty, moth-eaten,</p> +<p>If ye take well therewith,</p> +<p>It hath in it some pith.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>Whether Skelton really adopted the measures of the +old tavern-minstrelsy used by harpers, who gave “a fit +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page277" id="page277"></a>277</span> +of mirth for a groat,” or “carols for Christmas,” or +“lascivious poems for bride-ales,” as Puttenham, the arch-critic +of Elizabeth’s reign, supposes; or whether in +Skelton’s introduction of alternate Latin lines among his +verses he caught the Macaronic caprice of the Italians, as +Warton suggests; the Skeltonical style remains his own +undisputed possession. He is a poet who has left his name +to his own verse—a verse, airy but pungent, so admirably +adapted for the popular ear that it has been frequently +copied,<a name="fa1c28" id="fa1c28" href="#ft1c28"><span class="sp">1</span></a> and has led some eminent critics into singular +misconceptions. The minstrel tune of the Skeltonical +rhyme is easily caught, but the invention of style and +“the pith” mock these imitators. The facility of doggrel +merely of itself could not have yielded the exuberance of +his humour and the mordacity of his satire.</p> + +<p>This singular writer has suffered the mischance of being +too original for some of his critics; they looked on the +surface, and did not always suspect the depths they glided +over: the legitimate taste of others has revolted against +the mixture of the ludicrous and the invective. A taste +for humour is a rarer faculty than most persons imagine; +where it is not indigenous, no art of man can plant it. +There is no substitute for such a volatile existence, and +where even it exists in a limited degree, we cannot enlarge +its capacity for reception. A great master of humour, who +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page278" id="page278"></a>278</span> +observed from his experience, has solemnly told us that +“it is not in the power of every one to taste humour, +however he may wish it—it is the gift of God; and a true +feeler always brings half the entertainment along with +him.”<a name="fa2c28" id="fa2c28" href="#ft2c28"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p>Puttenham was the first critic who prized Skelton +cheaply; the artificial and courtly critic of Elizabeth’s +reign could not rightly estimate such a wild and irregular +genius. The critic’s fastidious ear listens to nothing but +the jar of rude rhymes, while the courtier’s delicacy +shrinks from the nerve of appalling satire. “Such,” says +this critic, “are the rhymes of Skelton, usurping the name +of a Poet Laureat, being indeed but a rude rayling rhimer, +and all his doings ridiculous—pleasing only the popular +ear.” This affected critic never suspected “the pith” of +“the ridiculous;” the grotesque humour covering the +dread invective which shook a Wolsey under his canopy. +Another Elizabethan critic, the obsequious Meres, re-echoes +the dictum. These opinions perhaps prejudiced +the historian of our poetry, who seems to have appreciated +them as the echoes of the poet’s contemporaries. Yet +we know how highly his contemporaries prized him, notwithstanding +the host whom he provoked. One poetical +brother<a name="fa3c28" id="fa3c28" href="#ft3c28"><span class="sp">3</span></a> distinguishes him as “the Inventive Skelton,” +and we find the following full-length portrait of him by +another:—<a name="fa4c28" id="fa4c28" href="#ft4c28"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>A poet for his art,</p> + <p class="i1">Whose judgment sure was high,</p> +<p>And had great practise of the pen,</p> + <p class="i1">His works they will not lie;</p> +<p>His termes to taunts did leane,</p> + <p class="i1">His talk was as he wrate,</p> +<p>Full quick of wit, right sharpe of wordes,</p> + <p class="i1">And skilful of the state;</p> + +<p class="ptb1" style="letter-spacing: 3em;">*****</p> + +<p>And to the hateful minde,</p> + <p class="i1">That did disdaine his doings still,</p> +<p>A scorner of his kinde.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>When Dr. Johnson observed that “Skelton cannot be +said to have attained great elegance of language,” he tried +Skelton by a test of criticism at which Skelton would have +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page279" id="page279"></a>279</span> +laughed, and “jangled and wrangled.” Warton has also +censured him for adopting “the familiar phraseology of +the common people.” The learned editor of Johnson’s +“Dictionary” corrects both our critics. “If Skelton did +not attain great elegance of language, he however possessed +great knowledge of it.” From his works may be +drawn an abundance of terms which were then in use among +the vulgar as well as the learned, and which no other +writer of his time so obviously (and often so wittily) +illustrated. Skelton seems to have been fully aware of +the condition of our vernacular idiom when he wrote, for +he has thus described it:—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Our natural tongue is rude,</p> +<p>And hard to be enneude</p> +<p>With polished termes lusty;</p> +<p>Our language is so rusty,</p> +<p>So cankered, and so full</p> +<p>Of frowards, and so dull,</p> +<p>That if I would apply</p> +<p>To write ordinately,</p> +<p>I wot not where to find</p> +<p>Terms to serve my mind.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>It was obviously his design to be as great a creator of +words as he was of ideas. Many of his mintage would +have given strength to our idiom. Caxton, as a contemporary, +is some authority that Skelton improved the +language.</p> + +<p>Let not the reader imagine that Skelton was only “a +rude rayling rhimer.” Skelton was the tutor of Henry +the Eighth; and one who knew him well describes him +as—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Seldom out of prince’s grace.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>Erasmus distinguished him “as the light and ornament +of British letters;” and one, he addresses the royal pupil, +“who can not only excite your studies, but complete +them.” Warton attests his classical attainments—“Had +not his propensity to the ridiculous induced him to follow +the whimsies of Walter Mapes, Skelton would have +appeared among the first writers of Latin poetry in +England.” Skelton chose to be himself; and this is +what the generality of his critics have not taken in their +view.</p> + +<p>Skelton was an ecclesiastic who was evidently among +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page280" id="page280"></a>280</span> +those who had adopted the principles of reformation before +the Reformation. With equal levity and scorn he +struck at the friars from his pulpit or in his ballad, he +ridiculed the Romish ritual, and he took unto himself that +wife who was to be called a concubine. To the same +feelings we may also ascribe the declamatory invective +against Cardinal Wolsey, from whose terrible arm he flew +into the sanctuary of Westminster, where he remained +protected by Abbot Islip until his death, which took +place in 1529, but a few short months before the fall of +Wolsey. It is supposed that the king did not wholly +dislike the levelling of the greatness of his overgrown +minister; and it is remarkable that one of the charges +subsequently brought by the council in 1529 against +Wolsey—his imperious carriage at the council-board—is +precisely one of the accusations of our poet, only divested +of rhyme; whence perhaps we may infer that Skelton was +an organ of the rising party.</p> + +<p>“Why Come you not to Court?”—that daring state-picture +of an omnipotent minister—and “The Boke of +Colin Clout,” where the poet pretends only to relate +what the people talk about the luxurious clergy, and +seems to be half the reformer, are the most original satires +in the language. In the days when Skelton wrote these +satires there appeared a poem known by the title of +“Reade me and be not Wrothe,” a voluminous invective +against the Cardinal and the Romish superstitions, which +has been ascribed by some to Skelton. The writer was +<span class="sc">William Roy</span>, a friar; the genius, though not the zeal, +of <span class="sc">Roy</span> and <span class="sc">Skelton</span> are far apart—as far as the buoyancy +of racy originality is removed from the downright +earnestness of grave mediocrity. Roy had been the +learned assistant of Tyndale in the first edition of the +translation of the New Testament, and it was the public +conflagration at London of that whole edition which +aroused his indignant spirit. The satire, which had been +printed abroad, was diligently suppressed by an emissary +of the Cardinal purchasing up all the copies; and few +were saved from the ravage;<a name="fa5c28" id="fa5c28" href="#ft5c28"><span class="sp">5</span></a> the author, however, +escaped out of the country.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page281" id="page281"></a>281</span></p> + +<p>In “The Crown of Lawrell” Skelton has himself furnished +a catalogue of his numerous writings, the greater +number of which have not come down to us. Literary +productions were at that day printed on loose sheets, or +in small pamphlets, which the winds seem to have scattered. +We learn there of his graver labours. He composed +the “Speculum Principis” for his royal pupil—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>To bear in hand, therein to read,</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">and he translated Diodorus Siculus—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Six volumes engrossed, it doth contain.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">To have composed a manual for the education of a prince, +and to have persevered through a laborious version, are +sufficient evidence that the learned Skelton had his studious +days as well as his hours of caustic jocularity. He +appears to have written various pieces for the court entertainment; +but for us exists only an account of the interlude +of the “Nigramansir,” in the pages of Warton, and +a single copy of the goodly interlude of “Magnificence,”<a name="fa6c28" id="fa6c28" href="#ft6c28"><span class="sp">6</span></a> +in the Garrick collection. If we accept his abstract personations +merely as the names, and not the qualities of +the dramatic personages, “Magnificence” approaches to +the true vein of comedy.</p> + +<p>Skelton was, however, probably more gratified by his +own Skeltonical style, moulding it with the wantonness +of power on whatever theme, comic or serious. In a poem +remarkable for its elegant playfulness, a very graceful +maiden, whose loveliness the poet has touched with the +most vivid colouring, grieving over the fate of her sparrow +from its feline foe, chants a dirige, a paternoster, and an +Ave Maria for its soul, and the souls of all sparrows. In +this discursive poem, which glides from object to object, in +the vast abundance of fancy, a general mourning of all the +birds in the air, and many allusions to the old romances, +“Philip Sparrow,” for its elegance, may be placed by the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page282" id="page282"></a>282</span> +side of Lesbia’s Bird, and, for its playfulness, by the Vert +Vert of Gresset.</p> + +<p>But Skelton was never more vivid than in his Ale-wife, +and all</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>The mad mummyng</p> +<p>Of Elynour Rummyng,—</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">a piece which has been more frequently reprinted than any +of his works. It remains a morsel of poignant relish for +the antiquary, still enamoured of the portrait of this +grisly dame of Leatherhead, where her name and her domicile +still exist. Such is the immortality a poet can +bestow.<a name="fa7c28" id="fa7c28" href="#ft7c28"><span class="sp">7</span></a> “The Tunnyng of Elynoure Rummyng” is a +remarkable production of <span class="sc">the Grotesque</span>, or the low +burlesque; the humour as low as you please, but as strong +as you can imagine. Cleland is reported, in Spence’s +Anecdotes of Pope, to have said, that this “Tunnyng of +Elynoure Rummyng” was taken from a poem of Lorenzo +de’ Medici. There is indeed a jocose satire by that noble +bard, entitled “I Beoni,” the Topers; an elegant piece of +playful humour, where the characters are a company of +thirsty souls hastening out of the gates of Florence to a +treat of excellent wine. It was printed by the Giunti, in +1568,<a name="fa8c28" id="fa8c28" href="#ft8c28"><span class="sp">8</span></a> and therefore this burlesque piece could never have +been known to Skelton. The manners of our Alewife and +her gossips are purely English, and their contrivances to +obtain their potations such as the village of Leatherhead +would afford.</p> + +<p>The latest edition of Skelton was published in the days +of Pope, which occasioned some strictures in conversation +from the great poet. The laureated poet of Henry the +Eighth is styled “beastly;” probably Pope alluded to +this minute portrait of “Elynoure Rummynge” and her +crowd of customers. Beastliness should have been a +delicate subject for censure from Pope. But surely Pope +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page283" id="page283"></a>283</span> +had never read Skelton; for could that great poet have +passed by the playful graces of “Philip Sparrow” only to +remember the broad gossips of “Elynoure Rummyng?”</p> + +<p>The amazing contrast of these two poems is the most +certain evidence of the extent of the genius of the poet; +he who with copious fondness dwelt on a picture which +rivals the gracefulness of Albano, could with equal completeness +give us the drunken gossipers of an Ostade. It +is true that in the one we are more than delighted, and in +the other we are more than disgusted; but in the impartiality +of philosophical criticism, we must award that +none but the most original genius could produce both. It +is this which entitles our bard to be styled the “Inventive +Skelton.”</p> + +<p>But are personal satires and libels of the day deserving +the attention of posterity? I answer, that for posterity +there are no satires nor libels. We are concerned only +with human nature. When the satirical is placed by the +side of the historical character, they reflect a mutual +light. We become more intimately acquainted with the +great Cardinal, by laying together the satire of the mendacious +Skelton with the domestic eulogy of the gentle +Cavendish. The interest which posterity takes is different +from that of contemporaries; our vision is more +complete; they witnessed the beginnings, but we behold +the ends. We are no longer deceived by hyperbolical exaggeration, +or inflamed by unsparing invective; the ideal +personage of the satirist is compared with the real one of +the historian, and we touch only delicate truths. What +Wolsey was we know, but how he was known to his own +times, and to the people, we can only gather from the +private satirist; corrected by the passionless arbiter of +another age, the satirist becomes the useful historian of +the man.</p> + +<p>The extraordinary combination in the genius of Skelton +was that of two most opposite and potent faculties—the +hyperbolical ludicrous masking the invective. He acts the +character of a buffoon; he talks the language of drollery; +he even mints a coinage of his own, to deepen the colours +of his extravagance—and all this was for the people! +But his hand conceals a poniard; his rapid gestures only +strike the deeper into his victim, and we find that the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page284" id="page284"></a>284</span> +Tragedy of the State has been acted while we were only +lookers-on before a stage erected for the popular gaze.<a name="fa9c28" id="fa9c28" href="#ft9c28"><span class="sp">9</span></a></p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c28" id="ft1c28" href="#fa1c28"><span class="fn">1</span></a> George Ellis, although an elegant critic, could not relish “the +Skeltonical minstrelsy.” In an extract from a manuscript poem +ascribed to Skelton, “The Image of Hypocrisy,” and truly Skeltonical +in every sense, he condemned it as “a piece of obscure and unintelligible +ribaldry;” and so, no doubt, it has been accepted. But the +truth is, the morsel is of exquisite poignancy, pointed at Sir Thomas +More’s controversial writings, to which the allusions in every line might +be pointed out. As these works were written after the death of Skelton, +the merit entirely remains with this fortunate imitator.</p> + +<p>In the public rejoicings at the defeat of the Armada, in 1589, a +ludicrous bard poured forth his patriotic effusions in what he called +“A Skeltonical Salutation, or Condign Gratulation,” of the Spaniard, +who, he says,—</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>——In a bravado,</p> +<p>Spent many a crusado.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>In a reprint of the poem of “Elynoure Rummynge,” in 1624, which +may be found in the “Harl. Miscellany,” vol. i., there is a poem prefixed +which ridicules the lovers of tobacco; this anachronism betrays +the imitator. At the close there are some verses from the Ghost of +Skelton; but we believe it is a real ghost.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c28" id="ft2c28" href="#fa2c28"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Sterne.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c28" id="ft3c28" href="#fa3c28"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Henry Bradshaw. “Warton,” iii. 13.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c28" id="ft4c28" href="#fa4c28"><span class="fn">4</span></a> Thomas Churchyard.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c28" id="ft5c28" href="#fa5c28"><span class="fn">5</span></a> After the death of the Cardinal it was reprinted, in 1546; but +the satire was weakened, being transferred from Wolsey and wholly +laid on the clergy. The very rare first edition is reprinted in the +“Harleian Miscellany,” by Parke, vol. ix. Tyndale has reproached +his colleague with being somewhat artful and mutable in his friendships; +but the wandering man proved the constancy of his principles, for as a +heretic he perished at the stake in Portugal.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c28" id="ft6c28" href="#fa6c28"><span class="fn">6</span></a> It has passed through a reprint by the Roxburgh Club.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c28" id="ft7c28" href="#fa7c28"><span class="fn">7</span></a> A noble amateur laid on the shrine of this antiquated beauty 20<i>l.</i> +to possess her rare portrait; and, on the republication of this portrait, +Steevens wrote some sarcastic verses on the print-collectors in the +“European Mag.” 1794; they show this famous commentator to have +been a polished wit, though he pronounced the Sonnets of Shakspeare +unreadable. These verses have been reprinted in “Dibdin’s +Bibliomania.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c28" id="ft8c28" href="#fa8c28"><span class="fn">8</span></a> Roscoe’s “Lorenzo de’ Medici,” i. 290.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c28" id="ft9c28" href="#fa9c28"><span class="fn">9</span></a> The first collection of some of the works of Skelton was made by +Thomas Marshe, in 1568. Another edition, by an unknown editor, +was in 1736; the text of which is, as Gifford justly observed, execrable. +Many of his writings still remain in their manuscript state—see +Harleian MSS., 367, 2252; and many printed ones have not been +collected. There is no task in our literature so desperately difficult as +that of offering a correct text of this anomalous poet; but we may hope +to receive it from the diligent labours of Mr. Dyce, so long promised; +it would form one of the richest volumes of the Camden publications. +[Since this note was written, the poetical works of Skelton have been +published by the Rev. A. Dyce, (2 vols. 8vo, T. Rodd, 1843,) with an +abundance of elucidatory notes and bibliographical information; so that +this difficult task has been performed with great success; and the +volumes are among the most valuable of the many works of that conscientious +editor.]</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page285" id="page285"></a>285</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE SHIP OF FOOLS.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">The</span> Stultifera Navis, or Ship of Fools, composed in verse +by Sebastian Brandt, a learned German civilian, is a general +satire on society. It has been translated into verse, or +turned into prose, in almost every European language; +and no work of such dimensions has been made so familiar +to general readers.</p> + +<p>There are works whose design displays the most striking +originality; but, alas! there are so many infelicitous +modes of execution! To freight a ship with fools, collected +from all the classes and professions of society, would +have been a creative idea in the brain of Lucian, or another +pilgrimage for the personages of Chaucer; and natural +or grotesque incidents would have started from the +invention of Rabelais. These men of genius would have +sportively navigated their “Ship,” and not have driven +aboard fool after fool, an undistinguishable shoal, by the +mere brutal force of the pen, only to sermonise with a +tedious homily or a critical declamation. Erasmus playfully +threw out a small sparkling volume on folly, which +we still open; Brandt furnishes a massive tome, with +fools huddled together; and while we lose our own, we +are astonished at his patience.</p> + +<p>The severity of this decision, we own, is that of a critic +of the nineteenth century on an author of the sixteenth.</p> + +<p>It is amusing to observe the perplexities of an eminent +French critic, Monsieur Guizot, in his endeavour to decide +on the “Stultifera Navis.” A critic of his school could +not rightly comprehend how it happened that so dull a +book had been a popular one, multiplied by editions in all +the languages of Europe. “It is,” says M. Guizot, “a +collection of extravagant or of gross <i>plaisanteries</i>—which +may have been poignant at their time, but which at this +day have no other merit than that of having had great +success three hundred years ago.” The salt of plaisanteries +cannot be damped by three centuries, provided they +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page286" id="page286"></a>286</span> +were such; but our author is by no means facetious: he +is much too downright; the tone is invariably condemnatory +or exhortative; and the Proverbs, the Psalms, and +Jeremiah, are more frequently appealed to than Cicero, +Horace, and Ovid, who occasionally show their heads in +his margin.</p> + +<p>We must look somewhat deeper would we learn why a +book which now tries our patience was not undeserving +of those multiplied editions which have ascertained its +popularity.</p> + +<p>At the period when this volume appeared, we in the +north were far removed from the urbanity and the elevated +ethics of lettered Italy. Brandt took this general view +of society at the time when the illustrious Castiglione was +an ambassador to our Henry the Seventh, and was meditating +to model the manners of his countrymen by his +<i>Libro dell’ Cortigiano</i>; and La Casa, by his <i>Galateo</i>, was +founding a code of minute politeness. But neither France, +nor Germany, nor England, had yet greatly advanced in +the civil intercourse of life, and could not appreciate such +exility of elegance, and such sublimated refinement. With +us, the staple of our moral philosophy was of a homespun +but firm texture, and had in it more of yarn than of silk. +Men had little to read; they were not weary of that +eternal iteration of admonition on whatever was most +painful or most despicable in their conduct; their ideas +were uncertain, and their minds remained to be developed; +nothing was trite or trivial. In his wide survey of human +life, the author addressed the mundane fools of his age in +the manner level to their comprehension; the ethical +character of the volume was such, that the Abbot Trithemus +designated it as a divine book; and in this volume, +which read like a homily, while every man beheld the +reflection of his own habits and thoughts, he chuckled +over the sayings and doings of his neighbours. If any one +quipped the profession of another, the sufferer had only to +turn the leaf to find ample revenge; and these were the +causes of the uninterrupted popularity of this ethical work.</p> + +<p>“The Ship of Fools” is, indeed, cumbrous, rude, and +inartificial, and was not constructed on the principles which +regulate our fast-sailing vessels; yet it may be prized for +something more than its curiosity. It is an ancient satire, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page287" id="page287"></a>287</span> +of that age of simplicity which must precede an age of +refinement.</p> + +<p>If man in society changes his manners, he cannot vary +his species; man remains nothing but man; for, however +disguised by new modes of acting, the same principles of +our actions are always at work. The same follies and the +same vices in their result actuate the human being in all +ages; and he who turns over the volume of the learned +civilian of Germany will find detailed those great moral +effects in life which, if the modern moralist may invest +with more dignity, he could not have discovered with more +truth. We have outgrown his counsels, but we never shall +elude the vexatious consequences of his experience; and +many a chapter in the “Ship of Fools” will point many +an argument <i>ad hominum</i>, and awaken in the secret hours +of our reminiscences the pang of contrite sorrows, or tingle +our cheek with a blush for our weaknesses. The truths of +human nature are ever echoing in our breasts.</p> + +<p>“The Ship of Fools,” by Alexander Barclay—a volume of +renown among literary antiquaries, and of rarity and price—is +at once a translation and an original. In octave stanza, +flowing in the ballad measure, Barclay has a natural construction +of style still retaining a vernacular vigour. +He is noticed by Warton for having contributed his share +in the improvement of English phraseology; and, indeed, +we are often surprised to discover many felicities of our +native idiom; and the work, though it should be repulsive +to some for its black-letter, is perfectly intelligible to a +modern reader. The verse being prosaic, preserves its +colloquial ease, though with more gravity than suits +sportive subjects; we sometimes feel the tediousness of the +good sense of the Priest of St. Mary Ottery.</p> + +<p>The edition of 1570 of the “Ship of Fooles”<a name="fa1c29" id="fa1c29" href="#ft1c29"><span class="sp">1</span></a> contains +other productions of Barclay. In his “Eclogues,”<a name="fa2c29" id="fa2c29" href="#ft2c29"><span class="sp">2</span></a> our +good priest, who did not write, as he says, “for the laud +of man,” indulged his ethical and theological vein in pastoral +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page288" id="page288"></a>288</span> +poetry; and the interlocutors are citizens disputing +with men of the country, and poets with their patrons. +To have converted shepherds into scholastic disputants or +town-satirists was an unnatural change; but this whimsical +taste had been introduced by Petrarch and Mantuan; +and the first eclogues in the English language, which +Warton tells us are those of Barclay, took this strange +form—an incongruity our Spenser had not the skill to +avoid, and for which Milton has been censured. The less +fortunate anomalies of genius are often perpetuated by the +inconsiderate imitation of those who should be most +sensible of their deformity.</p> + +<p>In the eclogues of Barclay, the country is ever represented +in an impoverished, depressed state; and the +splendour of the city, and the luxurious indulgence of the +citizen and the courtier, offer a singular contrast to the +extreme misery of the agriculturist. We may infer that +the country had been deplorably ravaged or neglected in +the civil wars, which, half a century afterwards, was to be +covered by the fat beeves of the graziers of Elizabeth.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c29" id="ft1c29" href="#fa1c29"><span class="fn">1</span></a> The woodcuts in this edition are wretched; though in part they are +copied from the fine specimens of the art which embellish the Latin +version of Locherus.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c29" id="ft2c29" href="#fa2c29"><span class="fn">2</span></a> One of these, a “Dialogue between a Citizen and Uplandishman,” +has been reprinted by the Percy Society, under the editorship of Mr. +Fairholt, who has given a digest of the other Eclogues in a Preface.—<span class="sc">Ed.</span></p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page289" id="page289"></a>289</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTER OF +SIR THOMAS MORE.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">If</span> the art of biography be the development of “the ruling +passion,” it is in strong characters that we must seek for +the single feature. Learned and meditative as was Sir +<span class="sc">Thomas More</span>, a jesting humour, a philosophical jocundity, +indulged on important as well as on ordinary +occasions, served his wise purpose. He seems to have +taken refuge from the follies of other men by retreating to +the pleasantry of his own. Grave men censured him for +the absence of all gravity; and some imagined that the +singularity of his facetious disposition, which sometimes +seemed even ludicrous, was carried on to affectation. It +was certainly inherent,—it was a constitutional temper—it +twined itself in his fibres,—it betrayed itself on his countenance. +We detect it from the comic vein of his boyhood +when among the players; we pursue it through the numerous +transactions of his life; and we leave him at its last +solemn close, when life and death were within a second of +each other, uttering three jests upon the scaffold. Even +when he seemed to have quitted the world, and had laid +his head on the block, he bade the executioner stay his +hand till he had removed his beard, observing, “that that +had never committed any treason.”</p> + +<p>This mirthful mind had, indeed, settled on his features. +<span class="sc">Erasmus</span>, who has furnished us with an enamelled portrait +of <span class="sc">More</span>, among its minuter touches reluctantly +confessed that “the countenance of Sir Thomas More was +a transcript of his mind, inclining to an habitual smile;” +and he adds, “ingenuously to confess the truth, that face +is formed for the expression of mirth rather than of gravity +or dignity.” But, lest he should derange the gravity of +the German to whom he was writing, Erasmus cautiously +qualifies the disparaging delineation—“though as far as +possible removed from folly or buffoonery.” <span class="sc">More</span>, however, +would assume a solemn countenance when on the +point of throwing out some facetious stroke. He has so +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page290" id="page290"></a>290</span> +described himself when an interlocutor in one of his dialogues +addresses him—“You use to look so sadly when +you mean merrily, that many times men doubt whether +you speak in sport when you mean good earnest.”<a name="fa1c30" id="fa1c30" href="#ft1c30"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p>The unaffected playfulness of the mind; the smile whose +sweetness allayed the causticity of the tongue; the tingling +pleasantry when pointed at persons; the pungent +raillery which corrected opinions without scorn or contumely; +and the art of promptly amusing the mind of +another by stealing it away from a present object—appeared +not only in his conversations, but was carried +into his writings.</p> + +<p>The grave and sullen pages of the polemical labours of +<span class="sc">More</span>, whose writings chiefly turn on the controversies +of the Romanists and the Reformers, are perhaps the only +controversial ones which exhibit in the marginal notes, +frequently repeated, “a merrie tale.” “A merry tale +cometh never amiss to me,” said <span class="sc">More</span> truly of himself. +He has offered an apology for introducing this anomalous +style into these controversial works. He conceived that, +as a layman, it better became him “to tell his mind merrily +than more solemnly to preach.” Jests, he acknowledges, are +but sauce; and “it were but an absurd banquet indeed in +which there were few dishes of meat and much variety of +sauces; but that is but an unpleasant one where there +were no sauce at all.”</p> + +<p>The massive folio of Sir <span class="sc">Thomas More’s</span> “English +Works”<a name="fa2c30" id="fa2c30" href="#ft2c30"><span class="sp">2</span></a> remains a monument of our language at a +period of its pristine vigour. Viewed in active as well +as in contemplative life, at the bar or on the bench, as +ambassador or chancellor, and not to less advantage where, +“a good distance from his house at Chelsea, he builded +the new building, wherein was a chapel, a library, and a +gallery,” the character, the events, and the writings of +this illustrious man may ever interest us.</p> + +<p>These works were the fertile produce of “those spare +hours for writing, stolen from his meat and sleep.” We +are told that “by using much writing, towards his latter +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page291" id="page291"></a>291</span> +end he complained of the ache of his breast.” He has +himself acknowledged that “those delicate dainty folk, +the evangelical brethren (so More calls our early reformers), +think my works too long, for everything that is, +they think too long.” More alludes to the rising disposition +in men for curtailing all forms and other ceremonial +acts, especially in the church service.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">More</span>, however skilful as a Latin scholar, to promulgate +his opinions aimed at popularity, and cultivated our vernacular +idiom, till the English language seems to have +enlarged the compass of its expression under the free and +copious vein of the writer. It is only by the infelicity of +the subjects which constitute the greater portion of this +mighty volume, that its author has missed the immortality +which his genius had else secured.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">More</span> has been fortunate in the zeal of his biographers; +but we are conscious, that had there been a Xenophon or +a Boswell among them, they could have told us much +more. The conversations of Sir <span class="sc">Thomas More</span> were +racy. His was that rare gift of nature, perfect presence +of mind, deprived of which the fullest is but slow and late. +His conversancy with public affairs, combined with a close +observation of familiar life, ever afforded him a striking +aptitude of illustration; but the levity of his wit, and the +luxuriance of his humour, could not hide the deep sense +which at all times gave weight to his thoughts, and decision +to his acts. Of all these we are furnished with ample +evidence.</p> + +<p>Domestic affection in all its naïve simplicity dictated +the artless record of Roper, the companion of More, for +sixteen years, and the husband of his adored daughter +Margaret.<a name="fa3c30" id="fa3c30" href="#ft3c30"><span class="sp">3</span></a> The pride of ancestry in the pages of his +great-grandson, the ascetic Cresacre More, could not +borrow the charm of that work whence he derived his +enlarged narrative.<a name="fa4c30" id="fa4c30" href="#ft4c30"><span class="sp">4</span></a> More than one beadsman, the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page292" id="page292"></a>292</span> +votaries of their martyr, have consecrated his memory +even with their legendary faith;<a name="fa5c30" id="fa5c30" href="#ft5c30"><span class="sp">5</span></a> while recent and more +philosophical writers have expatiated on the wide theme, +and have repeated the story of this great Chancellor of +England.<a name="fa6c30" id="fa6c30" href="#ft6c30"><span class="sp">6</span></a></p> + +<p>“The child here waiting at table, whomever shall live +to see it, will prove a marvellous man.” It was thus that +the early patron of More, Cardinal Morton, sagaciously +contemplated on the precocity of More’s boyhood. His +prompt natural humour broke out at the Christmas revels, +when the boy, suddenly slipping in among the players, +acted an extempore part of his own invention. Yet this +jocund humour, which never was to quit him to his last +awful minute, at times indulged a solemnity of thought, +as remarkable in a youth of eighteen. In the taste of +that day, he invented an allegorical pageant. These +pageants consisted of paintings on rolls of cloth, with inscriptions +in verse, descriptive of the scenical objects. +They formed a series of the occupations of childhood, +manhood, the indolent liver, “a child again,” and old age, +thin and hoar, wise and discreet. The last scenes exhibited +more original conceptions. The image of <span class="sc">Death</span>, where +under his “misshapen feet” lay the sage old man; then +came “the Lady <span class="sc">Fame</span>,” boasting that she had survived +death, and would preserve the old man’s name “by the +voice of the people.” But <span class="sc">Fame</span> was followed by <span class="sc">Time</span>, +“the lord of every hour, the great destroyer both of sea +and land,” deriding simple “Fame;” for “who shall boast +an eternal name before me?” Yet was there a more potent +destroyer than <span class="sc">Time</span>; Time itself was mortal! and the +eighth pageant revealed the triumph of <span class="sc">Eternity</span>. The +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page293" id="page293"></a>293</span> +last exhibited the poet himself, meditating in his chair—he +“who had fed their eyes with these fictions and these +figures.” The allegory of Fame, Time, and Eternity, is a +sublime creation of ideal personifications. The conception +of these pageants reminds one of the allegorical +“Trionfi” of Petrarch; but they are not borrowed from +the Italian poet. They were, indeed, in the taste of the +age, and such pageants were exhibited in the streets; but +the present gorgeous invention, as well as the verses, were +the fancies of the youthful More.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">More</span> in his youth was a true poet; but in his active +life he soon deserted these shadows of the imagination.</p> + +<p>A modern critic has regretted, that, notwithstanding +the zeal of his biographers, we would gladly have been +better acquainted with <span class="sc">More’s</span> political life, his parliamentary +speeches, his judicial decrees, and his history as +an ambassador and a courtier.</p> + +<p>There is not, however, wanting the most striking +evidence of <span class="sc">More’s</span> admirable independence in all these +characters. I fix on his parliamentary life.</p> + +<p>As a burgess under Henry the Seventh, he effectually +opposed a royal demand for money. When the king +heard that “a beardless boy had disappointed all his +purpose,” the malice of royalty was wreaked on the devoted +head of the judge his father, in a causeless quarrel +and a heavy fine. When <span class="sc">More</span> was chosen the Speaker +of the Commons, he addressed Henry the Eighth on the +important subject of <i>freedom of debate</i>. There is a remarkable +passage on the heat of discussion, and the diversity +of men’s faculties, which displays a nice discrimination +in human nature. “Among so many wise men, neither is +every one wise alike; nor among so many alike well-witted, +every man alike well-spoken; and it often happeneth, +that likewise as much folly is uttered with painted +polished speeches, so many boisterous and rude in language +see deep, indeed, and give right substantial counsel. +And since also in matters of great importance the mind +is so often occupied in the matter, that a man rather +studies what to say than how, by reason whereof the +wisest man and best-spoken in a whole country fortuneth, +while his mind is fervent in the matter, somewhat to speak +in such wise as he would afterward wish to have been +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page294" id="page294"></a>294</span> +uttered otherwise; and yet no worse will had he when he +spake it, than he had when he would gladly change it.”</p> + +<p>Once the potent cardinal, irritated at the free language +of the Commons, to awe the House, came down in person, +amid the blazonry of all the insignia of his multiform state. +To check his arrogance, it was debated whether the minister +should be only admitted with a few lords. <span class="sc">More</span> +suggested, that as <span class="sc">Wolsey</span> had lately taxed the lightness +of their tongues, “it would not be amiss to receive him in +all his pomp, with his (silver) pillars, emblems of his +ecclesiastical power, as a pillar of the church, his maces, +his pole-axes, his crosses, his hat, and his great seal too, +to the intent that if he find the like fault with us hereafter, +we may the more boldly lay the blame on those his +grace brings with him.” The cardinal made a solemn +oration; and when he ceased, behold the whole House was +struck by one unbroken and dead silence! The minister +addressed several personally—each man was a mute: discovering +that he could not carry his point by his presence, +he seemed to recollect that the custom of the House was +to speak by the mouth of their Speaker, and <span class="sc">Wolsey</span> +turned to him. <span class="sc">More</span>, in all humility, explained the +cause of the universal silence, by the amazement of the +House at the presence of so noble a personage; “besides, +that it was not agreeable to the liberty of the House to +offer answers—that he himself could return no answer +except every one of the members could put into his head +their several wits.” The minister abruptly rose and departed +<i>re infectâ</i>. Shortly after, <span class="sc">Wolsey</span> in his gallery +at Whitehall told <span class="sc">More</span>, “Would to God you had been +at Rome, Mr. More, when I made you Speaker!” “So +would I too!” replied <span class="sc">More</span>; and then immediately exclaimed, +“I like this gallery much better than your +gallery at Hampton Court;” and thus, talking of pictures, +he broke off “the cardinal’s displeasant talk.”</p> + +<p>This was a customary artifice with <span class="sc">More</span>. He withdrew +the mind from disturbing thoughts by some sudden +exclamation, or broke out into some facetious sally, which +gave a new turn to the conversation. Of many, to give a +single instance. On the day he resigned the chancellorship, +he went after service to his wife’s pew; there bowing, +in the manner and with the very words the Lord Chancellor’s +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page295" id="page295"></a>295</span> +servant was accustomed to announce to her, that +“My lord was gone!” she laughed at the idling mockery; +but when assured, in sober sadness, that “My lord was +gone!” this good sort of lady, with her silly exclamation +of “Tillie vallie! Tillie vallie! will you sit and make goslings +in the ashes?” broke out into one of those domestic +explosions to which she was very liable. The resigned +chancellor, now resigned in more than one sense, to allay +the storm he had raised, desired his daughters to observe +whether they could not see some fault in their mother’s +dress. They could discover none. “Don’t you perceive +that your mother’s nose stands somewhat awry?” Thus +by a stroke of merriment, he dissipated the tedious remonstrances +and perplexing inquiries which a graver man could +not have eluded.</p> + +<p>At the most solemn moments of his life he was still +disposed to indulge his humour. When in the Tower, +denied pen and ink, he wrote a letter to his beloved +Margaret, and tells her that “This letter is written with +a coal; but that to express his love a peck of coals would +not suffice.”</p> + +<p>His political sagacity equalled the quickness of his wit +or the flow of his humour. He knew to rate at their real +value the favours of such a sovereign as Henry VIII. +The king suddenly came to dine at his house at Chelsea, +and while walking in the garden, threw his arm about the +neck of the chancellor. Roper, his son-in-law, congratulated +More on this affectionate familiarity of royalty. +More observed, “Son, the king favours me as (much as) +any subject within the realm; howbeit I have no cause to +be proud thereof, for if my head would win him a castle +in France, it should not fail to go!”</p> + +<p><span class="sc">More</span> seems to have descried the speck of the Reformation, +while others could not view even the gathering +cloud in the political horizon. He and Roper were conversing +on their “Catholic prince, their learned clergy, +their sound nobility, their obedient subjects, and finally +that no heretic dare show his face.” More went even beyond +Roper in his commendation; but he proceeded, “And +yet, son Roper, I pray God that some of us, as high as we +seem to sit upon the mountains, treading heretics under +our feet like ants, live not the day that we would gladly +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page296" id="page296"></a>296</span> +be at league and composition with them, to let them +have their churches quietly to themselves, so that they +would be contented to let us have ours quietly to ourselves.” +Roper, somewhat amazed, alleged his reasons for +not seeing any cause which could produce such consequences. +The zeal of the juvenile Catholic broke out into +“a fume,” which More perceiving, with his accustomed +and gentle artifice exclaimed merrily, “Well, son Roper, +it shall not be so! it shall not be so!”</p> + +<p>No one was more sensible than <span class="sc">More</span> that to gain over +the populace it is necessary to descend to them. But +when raillery passed into railing, and sarcasm sunk into +scurrility, in these unhappy polemical effusions, our critics +have bitterly censured the intolerance and bigotry of Sir +<span class="sc">Thomas More</span>. All this, however, lies on the surface. +The antagonists of <span class="sc">More</span> were not less free, nor more refined. +<span class="sc">More</span> wrote at a cruel crisis; both the subjects he +treated on, and the times he wrote in, and the distorted +medium through which he viewed the new race as the +subverters of government, and the eager despoilers of the +ecclesiastical lands, were quite sufficient to pervert the +intellect of a sage of that day, and throw even the most +genial humour into a state of exacerbation.</p> + +<p>Our sympathies are no longer to be awakened by the +worship of images and relics—prayers to saints—the state +of souls in purgatory—and the unwearied blessedness of +pilgrimages—nor even by the subtle inquiry, Whether the +church were before the gospel, or the gospel before the +church?—or by the burning of Tyndale’s Testament, and +“the confutation of the new church of Frere Barnes:” all +these direful follies, which cost Sir Thomas More many a +sleepless night, and bound many a harmless heretic to the +stake, have passed away, only, alas! to be succeeded by +other follies as insane, which shall in their turn meet the +same fate. Those works of <span class="sc">More</span> are a voluminous +labyrinth; but whoever winds its dark passages shall +gather many curious notices of the writer’s own age, and +many exquisite “merrie tales,” delectable to the antiquary, +and not to be contemned in the history of the human +mind.</p> + +<p>The impending Reformation was hastened by a famous +invective in the form of “The Supplication of Beggars.” +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page297" id="page297"></a>297</span> +Its flagrant argument lay in its arithmetic. It calculated all +the possessions of the clergy, who though but “the four-hundredth +part of the nation, yet held half of the revenues.”</p> + +<p><span class="sc">More</span> replied to “The Supplication of the Beggars” by +“The Supplications of the Souls in Purgatory.” These +he represented in terror at the sacrilegious annihilation of +the masses said for their repose; and this with the +Romanist was probably no weak argument in that day.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">More</span> more reasonably ridicules the extravagance of the +estimates. Such accounts, got up in haste and designed +for a particular purpose, are necessarily inaccurate; but the +inaccuracy of a statement does not at all injure the drift of +the argument, should that be based on truth.</p> + +<p>With <span class="sc">More</span> “the heretics” were but ordinary rebels, +as appears by the style of his narrative. “A rabble of +heretics at Abingdon did not intend to lose any more +labour by putting up bills (petitions) to Parliament, but +to make an open insurrection and subvert all the realm, to +kill the clergy, and sell priests’ heads as good and cheap as +sheep’s heads—three for a penny, buy who would! But +God saved the church and the realm. Yet after this was +there one John Goose roasted at Tower-hill, and thereupon +some other John Goose began to make some gaggling +awhile, but it availed him not. And now we have this +gosling with his ‘Supplication of Beggars.’ He maketh +his bill in the name of the beggars. The bill is couched +as full of <i>lies</i> as the beggar swarmeth full of <i>lice</i>. We +neither will nor shall need to make much business about +this matter; we trust much better in the goodness of +good men.”</p> + +<p>The marriage of the clergy was no doubt at first abused +by some. <span class="sc">More</span> describes one Richard Mayfield, late a +monk and a priest, and, it may be added, a martyr, for he +was burned. Of this man he says, “His holy life well +declares his heresies, when being both a priest and a monk +he went about two wives, one in Brabant, another in England. +What he meant I cannot make you sure, whether +he would be sure of the one if t’other should happen to +refuse him, or that he would have them both, the one here, +the other there; or else both in one place, the one because +he was priest, the other because he was monk.”<a name="fa7c30" id="fa7c30" href="#ft7c30"><span class="sp">7</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page298" id="page298"></a>298</span></p> + +<p>Such is the ludicrous ribaldry which runs through the +polemical works of Sir <span class="sc">Thomas More</span>: the opposite party +set no better example, and none worse than the redoubtable +Simon Fish, the writer of the “Supplication of Beggars.” +Oldmixon expresses his astonishment that “the famous +Sir Thomas More was so hurried by his zeal that he forgot +he was a gentleman, and treated Mr. Fish with the +language of a monk.”</p> + +<p>Writers who decide on other men and on other times by +the spirit of their own, try human affairs by a false +standard. <span class="sc">More</span> was at heart a monk. He wore a +prickly hair-shirt to mortify the flesh; he scourged himself +with the knotted cord; he practised the penance; and +he appeals to miraculous relics as the evidences of his +faith! I give his own words in alluding to the Sudarium, +that napkin sent to king Abgarus, on which Jesus impressed +the image of his own face: “And it hath been by +like miracle in the thin corruptible cloth kept and preserved +these 1500 years fresh and well preserved, to the +inward comforts, spiritual rejoicing, and great increase of +fervour in the hearts of good Christian people.” To this +he joins another similar miraculous relic, “the evangelist +Luke’s portrait of our blessed Lady, his mother.”<a name="fa8c30" id="fa8c30" href="#ft8c30"><span class="sp">8</span></a></p> + +<p>Such were considered as the evidences of the true faith +of the Romanists; but <span class="sc">More</span> with his relics was then +dealing in a damaged commodity. Lord Herbert has +noticed the great fall of the price of relics at the dissolution +of the monasteries: some which had been left in +pawn no one cared to redeem.</p> + +<p>“The History of King Richard the Third,” which first +appeared in a correct state in this folio, has given rise to +“historic doubts” which led to some paradoxes. The personal +monster whom <span class="sc">More</span> and <span class="sc">Shakspeake</span> exhibited +has vanished, but the deformity of the revolting parricide +was surely revealed in the bones of the infant nephews. +This, the earliest history in our vernacular literature, may +still be read with delight. As a composition the critical +justice of Lord Orford may be cited. “Its author was +then in the vigour of his fancy, and fresh from the study +of the Greek and Roman historians, whose manner he has +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page299" id="page299"></a>299</span> +imitated.” The details in this history of a prince of the +house of York, though they may be tinged with the gall +of the Lancastrian Cardinal Morton, descend to us with +the weight of contemporary authority. It is supposed +that <span class="sc">More</span> may have derived much of the materials of +his history from his early patron, but the charms which +still may retain us are the natural yet dramatic dialogue—the +picturesque touches—and a style, at times, whose +beauty three centuries have not wrinkled—and the emotions +which such vital pages leave in the reader’s mind.<a name="fa9c30" id="fa9c30" href="#ft9c30"><span class="sp">9</span></a></p> + +<p>The “<span class="sc">Utopia</span>” of Sir <span class="sc">Thomas More</span>, which being +composed in Latin is not included in this great volume of +his “Workes,” may be read by the English reader in its +contemporary spirited translation,<a name="fa10c30" id="fa10c30" href="#ft10c30"><span class="sp">10</span></a> and more intelligibly +in Bishop Burnet’s version. The title of his own coinage +has become even proverbial; and from its classical Latinity +it was better known among foreigners even in Burnet’s +day than at home. This combination of philosophy, +politics, and fiction, though borrowed from the ideal republic +of Plato, is worthy of an experienced statesman and +a philosopher who at that moment was writing not only +above his age, but, as it afterwards appeared, above himself. +It has served as the model of that novel class of +literature—political romances. But though the “Utopia” +is altogether imaginary, it displays no graces of the imagination +in an ingeniously constructed fable. It is the dream +of a good citizen, and, like a dream, the scenes scattered +and unconnected are broken into by chimerical forms and +impracticable achievements. In times of political empiricism +it may be long meditated, and the “Utopia” may +yet pass through a million of editions before that new era +of the perfectibility of the human animal, the millennium of +political theorists, which it would seem to have anticipated.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page300" id="page300"></a>300</span></p> + +<p>This famous work was written at no immature period +of life, for <span class="sc">More</span> was then thirty-six years of age. The +author had clear notions of the imperfections of governments, +but he was not as successful in proposing remedies +for the disorders he had detected. A community where +all the property belongs to the government, and to which +every man contributes by his labour, that he may have his +own wants supplied; a domestic society which very much +resembles a great public school, and converts a citizen, +through all the gradations of his existence, from form to +form; and where every man, like an automatical machine, +must be fixed in his proper place,—supposes a society of +passionless beings which social life has never shown, and +surely never can. The art of carrying on war without +combating, by the wiliness of stratagems; or procuring a +peace by offering a reward for the assassination of the +leaders of the enemy, with whom rather than with the +people all wars originate; the injunction to the incurable +of suicide; the paucity of laws which enabled every man +to plead his own cause; the utmost freedom granted to +religious sects, where every man who contested the religion +of another was sent into exile, or condemned to +bondage; the contempt of the precious metal, which was +here used but as toys for children, or as fetters for slaves;—such +fanciful notions, running counter to the experience +of history, or to the advantages of civilised society, induced +some to suspect the whole to be but the incoherent +dreams of an idling philosopher, thrown down at random +without much consideration. It is sobriety indulging an +inebriation, and good sense wandering in a delirium. +Burnet, in his translation, cautiously reminds his readers +that he must in nowise be made responsible for the matter +of the work which “he ventured” to translate. Others +have conceived “the Utopia” dangerous for those speculators +in politics who might imagine the author to have +been serious. <span class="sc">More</span> himself has adjudged the book “no +better worthy than to lye always in his own island, or +else to be consecrated to Vulcan.”</p> + +<p>But assuredly many of the extraordinary principles inculcated +in “the Utopia” were not so lightly held by its +illustrious author. The sincerity of his notions may be +traced in his own simple habits, his opinions in conversation, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page301" id="page301"></a>301</span> +and the tenor of his invariable life. His contempt +of outward forms and personal honours, his voluntary +poverty, his fearlessness of death—all these afford ample +evidence that the singularity of the man himself was as +remarkable as the work he produced. The virtues he had +expatiated on, he had contemplated in his own breast.</p> + +<p>This singular, but great man, was a sage whose wisdom +lay concealed in his pleasantry; a politician without ambition; +a lord chancellor who entered into office poor, and +left it not richer. When his house was to be searched for +treasure, which circumstance had alarmed his friends, well +did that smile become him when he observed that “it +would be only a sport to his family,” and he pleasantly +added, “lest they should find out my wife’s gay girdle +and her gold beads.” When the clergy, in convention, +had voted a donation amounting to no inconsiderable fortune, +“not for services to be performed, but for those +which he had chosen to do,” More rejected the gift with +this noble confession—“I am both over-proud, and over-slothful +also, to be hired for money to take half the labour +and business in writing that I have taken since I began.” +And when accused by Tyndale and others for being “the +proctor of the clergy,” and richly fed, how forcible was +his expression! “He had written his controversial works +only that God might give him thanks.”</p> + +<p>It happened, however, that his after-conduct in life, in regard +to that religious toleration which he had wisely maintained +in his ideal society, was as opposite as night to noon. +Could he then have ever been earnest in his “Utopia?”—he +who exults over the burning of a heretic, who “could +not agree that before the day of doom there were either +any saint in heaven or soul in purgatory, or in hell +either,” for which horrible heresy he was delivered at last +into the secular hands, and “burned as there was never +wretch I ween better worth.”<a name="fa11c30" id="fa11c30" href="#ft11c30"><span class="sp">11</span></a> This harmless and hapless +metaphysical theologian did not disagree with More +on the existence of saints, of souls, nor of hell. The +heretic conceived—and could he change by volition the +ideas which seemed to him just?—that no reward or +punishment could be inflicted before the final judgment. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page302" id="page302"></a>302</span> +A conversation of five minutes might have settled the +difference, for they only varied about the precise time!</p> + +<p>In that great revolution which was just opening in his +latter days, <span class="sc">More</span> seems sometimes to have mistaken +theology for politics. A strange and mysterious change, +such as the history of man can hardly parallel, occurred in +the mind of <span class="sc">More</span>, by what insensible gradations is a +secret which must lie in his grave.</p> + +<p>This great man laid his head on the block to seal his +conscience with his blood. Protestants have lamented +this act as his weakness, the Romanists decreed a martyrdom. +In a sudden change of system in the affairs of a +nation, when even justice may assume the appearance of +violence, the most enlightened minds, standing amidst +their ancient opinions and their cherished prejudices subverted, +display how the principle of integrity predominates +over that of self-preservation.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c30" id="ft1c30" href="#fa1c30"><span class="fn">1</span></a> “Sir Thomas More’s Workes,” 127.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c30" id="ft2c30" href="#fa2c30"><span class="fn">2</span></a> “The Workes of Sir Thomas More in the English Tongue, 1557, +fo.,” a venerable folio of nearly 1500 pages in double columns, is closely +printed in black-letter.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c30" id="ft3c30" href="#fa3c30"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Roper’s “Life of Sir Thomas More,” which had been suppressed +through the reign of Elizabeth, only first appeared in 1626, at Paris, +when a Roman Catholic princess in the person of Henrietta, the queen +of Charles the First, had ascended the throne of England; it was republished +in 1729. There is also an elegant modern reprint by Mr. +Singer.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c30" id="ft4c30" href="#fa4c30"><span class="fn">4</span></a> The Life by his great-grandson was printed in 1627, and republished +in 1726. This biography is the one usually referred to. Though +with a more lucid arrangement, and a fuller narrative, than Roper’s +life, the writer inherited little of the family genius, except the bigotry +of his great ancestor.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c30" id="ft5c30" href="#fa5c30"><span class="fn">5</span></a> <i>Tres Thomæ.</i> The three Thomases are, Aquinas, à Becket, and +More—by Dr. Thomas Stapleton. Another Life by J. H. is an abridgment, +1662. These writers, Romanists, as well as the great-grandson, +have interspersed in their narrative more than one of those fabulous incidents +and pious frauds, visions, and miracles, which have been the +opprobrium of Catholic biographers.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c30" id="ft6c30" href="#fa6c30"><span class="fn">6</span></a> Macdiarmid, in his “Lives of British Statesmen,” has chiefly +considered the political character of this Lord-Chancellor. Others have +written lives merely as accompaniments to the editions of some of his +works.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c30" id="ft7c30" href="#fa7c30"><span class="fn">7</span></a> Works, fo. 346.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c30" id="ft8c30" href="#fa8c30"><span class="fn">8</span></a> “Works of Sir Thomas More,” 113, col. 2.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c30" id="ft9c30" href="#fa9c30"><span class="fn">9</span></a> Mr. Singer has furnished us with a correct reprint of this history. +More’s “Life of Richard the Third” had been given by our chroniclers +from copies mutilated or altered. A work whose merits arise from the +beauty of its composition admits of neither.</p> + +<p><a name="ft10c30" id="ft10c30" href="#fa10c30"><span class="fn">10</span></a> The old translation, “by Raphe Robinson, 1551,” has been republished +by Dr. Dibdin, accompanied by copious annotations. Almost +everything relating to the family, the life, and the works of the author +may be found in “the biographical and literary introduction.” It is +the first specimen of an edition where the diligence of the editor has not +been wasted on trivial researches or nugatory commentaries.</p> + +<p><a name="ft11c30" id="ft11c30" href="#fa11c30"><span class="fn">11</span></a> “Sir Thomas More’s Workes,” 348.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page303" id="page303"></a>303</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE EARL OF SURREY AND SIR THOMAS +WYATT.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Not</span> many years intervened between the uncouth gorgeousness +of <span class="sc">Hawes</span>, the homely sense of <span class="sc">Barclay</span>, the +anomalous genius of <span class="sc">Skelton</span>, and the pure poetry of +Henry Howard the <span class="sc">Earl</span> of <span class="sc">Surrey</span>. In the poems of +<span class="sc">Surrey</span>, and his friend, Sir Thomas Wyatt,<a name="fa1c31" id="fa1c31" href="#ft1c31"><span class="sp">1</span></a> the elder, the +age of taste, if not of genius, opens on us. Dryden and +Pope sometimes seem to appear two centuries before their +date. There is no chronology in the productions of real +genius; for, whenever a great master appears, he advances +his art to a period which labour, without creation, toils +for centuries to reach.</p> + +<p>The great reformer of our poetry, he who first from his +own mind, without a model, displayed its permanent +principles, was the poetic Earl of Surrey. There was inspiration +in his system, and he freed his genius from the +barbaric taste or the undisturbed dulness which had prevailed +since the days of Chaucer. His ear was musical, +and he formed a metrical structure with the melodies of +our varied versification, rejecting the rude rhythmical +rhyme which had hitherto prevailed in our poetry. He +created a poetic diction, and graceful involutions; a finer +selection of words, and a delicacy of expression, were now +substituted for vague diffusion, and homeliness of phrases +and feeble rhymes, or, on the other hand, for that vitiated +style of crude pedantic Latinisms, such as “purpúre, +aureáte, pulchritúde, celatúre, facúnde,” and so many +others, laborious nothings! filling the verse with noise. +The contemplative and tender <span class="sc">Surrey</span> charms by opening +some picturesque scene or dwelling on some impressive +incident. He had discerned the error of those inartificial +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page304" id="page304"></a>304</span> +writers, whose minute puerility, in their sterile abundance, +detailed till nothing was remembered, and described, till +nothing was perceptible. Hitherto, our poets had narrowed +their powers by moulding their conceptions by +temporary tastes, the manners and modes of thinking of +their day; but their remoteness, which may delight the +antiquary, diminishes their interest with the poetical +reader. <span class="sc">Surrey</span> struck into that secret path which leads +to general nature, guided by his art: his tenderness and +his thoughtful musings find an echo in our bosoms, and +are as fresh with us as they were in the court of Windsor +three centuries past.</p> + +<p>These rare qualities in a poet at such a period would +of themselves form an era in our literature; but <span class="sc">Surrey</span> +also extended their limits; the disciple of Chaucer was +also the pupil of Petrarch, and the Earl of <span class="sc">Surrey</span> composed +the <i>first sonnets</i> in the English language, with the +amatory tenderness and the condensed style of its legitimate +structure. Dr. Nott further claims the honour +for Surrey of the invention of heroic blank verse; Surrey’s +version of Virgil being unrhymed.</p> + +<p>When Warton suggested that Surrey borrowed the +idea of blank verse from Trissino’s “Italia Liberata,” he +seems to have been misled by the inaccurate date of 1528, +which he affixed to the publication of that epic. Trissino’s +epic did not appear till 1547,<a name="fa2c31" id="fa2c31" href="#ft2c31"><span class="sp">2</span></a> and Surrey perished in the +January of that year. It was indeed long a common +opinion that Trissino invented the <i>versi sciolti</i>, or blank +verse, though Quadrio confesses that such had been used +by preceding poets, whose names he has recorded. The +mellifluence and flexibility of the vowelly language were +favourable to unrhymed verse; while the poverty of the +poetic diction, and the unmusical verse of France, could +never venture to show itself without the glitter of rhyme. +The heroic blank verse, however, was an after-thought of +Surrey: he first composed his unrhymed verse in the long +Alexandrine, had afterwards felicitously changed it for the +decasyllabic verse, but did not live to correct the whole of +his version. Surrey could not therefore have designed the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page305" id="page305"></a>305</span> +pauses and the cadences of blank verse in his first choice, +nor will they be found in his last. Nor can it be conceded +that blank verse was wholly unknown among us. +Webbe, a critic long after, in the reign of Elizabeth, considers +the author of Pierce Ploughman as “the first +whom he had met with who observed the quantity of our +verse, <i>without the curiosity of rhyme</i>.”</p> + +<p>Dr. Nott, with editorial ardour, considers that the +unfinished model of Surrey was the prototype of all +subsequent blank verse, and was also the origin of its +introduction into dramatic composition. A sweeping conclusion! +when we consider the artificial structure of our +blank verse from the days of Milton, who, not without +truth, asserted that “he first gave the example of ancient +liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome +and modern bondage of rhyming.” This indeed has been +denied to Milton by those who look to dates, and have +no ear; and are apt to imagine that rhymeless lines, mere +couplets, with ten well-counted syllables in each, must +necessarily form blank verse. Dr. Nott, in quoting the +eulogy of Ascham on this noble effort of Surrey “to bring +our national poetry to perfection,” has omitted to add +what followed, namely, the censure of Surrey for not +having rejected our heroic verse altogether, and substituted +the hexameter of Virgil, in English verse. It is therefore +quite evident that Ascham had formed no conception of +blank verse, no more than had Surrey, such as it was to +be formed by the ear of Milton, and by some of his +successors. All beginnings are obscure; something is +borrowed from the past, and something is invented for +the future, till it is vain to fix the gradations of invention +which terminate in what at length becomes universally +adopted.</p> + +<p>Could the life, or what we have of late called the +psychological history, of this poetic Earl of <span class="sc">Surrey</span> be +now written, it would assuredly open a vivid display of +fine genius, high passions, and romantic enthusiasm. Little +is known, save a few public events; but the print of the +footsteps shows their dimension. We trace the excellence, +while we know but little of the person.</p> + +<p>The youth of <span class="sc">Surrey</span>, and his life, hardly passed +beyond that period, betrayed the buoyancy of a spirit +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page306" id="page306"></a>306</span> +vehement and quick, but rarely under guidance. Reckless +truth, in all its openness and its sternness, was his habit, +and glory was his passion; but in this restlessness of +generous feelings his anger too easily blazed forth. He +was haughty among his peers, and he did not even scorn +to chastise an inferior. We are not surprised at discovering +that one of so unreserved a temper should in that +jealous reign more than once have suffered confinement. +But the youthful hero who pursued to justice a relative +and a court favourite, for a blow, by which that relative +had outraged Surrey’s faithful companion—he who would +eat flesh in Lent—he who issued one night to break the +windows of the citizens, to remind them that they were a +sinful race, however that might have been instigated by +zeal for “the new religion”—all such things betrayed his +enthusiastic daring, but his deeds, to become splendid, +depended on their direction. The lofty notions he attached +to his descent; his proud shield quartering the arms of +the Confessor, which the duke, his father, dared not show +to a jealous monarch; his feats of arms at the barriers, +and his military conduct in his campaigns,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i1">————Who saw Kelsal blaze,</p> +<p>Landrecy burnt, and battered Boulogne render;</p> + <p class="i1">At Montreuil’s gate hopeless of a recure (recovery),</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">there, where that twin-spirit, his beloved associate, Clere, +to save his wounded friend, had freely yielded his own +life; his magnificence as a courtier, the companion of the +princely Richmond; all “the joy and feast with a king’s +son;” his own record of the brilliant days, and the +soothing fancies of “proud Windsor:” “its large open +courts;” “the gravelled ground for the foaming horse;” +“the palm-play;” “the stately seats and dances;” “the +secret groves,” and “the wild forest, with cry of hounds;” +and more than all, the mysterious passion for “the fair +Geraldine,” cover the misty shade of Surrey with a cloud +of glory, which, while it veils the man from our sight, +seems to enlarge the object we gaze on.</p> + +<p>We see this youth, he who first taught the English +Muse accents she had never before tried, hurried from his +literary seclusion to be immolated on the scaffold, by the +arts of a remorseless rival, of him whose pride at last sent +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page307" id="page307"></a>307</span> +him to the block, and who signed the death-warrant of +his own brother! It was at a moment when the dying +monarch, as the breath was fleeting from his lips, once in +his life was voiceless to condemn a state victim, that +Somerset took up the stamp which Henry used, to affix +it to the death-warrant of <span class="sc">Surrey</span>. Victim of his own +domestic circle! The father disunited with the son, from +fear or jealousy; the mother separated from the father, +to the last vowing unforgiving vengeance; a sister disnatured +of all kin, hastening to be the voluntary accuser +of her father and her brother! These domestic hatreds +were the evil spirits which raged in the house of the +Howards, and hurried on the fate of the accomplished, the +poetic, the hapless Earl of Surrey.</p> + +<p>A tale of such grandeur and such woe passed away unheeded +even by a slight record, so inexpert were the few +writers of those days, and probably so perilous was their +curiosity. The pretended trial of Surrey, who being no +lord of parliament, was tried by a timorous jury at Guildhall, +seems to have been studiously suppressed, and the +last solemn act of his life, “the leaving it,” is alike concealed. +Even in the registers of public events by our +chroniclers, they unanimously pass over the glorious name +and the miserable death—to spare the monarch’s or the +victim’s honour.</p> + +<p>The poems of <span class="sc">Surrey</span> were often read, as their multiplied +editions show; but of the noble poet and his +Geraldine, tradition had not sent down even an imperfect +tale. In this uncertainty, the world was disposed to +listen to any romantic story of such genius and love and +chivalry.</p> + +<p>The secret history of <span class="sc">Surrey</span> was at length revealed, +and the gravity of its discloser vouched for its authenticity. +Who would doubt the testimony of plain Anthony +à Wood?</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Surrey</span> is represented hastening on a chivalric expedition +to Italy; at Florence he challenges the universe, +that his Geraldine was the peerless of the beautiful. In +his travels, Cornelius Agrippa exhibited to Surrey, in a +magical mirror, his fair mistress as she was occupied at the +moment of inspection. He beheld her sick, weeping in +bed, reading his poems, in all the grief of absence. This +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page308" id="page308"></a>308</span> +incident set spurs to his horse. At Florence he hastened +to view the chamber which had witnessed the birth of so +much beauty. At the court he affixed his challenge, and +maintained this emprise in tilt and tourney. The Duke +of Florence, flattered that a Florentine lady should be +renowned by the prowess of an English nobleman, invited +Surrey to a residence at his court. But our Amadis more +nobly purposed to hold on his career through all the +courts of Italy, shivering the lances of whoever would +enter the lists, whether “Christian, Jew, or Saracen.” +Suddenly the Quixotism ends, by this paragon of chivalry +being recalled home by the royal command.</p> + +<p>This Italian adventure seemed congenial with the +romantic mystery in which the poet had involved the +progress of his passion for his poetic mistress. He had +himself let us into some secrets. Geraldine came from +“Tuscany;” Florence was her ancient seat, her sire was +an earl, her dame of “princes’ blood,” “yet she was +fostered by milk of an Irish breast;” and from her tender +years in Britain “she tasted costly food with a king’s +child.” The amatorial poet even designates the spots +hallowed by his passion; he first saw her at Hunsdon, +Windsor chased him from her sight, and at Hampton Court +“first wished her for mine!”</p> + +<p>These hints and these localities were sufficient to irritate +the vague curiosity of Surrey’s readers, and more particularly +of our critical researchers, of whom Horace Walpole +first ventured to explain the inexplicable. With singular +good fortune, and from slight grounds, Walpole conjectured +that Geraldine was no Italian dame, but Lady +Elizabeth Fitzgerald, one of the daughters of the Earl +of Kildare; the family were often called the Geraldines. +The Italian descent from the Geraldi was made out by a +spurious genealogy. The challenge and the tournament +no one doubted. But some harder knots were to be +untied; and our theoretical historian, unfurnished by facts +and dates, it has been recently shown, discovered some +things which never existed.</p> + +<p>But every writer followed in the track. Warton compliments +the sagacity of Walpole, and embroiders the +narrative. The historian of our poetry not only details +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page309" id="page309"></a>309</span> +the incident of the magical mirror, but adds that “the +imagination of Surrey was <i>heated anew</i> by this <i>interesting +spectacle</i>!” He therefore had no doubt of the reality; +and, indeed, to confirm the whole adventure of the romantic +chivalry, he refers the curious to a finely sculptured +shield which is still preserved by the Dukes of Norfolk. +The Italian adventures of Surrey, and all that Walpole +had erroneously suggested, are fully accepted, and our +critic observes—“Surrey’s life throws so much light on +the character and the subjects of his poetry, that it is +almost impossible to consider the one without exhibiting +the <i>few anecdotes</i> of the other.” But the critical sagacity +of Warton did not wholly desert him through all the circumstantial +narrative, for suddenly his pen pauses, and he +exclaims on these travels of Surrey, that “they have the +air of a romance!”</p> + +<p>And it was a romance! and it served for history many +a year!<a name="fa3c31" id="fa3c31" href="#ft3c31"><span class="sp">3</span></a> This tale of literary delusion may teach all +future investigators into obscure points of history to probe +them by dates.</p> + +<p>It was long after the days of Walpole and Warton, and +even of George Ellis, that it was discovered that these +travels into Italy by Surrey had been transferred literally +from an “Historical Romance.” A great wit, in Elizabeth’s +reign, Tom Nash, sent forth in “the Life of Jack +Wilton, an unfortunate traveller,” this whole legend of +Surrey. The entire fiction of Nash annihilates itself by +its extraordinary anachronisms.</p> + +<p>In what respect Nash designed to palm the imposture +of his “Historical Romance” on the world, may be left +to be explained by some “Jack Wiltons” of our own. +He says “all that in this <i>phantastical treatise</i> I can promise +is some <i>reasonable conveyance of history</i>, and variety +of mirth.” Must we trust to their conscience for “the +reasonable conveyance?”</p> + +<p>We now trace the whole progress of this literary delusion.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page310" id="page310"></a>310</span></p> + +<p>On Surrey’s ideal passion, and on this passage misconceived—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>From Tuscan came my lady’s worthy race;</p> +<p>Fair Florence was sometime her ancient seat—</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">the romancer inferred that Geraldine must be a fair Florentine; +Surrey had alluded to the fanciful genealogy of +the Geralds from the Geraldi. On this single hint the +romancer sends him on his aërial journey in this business +of love and chivalry.</p> + +<p>This romance, of which it is said only three copies are +known, was published in 1594. Four years after, <span class="sc">Drayton</span>, +looking about for subjects for his Ovidian epistles, +eagerly seized on a legend so favourable for poetry, and +Geraldine and Surrey supplied two amatory epistles. +Anthony à Wood, finding himself without materials to +frame a life of the poetic Surrey, had recourse to “the +famous poet,” as he calls Drayton, whom he could quote; +for Drayton was a consecrated bard for the antiquary, +since Selden had commented on his great topographical +poem. But honest Anthony on this occasion was not +honest enough. He did not tell the world that he had +fallen on the romance itself, Drayton’s sole authority. +Literally and silently, our antiquary transcribed the fuller +passages from a volume he was ashamed to notice, disingenuously +dropping certain incidents which would not +have honoured the memory of Surrey. Thus the “phantastical” +history for ever blots the authentic tomes of the +grave <i>Athenæ Oxonienses</i>. A single moment of scrutiny +would have detected the whole fabricated narrative; but +there is a charm in romance which bewitched our luckless +Anthony.</p> + +<p>Thus it happened that the romancer, on a misconception, +constructs an imaginary fabric; the poet Drayton +builds on the romancer; the sober antiquary on both; +then the commentators stand upon the antiquary. Never +was a house of cards of so many stories. The foundation, +Surrey’s poetic passion, may be as fictitious as the rest; +for the visionary Geraldine, viewed in Agrippa’s magic +mirror was hardly a more mysterious shadow.</p> + +<p>Not one of these writers was informed of what recent +researches have demonstrated. They knew not that this +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page311" id="page311"></a>311</span> +Earl of Surrey in boyhood was betrothed to his lady, also +a child—one of the customs to preserve wealth or power +in great families of that day. These historians were unfurnished +with any dates to guide them, and never suspected +that when Surrey is made to set off on his travels +in Italy, after a Donna Giraldi who had no existence, he +was the father of two sons, and “the fair Geraldine” was +only <i>seven</i> years of age! that Surrey’s first love broke out +when she was <i>nine</i>; that he declared his passion when she +was about <i>thirteen</i>; and finally, that Geraldine, having +attained to the womanly discretion of <i>fifteen</i>, dismissed +the accomplished Earl of Surrey, with whom she never +could be united, to accept the hand of old Sir Anthony +Brown, aged sixty. Lady Brown disturbs the illusion of +Geraldine, in the modest triumph of sixteen over sixty.</p> + +<p>Dr. Nott is in trepidation for the domestic morality of +the noble poet; yet some of these amatory sonnets may +have been addressed to his betrothed. He has perplexed +himself by a formal protest against the perils of Platonic +love, but apologises for his hero in the manners of the +age. It appears that not only the mistress of Petrarch, +but those of Bayard the chevalier “sans reproche,” and +Sir Philip Sidney, were married women, with as crystalline +reputations as their lovers. Nor should we omit the +great friend of Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyatt, who was a +staid married man, notwithstanding his romantic passion +for Anne Bullen. The courtly imitators of Petrarch had +made love fashionable. It is evident that Surrey found +nothing so absorbing in his passion, whatever it might +be; for whenever called into public employment he ceased +to be Petrarch—which Petrarch never could, and possibly +for a want of occupation. A small quantity of passion, +dexterously meted out, may be ample to inspire an amatorial +poet. Neither Surrey nor Petrarch, accomplished +lovers and poets, with all their mistress’ coquetry and +cruelty, broke their hearts in the tenderness of their ideas, +or were consumed by “the perpetual fires” of their imagination.</p> + +<p>We have now traced the literary delusion which long +veiled the personal history of the Earl of Surrey, and +which has duped so many ingenious commentators. The +tale affords an additional evidence of that “confusion +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page312" id="page312"></a>312</span> +worse confounded” by truth and fiction, where the names +are real, and the incidents fictitious; a fatality which +must always accompany “Historical Romances.” The +same mischance occurred to “The Cavalier” of <span class="sc">De Foe</span>, +often published under different titles, suitable to the designs +of the editors, and which tale has been repeatedly +mistaken for an authentic history written at the time. +Under the assumed designation by “a Shropshire Gentleman,” +whole passages have been transferred from the +Romance into the authentic history of Nichols’s Leicestershire—just +as Anthony à Wood had felicitously succeeded +in his historical authority of Tom Nash’s “Life +of Jack Wilton.”</p> + +<p>In the story of <span class="sc">Surrey</span> and <span class="sc">Wyatt</span>, one circumstance +is too precious to be passed over. <span class="sc">Wyatt</span> commenced as +a writer nearly ten years before Surrey, and his earlier +poetic compositions are formed in the old rhythmical +school. His manuscripts, which still exist, bear his own +strong marks in every line to regulate their cæsura; for +our ancient poets, to satisfy the ear, were forced to depend +on such artificial contrivances. It was in the strict intercourse +of their literary friendship that the elder bard surrendered +up the ancient barbarism, and by the revelation +of his younger friend, studied an art which he had not +himself discovered. Wyatt is an abundant writer; but he +has wrought his later versification with great variety, +though he has not always smoothed his workmanship +with his nail. For many years Wyatt had smothered his +native talent, by translation from Spanish and Italian +poets, and in his rusty rhythmical measures. He lived to +feel the truth of nature, and to practise happier art. Of +his amatory poems, many are graceful, most ingenious. +The immortal one to his “Lute,” the usual musical instrument +of the lover or the poet, as the guitar in Spain, composed +with as much happiness as care, is the universal +theme of every critic of English poetry.</p> + +<p>His defrauded or romantic passion for Anne Bullen often +lends to his effusions a deep mysterious interest, when we +recollect that the poet alludes to a rival who must have +made him tremble as he wrote.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Who list to hunt? I know where is an hind!</p> + <p class="i1">But as for me alas! I may no more, + <span class="pagenum"><a name="page313" id="page313"></a>313</span></p> + <p class="i1">The vain travail hath wearied me so sore;</p> +<p>I am of them that furthest come behind.</p> +<p>Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,</p> + <p class="i1">As well as I may spend his time in vain;</p> + <p class="i1">Graven with diamonds, in letters plain,</p> +<p>There is written, her fair neck round about—</p> + <p class="i1">“Noli me tangere, for Cæsar’s I am,</p> + <p class="i1"><i>And wild to hold, though I seem tame</i>.”</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>We perceive Wyatt’s keen perception of character in +the last verse, admirably expressive of the playfulness and +levity of the thoughtless but susceptible Anne Bullen, +which never left her when in the Tower or on the scaffold. +The poems of <span class="sc">Wyatt</span> accompanied the unhappy queen +in her imprisonment; and it was Wyatt’s sister who +received her prayer-book with her last smile, for the +block before her could not disturb the tenderness of her +affections.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Wyatt</span> is an ethical poet, more pregnant with reflection +than imagination; he was intimately conversant with the +world; and it is to be regretted that our poet has only left +three satires, the first Horatian Epistles we possess. These +are replete with the urbanity and delicate irony of the +Roman, but what was then still unexampled, flowing with +the fulness and freedom of the versification of Dryden. +Wyatt had much salt, but no gall.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Wyatt</span> excelled <span class="sc">Surrey</span> in his practical knowledge of +mankind; he had been a sojourner in politic Madrid, and +had been employed on active embassies. Surrey could +only give the history of his own emotions, affections, and +habits; he is the more interesting poet for us; but we +admire a great man in Wyatt, one whose perception was +not less subtile and acute, because it spread on a far wider +surface of life.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Wiat</span>, for so he wrote his name, was a great wit; as, +according to the taste of his day, his anagram fully maintained. +We are told that he was a nice observer of times, +persons, and circumstances, knowing when to speak, and +we may add, how to speak. That happened to Wyatt +which can be recorded probably of no other wit: three +prompt strokes of pleasantry thrown out by him produced +three great revolutions—the fall of Wolsey, the seizure of +the monastic lands, and the emancipation of England from +the papal supremacy. The Wyatts, besides their connexion +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page314" id="page314"></a>314</span> +with Anne Bullen, had all along been hostile to the great +Cardinal. One day Wyatt entering the king’s closet, +found his majesty much disturbed, and displeased with the +minister. Ever quick to his purpose, Wyatt, who always +told a story well, now, to put his majesty into good humour, +and to keep the Cardinal down in as bad a one, furnished +a ludicrous tale of “the curs baiting a butcher’s dog.” +The application was obvious to the butcher’s son of +Ipswich, and we are told, for the subject but not the tale +itself has been indicated, that the whole plan of getting +rid of a falling minister was laid down by this address of +the wit. It was with the same dexterity, when Wyatt +found the king in a passion on the delay of his divorce, +that, with a statesmanlike sympathy, appealing to the +presumed tendency of the royal conscience, he exclaimed, +“Lord! that a man cannot repent him of his sin but by +the pope’s leave!” The hint was dropped; the egg of the +Reformation was laid, and soon it was hatched! When +Henry the Eighth paused at the blow levelled at the whole +ponderous machinery of the papal clergy, dreading from +such wealth and power a revolution, besides the ungraciousness +of the intolerable transfer of all abbey lands to +the royal domains, Wyatt had his repartee for his counsel:—“Butter +the rooks’ nests!”—that is, divide all these +houses and lands with the nobility and gentry.</p> + +<p>Wyatt should have been the minister of Henry; we +should then have learned if a great wit, where wit was +ever relished, could have saved himself under a monarch +who dashed down a Wolsey.</p> + +<p>Surrey and Wyatt, though often engaged, the one as a +statesman, the other as a general, found their most delightful +avocation in the intercourse of their studies. Their +minds seemed cast in the same mould. They mutually +confided their last compositions, and sometimes chose the +same subject in the amicable wrestlings of their genius. +It was a community of studies and a community of skill; +the thoughts of the one flowed into the thoughts of the +other, and we frequently discover the verse from one in +the poem of the other. Wyatt was the more fortunate +man, for he did not live to see himself die in the partner +of his fame perishing on a scaffold, and he has received a +poet’s immortality from that friend’s noble epitaph. In +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page315" id="page315"></a>315</span> +his epitaph, Surrey dwells on every part of the person of +his late companion; he expatiates on the excellences of the +head, the face, the hand, the tongue, the eye, and the +heart—but these are not fanciful conceits; the solemnity +of his thoughts and his deep emotions tell their truth. +Wyatt’s was</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>A head, where Wisdom’s mysteries did frame,</p> + <p class="i1">Whose hammers beat still in that lively brain,</p> +<p>As on a stithy,<a name="fa4c31" id="fa4c31" href="#ft4c31"><span class="sp">4</span></a> where some work of fame</p> + <p class="i1">Was daily wrought.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c31" id="ft1c31" href="#fa1c31"><span class="fn">1</span></a> “The Works of the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt,” by +Dr. Nott, form an important accession to our national literature. If +we cannot always agree with the conclusions of our literary antiquary, +we must value the variety of his researches, not less profound than +extensive.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c31" id="ft2c31" href="#fa2c31"><span class="fn">2</span></a> “Tiraboschi,” vol. vii.—Haym’s “Bibliotheca Italiani.” When +Conybeare communicated the same information to Dr. Bliss, it must +have been derived from Warton.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c31" id="ft3c31" href="#fa3c31"><span class="fn">3</span></a> And, strange to add, it is still history! Mr. Godwin, in “The +Lives of Necromancers,” details every part of this apocryphal tale! +And the Edinburgh reviewer very philosophically, not doubtful of its +verity, accounts for all its supernatural magic, and clearly explains the +inexplicable!</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c31" id="ft4c31" href="#fa4c31"><span class="fn">4</span></a> The smith’s forge.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page316" id="page316"></a>316</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE SPOLIATION OF THE MONASTERIES.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Incidents</span> of such an overwhelming nature in political +history as are those of the Reformation can have no +sudden origin. They are but the consequences of something +which has preceded. In our country the suppression +of the monasteries and the abbeys had been long prepared; +it was not, and it could not have been, the temporary passions, +nor the absolute will, of an arbitrary monarch, which +by a word could have annihilated an awful power, had not +the royal edict been but the echo of many voices. It was +attacking but an aged power dissolving in its own corruption, +which, blind with pride, looked with complacency +on its own unnatural greatness, its political anasarca. Its +opulence was an object it could not conceal from its enviers, +and its paramount eminence was too heavy a yoke for its +rising rivals. This power, in the language of the times, +had “covered the land with an Egyptian darkness,” and +when appeared the “Godly and learned king,” as the +eighth Henry was called, he was saluted as “a Moses who +delivered them from the bondage of Pharaoh.” It is not +therefore strange that the act which at a single blow annihilated +the monastic orders and their “lands and tenements,” +was hailed as the most patriotic which had been +ever passed by an English sovereign. It made even a +tyrannous and jealous monarch, who cut off more heads of +men and women than any other on record, popular and +extolled even in his latter days.</p> + +<p>Henry the Eighth had paused at the blow he was about +to level. The plunder was too monstrous even for the +hand of an arbitrary monarch. Its division among the +nobility and gentry was an expedient which removed the +odium from royalty, and invested it with that munificence +which dazzled the pride of Henry. In the vast harvest, +the king refused the lion’s share, looking for his safer portion +in the secure loyalty of the new possessors to whom +he transferred this vast and novel wealth.</p> + +<p>As the scheme was managed, therefore, it was a compromise +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page317" id="page317"></a>317</span> +or co-partnership of the king and his courtiers. +The lands now lie the open prey of the hardy claimant or +the sly intriguer; crowds of suppliants wearied the crown +to participate in that national spoliation. Every one hastened +to urge some former service, or some present necessity, +as a colourable plea for obtaining a grant of some of +the suppressed lands. A strange custom was then introduced, +that of “begging for an estate.” Kneeling to the +king, and specifying some particular lands, was found a +convenient method to acquire them; and these royal +favours were sometimes capriciously and even ludicrously +bestowed. Fuller has a pleasant tale concerning one +Master Champernoun. One day, observing two or three +gentlemen waiting at a door through which the king was +to pass, he was inquisitive to learn their suit, which they +refused to tell. On the king’s appearance, they threw +themselves on their knees, and Champernoun was prompt +in joining them, with an implicit faith, says Fuller, that +courtiers never ask anything hurtful to themselves. They +were begging for an estate. The king granted their +petition. On this Champernoun claimed his share of the +largesse; they remonstrated that he had never come to +beg with them; he appealed to the king, and his brother +beggars were fain to allot him the considerable priory of +St. Germains, which he sold to the ancestor of the present +possessor, the Earl of St. Germains.</p> + +<p>The king was prodigal in his grants; for the more he +multiplied the receivers of his bounties, the more numerous +would be the stanch defenders of their new possessions:<a name="fa1c32" id="fa1c32" href="#ft1c32"><span class="sp">1</span></a> +gratitude was the least of their merits. He +counted on their resolution and their courage. The bait +was relishing, and there were some, when land-grants became +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page318" id="page318"></a>318</span> +more scarce, whose voracity of reformation attempted +to snatch at the lands of the universities, which had certainly +gone had not Henry’s love of literature protected +their trembling colleges. We have his majesty’s own +words, in replying to the suggestion of some hungry +courtier:—“Ha! sirrah! I perceive the abbey-lands have +fleshed you, and set your teeth on edge, to ask also those +colleges. We pulled down sin by defacing the monasteries; +but you desire to throw down all goodness by subversion +of colleges. I tell you, sir, that I judge no land +in England better bestowed than on our universities, +which shall maintain our realm when we be dead and +rotten. Follow no more this vein; but content yourselves +with what you have already, or else seek honest means +whereby to increase your worldhoods.”</p> + +<p>Lord Cromwell was the chief minister through whose +mediation these novel royal grants of houses and lands +were distributed. There was evidently no chance of attention +from his lordship without the most open and explicit +offers of the grossest bribery. The Chancellor Audley, in +bargaining with Lord Cromwell for the abbey of St. +Osyth, for “some present trouble in this suit,” one day +sent twenty pounds, with “my poor hearty good will, +during my life.” Perhaps the bribe, though only placed +to account, had not its full weight, as the chancellor does +not appear, in the present instance, to have possessed himself +of this abbey, though, afterwards, with the spoils of +two rich monasteries, he built the most magnificent mansion +in England, by which he perpetuated his own name in the +once-famed Audley-End. Sir Thomas Elyot, in soliciting +his lordship’s mediation with the king to reward him with +“some convenient portion of the suppressed lands,” found +it advisable to offer a conditional promise! “Whatsoever +portion of land that I shall attain by the king’s grace, I +promise to give to your lordship the first year’s fruits, +with my assured and faithful heart and service.” All +were offering their hearts and the rest of their lives to +Lord Cromwell.</p> + +<p>As for the regal dispenser himself, so stupendous was +his portion that it became necessary to found a court +never heard of before—“The Court of Augmentation,” +an expressive designation, indicating its plenary character, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page319" id="page319"></a>319</span> +with its chancellor and its treasurer, and a long routine +of officers, and none too many, “that the king might be +justly dealt with,” says Cowell, “the interpreter,” “for +all the manors and parks, the colleges and chantries, and +the religious houses which the king did not sell or give +away;” that is, the selected prey which the royal eagle +grasped in his own talons.</p> + +<p>We are accustomed to trace the Reformation to Henry +the Eighth; but in verity small are the claims of this +sovereign on posterity, for through all the multiplied +ramifications of superstition, nothing under him was reformed. +The other great event of the Reformation—the +assumption of the spiritual supremacy—accorded with the +national independence from a foreign jurisdiction. The +policy was English; but it originated in the private passions +of the monarch. Assuredly, had the tiara deigned +to nod to the regal solicitor, then had “the Defender of +the Faith” only given to the world another edition of his +book against Luther.</p> + +<p>In the last years of his reign, Henry vacillated in his +uncertain reform. Sometimes leaning on one party and +sometimes on another; he had lost the vigour of his +better days. In his last parliament, though not without +some difficulty, both from Protestant and Papist, they +had voted for “the augmentation” of the royal revenue, +their grant of the chantries. These chantries were the +last wrecks of the monastic lands. A single church had +often several chantries attached to it. Chantries were endowments +of estates by the sinners of that age for the +benefit of having eternal masses sung for their departed +souls. Henry on this occasion, in his last speech, strongly +animadverts on the national disunion; and among his +thanks mingles his menaces “to unite them in a more unacceptable +way” than the tenderness with which at that +moment he addressed them, for their concessions to his +“Court of Augmentation.”</p> + +<p>It is also evident, by this able and extraordinary speech, +that Henry would gladly have revoked his gift to the +people of “the Word of God in their mother-tongue,” as +his majesty expresses himself.<a name="fa2c32" id="fa2c32" href="#ft2c32"><span class="sp">2</span></a> He had, indeed, already +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page320" id="page320"></a>320</span> +in part withdrawn the freedom he had granted by restricting +it to a few persons, and only to be used on particular +occasions. His majesty proceeds—“You lay too +much stress on your own expositions and fantastical opinions. +In such sublime matters you may easily mistake. +This permission of reading the Bible is only designed for +private information, not to furnish you with reprimanding +phrases and expressions of reproach against priests and +preachers. I am extremely sorry to find with how little +reverence the Word of God is mentioned; how people +squabble about the sense; how it is turned into wretched +rhyme, sung and jingled in every alehouse and tavern.” +This part of the king’s speech was pointed at the general +readers of the Scriptures; but his majesty did not discover +any happier union among the clergy themselves, whom he +roundly rates:—“I am every day informed that you of +the clergy are declaiming against each other in the pulpit; +and here your charity and discretion are quite lost in +vehemence and satire. Some are too stiff in their old +<i>mumpsimus</i>, and others too busy and curious in their new +<i>sumpsimus</i>.<a name="fa3c32" id="fa3c32" href="#ft3c32"><span class="sp">3</span></a> Thus the pulpits are, as it were, batteries +against each other; the noise is hostile and ruinous. +How can we expect the poor people should live friendly +with their neighbours when they have such unhappy +precedents of discord and dissension in those that teach +them?”</p> + +<p>Henry the Eighth rejected the Pope, but surely he +died a Romanist. His unwieldy huge form was lifted up +from his death-bed that he might prostrate himself, and, +in the writer’s language, who, however, was a papist, +“bury himself in the earth,” to testify his reverence for +“the real presence,” when it was brought before him. +His will, which, though it was put aside, was not the less +the king’s will, attested his last supplications to “the +Virgin Mary, and all her holy company of Heaven.” And +he endowed an altar at Windsor, “to be honourably kept +up with all things necessary for <i>a daily mass</i>, there to be +read <i>perpetually while the world shall endure</i>.” At the +same time Henry endowed the poor knights of Windsor, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page321" id="page321"></a>321</span> +upon condition that they should repeat their eternal +masses for his soul. His magnificence was proportionate +to his sins; but his perpetual masses, and the world, did +not endure together.</p> + +<p>With this fact before us, it is not therefore strange that +foreign historians should have declared that our Henry +the Eighth never designed a Reformation, that he altered +nothing; and had only raised a schism which those who +contest the papal sovereignty in their civil affairs, as the +Gallican Church affected to do, would incline more to +approve than to censure.</p> + +<p>This monarch has been lauded as a patriot king for the +suppression of the monasteries and the national emancipation +from the tiara—but patriotism has often covered the +most egotistical motives.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c32" id="ft1c32" href="#fa1c32"><span class="fn">1</span></a> A fear of the restitution of these abbey-lands to their former uses +appears to have prevailed long after their alienation. So late as in the +reign of James the First, the founder of Dulwich College, in a dispute +respecting the land, observes hypothetically—“If the State should +be at any time pleased to returne all abbey lands to their former use, +I must lose Dulwich, for which I have paid now 5000<i>l.</i>” At a later +revolution, when the bishops’ lands were seized on by the parliamentarians, +many obtained those lands at easy rates, or at no rate at +all; the greater part reverted, but, if I am not misinformed, there are +still descendants of some of these parliamentarians who hold estates +without title-deeds.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c32" id="ft2c32" href="#fa2c32"><span class="fn">2</span></a> See an abstract from one of his Proclamations in “Curiosities of +Literature,” vol. iii. p. 373.—<span class="sc">Ed.</span></p> + +<p><a name="ft3c32" id="ft3c32" href="#fa3c32"><span class="fn">3</span></a> This alludes to the well-known story of the old priest, who having +blunderingly used <i>mumpsimus</i> for <i>sumpsimus</i>, would never be put right, +alleging that “he hated all novelties.”</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page322" id="page322"></a>322</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">A CRISIS AND A REACTION.<br /> +ROBERT CROWLEY.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">There</span> is a state of transition in society which we usually +call a crisis. A crisis is the most active moment of conflicting +principles; the novel must extirpate the ancient, +the ancient must eject the novel; the one looks to be continued +and the other to be settled; it is a painful state of +obstinate resistance, like that of two wrestlers when neither +can cast down the other.</p> + +<p>Fortunate are the people who have only to pass through +a single crisis. But in the wrath of Providence there may +be reserved another connecting crisis in the chain of human +events, and this we term a reaction, usually accompanied +by a retaliation; then comes the hoarded vengeance and +the day of retribution on which issues no amnesty. In +physics, action and reaction are equal; the reciprocation of +any impulse not being greater than the impulse itself. +Nature in her operations thus preserves an equilibrium; +but the human hatreds and the partial interests which +man has contrived for his own misery, can only find that +equilibrium when he submits to a toleration. But a +toleration is a partition of power, and predominance is the +vitality of a party. The Catholic vengeance of Mary in its +reaction was out of all proportion greater than the Protestant +docility of Edward. Our nation has been more subject +to this crisis and this reaction than perhaps any other. +The reign of Charles the First was a crisis, that of Charles +the Second a reaction; that of James the Second brought +on a crisis, and the revolution of 1688 was the consequential +reaction. But never have the people suffered more +than during the three reigns of Edward the Sixth, Mary, +and Elizabeth; a terrible intolerance disorganized the +whole community: the conflict of old and of new creeds; +of reciprocal persecutions, and alternate triumphs; of abjurations +and recantations; of supple compliers and rabid +polemics; and of pugilistic contests of the ejected with the +ejectors—rapid scenes at once tragic and ludicrous.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page323" id="page323"></a>323</span></p> + +<p>Henry the Eighth died in 1547, and the accession of +Elizabeth was in 1558. In this short period of eleven +years we were governed by two sovereigns, whose reigns, +happily for the English people, were the shortest in our +annals.</p> + +<p>A new era was opening under the dominion of Henry, +for he was a monarch of enlarged views. But the intellectual +character of England in its vernacular literature +was retarded by the events which occurred in the reigns +of the two successors of this sovereign. The nation +indeed suffered no longer from the civil wars of the rival +Roses; but another war now shook the empire with as +merciless a rivalry—it was a universal conflict of opinions +and dogmas. The governing powers themselves combated +each other; and whether in opposing the Reformer to the +Romanist, or in restoring “the papelin” to root out “the +gospeller,” in these two mutable reigns, they neutralised +or distracted the unhappy people; and while both maintained +that they were proffering “the true religion,” +religion itself seemed to have lost its eternal truth. +Edward with an infirm hand established, what from her +short reign Mary, with her barbarous energy, could only +imperfectly cast down.</p> + +<p>Edward the Sixth, a boy-king, and a puppet-prince, +invested with supreme power, acted without any volition +of his own. We are prepossessed in his favour by his +laborious diary. It is, however, remarkable that no solitary +entry made in that book of life, no chance effusion, +disturbs the uninterrupted equanimity. Whether the +young king signs for the decapitation of his two uncles, +or jots down the burning of Joan of Kent, an Arian, and +another of a Dutchman, a Socinian, or records how a live +goose suspended had its head sliced off by those who run +at the ring, they seem equally to be matters of course, +and by him were only distinguished by their respective +dates. A nation’s hope has always been the flattering +painter of every youthful prince who dies immaturely; +in the royal youth is lamented the irreparable loss of the +future great monarch. But his father had been the most +glorious youthful prince who ever adorned a throne; +and it would be hard to decide, by the heartless chronicle +of Edward, whether such an imperturbable spirit would +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page324" id="page324"></a>324</span> +have closed his life as a Nero or a Titus. This unhappy +young prince must have felt the utter misery of his +condition, for his was that curse of power, when in its +exercise power itself becomes powerless, while its hands +must be directed by another’s. Had the reign of Edward +the Sixth been prolonged, we should have had a polemical +monarch, if we may judge by a collection of texts of +Scripture, in proof of the doctrine of justification by faith, +which exists in his own handwriting, written in French, +and dedicated to his uncle.<a name="fa1c33" id="fa1c33" href="#ft1c33"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p>This was a calamitous period for the nation; we derive +little consolation when we discover that not more than +three centuries ago our ancestors were a semi-barbarous +race? We seem to be consulting the annals of some +Asiatic dynasty, when we see a royal nephew tranquilly +affixing his signature to the death-warrants of his uncles; +imprisonment or exile would have been too tender for these +state victims; we see one brother attainted by another, +and the scaffold finally receiving both; and a Queen of +England, in the captivity of the Romish superstition, +hailing with a benediction her own <i>autos da fè</i>. What +we should have gained had the accomplished prince lived, +we cannot conjecture; but what the nation were spared +by the death of the melancholy Mary, is not doubtful. +Edward and Mary were opposite bigots; and both alike +presumed that they were appointed to the work of +sanctity; but every reform which requires to be carried +on by coercion will long appear ambiguous to the better-tempered. +The bigotry as well as the puerile taste of the +prince appeared when he composed a comedy or interlude +against <i>The Whore of Babylon</i>, and the <i>The False Gods</i>; +but the brawls of polemics, at least, are more tolerable than +torture and the sacrifice of fire.</p> + +<p>It was one of the first evils of the Reformation, that +the people were ill prepared to receive their emancipation. +All sense of subordination rapidly disappeared in society; +even the spell of devotion was dissolved; and the people +seemed to consider that, having rid themselves of one +spurious mode of religion, there was no longer any religion +in the world. “Thus for religion ye keep no religion,” +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page325" id="page325"></a>325</span> +wrote the learned Cheke, in once addressing an armed +multitude, who cruelly would not tolerate the Christianity +of their neighbours.</p> + +<p>An immature reformation is accompanied by certain +unavoidable inconveniences. Its first steps are incomprehensible +to the thoughtless, and too vague for the considerate, +doing what it should not do, and leaving undone +what it ought to do, comprehending too much, and +omitting many things. A revolutionary reform breaks +out with an ebullition of popular feelings; but in escaping +from one tyranny, men do not necessarily enter into +freedom. The reformer, in abandoning what is known, +looks to an uncertain and distant futurity; the anti-reformer +appeals to precedent, and clings to what is +real—his good is positive, and his evil is not concealed. +In the removal of some long-standing evils in civil society, +some portion of good goes with them; for many of these +served as expedients to supply certain wants, and therefore +relatively were or may be beneficial. Even our +old prejudices, when scrutinised, often will be found to +have struck their roots in the common welfare. The +complicate interests of civil society were at first a web +woven by strong hands, so that much of the antiquated +may retain its soundness, while the gloss of the new may +set off but a loose and flimsy texture. These are some of +the difficulties of an age of innovation, which may wisely +check without stopping the velocity of its movements. +The only unerring reformer who partakes not of human +infirmities, neither deceived by illusions, nor overcome by +prejudices, and whose only wisdom is experience, must +be that silent and unceasing worker of the destinies of +man—Time!</p> + +<p>At the period now before us, the crisis and the reaction +were alike remarkable. The people who witnessed in four +successive reigns four different systems of religion, mutable +with the times, amidst their incertitude were in fact +taught a religious scepticism. One of the great innovations +in divine service was that of preaching from the +pulpit, instead of reading set homilies or other prescribed +lessons, by which the Romanists had reduced their whole +devotion to a mumbled ritual and a mechanical +service—formularies and forms which ceased to operate +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page326" id="page326"></a>326</span> +on the heart, and carried on a religion that was not +religious.</p> + +<p>The introduction of <i>preaching</i> appears to have been followed +by an unhappy effect. Latimer, in the rude simplicity +of his style, complains of some that went to +church for the benefit of being “lulled into a nap.” +There was a still greater grievance in this novel custom of +preaching; for from the pulpits the turbulent were rousing +the passions of the people, by declaiming against what +some termed “the abuses which ought to be put away;” +while others, persevering in their old doctrine, were +alarming their auditors, for the loss of what had been put +away. Pulpit thundered against pulpit; for it was not +only the reformer, but the anti-reformer, who were the +preachers. The fact was, that by an avaricious policy, +“the court of augmentation,” which had to pension the +monks of the suppressed houses, filled up the vacant +benefices as fast as they occurred, by appointing these +annuitants, to curtail the pension-list. The enemy was +thus settled in the camp of the reformers. This spirit of +division was caught by the rude stage of that day in their +comedies or interludes. This inundation of popular clamour +was only to be stayed by coercion—by proclamations +and orders in council. The Council of State issued +their orders, or rather their instructions, how the +preachers were to preach, and that none but the licensed +should be permitted to ascend into the pulpit. Even +Latimer himself was discountenanced for his apostolical +freedoms, by inveighing against the gentry, who sent +their sons to college, instead of educating them at home +for the church. Academical degrees were abrogated as +anti-Christian; Greek was heresy; and all human learning +was to be vain and useless to “the gospellers.” As the +preachers were to be licensed, it came to the turn of the +players and the printers not to enact or print their interludes, +without a special licence from the privy council; +and at length the interludes were actually inhibited for +“containing matter relating to sedition;” and this proclamation +more particularly specifies those that “play in +English.” The Romanists had their interludes as well as +the Reformers. Bishop Percy once observed that the excellence +of the drama, as every wise man would have it, is +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page327" id="page327"></a>327</span> +to form a supplement to the pulpit,—this literally occurred +in the present instance; but the pulpit was itself as +disorderly, to use the words of the proclamation, “as any +light and fantastical head could list to invent and devise.” +Our most skilful delver into dramatic history, amidst his +curious masses of disinterments, has brought up this +proclamation. We must connect the state of these rude +players with these rude preachers; the interludes were +nothing more than reflections from the sermons; player +and preacher were the same. By connecting these together, +we form a juster notion of their purpose than we +find in the isolated fact. There was now sedition in +religion as well as in politics.</p> + +<p>The prevalent fervour scattered its sparks through all +the ranks of society, and the thoughts of all were concentrated +on the sole object of “the new religion.” The +Reformation was the great political topic in the court of +Edward the Sixth; discussions in theology were no +longer confined to colleges or to the clergy. Our poets, +ever creatures of their age, reflecting its temper, and who +best tell its story, confined their genius to ballads and interludes, +making rough sport for loungers and for the +common people; or, in their quieter moods, were devoted +to metrical versions from the Scriptures. In a history of +our vernacular literature, the introduction of a versified +psalter and of psalm-singing forms an incident; as the +passion for psalmody itself is a portion of the history of +the Reformation. “This infectious frenzy of sacred +song,” as Thomas Warton describes what he condemns as +puritanic, we adopted from the practice of Calvin, who +had introduced psalm-singing into the Geneva discipline, +but really had himself borrowed it from the popularity of +the first psalms in French metre, by Clement Marot. +This natural and fine genius, as a commutation for an +irregular life—and he had been imprisoned for eating flesh +in Lent—was persuaded by the learned Vatable, the +Hebrew Professor, to perform this signal act of penance. +The gay novelty charmed the court, and was equally +delightful to the people; every one chose the psalm which +expressed his own personal feelings or described his own +condition, adapted to some favourite air for the instrument +or the voice. At the time it could have been little suspected +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page328" id="page328"></a>328</span> +that while Calvin was stripping the religious service +of its pageantry, and denuding it even of its decent +ceremonies, he would have condescended to anything so +human as a tune and a chorus; yet the austere reformer of +Geneva showed no deficient knowledge of human nature, +when he contrived to make men sing in concert, or carol +in the streets, and shorten their work by a song cheerful +or sad; for psalms there are for joy or for affliction, +effusions for all hours, suitable to all ranks.<a name="fa2c33" id="fa2c33" href="#ft2c33"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p>Another incident in which our vernacular literature was +remotely connected, was the calling in of the ancient +Rituals, Missals, and other books of the Latin service, and +establishing the book of Common Prayer in the common +language. But the people at large seemed reluctant to +alter their antiquated customs, which habit had long +endeared to them. While they had listened to an unintelligible +Mass, they had, from their childhood, contracted a +spirit of devotion. Their fathers had bowed to the Mass +as a holy office from time immemorial; and from their +childhood they had attached to it those emotions of holiness +which were not the less so by their erroneous association +of ideas. When their religion became a mere Act +of Parliament, and their prayers were in plain English, +all appeared an affair of yesterday. The church service +seemed no longer venerable, the new priesthood no longer +apostolical; and the giddy populace protested against the +common dues exacted by their neighbour the curate, for +their marriages and baptisms and funerals. They forsook +their churches, and even refused to pay tithes.</p> + +<p>It is in revolutionary periods that we find men adapted +for these rare occasions; who, had they not lived amid the +commotions around them, had probably not emerged out +of the sphere of their neighbours. Such minds quickly +sympathise with popular grievances and popular clamours, +and obtain their reformation, often at the sacrifice of their +individual interest, as if the cause were their appointed +vocation. They are advocates who plead, imbued even by +all the prejudices of their clients; they are organs +resounding the fulness of the passions around them: a +character of this order is the true representative of the multitude; +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page329" id="page329"></a>329</span> +and we listen to all their cries in the single voice +of such a man.</p> + +<p>And such a man was <span class="sc">Robert Crowley</span>, a universal +reformer through Church and State; whose unwearied +industry run the pace of his zeal; whose declarations +were as open as his designs were definite; and whose resolved +spirit pursued its object in every variable form +which his imagination could invent, and which incessant +toil never found irksome.</p> + +<p>Crowley had been a student at Magdalen College at +Oxford, and obtained a fellowship. At the close of the +reign of Henry the Eighth, Crowley appears to have +sojourned in “the great city;” and in that of Edward +the Sixth, we must not be surprised to discover the Fellow +of Magdalen established as a printer and bookseller, and +moreover combining the elevated characters of poet and +preacher. How it happened that a man of letters, and +not undistinguished by his genius, adopted a mechanical +profession, we may account for from the exigencies of the +time. Possibly Crowley’s fellowship was what Swift +once called “a beggarly fettleship.” In the hurried reform +of the day, “the universal good” was attended by “a +great partial evil.” In the dissolution of the abbeys and +priories they had also demolished those useful exhibitions +proceeding from them, by which poor students were +maintained at the universities. Many, thus deprived of +the means of existence at college, were compelled to forsake +their Alma-Mater and seek another course of life. It +was probably this incident which had thrown this learned +man among the people. How Crowley contrived to fulfil +his fourfold office of printer, bookseller, poet, and +preacher, with eminent success, the scanty notices of his +life disappoint our curiosity. We would gladly enter into +the recesses of this man’s arduous life. Did he partition +the hours of his day? What habits harmonised such +clashing pursuits? Was he a sage whose wisdom none of +his followers have gathered? Was the shop of the studious +man haunted by learned customers? When we +think of the printer’s press and the bookseller’s counter, +we are disposed to inquire, Where mused the poet, and +where stood the preacher?</p> + +<p>Crowley is the author of many controversial pieces, and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page330" id="page330"></a>330</span> +some satirical poems reflecting the manners and the +passions of his day, all which enjoyed repeated editions. +But he was not less a favourite sermoniser. He touched +a tremulous chord in the hearts of the people, and his +opinions found an echo in their breasts. The pulpit and +the press, perhaps, had been his voluntary choice, to print +out what he had spoken ere it perished, or offer a supplement +to a sermon in some awful tome of theology and +reform. His Pulpit and his Press!—“those two prolific +sources of faction,” exclaimed Thomas Warton.</p> + +<p>As a printer and book-vendor, Crowley is distinguished +by that curiosity of research which led him to be the first +publisher of “The Visions of Piers Ploughman,” which +had hitherto slept in the dust of its manuscript state. +Warton restricts the merit of his discovery merely to the +fervour of a controversialist eager to propagate his own +opinions; and truly the bold spirit of reform, and the +satirical strokes on the ecclesiastics of the times of Edward +the Third, in that remarkable and unknown author, were +in unison with a Reformer in the age of Reformation. It +must be confessed that the historian of our poetry +cherished some collegiate prejudices, and that his native +good humour is liable to change when his pen scourges a +puritan and a predestinarian, as was Robert Crowley. But +Warton wrote when he imagined that the suppressed +absurdities of Popery required no longer any strong satire +from a Calvinist; and as Crowley, too, lived to hold many +dignities in the reign of Elizabeth, Crowley appeared to +Warton to be the member of “a Church whose doctrines +and polity his undiscerning zeal had a tendency to destroy.” +Strype has only ventured to describe Crowley as +“an earnest professor of religion.” The meek curate of +Low-Leyton could not rise to the magisterial indignation +of one of the “heads of houses,” one who, at least, ought +to have been, and who, I understand, probably missed the +honour and the profit by his own ingenuous carelessness.</p> + +<p>One of the most striking productions of this earnest +Reformer, for its freedom, was his address to the assembled +Parliament. The title is expressive—“An Information +and Petition against the <i>Oppressors of the Commoners of +this Realm</i>. Compiled and imprinted for this only purpose, +that among them that have to do in the Parliament, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page331" id="page331"></a>331</span> +some godly-minded men may hereat take occasion to speak +more in the matter than the author was able to write.” +Crowley too modestly alludes to any deficiencies of his +own; his “information” is ample, and doubtless conveyed +to the ear of those “who had to do in the Parliament,” +what must have startled the oldest senator.</p> + +<p>Who are “the oppressors of the poor commoners?” +All the orders in society! the clergy—the laity—and, +above all, “the Possessioners!”</p> + +<p>This term, “the Possessioners,” was a popular circulating +coinage struck in the Mint of our reformer—and +probably included much more than meets our ear. Every +land-owner, every proprietor, was a “Possessioner.” +Whether in an orderly primitive commonwealth there +should be any “Possessioners,” might be a debateable +point in a parliament composed of “the poor Commons” +themselves, with our Robin for their speaker. But +however this might be, “the Possessioners of this +realm,” as he calls them, “could only be reformed by +God working in their hearts, as he did in the primitive +church, when the <i>Possessioners</i> were contented and very +willing <i>to sell their possessions, and give the price thereof +to be common to all the faithful believers</i>.” This seems +perfectly intelligible, but our reformer judged it required +some explanation—as thus:—“He would not have any to +take him as though he went about to make all things common.” +Doubtless, there were some propagators of this +new revelation of a primitive Christian community, and as +little doubt that Robin himself was one; for he adds, “If +the Possessioners know how they ought to bestow their +possessions,” and he had already instructed them, in that +case “he doubted not <i>it should not need to have all things +made common</i>.” Such was the logic of this primitive +radical reformer. A bland compromise, and a sturdy +menace! This “grievance” of the “Possessioners” might +be reformed, till poverty itself became a test of patriotism. +They had yet to learn that to impoverish the rich is not +to enrich the poor.</p> + +<p>At that day they were bewildered in their notions of +property, and their standards of value; they had neither +discovered the sources nor the progress of the wealth of a +nation. They murmured at importation, for which they +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page332" id="page332"></a>332</span> +seemed to pay the penalties, and looked on exportation as a +conveyance of the national property to the foreigner. +They fixed the prices at which all consumable articles +were to be sold; the farmer’s garner was inspected; the +landlords who became graziers were denounced; forestallers +and regraters haunted the privy councils of the king; the +markets were never better supplied; and the people wondered +why every article was dearer. About this time the +prices of all commodities, both in France and England, had +gradually risen. The enterprise of commerce was probably +working on larger capitals. As expenses increased, the +landlords held that they were entitled to higher rents. +In Crowley’s denunciations, “God’s plague” is invoked +against all “lease-mongers, pilling and polling the poor +commoner.” The Parliament of Henry the Eighth had +legalized the interest of money at ten per cent.; Robin +would have this “sinful act” repealed: loans should be +gratuitous by the admonition in Luke, “Do ye lend, looking +for no gain thereof.” In this manner he applies the +text against usury. They seemed to have no notion that +he who bought ever intended to sell. This rude political +economist proposed that all property should be kept stationary. +No one should have a better portion than he +was born to. Where then was to be found the portion of +“the poor commoner” not born to any? or him whose +loss of fortune was to be repaired by industry and enterprise? +Prices advanced; double rents! double tithes! +Our radical preacher attacks his brother ecclesiastics. +“We can neither come into the world, nor remain in it, +nor go out of it, but they must have a fleece! Let it be +lawful to perform all their ministries by ourselves; we can +lay an honest man in his grave without a set of carrion-crows +scenting their prey.” The splendour of the ancient +landed aristocracy and the prodigal luxury of the ecclesiastics +more forcibly struck their minds than those silent +arts of enlarged traffic which were perpetuating the wealth +of the nation, and producing its concomitant evils.</p> + +<p>While the people were thus agitated, divided, and distracted, +the same state of disorder was shaking the more +intelligent classes of society. Our mutable governments +during four successive reigns gave rise to incidents which +had not occurred in the annals of any other people. With +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page333" id="page333"></a>333</span> +the higher orders it was not only a conflict of the old and +the new religions; public disputations were frequent, creeds +were yet to be drawn from school-divinity, the artificial +logic of syllogisms and metaphysical disputations held +before mixed audiences, where the appellant, when his +memory or his acumen failed him, was disconcerted by the +respondent; but when the secular arm was called in, +alternately as each faction predominated, and the lives and +properties of men were to be the result of these opinions, +then men knew not what to think, nor how to act. What +had served as argument and axiom within a few years, a +state proclamation condemned as false and erroneous. A +dereliction of principle spread as the general infection of +the times, and in despair many became utterly indifferent +to the event of affairs to which they could apply no other +remedy than to fall in with the new course, whatever that +might be.</p> + +<p>The history of the universities exhibits this mutable +picture of the nation. There were learned doctors who, +under Henry the Eighth, abjured their papacy—under +Edward vacillated, not knowing which side to lean on—under +Mary recanted—and under Elizabeth again abjured. +Many an apostate on both sides seemed converted into +zealous penitents; persecutors of the friends with whom +they had consorted, and deniers of the very opinions +which they had so earnestly propagated. The facility +with which some illustrious names are recorded to have +given way to the pressure of events seems almost incredible; +but, for the honour of human nature, on either +side there were some who were neither so tractable nor +so infirm.</p> + +<p>The heads of houses stood for antiquity, with all its +sacred rust of time; they looked on reform with a suspicious +eye, while every man in his place marked his +eager ejector on the watch. Under Edward the Sixth, +Dr. Richard Smith, a potent scholastic, stood forth the +stern advocate of the ancient order of things. However, +to preserve his professorship, this doctor recanted of “his +popish errors;” shortly afterwards he declared that it +was no recantation, but a retractation signifying nothing: +to make the doctor somewhat more intelligible, and a +rumour spreading that “Dr. Smith was treading in his +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page334" id="page334"></a>334</span> +old steps,” he was again enforced to read his recantation, +with an acknowledgment that “his distinction was frivolous, +both terms signifying the same thing.” He did not +recant the professorship till Cranmer invited Peter Martyr +from Germany to the chair of the disguised Romanist. +The political Jesuit attended even the lectures of his +obtrusive rival, took notes with a fair countenance, till +suddenly burst the latent explosion. An armed party +menaced the life of Peter Martyr, and a theological challenge +was sent from the late professor to hold a disputation +on “the real presence.” Peter Martyr protested +against the barbarous and ambiguous terms of the scholastic +logic, and would only consent to explain the mystery +of the sacrament by the terms of <i>carnaliter</i> and <i>corporaliter</i>; +for the Scriptures, in describing the Supper, mention +the flesh and the body, not the matter and substance. +He would, however, indulge them to accept the terms of +<i>realiter</i> and <i>substantialiter</i>.</p> + +<p>There was “a great hubbub” at Oxford on this most +eventful issue. The popish party and the reformers were +alike hurried and busied; books and arguments were +heaped together; the meanest citizen took his stand. +The reforming visitors of Edward arrived; all met, all +but Dr. Smith, who had flown to Scotland, on his way to +Louvain. However, he had left his able deputies, who +were deep in the lore in which it appears Peter Martyr +required frequent aid to get on. Both the adverse parties +triumphed; that is usual in these logomachies; but the +Romanists account for the success of the Reformed by the +circumstance that their judges were Reformers.</p> + +<p>Such abstruse subjects connected with religious associations, +and maintained or refuted by the triumph or the +levity of some haughty polemic, produced the most irreverent +feelings among the vulgar. As the Reformation was +then to be predominant, the common talk of the populace +was diversified by rhymes and ballads; and it was held, at +least by the wits, that there was “no real presence,” since +Dr. Smith had not dared to show himself. The papistical +sacrament was familiarly called “Jack in the Box,” +“Worm’s meat,” and other ludicrous terms, one of which +has descended to us in the term which jugglers use of +<i>hocus pocus</i>. This familiar phrase, Anthony Wood informs +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page335" id="page335"></a>335</span> +us, originated in derision of the words, “Hoc est +corpus,” slovenly pronounced by the mumbling priest in +delivering the emblem as a reality. As opprobrious words +with the populace indicate their furious acts, scandalous +scenes soon followed. The censers were snatched from +the hands of the officiating priests; mass-books were flung +at their heads; all red-lettered and illuminated volumes +were chopped in pieces by hatchets: nor was this done +always by the populace, but by students, who in their +youth and their reform knew of no better means to testify +their new loyalty to the visitors of Edward. One of the +more ludicrous scenes among so many shameful ones, was +a funereal exhibition of the schoolmen. Peter Lombard, +“the master of sentences,” accompanied by Duns Scotus +and Thomas Aquinas, carried on biers, were tumbled into +bonfires!</p> + +<p>Five years after these memorable scenes, the same drama +was to be repeated, performed by a different company of +actors. Religion assumed a new face; that which had +hardly been established was blasted by the name of heresy. +All who had flourished under Edward were now called +in question. The ancient tenants now ejected the newcomers, +and affronted them by the same means they had +themselves been affronted. No one at first knew how +affairs were to turn out; some still clung to the reform; +others were reverting to the old system. There were in +fact for some time two religions at once in the university. +The Common Prayer-book in English was, however, but +faintly read, while the Mass was loudly chanted. Jewel’s +letter to the Queen was cautiously worded. This zealous +reformer, in an unhappy moment, had yielded to his fears, +and subscribed a recantation, which he soon after abjured +before a Protestant congregation in Germany. When +Peter Martyr heard the little bell ring to Mass, he sighed, +and said, “that bell would destroy all the sound doctrine +in the college.” Gardiner gave him a safe-conduct homewards, +which saved Peter Martyr from the insolent triumph +of his rival, the scholastic Dr. Smith, and the Spanish friars +with whom Mary supplied his place.</p> + +<p>But the Marians also burned books, as likewise men!</p> + +<p>The funeral of the schoolmen carried on their biers was +too recent to be forgotten; and in return, all Bibles in +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page336" id="page336"></a>336</span> +English, and all the commentators on the Bible in the +vernacular idiom, and which, we are told, “for their number +seemed almost infinite,” were thrown together in the +market-place; and the lighted pyre proclaimed to Oxford +the ominous flames of superstition, which consumed, not +long after, opposite to Baliol College, the great unfortunate +victims of reformation. There Latimer and Ridley +bowed their spirits in the fires, while Cranmer, from the +top of the Bocardo, witnessed the immolation, praying to +God to strengthen them, and felt in anticipation his own +coming fate. Then followed expulsions and emigrations. +We have a long list of names. Five years afterwards, +such was the rapid change of scenery, these fugitives +returned to re-possess themselves of their seats, and were +again and finally the ejectors under Elizabeth.</p> + +<p>The history of this mutable period is remarkably shown +in the singular incident of Catherine, the wife of Peter +Martyr, and St. Frideswide.</p> + +<p>Peter Martyr, when celibacy was the indispensable virtue +of an ecclesiastic, brought his wife into his college, and +also his bawling children. This spirit of reform was an +abhorrence to the conscience and the quiet of the monks. +A brothel, a prostitute, and a race of bastards, formed, +according to the old inmates, the residence of the family +of the reformer. The wife of Martyr died, and was interred +near the relics of St. Frideswide. In the Marian +days, it was resolved that the departed female should be +condemned for heresy, and, since the corpse lay not distant +from “that religious virgin, St. Frideswide,” it should be +disinterred; and the Dean of Christ Church had the +remains of Martyr’s wife dug up and buried in the dunghill +of his stable. Five years after, when Elizabeth +reigned, the fate of the disturbed bones of the wife of +Martyr was recollected, and, by command, with patience +and ingenuity, the sub-dean collected from the dunghill +the bones which time had disjointed, and placed them in +a coffin in the cathedral till they should be reburied with +greater solemnity. A search was at the same time made +by the sub-dean for the bones of St. Frideswide, which +were not found where they had reposed for centuries. +They had been hidden by some relic-adoring Catholic, to +save them from the profane hands of the triumphant +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page337" id="page337"></a>337</span> +heretics of Edward the Sixth. In the obscurest part of +the church, after much seeking, two silken bags were discovered, +which had carefully preserved the relics of St. +Frideswide. The sub-dean, who seems to have been at +once a Romanist and a Reformer, considered that these +bones of Peter Martyr’s wife and the female saint should +receive equal honours. He put them in the same coffin, +and they were re-interred together. This incident provoked +some scoffs from the witless, and some grave comments +from those who stood more in awe of the corpse of +the saint than of the sinner. Thus they were buried and +coupled together; and a scholar, whether a divine or a +<span class="correction" title="amended from philosoper">philosopher</span> his ambiguous style will not assure us, inscribed +this epitaph:—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p><i>Hic jacet Religio cum Superstitione.</i></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>Did the profound writer insinuate a wish that in one +grave should lie mingled together Religion with Superstition? +or that they are still as inseparable as the bones +of the wife of Peter Martyr with the bones of St. +Frideswide? Or did he mean nothing more than the idle +antithesis of a scholar’s pen?</p> + +<p>At this uncertain crisis of the alliance between Church +and State, the history of our English Bible exhibits a +singular picture of the Church, which, from courting the +favour of the great, gradually grew into its own strength, +and rested on its own independence. We perceive it first +attracting the royal eye, and afterwards securing the patronage +of ministers. This phenomenon is observable in +the Bible commanded to be printed by Edward the Sixth. +There we view his majesty’s portrait printed and illumined +in red. Under Elizabeth, in the same Bible, omitting +only the Papistic fish-days, we are surprised by the +two portraits of the Earl of Leicester, placed before the +Book of Joshua, and Cecil Lord Burleigh, adorning the +Psalms. This is the first edition of the Bishops’ Bible. +But subsequently, in 1574, we discover that the portraits +of the royal favourites are both withdrawn, and a map of +the Holy Land substituted, while the arms of Archbishop +Parker seem to have been let into the vacancy which Lord +Burleigh erst so gloriously occupied. The map of the +Holy Land unquestionably is more appropriate than the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page338" id="page338"></a>338</span> +portraits of the two statesmen; but the arms of the +archbishop introduced into the Scriptures indicate a more +egotistic spirit in the good prelate than, perhaps, becomes +the saintly humility of the pastor. The whole is an exhibition +of that worldliness which in its first weakness is +uncertain of the favour of the higher powers, but which +cannot conceal its triumph in its full-grown strength; the +great ecclesiastic, no longer collecting portraits of ministers, +stamps his own arms on the sacred volume, to ratify +his own power!</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c33" id="ft1c33" href="#fa1c33"><span class="fn">1</span></a> It will be found in the additional manuscripts at the British +Museum.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c33" id="ft2c33" href="#fa2c33"><span class="fn">2</span></a> See an article on Psalms in vol. ii. of “Curiosities of Literature.”—<span class="sc">Ed.</span></p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page339" id="page339"></a>339</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">PRIMITIVE DRAMAS.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Scriptural</span> dramas, composed by the ecclesiastics, furnished +the nations of Europe with the only drama they +possessed during many centuries. Voltaire ingeniously +suggested, that <span class="sc">Gregory</span> of Nazianzen, to wean the +Christians of Constantinople from the dramas of Greece +and Rome, composed sacred dramas; <i>The Passion of +Christ</i> afforded one of the deepest interest. This remarkable +transition might have occurred to this father of the +Church, from the circumstance that the ancient Greek +tragedy had originally formed a religious spectacle; and +the choruses were turned into Christian hymns. Warton +considered this fact as a new discovery in the obscure +annals of the earliest drama.<a name="fa1c34" id="fa1c34" href="#ft1c34"><span class="sp">1</span></a> The temples of the idols +were for ever to be closed, for true religion and triumphant +faith could show the miraculous Being who, blending +the celestial with the human nature, was no longer the +empty fable of the poet. The gross simplicity of the inventors, +and the undisturbed faith of the people, perceived +nothing profane in the representation of an awful mystery +by a familiar play. Christian or Pagan, the populace remains +the same, and must be amused; the invention of +scriptural plays would keep alive their religious faith, and +sacred dramas would be a happy substitute for those of +which they were denied evermore to be spectators.</p> + +<p>This attempt to christianise the drama did not produce +an immediate effect; but the Roman dramatic art could +not fail to degenerate with the Roman empire; and the +actors themselves were but the descendants of the mimi, a +race of infamous buffoons, objects of the horror and the +excommunication of the primitive fathers.<a name="fa2c34" id="fa2c34" href="#ft2c34"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page340" id="page340"></a>340</span></p> + +<p>In the obscurity of the medieval period, the origin of +these sacred dramas in Europe is lost. They are only incidentally +noticed by those who had yet no notions of the +drama. But though in England their remains are found +at a much earlier period than in any other country, this +seems to have been a mere accident from the utter neglect, +or rather ignorance, of other nations of the origin of their +own early drama; for these scriptural plays, judging by +those which we possess, seem struck in the same mint, +and are worked out of a common stock, and their appearance +we can hardly doubt was coeval. Monks were the +writers or inventors, and a general communication was +kept up with Rome throughout every European realm. +The subjects and the personages of these biblical dramas +are treated with the same inartificial arrangement, and +when translated it would be difficult to distinguish between +a French, a Flemish, or an English mystery; and +in their progressive state, branching out into three distinct +classes, they passed in all countries through the same +mutations.</p> + +<p>It has been conjectured that they were first introduced +into Italy, from its intercourse with the metropolis of the +Greek Empire; but when we have recourse to its literary +recorder, we gather nothing but ambiguity. Tiraboschi is +dubious whether the early Italian mysteries exhibited in +the year 1264 were anything more than a dumb show, or +the processional display of a religious pageant. Decided, +on system, not to approve of such familiar exhibitions of +sacred themes, the Jesuit has cautiously noticed two +companies who evidently had performed a mystery, or +miracle-play. In that piece there is a direction that “An +angel and the virgin <i>sing</i>;” but our learned Jesuit will +not venture even to surmise that “the virgin and the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page341" id="page341"></a>341</span> +angel” <i>acted</i> their parts, but merely chanted a poem.<a name="fa3c34" id="fa3c34" href="#ft3c34"><span class="sp">3</span></a> +The literary antiquary Signorelli inclines to fix the uncertain +date of the first sacred drama so late as in 1445.<a name="fa4c34" id="fa4c34" href="#ft4c34"><span class="sp">4</span></a> In +France these early scriptural exhibitions were so little +comprehended, that Le Grand D’Aussy, in his pretension +that his nation possessed the drama in the thirteenth century, +derives the origin of their mysteries from such pieces +as the three fabliaux which he has given, as the earliest +dramas.<a name="fa5c34" id="fa5c34" href="#ft5c34"><span class="sp">5</span></a> So little conversant in his day—not a distant +one—were the French antiquaries with a subject which +has of late become familiar to their tastes. We learn nothing +positive of their “Mysteries” till their “Confraerie +de la Passion” was incorporated in 1402.</p> + +<p>The earliest of these representations necessarily would +be in Latin,<a name="fa6c34" id="fa6c34" href="#ft6c34"><span class="sp">6</span></a> and performed in monasteries by the ecclesiastics +themselves, on festival days; in this state, how +could they have been designed for the people? Aware of +this difficulty, and convinced that these holy plays were +in their origin intended for popular instruction and recreation, +it has been conjectured that the Latin mystery +was accompanied by a pantomimic show, for the benefit of +the people; but an impatient concourse could be little +affected by the action of the performers, almost as incomprehensible +as the language was unintelligible. The +people, a great animal only to be fondled in one way, as +usual, worked out their own wants; they taught learned +clerks the only method by which they were to be amused, +by having the same thing after their own fashion, and to be +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page342" id="page342"></a>342</span> +comprehended in their own language; and the day at last +arrived when even the people themselves would be actors. +In the obscurity of the medieval period, the literary antiquary +has often to feel his way in the darkness, till among +uncertain things he fancies that he grasps the palpable. +We are not furnished with precise dates, but some natural +circumstances may account for the introduction of the mysteries +in the <i>vernacular idiom</i>. About the eighth century, +merchants carried on their trades in the great fairs, and to +attract the people together, jugglers, minstrels, and buffoons +were well paid, and the populace flocked. Such a multitudinous +concourse appears to have created alarm among +their great lords; and the ecclesiastics in vain proscribed +these licentious revelries. It would be nothing more than +a stroke of their accustomed policy if we imagine that, +seeing the people were eager after such public entertainments, +the monks should take them into their own hands; +and offering a far more imposing exhibition than even the +tricks of jugglers, combining piety with merriment, at +once awe and delight the people by their scriptural histories +and the legends of saints, in the language common +to them all, thus enticing them from profane mummeries. +It was a revolution in the history of the people, who, +without education, seemed to grow learned in the mysteries +and to be witnesses of miracles!</p> + +<p>This account is not incongruous with another probably +not less true, and which indeed has been received as indisputable +among the more ancient literary historians of +France, and is well known by the verses of Boileau in +his “Art of Poetry.” Palmers and Pilgrims—the one +returning from the East, bearing in their caps the hallowed +palm-branch of Palestine, and the other from some distant +shrine, their chaplets and cloaks covered with the many-coloured +scallops—taking their stand in thoroughfares, and +leaning on their staffs, while their pendent relics and +images attracted the gazer, would win an audience from +among the people. These venerable itinerants or semi-saints +recited their sacred narratives in verse or even in +prose; they had sojourned amid “the holy places,” which +they described; they had their adventures to tell, serious +or comic; and that many of these have entered into the +great body of <span class="sc">Romance</span>, and were caught up by the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page343" id="page343"></a>343</span> +Trouvères, we can easily imagine. These strollers excited +the piety and contributed to the amusement of their simple +auditors, who, in the course of time, occasionally provided +for these actors a stage on a green in the vicinage of their +town; thus an audience of burghers and clowns, and no +critics, was first formed. The ecclesiastics adopted performances +so certain of popular attraction, and became the +sole authors of these inartificial dramas, as they were of +romances and chronicles. They had but one object, and +knew to treat it only in one way. They imagined that +they were instructing the people by initiating them into +scriptural history, the only history then known, and by +keeping the sources of popular recreation in their own +hands, they looked for their success in the degree they +excited their terror or their piety, and not less their ribald +merriment; and for the people the profane drollery and +the familiar dialogue were as consistent with their feelings +as the articles of their creed, for which they would have +died, as well as laughed at.</p> + +<p>These primeval dramas are not inconsiderable objects in +the philosophy of literary history. In England,<a name="fa7c34" id="fa7c34" href="#ft7c34"><span class="sp">7</span></a> and probably +throughout Europe, they long kept their standing; +they linger in Italy, and still possess devout Spain. Not +long since at Seville they had their mysteries adapted to +the seasons—the Crucifixion for Good Friday, and the +Nativity for Christmas, and the Creation whenever they +chose; and a recent editor of the plays of Cervantes +assures us, that these <i>Autos Sacramentales</i> still form a source +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page344" id="page344"></a>344</span> +of amusement and edification to the pilgrims at the Shrine +of St. Jago de Compostella, which it seems still receives +such visitors.<a name="fa8c34" id="fa8c34" href="#ft8c34"><span class="sp">8</span></a></p> + +<p>These scriptural plays were known in England before +1119; they formed public performances in the metropolis +in 1180. They were then confined to the monasteries, +and when the audience required the space, they were exhibited +in churches, and sometimes even in cemeteries. So +true it is that the first theatres were churches and the +first actors churchmen. Some reprobated the sight of the +priestly character, or the “fols clers,” “mad clerks,” in +their grotesque disguisings; if they were sanctioned by one +pope, they were condemned by another. The clergy, except +on some rare occasion, when exhibiting before royalty or +nobility,<a name="fa9c34" id="fa9c34" href="#ft9c34"><span class="sp">9</span></a> were at length not reluctant to yield their places +to a new race of performers. In the metropolis they never +lost their control over these representations, for they consigned +them to the care of their inferior brethren, the +parish clerks; but in provincial towns it was not long ere +the people themselves discovered that they, with some +little assistance from the neighbouring monasteries, were +competent to take them into their own hands. The +honest members of guilds or corporations, of mechanics +and tradesmen, formed themselves into brotherhoods of +actors, ambitious of displaying their mimetic faculty to +their townsfolk. The play had now become the people’s +play, and the scale of the representation widened at every +point; it was to be acted in an open plain, and it was to +extend sometimes through eight days.<a name="fa10c34" id="fa10c34" href="#ft10c34"><span class="sp">10</span></a> Such was the +concourse of spectators, and indeed the performers were +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page345" id="page345"></a>345</span> +themselves a crowd. All were anxious to show themselves +in some part, and such a play might require nearly a hundred +personages. In a miracle-play, the whole life of a +saint, from the cradle to martyrdom, was displayed in the +same piece; the youth, the middle-age, and the caducity +of the eminent personage required to be enacted by three +different actors, so that there were the first, the second, +and the third Jacob, to emulate one another, and provoke +bickerings; townsfolk when acting, it appears, being +querulously jealous. Something of scenical illusion was +contrived, and what in the style of the green-room is +termed “properties”<a name="fa11c34" id="fa11c34" href="#ft11c34"><span class="sp">11</span></a> was attempted, by the description +we find in the directions to the actors, and by the mischances +which occurred to the unpractised performers by +their clumsy machinery. Their mode of representation +was so much alike, that the same sort of ludicrous accidents +have come down to us relative to our native mysteries, +as occurred in those of France. Bishop Percy +has quoted a malicious trick played by the Flemish Owl-glass, +the buffoon of the times, among his neighbours in +one of these mysteries;<a name="fa12c34" id="fa12c34" href="#ft12c34"><span class="sp">12</span></a> a Judas had nearly hanged himself, +and the cross had nearly realised a crucifixion. +Among these unlucky attempts they gilded over the face +to represent the Eternal Father; the honest burgher, +nearly suffocated, never appeared again; and the next +day it was announced that for the future the Deity should +lie “covered by a cloud.” A scaffold was built up of +three or more divisions for “the stage-play:” Paradise +opened at the top, the world moved in the centre, and +the yawning throat of an immeasurable dragon, as the +devils run in and out, showed the bottomless pit; and +whenever the protruding wings of that infernal monster +approached, “and fanned” the near spectators, the terror +was real.</p> + +<p>These mysteries abound with a licentiousness to which +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page346" id="page346"></a>346</span> +the rude simplicity of the age was innocently insensible; +a ludicrous turn is often given to the solemn incidents of +holy writ; and the legend of a saint opened an unbounded +scope to their mother-wit. The usual remark of the +people when they had been pleased with a performance +was, “To-day the mystery was very fine and devout; and +the devils played most pleasantly.”<a name="fa13c34" id="fa13c34" href="#ft13c34"><span class="sp">13</span></a> The devils were the +buffoons, and compliment one another with the most +atrocious titles. The spectators, who shed tears at the +torturous crucifixion, would listen with delight to the +volume of reciprocal abuse voided by Satan and the +Satanic, whose very names, at any other time or place, +would have paralysed the intellect. This strange mixture +of religious and ludicrous emotions attests that the authors +and the spectators were in the childhood of society, satisfied +that they were good Christians. Such were the +earliest attempts of our dramatic representations; but +men must tread with naked feet before they put on the +sock and buskin.</p> + +<p>Several of these annual exhibitions in provincial towns +have descended to us, as those of the Chester Whitsun-plays, +and others in great towns. Originally, doubtless, +written in Latin, they soon submitted to the Norman +rule, vigilant to practise every means to diffuse the <i>French</i> +language; but in this state they could not deeply delight +the great body of the Saxon people.<a name="fa14c34" id="fa14c34" href="#ft14c34"><span class="sp">14</span></a> The monk, Ralph +Higden, under the influence of that national spirit which +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page347" id="page347"></a>347</span> +had been evinced by some former native monks, directed +his efforts to the relief of his countrymen. Thrice he +journeyed to Rome to obtain the permission of his holiness +to translate these holy plays into the vernacular <i>English</i> +for the people.<a name="fa15c34" id="fa15c34" href="#ft15c34"><span class="sp">15</span></a> Three journeys to Rome indicate some +difficulty about the propriety of this mode of edifying the +populace, of which indeed there were conflicting opinions. +But the time was favourable; the youthful monarch on the +throne, our third Edward, was beginning to encourage the +use of the vernacular idiom, and in 1338, Higden put +forth mysteries in the native tongue, and thus accomplished +what, in the great volume of the Polychronicon, +he has so energetically exhorted should be done, for the +maintenance of what he termed “the birth-tongue.”</p> + +<p>The day could not fail to arrive in the gradations of the +public intellect, even such as it then was, that society +would feel the want of something more directly operating +on their sympathies, or their daily experience, than the +unvaried scriptural tale. Mysteries however devout, by +such familiar repetition, would lose something of their +awfulness, as miracle-plays would satiate their tastes, as +they became deficient in the freshness of invention. The +first approaches of this change in their feelings are observable +in the later miracle-plays, where, as a novel +attraction to the old plays, abstract personations are partially +introduced; but this novelty was to be carried much +higher, and to include a whole set of new dramatic personages. +A more intellectual faculty was now exercised in +the plan of the <span class="scs">MORALITY</span>, or moral play.<a name="fa16c34" id="fa16c34" href="#ft16c34"><span class="sp">16</span></a> This was no +inconsiderable advancement in the progress of society; it +was deepening the recesses of the human understanding, +awakening and separating the passions; it was one of those +attempts which appear in the infancy of imagination, consisting +not of human beings, but of their shadowy reflections, +in the personification of their passions,—in a word, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page348" id="page348"></a>348</span> +it was allegory! To relieve the gravity of this ethical +play, which was in some danger of calling on the audience +for deeper attention than their amusement could afford, +the morality not only retained their old favourite, the +Devil, but introduced a more natural buffoon in the Vice, +who performed the part of the domestic fool of our ancestors, +or the clown of our pantomime.</p> + +<p>These unsubstantial personages of allegory—these apparitions +of human nature—were to assume a more bodily +shape, when not only the passions, but the individual +characters whom they agitated, were exhibited in every-day +life, not however yet venturing into a wide field of +society, but peeping from a corner,—it was nothing more +than a single act, satirical and comic, in a dialogue sustained +by three or four professional characters of the +times. It was called the <span class="scs">INTERLUDE</span>, or “<i>a play between</i>,” +to zest by its pleasantry the intervals of a luxurious, and +sometimes a wearisome, banquet. The most dramatic +interludes were the invention of <span class="sc">John Heywood</span>, the +jester of Henry the Eighth. The Scottish Bard, Douglas, +the Bishop of Dunkeld, alludes to these interludes, in his +“Paleys of Honour.”</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Grete was the preis the feast royál to sene,</p> +<p>At ease they eat, with <span class="sc">Interludes</span> between.<a name="fa17c34" id="fa17c34" href="#ft17c34"><span class="sp">17</span></a></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page349" id="page349"></a>349</span></p> + +<p>Such was the march of events, the steppings which were +conducting the national genius to the verge of tragedy +and comedy; a vast interval of time and labour separates +the writers of these primitive plays from the fathers of +dramatic art; yet however ludicrous to us the simplicity +of the age, often these singular productions betray shrewd +humour and natural emotions. To condemn them as barbarous +and absurd would be forming a very inadequate +notion of the influence of these earliest of our European +dramas on their contemporaries. An enlightened lover of +the arts has said, perhaps with great truth, that Raphael +never received from his age such flattering applause, and +excited such universal approbation, as did Cimabué, the +rude father of his art. The first essays strike more deeply +than even the masterpieces of a subsequent age after all its +successful labour; for its more finished excellence depends +partly on reflection, as well as on sensation.</p> + +<p>The mystery and the morality lingered among us; but +in the improved taste and literature of the court of Henry +the Eighth, the facetious <span class="scs">INTERLUDE</span>, while it was facetious, +won the royal smile. The successive agitations of +the age, however, could not fail to reflect its tempers in +these public exhibitions. In the reforming government of +Edward the Sixth, the miracle-plays were looked on as +Romish spectacles, and were fast sinking into neglect, +when the clergy of the papistic queen retrograded into +this whole fabulous mythology; adepts not only in the +craft of miracles, but desirous, by these shows or “plays +of miracles,” to revive the taste in the imaginations of +the people. The public authorities patronised what recently +they had laughed at or had scorned. On Corpus +Christi day, the Lord Mayor and the Privy Council were +spectators of <i>The Passion of Christ</i>, always an affecting +drama; and it was again represented before this select +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page350" id="page350"></a>350</span> +audience: and on St. Olave’s day, the truly “miracle-play” +of that legendary saint was enacted in the church +dedicated to the saint.<a name="fa18c34" id="fa18c34" href="#ft18c34"><span class="sp">18</span></a></p> + +<p>The history of the <span class="scs">INTERLUDE</span> more particularly marks +an epoch, for it enters into our political history. Mysteries +and moralities were purely religious or ethical +themes, but the comic interludes took a more adventurous +course; and their writers, accommodating themselves to +the fashions of the day, were the organs of the prevalent +factions then dividing the unquiet realm.</p> + +<p>From the earliest moment of the projected reformation +or emancipation from the Papal dominion by Henry, we +discover the players of interludes at their insidious work; +but affairs were floating in that uncertain state when the +new had by no means displaced the old. In 1527, Henry +the Eighth was greatly diverted at an interlude where +the heretic Luther and his wife were brought on the +stage, and the Reformers were ridiculed.<a name="fa19c34" id="fa19c34" href="#ft19c34"><span class="sp">19</span></a> The king in +the Creed and the ceremonies remained a Romanist; and +in 1533, a proclamation inhibits “the playing of enterludes +concerning doctrines now in question and controversy.”<a name="fa20c34" id="fa20c34" href="#ft20c34"><span class="sp">20</span></a> +“The Defender of the Faith” was still irresolute +to defend or to attack. In 1543, an act of parliament +was passed for the control of dramatic representations; +and at this later date, this reforming monarch +decreed, that “no person should play in interludes any +matter contrary to the doctrines of the Church of +Rome!” Chronology in history is not only useful to date +events, but to date the passions of sovereigns. It was +absolutely necessary for Edward the Sixth on his ascension +immediately to repeal this express act of parliament of his +father;<a name="fa21c34" id="fa21c34" href="#ft21c34"><span class="sp">21</span></a> and then the emancipated interluders now, +openly, with grave logic or laughing ridicule, struck at all +“the Roman superstitions.” Hence we had Catholic and +Protestant dramas. The Romanists had made very free +strictures on Cromwell, Cranmer, and their followers; and +on the side of the reformed we have no deficiency of oppugners +of the Romish Church. Under Henry the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page351" id="page351"></a>351</span> +Eighth, we have the sacred drama of <i>Every-man</i>, a single +personage, by whom the writer not unaptly personifies +human nature. This drama came from the Romanists to +recall the auditors back to the forsaken ceremonies and +shaken creed of their fathers. Under Edward the Sixth, +we have <i>Lusty Juventus</i>, whom Satan and his old son +Hypocrisy, with an extraordinary nomenclature of “holy +things,” would inveigle back to that seductive harlot, +“Abominable Living,” which the Reformer imagined was +the favourite Dulcinea of “the false priests.”<a name="fa22c34" id="fa22c34" href="#ft22c34"><span class="sp">22</span></a> On the +accession of Mary, this queen hastened a proclamation +against the interludes of the Reformers. The term used +in the proclamation looks like an ironical allusion to a +word which now had long been bandied on the lips of the +populace. It specifies to be for “the <i>reformation</i> of busy +meddlers in matters of religion.” A strict watch was +kept on the players, some of whom suffered for enacting a +reformed interlude. Such plays seem to have been patronised +in domestic secrecy. The interference of the Star +Chamber was called forth in 1556 for the total suppression +of dramatic entertainments. In many places some magistrates +had slackened their pursuit after “players,” and +reluctantly obeyed the public authorities. The first act of +Elizabeth resembled in its character those of her brother +Edward and her sister Mary, however opposite were the +systems of their governments. The queen put a sudden +stop to the enacting of all interludes which opposed the +progress of the Reformation; there seemed to be no objection +to any of a different cast; but Elizabeth lived to +be an auditor of more passionate dramas than these theological +logomachies performed on the stage, where the +dull poet had sometimes quoted chapter and verse in +Genesis or St. Matthew.</p> + +<p>It is not generally known that, while these Catholic +and Protestant dramas were opposed to each other in +England, at the same period the Huguenots in France had +also entertained the derisory muse of the more comic interludes. +There was, however, this difference in the fortunes +of the writers; as in France the government had +never reformed nor changed their position, there could +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page352" id="page352"></a>352</span> +have been no period which admitted of the public +representation of these satirical dramas. In their dramatic +history, it was long considered that the subjects of these +Hugonistic dramas were too tender to bear the handling; +and the brothers Parfait, in their copious “History of the +French Theatre,” only afford a slight indication of “the +turbulent Calvinists,” who had spread “pieces of dangerous +heresy and fanaticism against the Pope, the cardinals, +and the bishops; works which could not be noticed +without profaning the page!”—and therefore they refrain +from giving even their titles! It is in this spirit, and with +such apologies, that historians have often castrated their +own history. The existence of these dramas might have +escaped our knowledge, had not the more enlightened +judgment of the Duke de la Vallière supplied what the +more stubborn Romanists had suppressed. This lover of +literature has favoured the curious with the interesting +analysis of two rare French Protestant plays, <i>Le Marchand +Converti</i>, in 1558; and <i>Le Pape Malade et tirant à +sa Fin</i>, in 1561. Allowing largely for the gross invectives +of the Calvinist—“<i>les impiétés</i>”—they display an +original comic invention, and sparkle with the most lively +sallies.<a name="fa23c34" id="fa23c34" href="#ft23c34"><span class="sp">23</span></a> It is remarkable that <i>Le Marchand Converti</i>, at +such an early period of modern literature, is a regular +comedy of five acts, introduced by a prologue in verse; +odes are interspersed, and each act concludes with a +chorus, whom the author calls “the company.” The +classical form of this unacted play, instinct with the spirit +of the new reform, betrays the work of a learned hand.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c34" id="ft1c34" href="#fa1c34"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Warton’s “Hist. of Eng. Poetry,” iii. 195, 8vo edition; but it +has been suggested that, as Saint Gregory composed more poetically, +this earliest sacred drama was the production of a later writer, +another Gregory, bishop of Antioch, <span class="sc">A.D.</span> 572. The dramatist, however, +was an ecclesiastic, and that point only is important on the +present occasion.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c34" id="ft2c34" href="#fa2c34"><span class="fn">2</span></a> <span class="sc">Tertullian</span>, <span class="sc">Chrysostom</span>, <span class="sc">Lactantius</span>, <span class="sc">Cyprian</span>, and others, +have vehemently declaimed against theatres and actors. It is doubtless +the invectives of the Fathers which have been the true origin of +the puritanic denouncement against “stage-plays” and “play-goers.” +The Fathers furnished ample quotations for <span class="sc">Prynne</span> in his “Histriomastix.” +It is, however, curious to observe that at a later day, in the +thirteenth century, the great schoolman, Thomas Aquinas, greatly +relaxed the prohibitions; confessing that amusement is necessary to the +happiness of man, he allows the decent exercise of the histrionic art. +See a curious tract, “The Stage Condemned,” which contains a collection +of the opinions of the Fathers, 1698. Riccoboni, “Sur les +Théâtres,” does not fail to appeal to the great schoolman.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c34" id="ft3c34" href="#fa3c34"><span class="fn">3</span></a> “Tiraboschi,” iv.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c34" id="ft4c34" href="#fa4c34"><span class="fn">4</span></a> These dramas subsequently formed no uncommon spectacle in the +streets of Italy, whence some Italian critics have fancied that the +Gothic poem of Dante—his Hell, his Purgatory, and his Paradise—was +an idea caught from the threefold stage of a mystery which +often fixed his musings in the streets of his own Florence. As late as +in the year 1739, a mystery of <i>The Damned Soul</i>, acted by living +personages, was still exhibited by a company of strollers in Turin; +we have the amusing particulars in a letter by Spence.—Spence’s +“Anecdotes,” 397. They have sunk to the humble state of puppet-shows, +and are still exhibited at Carnival time at Venice and elsewhere.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c34" id="ft5c34" href="#fa5c34"><span class="fn">5</span></a> See the note and this extraordinary blunder in <i>Fabliaux</i>, ii. 152.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c34" id="ft6c34" href="#fa6c34"><span class="fn">6</span></a> Mr. Wright has published a curious collection of Latin mysteries +of the twelfth century. [For a detailed notice of other printed collections +see note to “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. i. p. 352.—<span class="sc">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c34" id="ft7c34" href="#fa7c34"><span class="fn">7</span></a> Perhaps the very last remains of such rude dramatic exhibitions +are yet to be traced in our counties—about Christmas-tide, or rather +old Christmas, whose decrepit age is personified. In Lancashire and +Yorkshire, and also in Dorsetshire, families are visited by “the great +Emperor of the Turks” and St. George of England, or by the lion-hearted +Richard. After a fierce onset, ringing their tin swords, the +Saracens groan and drop. The Leech appears holding his phial; from +some drops the dead survive their fate, and rise for the hospitable +supper. The dialogue, however, has not been so traditional as the +exhibition. The curious portion of these ancient exhibitions is, therefore, +totally lost in the substitutions of the rude rustics. The Wassail +Songs, or the Christmas Carols, have come down with fewer losses than +these ancient “Tales of the Crusaders;” for the language of emotion, +and the notice of old picturesque customs, cling to the memory, and +endure with their localities. But for these we must travel far from the +land of the Cockneys.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c34" id="ft8c34" href="#fa8c34"><span class="fn">8</span></a> Bouterwek.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c34" id="ft9c34" href="#fa9c34"><span class="fn">9</span></a> The clergy long continued to assist at these exhibitions, if they +did not always act in them. In 1417, an <i>English Mystery</i> was exhibited +before the Emperor Sigismund, at the Council of Constance, on +the usual subject of the Nativity. The <i>English Bishops</i> had it +rehearsed several days, that the actors might be perfect before their +imperial audience. We are not told in what language their <i>English +Mystery</i> was recited; but we are furnished with a curious fact, that +“the Germans consider this play as the first introduction of that sort +of dramatic performance in their country.”—“Henry of Monmouth,” +by the Rev. J. E. Tyler, ii. 61.</p> + +<p><a name="ft10c34" id="ft10c34" href="#fa10c34"><span class="fn">10</span></a> The Spanish nation, unchangeable in their customs, have retained +the last remains of the ancient Mysteries in the divisions of their +dramas, called “Jornadas.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft11c34" id="ft11c34" href="#fa11c34"><span class="fn">11</span></a> “A sheep-skin for Jews, wigs for the Apostles, and vizards for +Devils,” appear in the churchwardens’ accounts at Tewkesbury, 1578, +“for the players’ geers.”—“Hist. of Dramatic Poetry,” ii. 140. The +same diligent inquirer has also discovered the theatrical term “properties,” +in allusion to the furniture of the stage, and which is so used +by Shakspeare, employed in its present sense in an ancient morality.—Ib. +ii. 129.</p> + +<p><a name="ft12c34" id="ft12c34" href="#fa12c34"><span class="fn">12</span></a> “Reliques of Ancient Poetry,” i. 129.</p> + +<p><a name="ft13c34" id="ft13c34" href="#fa13c34"><span class="fn">13</span></a> “Dictionnaire de l’Académie Française.”—The proverbial phrase +is accompanied by a very superfluous remark—“Ce mot a passé d’usage +avec les mœurs de ces temps anciens.” See also “Dict. de Trevoux,” +art. <i>Mystère</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="ft14c34" id="ft14c34" href="#fa14c34"><span class="fn">14</span></a> That the translation of the “Chester Plays” was made from the +<i>French</i>, and not from the <i>Latin</i>, as Warton supposed, is ingeniously +elucidated by Mr. Collier. In the English translation, some of the +original French passages have been preserved.—“Annals of the Stage,” +ii. 129.</p> + +<p>When Warton found that these plays were translated into English, +he concluded that they were from the Latin. He totally forgot that +the French was long the prevalent language of England. And this important +circumstance, too often overlooked by preceding inquirers, has +thrown much confusion in our literary history.</p> + +<p>The best account we have of Ralph Higden may be found in the <i>first</i> +volume of Lardner’s Cyclopædia on “The Early History of the English +Stage,” a work of some original research, at page 193.</p> + +<p><a name="ft15c34" id="ft15c34" href="#fa15c34"><span class="fn">15</span></a> The earliest and rudest known miracle-play in English has been +published by Mr. Halliwell—<i>The Harrowing of Hell</i>. It was written +in the reign of Edward the Second, and is a curious instance of the +childhood of the drama.</p> + +<p><a name="ft16c34" id="ft16c34" href="#fa16c34"><span class="fn">16</span></a> The reign of Henry the Sixth may he fixed upon as the epoch of a +new species of dramatic representation, known by the name of a moral.—<i>Collier</i>, +i. 23.</p> + +<p><a name="ft17c34" id="ft17c34" href="#fa17c34"><span class="fn">17</span></a> The reader may gratify his curiosity, and derive considerable +amusement, from the skilful analysis of primitive dramas, both manuscript +and printed, which Mr. <span class="sc">Collier</span> has drawn up with true +dramatic taste. There are also copious specimens in a curious article +on Heywood in the volume on “The English Drama” of Lardner’s +Cyclopædia,—the labour of a learned antiquary. [One of Heywood’s +Interludes was printed by the Percy Society from his MS. in the +British Museum, under the editorial care of Mr. Fairholt; who prefixed +an analysis with copious extracts from his other Interludes.] The progress +of the drama was similar both in France and England, yet our +vivacious neighbours seem to have invented a peculiar burlesque piece +of their own, under the title of <i>Sotties</i>, and whose chief personage takes +the quality of <i>Prince des Sots</i>; and <i>La Mère Sotte</i>, who is represented +with her infant <i>Sots</i>. These pieces still retained their devout character, +with an intermixture of profane and burlesque scenes, highly relished +by the populace. “Ils le nommèrent par un quolibet vulgaire, <i>Jeux +de Pois pilez</i>, et ce fut selon toutes les apparences à cause de mélange +du sacré et du profane qui régnait dans ces sortes de jeux.” The cant +phrase which the people coined for this odd mixture of sacred and farcical +subjects, of <i>Mashed Peas</i>, may lose its humour with us, but we +find by Bayle, art. “D’Assoucy,” that they were collected and printed +under this title, and fetched high prices among collectors. These +<i>Sotties</i> were acted by a brotherhood calling themselves <i>Enfans sans +Soucy</i>.—Parfait, “Hist. du Théâtre Français,” i. 52. One of their +chief composers was <span class="sc">Pierre Gringoire</span>, of whose rare <i>Sotties</i> I have +several reprints by the learned Abbé Caron. Gringoire invented and +performed his <i>Sotties</i>, in ridicule of the Pope, on a scaffold or stage, to +charm his royal master, Louis the Twelfth, in 1511; for an ample list +of his gay satires see “Biog. Universelle,” art. “Gringoire.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft18c34" id="ft18c34" href="#fa18c34"><span class="fn">18</span></a> Strype’s “Mem. of Eccles. Hist.,” iii. 379.</p> + +<p><a name="ft19c34" id="ft19c34" href="#fa19c34"><span class="fn">19</span></a> “Annals of the Stage,” i. 107.</p> + +<p><a name="ft20c34" id="ft20c34" href="#fa20c34"><span class="fn">20</span></a> Warton’s “Hist. of Eng. Poetry,” iii. 428, 8vo.</p> + +<p><a name="ft21c34" id="ft21c34" href="#fa21c34"><span class="fn">21</span></a> Rastell’s “Collection of Statutes,” fo. 32—d.</p> + +<p><a name="ft22c34" id="ft22c34" href="#fa22c34"><span class="fn">22</span></a> Both these ancient dramas are reprinted in Hawkins’ “Origin of +the English Drama.” Many such dramas remain in manuscript.</p> + +<p><a name="ft23c34" id="ft23c34" href="#fa23c34"><span class="fn">23</span></a> “Bibliothèque du Théâtre Français,” iii. 263, ascribed to the +Duke de la Vallière. He has preserved many passages exquisitely +humorous. He felt awkwardly in performing his duty to his readers, +after what his predecessors, Messieurs Parfait, had declared;—and, to +calm the terrors of <i>les personnes scrupuleuses</i>, it is amusing to +observe his plea, or his apology, for noticing these admirable antipapistic +satires:—“They are outrageous and abound with impieties; but they +are extremely well written for their time, and truly comic. I considered +that I could not avoid giving these extracts, were it only to show to +what lengths the first pretended reformers carried their unreasonable +violence against the holy Father, and the court of Rome.” The apology +for their transcription, if not more ingenuous, is at least more ingenious +than the apology for their suppression.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page353" id="page353"></a>353</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE REFORMER BISHOP BALE; AND THE +ROMANIST JOHN HEYWOOD, THE +COURT JESTER.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Bale,</span> Bishop of Ossory, and <span class="sc">John Heywood</span>, the court +jester, were contemporaries, and both equally shared in +the mutable fortunes of the satiric dramas of their times; +but they themselves were the antipodes of each other: +the earnest Protestant <span class="sc">Bale</span>, the gravest reformer, and +the inflexible Catholic <span class="sc">Heywood</span>, noted for “his mad +merry wit,” form one of those remarkable disparities +which the history of literature sometimes offers.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Bale</span> was originally educated in a monastery; he +found an early patron, and professed the principles of the +Reformation; and, like Luther, sealed his emancipation +from Catholic celibacy by a wife, whom he tenderly +describes as “his faithful Dorothea.” It was a great +thing for a monk to be mated with such constancy at a +time when women were usually to be described as shrews, +or worse. From the day of marriage the malice of +persecution haunted the hapless heretic; such personal +hatreds could not fail of being mutual. He seems to +have too hastily anticipated the Reformation under Henry +the Eighth, for though that monarch had freed himself +from “the bishop of Rome,” he had by no means put +aside the doctrines, and Bale, who had already begun a +series of two-and-twenty reforming interludes in his +“maternal idiom,” found it advisable to leave a kingdom but +half reformed. He paused not, however, till he had +written a whole library against “the Papelins,” the last +production always seemed the most envenomed. On the +death of Henry he unexpectedly appeared before Edward +the Sixth, who imagined that he had died. Bale had the +misfortune to be promoted to the Irish bishopric of +Ossory—to plant Protestantism in a land of Papistry! +Frustrated in his unceasing fervour, Bale escaped from +martyrdom by hiding himself in Dublin. The death of Edward +relieved our Protestant bishop from this sad dilemma; +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page354" id="page354"></a>354</span> +for on the accession of Mary he flew into Switzerland. +There he indulged his anti-papistical vein; the press sent +forth a brood, among which might have been some of +better growth, for he laboured on our British biography +and literature; but as there were yet but few Protestants +to record, it flowed, and sometimes overflowed, against +all the friends of the Papacy; Pits, who subsequently +resumed the task, a sullen and fierce Papist, in revenge +omitted in the line of our illustrious Britons, Wickliffe +and every Wickliffite. Such were the beginnings of our +literary history. On the accession of Elizabeth, his +country received back its exile; but Bale refused to be +reinstated in his Irish see, and sunk into a quiet prebendary +of Canterbury. Fuller has called our good bishop +“Bilious Bale.” Some conceive that this bishop has +suffered ill-treatment merely for having thrown out some +remarkable, or abominable, invectives. Proselytes, however +sincere in their new convictions and their old hatreds, +both operating at once, colour their style as some do their +faces, till by long use the heightened tint seems faint, and +they go on deepening it, and thus at last the natural +countenance is lost in the artificial mass.</p> + +<p>If Bale were no poet, in the singular dramas we have, +he at least displays a fluent invention; he tells plainly +what is meant, which we like to learn; and I do not +know whether it be owing to his generally indifferent +verse that we sometimes are struck by an idiomatic +phrase, and a richness of rhymes peculiar to himself, +which sustain our attention.<a name="fa1c35" id="fa1c35" href="#ft1c35"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p>Of <span class="sc">John Heywood</span>, the favourite jester of Henry the +Eighth and his daughter Mary, and the intimate of Sir +Thomas More, whose congenial humour may have mingled +with his own, more table-talk and promptness at reply +have been handed down to us than of any writer of the +times. His quips, and quirks, and quibbles are of his +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page355" id="page355"></a>355</span> +age, but his copious pleasantry still enlivens; these +smoothed the brow of Henry, and relaxed the rigid +muscles of the melancholy Mary. He had the <i>entrée</i> at +all times to the privy-chamber, and often to administer a +strong dose of himself, which her majesty’s physicians +would prescribe. He is distinguished as Heywood the epigrammatist; +a title fairly won by the man who has left +six centuries of epigrams, collected and adjusted as many +English proverbs in his verse, besides the quaint conceits +of “crossing of proverbs.”<a name="fa2c35" id="fa2c35" href="#ft2c35"><span class="sp">2</span></a> Of these six hundred epigrams +it is possible not a single one is epigrammatic: we +have never had a Martial. Even when it became a fashion, +to write books of epigrams half a century subsequently, +they usually closed in a miserable quibble, a dull apophthegm, +or at the best, like those of Sir John Harrington, +in a plain story rhymed. Wit, in our sense of the term, +was long unpractised, and the modern epigram was not +yet discovered.</p> + +<p>Heywood, who had flourished under Henry, on the +change in the reign of Edward, clung to the ancient +customs. He was a Romanist, but had he not recovered +in some degree from the cecity of superstition, he had +not so keenly exposed, as he has done, some vulgar impostures. +It happened, however, that some unlucky jest, +trenching on treason, flew from the lips of the unguarded +jester; it would have hanged some—but pleasant verses +promptly addressed to the young sovereign saved him at +the pinch,—however, he gathered from “the council” +that this was no jesting-time, and he left the country in +the day that Bale was returning from his emigration +under King Henry. On Mary’s accession, Bale again +retired, and Heywood suddenly appeared at court. Asked +by the queen “What wind blew him there?” “Two +specially; the one to see your majesty!” he replied. “We +thank you for that,” said the queen, “but I pray +you what is the other?” “That your grace might +see me!” There was shrewdness in this pleasantry, +to bespeak the favour of his royal patroness. Four short +years did not elapse ere Elizabeth opened her long reign, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page356" id="page356"></a>356</span> +and then the merry Romanist for ever bid farewell to his +native land, while Bale finally sat beside his English +hearth. These were very moveable and removeable times, +and no one was certain how long he should remain in his +now locality.</p> + +<p>The genius of <span class="sc">Heywood</span> created “The Merrie Interlude;” +unlike <span class="sc">Bale</span>, as in all things, he never opened +the Bible for a stage-play, but approaching Comedy, he +became the painter of manners, and the chronicler of +domestic life. Warton certainly has hastily and contradictorily +censured Heywood, without a right comprehension +of his peculiar subjects; yet he admired at least +one of Heywood’s writings, in which, being anonymous, +he did not recognise the victim of his vague statements. +Warton and his followers have obscured a true genius for +exuberant humour, keen irony, and exquisite ridicule, +such as Rabelais and Swift would not have disdained, and +have not always surpassed. One of his interludes is +accessible for those who can revel in a novel scene of +comic invention. This interlude is “The Four P’s; the +Palmer, the Pardoner, the Poticary, and the Pedler.” +Each flouts the other, and thus display their professional +knaveries.<a name="fa3c35" id="fa3c35" href="#ft3c35"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> + +<p>The ludicrous strokes of this piece could never have +come from a bigot to the ancient superstition, however +attached to the ancient creed. We cannot tell how far +the jester may have been influenced by a proclamation of +28th of Henry the Eighth, to protect “the poor innocent +people from those light persons called pardoners by colour +of their indulgences,” &c. He has curiously exhibited +to us all the trumpery regalia of papistry; as he also +exposed “The Friery” in another interlude which has all +the appearance of a merry tale from Boccaccio.</p> + +<p>So plays the jocund spirit of Heywood the Jester, in +his minstrel-verse and pristine idiom; but we have now +to tell another tale. Heywood is the author of a ponderous +volume, and an interminable “parable” of “The +Spider and the Fly.” It is said to have occupied the +thoughts of the writer during twenty years. This unlucky +“heir of his invention” is dressed out with a profusion +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page357" id="page357"></a>357</span> +of a hundred woodcuts—then rare and precious +things—among which starts up the full-length of the +author more than once. Warton impatiently never reached +the conclusion, where the author has confided to us the +secret of his incomprehensible intention. There Warton +would have found that “we must understand that the +spiders represent the Protestants, and the flies the +Catholics; that the maid with the broom sweeping away +the cobwebs (to the annoyance of their weavers) is Mary +armed with the civil power, executing the commands of +her Master (Christ), and her mistress (Mother Church).” +We see at once all the embarrassments and barrenness of +this wearying and perplexed fancy. Warton contents +himself with what he calls “a sensible criticism,” taken +from Harrison, a Protestant minister, and one of the +partners of Holinshed’s Chronicle; it is as mordacious as +a periodical criticism. “Neither he who made this book, +nor any who reads it, can reach unto the meaning.” +Warton, to confirm “the sensible criticism,” alleges as a +proof of its unpopularity, that it was never reprinted; +but it was published in 1556, and Mary died in 1558. +A vindication of “the maid with the broom” might be +equally unwelcome to “spiders and flies.”</p> + +<p>How it happened that the court jester who has sent +forth such volumes of mirth could have kept for years +hammering at a dull and dense poem, is a literary problem +which perhaps admits of a solution. We may ascribe this +aberration of genius to the author’s position in society. +Heywood was a Romanist from principle; that he was no +bigot, his free satires on vulgar superstitions attest. But +the jester at times was a thoughtful philosopher. One of +his interludes is <i>The Play of the Weather</i>, where the ways +of Providence are vindicated in the distribution of the +seasons. But “mad, merry Heywood” was the companion +of many friends—Papists and Protestants—at court +and in all the world over. His creed was almost whole in +broken times, perhaps agreeing a little with the Protestant, +and then reverting to the Romanist. In this unbalanced +condition, mingling the burlesque with the +solemn, unwilling to excommunicate his friend the Protestant +“spider,” and intent to vindicate the Romanist +“fly;” often he laid aside, and often resumed, his confused +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page358" id="page358"></a>358</span> +emotions. It might require dates to settle the precise allusions; +what he wrote under Henry and Edward would be +of another colour than under the Marian rule. His gaiety +and his gravity offuscate one another; and the readers of +his longsome fiction, or his dark parallel, were puzzled, +even among his contemporaries, to know in what sense +to receive them. Sympathising with “the fly,” and not uncourteous +to “the spider,” our author has shown the danger +of combining the burlesque with the serious; and thus it +happened that the most facetious genius could occupy +twenty years in compounding, by fits and starts, a dull +poem which neither party pretended rightly to understand.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c35" id="ft1c35" href="#fa1c35"><span class="fn">1</span></a> One of these interludes has been recently published by the Camden +Society, under the skilful editorship of Mr. Collier, from a manuscript +corrected by Bale himself in the Devonshire collection—it is entitled +“Kynge Johan,” [and founded on events in his reign, made subservient +to the ultra-protestantism of Bale.] Others have been printed in the +“Harleian Collection,” vol. i.; and in Dodsley’s “Old English +Drama.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c35" id="ft2c35" href="#fa2c35"><span class="fn">2</span></a> That is, proverbs with humorous answers to them. See the +“Bibliographical and Critical Catalogue,” by Mr. Payne Collier, of +Lord Francis Egerton’s “Library of Early English Literature,” p. 2.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c35" id="ft3c35" href="#fa3c35"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Dodsley’s “Old Plays,” vol. i.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page359" id="page359"></a>359</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">ROGER ASCHAM.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">It</span> would, perhaps, have surprised <span class="sc">Roger Ascham</span>, the +scholar of a learned age, and a Greek professor, that the +history of English literature might open with his name; +for in his English writings he had formed no premeditated +work, designed for posterity as well as his own times. The +subjects he has written on were solely suggested by the +occasion, and incurred the slight of the cavillers of his +day, who had not yet learned that humble titles may +conceal performances which exceed their promise, and +that trifles cease to be trivial in the workmanship of +genius.</p> + +<p>An apology for a favourite recreation, that of archery, +for his indulgence in which his enemies, and sometimes +his friends, reproached the truant of academic Greek; +an account of the affairs of Germany while employed as +secretary to the English embassy; and the posthumous +treatise of “The Schoolmaster,” originating in an accidental +conversation at table, constitute the whole of the +claims of Ascham to the rank of an English classic—a +degree much higher than was attained by the learning +of Sir Thomas Elyot, and the genius of Sir Thomas More.</p> + +<p>The mind of Ascham was stored with all the wealth of +ancient literature the nation possessed. Ascham was +proud, when alluding to his master the learned Cheke, +and to his royal pupil Queen Elizabeth, of having been +the pupil of the greatest scholar, and the preceptor to the +greatest pupil in England; but we have rather to admire +the intrepidity of his genius, which induced him to avow +the noble design of setting an example of composing in +our vernacular idiom. He tells us in his “Toxophilus,” +“I write this English matter in the English language for +Englishmen.” He introduced an easy and natural style +in English prose, instead of the pedantry of the unformed +taste of his day; and adopted, as he tells us, the counsel +of Aristotle, “to speak as the common people do, to think +as wise men do.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page360" id="page360"></a>360</span></p> + +<p>The study of Greek was the reigning pursuit in the +days of Ascham. At the dispersion of the Greeks on the +loss of Constantinople, the learned emigrants brought +with them into Europe their great originals; and the +subsequent discovery of printing spread their editions. +The study of Greek, on its first appearance in Europe, +alarmed the Latin Church, and was long deemed a dangerous +and heretical innovation. The cultivation of this +language was, however, carried on with enthusiasm, and +a controversy was kindled, even in this country, respecting +the ancient pronunciation. A passion for Hellenistic lore +pervaded the higher classes of society. There are fashions +in the literary world as sudden and as capricious as those +of another kind; and which, when they have rolled away, +excite a smile, although possibly we have only adopted +another of fresher novelty. The Greek mania raged. +Ascham informs us that his royal pupil Elizabeth understood +Greek better than the canons of Windsor; and, +doubtless, while the queen was translating Isocrates, the +ladies in waiting were parsing. Lady Jane Grey studying +Plato was hardly an uncommon accident; but the touching +detail which she gave to Ascham of her domestic +persecution, on trivial forms of domestic life, which had +induced her to fly for refuge to her Greek, has thrown a +deep interest on that well-known incident. All educated +persons then studied Greek; when Ascham was secretary +to our ambassador at the Court of Charles the Fifth, five +days in the week were occupied by the ambassador reading +with the secretary the Greek tragedians, commenting on +Herodotus, and reciting the Orations of Demosthenes. +But this rage was too capricious to last, and too useless to +be profitable; for neither the national taste nor the +English language derived any permanent advantage from +this exclusive devotion to Greek, and the fashion became +lost in other studies.</p> + +<p>It was a bold decision in a collegiate professor, who +looked for his fame from his lectures on Greek, to venture +on modelling his native idiom, with a purity and simplicity +to which it was yet strange. Ascham, indeed, was +fain to apologise for having written in English, and offered +the king, Henry the Eighth, to make a Greek or a Latin +version of his “Toxophilus,” if his grace chose. “To have +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page361" id="page361"></a>361</span> +written in another tongue had been both more profitable +for my study, and also more honest [honourable] for my +name; yet I can think my labour well bestowed, if, with +a little hindrance of my profit and name, may come any +furtherance to the pleasure or commodity of <i>the gentlemen +and yeomen of England</i>. As for the Latin and Greek +tongue, everything is so excellently done in them that +none can do better; <i>in the English tongue</i>, contrary, +<i>everything in a manner so meanly, both for the matter and +handling, that no man can do worse</i>.”</p> + +<p>Such were the first difficulties which the fathers of our +native literature had to overcome. Sir Thomas Elyot +endured the sneer of the cavillers, for his attempt to inlay +our unpolished English with Latin terms; and Roger +Ascham, we see, found it necessary to apologise for at all +adopting the national idiom. Since that day neologisms +have fertilised the barrenness of our Saxon, and the finest +geniuses in Europe have abandoned the language of Cicero, +to transfuse its grace into an idiom whose penury was +deemed too rude for the pen of the scholar. Ascham followed +his happier genius, and his name has created an +epoch in the literature of England.</p> + +<p>A residence of three years in Germany in the station of +confidential secretary of our ambassador to the Emperor +Charles the Fifth, placed him in a more extensive field of +observation, and brought him in contact with some of the +most remarkable men of his times. It is much to be regretted, +that the diary he kept has never been recovered. +That Ascham was inquisitive, and, moreover, a profound +observer at an interesting crisis in modern history, and +that he held a constant intercourse with great characters, +and obtained much secret history both of persons and +of transactions, fully appears in his admirable “Report of +the Affairs and State of Germany, and the Emperor +Charles’ Court.” This “Report” was but a chance communication +to a friend, though it is composed with great +care. Ascham has developed with a firm and masterly +hand the complicated intrigues of the various powers, +when Charles the Fifth seemed to give laws to Germany +and Italy. This emperor was in peace with all the world +in 1550, and in less than two years after, he was compelled +to fly from Germany, surrounded by secret enemies. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page362" id="page362"></a>362</span> +Ascham has traced the discontents of the minor courts of +Italian dukes, and German princes, who gradually deserted +the haughty autocrat—an event which finally led to the +emperor’s resignation. It is a moral tale of princes openly +countenancing quietness, and “privily brewing debate”—a +deep catastrophe for the study of the political student. +Ascham has explained the double game of the court of +Rome, under the ambitious and restless Julius the Third, +who, playing the emperor against the French monarch, +and the French monarch against the emperor, worked himself +into that intricate net of general misery, spun out of +his own crafty ambidexterity. This precious fragment of +secret history might have offered new views and many +strokes of character to the modern historian, Robertson, +who seems never to have discovered this authentic document; +yet it lay at hand. So little even in Robertson’s +day did English literature, in its obscurer sources, enter +into the pursuits of our greatest writers.</p> + +<p>Ascham’s first work was the “Toxophilus, the Schole, +or Partitions of Shootinge.” At this time fire-arms were +so little known, that the term “shooting” was solely +confined to the bow, then the redoubtable weapon of our +hardy countrymen. In this well-known treatise on +archery, he did what several literary characters have so +well done, apologised for his amusement in a manner that +evinced the scholar had not forgotten himself in the archer.</p> + +<p>It affords some consolation to authors, who often suffer +from neglect, to observe the triumph of an excellent book. +Its first appearance procured him a pension from Henry +the Eighth, which enabled him to set off on his travels. +Subsequently, in the reign of Mary, when that eventful +change happened in religion and in politics, adverse to +Ascham, our author was cast into despair, and hastened to +hide himself in safe obscurity. It was then that this excellent +book, and a better at that time did not exist in +the language, once more recommended its author; for +Gardiner, the papal bishop of Winchester, detected no +heresy in the volume, and by his means, the Lords of the +Council approving of it, the author was fully reinstated in +royal favour. Thus Ascham twice owed his good fortune +to his good book.</p> + +<p>“The Schoolmaster,” with its humble title, “to teach +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page363" id="page363"></a>363</span> +children to understand, write, and speak the Latin tongue,” +conveys an erroneous notion of the delight, or the knowledge +which may be drawn from this treatise, notwithstanding +that the work remains incomplete, for there are +references to parts which do not appear in the work itself. +“The Scholemaster” is a classical production in English, +which may be placed by the side of its great Latin +rivals, the Orations of Cicero, and the Institutes of Quintilian. +It is enlivened by interesting details. The first +idea of the work was started in a real conversation at table, +among some eminent personages, on occasion of the flight +of some scholars from Eton College, driven away by the +iron rod of the master. “Was the schoolhouse to be a +house of bondage and fear, or a house of play and pleasure?” +During the progress of the work the author lost his patron, +and incurred other disappointments; he has consigned all +his variable emotions to his volume. The accidental +interview with Lady Jane Grey; his readings with Queen +Elizabeth in their daily intercourse with the fine writers +of antiquity, and their recreations at the regal game of +chess—for such was the seduction of Attic learning, that +the queen on the throne felt a happiness in again becoming +the pupil of her old master; these, and similar incidents, +present those individual touches of the writer, which give +such a reality to an author’s feelings.<a name="fa1c36" id="fa1c36" href="#ft1c36"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p>It is to be regretted that Ascham held but an indolent +pen. Yet it were hard to censure the man for a cold +neglect of his fame, who seems equally to have neglected +his fortune. Ascham has written little; and all he left +his family was “this little book” (The Schoolmaster), and +which he bequeathed to them, as the right way to good +learning, “which, if they follow, they shall very well come +to sufficiency of living.” This was an age when the +ingenious clung to a patron; the widow and the son of +Ascham found the benefits of this testamentary recommendation. +It must, however, be confessed to have been +but a capricious legacy, for no administrator might have +been found to “the will.” The age of patronage was +never that of independence to an author.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page364" id="page364"></a>364</span></p> + +<p>Johnson, in his admirable “Life of Ascham,” observed, +that “his disposition was kind and social; he delighted in +the pleasure of conversation, and was probably not much +inclined to business.” It is certain that he preferred old +books to pounds sterling, for once he requested to commute +a part of his pension for a copy of the “Decem +Rhetores Græci,” which he could not purchase at Cambridge. +His frequent allusions in his letters when abroad +to “Mine Hostess Barnes,” who kept a tavern at Cambridge +in the reign of Edward the Sixth, with tender +reminiscences of her “fat capons,” and the “good-fellowship” +there; and further, his sympathy at the deep potation, +when standing hard by the emperor at his table, he +tells us, “the emperor drank the best I ever saw,—he had +his head in the glass five times as long as any of us, and +never drank less than a good quart at once of Rhenish +wine,” and his determination of providing “every year a +little vessel of Rhenish” for his cronies: and still further, +his haunting the cockpit, and sometimes trusting fortune +by her dice, notwithstanding that he describes “dicing” +as “the green pathway of Hell;” all these <i>traits</i> mark the +boon companion loving his leisure and his lounge.</p> + +<p>When engaged in public life, a collegiate fellowship +appeared to him to offer supreme felicity. He writes +thus,—“Ascham to his friends: who is able to maintain his +life at Cambridge, knows not what a felicity he hath.” Such +was the conviction of one who had long lived in courts.</p> + +<p>But when we consider that Ascham was Latin secretary +to Edward the Sixth, to Mary, and to Elizabeth, and intimately +acquainted with the transactions of these cabinets, +with the sovereigns, and the ministers; and during three +years held a personal intercourse with the highest foreign +court;—we must regret, if we no not censure, the +man who, possessing these rare advantages, with a vigorous +intellect, and a felicitous genius, has left the world in +silence. Assuredly, in Ascham, we have lost an English +Comines, who would have rivalled our few memoir-writers, +who, though with pens more industrious, had not eyes +more observant, nor heads more penetrating, than this +secretary of three sovereigns.</p> + +<p>There is, however, reason to conclude, that he himself +was not insensible to these higher claims which his station +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page365" id="page365"></a>365</span> +might have urged on his genius and his diligence. Every +night during his residence abroad, which was of no short +period, he was occupied by filling his Diary, which has not, +in any shape, come down to us. He has also himself told, +that he had written a book on “The Cockpit,” one of the +recreations of “a courtly gentleman.” We cannot imagine +that such writings, by the hand of Ascham, would be +destroyed by his family, who knew how to value them. A +modern critic, indeed, considers it fortunate for Ascham’s +credit, that this work on “The Cockpit” has escaped from +publication. The criticism is fallacious, for if an apology +for cock-fighting be odious, the author’s reputation is +equally hurt by the announcement as by the performance. +But the truth is, that such barbarous sports, like the bear-baiting +of England and the bull-fights of Spain, have had +their advocates. Queen Elizabeth had appointed Ascham +her bear-keeper; and he was writing in his character when +disclosing the mysteries of the cockpit. But the genius +of our author was always superior to his subject; and this +was a treatise wherein he designed to describe “all kinds +of pastimes joined with labour used in open place, and in +the day-light.” The curious antiquary, at least, must +regret the loss of Ascham’s “Cockpit.”</p> + +<p>Ascham lived in the ferment of the Reformation: +zealously attached to the new faith under Edward the +Sixth and Elizabeth, how did he preserve himself during +the intermediate reign, when he partook of the favours of +the papistical sovereign? His master and friend, the +learned Sir John Cheke, had only left for himself the +choice of a recantation, or a warrant for execution; but of +Ascham’s good fortune, nothing is known but its mystery. +The novel religion had, however, early heated the passions, +and narrowed the judgment, of Ascham. He wrote at a +period when the Romanist and the Protestant reciprocally +blackened each other. Ascham not only abhorred all +Italians as papists, but all Italian books as papistical. He +invokes the interposition of the civil magistrate against +Petrarch and Boccaccio, whose volumes were then selling +in every shop. Baretti strikes at his manes with his +stiletto-pen, in an animated passage;<a name="fa2c36" id="fa2c36" href="#ft2c36"><span class="sp">2</span></a> and Warton is indignant +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page366" id="page366"></a>366</span> +at his denunciation of our ancient romances, of +which the historian of our poetry says, “he has written in +the spirit of an early Calvinistic preacher, rather than as a +sensible critic and a polite scholar”—he who, in his sober +senses, was eminently both.</p> + +<p>We may lament that the first steps in every revolution +are taken in darkness, and that the reaction of opinions +and prejudices is itself accompanied by errors and prejudices +of its own. The bigotry of the new faith was not +inferior to the old. The reforming Archbishop Grindal +substituted the dull and barbarous Palingenius, Sedulius, +and Prudentius, for the great classical authors of antiquity. +The Reformation opened with fanaticism; and men were +reformers before they were philosophers. Had Ascham, a +learned scholar, and a man of fine genius, been blessed +with the prescient eye of philosophy, he had perceived +that there was not more papistry in the solemn “Trionfi” +of Petrarch, and not less “honest pastime” in a “merrie +tale” of Boccaccio, than in cock-fighting and dicing; and +that with these works the imagination of the public was +gradually stepping out of a supernatural world of folio +legends, into a world of true nature, which led to that unrivalled +era which immortalised the closing century.</p> + +<p>We must recollect that the bigotry of the Reformation, +or that which afterwards assumed the form of puritanism, +in their absurd notion of the nature of idolatry attached +to every picture and every statue on sacred subjects, eventually +banished the fine arts from England for a long century, +and retarded their progress even to our own days. A +curious dialogue has been preserved by Strype, whose interlocutors +are Queen Elizabeth and a Dean. The Dean +having obtained some of those fine German paintings, +those book-miniatures which are of the most exquisite +finish, placed them in her majesty’s prayer-book. For +this the queen proscribed the dean, as she did those beautiful +illuminations, as “Romish and idolatrous;” and with +a Gothic barbarism, strange in a person with her Attic +taste, commanded the clergy “to wash all pictures out of +their walls.” To this circumstance the painter Barry +ascribes the backward state of the fine arts, which so long +made us a by-word among the nations of Europe, and even +induced the critical historian of the arts, Winkelman, to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page367" id="page367"></a>367</span> +imagine that the climate of England presented an internal +obstruction to the progress of art itself; it was too long +supposed that no Englishman could ever aspire to be an +artist of genius. The same principle which urged Ascham +to denounce all Italian books, instigated his royal pupil +“to wash out all pictures;” and even so late as the reign +of George the Third, when the artists of England made a +noble offer, gratuitously to decorate our churches with +productions of their own composition, the Bishop of +London forbade the glorious attempt to redeem English +art from the anathema of foreign critics.</p> + +<p>Ascham, whose constitutional delicacy often impeded +his studies, died prematurely. The parsimonious queen +emphatically rated his value by declaring, that she would +rather have lost ten thousand pounds—no part of which, +during his life, the careless yet not the neglected Ascham +ever shared.</p> + +<p>Roger Ascham was truly what Pope has described Gay +to have been, “in wit a man, simplicity a child;” and he +has developed his own character in his letters. Latin and +English, they are among the earliest specimens of that +domestic and literary correspondence in which the writer +paints himself without reserve, with all the warm touches +of a free pencil, gay sallies of the moment, or sorrows of +the hour, confiding to the bosom of a friend the secrets of +his heart and his condition; such as we have found in the +letters of Gray and of Shenstone.</p> + +<p>The works of Ascham, which are collected in a single +volume, remain for the gratification of those who preserve +a pure taste for the pristine simplicity of our ancient +writers. His native English, that English which we have +lost, but which we are ever delighted to recover, after near +three centuries, is still critical without pedantry, and +beautiful without ornament: and, which cannot be said of +the writings of Sir <span class="sc">Thomas Elyot</span> and Sir <span class="sc">Thomas +More</span>, the volume of <span class="sc">Ascham</span> is indispensable in every +English library, whose possessor in any way aspires to +connect together the progress of taste and of opinion in +the history of our country.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c36" id="ft1c36" href="#fa1c36"><span class="fn">1</span></a> There were five editions of “The Scholemaster” within twenty +years of its first publication, of which that of 1573 is the most correct +and rare.—Dr. Valpy’s “Cat.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c36" id="ft2c36" href="#fa2c36"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Baretti’s “Account of the Manners of Italy,” ii. 137—the most +curious work of this Anglo-Italian.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page368" id="page368"></a>368</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">PUBLIC OPINION.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">How</span> long has existed that numerous voice which we designate +as “Public Opinion;” which I shall neither define +nor describe?</p> + +<p>The history of the English “people,” considered in their +political capacity, cannot be held to be of ancient date. +The civil wars of England, and the intestine discords of +the bloody Roses, seem to have nearly reduced the nation +to a semi-barbarous condition; disputed successions, cruel +factions, and family feuds, had long convulsed the land, +and the political disorganization had been as eventful as +were, not long after, the religious dissensions.</p> + +<p>The grandfather of Elizabeth, Henry the Seventh, had +terminated a political crisis. It was his policy to weaken +the personal influence of the higher nobility, whose domination +our monarchs had often fatally experienced. +This seems to have been the sole “public” concern of this +prudential and passionless sovereign, who, as the authority +of the potent aristocracy declined, established that despotic +regality which remained as the inheritance of the dynasty +of the Tudors.</p> + +<p>In the days of the queen’s father all “public interests” +were concentrated in the court-circle and its dependencies. +The Parliament was but the formal echo of the voice +which came from the cabinet. The learned Spelman has +recorded that when the Lower House hesitated to pass the +bill for the dissolution of the monasteries, they were +summoned into the king’s presence; and the Commons +being first kept in waiting some hours in his gallery, the +king entered, looking angrily on one side and then on the +other: the dark scowl of the magnificent despot announced +his thoughts; and they listened to the thunder +of his voice. “I hear,” said he, “that my bill will not +pass, but I will have it pass, or I will have some of your +heads.”<a name="fa1c37" id="fa1c37" href="#ft1c37"><span class="sp">1</span></a> I do not recollect whether it was on this occasion +that his majesty saluted his faithful Commons as +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page369" id="page369"></a>369</span> +“brutes!” but the burly tyrant treated them as such. +The penalty of their debates was to be their heads; therefore +this important bill passed <i>nemine contradicente</i>!</p> + +<p>However contemptuously this monarch regarded those +who were within his circle, he was sufficiently enlightened +in the great national revolution he meditated to desire to +gain over the multitude on his side. The very circumstance +of the king allowing, as the letters patent run, “the +free and liberal use of the Bible in <i>our own natural +English tongue</i>,” was a <i>coup-d’état</i>, and an evidence that +Henry at one time designed to create a people of readers +on whom he counted to side with him. The people were +already possessed of the Reformation, before Henry the +Eighth had renounced the papacy. The reformers abroad +had diligently supplied them with versions of the Scriptures, +and no small numbers of pamphlets printed abroad +in English were dispersed among the early “gospellers,” +the expressive distinction of the new heretics; a humble +but fervent rabble of tailors, joiners, weavers, and other +handicraftsmen, who left “the new for the old God,” +ready martyrs against the gross papistical impostures, and +many females theological, who turned away from the +corporal presence, and whom no bishop could seduce to +curtsey to a saint.</p> + +<p>The new concession made to this people was indeed +received with enthusiasm. All flocked to read, or to be +read to. Never were the Scriptures so artlessly scrutinised; +they furnished whole scenes for interludes, and were tagged +with rhymes for ballads; even the grave judges, before +they delivered their charges, prefaced them by a text. +Each reader became an expounder, and new schismatics +were busied with new heresies. The king had not calculated +on this result; and when he found the nation +abounded not with readers so much as with disputants—that +controversies raged where uniformity was expected—Henry +became so irritated at the universal distraction of +opinion, that his first attempt to raise a public voice +ended, as has been since often attempted, in its suppression. +The permission to read the sacred volume was contracted +by the most qualifying clauses. The noble and +the gentry might read it “alone in their garden or orchard, +or other retired places,” but men and women in the lower +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page370" id="page370"></a>370</span> +ranks were absolutely forbidden to read it, or to have it +read to them.<a name="fa2c37" id="fa2c37" href="#ft2c37"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p>The clashing polemics of the brother and the sister of +Elizabeth did not advance the progress of civil society. +The novelists, if we may so term these lovers of novelty, +flushed with innovation, were raging with every rapid +change, while the ancients, in spite and in despondence, +sullenly clung to the old, which they held could never be +the obsolete. The first movements of the great reform +seemed only to have transferred the late civil wars which +had distracted the land, to the minds of the people in a +civil war of opinions.</p> + +<p>When Elizabeth ascended the throne, there was yet no +recognised “public” in the commonwealth; the people +were mere fractional and incoherent parts of society. +This heroic queen, whose position and whose masculine +character bear some affinity to those of the great Catharine +of Russia, had to create “a people” subservient to +the very design of advancing the regal authority in its +ascendancy. The policy of the maiden queen was that of +her ancestors; but the same jealousy of the aristocracy +turned her genius to a new source of influence, unknown +to her progenitors, and which her successors afterwards +hardly recognised. In the awful mutations through which +society had been passing, some had been silently favourable +to the queen’s views. The population had considerably +risen since the reign of Henry the Seventh.<a name="fa3c37" id="fa3c37" href="#ft3c37"><span class="sp">3</span></a> Property +had changed hands, and taken new directions; and +independent classes in society were rising fast.</p> + +<p>The great barons formerly had kept open houses for all +comers and goers; five hundred or a thousand “blue +coats” in a single family crowded their castles or their +mansions; these were “trencher slaves” and “swash-bucklers;” +besides those numerous “retainers” of great +lords, who, neither menial nor of the household, yet +yielded their services on special occasions, for the privilege +of shielding their own insolence under the ostentatious +silver “badge,” or the family arms, which none might +strike with impunity, and escape from the hostility of the +whole noble family. In the opening scene of <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page371" id="page371"></a>371</span> +our national bard has perpetuated the insolence of +the wearers with all the reality of nature and correctness +of custom. Such troops of idling partisans were only +reflecting among themselves the feuds and the pride of their +rival masters; shadows of the late civil wars which still +lingered in the land.<a name="fa4c37" id="fa4c37" href="#ft4c37"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> + +<p>The first blow at the independent grandeur of the +nobles had been struck by the grandfather of the queen; +the second was the consequence of the acts of her father. +The new proprietors of the recently-acquired abbey-lands, +and other monastic property, were not only courtiers, +but their humbler dependents; many of them the commissioners +who had undervalued all these manors and +lordships, that they might get such “Robin Hood’s +pennyworths” more easily by the novelty of “begging” +for them. These formed a new body of proprietors, who +gradually constituted <i>a new gentry</i>, standing between +the nobles and the commonalty; and from the nature of their +property they became land-jobbers, letting and under-letting, +raising rents, enhancing the prices of commodities, +inclosing the common lands, and swallowing up the small +farms by large ones. There arose in consequence a great +change in agricultural pursuits, no longer practised to +acquire a miserable subsistence; the land was changed +into a new mine of wealth; and among the wealthiest +classes of English subjects were the graziers, who indeed +became the founders of many families.<a name="fa5c37" id="fa5c37" href="#ft5c37"><span class="sp">5</span></a></p> + +<p>The nobles found their revenues declining, as an excess +of expenditure surprised them; this changeable state only +raised their murmurs, for they seemed insensible to the +cause. Their ancient opulence was secretly consuming +itself; their troops of domestics were thinned in numbers; +and a thousand families disappeared, who once seemed to +have sprung out of the soil, where whole generations had +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page372" id="page372"></a>372</span> +flourished through the wide domains of the lord. A great +change had visibly occurred in the baronial halls. The +octogenarians in Elizabeth’s later days complained that +the country was depopulating fast; and the chimneys +of the great mansions which had smoked the year round, +now scarcely announced “a merry Christmas.”</p> + +<p>A transition from one state of society to another will +always be looked on suspiciously by those who may deem +the results problematical; but it will be eagerly opposed +by those who find the innovation unfavourable to themselves. +The results of the new direction of landed property, +incomprehensible to the nobles, were abhorrent to +the feelings of the people. Among “the people,” that is, +the populace, there still survived tender reminiscences of +the warmth of the abbots’ kitchens; and many a wayfaring +guest could tell how erst by ringing at the monastic +gate the wants of life had been alleviated. The monks, +too, had been excellent landlords living amid their tenants; +and while the husbandmen stood at easy rents, the public +markets were regularly maintained by a constant demand. +In the breaking up of the monasteries many thousands of +persons had been dispersed; and it would seem that +among that sturdy community of vagabonds which now +rose over the land, some low Latin words in their +“pedler’s French,” as the canting language they devised +is called, indicate their origin from the familiar dialect +of the ejected poor scholars of the late monastic institutions.</p> + +<p>The commotions which rose in all parts of the country +during the brief reign of Edward the Sixth were instigated +by the ancient owners of these lands, who conceived +that they had been disinherited by the spoliators; thus +weakly they avenged their irrecoverable losses; nor did +such leaders want for popular pretences among a discontented +populace, who, as they imagined, were themselves +sufferers in the common cause. We are informed, on the +indubitable authority of the diary of the youthful Edward, +that “<i>the</i> <span class="scs">PEOPLE</span> had conceived a wonderful hatred against +<span class="scs">GENTLEMEN</span> whom they held as <i>their enemies</i>.” The +king seems distinctly to distinguish the gentry from the +nobility.</p> + +<p>In the decline of the great households a result, however, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page373" id="page373"></a>373</span> +occurred, which tended greatly to improve the independent +condition of “the people.” The manual arts had been +practised from generation to generation, the son succeeding +the father in the wide domains of some noble; but when +the great lords were contracting the scale of their establishments, +and failed to furnish occupation to these dependents, +the mechanics and artificers took refuge in the +towns; there localised, they were taught to reap the +fruits of their own daily industry; and as their labour +became more highly appreciated, and the arts of commerce +were more closely pursued, they considerably heightened +the cost of those objects of necessity or pleasure which +supplied the wants or the luxuries of the noble. In becoming +citizens, they ceased to be mere domestics in the +great households; a separate independence was raised between +the lord and his mechanic; the humble class lost +something in leaving the happy carelessness of life for a +condition more anxious and precarious; but the influence +of the noble was no longer that of the lord paramount, but +simply the influence of the customer over the tradesman; +“an influence,” as Hume shrewdly remarks, “which can +never be dangerous to civil government.”</p> + +<p>We now distinctly perceive new classes in civil society +rising out of the decline of the preponderating power of +the great barons, and of the new disposition of landed +property; the gentry, the flourishing agriculturist, and +those mechanics and artificers who carried on their trades, +independently of their former lordly patrons; we now, +therefore, discern the first elements of popularity.</p> + +<p>There was now “a people,” who might be worthy of +entering into the views of the statesman; but it was a +divided people. Among them, the queen knew, lay concealed +her domestic enemies; a more novel religion than +the new was on the watch to shake her established +church; and no inconsiderable portion of her subjects in +their papal consciences were traitors. The arts of juncture, +or the keeping together parts broken and separated, +making hearts compliant which were stubbornly opposed +to each other, demanded at once the firmness and the indulgence +of the wisest policy; and such was the administration +of Elizabeth. A reign of continued struggle, +which extended to nearly half a century, was a probationary +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page374" id="page374"></a>374</span> +period for royalty; and a precarious throne, while it +naturally approximated the sovereign to the people, also +taught the nation its own capacities, by maintaining +their monarch’s glory amid her external and internal enemies.</p> + +<p>The nobility was to feel the weight of the royal +prerogative; no noble families were permitted to intermarry, +and no peer could leave the kingdom, without the license +of the queen. But at the very time she was ruling them +with a potent hand, Elizabeth courted the eyes and the +hearts of “the people;” she sought every occasion to exhibit +her person in processions and progresses, and by her +speech and manner shed her graciousness on the humblest +of her subjects. Not slow to perceive their wants and +wishes, she it was who first gave the people a theatre, as +her royal style expressed it, “for the recreation of our +loving subjects, as for our solace and pleasure;” and this +at a time when her council were divided in their opinion.</p> + +<p>Participating in the inmost feelings of the people, she +commanded that the awful tomes of Fox’s “Acts and +Monuments,” a book written, as the author has himself +expressed it, for “the simple people,” should be chained +to the desk of every church and common hall. In this +“Book of Martyrs,” gathered from all quarters, and +chronicling the obscurest individuals, many a reader, +kindling over the lengthened page, dwelt on his own +domestic tale in the volume of the nation. These massy +volumes were placed easy of access for perpetual reference, +and doubtless their earnest spirit multiplied Protestants.</p> + +<p>No object which concerned the prosperity of the people +but the Queen identified herself with it; she saluted Sir +Thomas Gresham as her “royal merchant,” and opening +with her presence his Exchange, she called it Royal. It +is a curious evidence of her system to win over the people’s +loyalty, that she suggested to Sir Thomas Wilson to +transfuse the eloquence of Demosthenes into the language +of the people, to prepare them by such solemn admonitions +against the machinations of her most dreaded enemy. +Our translator reveals the design by his title: “The Three +Orations of Demosthenes, with those his fower Orations +titled expressly and by name against King Philip of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page375" id="page375"></a>375</span> +Macedonie, most needful to be redde in these dangerous +dayes, of all them that love their countrie’s libertie.” +The Queen considered the aptness of their application, and +the singular felicity of transferring the inordinate ambition +of Philip of Macedon to Philip of Spain. To these famous +“philippics” was prefixed the solemn oath that the young +men of Greece took to defend their country against the +royal invader, “at this time right needful for all Christians, +not only for Englishmen, to observe and follow.”</p> + +<p>It was not until eighteen years after that the Armada +sailed from the shores of Spain, and this translation +perpetuates an instance of political foresight.</p> + +<p>The genius of Elizabeth created her age; surrounding +herself by no puny favourites of an hour, in the circle of +her royalty were seen the most laborious statesmen our +annals record, and a generation of romantic commanders; +the secretaries of state were eminently learned; and the +queen was all these herself, in her tried prudence, her +dauntless intrepidity, and her lettered accomplishments. +The energies of the sovereign reached the people, and were +responded to; the spirit-stirring events rose with the +times: it was a reign of enterprise and emulation, a new +era of adventure and glory. The heroes of England won +many a day’s battle in the Netherlands, in France, in +Spain, and in Portugal; and the ships of England unfurled +their flags in unknown seas, and left the glory of the +maiden queen in new lands.</p> + +<p>It would be no slight volume which should contain the +illustrious names of a race of romantic adventurers, who +lost their sleep to gain new trophies in a campaign, to +settle a remote colony, or to give a name to a new continent. +All ranks in society felt the impulse of the same +electrical stroke, and even the cupidity of the mere +trader was elevated into heroism, and gained a patent of +heraldry. The spirits of that age seemed busied with +day-dreams, of discovering a new people, or founding a +new kingdom. <span class="correction" title="amended from Shakspeare">Shakespeare</span> alludes to this passion of the +times:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Some to the wars, to try their fortune there;</p> +<p>Some to discover islands far away.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>If our Drake was considered by the Spaniard as the +most terrible of pirates, in England he was admired as +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page376" id="page376"></a>376</span> +another Columbus. The moral feeling may sometimes be +more justly regulated by the degree of latitude. The +Norrises, the Veres, the Grenvilles, the Cavendishes, the +Earl of Cumberland, and the Sidneys, bear a lustre in their +characters which romance has not surpassed; and many +there were as resolutely ambitious as Sir John Davies, +who has left his name to the Straits still bearing it. Sir +Henry Sidney, the father of Sir Philip, who became a distinguished +statesman, had once designed to raise a new +kingdom in America; and his romantic son resumed this +design of founding an empire for the Sidneys. The project +was secretly planned between our puerile hero and the +adventurous Drake, and was only frustrated by the queen’s +arrest of our hero at Plymouth. Of the same batch of +kingdom-founders was Sir Walter Rawleigh; he baptised +with the spirit of loyalty his “Virginia.” Muscovy, at +that stirring period, was a dominion as strange as America +and the Indies; during the extraordinary events of this +period, when Elizabeth had obtained a monopoly of the +trade of that country, the Czar proposed to marry an +English lady; a British alliance, both personal and political, +he imagined, should his subjects revolt, might secure +an asylum in the land of his adoption. The daughter of +the Earl of Huntington was actually selected by the queen +to be the Czarina; but her ladyship was so terrified at the +Muscovite and his icy region, that she lost the honour of +being a romantic empress, and the civilizer of all the +Russias. Thus, wherever the winds blew, the name of +Elizabeth was spread; “the great globe itself” seemed to +be our “inheritance,” and seemed not too vast a space to +busy the imaginations of the people.</p> + +<p>This was the time of first beginnings in the art of +guiding public opinion. Ample volumes, like those of +Fox, powerful organs of the feelings of the people, were +given to them. The Chronicles of Hall and Holinshed +opened for them the glory of the love of their father-land. +It was the genius of this active age of exploits which +inspired <span class="sc">Richard Hakluyt</span> to form one of the most +remarkable collections in any language, yet it was solely +to be furnished from our own records, and the mighty +actors in the face of the universe were solely to be Englishmen. +Now appeared the three tomes of “The Principal +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page377" id="page377"></a>377</span> +Navigations, Voyages, and Discoveries, made by the English +Nation;” northward, southward, and westward, and at +last “the new-found world of America;” a world, with +both Indies, discovered within their own century!—these +amazed and delighted all classes of society. The legendary +voyages of the monkish chroniclers, their maritime expeditions, +opening with the fabulous Arthur, hardly exceeded +the simplicity of our first discoverers. Many a hero had +led on the adventurers; but their secretaries and historians +were often themselves too astonished at what they witnessed, +and stayed too short a time, to recover their better +judgment in new places, and among new races of men. +Sanctioned by many noble and genuine adventures, not +less authentic appeared their terrors and their wonder; in +polar icebergs, or before that island which no ship could +approach, wherein devils dwelt; or among the sunny isles +of Greece, and the burning regions of Ormus and Malacca, +and the far realms of Cambaya and Cathay; in Ethiopia +and in Muscovy, in Persia and in Peru; on the dark coast +of Guinea, and beyond in Africa; and in Virginia, with her +feathered chiefs; with many a tale of Tripoli and Algiers, +where Britons were found in chains, till the sovereign of +England demanded their restitution, and of the Holy Land, +where the peaceful crusaders now only knelt in pilgrimage. +All this convinced them that the world was everywhere +inhabited; and that all was veracious, as Sebastian Cabot, +the true rival of Columbus, and perhaps our countryman, +had marked in his laborious maps, which he had engraved, +and which were often wondered at, as they hung in the +Privy Gallery at Westminster. Alas! for the readers of +modern travels, who can no longer participate in the wild +and awful sensations of the all-believing faith of “the +home-bred wit” of the Elizabethan era—the first readers +of <span class="sc">Hakluyt’s</span> immense collection.</p> + +<p>The advancement of general society out of its first +exclusive circle became apparent when “the public” +themselves were gradually forming a component part of +the empire.</p> + +<p>“The new learning,” as the free discussions of opinions +and the popular literature of the day were distinguished, +widely spread. Society was no longer scattered in distant +insulations. Their observation was more extended, their +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page378" id="page378"></a>378</span> +thought was more grave; tastes multiplied, and finer sympathies +awakened. “The theatre” and “the ordinary” +first rose in this early stage of our civilization; and the +ceaseless publications of the day, in the current form of +pamphlets, were snatched up, even in the intervening +pauses of theatrical representation, or were commented +upon by some caustic oracle at the ordinary, or in Powles’ +walk. We were now at the crisis of that great moral +revolution in the intellectual history of a people, when +the people become readers, and the people become writers. +In the closer intercourse with their neighbours, their insulated +homeliness was giving way to more exotic manners; +they seemed to imitate every nation while they were incurring +the raillery or the causticity of our satirists, who +are not usually the profoundest philosophers. The satirists +are the earliest recorders of manners, but, fugitive historians +of fugitive objects, they only sport on the surface +of things. The progressive expansion of social life, through +its homeliest transitions, are more clearly discerned in the +perspective view; for those who are occupied by opening +their narrow ways, and by lengthening their streets, do +not contemplate on the architectural city which is reserved +for posterity.</p> + +<p>It was popular to ridicule the finical “Monsieur Traveller,” +who was somewhat insolent by having “swum in a +gondola;” or to raise a laugh at him who had “bought his +doublet in Italy, his round hose in France, and his bonnet +in Germany.” It did not occur to our immortal satirist +that the taste which had borrowed the doublet and the +bonnet, had also introduced to his happier notice the tales +of Bandello and the Giuletta of Luigi Porto. The dandy +of Bishop Hall almost resembles the fantastic picture of +Horace, in illustrating a combination of absurdities. Hall +paints with vigour:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>A French head join’d to neck Italian;</p> +<p>His thighs from Germany, his breast from Spain;</p> +<p>An Englishman in none, a fool in all.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>But if this egregious man of fashion borrowed the +wordiness of Italian compliment, or the formality of the +Spanish courtesy, he had been also taught the sonnet and +the stanza, and those musical studies which now entered +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page379" id="page379"></a>379</span> +into the system of education, and probably gave delicacy +to our emotions, and euphony to our language. The first +attempts in the refinements of manners are unavoidably +vitiated by too close a copy; and it is long before that +becomes graceful which began in affectation. When the +people experienced a ceaseless irritability, a marvelling +curiosity to learn foreign adventures and to inspect strange +objects, and “laid out ten doits to see a dead Indian,” +these were the nascent propensities which made Europe +for them a common country, and indicated that insular +genius which at a distant day was to add new dominions +to the British empire.</p> + +<p>This public opinion which this sovereign was creating +she watched with solicitude, not only at home, but even +abroad. No book was put forth against her government, +but we find her ministers selecting immediately the most +learned heads or the most able writers to furnish the +replies. Burghley, we are told, had his emissaries to inform +him of the ballads sung in the streets; and a curious +anecdote at the close of the reign of Elizabeth informs us +how anxiously she pondered on the manifestations of her +people’s feelings. The party of Lord Essex, on the afternoon +before their insurrection, ordered the play of the +tragical abdication of Richard the Second. It is one of +the charges in their trial; and we learn, from a more secret +quarter than the public trial, that the queen deeply felt +the acting of this play at that moment as the watchword +of the rebels, expressive of their designs. The queen’s +fears transformed her into Richard the Second; and a +single step seemed to divide her throne from her grave. +The recollection of this circumstance long haunted her +spirits; for, a year and a half afterwards, in a literary +conversation with the antiquary Lambarde, the subject of +a portrait of Richard the Second occurring, the queen +exclaimed, “I am Richard the Second, know ye not that?” +The antiquary, at once wary and ingenuous, replied, well +knowing that the virgin queen would shrink were her well-beloved +Essex to be cast among ordinary rebels, “Such a +wicked imagination was attempted by a most unkind gentleman, +the most adorned creature that ever your majesty +made.” The queen replied, “He that will forget God +will also forget his benefactors.” So long afterwards +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page380" id="page380"></a>380</span> +was the royal Elizabeth still brooding over the gloomy +recollection.</p> + +<p>In the art of government a new principle seemed to +have arisen, that of adopting and guiding public opinion, +which, in the mutations of civil and political society, had +emerged as from a chaos. A vacillating and impetuous +monarch could not dare it; it was the work of a thoughtful +sovereign, whose sex inspired a reign of love. Elizabeth +not only lived in the hearts of her people, but survived in +their memories; when she was no more, her birthday was +long observed as a festival day; and so prompt was the +remembrance of her deeds and her words, that when +Charles the First once published his royal speech, an insidious +patriot sent forth “The Speech of Queen Elizabeth,” +which being innocently printed by the king’s printer, +brought him into trouble. Our philosophic politician, +Harrington, has a remarkable observation on the administration +of Elizabeth, which, laying aside his peculiar +views on monarchy, and his theoretical balances in the +State, we may partly adopt. He says, “If the government +of Elizabeth be rightly weighed, it seems rather the +exercise of a principality in a commonwealth than a sovereign +power in a monarchy. Certain it is that she ruled +wholly with an art she had to high perfection, by humouring +and blessing her people.”</p> + +<p>Did Harrington imagine that political resembles physical +science? In the revelations of the Verulamian philosophy, +it was a favourite axiom with its founder, that we +subdue Nature by yielding to her.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c37" id="ft1c37" href="#fa1c37"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Spelman’s “History of Sacrilege.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c37" id="ft2c37" href="#fa2c37"><span class="fn">2</span></a> 34 Henry VIII.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c37" id="ft3c37" href="#fa3c37"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Hallam’s “Constitution of England,” i. 8, 4to.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c37" id="ft4c37" href="#fa4c37"><span class="fn">4</span></a> The remains of this feudal pomp and power were visible even at +a later period in the succeeding reign, when we find the Earl of +Nottingham, in his embassy to Spain, accompanied by a retinue of five +hundred persons, and the Earl of Hertford, at Brussels, carried three +hundred gentlemen.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c37" id="ft5c37" href="#fa5c37"><span class="fn">5</span></a> “The graziers have assured me of their credit, and some of them +may be trusted for a hundred thousand pounds.”—Sir J. Harrington’s +Prologue to <i>The Metamorphosis of Ajax</i>.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page381" id="page381"></a>381</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">ORTHOGRAPHY AND ORTHOEPY.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Some</span> of the first scholars of our country stepped out of +the circle of their classical studies with the patriotic design +of inculcating the possibility of creating a literary +language. This was a generous effort in those who had +already secured their supremacy by their skill and dexterity +in the two languages consecrated by scholars. Many of +the learned engaged in the ambitious reform of our +<i>orthography</i>, then regulated by no certain laws; but while +each indulged in some scheme different from his predecessors, +the language seemed only to be the more disguised +amid such difficult improvements and fantastic +inventions.</p> + +<p>A curious instance of the monstrous anomalies of our +orthography in the infancy of our literature, when a +spelling-book was yet a precious thing which had no existence, +appears in this letter of the Duchess of Norfolk +to Cromwell, Earl of Essex.</p> + +<p class="ptb1">“<i>My ffary gode lord—her I sand you in tokyn hoff the +neweyer a glasse hoff Setyl set in Sellfer gyld I pra you +take hit (in) wort An hy wer habel het showlde be bater +I woll hit war wort a m crone.</i>”</p> + +<p>These lines were written by one of the most accomplished +ladies of the sixteenth century, “the friend of +scholars and the patron of literature.” Dr. Nott, who +has supplied this literary curiosity, has modernized the +passage word by word; and though the idiom of the times +is preserved, it no longer wears any appearance of vulgarity +or of illiteracy.</p> + +<p>“My very good lord,—Here I send you, in token of the +New Year, a glass of setyll set in silver gilt; I pray you +take it (in) worth. An I were able, it should be better. I +would it were worth a thousand crowns.”</p> + +<p>The domestic correspondence, as appears in letters of +the times, seems to indicate that the writers imagined that, +by conferring larger dimensions on their words by the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page382" id="page382"></a>382</span> +duplication of redundant consonants, they were augmenting +the force, even of a monosyllable!<a name="fa1c38" id="fa1c38" href="#ft1c38"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p>In such disorder lay our orthography, that writers, +however peculiar in their mode of spelling, did not even +write the same words uniformly. Elizabeth herself wrote +one word, which assuredly she had constantly in her mind, +seven different ways, for thus has this queen written the +word <i>sovereign</i>. The royal mistress of eight languages +seemed at a loss which to choose for her command. The +orthography of others eminent for their learning was as +remarkable, and sometimes more eruditely whimsical, +either in the attempt to retrace the etymology, or to +modify exotic words to a native origin; or, finally, to suit +the popular pronunciation. What system or method +could be hoped for at a time when there prevailed a strange +discrepancy in the very names of persons, so variously +written not only by their friends but by their owners? +Lord Burleigh, when Secretary of State, daily signing +despatches with the favourite <i>Leicester</i>, yet spelt his name +<i>Lecester</i>; and Leicester himself has subscribed his own +name eight different ways.<a name="fa2c38" id="fa2c38" href="#ft2c38"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p>At that period down to a much later, every one seems to +have been at a loss to write their own names. The name +of <i>Villers</i> is spelt fourteen different ways in the deeds of +that family. The simple dissyllabic but illustrious name +of <i>Percy</i>, the bishop found in family documents, they had +contrived to write in fifteen different ways.</p> + +<p>This unsettled state of our <i>orthography</i>, and what it +often depended on, our <i>orthoepy</i>, was an inconvenience +detected even at a very early period. The learned Sir +<span class="sc">John Cheke</span>, the most accomplished Greek scholar of the +age, descended from correcting the Greek pronunciation to +invent a system of English orthography. Cheke was no +formal pedant; with an enlarged notion of the vernacular +language, he aimed to restore the English of his day to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page383" id="page383"></a>383</span> +what then he deemed to be its purity. He would allow of +no words but such as were true English, or of Saxon original; +admitting of no adoption of any foreign word into +the English language, which at this early period our +scholar deemed sufficiently copious. He objected to the +English translation of the Bible, for its introduction of +many foreign words; and to prove them unnecessary he +retranslated the Gospel of St. Matthew, written on his +own system of a new orthography. His ear was nice, and +his Attic taste had the singular merit of giving concision +to the perplexed periods of our early style. But his +orthography deterred the eyes of his readers; however the +learned Cheke was right in his abstract principle, it +operated wrong when put in practice, for every newly-spelt +word seemed to require a peculiar vocabulary.</p> + +<p>When Secretaries of State were also men of literature, +the learned Sir <span class="sc">Thomas Smith</span>, under Elizabeth, composed +his treatise on “The English Commonwealth,” both +in Latin and in English—the worthy companion of the +great work of Fortescue. Not deterred by the fate of his +friend, the learned Cheke, he projected even a bolder system, +to correct the writing of English words. He +designed to relieve the ear from the clash of supernumerary +consonants, and to liquify by a vowelly confluence. +But though the scholar exposed the absurdity of the +general practice, where in certain words the redundant +letters became mutes, or do not comprehend the sounds +which are expressed, while in other words we have no +letters which can express the sounds by which they are +spoken, he had only ascertained the disease, for he was not +equally fortunate in the prevention. An enlargement of +the alphabet, ten vowels instead of five, and a fantastical +mixture of the Roman, the Greek, and the Saxon characters, +required an Englishman to be a very learned man +to read and write his maternal language. This project +was only substituting for one difficulty another more +strange.</p> + +<p>Were we to course the wide fields which these early +“rackers of orthography” have run over, we should start, +at every turn, some strange “winged words;” but they +would be fantastic monsters, neither birds with wings nor +hares with feet. Shakspeare sarcastically describes this +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page384" id="page384"></a>384</span> +numerous race: “Now he is turned <span class="scs">ORTHOGRAPHER</span> his +words are a very fantastical banquet; just so many strange +dishes.” Some may amuse. One affords a quaint definition +of the combination of <i>orthoepy</i> with <i>orthography</i>, for +he would teach “how to write or <i>paint the image of man’s +voice</i> like to the life or nature.”<a name="fa3c38" id="fa3c38" href="#ft3c38"><span class="sp">3</span></a> The most popular +amender of our defective orthography was probably <span class="sc">Bullokar</span>, +for his work at least was republished. He proposed +a bold confusion, to fix the fugitive sounds by +recasting the whole alphabet, and enlarging its number +from twenty-four to more letters, giving two sounds to one +letter, to some three; at present no mark or difference +shows how the sounded letters should be sounded, while +our speech (or orthography) so widely differed; but the +fault, says old Bullokar, is in the <i>picture</i>, that is, the +letters, not the speech. His scheme would have turned +the language into a sort of music-book, where the notes +would have taught the tones.<a name="fa4c38" id="fa4c38" href="#ft4c38"><span class="sp">4</span></a> I extract from his address +to his country a curious passage. “In true orthographie, +both the <i>eye</i>, the <i>voice</i>, and the <i>eare</i> must consent perfectly +without any let, doubt, or maze. Which want of concord +in the eye, voice, and ear I did perceive almost thirtie +yeares past by the very voice of children, who, guided by +the eye with the letter, and giving voice according to the +name thereof, as they were taught to name letters, yielded +the eare of the hearer a degree contrary sound to the word +looked for; hereby grewe quarrels in the teacher, and lothsomeness +in the learner, and great payne to both, and the +conclusion was that both teacher and learner must go by +rote, or no rule could be followed, when of 37 parts 31 +kept no square, nor true joint.”</p> + +<p>All these reformers, with many subsequent ones, only +continued to disclose the uneasy state of the minds of the +learned in respect to our inveterate orthography; so difficult +was it, and so long did it take to teach the nation how to +spell, an art in which we have never perfectly succeeded. +Even the learned Mulcaster, in his zealous labour to “the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page385" id="page385"></a>385</span> +right writing of the English tongue,” failed, though his +principle seems one of the most obvious in simplicity. +This scholar, a master of St. Paul’s school, freed from +collegiate prejudices, maintained that “words should be +written as they were spoken.” But where were we to seek +for the standard of our orthoepy? Who was to furnish +the model of our speech, in a land where the pronunciation +varied from the court, the capital, or the county, and as +mutable from age to age? The same effort was made +among our neighbours. In 1570 the learned Joubert attempted +to introduce a new orthography, without, however, +the aid of strange characters. His rule was only to +give those letters which yield the proper pronunciation; thus +he wrote, <i>œuvres</i>, uvres; <i>françoise</i>, fransaise; <i>temps</i>, tems.</p> + +<p>Among the early reformers of our vernacular idiom, the +name of <span class="sc">Richard Mulcaster</span> has hardly reached posterity. +Our philologer has dignified a small volume ostensibly +composed for “the training of children,”<a name="fa5c38" id="fa5c38" href="#ft5c38"><span class="sp">5</span></a> by the +elevated view he opened of far distant times from his own +of our vernacular literature—and he had the glory of +having made this noble discovery when our literature was +yet in its infancy.</p> + +<p>This learned master of St. Paul’s school developes the +historical progress of language, on the great philosophical +principle that no impediment existed to prevent the +modern from rivalling the more perfect ancient languages. +In opposition to the many who contended that no subject +can be philosophically treated in the maternal English, he +maintained that no one language, naturally, is more refined +than another, but is made so by the industry of “eloquent +speech” in the writers themselves, and by the excellence +of the matter; a native soil becomes more genial in emulating +a foreign. I preserve the pleasing illustration of +his argument in the purity of his own prose, and because +he was the prophet of our literature.</p> + +<p>“The people of Athens thus beautified their speech and +enriched their tongue with all kinds of knowledge, both +bred within Greece and borrowed from without. The +people of Rome having plotted (planned) their government +much like the Athenians, became enamoured of their +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page386" id="page386"></a>386</span> +eloquence, and translated their learning wherewith they +were in love. The Roman authority first planted the +Latin among us here, by force of their conquest; the use +thereof for matters of learning doth cause it continue, +though the conquest be expired. And, therefore, the +learned tongues, so termed of their store, may thank their +own people both for their fining (refinement) at home and +their favour abroad. But did not these tongues use even +the same means to brave (adorn) themselves, ere they +proved so beautiful?</p> + +<p>“There be two special considerations which keep the +Latin and other learned tongues, though chiefly the Latin, +in great countenance among us; the one is the knowledge +which is registered in them; the other is the conference +which the learned of Europe do commonly use by them, +both in speaking and writing. We seek them for profit, +and keep them for that conference; but whatever else may +be done in our tongue, either to serve private use, or the +beautifying our speech, I do not see but it may well be +admitted, <i>even though in the end it displaced the Latin</i>, as +the Latin did others, and furnished itself by the Latin +learning. For is it not indeed a marvellous bondage to +become servants to one tongue for learning sake, the most +of our time, with loss of most time, whereas we may have +the very same treasure in our own tongue, with the gain +of most time? Our own, bearing the joyful title of our +liberty and freedom; the Latin tongue remembering us of +our thraldom. I honour the Latin, but I worship the +English. I wish all were in ours which they had from +others; and by their own precedent, do let us understand +how boldly we may venture, notwithstanding the opinion +of some of our people, as desire rather to please themselves +with a foreign tongue wherewith they are acquainted, than +to profit their country in her natural language, where their +acquaintance should be. The tongues which we study +were not the first getters, though by learned travel +(labour) they prove good keepers; but they are ready to +return and discharge their trust when it shall be demanded, +in such a sort, as it was committed for term of years, and +not for inheritance.”</p> + +<p>“But it is objected,” our learned Mulcaster proceeds, +with his engaging simplicity, that “the English tongue +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page387" id="page387"></a>387</span> +is of small reach, stretching no further than this island of +ours, nay not there over all. What tho’ (then)? It +reigneth there, though it go not beyond sea. And be not +English folk finish (refined) as well as the foreign, I pray +you? And why not our tongue for speaking, and our pen +for writing, as well as our bodies for apparel, and our +tastes for diet? But you say that we have no cunning +(knowledge) proper to our soil to cause foreigners to study +it, as a treasure of such store. What tho’ (then)? Why +raise not the English wits, if they will bend their wills +either, for matter or for method, in their own tongue, <span class="scs">TO +BE IN TIME AS WELL SOUGHT TO BY FOREIGN STUDENTS +FOR INCREASE OF THEIR KNOWLEDGE, AS OUR SOIL IS +SOUGHT TO AT THIS TIME BY FOREIGN MERCHANTS FOR +INCREASE OF THEIR WEALTH</span>?”<a name="fa6c38" id="fa6c38" href="#ft6c38"><span class="sp">6</span></a></p> + +<p>We, who have lived to verify the prediction, should not +less esteem the prophet; the pedagogue, <span class="sc">Mulcaster</span>, is +a philosopher addressing men—a genius who awakens a +nation. His indeed was that “prophetic eye,” which, +amid the rudeness of its own days, in its clear vision contemplated +on the futurity of the English language; and +the day has arrived, when “<i>in the end it displaced the +Latin</i>,” and “<span class="scs">FOREIGN STUDENTS</span>” learn our language +“<span class="scs">FOR INCREASE OF THEIR KNOWLEDGE</span>.”</p> + +<p>The design of Mulcaster to regulate orthography by +orthoepy was revived so late as in 1701, in a curious work, +under the title of “Practical Phonography,” by John +Jones, M.D. He proposed to write words as they are +“fashionably” sounded. He notices “the constant complaints +which were then rife in consequence of an unsettled +orthography.” He proclaims war against “the visible +letters,” which, not sounded, occasion a faulty pronunciation. +I suspect we had not any spelling-books in 1701. +I have seen Dyche’s of 1710, but I do not recollect +whether this was the first edition; this sage of practical +orthography was compelled to submit to custom, and +taught his scholars to read by the <i>ear</i>, and not by the +<i>eye</i>. “Yet custom,” he adds, “is not the truest way of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page388" id="page388"></a>388</span> +speaking and writing, from not regarding the originals +whence words are derived; hence, abundance of errors +have crept both into the pronunciation and writing, and +English is grown a medley in both these respects.” Such +was the lamentation of an honest pedagogue in 1710.</p> + +<p>The “Phonography” of Dr. Jones was probably well +received; for three years after, in 1704, he returned to +his “spelling,” which, he observed, “however mean, concerned +the benefit of millions of persons.” He had a +notion to “invent a universal language to excel all others, +if he thought that people would be induced to use it.”<a name="fa7c38" id="fa7c38" href="#ft7c38"><span class="sp">7</span></a></p> + +<p>Even the learned of our own times have indulged some +of these philological reveries. One would hardly have suspected +that Dr. <span class="sc">Franklin</span>, whose genius was so wholly +practical, contemplated to revolutionise the English alphabet: +words were to be spelt by the sounds of their letters, +which were to be regulated by six new characters, and +certain changes in the vowels. He seems to have revived +old Bullokar. <span class="sc">Pinkerton</span> has left us a ludicrous scheme +of what he calls “an improved language.” Our vowel +terminations amount but to one-fourth of the language; +all substantives closing in hard consonants were to have +a final vowel, and the consonant was to be omitted after +the vowel. We were to acquire the Italian euphony by +this presumed melody for our harsh terminations. In +this disfigurement of the language, a <i>quack</i> would be a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page389" id="page389"></a>389</span> +<i>quaco</i>, and <i>that</i> would be <i>tha</i>. Plurals were to terminate +in <i>a</i>: <i>pens</i> would be <i>pena</i>; papers, <i>papera</i>. He has very +innocently printed the entire “Vision of Mirza” from the +“Spectator,” on his own system; the ludicrous jargon at +once annihilates itself. Not many years ago, <span class="sc">James +Elphinstone</span>, a scholar, and a very injudicious one, performed +an extraordinary experiment. He ventured to +publish some volumes of a literary correspondence, on the +plan of writing the words as they are pronounced. But +this editor, being a Scotchman, had two sorts of Scotticisms +to encounter—in idiom and in sound. Notwithstanding +the agreeable subjects of a literary correspondence, +it is not probable that any one ever conquered a single +perusal of pages, which tortured the eye, if they did not +the understanding.</p> + +<p>We may smile at these repeated attempts of the learned +English, in their inventions of alphabets, to establish the +correspondence of pronunciation with orthography, and +at their vowelly conceits to melodise our orthoepy. All +these, however, demonstrate that our language has never +been written as it ought to have been. All our writers +have experienced this inconvenience. Considerable changes +in spelling were introduced at various periods, by way of +experiment; this liberty was used by the Elizabethan +writers, for an improvement on the orthography of Gower +and Chaucer. Since the days of Anne we have further +deviated, yet after all our efforts we are constrained to +read words not as they are written, and to write different +words with the same letters, which leaves them ambiguous. +And now, no reform shall ever happen, short of one by +“the omnipotence of parliament,” which the great luminary +of law is pleased to affirm, “can do anything +except making a man a woman.” Customary errors are +more tolerable than the perplexing innovations of the +most perverse ingenuity.<a name="fa8c38" id="fa8c38" href="#ft8c38"><span class="sp">8</span></a> The eye bewildered in such +uncouth pages as are here recorded, found the most +capricious orthography in popular use always less perplexing +than the attempt to write words according to +their pronunciation, which every one regulated by the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page390" id="page390"></a>390</span> +sounds familiar to his own ear, and usually to his own +county. Even the dismemberment of words, omitting or +changing letters, distracts attention;<a name="fa9c38" id="fa9c38" href="#ft9c38"><span class="sp">9</span></a> and modern readers +have often been deterred from the study of our early +writers by their unsettled orthography. Our later literary +antiquaries have, therefore, with equal taste and sagacity, +modernised their text, by printing the words as the writers, +were they now living, would have transcribed them.</p> + +<p>Such have been the impracticable efforts to paint the +voice to the eye, or to chain by syllables airy sounds. +The imperfections for which such reforms were designed +in great part still perplex us. Our written language still +remains to the utter confusion of the eye and the ear of +the baffled foreigner, who often discovers that what +is written is not spoken, and what is spoken is not +written. The orthography of some words leads to +their false pronunciation. Hence originated that peculiar +invention of our own, that odd-looking monster +in philology, “a pronouncing dictionary,” which offends +our eyes by this unhappy attempt to write down sounds. +They whose eyes have run over Sheridan, Walker, and +other orthoepists, must often have smiled at their arbitrary +disfigurements of the English language. These ludicrous +attempts are after all inefficient, while they compel us to +recollect, if the thing indeed be possible, a polysyllabic combination +as barbarous as the language of the Cherokees.<a name="fa10c38" id="fa10c38" href="#ft10c38"><span class="sp">10</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page391" id="page391"></a>391</span></p> + +<p>We may sympathise with the disconcerted foreigner +who is a learner of the English language. All words +ending in <i>ugh</i> must confound him: for instance, <i>though</i>, +<i>through</i>, and <i>enough</i>, alike written, are each differently +pronounced; and should he give us <i>bough</i> rightly, he +may be forgiven should he blunder at <i>cough</i>; if he escape +in safety from <i>though</i>, the same wind will blow him out +of <i>thought</i>. What can the foreigner hope when he discovers +that good judges of their language pronounce +words differently? A mere English scholar who holds +little intercourse with society, however familiar in his +closet be his acquaintance with the words, and even their +derivations, might fail in a material point, when using +them in conversation or in a public speech. A list of +names of places and of persons might be given, in which +not a single syllable is pronounced of those that stand +written.</p> + +<p>That a language should be written as it is spoken we +see has been considered desirable by the most intelligent +scholars. Some have laudably persevered in writing the +past tense <i>red</i>, as a distinction from the present <i>read</i>, and +anciently I have found it printed <i>redde</i>. Lord Byron has +even retained the ancient mode in his Diary. By not +distinguishing the tenses, an audible reader has often +unwarily contused the times. <i>G</i> before <i>I</i> ungrammatical +orthoepists declare is sounded hard, but so numerous are +the exceptions, that the exceptions might equally be +adopted for the rule. It is true that the pedantry of +scholarship has put its sovereign veto against the practice +of writing words as they are spoken, even could the +orthoepy ever have been settled by an unquestioned +standard. When it was proposed to omit the mute <i>b</i> in +<i>doubt</i> and <i>debt</i>, it was objected that by this castration of +a superfluous letter in the pronunciation, we should lose sight +of their Latin original. The same circumstance occurred +in the reform of the French orthography: it was objected +to the innovators, that when they wrote <i>tems</i>, rejecting +the <i>p</i> in <i>temps</i>, they wholly lost sight of the Latin original, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page392" id="page392"></a>392</span> +<i>tempus</i>. Milton seems to have laid down certain principles +of orthography, anxiously observed in his own +editions printed when the poet was blind. An orthography +which would be more natural to an unlearned +reader is rejected by the etymologist, whose pride and +pomp exult in tracing the legitimacy of words to their +primitives, and delight to write them as near as may be +according to the analogy of languages.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c38" id="ft1c38" href="#fa1c38"><span class="fn">1</span></a> See “The Paston Letters,” edited by Sir <span class="sc">John Fenn</span>; and +<span class="sc">Lodge’s</span> authentic and valuable Collection.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c38" id="ft2c38" href="#fa2c38"><span class="fn">2</span></a> George Chalmers’ “Apology for the Believers in the Shakspeare +Papers,” 94.—See on this subject in “Curiosities of Literature,” art. +“Orthography of Proper Names.” [Also a note on the orthography of +Shakspeare’s name, in an Essay on that Poet, in a future page of the +present volume.]</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c38" id="ft3c38" href="#fa3c38"><span class="fn">3</span></a> “An Orthographie, composed by J(ohn) H(art), Chester Herald,” +1569. A book of extreme rarity. A copy at Horne Tooke’s sale was +sold for 6<i>l.</i> 6<i>s.</i> It is in the British Museum.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c38" id="ft4c38" href="#fa4c38"><span class="fn">4</span></a> “Bullokar’s Booke at large for the Amendment of Orthographie +for English Speech,” &c. &c., 1580, 4to; republished in 1586.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c38" id="ft5c38" href="#fa5c38"><span class="fn">5</span></a> “The first part of the Elementarie, which entreateth chieflie of +the <i>right writing of our English Tong</i>,” 1582, 12mo.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c38" id="ft6c38" href="#fa6c38"><span class="fn">6</span></a> In this copious extract from Mulcaster’s little volume, we have a +specimen of the unadulterated simplicity of the English language. I +have only modernised the orthography for the convenience of the reader, +but I have not altered a single word.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c38" id="ft7c38" href="#fa7c38"><span class="fn">7</span></a> The second work of our Phonographer is entitled “The New Art +of Spelling, designed chiefly for Persons of Maturity, teaching them to +Spell and Write Words by the Sound thereof, and to Sound and Read +Words by the Sight thereof,—rightly, neatly, and fashionably, &c.,” by +J. Jones, M.D., 1704.</p> + +<p>I give a specimen of his words as they are written and as they are +pronounced—</p> + +<table class="ws" summary="Contents"> +<tr><td class="tcl">VISIBLE LETTERS.</td> <td class="tcl">CUSTOMARY AND FASHIONABLY.</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcl">    Mayor</td> <td class="tcl">    Mair.</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcl">    Worcester</td> <td class="tcl">    Wooster</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcl">    Dictionary</td> <td class="tcl">    Dixnary</td></tr> +<tr><td class="tcl">    Bought</td> <td class="tcl">    Baut.</td></tr> +</table> + +<p>“All words”, he observes, “were originally written as sounded, and +all which have since altered their sounds did it for ease and pleasure’s +sake from</p> + +<table class="ws" summary="Contents"> +<tr><td class="tcl cl">the harder to the easier<br /> +the harsher to the pleasanter<br /> +the longer to the shorter<br /></td> + +<td class="tclm">sound.”</td></tr> +</table> + +<p><a name="ft8c38" id="ft8c38" href="#fa8c38"><span class="fn">8</span></a> The Grammar prefixed to Johnson’s Dictionary, curiously illustrated +by the notes and researches of modern editors, will furnish specimens +of many of these abortive attempts.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c38" id="ft9c38" href="#fa9c38"><span class="fn">9</span></a> When we began to drop the letter K in such words as <i>physic</i>, +<i>music</i>, <i>public</i>, a literary antiquary, who wrote about 1790, observed +on this new fashion, that “forty years ago no schoolboy had dared to +have done this with impunity.” These words in older English had +even another superfluous letter, being <i>physicke</i>, <i>musicke</i>, <i>publicke</i>. +The modern mode, notwithstanding its prevalence, must be considered +anomalous; for other words ending with the consonants <i>ck</i> have not +been shorn of their final <i>k</i>. We do not write <i>attac</i>, <i>ransac</i>, <i>bedec</i>, nor +<i>bulloc</i>, nor <i>duc</i>, nor good <i>luc</i>.</p> + +<p>The appearance of words deprived of their final letter, though identically +the same in point of sound, produces a painful effect on the +reader. Pegge furnishes a ludicrous instance. It consists of monosyllables +in which the final and redundant <i>k</i> is not written,—“<i>Dic</i> +gave <i>Jac</i> a <i>kic</i> when <i>Jac</i> gave <i>Dic</i> a <i>knoc</i> on the <i>bac</i> with a <i>thic stic</i>.” +If even such familiar words and simple monosyllables can distract our +attention, though they have only lost a single and mute letter, how +greatly more in words compounded, disguised by the mutilation of +several letters.</p> + +<p><a name="ft10c38" id="ft10c38" href="#fa10c38"><span class="fn">10</span></a> A most serious attempt was made a few years ago to establish +English spelling by sound. A journal called the <i>Fonetic Nuz</i> (<i>sic</i> to give +the idea of the pronunciation of the word <i>News</i>) was published, and Goldsmith’s +“Vicar of Wakefield” printed with a type expressly cast for the +novel forms. The ruin of the projector closed the experiment.—<span class="sc">Ed.</span></p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page393" id="page393"></a>393</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE ANCIENT METRES IN MODERN VERSE.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">A strong</span> predilection to reproduce the ancient metres in +their vernacular poetry was prevalent among the scholars +of Europe; but, what is not less remarkable, the attempt +everywhere terminated in the same utter rejection by the +popular ear. What occasioned this general propensity +of the learned, and this general antipathy in the unlearned?</p> + +<p>These repeated attempts to restore the metrical system +of the Greeks and the Romans would not only afford a +classical ear, long exercised in the nice artifices of the ancient +prosody, a gratification entirely denied to the uninitiated; +but at bottom there was a deeper design—that of +elevating an art which the scholar held to be degraded by +the native but unlettered versifiers; and, as one of them +honestly confessed, the true intent was to render the +poetic art more difficult and less common. Had this metrical +system been adopted, it would have established a +privileged class. The thing was practicable; and, even in +our own days, iambics and spondees, dactyls and tribrachs, +charm a few classical ears by their torturous arrangement +of words without rhythm and cadence.<a name="fa1c39" id="fa1c39" href="#ft1c39"><span class="sp">1</span></a> +Fortunately for all vernacular poetry, it was attempted +too late among the people of modern Europe ever to be +substituted for their native melody, their rhythm, the +variety of their cadences, or the consonance of rhyme.</p> + +<p>With us the design of appropriating the ancient metres +to our native verse was unquestionably borrowed from +Italy, so long the model of our fashions and our literature. +There it had early begun, but was neither admired nor +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page394" id="page394"></a>394</span> +imitated.<a name="fa2c39" id="fa2c39" href="#ft2c39"><span class="sp">2</span></a> The nearly forgotten fantasy was again +taken up by Claudio Tolommei, an eminent scholar, who +composed an Italian poem with the Roman metres. +More fortunate and profound than his neglected predecessors, +Tolommei, in 1539, published his <i>Versi e Regole +della</i> <span class="sc">Poesia Nuova</span>—the very term afterwards adopted +by the English critics—and promised hereafter to establish +their propriety on principles deduced from philosophy and +music. But before this code of “new poetry” appeared +the practice had prevailed, for Tolommei illustrates “the +rules” not only by his own verses, but by those of other +writers, already seduced by this obsolete novelty. But +what followed? Poets who hitherto had delighted by +their euphony and their rhyme, were now ridiculed for the +dissonance which they had so laboriously struck out. A +literary war ensued! The champions for “the new +poetry” were remarkable for their stoical indifference amid +the loud outcries which they had raised; something of +contempt entered into their bravery, and it was some time +before these obdurate poets capitulated.</p> + +<p>In France the same attempt encountered the same fate. +A few scholars, Jodelle, Passerat, and others, had the intrepidity +to versify in French with the ancient metres; +and, what is perhaps not generally known, later, D’Urfé, +Blaise de Vigneres, and others, adopted <i>blank verse</i>, for +Balzac congratulates Chapelain in 1639 that “Les vers +sans rime sont morts pour jamais.” French poetry, which +at that period could hardly sustain itself with rhyme, denuded +of this slight dress must have betrayed the squalidness +of bare poverty. The “new poetry” in France, +however, seems to have perplexed a learned critic; for with +the learned his prejudices leaned in its favour, but as a +faithful historian the truth flashed on his eyes. The +French antiquary, Pasquier, stood in this awkward position, +and on this subject has delivered his opinions with +great curiosity and honest naïveté. “Since only these two +nations, the Greeks and the Romans, have given currency +to these measures without rhymes, and that on the contrary +there is no nation in this universe which poetises, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page395" id="page395"></a>395</span> +who do not in their vulgar tongue use rhymes, which +sounds have naturally insinuated themselves into the ear +of every people for more than seven or eight centuries, +even in Italy itself, I can readily believe that the ear is +more delighted by our mode of poetry than with that of +the Greeks and the Romans.”<a name="fa3c39" id="fa3c39" href="#ft3c39"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> + +<p>The candour of the avowal exceeds the philosophy. +Our venerable antiquary had greater reason in what he +said than he was himself aware of; for rhyme was of a +far more ancient date than his eight centuries.</p> + +<p>It was in the Elizabethan period of our literature that, +in the wantonness of learned curiosity, our critics attempted +these experiments on our prosody; and, on the +pretence of “reformed verse,” were for revolutionising the +whole of our metrical system.</p> + +<p>The musical impression made by a period consisting of +long and short syllables arranged in a certain order is what +the Greeks called <i>rhythmus</i>, the Latins <i>numerus</i>, and we +<i>melody</i> or <i>measure</i>. But in our verse, simply governed by +accent, and whose rhythm wholly depends on the poet’s +ear, those durations of time, or sounds, like notes in +music, slow or quick, long or short, which form the quantities +or the time of the measured feet of the ancients, +were no longer perceptible as in the inflection, the inversion, +and the polysyllabic variety of the voluble languages +of Greece and Rome. The artificial movements in the +hexameter were inflicting on the ear of the uninitiated +verse without melody, and, denuded of rhyme, seemed +only a dislocated prose, in violation of the genius of the +native idiom.</p> + +<p>Several of our scholars, invested by classical authority, +and carrying their fasces wreathed with roses, unhappily +influenced several of our poets, among whom were Sidney +and Spenser, in their youth subservient to the taste of +their learned friend Gabriel Harvey, to submit their vernacular +verse to the torturous Roman yoke. Had this +project of versification become popular it would necessarily +have ended in a species of poetry, not referring so much to +the natural ear affected by the melody of emotion, as to a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page396" id="page396"></a>396</span> +mechanical and severe scansion. To this Milton seems to +allude in a sonnet to Lawes, the musician—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Harry, whose tuneful and well-measured song</p> +<p>First taught our English music how to span</p> +<p>Words with just <i>note</i> and <i>accent</i>, not to scan</p> +<p><i>With Midas’ ears, committing short and long</i>.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The poet of all youthful poets had a narrow escape from +“dark forgetfulness” when from the uncouth Latin hexameters, +his “Fairy Queen” took refuge in the melodious +stanza of modern Italy. <span class="sc">Stanyhurst</span> has left a memorable +woful version of Virgil, and the pedantic <span class="sc">Gabriel +Harvey</span> had espoused this Latin intruder among the +English muses. The majestic march of the Latin resounding +lines, disguised in the miserable English hexameters, +quailed under the lash of the satirical <span class="sc">Tom Nash</span>, +who scourged with searching humour. “The Hexameter +verse I grant to be a gentleman of an ancient house (so is +many an English beggar), yet this clime of ours he cannot +thrive in; our speech is too craggy for him to set his +plough in; he goes twitching and hopping in our language +like a man running upon quagmires, up the hill in one +syllable, and down the dale in another, retaining no part +of that stately smooth gait which he vaunts himself with +among the Greeks and Latins.”</p> + +<p>A treatise on “the New Poetry,” or “the Reformed +Verse,” for it assumed this distinction, was expressly +composed by <span class="sc">William Webbe</span>, recommendatory of this +“Reformation of our English verse.”<a name="fa4c39" id="fa4c39" href="#ft4c39"><span class="sp">4</span></a> Some years after +Dr. <span class="sc">Thomas Campion</span>, accomplished in music and verse, a +composer of airs, and a poet of graceful fancy in masques, +fluent and airy in his rhymes, seating himself in the +critic’s chair, renewed the exotic system. Notwithstanding +his own felicity in the lighter measures of English +verse, he denounces “the vulgar and inartificial custom of +<span class="scs">RIMING</span>, which hath, I know, deterred many excellent wits +from the exercise of English poetry.”<a name="fa5c39" id="fa5c39" href="#ft5c39"><span class="sp">5</span></a> He calls it “the +childish titillation of rime.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page397" id="page397"></a>397</span></p> + +<p>We may regret that Dr. Campion, who composed in +Latin verse, held his English in little esteem, since he +scattered them whenever he was called on, and not always +even printed them. The physician, for such was Campion, +held too cheap his honours as a poet and a musician; +however, he was known in his days as “<span class="sc">Sweet Master +Campion</span>,” and his title would not be disputed in ours. +In dismissing his critical “Observations,” he has prefixed +a poem in what he calls “Licentiate Iambicks,” +which is our blank verse; it is a humorous address of +an author to his little book, consisting only of nearly +five leaves:—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i6">Alas, poor book, I rue</p> +<p>Thy rash selfe-love; go spread thy papery wings;</p> +<p>Thy lightness cannot helpe, or hurt my fame.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The poet <span class="sc">Daniel</span> replied by his “Defence of Rime,” +an elaborate and elegant piece of criticism, to which no +reply was sent forth by the anti-rhymers.</p> + +<p>It has often been inquired how came the vernacular +rhyme to be wholly substituted for the classical metres, +since the invaders of the Roman empire everywhere +adopted the language of Rome with their own, for in +the progress of their dominion everywhere they found +that cultivated language established. The victors submitted +to the vanquished when the contest solely turned +on their genius.</p> + +<p>A natural circumstance will explain the occasion of this +general rejection of the ancient metres. These artificial +structures were operations too refined for the barbarian +ear. Their bards, who probably could not read, had +neither ability nor inclination to be initiated into an intricate +system of metre, foreign to their ear, their tastes, +and their habits, already in possession of supremacy in +their own poetic art. Their modulation gave rhythm to +their recitative, and their musical consonance in their +terminable sounds aided their memory; these were all the +arts they wanted; and for the rest they trusted to their +own spontaneous emotions.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page398" id="page398"></a>398</span></p> + +<p>Rhyme then triumphed, and the degenerate Latinists +themselves, to court the new masters of the world, polluted +their Latin metres with the rhymes too long erroneously +degraded as mere “Gothic barbarisms.” Had +the practice of the classical writers become a custom, we +should now be “committing long and short,” and we +should have missed the discovery of the new world of +poetic melody, of which the Grecians and the Latins could +never have imagined the existence.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c39" id="ft1c39" href="#fa1c39"><span class="fn">1</span></a> For a remarkable effusion of this ancient idolatry and classical +superstition, see <i>Quarterly Review</i>, August, 1834.</p> + +<p>The ancient poetry of the Greeks was composed for recitation. The +people never read, for they had no books; they listened to their rhapsodists; +and their practised ear could decide on the artificial construction +of verses regulated by <i>quantity</i>, and not by the latent delicacy and +numerosity of which modern versification is susceptible.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c39" id="ft2c39" href="#fa2c39"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Quadrio, “Storia e raggione d’ogni Poesia,” i. 606.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c39" id="ft3c39" href="#fa3c39"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Pasquier, “Les Recherches de la France,” p. 624, fo. 1533.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c39" id="ft4c39" href="#fa4c39"><span class="fn">4</span></a> “A Discourse of English Poetrie; together with the Author’s +Judgment touching the Reformation of our English Verse,” by +<span class="sc">William Webbe</span>, graduate, 1586, 4to.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c39" id="ft5c39" href="#fa5c39"><span class="fn">5</span></a> “Observations on the Art of English Poesie, by <span class="sc">Thomas Campion</span>, +wherein is demonstratively proved, and by example confirmed, that the +English tongue will receive eight several kinds of numbers proper to +itself, which are all in this Book set forth, and were never before this +time by any man attempted,” 1602.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page399" id="page399"></a>399</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">ORIGIN OF RHYME.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Contending</span> theories long divided the learned world. +One party asserted that the use of Rhyme was introduced +by the Saracenic conquerors of Spain and of Sicily, for +they had ascertained that the Arabian poets rhymed; the +other, who had traced Rhyme to a northern source among +the Scandinavian bards, insisted that Rhyme had a Gothic +origin; and as Rhyme was generally used among the +monks in the eighth century, they imagined that in the +decline of ancient literature the dexterous monks had borrowed +the jingle for their church hymns, to win the ear of +their Gothic lords; both parties alike concurred in condemning +Rhyme as a puerile invention and a barbarous +ornament, and of a comparatively modern invention.</p> + +<p>The opinions of the learned are transmitted, till by +length of time they are accepted as facts; and in this +state was Rhyme considered till our own days. Warton, +in the course of his researches in the history of our poetry, +was struck at the inaccuracy of one of these statements; +for he had found that rhymed verse, both Latin and +vernacular, had been practised much earlier than the period +usually assigned. But Warton, though he thus far corrected +the misstatements of his predecessors, advanced no +further. No one, indeed, as yet had pursued this intricate +subject on the most direct principle of investigation; conjecture +had freely supplied what prevalent opinion had +already sanctioned; and we were long familiarised to the +opprobrious epithet of “Monkish Rhymes.” The subject +was not only obscure, but apparently trivial; for Warton +dismisses an incidental allusion to the origin of Rhyme by +an apology for touching on it. “Enough,” he exclaims, +in his impatience, “has been said on a subject of so little +importance;”<a name="fa1c40" id="fa1c40" href="#ft1c40"><span class="sp">1</span></a> and it is curious to observe, that the same +vexatious exclamation occurred to a French literary antiquary. +“We must not believe,” said Lenglet du Fresnoy, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page400" id="page400"></a>400</span> +“that we began to rhyme in France about 1250, as +Petrarch pretends. The romance of Alexander existed +before, and it is not probable that the first essay of our +versification was a great poem. Abelard composed love-songs +in the preceding century. I believe Rhyme was +still more ancient; and it is useless to torment ourselves +to discover from whom we learned to rhyme. As we +always had poets in our nation, so we have also had +Rhyme.”<a name="fa2c40" id="fa2c40" href="#ft2c40"><span class="sp">2</span></a> Thus two great poetical antiquaries in England +and France had been baffled in their researches, and +came to the same mortifying conclusion. They were little +aware how an inquiry after the origin of Rhyme could +not be decided by chronology.</p> + +<p>The origin of Rhyme was an inquiry which, however +unimportant Warton in his despair might consider it, had, +though inconclusively treated, often engaged the earnest +inquiries of the learned in Italy and in Spain, in Germany +and in France. It is remarkable that all the parties were +equally perplexed in their researches, and baffled in their +conclusions. Each inquirer seemed to trace the use of +Rhyme by his own people to a foreign source, for with no +one it appeared of native growth. The Spaniard Juan de +la Enzina, one of the fathers of the Spanish drama, and +who composed an “Art of Poetry,” (<i>Arte de Trovar</i>, as +they expressively term the art of invention,) fancied that +Rhyme had passed over into Spain from Italy, though in +the land of Redondillas the guitar seemed attuned to the +chant of their Moorish masters; but in Italy Petrarch, at +the opening of his epistles, declares that they had drawn +their use of Rhyme from Sicily; and the Sicilians had +settled that they had received it from the Provençals; +while those roving children of fancy were confident that +they had been taught their artless chimes by their former +masters, the Arabians! Among the Germans it was +strenuously maintained that this modern adjunct to +poetry derived its origin and use from the Northern +Scalds. Fauchet, the old Gaulish antiquary, was startled +to find that Rhyme had been practised by the primitive +Hebrews!</p> + +<p>Fauchet, struck by discovering the use of Rhyme among +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page401" id="page401"></a>401</span> +this ancient people, and finding it practised by the monks +in their masses in the eighth century, suggested for its +modern prevalence two very dissimilar causes. With an +equal devotional respect for “the people of God,” and for +the monks, whom he considered as sacred, he concluded +that “possibly some pious Christian by the use of Rhyme +designed to imitate the holy people;” but at the same +time holding, with the learned, Rhyme to be a degenerate +deviation from the classical metres of antiquity, he +insinuates, “or perchance some vile poetaster, to eke out +his deficient genius, amused the ear by terminating his +lines with these ending unisons.” He had further discovered +that the Greek critics had, among the figures of +their rhetoric, mentioned the <i>homoioteleuton</i>, or consonance. +The abundance of his knowledge contradicted every system +which the perplexed literary antiquary could propose; and +impatiently he concludes,—“Rhyme has come to us from +some part of the world, or nation, whoever it may be; for +I confess I know not where to seek, nor what to conclude. +It was current among the people and the languages which +have arisen since the ruin of the Roman empire.”<a name="fa3c40" id="fa3c40" href="#ft3c40"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> + +<p>Since the days of ancient Fauchet, no subsequent investigators, +even such great recent literary historians as +Warton, Quadrio, Crescembini and Gray, Tiraboschi, +Sismondi and Ginguené, have extricated us by their opposite +theories from these uncertain opinions. It was +reserved for the happy diligence of the learned Sharon +Turner to explore into this abyss of darkness.<a name="fa4c40" id="fa4c40" href="#ft4c40"><span class="sp">4</span></a> To defend +the antiquity of the Rhyming Welsh bards, he pursued +his researches through all languages, and demonstrated its +early existence in all. His researches enable us to advance +one more step, and to effect an important result, which +has always baffled the investigators of these curious +topics.</p> + +<p>Rhyming poems are found not only in the Hebrew but +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page402" id="page402"></a>402</span> +in the Sanscrit, in the Bedas, and in the Chinese poetry,<a name="fa5c40" id="fa5c40" href="#ft5c40"><span class="sp">5</span></a> +as among the nations of Europe. It was not unknown to +the Greeks, since they have named it as a rhetorical ornament; +and it appears to have been practised by the +Romans, not always from an accidental occurrence, but of +deliberate choice.</p> + +<p>To deduce the origin of rhyme from any particular +people, or to fix it at any stated period, is a theory no +longer tenable. The custom of rhyming has predominated +in China, in Hindustan, in Ethiopia; it chimes in the +Malay and Javanese poetry, as it did in ancient Judea: +this consonance trills in the simple carol of the African +women; its echoes resounded in the halls of the frozen +North, in the kiosque of the Persian, and in the tent of +the Arab, from time immemorial. <span class="sc">Rhyme</span> must therefore +be considered <i>as universal as poetry itself</i>.</p> + +<p>Yet rhyme has been contemned as a “monkish jingle,” +or a “Gothic barbarism;” but we see it was not peculiar +to the monks nor the Goths, since it was prevalent in the +vernacular poetry of all other nations save the two ancient +ones of Greece and Rome. Delighting the ear of the man +as it did that of the child, and equally attractive in the +most polished as in the rudest state of society, rhyme +could not have obtained this universality had not this +concord of returning sounds a foundation in the human +organization influencing the mind. We might as well inquire +the origin of dancing as that of rhyming; the rudest +society as well as the most polished practised these arts +at every era. And thus it has happened, as we have seen, +that the origin of rhyme was everywhere sought for and +everywhere found.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c40" id="ft1c40" href="#fa1c40"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Warton’s “Second Dissertation on the Introduction of Learning +into England.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c40" id="ft2c40" href="#fa2c40"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Lenglet du Fresnoy—Preface to his edition of the “Roman de +la Rose.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c40" id="ft3c40" href="#fa3c40"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Much curious matter will be found in the rare volume of Fauchet +“Recueil de l’Origine de la Langue et Poesie Françoise Ryme et Romans +plus les Noms et Summaire des Œuvres, de cxxvii. Poètes François, +vivant avant l’an <span class="scs">MCCC.</span>;” liv. i. ch. vii., 1610, 4to.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c40" id="ft4c40" href="#fa4c40"><span class="fn">4</span></a> See “Two Inquiries respecting the Early Use of Rhyme,” by +Sharon Turner, Esq.—<i>Archæologia,</i> vol. xiv. The subject further +enlarged, “On the Origin and Progress of Rhyme in the Middle Ages.”—<i>Hist. +of England</i>, iv. 386.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c40" id="ft5c40" href="#fa5c40"><span class="fn">5</span></a> The second book the Chinese children read is a collection conveyed +in <i>rhyming lines</i>.—<i>Davis on the Chinese.</i></p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page403" id="page403"></a>403</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">RHYMING DICTIONARIES.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">If</span> our poets in rhyme dared to disclose one of the grand +mysteries of their art, they would confess that, to find +rhymes for their lines is a difficulty which, however overcome, +after all has botched many a fine verse; the second +line has often altered the original conception of the preceding +one. The finest poems in the language, if critically +examined, would show abundant evidence of this +difficulty <i>not overcome</i>. This difficulty seems to have +occurred to our earliest critics, for <span class="sc">Gascoigne</span>, in his +“Certain Notes of Instruction concerning the making +Verse or Rhyme in English”—and <span class="sc">Webbe</span>, in his “Discourse,” +repeats the precept—would initiate the young +poet in the art of rhyme-finding: the simplicity of the +critic equals the depth of his artifice.</p> + +<p>“When you have one verse <i>well settled</i> and <i>decently +ordered</i>, which you may dispose at your pleasure to end +it with <i>what word you will</i>; then whatsoever the word is, +you may speedily run over the other words which are +answerable thereunto (for more readiness through all the +letters alphabetically),<a name="fa1c41" id="fa1c41" href="#ft1c41"><span class="sp">1</span></a> whereof you may choose that +which will <i>best fit the sense</i> of your matter in that place; +as, for example, if your last word end in book, you may +straightway in your mind run them over thus—book, +cook, crook, hook, look, nook, pook, &c. &c. Now it is +<i>twenty to one but always one of these shall jump with your +former word and matter in good sense</i>.”</p> + +<p>The poet in <i>rhyme</i> has therefore in his favour “twenty +to one” of a chance that his second line may “jump” with +his former one. We were not aware that the odds were +so favourable, even when we look over the finished poetry +of Pope, who has written so much, or of Gray, who has +written so little. Boileau tells us he always chose a +rhyme for his second line before he wrote out his first, +that by this means he might secure the integrity of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page404" id="page404"></a>404</span> +sense; and this he called “the difficult art of rhyming.” +These are mysteries which only confirm the hazard which +rhymers incur; and, on the whole, though we do marvellously +escape, the poet at every rhyming line still stands +in peril.</p> + +<p>This torture of rhyme-finding seems to have occasioned +a general affliction among modern poets; and an unhappy +substitute was early found in arranging collections of +rhymes, and which subsequently led to a monstrous device. +In Goujet’s “Bibliothèque Française,” vol. iii., will +be found a catalogue of these rhyming dictionaries: the +earliest of the French was published in 1572. Indeed, +some of these French critics looked upon these rhyming +dictionaries as part of the art of poetry, recommending +pocket editions for those who in their walks were apt to +poetise, as if finding a rhyme would prompt a thought.</p> + +<p>Among these early attempts is an extravagant one by +Paul Boyer. It is a kind of encyclopædia, in which all +the names are arranged by their terminations, so that it +furnishes a dictionary of rhymes.</p> + +<p>The demand for rhymes seems to have continued; for +in 1660, D’Ablancourt Fremont published a <i>Dictionnaire</i>, +which was enlarged by Richelet in 1667. It seems we +were not idle in threading rhymes in our own country, for +Poole, in 1657, in his “Parnassus,” furnishes a collection +of rhymes; and he has had his followers. But the perfect +absurdity or curiosity of a rhyming lexicographer appears +in one of Walker’s Dictionaries of the English Language. +As he was a skilful philologist, he has contrived to make +it useful for orthography and pronunciation. He advances +it as on a plan “not hitherto attempted;” and his volume +on the whole, as Moreri observes of Boyer’s, is a thing +“<i>plaisant à considérer</i>.”</p> + +<p>A dictionary of rhymes is as miserable a contrivance to +assist a verse as counting the syllables by the finger is to +regulate the measure; in the case of rhyme it is sense +which should regulate the verse, and in that of metre it +is the ear alone which can give it melody.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c41" id="ft1c41" href="#fa1c41"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Here is the first idea of “A Dictionary of Rhymes,” which has +inspired so many unhappy bards.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page405" id="page405"></a>405</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE ARTE OF ENGLISH POESIE.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Among</span> the arts of English poesie, the most ample and +most curious is an anonymous work.<a name="fa1c42" id="fa1c42" href="#ft1c42"><span class="sp">1</span></a> The history of an +anonymous book is sometimes liable to the most contradictory +evidence. The present, first printed in 1589, we learn +from the work itself, was in hand as early as in 1553. The +author inscribed the volume to Queen Elizabeth, and the +courtly critic has often adroitly addressed “the most beautiful, +or rather the beauty, of queens;” and to illustrate +that figure which he terms “the gorgeous,” has preserved +for us some of her regal verses.</p> + +<p>Yet notwithstanding this votive gift to royalty, the +printer has formally dedicated the volume to Lord Burleigh, +acknowledging that “this book came into my hands +with <i>its bare title without any author’s name</i>.” The +author himself could not have been at all concerned in +delivering this work to the press, for having addressed the +volume to the queen, he would never have sought for a +patron in the minister.</p> + +<p>This ambiguous author remained unknown after the +publication, for Sir John Harrington, who lived in the +circle of the court, designates him as “the unknown <i>Godfather</i>, +that, this last year save one (1589), set forth a +book called ‘The Arte of English Poesie.’” About +twelve years afterwards, Carew, in his “Survey of Cornwall,” +appears to have been the first who disclosed the +writer’s name as “Master Puttenham;” but this was so +little known among literary men, that three years later, +in 1605, Camden only alludes to the writer as “the <i>gentleman</i> +who proves that poets are the first politicians, the +first philosophers, and the first historiographers.” Eleven +years after, Edmund Bolton, in his “Hypercritica,” notices +“this work (<i>as the fame is</i>) of one of Queen Elizabeth’s +pensioners, Puttenham.” The qualifying parenthesis “as +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page406" id="page406"></a>406</span> +the fame is,” leaves the whole evidence in a very ticklish +condition.</p> + +<p>Who was Puttenham? A name unknown, and whose +writings are unnoticed by any contemporary. Even the +baptismal name of this writer has been subject to contradiction.<a name="fa2c42" id="fa2c42" href="#ft2c42"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p>In the work itself the writer has interspersed many +allusions to himself, from his nursery to his court-days. +His nurse, a right-lined ancestor of the garrulous nurse of +the Capulets, had exercised his prurient faculties in expounding +an indecent riddle,<a name="fa3c42" id="fa3c42" href="#ft3c42"><span class="sp">3</span></a> which our mature critic still +deemed “pretty;” but, according to one of his rhetorical +technical terms, “it holds too much of the <i>cachemphaton</i> +or <i>foule speech</i>, and may be drawn unto a reprobate sense.” +Our author was a travelled gentleman, and by his residence +at various courts, seems to have been connected with the +<i>corps diplomatique</i>, for he had been present on some remarkable +occasions at foreign courts, which we discover by +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page407" id="page407"></a>407</span> +coeval anecdotes of persons and places. One passage relating +to himself requires attention. Alluding to the +polished hypocrisy practised in courts, he observes:—“These +and many such like disgustings we find in men’s +behaviour, and specially in the courtiers of foreign countries, +<i>where in my youth I was brought up</i>, and very well +observed their manner of life and conversation; for of <i>mine +own country I have not made so great experience</i>.”</p> + +<p>This seems as ambiguous as any part of our author’s +history, for at eighteen years of age he had addressed +Edward the Sixth by “Our Eclogue of Elpine.” When he +tells us that “he had not had so great experience of his +own country as of others,” we may be surprised, for no +contemporary writer has displayed such intimacy with the +court anecdotes of England, which have studded many of +his pages. Neither does the style, which bears no mark +of foreign idiom, nor the collected matter of his art of +poetry, which discovers a minute acquaintance with every +species of English composition, preserving for us much +fragmentary poetry, at all betray a stranger’s absence from +home. But, what seems more extraordinary, the writer +frequently alludes to learned disquisitions, critical treatises, +and to dramatic compositions of his own—to “our comedy” +and to “our enterlude,” and has frequent illustrations +drawn from poems of all sorts and measures of his own +growth. It is one of the singularities of this unknown +person that his writings were numerous, and that no contemporary +has ever mentioned the name of Puttenham. +How are we to reconcile these discrepancies, and how +account for these numberless vernacular compositions, +with the condition of one who was “brought up abroad,” +and who had such “little experience of his own country?” +We appear to read a work composed by different persons.</p> + +<p>The same anomalous character is attached to the work +as we have discovered concerning the writer.</p> + +<p>This “Arte of English Poesie,” which Warton observes +“remained long as a rule of criticism,” and still may be +consulted for its comprehensive system, its variety of +poetic topics, and its contemporary historical anecdotes, is +the work of a scholar, and evidently of a courtier. His +scholastic learning furnished the terms of his numerous +figures of rhetoric, each of which is illustrated by examples +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page408" id="page408"></a>408</span> +drawn from English literature; but aware that this uncouth +nomenclature might deter, as he says, “the sort of +readers to whom I write, too scholastical for our <span class="sc">Makers</span>,” +as he classically calls our poets, “and more fit for clerks +than for courtiers, for whose instruction this travail is +taken,” our logician was cast into the dilemma of inventing +English descriptions for these Greek rhetorical figures. +We had no English name—“the rule might be set down, +but there was no convenient name to hold it in memory.”</p> + +<p>To familiarise the technical terms of rhetoric by substituting +English descriptive ones, led to a ludicrous +result. The Greek term of <i>histeron proteron</i> was baptised +the <i>preposterous</i>; these are words misplaced, or, as our +writer calls it, “in English proverb, the cart before the +horse,” as one describing his landing on a strange coast +said thus <i>preposterously</i>, that is, placing before what +should follow—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>When we had climb’d the cliff, and were ashore.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">instead of</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>When we had come ashore, and climb’d the cliff.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The <i>hipallage</i> he calls <i>the changeling</i>, when changing +the place of words changes the sense; as in the phrase +“come dine with me, and stay not,” turned into “come +stay with me, and dine not.” This change of sense into +nonsense he called “the changeling,” in allusion to the +nursery legend when fairies steal the fairest child, and substitute +an ill-favoured one. This at least is a most fanciful +account of nonsense! I will give the technical terms +of satire; they display a refinement of conception which +we hardly expected from the native effusions of the wits +of that day. <i>Ironia</i>, he calls the <i>dry-mock</i>; <i>sarcasmus</i>, +the <i>bitter taunt</i>; the Greek term <i>asteismus</i> he calls <i>the +merry scoff</i>—it is the jest which offends not the hearer. +When we mock scornfully comes the <i>micterismus</i>, the +<i>fleering frumpe</i>, as he who said to one to whom he gave +no credit, “<i>No doubt, sir, of that!</i>” The <i>antiphrasis</i>, or +the <i>broad flout</i>, when we deride by flat contradiction, +antithetically calling a dwarf a giant; or addressing a +black woman, “In sooth ye are a fair one!” The <i>charientismus</i> +is <i>the privy nippe</i>, when you mock a man in a <i>sotto</i> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page409" id="page409"></a>409</span> +<i>voce</i>; and the <i>hyperbole</i>, as the Greeks term the figure, +and the Latins <i>dementiens</i>, our vernacular critic, for its +immoderate excess, describes as “the over-reacher, or the +loud liar.” The rhetorical figures of our critic exceed a +hundred in number, if Octavius Gilchrist has counted +rightly, all which are ingeniously illustrated by fragments +of our own literature, and often by poetical and historical +anecdotes by no means common and stale. We must appreciate +this treasure of our own antiquity, though we may +smile when we learn that while we speak or write, however +naturally, we are in fact violating, or illustrating, this +heap of rhetorical figures, without whose aid unconsciously +our <i>fleering frumpes</i>, our <i>merry scoffs</i>, and our <i>privy +nippes</i>, have been intelligible all our days.</p> + +<p>In the more elevated spirit of this work, the writer +opens by defining the poet, after the Greek, to be “a +maker” or creator, drawing the verse and the matter from +his native invention,—unlike the <i>translator</i>, who therefore +may be said to be a versifier, and not a poet. This canon +of criticism might have been secure from the malignity of +hypercriticism. It happened, however, that in the year +following that in which “The Art of Poetry” was published, +Sir John Harrington put forth his translation of +Ariosto, and, presuming that none but a poet could translate +a poet, he caught fire at the solemn exclusion. The +vindictive “versifier” invented a merciless annihilation +both of the critic and his “Art,” by very unfair means; +for he proved that the critic himself was a most detestable +poet, and consequently the very existence of “The Art” +itself was a nullity! “All the receipts of poetry prescribed,” +proceeds the enraged translator of Ariosto, “I +learn out of this very book, never breed excellent poets. +For though the poor gentleman laboureth to make poetry +an art, he proveth nothing more plainly than that it is a +<i>gift</i> and not an <i>art</i>, because making himself and many +others so cunning in the art, yet he sheweth himself so +slender a gift in it.”</p> + +<p>Was this critic qualified by nature and art to arbitrate +on the destinies of the Muses? Were his taste and sensibility +commensurate with that learning which dictated +with authority, and that ingenuity which reared into a +system the diversified materials of his critical fabric? We +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page410" id="page410"></a>410</span> +hesitate to allow the claims of a critic whose trivial taste +values “the courtly trifles,” which he calls “pretty +devices,” among the inventions of poesy; we are startled +by his elaborate exhibition of “geometrical figures in +verse,” his delight in egg or oval poems, tapering at the +ends and round in the middle, and his columnar verse, +whose pillars, shaft, and capital, can be equally read upwards +and downwards. This critic, too, has betrayed his utter +penury of invention in “parcels of his own poetry,” +obscure conceits in barbarous rhymes; by his intolerable +“triumphals,” poetical speeches for recitation; and a series +of what he calls “partheniades, or new year’s gifts,”—bloated +eruptions of those hyperbolical adulations which +the maiden queen could endure, but which bear the traces +of the poetaster holding some appointment at court.</p> + +<p>When the verse flowed beyond the mechanism of his +rule of scanning, and the true touch of nature beyond the +sympathy of his own emotions, the rhetorician showed the +ear of Midas. He condemns the following lines as “going +like a minstrel’s music in a metre of eleven, very harshly +in my ear, whether it be for lack of good rime or of good +reason, or of both, I wot not.” And he exemplifies this +lack of “good rime and good reason, or both,” by this exquisitely +tender apostrophe of a mother to her infant:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Now suck, child, and sleep, child, thy mother’s own joy,</p> +<p>Her only sweet comfort to drown all annoy;</p> +<p>For beauty, surpassing the azured sky,</p> +<p>I love thee, my darling, as ball of mine eye.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>Such a stanza indeed may disappoint the reader when he +finds that we are left without any more.</p> + +<p>In the history of this ambiguous book, and its anonymous +author, I discover so many discrepancies and singularities, +such elaborate poetical erudition, combined with +such ineptitude of poetic taste, that I am inclined to think +that the more excellent parts could never have been composed +by the courtly trifler. It is remarkable that this +curious Art of English Poetry was ascribed to <span class="sc">Sidney</span>; +and Wanley, in his catalogue of the Harley Library, +assigns this volume to Spenser.<a name="fa4c42" id="fa4c42" href="#ft4c42"><span class="sp">4</span></a> I lay no stress on the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page411" id="page411"></a>411</span> +singular expression of Sir John Harrington, applied to the +present writer, as “the unknown <i>godfather</i>,” which seems +to indicate that the presumed writer had named an offspring +without being the parent. Nor will I venture to +suggest that this work may at all have been connected +with that treatise of “the English poets,” which Spenser, +we know, had lost and never recovered. The poet lived +ten years after the present publication, and it does not appear +that he ever claimed this work. Manuscripts, however, +we may observe, strangely wandered about the world +in that day, and such literary foundlings often fell into the +hands of the charitable. In that day of modest publication, +some were not always solicitous to claim their own; +and there are even instances of the original author, residing +at a distance from the metropolis, who did not +always discover that his own work had long passed +through the press; so narrow then was the sphere of +publication, and so partial was all literary communication.</p> + +<p>One more mystery is involved in the authorship of this +remarkable work: first printed in 1589, we gather from +the book itself that it was in hand at least as early as in +1553. This glorious retention of a work during nearly +forty years, would be a literary virtue with which we +cannot honour the trifler who complacently alludes to so +many of his own writings which no one else has noticed, +and unluckily for himself has furnished for us so many +“parcels of his poetry,” to exemplify “the art.”</p> + +<p>If we resolve the enigma, by acknowledging that this +learned and curious writer has not been the only critic +who has proved himself to be the most woful of poetasters, +this decision will not account for the mysterious +silence of the writer in allowing an elaborate volume, the +work of a great portion of a life, to be cast out into the +world unnamed and unowned.</p> + +<p>I find it less difficult to imagine that some stray manuscript, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page412" id="page412"></a>412</span> +possibly from the relics of <span class="sc">Sidney</span>, or perhaps the +lost one of <span class="sc">Spenser</span>, might have fallen into the hands of +some courtly critic, or “the Gentleman Pensioner,” who +inlaid it with many of his own trivialities: the discrepancy +in the ingenuity of the writing with the genius of +the writer in this combination of learning and ineptitude +would thus be accounted for; at present it may well provoke +our scepticism.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c42" id="ft1c42" href="#fa1c42"><span class="fn">1</span></a> “The Arte of English Poesie, contrived in three bookes—the first +of Poets and Poesie, the second of Proportion, the third of Ornament,” +1589, 4to.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c42" id="ft2c42" href="#fa2c42"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Ames appears first to have called him <i>Webster</i> Puttenham. Possibly +Ames might have noted down the name from Carew, as Master +Puttenham, which by an error of the pen, or the printer, was transformed +into the remarkable Christian name of <i>Webster</i>. I cannot +otherwise account for this misnomer. Steevens, in an indistinct reference +to a manuscript, revealed it to be <i>George</i>; and probably was led +to that opinion by the knowledge of a manuscript work in the Harleian +Collection by a George Puttenham. It is a defence of Elizabeth in the +matter of the Scottish Queen. Ellis, our poetic antiquary, has distinguished +our author as “Webster, <i>alias</i> George.” All this taken for +granted, the last editor, probably in the course of his professional pursuits, +falls on a nuncupative will, dated 1590, of a <i>George</i> Puttenham; +already persuaded that such a name appertained to the author of the +“Art of English Poetry,” he ventured to corroborate what yet remained +to be ascertained. All that he could draw from the nuncupative will +of this <i>George</i> Puttenham is, that he “left all his goods, movable and +immovable, moneys, and bonds,” to Mary Symes, a favourite female +servant; but he infers that “he probably was our author.” Yet, at +the same time, there turned up another will of one <i>Richard</i> Puttenham, +“a prisoner in her Majesty’s Bench.” <i>Richard</i>, therefore, may have as +valid pretensions to “The Arte of English Poesie,” as <i>George</i>, and +neither may be the author. This matter is trivial, and hardly worth +an inquiry.</p> + +<p>Haslewood, laborious but unfortunately uneducated, is the editor of +an elegant reprint of this “Arte of English Poesie.” A modern reader +may therefore find an easy access to a valuable volume which had been +long locked up in the antiquary’s closet.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c42" id="ft3c42" href="#fa3c42"><span class="fn">3</span></a> See page 157 of “The Arte of English Poesie.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c42" id="ft4c42" href="#fa4c42"><span class="fn">4</span></a> The following letter is an evidence of the uncertain accounts respecting +this author among the most knowing literary historians. Here, too, +we find that Webster, or George, or Richard, is changed into Jo!—</p> + +<p>“What authority Mr. Wood has for Jo. Puttenham’s being the author +of the ‘Art of English Poetry’ I do not know. Mr. Wanley, in his +‘Catalogue of the Harley Library,’ says that <i>he had been told that +Edmund Spenser was the author of that book, which came out anonymous</i>. +But Sir John Harrington, in his preface to ‘Orlando Furioso,’ +gives so hard a censure of that book, that Spenser could not possibly +be the author.”—“Letter from <span class="sc">Thomas Baker</span> to the Hon. James +West,” printed in the “European Magazine,” April, 1788.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page413" id="page413"></a>413</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE DISCOVERIE OF WITCHCRAFT.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">A single</span> volume sent forth from the privacy of a retired +student, by its silent influence may mark an epoch in the +history of the human mind among a people.</p> + +<p>Such a volume was “The Discoverie of Witchcraft, by +Reginald Scot,” a singular work which may justly claim +the honour in this country of opening that glorious career +which is dear to humanity and fatal to imposture.</p> + +<p>Witchcraft and magic, and some similar subjects, +through a countless succession of ages, consigned the +human intellect to darkness and to chains. In this country +these conspiracies against mankind were made venerable +by our laws and consecrated by erring piety. They +were long the artifices of malignant factions, who found +it mutually convenient to destroy each other by the condemnation +of crimes which could never be either proved +or disproved. The sorcerers and witches under the +Church of Rome were usually the heretics; and our +Henry the Eighth, who was a Protestant pope, transferred +the grasp of power to the civil law, and an Act of Parliament +of the Reformation made witchcraft felony. Dr. +Bulleyn, a celebrated physician and a reformer, who lived +through the gloomy reign of Philip and Mary, bitterly +laments “that while so many blessed men are burned, +witches should walk at large.” When the Act fell into +disuse, Elizabeth was reminded, by petitions from the laity +and by preaching from the clergy, that “witches and +sorcerers were wonderfully increasing, and that her Majesty’s +subjects pined away until death.” Witchcraft was +again confirmed to be felony.</p> + +<p>The learned and others were fostering the traditions of +the people about spirits, the incubus, and the succubus, +the assemblies of witches, and the sabbaths of Satan. +Some constructed their theories to explain the inexplicable; +and too many, by torture, extorted their presumed +facts and delusive confessions. The sage doated—the +legal functionaries were only sanguinary executioners; and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page414" id="page414"></a>414</span> +the merciful, with the kindest intentions, were practising +every sort of cruelty, by what was termed trials to save +the accused. The history of these dismal follies belongs +even to a late period of the civilization of Christian +Europe! An enlightened physician of Germany had +raised his voice in defence of the victims who were suffering +under the imputation of Sorcery;<a name="fa1c43" id="fa1c43" href="#ft1c43"><span class="sp">1</span></a> not denying the +Satanic potency, he maintained that the devil was very +well able to execute his own malignant purposes without +the aid of such miserable agents. It required a protracted +century ere Balthaser Bekker’s “World Bewitched” could +deprive Satan himself of his personality, indeed of his +very existence. But it was a subject to be tenderly +touched; superstition was a sacred thing, and too often +riveted with theology; and though the learned Wierus +had thus guarded his system, to a distant day he encountered +the polemical divines. One of his fiercest assailants +was a layman, the learned Bodin, he who has composed so +admirable a treatise on Government, now deeply plunged +into the “Demonomanie des Sorciers.” The volume of +Wierus, he tells us, “made his hair stand on end.” +“Shall we,” he cries, “credit a little physician” before all +the philosophers of the world, and the laws of God which +condemn sorcerers?</p> + +<p>While Wierus and Bodin had been thus employed, an +Englishman, Reginald Scot, in the serene retreat of a +studious life, was silently labouring on the development of +this great moral conquest over the prejudices of Europe. +Reginald Scot, who passed his life in the occupation of +his studies, seems to have concentrated them on this great +subject, for he has left no other work, except an esteemed +tract on the cultivation of the hop—the vine of his +Kentish county. Although he took no degree at college, +his erudition was not the less extensive, as appears by his +critical knowledge of the Hebrew and Greek. But it was +chiefly by his miscellaneous reading, where nothing seems +to have escaped his insatiable curiosity on the extraordinary +subjects which he ventured to scrutinise with such +minute attention, that he was enabled to complete one of +the most curious investigations of the age. Anthony +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page415" id="page415"></a>415</span> +Wood, in his peculiar style, tells us that “Scot gave himself +up solely to <i>solid reading</i>, and to the perusal of <i>obscure +authors</i> that had by the generality of the learned +been neglected.” This is a curious description of the +early state of our vernacular literature, and of those students +who, watchful over the spirit of the times, sought a +familiar acquaintance with the opinions of their contemporaries. +All writers were condemned as “obscure” who +stood out of the pale of classical antiquity; and plain +Anthony, who rarely dipped into the writings of Greece +and Rome, but was an incessant lover of the miscellaneous +writers of modern date, distinguishes his favourites as +“solid reading.” In the days of Reginald Scot our scholars +never ventured to quote other authority than some +ancient; but the poets from Homer to Ovid, the historians +from Tacitus to Valerius Maximus, and the essayists from +Plutarch to Aulus Gellius, could not always supply arguments +and knowledge for an age and on topics which had +nothing in common with their own.</p> + +<p>With more elevated views than Wierus, Scot denied the +power of sorcerers, because it attributed to them an omnipotence +which can only be the attribute of divine power. +Our philosopher could publish only half the truth. “My +question is not, as many fondly suppose, whether there be +witches or not, but whether they can do such miraculous +works as are imputed unto them.” He thus adroitly +eludes an argument which the public mind was not yet +capable of comprehending. The “Discoverer” had to encounter +a fierce host in shaking the predominant creed. +The passions of mankind were enlisted against the zealous +antagonist of an ancient European prejudice; the vital +interests of priestly exorcists were at stake. To doubt of +a supernatural agency seemed to some to be casting a suspicion +over miracles and mysteries. The most ticklish +point was the difficulty of explaining Scriptural phrases, +which Reginald Scot denied related to witches, in the +ordinary sense attached to these miserable women; the +Hebrew term merely designating a female who practised +the arts of “a poisoner,” or “a cozener or cheat.” The +whole scene of the witch of Endor seems to have racked +the “Discoverer’s” invention through several chapters, +to unveil the preparatory management of such incantations, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page416" id="page416"></a>416</span> +by the ventriloquising Pythonissa, and her confederate, +some lusty priest. All these Scot presumes to trace +in the obscure and interrupted narrative of the Israelitish +Macbeth, who, in his despair, hastened by night to listen +to his approaching fate, which hardly required the gift of +prophecy to predict.</p> + +<p>Our “Discoverer” prepared his readers for a revolution +in their opinions. It appears that in his day, notwithstanding +some fairies still lurking in the bye-corners of +our poets, the whole fairy creed had in fact passed away. +He appeals to this native mythology, now utterly exploded, +as an evidence of popular infatuation; and our philosopher +observes that he cannot hope that the partial reader should +look with impartial eyes on this book; it were labour lost +to ask for this, for, he adds, “I should no more prevail +therein than if <i>a hundred years since I should have entreated +your predecessors</i> to believe that Robin Goodfellow, +that great but antient bull-beggar, had been but a cousening +merchant, and no devil indeed.” This was a philosophical +parallelism; and the corollary pinched the present +generation concerning their witches, they who were now +holding their fathers dotards for their belief in fairies.</p> + +<p>The volume abounds with many strange incidents, which +its singular subject involved. The solitary witch of the +homestead was not the poetic witch uttering her incantations +at her mystic cauldron. Her homely feats are +familiar, but the revelations of the impostures are not. +“The devils and spirits,” the powers of the kingdom of +darkness, are more fantastic. These raw materials have +been woven in the rich looms of Shakspeare and Goethe. +Our author included in his volume a complete treatise of +legerdemain, or the conjuring art. To convince the people +that many acts may appear miraculous without the intervention +of a miracle, he ingeniously initiated himself into +the deceptious practices of the juggler; but he dreaded +lest the spectators of his dexterity should depose against +his own witchcraft, and “the Familiar,” his confederate. +Our seer, to save himself from fire or water, has not only +minutely explained these “deceitful arts,” but cautiously +accompanied them by woodcuts of the magical instruments +used on these occasions. At the time, these were +surprising revelations. The sagacity of our author anticipated +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page417" id="page417"></a>417</span> +the fate of his work. It appears to have shaken the +credulity of a very few reflecting magistrates; yet such +scholars as Sir Thomas Smith, the great political writer, +when he retired from public life, as a justice of peace, was +active in punishing witches. But the book was denounced +by the divines.</p> + +<p>When Reginald Scot’s work was translated into Dutch, +we learn from an arch-enemy of philosophy, the intolerant +Calvinistical polemic, Voetius, that “this book was an inexhaustible +source, whence not a few learned and unlearned +persons in the Netherlands have begun to doubt, and grow +sceptics and libertines with regard to witchcraft. Our +country is infected with libertines and half libertines, and +they have proceeded to such a pitch of ignorance, that +this set of new Sadducees laugh at all the operations and +apparitions of the devils as phantoms and fables of old +women, and timorous superstition.” The work was more +successful abroad than at home; and, indeed, how often +have the benefactors of mankind experienced that the voice +of foreigners is the voice of posterity! They decide without +prepossessions.</p> + +<p>The <span class="scs">FIRST</span> edition of the “Discoverie of Witchcraft,” +1584, is of extreme rarity, the copies having been burned +by the order of James, on his accession to the English +throne, in compliance with the act of parliament of 1603, +which ratified a belief in witchcraft throughout the three +kingdoms; but the author had not survived to see that +day. This awful prejudice broke out afresh under the +fanatical government, and gave rise to an infamous class +of men who were called “witch-finders.” When a reward +was publicly offered, there seemed to be no end in finding +witches. It was probably this great evil which reminded +the people of Scot, whose work was reprinted in 1651, but +the public so eagerly required another edition, that it was +again republished in 1665. The fact was, that justices, +judges, and juries, had so little improved by the <i>second</i> +edition, that many had kept with great care their note-books +of “Examinations of Witches,” and were discovering +“hellish knots of them.” It was only in the preceding +year that Sir Matthew Hale had left for execution +two female victims, without even summing up the evidence, +solely resting on the fact that “there were witches,” +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page418" id="page418"></a>418</span> +for which assumption he appealed “to the Scriptures,” and +he added, to “the wisdom of all nations!” What is not +less remarkable in this trial, the illustrious corrector of +“vulgar errors,” Sir Thomas Browne, in his medical character +examining the accused person, who was liable to +fainting fits, acknowledged that the fits were natural and +common; but the philosopher was so prepossessed that +the woman was a witch, that he pronounced against her, +alleging this mystical explanation of “the subtleties of +the devil,” who had taken this opportunity of her natural +fits to be “co-operating with her malice!” What a +demonstration that superstition holds its mastery even +over the philosophic intellect!</p> + +<p>The popular prejudice was confirmed by narratives of +witchcraft, by Joseph Glanvil, one of the early founders of +the Royal Society; by the visionary learning of the platonic +Dr. More; and by the theological dogmatism of +Meric Casaubon. Dr. More was desirous that every +parish should keep a register of all authentic histories of +apparitions and witchcraft: and Glanvil was so staunch a +believer, that he considered that the strong unbelief in +some persons was an evidence of what they denied; for +that so confident an opinion could not be held but by +some kind of witchcraft and fascination in the senses. All +these, and such as these, treat with extreme contempt and +cover with obloquy “the Father of the modern Witch-advocates,” +“the Gallant of the Old Hags!” This was +our Reginald Scot.</p> + +<p>The most elaborate treatise on the subject was now sent +forth by John Webster; “The Displaying of Supposed +Witchcraft,” 1677, fo. He defends Scot and Wierus +against Glanvil and Casaubon. He was a clergyman, and +dares not agitate the question, <i>an sint</i>, whether there be +witches or not; but <i>quomodo sint</i>, in what manner they +act, and what the things are they do, or can perform. +The state of the question is not simply the being of +witches, or <i>de existencia</i>, but only <i>de modo existendi</i>. +The dispute of their manner of existing necessarily supposes +their existence. He has, however, detected many +singular impostures, and the volume is full and curious.<a name="fa2c43" id="fa2c43" href="#ft2c43"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page419" id="page419"></a>419</span></p> + +<p>Glanvil and his “Sadducismus Triumphatus, or full evidence +concerning Witches,” 1668, a book so popular that I +have never met with a very fair copy, introduced with plenary +evidence a minute narrative of “the Demon of Tedworth,” +whose invisible drum beat every night for above a year, in +the house of some reverend magistrate, who had evidently +raised a spirit which he could not lay, and whose Puck-like +pranks wofully deranged the whole unsuspicious family. +This tale, confirmed by affidavits, but shaken by demurrers, +was long an article of faith, but finished by furnishing the +comedy of Addison’s “Drummer.” The controversy +about witches, including that of ghosts, which were equally +the incessant but volatile phantoms of their chase, now +assumed a more serious aspect than ever. The illustrious +Boyle, who had observed the unguarded heat with which +it was pursued, vainly cautioned the parties, that even +religion might suffer by weak arguments drawn from uncertain +statements. Boyle had more reason to say this +than one might suppose; for Dr. More, ever too vehement +and too fanciful, had exclaimed in his unhappy conviction, +“No bishop, no king! no spirit, no God!”<a name="fa3c43" id="fa3c43" href="#ft3c43"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page420" id="page420"></a>420</span></p> + +<p>Shadwell in his “Lancashire Witches,” resolved to +advance nothing without authority, accompanies that +comedy with ample notes, drawn from the writings of +witch-believers. His witches, therefore, are far beneath +those of Shakspeare, for they do nothing but what we are +told witches do; the whole system of witchery is here +exhibited. In his remarkable preface, Shadwell tells us, +that if he had not represented them as <i>real</i> witches, “it +would have been called atheistical by a prevailing party.”</p> + +<p>The belief in witchcraft was maintained chiefly by that +fatal error which had connected the rejection of any supernatural +agency in old women with religious scepticism; +and it was fostered by the statutes, which with the lawyer +admitted of no doubt. “We cannot doubt of the existence +of witchcraft, seeing that our law ordains it to be punished +by death,” was the argument of Sir George Mackenzie, +the great Scottish advocate; nor is it less sad to see such +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page421" id="page421"></a>421</span> +minds as that of the great Dr. Clarke, celebrated for his +logical demonstrations, thus reasoning on witchcraft, +astrology, and fortune-telling; “All things of this sort, +whenever they have any reality in them, are evidently +diabolical; and when they have no reality, they are cheats +and lying impostures.”<a name="fa4c43" id="fa4c43" href="#ft4c43"><span class="sp">4</span></a> The great demonstrator thus +confesses “the reality” of these chimeras! Another not +less celebrated divine, Dr. Bentley, infers that “no English +priest need affirm the existence of sorcery or witchcraft, +since they now have a public law which they neither +enacted nor procured, declaring these practices to be +felony!”<a name="fa5c43" id="fa5c43" href="#ft5c43"><span class="sp">5</span></a> Did the doctor know that churchmen have +had no influence in creating that belief, or in enacting this +statute?</p> + +<p>The gravity of Blackstone seems strangely disturbed +when as a lawyer he was compelled to acknowledge its +existence. “It is a crime of which one knows not well +what account to give.” The commentator on the laws of +England found no other resource than to turn to Addison, +whose gentle sagacity could only discover that “<i>in general</i>, +there has been such a thing as witchcraft, though one +cannot give credit to any <i>particular</i> modern instance of +it.” Not one of these writers had yet ventured to detect +the hallucinations of self-credulity in the victims, and the +crimes of remorseless men in their persecutors. The name +and the volume of their own countryman had never +reached them, who two centuries before had elucidated +these chimeras.</p> + +<p>After the statute against witchcraft had been repealed +in England, we must not forget that an act of the +Assembly of the Calvinistic Church of Scotland confesses +“as a great national sin, the act of the British Parliament +abolishing the burning and hanging of witches.”</p> + +<p>The name of Reginald Scot does not appear in the +“Biographia Britannica;” and it was only from a short +notice by Bayle, that Dr. Birch, in his translation of the +General Dictionary, was induced to draw up a life of our +earliest philosopher. Such was the fate of this “English +gentleman,” as Bayle has described him; and the philosophical +reader, in what is now before him, may detect the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page422" id="page422"></a>422</span> +shifting shades of truth, till it settles in its real and +enduring colour; the philosopher had demonstrated a +truth which it required a century and a half for the world +to comprehend.</p> + +<p>That such courageous and generous tempers as that of +<span class="sc">Reginald Scot</span> should fail themselves of being the spectators +of that noble revolution in public opinion which +was the ripening of their own solitary studies, is the +mortifying tale of the benefactors of mankind.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c43" id="ft1c43" href="#fa1c43"><span class="fn">1</span></a> “De Prestigiis Demonum et Incantationibus ac Veneficiis,” 1564.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c43" id="ft2c43" href="#fa2c43"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Webster notices the popular delusions of the country people in the +following passage, in which he is speaking of a sound judgment as +necessary to a competent witness:—“They ought to be of a sound +judgment, and not of a vitiated and distempered phantasie, nor of a +melancholic constitution; for these will take a bush to be a bugbear, +and a black sheep to be a demon; the noise of the wild swans, flying +high in the night, to be spirits—or, as they call them here in the +north, <i>Gabriel Ratchets</i>; the calling of a daker hen, in the meadow, +to be the <i>whistlers</i>; the howling of the female fox in a gill or clough +for the male, to be the cry of fairies.” “The <i>Gabriel Ratchets</i>,” in +our author’s time, seem to have been the same with the German <i>Rachtvogel</i>, +or <i>Rachtraven</i>. The word and the superstition are well known +in Lancashire, though in a sense somewhat different; for the <i>Gable-Rachets</i> +are supposed to be something like litters of puppies yelping +(gabbling) in the air. <i>Ratch</i> is certainly a dog in general.</p> + +<p>The <i>whistlers</i> are the green or whistling plovers, which fly very high +in the night uttering their characteristic note.—Whitaker’s “History +of Whalley.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c43" id="ft3c43" href="#fa3c43"><span class="fn">3</span></a> In a correspondence I have read between Dr. More and one of his +enthusiastic disciples, the Rev. Edmund Elys, the letters usually turn +on the reality of apparitions and magical incantations; both these +learned men were hunting about all their lifetimes to find a true ghost. +Elys often breaks out in triumph that he has at length discovered an +authentic ghost; in subsequent letters the evidence gradually diminishes, +and finally the apparition and evidence vanish together. The +following pious doubts, addressed to the philosophic More, may amuse +the reader:—</p> + +<p>    “Most honoured dear Sir,</p> + +<p>“I should be troublesome to you if I did not repress many strong +inclinations to write to you, for I do not take greater comfort in anything +than in the thoughts of <i>you</i> and the <i>notions</i> you have communicated +to the world.</p> + +<p>“I now entreat you to tell me one of your arguments why this act +is unlawfull, viz., to inquire by this black art (as I am sure it is, +though I am told some preachers allow it), whether such or such a +<i>suspected person</i> has stolen a thing; viz., by putting a key into the +midst of a Bible, and clasping or tying the Bible on it, and then +hanging the key upon some man’s finger put into the hollow of the +handle; and then one of the company saying these words—Ps. 1. +19, 20, ‘When thou a thief dost see,’ &c., to these words, ‘To use +that life most vile.’ If the Bible turn upon the finger (holding it by +the key) when such or such a person is named, then he is judged to be +the thief. Some persons that dined at the same table with me had an +humour to try this trick. I declared it was very <i>wicked</i>, &c., but, +however, they would do it. And a gentleman of great acquaintance in +the world said that a learned divine asserted it was no hurt, &c. I +thought it might not be a sin for me to stay in the room, after I had +made that profession of my dissent, &c. They tried what would be +done; and, upon the naming of one or two, the key did not move, but +on the naming of one (who afterwards was known to be an accomplice +in the theft) the Bible turned on the finger very plainly in the +sight of divers persons, myself being one. The gentleman that was +most eager to have the <i>experiment</i> holds that there never were any +<i>apparitions</i>, &c. I told him that this was equivalent to <i>an apparition</i>; +for here was an <i>ocular demonstration</i> of the existence and +operation of an intelligent invisible being, &c.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c43" id="ft4c43" href="#fa4c43"><span class="fn">4</span></a> In his “Exposition of the Church Catechism.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c43" id="ft5c43" href="#fa5c43"><span class="fn">5</span></a> Remarks upon a late “Discourse of Free-Thinking,” 1743, p. 47.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page423" id="page423"></a>423</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE FIRST JESUITS IN ENGLAND.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">The</span> fate of the English Protestants, exiles under the +Marian administration, was, as the day arrived, to be the +lot of the English Papists under the government of +Elizabeth. These opposing parties, when cast into the +same precise position, had only changed their place in it; +and in this revolution of England, in both cases alike, the +expatriated were to return, and those at home were to +become the expatriated.</p> + +<p>During the short reign of Edward, conformity was +not pressed; and notwithstanding two statutes, the one +to maintain the queen’s supremacy, and the other strictly +to enjoin the use of the Book of Common Prayer, through +the first ten or twelve years of Elizabeth Romanist and +Protestant entered into the same parish church. “The +old Marian priests,” whom the rigid papists indeed afterwards +scornfully decried, were wont to inquire of any one, +to use their own term, “whether they were <i>settled</i>?” +and were satisfied to lure from the seduction of a protestant +pulpit some lonely waverer, if by chance they +found an easy surrender. There were, indeed, many who +would neither “settle” nor “waver,” and these were +called “Occasionalists;” they insisted that “Occasional +conformity” had nothing <i>per se malum</i>—that human +laws might be complied with or neglected according to +circumstances; so learned doctors had opined! The old +religion seemed melting into the new, when the Romanists, +of another temper than “the old Marian priests,” +protested against this pacific toleration, and procured from +the fathers of the Council of Trent a declaration against +schismatics and heretics: this was but the prelude of +what was to come from a final authority; but this was +sufficient to divide the Romanists of England, and to +alarm the Protestants, yet tender in their reformation.</p> + +<p>The sterner Romanists gradually seceded from their +preferments in the church or their station in the universities, +and at length forsook the land. Two eminent +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page424" id="page424"></a>424</span> +persons effected a revolution among their brother-exiles, +of which our national history bears such memorable +traces. These extraordinary men were Dr. <span class="sc">Allen</span>, of +Oriel College, a canon in the cathedral of York, and who +subsequently was invested with the purple as the English +cardinal, and <span class="sc">Robert Parsons</span>, of Baliol, afterwards +the famous Jesuit. They left England at different periods, +but when they met abroad, their schemes were inseparable—and +possibly some of their writings; though it may be +doubted whether the subtile and daring genius of Parsons, +which Cardinal Allen declared equalled the greatest whom +he had known, ever acted a secondary part.</p> + +<p>Allen abandoned his country for ever in 1565. He +soon projected the gathering of his English brothers, +scattered in foreign lands; he conceived the formation for +the fugitive Romanists of England of another Oxford, +ostensibly to furnish a succession of Romish priests to +preserve the ancient papistry of England, which was +languishing under “the old Marian priests.” In 1568 +an English college was formed at Douay; in twenty years +Allen witnessed his colleges rise at Rheims, at Rome,<a name="fa1c44" id="fa1c44" href="#ft1c44"><span class="sp">1</span></a> +at Louvain and St. Omer, and at Valladolid, at Seville, +and at Madrid. From these cradles and nurseries of +holiness to Rome, and of revolt to England, issued those +seminary priests whose political religionism elevated them +into martyrdom, and involved them in inextricable treason.<a name="fa2c44" id="fa2c44" href="#ft2c44"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p>In these labours Allen had, as early as 1575, associated +himself with Parsons, who in that year had entered into +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page425" id="page425"></a>425</span> +the order of the Jesuits. Allen sought the vigorous aid +of the “soldiery of Jesus,” alleging “that England was +as glorious a field for the propagation of faith as the +Indies.” From that time the more ambiguous policy +and deeper views of that celebrated Society gave a new +character to the Romish missionaries to England, and +were the cause of all their calamities; a history written +in blood, at whose legal horrors our imagination recoils, +and our sympathy for the honourable and the hapless may +still dim our eyes with tears.</p> + +<p>Parsons, pensioned by Spain and patronised by Rome—wide +and deep in his comprehensive plans—slow in deliberation, +but decisive in execution—of a cold and austere +temper, yet flexible and fertile in intrigue—with his +working head and his ceaseless hand—once at least looked +for nothing less than the dominion of England, ambitious +to restore to Papal Rome a realm which had once been +her fief. This daring Machiavelian spirit had long been +the subtle and insidious counsellor, conjointly with Allen, +of the cabinets of Madrid and of Rome. From Rome +came the denunciatory bull of 1569, renewed with an +artful modification in 1580, and again in 1588; and from +Spain the Armada.</p> + +<p>It has been ascertained by his own writings that the +Jesuit Parsons, who had obtained free access to the +presence of the Spanish monarch, left Madrid in 1585, +about the time when the preparations for the Armada +began, and returned to Madrid in 1589, the year after its +destruction; so that the English Jesuit, whose sanguine +views had aided the inspiration, had also the fortitude to +console and to assure the Spanish monarch that “the +punishment of England had only been deferred.” Of +this secret intercourse with the Court of Madrid we have +the express avowal of the English Cardinal, Allen, in that +infuriated “Admonition to the Nobility and People of +England,” the precursor of the Armada; in which this +Italianated Englishman, contrary to those habits and that +language of amenity to which he had been accustomed, +suddenly dropped the veil, and, at the command of his +sacerdotal suzerain, raged against Elizabeth more furiously +than had the Mar-prelate Knox.</p> + +<p>In the year 1580 <span class="sc">Parsons</span> and <span class="sc">Campian</span> came the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page426" id="page426"></a>426</span> +first Jesuit missionaries to their native soil. Camden was +acquainted with both these personages at college. The +contrast of their personal dispositions might have occasioned +their selection; for the chiefs of this noted order +not only exercised a refined discernment in the psychology +of their brothers and agents, but always acted on an +ambidextrous policy. Campian, with amenity of manners +and sweetness of elocution, with a taste imbued with +literature, was adapted to win the affections of those +whom Parsons sometimes terrified by his hardihood. +They landed in England at different ports; and, though +at first separated, subsequently they sometimes met. +They travelled under a variety of disguises, sure of concealment +in the priests’ secret chamber of many a mansion, +or they haunted unfrequented paths. A tradition in the +Stonor family still points at a tangled dell in the park +where Campian wrote his “Decem Rationes,” and had +his books and his food conveyed to him.</p> + +<p>We have an interesting account of the perilous position +which he occupied; his devoted spirit, not to be subdued +by despair, but tinged with the softest melancholy, is +disclosed in a letter to the general of the order. He tells +him that he is obliged to assume a most antick dress, +which he often changes as well as his name; but his +studious habits were not interrupted amid this scene of +trouble; he says, “Every day I ride about the country. +Sitting on my horse, I meditate a short sermon, which +coming into the house I more perfectly polish. Afterwards, +if any come to me I discourse with them, to which +they bring thirsty ears.” But notwithstanding that +most threatening edicts were dispersed against them, he +says, that “by wariness and the prayers of good people, +we have in safety gone over a great part of the island. +I see many forgetting themselves to be careful for us.” +He concludes, “We cannot long escape the hands of +heretics, so many are the eyes, the tongues, and treacheries +of our enemies. Just now I read a letter where was +written, ‘Campian is taken.’ This old song now so rings +in mine ears wheresoever I come, that very fear hath +driven all fear from me; my life is always in my hand. +Let them that shall be sent hither for our supply bring +this along with them, well thought on beforehand.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page427" id="page427"></a>427</span></p> + +<p>Our Jesuits in some respects betrayed themselves by +their zeal in addressing the nation through their own +publications. Parsons, under the lugubrious designation +of John Howlet, that is, Owlet, sent forth his “screechings;” +and Campian, too confident of his irrefutable “Decem +Rationes,” was so imprudent as to publish “A Challenge +for a Public Disputation” in the presence of the queen. +The eye of Walsingham opened on their suspected presence. +A Roman Catholic servant unwittingly betrayed +Campian, who suffered as a state victim.<a name="fa3c44" id="fa3c44" href="#ft3c44"><span class="sp">3</span></a> Parsons saw his +own doom approaching, and vanished! This able Jesuit +was confident that the great scheme was to be realised +by means more effective than the martyrdom of young +priests. His awful pen was to change public opinion, and +nearly forty works attest his diligence, while he mused on +other resources than the pen to overturn the kingdom.</p> + +<p>The history of the order records that, thirty years +afterwards, Father Parsons, lying on his death-bed, ordered +to be brought to him the cords which had served as the +instruments of torture of his martyred friend, and, having +kissed them fervently, bound round his body these sad +memorials of the saintly Campian.<a name="fa4c44" id="fa4c44" href="#ft4c44"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> + +<p>Two of the numerous writings ascribed to Parsons, one +before the Armada, and the other subsequent to it, are remarkably +connected with our national history; the ability +of the writer, and the boldness of the topics, have at +various periods influenced public opinion and national +events. The first “A Dialogue between a Scholar, a +Gentleman, and a Lawyer,” was printed abroad in 1583 +or 1584, and soon found a conveyance into England. The +first edition was distinguished as “Father Parsons’ Green +Coat,” from its green cover. It is now better known as +“Leicester’s Commonwealth,” a title drawn from one of +its sarcastic phrases.</p> + +<p>To describe this political libel as a mere invective +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page428" id="page428"></a>428</span> +would convey but an imperfect notion of its singularity. +The occasion which levelled this artful and elaborate +scandalous chronicle at Leicester, and at Leicester alone, +remains as unknown as this circumstantial narrative descends +to us unauthenticated and unrefuted. That the +whole was framed by invention is as incredible as that +the favourite of Elizabeth during thirty years could possibly +have kept his equal tenor throughout such a criminal +career, besides not a few atrocities which were prevented +by intervening accidents with which the writer seems +equally conversant as with those perpetrated. The mysterious +marriages of Leicester—his first lady found at the +foot of the stairs with her neck broken, but “without +hurting the hood on her head”—husbands dying quickly—solemnised +marriages reduced to contracts—are remarkable +accidents. We find strange persons in the earl’s +household; Salvador, the Italian chemist, a confidential +counsellor, supposed to have departed from this world with +many secrets, succeeded by Dr. Julio, who risked the promotion. +We are told of the lady who had lost her hair and +her nails—of the exquisite salad which Leicester left on +the supper-table when called away, which Sir Nicholas +Throgmorton swore had ended his life—of the Cardinal +Chatillon, who, after having been closeted with the queen, +returning to France, never got beyond Canterbury—of +the sending a casuist with a case of conscience to Walsingham, +to satisfy that statesman of the moral expediency of +ridding the state of the Queen of Scots by an Italian +philtre—all these incidents almost induce one to imagine +the existence of an English Borgia, drawn full-length by +the hand of a Machiavel.</p> + +<p>If this strange history were true, it would not be +wanting in a moral; for if Leicester were himself this +poisoner, there seems some reason to believe that the +poisoner himself was poisoned. “The beast,” as Throgmorton +called this earl, found but a frail countess in the +Lady Lettice, whose first husband, the Earl of Essex, had +suddenly expired. The Master of the Horse had fired +her passion—a hired bravo, in cleaving his skull, did not +succeed in despatching the wounded lover: where the +blow came from they did not doubt. Leicester was conducting +his countess to Kenilworth; stopping at Cornbury +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page429" id="page429"></a>429</span> +Hall, in Oxfordshire, the lady was possibly reminded of +the tale of Cumnor Hall. To Leicester, after his usual +excessive indulgence at table, the countess deemed it necessary +to administer a cordial—it was his last draught! +Such is the revelation of the page, and latterly the gentleman, +of this earl. Certain it is that Leicester was suddenly +seized with fever, and died on his way to Kenilworth, and +that the Master of the Horse shortly after married the +poisoning countess of the great poisoner.<a name="fa5c44" id="fa5c44" href="#ft5c44"><span class="sp">5</span></a></p> + +<p>Had the writer unskilfully heaped together such atrocious +acts or such ambiguous tales the libel had not +endured; the life of this new Borgia is composed of richer +materials than extravagant crimes. It furnishes a picture +of eventful days and busied personages; truth and fiction +brightening and shadowing each other. Some close observer +in the court circle, one who sickened at the queen’s +insolent favourite, was a malicious correspondent. Some +realities lie on the surface; and Sir Philip Sidney was +baffled or confounded when he would have sent forth his +chivalric challenge to the veiled accuser.</p> + +<p>The adversaries of the Jesuits referred to Busenbaum, a +favourite author with the order, to inform the world that +among the artifices of the political brotherhood was inculcated +the doctrine of systematic calumny. “Whenever +you would ruin a person or a government, you must begin +by spreading calumnies to defame them. Many will incline +to believe or to side with the propagator. Repetition +and perseverance will at length give the consistency of +probability, and the calumnies will stick to a distant day.” +A nickname a man may chance to wear out; but a system +of calumny, pursued by a faction, may descend even to +posterity. This principle has taken full effect on this state-favourite. +The libel was most diligently spread about—“La +Vie Abominable” was read throughout Europe. This +story of the “subject without subjection,” who “shoots +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page430" id="page430"></a>430</span> +at a diadem” in England or Scotland, and turns England +into a “Leicesterian commonwealth,” raised princely anger: +the queen condescended to have circular letters written to +protest against it, considering the libel as reflecting on +herself, in the choice of so principal a counsellor: and +though her majesty discovered that the author was nothing +less than “an incarnate devil,” yet to this day the +state-favourite Leicester remains the most mysterious personage +in our history; nor is there any historian from the +days of Camden who dares to extenuate suspicions which +come to us palpable as realities. In truth, the life of +Leicester is darkness; his political intrigues probably were +carried on with all parties, which probably he adopted and +betrayed by turns: at last his caprice stood above law. +And even in his domestic privacy there were strange +incidents, dark and secret, which eye was not to see, nor +ear to listen to; and we have a remarkable chance-evidence +of this singular fact in that mysterious sonnet of Spenser, +prefixed to his version of Virgil’s “Gnat,” whose sad tale +was his own, dedicated “to the deceased lord;” his +“cloudy tears” have left “this riddle rare” to some “future +Œdipus” who has never arisen.<a name="fa6c44" id="fa6c44" href="#ft6c44"><span class="sp">6</span></a></p> + +<p>The Armada flying from our coasts evinced to Spain +and Rome that Elizabeth was not to be dethroned. What +then remained to hold a flattering vision of the English +crown to Philip, and to cast the heretical land into confusion? +The genius of this new Machiavel rose with the +magnitude of the subject and the singularity of the +occasion.</p> + +<p>The policy or the weakness of Elizabeth never consented +to settle the succession; and as the queen aged, all +Europe became more interested in that impending event. +This was a cause of national uneasiness, and an implement +for political mischief.</p> + +<p>In 1594 was printed at Antwerp “A Conference about +the next Succession to the Crown of England.” The purpose +of this memorable tract is twofold. The first part +inculcates the doctrine that society is a compact made by +man with man for the good of the commonwealth; that the +forms of government are diverse, and therefore are by God +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page431" id="page431"></a>431</span> +and nature left to the choice of the people; that kings do +not derive their title from any birthright, or lineal +descent, but from their coronation, with conditions and +admissions by the consent of the people; and that kings +may be deposed, or the line of succession may be altered, +as many of our own and other monarchs have suffered +from various causes, being accountable for their misgovernment +or natural incompetency. “Commonwealths +have sometimes chastised lawfully their lawful princes, +though never so lawfully descended.” This has often +been “commodious to the weal-public,” and “it may seem +that God prospered the same by the good success and successors +that hence ensued.”<a name="fa7c44" id="fa7c44" href="#ft7c44"><span class="sp">7</span></a></p> + +<p>This theory of monarchical government was opposed to +those “absurd flatterers who yield too much power to +princes,” and was not likely, as we shall see, to be only a +work of temporary interest. Let us, however, observe that +this advocate of the people’s supremacy over their sovereign’s +was himself the vowed slave to passive obedience, +and the indefeasible and absolute rule of the sacerdotal +suzerain.</p> + +<p>The second division is a very curious historical treatise +on the titles and pretensions of ten or eleven families of +the English blood-royal, “what may be said for them, and +what against them.” From its topics it was distinguished +as “The Book of Titles.” It was well adapted to perplex +the nation or raise up competitors, while, however, it reminded +them “of the slaughter and the executions of the +nobility of England.” In this uncertainty of the succession, +Isabella of Spain, whose ancestry is drawn from the +Conquest through many descents, is shown to have the +best title, and James of Scotland the worst.</p> + +<p>The book appeared in London with a dedication to the +Earl of Essex—this was a stroke of refined malice, and +produced its full effect on the queen. In this panegyric +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page432" id="page432"></a>432</span> +on the earl’s “eminence in place and in dignity, in favour +of the prince and in high liking of the people,” the wily +Jesuit intimated that “no man is like to have greater +sway on deciding of this great affair (the succession), when +time shall come for that determination, and those that shall +assist you and are likest to follow your fame and fortune.” +The jealous alarm of Elizabeth had often been roused by +the imprudence of the earl, and on this occasion it +thundered with all her queenly rage; she herself showed +him the dangerous eulogiums of the insidious dedicator, +till the hapless earl was observed to grow pale, and withdrew +from court with a mind disturbed, and was confined +by illness till the queen’s visit once more restored +him to favour.</p> + +<p>The immediate effect of the “Conference” appears by +an act of Parliament of the 35th of Elizabeth, enacting +that “whoever was found to have it in his house should be +guilty of high treason;” but its more permanent influence +is remarkable on several national occasions. This tract +contributed to hasten the fate of the hapless Charles. +The doctrine of cutting off the heads of kings, “the +whole body being of more authority than the only head,” +was too opportune for the business in hand to be neglected +by the Independents. The first part, licensed by their +licenser, was printed at the charge of the Parliament, disguised +as “Several Speeches delivered at a Conference +concerning the Power of Parliament to proceed against +their King for Misgovernment.” The nine chapters of +the Conference were turned into these nine pretended +speeches!<a name="fa8c44" id="fa8c44" href="#ft8c44"><span class="sp">8</span></a> These furnished the matter of the speech of +Bradshaw at the condemnation of the monarch; and even +Milton, in his “Defence of the English People,” adopted +the doctrines. Never has political pamphlet directed an +event more awful, and on which the destiny of a nation +was suspended. Even an abstract of it served for the +nonce, under the title of “The Broken Succession of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page433" id="page433"></a>433</span> +Crown of England,” at the time that Cromwell was aiming +at restoring the English monarchy in his own person. +It was again renovated in 1681, at the time of agitating +the bill of exclusion against James the Second. I believe +it has appeared in other forms. Nor was the fortune of +“Leicester’s Commonwealth” less remarkable in serving +the designs of a party. It was twice reprinted, in 1641, +as a melancholy picture of a royal favourite, and again, +probably with the same political design, in 1706.</p> + +<p>Parsons’ claim to these two memorable tracts has been +impugned. My ingenious friend Dr. Bliss has referred to +two letters of Dr. Ashton, Master of Jesus College, and +Dean Mosse, on the subject of “Leicester’s Commonwealth,” +which he considers “fully prove” that it was +not the work of Parsons. I give these letters.</p> + +<p class="center ptb1"><i>Dr. Ashton to Dean Mosse.</i></p> + +<p>“There is nothing in the book that favours the Spanish +invasion, and all the treason is only against Leicester. +Parsons has been esteemed the author of it; but I can’t +yet believe that ’twas his, for several reasons.</p> + +<p>“First; there’s nothing in it of the fierce and turbulent +spirit of that Jesuit; but a tender concern for the +Queen and government both in church and state.</p> + +<p>“Secondly; the book makes a papist own that several +of the priests and others were traitors, and often commends +Burleigh, who was the chief persecutor, and ordered +the writing of ‘The Book of Justice,’ &c., which certainly +Parsons would not have done, whose errand into +England not long before was to renew the excommunication +of the Queen, and declare her subjects freed from their +allegiance, nay bound to take up arms against her; +especially since Campian, his brother missionary, was one +of those martyrs, and he himself very narrowly escaped.</p> + +<p>“Thirdly; when Parsons and Campian came into England +in ’80, it was to further the designs of the King of +Spain, and persuade the people that upon the Queen’s forfeiture +he had a right to take possession of her crown. +But there’s nothing looks that way in the book, unless +defending the title of the Queen of the Scots and her son +be writing for the invasion. There was a book written a +little before this, for the Scotch succession, by Lesly, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page434" id="page434"></a>434</span> +bishop of Rosse, under the name of Morgan, even by the +connivance of Queen Elizabeth, as Camden tells us; but +the seminary priests and Jesuits were all upon the Spanish +right by virtue of the Pope’s bull of excommunication; +and upon this foot Parsons afterwards wrote his ‘Andr. +Philopater,’ and ‘Book of Titles,’ in the name of +N. Doleman.</p> + +<p>“Fourthly; I can’t think Parsons capable of writing +this book; for how could a man that from ’75 to his +dying day (bating a few months in the year ’80) lived at +Rome, be able to know all the secret transactions, both in +<i>court</i> and <i>country</i>, in England, which perhaps were mysteries +to all the nation except a few statesmen about the +Queen?</p> + +<p>“Lastly; I can’t believe that Parsons, who was expelled +(or forced to resign his fellowship in Baliol) for his immoralities, +and then pretended to be a physician, and at last +went to Rome and turned Jesuit, would tell that story of +Leicester’s management of the University of Oxford. +There are several other improbabilities.</p> + +<p>“The book seems to be written by a man moderate in +religion (whether Papist or Protestant, I can’t say), but +a bitter enemy to Leicester—one that was intimate with +all the court affairs, and, to cover himself from <i>the bear’s</i> +fury, contrived that this book should come as it were from +abroad, under the name of Parsons.”</p> + +<p class="center ptb1"><i>Dr. Mosse’s Notes on the above Letter.</i></p> + +<p>“First, He points out several facts to show that the +book must have been written at the end of 1584, certainly +between 1583 and ’85, when in ’85 Leicester went general +into Holland, of which there is no mention in the book, +as Drake observes.</p> + +<p>“Secondly, The design. I see nothing in the book relating +to the invasion, the design being to support the title +of the Queen of Scots and her son. Dr. James was the +first who in print affirmed Parsons to be the only author—which +was then in many mouths, that he wrote it from +materials sent him by Burleigh. But as it is not very likely +that Parsons, who lived at Rome, should be acquainted +with all the transactions set down in that book, so ’tis +less probable that Burleigh should pitch upon him for +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page435" id="page435"></a>435</span> +such a work; and I take the report to be grounded only on +a passage in the book that mentions the <i>papers</i> Burleigh +had against Leicester.”</p> + +<p>Dr. Mosse then gives what Wood has written, and +Wood’s inference, that neither Pitts nor Ribadeneira +giving it in the list of his writings is a sufficient argument; +and the doctor concludes—</p> + +<p>“In short, the author is very uncertain; and, for anything +that appears in it, it may as well be a protestant’s +as a papist’s. I should rather think it the work of some +subtle courtier, who for safety got it printed abroad, and +sent into England under the name of Parsons.”<a name="fa9c44" id="fa9c44" href="#ft9c44"><span class="sp">9</span></a></p> + +<p>Allowing these arguments to the fullest extent, they +are not sufficient to disprove the authorship ascribed to +Parsons. The drift and character of this English Jesuit +seem not to have been sufficiently taken in by these critics. +There would certainly be no difficulty in the Jesuit assuming +the mask of a moderate religionist, and a loyal subject; +for the advantage of the disguise, he would even +venture the bold stroke of condemning the martyrs. The +conclusion of Dr. Mosse, that the book might be written +by either a protestant or a papist, betrays its studied +ambiguity. It was usual with the Jesuits to conform to +prevalent opinions to wrestle with them. Sometimes the +Jesuit was the advocate for the dethronement of monarchs, +and at other times urged passive obedience to the right +divine. In truth, it is always impossible to decide on the +latent meaning of the Jesuitic pen. Pascal has exhausted +the argument.</p> + +<p>Dr. Ashton may be mistaken when he asserts that Parsons +and Campian came to England in 1580, to further +the designs of the King of Spain. The policy of the +Roman Catholic party at that moment did not turn on +the Spanish succession; during the life of the Scottish +Mary, the party were all united in one design; it was at +her death, in 1587, that it split into two opposite factions. +At the head of one stood the Jesuit Parsons; in his rage +and despair, having failed to win over the Scottish prince, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page436" id="page436"></a>436</span> +he raised up the claims of the Spanish line, reckless of the +ruin of his country by invasion and internal dissension: +the other party, British at heart, consisting of laymen and +gentlemen, would never concur in the invasion and conquest +of England by a foreign prince. This curious contingency +has been elucidated by our ambassador at the +court of France, Sir Henry Neville, in a letter to Cecil.<a name="fa10c44" id="fa10c44" href="#ft10c44"><span class="sp">10</span></a> +It is therefore quite evident why “the book did not look +<i>that way</i>,” as Dr. Ashton expresses it, and why all Parsons’ +subsequent writings did.</p> + +<p>Dr. Ashton considers it impossible that Parsons, who +lived abroad so much of his lifetime, should be so intimate +with the secret transactions of the court and country of +England. But Parsons kept up a busy communication +with this country. This he has himself incidentally told +us, in his “Memorial for Reformation,” written in 1596; +he says, “I have had occasion, <i>above others</i>, for more than +twenty years, not only to know the state of matters in +England, but also of many foreign nations.” It is recorded +that he received three hundred letters from England +on his Book of Titles. He was very critical in the +history of our great families, and had a taste for personal +anecdote, even to the gossip of the circle. In a remarkable +work which he sent forth under the name of Andreas +Philopater, a Latin reply to the queen’s proclamation, he +describes her ministers as <i>sprung from the earth</i>. Of Sir +Nicholas Bacon, he says that he was an under-butler at +Gray’s Inn; of Lord Burleigh, that his father served +under the king’s tailor, and that his grandfather kept an +alehouse, and that for himself during Mary’s reign he had +always his beads in his hand. In this defamatory catalogue, +the Earl of Leicester is not forgotten: the son of a +duke, the grandson of an esquire, and the great-grandson +of a carpenter; a more flagitious man, a more insolent +tyrant England never knew; <i>never had the Catholics a +more bitter enemy</i>; books, both in the French and the +English language, have exposed his debaucheries, his adulteries, +his homicides, his parricides, his thefts, his rapines, +his perjuries, his oppressions of the poor, his cruelties, his +deceitfulness, and the injuries he did to the Catholic +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page437" id="page437"></a>437</span> +religion, to the public, and to private families. This is +quite a supplement to Leicester’s “Commonwealth,” condensing +all its original spirit.</p> + +<p>That Lord Burleigh should have supplied materials for +this political libel, stands next to an impossibility. One +passage asserts that “the Lord Treasurer hath as much +in his keeping of Leycester’s own hand-writing as is sufficient +to hang him, if he durst present it to her majesty.” +This could only have been a random stroke of the hardy +writer; for were it absolutely true, that sage would never +have entrusted that secret to any man. It would have +been placing his own life in jeopardy. As for the tattle +of the lady who, in delivering a letter from Leicester into +the hands of Lord Burleigh, “at the door of the withdrawing +chamber,” was instructed to drop it in a way +that it might attract the queen’s notice, and induce her +majesty to read it, it surely was not necessary for Lord +Burleigh to communicate this “shift” of Leicester’s practices; +the lady might have deposited this secret manœuvre +in the ear of the faithless courtier who unquestionably +contributed his zealous quota to this Leicesterian Commonwealth.</p> + +<p>With regard to “the Conference,” the Roman Catholic +historian, Dodd, and others, have inclined to doubt whether +Parsons was the author; and their argument is—not an +unusual one with the Jesuits—you cannot prove it, and +he has denied it. Cardinal Allen and Sir Francis Englefield +may have contributed to this learned work, but +Parsons held the pen. It appeared under the name of +Doleman; and it is said that the harmless secular priest +who bore that name fell into trouble in consequence. We +may for once believe Parsons himself, that the name was +chosen for its significance, as “a man of dole,” grieving +for the loss of his country. He has in other writings +continued the initials, N. D., associating his feelings with +these letters. On the same querulous principle, he had +formerly taken that of “John Howlett,” or Owlet. He +fancied such significant pseudonyms, in allusion to his +condition; thus he took that of “Philopater.” He varied +his initials, as well as his fictitious names. He was a +Proteus whenever he had his pen in his hand; Protestant +and Romanist, Englishman and Spaniard.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page438" id="page438"></a>438</span></p> + +<p>It is now, however, too late to hesitate in fixing on the +true parent of these twin-productions; twins they are, +though in the intellectual state twins are not born on the +same day. These productions are marked by the same +strong features; their limbs are fashioned alike; and their +affinity betrays itself, even in their tones. The author +could not always escape from adopting a peculiar phraseology, +or identical expressions, which unavoidably associate +the later with the earlier work, the same in style, in +manner, and in plan. Imitation is out of the question +where there is identity. One pen composed these works, +as they did thirty more.</p> + +<p>The English writings of the Jesuit <span class="sc">Parsons</span> have attracted +the notice of some of our philological critics. +Parsons may be ranked among the earliest writers of our +vernacular diction in its purity and pristine vigour, without +ornament or polish. It is, we presume, Saxon English, +unblemished by an exotic phrase. It is remarkable +that our author, who passed the best part of his days +abroad, and who had perfectly acquired the Spanish and +the Italian languages, and slightly the French, yet appears +to have preserved our colloquial English, from the vicissitudes +of those fashionable novelties which deform the long +unsettled Elizabethan prose. To the elevation of Hooker +his imagination could never have ascended; but in clear +conceptions and natural expressions no one was his superior. +His English writings have not a sentence which to +this day is either obsolete or obscure. Swift would not +have disdained his idiomatic energy. Parsons was admirably +adapted to be a libeller or a polemic.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c44" id="ft1c44" href="#fa1c44"><span class="fn">1</span></a> At Rome there was “The English Hospital,” founded by two of +the kings of our Saxon Heptarchy; a thousand years had consecrated +that small domicile for the English native; but now the emigrants, and +not the pilgrims, of England claimed an abode beneath the papal eye. +It had been a refuge to the fugitives from the days of Henry the Eighth; +subsequently this English Hospital, under the auspices of Cardinal +Allen, assumed the higher title of “The English College at Rome,” +and the Jesuit Parsons closed his days as its rector without attaining to +the cardinalship.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c44" id="ft2c44" href="#fa2c44"><span class="fn">2</span></a> The seminarists were universally revered as candidates of martyrdom.—See +Baronius, “Martyrol.” Rome, 29 Dec. St. Philip Neri, +who lived in the neighbourhood of the English Seminary in Rome, +would frequently stand near the door of the house to view the students +going to the public schools. This saint used to bow to them, and salute +them with the words—“<i>Salvete flores martyrum.</i>”—Plowden’s “Remarks +on Missions of Gregorio Panzani,” Liege, 1794, p. 97.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c44" id="ft3c44" href="#fa3c44"><span class="fn">3</span></a> As Roman Catholics usually interpolate history with miracles, so +we find one here; being assured that the judge, while passing sentence +on Campian, drawing off his glove, found his hand stained with blood, +which he could not wash away, as he showed to several about him who +can witness of it.—Lansdowne MSS., 982, fo. 21.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c44" id="ft4c44" href="#fa4c44"><span class="fn">4</span></a> “Hist. Soc. Jesu.” Pars quinta, Tomus posterior. Auctore Jos. +Juvencio, 1710.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c44" id="ft5c44" href="#fa5c44"><span class="fn">5</span></a> This remarkable incident, in keeping with the rest, was discovered +by Dr. Bliss in a manuscript note on “Leicester’s Ghost,” as communicated +by the page to the writer from his own personal observations.—“Athenæ +Oxon.,” ii. col. 74.</p> + +<p>If this voracious Apicius did not die of a surfeit, the fever might +have been caught from the cordial. The marriage of the Master of the +Horse seems to wind up the story.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c44" id="ft6c44" href="#fa6c44"><span class="fn">6</span></a> See the subsequent article on “<span class="sc">Spenser</span>.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c44" id="ft7c44" href="#fa7c44"><span class="fn">7</span></a> “There is,” continues our author, “a point much to be noted,” +which is, “what men have commonly succeeded in the places of such +as have been deposed?” The successors of five of our deposed monarchs +have been all eminent princes; “John, Edward the Second, Richard +the Second, Henry the Sixth, and Richard the Third, have been succeeded +by the three Henries—the Third, Fourth, and Seventh; and +two Edwards—Third and Fourth.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c44" id="ft8c44" href="#fa8c44"><span class="fn">8</span></a> I have not seen this edition of “The Conference,” or “Speeches,” +but it must assuredly have suffered some mutilations; for Parsons often +puts down some marginal notes which were not suitable to the republicans +of that day. Such, for instance, as these—“A Monarchy the +best Government;” “Miseries of Popular Governments.” Mabbott, +the licenser, must have rescinded such unqualified axioms.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c44" id="ft9c44" href="#fa9c44"><span class="fn">9</span></a> Cole’s MSS., xxx. 129. Cole adds, that Baker, in a manuscript +note upon Pitt’s and Ribadeneira’s silence, observes, “That’s no argument—the +book was a libel, and libels are not mentioned in catalogues +by friends.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft10c44" id="ft10c44" href="#fa10c44"><span class="fn">10</span></a> Winwood’s “Memorials,” vol. i., p. 51.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page439" id="page439"></a>439</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">HOOKER.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">The</span> government of Elizabeth, in the settlement of an +ecclesiastical establishment, had not only to pass through +the convulsive transition of the “old” to the “new religion,” +as it was called at the time; but subsequently it +was thrown into a peculiar position, equally hateful to the +zealots of two antagonist parties or factions.</p> + +<p>The Romanists, who would have disputed the queen’s +title to the crown, were securely circumscribed by their +minority, or pressed down by the secular arm; they were +silenced by penal statutes, or they vanished in a voluntary +exile; and even their martyrs were only allowed to suffer +as traitors. A more insidious adversary was lurking at +home; itself the child of the Reformation, it had been +nourished at the same breast, and had shared in the common +adversity; and this youthful protestantism was lifting +its arm against its elder sister.</p> + +<p>A public event, when it becomes one of the great eras +of a nation, has sometimes inspired one of those “monuments +of the mind,” which take a fixed station in its literature, +addressed to its own, but written for all times. +And thus it happened with the party of the <span class="sc">Mar-prelates</span>; +for these mean and scandalous satirists, and their +abler chiefs, were the true origin of Hooker’s “Ecclesiastical +Polity.” The scandalous pamphlets of the <span class="sc">Mar-prelates</span> +met their fate, crushed by the sharper levity of +more refined wits; the more solemn volumes of their +learned chiefs encountered a master genius, such as had +not yet risen in the nation.</p> + +<p>In the state of the language, and the polemical temper +of these early opposite systems of church, and indeed of +civil government, it was hardly to be expected that the +vindication of the ruling party should be the work of an +elevated genius. The vernacular style was yet imperfectly +moulded, the ear was not yet touched by modulated +periods, nor had the genius of our writers yet extended to +the lucid arrangement of composition; moreover, none had +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page440" id="page440"></a>440</span> +attained to the philosophic disposition which penetrates +into the foundations of the understanding, and appeals to +the authority of our consciousness. On a sudden appeared +this master-mind, opening the hidden springs of eloquence—the +voice of one crying from the wilderness.</p> + +<p>It had been more in the usual course of human affairs, +that the whole controversy of ecclesiastical polity should +have remained in the ordinary hands of the polemics; the +cold mediocrity of the Puritan Cartwright might have +been answered by the cold mediocrity of the Primate +Whitgift. Their quarrel had then hardly passed their own +times; and “the admonition,” and “the apology,” and +all “the replies and rejoinders,” might have been equally +suffered to escape the record of an historian.</p> + +<p>But such was not the issue of this awful contest; and +the mortal combatants are not suffered to expire, for a +master-genius has involved them in his own immortality.<a name="fa1c45" id="fa1c45" href="#ft1c45"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p>The purity and simplicity of Izaak Walton’s own mind +reflected the perfect image of <span class="sc">Hooker</span>; the individualising +touches and the careful statements in that vital biography +seem as if Hooker himself had written his own life.</p> + +<p>We first find our author in a small country parsonage, +at Drayton-Beauchamp, near Aylesbury, in Buckinghamshire; +where a singular occurrence led to his elevation to +the mastership of the Temple.</p> + +<p>Two of his former pupils had returned from their +travels—Sir Edwin Sandys and George Cranmer, men +worthy of the names they bore; for the one became his +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page441" id="page441"></a>441</span> +ardent patron, and the other the zealous assistant in his +great work. Longing to revisit their much-loved tutor, +who did not greatly exceed them in age, they came unexpectedly; +and, to their amazement, surprised their learned +friend tending a flock of sheep, with a Horace in his +hand. His wife had ordered him to supply the absence of +the servant. When released, on returning to the house, +the visitors found that they must wholly furnish their own +entertainment—the lady would afford no better welcome; +but even the conversation was interrupted by Hooker +being called away to rock the cradle. His young friends +reluctantly quit his house to seek for quieter lodgings, +lamenting that his lot had not fallen on a pleasanter parsonage, +and a quieter wife to comfort him after his unwearied +studies. “I submit to God’s will while I daily +labour to possess my soul in patience and peace,” was the +reply of the philosophic man who could abstract his mind +amid the sheep, the cradle, and the termagant.</p> + +<p>The whole story of the marriage of this artless student +would be ludicrous, but for the melancholy reflection that +it brought waste and disturbance into the abode of the +author of the “Ecclesiastical Polity.”</p> + +<p>According to the statutes of his college he had been +appointed to preach a sermon at Paul’s-cross: he arrived +from Oxford weary and wet, with a heavy cold; faint and +heartless, he was greatly agitated lest he should not be +able to deliver his probationary sermon; but two days’ +nursing by the woman of the lodgings recovered our young +preacher. She was an artful woman, who persuaded him +that his constitutional delicacy required a perpetual nurse; +and for this purpose offered, as he had no choice of his +own, to elect for him a wife. On his next arrival she presented +him with her daughter. There was a generosity +in his gratitude for the nursing him for his probationary +sermon, which only human beings wholly abstracted from +the concerns of daily life could possibly display. He +resigned the quiet of his college to be united to a female +destitute alike of personal recommendations and of property. +As an apology for her person, he would plead his +short-sightedness; and for the other, that he never would +have married for any interested motive. Thus, the first +step into life of a very wise man was a folly which was to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page442" id="page442"></a>442</span> +endure with it. The wife of Hooker tyrannized over his +days, and at last proved to be a traitress to his fame.</p> + +<p>The mastership of the Temple was procured for the +humble rector of Drayton-Beauchamp by the recommendation +of his affectionate Edwin Sandys. But not without +regret did this gentle spirit abandon the lowly rectory-house +for “the noise” of the Temple-hall. Hooker required for +his happiness neither elevation nor dignities, but solely a +spot wherein his feeble frame might repose, and his working +mind meditate; solitude to him was a heaven, notwithstanding +his eternal wife Joan!</p> + +<p>Hooker might have looked on the Temple as a vignette +represents the greater picture. The Temple was a copy +reduced of the kingdom, with the same passions and the +same parties. What had occurred between the Archbishop +Whitgift and the Puritan Cartwright, was now opened +between the lecturer and the master of the Temple.</p> + +<p>The Evening Lecturer at the Temple was Walter Travers—an +eminent man, of insinuating manners and of an +irreproachable life. He had been nursed in the presbytery +of Geneva, and was the correspondent of Beza in the +French, and of Knox in the Scottish Church; above all, +Travers was the firm associate of Cartwright, and the consulted +oracle of the English dissenters. He ruled over an +active party of the younger members, and, by insensible +innovations, appears to have there established the new +ecclesiastical commonwealth, which at first consisted of the +most trivial innovations in ceremonies and the most idle +distinctions. Travers was looking confidently to the mastership, +when the appointment of Hooker crossed his ambitious +hopes.</p> + +<p>With the disciples of parity, a free election, and not a +royal appointment, was a first state principle. To preserve +the formality, since he could not yet possess the +reality, Travers suggested to the new master of the +Temple that he should not make his appearance till +Travers had announced his name to the body of the members, +and then he would be admitted by their consent. +To this point in “the new order of things,” the sage +Hooker returned a reasonable refusal. “If such custom +were here established, I would not disturb the order; but +here, where it never was, I might not of my own head +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page443" id="page443"></a>443</span> +take upon me to begin it.” The formality required was, +in fact, a masked principle, which cast a doubt on his right +and on the authority which had granted it. “You conspire +against me,” exclaimed the nonconformist, “affecting +superiority over me;” and condensing all the bitterness +of his mingled religion and politics, he reproached Hooker +that “he had entered on his charge by virtue <i>only of an +human creature</i>, and not by the <i>election of the people</i>.” +With <span class="sc">Travers</span> the people were more than “human creatures;” +the voice of the people was a revelation of +Heaven; this sage probably having first counted his votes. +These were the inconveniences of a transition to a new +political system; the parties did not care to understand +one another. These two good men, for such they were, +now brought into collision, bore a mutual respect, connected +too by blood and friendly intercourse. But in a +religious temper or times, while men mix their own notions +with the inscrutable decrees of Heaven, who shall +escape from the torture of insolvable polemics? Abstruse +points of scholastic theology opened the rival conflict. A +cry of unsound doctrine was heard. “What are your +grounds?” exclaimed <span class="sc">Travers</span>. “The words of St. +Paul,” replied <span class="sc">Hooker</span>. “But what author do you follow +in expounding St. Paul?” Hooker laid a great stress +on reason on all matters which allowed of the full exercise +of human reason. Two opposite doctrines now came from +the same pulpit! The morning and the evening did not +seem the same day. The son of Calvin thundered his +shuddering dogmas; the child of Canterbury was meek +and merciful. If one demolished an unsound doctrine, it +was preached up again by the other. The victor was +always to be vanquished, the vanquisher was always to be +victor. The inner and the outer Temple appeared to be +a mob of polemics.</p> + +<p>Travers was silenced by “authority.” He boldly appealed +to her majesty and the privy council, where he had +many friends. His petition argued every point of divinity, +while he claimed the freedom of his ministry. But there +stood Elizabeth’s “black husband,” as the virgin queen +deigned in her coquetry to call the archbishop. The party +of Travers circulated his petition, which was cried up as +unanswerable; it was carried in “many bosoms:” Hooker +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page444" id="page444"></a>444</span> +was compelled to reply; and the churchmen extolled “an +answer answerless:” the buds of the great work appear +among these sterile leaves of controversy.<a name="fa2c45" id="fa2c45" href="#ft2c45"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p>The absence of Travers from the Temple seemed to be +more influential than even his presence. He had plenteously +sown the seeds of nonconformity, and the soil was +rich. Hooker had foreseen the far-remote event; “Nothing +can come of contention but the mutual waste of the +parties contending, till a common enemy dance in the +ashes of them both.” It must be confessed that Hooker +had a philosophical genius.</p> + +<p>It was amid the disorders around him that the master +of the Temple meditated to build up the great argument +of polity, drawn from the nature of all laws, human and +divine. The sour neglect and systematic opposition of +the rising party of the dissenters had outwearied his +musings. Clinging to the great tome which was expanding +beneath his hand, the studious man entreated to be +removed to some quieter place. A letter to the primate +on this occasion reveals, in the sweetness of his words, his +innate simplicity. He tells that when he had lost the +freedom of his cell at college, yet he found some degree +of it in his quiet country parsonage: but now he was +weary of the noise and opposition of the place, and God +and nature did not intend him for contention, but for +study and quietness. He had satisfied himself in his +studies, and now had begun a treatise in which he intended +the satisfaction of others: he had spent many thoughtful +hours, and he hoped not in vain; but he was not able to +finish what he had begun, unless removed to some quiet +country parsonage, where he might see God’s blessings +spring out of our mother earth, and “eat his own bread in +peace and privacy.”</p> + +<p>The humble wish was obtained, and the great work was +prosecuted.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page445" id="page445"></a>445</span></p> + +<p>In 1594, four books of the “Ecclesiastical Polity” were +published, and three years afterwards the fifth. These +are for ever sanctioned by the last revisions of the author. +The intensity of study wore out a frame which had +always been infirm; and his premature death left his +manuscripts roughly sketched, without the providence of +a guardian.</p> + +<p>These unconcocted manuscripts remained in the sole +custody of the widow. Strange rumours were soon afloat, +and transcripts from Hooker’s papers got abroad, attesting +that in the termination of the “Ecclesiastical Polity,” the +writer had absolutely sided with the nonconformists. The +great work, however, was appreciated of such national importance, +that it was deemed expedient to bring it to the +cognizance of the privy council, and the widow was summoned +to give an account of the state of these unfinished +manuscripts. Consonantly with her character, which we +have had occasion to observe, in the short interval of four +months which had passed since the death of Hooker, this +widow had become a wife. She had at first refused to give +any account of the manuscripts; but now, in a conference +with the archbishop, she confessed that she had allowed +certain puritanic ministers “to go into Hooker’s study and +to look over his writings; and further, that they burned +and tore many, assuring her that these were writings not +fit to be seen.” There never was an examination by the +privy council, for the day after her confession this late +widow of Hooker was found dead in her bed. A mysterious +coincidence! The suspected husband was declared +innocent, so runs the tale told by honest Izaac +Walton.</p> + +<p>These manuscripts were now delivered up to the archbishop, +who placed them in the hands of the learned Dr. +Spenser to put into order; he was an intimate friend +of Hooker, and long conversant with his arguments. +However, as this scholar was deeply occupied in the +translation of the Bible, he entrusted the papers to a +student at Oxford, Henry Jackson, a votary of the departed +genius.</p> + +<p>On the decease of Dr. Spenser, the manuscripts of +Hooker were left as “a precious legacy” to Dr. King, +bishop of London, in 1611. They were resigned with the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page446" id="page446"></a>446</span> +most painful reluctance by the speculative and ingenious +student to whom they had been so long entrusted, that he +looked on them with a parental eye, having transcribed +them and put many things together according to his idea +of the system of Hooker.<a name="fa3c45" id="fa3c45" href="#ft3c45"><span class="sp">3</span></a> During the time the manuscripts +reposed in the care of the bishop of London, an +edition of the five books of the “Ecclesiastical Polity,” +with some tractates and sermons, was published in 1617;<a name="fa4c45" id="fa4c45" href="#ft4c45"><span class="sp">4</span></a> +had Dr. King thought that these manuscripts were in a +state fitted for publication, he would have doubtless completed +that edition. He died in 1621, and the manuscripts +were claimed by Archbishop Abbot for the Lambeth +library.</p> + +<p>Again, in 1632, the five undoubted genuine books were +reprinted. Laud, then archbishop of Canterbury, attracted +probably by this edition, examined the papers—he +was startled by some antagonist principles, and left the +phantom to sleep in its darkness; whether some doctrines +which broadly inculcate <i>jure divino</i> were touches from the +Lambeth quarter, or whether the interpolating hand of +some presbyter had insidiously turned aside the weapon, +the conflicting opinions could not be those of the judicious +Hooker.</p> + +<p>But their fate and their perils had not yet terminated; +the episcopalian walls of Lambeth were no longer an +asylum, when the manuscripts of Hooker were to be +grasped by the searching hands and heads of Prynne and +Hugh Peters, by a vote of the Commons! At this critical +period the sixth and eighth books were given to the world, +announced as “a work long expected, and now published +according to the most authentique copies.” We are told +of six transcripts with which this edition was collated. It +is perplexing to understand when these copies got forth, +and how they were all alike deficient in the seventh book, +which the setter forth of this edition declares to be irrecoverable. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page447" id="page447"></a>447</span> +After the Restoration, Dr. Gauden made an +edition of Hooker; in the dedication to the king he offers +the work as “now augmented and I hope completed, with +the three last books, so much desired and so long concealed.” +This remarkable expression indicates some doubt +whether he possessed the perfect copies, nor does he inform +us of the manner in which he had recovered the lost +seventh book. The recent able editor of the works of +Hooker favours its genuineness by internal evidence, notwithstanding +it bears marks of hasty writing; but he irresistibly +proves that the sixth book is wholly lost, that +which is named the sixth being never designed as a part +of the “Ecclesiastical Polity.”</p> + +<p>Both the great parties are justly entitled to suspect one +another; a helping hand was prompt to twist the nose of +wax to their favourite shape; and the transcripts had +always omissions, and we may add, commissions. Some +copies of the concluding book asserted that “Princes on +earth are only accountable to Heaven,” while others read +“to the people.” We perceive the facility of such slight +emendations, and may be astonished at their consequences; +but we need not question the hands which furnished the +various readings. When we recollect the magnificent +entrance into the work, we must smile at the inconclusive +conclusion, the small issue from so vast an edifice. “Too +rigorous it were that the breach of human law should be +held a deadly sin. A mean there is between extremities, +<i>if so be that we can find it out</i>.” Never was the <i>juste +milieu</i> suggested with such hopeless diffidence. Such was +not the tone, nor could be the words, of our eloquent and +impressive <span class="sc">Hooker</span>. From the first conception of his +system, his comprehensive intellect had surveyed all its +parts, and the intellectual architecture was completed +before the edifice was constructed. This admirable secret +in the labour of a single work, on which many years were +to be consumed, our author has himself revealed to us; a +secret which may be a lesson. “I have endeavoured that +every former part might give strength unto all that follow, +and every latter bring some light unto all before; so that +if the judgments of men do but hold themselves in suspense, +as touching the first more general meditations, till +in order they have perused the rest that ensue, what may +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page448" id="page448"></a>448</span> +seem dark at the first will afterwards be found more plain, +even as the latter particular decisions will appear, I doubt +not, more strong, when the other have been read before.”<a name="fa5c45" id="fa5c45" href="#ft5c45"><span class="sp">5</span></a> +Here we have an allusion to a noble termination of his +system.</p> + +<p>This great work of Hooker strictly is theological, but +here it is considered simply as a work of literature and +philosophy. The first book lays open the foundations of +law and order, to escape from “the mother of confusion +which breedeth destruction. The lowest must be knit to +the highest.” We may read this first book as we read the +reflections of Burke on the French revolution; where what +is peculiar, or partial, or erroneous in the writer does not +interfere with the general principles of the more profound +views of human policy. And it is remarkable that during +the anarchical misrule of France, when all governments +seemed alike unstable, some one who had not wholly lost +his senses among those raving politicians, published separately +this <i>first book of Ecclesiastical Polity</i>; a timely +admonition, however, alas! timeless! I was not surprised +to find classed among “Legal Bibliography” the works of +Hooker.</p> + +<p>The fate of those controversies which in reality admit +of no argument, is singularly exemplified in the history +of this great work. These are the controversies where +the parties apparently going the same course, and intent +on the same object, but impelled by opposite principles, +can never unite; like two parallel lines, they may run on +together, but remain at the same distance, though they +should extend themselves to infinity. Opposite propositions +are assigned by each party, or from the same premises +are educed opposite inferences. In the present case +both parties inquired after a model for church-government; +there was none! Apostolical Christianity had hardly left +the old synagogue. Hooker therefore asserted that the +form of church-government was merely a human institution +regulated by laws; and that laws were not made for +private men to dispute, but to obey. The nonconformist +urged the Protestant right of private judgment and a +satisfied conscience. Hooker, alarmed at this irruption of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page449" id="page449"></a>449</span> +schisms, to maintain established authority, or rather supremacy, +was driven to take refuge in the very argument +which the Romanist used with the Protestant.</p> + +<p>The elaborate preface of Hooker is a tract of itself; it is +the secret history of nonconformity, and of the fiery +Calvin. Yet was it from positions here laid down that +James the Second declared that it was one of the two +books which sent him back to the fold of Rome. It is not +therefore surprising that when a part was eagerly translated +by an English Romanist to his Holiness, who had +declared that “he had never met with an English book +whose writer deserved the name of an author!”—so low +then stood our literature in the eyes of the foreigner,—that +the Pope perceived nothing anti-papal in the eloquent +advocate of established authority, while he was deeply +struck at the profundity of the genius of “a poor obscure +English priest;” and the bishop of Rome exclaimed, +“There is no learning that this man has not searched into; +nothing too hard for his understanding, and his books will +get reverence by age.” Our James the First, who it must +be allowed was no ordinary judge of polemics, on his +arrival in England inquired after Hooker, and was informed +that his recent death had been deeply lamented by the +queen. “And I receive it with no less sorrow,” observed +the new English monarch, “for I have received more +satisfaction in reading a leaf in Mr. Hooker than I have +had in large treatises by many of the learned: many +others write well, but yet in the next age they will be +forgotten.”</p> + +<p>The attestations of his Holiness and our James the +First, to some of my readers, may appear very suspicious. +They are, however, prophetic; and this is an evidence that +the “Ecclesiastical Polity” must contain principles more +deeply important than those which might more particularly +have been grateful to these regal critics. Our sage, +it is true, has not escaped from a severer scrutiny, and has +been taxed as “too apt to acquiesce in all ancient tenets.” +What was transitory, or what was partial, in this great +work, may be subtracted without injury to its excellence or +its value. Hooker has written what posterity reads. The +spirit of a later age, progressive in ameliorating the imperfect +condition of all human institutions, must often return +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page450" id="page450"></a>450</span> +to pause over the first book of “Ecclesiastical Polity,” +where the master-genius has laid the foundations and +searched into the nature of all laws whatever. <span class="sc">Hooker</span> +is the first vernacular writer whose classical pen harmonised +a numerous prose. While his earnest eloquence, freed +from all scholastic pedantry, assumed a style stately in its +structure, his gentle spirit sometimes flows into natural +humour, lovely in the freshness of its simplicity.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c45" id="ft1c45" href="#fa1c45"><span class="fn">1</span></a> When our literary history was only partially cultivated, the readers +of Hooker were often disturbed amidst the profound reasonings of +“The Ecclesiastical Polity,” by frequent references to volumes and +pages of T. C. The editors of Hooker had thrown no light on these +mysterious initials. Contemporaries are not apt to mortify themselves +by recollecting that what is familiar to them may be forgotten by the +succeeding age. Sir John Hawkins, a literary antiquary, drew up a +memoir which explains these initials as those of Thomas Cartwright, +and has correctly arranged the numerous tracts of the whole controversy. +But Hawkins having consigned this accurate catalogue to +“The Antiquarian Repertory,” it could be little known; and Beloe, +in his “Anecdotes of Literature,” vol. i., transcribing the entire +memoir of Hawkins, <i>verbatim</i>, without the slightest acknowledgment, +obtains a credit for original research. Beloe is referred to for this +<i>authentic</i> information by Burnet, in his “Specimens of English Prose-Writers.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c45" id="ft2c45" href="#fa2c45"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Both these papers of Travers and Hooker are preserved in Hooker’s +Works. Many curious points are discussed by Hooker with admirable +reasoning. The divinity of Hooker, who is the firm advocate of legal +authority, is enlightened and tolerant; while Travers, who advocated +unrestrained personal freedom, is in his divinity narrow and merciless. +He sees only “the Elect,” and he casts human nature into the flames +of eternity.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c45" id="ft3c45" href="#fa3c45"><span class="fn">3</span></a> “A studious and cynical person, who never expected or desired +more than his small preferment. He was a great admirer of Richard +Hooker, and collected some of his small treatises.”—<i>Athenæ +Oxonienses.</i></p> + +<p><a name="ft4c45" id="ft4c45" href="#fa4c45"><span class="fn">4</span></a> Anthony Wood has said it contained all the eight books, (followed +by General Dictionary and Biographia Britannica,) and accused Gauden +of pretending to publish three books for the first time in 1662.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c45" id="ft5c45" href="#fa5c45"><span class="fn">5</span></a> “Ecclesiastical Polity,” book First.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page451" id="page451"></a>451</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">SIR PHILIP SIDNEY.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Were</span> I another Baillet, solely occupied in collecting the +“<i>jugemens des sçavans</i>”—the decisions of the learned—the +name of Sir Philip Sidney would bring forth an awful +crash of criticism, rarely equalled in dissonance and confusion.</p> + +<p>He who first ventured to pronounce a final condemnation +on “<span class="sc">The Arcadia</span>” of Sir <span class="sc">Philip Sidney</span> as a “tedious, +lamentable, pedantic, pastoral romance,” was Horace +Walpole;—a decision suited to the heartlessness which +wounded the personal qualities of an heroic man, the pride +of a proud age. Have modern critics too often caught the +watchword when given out by an imposing character? +The irregular Hazlitt honestly confides to us, in an agony +of despair, that “Sir Philip Sidney is a writer for whom I +cannot acquire a taste,” tormented by a conviction that a +taste should be acquired. The peculiar style of this critic +is at once sparkling and vehement, antithetical and metaphysical. +The volcano of his criticism heaves; the short, +irruptive periods clash with quick repercussion; the lava +flows over his pages, till it leaves us in the sudden darkness +of an hypercriticism on “the celebrated description of +the ‘Arcadia.’”</p> + +<p>Gifford, once the Coryphæus of modern criticism, whose +native shrewdness admirably fitted him for a partisan, both +in politics and in literature, did not deem Walpole’s depreciation +of Sidney “to be without a certain degree of +justice; the plan is poor, the incidents trite, the style +pedantic.” But our prudential critic harbours himself in +some security by confessing to “some nervous and elegant +passages.”</p> + +<p>At our northern Athens, the native coldness has touched +the leaves of “The Arcadia” like a frost in spring. The +agreeable researcher into the history of fiction confesses +the graceful beauty of the language, but considers the whole +as “extremely tiresome.” Another critic states a more +alarming paroxysm of criticism, that of being “lulled to +sleep over the interminable ‘Arcadia.’”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page452" id="page452"></a>452</span></p> + +<p>What innocent lover of books does not imagine that +“The Arcadia” of Sidney is a volume deserted by every +reader, and only to be classed among the folio romances of +the Scuderies, or the unmeaning pastorals whose scenes +are placed in the golden age? But such is not the fact. +“Nobody, it is said, reads ‘The Arcadia;’ we have known +very many persons who read it, men, women, and children, +and never knew one read it without deep interest and admiration,” +exclaims an animated critic, probably the poet +Southey.<a name="fa1c46" id="fa1c46" href="#ft1c46"><span class="sp">1</span></a> More recent votaries have approached the +altar of this creation of romance.</p> + +<p>It may be well to remind the reader that, although this +volume, in the revolutions of times and tastes, has had the +fate to be depreciated by modern critics, it has passed +through fourteen editions, suffered translations in every +European language, and is not yet sunk among the refuse +of the bibliopolists. “The Arcadia” was long, and it may +still remain, the haunt of the poetical tribe. <span class="sc">Sidney</span> was +one of those writers whom Shakespeare not only studied +but imitated in his scenes, copied his language, and transferred +his ideas.<a name="fa2c46" id="fa2c46" href="#ft2c46"><span class="sp">2</span></a> <span class="sc">Shirley</span>, <span class="sc">Beaumont</span> and <span class="sc">Fletcher</span>, +and our early dramatists turned to “<span class="sc">The Arcadia</span>” as +their text-book. Sidney enchanted two later brothers in +<span class="sc">Waller</span> and <span class="sc">Cowley</span>; and the dispassionate Sir <span class="sc">William +Temple</span> was so struck by “The Arcadia,” that he found +“the true spirit of the vein of ancient poetry in Sidney.” +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page453" id="page453"></a>453</span> +The world of fashion in Sidney’s age culled their phrases +out of “The Arcadia,” which served them as a complete +“Academy of Compliments.”</p> + +<p>The reader who concludes that “The Arcadia” of Sidney +is a pedantic pastoral, has received a very erroneous +conception of the work. It was unfortunate for Sidney +that he borrowed the title of “The Arcadia” from Sannazaro, +which has caused his work to be classed among +pastoral romances, which it nowise resembles; the pastoral +part stands wholly separated from the romance itself, and +is only found in an interlude of shepherds at the close of +each book; dancing brawls, or reciting verses, they are +not agents in the fiction. The censure of pedantry ought +to have been restricted to the attempt of applying the +Roman prosody to English versification, the momentary +folly of the day, and to some other fancies of putting verse +to the torture.</p> + +<p>“The Arcadia” was not one of those spurious fictions +invented at random, where an author has little personal +concern in the narrative he forms.</p> + +<p>When we forget the singularity of the fable, and the +masquerade dresses of the actors, we pronounce them to +be real personages, and that the dramatic style distinctly +conveys to us incidents which, however veiled, had +occurred to the poet’s own observation, as we perceive +that the scenes which he has painted with such precision +must have been localities. The characters are minutely +analyzed, and so correctly preserved, that their interior +emotions are painted forth in their gestures as well as +revealed in their language. The author was himself the +tender lover whose amorous griefs he touched with such +delicacy, and the undoubted child of chivalry he drew; +and in these finer passions he seems only to have multiplied +himself.</p> + +<p>The manners of the court of Elizabeth were still +chivalric; and Sidney was trained in the discipline of +those generous spirits whom he has nobly described as +men of “high-erected thoughts seated in a heart of +courtesy.” Hume has censured these “affectations, conceits, +and fopperies,” as well became the philosopher of +the Canongate; but there was a reality in this shadow of +chivalry. Amadis de Gaul himself never surpassed the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page454" id="page454"></a>454</span> +chivalrous achievements of the Earl of Essex; his life, +indeed, would form the finest of romances, could it be +written. He challenged the governor of Corunna to +single combat for the honour of the nation, and proposed +to encounter Villars, governor of Rouen, on foot or on +horseback. And thus run his challenge:—“I will maintain +the justice of the cause of Henry the Fourth of +France, against the league; and that I am a better man +than thou, and that my mistress is more beautiful than +thine.” This was the very language and the deed of one +of the Paladins. It was this spirit, fantastic as it may +appear to us, which stirred Sidney, when Parsons the +Jesuit, or some one who lay concealed in a dark corner of +the court, sent forth anonymously the famous state-libel +of “Leicester’s Commonwealth.” To the unknown libeller +who had reflected on the origin of the Dudleys, that “the +Duke of Northumberland was not born a gentleman,” +Sir Philip Sidney, in the loftiest tone of chivalry, designed +to send a cartel of defiance. Touched to the quick in any +blur in the <i>Stemmata Dudleiana</i>, which, it is said, occupied +the poet Spenser when under the princely roof of Leicester, +Sidney exclaims, “I am a Dudley in blood, that +Duke’s daughter’s son; my chief honour is to be a +Dudley, and truly am I glad to have cause to set forth the +nobility of that blood; none but this fellow of invincible +shamelessness could ever have called so palpable a matter in +question.” He closed with the intention of printing at +London a challenge which he designed all Europe to witness. +“Because that thou the writer hereof doth most +falsely lay want of gentry to my dead ancestors, I say +that thou therein liest in thy throat, which I will be +ready to justify upon thee in any place of Europe where +thou wilt assign me a free place of coming, as within +three months after the publishing thereof I may understand +thy mind. And this which I write, I would send +to thine own hands if I knew thee; but I trust it cannot +be intended that he should be ignorant of this printed in +London, who knows the very whisperings of the Privy-chamber.”<a name="fa3c46" id="fa3c46" href="#ft3c46"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page455" id="page455"></a>455</span></p> + +<p>We, who are otherwise accustomed to anonymous +libels, may be apt to conclude that there was something +fantastical in sending forth a challenge through all +Europe:—we, who are content with the obscure rencontre +of a morning, and with the lucky chance of an exchange +of shots.</p> + +<p>The narrative of “The Arcadia” is peculiar; but if the +reader’s fortitude can yield up his own fancy to the feudal +poet, he will find the tales diversified. Sidney had traced +the vestiges of feudal warfare in Germany, in Italy, and in +France; those wars of petty states where the walled city +was oftener carried by stratagem than by storm, and +where the chivalrous heroes, like champions, stepped forth +to challenge each other in single combat, almost as often +as they were viewed as generals at the head of their +armies. Our poet’s battles have all the fierceness and the +hurry of action, as if told by one who had stood in the +midst of the battle-field; and in his “shipwreck,” men +fight with the waves, ere they are flung on the shore, as if +the observer had sat on the summit of a cliff watching +them.</p> + +<p>He describes objects on which he loves to dwell with a +peculiar richness of fancy; he had shivered his lance in +the tilt, and had managed the fiery courser in his career; +that noble animal was a frequent object of his favourite +descriptions; he looks even on the curious and fanciful +ornaments of its caparisons; and in the vivid picture of +the shock between two knights, we see distinctly every +motion of the horse and the horseman.<a name="fa4c46" id="fa4c46" href="#ft4c46"><span class="sp">4</span></a> But sweet is +his loitering hour in the sunshine of luxuriant gardens, or +as we lose ourselves in the green solitudes of the forests +which most he loves. His poetic eye was pictorial; and +the delineations of objects, both in art and nature, might +be transferred to the canvas.</p> + +<p>There is a feminine delicacy in whatever alludes to the +female character, not merely courtly, but imbued with +that sensibility which St. Palaye has remarkably described +as “full of refinement and fanaticism.” And this may +suggest an idea not improbable, that Shakespeare drew his +fine conceptions of the female character from Sidney. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page456" id="page456"></a>456</span> +Shakespeare solely, of all our elder dramatists, has given +true beauty to woman; and Shakespeare was an attentive +reader of “The Arcadia.” There is something, indeed, in +the language and the conduct of Musidorus and Pyrocles, +two knights, which may startle the reader, and may be +condemned as very unnatural and most affected. Their +friendship resembles the love which is felt for the beautiful +sex, if we were to decide by their impassioned conduct +and the tenderness of their language. Coleridge observed +that the language of these two friends in “The +Arcadia” is such as we would not now use, except to women; +and he has thrown out some very remarkable observations.<a name="fa5c46" id="fa5c46" href="#ft5c46"><span class="sp">5</span></a> +Warton, too, has observed, that the style of +friendship between males in the reign of Elizabeth would +not be tolerated in the present day; sets of sonnets, in a +vein of tenderness which now could only express the most +ardent affection for a mistress, were then prevalent.<a name="fa6c46" id="fa6c46" href="#ft6c46"><span class="sp">6</span></a> +They have not accounted for this anomaly in manners by +merely discovering them in the reigns of Elizabeth and +James. It is unquestionably a remains of the ancient +chivalry, when men, embarking in the same perilous enterprise +together, vowed their mutual aid and their personal +devotion. The dangers of one knight were to be +participated, and his honour to be maintained, by his brother-in-arms. +Such exalted friendships, and such interminable +affections, often broke out both in deeds and +words which, to the tempered intercourse of our day, +offend by their intensity. A male friend, whose life and +fortune were consecrated to another male, who looks on +him with adoration, and who talks of him with excessive +tenderness, appears to us nothing less than a chimerical +and monstrous lover! It is certain, however, that in the +age of chivalry, a Damon and Pythias were no uncommon +characters in that brotherhood.</p> + +<p>It is the imperishable diction, the language of Shakespeare, +before Shakespeare wrote, which diffuses its enchantment +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page457" id="page457"></a>457</span> +over “The Arcadia;” and it is for this that it +should be studied; and the true critic of Sidney, because +the critic was a true poet, offers his unquestioned testimony +in Cowper—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p><span class="sc">Sidney, warbler of poetic prose!</span></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">Even those playful turns of words, caught from Italian +models, which are usually condemned, conceal some subtility +of feeling, or rise in a pregnant thought.<a name="fa7c46" id="fa7c46" href="#ft7c46"><span class="sp">7</span></a> The intellectual +character of Sidney is more serious than volatile; +the habits of his mind were too elegant and +thoughtful to sport with the low comic; and one of the +defects of “The Arcadia” is the attempt at burlesque +humour in a clownish family. Whoever is not susceptible +of great delight in the freshness of the scenery, the luxuriant +imagery, the graceful fancies, and the stately periods +of “The Arcadia,” must look to a higher source than criticism, +to acquire a sense which nature and study seem to +deny him.</p> + +<p>I have dwelt on the finer qualities of “The Arcadia;” +whenever the volume proves tedious, the remedy is in the +reader’s own hands, provided he has the judgment often to +return to a treasure he ought never to lose.</p> + +<p>It is indeed hardly to be hoped that the volatile +loungers over our duodecimos of fiction can sympathise +with manners, incidents, and personages which for them +are purely ideal—the truth of nature which lies under the +veil must escape from their eyes; for how are they to +grow patient over the interminable pages of a folio, unbroken +by chapters, without a single resting-place?<a name="fa8c46" id="fa8c46" href="#ft8c46"><span class="sp">8</span></a> And +I fear they will not allow for that formal complimentary +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page458" id="page458"></a>458</span> +style, borrowed from the Italians and the Spaniards, which +is sufficiently ludicrous.</p> + +<p>The narrative too is obstructed by verses, in which +Sidney never obtained facility or grace. Nor will the defects +of the author be always compensated by his beauties, +for “The Arcadia” was indeed a fervent effusion, but +an uncorrected work. The author declared that it was +not to be submitted to severer eyes than those of his beloved +sister, “being done in loose sheets of paper, most of +it in her presence, the rest by sheets sent as fast as they +were done.” The writer, too, confesses, to “a young +head having many fancies begotten in it, which, if it had +not been in some way delivered, would have grown a +monster, and more sorry might I be that they came in, +than they gat out.” So truly has Sidney expressed the +fever of genius, when working on itself in darkness and in +doubt—absorbing reveries, tumultuous thoughts, the +ceaseless inquietudes of a soul which has not yet found a +voice. Even on his death-bed, the author of “The +Arcadia” desired its suppression; but the fame her noble +brother could contemn was dear to his sister, who published +these loose papers without involving the responsibility +of the writer, affectionately calling the work, +“The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia;” and this volume +of melodious prose, of visionary heroism, and the pensive +sweetness of loves and friendships, became the delight of +poets.</p> + +<p>There is one more work of Sidney, perhaps more generally +known than “The Arcadia”—his “Defence of +Poetry.” Lord Orford sarcastically apologised, in the +second edition of his “Royal and Noble Authors,” for his +omission of any notice of this production. “I had forgotten +it,” he says; and he adds, “a proof that I at least +did not think it sufficient foundation for so high a character +as he acquired.” It was a more daring offence to +depreciate this work of love, than the romance which at +least lay farther removed from the public eye. The +“Defence of Poetry” has had, since the days of Walpole, +several editions by eminent critics. Sidney, in this luminous +criticism, and effusion of poetic feeling, has introduced +the principal precepts of Aristotle, touched by the +fire and sentiment of Longinus; and, for the first time in +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page459" id="page459"></a>459</span> +English literature, has exhibited the beatitude of criticism +in a poet-critic.</p> + +<p>Sir <span class="sc">Philip Sidney</span> assuredly was one of the most admirable +of mankind, largely conspicuous in his life, and +unparalleled in his death. But was this singular man +exempt from the frailties of our common nature? If we +rely on his biographer Zouch, we shall not discover any; +if we trust to Lord Orford, we shall perceive little else. +The truth is, that had Sidney lived, he might have grown +up to that ideal greatness which the world adored in +him; but he perished early, not without some of those +errors of youth, which even in their rankness betrayed the +generous soil whence they sprung. His fame was more +mature than his life, which indeed was but the preparation +for a splendid one. We are not surprised, that to such an +accomplished knight the crown of Poland was offered, and +that all England went into mourning for their hero. We +discover his future greatness, if we may use the expression, +in the noble termination of his early career, rather +than in the race of glory which he actually ran. The life +of Sidney would have been a finer subject for the panegyric +of a Pliny, than for the biography of a Plutarch; +his fame was sufficient for the one, while his actions were +too few for the other.<a name="fa9c46" id="fa9c46" href="#ft9c46"><span class="sp">9</span></a></p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c46" id="ft1c46" href="#fa1c46"><span class="fn">1</span></a> “Annual Review,” iv. 547.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c46" id="ft2c46" href="#fa2c46"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Who does not recognise a well-known passage in <span class="sc">Shakespeare</span>, +copied too by <span class="sc">Coleridge</span> and <span class="sc">Byron</span>, in these words of <span class="sc">Sidney</span>—“More +sweet than a gentle south-west wind which comes creeping over +flowery fields and shadowed waters in the extreme heat of summer.” +Such delightful diction, which can only spring out of deep poetic emotion, +may be found in the poetic prose of Sidney.</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>“Oh, it came o’er my ear like the sweet south,</p> +<p class="i05">That breathes upon a bank of violets,</p> +<p class="i05">Stealing and giving odour.”—</p> + +<p class="i10">Shaks. <i>Twelfth Night</i>, act 1, sc. i.</p> + +<p class="s">“And sweeter than the gentle south-west wind,</p> +<p class="i05">O’er willowy meads and shadow’d waters creeping,</p> +<p class="i05">And Ceres’ golden fields.”—</p> + +<p class="i10">Coleridge’s <i>First Advent of Love</i>.</p> + +<p class="s">“Breathing all gently o’er his cheek and mouth,</p> +<p class="i05">As o’er a bed of violets the sweet south.”—</p> + +<p class="i12"><i>Don Juan</i>, canto 2, verse 168.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><a name="ft3c46" id="ft3c46" href="#fa3c46"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Sidney alludes to all that secret history of Leicester which Parsons +the Jesuit pretends to disclose in his “Leicester’s Commonwealth.” This +challenge was found among the Sidney papers, but probably was not issued.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c46" id="ft4c46" href="#fa4c46"><span class="fn">4</span></a> See “The Arcadia,” p. 267; eighth edition, 1633.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c46" id="ft5c46" href="#fa5c46"><span class="fn">5</span></a> See Coleridge’s “Table-Talk,” ii. 178.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c46" id="ft6c46" href="#fa6c46"><span class="fn">6</span></a> Richard Barnfielde’s “Affectionate Shepherd” forms such a collection +of sonnets which were popular. The poet bewails his unsuccessful +love for a beautiful youth, yet professing the chastest affection. +Poets, like mocking-birds, repeat the notes of others, till the cant becomes +idle, and the fashion of style obsolete.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c46" id="ft7c46" href="#fa7c46"><span class="fn">7</span></a> A lady who has become enamoured of the friend who is pleading +for her lover, and suddenly makes the fatal avowal to that friend, thus +expresses her emotion—“Grown bolder or madder, or bold with madness, +I discovered my affection to him.” “He left nothing unassayed +to disgrace himself, to grace his friend.”—p. 39.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c46" id="ft8c46" href="#fa8c46"><span class="fn">8</span></a> In the late Mr. Heber’s treasures of our vernacular literature there +was a copy of “The Arcadia,” with manuscript notes by Gabriel +Harvey. He had also divided the work into chapters, enumerating the +general contents of each.—“Bib. Heberiana,” part the first. A republication +of this copy—omitting the continuations of the Romance by a +strange hand, and all the eclogues, and most of the verses—would +form a desirable volume, not too voluminous.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c46" id="ft9c46" href="#fa9c46"><span class="fn">9</span></a> This summary of the character of Sidney I wrote nearly thirty +years ago, in the “Quarterly Review.”</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page460" id="page460"></a>460</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">SPENSER.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Though</span> little is circumstantially related, yet frequent +outbreakings, scattered throughout the writings of Spenser, +commemorate the main incidents of his existence. +His emotions become dates, and no poet has more fully +confided to us his “secret sorrows.”</p> + +<p>Spenser in the far north was a love-lorn youth when he +composed “The Shepherd’s Calendar.” This rustic +poem, rustic from an affectation of the Chaucerian style, +though it bears the divisions of the twelve months, displays +not the course of the seasons so much as the course +of the poet’s thoughts; the themes are plaintive or recreative, +amatorial or satirical, and even theological, in +dialogues between certain interlocutors. To some are +prefixed Italian mottoes; for that language then stamped +a classical grace on our poetry. In the eclogue of January +we perceive that it was still the season of hope and favour +with the amatory poet, for the motto is, <i>Anchora Speme</i> +(“yet I hope”); but in the eclogue of June we discover +<i>Gia Speme Spenta</i> (“already hope is extinguished”). A +positive rejection by Rosalind herself had for ever mingled +gall with his honey, and he ungenerously inveighs against +the more successful arts of a hated rival. Rosalind was +indeed not the Cynthia of a poetic hour: deep was the +poet’s first love; and that obdurate mistress had called him +“her Pegasus,” and laughed at his sighs.</p> + +<p>It was when the forlorn poet had thus lost himself in +the labyrinth of love, and “The Shepherd’s Calendar” had +not yet closed, that his learned friend Harvey, or, in his +poetical appellative, Hobbinol, to steal him away from the +languor of a country retirement, invited him to southern +vales, and with generous warmth introduced “the unknown” +to Sir Philip Sidney. This important incident in +the destiny of Spenser has been carefully noted by a person +who conceals himself under the initials E. K., and who is +usually designated as “the old commentator on ‘The +Shepherd’s Calendar.’” This E. K. is a mysterious personage, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page461" id="page461"></a>461</span> +and will remain undiscovered to this day, unless +the reader shall participate in my own conviction.</p> + +<p>“The Shepherd’s Calendar” was accompanied by a +commentary on every separate month; and this singularity +of an elaborate commentary in the first edition of the +work of a living author was still more remarkable by the +intimate acquaintance of the commentator with the +author himself. E. K. assures us, and indeed affords +ample evidence, that “he was privy to all his (the poet’s) +designs.” He furnishes some domestic details which no +one could have told so accurately, except he to whom they +relate; and we find our commentator also critically conversant +with many of the author’s manuscripts which the +world has never seen. Rarely has one man known so +much of another. The poet and the commentator move +together as parts of each other. In the despair of conjecture +some ventured to surmise that the poet himself had +been his own commentator. But the last editor of Spenser +is indignant at a suggestion which would taint with +strange egotism the modest nature of our bard. Yet +E. K. was no ordinary writer; an excellent scholar he was, +whose gloss has preserved much curious knowledge of +ancient English terms and phrases. We may be sure that +a pen so abundant and so skilfully exercised was not one +to have restricted itself to this solitary lucubration of his +life and studies. The commentary, moreover, is accompanied +by a copious and erudite preface, <i>addressed to +Gabriel Harvey</i>, and the style of these pages is too remarkable +not to be recognised. At length let me lift the +mask from this mysterious personage, by declaring that +E. K. is Spenser’s dear and generous friend Gabriel Harvey +himself. I have judged by the strong peculiarity of +Harvey’s style; one cannot long doubt of a portrait +marked by such prominent features. Pedantic but energetic, +thought pressed on thought, sparkling with +imagery, mottled with learned allusions, and didactic with +subtle criticism—this is our Gabriel! The prefacer describes +the state of our bardling as that of “young birds +that be nearly crept out of their nest, who, by little, first +prove their tender wings before they make a greater +flight. And yet our new poet flieth as a bird that in time +shall be able to keep wing with the best.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page462" id="page462"></a>462</span></p> + +<p>From this detection, we may infer that the Commentary +was an innocent <i>ruse</i> of the zealous friend to overcome +the resolute timidity of our poet.<a name="fa1c47" id="fa1c47" href="#ft1c47"><span class="sp">1</span></a> His youthful +muse, teeming with her future progeny, was, however, +morbidly sensible in the hour of parturition. Conscious +of her powers, thus closes the address “To his Booke:”—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>And when thou art past jeopardie,</p> +<p>Come tell me what was said of me,</p> +<p>And I will send more after thee.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>After several editions, the work still remained anonymous, +and the unnamed poet was long referred to by +critics of the day only as “the late unknown poet,” or +“the gentleman who wrote ‘The Shepherd’s Calendar.’”</p> + +<p>In Sir Philip Sidney the youthful poet found a youthful +patron. The shades of Penshurst opened to leisure and +the muse. “The Shepherd’s Calendar” at length concluded, +“The Poet’s Year” was dedicated to “Maister +Philip Sidney, worthy of all titles, both of learning and +chivalry.” Leicester, the uncle of Sidney, was gained, and +from that moment Spenser entered into a golden servitude.</p> + +<p>The destiny of Spenser was to be thrown among courtiers, +and to wear the silken trammels of noble patrons—a +life of honourable dependence among eminent personages. +Here a seductive path was opened, not easily scorned by +the gentle mind of him whose days were to be counted by +its reveries, and the main business of whose life was to be +the cantos of his “Faery Queen.”</p> + +<p>Of the favours and mortifications during his career of +patronage, and of his intercourse with the court, too little +is known; though sufficient we shall discover to authenticate +the reality of his complaints, the verity of his strictures, +and all the flutterings of the sickening heart of him +who moves round and round the interminable circle of +“hope deferred.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page463" id="page463"></a>463</span></p> + +<p>Our poet was now ascending the steps of favouritism; +and the business of his life was with the fair and the +great. He looked up to the smiles of distinguished ladies, +for to such is the greater portion of his poems dedicated. +If her Majesty gloried in “The Faery Queen,” we are +surprised to find that the most exquisite of political +satires, “Mother Hubbard’s Tale,” should be addressed +to the Lady Compton and Monteagle; that “The Tears +of the Muses” were inscribed to Lady Strange; and that +“The Ruins of Time” are dedicated to the Countess of +Pembroke. For others, their nuptials were graced by the +music of his verse, or their sorrows were soothed by its +elegiac tenderness.<a name="fa2c47" id="fa2c47" href="#ft2c47"><span class="sp">2</span></a> In the Epithalamion on his own +marriage, the poet reminds</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>The sacred sisters who have often times</p> +<p>Been to the aiding others to adorn,</p> +<p>Whom ye thought worthy of your graceful rymes,</p> +<p>That even the greatest did not greatly scorn</p> +<p>To hear their names sung in your simple lays,</p> +<p>But joyed at their praise.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>“The Tears of the Muses,” as one of his plaintive +poems is called, had possibly been spared had the poet +only moved among that bevy of ladies whose names are +enshrined in his volumes, around the Queen, whose royalty +so frequently rises with splendour in his verse. Unawares, +perhaps, the gentle bard discovered that personal attachments +by cruel circumstances were converted into political +connexions; that a favourite must pay the penalty of +favouritism; and that in binding himself more closely to +his patrons, he was wounded the more deeply by their +great adversary; and in gaining Sidney, Leicester, and +Essex, Spenser was doomed to feel the potent arm of the +scornful and unpoetic Burleigh.</p> + +<p>The Queen was the earliest and the latest object of our +poet’s musings. “The Maiden Queen” enters into almost +every poem. Shortly after the publication of “The Shepherd’s +Calendar,” wherein her Majesty occupies the month +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page464" id="page464"></a>464</span> +of April, Spenser, in writing to Harvey, has this remarkable +passage:—“Your desire to hear of my late being with her +Majesty must die in itself.” By this ambiguous reply, it +is, however, evident that Harvey, and probably Spenser +himself, had looked forwards, by the intervention of his +great patrons, that “the unknown poet,” as he is called +by “the old commentator,” would have been honoured by +an interview with the royal poetess. Elizabeth, among +her princely infirmities, had the ambition of verse. She +was afterwards saluted as</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>A peerless prince and peerless poetess,</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">by Spenser, who must, however, have closed his ear at her +harsher numbers.<a name="fa3c47" id="fa3c47" href="#ft3c47"><span class="sp">3</span></a> We may regret that we know so little +of our Spenser’s intercourse with the Queen. If Sidney +made him known to her Majesty, as Philips has told, the +poet might have read to the Queen the earlier cantos of +his romantic epic. The poet himself has only recorded +that “The Shepherd of the Ocean,” Sir Walter Raleigh, +brought him into the presence of Cynthia, “The Queen +of the Ocean,” who</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i2">To his oaten pipe inclined her ear,</p> +<p>And it desired, at timely hours, to hear.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The Lord Treasurer Burleigh seems to have marred +those “timely hours.” Spenser had lingered before the +fountain of court favour; and how often the dark shadow +of the political minister intervened between the poet and +the throne we are reminded by the deep sensitiveness of +the victim, the murmurs, and even the scorn of the indignant +bard.</p> + +<p>Under the patronage of Leicester, the poet’s services +were transferred to Lord Arthur Grey, the Lord-Lieutenant +of Ireland, who appointed Spenser his secretary. +He has vindicated this viceroy’s administration in the +“Faery Queen,” by shadowing forth his severe justice in +Arthegal, accompanied by his “Iron Man,” whose iron +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page465" id="page465"></a>465</span> +flail “threshed out falsehood” in their quest of Ierne, in +that “Land of Ire” where justice and the executioner +were ever erratic.</p> + +<p>Of the brief life of the poet, his better years were consumed +in Ireland, where he filled several appointments +more honourable than lucrative. His slender revenue +seems not to have flourished under a grant of land from +the crown, on the conditions attached to it in 1585.<a name="fa4c47" id="fa4c47" href="#ft4c47"><span class="sp">4</span></a> +Cast into active service, the musings of the “Faery +Queen” were assuredly often thrown aside; its fate was +still dubious, for Ireland was not a land of the muses, +as he himself declared, when a chance occurrence, the +visit of Rawleigh to that country, gave Spenser another +Sidney. The “Faery Queen” once more opened its mystical +leaves on the banks of the Mulla, before a judge, +whose voice was fame.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>And when he heard the music that I made,</p> +<p>He found himself full greatly pleased at it;</p> +<p>He gan to cast great liking to my lore,</p> +<p>And great disliking to <i>my luckless lot,</i></p> +<p><i>That banish’d had myself, like wight forlore,</i></p> +<p><i>Into that waste where I was quite forgot</i>.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">Spenser has here disclosed involuntarily “the secret +sorrow.”</p> + +<p>The acres of Kilcolman offered no delights to “the +wight forlore, forgotten in that waste.” Our tender and +melancholy poet was not blessed with that fortitude which, +even in a barren solitude, can muse on its own glory, as +Petrarch and Rousseau were wont, and which knows also +to value a repose freed from spiteful rivalries and mordacious +malignity. And now opened his tedious suings at +court, for what, but to obtain some situation in his native +home, which offered repose of mind, and carelessness of the +future? We know of his restless wanderings to England, +and his constant returns to Ireland. We find the poet, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page466" id="page466"></a>466</span> +in 1590, wearied by solicitations, throwing out the immortal +lines so painfully descriptive of</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>What hell it is in suing long to bide.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">It was in this year that the first three books of the romantic +epic were published, which was followed by the +grant of a pension in February, 1591. But five years +afterwards the poet still remains the same querulous +court-suitor; the miserable man wasting his days and his +nights; for then he tells us in his “Prothalamion,” how +on a summer’s day he</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Walk’d forth to ease his pain,</p> +<p>Along the shore of silver-streaming Thames.</p> +<p>————————I whose sullen care,</p> +<p>Through discontent of my long fruitless stay</p> +<p>In princes’ court, and expectation vain</p> +<p>Of idle hopes which still do fly away,</p> +<p>Like empty shadows, to afflict my brain.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>When this was written Spenser had possessed the lands +of Kilcolman more than ten years, and held his pension. +Were the lands profitless, and the pension still to be solicited? +The poet has only perpetuated his “secret sorrows;” +his pride or his delicacy has thrown a veil over them. He +has sent down to posterity his disappointments, without +alluding to the nature of his claims.</p> + +<p>It was in 1597 that Spenser laid before the Queen his +memorable “View of the State of Ireland.” This state-memorial +still makes us regret that our poet only wrote +verse; there is a charm in his sweet and voluble prose, a +virgin grace which we have long lost in the artificial +splendour of English diction. Here is no affectation of +Chaucerian words; the gold is not spotted with rust. The +vivid pictures of the poet; the curiosity of the antiquary; +and above all, a new model of policy of the practical politician, +combine in this inestimable tract. Spenser suggested +that the popular hero of that day, his noble friend the Earl +of Essex, would be more able to conciliate popular favour in +Ireland. By an alternate policy, from that day to the present, +has our government tried to rule that fair “Land of +Ire,” either by a Lord Grey’s severity of justice—the +Arthegal, accompanied by his “iron man,” with his “iron +flail;” or by the generous graciousness of an Earl of Essex, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page467" id="page467"></a>467</span> +courting popularity: but neither would serve; the more +quiet wisdom lay in colonization, happily begun, and so +fatally neglected. The powerful eloquence of the poet and +the secretary attracted the Queen’s attention. She recommended +Spenser to the Irish Council to be Sheriff of Cork; +again was “the wight forlore” sent back to his undesired +locality; yet now, perhaps, honours and promotion were +awaiting the “miserable man.” The royal letter was +dated in September, and in the following month, suddenly, +the Irish insurrection broke out. The flight of Spenser +and his family from the Castle of Kilcolman was momentous—perhaps +they witnessed the flames annihilating their +small wealth. Spenser himself lost more than wealth; +for the father beheld the sacrifice of his child, and the +author was bereaved of all his manuscripts, now lost or +scattered—his hopes, his pride, and his fame! He flew to +England, not to live, but to experience how this last stroke +of fortune went beyond the force of his own passionate +descriptions, or of his nature to endure. In an obscure +lodging, and within three short months, the most sensitive +of men, broken-hearted, closed his eyes in mute grief, +and in a premature death; Spenser perished at the zenith +of human life.</p> + +<p>Curiosity has been excited to learn the occasion of the +inveterate prejudice of an insensible Lord Treasurer against +a tender poet, who had courted his favour. This hostility +of “the mighty peer” seems not to have broken forth +openly till the publication of the first three books of the +“Faery Queen;” for all the poet’s personal allusions to +Burleigh were written shortly after that event.</p> + +<p>Can so small a creature as a poet when it creeps into +the sphere of a jealous statesman’s policy draw on itself +his hateful attention? Are crafty politicians in office like +richly-laden travellers who start at a crossing shadow? +Burleigh possessed the full confidence of his sovereign +from her youth; but she was a woman subject to caprices, +and would call her ancient friend and servant “an old +fool.” Burleigh was fearfully jealous of two potent rivals—the +Earl of Leicester and the Earl of Essex; these +“men of arms,” the patrons of Spenser, were each subsequently +the head of the opposition to the pacific administration +of the Lord Treasurer.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page468" id="page468"></a>468</span></p> + +<p>“The sage old sire,” moreover, well knew the romantic +self-idolatry of his royal mistress; her infirmity of poetical +susceptibility; her avidity of poignant flatteries on her +beauty, her chastity, and even on her verse. Her Majesty +was now in the ascension of that glorified beatitude, the +“Faery Queen;” and this transfiguration was the work of +him whom he held to be a creature of his great rivals!</p> + +<p>We are interested to detect the vacillating conduct of the +poet to the implacable statesman. Spenser accompanied +his presentation copy of the “Faery Queen” to the Lord-Treasurer +with a sonnet, in which he humiliated the muse +before his great court-enemy—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>On whose mighty shoulders most doth rest</p> +<p>The burden of this kingdom’s government,</p> +<p>Unfitly I these idle rimes present,</p> +<p>The labour of lost time and wit unstay’d.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>If Spenser had complained of former cold neglect, now +he had to endure, what a poet can never forgive, bitter +disdain.</p> + +<p>Wounded in spirit, the poet composed, immediately +after the first appearance of the “Faery Queen,” “The +Ruins of Time;” there, eulogising the departed Sir Francis +Walsingham for his love of learning and care of “men of +arms,” he launches forth a thunderbolt against the wary +and frigid Burleigh—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i1">For he that now wields all things at his will,</p> +<p>Scorns one and th’ other, in his deeper skill.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>And he repeats the accusation in “Mother Hubbard’s +Tale”—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Oh, grief of griefs! Oh, gall of all good hearts!</p> +<p>To see that virtue should despised be</p> +<p>Of him, that first was raised for vertuous parts;</p> +<p>And now, broad spreading like an aged tree,</p> +<p>Lets none shoot up that nigh him planted be.</p> +<p>Oh, let the man by whom the Muse is scorn’d,</p> +<p>Nor alive nor dead be of the Muse adorn’d.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>We have, too, a more finished portrait of an evil <i>minister</i> +who “lifted up his lofty towers,”</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>That they begin to threat the neighbour sky;</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">in which unquestionably we find some of the deformities +of Burleigh’s political physiognomy.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page469" id="page469"></a>469</span></p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i3">He no count made of nobility;</p> +<p>The realm’s chief strength and girlond of the crown—</p> +<p>He made them dwell in darkness of disgrace,</p> +<p>For none but whom he list might come in place.</p> +<p>Of men of armes he had but small regard,</p> +<p>But kept them low, and strained very hard;</p> +<p>For men of learning little he esteem’d,</p> +<p>His wisdome he above their learning deem’d.</p> +<p>As for the rascal commons least he cared,</p> +<p>For not so common was his bounty shared.</p> +<p>Let God, said he, if please care for the manie,</p> +<p>I for myself most care before else anie.</p> +<p>Yet none durst speak, ne none durst of him plaine,</p> +<p>So great he was in grace, and rich through gaine.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The gentle bard of the “Faery Queen” now sate down +to continue his great work; but haunted by this spectral +and iron-eyed monster of an unpatronising minister, he +actually violates the solemnity of his theme by opening +with another recollection, so fatal to his own repose:—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>The rugged forehead that, with grave foresight,</p> +<p>Welds kingdoms, causes, and affairs of state,</p> +<p>My looser rimes I wote doth sharply wite,</p> +<p>For praising love as I have done of late.</p> +<p>Such ones ill judge of love, that cannot love,</p> +<p>Ne in their frozen heart feel kindly flame.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">But the minister could not banish him from the sovereign:—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>To such therefore I do not sing at all,</p> +<p>But to that Sacred Saint, my sovereign Queen;</p> +<p>To her I sing of love that loveth best,</p> +<p>And best is loved.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>About the same time Spenser had written “The Tears +of the Muses,” where, expressing a poet’s wish that the +royal palaces of Eliza should be filled with</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>————Praises of divinest wits,</p> +<p>Who her eternize with their heavenly writs,</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">I suspect that Burleigh figures again among</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>——————The salvage brood,</p> +<p>Who, having been with acorns always fed,</p> +<p>Can no whit cherish this celestial food;</p> +<p>But, with base thoughts, are unto blindness led,</p> +<p>And kept from looking on the lightsome day.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>After these indignant effusions, Spenser in proceeding +with the “Faery Queen” tergiversated in his feelings. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page470" id="page470"></a>470</span> +The poet had shadowed with some tenderness the calamities +of the Scottish Mary, in the gentle characters of +Amoret and Florizel. Yielding to political changes, the +Queen of Scots is suddenly horribly transformed into the +false Duessa. For the honour of the poet we may concede +that he partook of those party-passions which great statesmen +know to raise up at will, and which never fail to influence +contemporaries. Burleigh never paused till he laid +the head of Mary on the block.<a name="fa5c47" id="fa5c47" href="#ft5c47"><span class="sp">5</span></a> In the fifth book of +the “Faery Queen” the poet has exhibited the trial of +this state victim, and has made her sister-sovereign gracefully +conceal tears which possibly were never shed; but +who could expect that “the rugged forehead”—him whom +he had denounced that “alive or dead” should by “the +muse be ever scorned”—should appear with all the dignity +of wisdom!</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>The sage old Sire, that had to name</p> +<p>The kingdom’s care, with a white silver head,</p> +<p>That many high regards and reasons ’gainst her read.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The poet did worse as he advanced in his work, for in +the sixth book he absolutely denies that it was his intention +in any of his “former writs” to reflect on “this +mighty peer.” To what “former writs” Spenser alludes +is not clear. The matchless picture of the fruitless days +of a court-expectant in “Mother Hubbard’s Tale,” which +many of my readers may have by heart, is supposed to +have been represented to Lord Burleigh by “backbiters” +as a censure on him; it was an immortal one! and the application +was easy.</p> + +<p>It was after the appearance of the “Faery Queen” that +Elizabeth, economical as were her bounties, sealed her +delight by a permanent pension. Was it on this occasion +that the remonstrance of the prudential Lord Treasurer +diminished by half its amount? “All this for a song!” +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page471" id="page471"></a>471</span> +exclaimed Burleigh. “Then give him what is reason,” +rejoined the Queen. The words were remembered by the +bard, but the royal command lay neglected at the exchequer. +On a progress Spenser reminded her Majesty, by +a petition, in the smallest space that ever suitor presented +one, and in a style of which it was not easy to forget a +word.<a name="fa6c47" id="fa6c47" href="#ft6c47"><span class="sp">6</span></a> The Lord Treasurer got reprimanded, and the poet +present payment. We cannot avoid associating the anecdote +with these lines—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>To have thy Prince’s grace, yet want her Peer’s;</p> +<p>To have thy asking, yet wait many years.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>We may now close with Burleigh; but much remains to +be developed in the fortunes of a court-suitor, as we trace +them in the history of our Spenser. The coldness of the +Lord Treasurer may not have been the only cause of the +poet’s deep and constant laments. The sojourner in the +circle of a court may be mortified not only by its repulse +or its neglect, but also by the capricious favour of his +patron. A devotion of service may provoke offence, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page472" id="page472"></a>472</span> +whether it be from zeal too improvident, from officiousness +too busy, or from an ingenuousness too open. He is +thrown into a position in which he must preserve silence, +and cannot always hope for pardon.</p> + +<p>One incident of this nature deeply affected our poet in +his intercourse with Lord Leicester. We only discover it +by a remarkable dedicatory sonnet to his translation of +Virgil’s “Gnat.” Had the poet not decided that the +mysterious tale should reach posterity, he would not have +published the sonnet several years after it was composed, +for it is dedicated “to the deceased lord!” The poet has +energetically described the delicacy and difficulty of the +position into which he had been cast.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p><i>Wrong’d, yet not daring to express my pain</i></p> +<p>To you, good lord! the causer of my care,</p> +<p>In cloudy tears my case <i>I thus complain</i></p> +<p><i>Unto yourself, that only privy are</i>.</p> +<p>But if that any Œdipus, unware,</p> +<p>Shall chance, through power of some divining spright,</p> +<p>To read <i>the secret of this riddle rare</i>,</p> +<p>And know the purport of my evil plight;</p> +<p>Let him rest pleased with his own insight,</p> +<p>Ne further seek to gloze upon the text;</p> +<p><i>But grief enough it is to grieved wight,</i></p> +<p><i>To feel hit fault</i>, and not be further vext.</p> +<p>But what so by myself may not be shown,</p> +<p>May by this Gnat’s complaint be easily known.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The Gnat of Virgil, observing a serpent in the act of +darting on a sleeping swain, stings the eye of the sleeper; +starting at the pain, the disturbed man crushes the gnat, +but, thus awakened, he saves himself from the crested +serpent. The poem turns on the remonstrance of the +ghost of the gnat, which had no other means than by inflicting +its friendly sting to warn him of his peril who had +thus hastily deprived it of its own innocent existence. +What was “the serpent,” and why the poet was hardly +used as “the gnat,” and why he was</p> + +<p class="center f90 ptb1">Wrong’d, yet not daring to express his pain,</p> + +<p class="noind">and yet “grieved to feel <i>his fault</i>,” is “a riddle rare,” +supposed to require some Œdipus of secret history to solve. +The moral is obvious. The character of the royal favourite +may give rise to many suggestions; but if I may venture +a conjecture on what the parties themselves “were only +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page473" id="page473"></a>473</span> +privy to,” Spenser had touched on some high matter, +where his affectionate zeal, however sagacious, on this occasion +hurt the pride of Leicester—too haughty or too +mortified to be lessoned by his familiar dependant, who, +like the gnat, found that his timely warning was “his +fault.”</p> + +<p>A sage of the antiquarian school imagined that he could +solve the enigma of Spenser’s sorrows, by arranging, with +dates and accounts of salaries, the official situations which +the poet held. To remove the odium attached to Burleigh’s +prepossessions against the poet, he assumes that +without the Lord Treasurer’s consent Spenser could not +have received his lands or his pensions. But the royal +grant of the forfeited lands was obviously the reward for +his conduct, suggested by those under whose eye he had +served: the patronage of Sidney and the Lords Leicester +and Grey may be imagined to have greatly outweighed +any cavils of Burleigh. George Chalmers infers that all +the complaints of the poet are “too highly coloured, <i>if +they really were complaints respecting himself</i>!” and concludes +that all the poet’s querulousness must be ascribed, +not to Burleigh, but to the Irish rebellion. But the +calamity of the Irish rebellion occasioned no complaints +from the poet—only his death! for we have not a line by +Spenser during the short interval which elapsed between +his flight from Ireland and his decease in London.</p> + +<p>It was not by an estimate of salaries and an arrangement +of dates, which yield no result, but by a statement +of feelings, in which the “secret sorrows” of Spenser lie +concealed, that we can decide on the real source of his +continued complaints. The poet must be judged by the +habits of his mind, and by those interior conflicts which +are often unconnected with those external circumstances +open to common observers. Of all the tuneful train +Spenser was the most poetical in the gentlest attributes of +the poet. That robust force which the enterprise of active +life demands was not lodged in that soul of tenderness; +and worldly cares, like that cancer in the breast which the +sufferer hides from others, dejected the fancy which at all +times was working ceaselessly among its bright creations. +His vein was inexhaustible, and we have lost perhaps more +than we possess of his writings. The author of “The +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page474" id="page474"></a>474</span> +Faery Queen” required above all things leisure and the +muse. His first steppings into life were auspicious. To +Sir Philip Sidney he had opened the first cantos of his +romantic epic; the catastrophe of that poet-hero made +our poet a mourner all his days. There was no substitute +for a congenial patron: all other patrons could be but the +very statues of patronage, cold representatives of the departed, +but no longer the bosom companion of the poet’s +thoughts, and the generous arbiter of his fortunes.</p> + +<p>In his last days Spenser has not dropped even one +“melodious tear;” but he was wept by his brothers the +poets, who held his pall and bestrewed his hearse with +their elegies, and beheld in the fate of their great master +their own. And thus truly, though ambiguously, Phineas +Fletcher described his destiny—</p> + +<p class="center f90 ptb1">Poorly, poor man! he lived; poorly, poor man! he died.</p> + +<p>So many living details of that golden bondage into +which our poet was thrown, from his earliest to his latter +days, discover the real source of his “secret sorrows”—his +unceasing and vain solicitation at court, the suitor of so +many patrons; the <i>res angusta domi</i> perpetually pressed +on the morbid imagination of the fortuneless man.</p> + +<p>I know of no satire aimed at <span class="sc">Spenser</span>; a singular fate +for a great poet: even “satyric Nash” revered the character +of the author of “The Faery Queen.” I have often +thought that among the numerous critics of <span class="sc">Spenser</span>, the +truest was his keen and witty contemporary; for this +town-wit has stamped all our poet’s excellences by one +felicitous word—“<span class="sc">Heavenly Spenser</span>.”</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c47" id="ft1c47" href="#fa1c47"><span class="fn">1</span></a> A strange personage has been fixed on as the commentator. Spenser +lodged with a Mrs. Kerke, where his parcels were directed. E. K. has +been conjectured to be Mr. Kerke, her husband!</p> + +<p>It is a proof of the deficient skill of the modern editors of Spenser, +Hughes and Aikin, that they have omitted the curious and valuable +Commentary of E. K. It has been judiciously restored to the last +and best edition, by Mr. Todd. The woodcuts might also have been +preserved.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c47" id="ft2c47" href="#fa2c47"><span class="fn">2</span></a> These complimentary sonnets, evidently composed “for the nonce,” +are not the happiest specimens in our language of these minor poems, no +more than they are of the real genius of Spenser. I have seen a +German reprint, consisting <i>only</i> of Spenser’s Sonnets, by the learned +Von Hammer. Foreign critics often startle one by their fancies on +English poetry.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c47" id="ft3c47" href="#fa3c47"><span class="fn">3</span></a> We have several printed specimens of her Majesty’s poetry, which +does not want for elevation of thought; but to compose poetry with +the energy of her prose, deprived her Majesty of all the grace and +melody of verse. I have been informed, on the best authority, that +Elizabeth exercised her poetical pen more voluminously than we have +hitherto known, for that there exists a manuscript volume of her Majesty’s +poems in that rich repository of State-papers—the Hatfield Collection.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c47" id="ft4c47" href="#fa4c47"><span class="fn">4</span></a> Three thousand acres of dilapidated estates of the Earl of Desmond. +The receivers of these grants were called “The Undertakers,” as they +were bound to bring the lands into cultivation, which, after the ravages +of fire and sword, consisted of tenantless farms and a wasted soil. Sir +Walter Rawleigh had a grant of twelve thousand acres, which he probably +found profitless, for he made them over at a low rate to the +Boyle family.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c47" id="ft5c47" href="#fa5c47"><span class="fn">5</span></a> I have been favoured with the sight of several manuscript letters +of Burleigh, in the possession of a gentleman in the neighbourhood +of Taunton, which relate to this critical period. They remarkably +display the eager and remorseless decision of Burleigh. Messengers +were sent off three or four times in a day, countermanding the former +command, as the mind of Elizabeth vacillated, disconcerting the plans +of the minister. The order “to cut off her head” is given with the +most revolting minuteness.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c47" id="ft6c47" href="#fa6c47"><span class="fn">6</span></a> This petition in rhyme is well known—</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>“I was promised on a time,</p> +<p class="i05">To have reason for my rhime;</p> +<p class="i05">From that time unto this season,</p> +<p class="i05">I received nor rhime nor reason.”</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>Mr. Todd deems the anecdote apocryphal, because he can only retrace +it to Fuller, who published it seventy years after the incident recorded, +assigning no authority. Honest Fuller has, however, given a tolerable +authority for such a sort of thing, namely, that it was “a story commonly +<i>told</i> and <i>believed</i>.” There could be no motive for any one to +invent the circumstance and the pleasantry, gratuitously to ascribe it +to the poet. Mr. Todd is pleased to call “the numbers magical,” +and decides on this “ridiculous memorial”—a criticism fatal to all +the playfulness of genius. Were the “Rhimes” not good enough for +the nonce, and “the Reason” amusingly convenient to be remembered?</p> + +<p>The anecdote is only deficient in its date, and possibly may relate to +some former donation before the pension was fixed. Edward Phillips +gives the large sum of five hundred pounds—another version of the +same story; and he wrote about the same time. What remains inexplicable +is, that this pension to Spenser seems to have been wholly +unknown to his contemporaries—to Camden and to others—who wrote +subsequently. The grant of this pension was only discovered a few +years ago in the Chapel of the Rolls. The pension was only for fifty +pounds; but the value of money makes the royal gift more decent than +at first it would seem.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page475" id="page475"></a>475</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE FAERY QUEEN.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Spenser,</span> the courtly spectator of the tilt, the pageant, +and the masque—musing over the tome of old Gothic +romances, and striking into the vein of fabling of Italian +poesy, whose novelty had nearly supplanted the ancient +classics—was at once <span class="sc">Ariosto</span> and <span class="sc">Tasso</span> and <span class="sc">Ovid</span>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Spenser</span> composed with great facility; incessant production +seems to have been his true existence. His was +one of those minds whose labour diffuses their delight, and +whose delight provokes to labour. He seems always to be +in earnest, and sometimes in haste, for he had much to +work. While composing the “Faery Queen,” he had that +concurrent poem of the regal Arthur, of no inferior <i>calibre</i>, +ever in his mind. The “Faery Queen” would have contained, +had it been completed, not much under a hundred +thousand verses. The “Iliad” does not exceed fifteen. +He seems to have been satisfied with his first unblotted +thoughts. He has defects which might have proved fatal +to an ordinary versifier; but his voluminous vein lies protected +by his genius.</p> + +<p>The artificial complexity of his nine-lined stanza put +him to many shifts; he exercised arbitrary power in shortening +words or lengthening syllables, and hardily invented +novel terminations to common words, to provide his multiplicity +of rhymes; he falsified accentuation, to adapt it to +his metre, and violated the orthography, to adjust the +rhyme. He dilated his thoughts to fill up the measure of +his stanza; and we are too often reminded of the hammering +of the chain. The first book of the “Faery Queen,” +when the difficulties of this novel stanza must have been +most arduous, is necessarily composed with most care, and, +both for subject and execution, is of itself a complete poem. +As Spenser acquired facility and dexterity, his pen winged +its flight through the prescribed labyrinth of sweet sounds.</p> + +<p>His exquisite ear had felt the melody of the vowelly and +voluble stanza of Italy, and to which he even added a +grace of his own by a new measure, in the Alexandrine +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page476" id="page476"></a>476</span> +close. This verse had been introduced by Sir Thomas +Wyatt with no great effect; it was adroitly adopted by +Spenser to give a full cadence to his stanza. Dryden, in +its occasional use, professedly derived it from Spenser, and +seems to have carried away the honour, when Pope in +exemplifying its solemn effect ascribes it to the latter poet, +who he tells us had taught—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>——————The full-resounding line,</p> +<p>The long majestic march and energy divine.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The inanity of that race—</p> + +<p class="center f90 ptb1">Of gentlemen who wrote with ease,</p> + +<p class="noind">and made such free use of “the full-resounding line,” +void of all thought, only betrayed their barrenness by this +additional extension of their weakness. Hence it incurred +the partial censure of our great poetical critic, as “a needless +Alexandrine,”</p> + +<p class="center f90 ptb1">That like a wounded snake drags its slow length along.</p> + +<p>But the soul of melody lies hidden in the musician’s +instrument; and the Spenserian stanza, to be felt, must +find its echo in the ear of the reader. A master in the +art of versification was struck by our poet’s modulation, so +musical was his ear in the rhythm of his verse. He remarked +this in those two delicious pieces, “The Prothalamion,” +a spousal hymn on the double marriage of two +ladies, personated as two swans in these harmonious lines—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>——————Two swans of goodly hue,</p> +<p>Came softly swimming down along the Lee;<a name="fa1c48" id="fa1c48" href="#ft1c48"><span class="sp">1</span></a>—</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">and “The Epithalamium” on the poet’s own nuptials, or, +as the poet notes—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Song made in lieu of many ornaments,</p> +<p>With which my Love should duely have been deck’d.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>One feature in Spenser’s versification seems to have +escaped notice, although Warton has expressly written a +dissertation on that subject. It is Spenser’s discreet use +of <i>alliteration</i>; never obtrusive, but falling naturally into +the verse, it may escape our perception while it is acting +on our feeling. Unconsciously or by habit, his ear became +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page477" id="page477"></a>477</span> +the echo of his imagination; sound was the response of +thought, and, as much as his epithets, scattered the “orient +hues” of his fancy. Alliteration and epithets, which with +mechanical versificators are a mere artifice, because only +an artifice, and glare and glitter, charm by their consonance +when they rise out of the emotions of the true poet.<a name="fa2c48" id="fa2c48" href="#ft2c48"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p>Some persons have been deterred from venturing on the +“Faery Queen” from a notion that the style had rusted +with time, and is as obsolete as chivalry itself. This +popular prejudice has been fostered by an opinion of Ben +Jonson, which probably referred chiefly to “The Shepherd’s +Calendar,” where Spenser had adopted a system of +Chaucerian words, which to us is more curious than fortunate, +and which on the first publication required a glossary. +This system he abandoned in his romantic epic; but he +loved to sprinkle some remaining graces of antiquity, some +<i>naïve</i> expressions, or some picturesque words; and his +modern imitators, amid their elaborate pomp, have felt the +secret charm, and have mottled their Spenserian stanza +with these archaisms.</p> + +<p>Of all poets <span class="sc">Spenser</span> excelled in the pictorial faculty. +His circumstantial descriptions are minute yet vivid. +They are, indeed, exuberant, for he loved not to quit his +work while he could bring the object closer to the eye. +This diffusion, flowing with the melody of his verse, often +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page478" id="page478"></a>478</span> +raises the illusion of reverie till we seem startled by reality, +and we appear to have beheld what only we have been +told.<a name="fa3c48" id="fa3c48" href="#ft3c48"><span class="sp">3</span></a> Poet of poets! <span class="sc">Spenser</span> made a poet at once of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page479" id="page479"></a>479</span> +<span class="sc">Cowley</span>, and once lent an elegant simplicity to <span class="sc">Thomson</span>. +<span class="sc">Gray</span> was accustomed to open Spenser when he would +frame</p> + +<p class="center f90 ptb1">Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn;</p> + +<p class="noind">and <span class="sc">Milton</span>, who owned Spenser to have been his master +as well as his predecessor, lingered amid his musings, and +with many a Spenserian image touched into perfection his +own sublimity.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page480" id="page480"></a>480</span></p> + +<p>In associating the name of <span class="sc">Spenser</span> with <span class="sc">Milton</span> and +<span class="sc">Gray</span>, we are reminded of the distinctness of his poetic +faculty, and the difference of his personal character. +Spenser, tender, elegant, and fanciful, rarely participated +in their condensed energies or the severity of their greatness; +the personal character of our courtly poet was +moulded by his position in society.</p> + +<p>When we float along the stream of his melodious song, +conscious only of its beauty, we do not often pause at +elevations which raise the feeling of the sublime. Such +daring visions, when they do rise on us, rather indicate the +power of his genius than the habit of his mind. Our +gentle Spenser was often satisfied with rivalling without +surpassing his originals, which Milton and Gray ever did +when they copied. It seems, therefore, unreasonable to +assert that Spenser has combined the daring sternness of +Dante with the wild fantasy of Goethe. Yet their lofty +creations have not gone beyond those of Spenser’s personifications +of Despair—of Fear—of Confusion—of Astonishment—of +laborious Care, that workman in his smithy, +living amid the unceasing strokes of his perpetual hammers—or +of Jealousy, from a mortal man metamorphosed with +Ovidean fancy: his single eye, for he had long worn out +the other, never could be closed; no slumber could press +down those restless lids; tenant of a cavern, listening day +and night to the roaring billows incessantly beating his +abode, threatening with its huge ruins to fall on the +wretch wasting in self-torments, till, nothing left of him, +he vanished into a flitting aëry sprite—</p> + +<p class="center f90 ptb1">Forgot he was a Man, and <span class="sc">Jealousy</span> is hight.<a name="fa4c48" id="fa4c48" href="#ft4c48"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> + +<p>There are two sublime descriptions of <span class="sc">Night</span> which +may be read together. In the one she is the</p> + +<p class="center f90 ptb1">Sister of heavie Death, and nurse of Woes!</p> + +<p class="noind">and elsewhere she appears as</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>That most ancient Grandmother of all,</p> +<p>Older than Jove——</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="sc">Night</span> befriending Deceit and Shame, takes one of their +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page481" id="page481"></a>481</span> +daughters, the witch Duessa, in her “pitchy mantle;” +yoking her coal-black steeds to her iron waggon, they +penetrate to the inferior regions, bearing a mortal caitiff +to be <i>restored</i> to this wicked life—“the messenger of +death” passing over the earth, the screeching owl, the +baying dogs, the howling wolf, warn of the witch’s presence; +and in hell the trembling ghosts stand</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Chattering with iron teeth, and staring wide</p> +<p>With stonie eyes—and flock’d on every side</p> +<p>To gaze on <span class="sc">Earthly Wight</span> that with the <span class="sc">Night</span> durst ride.<a name="fa5c48" id="fa5c48" href="#ft5c48"><span class="sp">5</span></a></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The sublime fragment on “Mutability,” where Nature +is viewed seated mysteriously amid the creation, has not +been excelled by the most philosophical poets.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Great Nature ever young, yet full of eld,</p> +<p>Still moving, yet immoved from her sted;</p> +<p>Unseen of any, yet of all beheld,</p> +<p>Thus sitting on her throne——</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>If such noble inventions appear rare, it perhaps is owing +to the wide extent of the “faery land,” as well as to the +poet’s proneness to luxuriance of diction. If from that +voluminous inspiration the poet has sometimes trespassed +on the critic’s bourn, or the romantic eulogist of chastity +itself has sometimes violated his own virgin page, for +Spenser, always imitative, caught a slight infection from +his old romancers and his Italian favourites, all this +exuberance bears fruit; freedom and force will ever +interest the artists of poetry.</p> + +<p>Whoever has passed into the house of Pride,</p> + +<p class="center f90 ptb1">Whose walls were high, but nothing strong nor thick,</p> + +<p class="noind">and marked her on her progress, “drawn by six unequal +beasts,” with her vile counsellors in their wicked gradation; +or has entered “the ancient house of Holiness;” or +counted in the den of Riches,</p> + +<p class="center f90 ptb1">The huge great iron chests, and coffers strong,</p> + +<p class="noind">amid the dead men’s bones scattered around those chests +and coffers, has realized the marvellous architecture of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page482" id="page482"></a>482</span> +Fancy; or, whoever roving with the muse of Spenser +through all her localities, meets the sylvan men whom +the chaste Una governed, or the satyrs whom the frail +Hellenore would not quit; or when that muse unveils her +voluptuous charms, listens to her song in the enchanted +gardens of Armida; or in the approach to Acrasia in the +bower of Bliss, starts at the nymphs wantonly wrestling +in the glassy waters, laughing and blushing; or more +innocently gazes on the gorgeous Masque of Cupid, or +the dance of the poet and mistress among the Graces,—finds +all endowed with poetic existences, unchangeable +in their nature amid the changes of taste so long as imagination +shall seek for its delights, and genius for the +language of its emotions.</p> + +<p>“The Faery Queen” was designed by its author to +consist of twelve books; six of which we only possess, +published at two several times, and a fragment of another. +The subject of each book is a moral attribute; Holiness, +Temperance, Chastity, Friendship, Justice, and Courtesy. +Each attribute is personified by a knight-errant, with all +the passions of bodily mortality.</p> + +<p>The plan of the poem is so inartificial, that the twelve +books, had it been completed, could only have formed +twelve separate poems; our poet followed the free and +fertile way of Ariosto. The introduction of Prince +Arthur may have been designed to give a sort of unity to +the incoherent twelve knights, who would have been +finally led under his auspices to the court of the Faery +Queen; but as the prince, however respectable in romance, +comes and vanishes, does nothing, and says little, we +incline to the humour of the editor, Hughes, that “the +prince is here seen only in his minority, performing his +exercises in Fairy-land as a <i>private gentleman</i>.” The +versatile plan was adapted to the genius of the poet; the +ductility of his invention, the luxuriance of his imagination, +and the never-ceasing flow of his mellifluous stanza, +would have suffered constraint and mutilation, bound +by prescribed forms, and modelled by the classical epic. +At the period that the poet Hughes published his edition<a name="fa6c48" id="fa6c48" href="#ft6c48"><span class="sp">6</span></a> +of Spenser, our editors and critics were little conversant +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page483" id="page483"></a>483</span> +with the Elizabethan literature, nor had the taste of the +learned emancipated itself from the established form of +the epic of antiquity. But Hughes was alive to the vital +poetry before him, though evidently perplexed to fix on a +criterion, or to specify the class of poetry, for “The +Faery Queen.” His excellent judgment struck into a +new and right path. He describes it as “a poem of a +particular kind;” and in his “Remarks on The Faery +Queen,” he had the merit of distinguishing poetry, like +architecture, into its Gothic origin, as well as its classical. +This was a discovery at that period; and subsequent +critics, such as Bishop Hurd, and more recently Schlegel, +have run away with the honour, by their more ample +development of the romantic school. Hughes was hardly +aware of the importance of this division; for his discovery +amounts to little more than one of those first thoughts, +which have not ripened into a principle.</p> + +<p>“The Faery Queen” was the last great work modelled +on Chivalry. Awakening from the gloom of the theological +contests of Edward and Mary, the court of the +Maiden Queen, from state-policy and her own disposition, +had been transformed into a court of romance. Glory +was the cheap but inappreciable meed bestowed by the +economical sovereign; and love was the language to which +the female from the throne could bend to listen to her +subject.</p> + +<p>Elizabeth, stately and tender, was herself “the Faery +Queen,” without even the poet’s flattery, when seated +under the dais, amid long galleries hung with cloth of +gold or silver, and all the moving tilt-yard glittering +in its shine; “the noise of music,” and the sound of +shields; the solemn procession, and gay crowd of +the many-coloured liveries; the tasselled caparisons of +the horses, and the nodding plumes of the knights. +There our poet fed his eyes on the pageant, enchanting +by its scenical allegory—as when four noble challengers +approached—the children of <span class="sc">Desire</span>—attempting +to win the Fortress of <span class="sc">Beauty</span>,—that is, Whitehall and +her Majesty!<a name="fa7c48" id="fa7c48" href="#ft7c48"><span class="sp">7</span></a> They stand in a car, “shadowed with +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page484" id="page484"></a>484</span> +white and carnation silk, being the colours of Desire.” +But the challengers must yield to Beauty, whose princely +voice is their ample guerdon; and on the following day were +the tourney and the barriers “courageously tried.” Thus +were the days of chivalry, in its forms or its “fopperies,” +restored by the Faery Queen; and with such festivals +<span class="sc">Spenser</span> nursed his gorgeous fancy, and the Queen was +the true inspirer of his romantic Epic.</p> + +<p>Warton and Hurd observe that Spenser copied real +<i>manners of his time</i> as much as Homer. We must +here distinguish an essential difference, if Homer really +represented the manners of the heroic age. It is true, +that much of the <i>manners</i> and forms of chivalry prevailed +among the courtiers of Elizabeth; but such <i>adventures</i> +of chivalry as Spenser has described in his +singular poem were transplanted from the ancient +romances. The <i>incidents</i> are therefore not of the poet’s +age; and we can only read his narrative as the last of the +romances.</p> + +<p>The old romance of “La Morte d’Arthur” was still the +fashionable reading of the court; nor had the gorgeous +enchantments of Stephen Hawes yet vanished, for a new +edition had issued in 1555. Spenser had read Hawes; +and however entranced by the pageantry of the fiction, +from the uncouth stanza of “The Pastime of Pleasure” +he may have been led to the construction of the Spenserian; +for it is one of the aptitudes of true genius to +carry to perfection what it finds imperfect.</p> + +<p>“The Faery Queen” was produced at a crisis of +transition when the old romantic way was departing, +notwithstanding the temporary influence of a courtly +revival, and the new had not yet arrived. The whole +machinery of Gothic invention could hardly be worked; +its marvels had ceased to be wondrous, and began to +be ridiculed. The fantastic extravagance of the ordinary +writers of fiction—that crowd of poet-apes which +always rise after a great work has appeared—has been +censured by the two great literary satirists of that day, +<span class="sc">Marston</span> and <span class="sc">Hall</span>; Hall, indeed, suddenly checks his +censorial temerity in blaming themes made sacred by the +Faery Muse.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page485" id="page485"></a>485</span></p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Let no rebel satire dare traduce</p> +<p>Th’ eternal legends of thy fairy Muse,</p> +<p>Renowned <span class="sc">Spenser</span>, whom no earthly wight</p> +<p>Dares once to emulate——</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The compliment to Spenser does not diminish the satire +levelled at the class.</p> + +<p>Contemporary satirists furnish a precise date when +ancient things are on the turn and getting out of fashion; +they are the first who, like hawks, descend on their quarry.</p> + +<p>If Spenser attempted to infuse a rejuvenescence into the +dry veins of the old age of romance, by the vitality of +<i>Allegory</i>, he has fallen into a great error; for his twelve +knight-errants do not interest our sympathies the more +for being twelve wandering virtues. Allegorical poetry +not long after his day also declined; and when it was +resumed by <span class="sc">Phineas Fletcher</span>, in what he has fantastically +named and described as “The Purple Island,” or +“the little <span class="sc">Isle of Man</span>,” the poetry can hardly preserve +itself amid the ludicrous analogies which, with such +ingenious perversity of taste, are struck out between +anatomy and poesy, too many not very agreeable to recollect.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Chivalry</span> and <span class="sc">Allegory</span>, two columns of our poet’s +renown, thus soon gave way; and <span class="sc">Spenser</span> has often suffered +the heaviest penalty to which a great poet was ever +condemned—neglect!</p> + +<p>But these infelicitous forms, which disguised the most +tender and imaginative genius, could not deprive it of its +“better parts.” Spenser still remained the poet among +poets themselves; though for the world at large, indeed, +Spenser seemed to be recognised only as a poet in the +chronology of poetry. A critic of great delicacy, and a +votary of “the Gothic school,” despaired for the destiny +of our poet. “The Faery Queen,” exclaimed <span class="sc">Hurd</span>, in +the agony of his taste, “one of the noblest productions of +modern poetry, is fallen into so general a neglect, that all +the zeal of the commentators is esteemed officious and impertinent, +and will never restore it to those honours which +it has, once for all, irrecoverably lost.”</p> + +<p>This sharp lament broke out in 1760, when, only two +years before, the two rival editions of <span class="sc">Church</span> and <span class="sc">Upton</span> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page486" id="page486"></a>486</span> +had simultaneously appeared; and the latter could at least +boast both of the novelty and the curiosity of its commentary. +But literary commentators held forth few +attractions to the incurious readers of that day. More +than thirty years have now elapsed since the last classical +edition of Spenser’s works. But at no period was Spenser +ever forgotten by poetical recluses; and professed imitations +of our poet in modern times, though they may not +always be Spenserian, have never ceased, from Shenstone +to Mickle, and from Beattie to Byron.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c48" id="ft1c48" href="#fa1c48"><span class="fn">1</span></a> The Lee is the stream.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c48" id="ft2c48" href="#fa2c48"><span class="fn">2</span></a> I offer some instances of alliteration; but the beauty of such lines +can only be rightly judged by the context.—</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p class="s">“In woods, in waves, in wars, she wonts to dwell</p> +<p class="i05">And will be found with peril and with pain.”</p> + +<p class="s">“Such as a lamp whose life does fade away,</p> +<p class="i05">Or as the moon cloathed with cloudy night.”</p> + +<p class="s">“A world of waters,</p> +<p class="i05">Horrible, hideous, roaring with hoarse cry.”</p> + +<p class="s">“They cherelie chaunt, and rymes at random flung,</p> +<p class="i05">The fruitful spawn of their rank fantasies;</p> +<p class="i05">They feed the ears of fools with flattery.”</p> + +<p class="s">“All the day before the sunny rays,</p> +<p class="i05">He used to slug or sleep, in slothful shade.”</p> + +<p class="s">“Unpitied, unplagued, of foe or friend.”</p> + +<p class="s">“And with sharp shrilling shriek do bootless cry.”</p> + +<p class="s">“Did stand astonish’d at his curious skill,</p> +<p class="i05">With hungry ears to hear his harmony.”</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><a name="ft3c48" id="ft3c48" href="#fa3c48"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Spenser has suffered a criticism from Mr. Campbell, who, a great +poet himself, has otherwise done ample justice to his ancient master. +“It must certainly be owned that in description he exhibits nothing of +the <i>brief strokes</i> and <i>robust power</i> which characterize the <i>very greatest +poets</i>.” Certain it is Spenser is rarely “brief and robust;” but contrary +natures cannot operate in the same genius. If Spenser rarely +shows the strength and brevity of “the very greatest poets,” so may it +be said that “the very greatest poets” rarely rival the charm of his +diffusion; or, as Mr. Campbell himself attests, in “verse more magnificently +descriptive.” But the voice of Poetry is more potent than its +criticism, and truly says Mr. Campbell—“We shall nowhere find more +airy and expansive images of visionary things, a sweeter tone of sentiment, +or a finer flush in the colour of language, than in this <span class="sc">Rubens +of English Poetry</span>.”</p> + +<p>Twining was a scholar, deeply versed in classical lore, which he +has shown to great advantage in his “Version of and Commentary on +Aristotle’s Treatise of Poetry.” In his Dissertations “On Poetical and +Musical Imitation” prefixed to this work, our critic is quite at home +with Pope and Goldsmith, but he seems wholly shut out from Spenser! +In a note to his first Dissertation he tells us “the following stanza of +<span class="sc">Spenser</span> has been much admired:”—</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>The joyous birds shrouded in cheareful shade,</p> +<p>Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet;</p> +<p>Th’ angelical soft trembling voices made</p> +<p>To th’ instruments divine respondence meet;</p> +<p>The silver-sounding instruments did meet</p> +<p>With the base murmurs of the waters-fall;</p> +<p>The waters-fall with difference discreet,</p> +<p>Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call;</p> +<p>The gentle-warbling wind low answered to all.*</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>Our critic observes that Dr. Warton says of these lines, that “they +are of themselves a complete concert of the most delicious music.” +Indeed, this very stanza in Spenser has been celebrated long before +Joseph Warton wrote, and often since; now listen to our learned +<i>Twining:</i>—</p> + +<p>“It is unwillingly that I differ from a person of so much taste. I +cannot consider as music, much less as ‘delicious music,’ a mixture of +incompatible sounds—of sounds musical with sounds unmusical. The +singing of birds cannot possibly be ‘attempered’ to the notes of a human +voice. The mixture is, and must be, disagreeable. To a person +listening to a concert of voices and instruments, the interruption of +singing-birds, wind, and water-falls, would be little better than the +torment of Hogarth’s enraged musician. Further, the description +itself is, like too many of Spenser’s, coldly elaborate, and indiscriminately +minute. Of the expressions, some are feeble and without effect, +as ‘joyous birds’—some evidently improper, as ‘trembling voices’ and +‘cheerful shades;’ for there cannot be a greater fault in a voice than +to be tremulous, and cheerful is surely an unhappy epithet applied to +shade—some cold and laboured, and such as betray too plainly the necessities +of rhyme; such is—</p> + +<p class="center ptb1">“‘The waters-fall with difference discreet.’”</p> + +<p>Such is the anti-poetical and technical criticism! Imagine a music-master, +who had never read a line of poetry, attempting to perform the +“delicious music” of our poet—or a singing-master, who had never +heard a “joyous bird,” tuning up some fair pupil’s “trembling voice,” +and we might have expected this criticism from such “enraged musicians!” +Would our critic insist on having a philharmonic concert, or +a simple sonata? He who will not suffer birds to be “joyous,” nor +“the shade cheerful,” which their notes make so.</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>“Th’ angelical soft trembling voices made</p> +<p class="i05">To th’ instruments divine respondence meet,”</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">the “softness trembling” with the verse; had our critic forgotten +Strada’s famed contest of the Nightingale with the Lyre of the poet, +when, her “trembling voice” overcome in the rivalry, she fell on the +strings to die? And what shall we think of the classical critic who +has pronounced that “the descriptions of Spenser are coldly elaborate”—the +most vivid and splendid of our poetry?</p> + +<p>But the most curious part remains to be told. This fine stanza of +Spenser is one of his free borrowings, being a translation of a stanza in +Tasso,** excepting the introduction of “the silver-sounding instruments.” +The Æolian harp played on by the musical winds was a happiness reserved +for Thomson. The felicitous copy of Spenser attracted Fairfax, +who, when he came to the passage in Tasso, kept his eye on Spenser, +and has carefully retained “the joyous birds” for the “vezzosi augelli” +of the original.</p> + +<p>It is certain that, without poetic sensibility, the most learned critic +will ever find that the utmost force of his logic in these matters will +not lead to reason, but to unreason. Imagination only can decide on +imagination.</p> + +<p class="f90">    * “The Faery Queen,” book <span class="scs">II.</span> canto xii. st. 71.</p> + +<p class="f90">    ** “Gerusalemme Liberata,” canto xvi. st. 12.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c48" id="ft4c48" href="#fa4c48"><span class="fn">4</span></a> “The Faery Queen,” book <span class="scs">III.</span> canto x.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c48" id="ft5c48" href="#fa5c48"><span class="fn">5</span></a> “The Faery Queen,” B. <span class="scs">III.</span> canto iv, st. 65, and B. <span class="sc">I.</span> canto v. +st. 20.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c48" id="ft6c48" href="#fa6c48"><span class="fn">6</span></a> This edition of 1715, from its modernized orthography, and from +greater freedoms taken with the text, is valueless.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c48" id="ft7c48" href="#fa7c48"><span class="fn">7</span></a> Thia famous tourney may be viewed in Hollinshed—“England,” +1317, fo. The four illustrious challengers were, the Earl of Arundel, +Lord Windsor, Sir Fulke Greville, and Sir Philip Sidney.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page487" id="page487"></a>487</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">ALLEGORY.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Allegory</span> and its exposition of what is termed the double +or secret sense, is a topic on more than one account +important. The mystical art of types and symbols has +given rise to some extraordinary abuses, and even to artifices, +which may be considered as an imposture practised +on the human understanding. An extended fictitious +narrative, constructed on the principle of one continued +allegory, is a topic which critical learning has not expressly +treated on. An allegorical epic never occurred to the +ancient legislator of poetry; and modern critics have consented +to define <span class="sc">Allegory</span> as “that art in which one +thing is <i>related</i>, and another <i>understood</i>.”</p> + +<p>But it has been subsequently discovered that this definition +was too narrow to comprehend the multiform shapes +which allegory assumes, either in the subtility or the grossness +of its nature.</p> + +<p>Licentious commentators have rioted in their presumed +discoveries by extorting from the apparent meaning a +hidden sense; or by typical adumbrations wresting allusions +to persons or circumstances. The genius of allegory +has triumphed from an extended metaphor to a whole poem +itself; and its chimerical results have often resembled the +metamorphoses of Ovid, turning every object into an +altered shape, and making two objects, wholly unconnected, +appear to rise out of each other. We may show +from the success of many of these pretended revelations +that the difficulty has not always been so great as the +absurdity.</p> + +<p>A prevalent folly has usually some parent-origin; and +the present one of <span class="sc">Allegory</span> may have been an ancient +one. The learned have sought for the source of Allegory +in the night of Egyptian darkness, among their hieroglyphics. +That curious tale of antiquity which Herodotus +has preserved shows us all the obscurity and the inconvenience +of allegorical communication in its ambidextrous +nature. The four symbols—of the arrows, the bird, the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page488" id="page488"></a>488</span> +mouse, and the frog, which the Scythian ambassadors +silently presented to Darius on his invasion of their deserts, +were an allegory; and like many allegories, this emblematical +embassy admitted of contrary interpretations. +This enigmatic humour of the Egyptian learning seems +to have been caught by the emblematical Greeks. The +priesthood, eager to save the divinity of their whole +theogony from the popular traditions and poetical impieties +of that bible of the Polytheists, the Iliad, opened +the secret or double sense of Homer. They maintained +that the Homeric fables were nothing less than an allegory, +shadowing forth the mysteries of nature, and veiling an +arcanum of the sciences physical and moral. And these +elucidators of speculative obscurities formed a sect under +the lower Platonists.<a name="fa1c49" id="fa1c49" href="#ft1c49"><span class="sp">1</span></a> The fathers were perfect children +in their ridiculous allegories, and they allegorised the Old +Testament throughout; and assuredly the Rabbins did +not yield in puerility to the fathers. But all these were +on topics too solemn to enter into our present inquiry.</p> + +<p>We may, however, smile when we discover this race of +Œdipuses among the <i>romanzatori</i>, or the publishers of the +ancient romances. With solemn effrontery these proceeded +on the principle of allegory to dignify their light and lying +volumes, either to renovate the satiated curiosity of their +readers, to cover the freedom of their prurient incidents, +or to tolerate their marvellous fantasies. The editor of +“Amadis of Gaul” revealed a secret yet untold. The +common reader hitherto had never strayed beyond the +literal sense; but he was now informed that he had only +culled the most perishable flowers; for the more elevated +mind were reserved the perennial fruits of a mystical interpretation +of the occult sense. It was in this way that +the famous “Romaunt of the Rose,” from a mere love-story +and a general satire on society, was converted into a +volume of theology, of politics, of ethics, and even of the +<i>grand œuvre</i> of the alchemists. Such inchoate mysteries +were told under “the rose!” The most ludicrous display +of their literary imposture may be seen in that collection +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page489" id="page489"></a>489</span> +of popular tales called the <i>Gesta Romanorum</i>. Every tale +is accompanied by the gloss of a pious allegorist. An +“Emperor,” or “Pompey the Great,” is a frequent personage +in these tales, and is always the type of “our +Heavenly Father,” or “the soul,” or “the Saviour;” +while <i>Contes à la Fontaine</i>, however licentious, pass +through a moralization by the puritanical cant of hypocritical +monkery.</p> + +<p>Conforming to the spurious piety of this monkish taste, +a voluminous commentary expounded the morality of the +ravishing versatilities of Ariosto. Berni gravely assured +us that all the marvels of enchanted gardens, voluminous +dragons, sylvan savages, and monsters with human faces, +were only thrown out for the amusement of the ignorant; +and concludes with these memorable lines, which he freely +borrowed from the father of Italian poesy—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Ma voi ch’avete gl’intelletti sani,</p> +<p>Mirate la dottrina che s’asconde,</p> +<p>Sotto queste coperte alte e profonde!<a name="fa2c49" id="fa2c49" href="#ft2c49"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">“But ye of sounder intellect admire the wisdom hidden +under these coverings, high and profound!” A strain so +solemn and melodious was not the least exquisite pleasantry +from a burlesque satirist!</p> + +<p>Camoens having adopted the Grecian mythology in his +Christian epic, recourse was had to a mystic allegory to +defend the incongruity; when Vasco de Gama and his +companions sport with Thetis and her nymphs, allegorically, +though in good earnest, some Portuguese commentator +has explained how “these phantastic amours signify +the <i>wild sects</i> of different enthusiasts in the most rational +institutions, which, however contrary to each other, all +agree in deriving their authority from the same source.” +To such ineptitudes are the allegorists sometimes driven, +from the sickly taste of gratifying the infirmity of readers +by cloaking their freest inventions in the garb of piety +and morality. Thus the popular literature of Europe was +overrun by these adumbrations. Even Milton echoed the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page490" id="page490"></a>490</span> +occult doctrine which he had caught from the seers of the +old <i>Romanzatori</i>—those Gothic Homers in whose spells +he had been bound:—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Forests and enchantments drear,</p> +<p><i>Where more is meant than meets the ear</i>.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>While this mania of allegorising fictitious narratives was +in vogue, a remarkable occurrence, had it been publicly +known, might have let the initiated into a secret more +“high and profound” than any of their esoteric revelations, +and might have exposed the imposture which had +been so long practised on their simplicity. The hapless +Tasso was harassed by a most “stiff-necked” generation +of “the learned Romans,” as he calls the Classicists—a +mob of <i>signori</i>, of mechanical critics, protesting against +his potent inventions.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Magnanima Mensogna, hor quando è il vero</p> +<p>Si bello che si posse à te preporre.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The forest incantations of Ismen, and the enchantments +of Armida, those true creations of Gothic romance, were +on the point of utter perdition. In this extremity the +poet decided to have recourse to the prevalent folly of +fitting an allegory to his epic. He acknowledges to his +confidential friend that the whole was only designed to +humour the times, and begs that he may not be laughed +at. “I will act the profound, and show that I have a +deep political purpose;” and he might have added a whole +system of ethics which has been extorted from the presumed +allegory. “Under this shield,” he proceeds, “I +shall endeavour to protect the <i>loves</i> and the <i>enchantments</i>”—those +golden leaves which the furious classicists would +have torn out of his romantic epic. By this singular fact +we are led to this important discovery, that to allegorise +is no difficult affair, for the present allegory was “the +work of a single morning!”<a name="fa3c49" id="fa3c49" href="#ft3c49"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page491" id="page491"></a>491</span></p> + +<p>Tasso’s confession is a perpetual demonstration of <i>the +fallacies of allegory</i>. We must wholly rid ourselves of +“gl’ intelletti sani,” if we doubt that the original writers +who have been so largely allegorised ever composed an +extended fictitious narrative but in all the freedom of +invention, in open daylight, and never seeking to hide +nature in secret coverts.</p> + +<p>If, as we see, an allegory may be ingeniously drawn +from a work which never was allegorical; so when an +allegory seems designed, its secret application is usually +the forlorn hope of literature, since the most subtile conjectures +on these enigmas have wholly differed from each +other.</p> + +<p>Persons and incidents in an allegorical fiction are noses +of wax, ever to be shaped by a more adroit finger. But +in a lengthened allegory, the ground is often shifted; the +allegorister tires of his allegory, and at length means +what he says and nothing more. This has driven the +expounders of the double sense into the absurdity of +explaining an identical object, sometimes in a metaphysical, +and at others in a material sense; they take up +what their fancy requires, and cautiously drop what would +place them in an inextricable position.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Dante</span> opened his great work in the darkness of an +allegory; but how the erratic commentators have lost +their way in “Le tenebre della Divina Commedia!” +What are the three allegorical animals which open “the +Vision?” The double sense remains inexplicable from +its abundant explanations. Are these animals personifications +of three great passions? Is the gay panther the +type of luxurious pleasure, the lion of ambition, the she-wolf +of avarice? But what if the spotted panther should +be the representative of Dante’s own Florence, and its +spots indicate the Neri and the Bianchi factions? The +hungry lion, with its lofty head, would then be superb +France, and the lean she-wolf, never satiate, be devouring +Rome. Yet a later revelation from Niebuhr, according +to his Platonic ideas, sees but three metaphysical beings +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page492" id="page492"></a>492</span> +the types of the soul, the understanding, and the senses. +Should some future allegorister discover, by his historical, +political, and ethical fancies, that the three animals were +designed, one for a wavering and maculated Ghibelline, +and the others for the resolute papal Guelphs, the probability +would be much the same. In truth we can afford +but small confidence to these expounders of the double +sense; for when Jean Molinet allegorised the “Roman de +la Rose,” and illustrated it by historical appliances, as +chronology was rarely consulted in his day, it appears that +this good canon of Valenciennes had allegorised in reference +to persons who flourished and events which occurred +posterior to the time of the writers.</p> + +<p>In the instances which we have indicated, such as in +Ariosto and Tasso, it was the commentator who had indulged +his allegorical genius, not the original writers +themselves. With one of our great poets unhappily +the case is reversed; the poetic character and destiny of +Spenser stand connected with allegory; for here the poet +himself prematurely <i>meditated on his allegory before he +invented his fiction</i>. The difference is immense. <span class="sc">Spenser</span> +fell a victim to this phantom of the poetic creed of his +day. Deeming a mystic allegory a novel spirit in poesy, +he who was to run the glorious career of Faery-land first +forged the brazen bonds which he could never shake off. +His invention was made subordinate to a prescribed system. +The poet was continually running after the allegory, +which he did not always care to recover in the exuberance +of his imagination, and the copious facility of his stanzas. +Often must he have deprived his twelve knights-errant of +their tangible humanity, perpetually relapsing into their +metaphysical nonentities—Sir Guyon into temperance, +Arthegal into justice, and Sir Caladore into courtesy!</p> + +<p>Yet this is not the sole defect of the allegorical character +of the “Faery Queen.” We may suspect that when +<span class="sc">Spenser</span> decided on constructing an allegorical poem, he +had not any settled notions of the artifice of types, nor yet +of the subjects to be symbolised; of fictions which were +to conceal truths, and of truths which might be mistaken +for fictions. A strange confusion often prevails in his +system, sometimes ambiguous, sometimes contradictory, +whenever the allegory loses itself in what is not allegorical, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page493" id="page493"></a>493</span> +or the reality is as suddenly lost amid the mystical +fancies.</p> + +<p>The poet himself announced that the “Faery Queen” +was “a continued allegory or dark conceit;” and he was +so strongly convinced that “all allegories are doubtfully +construed,” that he determined to expound his own text +regarding a most eminent personage; but this was merely +to secure a courtly eulogy on a royal patroness. “In the +‘Faerie Queene’ I mean <i>glory</i> in my <i>general</i> intention, +but in my <i>particular</i> I conceive the most excellent and +glorious person of the Queen and her kingdom in Faery-land.” +He afterwards adds that “in some places also I do +otherwise shadow her.” And further, the poet informs us +that “her Majesty is two persons, a royal Queen and a +most virtuous and beautiful lady.” Truly her Majesty +might have viewed herself “in mirrors more than one,” +and, as she much liked, in different dresses. Now as the +Faerie Queen, now as Belphœbe, now as Cynthia, now as +Mercilla; and in the “Legend of Chastity,” who would +deny that Britomart is the shadow of the Virgin Queen, +notwithstanding that this lady-warrior bears a closer resemblance +to Virgil’s Camilla, to Ariosto’s Bradamante, +and Tasso’s Clorinda? All this the poet has revealed; +but had he been silent, these mystical types might have +baffled even the perilous ingenuity of Upton, his egregious +expounder of the double sense, the exuberance of whose +conjectural sagacity might have enlightened and charmed +even Spenser himself!</p> + +<p>The poet was himself aware that when an allegory does +not gracefully unveil itself, it admits of the most dubious +expositions. The allegories of the “Faery Queen” which +allude to public events are transparent. The first book +exhibits the struggles of the Reformation with papistry. +Una is Truth, the Red-cross Knight the Christian militant, +still subjected to trial and infirmity, separated from +Una, or as it was called, “the true Religion,” by the +magical illusions of Archimagus, whom Warton considers +was the arch-fiend himself, but Upton only an adumbration +of “his Holiness.” The terrible giant, Orgoglio, +seems to have a stronger claim to be the proud and potent +Bishop of Rome, enamoured as he is of Superstition in +the false Duessa, that gorgeous enchantress, so fair and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page494" id="page494"></a>494</span> +foul, arrayed in purple and scarlet, whom he has seated on +his seven-headed dragon, and on whose head he has placed +a triple crown. The dark den of monstrous Error, the +hastening cavalcade of every splendid vice, the combat +with the Infidel Sans Foy, the church militant finally +triumphant in the solemn union of the Red-cross with +Una, complete the allegory of “Holiness.” The Apocalypse +may serve as the commentary on some of these +personages; but the well-known title of the lady may +not be risked to “ears polite.” But such is the moveable +machinery of allegorical history, that Sir Walter Scott, in +his review of Todd’s Spenser, has discovered many other +shadowings of <i>facts</i>, in the history of Christian “Holiness,” +who, like the Red-cross Knight, separated from Una, had +to encounter “the monster Error, and her brood,” in +paganism, before the downfall of Orgoglio and Duessa, and +popery in England; in the freedom of the Red-cross +Knight from his imprisonment, our critic reveals the +establishment of the Protestant Church.<a name="fa4c49" id="fa4c49" href="#ft4c49"><span class="sp">4</span></a> Sir Walter +might have noticed Spenser’s abhorrence of the puritans.</p> + +<p>The allegory is still more obvious when the poet alludes +to some contemporary events. It is then a masquerade +by daylight, where the maskers pass on, holding their +masks in their hands. In the fifth book we see the distressed +Knight Bourbon, opposed by a rabble-rout in his +attempt to possess himself of the Lady <i>Fleur de Lis</i>, +whom he loves for “her lordships and her lands.” He +bears away that half-reluctant and coy lady. But for this +purpose Bourbon had basely changed his shield, and, reproached +by Sir Arthegal or Justice, he offers but a recreant’s +apology:—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i2">——When time shall serve,</p> +<p>My former shield I may resume again;</p> +<p>To temporise is not from truth to swerve.</p> + +<p class="s">Fie on such forgerie! said Arthegal,</p> +<p>Under one hood to shadow faces twain.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The change of shields of Sir Bourbon is the change of +faith of Henry of Navarre; and the reluctant mistress is +that uncompliant France whom he forced to take him as +her monarch. Not less obvious is the episode of the Lady +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page495" id="page495"></a>495</span> +Belgé calling for aid on the British prince—she, now +widowed, and whose seventeen sons were reduced to five +by the cruelties of Geryon, and the horrors of that implacable +“monster, who lay hid in darkness, under the cursed +Idol’s altar-stone;” the great revolution of the Netherlands, +the reduction of the seventeen provinces, and the +horrors of a Romish persecution, are apparent.</p> + +<p>But when the allegory runs into obscurer incidents and +more fictitious personages than those which we have +noticed, it becomes rarefied into volatile conjecture, or by +our ingenuity may be shaped into partial resemblances, +always uncertain, when we accept invented fictions as historical +evidence. We know that a writer of an elaborate +fictitious narrative may have touched on circumstances +and characters caught from life; but all these, in passing +through the mind of the inventor, are usually so altered +from their reality, to be accommodated to the higher design +of the invention, that any parallel in private history, +or any likeness of an individual character, any indistinct +allusion, can never deserve our historical confidence. A +picture of human nature would be an anomalous work, in +which we could trace no resemblance to individuals, or +discover no coincidences of circumstances.</p> + +<p>A century and a half after the publication of the “Faery +Queen,” a commentator of “the double sense” revealed to +its readers that sealed history which they had never read, +and which the poet had never divulged. A few traditional +rumours may have floated down; but it was +<span class="sc">Upton’s</span> edition which startled the world by the abundance +of its modern revelations.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">John Upton</span>, prebendary of Rochester, and the master +of a public school, which he raised to eminence, was distinguished +for his scholastic acquirements, the depth of +his critical erudition, and for his acquaintance with the +history of the Elizabethan court, chiefly, however, drawn +from Camden. Acute in his emendations of texts, they +were not, however, slightly tinged by an over-refining +pedantry at the cost of his taste; and as his judgment +was the infirmest of his faculties, in his enthusiasm for an +historical illustration of Spenser, he seems often encumbered +by his knowledge striking out similitudes and +parallels; a few appear not infelicitous, but many are +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page496" id="page496"></a>496</span> +suggested in the licentiousness of vague conjecture, or left +half in the light and half in the dark. His “Critical +Observations on Shakspeare” remind one of Bentley’s +“slashing” of Milton. Dr. Johnson has been censured for +the severity of his character of <span class="sc">Upton</span>; I know not +whether the doctor ever attended to Upton’s Commentary +on Spenser; he has, however, admirably hit off a prominent +feature of our critic. “Every cold”—in Upton’s +case I would rather say warm—“empiric, when his heart +is expanded by a successful experiment, swells into a +theorist.”</p> + +<p>“In one sense,” says <span class="sc">Upton</span>, “you are in Fairy-Land, +yet in another you may be in the British dominions.” +And further, “where the <i>moral</i> allusion is not apparent, +you must look for an <i>historical</i> allusion.” Such are the +fundamental positions of the allegorical theory, by which +a conjectural historian designs to unveil the secret sense of +a romantic epic; the poet, according to him, having frigidly +descended into the historiographer of the court of +Elizabeth, rather than of the court of the Faery Queen—to +catch “the Cynthias of the minute,” and to waste his +colours on their evanescent portraits.</p> + +<p>And amusing it is to watch the historical conjecturer of +a romantic poem perilously creeping along the dark passages +of secret history; but he is often at a stand. In +“the palpable obscure,” the historical reality, which he +seems to be touching, suddenly disappears under his grasp. +We have no golden key to open the occult chamber, where +we are told so many knights and ladies lie entranced near +two centuries in their magical sleep, and where, amid the +shadowiness, the historical necromancer promptly furnishes +us with their very names, recognising all these enchanted +persons by their very attitudes.</p> + +<p>One of his most felicitous conjectures regards “the +gentle squire Timias” as the poet’s honoured friend, Sir +Walter Rawleigh. Sir Walter once incurred the disgrace +of the Queen by a criminal amour with one of the maids +of honour; he was for some time banished the court; but +the injury to the lady was expiated by marriage. The +private history we are to look for in the Allegory. +Timias offends Belphœbe the patroness of Chastity, and +the Queen of England, who surprised “the gentle squire” +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page497" id="page497"></a>497</span> +in a very suspicious attitude of tenderness with Amoret. +This lady was suffering from violence, having been “rapt +by greedie Lust,” and the gentle squire himself had partaken +of the mischance, in encountering that savage. +Timias; the knight, is seen—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>From her fair eyes wiping the dewy wet,</p> +<p>Which softly slid; and kissing them atween,</p> +<p>And handling soft the hurts which she did get.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">Belphœbe on the sudden appears, and indignantly exclaims—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>“Is this the Faith?” she said, and said no more;</p> +<p>But turn’d her face, and fled away for evermore.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>In a romantic scene,<a name="fa5c49" id="fa5c49" href="#ft5c49"><span class="sp">5</span></a> “the gentle squire” in banishment +is wasted with grief, so as not to be recognised by +his friends; his lone companion is a turtle-dove, a magical +and sympathizing bird, who entices Belphœbe, that Sovereign +Chastity, to pursue its playful flight, till it leads her +to the cell of the miserable man from whom she had so +long averted her face, and Timias recovers her favour.</p> + +<p>In this extended scene we are to view the condition of +Rawleigh during his disgrace; and the opening of the +canto gives some countenance to the particular application. +The aptitude of a resemblance, however, may only +be a coincidence. The fatal error of our conjectural historian +is that of spinning at his allegory long after he is +left without a thread. In Amoret’s calamitous adventure, +“rapt by greedie Lust,” Upton sees an adumbration of the +lady of Sir Walter <i>before</i> her marriage; and in another +adventure, where another person, <i>Serena</i>, with “the gentle +squire,” are both carried to a hermit’s cell, to be healed +of the wounds inflicted by calumny and scandal, their condition +<i>after</i> marriage. Our diviner, as further evidence of +“the double sense,” discovers how remarkably appropriate +was the name of Serena to the lady of Rawleigh.</p> + +<p>In all these transmigrations of persons the enigmatical +expounder acknowledges that the typical incidents suddenly +diverge from their prototype. The parallels run +crooked, and the fictions will not square with the facts; +and he desperately exclaims that “the poet has designedly +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page498" id="page498"></a>498</span> +perplexed the story:” but he concludes with this hardy +assumption, “If the reader cannot see through these disguises, +he will see nothing but <i>the dead letter</i>.” And +what but “the dead letter,” as this hierophant of mystic +senses asperses the free inventions of genius, can now interest +the readers of Spenser? For the honour of our poet +we protest against the dark and broken dreams hovering +about a commentator’s desk. Who can credit that the +courteous and courtly spirit of Spenser would thus lay bare +to the public eye the delicate history of the lady of Sir +Walter, even by a remote allusion? Yet this he does by +connecting her name with Amoret carried away by +“greedie Lust,” and with Serena, who required to be +healed of the wounds inflicted by scandal. Can we conceive +that the poet would have thus deliberately re-opened +the domestic wound, still tender, of his patron-friend, and +distressed that “serene” lady, in a poem to be read by +them, to be conned by malicious eyes, and to be consigned +to posterity?</p> + +<p>The readers of Upton’s revelations may often be amused +by his lettered ingenuity reasoning with eager perversity. +In Book <span class="scs">II.</span> Canto i. a pathetic incident occurs in a forest, +where we find a lady with her infant on her bosom, and +her knight extended in death beside her. Her shriek is +deadly as the blow she has given herself. Guyon the +Knight of Temperance flies to her succour; dying, she +tells how “her liefest lord” had been beguiled, “for he +was flesh,” by Acrasia, or sensual pleasure. The lady had +recovered him from the fell embraces of that sorceress, +who, in parting, seduces him to drink from a charmed cup +her accursed <i>wine</i>. On his return homewards with his +lady he would quench his thirst at a fountain, but</p> + +<p class="center f90 ptb1">So soon as Bacchus with the Nymphe does lincke,</p> + +<p class="noind">that is, the instant the pure water reaches his viny lips, he +tastes, and he dies!</p> + +<p>The Knight of Temperance takes the infant from the +bleeding bosom of the mother to wash it in the fountain—but +no water could cleanse its bloody hand; hence it was +to be called “Ruddimane:” it was “a sacred symbol in +the son’s flesh, to tell of the mother’s innocence.” Upton +had discovered that the great Irish insurrectionist O’Neal, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page499" id="page499"></a>499</span> +as Camden records, “dwelt in all the pollutions of unchaste +embraces, and had several children by O’Donnel’s wife.”</p> + +<p>The badge of the O’Neals was “a bloody hand.” In +the ecstasy of divination he exclaims, “This lady with +the bloody-handed babe is—the wife of O’Neal!” The +dying lady had told her sad tale, but never had she hinted +at the Irish origin. Her knight had fallen a victim to +Acrasia; a suitable incident in the legend of temperance—a +result of that “passion” at which the poet pointed, and +described as one which</p> + +<p class="center f90 ptb1">Robs Reason of her due regality.</p> + +<p class="noind">And this simple incident is converted into the fate of the +O’Neals, presenting an image of the miseries of the Irish +rebellion!</p> + +<p>We pass by the contemporary portraits inscribed by our +speculative historian with real names. When fancy is +busy, likenesses are often found; a single feature is sometimes +taken for a whole physiognomy. Never surely did +our conjecturer shoot wider of the mark than when he discovered +in the two burlesque characters of the poltroon +Braggadochio and his cheating squire Trompart, the Duke +of Anjou and his envoy Simier. These were eminent characters +known in the court of Elizabeth. To the French +prince the Queen seemed partial, and once placed a ring on +his finger, too sanguinely accepted as a plight of betrothment; +and Simier was a discreet diplomatist, whom the +Queen publicly commended for his conduct. To have degraded +such distinguished men by such vulgar baseness +would have been a discrepancy in the taste and decorum +of our courtly poet which Spenser never betrayed.<a name="fa6c49" id="fa6c49" href="#ft6c49"><span class="sp">6</span></a></p> + +<p>In regard to Spenser, after all these allusions problematical +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page500" id="page500"></a>500</span> +for a succeeding generation, the poet is no longer to +be judged by the darkness which has hidden small and +fugitive matters. We cannot know the degree which +Spenser allowed himself in distant allusions to the court +of Elizabeth, or, as the poet himself vaguely said, to +“Fairy-land;” he may have promised far more than he +would care to perform; for an epical poet must have found +the descent into a chronicler of scandalous legends, a portrayer +of so many nameless personages, incompatible with +the flow and elevation of his themes. And for what was +never ascertained in its own age we dare not confide to +that mystical vaticinator of past events, a conjectural +historian!</p> + +<p>Our interpreter of allegory was honest as well as hardy; +in truth, he is sometimes startled at the historical revelations +which crowd on his mind. It required “the hound’s +fine footing,” to borrow the beautiful figure of Spenser +himself, for our conjecturer to course in this field of +allegory. With great candour he says, “Let us take care +we do not overrun our game, or start more game than we +are able to catch.” His occasional dilemmas are amusing. +He perplexed himself by a discovery that Amoret, whom +he had made the lady of Sir Walter Rawleigh, might also +have served for Mary Queen of Scots. In this critical +crucifixion, he cries in torture, “I will neither affirm nor +deny that Amoret is the type of Mary Queen of Scots!” +But he had his ecstasies; for on another occasion, having +indulged a very extravagant fancy, he exclaims in joyous +rapture, “This may show how far types and symbols +may be carried!” Yet, with his accustomed candour, he +lowers down. “If the reader should think my arguments +too flimsy, and extended beyond their due limits, and +should laugh</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>To see their thrids so thin as spiders frame,</p> +<p>And eke so short that seem’d their ends out shortly came,</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">let him consider the latitude of interpretation all types +and symbolical writings admit.”<a name="fa7c49" id="fa7c49" href="#ft7c49"><span class="sp">7</span></a> Truly that latitude +has been too often abused on graver subjects than “The +Faery Queen;” but the honesty of our mystical interpreter +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page501" id="page501"></a>501</span> +of double senses may plead for the extravagance of his +ingenuity whenever he needs our indulgence.</p> + +<p>Enough on this curious subject of allegory—this child +of darkness among the luminous progeny of fancy. We +have shown its changeable nature, and how frequently it +fails in unity and clearness; we have demonstrated that +“the double sense”—this system of types and symbols—has +served as an imposture, since allegories have been +deduced from works which were not allegorical, and forced +interpretations of an ambiguous sense have led to fallacies +which have fatally been introduced into history, into +politics, and into theology.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c49" id="ft1c49" href="#fa1c49"><span class="fn">1</span></a> We have a collection of these “Allegoricæ Homericæ.” Even the +great Verulam caught the infectious ingenuity; and, in “the wisdom +of the ancients,” explains everything with the skill of a great Homeric +scholiast.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c49" id="ft2c49" href="#fa2c49"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Berni’s “Bojardo,” canto xxxi. st. 2. He has hardly improved +the verse in the “Inferno,” canto ix. ver. 61.—</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>O voi ch’avete gl’intelletti sani,</p> +<p>Mirate la dottrina che s’asconde,</p> +<p><i>Sotto il velame degli versi strani</i>.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><a name="ft3c49" id="ft3c49" href="#fa3c49"><span class="fn">3</span></a> The “Allegoria dalla Poema” is appended to the ancient editions +of Tasso’s “Gerusalemme Liberata.” The one before me is dated +Ferrara, 1582. I believe it has been indignantly rejected by modern +editors. When we detect Tasso seriously describing Godfrey as the +type of the human understanding—Rinaldo, and Tancred, and others, +as different faculties of the soul—and the common soldiers as the +body of man—we regret that an honourable mind should degrade itself +by such literary imposture. At length, having succeeded in imposing +on others, he attempted to impose on himself; for he actually commenced +a second “Jerusalem” on the allegorical system, and did not +more happily succeed in his elder days than our Akenside in his philosophical +destruction of his youthful poem.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c49" id="ft4c49" href="#fa4c49"><span class="fn">4</span></a> “Edinburgh Review,” vol. vii. p. 215.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c49" id="ft5c49" href="#fa5c49"><span class="fn">5</span></a> Book <span class="scs">III.</span> canto viii.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c49" id="ft6c49" href="#fa6c49"><span class="fn">6</span></a> It has been observed of Upton that, though an excellent classical +scholar, he was little versed in the romances of chivalry. In the +romance of “Gyron le Courtois” he would have found the original of +the farcical Knight Braggadochio; a fact, long after I had written the +above, which I owe to Mr. Southey. Such ludicrous caricatures are +unusual with the delicacy and elegance of Spenser; and they seem +never to have been struck in his mint. I suspect we should not +have had such farcical personages in the “Faery Queen,” had not +Spenser’s propensity to imitation induced him to follow his beloved +patron, who has not happily introduced in the “Arcadia” the low +comic of Damœtas and his ugly daughter Mopsa.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c49" id="ft7c49" href="#fa7c49"><span class="fn">7</span></a> Upton’s note at the close of the fifth book of “The Faery Queen.”</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page502" id="page502"></a>502</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE FIRST TRAGEDY AND THE FIRST +COMEDY.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">In</span> the transition from the simpler interlude to the aggrandizement +of a more complicate scene and more numerous +personages, so indistinct were the notions of tragedy and +comedy, that the writer of a morality in 1578, declaring +that his purpose was to represent “the manners of men, +and fashion of the world now-a-days,” distinguishes his +drama both as “a Pleasant Tragedy” and “a Pitiful +Comedy.”<a name="fa1c50" id="fa1c50" href="#ft1c50"><span class="sp">1</span></a> This play, indeed, may be placed among the +last of the ancient dramas; and it is probable that the +author considered that these vague expressions might serve +to designate a superior order of dramatic productions.</p> + +<p>The term Comedy was as indefinite in France as with +ourselves. Margaret of Valois, in 1544, gave the title of +comedy to such scriptural pieces as <i>The Nativity</i>, <i>The +Adoration of the Kings</i>, and <i>The Massacre of the Innocents</i>; +and in Spain, at the same period, they also called +their moral pieces comedies. The title of one of these indicates +their matter, <i>La Doleria del Sueño del Mundo; +Comedia tratada por via de Philosophia Moral</i>,—“The +Anguish of the Sleep of the World; a Comedy treated in +the style of Philosophic Morality.” Comedy was the +general appellative for a play. Shakspeare himself calls +the play of the players in <i>Hamlet</i> both a tragedy and a +comedy. It is quite evident that at this period they had +no distinct conception of comedy merely as a pleasant exhibition +of society. Aristotle had not afforded them a +correct description in our sense, drawing his notions from +the old comedy, those personal satires or farcical lampoons +acted on the Athenian stage.</p> + +<p>To this day we remain still unsatisfied what Dante +meant by calling his great poem a “Commedia.” Dante +throws the same sort of mystery over the species of his +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page503" id="page503"></a>503</span> +poem as he has done over the creation of a classical diction +for his own Italy. According to his interpretation, the +lofty style was denominated tragic, and in opposition to it +he has called his work “Commedia,” as of a more humble +style; and on another occasion he describes comedy as +something that begins sadly and ends happily, as we +find it in his great poem. We must, however, accept the +definition as very obscure, when we consider that both his +subject and his diction so often led him to sublimity of +conception and expression; but the style of criticism was +yet unformed in the days of the Italian Homer.</p> + +<p>It is remarkable that Boccaccio has entitled his pastoral +of “Ameto” a “Commedia delle Ninfe Fiorentine.” It is +difficult to imagine that the almost contemporaneous commentator +would have misused the word; we might presume +he attached the idea of a drama to this disputed term.</p> + +<p>While these indistinct notions of tragedy and comedy +were prevalent with us, even long after we had a public +theatre, we really possessed tragedy and comedy in their +more classical form; Tragedy, which soared to the sententiousness +of Seneca; and Comedy, which sported with +Plautus and Terence.</p> + +<p>We owe this first <span class="scs">TRAGEDY</span> in our language, represented +before the Queen in 1561, by the gentlemen of the Inner +Temple, to the master-spirit who planned <i>The Mirror for +Magistrates</i>, and left as its model <i>The Induction</i>. <span class="sc">Sackville</span>, +Lord Buckhurst, the first Earl of Dorset, in that +national poem had struck with the nerve of Chaucer while +he anticipated the grave melodious stanza and the picturing +invention of Spenser. But called away from the land +of the muses to the political cabinet, this fine genius seems +repeatedly to have consigned his works to the hands of +others; even his lighter productions are still concealed +from us in their anonymous condition. As in <i>The Mirror +for Magistrates</i> Sackville had resigned that noble scheme +to inferior names, so in this tragedy of <i>Ferrex and Porrex</i>, +or, as it was sometimes entitled, <i>The Tragedy of Gorboduc</i>, +while his genius struck out the same originality of plan, +yet the titlepage informs us that he accepted a coadjutor +in <span class="sc">Thomas Norton</span>, who, as much as we know of him +in other things, was a worthy partner of Sternhold and +Hopkins.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page504" id="page504"></a>504</span></p> + +<p>In this first tragedy in our language, cast in the mould +of classical antiquity, we find a division of scenes and a +progressive plot carried on, though somewhat heavily, +through five acts; the ancient ethical choruses are preserved, +changing their metres with rhyme. And here, for +the first time, blank verse was recited on the stage. Notwithstanding +these novel refinements, our first tragedy +bears a strong impress of ancient simplicity. Every act +was preceded by “a dumb show,” prefiguring the incidents +of the opening act; these scenical displays of something +considered to be analogous to the matter were remains of +the pageants.</p> + +<p>Blank verse, which the Earl of Surrey had first invented +for his version of Virgil, the Earl of Dorset now +happily applied to the dramatic dialogue. To both these +noblemen our poets owe their emancipation from rhyme; +but the rhythmical artifices of blank verse were not discovered +in the monotonous, uncadenced lines of its inventors. +The happiest inventor does not overcome all +difficulties.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Sackville</span>, in this tragedy, did not work with the +potent mastery of his <i>Induction</i>; his fire seems +smothered in each exact line; he steals on with care but +with fear, as one treading on ice, and appears not to have +settled in his mind the true language of emotion, for we +feel none. He is ethical more than dramatic. His lifeless +personages have no distinctness of character; his speeches +are scholastic orations: but the purity of his diction and +the aptness of his epithets are remarkable; his words and +phrases are transparent; and he may be read with ease by +those not versed in ancient lore. The political part of the +tragedy is not destitute of interest; developing the misery +of fraternal wars, the division of sovereign power, each +contending for dominion, and closing in the dissolution of +all government, by the despair of a people. We have +ourselves witnessed in these times a similar scene of the +enmity of brothers and monarchs.</p> + +<p>A political anecdote confining this tragedy is worth +recording. In the discussions of the dangers and mischiefs +of such a state of insubordination, the poet, adopting +the prevalent notions of the divine right and the +authority of “the absolute king,” inculcates the doctrine +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page505" id="page505"></a>505</span> +of passive obedience. These lines, which appear in the +first edition, were silently removed from the later ones.<a name="fa2c50" id="fa2c50" href="#ft2c50"><span class="sp">2</span></a> +It is an evidence that these dreary principles, which in the +following reigns of James and Charles produced such fatal +misunderstandings, even at this time began to be questioned. +Our poet, however, under the reckless councils of +a court minion, had covered the severest satire on those +monarchs who rage with “the lust of kingdoms,” and +“subject to no law,” and who hold their enormous will to +be the privilege of regal power. Sackville seems to have +adopted the principle which Machiavel had artfully +managed in his “Prince,” in the spirit of damning irony.</p> + +<p>There is such a level equality throughout the whole +style of this drama,<a name="fa3c50" id="fa3c50" href="#ft3c50"><span class="sp">3</span></a> that it has given rise to a suspicion +that the work could only be the composition of one mind +and one ear. It is not in the constitution of the human +intellect that Norton could emulate Sackville, or that +Sackville could bring himself down to Norton. This internal +evidence struck Warton; and tracing it by <i>The +Mirror for Magistrates</i>, the suspicion was confirmed; the +scenes of <i>Gorboduc</i> are visibly marked with the greater +poet’s characteristics, “in a perspicuity of style and a +command of numbers superior to the tone of his times.” +The name of Norton affixed to the titlepage might only +indicate his management of the pageants! and possibly, +being a licenser of books and a puritan, even his name +might be a recommendation of this drama, for certain +persons. Few things in those days were more loosely +conducted than the business and the artifices of printers, +who generally procured their copies surreptitiously, or +were permitted to accommodate them to their own free +management and deceptive titlepages.</p> + +<p>We must not decide on <i>the first tragedy</i> by a comparison +with the more attractive and impassioned ones +which soon afterwards inundated our theatres. The +court-circle had never before listened to such an amazing +novelty; and the poetic critic of that day pronounced that +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page506" id="page506"></a>506</span> +“those stately speeches and well-sounding phrases were +full of notable morality, which it doth most delightfully +teach.” Sir Philip Sidney only grieved that this tragedy +might not remain as an exact model of all tragedies, being +“faulty both in place and time, the two necessary companions +of all corporal actions.” Sidney did not live to +witness the code of Aristotle impugned, and his unities +set at defiance, by a swarm of dramatic bees, whose wild +music and native sweetness were in their own humming +and their own honey.</p> + +<p>This our first tragedy attracted by its classical form the +approval of some great moderns. <span class="sc">Rymer</span>, a stout Aristotelian, +who has written on tragedy, was astonished to +find “such a classical fable on this side the Alps,” +which, he plainly tells us, “might have been a better +direction to Shakspeare and Jonson than any which they +had the luck to follow.” And Pope was not the less +struck by the chaste style and the decorum of Sackville, +who having several murders in his tragedy, veiled them +from the public eye; conforming to the great Horatian +canon, they are told, and not viewed in the representation. +Pope in conversation declared, too, that Sackville +wrote in a much purer style than Shakspeare in his first +plays, without affectation and bombast! and he has delivered +a more formal decision in print. “The writers of +the succeeding age might have improved as much in other +respects by copying from Sackville, from a propriety in the +sentiments and dignity in the sentences, and an unaffected +perspicuity of style, which all the succeeding poets, not +excepting Shakspeare himself, either little understood or +perpetually neglected.”</p> + +<p>These are edicts from the school of classical antiquity. +It was on the earnest recommendation of Pope that +Spence published an edition of this tragedy, which had +accidentally been put into the hands of Pope by the +father of the Wartons. Our vernacular writers, even the +greatest, were almost unknown in that day, and they only +accidentally occurred.<a name="fa4c50" id="fa4c50" href="#ft4c50"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page507" id="page507"></a>507</span></p> + +<p>Spence, a feeble classical critic, was so overcome by the +notion that “a privy-counsellor” must be more versant in +the language and the feelings of royalty than a plebeian +poet, that in his preface pointing out “the stately +speeches,” he exclaimed in ecstasy—“’Tis no wonder if +the language of <i>kings</i> and <i>statesmen</i> should be less happily +imitated by a <i>poet</i> than a <i>privy-counsellor</i>.” To vindicate +Shakspeare, at whom this unguarded blow seemed +levelled, the historian of our poetry, seated in his professorial +chair, flung his lightning on the impious critic. +“Whatever merit there is in this play, and particularly in +the speeches, it is more owing to the poet than the privy-counsellor. +If a first minister was to write a tragedy, I +believe the piece will be the better the less it has of the +first minister. When a statesman turns poet, I should +not wish him to fetch his ideas or his language from +the cabinet. I know not why a king should be better +qualified than a private man to make kings talk in blank +verse.”</p> + +<p>Literary history would have supplied the positive fact. +Cardinal Richelieu, that great minister, wrote a memorable +tragedy; and, in accordance with his own familiar +notions, the minister called it <i>Europe</i>. It was written in +the style of “a privy-counsellor,” and it was hissed! +while Corneille, who wrote as a poet, for the national +theatre, composed sentiments which statesmen got by +heart.</p> + +<p>Our literary antiquaries long doted on the first English +comedy—<i>Gammer Gurton’s Needle</i>—being a regular +comedy in five acts in rhyme. The rusticity of the materials +is remarkable. A diligent crone, darning the lower +habiliments of Hodge, loses her needle—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>A little thing, with a hole in the end, as bright as any siller (silver),</p> +<p>Small, long, sharp at the point, and straight as any piller.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">Had a needle not been a domestic implement of more +rarity than it is since Birmingham flourished, we had not +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page508" id="page508"></a>508</span> +had such a pointed and polished description. In fact, +the loss of the Gammer’s needle sets the whole village in +flames; the spark falling from the mischievous waggery +of a Tom o’ Bedlam in an artful insinuation against a +certain gossip notable for the luxuriance of her grotesque +invectives. Dame Chat is a scold, whose curses and oaths +neither the fish-market nor Shakspeare himself could +have gone beyond. Brawls and battles involve the justice, +the curate, and the devil himself, in their agency. The +prime author of all the mischief produces the catastrophe; +for he contrives to make Hodge extract from +a part more tender than his heart the cause of so much +discord, with great risk to its point and straightness; and +the parties conclude—</p> + +<p class="center f90 ptb1">For Gammer Gurton’s needle’s sake let us have a <span class="scs">PLAUDITE</span>!</p> + +<p>The writer of this extraordinary, and long supposed to +be the earliest comedy in our language, the titlepage +informs us was Mr. S——, Master of Arts; and, moreover, +that it was acted at the University of Cambridge. When +afterwards it was ascertained that Mr. S—— was no less +a person than <span class="sc">John Still</span>, subsequently Bishop of Bath +and Wells, it did not diminish the number of its admirers. +The black-letter brotherhood were long enamoured +of this most ancient comedy, as a genuine beauty of the +infancy of the drama. Dodsley and Hawkins enshrined +<i>Gammer Gurton’s Needle</i> in their “Reliquary;” and +literary superstition</p> + +<p class="center f90 ptb1">Swore it was the relick of a saint.</p> + +<p>The mere lovers of antiquity endured the raillery of +the wits for the puerility of the plot, the vulgar humour, +and the homeliness of the style. One had asserted that +“<span class="sc">Still</span> had displayed the true genius of comedy, and the +choice of his <i>subject</i> only was to be regretted;” another +declared that “the vein of familiar humour and a kind of +grotesque imagery are not unlike some parts of Aristophanes, +but without the graces of <i>language</i>.” Thus one +admirer gives up the subject, and another the style! +Even Warton fondly lingered in an apology for the grossness +of the “Gammer.”—“In a polished age that writer +would have chosen, nor would he perhaps have disgraced, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page509" id="page509"></a>509</span> +a better subject. It has been thought surprising that a +learned audience could have endured some of the indelicate +scenes. But the established festivities of scholars +were gross, and agreeable to their general habits.” This +apology has turned out to be more plausible than true.</p> + +<p>This ancient comedy is the work of a truly comic +genius, who knew not how to choose his subject, and +indulged a taste repulsive to those who only admit of +delicate, and not familiar humour. Its grossness, however, +did not necessarily result from the prevalent grossness +of the times; since a recent discovery, with which +Warton was unacquainted, has shown the world that an +English comedy which preceded the hitherto supposed +first comedy in our language, is remarkable for its +chasteness—the propriety of its great variety of characters, +the truth of the manners in a wide circle of +society, and the uninterrupted gaiety pervading the whole +airy composition.</p> + +<p>So recently as in 1818 an ancient printed drama, styled +<i>Ralph Roister Doister</i>, was discovered;<a name="fa5c50" id="fa5c50" href="#ft5c50"><span class="sp">5</span></a> a legitimate +comedy of five acts in rhyme, and, as the writer himself +professes, modelled on the dramas of Plautus and Terence. +He claims for it the honour of the highest class—that of +“Comedy,” but this term was then so indistinct that the +poet adds the more usual one of “Enterlude.”</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Gammer Gurton</span> is a representation of sordid rusticity. +<span class="sc">Roister Doister</span> opens the moveable scenery of domestic +life in the metropolis—touched with care, and warm with +reality. The plot, without involution, progresses through +the acts. An egotistical and affectedly amorous hair-brain, +ever lamenting the dangerous beauty of his ridiculous +self, fancies to marry a fair dame. He is hit off as</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>So fervent hot wooing, and so far from wiving,</p> +<p>I trow, never was any creature living.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page510" id="page510"></a>510</span></p> + +<p class="noind">He is the whetstone of a sharp parasite, whose opening +monologue exhibits his full portrait—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>But, know ye, that for all this merry note of mine,</p> +<p>He might oppose me now that should ask where I dine.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">He runs over a nomenclature of a most variegated acquaintance, +with some fugitive strictures exquisitely personal. +We find ourselves in a more advanced stage in +society than we expected in the reigns of our last Henry +or Edward. Such personages abounded in the twenty +years of peace and luxury under James the First, when +the obsequious hanger-on flourished among the town-heroes +of “The Gull’s Horn-book.” This parasite is +also one of those domestic dependents whose shrewdness +and artifices supply a perpetual source of comic invention; +such as those found among the Latin dramatists, +whose scenes and incidents are Grecian, and from +whom this “Matthew Merry-greek” by his name seems +happily transplanted. This poet delights by scenes +coloured with the truth of nature, and by the clear +conception of his domestic personages. There is a group +of domestics—the ancient housekeeper spinning on +her distaff amidst her maidens, some sowing, some +knitting, all in free chat; these might have formed a +study for the vivid Teniers, and even for Shakspeare +in his happiest vein. They are not the domestics of Swift +and of Mandeville—the spoilers of the establishment; not +that they are without the common feelings of the servants’ +hall, for they have at heart the merry prosperity of +their commonwealth. After their “drudgerie,” to dissipate +their “weariness” was the fundamental principle of +the freedom of servitude. Their chorus is “lovingly to +agree.” A pleasant song, on occasion of the reception of +“a new-come man” in the family, reveals the “mystery” +of their ancient craft.<a name="fa6c50" id="fa6c50" href="#ft6c50"><span class="sp">6</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page511" id="page511"></a>511</span></p> + +<p>These early dramatists describe their characters by their +names; an artless mode, which, however, long continued to +be the practice of our comic writers, and we may still +trace it in modern comedies. Steele, in his periodical +paper, “The Lover,” condemned it as no better a device +than of underwriting the name of an animal; it is remarkable, +that in this identical paper an old bachelor is +called “Wildgoose,” and the presumed author of “The +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page512" id="page512"></a>512</span> +Lover” is Marmaduke “Myrtle.” Anstey has made the +most happy use of characteristic names in the “Bath +Guide,” which is an evidence that they may still be successfully +appropriated, whenever an author’s judgment +equals the felicity of his invention.</p> + +<p>Of a comedy, conjectured to have been written at the +close of the reign of Henry the Eighth, we may be surprised +that the language hardly retains a vestige of the +rust of antiquity:—so true it is that the familiar language +of the people has been preserved with rare innovations. +Its Alexandrine measure properly read or chanted is a +metre which runs on with facility; the versification has +even happily imitated the sounds of the different instruments +played on in one of the serenades; a refinement +which we could not have imagined to have been within +the reach of an artificer of verse in those days. All this +would look suspicious, if for an instant we could imagine +that this admirable drama was the contrivance of some +Chatterton or Ireland. In style and versification the +writer far distanced those of his contemporaries, whose +affectation of phrases rendered them harsh and obscure; +he has, therefore, approached us. It is remarkable also +that the very measure of this ancient dramatist, though +those whose ear is only used to the decasyllabic measure +have called it “a long hobbling metre,” has been actually +chosen by a modern poet, when writing familiar dialogue +with the design of reviving rhymed comedy.<a name="fa7c50" id="fa7c50" href="#ft7c50"><span class="sp">7</span></a></p> + +<p>The fate of some books is as remarkable as the histories +of some men. This lorn and lost drama, deprived even of +its title and the printer’s name, offered no clue to the +discovery of the fine genius who composed it; and the +possessor, who deposited it in the library of Eton College, +was not at all aware of its claim to be there preserved. +It was to subsequent research, after the reprint had been +made, that both the writer and the celebrity of his comedy +were indisputably ascertained. We owe the discovery to +a comic incident in the drama: an amatory epistle prepared +by a scrivener’s hand, for our gay amourists then +could not always compose, if they could write their billets-doux, +being maliciously read to the lady, by purposely +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page513" id="page513"></a>513</span> +neglecting the punctuation, turned out to be a severe +satire. The discomfited lover hastens to wreak his vengeance +on the hapless scribe, who, however, reading it +with the due punctuation, proves it to be a genuine love-letter. +Wilson, in his “Art of Logic,” gave this letter +as an example of the use of punctuation in settling the +sense; and without which, as in the present instance, we +may have “a double sense and contrary meaning.” He +fortunately added that his example was “taken out of an +interlude made by <span class="sc">Nicholas Udall</span>.”</p> + +<p>This was the learned <span class="sc">Udall</span>, the Master of Eton School; +and this very comedy had been so universally admired, that +“Roister-Doister” became a proverbial phrase to designate +a hair-brained coxcomb. We now possess two pictures +of the habits, the minds, and the dialogue of the +English people in rural and in city life by two contemporaries, +who wanted not the art of “holding the mirror up +to nature.”</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c50" id="ft1c50" href="#fa1c50"><span class="fn">1</span></a> “A Moral and Pitiful Comedie,” entitled, “All for Money,” &c., +by T. Lupton, 1578. In the prologue the author calls it “A Pleasant +Tragedy.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c50" id="ft2c50" href="#fa2c50"><span class="fn">2</span></a> The lines, which are very miserable, are preserved in Dodsley’s +“Old Plays.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c50" id="ft3c50" href="#fa3c50"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Warton has analysed this drama in his “History of English +Poetry,” vol. iv. 178, 8vo. It is in the Collection of Dodsley and +Hawkins.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c50" id="ft4c50" href="#fa4c50"><span class="fn">4</span></a> This our first tragedy, <i>Ferrex and Porrex</i>, offers a striking +evidence of our literary knowledge. Dryden, alluding to it, refers to +a spurious copy published under the title of <i>Gorboduc</i> but he could +not have seen it, for he calls it <i>Queen Gorboduc</i>, whereas he is <i>King</i>; +and he appears to think that it was written in <i>rhyme</i>; and notices +Shakspeare as the inventor of blank verse! When Pope requested +Spence to reprint <i>Gorboduc</i>, they were so little cognisant of these +matters, that the spurious and defective <i>Gorboduc</i> was printed instead +of the genuine <i>Ferrex and Porrex</i>. This ignorance of our +ancient writers lasted to a later period.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c50" id="ft5c50" href="#fa5c50"><span class="fn">5</span></a> Reprinted by the Rev. Mr. Briggs, the possessor. After a limited +reprint it was republished as the first number of a cheap edition of Old +English Dramas, published by T. White, 1830; a work carried on to a +few volumes only. The text reads apparently very correct, and seems +to have passed under a skilful eye. I have read it with attention, +because I read it with delight. [It has since been reprinted by the +Shakspeare Society, carefully collated from the unique original now in +Eton College Library, by Mr. Payne Collier.]</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c50" id="ft6c50" href="#fa6c50"><span class="fn">6</span></a> This song of Domesticity, as probably it never has been noticed, +I preserve in the note, that the reader may decide on the melody of +such native simplicity.</p> + +<p>This song may have been written about the close of the reign of +Henry the Eighth. The short ballad metres in our ancient poems are +perfectly harmonious, and the songs are racy and joyous,—</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p class="i5 s">I.</p> + + <p class="i1">A thing very fitte</p> + <p class="i1">For them that have witte</p> + <p class="i1">And are felowes knitte</p> +<p>Servants in one house to bee,</p> + <p class="i1">As fast fast for to sitte,</p> + <p class="i1">And not oft to flitte</p> + <p class="i1">Nor varie a whitte,</p> +<p>But lovingly to agree.</p> + +<p class="i5 s">II.</p> + + <p class="i1">No man complainyng</p> + <p class="i1">Nor other disdainyng</p> + <p class="i1">For losse or for gainyng,</p> +<p>But felowes or friends to bee,</p> + <p class="i1">No grudge remainyng,</p> + <p class="i1">No work refrainyng,</p> + <p class="i1">Nor helpe restrainyng,</p> +<p>But lovingly to agree.</p> + +<p class="i5 s">III.</p> + + <p class="i1">No man for despite</p> + <p class="i1">By worde or by write</p> + <p class="i1">His felowe to twite,</p> +<p>But further in honestie;</p> + <p class="i1">No good turns entwite</p> + <p class="i1">Nor old sores recite,</p> + <p class="i1">But let all goe quite,</p> +<p>And lovingly to agree.</p> + +<p class="i5 s">IV.</p> + + <p class="i1">After drudgerie</p> + <p class="i1">When they be werie,</p> + <p class="i1">Then to be merie,</p> +<p>To laugh and sing they be free</p> + <p class="i1">With chip and cherie,</p> + <p class="i1">High derie derie,</p> + <p class="i1">Trill on the berie,</p> +<p>And lovingly to agree!</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><a name="ft7c50" id="ft7c50" href="#fa7c50"><span class="fn">7</span></a> Hayley.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page514" id="page514"></a>514</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE PREDECESSORS AND CONTEMPORARIES +OF SHAKESPEARE.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">The</span> establishment of a variety of theatres is an incident +in the history of the people, as well as of the national +genius. The drama at first existed, it may be said, in +privacy. Royalty and nobility maintained their own companies; +the universities acted at their colleges, the “children” +or the singing boys at the public schools, the +lawyers at their halls; and some of the gentry at their +seats had servants who were players. A stage for strollers +would occasionally be hastily erected in the unsheltered +yards of inns, and they would ramble into the country till +an Act of Elizabeth in 1572 controlled these erratic bodies, +classing them with “rogues and vagabonds.” Throughout +the kingdom there was a growing predilection for +theatrical entertainments—it was the national anticipation +of a public theatre.</p> + +<p>If Elizabeth, a popular sovereign, in 1572 checked the +strollers assuming the character of players, two years +afterwards, in 1574, she granted a patent to the servants +of the Earl of Leicester<a name="fa1c51" id="fa1c51" href="#ft1c51"><span class="sp">1</span></a> “to exercise the faculty of +playing stage-plays, as well for the recreation of our loving +subjects, as for our solace and pleasure;” and she added, +“within our city of London, and of any of our cities.” +This was a boon royally given, in which her “loving subjects” +might gather from the tone of this dramatic state-paper, +that the queen had resolved in council that the +public should not be denied sharing in her own amusements.</p> + +<p>The pleasures of the people were not, however, yet +those of their grave seignors. The puritanic spirit of the +anti-dramatists, which sometimes divided the councils of +the queen, had lodged among the honest wardmotes. A +protracted contest between the privy-council and the lord +mayor in common council, with protests and petitions, rose +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page515" id="page515"></a>515</span> +up; and long it seemed hopeless to patronise the players, +who were not suffered to play. The Recorder Fleetwood, +of whom we have many curious police-reports in the style +of a <i>lieutenant de police</i>—as the chief of his own spies, +and the executioner of his own decrees—had himself a fertile +dramatic invention, which was largely developed in +the singular “orders of the common-council” against the +alarming innovation of <span class="scs">PUBLIC PLAYS</span> in the boundaries of +the civic jurisdiction.<a name="fa2c51" id="fa2c51" href="#ft2c51"><span class="sp">2</span></a> There was not a calamity, moral +and physical, which could happen to any city which the +Recorder has not made concomitant with the opening of +playhouses. The infection of the plague was, however, +then an irrefutable argument. In this contest between +the court and the city, the common-council remained dogged +assertors of their privileges; they drove the players +from their sacred precincts to the boundaries and to “the +liberties,” where, however, they harassed these children of +fancy by a novel claim, that none were to be free in the +“liberties” but themselves, which argument was submitted +to the law officers for their decision. The privy-council +once more interfered, by a declaration that the chief justices +had not yet been able to determine their case, and +therefore there was to be no present “intermeddling.” It +is evident that the government all along had resolved that +the people should have a theatre. After two years of +opposition to the patent granted to the players in 1574, +the first playhouse was built—a timber house in the +suburbs—and received the appropriate title of “The +Theatre;” and about the same time “The Curtain” rose +in its vicinage, a name supposed to have been derived +from that appendage to a stage; for to those who had +been accustomed to the open stage of an inn-yard, the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page516" id="page516"></a>516</span> +drop or “curtain” separating the actors from the audience +was such a novelty, that it left its name to the house. +The Blackfriars, the Round Globe, the Square Fortune—whence +Edward Alleyn, by his histrionic fame, drew the +wealth which endowed Dulwich College—are names almost +consecrated by the eminent geniuses whose lives were connected +with these theatres; and at one time it appears that +seventeen playhouses had been erected; they were, however, +wooden and thatched, till the Fortune was built +with brick, and, in the theatrical phrase, “the heavens,” +that is, the open top, was tiled.</p> + +<p>The popular fervour of the drama had now a centrical +attraction; a place of social resort, with a facility +of admission, was now opened;<a name="fa3c51" id="fa3c51" href="#ft3c51"><span class="sp">3</span></a> and when yet there was +no reading public, the theatre would be substituted for +the press; and often, wearied of the bearward and coarser +sports, they flocked to the more intellectual entertainment. +The playhouse was a wider sphere for their exertions, and +it opened an arduous competition for the purveyors of +these incessant novelties. The managers of theatres had +now to look about for plays and playwrights. A general +demand required, not only an abundant, but, unfortunately, +a rapid supply. What a crisis for genius, for its +development and its destruction!</p> + +<p>This was an event in the history of our literature which +has not occurred in the literary history of any other +European people. It was about the middle of the reign +of Elizabeth that a race of dramatic writers burst forth +on the nation—writers, not easily numbered, of innumerable +dramas.</p> + +<p>Literature now opened a new avenue for a poor scholar, +the first step of advancement in society from a collegiate +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page517" id="page517"></a>517</span> +life for those who found their future condition but ill +provided for. A secretaryship, a chaplainship, or to be a +gentleman’s usher—in a word, an humble retainer in great +families—circumscribed the ambition of the meek and the +worthy; but there were others, in “their first gamesome +age,” whose</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i6">——doting sires,</p> +<p>Carked and cared to have them lettered—</p> +<p>But their kind college from the teat did tent,</p> +<p>And forced them walk before they weaned were.<a name="fa4c51" id="fa4c51" href="#ft4c51"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">This, however, is but the style of apology which one of +them gives to veil the fact that many were ejected from +“the teat.” Fiery emanations these, compelled to leave +their cloistered solitudes, restless and reckless, they rushed +to the metropolis, where this new mart of genius in the +rising dramatic age was opened. Play-writing and play-acting, +for they were often combined, were too magical a +business to resist its delusions.</p> + +<p>They wrote, with rare exceptions, without revision. An +act or two, composed with some meditation to awaken +interest—a few moveable scenes rapidly put together—and, +at some fortunate moment, a burst of poetry—usually +wound up in pell-mell confusion; for how could they contrive +a catastrophe to the chaos? Such writers relied on +the passing curiosity which their story might raise, and +more on the play of the actors, who, in the last bustling +scenes, might lend an interest which the meagre dialogue +of the economical poet so rarely afforded. They never +wrote for posterity, and seem never to have pretended to +it. They betrayed no sympathy for their progeny; the +manager’s stock was the foundling hospital for this spurious +brood; the Muse even often sold her infant while +it still lay on the breast. The huddled act of a play was +despatched to the manager as the lure of a temporary +loan, accompanied by a promissory note of expedition; +and assuredly they kept to their word if ever they concluded +the work.</p> + +<p>This facility of production may be accounted for, not +only from the more obvious cause which instigated their +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page518" id="page518"></a>518</span> +incessant toil, but from the ready sources whence they +drew their materials. They dramatised evanescent subjects, +in rapid competition, like the ballad-makers of their +own day, or the novelists of ours; they caught “the +Cynthia of the minute”—a domestic incident—a tragic +tale engaging the public attention produced many domestic +tragedies founded on actual events; they were certain of +exciting the sympathies of an audience. Two remarkable +ones have been ascribed to Shakespeare by skilful judges: +<i>Arden of Feversham</i>, where the repentance of an adulterous +wife in the agony of conscience so powerfully +reminds one of the great poet, that the German, Tieck, +who has recently translated it, has not hesitated to subscribe +to the opinion of some of our own critics; and +<i>The Yorkshire Tragedy</i>, which was printed with the +name of Shakespeare in his own lifetime, and has been held +to be authentic; and surely <i>The Yorkshire Tragedy</i> at +least possessed an equal claim with the monstrous <i>Titus +Andronicus</i><a name="fa5c51" id="fa5c51" href="#ft5c51"><span class="sp">5</span></a> not to be ejected from the writings of +Shakespeare. It is most probable that that, among others, +was among the old plays which he often took in hand; +and our judicial decisions have not always found “the +divinity which stirs within them.” The Italian novelists, +which had been recently translated in <span class="sc">Painter’s</span> “Palace +of Pleasure,” these dramatists ransacked for their plots; +this source opened a fresh supply of invention, and a combination +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page519" id="page519"></a>519</span> +of natural incidents, which varies the dry matter-of-fact +drawn from the “Chronicles,” which in their hands +too often produced mere skeletons of poetry. They borrowed +from the ancients when they could. Plautus was +a favourite. They wrote for a day, and did not expect to +survive many.</p> + +<p>The rapid succession of this multitude of plays is remarkable; +many have wholly perished by casualties and +dispersions, and some possibly may still lie unsunned in +their manuscript state.<a name="fa6c51" id="fa6c51" href="#ft6c51"><span class="sp">6</span></a> We have only the titles of many +which were popular, while the names of some of these +artificers have come down to us without any of their +workmanship. In a private collection, Langbaine had +gathered about a thousand plays, besides interludes and +drolls; and yet these were but a portion of those plays, +for many never passed through the press; the list of +anonymous authors is not only considerable, but some of +these are not inferior in invention and style to the best.<a name="fa7c51" id="fa7c51" href="#ft7c51"><span class="sp">7</span></a> +We may judge of the prolific production of these authors +by <span class="sc">Thomas Heywood</span>, a fluent and natural writer, who +never allowed himself time to cross out a line, and who +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page520" id="page520"></a>520</span> +has casually informed us that “he had either an entire +hand, or at least a main finger, in two hundred and +twenty plays.”</p> + +<p>The intercourse of the proprietors or managers of the +theatres and these writers has been only incidentally, and +indeed accidentally, revealed to us.<a name="fa8c51" id="fa8c51" href="#ft8c51"><span class="sp">8</span></a> It was justly observed +by Gifford, that these dramatic poets, either from +mortification or humility, abstained from dwelling, or even +entering upon their personal history. Though frequent +in dedications, they are seldom explicit; and even their +prefaces fail to convey any information, except of their wants +or their grievances, from evils which are rarely specified. +The truth is, that this whole poetical race, which suddenly +broke out together, a sort of wild insurrection of genius, +early found that they were nothing more than the hirelings +of some crafty manager, at whose beck and mercy +they lived. Writing plays was soon held to be as discreditable +an occupation as that of the players themselves; +indeed, not seldom the poets themselves were actors—these +departments were so frequently combined, that the +term player is sometimes used equally for a performer on +the stage, and a writer of plays.</p> + +<p>This fraternity, children of ill-fortune and of passion, +were scarce distinguishable from each other; and if the +fortunes, and the fate of some, are more known, it is but +by the recklessness of their days—their criminal impetuosity. +Several perished in their immaturity, torches +blazing, while they were consuming themselves. The +chance-record of the violent end of one; a cry of desperation +still more horrible of another; the death-bed repentance +of a third; the dishonourable life of dupery probably +practised by a fourth;<a name="fa9c51" id="fa9c51" href="#ft9c51"><span class="sp">9</span></a> are adapted to enter into moral, +if not into literary history.</p> + +<p>The Psychologist, the historian of the soul among +the brotherhood of genius—for such were many among +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page521" id="page521"></a>521</span> +them—feels how precious are the slight memorials of +noble passions, disguised by a degraded existence. However +tortuous their lives seem, some grasped at celebrity, +and some looked towards distant fame. If some have +eloquently reproached themselves, there are, too, those +who exulted in the consciousness of their intellectual greatness. +They were of different magnitude, and in the scroll +of their names some have been recognised by posterity.</p> + +<p>An ungenial critic has morosely censured Robert Greene, +who, harboured in an obscure lodging, which a poor man’s +charity had yielded, when lying on his death-bed, prayed +for the last favour that poor man’s charity could bestow +on a miserable, but a conscious poet—that his coffin might +be covered with bays. In the shadow of death, the poet +and the romancer dwelt on the fame which he cherished +as life.</p> + +<p>Even their small theatres appeared to the poet “thronged,” +and the heart of the dramatist would swell at “the shouts +and claps.” Drayton, who, at a later day, joined in several +dramas, has perpetuated this rejoicing of the poet, which +he himself had experienced in that small world “the proud +round” of the Globe Theatre. It is a sonnet in the collection +which he has entitled “Idea,” and which no successful +dramatist will read without some happy emotion.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>In pride of wit, when <i>high desire of fame</i></p> +<p><i>Gave life and courage to my labouring pen</i>,</p> +<p>And first the sound and vertue of my name</p> +<p>Were grace and credit in the ears of men;</p> +<p>With those the <i>thronged theaters</i> that presse,</p> +<p>I in <i>the circuit</i> for the Lawrell strove,</p> +<p>Where the <i>full praise</i>, I freely must confesse,</p> +<p>In heate of blood and modest minde might move;</p> +<p><i>With</i> <span class="scs">SHOWTS</span> <i>and</i> <span class="scs">CLAPS</span> <i>at every little</i> <span class="scs">PAWSE</span></p> +<p>When the <i>prowd</i> <span class="scs">ROUND</span> <i>on everie side hath rung</i>.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The ample roll might not be tedious, though it were +long, had we aught to record of this brotherhood of genius—but +nothing we know of the much-applauded, and much-ridiculed, +and most ingenious <span class="sc">John Lyly</span>; nothing of the +searching and cynical <span class="sc">Marston</span>; nothing of the inventive +and flowing <span class="sc">Dekker</span>; nothing of the unpremeditated +strains of the fertile <span class="sc">Heywood</span>; nor of the pathetic +<span class="sc">Webster</span>; nor of <span class="sc">Middleton</span>, from whose “Witch” +Shakespeare borrowed his incantations; nor of <span class="sc">Rowley</span>, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page522" id="page522"></a>522</span> +whom Shakespeare aided; nor of the equal and grave +<span class="sc">Massinger</span>; nor of the lonely and melancholy <span class="sc">Ford</span>.</p> + +<p>Among these poets stood He, in whose fire the Greek +of Homer burned clear in his Homeric English. Chapman +often caught the ideas of Homer, and went on writing +Homerically; at once the translator and the original. +One may read in that “most reverend aspect” of his, the +lofty spirit that told how, above all living, was to him the +poet’s life—when he exclaimed—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>The work that I was born to do is done!</p> + <p class="i9">The conclusion</p> +<p>Makes the beginning of my life; for never</p> +<p>Let me be said to live, till I live ever!<a name="fa10c51" id="fa10c51" href="#ft10c51"><span class="sp">10</span></a></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The plays were bought by a manager for his company, +and each company was jealously alive that no other should +perform their purchased copies. These monopolists were +therefore anxious to suppress the publication of plays, and +to smother the fame of their dramatist on their own +boards. The players, who were usually copartners, at +the sovereign pleasure of their proprietorship, unmercifully +mutilated the tender limbs of their poet,<a name="fa11c51" id="fa11c51" href="#ft11c51"><span class="sp">11</span></a> or what +was not less usual, made him for ever ridiculous by foisting +in whole scenes of the basest humour, as clap-traps for +“the groundlings,” and which sometimes were perpetuated +in the prompter’s copy. Such scenes of ribaldry have +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page523" id="page523"></a>523</span> +tainted even immortal pages, and have provoked much idle +criticism either to censure or to palliate.</p> + +<p>As the stock-copies increased and lost their novelty, they +required some new-fashioning. The tarnished piece was +drawn out of the theatrical wardrobe; once in vogue, and +now neglected, the body, not yet moth-eaten, might be +flounced with new scenes. To this humiliated state of +jobbers of old plays, were reduced the most glorious names +in our drama’s roll. Shakespeare, Jonson, and Massinger +sate down to this obscure drudgery. Our earlier commentators +on Shakespeare had no suspicion that even his +plays were often <i>rifacimentos</i> of neglected stock-copies. +When the account-books of Henslow, the manager, were +discovered at Dulwich College, they supplied some strange +literary anecdotes. This entry appears, “lent to Bengemen +Jonson, forty shillings for his adycions to Jeronymo,” +which was an old favourite play of Kyd’s. Again, more +lent for “new adycions.” When Hawkins republished +“Jeronymo” in his collection, he triumphantly rejected +these “adycions,” as being “foisted in by the players.” +This he had detected by collation with the first edition; +further his critical decision could not advance. The Diary +of Henslow was fatal to the matter-of-fact critic—the passages +he had ejected relate to the madness of Hieronymo +for the murder of his son; the learned poet never wrote +with such a Shakespearian force.</p> + +<p>Our early dramatists not only jobbed in this chance-work, +but established a copartnership for the quicker +manufacture; and we find sometimes three or four poets +working on one play, share and share alike, or in due proportions, +whenever they could peaceably adjust their +mutual celebrities.<a name="fa12c51" id="fa12c51" href="#ft12c51"><span class="sp">12</span></a> Could we penetrate into the recesses +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page524" id="page524"></a>524</span> +of the theatre of that day, I suspect we should discover +civil wars in the commonwealth. These partners sometimes +became irreconcilably jealous. Jonson and Marston +and Decker, who had zealously co-operated, subsequently +exhausted their quivers at one another. Greene was +incurably envious of Marlow, and got his friend Nash to +be as much so, till Marlow and Nash compromised, and +wrote together the tragedy of <i>Dido</i>, with the affection +of twins. Lofty Chapman flashed an “invective” against +proud “Ben,” and when Anthony Munday, a copious +playwright, was hailed by a critic as “the best plotter,” +Jonson, in his next <i>play</i>, ridiculed “the best plotter.” +Can we forget that in <i>Eastward Hoe</i>, one of the most +amusing of our old comedies, whence Hogarth borrowed +the hint of his “Idle and Industrious Apprentices,” by +Jonson, Chapman and Marston, the madness of Ophelia is +poorly ridiculed? It would seem that a junction of the +poets usually closed in a rupture.</p> + +<p>Our first tragedy and comedy were moulded on the +classical model, for both the writers were university-men. +It is, however, remarkable that the greater number of our +early dramatists who now occupy our attention were also +members of the universities, had taken a degree, and some +were skilful Greek scholars.<a name="fa13c51" id="fa13c51" href="#ft13c51"><span class="sp">13</span></a> How then did it happen, +that not one of these scholars submitted to the artificial +apparatus and the conventional code of their legislator, the +Stagyrite? We observe a sudden revolution in the +dramatic art.</p> + +<p>Our poets had not to address scholastic critics; for, as +one of them has delivered himself,—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>————They would have <span class="scs">GOOD PLAYS</span>, and not produce</p> +<p>Such musty fopperies of antiquity;</p> +<p>Which do not suit the humorous age’s back,</p> +<p>With clothes in fashion.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">It was their business to raise up that multiform shape +which alone could win the mutable attention of a very +mixed audience. At once they clung to the human +nature before them; they ran through all the chords of +the passions; mingling the comic with the tragic, they +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page525" id="page525"></a>525</span> +struck out a new course in their inartificial drama. They +were at all events inventors, for they had no prototypes. +Every poet was an original, <i>more suo</i>, mindless of the +encumbering alloy, for they knew that the vein they had +opened was their own, and confided too frequently in its +abundance to find its richness. It was a spontaneous +burst which broke forth in the excitement of these new +times, and which, as far as the careless prodigality of the +vernacular genius is concerned, in the raciness of its idiom, +and the flow of its conceptions, and the freshness of its +imagery, can never return, for the virgin genius of a people +must pass away!</p> + +<p>Valueless, indeed, was our early drama held by graver +men. Sir Thomas Bodley wholly rejected from his great +library all plays, “to avoid stuffing it with baggage-books;” +but more particularly objected to “<span class="sc">English Plays</span>, <i>as +unlike those of other nations</i>, which are esteemed for +learning the languages; and many of them,” he adds, +“are compiled by men of great wisdom and learning.”</p> + +<p>The perplexities of the founder of the noble Bodleian +Library were occasioned by our dramatic illegitimacy; we +had no progenitors, and we were not spell-bound by the +three unities. Originality in every kind startled the mind +which could only pace in the trammels of authority. On +the principle Bodley rejected our <i>English plays</i> he also +condemned our <i>English philosophy</i>; and Lord Bacon +rallied him on that occasion by a good-humoured menace +of “a cogitation against Libraries,” which must have +made the cheeks of the great collector of books tingle. +Bodley with excellent truth described himself as “the +carrier’s horse which cannot blench the beaten way in +which I was trained.”</p> + +<p>In banishing the productions of the national genius +from that national library which his hand had proudly +erected, little was Bodley able to conceive, that a following +generation would dwell on those very “English plays,” +would appeal to them as the depositaries of our language, +and as the secret history of the people, a history which no +historian writes, their modes of thinking in the transition +of their manners, in the vicissitudes of their passions, and +in the scenes of their politics and their religion; and what +most would have astonished our great <i>bibliophile</i>, that +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page526" id="page526"></a>526</span> +collectors like himself, presuming on “their wisdom and +learning,” would devote their vigils to collate, to comment, +and to edit “these baggage-books of English plays,” +and above all, that foreigners, after a century or two, should +enrich their own literature by the translations, or enlarge +their own genius by the imitations of these bold originals.</p> + +<p>By emancipating themselves from the thraldom of +Greece and the servility of Rome our dramatists have +occasioned later critics to separate our own from the +classical drama of antiquity. They are placed in “the +Romantic” school; a novel technical term, not individually +appropriate, and which would be less ambiguous if +considered as “the Gothic.”<a name="fa14c51" id="fa14c51" href="#ft14c51"><span class="sp">14</span></a> At the time when Italy +and France had cast themselves into thraldom, by adhering +to the contracted models of the drama of antiquity, two +nations in Europe, without any intercourse whatever, for +even translation was not yet a medium, were spontaneously +creating a national drama accordant with the experience, +the sympathies, and the imagination of their people. The +theatre was to be a mirror of enchantment, a moveable +reflection of themselves. These two nations were England +and Spain. The dramatic history of Spain is the exact +counterpart which perfectly tallies with our own. In +Spain the learned began with imitations and translations +of the ancient classics; but these formal stately dramas +were so coldly received, that they fell into desuetude, and +were succeeded by those whose native luxuriant genius +reached to the secret hearts of their audience; and it was +this second race, not, indeed, so numerous as our own, who +closed with the Spanish Shakespeare.<a name="fa15c51" id="fa15c51" href="#ft15c51"><span class="sp">15</span></a> This literary +phenomenon, though now apparent, was not perceived +when it was occurring.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page527" id="page527"></a>527</span></p> + +<p>Every taste has delivered its variable decision on these +our old plays, each deciding by its own standard; and the +variance is occasioned not always by deficiency in critical +judgment, but in the very nature of the object of criticism, +in the inherent defect of our ancient drama itself. +These old plays will not endure criticism. They were not +written for critics, and they now exist even in spite of +criticism. They were all experiments of the freest +genius, rarely placed under favouring circumstances. +They were emanations of strong but short conceptions, +poured forth in haste and heat; they blotted their lines as +rarely as we are told did Shakespeare; they revelled in +their first conceptions, often forgotten in their rapid progress; +the true inspiration was lodged in their breasts, the +hidden volcano has often burst through its darkness, and +flamed through a whole scene, for often have they written +as Shakespeare wrote. We may look in them for entire +scenes, felicitous lines, and many an insulated passage, +studies for a poet; anthologies have been drawn from +these elder dramatists.<a name="fa16c51" id="fa16c51" href="#ft16c51"><span class="sp">16</span></a> We may perceive how this +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page528" id="page528"></a>528</span> +sudden generation of poets, some of whose names are not +familiar to us, have moulded our language with the +images of their fancy, and strengthened it by the stability +of their thoughts.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c51" id="ft1c51" href="#fa1c51"><span class="fn">1</span></a> This Patent, corrected from a former copy in Rymer, has been recovered +by Mr. Collier.—<i>Annals of the Stage</i>, i. 211.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c51" id="ft2c51" href="#fa2c51"><span class="fn">2</span></a> This singular document, incorrectly given by Strype, Mr. Collier +has completed. “It throws much new light on the state of the +drama at this period;” and still more on the strange arguments which +the Puritans of the day alleged against players and plays.—Mr. Collier +has preserved an old satirical epigram which had been perilous to print +at that day; it was left for posterity on the fly-leaf of a book. It is +addressed to—</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>“‘The Fooles of the Cittee,’—</p> +<p class="i05">They establish as a rule,</p> +<p class="i05">Not one shall play the fool,</p> +<p class="i05">But they—a worthy school!”</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><a name="ft3c51" id="ft3c51" href="#fa3c51"><span class="fn">3</span></a> At the inferior playhouses the admission was as low as a penny +for “the groundlings” who stood in the roofless pit, which still retained +the name of “the yard”—evidently from the old custom of +playing in the yards of inns. In the higher theatres “a room,” or +box, varied from sixpence to two shillings and sixpence. They played +in daylight, and rose from their dinner to the playhouse. It was one +of the City regulations, that “no playing be in the dark, so that the +auditory may return home before sunset.” Society was then in its +nursery-times; and the solemnity of “the orders in common council” +admirably contrasts with their simplicity; but they acted under the +terror that, when they entered a playhouse, they were joining in “the +devil’s service!”</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c51" id="ft4c51" href="#fa4c51"><span class="fn">4</span></a> Two such poor scholars are introduced in “The Return from Parnassus” +alternately “banning and cursing Granta’s muddy bank;” and +Cambridge, where “our oil was spent.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c51" id="ft5c51" href="#fa5c51"><span class="fn">5</span></a> The popular taste at all times has been prone to view in representation +the most harrowing crimes—probably influenced by the vulgar +notion that, because the circumstances are literally true, they are +therefore the more interesting. One of these writers was <span class="sc">Robert +Yarrington</span>, who seems to have been so strongly attracted to this taste +for scenical murder, that he wrote “Two Lamentable Tragedies,” +which he contrived to throw into one play. By a strange alternation, +the scene veers backwards and forwards from England to Italy, both +progressing together;—the English murder is of a merchant in +Thames-street, and the Italian of a child in a wood by ruffians hired by +the uncle; the ballad deepens the pathetic by two babes—but which +was the original of a domestic incident which first conveyed to our +childhood the idea of an unnatural parent? It appears that we had a +number of what they called “Lamentable Tragedies,” whose very +titles preserve the names of the hapless victims. Taylor, the Water-poet, +alludes to these “as murders fresh in memory;” and has himself +described “the unnatural father who murdered his wife and children” +as parallel to one of ancient date. Acts of lunacy were not then distinguishable +from ordinary murders.—<i>Collier</i>, iii. 49.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c51" id="ft6c51" href="#fa6c51"><span class="fn">6</span></a> Not many years ago Isaac Reed printed <i>The Witch</i> of <span class="sc">Middleton</span>. +Recently another manuscript play appeared, <i>The Second +Maiden’s Tragedy</i>. To the personal distresses of the actors in the +days of the Commonwealth we owe several dramas, which they published, +drawn out of the wrecks of some theatrical treasury; such was +<i>The Wild-Goose Chase</i> of <span class="sc">Fletcher</span>, which they assured us was the +poet’s favourite. It is said that more than sixty of these plays, in +manuscript, were collected by Warburton, the herald, and from the +utter neglect of the collector had all gone to singe his fowls. When +<span class="sc">Theobald</span> solemnly declared that his play, <i>The Double Falsehood</i>, was +written by Shakespeare, it was probably one of these old manuscript +plays. This drama was not unsuccessful; nor had Theobald shot far +wide of the mark, since Farmer ascribed it to Shirley, and Malone to +Massinger.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c51" id="ft7c51" href="#fa7c51"><span class="fn">7</span></a> See the last and enlarged edition of Charles Lamb’s “Specimens +of the English Dramatic Poets.” In the second volume, in “Extracts +from the Garrick Plays,” under the odd names of <i>”Doctor Dodypol, a +comedy</i>, 1600,” we have scenes exquisitely fanciful—and <i>Jack Drum’s +Entertainment</i>, 1601, where “the free humour of a noble housekeeper” +may be placed by the side of the most finished passages even in +Shakespeare. Yet <i>Doctor Dodypol</i> has wholly escaped the notice even +of catalogue-scribes—and <i>Jack Drum</i> is not noticed by the collectors of +these old plays. I only know these two dramas by the excerpts of +Lamb; but if the originals are tolerably equal with “The Specimens,” +I should place these unknown dramas among the most interesting ones.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c51" id="ft8c51" href="#fa8c51"><span class="fn">8</span></a> By the discovery of the Diary of Henslow, the illiterate manager +of the theatre, connected with Edward Alleyn. Henslow was the +pawnbroker of the company, and the chancellor of its exchequer. He +could not spell the titles of the plays; yet, in about five years, 160 +were his property. He had not less than thirty different authors in his +pay.—<i>Collier</i>, iii. 105. [His Diary has been published by the Shakespeare +Society under the editorship of Mr. Payne Collier.—<span class="sc">Ed.</span>]</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c51" id="ft9c51" href="#fa9c51"><span class="fn">9</span></a> Marlow—Nash—Greene—Peele.</p> + +<p><a name="ft10c51" id="ft10c51" href="#fa10c51"><span class="fn">10</span></a> When Pope translated Homer, Chapman’s version lay open before +him. The same circumstance, as I have witnessed, occurred with the +last translator—Mr. Sotheby. Charles Lamb justly appreciated Chapman, +when he observed, that “He would have made a great epic poet, +if indeed he has not abundantly shown himself to be one; for his +Homer is not so properly a translation, as the stories of Achilles and +Ulysses rewritten. The earnestness and passion which he has put into +every part of these poems would be incredible to a reader of more +modern translations.”</p> + +<p>The striking portrait of Chapman is prefixed to Mr. Singer’s elegant +edition of this poet’s version of Homer’s “Battle of the Frogs and the +Mice”—and the Hymns. His <i>Iliad</i>, collated with his last corrections +and alterations, well deserves to fill a stationary niche in our poetical +library. Chapman has, above all our poets, most boldly, or most +gracefully, struck out those “words that burn”—compound epithets.</p> + +<p><a name="ft11c51" id="ft11c51" href="#fa11c51"><span class="fn">11</span></a> An original leaf of the manuscript of one of Marlow’s plays, in +the possession of Mr. J. P. Collier, is a singular literary curiosity. On +a collation with the printed copy, the mutilations are not only excessive, +but betray a defective judgment. An elaborate speech, designed +by the poet to develope the character of the famous Guise, was cut +down to four meagre lines.—<i>Annals of the Stage</i>, iii. 134.</p> + +<p><a name="ft12c51" id="ft12c51" href="#fa12c51"><span class="fn">12</span></a> Charles Lamb has alluded to this fact; and, in one of his moments +of enthusiasm, exclaims—“This was the noble practice of these +times.” Would not the usual practice of a man of genius, working his +own drama, be “nobler?” We presume the unity of feeling can only +emanate from a single mind. In the instance here alluded to we should +often deceive ourselves if we supposed, from the combination of names +which appear on the old titlepages, that those who are specified were +always <i>simultaneously employed</i> in the new direction of the same +play. Poets were often called in to alter the old or to supply the new, +which has occasioned incongruities which probably were not to be +found in the original state.</p> + +<p><a name="ft13c51" id="ft13c51" href="#fa13c51"><span class="fn">13</span></a> Green, Nash, Lyly, Peele, and Marston were from the university—Marlow +and Chapman were exquisite translators from the Greek.</p> + +<p><a name="ft14c51" id="ft14c51" href="#fa14c51"><span class="fn">14</span></a> The term, the Romantic School, is derived from the <i>langue Romans</i> +or <i>Romane</i>, under which comprehensive title all the modern languages +may be included; formed, as they are, out of the wrecks of the +Latin or <i>Roman</i> language. However this may apply to the origin of +the <i>languages</i>, the term is not expressive of the <i>genius</i> of the people. +In the common sense of the term “Romantic,” the Æneid of Virgil is +as much a Romance as that of Arthur and his knights. The term +“Romantic School” is therefore not definite. By adopting the term +<i>Gothic</i>, in opposition to the <i>Classical</i>, we fix the origin, and indicate +the species.</p> + +<p><a name="ft15c51" id="ft15c51" href="#fa15c51"><span class="fn">15</span></a> Bouterwek’s Hist. of Spanish Lit. i. 128.</p> + +<p><a name="ft16c51" id="ft16c51" href="#fa16c51"><span class="fn">16</span></a> Two of these collections are to be valued.</p> + +<p>“<span class="sc">Cotgrave’s</span> English Treasury of Wit and Language,” 1655. He +neglected to furnish the names of the dramatic writers from whom he +drew the passages. Oldys, with singular diligence, succeeded in recovering +these numerous sources, which I transcribed from his manuscript +notes. Oldys’ copy should now repose in the library of Mr. +Douce, given to the Bodleian.</p> + +<p>A collection incomparably preferable to all preceding ones is “The +British Muse, or a Collection of Thoughts—Moral, Natural, or Sublime—of +our English poets who flourished in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth +Centuries,” by <span class="sc">Thomas Hayward</span>, gent. 1732, in three volumes. It +took a new title, not a new edition, as “The Quintessence of English +Poetry.” Such a title could not recommend itself. The prefatory +matter was designed for a critical history of all these Anthologies, and +was the work of Oldys; but it was miserably mangled by Dr. Campbell, +then the Aristarchus of the booksellers, to save print and paper! +Our literary antiquary has vented, in a manuscript note, his agony and +his indignation. He had also greatly assisted the collector; the +circuit is wide and copious, and there is not a name of note which does +not appear in these volumes. The ethical and poetic powers of our old +dramatic poets, as here displayed, I doubt could be paralleled by our +literary neighbours. We were a thoughtful people at the time that our +humour was luxuriant—as lighter gaiety was from the first the national +inheritance of France.</p> + +<p>Of this collection, says Oldys, “Wherever you open it, you are in +the heart of your subject. Every leaf includes many lessons, and is a +system of knowledge in a few lines. The merely speculative may here +find experience; the flattered, truth; the diffident, resolution, &c.” +For my part, I think of these volumes as highly as Oldys himself.</p> + +<p>But what has occasioned the little success of these collections of +single passages and detached beauties, like collections of proverbs, is +the confusion of their variety. We are pleased at every glance; till the +eye, in weariness, closes over the volume which we neglect to re-open.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Charles Lamb’s</span> “Specimens of English Dramatic Poets” is of +deeper interest. He was a nobler workman, and he carries us on +through whole scenes by a true unerring emotion. His was a poetical +mind labouring in poetry.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page529" id="page529"></a>529</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">SHAKESPEARE.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">The</span> vicissitudes of the celebrity of Shakespeare may form +a chapter in the philosophy of literature and the history +of national opinions. Shakespeare was destined to have +his dramatic faculty contested by many successful rivals, to +fall into neglect, to be rarely acted and less read, to appear +barbarous and unintelligible, to be even discarded from the +glorious file of dramatists by the anathemas of hostile +criticism; and finally, in the resurrection of genius (a rare +occurrence!) to emerge into universal celebrity. This +literary history of Shakespeare is an incident in the history +of the human mind singular as the genius which it relates +to. The philosopher now contemplates the phenomenon +of a poet who in his peculiar excellence is more poetical +than the poets of every other people. We have to track +the course of this prodigy, and if possible to comprehend +the evolutions of this solitary luminary. It is knowledge +which finally must direct our feelings in the operations of +the mind as well as in the phenomena of nature. We are +conscious that even the anomalous is regulated by its own +proper motion, and that there is nothing in human nature +so arbitrary as to stand by itself so completely insulated +as to be an effect without a cause.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Shakespeare</span> is a poet who is always now separated +from other poets, and the only one, except <span class="sc">Pope</span>, whose +thoughts are familiar to us as household words. His +eulogy has exhausted the language of every class of enthusiasts, +the learned and the unlearned, the profound and +the fantastical. The writings of this greatest of dramatists +are, as once were those of Homer, a Bible whence we +receive those other revelations of man, and of all that +concerns man. There was no excess of wonder and admiration +when <span class="sc">Hurd</span> declared that “This astonishing +man is the most original <span class="scs">THINKER</span> and <span class="scs">SPEAKER</span> since the +days of <span class="sc">Homer</span>.”</p> + +<p>The halo which surrounds the poetic beatitude has +almost silenced criticism in its devotion; but a literary +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page530" id="page530"></a>530</span> +historian may not at all times be present in the choir of +votaries; his labours lie outwards among the progressive +opinions of a people, nor is he free to pass over what may +seem paradoxical if it lies in his way.</p> + +<p>The universal celebrity of Shakespeare is comparatively +of recent origin: received, rejected, and revived, we must +ascertain the alternate periods, and we must look for the +causes of the neglect as well as the popularity of the +poet. We may congratulate ourselves on the numerous +escapes of our national bard from the oblivion of his dramatic +brothers. The history and the works of Shakespeare, +and perhaps the singularity of the poet’s character +in respect to his own writings, are some of the most +startling paradoxes in literary history.</p> + +<p>Malone describes Shakespeare as “the great poet whom +nature framed to disregard the wretched models that were +set before him, and to create a drama from his own native +and original stores.” This cautious but creeping commentator, +notwithstanding that he had often laboured to +prove the contrary, gaily shot this arrow drawn from the +quiver of Dryden, who has delivered very contradictory +notions of Shakespeare. Veritably—for we are now +writing historically—Shakespeare never “created our +drama, disregarding the wretched models before him;” far +from this! the great poet had those models always before +him, and worked upon them; no poet has so freely availed +himself of the inventions of his predecessors, and in +reality many of the dramas of Shakespeare had been +written before he wrote.</p> + +<p>It cannot be denied that our great poet never exercised +his invention in the fables of his dramas; thus he spared +himself half the toil of his work. He viewed with the +prophetic eye of genius the old play or the old story, and +at once discovered all its capabilities; he saw at once all +that it had and all that it had not; its characterless personages +he was confident that he could quicken with +breath and action, and that his own vein, allowed to flow +along the impure stream, would have the force to clear the +current, and to expand its own lucid beauty.</p> + +<p>Had not the felicitous genius of our bard revelled in +this facility of adopting and adapting the ready-made inventions +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page531" id="page531"></a>531</span> +of many a luckless playwright, we might have +lost our Shakespeare; for he never wrote for us, but for +his little theatre. He had no leisure to afford whole days +in constructing plots for plays, nor much troubled himself +with those which he followed closely even to a fault; nor +did the quickness of his genius neglect a solitary thought, +nor lose a fortunate expression. To what extent were +these borrowings from manuscript plays we cannot even +surmise; we have one specimen of Shakespeare’s free use +of whatever the poet’s judgment caught, in those copious +passages which he transplanted from North’s “Plutarch” +and Holinshed’s “Chronicles,” lending their words his +own music.</p> + +<p>One of his commentators, George Steevens, published +six old plays on which Shakespeare had grounded six of +his own; but this rash act was in the early days of the +commentatorship; Steevens must soon have discovered the +inconvenience of printing unreadable dramas, to exhibit +the concealed industry of the mighty bard. The spells of +Shakespeare did not hang on the artificial edifice of his +fable; he looked abroad for mankind, and within his own +breast for all the impulses of the beings of his imagination. +All he required was a scene; then the whole +“sphere of humanity,” as Jonson expressed it, lie wide +before him. There was a Jew before the <i>Merchant of +Venice</i>; a shrew had been tamed before Katherine by +Petruchio; a King Lear and his three daughters, before +the only one the world knows; and a tragical Hamlet had +philosophised like Seneca, as the satirical Nash told, before +our Shakespeare’s: but this list is needless, for it would +include every drama he has left us. Even the beings of +his creation lie before him in their embryon state. His +creative faculty never required more than a suggestion. +The prototype of the wonderful Caliban has not hitherto +been discovered, but the fairies of the popular mythology +become the creatures of his own imagination. Middleton +first opened the incantations of “the witches.” The +Hecate of Middleton is a mischief-brooding hag, gross and +tangible, and her “spirits, black, white, and grey,” with +her “devil-toad, devil-ram, devil-cat, and devil-dam,” disturb +their spells by the familiar drollery of their names, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page532" id="page532"></a>532</span> +and their vulgar instincts. Out of this ordinary domestic +witchcraft the mightier poet raised “the weird sisters,”</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>That look not like the inhabitants o’ the earth,</p> +<p>And yet are on’t,</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">nameless, bodiless, vanishing shadows!</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i5">And what seemed corporal</p> +<p>Melted as breath into the wind.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The dramatic personages which seem to me peculiar to +Shakespeare, and in which he evidently revelled, serving +his purposes on very opposite occasions, are his clowns and +domestic fools. Yet his most famous comic personage, +the fat knight, was the rich graft on the miserable scion +of Sir John Oldcastle, in an old play; the slight hint of +“a mere pampered glutton” was idealised into that inimitable +variety of human nature combined in one man—at +once so despicable and so delightful!</p> + +<p>The life of our poet remains almost a blank, and his +very name a subject of contention.<a name="fa1c52" id="fa1c52" href="#ft1c52"><span class="sp">1</span></a> Of that singular +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page533" id="page533"></a>533</span> +genius who is now deemed the national bard, we can only +positively ascertain that the place of his birth was that of +his death; a circumstance which, for a poet, is some evidence +of his domestic prosperity; but the glorious interval +of existence, how and all he performed on the stage of +human life, no one observed as differing from his fellows +of the company, and he of all men the least; and of his +productions, wherein we are to find every excellence to +which any poet has reached, our scepticism is often at +work to detect what is Shakespearian among that which +cannot be.</p> + +<p>Of the idle traditions of the youth of Shakespeare, +Malone, after “foraging for anecdotes” during half a +century, has painfully satisfied us that all which so many +continued to repeat was apocryphal. Having with his +own eyes ascertained that Sir Thomas Lucy had no park, +he closed with his famous corollary, that “therefore he could +have no deer to be stolen.” But other parks and other +deer were liable to the mischance of furnishing venison +for a young deer-fancier to treat his friends; and Sir +Thomas Lucy, probably, was Justice Shallow on this +occasion to the poetic stripling. The other circumstances +of the poet’s early life, too well known to repeat, may +stand on the same ground. Personal facts may come +down to us confused, inaccurate, and mistaken, but they +do not therefore necessarily rest on no foundation. The +invention of such irrelevant circumstances seems to be +without a motive; and though the propagators of gossip +are strange blunderers, they rarely aspire to be original +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page534" id="page534"></a>534</span> +inventors. We are not concerned with such tales, for +there is nothing in them which is peculiar to the idiosyncrasy +of the great poet.</p> + +<p>The first noticeable incident in the life of Shakespeare +was his marriage in 1582, in his eighteenth year; the +nuptials of the poet seem an affair of domestic convenience, +rather than a poetical incident in “the romance of life.”</p> + +<p>In 1586, being only twenty-two years of age, Shakespeare +quitted home for the metropolis.</p> + +<p>At this critical moment of his life, which Malone sought +for in despair, we should have remained in darkness, had +not the unfortunate and intrepid industry of the most +devoted enthusiast of the Shakespearian school lifted his +steady torch.<a name="fa2c52" id="fa2c52" href="#ft2c52"><span class="sp">2</span></a> Shakespeare arrived at the theatre not to +hold the horses of gentlemen, as was so long reported, +without, for he had a more friendly interest within, doors. +There he joined a neighbour in his shire, Richard Burbage, +who subsequently became the renowned actor of the future +Shakespeare’s creations; and likewise Thomas Green, his +townsman, and no inferior actor and poet. It is hardly a +conjecture to presume that their friendly invitations had +tempted our youthful adventurer to join their company. +In three years Shakespeare obtained shares in the theatre, +which multiplied every year, till he became the joint-proprietor +with Burbage. The friendship of the actor and +the dramatist was a golden bond, when each had conferred +on the other their mutual popularity. The plays of Shakespeare +were higher favourites with the public during the +lifetime of this Garrick of the poet’s own days; and the +renowned actor was so charmed by his own success, that +he perpetuated among his daughters the delightful name +of Juliet, which reminded him, with pride, of his own +exquisite Romeo.</p> + +<p>Shakespeare proved a closer and a more refined observer +of the art of acting than nature had enabled him to show +himself as an actor, by practising his own professional precepts. +Two actors, who long survived the poet, recorded +that he had critically instructed the one to enact Hamlet, +and the other Henry the Eighth.<a name="fa3c52" id="fa3c52" href="#ft3c52"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page535" id="page535"></a>535</span></p> + +<p>How in an indifferent actor like Shakespeare was betrayed +those latent dramatic faculties by which he was one day +to be the delight of that stage which he could not tread, +remains a secret which the poet has not told. But whether +it was by accident or in some happy hour, we know +not, that Shakespeare, in conning the manuscript of some +wretched drama, felt the glorious impulse which prompted +the pen to strike out whole passages, and to interpolate +whole scenes; that moment was the obscure birth of his +future genius. How he was employed at this unknown +era of his life, the peevish jealousy of a brother of the +craft has curiously informed us.</p> + +<p>When Shakespeare was a name yet scarcely known, save +to that mimetic world, tenanted by playwrights, it appears +that he was there sustaining an active and secret avocation. +The great bard had been serving a silent apprenticeship to +the dramatic muse, by trying his hand on the old stock-pieces +which lay in the theatrical treasury, and further +venturing his repolishing touches on the new. Marlowe, +Lodge, and Peele had submitted to his soft pencillings or +his sharp pruning-hook. The actors were often themselves +a sort of poets, and would compete with those who were +only poets; and in pricing the hasty wares, would often +have them fashioned to their liking. Alluding to the +treatment the dramatists were enduring from their masters, +Robert Greene indignantly addressed his peers. This +curious passage, first discovered by Tyrwhit, has been +often quoted, and indispensably must be once more; for it +tells us how Shakespeare, in 1592, had been fully employed +within six years of his arrival at the metropolis. Greene +desires his friends would no longer submit to the actors. +“Do not trust those burrs, who have sought to cleave to +us all; those puppets that speak from our mouths, those +antics garnished in our colours. Is it not strange that I +to whom they all have been beholding, is it not like that +you to whom they all too have been beholding, shall, were +ye in that case I am now, be both of them at once forsaken?<a name="fa4c52" id="fa4c52" href="#ft4c52"><span class="sp">4</span></a> +Yes, trust them not! There is <i>an upstart crow +beautified with our feathers</i>, that with <i>his tyger’s heart</i> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page536" id="page536"></a>536</span> +<i>wrapt in a player’s hide</i>, supposes he is as well able to +<i>bombast<a name="fa5c52" id="fa5c52" href="#ft5c52"><span class="sp">5</span></a> out a blank verse</i> as the best of you, and being +<i>an absolute Johannes Factotum</i>, is, in his own conceit, the +only <span class="sc">Shake-scene</span> in a country.”</p> + +<p>“The absolute Johannes Factotum,” “the only shake-scene,” +and “the crow beautified with their feathers,” are +one person; but “the tyger’s heart wrapt in a player’s +hide,” particularly points out that person. It is, in fact, +a parody of a line composed by this batch of poets in one +of their dramas, <i>The Contention of the Two Houses of +York and Lancaster</i>; and which, with many others, +Shakespeare had wholly appropriated. In the third part +of <i>King Henry the Sixth</i>, in Act I., Scene IV., it stands +as Peele or Greene had originally composed it—</p> + +<p class="center f90 ptb1">O, tyger’s heart wrapt in a woman’s hide!</p> + +<p>This attack on our untiger-like Shakespeare turns poor +Greene into an enraged wasp, peevish and mortified at the +Shakespearian hand which had often larded his leanness, or +scarified his tumidities. Greene charges Shakespeare with +altering the plays of himself, Marlowe, Lodge, and Peele, +and then claiming all the merit of the work!<a name="fa6c52" id="fa6c52" href="#ft6c52"><span class="sp">6</span></a></p> + +<p>Our great bard was not insensible to the fancy of his +querulous libeller, since it was on Greene’s “Dorastus and +Fawnia” Shakespeare founded his <i>Winter’s Tale</i>, as he +took his <i>As You Like It</i> from Lodge’s “Rosalynd,” +whose very name he preserved. Thus borrowing from +the writings of his unfortunate and reckless brothers of +Parnassus, he has made immortal works which have long +expired.</p> + +<p>The active employment of Shakespeare among the old +plays was so well known at the time, that when his name +became familiar to the public, the printers were often +eager to obtain the original neglected plays in their +meagre condition, to avail themselves of the popularity +of the Shakespearian rifacimentos. Fraud and deception +were evidently practised on the uncritical readers. One +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page537" id="page537"></a>537</span> +of these cunning publishers issued the old play of <i>The +Contention of the Two Houses</i>, &c., as <i>newly corrected +and enlarged</i> by William Shakespeare; which was true +as it was acted on the stage, but false in the copy of the +elder dramatist which was republished. In this manner +several plays not only bear the consecrating name of +Shakespeare, but seven which are now discarded from his +works appeared in the edition of Rowe; in some of these +the hand of Shakespeare appears to have been discerned; +and it has been suggested by Mr. Collier, an experienced +critic in the history of the drama, that it is possible that +all the plays of Shakespeare have not yet been given to the +world.</p> + +<p>In the second and third parts of <i>King Henry the Sixth</i>, +for the first was placed in his volume merely to complete +the historical series, Shakespeare made ample use of several +dramas; and Malone, whose microscopic criticism obtained +for him the sarcastic cognomen of <i>Minutius Felix</i>, by an +actual scrutiny, which we may well believe cost him the +most anxious pains, computed the lines of these dramas, +and has passed his word, that of six thousand and forty-three +lines, one thousand seven hundred and seventy-one +were written by some author who preceded Shakespeare; +two thousand three hundred and seventy-three were +formed by him on the foundation laid by his predecessors, +and one thousand eight hundred and forty-nine lines were +entirely our poet’s own composition. Malone has even +contrived to distinguish them in the text; those which +Shakespeare <i>adopted</i> are printed in the usual manner; the +speeches which he <i>altered</i> or expanded, are marked by inverted +commas; and to all the lines entirely <i>composed</i> by +himself, asterisks are prefixed. A critical reader may derive +a curious gratification by attending to this novel text +of our national poet; the only dramatist to whom this +singularity has ever occurred, and on whose writings this +anomalous operation could have been performed.</p> + +<p>Shakespeare was more conversant with these preceding +dramatists, most of whose writings have perished, than we +can ever discover; but it is fortunate for us that his creative +faculties brooded over such a world of chaotic genius. +He scrupled not to appropriate those happier effusions +which were not only worthy of his own genius, but are +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page538" id="page538"></a>538</span> +not distinguishable from it. Sometimes he only retouched, +sometimes he nobly amplified, expanding a slight +hint into some glorious passage, and elevating a creeping +dialogue into an impassioned scene. His judgment was +always the joint-workman of his fancy.</p> + +<p>Who by the interior evidence could have conjectured +that the following Shakespearian effusion, musical with his +own music, was, in truth, a mere transcription from an +old play of <i>Richard Duke of York</i>, whose author remains +unknown? I mark by italics the rejections of Shakespeare. +In the slight emendations, we may observe that our poet +consulted his ear; but in the first verse he has chosen a +more expressive term.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>————Doves will peck in <i>rescue</i> (safeguard) of their brood.</p> +<p>Unreasonable creatures feed their young;</p> +<p>And though man’s face be fearful to their eyes,</p> +<p>Yet, in protection of their tender ones,</p> +<p>Who hath not seen them even with those <i>same</i> wings</p> +<p>Which <i>they have sometimes</i> used <i>in</i> fearful flight,</p> +<p>(Which sometime they have used with fearful flight,)</p> +<p>Make war with him that climb’d unto their nest,</p> +<p>Offering their own lives in their young’s defence?</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The speech of Queen Margaret, in the third part of +<i>Henry the Sixth</i>, Act V. Scene IV., in the old play, consisted +of a single metaphor included in twelve lines. The +single metaphor was not rejected, but it is amplified and +nobly sustained through forty lines in the queen’s animated +address to the lords:—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>The mast but now blown overboard,</p> +<p>The cable broke, the holding anchor lost, &c.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The two celebrated scenes in which the dead body of +the murdered Duke of Gloster is placed before us, with +such precision of horror, minutely appalling, and of the +raving despair of Cardinal Beaufort so awfully depicted by +his death, “making no sign,” are splendours whose igniting +sparks flew out of the ashes of old plays, one of <i>King +John</i>, and the other of <i>The Contentions of the Two Houses</i>, +and of the chronicles. But still these sublime descriptions +and these fearful images are the inspirations of Shakespeare; +their truth of nature, and the completeness of the purpose +of the poet, the bare originals could not impart.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page539" id="page539"></a>539</span></p> + +<p>These ascertained evidences may suffice—it would be +tedious to proceed with their abundance—of the studiousness +and propriety of Shakespeare in his adoptions and +adaptations of our earlier drama. Dr. Farmer was the first +to discover that these plays were not written <i>originally</i> by +Shakespeare; but that able researcher was not then aware +of what only the progress of discovery could demonstrate, +that hardly a single drama of our national bard can be +deemed to have been of his own original invention.</p> + +<p>While thus occupied in altering and writing old plays +for his own theatre, in 1593 first appeared to the world +the name of William Shakespeare in the dedication to the +Earl of Southampton of his “Venus and Adonis.” The +poet has called this poem, of a few pages, “the first heir +of my invention.” For him who had already written +much, the expression is singular, and it looks like a tacit +acknowledgment that the poet considered that the five or +six plays which he had already set forth had really no +claim to “<i>his</i> invention.” And the dedication betrays +the tremulousness of a virgin effort. “Should this first +heir prove deformed,” declared our poet in his own Shakespearian +diction, “I shall be sorry it had so noble a godfather, +and never after <i>ear so barren a land</i>, for fear it +yield me still so bad a harvest.” The poet, doubtless, +was induced to proceed; for the following year, 1594, +produced his “Lucrece.” He described his first poem as +“unpolished lines;” and he still calls his second his “untutored +lines.” As the former, so likewise is the present +dedicated to the same earl. The fervour of the style indicates +the influence of the patron, and the singleness of +the devotion of the poet, who tells his noble patron +“What I have done is yours, and what I have to do is +yours.” The humble actor’s intercourse with his noble +friend is a remarkable incident, for the poet was not yet +famous when he prefixed his name to these poems. This +earl, then in his youth, we learn was attached to theatrical +amusements; and it has been ingeniously conjectured that +the princely donation of a thousand pounds, which the +peer presented to the poet, a tradition which Davenant +had handed down, may have occurred, if it ever happened, +in the interval between the publication of these two +poems.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page540" id="page540"></a>540</span></p> + +<p>The Ovidian deliciousness of “Venus and Adonis,” and +the more solemn narrative of “Tarquin and Lucrece,” +early obtained celebrity among the youthful and impassioned +generation. Shakespeare was long renowned as the +amatory poet of the nation by many who had not learned +to distinguish the bard among his dramatic brethren. +Numerous editions of these poems confirm their popularity, +and the public voice resounded from the lyres of +many poets.</p> + +<p>No poet more successfully opened his career than Shakespeare +by these two popular poems; but it is remarkable +that he made no farther essay with a view to permanent +fame, which, as it would seem to us, he never imagined he +was to derive from his dramas.</p> + +<p>Meres, a critic of the day, has informed us that, in +1598, some sonnets by Shakespeare were in circulation +among his friends. These were effusions of the hour; +and, possibly, some may have been descriptive of his own +condition. In 1599, a poetical collection called “The +Passionate Pilgrim,” appeared under the name of Shakespeare; +and ten years afterwards another, entitled “Shakespeare’s +Sonnets,” was given to the world; but as poetical +miscellanies were formed in those days by publishers who +were not nice in the means they used to procure manuscripts, +it is quite uncertain what are genuine and what +may be the composition of other writers in these collections.</p> + +<p>In “The Passionate Pilgrim,” some critics find difficulty +in tracing the hand of the poet; and we accidentally +discover by the complaint of Heywood, a congenial dramatist, +that there were two of his poems in one edition +of this collection; and we know that there were also other +poems by Marlowe, and Barnefield, and others. Heywood +tells us that Shakespeare was greatly offended at this +licentious use of his name;<a name="fa7c52" id="fa7c52" href="#ft7c52"><span class="sp">7</span></a> but he must have been +imperturbably careless on such matters, otherwise he +would not have suffered three editions of this spurious +miscellany.</p> + +<p>The fate of “The Sonnets” is remarkable. Steevens +boldly ejected them from the poet’s works, declaring that +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page541" id="page541"></a>541</span> +the strongest Act of Parliament that could be framed +could not compel their perusal. Shall we ascribe to this +caustic wit a singular deficiency in his judicial decisions, +or look to some other cause for the ejection of these +sonnets which have become of late the subject of so much +curious inquiry? An ingenious attempt has been recently +made to form what is called an autobiography of the poet +by stringing together the sonnets in six distinct poems; +this would be sufficient evidence that they had never +passed under the eye of the author, and that he could have +had no concern in a publication which has thus mutilated +his living members. This bookseller’s collection remains +for more than one cause an ambiguous volume.</p> + +<p>Shakespeare now stands alone the national bard; but +hoary Time, which has decreed who are his inferiors, once +saw them his equals; and when he mingled with his +fellows, possibly the world looked up to a Coryphæus +whose name was not Shakespeare. Two inquiries interest +us: Was the pre-eminence of our national bard acknowledged +by his contemporaries?—and, What cause occasioned +the utter neglect of his own reputation?</p> + +<p>Among his contemporaries, Shakespeare could not possess +the pre-eminence of the present age, for who were +then to be his judges? His rivals or his audience? Our +gentle Shakespeare, as Jonson called him, perhaps at no +time appreciated his own genius at its peculiar excellence, +and therefore was not likely to discover his solitary pre-eminence +among a formidable crowd of rivals, nor were +they likely to acknowledge in their friend “Will” the +prevailing charm which has now subdued the world. +They have even occasionally darted a shaft of ridicule or +a sharp parody at our immortal tragedian; the madness +of Hamlet and Ophelia could serve these dramatic writers +as a subject for raillery;<a name="fa8c52" id="fa8c52" href="#ft8c52"><span class="sp">8</span></a> and the airy Fletcher, who would +have emulated Shakespeare, was guilty of sneering at his +inimitable master. The learned <span class="sc">Jonson</span> was apt to be +critical; <span class="sc">Chapman</span> cast his Greek glances haughtily on +the vernacular bard; <span class="sc">Marston</span> was caustic; and <span class="sc">Drayton</span>, +his intimate, who had composed two or three tragedies, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page542" id="page542"></a>542</span> +could hardly perceive any supremacy in <span class="sc">Shakespeare</span>, +and for us, seems parsimoniously to commend his “comic +vein” as strong</p> + +<p class="center f90 ptb1">As any one that traffick’d with the stage;</p> + +<p class="noind">while <span class="sc">Ben Jonson</span> is hailed as</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Lord of the theatre, who could bear</p> +<p>The buskin, as the sock, away.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>It was not from his dramatic brothers that <span class="sc">Shakespeare</span> +could have discovered his more than supremacy; and +while the brotherhood had family quarrels among themselves, +Shakespeare appears never to have moved offensively +or defensively. Gifford tells us that he has never mentioned +one of his contemporaries with commendation, and +only once appears, with Jonson and others, to have contributed +some commendatory lines to the volume of an +obscure and whimsical poet.<a name="fa9c52" id="fa9c52" href="#ft9c52"><span class="sp">9</span></a> As Shakespeare did not deal +in this literary traffic of that day, he has received fewer +tributes than some of the meanest of our poets. But if +Shakespeare has not noticed any of his associates, neither +has the poet ever alluded to himself in his works. He +never exults in his triumphs, nor is querulous on those +who oppugned them.</p> + +<p>With his audience he was unquestionably popular; we +hear of none of his plays having been condemned, though +such mischances are recorded of his rivals, and, above all, +of his great compeer Jonson. We know that he was +fortunate in the personation of his characters; and those +natural touches, listened to on the spot when nature was +left free to act her part, fell on contagious and instantaneous +sympathies. But if the poet charmed by his +“many-coloured life,” his very faults were not less delightful. +His audience revelled in bustle and bombast, +and it is possibly in compliance with their stirring unchastised +taste that we have received so much of his rude +originals.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page543" id="page543"></a>543</span></p> + +<p>Our poet’s recklessness of the fate of his own dramas, +and his utter disregard of posterity, is at least one unquestionable +fact in the blank page of his life. He was +utterly reckless of his personal reputation among his contemporary +readers, or otherwise he would not have suffered +in his lifetime mutilated dramas, or even their first draughts, +surreptitiously procured, to pass under his own name;—huddled +pieces without even the divisions of the acts, or +crude and ridiculous dramas which he was incapable of +having written. These were suicidal acts of his own fame, +but they never broke his silence; and even in his retreat +from the metropolis, in the leisure of his native bowers of +Avon, Shakespeare felt not</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>That last infirmity of noble minds,</p> +<p>The spur of fame,</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">pricking his patient acquiescence, and disturbing his careless +freedom; he issued no protest, he uttered no complaint, +against the effrontery of the printers of those days, who +published, as “newly corrected by William Shakespeare,” +old plays which he never wrote; nor did he yield the +yearnings of a nurse to those ricketty children of the press +which passed as his progeny, bearing a name which he +never could have deemed immortal. We may trace to its +real cause this utter carelessness of his poetical existence.</p> + +<p>The horizon of this poet’s hopes was bounded by his +daily task and his prosperous theatre. Assuredly it was +not an ordinary gratification to be conscious that his friend +Burbage would call into a real existence <i>Romeo</i>, <i>Macbeth</i>, +and <i>Othello</i>, and that the shares of the playhouse would in +due time be transferred for Warwickshire acres. But his +mind was above his condition, and however the dramatist +flourished at “the Globe,” Shakespeare himself felt the +misery of a degraded station;—players and play-writing +were held to be equally despicable in that day. This “secret +sorrow” he may have himself confided to us; for in one of +“the sonnets,” he pathetically laments the compulsion which +forced him to the trade of pleasing the public; and this +humiliation, or this “stain,” as the poet felt it, is illustrated +by a novel image—“Chide Fortune,” exclaims the bard,</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,</p> +<p>That did not better for my life provide + <span class="pagenum"><a name="page544" id="page544"></a>544</span></p> +<p>Than public means which public manners breeds;</p> +<p>Thence comes it that <i>my name receives a brand;</i></p> +<p><i>And almost thence my nature is subdued</i></p> +<p><i>To what it works in</i>, <span class="scs">LIKE THE DYER’S HAND</span>.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p><span class="sc">Shakespeare</span>, in the vigour of life, withdrew from the +theatre and the metropolis, returning to his native abode.<a name="fa10c52" id="fa10c52" href="#ft10c52"><span class="sp">10</span></a> +“The properties and the wardrobe” were now exchanged +for “land and tithes.” It is consolatory for us to have +ascertained that our national bard, not yet, however, +national, did not participate in the common misery of his +noblest brothers. Four years glided away in the tranquil +obscurity of his family, till his death! Yet still some old +associations survived with the dramatic bard, some reveries +of the winter theatre of “the Blackfriars,” and the summer +Globe “open to the sky,” for we are told that two or +three of his noblest dramas were composed during his +retirement; and he retained his unbroken love for old companionship +to the last, for, by a credible tradition, Shakespeare +died of a fever contracted by convivial indulgence at +a joyous meeting with his beloved cronies Ben Jonson and +Michael Drayton.</p> + +<p>We hear nothing more of <span class="sc">Shakespeare</span> nor of any fragmentary +manuscripts; no verses were scattered on his +funereal bier as with Spenser, no sepulchral volume of +elegies was gathered, as with Jonson, to consecrate his +memory. There was yet no <span class="sc">Shakespeare</span>! no national +bard! The poet himself could not have favoured a friend +with a copy of many of his own plays, and probably could +not himself have repeated one of those admired soliloquies +which we now get by rote. <span class="sc">Shakespeare</span> was wholly insensible +to the days which were to come. All this to us +seems incredible!</p> + +<p>Seven years passed away silently, and the nation remained +without their Shakespeare, although Jonson, in +the very year that the poet had deceased, had set the first +example of a collection of dramas made by their own +author; the volume sanctioned by his critical learning he +dignified as his “works:” a proud distinction by which he +laid himself open to the epigrammatists. At length, in 1623, +two of Shakespeare’s fellow-comedians, Heminges and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page545" id="page545"></a>545</span> +Condell, published the first folio edition of “Mr. William +Shakespeare’s Comedies, Histories, and Tragedies.”</p> + +<p>These player-editors profess that “they have done this +office to the dead only to keep the memory of so worthy a +<i>friend and fellow</i> alive as was our Shakespeare.” Yet their +utter negligence shown in “their fellow’s” volume is no +evidence of their pious friendship, nor perhaps of their care +or their intelligence. The publication was not, I fear, so +much an offering of affection as a pretext to secure the +copyright. Their real design seems to have been to +recover the monopoly of <span class="scs">ALL</span> the plays, having lost the +proprietorship of several which had <i>stolen abroad in Shakespeare’s lifetime</i>, +and to obtain this crafty purpose they practised a fraudulent deception.</p> + +<p><i>Fifteen quarto plays</i> the public already possessed; no +one appears to have known how they had issued from the +study of the poet, or the treasury of the theatre. Our +player-editors, however, now cautioned their readers that +these fifteen plays were a fraud practised on them; that +“they were stolen and surreptitious copies maimed and +deformed.” But what these new editors themselves +alleged, they knew was false; for they actually reprinted, +unaltered, in their own collection these declared surreptitious +copies. As the reprint became subject to their +negligence, these <i>first editions</i> were appreciated by Capel +and Malone as manuscripts, and by these quarto plays +they corrected the text of the folio volume. The mystifying +republication of these fifteen quarto plays is a piece of +literary history of no common occurrence. <span class="sc">Capel</span> imagined +that the player-editors merely reprinted these very copies +which they had so loudly decried to save the labour of +transcription. But looking closer into this affair, we +seem to detect that a double deception was practised. +The printers of these plays had secured the copyright by +entering them at Stationers’ Hall, and when the folio collection +was projected it was found necessary by Heminges +and Condell to admit the proprietors into the copartnership +of the volume. Hence their names appear in the titlepage. +Malone imagined that this circumstance indicated +that the volume of Shakespeare was considered so great a risk +that it required the joint aid of these printers. But the +parties only united to secure the monopoly of all the plays.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page546" id="page546"></a>546</span></p> + +<p>It therefore results that the player-editors pretended to +warn the public that all the preceding editions were +“maimed and deformed,” and the proprietors of these pretended +surreptitious editions silently acquiesced in their +own condemnation, for the future advantages they expected +to derive from their share in the monopoly.</p> + +<p>It is quite obvious that the first proprietors of the +quarto plays could never have acquired such complete +copies without either Shakespeare or his company having +furnished them. Yet Shakespeare, if he had connived at +these publications, could never have revised the press; +another evidence of the utter recklessness of the poet of the +fate of his dramas.</p> + +<p>The player-editors supplied about twenty new dramas, +and by another adroit deception in their titlepage they +announced that all the dramas were <span class="scs">NOW</span> published +“acording to the original copies.”</p> + +<p>Alas! where were these “original copies?” The +precious autographs could not have endured through +many a season the thumbings of “the book-holder” or +the prompter. The playhouse copies, carelessly written +out in parts for the actors, interpolated with whole scenes, +spurious with ribaldry, and extemporaneous nonsense at +the caprice of some favourite actor, corrupt with false +readings, obscure with distorted alterations, and often +omissions of a line or half a line to connect or to complete +the sense, verse lurking in prose, and metre without feet,—such +were the original sins of the copies despatched in +haste to a rapid press, and the writings of Shakespeare +come before the world in these hurried proofs from printers +among whom a corrector of the press seems to have been +unknown. It is in this prolific soil of weeds that many +are still too curiously seeking for the genuine text of +Shakespeare, perhaps too often irretrievable.<a name="fa11c52" id="fa11c52" href="#ft11c52"><span class="sp">11</span></a> The recollections +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page547" id="page547"></a>547</span> +of these two players were so inaccurate that they +at first totally omitted the <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>, which is +inserted without pagination, and with little discrimination +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page548" id="page548"></a>548</span> +in the writings of Shakespeare, preserved the barbarous +<i>Titus Andronicus</i>, evidently one of Marlowe’s gigantic +pieces, and the old play of “the first part of <i>Henry the +Sixth</i>;” but it is by no means certain that not less than +twenty other dramas had various degrees of claims to be +included in the works of Shakespeare; such as the suspicious +<i>Pericles</i>.<a name="fa12c52" id="fa12c52" href="#ft12c52"><span class="sp">12</span></a> But the incompetence of these player-editors, +even in transcribing from the prompter’s copies, was not +their only fault. “Will” was but “their fellow;” time +had not hallowed him into the national poet; and they +themselves had formed no elevated conception of the art +of Sophocles and Terence; for in their dedication to two +peers they express their fear whether their noble patrons +from “their greatness would <i>descend to the reading of</i> +<span class="scs">SUCH TRIFLES</span>;” the immortal writings! These unhappy +editors seem to reflect back to us the humiliated feelings of +Shakespeare and the age on the histrionic art. In that +early epoch of our literature the sock and buskin had +indeed been worn by a reckless race.</p> + +<p>Charles the First was a lover of the English drama. +The king delighted to explore into the manuscript plays +which were laid before the master of the revels for his +license. Milton has acquainted us that the writings of +Shakespeare formed the favourite studies of the monarch.<a name="fa13c52" id="fa13c52" href="#ft13c52"><span class="sp">13</span></a> +In the “Iconoclastes,” alluding to those writers who have +shown the characteristic religious hypocrisy of tyrants, +Milton observes, “I shall not instance an abstruse author +wherein the king might be less conversant, but one whom +we well know was the <span class="scs">CLOSET COMPANION</span> of these his +solitudes, William Shakespeare.”</p> + +<p>This has been considered as a designed reproach, and we +are startled by such a style from the author of “Comus” +and of “Samson Agonistes.” The odious distinction of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page549" id="page549"></a>549</span> +not referring the king to an abstruse author seems a palpable +sneer at the course of the king’s reading, who, however, +was not deficient in learning; and in making the +king’s “closet companion” Shakespeare, Milton too well +knew that he was casting the deepest odium on the royal +character, for to this poet’s then masters, the puritanical +faction, there could be nothing less to be forgiven than a +king, and a king in his imprisonments, mockingly here +called “these his solitudes,” than to be a play-reader! +The slur, the gibe, and the covert satire are, I fear, too +obvious. I would gladly have absolved our great bard +from this act of treason at least against the majesty of +Shakespeare’s genius.<a name="fa14c52" id="fa14c52" href="#ft14c52"><span class="sp">14</span></a> Milton had more deeply studied +Shakespeare than any king whatever; but at this moment +his literature was to be stretched on the torture of his +politics.</p> + +<p>In the history of the celebrity of Shakespeare, this day of +royal favour sank amid the national tempest: and the +theatre was abolished with the throne.</p> + +<p>With the Restoration, the drama returned to the people. +Half a century only had elapsed since our poet flourished; +but in that half century our style, with our manners and +modes of feeling, had suffered the vicissitudes of a revolution. +If in the reign of Charles the First they perceived a +change in the language from that of Elizabeth, that +change was more apparent when, in retrograding, it was +reduced to the indigent nakedness of the Puritanic period, +and then, bursting into an opposite direction, like</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p class="center f90 ptb1">Stars shot madly from their spheres</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">was mottled by the modern Gallic in phrase and in +criticism, corrupting our national taste, and thus removing +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page550" id="page550"></a>550</span> +us still further from the Shakespearian diction in idiom and +in imagery. A great master of language, Dryden, confesses +he found Shakespeare almost as difficult as old Chaucer.</p> + +<p>On the restored theatre, “the renowned Jonson,” thus +distinguished by Shadwell, retained his supremacy in +<i>The Fox</i>, <i>The Silent Woman</i>, and <i>The Alchemist</i>, +and the airy and loose Fletcher was popular, being considered +by this new generation as having drawn the +characters of gentlemen more to their humour than his +grave predecessors. One of the first managers was +Davenant: to his partiality, for he was eager to acknowledge +Shakespeare his father, both in blood and in verse, we +may ascribe the revival of that poet’s plays. Dryden has +told that it was Davenant who first taught him to appreciate +our national bard; they were caught by the fancy of +the poet; but the great ethical preceptor of mankind had +never entered into their contemplation; and thus <i>Macbeth</i> +shrank into an opera under the hand of Davenant; and the +<i>Tempest</i>, after having been seemingly burlesqued by duplicate +characters of Miranda, Ferdinand, and Caliban, by +Davenant and Dryden together, was turned into an opera +by Shadwell, and exhibited as if it were a pantomime, depending +now on popular favour for new dresses, new music, +and new machinery. <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> was altered by +the Honourable James Howard, Dryden’s brother-in-law, +to introduce a happy conclusion: however, it is but justice +to the town to record that they were so firmly divided in +opinion on the catastrophe, that it was alternately played +as tragedy and tragic-comic. We may fairly conclude by +these profanations, that the true taste for our national +bard had passed away.<a name="fa15c52" id="fa15c52" href="#ft15c52"><span class="sp">15</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page551" id="page551"></a>551</span></p> + +<p>Evelyn is a literary man, whose judgment has its value; +and assuredly, he records the taste of the court-circle. In +1661 he saw “<i>Hamlet, Prince of Denmark</i>, played; but +now, <i>the old plays begin to disgust this refined age</i>, since +his Majesty has been so long abroad.” Pepys, his contemporary, +was a play-haunter: and how he relished <i>The +Midsummer Night’s Dream</i>, with all its beautiful fancy, +appears by his firm opinion, that “it was the most insipid, +ridiculous play he had ever seen.” <i>Macbeth</i>, though “a +deep tragedy, had a strange perfection in a <i>divertisement</i>;” +that is, <i>Macbeth</i> was Davenant’s opera, with music and +dancing. But Pepys <i>read</i> Othello, and we have his deliberate +notion; “but having lately read the <i>Adventures of +Five Hours, Othello</i> seemed a mean thing!” It is clear +from these, and there are other as remarkable instances, that +their ideas of the drama had wholly changed; that Nature +and Fancy had retired from the stage to give precedence +to what are called “Heroic Tragedy,” and comedies of +Intrigue.</p> + +<p>Shakespeare’s plays, in a great measure, were banished +the stage; but we may presume that Shakespeare still preserved +some readers, though not critical ones, for four years +after the Restoration the third edition of Shakespeare in +1664, with seven additional dramas, one of which, <i>The +Yorkshire Tragedy</i>, had been printed with his name in his +lifetime, was given to the world.</p> + +<p>Leaving the theatre, and its moody humours of the +populace, let us turn to those who think in their closet. +How did such critics arbitrate? We can have no judge +more able than the learned author of “Hudibras,”—“The +quickest apprehensions, and aptest geniuses to anything +they undertake, do not always prove <i>the greatest masters</i> +in it, for there is more patience and phlegm required in +those that attain to any degree of perfection, than is commonly +found in the temper of <i>active and ready wits that +soon tire, and will not hold out</i>.” Butler instances Virgil, +who wanting much of that natural easiness of wit that +Ovid had, “did, nevertheless, with hard labour and long +study, arrive at a higher perfection, than the other, with +all his dexterity of wit, but less industry, could attain to. +The same we may observe of <span class="sc">Jonson</span> and <span class="sc">Shakespeare</span>, +for he that <i>is able to think long and judge well, will be</i> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page552" id="page552"></a>552</span> +<i>sure to find out better things than another man can hit +upon suddenly, though of more quick and ready parts</i>; +which is commonly but <span class="scs">CHANCE</span>, and the other wit and +judgment.”<a name="fa16c52" id="fa16c52" href="#ft16c52"><span class="sp">16</span></a></p> + +<p>After this long extract, it is quite evident that with a +predilection for Shakespeare, alive at times to his true +touches of nature, <span class="sc">Butler</span> could not at that day take a +comprehensive view of the faculties of the great bard. +What we deem his intuitive faculty seemed but “chance” +that could only “hit suddenly;” that prodigality of genius, +the marvels which modern criticism has revealed to its +initiated—was an advent—the day had not yet come! +Butler perceived the electrical strokes of Shakespeare; but +the mental shadowings—and the oneness—which rose +together in the creation of a <i>Macbeth</i>, a <i>Hamlet</i>, a <i>Lear</i>, +was a philosophical result, which probably no one had yet +dreamed of.</p> + +<p>If the genius of <span class="sc">Shakespeare</span> were neglected, it was also +destined to be arraigned and condemned.</p> + +<p>Critical learning was yet new in our literature; it had +taken its birth in Italy, among a crowd of philosophers, +rhetoricians and philologists, busied in developing the true +principles of every species of literary composition. The +academy <i>Della Crusca</i> was a tribunal, and the “Poetic of +Aristotle,” commented on by the renowned Castelvetro, was +a code, which was chiefly directed to the dramatic art. +Our airy neighbours, whose national theatre at its beginning +had much resembled our own in its freedom and +originality, at the erection of the famous French Academy, +evidently in imitation of the Cruscan, with the great cardinal +at its head, surrendered to the Greeks and to +Aristotle. Everything now was to be as it had been, and +every work, whatever might be its genius, was to be +strictly modelled by certain arbitrary decisions; and all +tragedies were to be written according to the humour of +that ancient people, the Greeks, with their choruses,—and +regulated by the severe unities of time and place and +action! Bossu set down his prescriptions to compound an +Epic, and Père Rapin, in his “Reflections on Aristotle’s +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page553" id="page553"></a>553</span> +Treatise of Poetry,” dictated “Universal Rules” for all +sorts of poetry. <span class="sc">Rymer</span>, the collector of our Fœdera, in +his earlier days, was an excellent scholar, and cultivated +elegant literature. He translated this very work of Père +Rapin, to which he prefixed an ingenious critical preface +on comparative poetry. Enraptured by Grecian tragedy, +and vivacious with French criticism, and moreover sanguine +with an elevated conception of a certain forthcoming +tragedy, which was to appear “a faultless piece” among +our own monstrous dramas, Rymer grasped the new and +formidable weapon of modern criticism. Armed at all +points with a Grecian helmet and a Gallic lance, this +literary Quixote sallied forth to attack all the giants, or the +windmills, of the English theatre.</p> + +<p>Now appeared “The Tragedies of the Last Age examined +by the Practice of the Ancients. 1678.” This +explosion entirely fell on three of Fletcher’s plays.<a name="fa17c52" id="fa17c52" href="#ft17c52"><span class="sp">17</span></a> This +critical bomb was learned and lively. The court, and +consequently the popular, tastes were classical or Gallic; +<span class="sc">Rymer</span> haunted St. James’s, and soon became one of “their +majesties’ servants.” He had formed the most elevated +conception of the dramatic art, and that tragedy was a +poem for kings; and he tells, that the poets who first +brought tragedy to perfection were made viceroys.</p> + +<p>“The poetry of the last age,” the age of Elizabeth, he +considered was “rude as our architecture,” and he detected +the cause in our utter “neglect of the Poetic of Aristotle, +on which all the great men in Italy had commented, before +on this side of the Alps we knew of the existence of such a +book.”</p> + +<p>This critic-poet,—for unluckily for Aristotle, Rymer resolved +on being both,—had a notion that “though it be +not necessary that all heroes should be kings, yet undoubtedly +all crowned heads should be heroes;” this was a +prerogative of the crown never to be invaded by any parliament +of poets. This passive obedience in the critical +art was perfume in “the royalty” of a dedication to +Charles the Second, preparatory of the writer’s own legitimate +tragedy of <i>Edgar, or the English Monarch</i>, in +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page554" id="page554"></a>554</span> +rhymed verse; and the first inroad of his critical demolition +was to expose “the barbarisms” of Milton’s blank! +Rymer was as intrepid as he was enterprising. He composed +his tragedy on the principles which he advocated, +and the result was precisely what happened to the Abbé +d’Aubignac, who wrote on the same system. Undoubtedly, +he congratulated himself on the perfection of the clockwork +machinery of his legitimate drama, where he had inviolably +preserved the unities, for the action begins about +one o’clock at noon, and the catastrophe closes at ten at +night! He would have been right by “Shrewsbury +clock.” To the audience, however, the “long hour” +might have seemed much longer than the delightful +<i>Winter’s Tale</i> of Shakespeare, which includes the events +of twenty years!</p> + +<p>The formidable critique, not the tragedy, made a great +sensation; many were on the side of the stout Aristotelian, +though some might deem that little mercy had tempered +his justice. Dryden prepared an answer, for we have its +heads; but he seems to have been awed by the critic’s +learning, for he never proceeded, and at a later day Rymer +was a critic quite after Pope’s own heart on our ancient +drama.<a name="fa18c52" id="fa18c52" href="#ft18c52"><span class="sp">18</span></a> Some years after, the critique was honoured by +a second edition, and in the following year this <i>combat à +l’outrance</i> was again waged, with no diminished intrepidity, +in “A Short View of Tragedy, with some reflections +on <span class="sc">Shakespeare</span>, and other <span class="scs">PRACTITIONERS</span> for the Stage,” +1693. This, notwithstanding the offensive theme, is replete +with curious literature, and some original researches +in Provençal poetry.</p> + +<p>“Rymer is the worst critic that ever lived.” Such is +the warm decision of an eloquent modern critic.<a name="fa19c52" id="fa19c52" href="#ft19c52"><span class="sp">19</span></a> But +in taste, as well as in more serious affairs, every age is +governed by opinions. A mechanical critic then seemed +mathematically irrefutable. Judging an English drama +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page555" id="page555"></a>555</span> +by the practice of the ancients, his triumph was easy. +This scholastic doctrine, however, proved too subtle for +the English people, and even the learned themselves in +time looked up to nature. The philosophy of criticism, +that is, of the human mind, was then imperfectly comprehended. +A critic will be no longer safe who has nothing +by heart but canons of criticism. The curious “Tracts” +of <span class="sc">Rymer</span> are a memorable evidence how a learned critic +deprived of native susceptibility, may distort the noblest +productions, by coarse jocularity and that malice of criticism—ridicule! +He calls <i>Othello</i> “the tragedy of the +pocket-handkerchief.” That beautiful incident Shakespeare +had found in Cynthio’s novel, and probably intuitively felt +how casualties, small as this one, in human affairs may +become associated with our highest passions. Rymer only +exposed the poverty of his imagination when, with a +morsel of Quintilian, he would demonstrate this incident +to be “too small a matter to move us in tragedy, much +like Fortunatus’ purse and the invisible cloak, long ago +worn threadbare, and stowed up in the wardrobe of obsolete +romance.” With <i>Othello’s</i> tragic tale before him, +the critic worms himself into “the burlesque or comic +parts,” and these he insidiously lauds, to insinuate that +<i>Othello</i> is but “a bloody farce.” The blending of the +comic and the serious in the same character, as in that of +Iago, as often we find it in the many-coloured scenes of +human life, was an artful mixture too potent and poisonous +in the cup of mechanical criticism. There is a strange +malignant drollery, a bitter pleasantry in the villanous +Iago, as in the scene where he alarms Brabantio for the +fate of his daughter, which to “the heroic” dramatist, +who could only move on stilts, was mistaken for “farce,” +and not comprehended in his narrow views of human nature.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Rymer</span>, however, was a ripe scholar, and the founder +in our literature of what has been considered as the French +or the classical school of criticism; and he has won the +unlucky distinction of being designated as “Shakespeare’s +critic!” In Dryden’s prologue to “Love Triumphant,” +there is an allusion which Sir Walter Scott could not assign +to any individual, though he acutely suspected it had +a reference to some person: Sir Walter at that moment +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page556" id="page556"></a>556</span> +forgot Rymer and his “heroic tragedy.” The lines are +now very significant.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>To <span class="sc">Shakespeare’s Critic</span>, he bequeaths the curse,</p> +<p><i>To find his faults</i>, and yet <span class="sc">Himself make worse</span>.<a name="fa20c52" id="fa20c52" href="#ft20c52"><span class="sp">20</span></a></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The uncertain criticisms of Dryden on Shakespeare were +often dictated by the impulse of the moment, and stand in +strange opposition to each other. At one happy time, +indeed, he exclaimed, “I admire Jonson, but I love Shakespeare;” +but he had not dived into the spirit of the poet, +else we should not have had the strong censure of a +“lethargy of thought for whole scenes together;” we +should not have heard of “the bombast speeches of Macbeth;” +nor that “the historical plays, <i>The Winter’s Tale</i>, +and <i>Measure for Measure</i>, are so meanly written, that the +comedy neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part +your concernment.”</p> + +<p>Dryden, however great as a poet, was deficient in passion, +whose natural touches he acknowledged he had found +in Otway. In his earliest pieces, while enamoured of the +false taste of his heroic tragedies, it is certain he had +formed little relish for nature and Shakespeare, which, at a +later period of life, he seems to have been more open to.</p> + +<p>In 1681, the Poet Laureate, Nahum Tate, was so little +acquainted with Shakespeare, that <i>Lear</i> being brought to +his notice, he found it a treasure, a heap of jewels unstrung +and unpolished; and having had “the good fortune +to light upon an expedient to rectify it,” he brought it +on the stage.</p> + +<p>Shakespeare was now out of fashion, and a man of +fashion aimed a last and mortal blow. The noble author +of the “Characteristics” anathematised “the Gothic model +of poetry.” He told the nation that “the British muses +were in their infant state, without anything of shapeliness +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page557" id="page557"></a>557</span> +or person, lisping in their cradles, with stammering tongues +which nothing but their youth and rawness can excuse.” +Our dramatic <span class="sc">Shakespeare</span> and our epic <span class="sc">Milton</span> are +among these venerable bards, “<i>rude as they were according +to their time and age</i>.” The classical pedant had, however, +the sagacity to perceive that they have provided us with +“the richest ore.” Nature and Shakespeare lifted not +their veil to the cold artificial soliloquist whose faint delicacy +bred its own sickliness, and who, in the march and +glitter of his external pomp, only betrayed the internal +failure of his vigour.</p> + +<p>The fourth and last folio edition of Shakespeare appeared +in 1685. The poet again was locked up in a huge +folio for the following twenty-five years, when, in 1709, +he was freed by Rowe, who now gave him to the world at +large in a more current form, which would meet the eye +of the many.<a name="fa21c52" id="fa21c52" href="#ft21c52"><span class="sp">21</span></a></p> + +<p>The appearance of Rowe’s edition at least placed the +volumes in the hands of Steele and Addison, and possibly +it formed their first studies of this poet. Whoever will +take the pains to examine their popular papers may discover +the fruits of their first thoughts. Steele at first +seems to have derived his knowledge of Shakespeare from +the plays as they were represented; he quotes <i>Macbeth</i> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page558" id="page558"></a>558</span> +by memory very faultily in the famous exclamation of +Macduff, and seems quite unconscious of the character of +Lady Macbeth, and indeed notices that all the female +characters of Shakespeare make “so small a figure.”<a name="fa22c52" id="fa22c52" href="#ft22c52"><span class="sp">22</span></a> As +we proceed, we discover him more deeply read and more +familiar with the poet’s language. It was not to be hoped from +Addison’s colder fancy and classical severity, that +the Elizabethan poet could transport this critic by his +inexhaustible imagery and a diction which paints the +passions as well as reveals them. The prosaic genius of +Addison, which had produced a frigid <i>Cato</i>, could hardly +fathom the depth of the mightier soul. He pronounced +Shakespeare “very faulty in hard metaphors and forced +expressions,” and he joins Shakespeare and Nat Lee as instances +of the false sublime.<a name="fa23c52" id="fa23c52" href="#ft23c52"><span class="sp">23</span></a> Pope’s idea was similar, in +his conversation, not in his preface; and later so was +Thomas Warton’s.<a name="fa24c52" id="fa24c52" href="#ft24c52"><span class="sp">24</span></a></p> + +<p>In 1718, Bysshe, in compiling his “Art of Poetry,” +which consists of mere extracts, passed by “Spenser and +the poets of his age, because their language has become so +obsolete that most readers of our age have no ear for +them, and therefore <span class="sc">Shakespeare</span> is so rarely cited in this +collection.”</p> + +<p>Rowe silently corrected his unostentatious edition; +when fifteen years had elapsed, Tonson called on a greater +poet to succeed to the editorial throne. The classical +taste of Pope was disturbed and rarely sympathised with +“the choice of the subjects, the wrong conduct of the +incidents, false thoughts, forced expressions:” in tenderness +to Shakespeare these he held to be “not so much defects, +but superfœtations,” which are to be ascribed to the +times, to interpolation, to the copyists; and contemning +“the dull duty” of editorship, he initiated himself into +the novel office of expurgator; striking out or inserting +at pleasure—not only pruning, but grafting. Schlegel +exclaims in agony, that Pope would have given us a mutilated +Shakespeare! but Pope, to satisfy us that he was not +insensible to the fine passages of Shakespeare, distinguished +by inverted commas all those which he approved! So +that Pope thus furnished for the first time what have been +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page559" id="page559"></a>559</span> +called “The <i>Beauties</i> of Shakespeare!” but amid such a +disfigured text, the <i>faults</i> of Shakespeare must have been +too apparent! Pope but partially relished and often ill +understood his Shakespeare; yet in the liveliest of prefaces +he offers the most vivid delineation of our great bard’s +<i>general characteristics</i>. The <i>genius of Shakespeare</i> was at +once comprehended by his brother poet; but <i>the text</i> he +was continually tampering with ended in a fatal testimony +that <span class="sc">Pope</span> had no congenial taste for the style, the manner, +and the whole native drama of England.<a name="fa25c52" id="fa25c52" href="#ft25c52"><span class="sp">25</span></a> <span class="sc">Pope</span> laid +himself open to the investigating eye of <span class="sc">Theobald</span>.</p> + +<p>The attention of <span class="sc">Theobald</span> had been drawn to our old +plays by <span class="sc">Thomas Coxeter</span>, an enthusiast of our ancient +dramatists. This Coxeter was the original projector of +their revival, but having communicated his plan, he witnessed +the incompetent <span class="sc">Dodsley</span> appropriate this fond +hope of his dreamy life, and he has left us his indignant +groans.<a name="fa26c52" id="fa26c52" href="#ft26c52"><span class="sp">26</span></a></p> + +<p>After an interval of seven years Theobald gave his +edition. His attempts were limited to the emendation of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page560" id="page560"></a>560</span> +corrupt passages and the explanation of obscure ones: the +more elevated disquisitions to develope the genius of his +author, by principles of criticism applied to his beauties or +his defects, he assigned to “a masterly pen.” This at +least was not arrogant; the man who is sensible of his own +weakness, is safe by not tasking it to the proof. His +annotations are amusing from the self-complacency of the +writer, who at times seems to have been struck by his own +felicitous results; and in truth he was often successful, +more than has been honestly avowed by those who have +poached on his manor. Theobald exulted over Pope, but +he read his triumph in “The Dunciad.”</p> + +<p>The Popeians now sunk the sole merit of the laborious +sagacity of “the restorer,” as Mr. Pope affectionately +called him, to that of “a word-catcher.” But “piddling +Theobald,” branded in the forehead by the immortal +“Dunciad,” was the first who popularised the neglected +writings of Shakespeare.<a name="fa27c52" id="fa27c52" href="#ft27c52"><span class="sp">27</span></a> His editions dispersed thirteen +thousand copies, while nearly a third of Pope’s original +subscription edition, of seven hundred and fifty copies, +were left unvendible.<a name="fa28c52" id="fa28c52" href="#ft28c52"><span class="sp">28</span></a></p> + +<p>It is an evidence of the spread of Shakespeare’s celebrity, +that a fashionable circle had formed themselves into a +society under the title of “The Shakespeare Club.” Every +week they bespoke some favourite play; but, unexpectedly, +the <i>acted plays</i> of Shakespeare seemed to lose greatly of +their secret magic: this failure was charged upon the unhappy +performers, whose skill appeared all unequal to raise +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page561" id="page561"></a>561</span> +the emotions which the bard had inspired in the closet. +Certain it is, that for the full comprehension of the genius +of this great poet, we must learn to think, to reflect, to +combine, for what has passed is a part of what is going +on; and this is a labour more adapted for the repose of the +closet than the business of the theatre. Much is written +which must remain in the mind, and cannot come within +the province of acting. The dramas of Shakespeare, as +they have descended to us, modern taste also has always +required to be altered and adapted; they are less calculated +for performance on the stage than those of almost any +other dramatist who has become classical in the theatre. +Unquestionably, the great poet had retained much of the +barbarism of the old plays which he re-wrote without remodelling; +bustle which hurries on our attention without +stimulating our feelings; some flagrant indecorums and +some absolute nonsense to the taste of “the groundlings +of the Globe.” In the reverie of the poet’s pages, the eye +glides silently over the offending passages which cannot +detain it. It was these prominent defects which provoked +so many modern alterations; and no doubt Tate and +Cibber, and all that race, exulted like Shadwell, who in his +dedication to his alteration of <i>Timon of Athens</i> exclaims, +“I can truly say I have made it into a play.” When Sir +James Mackintosh observed, that “Massinger’s taste, as +Shakespeare’s genius, is displayed with such prodigal magnificence +in the <i>parts</i>, but never employed in the construction +of the whole,” he was perhaps not aware of the real cause, +which was that of our great poet following the construction +of old plays, without altering their ordonnance. It is true +also, that the characters of Shakespeare require something +of his own genius in their personifiers to sustain the perfect +illusion; great actors seem always to have felt the deep +emotions they raised; they studied, they meditated, till at +length they personified the ideal character they represented. +We are told this of Burbage and Betterton, and we know +it of Garrick and Mrs. Siddons.</p> + +<p>A novel fate was now to befal Shakespeare. Theobald +had made his volumes useful for all hands; a man of rank, +who had been the Speaker of the House of Commons, set +the first example of literary magnificence. Sir <span class="sc">Thomas +Hanmer</span> had cradled his fancy in the idealism of publication; +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page562" id="page562"></a>562</span> +his edition was to be not only “the fairest impression, +beautified with the ornaments of sculpture,” but it +was not to be <i>sold</i> by booksellers! The Shakespeare of Sir +Thomas Hanmer seemed to be a sacred thing, like the +shew-bread of ancient Israel, to be touched by no profane +hand, nor eaten but by an exclusive class. He made a +gratuitous donation of his “sculptured” edition to his +Alma Mater, to issue from the university press, at a very +moderate subscription price. The embroidered mantle, +however, but ill concealed the trifler. Sir Thomas had +vigorously attacked the grammatical errors of the poet, +which, in fact, was often a violation of the text, for Shakespeare +wrote ungrammatically; the other editorial effort +was a metrical amusement, gently lopping a redundant, or +straightening a limping line; the only harm of his edition +was his modesty in adopting all the innovations of his predecessors, +for his own were quite innocent. On the whole, +Sir Thomas appears to have edited his Shakespeare, wearing +all the while his “white kid gloves,” which the Mad Tom +Hervey, who ran away with his lady, by information +which he ought not to have divulged, assured the world +that the baronet always slept in.</p> + +<p>Under the veil of giving “dear Mr. Pope’s” edition, +which no one craved, the great author of “The Divine +Legation” now edited Shakespeare. It must have occurred +to the readers of this edition, that hitherto no one +had entered into any right conception of a great portion +of the poet’s writings. Many passages with which our +memory is familiar were wrested into the most whimsical +readings; plain matters were for ever obscured by perverse +but ingenious interpretations; not only the words, but the +thoughts of the author were changed; here a line was to +be wholly rejected, and there an interpolation was to clear +an imperfect sense; but the most prominent feature of the +commentary was that learned fancy which struck out +allusions to the most recondite circumstances of learned +antiquity.<a name="fa29c52" id="fa29c52" href="#ft29c52"><span class="sp">29</span></a></p> + +<p>In this great commentator on Shakespeare there was +always a contest between his learning and his fancy; the +one was copious, and the other was exuberant; neither +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page563" id="page563"></a>563</span> +could yield to the other; and the reader was sure to be led +astray by both. His fervid curiosity was absolutely creative; +all things crowded to bear on his point; in the precipitancy +of his pen, his taste or his judgment was not of +that degree which could save him even from inglorious +absurdities. But the ingenious follies of his literature +were such that they have often been preserved, for the sake +of all that learning which it required for their refutation.</p> + +<p>When all was over, and the battle was fought and lost, +the friends of the great man acknowledged that the +editor’s design had never been to explain Shakespeare! and +that he was even conscious that he had frequently imputed +to the poet meanings which had never entered the mind of +the bard! Our critic’s grand object was to display his +own learning in these amusements of his leisure. Warburton +wrote for Warburton, and not for Shakespeare; and +the literary confession almost rivals those of Lauder or +Psalmanazar.</p> + +<p>There is one more remarkable object in the Shakespeare +of Warburton. He not only preserved that strange device +of Pope to distinguish the most beautiful passages by +<i>inverted commas</i>, but carried on that ridiculous process on +his own separate account, by marking his favourites by +<i>double commas</i>. It is evident that these great editors +judged Shakespeare by these fragmentary and unconnected +passages, which could not indicate the harmonious and +gradual rise of the thoughts, nor the fine transitions of +emotions, and less the comprehensive genius of the inventor. +They were scattering the living members which +must be viewed whole with all their movements, and at +last must be sought for by the reader in his own mind. +The truest mode of discovering the beauties of an author +is first to be conversant with the beautiful, otherwise it is +possible that the beauties may escape the readers, even +should they be marked by a Pope or a Warburton.</p> + +<p>The acknowledged failure of the preceding editions invited +to a fresh enterprise, and it was the edition of +Johnson, in 1765, which conferred on Shakespeare the +stability of a classic, by the vigour and discrimination of +his criticism, and the solemnity of his judicial decisions.</p> + +<p>When Johnson had issued his proposals twenty years +before for an edition of Shakespeare, he pointed to a great +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page564" id="page564"></a>564</span> +novelty for the elucidation of the poet. His intuitive +sagacity had discerned that a poet so racy and native required +a familiarity both with the idiom and the manners +of his age. He was sensible that a complete explanation +of an author, not systematic and consequential, but desultory +and vagrant, abounding in casual allusions and slight +hints, is not to be expected from any single scholiast. He +enumerates, however, the desiderata for this purpose; +among which we find that of reading the books which +Shakespeare read, and to compare his works with those of +writers who lived at the same time, or immediately preceded, +or immediately followed him. This project, happily +conceived, inferred comprehensive knowledge in the proposer; +but it was only a reverie; a dim Pisgah view which +the sagacity of the great critic had taken of that future +Canaan, which he himself never entered. With this sort +of knowledge, and these forgotten writers, which the +future commentators of Shakespeare revelled in, Johnson +remained wholly unacquainted.</p> + +<p>But what proved more fatal to the editorial ability of +<span class="sc">Johnson</span> than this imperfect knowledge of the literature +and the manners of the age of Shakespeare, was that the +commentator rarely sympathised with the poet, for his +hard-witted and unpliant faculties, busied with the more +palpable forms of human nature, when thrown amid the +supernatural and the ideal, seemed suddenly deserted of +their powers; the magic knot was tied, which cast our +Hercules into helpless impotence; and in the circle of +imaginative creation, we discover the baffled sage resisting +the spell, by apologising for Shakespeare’s introduction of +his mighty preternatural beings! a certain evidence that +the critic had never existed for a moment under their influence. +“Witches, fairies, and ghosts, would not now be +tolerated by an audience;” such was the grave and fallacious +assumption of the unimaginative critic, which seems +something worse than Voltaire’s raillery; for though that +wit ridiculed the ghost in Hamlet, he afterwards had the +poetic agility to transfer its solemnity to his own Semiramis,—though, +like all rapid inlayers, the appliqué did +not fit to his work.<a name="fa30c52" id="fa30c52" href="#ft30c52"><span class="sp">30</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page565" id="page565"></a>565</span></p> + +<p>We may even suspect the degree of our great critic’s +susceptibility of the infinitely-varied emotions flowing in +the inexhaustible vein of the poet of nature. In those +judicial summaries at the close of each drama, his cold approbation, +his perplexing balancings, his hazarded doubts, +or his positive censures, all alike betray the uncertainty +and the difficulties of a critical mind, which misapplied its +energies to themes adverse to its habits.</p> + +<p>Johnson’s preface to his Shakespeare was long held as a +masterpiece; and several splendid passages, after more than +half a century, remain to remind us of his nervous intellect. +If we now read that preface with a different understanding +than that of most of his contemporaries, it is because +Johnson himself has revealed his poetical confessions in +certain “Lives of the Poets.” We now look on that +famed preface much more as a labour of pomp than a +labour of love. Far from me be any irreverence to our +master-genius of the passed century, whose volumes were +read by all readers, and imitated by all writers; my first +devotion to literature was caught from his pages; and the +fire still burns on that altar. But the literary character +of <span class="sc">Johnson</span>, with his enduring works, is no longer a subject +of inquiry, but of history; of truths established, and +not of opinions which are mutable.</p> + +<p>Can we imagine that Johnson himself experienced a +degree of conviction, some perplexing consciousness, that +his spirit was not endowed with the sensibility of Longinus? +A profound thinker, acutely argumentative and +analytical, though clothed in the purple of his cumbrous +diction, and the cadences of his concatenated periods, +when he touched on themes of pure imagination, and passions +not merely declamatory, had nothing left to him but +the solitary test of his judgment, to decide on what lies +out of the scope of daily life. He interpreted the pathetic +and the sublime, till they ceased to be either by the force +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page566" id="page566"></a>566</span> +of his reasoning and the weakness of his conceptions; he +cross-examined shadowy fancies, till they vanished under +the eye of the judge. He had no wing to ascend into +“the heaven of invention.”</p> + +<p>In <span class="sc">Johnson’s Shakespeare</span>, therefore, we may trace +that deficient sympathy which subsequently betrayed itself +in his revolting decisions on Collins, on Gray, on Milton, +and on others. It was his hard fate to be called on to deliver +his solemn decisions on two of our greatest poets; +from Spenser he had fortunately escaped, having wholly +forgotten the Muse of Mulla, while his piety and his taste +had remembered Blackmore, in the collection of English +poets. It is curious to detect the mode by which our +great critic extricated himself from the difficulties of his +judicial function on Shakespeare and on Milton, by his prudential +sagacity, and his passive obedience to established +authorities. Johnson’s preface to Shakespeare was grafted +on Pope’s, as afterwards, when he came to Milton, he followed +the track of Addison. But Johnson was too honest +to disguise the reality of his own conviction: it was legitimate +to adopt theirs, but it was independent to preserve +his own; in this dissonance he has left a lesson and a +warning for some who are eminent, and who travel in the +high-road of criticism.</p> + +<p>It is thus that we find in this famous preface to Shakespeare +that he is hailed as the poet of nature, and is placed +by the side of Homer; and of this Pope had instructed the +critic; but in the sudden change the noble qualities of the +bard are minutely reversed; the antithesis was too often +in the critic’s own taste; and the characteristic excellence +ascribed to Shakespeare seems hardly compatible with the +number and the grossness of his faults. Every work of +note bears the impression of its times; and we learn from +the faithful chronicler of Johnson the real occasion which +gave rise to this remarkable preface. “A blind and indiscriminate +admiration of Shakespeare had exposed the British +nation to the ridicule of foreigners; and this preface was +considered as a grave, well-considered, and impartial +opinion of the judge.” Such was the defence of the +logical critic, who so diligently enumerated the defects of +his author, that Voltaire, who could never understand the +language nor comprehend the genius of Shakespeare, might +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page567" id="page567"></a>567</span> +sometimes have referred to Johnson to confirm his own +depreciating notions.</p> + +<p>The extensive plan for the illustration of the poet, imperfectly +projected by Johnson, was finally executed +through a series of editions, which gave rise to a new +class of literary antiquaries.</p> + +<p>Shortly after the first edition of Johnson, Dr. <span class="sc">Farmer</span> +led the way to the disclosure of a new lore in our old books. +Farmer had silently pursued an untired chase in this +“black” forest, for he had a keen <i>gusto</i> for the native +venison, and, alluding to his Shakespearian pursuits, exclaimed +in the inspiring language of his poet—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Age cannot wither them, nor custom stale</p> +<p>Their infinite variety.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">His vivacity relieved the drowsiness of mere antiquarianism. +This novel pursuit once opened, an eager and motley pack +was hallooed up, and Shakespeare, like Actæon, was torn to +pieces by a whole kennel of his own hounds, as they were +typified, with equal humour and severity. But to be +severe and never to be just is the penury of the most sordid +criticism; and among these</p> + +<p class="center f90 ptb1">Spirits black, white, and grey,</p> + +<p class="noind">are some of the most illustrious in English literature.</p> + +<p>The original edition of Johnson consisted only of eight +volumes; had not the contriving wisdom of the printers +impressed the last into twenty and one huge tomes, they +might easily have been expanded into forty.</p> + +<p>When we survey the massive <i>variorum</i> edition of Shakespeare, +we are struck by the circumstance that nothing +similar has happened to any other national author. It was +not to be expected that, after the invention of the art of +printing, an author could arise, whose works should be disfigured +by treacherous transcribers, corrupted by interpolations, +and still more by a race of men whose art was +unknown to the ancients, subjecting his text to the mercy +of contending commentators and conjectural critics. But +a singular combination of untoward circumstances attached +to this poet and his works, produced this remarkable +result. The scholiasts among the ancient classics had +rejoiced in some rare emendation of the text, or the rhetorical +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page568" id="page568"></a>568</span> +commentator had flourished in the luxuriance of the +latent beauties of some favourite author. But a far wider +and deeper source of inquiry was now to be attempted, +historical or explanatory—comments to clear up obscure +allusions; to indicate unknown prototypes; to trace the +vicissitudes of words as well as things; to picture forth +the customs and the manners which had faded into desuetude; +and to re-open for us the records of our social and +domestic life, thus at once to throw us back into that age, +and to familiarize us with that language, of Shakespeare +which had vanished. Shakespeare, it may be said, suddenly +became the favourite object of literary inquiry. Every +literary man in the nation conned over and illumined “the +infinite variety” of the bard. And assuredly they enriched +our vernacular literature with a collection of historical, +philological, and miscellaneous information, unparalleled +among any other literary people. In 1785, <span class="sc">Isaac Reed</span>, +in one of his prefaces, informs us, that “the works of +Shakespeare, during the last twenty years, have been the +object of public attention.”</p> + +<p>All this novel knowledge was, however, not purchased +at a slight cost. It was not only to be snatched up by +accidental discovery, but it was more severely tasked by +what Steevens called “a course of black-letter!”—dusty +volumes, and fugitive tracts, and the wide range of antiquarian +research. The sources whence they drew their +waters were muddy; and <span class="sc">Steevens</span>, who affected more +gaiety in his chains than his brothers in the Shakespearian +galley, with bitter derision reproached his great coadjutor +<span class="sc">Malone</span>, whom he looked on with the evil eye of rivalry +for drawing his knowledge from “books too mean to be +formally quoted.”</p> + +<p>The commentators have encumbered the poet, who +often has been but a secondary object of their lucubrations, +for they not only write notes on Shakespeare, but notes, and +bitter ones too, on one another. This commentary has +been turned into a gymnasium for the public sports of +friendly and of unfriendly wrestlers; where some have +been so earnest, that it is evident that, in measuring a +cast, they congratulated themselves in the language of +Orlando, “If ever he goes alone again, I’ll never wrestle +for prize more.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page569" id="page569"></a>569</span></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Thomas Warton</span> once covered with his shield some of +the minor brotherhood: “If Shakespeare is worth reading, +he is worth explaining; and the researches used for so +valuable and elegant a purpose merit the thanks of genius +and candour, not the satire of prejudice and ignorance.” +But this serves not as an apology for abusing the privilege +of a commentator; elucidating the poet into obscurity by +information equally contradictory and curious; racking us +by fantastic readings which no one imagined before or +since; and laying us open to the mercy of some who +never ventured to sharpen their pens but on our irresistible +Shakespeare. What has been the result of the petty conflicts +between the arch maliciousness of Steevens and the +fervent plodding of Malone, which raised up two parties +among the Shakespearian commentators, till they became +so personal, that a Steevenite and a Malonist looked on +each other suspiciously, and sometimes would drop the +ordinary civilities of life? At length, strange to tell, +after Steevens had laboured with zeal equal to the whole +confraternity, it became a question with him, In what +manner the poet <span class="scs">COULD</span> be read? Are we to con over +each note appended to each word or passage?—but this +would be perpetually to turn aside the flow of our imagination; +or are we to read a large portion of the text +uninterruptedly, and then return to the notes?—but this +would be breaking the unity of the poet into fragments; +or, for a final decision, and the avowal must have mortified +the ingenuous illustrator, according to a third class of +readers, were these illustrations to be altogether rejected? +must the poet or the commentator be at continual +variance? or shall we endure to see “Alcides beaten by +his page?”</p> + +<p>Might I be allowed to offer an award on a matter so involved +and delicate as this union between the genius of +Shakespeare and the genius of his commentators, I would +concede the divorce, from the incompatibility of temper +between the parties; but I would insist on a separate +maintenance, to preserve the great respectability attached +to the party most complained of. The true reader of +Shakespeare may then accommodate himself with two editions; +the one for his hand, having nothing but what +the poet has written; the other for the shelf, having all +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page570" id="page570"></a>570</span> +the commentators have conjectured, confuted, and confounded.<a name="fa31c52" id="fa31c52" href="#ft31c52"><span class="sp">31</span></a></p> + +<p>The celebrity of Shakespeare is no longer hounded by his +nationality. Even France responds, though the voice +of Parisian critics is muffled, confused, and ambiguous; +they have not yet solved the great problem, why Shakespeare +is an omnipotent dramatist.<a name="fa32c52" id="fa32c52" href="#ft32c52"><span class="sp">32</span></a> The school of Corneille +and Racine are perplexed, like Quin, who could not +be brought to acknowledge the creative acting of Garrick, +observing that, “If that young man were right, all which +they had hitherto done was wrong.”</p> + +<p>Voltaire, in early life, to compose the <i>Henriade</i>, to +escape from the Bastile, or to conceal his espionage—for +he appears to have been a secret <i>employé</i> of the French +ministry—resided a considerable time in England. He +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page571" id="page571"></a>571</span> +acquired an unusual knowledge of our language, and published +an essay on the epic poets in English.<a name="fa33c52" id="fa33c52" href="#ft33c52"><span class="sp">33</span></a> He discovered +a new world among our writers, and was the first +who introduced the Literature of England into France. +Voltaire expounded to his nation the philosophy of Newton; +but unhappily he criticized and translated Shakespeare, +whose idiomatic phrases and metaphorical style +did not admit of the demonstrations of the Newtonian +system. To the author of the <i>Henriade</i>, who had ever +before his eyes the two great masters whom he was one +day to rival, the anti-classical and “Gothic” genius of a +poet of the Elizabethan period, scorning the unities, following +events without the contrivance of an intrigue artfully +developed, mingling farce with tragedy, buffoons +with monarchs, and preternatural beings stalking amid +the palpable realities of life—such irregular dramas seemed +to the Aristotelian but “des farces monstrueuses,” as we +see they appeared to Rymer and Shaftesbury; but Voltaire +was too sagacious to be wholly insensible that “these +monstrous farces, which they call tragedies, had scenes +grand and terrific.” Voltaire, then meditating on his +future dramas, in passing over the surface of the soil, discovered +that a mine lay beneath—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i5">Some ore</p> +<p>Among a mineral of metals base,</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">and the embedded treasure was worked with more diligence +than with gratitude to the owner. If Voltaire +ridiculed what he had found, it was partly with the desire +of its concealment, but not wholly; for it was impossible +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page572" id="page572"></a>572</span> +for any foreigner to interpret sweet words, and idiomatic +phrases, not to be found in dictionaries; or to make way +through the bewilderment of the perpetual metaphorical +diction of the daring fancy of the great poet; but the +deformities of the bard would be too intelligible; all those +parts which Pope would have struck out as “superfœtations.” +A bald version, or a malicious turn, would amuse +the world by those amazing absurdities, which the wit, +too famous for his ridicule, rejoiced to commit, and Europe +yet knew nothing of Shakespeare, and lay under the sway +of this autocrat of Literature.<a name="fa34c52" id="fa34c52" href="#ft34c52"><span class="sp">34</span></a></p> + +<p>Mrs. <span class="sc">Montague</span> was the Minerva, for so she was complimented +on this occasion, whose celestial spear was to +transfix the audacious Gaul. Her “Essay on the Writings +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page573" id="page573"></a>573</span> +and Genius of Shakespeare, compared with the Greek and +French dramatic poets,” served for a popular answer to +Voltaire. This accomplished lady, who had raised a literary +coterie about her, which attracted such fashionable +notice that its title has survived its institution, found in +“the Blue-stocking Club” choral hymns and clouds of incense +gathering about the altar in Portman Square! The +volume is deemed “a wonderful performance,” by those +echoes of contemporary prepossessions, the compilers of +dictionary-biography; even the poet Cowper placed Mrs. +Montague “at the head of all that is called learned.”</p> + +<p>This lady’s knowledge of the English drama, and the +genius of our ancient Literature, is as vague and indistinct +as that of the Greek tragedians, to whom she frequently +refers, without, we are told, any intimacy with the originals. +She discovers many bombast speeches even in +<i>Macbeth</i>, but she triumphantly exclaims, “Shakespeare redeems +the nonsense, the indecorum, the irregularities of +his plays;” irregularities which seem to her incomprehensible. +Her criticisms are the random reflections of her +feelings; but trusting to our feelings alone, unaccompanied +by that knowledge on which they should be +based, is confiding in a capricious, and often an erring +dictator, governed by our own humours, or by fashionable +tastes.</p> + +<p>Thus have we viewed our bard through distinct eras, +from the time in which he was not yet pre-eminently distinguished +among his numerous peers; the Shakespeare of +his own day could not be the Shakespeare of posterity; his +rivals could only view that genius in its progress, and +though there was not one who was a Shakespeare, yet, in +that bursting competition of genius, there were many who +were themselves Shakspearian. In a succeeding era, novel +and unnational tastes prevailed; to the Drydenists who, +dismissing the language of nature, substituted a false +nature in their exaggerated passion, Shakespeare might +have said of himself—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>I dare do all that may become a man,</p> +<p>Who dares do more is none;—</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">and when tried by the conventional code of criticism, and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page574" id="page574"></a>574</span> +condemned; the poet of creation, might have exclaimed to +Rymer and to Shaftesbury—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>The poet’s eye,</p> +<p>Bodying forth the forms of <span class="scs">THINGS UNKNOWN</span>,</p> + <p class="i12">gives to airy nothing</p> +<p>A local habitation and a name.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>Emerging into light through his modern editors, the +volume in the hands of all men; the English public, with +whom the classical model was held as nothing, received +him as their national bard; for every one read in “the +chance” that could only “hit suddenly,” as Butler has +described the genius of Shakespeare, revelations about himself. +It seemed as if the poet had served in all professions, +taking every colour of public and domestic life. +Lawyers have detected their law-cunning in the legal contrivances +of the poet; physicians have commented on the +madness of Lear, and the mystery of Hamlet; statesmen +have meditated on profound speculations in civil polity; +the merchant and the mechanic, the soldier and the +maiden—all, from the crowned head to the sailor-boy, +found that in the cursory pages of the great dramatist, he +had disclosed to all the tribes of mankind the secrets of +their condition. The plenitude and the pliancy of the +Shakespearian mind may be manifested by a trivial circumstance. +We are a people of pamphleteers; a free country +has a free communication; and many, for interest or vainglory, +rush to catch the public ear. To point out the +drift of their effusions, and aid a dubious title by an unquestioned +authority, the greater number of these incessant +fugitives, coming in all shapes, will be usually found +to have recourse for this apposite thought, and crowning +motto, to the prodigal pages of Shakespeare, who, thus +pressed into their service, has often made the drift of the +pamphleteer intelligible, vainly sought in his confused +pamphlet.</p> + +<p>When the strange condition of his works made the +poet the noble prey of a brood of commentators, antiquarian +and philological, from that generation he derived +nothing of that abstract greatness with which we are now accustomed +to contemplate a genius which seems universal. +It was not by new readings, contested restorations, conjectural +emendations, and notes explanatory of customs +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page575" id="page575"></a>575</span> +and phrases, however useful, that we could penetrate into +the depths of a genius profound as nature herself, and it +was only when philosophical critics tested this genius by +their own principles, that the singularity was discovered +to Europe.</p> + +<p>Hitherto the critical art had been verbal, or didactic, +or dogmatic; but when the mind engaged itself in +watching its own operations, by analysis and combination, +and when the laws of its constitution formed a science, +educing principles, and exploring the sources of our +emotions, all arbitrary conventions were only rated at +their worth, while the final appeal was made to our own +experience: these nobler critics founded the demonstrations +of their metaphysical reasonings on our consciousness. +This novel philosophy was more surely and more deeply +laid in the nature of man, and whatever concerns man, +than the arbitrary code of the Stagyrite, who had founded +many of his laws on what had only been customs. We +were passing from the history of the human understanding +to the history of the imagination; and the whole beautiful +process of the intellectual faculties was a new revelation. +Theories of taste and systems of philosophy multiplied +our sympathies, and amplified our associations; the intellectual +powers had their history, and the passions were +laid bare in their eloquent anatomy. But in these severe +investigations, this new school had to seek for illustrations +and for examples which might familiarize their abstract +principles; and these philosophical critics appealed to +nature, and drew them from her poetic interpreter.</p> + +<p>It was the philosophical critics who, by trying Shakespeare +by these highest tests, fixed him on his solitary +eminence. From Lord Kaimes, through a brilliant succession +of many a Longinus, the public has been instructed. +The strokes of nature and the bursts of passion, +the exuberance of his humour and the pathos of his higher +mood, untutored minds had felt more or less, and Shakespeare +was lauded for what they considered to be his +“natural parts;” and it was parts only on which they +could decide, for the true magnitude they could not yet +comprehend. The loneliness of his genius, in its profundity +or its elevation, and the delicacy of its delineations, +the mighty space his universal faculty extends before us, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page576" id="page576"></a>576</span> +these they could never reach! The phenomenon had not +been explained—the instruments had not yet been invented +which could fathom its depths, or take the admeasurement +at the meridian.</p> + +<p>But if philosophical criticism has been so far favourable +to develope the truth of nature in the great poet, it is +not a consequence that Shakespeare himself produced his +poetry on those revolving systems of metaphysics by +which some late æsthetic and rhetorical German critics +have somewhat offuscated the solitary luminary. They +have developed such a system of intricate thinking in the +genius of the poet, such a refined connexion between his +conceptions and the execution of his dramatic personages—they +have so grafted their own imagination upon his, +that at times it becomes doubtful whether we are influenced +by the imagination of the critic, or that of the +poet. In this seraphic mode of criticism, the poem +becomes mythic, and the poet a myth; in the power of +abstraction, these critics have passed beyond the regions +of humanity. We soar with them into the immensity +of space, and we tremble as if we stood alone in the +universe; we have lost sight of nature, as we seem to +have passed her human boundaries. The ancient divinity +of poetry itself, even Homer, is absorbed in the Shakespearian +myth; for Shakespeare, to snatch a feather from +the fiery wing of Coleridge, is “the Spinosistic deity, an +omnipresent creativeness.”</p> + +<p>Thou whose rapt spirit beheld the vision of human +existence, “the wheel in the middle of the wheel, and the +spirit of the living creature within,” and wrotest thy +inspirations, how shall we describe thy faculty? To +paint lightning, and to give it no motion, is the doom of +the baffled artist. Something, however, we may conceive +of the Shakespearian faculty when we say that it consisted +in a facility of feeling, an aptitude in following +those trains of thought which constitute that undeviating +propriety, in the consonance of the character with its +action, and the passion with its language. Whether the +poet followed the romancer or the chronicler in his conception +of a dramatic character, he at the first step struck +into that undeviating track of our humanity amid the +accidents of its position. The progress of each dramatic +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page577" id="page577"></a>577</span> +personage was therefore a unity of diction and character, +of sentiment and action; all was direct, for there was no +effort where all was impulse; and the dramatic genius of +Shakespeare, as if wholly unstudied, seems to have formed +the habit of his intellectual character. Was this unerring +Shakespearian faculty an intuitive evidence, like +certain axioms; or may we venture to fancy that our +poet, as it were, had discovered the very mathematics of +metaphysics?</p> + +<p>Besides this facility of feeling appropriating to itself +the whole sphere of human existence, there is another +characteristic of our national bard. He struck out a +diction which I conceive will be found in no other poet. +What is usually termed diction would, applied to Shakespeare, +be more definite, and its quality more happily +explained, if we call it <i>expression</i>, and observed in what +magic the Shakespearian expression lies. This diction +has been subject to the censure of obscurity. Modern +critics have ascribed the invention of our dramatic blank +verse to Shakespeare; but Shakespeare was no inventor +in the usual acceptation of the term, and assuredly was +not of unrhymed metre: what, indeed, are imperfectly or +rarely found among his tuneful predecessors and contemporaries, +are the sweetness of his versification, combined +with ceaseless imagery; we view the image through +the transparency of the thought never disturbing it; it is +neither a formal simile nor an expanded metaphor—it is +a single expression, a sensible image combined with an +emotion.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c52" id="ft1c52" href="#fa1c52"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Posterity is even in some danger of losing the real name of our +great dramatic poet. In the days of Shakespeare, and long after, +proper names were written down as the ear caught the sound, or they +were capriciously varied by the owner. It is not therefore strange that +we have instances of eminent persons writing the names of intimate +friends and of public characters in a manner not always to be recognised. +Of this we are now furnished with the most abundant evidence, +which was not sufficiently adverted to in the early times of our +commentators.</p> + +<p>The autographs we possess of our national bard are unquestionably +written <span class="sc">Shakspere</span>, according to the pronunciation of his native town; +there the name was variously written,—even in the same public document,—but +always regulated by the dialectical orthoepy. The marriage +license of the poet, recovered in the “Gentleman’s Magazine” for +September, 1836, offers a striking evidence of the viciousness of the +pronunciation and the utter carelessness with which names were written, +for there we find it <span class="sc">Shagspere</span>.</p> + +<p>That the poet himself considered that the genuine name was +<span class="sc">Shakespeare</span>, accordant with his own (a spear, the point upward), +seems certain, notwithstanding his compliance with the custom of his +country; for his “Rape of Lucrece,” printed by himself in 1594, in +the first edition bears the name of <span class="sc">William Shakespeare</span>, as also does +the “Venus and Adonis,” that first heir of his invention; these first +editions of his juvenile poems were doubtlessly anxiously scrutinised by +the youthful bard. In the literary metropolis the name was so pronounced. +Bancroft has this allusion in his Epigrams—“To Shakespeare:”—</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>“Thou hast so used thy pen, or shook thy speare,</p> +<p class="i05">That poets startle.”</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The well-known allusion of Robert Greene, to a shake-scene, confirms +the pronunciation. I now supply one more evidence—that of +Thomas Heywood, the intimate of Shakespeare and his brother dramatists; +he, like some others, has printed the name with a hyphen, +which I transcribe from the volume open before me,—</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>“Mellifluous Shake-speare,”</p> + + <p class="i8"><i>Hierarchie of Angels</i>, 206.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>The question resolves itself into this—Is the name of our great bard +to descend to posterity with the barbaric curt shock of <span class="sc">Shakspere</span>, the +twang of a provincial corruption; or, following the writers of the +Elizabethan age, shall we maintain the restoration of the euphony and +the truth of the name of <span class="sc">Shakespeare</span>?</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c52" id="ft2c52" href="#fa2c52"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Mr. J. Payne Collier, in his “New Facts regarding the Life of +Shakespeare.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c52" id="ft3c52" href="#fa3c52"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Roscius Anglicanus.—They were Richard Burbage and John Lowin.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c52" id="ft4c52" href="#fa4c52"><span class="fn">4</span></a> Greene was then lying on his last pallet of rhyme and misery, +dictating this sad legacy of “a groat’s worth of wit bought with a +million of repentance.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c52" id="ft5c52" href="#fa5c52"><span class="fn">5</span></a> <i>Bombast</i> is not here used in the present application of the term, +in a depreciating sense, but is a simile derived from the cotton used in +stuffing out or quilting the fashionable dresses.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c52" id="ft6c52" href="#fa6c52"><span class="fn">6</span></a> Collier’s “New Facts,” 13. Dyce’s edition of “Greene’s Dramatic +Works.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c52" id="ft7c52" href="#fa7c52"><span class="fn">7</span></a> Heywood’s “Apology for Actors.”—The Epistle to his bookseller +at the end.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c52" id="ft8c52" href="#fa8c52"><span class="fn">8</span></a> In the comedy of <i>Eastward Ho!</i> the joint production of Jonson, +Marlowe, and Chapman,—Shakespeare is ridiculed, particularly the +madness of Hamlet and Ophelia.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c52" id="ft9c52" href="#fa9c52"><span class="fn">9</span></a> <span class="sc">Robert Chester</span>, a fantastical versifier, whose volume is priced in +the “Bib. Anglo-Poetica” at 50<i>l.</i>, but this price was too moderate; +for, at the sale of Sir M. Sykes, some ingenious lover of absurd poetry +willingly gave 61<i>l.</i> 19<i>s.</i> I have not yet seen this extraordinary production, +and derive my knowledge only from a specimen in the +catalogue.</p> + +<p><a name="ft10c52" id="ft10c52" href="#fa10c52"><span class="fn">10</span></a> In 1612 or 13.</p> + +<p><a name="ft11c52" id="ft11c52" href="#fa11c52"><span class="fn">11</span></a> Most of our old plays come before us in a corrupt and mangled +state. They were often imperfectly caught by the scribe, or otherwise +surreptitiously obtained; hurried through the press from some illegible +manuscript by a careless printer, who would throw three distinct +speeches into the mouth of one character, transpose the names of the +dramatis personæ, and omit the change of scene; while others again +with indiscriminate fidelity, from a stolen transcript of the prompter’s +book, preserved his private memorandums and directions in the stage-copy. +Even in the first folio of Shakespeare, so absent from their work +were the player-editors, that “tables and chairs” are introduced to +direct the property-man, or the scene-shifters, to be in readiness. +Verse is printed as prose, to save the expenditure of those small blank +spaces which divide those two regions of genius. The dramatists +themselves, who probably conceived that they had consigned all their +property in their vended plays, never read their own proof-sheets. +The reader may form a clear conception of the injuries inflicted on these +writers by the existing presentation copy of Massinger’s “Duke of +Milan,” in which may be seen how the poet, after its publication, indignantly +corrected the multiplied and the strange errata. The printer +gave this text—</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>“Observe and honour her as if the <span class="scs">SEAL</span></p> +<p class="i05">Of woman’s goodness only dwelt in hers.”</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">The poet corrected this to “the <span class="sc">Soul</span>.” The sagacity of an English +Bentley could hardly have conjectured the happy emendation; only +the poet himself could have supplied it.</p> + +<p>Again the printer’s text runs—</p> + +<p class="center ptb1">“From any lip whose <span class="sc">Honour</span> writ not Lord.”</p> + +<p class="noind">The poet corrected this also to “whose <span class="sc">Owner</span>.”</p> + +<p>These errors of the press are far more important to the readers of +Shakespeare than many suspect. “Who knows,” exclaimed the acute +Gifford, “whether much of the ingenious toil to explain nonsense in +the variorum edition of Shakespeare is not absolutely wasted upon mere +<i>errors of the press</i>?” Not long after this was said, an actual experiment +of the kind was made by a skilful printer. This person, during +the leisure of eleven years of a French captivity, had found his most +constant companion in a Shakespeare.* By his own experience of the +blunders and the mischances of the typographer, to which we may add +also a little sagacity, he recovered some of the lost text. His new +readings were accompanied by an explanation of those mechanical accidents +which had caused these particular errata. The practical printer +mortified the haughty commentator by several felicitous and obvious +emendations. The grave brotherhood of black-letter looked askance on +such humble ingenuity, and turned against the simple printer. Unluckily +for <span class="sc">Zachary Jackson</span>, he had the temerity, in the flush of +success, of abandoning his type-work to err in “the dalliance of +fancy” into an ambitious Commentary of “seven hundred passages,” when +seventy had exceeded his fair claim. The commentating printer therefore +met with the fate of the immortalised cobbler who ventured to +criticise beyond the right measure of his last.</p> + +<p class="f90" style="margin-left: 2em;"> * So numerous were the English prisoners in France during the +persecuting war of Napoleon, and so general was the demand for a +Shakespeare, that more than one edition, I think, was printed by the +French booksellers, which I have seen on their literary stalls.</p> + +<p><a name="ft12c52" id="ft12c52" href="#fa12c52"><span class="fn">12</span></a> Collier’s “Poetical Decameron,” i. 52. <span class="sc">Steevens</span> thought <i>The +Yorkshire Tragedy</i> to be Shakespearian; and the Rev. <span class="sc">Alexander +Dyce</span>, struck by the Shakespearian soliloquy of the wife, decides that +“it contains passages worthy of his pen.”—<i>Dyce’s Mem. of Shakespeare</i>, +xxxi.</p> + +<p><a name="ft13c52" id="ft13c52" href="#fa13c52"><span class="fn">13</span></a> That Shakespeare was the favourite poet of Charles the First is +confirmed to the eyes of posterity; for on the copy the king used, he +has written his own name, and left other traces of his pen; the +volume now bears also the autograph of George the Third. It is preserved, +it is hoped, in the library of the sovereigns of England.</p> + +<p><a name="ft14c52" id="ft14c52" href="#fa14c52"><span class="fn">14</span></a> Milton, however, has been misinterpreted by some modern critics; +when, on this occasion, having quoted that passage in <i>Richard the +Third</i> which displays his hypocrisy, Milton adds—“<i>Other stuff of this +sort</i> may be read throughout the whole tragedy, wherein the poet used +not much license in departing from the truth of history.” Pye, in his +“Commentary on the Poetic of Aristotle,” is indignant at the language +of Milton. He takes the term “stuff” in its modern depreciating +sense; but it had no such meaning with Milton, it merely signified +<i>matter</i>. Pye exclaims—“Could Milton have imagined that <i>the stuff</i> of +Mr. William Shakespeare would be preferred to ‘Comus’ and the +‘Samson Agonistes?’”—212.</p> + +<p><a name="ft15c52" id="ft15c52" href="#fa15c52"><span class="fn">15</span></a> I derive my knowledge from the “Roscius Anglicanus” of <span class="sc">Downes</span>, +the prompter; it is a meagre chronicle, and the scribe is illiterate; but +the edition by <span class="sc">F. Waldron</span>, 1784, is an addition to our literary history. +Though chiefly dramatic, it abounds with some curious secret history. +Waldron, himself an humble actor, was, however, a sagacious literary +antiquary; but his modesty and failure of encouragement impeded his +proposed labours. Gifford found him intelligent when that critic was +busied on Jonson; and I possess an evidence of his acute emendations.</p> + +<p>By this chronicle of our drama, it appears that in a list of fifteen +stock plays there are seven of Beaumont and Fletcher, three of Jonson, +and three of Shakespeare. In another list of twenty-one plays there +are <i>five</i> of Jonson, and but <i>one</i> of Shakespeare and that <i>Titus Andronicus</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="ft16c52" id="ft16c52" href="#fa16c52"><span class="fn">16</span></a> Butler’s “Genuine Remains,” ii. 494.</p> + +<p><a name="ft17c52" id="ft17c52" href="#fa17c52"><span class="fn">17</span></a> <i>Rollo, King and no King</i>, and <i>The Maid’s Tragedy</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="ft18c52" id="ft18c52" href="#fa18c52"><span class="fn">18</span></a> We may listen to Pope:—S. “Rymer is a learned and strict critic!”—P. +“Ay, that’s exactly his character. He is generally right, though +rather too severe in his opinion of the particular plays he speaks of; +and is, on the whole, one of the best critics we ever had.”—Spence’s +“Anecdotes,” 172.</p> + +<p><a name="ft19c52" id="ft19c52" href="#fa19c52"><span class="fn">19</span></a> “Edinburgh Review,” Sept. 1831.</p> + +<p><a name="ft20c52" id="ft20c52" href="#fa20c52"><span class="fn">20</span></a> The fate of Rymer’s Tragedy has been illustrated by the inimitable +humour of Addison in No. 592 of “The Spectator.” Describing different +theatrical properties, he says—“They are provided with above +a dozen showers of snow, which, as I am informed, are the plays of +many unsuccessful poets artificially cut and shredded for that use. +Mr. Rymer’s <i>Edgar</i> is to fall in snow at the next acting of <i>King +Lear</i>, in order to heighten, or rather to alleviate, the distress of that +unfortunate prince, and to serve by way of decoration to a piece which +that great critic has written against.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft21c52" id="ft21c52" href="#fa21c52"><span class="fn">21</span></a> On the play-bills of that day I find the modern dramas of <i>Cato</i>, +<i>The Conscious Lovers</i>, and Cibber’s and Farquhar’s plays are simply +announced, while the elder dramatists have accompanying epithets, +which show the degree of their celebrity according, at least, to the +director of the bills; and perhaps indicate the necessity he was under +to remind the public, who were not familiar with the titles of these +old plays. Thus appear “<i>The Silent Woman</i>, a Comedy by the <i>famous</i> +Ben Jonson;” “<i>Hamlet, Prince of Denmark</i>, written by the <i>immortal</i> +Shakespeare;” “<i>The Soldier’s Fortune</i>, written by the late <i>ingenious</i> +Mr. Otway.” Though Shakespeare bears away the prize among these +epithetical allotments, I suspect that his <i>immortality</i>—here positively +assigned to him—was owing to the honour of the recent edition by +Rowe.</p> + +<p>In 1741 the theatre seems to have recommended the dramas of +Shakespeare for the variety of their <i>historical subjects</i>. On one of +these bills <i>Richard the Third</i> is described as “containing the distresses +of King Henry the Sixth; the murder of young King Edward +the Fifth and his brother in the Tower; the landing of the Earl of +Richmond, and the death of King Richard in the memorable battle of +Bosworth, being the last that was fought between the Houses of York +and Lancaster; with many other true historical passages.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft22c52" id="ft22c52" href="#fa22c52"><span class="fn">22</span></a> “Tatler”—42.</p> + +<p><a name="ft23c52" id="ft23c52" href="#fa23c52"><span class="fn">23</span></a> “Spectator”—39, 285.</p> + +<p><a name="ft24c52" id="ft24c52" href="#fa24c52"><span class="fn">24</span></a> V. iv. 186.</p> + +<p><a name="ft25c52" id="ft25c52" href="#fa25c52"><span class="fn">25</span></a> Pope said that “it was mighty simple in Rowe to write a play +now, professedly in Shakespeare’s style, that is, the style of a bad age!” +He relished as little Milton’s “high style,” as he called it. “The +high style would not have been borne even in Milton, had not his subject +turned so much on such strange out-of-the-world things as it does.” +Lord Shaftesbury would furnish a code of criticism in the days of Pope, +when the “Gothic model” was proscribed by such high authorities. +But Pope expressed unqualified approbation for the stately but classical +“Ferrex and Porrex,” and occasioned Spence to reprint it;—a tragedy +in the unimpassioned style and short breathings of the asthmatic +Seneca.</p> + +<p><a name="ft26c52" id="ft26c52" href="#fa26c52"><span class="fn">26</span></a> <span class="sc">Coxeter</span>, after a search of thirty years, faithfully collating the +best of our old plays, tells us he happened to communicate his scheme +to one who now invades it; but for what mistakes and confusion may +be expected from the medley now advertising in ten volumes, he appeals +to the “Gorboduc” which Spence had published by the desire of Pope; +both these wits, and the future editor of “Old Plays,” Dodsley, had +used the spurious edition! Coxeter’s judgment was prophetic in the +present instance. “Dodsley’s Collection” turned out to be a chance +“medley;” unskilled in the language and the literature and the choice +of his dramatists, he, as he tells us, “by the assistance of a little +common sense set a great number of these passages right;” that is, the +dramatist of the dull “Cleone” brought down the ancient genius to his +own, and, if he became intelligible, at least he was spurious. If, after +all, some parts were left unintelligible, the reader must consider how +many such remain in Shakespeare.</p> + +<p><a name="ft27c52" id="ft27c52" href="#fa27c52"><span class="fn">27</span></a> A third edition lies before me, 1757. The preface of the first +edition of 1733 was much curtailed in the second of 1740, as well as +the notes—particularly those which Theobald describes as “rather +verbose and declamatory, and so notes merely of ostentation.” The +candour is admirable. The third edition seems a mere reprint of the +second. The first edition is also curious for its plates preserving the +<i>costume</i> or dress of the characters at the time.</p> + +<p><a name="ft28c52" id="ft28c52" href="#fa28c52"><span class="fn">28</span></a> This was one of those literary secrets which are only divulged on +that final day of judgment which happens to authors when, on the +decease of their publishers, those literary cemeteries, their warerooms, +open for the sale of what are called “their effects;” but which, in this +instance of literary property, may be deemed “the ineffectual effects.” +At the sale of “the effects” of Tonson, the great bibliopolist, in 1767, +one hundred and forty copies of Pope’s “Shakespeare,” in six volumes +quarto, for which the original subscribers paid six guineas, were disposed +of at sixteen shillings only per set.—“Gent. Mag.,” lvii. 76.</p> + +<p><a name="ft29c52" id="ft29c52" href="#fa29c52"><span class="fn">29</span></a> See “Quarrels of Authors.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft30c52" id="ft30c52" href="#fa30c52"><span class="fn">30</span></a> Laharpe, in a paroxysm of criticism, had both to defend and to +censure his great master, Voltaire, on the subject of the Marvellous in +Tragedy; and, strange to observe, in the coldness of the Aristotelian-Gallic +Poetic, our “monster-poet” carries away the palm. The critic +acknowledges that, though he is loath to compare “Semiramis” to +that “monster of a tragedy”—“Hamlet,” the Ghost there acts as a +ghost should do, showing himself but to one person, and revealing a +secret unknown to all but himself; while the Ghost of Ninus appears +in a full assembly, only to tell the hero to listen to somebody else who +knows the secret as well as the Ghost.—“Cours de Littérature.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft31c52" id="ft31c52" href="#fa31c52"><span class="fn">31</span></a> Much, if not all, that is valuable in this great body of varied +information, has been alphabetically arranged in “A Glossary, or Collection +of Words, Phrases, Names, and Allusions to Customs, Proverbs, +&c., which have required illustration in the <i>works of English Authors</i>, +particularly <i>Shakespeare and his Contemporaries</i>,” by Archdeacon Nares, +4to, 1822: a compilation as amusing as it is useful, and which I suspect +has not been justly appreciated. It is a substitute for all these +commentators; and with this volume, at an easy rate, we are made free +of the whole Shakespearian corporation.</p> + +<p><a name="ft32c52" id="ft32c52" href="#fa32c52"><span class="fn">32</span></a> Monsieur <span class="sc">Villemain</span>, who possesses a perfect knowledge of our +English writers on historical subjects, and many years since composed a +life of Cromwell, has drawn up an elaborate article on <span class="sc">Shakespeare</span> in +the “Biographie Universelle.” The perplexities of his taste, and the +contradictory results of his critical decisions, are amusing; but it must +have been a serious labour for a person of his strict candour. Our critic +remains astonished at Johnson’s preference of Shakespeare’s comic to his +tragic genius, which never can be, he adds, the opinion of foreigners. +Monsieur Villemain is perfectly right; for no foreigner can comprehend +the humour, not always delicate but strong, which often depends on the +phrase, as well as on the character; but he errs when he can only discover +in the comedy of Shakespeare merely a drama of intrigue, and +not a picture of manners. Our critic has formed no conception of the +poet’s ideal standard and universal nature; insomuch that to this day +we continue to apply among ourselves those exquisite personal strokes +of the comic characters of Shakespeare. Our critic, who cannot perceive +that which perhaps only a native can really taste, is indignant at the +enthusiastic critic who has decided that <span class="sc">Molière</span> only gave “a prosaic +copy of human nature, and is merely a faithful or a servile imitator.” +I suppose this critic is Schlegel, a prejudiced critic on system. I beg +leave to add, that it is not necessary to decry the French Shakespeare to +elevate our own. Molière is as truly an original genius as any +dramatist of any age.</p> + +<p><a name="ft33c52" id="ft33c52" href="#fa33c52"><span class="fn">33</span></a> This rare tract, which I once read in a private library which had +been collected in the days of Pope, was apparently Voltaire’s entire +composition; for the Gallicisms bear the impression of a foreigner’s pen, +and of one determined to prove the authenticity of its source. “Voltaire, +like the French in general,” said Dr. Young, “showed the greatest +complaisance outwardly, and had the greatest contempt for us inwardly.” +He consulted Dr. Young about his Essay in English, and begged him +to correct any gross faults. The doctor set himself very honestly to +work, marked the passages most liable to censure, and when he went +to explain himself about them, Voltaire could not avoid bursting out +and laughing in his face!—<i>Spence.</i></p> + +<p>Had Voltaire accepted the doctor’s verbal corrections, or the opinions +suggested by him, something else than the “laughing in the face” had +been recollected.</p> + +<p><a name="ft34c52" id="ft34c52" href="#fa34c52"><span class="fn">34</span></a> Two specimens of the criticism of Voltaire may explain his involuntary +and his voluntary blunders:—</p> + +<p>In <i>Hamlet</i>, when one sentinel inquires of the other—“Have you +had quiet guard?” he is answered—“Not a mouse stirring!” which +Voltaire translates literally—“Pas un souris qui trotte!” How different +is the same circumstance described by Racine—“Tout dort, et +l’armée, et le vents, et Neptune!” A verse Kaimes had condemned +as mere bombast! To every people who had not associated with the +general night-stillness of a castle the movement of a mouse, this description +would appear ludicrously puerile; while, with us, the familiar +idiom is most happily appropriate to the speaker; but this natural +language no foreigner can acquire by study or reflection; we imbibe our +idioms as we did the milk of the nurse’s breast.</p> + +<p>In <i>Julius Cæsar</i>, when Voltaire translates Cæsar’s reply to Metellus, +who would fall at his feet to supplicate for the repeal of his brother’s +banishment, the Cæesar of Shakespeare uses metaphorical expressions. +He would not yield to</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>“That which melteth fools; I mean sweet words,</p> +<p class="i05">Low-crooked curt’sies, and base <i>spaniel-fawning</i>.</p> +<p class="i05">If thou dost bend, and pray, and fawn for him,</p> +<p class="i05"><i>I’d spurn thee like a cur out of my way</i>.”</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>This natural style was doubtless “trop familier” for the polished +Frenchman, and his version is malicious, and he delights to detail +every motion of a spaniel, even to the licking of the feet of his +master!—</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>“<i>Les airs d’un chien couchant</i> peuvent toucher un sot;</p> +<p class="i05">Flatte, prie à genoux, et <i>lèche-moi les pieds</i>—</p> +<p class="i05">Va, je te <i>rosserai</i> comme un chien.”</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind"><i>Rosser</i> can only be translated by so mean a phrase as “a sound +beating;” while to spurn is no ignoble action, and is used rather in a +poetical than familiar style.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page578" id="page578"></a>578</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE “HUMOURS” OF JONSON.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Jonson</span> studied “<span class="scs">THE HUMOURS</span>,” and not the passions. +What were these “humours”? The bard himself does +not distinguish them from “manners”—</p> + +<p class="center f90 ptb1">Their <span class="sc">Manners</span>, now call’d <span class="sc">Humours</span>, feed the stage.</p> + +<p>The ambiguity of the term has confounded it with +humour itself; they are, however, so far distinct, that a +“humour,” that is, some absorbing singularity in a +character, may not necessarily be very humorous—it may +be only absurd.</p> + +<p>When this term “humours” became popular, it sunk +into a mystification. Every one suddenly had his +“humour.” It served on all occasions as an argument +which closed all discussion. The impertinent insisted on +the privilege of his “humour.” “The idiot” who chose +to be “apish,” declared that a lock of hair fantastically +hung, or the dancing feather in his cap, were his “humour.” +A moral quality, or an affection of the mind, was thus indiscriminately +applied to things themselves, when they +were objects of affectation or whim. The phrase was +tossed about till it bore no certain meaning. Such indeed +is the fate of all fashionable cant—ephemera which, left to +themselves, die away with their season.</p> + +<p>The ludicrous incongruity of applying these physical +qualities to moral acts, and apologizing for their caprices by +their “humours,” was too exquisitely ludicrous not to be +seized on as the property of our comic satirists. Shakespeare +and Jonson have given perpetuity to this term +of the vocabulary in vogue, and Jonson has dignified +it by transferring it to his comic art. Shakespeare +has personified these “humours” in that whimsical, +blunt, grotesque Corporal Nym, the pith of whose reason +and the chorus of whose tune are his “humours;” +admirably contrasting with that other “humourist,” his +companion, ranting the fag-ends of tragedies “in Cambyses’ +vein.” Jonson, more elaborate, according to his +custom, could not quit his subject till he had developed +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page579" id="page579"></a>579</span> +the whole system in two comedies of “Every Man <span class="scs">IN</span>” and +“Every Man <span class="scs">OUT</span> of his <span class="sc">Humour</span>.”</p> + +<p>The vague term was least comprehended when most in +use. Asper, the censor of the times,<a name="fa1c53" id="fa1c53" href="#ft1c53"><span class="sp">1</span></a> desires Mitis, who +had used it, “to answer what was meant:” Mitis, a +neutralized man, “who never acts, and has therefore no +character,” can only reply, “Answer what?” The term +was too plain or too obscure for that simple soul to attach +any idea to a word current with all the world.</p> + +<p>The philosopher then offers</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>To give these ignorant well-spoken days</p> +<p>Some taste of their abuse of this word <span class="sc">Humour</span>.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>This rejoices his friend Cordatus:</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>Oh, do not let your purpose fall, good Asper;</p> +<p>It cannot but arrive most acceptable,</p> +<p>Chiefly to such as have the happiness</p> +<p>Daily to see how <i>the poor innocent word</i></p> +<p><i>Is rack’d and tortured</i>.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>It is then that Asper, or rather Jonson, plunges into a +dissertation on “the elements,” which, according to the +ancient philosophy, compound the fragile body of man, +with the four “humours,” or moistures.<a name="fa2c53" id="fa2c53" href="#ft2c53"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p>Had not this strange phrase been something more than +a modish coinage, it had not endured so long and spread so +wide. Other temporary phrases of this nature were +equally in vogue, nor have they escaped the vigilant +causticity of Jonson. Such were “the vapourers,” and +“the jeerers;” but these had not substance in them to +live, and Jonson only cast on them a side-glance. “The +humours” were derived from a more elevated source than +the airy nothingness of fashionable cant.</p> + +<p>How “the humours” came into vogue may I think be +discovered. A work long famous, and of which multiplied +editions, in all the languages of Europe, were everywhere +spread, deeply engaged public attention; this work was +<i>Huarté’s Examen de Ingenios</i>, translated into English as +“The Examination of Men’s Wits.” It was long imagined +that the Spaniard had drawn aside the veil from +nature herself, revealing among her varieties those of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page580" id="page580"></a>580</span> +human character. The secret, “to what profession a man +will be most apt,” must have taken in a wide circle of +inquirers. In the fifth chapter, we learn that “the differences +of men’s wits depend on the hot, the moist, and the +dry;” the system is carried on through “the elements” +and “the humours.” The natural philosophy is of the +schools, but the author’s anatomy of the brain amounted +to a demonstration of the phenomenon, as it seemed to +him. He, however, had struck out some hardy novelties +and some mendacious illustrations. The system was long +prevalent, and every one now conceived himself to be the +passive agent of his predominant temperament or +“humour,” and looked for that page which was to discover +to him his own genius. This work in its day made +as great a sensation as the “Esprit” of Helvetius at a +later time; and in effect resembled the phrenology of our +day, and was as ludicrously applied. The first English +version—for there are several—appeared in 1594, and we +find that, four years after, “the humours” were so rife that +they served to plot a whole comedy, as well as to furnish +an abundance of what they called “epigrams,” or short +satires of the reigning mode.</p> + +<p>Jonson’s intense observation was microscopical when +turned to the minute evolutions of society, while his +diversified learning at all times bore him into a nobler +sphere of comprehension. This taste for reality, and this +fulness of knowledge on whatever theme he chose, had a +reciprocal action, and the one could not go without the +other. Our poet doggedly set to “a humour” through its +slightest anomalies, and in the pride of his comic art expanded +his prototype. Yet this was but half the labour +which he loved; his mind was stored with the most +burdensome knowledge; and to the scholar the various +erudition which he had so diligently acquired threw a +more permanent light over those transient scenes which +the painter of manners had so carefully copied.</p> + +<p>The pertinacity of Jonson in heaping such minute particularities +of “a humour,” has invariably turned his great +dramatic personages into complete personifications of some +single propensity or mode of action; and thus the individual +is changed into an abstract being. The passion +itself is wholly there, but this man of one volition is +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page581" id="page581"></a>581</span> +thrown out of the common brotherhood of man; an individual +so artificially constructed as to include a whole +species. Our poet, if we may decide by the system which +he pursued, seems to have considered his prodigious +dramatic characters as the conduit-pipes to convey the +abundant waters which he had gathered into his deep +cisterns.</p> + +<p>It is surely evident that such elaborate dramatic personages +were not extemporary creations thrown off in the +heat of the pen. Our poet professed to instruct as much +as to delight; and it was in the severity of thought and +the austerity of his genius that his nobler conceptions +arose. His studious habits have been amply ascertained. +When he singled out “a humour,” to possess himself of +every trait of the anomalous dispositions he contemplated, +he must gradually have accumulated, as they occurred, the +particulars whence to form the aggregate; and like Swift, +in his “Advice to Servants,” in his provident diligence +he must have jotted down a mass such as we see so +curiously unfolded in “the character of the persons,” prefixed +to “Every Man in his Humour,” a singular dramatic +sketch. To this mass, with due labour and shaping, he +gave the baptism of an expressive name, and conceived +that a name would necessarily become a person. If he +worked in this manner, as I believe he did, and “the +characters” we have just seen confirm the suggestion, it +sufficiently explains the space he required to contain his +mighty and unmixed character—the several made into +one; and which we so frequently observe he was always +reluctant to quit, while a stroke in his jottings remained +untold. His cup indeed often runs over, and sometimes +the dregs hang on our lips. We have had perhaps too +many of these jottings.</p> + +<p>But if Jonson has been accused of having servilely +given portraits—and we have just seen in what an extraordinary +way they are portraits—his learning has also +been alleged as something more objectionable in the +dramatic art; and we have often heard something of the +pedantry of Jonson.</p> + +<p>In that elaborate personage Sir Epicure Mammon, we +have not only the alchemist and the epicurean to answer +that characterizing name, but we are not to be set free +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page582" id="page582"></a>582</span> +without enduring the obscure babble of “the projection” +and “the projectors”—which assuredly cost some patient +sweat of that curious brain—and further being initiated +into the gastronomic mysteries of the kitchens of the +ancients. Volpone, and “the gentleman who loves not +noise,” his other masterpieces, like Sir Epicure Mammon, +are of the same colossal character. In “The Fox” and +“The Fly,” the richest veins of antiquity are melted down +into his own copious invention; nor had the ancients +themselves a picture so perfect, or a scene so living, of +those legacy-hunters, though that vice was almost a profession +with them. If true learning in the art of the +drama be peccant, our poet is a very saintly sinner; and +Jonson indeed was, as Cleaveland has hailed his manes,</p> + +<p class="center f90 ptb1">The wonder of a learned age.</p> + +<p>The fate of Jonson has inflicted its penalties on his very +excellences. Some modern critics, whose delicacy of taste +in its natural feebleness could not strain itself to the +vigour of Jonson, have strangely failed to penetrate into +the depths of that mighty mind; and some modern poets +have delivered their sad evidence, that for them the Coryphæus +of our elder dramatists has become unintelligible. +Of all our dramatists, Jonson, the Juvenal of our drama, +alone professed to study the “humour” or manners of the +age; but manners vanish with their generation; and ere +the century closes even actors cannot be procured to personate +characters of which they view no prototype. They +remain as the triumphs of art and genius, for those who +are studious of this rare combination; but they were the +creatures of “the age,” and not for “all time,” as Jonson +himself energetically and prophetically has said of Shakespeare.<a name="fa3c53" id="fa3c53" href="#ft3c53"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> + +<p>Shadwell, who has left us nearly twenty comedies, and +“the god of whose idolatry” was Jonson, in his copious +prefaces, and prologues and epilogues, overflows with his +egotistical admiration of “the humours.” In his preface +to <i>The Sullen Lovers</i>, he says that we are not to expect +the intrigue of comedy, plot and business, lest he should +“let fall the humour.” And in <i>The Humourist</i>, he +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page583" id="page583"></a>583</span> +says, “Mr. Jonson was very unjustly taxed for personating +particular men,” in the writing of his humours; “but +it will ever be the fate of them that write the humours of +the town.” We have more of this in the dedication of +<i>The Virtuoso</i>, where we are told that “four of the +humours are entirely new.” We have his definition of +these “humours” in the epilogue to <i>The Humourists</i>, +and which is neatly expressed.</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>A Humour is the bias of the mind,</p> +<p>By which, with violence, ’tis one way inclined;</p> +<p>It makes our action lean on one side still;</p> +<p>And, in all changes, that way bends the will.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p>It is singular that as Jonson has been somewhat +censured for drawing so elaborately these artificial men +and their humours, Shadwell should have adopted the +notion, and made it the staple of his comic invention.</p> + +<p>When men were more insulated, and society was less +monotonous than at the present day, those whom we now +call humourists, without however any allusion to the system +of the humours, and whom we now rarely meet with, +allowed their peculiar tastes and fancies to be more prominent +in their habits, so as to make them more observable, +and more the subject of ridicule than we find them in the +present level decorum of society.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c53" id="ft1c53" href="#fa1c53"><span class="fn">1</span></a> In the Introduction to <i>Every Man Out of his Humour</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c53" id="ft2c53" href="#fa2c53"><span class="fn">2</span></a> See Nares’ “Glossary” for an account of these Humours in their +philosophical sense.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c53" id="ft3c53" href="#fa3c53"><span class="fn">3</span></a> “He was not of an age, but for all time.”—<i>Jonson.</i></p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page584" id="page584"></a>584</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">DRAYTON.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">“The Poly-olbion”</span> of <span class="sc">Drayton</span> is a stupendous work, +“a strange Herculean toil,” as the poet himself has said, +and it was the elaborate production of many years. The +patriotic bard fell a victim to its infelicitous but glorious +conception; and posterity may discover a grandeur in this +labour of love, which was unfelt by his contemporaries.</p> + +<p>The “Poly-olbion” is a chorographical description of +England and Wales; an amalgamation of antiquarianism, +of topography, and of history; materials not the most +ductile for the creations of poetry. This poem is said to +have the accuracy of a road-book; and the poet has contributed +some notices, which add to the topographic stores +of <span class="sc">Camden</span>; for this has our poet extorted an alms of +commendation from such a niggardly antiquary as Bishop +Nicholson, who confesses that this work affords “a much +truer account of this kingdom than could be well expected +from the pen of a poet.”</p> + +<p>The grand theme of this poet was his fatherland! The +muse of Drayton passes by every town and tower; each +tells some tale of ancient glory, or of some “worthy” who +must never die. The local associations of legends and +customs are animated by the personifications of mountains +and rivers; and often, in some favourite scenery, he breaks +forth with all the emotion of a true poet. The imaginative +critic has described the excursions of our muse with +responsive sympathy. “He has not,” says Lamb, “left a +rivulet so narrow that it may be stepped over without +honourable mention, and has associated hills and streams +with life and passion beyond the dreams of old mythology.” +But the journey is long, and the conveyance may be +tedious; the reader, accustomed to the decasyllabic or +heroic verse, soon finds himself breathless among the protracted +and monotonous Alexandrines, unless he should +relieve his ear from the incumbrance, by resting on the +cæsura, and thus divide those extended lines by the alternate +grace of a ballad-stanza. The artificial machinery of +Drayton’s personifications of mountains and rivers, though +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page585" id="page585"></a>585</span> +these may be often allowed the poet, yet they seem more +particularly ludicrous, as they are crowded together on the +maps prefixed to each county, where this arbitrary mythology, +masculine and feminine, are to be seen standing by +the heads of rivers, or at the entrances of towns.</p> + +<p>This extraordinary poem remains without a parallel in +the poetical annals of any people; and it may excite our +curiosity to learn its origin. The genealogy of poetry is +often suspicious; but I think we may derive the birth of +the “Poly-olbion” from <span class="sc">Leland</span>’s magnificent view of his +designed work on “Britain,” and that hint expanded by +the “Britannia” of <span class="sc">Camden</span>, who inherited the mighty +industry, without the poetical spirit of <span class="sc">Leland</span>: <span class="sc">Drayton</span> +embraced both.</p> + +<p>It is a nice question to decide how far history may be +admitted into poetry; like “Addison’s Campaign,” the +poem may end in a rhymed gazette. And in any other +work of invention, a fiction, by too free an infusion of historical +matter, can only produce that monster called “the +Romance of History,” a nonsensical contradiction in terms, +for neither can be both; or that other seductive and dangerous +association of real persons and fictitious incidents, +the historical romance! It is remarkable that <span class="sc">Drayton</span> +censures <span class="sc">Daniel</span>, his brother poet, for being <i>too historical</i> +in his “Civil Wars,” and thus transgressing the boundaries +of history and poetry, of truth and invention. Of these +just boundaries, however, he himself had no clear notion. +Drayton in his “Baron’s Wars” sunk into a grave +chronicler; and in the “Poly-olbion,” we see his muse +treading a labyrinth of geography, of history, and of +topography!</p> + +<p>The author of the “Poly-olbion” may truly be considered +as the inventor of a class of poems peculiar to our +country, and which, when I was young, were popular or +fashionable. These are loco-descriptive poems. Such were +Denham’s “Cooper’s Hill,”<a name="fa1c54" id="fa1c54" href="#ft1c54"><span class="sp">1</span></a> and its numerous and, some, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page586" id="page586"></a>586</span> +happy imitations. In these local descriptions some +favoured spot in the landscape opens to the poet not only +the charm of its natural appearance, but in the prospect +lie scenes of the past. Imagination, like a telescope fixed +on the spot, brings nearer to his eyes those associations +which combine emotion with description; and the contracted +spot, whence the bard scattered the hues of his +fancy, is aggrandized by noble truths.</p> + +<p>The first edition of the “Poly-olbion,” in 1613, consisted +of eighteen “Songs,” or cantos, and every one enriched +by the notes and illustrations of the poet’s friend, +our great national antiquary, <span class="sc">Selden</span>, whose avarice of +words in these recondite stores conceals almost as many +facts as he affords phrases. This volume was ill received +by the incurious readers of that age. Drayton had vainly +imagined that the nobles and gentlemen of England would +have felt a filial interest in the tale of their fathers, commemorated +in these poetic annals, and an honourable pride +in their domains here so graphically pictured. But no +voice, save those of a few melodious brothers, cheered the +lonely lyrist, who had sung on every mountain, and whose +verse had flowed with every river. After a hopeless suspension +of nine years, the querulous author sent forth the +concluding volume to join its neglected brother. It appeared +with a second edition of the first part, which is +nothing more than the unsold copies of the first, to which +the twelve additional “Songs” are attached, separately +paged. These last come no longer enriched by the notes +of Selden, or even embellished by those fanciful maps which +the unfortunate poet now found too costly an ornament. +Certain accidental marks of the printer betray the bibliographical +secret, that the second edition was in reality but +the first.<a name="fa2c54" id="fa2c54" href="#ft2c54"><span class="sp">2</span></a> The preface to the second part is remarkable +for its inscription, in no good humour,</p> + +<p class="center f90 ptb1"><span class="sc">To any that will read it</span>!</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page587" id="page587"></a>587</span></p> + +<p>There was yet no literary public to appeal to, to save +the neglected work which the great <span class="sc">Selden</span> had deemed +worthy of his studies: but there was, as the poet indignantly +designates them, “a cattle, <i>odi profanum vulgus et +arceo</i>, of which I account them, be they never so great.” +And “the cattle” conceived that there was nothing in +this island worthy studying. We had not yet learned to +esteem ourselves at a time when six editions of Camden’s +“Britannia,” in the original Latin, were diffusing the +greatness of England throughout Europe.</p> + +<p>But though this poet devoted much of his life to this +great antiquarian and topographic poem, he has essayed +his powers in almost every species of poetry; fertility of +subject, and fluency of execution, are his characteristics. +He has written historical narratives too historical; heroic +epistles hardly Ovidian; elegies on several occasions, or +rather, domestic epistles, of a Horatian cast; pastorals, +in which there is a freshness of imagery, breathing with +the life of nature; and songs, and satire, and comedy. In +comedy he had not been unsuccessful, but in satire he was +considered more indignant than caustic. There is one +species of poetry, rare among us, in which he has been +eminently successful; his “Nymphidia, or Court of Faerie,” +is a model of the grotesque, those arabesques of poetry, +those lusory effusions on chimerical objects. There are +grave critics who would deny the poet the liberty allowed +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page588" id="page588"></a>588</span> +to the painter. The “Nymphidia” seems to have been ill +understood by some modern critics. The poet has been +censured for “neither imparting nor feeling that half-believing +seriousness which enchants us in the wild and +magical touches of Shakespeare;” but the poet designed +an exquisitely ludicrous fiction. Drayton has, however, +relieved the grotesque scenes, by rising into the higher +strains of poetry, such as Gray might not have disdained.</p> + +<p>It was the misfortune of Drayton not to have been a +popular poet, which we may infer from his altercations +with his booksellers, and from their frequent practice of +prefixing new title pages, with fresher dates, to the first +editions of his poems. That he was also in perpetual +quarrel with his muse, appears by his frequent alteration +of his poems. He often felt that curse of an infelicitous +poet, that his diligence was more active than his creative +power. Drayton was a poet of volume, but his genius +was peculiar; from an unhappy facility in composition, in +reaching excellence he too often declined into mediocrity. +A modern reader may be struck by the purity and strength +of his diction; his strong descriptive manner lays hold of +the fancy; but he is always a poet of reason, and never of +passion. He cannot be considered as a poet of mediocrity, +who has written so much above that level; nor a poet who +can rank among the highest class, who has often flattened +his spirit by its redundance.</p> + +<p>There was another cause, besides his quarrel with his +muse, which threw a shade over the life of Drayton. He +had been forward to greet James the First, on his accession +to the throne of England, with a congratulatory ode; but +for some cause, which has not been revealed, he tells us, +“he suffered shipwreck by his forward pen.” The king +appears to have conceived a personal dislike to the bard, a +circumstance not usual with James towards either poets or +flatterers. It seems to arise from some state-matter, for +Drayton tells us,</p> + +<p class="center f90 ptb1">I feare, as I do stabbing, this word, state.</p> + +<p>According to Oldys, Drayton appears to have been an +agent in the Scottish king’s intercourse with his English +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page589" id="page589"></a>589</span> +friends; some unlucky incident probably occurred, which +might have indisposed the monarch towards his humble +friend. The unhappy result of his court to the new sovereign +cast a sour and melancholy humour over his whole +life; Drayton, in his “Elegy” to his brother-poet, Sandys, +has perpetuated his story.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c54" id="ft1c54" href="#fa1c54"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Dr. Johnson has ascribed the invention of local poetry to Denham, +who, he thought, had “traced a new scheme of poetry, copied by +Garth and Pope, after whose names little will be gained by an enumeration +of smaller poets.” Johnson and the critics of his day were +wholly unacquainted with the Fathers of our poetry; nor is it true +that we have not had loco-descriptive poems since Garth and Pope, +which may rank with theirs.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c54" id="ft2c54" href="#fa2c54"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Perhaps none of our poets have been more luckless in their editors +than Drayton. He himself published a folio edition of his works in +1619; but some of his more interesting productions, now lying before +me, are contained in a small volume, 1631—the year in which he +died.</p> + +<p>A modern folio edition was published by Dodsley in 1748. The +title-page assures us that this volume contains <i>all</i> his writings; while +a later edition, in four volumes 8vo, 1753, pretends to supply the deficiencies +of the former, which at length Dodsley had discovered, but it +is awkwardly done by an <i>Appendix</i>, and is still deficient. The rapid +demand for a new edition of Drayton between 1748 and 1753 bears a +suspicious aspect. An intelligent bibliopolist, Mr. Rodd, informs me +that this <i>octavo</i> edition is in fact the identical <i>folio</i>, only arranged to +the octavo form by a contrivance, well known among printers, at the +time of printing the folio. The separation of the additional poems in +the Appendix confirms this suggestion.</p> + +<p>Of the “Poly-olbion,” the edition called the second, of 1622, has +fetched an excessive price; while the first, considered incomplete, may +be procured at a very moderate price. The possessor of the first edition, +however, enjoys the whole treasure of Selden’s lore. Mr. +Southey, in his “Specimens of Our Ancient Poets,” has reprinted the +entire “Poly-olbion” with his usual judgment; but, unhappily, the +rich stores of Selden the publishers probably deemed superfluous. +Drayton is worthy of a complete edition of his works.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page590" id="page590"></a>590</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE PSYCHOLOGICAL HISTORY OF RAWLEIGH.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Rawleigh</span> is a great name in our history, and fills a space +in our imagination. His military and maritime genius +looked for new regions, to found perhaps his own dominion. +Yet was this hero the courtier holding “the glass of +fashion,” and the profound statesman—whose maxims and +whose counsels Milton, the severe Milton, carefully collected—and +the poet, who, when he found a master-genius +lingering in a desert, joyed to pay him the homage of his +protection. Rawleigh, who, in his youthful hours, and +even through his vagrant voyages, was at all times a +student, in the ripeness of his knowledge was a sage. +Thus he who seemed through all his restless days to +have lived only for his own age, was the true servant of +posterity.</p> + +<p>If ever there have been men whose temperaments and +dispositions have harmonized within themselves faculties +seemingly incompatible, with an equability of force combining +the extremes of our nature, it would not be difficult +to believe that Sir Walter Rawleigh was one of this rarest +species. Various and opposite were his enterprises, but +whichever was the object his aptitude was prompt; for he +is equally renowned for his active and his contemplative +powers; in neither he seems to have held a secondary rank. +And he has left the nation a collection of his writings +which claim for their author the just honours of being +one of the founders of our literature.</p> + +<p>This is the perspective view of his <i>character</i> as it appears +at a distance; his was a strange and adventurous <i>life</i>! +the shifting scenes seem gathering together as in a tale of +fiction, full of as surprising incidents, and as high passions, +and as intricate and mysterious as the involutions of a +well-invented fable. And in this various history of a single +individual should we be dazzled by the haughtiness of +prosperity, and even be startled by the baseness of humiliation, +still shall we find one sublime episode more glorious +than the tale, and as pathetic a close as ever formed the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page591" id="page591"></a>591</span> +catastrophe of a tragic romance. I pursue this history as +far as concerns its psychological development.</p> + +<p>It was the destiny of Rawleigh to be the artificer of his +own fortunes, and in that arduous course to pass through +pinching ways and sharp turns. The younger son of a +family whose patrimony had not lasted with their antiquity, +he had nothing left but his enterprise and his +sword; his mind had decided on his calling. The romantic +adventures of the Spanish in new regions had early +kindled the master-mind which takes its lasting bent from +its first strong impulse. The Spaniards and their new world, +“the treasures and the paradises” which they enjoyed, +haunted his dreams to his latest days. The age in which +the great struggle had commenced in Europe for the independence +of nations and of faiths, was as favourable to +the indulgence of the military passion as it was pregnant +with political instruction. No period in modern history +was so prodigal of statesmen and of heroes; and Rawleigh +was to be both.</p> + +<p>Two noble schools for military education were opened +for our youthful volunteer: among the Protestants in +France, when they assembled their own armies, and subsequently +in the Netherlands, under the Prince of Orange, +Rawleigh learned the discipline of a valorous but a wary +leader, and beheld in Don John of Austria the hardihood +of a presumptuous commander, whose “self-confidence could +overcome the greatest difficulties, yet in his judgment so +weak, that he could not manage the least.”</p> + +<p>The captain who had fleshed his sword in many a +field, now cast his fortunes in that other element which +led Columbus to discovery, and Pizarro to conquest. +Rawleigh had an uterine brother, whom he justly called +his “true brother,” Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a great navigator, +and the projector of a new passage to the Indies; +an expedition was fitted out by them to colonise some +parts of North America; his first maritime essay was +frustrated by a disastrous accident. But the intrepid +activity of Rawleigh allowed no pause, and now it turned +against the rebellious kerns of Ireland. His disputes +with Grey, the Lord-deputy, brought them before the +council-board in the presence of the queen. Our adventurer +knew how to value this fortunate opportunity. His +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page592" id="page592"></a>592</span> +eloquent tale struck his lordly adversary dumb, and was +not slightly noticed by Elizabeth. The soldier of fortune +was now hanging loosely about the circle of the court, +watchful of another fortunate moment to attract the +queen’s attention. There was a very remarkable disposition +in this extraordinary man, as I have elsewhere +noticed, of practising petty artifices in the affairs of life. +The gay cavalier flung his rich embroidered mantle across +the plashy spot for an instantaneous foot-cloth, not unknowing +that an act of gallantry was sure to win the susceptible +coquetry of his royal mistress. His personal grace, +and his tall stature, and the charm of his voluble elocution +when once admitted into the presence, were irresistible. On +the same system as he had cast his mantle before the queen, +he scratched on a window-pane likely to catch her majesty’s +eye that verse expressive of his “desire” and “his fear +to climb,” to which the queen condescended to add her +rhyme.</p> + +<p>The man of genius was not yet entangled in the meshes +of political parties, and was still contemplating on an +imaginary land north of the Gulf of Florida, as studious of +the art of navigation as he had been of the art of war. He +has left a number of essays on both these subjects, composed +for Prince Henry in the succeeding reign. He was +already in favour with the queen, for she sanctioned a renewal +of the unfortunate expedition under his brother. +Rawleigh had the largest vessel built under his own eye, +for he was skilful in naval architecture, and he named it +“The Rawleigh,” anticipating the day when it should +leave that name to a city or a kingdom. It was on this +occasion that the queen commanded Rawleigh to present +to his brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, a precious gem on +which was engraven an anchor guided by a lady, graciously +desiring in return the picture of the hardy adventurer. +Such were the arts of female coquetry which entered so +admirably into her system of policy, kindling such personal +enthusiasm in the professed lovers of their royal +mistress, while she resigned her heroes to their enterprises +at their own honourable cost of their fortunes or their +lives. In this second expedition Sir Humphrey Gilbert +realised a discovery of what was then called “The Newfoundland,” +of which he took possession for England with +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page593" id="page593"></a>593</span> +the due formalities; but on his return his slender bark +foundered, and thus obscurely perished one of the most +enlightened of that heroic race of our maritime discoverers—the +true fathers of future colonies.</p> + +<p>Rawleigh, unrolling an old map which had been presented +to her royal father, charmed the queen by the +visions which had long charmed himself. Her majesty +granted letters patent to secure to him the property of +the countries which he might discover or might conquer. +Rawleigh minutely planned the future operations, and by +the captains he sent, for the queen would not part with +her favourite, that country was discovered to which had +the royal maiden not so eagerly given the name of +“Virginia,” had probably borne that of Rawleigh; for +subsequently he betrayed this latent design when he proposed +founding a city with that romantic name.</p> + +<p>But the pressing interests of our home affairs withdrew +his mind from undiscovered dominions. Rawleigh was +a chief adviser of Elizabeth in the great Spanish invasion. +He was eminently active in various expeditions, and not +less serviceable in parliament. The ceaseless topic of his +counsels, and the frequent exercise of his pen, was the +alarming aggrandisement of the Spanish power. At this +day, perhaps, we can form no adequate notion of that +Catholic and colossal dominion which Rawleigh dwells on. +“No prince in the west hath spread his wing far over his +nest but the Spaniard, and made many attempts to make +themselves masters of all Europe.” Possibly he may +have ascribed too great an influence to the treasures of +India, which seem to have been always exaggerated; however, +he assures us, and as a statesman he may have felt +a conviction, that “its Indian gold endangers and disturbs +all the nations of Europe; it creeps into counsels, purchases +intelligence, and sets bound loyalty at liberty in +the greatest monarchies. When they dare not with their +own forces invade, they basely entertain the traitors and +vagabonds of all nations.” We have here a complete +picture of those arts of policy which, in the revolutionary +system of France, endangered Europe, and which may yet, +should ever a colossal power again overshadow its independent +empires.</p> + +<p>To clip “the wing that had spread far over its nest,” +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page594" id="page594"></a>594</span> +by cutting off the uninterrupted supplies of the plate +fleets of Spain, was a course in which the queen only perceived +the earnest loyalty of the intrepid adventurer; nor +was that loyalty less for its perfect accordance with his +own personal concerns.</p> + +<p>Rawleigh and his joint adventurers in these discoveries +were carrying on their expeditions at the risk of their +private fortunes, and it appears that his own zeal had +beguiled young men to change their immoveable lands for +light pinnaces. The prudential ministers looked on with +a cold eye, and the economical sovereign, as she was wont, +rewarded her hero in her own way. Elizabeth bestowed +titular honours, and cut out a seignory in Ireland from +the Earl of Desmond’s domains, which Rawleigh’s own +sword had chiefly won; twelve thousand acres, yielding no +rents; dismantled farms and tenantless hamlets—an estate +of fire and blood! A more substantial patent was conferred +on him, to license taverns for the sale of wines; and +at length it was enlarged to levy tonnage and poundage, +specifying that the grant was “to sustain his great +charges in the discovery of remote countries.”</p> + +<p>This was one of those odious monopolies by which the +parsimonious sovereign pretended to reward the services +of the individual by the infliction of a great public grievance, +infinitely more intolerable than any pension-list; for +every monopoly was a traffic admitting all sorts of abuses. +Rawleigh’s inventive faculty often broke forth into humbler +schemes in domestic affairs. He seems first to have +perceived in the expansion of society, the difficulty of +communication for the wants of life. He projected an +office for universal agency; and in this he anticipated +that useful intelligence which we now recognise by the +term of advertisement. New enterprises and ceaseless +occupation were the aliment of that restless and noble +spirit. But these monopolies, severely exacted, provoking +complaints and contests, were one among other causes +which may account for Rawleigh’s unpopularity, even at +his meridian.</p> + +<p>To his absorbing devotion to obtain the queen’s favour, +he has himself ascribed his numerous enemies. While +Elizabeth listened to his ingenious solutions of all her inquiries, +many close at hand took umbrage lest they themselves +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page595" id="page595"></a>595</span> +were being supplanted; while he himself, with +marked expressions, disdained all popularity. Hence, from +opposite quarters, we learn how haughtily his genius bore +him in commanding the world under him. And there is +no doubt, as Aubrey tells us, that he was “damnably +proud.” Even in the height of court favour, this great +man was obnoxious to the people. This we see by an +anecdote of Tarleton, the jester of Elizabeth, famed for his +extemporal acting. Performing before the queen, while +Rawleigh stood by her majesty, shuffling a pack of cards, +and pointing to the royal box, the jesting comedian exclaimed, +“See, the knave commands the queen!” Her +majesty frowned; but the audience applauding, the queen, +ever chary in checking any popular feeling, reserved her +anger till the following day, when Tarleton was banished +from the royal presence. Nor was Rawleigh less unpopular +in the succeeding reign, when the mob hooted +this great man, and when this great man condescended to +tell them how much he despised such rogues and varlets! +The inconsiderate multitude, in the noble preface to his +great work, he compared to “dogs, who always bark at +those they know not, and whose nature is to accompany +one another in these clamours.”</p> + +<p>However busied by the discovery of remote countries, +the armed ships of Rawleigh often brought into port a +Spanish prize. The day arrived—the short but golden +day—when, as his contemporary and a secretary of state +has told us, “he who was first to roll through want, and +disability to exist, before he came to a repose,” betrayed +a sudden affluence—in the magnificence about him—in +the train of his followers, when he seemed to be the +rival of the chivalrous Essex—in the gorgeousness of +his dress, from the huge diamond which buttoned his +feather, to his shoes powdered with pearls, darting from +every point of his person the changeful light of countless +jewels. In this habiliment, fitted to be the herald of +that goddess of beauty to which Elizabeth was familiarly +compared, beside the Queen during her royal progresses, +stood the captain of her guard, and her eyes were often +solaced as they dwelt on the minion of fortune, her own +prosperous adventurer; it was with secret satisfaction that +she knew his treasure was not taken out of her exchequer. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page596" id="page596"></a>596</span> +It could only have been some great Spanish galleon, like +that of “The Madre de Dios,” which furnished Rawleigh +with that complete suit of armour of solid silver which +fixed all eyes at the tilt; or which went to build the +stately mansion of Sherborne, and to plan its fanciful +gardens and groves, drawing the river through the rocks. +Curious in horticulture as in the slightest arts he practised, +Rawleigh’s hands transplanted the first orange trees +which breathed in this colder clime, as he had given Ireland +the Virginian potato, and England the Virginian +tobacco, and perhaps the delicious ananas. But Sherborne +was Church land. It is said that Sir Walter had often +cast a wistful eye on it as it lay in his journeys from +Devonshire. It gave umbrage to some in Church and +State that, by frightening a timid Bishop of Salisbury, he +had prevailed on him to alienate the manor of Sherborne +from his see in favour of the Crown, that it might the +more securely be transferred to him who had coveted it, +till another coveter, in the despicable Carr, plundered him +who had despoiled the diocese.</p> + +<p>A genius versatile as ambitious, moving in the eventful +court of a female sovereign, though often musing on “remote +countries” or Spanish galleons, could not stand as a +mere spectator amid the agitated amphitheatre of politics, +nor in the luxuriance of courtly idleness save himself from +softer, but not always less fatal, intrigues. Rawleigh was +the victim of love and of politics.</p> + +<p>On his first entrance to a court life, Rawleigh found +Burleigh and Leicester watchful of each other. They +were the heads of dark factions which clouded the Court +of Elizabeth, and crooked were the ways our aspirant had +to wind. Leicester seems to have been an early patron of +Rawleigh, by means of his nephew Sir Philip Sidney. At +length, perceiving his ascendancy over the Queen, the great +lord, to overturn this idol of womanish caprice, introduced +his youthful son-in-law, the famous and unfortunate Essex; +nor had he, who himself had been a reigning favourite, +miscalculated on the fascination of a new lover. The contest +for the royal smile became too apparent; ruptures and +reconciliations followed, till death closed these eventful +jealousies. Rawleigh had glided over to the opposition +under the subtle and the plotting Cecil.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page597" id="page597"></a>597</span></p> + +<p>An intrigue of less guiltiness than these dark machinations +of heartless men banished Rawleigh from court. In +the dalliance of the ladies of the privy-chamber, through +the long tedious days of audience, he once too wittily +threw out an observation on that seductive but spotless +circle, the maids of honour, who, he declared were “like +witches, who could do hurt, but do no good.” There was +one, however, the bewitching Throgmorton, who was all +goodness; the impassioned knight was resistless; and subsequently +the law consecrated what love had already +irrevocably joined. But envy with its evil eye was peering. +The Queen of Virgins, implacable in love-treasons, +sent the lovers to the Tower.</p> + +<p>In this desperate predicament, Rawleigh had lost in an +hour the proud work of his highest ambition, the favour +of his mistress-sovereign. The forlorn hero had recourse +to one of those prompt and petty stratagems in which he +was often so dexterous. At his prison-window, one day, he +beheld the Queen passing in her barge, and suddenly raved +like a distracted lover. He entreated to be allowed to go +in disguise to rest his eyes once more on the idol of his +heart; and when the governor refused this extraordinary +request of a state-prisoner, he, in his agony, struggled. +Their daggers were clutched; till Sir Arthur Gorge, seeing +“the cold iron walking about,” rushed between these +terrible combatants. All this, Gorge, then a friend of +Rawleigh, minutely narrates in a letter to Cecil, at the +same time gently hinting that, if the minister deem it +proper, it may be communicated to the queen, that such +was the miserable condition of Rawleigh, that he fell distracted +only at the distant sight of her majesty. This +theatrical scene was got up for the nonce, and served as a +prologue to another characteristic effusion, a letter of raving +gallantry, which Orlando Furioso himself might have +penned, potent with the condensed essence of old romance. +The amorist in his prison thus sorrows: “I was wont to +behold her riding like Alexander, hunting like Diana, +walking like Venus; the gentle wind blowing her fair hair +about her pure cheeks like a nymph; sometime sitting in +the shade like a goddess, sometime singing like an angel.” +Sir Walter knew how high the pulse beat of his royal mistress, +now aged by her sixtieth year. He obtained his +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page598" id="page598"></a>598</span> +freedom, but was banished the presence. And now, cast +out of court favour, and calling himself “The Queen’s +Captive,” Rawleigh, whom many had feared and few had +not admired, found that even fools had the courage to vex +a banished favourite.</p> + +<p>There was no hope; yet Rawleigh, in his exile at his +own Sherborne, addressed more than one letter to the +queen, warning her of “the dangers of a Spanish faction +in Scotland.” But the letters were received in silence. +Rawleigh then attempted to awaken Cecil to the state of +Ireland, then on the point of exploding into a rebellion. +He compares himself to the Trojan soothsayer, “who cast +his spear against the wooden horse, and was not believed.” +The language of complaint was not long tolerable to a +spirit which would have commanded the world; and at +once he took his flight from the old to the new, and his +fleet and himself were again buoyant on the ocean.</p> + +<p>This was Rawleigh’s first voyage to “the empire of +Guiana,” as it was then called. His interesting narrative +Hume has harshly condemned, as containing “the most +palpable lies ever imposed on the credulity of mankind.” +Our romantic adventurer has incurred censure for his own +credulity in search of mines which appear to have existed, +and of “the golden city,” which lying Spaniards had +described; and he had even his honour impeached by the +baffled speculators of his own day, whom he had beguiled +with his dreams; but he who sacrificed life and fortune in +a great enterprise, left the world a pledge that he at least +believed in his own tale.</p> + +<p>Rawleigh, like other men of genius, was influenced by +the spirit of the age, which was the spirit of discovery; +and to the brave and the resolved, what could be impracticable +which opened a new world? The traditions of the +Spaniards had been solemnly recorded in the collections of +their voyages, and had been sanctioned by the reports of +Rawleigh’s own people: and he himself had fed his eyes +and his dreams on the novel aspect of those fertile plains +and branching rivers, inhabited by fifty nations; on +animals of a new form, and birds of a new plumage; and +on a vegetable world of trees and plants, and flowers, and +fruits, on which the eye dwelt for the first time—a fresh +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page599" id="page599"></a>599</span> +creation, “the face of whose earth hath not been torn, nor +the virtue and salt of the soil spent by manurance.”</p> + +<p>The origin of those puerile tales which the Europeans +brought home with them has not been traced. Some +have the air of religious legends, descriptive of the Paradise +of the Blacks, such as that chimerical Manoa, where they +said, “the king had golden images of every object on +earth.” Or were such marvellous fictions the shrewd inventions +of these children of nature, more cunning than +the men of Europe, stupified and credulous from their +sovereign passion? When the Indians on the coast found +that the whites seemed insatiate of gold and pearls, they +fostered the madness, directing their strange invaders far +up into the land, to the great city of Manoa, the El-Dorado +of the Spaniards, and which no one ever reached. +In this manner they probably designed to rid themselves +of their ambiguous guests, sending them to stray in the +deserts of primeval forests, or to sail along interminable +rivers, wrecked amid rapid falls.</p> + +<p>Rawleigh endured many miseries; and on his return +his narrative was deemed fabulous. The pathos of his +language, however, perpetuates his dignified affliction. +“Of the little remaining fortune I had, I have wasted in +effect all herein; I have undergone many constructions, +been accompanied with many sorrows, with labour, hunger, +heat, sickness, and peril. From myself I have deserved +no thanks, for I am returned a beggar and withered.”</p> + +<p>An enterprise which was, as he himself considered it to +be, national, crushed the resources of the individual. He +assures us that he might have enriched himself, had “it +become the former fortune in which he once lived, and +sorted with all the offices of honour, which by her majesty’s +grace he held that day in England, for him <i>to go journies +of picory</i>;” that is, in Gondomar’s plain Spanish “piracy;” +for the Spaniards applied the term <i>picarro</i>, a rogue or +thief, to every one sailing in their forbidden seas. The +dedication of his narrative, though directed to Howard and +Cecil, was evidently addressed to “the lady of ladies,” +who, however, could not break her enchanted silence.</p> + +<p>Spain trembled at the efforts of a single hero of England; +she seemed to anticipate her uncertain dominion +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page600" id="page600"></a>600</span> +over that new world. Spain, though proud and mighty, +standing on her golden feet, yet found them weak as unbaked +clay, while her treasure-fleets were either burned or +sunk, or carried into our ports. But at home there were +those who dreaded the ascendancy of that bold spirit, which +even in his present sad condition asserted that “there were +men worthy to be kings of these dominions, and who, by +the queen’s grace and leave, would undertake it of themselves.” +His adversaries would cloak their private envy +under the fair colour of the public safety, or seemed wise +with prudential scepticism. Yet the dauntless soul of +Rawleigh, amid his distresses, despatched two ships under +his devoted Keymis, to keep up the intercourse with the +weak colony he had left behind; this was the second +voyage to Guiana, which only increased the anxiety for a +third, which soon followed.</p> + +<p>It is a curious instance of that alarm of jealousy prevalent +with the favourites of those days, that during the +time of Rawleigh’s disgrace at court merely his sudden +appearance in the metropolis, as the news is cautiously +indicated, “gave cause of discontent to some other”—that +is, the reigning favourite, Essex; possibly there +might be some cause, for the writer tells, that Rawleigh +was “in good hope to return into grace;”<a name="fa1c55" id="fa1c55" href="#ft1c55"><span class="sp">1</span></a> but this +restorative was not then administered to the lorn stroller +from Sherborne. The queen was imperturbable.</p> + +<p>The royal anger of Elizabeth never interfered with her +policy, nor dulled her sagacity. Two years after, in 1596, +it was decided to attack the Spanish fleet in their own +harbours, according to a plan laid down by Rawleigh, as +far back as in 1588; he was now wanted, and therefore +he was remembered, as far as his appointment, to be one +of the four commanders in the famous expedition against +Cadiz. Essex, as commander-in-chief, betrayed his incompetence, +and Rawleigh the prompt energy of his +military and his maritime abilities. Essex, at all times +his rival, and never his friend, saw his own lustre dusked +by the eminence of his inferior; and on his return fatally +read in the eyes of his royal mistress the first omen of +his decline. During his absence, his recommendation of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page601" id="page601"></a>601</span> +Sir Thomas Bodley for the secretaryship of state had +been rejected, and the hated Cecil had triumphed. Rawleigh +now undertook a more difficult affair than the +victory of Cadiz—he effected an amicable arrangement +between Cecil and Essex; and this seems to have been a +most grateful service to the queen, for a month afterwards, +we find him again at court. Five years must have +elapsed,—so long the queen could preserve the royalty of +her anger.</p> + +<p>Restored to the queen’s favour, the lover had lost +nothing of his fascination. The very day on which Cecil +led Rawleigh in “as captain of the guard,” he rode in +the evening with the queen, and held a private conference; +where, probably, many secrets and counsels were +divulged, too long and too proudly suppressed.<a name="fa2c55" id="fa2c55" href="#ft2c55"><span class="sp">2</span></a> All this +was done in the absence of Essex, but not without his +consent: for the three enemies were now to be friends.</p> + +<p>The second great expedition followed. Again Essex +betrayed his inexperience and his failure, while Rawleigh, +in a brilliant action, took Fayal. The reception of Essex +at court levelled his ambition, and he retreated from the +queen’s reproaches, sick at heart, to bury himself in sullen +seclusion. The remainder of his days exhibit a series of +disturbed acts, in the continued conflict between his own +popularity and the variable favour of the queen. To +complete this tale of political intrigues, we have a letter, +remarkable for its style, its matter, and its object, from +Rawleigh to Cecil, urging the annihilation of “the +tyrant,” before “it is too late,” in terms hardly ambiguous +enough to save Rawleigh from the charge of having +hurried on the fate of Essex, at whose execution he shed +tears;<a name="fa3c55" id="fa3c55" href="#ft3c55"><span class="sp">3</span></a> and in the confession of one of Essex’s desperate +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page602" id="page602"></a>602</span> +advisers, in their mad rising, we learn that the earl had +fixed on Rawleigh to be got rid of.</p> + +<p>If we reflect a moment on this triumvirate of political +friends—and Cecil secretly assured the Scottish monarch, +that “he and they would never live under one apple-tree”—we +may see how the wiles and jealousies of love are not +more fatal than those of intriguing statesmen. Rawleigh, +for a purpose reconciles Essex with Cecil; but in reality, +the three alike bear a mutual antipathy. When Essex in +disgrace lay sick at home, and the queen half-repentant +in her severity sent a friendly message to the earl, +this appearance of returning favour towards Essex +startled Rawleigh, who is seized with sickness in his turn; +and the queen, at once the royal slave and mistress of her +court-lovers, is compelled to send him a cordial of an +equivalent kindness; and both these political patients +were cured by the same prescription.</p> + +<p>Cecil and Rawleigh paused not till they laid the head +of Essex on the block; and that day sealed their own +fortunes, for, left without a rival, they became rivals to +each other. “Those,” said Rawleigh on the scaffold, +“who set me against him, set themselves afterwards +against me, and were my greatest enemies.” This may +be placed among the confessions of criminal friendships!</p> + +<p>Cecil “bore no love to Rawleigh,” tells a contemporary; +but we know more than contemporaries, and we possess +secrets which Rawleigh could not discover while Elizabeth +was on the throne, though a lurking suspicion of the +hollowness of his friend “Robin” may have lain on his +mind when he wrote this verse on the ambidextrous +Talleyrand, who through all changes</p> + +<p class="center f90 ptb1">Still kept on the mountain, and left us on the plain.</p> + +<p>It was while this subdolous minister was holding most +intimate intercourse with Rawleigh, while his son was +placed under his guardian care at Sherborne, and he himself, +with Lord Cobham his brother-in-law, was there a +guest, that this extraordinary Machiavel was daily +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page603" id="page603"></a>603</span> +working at the destruction of both his friends! This +was effectually done by instilling into the Scottish monarch +antipathies never to be uprooted. On the demise of the +queen, Rawleigh was for raising up an English against a +Scottish party; he was for keeping the government in +their own hands, and, looking on the successor to the +English throne as a foreigner, and his people as a needy +race, would have only admitted him on terms; or, as +Aubrey hints, was for “setting up a commonwealth.” +Little dreamed Rawleigh that he was already sold and +disposed of; that his friend, Secretary Cecil, was surrounding +Durham-House, Rawleigh’s town residence, by +domestic and midnight spies; and, as the secretary was +wont, laying traps to decoy his associate in the councils of +Elizabeth into something which might be shifted into a +semblance of treason against the future sovereign.<a name="fa4c55" id="fa4c55" href="#ft4c55"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> + +<p>The train so covertly laid, the mine was sprung at the +due hour. Rawleigh’s reception by the king was the +prognostic of his fall. Rawleigh announced, James +exclaimed, <i>more suo</i>,—“Rawleigh! Rawleigh! o’ my +saul, mon, I have heard <i>rawly</i> of thee!”<a name="fa5c55" id="fa5c55" href="#ft5c55"><span class="sp">5</span></a> Cecil, who +had participated in the fall of Essex, the chief of the +Scottish party, all expected would have shared in the same +royal repulse. Lady Kildare once aptly described Cecil, +when she threatened “to break the neck of that weasel;” +and afterwards the Scottish monarch, admiring the quick +shiftings and keen scent of the crafty creature in the +playful style of the huntsman, characterised his minister, +in his kennel of courtiers, as his “little beagle.” “The +weasel,” had all along, moving to and fro, kept his unobserved +course; and, to the admiration of all, now “came +out of the chamber like a giant, to run his race for +honour and fortune.” That astute Machiavel had long +prepared staunch friends for himself in well-paid Scots. +James was hardly seated on his new throne, when his +minister opened one of his political exhibitions by the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page604" id="page604"></a>604</span> +incomprehensible Cobham conspiracy; and this ingenious +artificer of state-plots had knotted the present with one +apparently more real; but though they would not hold +together, they served to put his friend on his memorable +trial. When the eloquence of Rawleigh had baffled his judges, +and the evidence failed, Cecil, then sitting in court in the +character of a friend, secretly conveyed an insidious letter, +sufficient to serve as an ambiguous plea for a mysterious conviction. +Rawleigh was judicially but illegally condemned; +and the affair terminated in a burlesque execution, where +men were led to the block, and no one suffered decapitation.<a name="fa6c55" id="fa6c55" href="#ft6c55"><span class="sp">6</span></a></p> + +<p>A remarkable circumstance, however, occurred, which +must not be passed over in this psychological history of +Rawleigh. In the Tower, during the examination of the +weak and worthless Cobham, who was shifting evidence, +Rawleigh affected a recklessness of life; suddenly, he inflicted +upon himself what his enemies afterwards called +“the guilty blow in the Tower;” in the blow he did not +risk his life, “being, in truth, rather a cut than a stab” in +his breast. Mortified passion may have overcome for a +moment the hero whose fortitude had often been more +nobly tried; but in my own mind, I cannot avoid including +the present incident among those similar minor artifices, +designed for some grand effect.</p> + +<p>Rawleigh, condemned, was suffered to live twelve years +in the Tower, whence he obtained a release, but not a +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page605" id="page605"></a>605</span> +pardon; the condemnation was suspended over his head +like the pointed sword, ready to drop on the guest invited +to the mockery of a festival. A new secretary, Winwood, +and a new favourite, Buckingham, had listened to the +vision of a gold mine, and an English colony. The sage, +who had passed through that school of wisdom, his own +“History of the World,” when called into action, was still +the same romantic adventurer. What else for him remained +in England, but the dream of his early days? The +military and the naval writings, as well as the “History +of the World,” of Rawleigh, had been designed by their +great author to mould the genius of that prince to whom +he looked for another Elizabethan reign; but Prince Henry +had sunk into an untimely grave, and the sovereign who +loved as much as any one an awful volume, was deterred +from valuing the man.</p> + +<p>Rawleigh gathered together all the wrecks of his +battered fortune, and, with a company of adventurers, +equipped the fleet which was hastening to found a new +empire. Ere its sails were filled with propitious gales, its +ruin was prepared. The secret plans of its great conductor, +confided to our government, by their order were +betrayed to the jealous council of Castille. Lying in sickness, +Rawleigh lands on a hostile coast; his son, with +filial emulation, combated and fell; his confidential Keymis, +whose life was devoted to him, could not endure reproach, +and closing his cabin-door, ended his days; and if +he himself bore up with life, it was that his life was still +due to many. “I could die heart-broken, as Drake and +Hawkins had died before, when they failed in their enterprise. +My brains are broken, and I cannot write much; +I live, and I told you why.” But he knew his life was a +pledge no longer redeemable. His “rabble of idle rascals” +mutinied, till the hope of falling in with the Spanish +treasure-fleet lured them homewards. The letters to his +wife are among the most tragical communications of a great +mind greatly despairing, and may still draw tears.</p> + +<p>On Rawleigh’s return, a proclamation was issued for his +arrest, and he surrendered to his near kinsman, Sir Lewis +Stukeley, vice-admiral of Devon. On their journey to +London, they were joined by Manoury, a French physician, +not unskilled in chemistry, a favourite study with Rawleigh.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page606" id="page606"></a>606</span></p> + +<p>It was in this journey that Rawleigh contrived one of +those humiliating stratagems which we have several times +noted with astonishment. In a confidential intercourse +with the French chemist, he procured drugs by which he +was enabled to counterfeit a strange malady. Alas! the +great man was himself cozened. Manoury was the most +guileful of <i>Moutons</i>, and his near kinsman, Stukeley, the +most infamous of traitors!<a name="fa7c55" id="fa7c55" href="#ft7c55"><span class="sp">7</span></a></p> + +<p>The conflict of opposite emotions which induced this +folly who shall describe? Rawleigh died in the elevation +of his magnanimous spirit; as truly great when he took +his farewell of his world, as when he closed the last sublime +page of his great volume. He knew his fate, and he +had come to meet it. The moment was disastrous; the +Spanish match lay in one scale, and the head of Rawleigh +was put in the other by the implacable Spaniard; and +when a state-victim is required, the political balance is +rarely regulated by simple justice.</p> + +<p>An eminent critic has pronounced, that “the ‘History +of the World,’ by Rawleigh, is rather an historical dissertation, +than a work rising to the majesty of history.”</p> + +<p>It sometimes happens that the application of an abstract +principle of the critical art to some particular work may +tend to injure the writer, without conveying any information +to the reader; for thus the rare qualities of originality +are wholly passed by, should the masterly genius have +composed in a manner unprescribed by any canon of +criticism.</p> + +<p>Our author was not ignorant of the laws of historical +composition, which, he observes, “many had taught, but +no man better, and with greater brevity, than that +excellent learned gentleman, Sir <span class="sc">Francis Bacon</span>.”</p> + +<p>The ardent and capricious genius of our author projected +a universal history which was to occupy three +mighty folios, at a time when our language had not yet +produced a single historical work; he had no model to +look up to; nor, had there been, was he disposed to be +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page607" id="page607"></a>607</span> +casting in other men’s moulds. The design and the execution +were a creation of his own. Masses of the most +curious parts of learning were to be drawn out of recondite +tomes, from the Rabbins, the Fathers, the historians and +the poets of every nation; all that the generations of men +have thought, and whatever they have memorably acted. +But in this voluminous scroll of time, something was to +enter of not less price—what his own searching spirit +thought, what his diligence had collected, and farther, +what his own eyes had observed in the old and the new +worlds. <span class="sc">Truth</span> and <span class="scs">EXPERIENCE</span> were to be the columns +which supported and adorned <span class="scs">HISTORY</span>. And this we read +in “The <span class="sc">Mind</span> of the Frontispiece,” one of those emblematical +representations of “the mind” of the author, +which the engravers of that day usually rendered less pictorial +than perplexing.<a name="fa8c55" id="fa8c55" href="#ft8c55"><span class="sp">8</span></a></p> + +<p>A universal genius was best able to compose a universal +history; statesman, soldier, and sage, in writing the “History +of the World,” how often has Rawleigh become his +own historiographer! He had been a pilgrim in many +characters; and his philosophy had been exercised in very +opposite spheres of human existence. A great commander +by land and by sea, he was critical in all the arts of stratography, +and delights to illustrate them on every occasion. +The danger of having two generals for one army, is exemplified +by what he himself had witnessed at Jarnac; in a +narrative of Carthage, when the Romans lost their fleet, +he points out the advantages of a flying navy, from what +had occurred under his own eye in the wars of the Netherlands, +and of Portugal; and concludes that “it is more +difficult to defend a coast than to invade it.” In the +midst of a narrative of the siege of a town of Carthage, +when the besieged rushed out of the town eager to learn +the terms of the capitulation before they were concluded, +the Roman general seized on this advantage by entering +with his army, without concluding the capitulation. “A +similar incident happened when I was a young man in +France, of Marshal Monluc, while a parley was held about +the surrender; but noble men held this conduct as not +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page608" id="page608"></a>608</span> +honourable.” Foreign mercenaries, he observes, are not to +be relied on, for at the greatest extremity, they have not +only refused to fight, but have passed over to the enemy; +or they have become the masters of those who hired them, +as the Turks were called in by the Greeks, and the Saxons +by the Britons; and here he distinguishes the soldiery consisting +of English, French, and Scotch, which established +the independence of the Netherlands; in this case, these +mercenaries were bound together by one common interest +with the people who had required their aid; therefore, +these stood in the condition of allies, as well as of +foreigners solely retained by pay.</p> + +<p>His digressions are never more agreeable than when +they become dissertations; the most ordinary events of +history assumed a new face by the noble speculations +which he builds on them, full of a searching, critical +spirit, of sound morality, and of practicable policy; often +profound, always eloquent. One on the Mosaic code as +a precedent for the laws of other nations, would have +delighted Montesquieu. On the inviolability of oaths, he +admirably describes them as “the chains by which free-men +are tied to the world.” On slavery—on idolatry—on +giving the lie—on the point of honour—on the origin +of local names of America by their first discoverers—such +topics abound in his versatile pages. Even curious +matters engaged his attention, and in the new world he +inspected nature with the close eye of a naturalist;<a name="fa9c55" id="fa9c55" href="#ft9c55"><span class="sp">9</span></a> nor +has he disdained, at times, a pleasant tale. There are few +pages of this venerable, but genial volume, where we do +not find that it is Rawleigh who speaks or who acts, +making legible his secret thoughts, charming the story +of four thousand years with the pleasures of his own +memory.</p> + +<p>The actual condition of society; the politics of past +governments; the arts, the trades, the inventions of past +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page609" id="page609"></a>609</span> +ages, matters deeply interesting in the history of man, +often forgotten, and hardly recoverable, judged by that large +mind which had so boldly planned the “History of the +World,” cannot properly be censured as “Digressions.” +“True it is,” he adds, “that I have also made many others, +which, if they shall be laid to my charge, I must cast the +fault into the great heap of human error. For seeing we +digress in all the ways of our lives—yea, seeing the life +of man is nothing else but digression, it may the better +be excused in writing of their lives and actions. <i>I am not +altogether ignorant in the laws of history and of the +kinds.</i>”</p> + +<p>It is evident that our author was conscious that he had +struck into a virgin vein, and however amenable to the +code of historical composition, very gracefully apologises +for indulging the novelty. The novelty indeed was so +little comprehended by those gross feeders on the carrion +of time who can discover nothing in history but its disjointed +and naked facts, that, rejecting every “digression” +as interrupting the chronology, they put forth their +abridgments; and Alexander Ross rejoiced to call his “The +Marrow of History;” but probably found, to his dismay, +that he had only collected the dry bones; and that in all +this “History of the World,” nothing was more veritable +than the author’s own emotions. All which these matter-of-fact +retailers had so carefully omitted we now class by +a title which such writers rarely recognise as the philosophy +of history. Great writers admit of no abridgment. +If you do not follow the writer through all the ramifications +of his ideas, and imbue your mind with the fulness +of the author’s mind, you can receive only interrupted impressions, +and retain but an imperfect and mutilated image +of his genius. The happiest of abridgments is the author’s +own skill in composition: to say all that is necessary and +to omit all that is superfluous—this is the secret of +abridgment, and there is no other of a great original work.</p> + +<p>“The History of the World” appeared as a literary +phenomenon, even to the philosophical Hume. He expresses +his astonishment at “the extensive genius of the +man who being educated amid naval and military enterprises, +had <i>surpassed in the pursuits of literature even +those of the most recluse and sedentary lives</i>.”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page610" id="page610"></a>610</span></p> + +<p>This is much from him who has taught us not to wonder +but to inquire. Rawleigh, however, had dropped some +hints on his Hebraic studies; acknowledging his ignorance +of that recondite language, he was indebted to some preceding +interpreters and to “some learned friends;” and +he adds with good humour, but with a solemn feeling, +“Yet it were not to be wondered at had I been beholding +to neither, having had <i>eleven years’ leisure</i> to obtain the +knowledge of that or any other language.” It did not +occur to our historian that “eleven years” of uninterrupted +leisure yields a full amount of “the most recluse +and sedentary life.” With a universal mind Rawleigh +was eager after universal knowledge; and we have positive +and collateral evidence that he sought in his learned +circle whatever aid the peculiar studies of each individual +could afford him.</p> + +<p>A circumstance as remarkable as the work itself occurred +in the author’s long imprisonment. By one of those +strange coincidences in human affairs, it happened that +in the Tower Rawleigh was surrounded by the highest +literary and scientific circle in the nation. Henry, the +ninth Earl of Northumberland, on the suspicion of having +favoured his relative Piercy, the gunpowder-plot conspirator, +was cast into this state-prison, and confined during +many years. This earl delighted in what Anthony Wood +describes as “the obscure parts of learning.” He was a +magnificent Mecænas, and not only pensioned scientific +men, but daily assembled them at his table, and in this +intellectual communion participating in their pursuits he +passed his life. His learned society were designated as +“the Atlantes of the mathematical world;” but that +world had other inhabitants, antiquaries and astrologers, +chemists and naturalists. There was seen Thomas Allen, +another Roger Bacon, “terrible to the vulgar,” famed for +his <i>Bibliotheca Alleniana</i>, a rich collection of manuscripts, +most of which have been preserved in the Bodleian; the +name of Allen survives in the ardent commemorations of +Camden, of Spelman, and of Selden. He was accompanied +by his friend Doctor Dee, but whether Dee ever tried their +patience or their wonder by his “Diary of Conferences +with Spirits” we find no record; and by the astronomical +Torporley, a disciple of Lucretius, for his philosophy consisted +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page611" id="page611"></a>611</span> +of atoms; several of his manuscripts remain in Sion +College. The muster-roll is too long to run over. In +this galaxy of the learned, the brightest star was Thomas +Hariot, who merited the distinction of being “the universal +philosopher;” his inventions in algebra, Descartes, +when in England, silently adopted, but which Dr. Wallis +afterwards indignantly reclaimed; his skill in interpreting +the text of Homer excited the grateful admiration of +Chapman when occupied by his version; Bishop Corbet +has described—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> + <p class="i3">Deep Hariot’s mine,</p> +<p>In which there is no dross.</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">Two others were Walter Warner, who is said to have +suggested to Harvey the great discovery of the circulation +of the blood, and Robert Hues, famed for his “Treatise +on the Globes.” These, with Hariot, were the earl’s constant +companions; and at a period when science seemed +connected with necromancy, the world distinguished the +earl and his three friends as “Henry the Wizard, and his +three Magi.” We may regret that no Symposia have +come down to us from this learned society in the Tower, +which we may consider as the first philosophical society +in our country. All these persons, eminent in their day, +appear to have written in their various departments, and +were inventors in science; yet few of their works have +passed through the press. This circumstance is a curious +evidence in our literary history, that in that day the +studious composed their works without any view to their +publicity; the difficulty of obtaining a publisher for any +work of science might also have conduced to confine their +discoveries to their private circle. Some of these learned +men probably were uncouth writers; Dee never could end +a sentence in his rambling, confused style. Many of +these works, scattered in their forlorn state of manuscript, +often fell into hands who appropriated them to their +own purpose. Even Hariot’s treatise, which furnished +Descartes with a new idea of the science, was a posthumous +publication by his friend Warner, merely to secure a +continuance of the pension which had been granted to him +by the Earl of Northumberland.</p> + +<p>These philosophers appear to have advanced far into +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page612" id="page612"></a>612</span> +their inquiries, for they were branded by atheism or deism. +What therefore has reached us coming from ignorant or +prejudiced reporters will not satisfy our curiosity. Of +Hariot, Wood tells that “he always undervalued the +old story of the creation of the world, and could never +believe the trite position <i>ex nihilo nihil fit</i>. He made a +<i>philosophical theology</i>, wherein he cast off the Old Testament, +so that consequently the New would have no foundation. +He was a deist, and his doctrine he did impart +to the Earl of Northumberland and to Sir Walter Rawleigh, +when he was compiling his ‘History of the World.’ +He would controvert the matter with eminent divines, +who therefore having no good opinion of him, did look on +the matter of his death as a judgment for nullifying the +Scriptures.” Hariot died of a cancer on his lip.</p> + +<p>From such accounts we can derive no knowledge of the +<i>philosophical theology</i> of Hariot. He was the philosopher, +however, who went to Virginia with the design of establishing +a people of peace, with the Bible in his hand. +He taught those children of nature its pure doctrines till +they began to idolise the book itself, embracing it, kneeling +to it, and rubbing their bodies with it. This new +Manco Capac checked this innocent idolatry, but probably +found some difficulty in making them rightly comprehend +that the Bible was but a book like any other, made by +many hands; but that the spiritual doctrine contained in +it was a thing not to be touched nor seen, but to be +obeyed. Such a philosopher, could he have remained +among these Indians, would have become the great legislator +of a tribe of primitive Christians; and as he actually +contrived to construct an alphabet for them, this seems to +have been his intention.</p> + +<p>The doctrines of Hariot, which Wood has reprobated, +certainly were not infused into the pages of Rawleigh; +his divinity is never sceptical; his researches only lead +to speculations purely ethical and political—what men +have done, and what men do.<a name="fa10c55" id="fa10c55" href="#ft10c55"><span class="sp">10</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page613" id="page613"></a>613</span></p> + +<p>Such were the men of science, daily guests in the Tower +during the imprisonment of Rawleigh; and when he had +constructed his laboratory to pursue his chemical experiments, +he must have multiplied their wonders. With +one he had been intimately connected early in life; Hariot +had been his mathematical tutor, was domesticated in his +house, and became his confidential agent in the expedition +to Virginia. Rawleigh had earnestly recommended his +friend to the Earl of Northumberland, and Sion House +in consequence became for Hariot a home and an observatory.</p> + +<p>The scholastic Dr. Burhill is supposed to have been one +among the learned friends whose assistance in his Hebraic +researches Rawleigh acknowledges. It was such a student +that might have led Rawleigh into his singular discussion +on the site of paradise. One great name has claimed the +tracings of his hand in the “History of the World.” +Ben Jonson has positively told that he wrote a piece on +the Punic wars, which Rawleigh “altered and set in his +book.” The verses prefixed to the “Mind of the Frontispiece” +are Jonson’s. There was an intimacy between +Jonson and Rawleigh which appears to have been interrupted, +and this may possibly have given occasion to the +remarkable sharp stricture from Jonson, in his conversation +with Drummond, that “Rawleigh esteemed more fame +than conscience; the best wits in England were employed +in making his ‘History of the World.’”</p> + +<p>Rawleigh, in his vast and recondite collection of criticism +and chronology, would enrich his volume with the stores +accumulated from the sources of brother-minds; it is even +said that he submitted his composition to Serjeant Hoskyns, +that universal Aristarchus of that day, at whose feet, to use +the style of honest Anthony, all poets threw their verses;<a name="fa11c55" id="fa11c55" href="#ft11c55"><span class="sp">11</span></a> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page614" id="page614"></a>614</span> +but the most material characteristic of his work Rawleigh +could borrow from no one—the tone and elevation of his +genius.</p> + +<p>But if the “History of the World” instructed his contemporaries, +there was a greater history in his mind, which +had secured the universal acceptance of posterity—the history +of his own times. But the age of Elizabeth, in manuscript, +might be an act of treason in the court of James +the First, in the eyes of his redoubted rival Cecil; he who +did not wholly escape from malicious applications in writing +the history of the world that had passed away, eluded +the fatal struggle with contemporary passions. He has +himself acquainted us of this loss to our domestic political +history: “It will be said by many that I might have +been more pleasing to the reader if I had written the +story of mine own times, having been permitted to draw +water as near the well-head as another. To this I answer, +that whosoever in writing a modern history shall follow +truth too near the heels, it may haply strike out his teeth. +There is no mistress or guide that hath led her followers +and servants into greater miseries. He that goeth after +her too far off, loseth her sight and loseth himself; and +he that walks after her at a middle distance, I know not +whether I should call that kind of course, temper or +baseness.”<a name="fa12c55" id="fa12c55" href="#ft12c55"><span class="sp">12</span></a></p> + +<p>The miscellaneous writings of Rawleigh are so numerous +and so various, that Oldys has classed them under the +heads, poetical, epistolary, military, maritime, geographical, +political, philosophical, and historical.<a name="fa13c55" id="fa13c55" href="#ft13c55"><span class="sp">13</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page615" id="page615"></a>615</span></p> + +<p>Of a character so exalted and a genius so varied, how +has it happened that Gibbon, who had once intended to +compose the wondrous tale of his life, has pronounced his +character to be “ambiguous;” and that Hume has described +it as “a great, but ill-regulated mind?”<a name="fa14c55" id="fa14c55" href="#ft14c55"><span class="sp">14</span></a></p> + +<p>The story of Rawleigh is a moral phenomenon; but +what is there that moves in the sphere of humanity, of +which, when we discover the principle of action, we cannot +calculate even the most eccentric movements? Rawleigh +from the first was to be the architect of his own fortunes; +this was a calamity with him, for a perpetual impulse was +communicated to the versatility and the boundless capacity +of a genius which seemed universal. Soldier and sailor, +sage and statesman, he could not escape from the common +fate of becoming the creature of circumstance. What +vicissitudes! what moral revelations! How he disdained +his enviers! His towering ambition paused not in its +altitude; he reached its apex, and having accomplished +everything, he missed all! He whose life is a life of adventure, +who is now the daring child of fortune, and falls +to be the miserable heir of misfortune, though glory sometimes +disguises his recklessness, is doomed to be often +humiliated as well as haughty.</p> + +<p>The favourite of his sovereign, thrown amid the contending +suitors of a female Court, we have found creeping +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page616" id="page616"></a>616</span> +in crooked politics, and intriguing in dark labyrinths. +Rawleigh met his evil genius in Cecil; he saw his solitary +hope vanish with Prince Henry. Awakening his last energies +with the juvenile passion of his early days, he pledged +his life on a new adventure—it was his destiny to ascend +the scaffold. He was always to be a victim of state. The +day of his trial and the hour of his death told to his country +whom they had lost. From the most unpopular man in +England he became the object of the public sympathy, for +they saw the permanent grandeur of the character, when +its lustre was no longer dusked by cloudy interests or temporary +passions.</p> + +<p>There is no object in human pursuits which the genius +of Rawleigh did not embrace. What science was that +unwearying mind not busied in? What arts of hoar +antiquity did he not love to seek? What sense of the +beautiful ever passed transiently over his spirit? His books +and his pictures ever accompanied him in his voyages. +Even in the short hour before his last morning, is he not +still before us, while his midnight pen traces his mortuary +verse, perpetuating the emotions of the sage, and of the +hero who could not fear death.<a name="fa15c55" id="fa15c55" href="#ft15c55"><span class="sp">15</span></a></p> + +<p>Such is the psychological history of a genius of the first +order of minds, whom posterity hails among the founders +of our literature.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c55" id="ft1c55" href="#fa1c55"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Lodge’s “Illustrations of British History,” iii. 67.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c55" id="ft2c55" href="#fa2c55"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Sidney Letters, ii. 45.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c55" id="ft3c55" href="#fa3c55"><span class="fn">3</span></a> When Rawleigh was himself in the place where he had put Essex—on +the scaffold, he solemnly declared that “he had no hand in his +blood, and was none of them that procured his death.” How are we +to reconcile this declaration with the extraordinary letter which first +appeared in Murdin’s Collection, and which Hume asserts “contains +the strongest proofs to the contrary?”—Mr. Lodge understands the advice +of Rawleigh in the very worst sense; Mr. Tytler, with ingenuity, +suggests that Cecil, with “a prospective wariness, which—not satisfied +with deceiving his contemporaries—provided <i>blinds for posterity</i>,” +procured Rawleigh to address this letter to him; and, in a word, that, +in composing this energetic epistle, he was not so much the writer as +the agent in the plot. I am more disposed to believe that when Rawleigh +wrote so remarkable a letter, he was fully aware of its import, +and looked forwards to the result.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c55" id="ft4c55" href="#fa4c55"><span class="fn">4</span></a> The extraordinary means of the duplicity of this wily minister are +stated by Mr. <span class="sc">Tytler</span> in the Appendix to his “Life of Rawleigh.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c55" id="ft5c55" href="#fa5c55"><span class="fn">5</span></a> As <i>Rawleigh</i>, like all his contemporaries, including Shakspeare, +wrote his name diversely, so that we are at a loss to pronounce it, this +spontaneous sally of the Scottish monarch reveals its real pronunciation; +which is also confirmed by a sort of epigram of that day.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c55" id="ft6c55" href="#fa6c55"><span class="fn">6</span></a> The secret history of this state-riddle—the conspiracy of Cobham, +a disappointed courtier—as Mr. Lodge observes, might fill a moderate +volume of speculations on its darker parts. All historians agree that +it must remain insolvable, and “hopelessly obscure.” It is, however, +opened with great vigour and novelty of research by Mr. <span class="sc">Tytler</span> in +the Appendix to his biography of Rawleigh. But he passes over too +slightly the conversation and the offer of the “eight thousand +crowns;” and “the pension,” of which Rawleigh said—“he would +tell him more when he saw the money.” It is quite evident that +Rawleigh had been tampered with by the silly Cobham, whose ricketty +brains had been concocting a crude, fantastic plot, which was hardly +the initial of one. But Rawleigh had listened; he had not positively +refused his participation, neither had he yielded his consent. When +“the eight thousand crowns” had safely arrived, where were they to +go? Rawleigh declared that “when he saw the money, he would be +ready to talk more on the subject.” Mr. Tytler, like Sir Walter, is +pleased to consider that the whole affair was “one of Lord Cobham’s +idle conceits.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c55" id="ft7c55" href="#fa7c55"><span class="fn">7</span></a> This incident in the life of Rawleigh is told in the “Curiosities of +Literature,” vol. iii. I have been enabled to give the secret history of +this Sir Lewis Stukeley, who having first despoiled, then betrayed his +great kinsman. That history offers one of the most striking instances +of moral retribution.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c55" id="ft8c55" href="#fa8c55"><span class="fn">8</span></a> The explanatory stanzas prefixed to this “Mind,” though unsubscribed +by the name of the writer, were composed by Jonson, for they +appear in his works.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c55" id="ft9c55" href="#fa9c55"><span class="fn">9</span></a> Rawleigh notices a singular instinct in the birds in these new regions, +which built their nests on the twigs of trees, pendent over the +waters, rather than in the branches, to save their young from the attacks +of the monkeys. In such relations he is full and particular. He +collects the marvellous accounts of the <i>Ficus indica</i>—the Banian, or +sacred tree of the Brahmins; we nowhere find such a lively picture of +that singular curiosity of nature, the self-planting tree, here minutely +described.</p> + +<p><a name="ft10c55" id="ft10c55" href="#fa10c55"><span class="fn">10</span></a> The authors of the “General Dictionary” censure Wood for his +unauthenticated assertions; and they infer that, as he was thus evidently +erroneous in his notion of Rawleigh’s history, he may have been +equally so in his idea of the philosophical theology of Hariot. Wood, +however, could have alleged his authority, though a very indifferent +one. We have recently discovered that Wood here was only transcribing +the crude hearsays of his friend Aubrey; and, in these matters, the +Oxford antiquary, and the “magotie-headed” gossiper, as Wood afterwards +found him to be, were equally intelligent.</p> + +<p><a name="ft11c55" id="ft11c55" href="#fa11c55"><span class="fn">11</span></a> Hoskyns wrote many poems. A manuscript volume of his poems, +fairly written we may presume for the press, and “bigger than all +Donne’s works,” was “lent by his son Sir Benedict,” A. Wood tells us, +“who was a man that ran with the usurping Parliament, to a certain +person, in 1653, but he could never retrieve it.” We are left in the +dark to know whether we have lost a great poet or only a loyalist; +whether the “certain person” was a parliamentary <i>enragé</i>, or only +utterly reckless of a collection of poems “bigger than Dr. Donne’s!” +One poem of this great critic has come down to us, of which there is +more than one manuscript in the Museum, and one in the Ashmolean,—“A +Vision,” addressed to the king during his confinement, in which +he introduces his mother, and his wife, and his child. By the frequency +of these copies we find how much temporary passion gave an +interest to very indifferent writings. It is printed by Dr. Bliss in the +“Athenæ Oxonienses.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft12c55" id="ft12c55" href="#fa12c55"><span class="fn">12</span></a> Preface to the “History of the World.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft13c55" id="ft13c55" href="#fa13c55"><span class="fn">13</span></a> The name of Rawleigh proved too attractive for the booksellers to +escape their grasp; they have forged his name on various occasions, +and they have done worse; for they have unquestionably adulterated +his genuine works by admitting writings which he never could have +written. Rawleigh composed some “Instructions to his Son and to +Posterity.” The publisher of his “Remains” probably considered that +“The Dutiful Advice of a Loving Son to his Aged Father” must be +equally acceptable. Sir Walter had no aged father to address; and if +he had, he would not have written such a mean piece of puritanic insolence. +I suspect that “The Advice” was nothing but a parody on +“The Instructions” by some very witless scribbler.</p> + +<p><a name="ft14c55" id="ft14c55" href="#fa14c55"><span class="fn">14</span></a> Hume was bitterly attacked in the “Biographia Britannica” by a +Dr. Philip Nicoll, one of the writers calling himself one of the proprietors, +for his account of the conduct of Rawleigh—art. “Ralegh,” +note (cc). The spirit of nationality was rife in 1760, when we find +that a cruel apology is inflicted on Hume as “a foreigner! for this +writer may be allowed the privilege of that plea, as being born and +bred, and constantly living among a people, and under a constitution, of +a very different nature, genius, and temper from the English!” I +cannot believe that Hume, to remove the odium of Rawleigh’s death +from the Scottish monarch, purposely depreciated the hero; but probably +looking hastily into the account of Guiana, stuffed with the +monstrous tales of a lying Spaniard, and considering the whole to be a +gross artifice of the great navigator for an interested purpose, he gave +way to his impressions.</p> + +<p><a name="ft15c55" id="ft15c55" href="#fa15c55"><span class="fn">15</span></a> The Dean of Westminster was astonished at Rawleigh’s cheerfulness +on the day of his execution, who “made no more of his death +than if he had been to take a journey.” The divine was fearful that +this contempt of death might arise from “a senselessness of his own +state,” but the hero satisfied the dean that he died “very Christianly.” +Yet the gossip of Aubrey tells, that “his cousin Whitney +said, and I think it is printed, that he spake not one word of Christ, +but of the great and incomprehensible God with much zeal and adoration, +so that he concluded he was an a-Christ, not an a-theist.” In +this manner great men were then judged whenever they “ventured at +discourse which was unpleasant to the churchmen,” as this confused +recorder of curious matters has sent down to us. This indicates that +Socinian principles were appearing.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page617" id="page617"></a>617</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE OCCULT PHILOSOPHER, DR. DEE.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">At</span> the dawn of philosophy its dreams were not yet dispersed, +and philosophers were often in peril of being as +imaginative as poets. The arid abstractions of the schoolmen +were succeeded by the fanciful visions of the occult +philosophers; and both were but preludes to the experimental +philosophy of Bacon and Newton, and the metaphysics +of Locke. The first illegitimate progeny of science +were deemed occult and even magical; while astronomy +was bewildered with astrology, chemistry was running into +alchemy, and natural philosophy wantoned in the grotesque +chimeras of magical phantoms, the philosophers themselves +pursued science in a suspicious secresy, and were often +imagined to know much more than the human faculties +can acquire. These anagogical children of reverie, straying +beyond “the visible diurnal sphere,” elevated above humanity, +found no boundary which they did not pass beyond—no +profundity which they did not fathom—no altitude +on which they did not rest. The credulity of enthusiasts +was kept alive by the devices of artful deceivers, and +illusion closed in imposture.</p> + +<p>Shakspeare, in the person of Prospero, has exhibited +the prevalent notions of the judicial astrologer combined +with the adept, whose white magic, as distinguished from +the black or demon magic, holds an intercourse with purer +spirits. Such a sage was</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>—————transported,</p> +<p>And rapt in secret studies;</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">that is, in the occult sciences; and he had</p> + +<p class="center f90 ptb1">Volumes that he prized more than his dukedom.</p> + +<p class="noind">These were alchemical, astrological, and cabalistical treatises. +The magical part of <i>The Tempest</i>, Warton has +observed, “is founded on that sort of philosophy which +was peculiar to <span class="sc">John Dee</span> and his associates, and has been +called ‘the Rosicrucian.’”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page618" id="page618"></a>618</span></p> + +<p>Dr. <span class="sc">Dee</span> was a Theurgist, a sort of magician, who imagined +that they held communication with angelic spirits, +of which he has left us a memorable evidence. His personal +history may serve as a canvas for the picture of +an occult philosopher—his reveries, his ambition, and his +calamity.</p> + +<p>Dee was an eminent and singular person, more intimately +connected with the patronage of Elizabeth than perhaps +has been observed. It was the fate of this scholar to live in +the reigns of five of our successive sovereigns, each of whom +had some influence on his fortunes. His father, in the +household of Henry the Eighth, suffered some “hard-dealing” +from this imperious monarch injurious to the inheritance +of the son; the harshness of the sire was considered +by the royal children, for Edward granted a pension; +Mary, in the day of trial, was favourably disposed towards +the philosopher; and Elizabeth, a queen well known for +her penurious dispensations, at all times promptly supplied +the wants of her careless and dreamy sage.</p> + +<p>That decision of character which awaits not for any +occasion to reveal itself, broke forth in his college-days. +His skill in mathematics, and his astronomical observations, +had attracted general notice; and in his twentieth year, +Dee ventured on the novel enterprise of conferring personally +with the learned of the Netherlands. In the +reign of Henry the Eighth, little experimental knowledge +was to be gathered out of books. Like the ancient, our +insular philosophers early travelled to discover those +novelties in science which were often limited to the private +circle; there were no Royal or Antiquarian Societies, no +“Transactions” of science or the arts. Robert Fludd, +the great Rosicrucian, who became more famous than +Dee in occult studies, before he gave the world his elaborate +labours, passed six years in his travels in France, +Germany, and Italy.</p> + +<p>Our youthful sage on his return to his college presented +them with several curious instruments of science which +were not then always procurable in the shops of mechanics. +Philosophers often made as well as invented their implements. +The learned Mercator was renowned for his globes; +and mathematical instruments, of a novel construction, +were the invention of the scientific Frisias.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page619" id="page619"></a>619</span></p> + +<p>Our young philosopher, already suspected of a dangerous +intimacy with the astral influences, did not quiet +the murmurs by his improved dexterity in mechanics. +In the elation of youth, he astounded the marvelling +fellows of his college. Dee has himself confessed, that +“his boyish attempts and exploits scholastical may not +be meet to repeat.” In a lecture, Dee executed a piece of +mechanical invention which now would have been pantomimical, +but was then necromantic. When a greater +magician, Roger Bacon, by his art, had made the apparition +of a man to walk from the top of All-Hallows +steeple in Oxford to the top of St. Mary’s, this optical +illusion had endangered his life; and another great occult +philosopher set forth a compassionate apology for the +science of optics, but could only allege it was not magical, +though it seemed so. Two centuries and a half had not +sufficed to enlighten the fellows of a college at Oxford.</p> + +<p>Dee has suffered hard measure from those who have +only judged of him in the last days of his unprotected +distress. In his age, if we except mathematics, there +were few demonstrable truths in science; disguised as it +was by rank fables and airy hypotheses; nature was not +interpreted so often as she was misunderstood. The +ideal world seemed hardly more illusive than the material. +While his sovereign, and the nation, and foreigners were +looking up to the solitary sage, may we not pardon the +honest egotism which once declared, that if he had found +a Mæcenas, Britain would not have been destitute of an +Aristotle? <span class="sc">Bacon</span> had not yet appeared; and however +we may deem of his aspiration, we cannot censure his +judgment in discovering there was yet a vacant seat for +him who was worthy to fill it.</p> + +<p>Dee was an eminent mathematician, but the early bent +of his mind was somewhat fanciful; an inextinguishable +ambition to fix the admiration of the world worked on a +restless temperament and a long vagrant course of life; +and his generous impulses burst into the wild exuberances +of the reveries of astrology, alchemy, and the cabbala.</p> + +<p>The restlessness of a mind ever escaping from the +bounded present to the indefinite future, directed his +flight to the University of Louvain; there he attracted +a noble crowd from the court of Brussels, whom he +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page620" id="page620"></a>620</span> +charmed like a new oracle of science. Then he rambled +to Paris, to lecture on his favourite Euclid, explaining the +elements not only mathematically, but by their application +to natural philosophy, like another Pythagoras. A professorship +was offered him on any terms; and the curious +may still decide on his skill by a remarkable English +preface which Dee furnished to the translation of Euclid +by Sir Henry Billingsley. Admiration seemed more real +to Dee when he attracted it on different spots. Preceded +by his reputation, with a name which had received +the baptism of fame, he returned homewards, where he +had potent friends, in Sir John Cheke and in Cecil, and +others who had been his auditors or his pupils; and he +was pensioned by the youthful Edward.</p> + +<p>In the jealous reign of Mary, he gave umbrage by a +correspondence with the confidential servants of the +Princess Elizabeth; and Dee had now grown into such +repute for his occult sciences, that there was little difficulty +in accusing him of practising against the queen by +enchantments. Cast into prison, the magician witnessed +his “bedfellow,” a meek religious man, dragged to the +flames, an incident which long after he could not remember +without horror. The spirit of the sovereign fails +not to betray itself in each succeeding reign. Mary +bound men to the stake, Elizabeth sent them forth into +new seas and new lands, and the pacific James, turning +them into babbling polemics, only shed much human ink. +The inquisitors unexpectedly detected no act of treason; +but as possibly he might stand in peril of heresy, they +recommended that he should be placed under the surveillance +of Bishop Bonner, which probably was a royal +protection. It is evident that Mary was as favourably +disposed towards the philosopher as were her brother and +her sister; and the literary memorial Dee addressed to +the queen showed that he had no leisure to become an +heresiarch.</p> + +<p>Dee proposed “the recovery and preservation of ancient +writers and monuments.” These had been lamentably +dispersed and wasted by the spoilers of the dissolved monasteries. +The moment was favourable for the acquisition, +not only by obtaining manuscripts, but by procuring +transcripts of all which their possessors would not part +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page621" id="page621"></a>621</span> +with. In this memorial Dee has recorded, that Cicero’s +treatise “De Republica” perished at Canterbury, and it +was the single copy which authenticated its existence. +With such a collection, he proposed to erect “a library +royal”——a future Vatican, or a British Museum! A noble +design, when as yet no national institution for general +learning existed. This glorious opportunity was lost! +Governments rarely comprehend those prescient minds +which anticipate wants posterity cannot always supply.</p> + +<p>The early intercourse of the Princess Elizabeth with our +philosopher suffered no interruption, as we shall have +occasion to show, during her protracted reign, notwithstanding +the ill fame of his awful skill in the occult +sciences. We must throw ourselves into his times to +judge of the calamity of this celebrity. This, and the +succeeding age, were troubled by the faith of omens, +meteors, and of “day-fatality,” combined with the astral +influences, malignant witchcraft, and horrible magic. It +was only at the close of the seventeenth century, in 1682, +that Bayle ventured anonymously in his “Thoughts on +Comets,” cautiously to demonstrate that these fugitive +bodies in the heavens had no influence whatever over the +cabinets of princes! Our own historian, Arthur Wilson, +in describing “a blazing star,” opined that it was not +sent as “a flambeau” to usher in the funeral of the +simple queen of James the First; the Puritan had no +notion that heaven would compliment royalty; but he +was not the less alarmed for the Protestant interest, as it +concerned “the war then breaking out in Bohemia;” and +so difficult was it to decide between the two opinions, +that Rushworth, who wrote long afterwards, very carefully +chronicles both. Such was the philosophy of the +Elizabethan age, and truly much later, in France as well +as in England.</p> + +<p>It was therefore in the spirit of the age that the +minister of Elizabeth held a formal conference with Dr. +Dee to fix on a fortunate day for the coronation, and +which the sage opened to them on “the principles of the +most ancient astrologers;” and the Privy Council punctually +placed the crown on the head of the Queen of +England. Nor was this the only occult lore for which his +protection of the queen’s safety was earnestly sought. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page622" id="page622"></a>622</span> +Dee one morning was hastily summoned to prevent a sudden +mischief impending over her majesty’s person. A +great puppet of wax, representing the queen, was discovered +lying in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields, with a huge pin stuck +through its breast. Dee undertook to quiet “Her Majesty +and the Lords of the Honourable Privy-Council” within +a few hours, but first insisted that, in the solemn disenchantment, +Mr. Secretary Wilson should stand beside +him to witness that Dee only used “godly means.” It is +not in our histories of England that we learn the real +occasion of the coronation-day of Elizabeth, nor of the +panic of “the Privy-Council” on the incident in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields; +yet such domestic annals of a people enter +into the national character, and have sometimes strangely +influenced it.<a name="fa1c56" id="fa1c56" href="#ft1c56"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p>Though Dee was imbued with the occult sciences of his +age, he ardently cultivated arts and literature which would +have honoured him in the present. He had formed a +great library, rich in Irish and Welsh and other ancient +manuscripts, which probably no other person then possessed;<a name="fa2c56" id="fa2c56" href="#ft2c56"><span class="sp">2</span></a> +an observatory where he watched, to read in the +volume of the heavens; a laboratory of chemistry where +the furnace rarely ceased; and a collection of philosophical +instruments, too many of which were deemed magical. +All these attested his energetic pursuits, to the manifold +injury of a very moderate fortune, and the carelessness of a +life of abstraction and reverie.</p> + +<p>But his ambition had accomplished its proud object; +and on all public events wherein science was concerned, +recourse was had to the sage of Mortlake. Camden refers +to Dr. Dee’s astronomical observations of a new star which +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page623" id="page623"></a>623</span> +had gradually vanished, though the celestial apparition had +spread great fears and doubts; but our philosopher entertained +the Queen the length of three days with the phenomenon. +A more important labour was his reformation of +the Gregorian Calendar, which even later mathematicians +have deemed correct. The versatility of the pursuits of +this scientific man was as remarkable as their ingenuity. In +that reign of maritime enterprise many of our adventurers +had taken nominal possession of many new countries, and +the Queen had expressed a wish to learn their sites. One +day, in her garden at Richmond, Dee unrolled to the royal +eye a spacious scroll, hydrographical, geographical, and +historical, where the rivers were tracked, and the coasts +indented, and the authorities of the records inscribed on +its page, by which the sovereign founded her title to +dominions of which she had not always heard the names.<a name="fa3c56" id="fa3c56" href="#ft3c56"><span class="sp">3</span></a> +The genius of Dee was as erratic as the course of life he +shortly fell into, but it kept great objects in view; and, as +he projected a national library under Mary when literature +itself seemed lost, under Elizabeth, when “this incomparable +islandish monarchy” was menaced by the foreigner, he +investigated “the art of navigation,” and proposed “the +perpetual guard and service of a petty navy royal, continually +to be maintained without the Queen’s charges or +any unpleasant burdens to the Commons.” Our inventor +was anticipating our future national greatness, and such +minds are only comprehended when they can no longer +receive our gratitude.</p> + +<p>Our author published eight or ten learned works, and +left unfinished fifty, some far advanced.<a name="fa4c56" id="fa4c56" href="#ft4c56"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page624" id="page624"></a>624</span></p> + +<p>The imagination of Dee often predominated over his +science; while both were mingling in his intellectual +habits, each seemed to him to confirm the other. Prone +to the mystical lore of what was termed the occult sciences, +(which in reality are no sciences at all, since whatever remains +occult ceases to be science,) Dee lost his better +genius.</p> + +<p>The mathematician whom the sage Burleigh had valued +for his correction of the vulgar calendar must have +amazed that statesman by a proposal to search for a mine +for the royal service! claiming for his sole remuneration a +letter patent granting him all <i>treasure trove</i>, as, in the barbarous +law-French, is termed all wealth hidden in the +earth, which, no claimant appearing, becomes appropriated +by the sovereign. The mysterious agency of the <i>virgula +divina</i>, or the divining rod, was to open the undiscovered +mine, and to detect, in its progress, for the use of the +bearer, the unsunned gold or silver which some had been +foolish enough to inter, and not extract, from the earth.<a name="fa5c56" id="fa5c56" href="#ft5c56"><span class="sp">5</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page625" id="page625"></a>625</span></p> + +<p>The luminous genius who had illustrated the demonstrations +of Euclid was penetrating into the arcane caverns +of the cabbalists, and in a state of spiritual elevation fell into +many a dreamy trance. The soul of the mystic would +have passed into the world of spiritual existences, but he +was not yet blessed with theurgic faculties, and patiently +awaited for the elect. If Dee had many reveries, he had +also many disciples both of rank and of name. Whatever +a mind thus preoccupied and predisposed earnestly seeks, +it usually finds; its own infirm imagination aids the deception +of the artful. The elect spirit, long expected, was +at last found in the person of Edward Kelley, a young +apothecary, but an adept in the secret sciences: his services +were engaged at a moderate salary. Kelley had to +make his fortune.</p> + +<p>This <span class="sc">Kelley</span>, who afterwards became an English +alchemist, renowned among the votaries of the hermetic +art, and of whom many a golden legend is recorded with +which I dare not trust the reader, it appears, once lost +his ears at Lancaster for coining; the judges not perhaps +distinguishing the process by which the alchemist might +have transmuted the baser into the precious metal. This +neophyte, moreover, was a wizard—an aspirant in more +supernatural arts—an incantator—a spirit-seer! Once +with impious temerity he had ventured on questioning +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page626" id="page626"></a>626</span> +the dead! This “deed without a name” was actually +perpetrated amid the powers of darkness in the park of +Walton-in-the-dale, in the county of Lancaster. A recent +corpse was dragged forth from the churchyard; whether +the erected spectre made any sign of resuscitation is not +recorded, but it probably did—for it spoke! A voice was +heard delivering its short but awful responses, sufficient +for the evil curiosity of the guardian of a ward, eager to +learn the doomsday of that frail mortal’s existence.</p> + +<p>For this tale our antiquary <span class="sc">Weever</span> has been quipped +by our antiquary <span class="sc">Anthony</span> à <span class="sc">Wood</span>, for his excessive +credulity, as if Anthony would infer that he himself was +incredulous on all supernatural disclosures! The authority +was, however, unquestionable, for it came from the +agent himself in this dark work, the opener of the grave, the +spectator of the grim vaticinator, the listener to the sepulchral +voice. He had often related this violation of “God’s +acre” to many gentlemen in Lancashire, as well as to the +faithful scribe of our “Ancient Funeral Monuments.”</p> + +<p>Many strange unexplained accounts have come down to +us where <i>Voices</i> have been introduced, and it has been too +usual at once to suppose that the attestations were +nothing more than what Butler deems “solid lying.” +Leibnitz, a philosopher who seems to have delighted in +the wonderful, gives an account of a dog who spoke +different languages; the evidence is undeniable; and certain +it is that the docile animal at his master’s bidding +opened his mouth—and good French or Latin was distinctly +heard. When the astrologer Lilly assures us of +one of the magical crystal globes or mirrors from whence +the spirits absolutely gave responses, he has described their +tones: “They speak, like the Irish, <i>much in the throat</i>.” +“This, if it proves nothing else, will serve to show that +the Irish was the primitive language,” sarcastically observes +Gifford; but his acumen might have discovered that “it +proved” something else, and that Lilly here really delivered +a plain truth in this description of the <i>voices</i> which +gave the responses of the spirits.</p> + +<p>The art of the ventriloquist to convey his voice to the +place he wills—into the gaunt jaws of a dead man’s skull—into +the moveable lips of a tutored dog, or into the invisible +spirits of a magical globe—may be easily recognised. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page627" id="page627"></a>627</span> +Ventriloquism has been oftener practised than has been +known to the listeners. Speaking <i>much in the throat</i> +identifies that factitious voice, which, drawing the air into +the lungs, proceeds out of the thorax, and not from a lower +region, as the ancient etymology indicated. The Pythonesses +of the oracles exercised this faculty, and it was not +less skilfully practised by Edward Kelley.</p> + +<p>In the theurgic mysteries Dee would not deviate from +what he deemed “the most Christian courses;” fervent +orisons and other devotional ceremonies were to hallow the +cabbalistical invocations,<a name="fa6c56" id="fa6c56" href="#ft6c56"><span class="sp">6</span></a> and the astrological configurations +and hieroglyphical cakes of wax, and other magical +furniture. Among these was “a showstone,” or an +angelical mirror, placed on a pedestal.<a name="fa7c56" id="fa7c56" href="#ft7c56"><span class="sp">7</span></a> By patient inspection +at certain more blessed hours, the gifted seer +could descry the apparitions of spirits moving within its +cloudless orb; for at other times less propitious the surface +was indistinct, as if a misty curtain hung over it.<a name="fa8c56" id="fa8c56" href="#ft8c56"><span class="sp">8</span></a></p> + +<p>By what natural progress of incidents the bold inventive +genius of Kelley worked this fascination on the fatuity +of the visionary might be curious to develope; but he who +himself probably had been a dupe was the better adapted +to play the impostor. Strange as this incident may +appear to us, it was not rare at that day. A communion +with invisible spirits entered into the general creed +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page628" id="page628"></a>628</span> +throughout Europe, and crystal or beryl was the magical +medium; but as the gift of <i>seeing</i> what was invisible to +every one else was reserved for the elect, it was this circumstance +which soon led to impostures. Persons even of +ordinary rank in life pretended to be what they termed +<i>speculators</i>, and sometimes women were <i>speculatrices</i>. +Often by confederacy, and always by a vivacious fancy, +these jugglers poured out their several artful revelations. +We now may inscribe as an historical fact in the voluminous +annals of human folly, from which, however, we have +hardly yet wholly escaped, imaginary beings, and incantation +of spirits, and all spectral apparitions.</p> + +<p>Kelley was now installed into the office of <i>Skryer</i>; a +term apparently of Dee’s invention. Listening to the +revelations of angelic spirits and to the mysterious secret, +the alchemist inflamed the cabbalistical faith of the +visionary. It is certain that Dee now abandoned his +mundane studies, and for many a year, through some +thousands of pages, when Kelley was in the act of +“skrying,” sate beside “the show-stone,” the eager scribe +of those imagined conferences with “the spirits,” received, +to use his own words, “through the eye and the ear of +E. K.” Kelley was a person of considerable fancy, which +sometimes approached to a poetical imagination; the +masquerade of his spiritual beings is remarkable for its +fanciful minuteness. Voices were at times audible to Dee; +but the terrific noises of supernatural agency which sometimes +accompanied the visions could only have been heard +by the poetical ear of Kelley, though assuredly they shook +the doctor. I will give the reader a notion of one of these +scenes.</p> + +<p>E. K. looking into the show-stone, said, “I see a garland +of white rose-buds about the border of the stone: +they be well opened, but not full out.”</p> + +<p>Δ “The great mercies of God be upon us; we beseech +him to increase our faith.”</p> + +<p>E. K. “Amen! But while I consider these buds better +they seem rather to be white lilies.”</p> + +<p>Δ “The eternal God wipe away our blackness, and make +us purer and whiter than snow.”</p> + +<p>E. K. “They are 72 in number (angels), seeming with +their heads <i>alternatim</i>, seeming with their heads one +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page629" id="page629"></a>629</span> +towards me and one towards you. A voice cometh shouting +out from the lilies, and all the lilies are become on fire. +I hear a sound as though it were of many waters poured +or streaming down in the clifts of great rocks and mountains. +The noise is marvellous great; I hear it as afar off, +and through the stone, or as it were of a thousand water-mills +going together.”</p> + +<p><span class="sc">A Voice.</span> “<i>Est. Et quo modo est?</i>”</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Another Voice.</span> “<i>Male et in summo: et mensuratum est.</i>”</p> + +<p>E. K. “I hear a great roaring, as if it were out of a +cloud over one’s head, not perfectly like thunder.”</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Another Voice.</span> “<i>The Seal is broken!</i>”</p> + +<p>E. K. “Now I see beyond like a furnace-mouth as big +as four or five gates of a city, as if it were a quarter of a +mile off, with a horrible smother of smoke coming out of +it; and by it a great lake of pitch, and it bubbleth or simpereth +as water doth when it beginneth to seethe. There +standeth by the pit a white man in a white garment +tucked up; his face is marvellous fair: this white spiritual +creature saith, ‘My Lord, <i>Ascend</i>!’”</p> + +<p>E. K. “Now there cometh out a thing like a lion in the +hinder parts, and his fore parts hath many heads of divers +fashions upon one trunk; he hath like feathers on his neck; +his heads are seven, three on one side, and three on +another, and one in the middle, longer than the rest, lying +backward to his tailward. The white man giveth him a +bloody sword, and he taketh it in his fore-foot. The +white man tieth this monster’s fore-legs with a chain, that +he cannot go but as one shackled. Now he giveth the +monster a great hammer with a seal at that end where +the hammer striketh. The white man has cried with a +loud cry, ‘A horrible and terrible beast!’ The white man +taketh the hammer and striketh him in the forehead of +that head which is in the middle. Now all this vision is +vanished away: the stone is clear.”</p> + +<p>On another occasion E. K. says, “I hear a marvellous +noise, as of many mountains: which of the mouths do +speak I cannot discern. I hear a greater noise still; I +never heard any such noise; it is as if half the world were +rushing down a hill.”<a name="fa9c56" id="fa9c56" href="#ft9c56"><span class="sp">9</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page630" id="page630"></a>630</span></p> + +<p>During two years, in which Dee deserted his studies +and sacrificed his fortune, the name of Dee still remained +so eminent that learned foreigners in their visits to England +continued their inquiries after him. A Polish prince, +Albert a’Laski, who was received with high honours at +our court, applied to the Earl of Leicester for an introduction +to the great English philosopher, and the Earl +appointed a day to dine with Dr. Dee. Then it was that +our philosopher disclosed his mortifying condition, that +he could no longer entertain his noble guests without +selling his plate. The Queen instantly sent him forty +angels in gold. The illustrious Polander became a constant +visitor, was initiated into the theurgic mysteries; +there came a whisper from the unseen “spirits” that this +palatine of Siradia might yet be the elected King of +Poland! Ambitious princes are as credulous as ambitious +philosophers. The predictors of a crown, with a royal +exchequer from the alchemists, seduced the imagination, +and a’Laski invited the sages with their families to reside +at his castle.</p> + +<p>There the Polish lord seems to have wearied of the +angelic communications; he transferred them to the +Emperor, Rodolph, the Second, at Prague. In all the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page631" id="page631"></a>631</span> +courts of Europe, occult philosophers found a ready +admittance.</p> + +<p>Dee came auspiciously recommended to the emperor; +for our author had formerly dedicated to the emperor’s +father, Maximilian, his cabbalistical volume, which, when +admitted to a private interview with Rodolph, the sage +beheld lying open on the table.<a name="fa10c56" id="fa10c56" href="#ft10c56"><span class="sp">10</span></a> The introduction of an +author to an emperor by his own work may have something +really magical in its effect, provided the spell is not +disturbed by him who raised it. In an inflated oration +Dee announcing himself like a babbling missionary, as a +messenger from angels, the emperor curtly observed that +he did not understand Latin! The Pope’s Nuncio opportunely +demanded that the two English necromancers +should be questioned at Rome. Their flight relieved the +emperor. A Bohemian count rejoiced to receive the fugitives +at his castle of Trebona, where strange alchemical +projections of pewter flagons turned into silver, which the +goldsmiths of Prague bought, are attested solemnly by +Arthur Dee, the son of the doctor, to the philosophical +Sir Thomas Browne. This must have been that day of +elation which Dee entered in his diary. “Master Edward +Kelley did open the great secret to me. God be thanked!” +This Arthur Dee, indeed, remained an inveterate alchemist +all his life; but the man who in his medical character was +recommended by James the First to the Czar of Russia, +and, after several years’ residence at Moscow, on his return +home, was appointed physician to Charles the First, would +be a reputable witness in any court of law.<a name="fa11c56" id="fa11c56" href="#ft11c56"><span class="sp">11</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page632" id="page632"></a>632</span></p> + +<p>Dee and Kelley were abroad, living together, from 1583 +to 1589. Their adventures would form a romance, but I +am not writing one. Their condition was mysterious, as +were the incidents of their lives. Sometimes reduced to +the most pitiable necessities for “meat and drink;” at +other times we find Dee travelling with a princely equipage, +in three family coaches, a train of waggons, and an +escort of fifty horsemen. These extraordinary personages +long attracted the wonder of the Continent; but whatever +happened, their fortunes were variable. The pride of Dee +was sensitive—there are querulous entries in his diary—there +appeared some false play in his dangerous coadjutor—Kelley +was dropping hints that he lived in a miserable +state of delusion—preludes to the great rupture! Mephistopheles +menaced his victim. It is evident that Kelley +determined to break up the profitless partnership and set +up for himself. The noise the parties raised in their +quarrels on the Continent induced Elizabeth to command +their return.<a name="fa12c56" id="fa12c56" href="#ft12c56"><span class="sp">12</span></a> The alchemist did not return home with +Dee. He obtained the patronage of the emperor, and was +created a knight; but as usually happened with great +alchemists, Sir Edward Kelley was twice cast into prison. +Sir Edward, however, continued his correspondence with +Dee, and sent her majesty a timely information of some +design against her person. This adventurer may appear a +very suspicious personage. Lord Burleigh addresses this +“Baron of Bohemia,” as the minister designates him, with +high respect and admiration, for his “virtues, his wisdom, +and learning.” However, in the same confidential letter, +his lordship informs “the good knight” of some malicious +reports; that “he did not come home, because he could +not perform that, indeed, which has been reported of +him:” and others had gone so far as to deem Sir Edward +“an impostor.” This letter, written by Burleigh’s own +hand,<a name="fa13c56" id="fa13c56" href="#ft13c56"><span class="sp">13</span></a> shows the skilful falconer luring the bird. Dee +assured the queen that “the Baron of Bohemia” positively +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page633" id="page633"></a>633</span> +possessed the secret of the great operation. The +queen anxiously concerted measures to secure the escape +of Sir Edward Kelley from his second imprisonment. +Agents were despatched, the jailers were drugged, the +horses were awaiting for the fugitive; scaling the wall, he +fell, and died of his contusions, thus abruptly closing the +romance of a daring disturbed spirit.</p> + +<p>Dee returned to England in December, 1589, and presenting +himself to the queen at Richmond, was received, +as he was ever accustomed to be, with all graciousness. +But the philosopher, after the absence of six years, returning +to his studious abode, beheld it nearly dismantled; +his chemical apparatus, with all his scientific implements, +had been destroyed by a mob, and his library pillaged. +Every day this victim of science experienced the effects of +popular obloquy. He gathered up what fragments he +could; and again rapt in study, he again relapsed into his +old wants. The <i>res angusta domi</i> once more disturbed his +lares. Yet the queen was not unmindful of her philosopher; +Mr. Cavendish was despatched to assure him that +he might freely pursue his studies, and brought a royal +Christmas gift of two hundred angels in gold, to be renewed +with the season.</p> + +<p>But the old man craved more than an uncertain eleemosynary +bounty; his creditors multiplied, and the great +will forget the man whom they rarely see. Dee has feelingly +classed those who had outwearied his generous +nature, “the ungrateful and the thankless; and the +scorners and disdainers.” The royal hand alone could repair +his injuries, and vindicate his genius. Dee addressed +a memorial to the queen, praying that a commission +might be appointed to inquire into his case, which, as he +energetically expressed himself, had been “written with +tears of blood.” He did not draw up his petition as an +illustrious pauper, but as a claimant for services performed.</p> + +<p>A commission was immediately assigned, and it was +followed by a literary scene of singular novelty.</p> + +<p>Dee, sitting in his library, received the royal commissioners. +Two tables were arranged; on one lay all the +books he had published, with his unfinished manuscripts; +the most extraordinary one was an elaborate narrative of +the transactions of his own life. This manuscript his secretary +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page634" id="page634"></a>634</span> +read, and as it proceeded, from the other table +Dee presented the commissioners with every testimonial; +these vouchers consisted of royal letters from the queen, +and from princes, ambassadors, and the most illustrious +persons of England and of Europe: passports which traced +his routes, and journals which noted his arrivals and departures: +grants and appointments, and other remarkable +evidences; and when these were wanting, he appealed to +living witnesses.</p> + +<p>Among the employments which he had filled, he particularly +alludes to “a painful journey in the winter season, +of more than fifteen hundred miles, to confer with learned +physicians on the Continent, about her majesty’s health.” +He showed the offers of many princes to the English +philosopher to retire to their courts, and the princely establishment +at Moscow proffered by the czar; but he had +never faltered in his devotion to his sovereign. He appealed +to the clerks of the records of the Tower, and to +other antiquaries,<a name="fa14c56" id="fa14c56" href="#ft14c56"><span class="sp">14</span></a> for his free distribution of the manuscripts +which he had often discovered. He complains +that his house at Mortlake was too public for his studies, and +incommodious for receiving the numerous foreign literati +who resorted to him. Of all the promised preferments, +he would have chosen the Mastership of St. Cross for its +seclusion. Here is a great man making great demands, +but reposing with dignity on his claims; his wants were +urgent, but the penury was not in his spirit. The commissioners, +as they listened to this autobiography, must +often have raised their eyes in wonder on the venerable +and dignified author before them.</p> + +<p>The report was most favourable; the queen spontaneously +declared that Dee should have St. Cross, and the +incumbent might be removed to a bishopric. She allotted +him a considerable pension, and commanded Lady Howard +to write “words of comfort” to his wife; and further +sent an immediate supply by the hands of Sir Thomas +Gorge. The letter to his wife and the ready money were, +however, the only tangible gift, for St. Cross and the pension +he never received!</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page635" id="page635"></a>635</span></p> + +<p>Two years after we find Dee still memorialising. He +published “A Letter Apologetical, with a Plain Demonstration +and Fervent Protestation for the Course of the +Philosophical Studies of <i>a Certain Studious Gentleman</i>,” +1599. This was a vindication against the odium of magical +practices. At length, the archbishop installed him in the +wardenship of Manchester College; but though our adventurer +now drew into harbour, it was his destiny to live in +storms. The inmates always suspected him of concealing +more secrets of nature than he was willing to impart; and +the philosopher who had received from great men in +Europe such testimonies of their admiration, now was +hourly mortified by the petty malice of the obscure fellows +of his college. After several years of contention, he +resigned a college which no occult arts he possessed could +govern.</p> + +<p>His royal patroness was no more. The light and splendour +of the Court had sunk beneath the horizon; and in +the chill evening of his life the visionary looked up to +those who were not susceptible of his innocent sorcery. +Still retaining his lofty pretensions, he addressed the King, +and afterwards the parliament. He implored to be freed +from vulgar calumnies, and to be brought to trial, that a +judicial sentence might clear him of all those foul suspicions +which had clouded over his days for more than half +a century. It is to be regretted that this trial did not +take place; the accusations and the defence would have +supplied no incurious chapter in the history of the human mind. +A necromancer, and a favourite with Elizabeth, +was not likely to be tolerated in the Court of James the +First. Cecil, who when young had been taught by his +father to admire the erudition of the reformer of the +Gregorian calendar, was not the same person in the Court +of James the First as in that of Elizabeth; he resigned +the sage to his solitude, and, with the policy of the statesman, +only reasonably enough observed, that “Dee would +shortly go mad!”</p> + +<p>Misfortune could neither break nor change the ambitious +spirit of the deserted philosopher. He still dreamed +in a spiritual world which he never saw nor heard, and +hopefully went on working his stills, deprived of the powder +of projection. He sold his books for a meal; and if the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page636" id="page636"></a>636</span> +gossiper Aubrey may be trusted, in such daily distress he +may have practised on the simplicity of his humble neighbours, +by sometimes recovering a stolen basket of linen, +though it seems he refused the more solemn conjuration +of casting a figure for a stray horse! It is only in this +degradation of sordid misery that he is shown to us in +the <i>Alchemist</i> of Jonson. Weary, as he aptly expresses +himself, of “sailing against the wind’s eye,” in 1608, in the +eighty-first year of his age, he resolved to abandon his native +land. There was still another and a better world for the +pilgrim of science; and it was during the preparations to +rejoin his Continental friends in Germany that death +closed all future sorrows.</p> + +<p>It was half a century after the decease of Dr. Dee, +that the learned Meric Casaubon amazed the world by +publishing the large folio containing “A True and Faithful +Relation of what passed many Years between Dr. <span class="sc">John +Dee</span> and <span class="scs">SOME SPIRITS</span>,” 1659, from a copy in the Cottonian +Library. Yet is this huge volume but a torso; the +mighty fragments, however, were recovered from the mischances +of a kitchen fire, by Elias Ashmole, a virtuoso in +alchemy and astrology, who toiled and trembled over the +mystical and almost the interminable quires. Such is the +fate of books! the world will for ever want the glorious +fragments of Tacitus and Livy, but they have Dee passingly +entire.<a name="fa15c56" id="fa15c56" href="#ft15c56"><span class="sp">15</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Meric Casaubon</span> was the learned son of a more learned +father, but his erudition much exceeded his judgment. He +had written a treatise against the delusions of “Enthusiasm,” +from whence the author derived but little benefit; +for he demonstrated the existence of witches. Yet Meric +Casaubon, meek and honest, was solicited by Cromwell to +become his historiographer; but from principle he declined +the profit and the honour; during the Oliverian rule, he +became an hypochondriac, and has prefixed an hypochondriacal +preface to this unparalleled volume. His faith is +obsequious, and he confirms the verity of these conferences +with “spirits,” by showing that others before Dee had +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page637" id="page637"></a>637</span> +enjoyed such visitations. The fascination of a conference +with “spirits” must have entered into the creed even of +higher philosophers; for we are startled by discovering +that the great Leibnitz observed on this preface, that “it +deserves to be translated, <i>as well as the work itself</i>!”<a name="fa16c56" id="fa16c56" href="#ft16c56"><span class="sp">16</span></a></p> + +<p>When this book of marvels was first published, the +world was overcome by the revelations. Those saintly +personages, whose combined wisdom then assisted the +councils of England, Owen, Goodwin, Nye, and others of +that sort, held a solemn consistory for the suppression of +the book. They entertained a violent suspicion that the +whole of this incomprehensible jargon was a covert design +by some of the Church of England party, by a mockery +of their own style, to expose the whole sainthood, who pretended +so greatly to inspiration. But the bomb exploded +at once, and spread in all directions; and ere they could fit +and unfit their textual debates, the book had been eagerly +bought, and placed far beyond the reach of suppression.<a name="fa17c56" id="fa17c56" href="#ft17c56"><span class="sp">17</span></a></p> + +<p>The “True Relation of what passed many Years between +Dr. <span class="sc">Dee</span> and <span class="scs">SOME SPIRITS</span>,” long excited curiosity which +no one presumed to satisfy. During no less a period than +five-and-twenty years was Dee recording what he terms +his “Actions with Spirits,” for all was written by his +own hand. It would be an extravagant inference to conclude +that a person of blameless character and grave +habits would persevere through a good portion of his life +in the profitless design of leaving a monument of posthumous +folly solely to mystify posterity. Some fools of +learning, indeed, have busied themselves in forging antiquities +to bewilder some of their successors, but these +malicious labours were the freaks of idle hours, not the +devotion of a life. Even the imposture of Kelley will not +wholly account for the credulity of Dee; for many years +after their separation, and to his last days, Dee sought for +and at length found another “Skryer.”<a name="fa18c56" id="fa18c56" href="#ft18c56"><span class="sp">18</span></a> Are we to resolve +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page638" id="page638"></a>638</span> +these “Actions with Spirits” by the visions of another +sage, a person eminent for his science, and a Rosicrucian +of our own times,—that illustrious Emanuel Swedenborg, +who, in his reveries, communed with spirits and angels? +It would thus be a great psychological phenomenon which +remains unsolved.</p> + +<p>No one has noticed that a secret communication, uninterrupted +through the protracted reign of Elizabeth, +existed between the Queen and the philosopher. The +deep interest her Majesty took in his welfare is strikingly +revealed to us. Dee, in his frequent troubles, had constantly +recourse to the Queen, and she was ever prompt +at his call. The personal attentions of the Queen often +gratified his master-passion—often she sent kind messages +by her ladies and her courtiers—often was he received at +Greenwich, Richmond, and at Windsor; and he was singularly +honoured by her Majesty’s visits at his house in +Mortlake. The Queen would sometimes appear waiting +before his garden, when he would approach to kiss her +hand and solve some difficult inquiry she had prepared for +him. On one of these occasions Dee exhibited to her +Majesty a concave mirror; a glass which had provoked too +much awful discussion, but which would charm the Queen +while this Sir David Brewster of his age condescended to +explain the optical illusions. When Dee, in his travels, +was detained by sickness in Lorraine, her Majesty despatched +two of her own physicians to attend on this valued patient. +The Queen incessantly made golden promises of preferment; +many eminent appointments were fixed on. He +had, too, a patron in Leicester, the favourite of Elizabeth, +for in that terrible state-libel of “Leicester’s Commonwealth,” +among the instruments of that earl’s dark agencies +we discover “Dee and Allen, two atheists, for figuring +and conjuring,” that is, for astrological diagrams and magical +invocations!<a name="fa19c56" id="fa19c56" href="#ft19c56"><span class="sp">19</span></a> As, notwithstanding the profusion of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page639" id="page639"></a>639</span> +the Queen’s designs for his promotion, he received but little, +and that little late, the sincerity of the royal patron has +been arraigned. Mysterious as the philosopher’s cabbalistic +jargon with which he sometimes entertained her, her Majesty +seems to have remunerated empty phrases by providing +notional places; but Elizabeth may not have deserved this +hard censure; she unfailingly supplied her money-gifts, a +certain evidence of her sincerity! The truth seems to be +that royal promises may be frustrated by intervening competitors +and ministerial expedients. At the Court, the +evil genius of Dee stood ever by his side, saluting the +philosopher with no friendly voice, as “the arch-conjuror +of the whole kingdom!” The philosopher struggled with +the unconquerable prejudices of the age.</p> + +<p>If we imagine that Elizabeth only looked on Dee as the +great alchemist who was to replenish her coffers, or the +mystic who propounded the world of spirits, this would +not account for the Queen permitting Dee to remain +on the Continent during six years. Had such been the +Queen’s hopes, she would have hermetically sealed the +philosopher in his house at Mortlake, where in her rides to +Richmond she might conveniently have watched the progress +of gold-making and listened to the theurgic revelations. +Never would she have left this wanderer from +court to court, with the chance of conveying to other +princes such inappreciable results of the occult sciences.</p> + +<p>What then was the cause of this intimate intercourse of +the Queen with Dr. Dee; and what the occasion of that +mysterious journey of fifteen hundred miles in the winter +season to consult physicians on her Majesty’s health, of +which he had reminded the Queen by her commissioners, +but which they could not have comprehended? Did these +mysterious physicians reside in one particular locality; +and in the vast intervening distance were there no skilful +physicians equally able for consultation?</p> + +<p>A casual hint dropped by Lilly, the famous astrologer, +will unveil the mysterious life of Dee during his six years’ +residence abroad. Lilly tells us that “for many years, in +search of the profounder studies, he travelled into foreign +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page640" id="page640"></a>640</span> +parts; <i>to be serious</i>, he was Queen Elizabeth’s intelligencer, +and had a salary for his maintenance from the +secretaries of state.” Lilly, who is correct in his statements +except on the fabulous narratives of his professional +art, must have written from some fact known to him; and +it harmonizes with an ingenious theory to explain the unintelligible +diary of Dee, suggested by Dr. <span class="sc">Robert +Hooke</span>, the eminent mathematician.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Hooke</span>, himself a great inventor in science, entertained +a very high notion of the scientific character of Dee, and +of his curiosity and dexterity in the philosophical arts—optics, +perspective, and mechanics. Deeply versed in +chemistry, mathematics, and the prevalent study of astrology, +like another Roger Bacon (or rather a Baptista +Porta), delighting in the marvellous of philosophical +experiments, he was sent abroad to amuse foreign princes, +while he was really engaged by Elizabeth in state affairs. +Hooke, by turning over the awful tome, and comparing +several circumstances with the history of his own life, was +led to conclude that “all which relates to the spirits, +their names, speeches, shows, noises, clothing, actions, &c., +were all <i>cryptography</i>; feigned relations, concealing true +ones of a very different nature.” It was to prevent any +accident, lest his papers should fall into hostile hands, +that he preferred they should appear as the effusions of a +visionary, rather than the secret history of a real spy. +When the spirits are described as using inarticulate +words, unpronounceable according to the letters in which +they are written, he conjectured that this gibberish would +be understood by that book of Enoch which Dee prized so +highly, and which Hooke considered to contain the cypher. +Hooke, however, has not deciphered any of these inarticulate +words; but as the book of Enoch seems still to exist, +this Apocalypse may yet receive its commentator, a task +which it appears Dr. Adam Clarke once himself contemplated.<a name="fa20c56" id="fa20c56" href="#ft20c56"><span class="sp">20</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page641" id="page641"></a>641</span></p> + +<p>There is one fatal objection to this ingenious theory of +cryptography; this astounding diary opens long before +Dee went abroad, and was continued long after his return, +when it does not appear that he was employed in affairs of +state.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c56" id="ft1c56" href="#fa1c56"><span class="fn">1</span></a> About the same time, in 1574, Ruggeiri, a Florentine, was condemned +to the galleys for having conspired against the French monarch +in favour of the Duke of Alençon, his brother. The act of treason +consisted in making an image of wax, the perfect likeness of Charles +the Ninth, which had a heart pricked with pins. This was the exact +peril into which our English queen had been cast—probably by some +Romanist who fancied himself, or herself, to be an adept.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c56" id="ft2c56" href="#fa2c56"><span class="fn">2</span></a> A catalogue of Dr. Dee’s library, in his own handwriting, may be +found in Harl. MSS. 1879. Four thousand volumes, “abounding with +a curious harvest of books illustrative of the occult art,” but also +containing the ancient classics. He expended on his collections the considerable +sum of “thirty hundred pounds,” as he tells us, for at that +day they counted by “hundreds.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c56" id="ft3c56" href="#fa3c56"><span class="fn">3</span></a> These ingenious rolls, or maps, are now deposited among the Cottonian +manuscripts.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c56" id="ft4c56" href="#fa4c56"><span class="fn">4</span></a> The curious catalogue of both is found in the “Biog. Britannica.” +Dee would have printed more of his writings, but he found the printers +too often adverse to his hopes, as “few men’s studies were in such +matters employed.” One of his manuscripts was so voluminous, containing +an account of his “Inventions,” being “greater than the +English Bible,” that it appeared “so dreadful to the printers,” that +our philosopher postponed its publication to “a sufficient opportunity,” +which never occurred.</p> + +<p>These unfinished writings are scattered in the <span class="sc">Cottonian</span> and the +<span class="sc">Ashmolean</span> Collections, for their learned founders anxiously recovered +them.</p> + +<p>The naval project appears in a singular volume, entitled “General +and Rare Memorials pertaining to the Perfect Art of Navigation, 1577, +folio.” The author printed only one hundred copies, which he distributed +among confidential friends, patriotically refusing a considerable +offer for a copy by a foreign Power. This volume is said to be one of +the scarcest books in the English language. A copy at the British +Museum contains notes in the handwriting of Dee himself, fraught with +his usual sorrows; his representation of his affairs is not luminous, and +seems written with a dulled spirit—querulous and involved.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c56" id="ft5c56" href="#fa5c56"><span class="fn">5</span></a> The mystery of the divining rod is as ancient as the days of +Cicero. The German miners introduced its practice among our Cornish +miners. Childrey, in his “Britannia Baconiana, or the Natural Rarities +of England, Scotland, and Wales,” 1661, cautiously describes, as a +disciple of Bacon should, its effects on mines of lead in Somersetshire. +Boyle and the Royal Society were perplexed by the evidence. We have +accounts from some, unimpeachable for integrity, of the agitation of +the divining rod as authentic and incomprehensible as any recorded of +animal magnetism. A few years ago, a learned writer in the “Quarterly +Review” surprised us by reviving the phenomenon, in the history +of it, as performed by a lady of distinction, in the present day, +searching for a spring of water.</p> + +<p>Many frauds have succeeded by this pretended rod of divination. +The reader may consult Le Brun’s “Histoire Critique des Pratiques +Superstitieuses” for “La Baguette;” but, above all, a philosophical +article by the scientific <span class="scs">BIOT</span>, in “Biog. Universelle,” art. <i>Ayman +Jacques</i>. [An account of its use at Freiburg in discovering silver +<span class="correction" title="amended from imines">mines</span>, and a picture of its form, may be seen in Dr. Brown’s “Travels +in Germany,” 4to, 1677, p. 136.]</p> + +<p>The divining rod consists simply of a hazel bough forked: the bearer +firmly grasps the two pointed ends, holding it before him; it must +bend, or become agitated, when it indicates the spot which conceals a +spring of water, or buried metal. In the hands of a susceptible agent +tremulous nerves, in the solemn operation, would be likely to communicate +their irritability to the hazel bough. But who has enjoyed the +magic of the <i>treasure trove</i>? The divining-rod, described as the Mosaical +rod, furnishes an incident in “The Antiquary” of Sir Walter +Scott, which was probably borrowed from an amusing incident in the +Life of Lilly the astrologer; where we discover that David Ramsay, +his majesty’s clockmaker, having heard of a great treasure in the +Cloyster of Westminster Abbey, came at midnight, accompanied by one +of the elect, with the Mosaical rods—“on the west side of the Cloyster +the hazle rods turned over another.” David Ramsay had brought a +great sack to hold the treasure, when suddenly all the demons issued +out of their beds in a storm, that—“we verily believed the west end +of the church would have fallen.” The torches were suddenly extinguished, +the rods would not move, and they returned home faster than +they came.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c56" id="ft6c56" href="#fa6c56"><span class="fn">6</span></a> Sloane MSS., 3191.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c56" id="ft7c56" href="#fa7c56"><span class="fn">7</span></a> There can be no doubt of the reality of all these magical apparatus, +for we actually possess them. The magical mirror, having lost +its theurgic enchantment, finally was placed among the curiosities of +the late Earl of Oxford. Lysons describes it as a round piece of volcanic +glass finely polished—some one calls it Kennel coal. The hieroglyphical +cakes of wax were deposited at the British Museum, probably +at the time the precious manuscripts of Dee’s conferences with “the +Spirits” were so carefully lodged in the Cottonian Collections.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c56" id="ft8c56" href="#fa8c56"><span class="fn">8</span></a> This superstition retains all its freshness in the East. A magician +at Cairo recently,</p> + +<p>“Taking in of <span class="scs">SHADOWS WITH A GLASS</span>”—(<i>The Alchemist of Jonson</i>), +has, I believe, been recorded by a noble lord; having startled the +lookers-on with one shadow, painfully recognised, and another of a +great <i>bibliophile</i>, who, seen in the glass, walking in a garden with his +hands full of books, was supposed to be the worthy Archdeacon +Wrangham. I must however add, that the same magician showed +himself very dull to a dear friend of mine; and that his “speculator,” +a boy called, apparently accidentally, from the street, only displayed +his gift in nonsensical mendacity.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c56" id="ft9c56" href="#fa9c56"><span class="fn">9</span></a> In the golden days of animal magnetism, more than forty years +ago, I heard many tales, and visited many scenes, where there must +have been much imposture practised, more credulity contagious, and +much which I never could comprehend. In the magnetic sleep, where +the body seemed extinct—and in the luminous crisis, where the soul +was wakeful in all its invisible operations—the inspired communicant, +undisturbed by the sly contrivances of the unbeliever, seemed transported +when and where they listed. A Mr. Baldwin, in 1795 our +consul at Alexandria, in search of what he called the Divinity of +Truth, imagined he had found it in this new and mystical science. +Always seeking for fitting subjects, a cunning Arab long served his +purpose on ordinary matters, but it was his fortune to fall on an Italian +wanderer far more susceptible of the magnetic influence. For three +years, in his own abode, he has chronicled down “The Sittings,” as he +calls them, where, in the magnetic sleep, the communicant poured forth +in verse and prose mysteries and revelations. On his return to England, +Mr. Baldwin printed, by Bulmer, in an unpublished quarto, these +“Sittings,” in the native language of the inspired; as the subject was an +improvisatore, it probably cost him little to charm Mr. Baldwin in +“celestial colloquy sublime” with answers to most unanswerable inquiries; +and descriptions of ecstatic scenes which made the pen tremble +with wonder and delight in the hands of the infatuated scribe. +Baldwin, with the faith of Dee, wrote down the revelations of <i>his</i> +Edward Kelley.</p> + +<p><a name="ft10c56" id="ft10c56" href="#fa10c56"><span class="fn">10</span></a> This volume is Dee’s “Monas Hieroglyphica, Mathematice, Cabalistice, +et Anagogice Explicata,” 1564; a book which Elizabeth lamented +she could not comprehend. It is reprinted in the “Theatrum Chymicum +Britannicum” of that lover of the occult sciences, <span class="sc">Elias Ashmole</span>.</p> + +<p><a name="ft11c56" id="ft11c56" href="#fa11c56"><span class="fn">11</span></a> The often-repeated tales of this vanished alchemy may startle the +incredulous; but the dupes and the knaves have been so numerous that +we cannot distinguish between them. Sir Humphry Davy assured me +that making gold might be no impossible thing, though, publicly divulged, +a very useless discovery. Metals seem to be composite bodies, +which nature is perpetually preparing, and it may be reserved for the +future researchers in science to trace, and perhaps to imitate, some of +these curious operations. Dr. Girtanner of Gottingen predicted, not +many years ago, that “In the nineteenth century the transmutation of +metals would be generally practised;” a set of kitchen utensils in gold, he +assures us, would save us from the deathly oxides of copper, &c.</p> + +<p><a name="ft12c56" id="ft12c56" href="#fa12c56"><span class="fn">12</span></a> Harl. MSS., 6986 (26)—A letter from Dr. Dee to the Queen, congratulating +her on the defeat of the Armada. He declares that he is +ready with Kelley, and their families, to return home. Dated Nov. +1588.</p> + +<p><a name="ft13c56" id="ft13c56" href="#fa13c56"><span class="fn">13</span></a> This letter, from the Burleigh Papers, is printed by Strype.—<i>Annals</i>, +iv. 3.</p> + +<p><a name="ft14c56" id="ft14c56" href="#fa14c56"><span class="fn">14</span></a> We have several manuscript letters which passed between <span class="sc">Dee</span> and +<span class="sc">Stowe</span>. They show all the warmth of their literary intercourse. Dee +offers his present aid, and promises his future assistance.</p> + +<p><a name="ft15c56" id="ft15c56" href="#fa15c56"><span class="fn">15</span></a> The curious may find a copious narrative of the recovery of these +manuscripts, written by Ashmole himself, printed in Ayscough’s Catalogue +of MSS., p. 371, where also he is referred to the autographs of +Dee, in the British Museum.</p> + +<p><a name="ft16c56" id="ft16c56" href="#fa16c56"><span class="fn">16</span></a> “General Dictionary,” by <span class="sc">Birch</span>, art. <i>Meric Casaubon</i>—Note B.</p> + +<p><a name="ft17c56" id="ft17c56" href="#fa17c56"><span class="fn">17</span></a> This literary anecdote I derive from a manuscript and contemporary +note in the printed copy at the British Museum.</p> + +<p><a name="ft18c56" id="ft18c56" href="#fa18c56"><span class="fn">18</span></a> This office of “skryer” is ambiguous—no dictionary will assist +us. “In the year before he died, 1607, Dee procured one Bartholomew +Hickman to serve him <i>in the same manner</i> as Kelley had done.”—<i>Biog. +Brit.</i>, v. 43. In what manner? Did Hickman pretend to descry +the “actions of the spirits” in the show-stone, or only to drudge +on the powder of projection? Forty years have elapsed since I turned +over the interminable “Diary,” and now my eyes are dim and my +courage gone. I suspect, however, that that magical herb—eye-bright, +however administered, will fail to penetrate through the darkness +which surrounds the chaotic mass of manuscript.</p> + +<p><a name="ft19c56" id="ft19c56" href="#fa19c56"><span class="fn">19</span></a> It requires a late posterity to correct the gross prejudices of contemporaries; +it was not the least of the honours which Dee enjoyed to +have been closely united with the studies of the “atheist” Allen, +“the father of all learning and virtuous industry, infinitely beloved and +admired by the court and the university.” The ardent eulogy of Wood +is earnest.—<i>Athen. Oxon.</i>, ii. 541.</p> + +<p><a name="ft20c56" id="ft20c56" href="#fa20c56"><span class="fn">20</span></a> “As it is asserted that the six books of Mysteries transcribed +from the papers of Dr. John Dee, by Elias Ashmole, Esqre., preserved +in the Sloane Library, (Plutarch <span class="scs">XVI.</span>, <span class="sc">G</span>,) are a collection of papers relative +to State Transactions between Elizabeth, her Ministers, and different +Foreign Powers, in which Dr. Dee was employed sometimes as +an official agent openly, and at other times as a Spy, I purpose to make +an extract from the whole work, and endeavour, if possible, to get +a key to open the Mysteries. A. C.”—<i>Cat. of Adam Clarke’s +MSS.</i></p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page642" id="page642"></a>642</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE ROSACRUSIAN FLUDD.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">The</span> confraternity of the Rose-cross long attracted +public notice. Congenial with the more ancient freemasonry, +it was probably designed for a more intellectual +order; it was entitled “The Enlightened,” “The Immortal,” +and “The Invisible.” Its name has been frequently +used to veil mysteries, to disguise secret agents, +and to carry on those artful impostures which we know +have been practised on infirm credulity by the dealers in +thaumaturgical arts, to a very recent period. The modern +illuminati, of whom not many years past we heard so +much, are conjectured to have branched out of the sublime +society of the Rose-cross.</p> + +<p>This mystical order sprung up among that mystical +people, the Germans, who are to this day debating on its +origin, for, like other secret societies, its concealed source +eludes the search. It was at the beginning of the seventeenth +century that a German divine, John Valentine +Andreæ, a scholar of enlarged genius, in his controversial +writings amused his readers by certain mysterious allusions +to a society for the regeneration of science and religion; in +the ambiguity of his language, it remained doubtful +whether the society was already instituted, or was to be +instituted. Suddenly a new name was noised through +Europe, the name of Christian Rosencreutz, the founder +three centuries back of a secret society, and a eulogy of the +order was dispersed in five different languages.</p> + +<p>The name of the founder seemed as mystical as the +secret order, the Rose and the Cross.<a name="fa1c57" id="fa1c57" href="#ft1c57"><span class="sp">1</span></a> The rose, with +the Germans, which was placed in the centre of their ceiling, +was the emblem of domestic confidence, whence we +have our phrase “under the rose;” and the cross, the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page643" id="page643"></a>643</span> +consecrated symbol of Christianity, described the order’s +holy end; such notions might suit a mystical divine.<a name="fa2c57" id="fa2c57" href="#ft2c57"><span class="sp">2</span></a> In +the legend, the visionary founder was said to have brought +from Palestine all the secrets of nature and of art, the +elixir of longevity, and the stone so vainly called philosophical.<a name="fa3c57" id="fa3c57" href="#ft3c57"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> + +<p>If to some the society had a problematical existence, +others were convinced of its reality; learned men became +its disciples, its defenders; and one eminent person published +its laws and its customs. Michael Maier, the physician +of the Emperor Rodolph, who had ennobled him for +his services, having become initiated by some adepts, +travelled over all Germany seeking every brother, and from +their confidential instruction collected their laws and +customs. At the same time, <span class="sc">Robert Fludd</span>, a learned +physician of our own country, distinguished for his science +and his mysticism, introduced Rosacrusianism into England; +its fervent disciple, he furnished an apology for the +mystical brotherhood when it seemed to require one.</p> + +<p>The arcane tomes of Fludd often spread, and still with +“the Elect” may yet spread, an inebriating banquet of +“the occult sciences”—all the reveries of the ancient +Cabalists, the abstractions of the lower Platonists, and +the fancies of the modern Paracelsians, all that is mysterious +and incomprehensible, with the rich condiment of +science. There are some eyes which would still pierce into +truths muffled in jargon and rhapsody, and dwell on the +images of realities in the delirious dreams of the learned.</p> + +<p>Two worlds, “The Macrocosm,” or the great visible +world of nature, and “the Microcosm,” or the little +world of man, form the comprehensive view, designed, to +use Fludd’s own terms, as “an Encyclophy, or Epitome +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page644" id="page644"></a>644</span> +of all arts and sciences.”<a name="fa4c57" id="fa4c57" href="#ft4c57"><span class="sp">4</span></a> This Rosacrusian philosopher +seeks for man in nature herself, and watches that creative +power in her little mortal miniatures. In his Mosaic +philosophy, founded on the first chapter of Genesis, our +seer, standing in the midst of Chaos, separates the three +principles of the creation: the palpable darkness—the +movement of the waters—at length the divine light! The +corporeity of angels and devils is distinguished on the +principle of <i>rarum et densum</i>, thin or thick. Angelic +beings, through their transparency, reflect the luminous +Creator; but, externally formed of the most spiritual part +of water or air, by contracting their vaporous subtilty, +may “visibly and organically talk with man.” The devils +are of a heavy gross air; so Satan, the apostle called “the +prince of air;” but in touch they are excessive cold, because +the spirit by which they live—as this philosopher proceeds +to demonstrate—drawn and contracted into the centre, the +circumference of dilated air remains icy cold. From angels +and demons, the Rosacrusian would approach even to the +Divinity; calculating the infinity by his geometry, he reveals +the nature of the Divine Being, as “a pure monad, +including in itself all numbers.” A paradoxical expression, +lying more in the words than the idea, which called +down an anathema on the impiety of our Theosophist, for +ascribing “composition unto God.” The occult philosopher +warded off this perilous stroke. “If I have said that +God is in composition, I mean it not as a part compounding, +but as the sole compounder, in the apostolic style, +‘He is over all, and in all.’” He detects the origin of +evil in the union of the sexes; the sensual organs of the +mother of mankind were first opened by the fruit which +blasted the future human race. He broods over the mystery +of life—production and corruption—regeneration and +resurrection! On the lighter topics of mortal studies he +displays ingenious conceptions. The title of one of his +treatises is “De Naturæ Simia,” or “The Ape of Nature,”—that +is, <span class="sc">Art</span>! a single image, but a fertile principle.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page645" id="page645"></a>645</span></p> + +<p>Sympathies and antipathies, divine and human, are +among the mysteries of our nature. By two universal +principles, the boreal, or condensing power of cold, and the +austral, or the rarefaction of heat, impulsion and repulsion, +our physician explains the active operations in the human +frame—notions not wholly fanciful; but, at once medical +and magical, this doctrine led him into one of the most +extraordinary conceptions of mystical invention, yet which +long survived the inventor; so seductive were the first +follies of science.</p> + +<p>Man exists in the perpetual opposition of sympathies +and antipathies; and the Cabalist in the human frame +beheld the contests of spirits, benevolent or malign, trooping +on the four viewless winds which were to be submitted +to his occult potentiality. Nor was the physician unsuccessful, +for in the sweetness of his elocution, pleasant +fancies and elevated conceptions operated on the charmed +faith of his imaginative patients.</p> + +<p>The mysterious qualities of the magnet were held by +Fludd as nothing less than an angelical effluvia. In his +“Mystic Anatomy,” to heal the wounds of a person miraculously, +at any distance, he prescribed a Cabalistical, +Astrological, and Magnetic Unguent. A drop of blood +obtained from the wound mixed with this unguent, and +the unguent applied to the identical instrument which +inflicted the wound, would, however distant the patient resided, +act and heal by the virtue of sympathy. This singular +operation was ludicrously named “the weapon-salve.”</p> + +<p>Fludd not only produces the attestations of eminent +persons, who, in charity we may believe, imagined that +they had perfectly succeeded in practising his “mystic +anatomy,” but he also alleges for its authority the practice +of Paul, who cured diseases by only requiring that the +handkerchiefs and aprons of patients should be brought +to him. Hardly a single extravagance of the Paracelsian +fancy of Fludd but rests on some scriptural authority,—on +some fictitious statement,—or some credulous imagination. +Fludd, indeed, as our plain Oxford antiquary +shrewdly opineth, was “strangely profound in obscure +matters.”<a name="fa5c57" id="fa5c57" href="#ft5c57"><span class="sp">5</span></a> A curious tract was published by <span class="sc">Fludd</span>, to +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page646" id="page646"></a>646</span> +clear himself from the odium of magical dealings, in +reply to a fiery parson, one Foster, who took an extraordinary +mode of getting his book read, by nailing it +at the door of the Rosacrusian at night, that it might be +turned over in the morning by the whole parish! This +was “A Sponge to Wipe away the Weapon-Salve,” +showing, that “to cure by applying the salve to the +weapon, is magical and unlawful.” The parson evidently +supposed that it did cure! Fludd replied by “The +Squeezing of Parson Foster’s Sponge. 1631, 4to.”—“to +crush and squeeze his sponge, and make it by force to +vomit up again the truth which it hath devoured.” Our +sage throughout displays the most tempered disposition, +and the most fervent genius; but the nonsense is equally +curious.</p> + +<p>We smile at the <i>sympathy</i> of “the weapon-salve;” but +we must not forget that this occult power was the +received philosophy of the days of our Rosacrusian. +Who has not heard of “the sympathetic powder” of Sir +Kenelm Digby, by which the bloody garter of James +Howell was cured, and consequently its pleasant owner, +without his own knowledge? or of the “sympathetic +needles” of the great author of “Vulgar Errors,” by +which, though somewhat perplexed, he concluded that +two lovers might correspond invisibly? and, above all +others, the warts of the illustrious Verulam, by sympathy +with the lard which had rubbed them, wasting away as +the lard rotted when nailed on the chamber window? +Lord Bacon acquaints us that “It is constantly received +and avouched, that <i>the anointing of the weapon that +maketh the wound</i> will heal the wound itself.”<a name="fa6c57" id="fa6c57" href="#ft6c57"><span class="sp">6</span></a> Indeed, +Lord Bacon himself had discovered as magical a sympathy, +for he presented Prince Henry, as “the first fruits of his +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page647" id="page647"></a>647</span> +philosophy, <i>a sympathising stone</i>, made of several mixtures, +to know the heart of man,” whose “operative gravity, +magnetic and magical, would show by the hand that held +it whether the heart was warm and affectionate.” The +philosophy of that day was infinitely more amusing than +our own “exact” sciences!</p> + +<p>We may smile at jargon in which we have not been +initiated, at whimsical combinations we do not fancy, at +analogies where we lose all semblance, and at fables which +we know to be nothing more; but we may credit that +these mystical terms of the learned <span class="sc">Fludd</span> conceal many +profound and original views, and many truths not yet +patent. It is enough that one of the deepest scholars, +our illustrious <span class="sc">Selden</span>, highly appreciated the volumes +and their author. It is indeed remarkable that Bayle, +Niceron, and other literary historians, have not ventured +to lay their hands on this ark of theosophical science; +too modest to dispute, or too generous to attack: unlike +the great adversary of Fludd, Père Mersenne, who denounced +the Rosacrusian to Europe as a caco-magician, +who had ensured for himself perdition throughout +eternity.</p> + +<p>Père Mersenne, at Paris, stood at the head of the +mathematical class, the early companion, and to his last +day the earnest advocate, of Descartes. That great philosopher +was secretly disposed not to reject all the reveries +of the occult philosophers. It is certain that he had +listened with complacency to the universal elixir, which +was to preserve human life to an indefinite period; and +one of his disciples, when he heard of his death, persisted +in not crediting the account. His own vortices displayed +the picturesque fancy of a Rosacrusian; and moreover, +likewise, he was calumniated as an atheist. Père Mersenne +not only defended his friend, but, to clear the French +philosopher of any such disposition, he attacked the Rosacrusians +themselves. Too vehement in his theological +hatreds, he dared to publish too long a nomenclature +of the atheists of his times;<a name="fa7c57" id="fa7c57" href="#ft7c57"><span class="sp">7</span></a> and among Machiavel, +Cardan, Campanella, and Vanini, appears the name of our +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page648" id="page648"></a>648</span> +pious Fludd. Mersenne expressed his astonishment that +James the First suffered such a man to live and to +write.</p> + +<p>On this occasion Fludd was more fortunate than Dee. +He obtained an interview with his learned sovereign, to +clear himself of “the Frier’s scandalous report.” He +found his Majesty “regally learned and gracious; excellent +and subtile in his inquisitive objections, and instead +of a check, I had much grace and honour from him, and I +found him my kingly patron all the days of his life.” +Mersenne, notwithstanding the odium he cast on the +personal character of Fludd, was willing to bribe the +Heresiarch, for he offered to unite with him in any work +for the correction of science and art, provided Fludd +would return to that Catholic creed which his ancestors +had professed. “I tell this to my countrymen’s shame,” +exclaims Fludd, “who, instead of encouraging me in my +labours, as by letters from Polonia, Suevia, Prussia, +Germany, Transylvania, France, and Italy, I have had, +do pursue me with malice, which when a learned German +heard of, it reminded him of the speech of Christ, that +‘no man is a prophet in his own country.’ Without any +bragging of my knowledge, be it spoken, I speak this +feelingly; but a guiltless conscience bids me be patient.”</p> + +<p>The writings of Fludd are all composed in Latin; it is +remarkable that the works of an English author, residing +in England, should be printed at Frankfort, Oppenheim, +and Gouda. This singularity is accounted for by the +author himself. Fludd, in one respect, resembled Dee; +he could find no English printers who would venture on +their publication. When Foster insinuated that his +character as a magician was so notorious, that he dared +not print at home, Fludd tells his curious story: “I sent +my writings beyond the seas, because our home-born +printers demanded of me five hundred pounds to print +the first volume, and to find the cuts in copper; but +beyond the seas it was printed at no cost of mine, and as +I could wish; and I had sixteen copies sent me over, with +forty pounds in gold, as an unexpected gratuity for it.” +It is evident that, throughout Europe, they were infinitely +more inquisitive in their occult speculations than +we in England; and however this may now seem to our +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page649" id="page649"></a>649</span> +credit, certainly our incuriosity was not then a consequence +of our superior science, for he whose mighty mind was to +give a new and enduring impulse to the study of nature, +who was to teach us how to philosophize, and was now +drawing us out of this dark forest of the human intellect +into the lucid expanse of his creative mind, was himself +still fascinated by magical sympathies, surmised why +witches eat human flesh, and instructed us in the doctrine +of spirits, angelic and demoniac. Bacon would have +elucidated the theory of Dee, and the imaginative mysticism +of the Rosacrusian.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c57" id="ft1c57" href="#fa1c57"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Fuller’s amusing explanation of the term Rosa-crusian was written +without any knowledge of the supposititious founder. He says—“Sure +I am that a Rose is the sweetest of flowers, and a Cross accounted +the sacredest of forms and figures, so that much of eminency +must he imported in their composition.”—<i>Fuller’s Worthies.</i></p> + +<p><a name="ft2c57" id="ft2c57" href="#fa2c57"><span class="fn">2</span></a> The chemists, in the style of their arcana, explain the term by the +mystical union, in their secret operations, of the dew and the light. +They derive the dew from the Latin <i>Ros</i>, and, in the figure of a cross +X, they trace the three letters which compose the word <i>Lux</i>—light. +Mosheim is positive in the accuracy of his information. I would not +answer for my own, though somewhat more reasonable; it is indeed +difficult to ascertain the origin of the name of a society which probably +never had an existence.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c57" id="ft3c57" href="#fa3c57"><span class="fn">3</span></a> In the Harleian MSS., from 6481 to 6486, are several Rosacrusian +writings, some translated from the Latin by one Peter Smart, and +others by a Dr. Rudd, who appears to have been a profound adept.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c57" id="ft4c57" href="#fa4c57"><span class="fn">4</span></a> These are his words in reply to his adversary Foster, the only +work which he published in English, in consequence of the attack +being in the vernacular idiom. The term here introduced into the language +is, perhaps, our most ancient authority for the modern term +<i>Encyclopædia</i>, which Chambers curtailed to <i>Cyclopædia</i>.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c57" id="ft5c57" href="#fa5c57"><span class="fn">5</span></a> The collected writings of <span class="sc">Robert Fludd</span>, under the latinised name +“De Fluctibus,” should form six volumes folio. His “Philosophia +Mosaica” has been translated, 1659, fo. He makes Moses a great +Rosacrusian. The secret brotherhood must be still willing to give +costly prices for their treasure. At the recent sale of Mr. Hibbert, the +“Opera” of Fludd obtained twenty pounds! The copy was doubtless +“very fine,” but the price was surely cabalistical. Nor are these +tomes slightly valued on the Continent.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c57" id="ft6c57" href="#fa6c57"><span class="fn">6</span></a> “Lord Bacon’s Natural History,” Cent. x. 998.—“In this experiment, +upon the relation of men of credit, though myself as <i>yet</i> am +not fully inclined to believe it,” his lordship gives ten notes or points as +extraordinary as “the ointment” itself.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c57" id="ft7c57" href="#fa7c57"><span class="fn">7</span></a> This list appeared in some Commentaries on Genesis, but was +suppressed in most of the copies; the whole has, however, been recovered +by Chauffepié in his Dictionary.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page650" id="page650"></a>650</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">BACON.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">In</span> the age of Elizabeth, the English mind took its first +bent; a new-born impulse in the nation everywhere was +working out its religion, its legislation, and its literature. +In every class of genius there existed nothing to copy; +everything that was to be great was to find a beginning. +Those maritime adventurers in this reign who sailed to +discover new regions, and those heroes whose chivalric +spirit was errant in the marshes of Holland, were not +more enterprising than the creators of our peaceful literature.</p> + +<p>Among these first <span class="sc">Inventors</span>—our epical <span class="sc">Spenser</span>, +our dramatic <span class="sc">Shakespeare</span> and <span class="sc">Jonson</span>, our <span class="sc">Hooker</span>, +who sounded the depths of the origin of law, and our +<span class="sc">Rawleigh</span>, who first opened the history of mankind—at +length appeared the philosopher who proclaimed a new +philosophy, emancipating the human mind by breaking +the chains of scholastic antiquity. He was a singular +being who is recognised without his name.</p> + +<p>Aristotle, in taking possession of all the regions of +knowledge, from the first had assumed a universal monarchy, +more real than that of his regal pupil, for he had +subjugated the minds of generation after generation. +Through a long succession of ages, and amid both extinct +and new religions, the writings of the mighty Stagyrite, +however long known by mutilated and unfaithful versions, +were equally studied by the Mahometan Arabian and the +Rabbinical Hebrew, and, during the scholastic ages, were +even placed by the side, and sometimes above, the Gospel; +and the ten categories, which pretended to classify every +object of human apprehension, were held as another revelation. +Centuries succeeded to centuries, and the learned +went on translating, commenting, and interpreting, the +sacred obscurity of the autocratical edict of a genius whose +lofty omniscience seemed to partake in some degree of +divinity itself.</p> + +<p>But from this passive obedience to a single encyclopædic +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page651" id="page651"></a>651</span> +mind, a fatal consequence ensued for mankind. The +schoolmen had formed, as Lord Bacon has nobly expressed +himself, “an unhallowed conjunction of divine with human +matters;” theology itself was turned into a system, drawn +out of the artificial arrangements of Aristotle; they made +their orthodoxy dependent on “the scholastic gibberish;”<a name="fa1c58" id="fa1c58" href="#ft1c58"><span class="sp">1</span></a> +and to doubt any doctrine of “the philosopher,” as Aristotle +was paramountly called, might be to sin by a syllogism—heretical, +if not atheistical. In reality it was to +contend, without any possibility of escape, with the ecclesiastical +establishment, whose integrity was based on the +immoveable conformity of all human opinions. Every +university in Europe, whose honours and emoluments arose +from their Aristotelian chairs, stood as the sentinels of +each intellectual fortress. Speculative philosophy could +therefore no further advance; it could not pass that inviolable +circle which had circumscribed the universal +knowledge of the human race. No one dared to think +his own thoughts, to observe his own observations, lest by +some fortuitous discovery, in differing from the Aristotelian +dialectic, he might lapse from his Christianity. The scholastical +sects were still agitating the same topics; for the +same barbarous terms supplied, on all occasions, verbal +disputations, which even bloody frays could never terminate.</p> + +<p>If we imagine that this awful fabric of the Aristotelian +or scholastic philosophy was first shaken by the Verulamian, +we should be conferring on a single individual a +sudden influence which was far more progressive. In a +great revolution, whence we date a new era, we are apt to +lose sight of those devious paths and those marking incidents +which in all human affairs are the prognostics and +the preparations; the history of the human mind would +be imperfectly revealed, should we not trace the great inventors +in their precursors.</p> + +<p>Early in the sixteenth century appeared simultaneously +a number of extraordinary geniuses. An age of philosophical +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page652" id="page652"></a>652</span> +inventors seemed to arise; a new generation, who, +each in his own way, were emancipating themselves from +the dogmas of the ancient dictator. This revolt against +the old scholastics broke forth in Italy, in Spain, in +France, in Germany, and even reached our shores. These +philosophers were the contemporaries of Luther: they had +not engaged in his theological reformation, but it is more +than probable that they had caught the inspiration of his +hardy spirit. We are indeed told that the famous Cornelius +Agrippa, though he could not desert the Rome of his +patrons, yet saw with satisfaction its great pontiff attacked +by Luther; as Erasmus and others equally delighted to +satirize all the scholastic monkery.<a name="fa2c58" id="fa2c58" href="#ft2c58"><span class="sp">2</span></a> Luther, too, made +common cause with them, in the demolition of that ancient +edifice of scholastic superstition which, under the supremacy +of Aristotle, barred out every free inquiry.</p> + +<p>Of these eminent men, an elegant scholar, Ludovicus +Vives, by birth a Spaniard, had been invited to the English +court by our Henry the Eighth, to be the preceptor of the +Princess Mary. Vives too was the friend of Erasmus; but +while that facetious sage only expended his raillery on the +scholastic madness, Vives formally attacked the chief, whose +final authority he declared had hitherto solely rested on +the indolence of the human mind. Ramus, in France, +advanced with more impetuous fury; he held a public disputation +against the paramount authority of the Stagyrite +in philosophy; and in his “Aristotelian Animadversions” +he profanely shivered into atoms of absurdity the syllogistic +method, and substituted for the logic of Aristotle +one of his own, which was long received in all the schools +of the reformed, for Ramus was a Huguenot. This innovator +was denounced to the magistrate; for, by opposing +Aristotle, he had committed open hostility against religion +and learning! The erudite Abate Andres, probably +an Aristotelian at heart, observes, in noticing the continued +persecutions of this bold spirit, that, “to tell the +truth, Ramus injured himself far more than the Aristotelian +doctrine which he had impugned”<a name="fa3c58" id="fa3c58" href="#ft3c58"><span class="sp">3</span></a>—and true +enough, if it were a rival Aristotelian who cast Ramus +out of the window, to be massacred by the mob on St. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page653" id="page653"></a>653</span> +Bartholomew’s day. Two eminent scholars of Italy contested +more successfully the doctrines of Aristotle: Patricius +collected everything he could to degrade and +depreciate that philosopher, and to elevate the more +seductive and imaginative Plato. He asserted that Aristotle +was the plagiarist of other writers, whose writings +he invariably affected to contemn; and he went so far as +to suggest to the Pope to prohibit the teaching of the +Aristotelian doctrines in the schools; for the doctrines of +Plato more harmoniously accorded with the Christian +faith. Less learned, but more original than Patricius, +the Neapolitan Telesius struck out a new mode of philosophizing. +The study of mathematics had indicated to +Telesius a severe process in his investigations of nature, +and had taught him to reject those conjectural solutions +of the phenomena of the material world—subtleties and +fictions which had led Aristotle into many errors, and +whose universal authority had swayed opinions through +successive ages. “Telesius,” says Lord Bacon, “hath +renewed the tenet of Parmenides, and is the best of our +novelists.”<a name="fa4c58" id="fa4c58" href="#ft4c58"><span class="sp">4</span></a> Lord Bacon considered the Telesian system +worthy of his development and his refutation. But, by +his physical system, Telesius had broken the spell, and +sent forth the naturalist to scrutinize more closely into +nature; and possibly this Neapolitan sage may have +kindled the first spark in the experimental philosophy of +Bacon.</p> + +<p>All these were eminent philosophers who had indignantly +rejected the eternal babble of the scholastics, and the vain +dicta of the peripatetics; and in the same cycle were +others more erratic and fantastic. These bold artificers of +novel systems of philosophy had not unsuccessfully attacked +the dogmas of Aristotle, but to little purpose, +while they were substituting their own. The prevalent +agitation of the philosophical spirit, now impetuous and +disturbed, shot forth mighty impulses in imaginary directions, +and created chimeras. Agrippa and Paracelsus, +Jordano Bruno, Cardan and Campanella, played their +“fantastic tricks,” till the patient genius of the new philosophy +arose simultaneously in the Italian Galileo and the +founder of the Verulamian method.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page654" id="page654"></a>654</span></p> + +<p>Amid the ruins of these systems of philosophies, it was +not with their fallen columns that Lord Bacon designed +to construct a new philosophy of his own—a system in +opposition to other systems. He would hold no controversies: +for refutations were useless if the method he +invented was a right one. He would not even be the +founder of a sect, for he presumed not to establish a +philosophy, but to show how we should philosophize. +The father of experimental philosophy delivered no +“opinions,” but “a work;” patient observation, practical +results, or new and enlarged sciences, “not to be found in +the space of a single age, but through a succession of generations.” +D’Alembert observed, “The Baconian philosophy +was too wise to astonish.” His early sagacity had +detected the fatal error of all system-makers; each, to give +coherence to his hypothesis, had recourse to some occult +operation, and sometimes had ventured to give it a name +which was nothing more than an abstract notion, and not +a reality ascertained to exist in nature. The Platonist had +buried his lofty head amid the clouds of theology, beyond +the aspirations of man: the Aristotelian, by the syllogistic +method of reasoning, had invented a mere instrument of +perpetual disputation, without the acquisition of knowledge; +and in the law which governed the material world, +when Democritus had conceived his atom, and endowed it +with a desire or appetency to move with other atoms, or +Telesius imagined with cold and heat to find the first beginnings +of motion—what had they but contracted nature +within the bars of their systems, while she was perpetually +escaping from them? The greater philosopher sought to +follow nature through her paths, to be “her servant and +interpreter;” or, as he has also expressed it, “to subdue +nature by yielding to her.”</p> + +<p>Lord Bacon was conscious of the slow progress of truth; +he has himself appealed to distant ages. So progressive is +human reason, that a novel system, at its first announcement, +has been resisted as the most dangerous innovation, +or rejected as utterly false; yet at a subsequent period the +first promulgator who had struck into the right road is +censured, not for his temerity, but for his timidity, in not +having advanced to its termination, and laying the burden +on posterity to demonstrate that which he had only surmised +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page655" id="page655"></a>655</span> +or assumed. It is left to another generation to +shoot their arrow forth a truer aim, far more distantly. +Some of the most important results in philosophical inquiries +by men who have advanced beyond their own age, +have been subjected to this inconvenience; and we now are +familiarized to axioms and principles, requiring no further +demonstration, which in their original discovery were +condemned as dangerous and erroneous; for the most +novel principles must be disputed before they can be +demonstrated, till time in silence seals its decree with +authority.</p> + +<p>Some discoveries have required almost a century to be +received, while some truths remain still problematical, and, +like the ether of Newton, but a mere hypothesis. What +is the wisdom of the wise but a state of progression? and +the inventor has to encounter even the hostility of his +brothers in science; even Lord Bacon himself was the +victim of his own idols of the den—those fallacies that +originate from the peculiar character of the man; for by +undervaluing the science of mathematics, he refused his +assent to the Copernican system.</p> + +<p>The celebrity of Lord Bacon was often distinct from the +Baconian philosophy at home—a circumstance which concerns +the history of our vernacular literature. The lofty +pretensions of a new way to “The Advancement of Learning,” +and the “Novum Organum” of an art of invention, +to invent arts, were long a veiled mystery to the English +public, who were deterred from its study by the most +offuscating translations of the Latin originals. English +readers recognised in Lord Bacon, not the interpreter of +Nature through all her works, but the interpreter of man +to man, of their motives and their actions, in his “Sermones +Fideles,” those “Essaies” which “come home to +our business and to our bosoms.” Such readers were left +to wonder how the historian of “The Winds,” and of +“Life and Death”—the gatherer of medical receipts and +of masses of natural history, amid all such minute processes +of experiments and inductions, groping in tangible +matter, as it seemed to ordinary eyes, could in the mere +naturalist be the creator of a new philosophy of intellectual +energy. The ethical sage who had unfolded the +volume of the heart they delightfully comprehended, but +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page656" id="page656"></a>656</span> +how the mind itself stood connected with the outward +phenomena of nature remained long an enigma for the +men of the world. Lord Bacon, in his dread to trust the +mutability of our language placed by the side of the universal +language of the learned which fifteen centuries had +fixed sacred from innovation, had concluded that the +modern languages will “at one time or another play the +bankrupt with books.” The sage who, in his sanguine +confidence in futurity, had predicted that “third period of +time which will far surpass that of the Grecian and Roman +learning,” had not, however, contemplated on a national +idiom; nor in that noble prospect of time had he anticipated +a race of the European learned whose vernacular +prose would create words beyond the reach of the languages +of antiquity. No work in our native idiom had +yet taken a station. The volume of Hooker we know not +how he read; but the copiousness of the diction little accorded +with the English of the learned Lord Chancellor, +who had pressed the compactness of his aphoristic sentences +into the brevity of Seneca, but with a weight of thought +no Roman, if we except Tacitus, has attained. Rawleigh +and Jonson were but contemporaries, unsanctioned by +time; nor could he have looked even on them as modellers +for him whose own genius was still more prodigally opulent, +though not always with the most difficult taste.</p> + +<p>Lord Bacon, therefore, decided to compose his “Instauratio +Magna” in Latin. Dedicating the Latin version of +the “Advancement of Learning” to the Prince, he +observed—“It is a work I think will live, and be a <i>citizen +of the world, as English books are not</i>.” Lord Bacon saw +“bankruptcy in our language,” and houseless wanderers +in our books. The commonwealth of letters had yet no +existence. Haunted by this desolating notion that there +was no perpetuity in English writings, he rested not till +his own were translated by himself and his friends, Jonson, +and Hobbes, and Herbert; and often enlarging these Latin +versions, some of his English compositions remain, in some +respect, imperfect, when compared with those subsequent +revisions in the Latin translations.</p> + +<p>By trusting his genius to a foreign tongue, Lord Bacon +has dimmed its lustre; the vitality of his thoughts in their +original force, the spontaneity of his mind in all its raciness, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page657" id="page657"></a>657</span> +all those fortuitous strokes which are the felicities of +genius, were lost to him who had condemned himself to +the Roman yoke. Professor Playfair always preferred +quoting the original English of those passages of the +treatise “De Augmentis Scientiarum,” which had first +appeared in “The Advancement of Learning.” The felicity +of many of those fine or forcible conceptions is +emasculated in a foreign and artificial idiom; and the invention +of novel terms in an ancient language left it often +in a clouded obscurity.</p> + +<p>The hand of Lord Bacon had already moulded the language +at pleasure, and he might have preceded his friend +Hobbes in the lucidity of a philosophical style. The style +of Lord Bacon is stamped with the originality of the age, +and is as peculiar to him as was that of Shakspeare to the +poet. He is not only the wittiest of writers in his remote +allusions, but poetical in his fanciful conceptions. +His style long served for a model to many succeeding +writers. One of the most striking imitations is that +curious folio of secret history, and brilliant sententiousness, +and witty pedantry, the Life of Archbishop Williams +by Bishop <span class="sc">Hacket</span>. It was with declining spirit +Lord Bacon composed his “History of Henry the +Seventh;” it was an oblation to majesty; the king himself +was his critic; and the Solomon, as he terms Henry +the Seventh, was that image of peaceful sovereignty +which James affected.</p> + +<p>He who thought that the language would have failed +him, has himself failed to the language, and we have lost +an English classic. Since the experimental philosophy +arose out of practical discoveries, it should not have been +limited to recluse students, but open to the practitioners +not yet philosophers, now condemned to study it by translations +of a translation. It required two centuries before +the writings of Bacon reached the many. Now, a single +volume, in the most popular form, places them in the +hands of artisans and artists, who are to learn from them +to think, to observe, and to invent.</p> + +<p>The first modern edition of the collected writings of +Lord Bacon was that by Blackbourne, in 1730. It probably +awoke the public attention; but English readers +eager to possess themselves of the Baconian philosophy +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page658" id="page658"></a>658</span> +were still doomed to their old ignorance, for no one was +yet to be found bold enough to risk versions, which in the +mere translation often require to be elucidated. This first +edition, however, hastened the arduous task of “methodising” +the philosophy of Bacon in English, by Dr. <span class="sc">Peter +Shaw</span>, in 1733, who then suggested that the noble Baconian +scheme had not been “sufficiently understood and +regarded.” This Dr. <span class="sc">Shaw</span> was one of the court physicians, +attached to scientific pursuits, which he usefully +displayed by popular lectures and writings, on subjects +with which the public were then not familiar. Imbued +with the genius of Bacon, this diligent student unfortunately +had a genius of his own; he fancied that he could +reconstruct the works of our great philosopher, by a more +perfect arrangement. He separated, or he joined; he +classed, and he new-named; and not the least curious of +his singularities is that of assigning right principles for +his wrong doings. He did not abridge his author; for +justly he observes, great works admit of no abridgment; +but to shorten their extent, he took the liberty of what he +terms “dropping,”—that is, “leaving out.” Of his translations +of the Latin originals, of which he experienced +all the difficulty, he observes, that “a direct translation +would have left the works more obscure than they are,” +and therefore he adopted what he terms “an open version.” +A precise notion of this mode of free translation, +it might be difficult to fix on; it would be too open if it +admitted what was not in the original, or if it suffered +what was essential to escape. His irremissible sin was +that of “modernizing the English” of Lord Bacon. The +most racy and picturesque expressions of our elder writers +were then to be weakened down to a vapid colloquial +style. Willymot had translated Lord Bacon’s “Essays” +from the Latin, and thus substituted his own loose incondite +sentences, which he deemed “more fashionable language,” +for the brilliancy or the energy of Lord Bacon’s +native vein. Dr. Shaw’s three goodly quartos, however, +long conveyed in some shape to the English public the +Baconian philosophy. There is something still seductive +in these fair volumes, with their copious index, and a +glossary of the philosophical terms invented by Bacon; +I loved them in the early days of my studies; and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page659" id="page659"></a>659</span> +they have been deemed worthy to be revived in a late +edition.</p> + +<p>In my youth, the illustrious name of Lord Bacon was +more familiar to readers than his works, and they were +more frequently reminded of the Lord Chancellor by the +immortal verse of Pope, than by that Life of Bacon by +Mallet, which may be read without discovering that the +subject was the father of modern philosophy, excepting +that in the last page, as if accidentally, there occurs a +slight mention of the Great Instauration itself! The very +choice of Mallet, in 1740, for an editor of Lord Bacon, is +a striking evidence how imperfectly the genius of the Instaurator +of sciences was comprehended.</p> + +<p>The psychological history of Lord Bacon has all that +oneness which is the perfection of mind. We see him in +his boyhood, studious of the phenomena of nature, meditating +on the multiplication of echoes at the brick-conduit, +near his father’s house; there he sought to discover +the laws of sound; as in his latest days, when on the +snowy road an experiment suddenly occurred, “touching +the conservation and the induration of bodies,” whether +snow could not preserve flesh equally with salt. Alighting +from his carriage, with his own hands he assisted the +experiment, and was struck by that chilliness which, a few +days after, closed in death; yet the dying naturalist, too +weak to write the last letter he dictated, expressed his +satisfaction that the experiment “answered excellently +well.”</p> + +<p>But he who, by the cruelty of fortune and mortal infirmity, +lived many lives in the span of one short life, ever +wrestling with Nature to subdue her, could never subdue +himself by himself. He idolized state and magnificence in +his own person; the brilliancy of his robes and the blaze +of his equipage his imagination seemed to feed on; he +loved to be gazed on in the streets, and to be wondered at +in the cabinet; but with this feminine weakness, this +philosopher was still so philosophic as to scorn the least +prudential care of his fortune. So that, while he was +enamoured of wealth, he could not bring himself down to +the love of money. Participating in the corruptions of +the age, he was himself incorruptible; the Lord Chancellor +never gave a partial or unjust sentence, and Rushworth +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page660" id="page660"></a>660</span> +has told us, that not one of his decrees was ever +reversed. Such a man was not made to crouch and to +fawn, to breathe the infection of a corrupted court, to +make himself the scape-goat in the mysterious darkness of +court-intrigues; but he was this man of wretchedness! +Truly he exclaimed one day, in grasping a volume, For +this only am I fitted. The intellectual architect who had +modelled his house of Solomon, and should have been for +ever the ideal inhabitant of that palace of the mind, was +the tenant of an abode of disorder, where every one was +master but its owner, a maculated man seeking to shelter +himself in dejection and in shade. Whisperers, surmisers, +evil eyes and evil tongues, the domestic asp, whose bite +sends poison into the veins of him on whom it hangs—those +were his familiars, while his abstracted mind was +dictating to his chaplain the laws and economy of nature.</p> + +<p>Yet there were some better spirits in the mansion of +Gorhambury, and even in the obscurity of Gray’s Inn, +who have left testimonies of their devotion to the great +man long after his death. In the psychological history of +Lord Bacon, we must not pass by the psychological +monument which the affectionate Sir Thomas Meautys, +who, by his desire, lies buried at his feet, raised to his +master. The design is as original as it is grand, and is +said to have been the invention of Sir Henry Wotton, +who, in his long residence abroad, had formed a refined +taste for the arts which were yet strangers in England. +The simplicity of our ancestors had placed their sculptured +figures recumbent on their tombs; the taste of Wotton +raised the marble figure to imitate life itself, and to give +the mind of the original to its image. The monument of +Bacon exhibits the great philosopher seated in profound +contemplation in his habitual attitude, for the inscription +records for posterity, <i>Sic sedebat</i>.<a name="fa5c58" id="fa5c58" href="#ft5c58"><span class="sp">5</span></a></p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c58" id="ft1c58" href="#fa1c58"><span class="fn">1</span></a> The Abate <span class="sc">Andres</span>, in his erudite “Origine &c. d’ogni Letteratura,” +gives this remarkable description—“<i>i</i> <span class="scs">GHIRIBIZZI</span> <i>della Dialetica +e Metafisica d’Aristotele</i>.” As we are at a loss to discover the +origin of the term <i>gibberish</i>, and as it is suitable to the present occasion, +may we conjecture that we have here found it?—xii. 26.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c58" id="ft2c58" href="#fa2c58"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Enfield, ii. 448.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c58" id="ft3c58" href="#fa3c58"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Andres “Dell’ Origine e Progressi d’ogni Letteratura,” xv. 165.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c58" id="ft4c58" href="#fa4c58"><span class="fn">4</span></a> Montagu’s Bacon, iv. 46.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c58" id="ft5c58" href="#fa5c58"><span class="fn">5</span></a> See “Curiosities of Literature,” art. “Bacon at Home.”</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page661" id="page661"></a>661</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE FIRST FOUNDER OF A PUBLIC LIBRARY.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">The</span> first marked advancement in the progress of the +national understanding was made by a new race of public +benefactors, who, in their munificence, no longer endowing +obsolete superstitions, and inefficient or misplaced charities, +erected libraries and opened academies; founders of those +habitations of knowledge whose doors open to the bidding +of all comers.</p> + +<p>To the privacy and the silent labours of some men of +letters and some lovers of the arts, usually classed under +the general designation of <span class="scs">COLLECTORS</span>, literary Europe, +for the great part, owes its public museums and its public +libraries. It was their ripe knowledge only which could +have created them, their opulence only which could render +them worthy of a nation’s purchase, or of its acceptance, +when in their generous enthusiasm they consecrated the +intellectual gift for their countrymen.</p> + +<p>These collections could only have acquired their strength +by their growth, for gradual were their acquisitions and +innumerable were their details; they claimed the sleepless +vigilance of a whole life, the devotion of a whole fortune, +and often that moral intrepidity which wrestled with +insurmountable difficulties. We may admire the generous +enthusiasm whose opulence was solely directed to enrich +what hereafter was to be consecrated as public property; +but it has not always received the notice and the eulogy +so largely its due. It is but bare justice to distinguish +these men from their numerous brothers whose collections +have terminated with themselves, known only to posterity +by their posthumous catalogues—the sole record that these +collectors were great buyers and more famous sellers. Of +many of the <span class="scs">FOUNDERS</span> of public collections the names are +not familiar to the reader, though some have sometimes +been identified with their more celebrated collections, from +the gratitude of a succeeding age.</p> + +<p>A collection formed by a single mind, skilled in its +favourite pursuit, becomes the tangible depository of the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page662" id="page662"></a>662</span> +thoughts of its owner; there is a unity in this labour of +love, and a secret connexion through its dependent parts. +Thus we are told that Cecil’s library was the best for +history; Walsingham’s, for policy; Arundel’s, for heraldry; +Cotton’s, for antiquity; and Usher’s, for divinity. The +completion of such a collection reflects the perfect image +of the mind of the philosopher, the philologist, the antiquary, +the naturalist, the scientific or the legal character, +who into one locality has gathered together and arranged +this furniture of the human intellect.</p> + +<p>To disperse their collections would be, to these elect +spirits, to resolve them back into their first elements—to +scatter them in the air, or to mingle them with the dust.<a name="fa1c59" id="fa1c59" href="#ft1c59"><span class="sp">1</span></a> +Happily for mankind, these have been men to whom the +perpetuity of their intellectual associations was a future +existence. Conscious that their hands had fastened links +in the unbroken chain of human inquiry, they left the +legacy to the world. The creators of these collections +have often betrayed their anxiety to preserve them distinct +and entire. Confident I am that such was the real feeling +of a recent celebrated collector. The rich and peculiar +collection of manuscripts, and of rare and chosen volumes, +of <span class="sc">Francis Douce</span>, from his earliest days had been the +objects of his incessant cares. With means extremely +restricted, but with a mind which no obstructions could +swerve from its direct course, through many years he +accomplished a glorious design. Our modest antiquary +startled the most curious, not only of his countrymen but +of foreigners, by his knowledge, diversified as his own unrivalled +collections, in the recondite literature of the middle +ages, and whatever exhibited the manners, the customs, +and the arts of every people and of every age. Late in life +he accidentally became the possessor of a considerable fortune, +and having decided that this work of his life should +be a public inheritance, he seemed at a loss where it might +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page663" id="page663"></a>663</span> +at once rest in security, and lie patent for the world. The +idea of its dispersion was very painful, for he was aware +that the singleness of design which had assembled such +various matters together could never be resumed by +another. He often regretted that in the great national +repository of literature the collection would merge into +the universal mass. It was about this time that we visited +together the great library of Oxford. Douce contemplated +in the Bodleian that arch over which is placed the portrait +of <span class="sc">Selden</span>, and the library of Selden preserved entire; the +antiquary’s closet which holds the great topographical +collections of Gough; and the distinct shelves dedicated +to the small Shakespearian library of <span class="sc">Malone</span>. He observed +that the collections of Rawlinson, of Tanner, and +of others, had preserved their identity by their separation. +This was the subject of our conversation. At this moment +Douce must have decided on the locality where his precious +collection was to find a perpetual abode; for it was immediately +on his return home that our literary antiquary +bequeathed his collection to the Bodleian Library, where +it now occupies more than one apartment.</p> + +<p>To the anxious cares of such founders of public collections, +England, as well as Italy and France, owes a national +debt; nor can we pass over in silence the man to whom +first occurred the happy idea of instituting a library which +should have for its owners his own fellow-citizens. A +Florentine merchant, emancipated from the thraldom of +traffic, vowed himself to the pursuits of literature, and, +just before the art of printing was practised, to the preservation +of manuscripts, which he not only multiplied by +his unwearied hand, but was the first of that race of critics +who amended the texts of the early copyists. What he +could not purchase, his pure zeal was not the less solicitous +to preserve. Boccaccio had bequeathed his own library to +a convent in Florence, and its sight produced that effect +on him which the library of Shakespeare, had it been preserved, +might have had on an Englishman; and since he +could not possess it, he built an apartment solely to preserve +it distinct from any other collection.</p> + +<p>At a period when the owners of manuscripts were so +avaricious of their possessions that they refused their loan, +and were frugal even in allowing a sight of their leaves, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page664" id="page664"></a>664</span> +the hardy generosity of this Florentine merchant conceived +one of the most important designs for the interests of +learning;—to invite readers, he bequeathed his own as <span class="sc">A +PUBLIC LIBRARY</span>.<a name="fa2c59" id="fa2c59" href="#ft2c59"><span class="sp">2</span></a> He who occupied but a private station, +first offered Europe a model of patriotic greatness which +princes and nobles in their magnificence would emulate. +It has been said that the founder of this public library at +Florence had only revived the noble design of the ancients, +who had displayed their affection for literature by even +bestowing their own names on public libraries; but this +must not detract from the true glory of the merchant of +Florence; it was at least an idea which had wholly escaped +the less liberal of his learned contemporaries.</p> + +<p>Sir <span class="sc">Thomas Bodley</span> may be considered as the first +founder of a public library in this country, raised by the +hand of an individual. A picture of the obstructions, the +anxieties, the hopes, and the disappointments of the +founder of the Bodleian, exhibits a person of rank and +opulence submitting even to minute drudgery, and to the +most humiliating solicitations, and busily occupied by a +foreign as well as a domestic correspondence, to accomplish +what he long despaired of—a library adequate to the +wants of every English student.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Bodley</span>, in the sketch of his own life, betrays that early +book-love which subsequently broke out into that noble +passion for “his reverend mother, the University of +Oxford.” Sir Thomas Bodley had ably served in some +of the highest state-employments; but, at length, discovered +the secret pathway to escape from “court contentions;” +and this he found when busying himself with a +vast ideal library—the future Bodleian! Long, indeed, it +was but ideal; the labour of his day, the dream of his +night, so slowly rose the reality of the fabric. It was +difficult to determine on the class or the worth of authors—often +rejecting, always augmenting, still consulting, +now advising, or being advised; sometimes irresolute, and +at others decisive; now exulting, and now despondent. +However fervid was his noble enthusiasm for literature, +and for his library, not less remarkable was that provident +sagacity which he combined with it, and by which only he +could carry on the vast design.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page665" id="page665"></a>665</span></p> + +<p>What were the emotions of Bodley through this long +period, what his first intentions, and what his immutable +decision, have fortunately been laid open to us in a close +correspondence with his first librarian. Our parent-founder +of a public library, with the forcible simplicity of the +natural colloquial style of that day, has developed his own +character. “Examining exactly for the rest of my life +what course I might take, and having sought, as I thought, +all the ways to the wood, to select the most proper, I +concluded, at the last, to set up my staff at the library +door in Oxon; being thoroughly persuaded, that in my +solitude and surcease from the commonwealth affairs, I +could not busy myself to better purpose.” He early discovered +that the formation of his library required the co-operation +of many favourable circumstances: “some kind +of knowledge, some purse-ability, great store of honourable +friends; else it would prove a vain attempt and inconsiderate.” +After many perplexities, the great resolve +seemed to sanction the act, and he exclaims—“The project +is cast, and whether I live or die, to such ends +altogether I address my thoughts and deeds!” Such was +the solemn pledge, and such the deed of gift, which Bodley, +in the greatness of his mind, contracted with posterity.</p> + +<p>But the minor cares and the minuter anxieties were to +open on him; and it must be confessed that he tried the +patient duties of the learned Dr. James, whom he had +judiciously elected for the first librarian, but who often +vents a groan on his interminable labours. Sir Thomas +gently reproaches him: “I am toiled exceedingly, no less +than yourself, with writing, buying, binding, disposing, &c.; +but I am fed with pleasure of seeing the end.” Bodley +had not only to form a universal library, but to build one +on the desolate ruins of that founded by Duke Humphrey, +whose royal name could not save his books and manuscripts, +which had all been purloined and wasted. The +pledges left for their loan not being worth half the value +of the books, the volumes were never returned; and those +which remained in the reign of Edward the Sixth were +burned as “superstitious,” for their rubrics and illuminations. +The history of this library might have deterred our +new founder, by reminding him of the fate which may +await even on public libraries. At all events, for many +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page666" id="page666"></a>666</span> +years it required all his fortitude to encounter a rabble of +master-carpenters, joiners, carvers, glaziers, builders, +claspers, and stringers, and the chain-smiths; for at that +day books were chained to their shelves, with chains long +enough to reach the desk. A book was tethered, and +could never stray from its paddock. Then came the classification +and the arrangements! discussions not easily to be +adjusted with his librarian, whether a book should be +classed as a work of theology or of politics? Sir Thomas +found an incessant business at London in packing up “dry +fats,” or vats of books, barging them for Oxford; he was +receiving fresh supplies from Italy, from Spain, from Turkey, +and designed to send a scholar to travel in the East, +to collect Arabic and Persian books, on which he sagaciously +observed, that “in process of time, by the extraordinary +diligence of some one student, these Eastern languages +may be readily understood.” Bodley anticipated our +Society for Oriental Literature.</p> + +<p>But not merely solicitous to erect a vast library, Bodley +was equally anxious to consecrate the spot to study itself. +He is uneasy at too public an admission, lest idlers should +mix among the students, and, as he plainly tells, “be +daily pestering the room with their gazing and babbling, +and trampling up and down, disturbing the real studious.” +With what fervour he rejoices when, at length, he lived to +witness the day of the opening of the library, and found +that “all proceeded orderly, and with such silence!” But +although he had bestowed all his cares and his fortune on +this institution, it still was but an infant, and he had to +look towards spirits as enlarged as his own, to protect the +orphan of the public. It met with some who adopted it, +and Bodley had their names inscribed in the register of +this public library; but he was as cautious as he was +courteous—the vain were not to be gratified for penurious +gifts. Books, and not names, were wanted. At first, +impatiently zealous, he murmurs of “promises received +for performances.” But latterly, he had occasion to +exhort the university to mark by their particular acknowledgments, +the donations in volumes or in money. The +honourable roll on which the names are inscribed, includes +not only those of the most eminent of our county, but +also of several ladies, who rivalled those heroes and statesmen +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page667" id="page667"></a>667</span> +who had the honour of laying the foundation of the +Bodleian Library.<a name="fa3c59" id="fa3c59" href="#ft3c59"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> + +<p>In Sir Thomas Bodley’s character we view the conscious +dignity of a great design, yet combined with the sedate +reflection of a man practised in the world. There were +certain traits of vanity, which may give a colour to the +insinuations of some—who might consider they had been +deprived of legacies—that it was his enormous vanity +which raised this edifice of learning. It is amusing to +discover, that when the Bishop of Exeter proposed to visit +the library, a letter of Sir Thomas immediately precedes +his visitor. “I pray you, observe his speeches, and liking +or disliking, and in your next let me know it.” When +James the First was preparing to visit the library, he furnished +hints to the librarian for his speech to the literary +monarch: “It must not carry greater length than for +half a quarter of an hour’s utterance. It must be short +and sweet, and full of stuff.” The librarian was desirous +to hide Buchanan when the king came down to Oxford; +but Bodley, probably not approving the concealment of +any of his literary stores, observed, “It will not avail to +conceal him in his desk since he is in the catalogue, nor +have we any reason to take any notice of the king’s dislike; +but,” he warily adds, “should it excite his Majesty’s +notice, we must allege that the books were put there in +the Queen’s time.” But nothing save the most delicate +attention towards an author could have prompted his order +concerning Coryat the traveller, who had presented his +book to the library. On the author’s coming to Oxford, +Sir Thomas desired that “it should be placed in such a +manner, that when the author came down, it may seem to +magnify the author and the book.” In his ardour for the +general interests of his library, Bodley absolutely insisted +that his librarian should persevere in his forlorn fellowship, +for “marriage,” opined the founder of the Bodleian +Library, “is too full of domestic impeachments to afford +him so much time from his private affairs.” The doctor +decided against the celibacy of a librarian, and was gravely +admonished on the absurdity of such conduct in one who +had the care of a public library! for “it was opening a gap +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page668" id="page668"></a>668</span> +to disorder hereafter.” With a happier prescience, Bodley +foresaw that race of generous spirits who, long after, and +at distant intervals, have carried on his great views. +Listen to the simplicity and force of the venerable style of +our first founder of a <span class="sc">Public Library</span>.</p> + +<p>“We cannot but presume that, casting (counting) what +number of noble benefactors have already concurred in a +<span class="scs">FERVOUR OF AFFECTION</span> to that <span class="scs">PUBLIC PLACE OF STUDY</span>, +we shall be sure in <span class="scs">TIME TO COME</span> to find some <span class="scs">OTHERS OF +THE LIKE DISPOSITION</span> to the advancement of learning.”<a name="fa4c59" id="fa4c59" href="#ft4c59"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> + +<p>With such a hallowed purpose ever before him, can we +conceive the agonies of the founder of a public library, on +being for ever denied an entrance into it? and yet such +was the fate of one of the most illustrious of this race. +The mournful history of the founder of the Cottonian +Library will ever excite the regrets of a grateful posterity, +and its catastrophe will witness how far above life he loved +and valued his collected lore! It happened that among +the many rare manuscripts collected by Sir <span class="sc">Robert +Cotton</span>, one reached his hands, which struck him by the +singularity of the subject; it was a political theory to show +the kings of England “how to bridle the impertinency of +Parliaments.” An unfaithful amanuensis, the son of the +Dr. James whom we have just noticed, took copies and sold +them to the curious. When the original was at length +traced to the Cottonian collection, Sir Robert was sued in +the Star-chamber, and considered as the author of a work +whose tendency was to enslave the nation. It was long +afterwards discovered that this manuscript had been originally +written by Sir Robert Dudley, when in exile at +Florence. Cotton was now denied all access to his library; +his spirits sunk in the blackest melancholy; and he declared +to an intimate friend, that “those who had locked +up his library from him had broken his heart.” Now deprived +of that learned crowd who once were flowing into +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page669" id="page669"></a>669</span> +his house, consulting and arranging his precious manuscripts; +torn away from the delightful business of his life, +and in torment at the doubtful fate of that manuscript collection, +which had consumed forty years at every personal +sacrifice to form it for the “use and service of posterity,” +he sunk at the sudden stroke. In the course of a few +weeks, he was so worn by injured feelings, that from a +ruddy-complexioned man, “his face was wholly changed +into a grim blackish paleness, near to the resemblance and +hue of a dead visage.” Such is the expression of one who +knew him well. Before he died, Sir Robert requested the +learned Spelman to acquaint the Privy Council that +“their so long detaining his books from him had been the +cause of his mortal malady.” “On this message,” says +the writer of a manuscript letter of the day, “the Lord +Privy Seal came to Sir Robert, when it was too late to +comfort him, from the King, from whom also the Earl of +Dorset came within half an hour of Sir Robert’s death, to +condole with Sir Thomas Cotton, his son, for his father’s +death; and with an assurance that as his Majesty loved +his father, so he would continue his love to him: Sir +Robert hath intailed his library of books as sure as he can +make it upon his son and his posterity. If Sir Robert’s +heart could be ripped up, his library would appear in it, as +Calais in Queen Mary’s.” Such is the affecting fate of +the founder of the Cottonian Library, that great individual +whose sole labour silently formed our national antiquities, +and endowed his country with this wealth of manuscripts.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c59" id="ft1c59" href="#fa1c59"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Sir Simonds d’Ewes feelingly describes in his will, his “precious +library.” “It is my inviolable injunction that it be kept entire, and +not sold, divided, or dissipated.” It was not, however, to be locked up +from the public good. Such was the feeling of an eminent antiquary.</p> + +<p>A later Sir Simonds d’Ewes was an extravagant man, and seems to +have sold everything about 1716, when the collection passed into the +possession of the Earl of Oxford.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c59" id="ft2c59" href="#fa2c59"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Tirabosohi, VI. pt. i, 131.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c59" id="ft3c59" href="#fa3c59"><span class="fn">3</span></a> See Gutch’s edition of Wood’s “Annals of the University of Oxford,” +vol. <span class="sc">I</span>. pt. ii. p. 928.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c59" id="ft4c59" href="#fa4c59"><span class="fn">4</span></a> The vigilant curiosity of Tom Hearne, the antiquary, collected the +singular correspondence of the Founder of the Bodleian Library with +Dr. James, the first librarian, and published it under the title of +“Reliquiæ Bodleianæ, or Some Genuine Remains of Sir Thomas +Bodley,” 1703, 8vo. The curious reader will find in Gutch’s edition of +Wood’s “Annals of the University of Oxford” many letters by Bodley, +and his liberal endowments to provide a fixed revenue after his +decease.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page670" id="page670"></a>670</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">EARLY WRITERS, THEIR DREAD OF THE +PRESS; THE TRANSITION TO AUTHORS BY +PROFESSION.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">At</span> the close of the reign of Elizabeth, the public, awakening +at the first dawn of knowledge, with their stirring +passions and their eager curiosity, found their wants supplied +by a new race of “ready writers,” who now teased +the groaning press—a diversified race of miscellaneous +writers, who had discovered the wants of the people for +books which excited their sympathies and reflected their +experience, and who caught on their fugitive pages the +manners and the passions of their contemporaries. No +subject was too mean to be treated; and had domestic +encyclopædias been then invented, these would have been +precisely the library the people required: but now, every +book was to be separately worked. The indiscriminate +curiosity of an uneducated people was gratified by immature +knowledge; but it was essential to amuse as well +as to inform: hence that multitude of fugitive subjects. +The mart of literature opened, and with the book-manufactory, +in the language of that primeval critic, <span class="sc">Webbe</span>, +of innumerable sorts of English books, and infinite fardles +of printed pamphlets, “all shops were stuffed.”</p> + +<p>It has been attempted to fix on the name of that great +patriarch, the Abraham of our Israel, who first invented +our own book-craft; but it would be indiscreet to assign +the honour to any particular person, or even to inquire +whether the cupidity of the book-vender first set to work +the ingenuity of the book-weaver. Who first dipped his +silver pen into his golden ink, and who first conceived the +notion of this literary alchemy, which transmutes paper +into gold or lead? It was, I believe, no solitary invention; +the rush of “authors by profession” was simultaneous.</p> + +<p>Former writers had fearfully courted fame; they were +the children of the pleasures of the pen; these were a +hardier race, who at once seized on popularity; and a new +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page671" id="page671"></a>671</span> +trade was opened by the arts of authorship. In the primitive +age of publication, before there existed “a reading +public,” literary productions were often anonymous, or, +which answered the same purpose, they wore the mask of +a fictitious name, and were pseudonymous, or they hid +themselves under naked initials, by which means the +owners have sometimes lost their own property. It seems +a paradox that writers should take such great pains to +defraud themselves of their claims.</p> + +<p>This coyness of publication was prevalent among our +earliest writers, when writing and publishing were not +yet almost synonymous terms. Before we had “authors +by profession,” we had authors who wrote, and seemed to +avoid every sort of publicity. To the secluded writers of +that day, the press was arrayed with terrors which have +ceased to haunt those who are familiar with its daily +labours, and our primeval writers trembled before that +halo of immortality, which seemed to hang over that +ponderous machinery. Writers eagerly affixed their names +to polemical tracts, or to devotional effusions, during the +melancholy reigns of <span class="sc">Edward</span> the Sixth and <span class="sc">Mary</span>, as +a record of their zeal, and sometimes as an evidence of +their voluntary martyrdom; but the productions of imagination +and genius were yet rare and private. The noble-minded +hardly ventured out of the halcyon state of +manuscript to be tossed about in open sea; it would have +been compromising their dignity, or disturbing their repose, +to submit themselves to the cavils of the Cynics, +for even at this early period of printed books we find that +the ancient family of the <i>Malevoli</i>, whom Terence has +noticed, had survived the fall of Rome, and here did not +find their “occupation gone.” With many scholars, too, +it was still doubtful whether the vernacular muses in verse +and prose were not trivial and homely. In the inchoate +state of our literature, some who were imbued with classical +studies might have felt their misgivings, in looking +over their “gorgeous inventions,” or their “pretty devices,” +as betraying undisciplined strength, bewildering +fancies, and unformed tastes. They were not aware, even +at that more advanced period, when a series of “poetical +collections” appeared, of what they had already done; and +it has been recently discovered, that when the printer of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page672" id="page672"></a>672</span> +“England’s Helicon” had innocently affixed the names of +some writers to their pieces, to quiet their alarms, he was +driven to the clumsy expedient of pasting slips of paper +over their names. This was a spell which Time only dissolved, +that great revealer of secrets more deeply concealed.</p> + +<p>When publication appeared thus terrible, an art which +was not yet valued even the artists themselves would +slight. We have a striking instance of this feeling in the +circumstance of a sonnet of our Maiden Queen, on the +conspiracies then hatching by the party of her royal +sister of Scotland. One of the ladies of her bedchamber +had surreptitiously transcribed the poem from her majesty’s +tablet; and the innocent criminal had thereby cast +herself into extreme peril. The queen affected, or at least +expressed, her royal anger lest the people should imagine +that she was busied in “such toys,” and her majesty was +fearful of being considered too lightly of, for so doing. +The grave sonnet might, however, have been accepted as +a state-paper. The solemn theme, the grandeur of the +queenly personages, and the fortunes of two great nations +at issue, communicated to these verses the profound emotions +of contemplative royalty, more exquisite than the +poetry. Yet Elizabeth could be checked by “the fear to +be held too lightly by such toys.”</p> + +<p>The same motive had influenced some of the great personages +in our literature, who, by the suppression of their +names, anxiously eluded public observation, at the very +moment they were in reality courting it! <i>Ignoto</i> and +<i>Immerito</i>, or bare initials, were the concealing signatures +of Rawleigh, of Sidney, and of Spenser. The works of +the Earl of Surrey, then the finest poems in the language, +were posthumous. “The Arcadia” of Sidney possibly +was never intended for the press. The noble Sackville, +who planned the grand poem of “The Mirror of Magistrates,” +willingly left his lofty “Induction” anonymous +among the crowd. In the first poetical miscellany in our +language collected by the printer Tottell, are “The Poems +of <i>uncertain Authors</i>;” so careless were the writers themselves +to preserve their names, and so little aware of +having claims on posterity. Some years after, when those +other poetical collections, “The Paradise of Dainty +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page673" id="page673"></a>673</span> +Devices” and “England’s Helicon,” were projected by +their publishers, they were borrowed or stolen from manuscripts +which lay neglected with their authors, and who +for the most part conceal themselves under quaint signatures.</p> + +<p>The metropolis, in the days of Elizabeth and James, +bore a pretty close resemblance to those ancient cities +now existing before us on the Continent, famous in their +day, but which, from causes not here necessary to specify, +have not grown with the growth of time. Cologne, +Coblentz, and Mayence, are such cities; and the city of +Rouen, in its more ancient site, exhibits a picture of the +streets of London in the days of Shakspeare. Stationary +in their limits and their population, the classes of society +are more distinctly marked out; but the individual lives +more constantly under the survey of his neighbours. +Their art of living is to live in the public eye; to keep +up appearances, however this pride may prove inconvenient. +No one would seem to have an established household, +or always care to indicate its locality; their meals +are at a public table, and their familiar acquaintance are +found in the same public resorts; their social life becomes +contracted as their own ancient narrow streets.</p> + +<p>Such was London, when the Strand was a suburb, with +only a few scattered mansions; the present streets still +retain the family names, thus separating London from its +regal sister. The glory of the goldsmiths and the mercers +blazed in Cheapside, “the beauty of London;” and Fleet-street +was the Bond-street of fashionable loungers. In +this contracted sphere, where all moved, and the observers +had microscopical eyes, any trivial novelty was strangely +magnified, and the great personage was an object for their +scrutiny as well as the least considerable. Thus we find +that the Lord Chancellor Bacon is censured by one of the +gossiping pens of that day for his inordinate pride and +pomp on the most ordinary occasions. He went in his +state robes “to cheapen and buy silks and velvets at Sir +Baptist Hicker’s and Burner’s shops.” James the First, +I think, once in Parliament alluded to the “goldsmiths at +Cheap, who showed not the bravery of former days,” as a +mark of the decline of national prosperity. One of the +popular alarms of that day was “the rising of the apprentices,” +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page674" id="page674"></a>674</span> +whenever the city’s clumsy “watch and ward” +were put to the rout; the apprentices usually made an +attempt on their abhorrence, Bridewell, or pulled down +two or three houses on Shrove-Tuesday. Once, on the +trying of some ordnance in Moorfields, the court was +seized by a panic of “a rising in the city.” From all +this we may form some notion of the size of the metropolis, +and its imbecile police. In a vast and flourishing +metropolis the individual in liberty and security passes +among the countless waves of this ocean of men.</p> + +<p>A metropolis thus rising from its contracted infancy, +extending in growth, and diversified by new classes of +society, presented many novelties in its crowded scenes; +mutable manners, humorous personages, all the affectations +or the homeliness of its citizens. Many writers, among +whom were some of admirable genius, devoted their pens +to fugitive objects and evanescent scenes, sure of finding +an immediate reception from the sympathy of their readers. +New modes of life, and altered manners during a +lengthened peace, brought men into closer observation of +each other; the ranks in society were no longer insulated; +their haunts were the same localities, the playhouse, +the ordinary, and Paul’s Walk. There we find the +gay and the grave—the disbanded captain—the critic from +the inns of court—fantastic “fashion-mongers”—the +coney-catcher who watches “the warren,”—and the gull, +“town or country,” a term which, unlike that of “the +coney-catcher,” has survived the times before us, and is +imbedded in the language.<a name="fa1c60" id="fa1c60" href="#ft1c60"><span class="sp">1</span></a> They even touched on the +verge of that last refinement in society, critical coteries. +We learn from Jonson, that there was “a college of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page675" id="page675"></a>675</span> +critics,” where a new member, “if he could pay for their +suppers,” might abuse the works of any man, and purchase +for himself “the terrible name of a critic;” and +ladies “lived free from their husbands,” held coteries, and +“gave entertainments to all the wits.” This was the incipient +state of the new world of manners, and what we +now call “society;” and society provokes satire!</p> + +<p>It was at the close of the Elizabethan period that our +first town-satirists arose, from whom we learn the complicate +system of manners, in the artifices practised in +society; and in looking on their phantasmagorias, we are +often startled among their grotesque forms by discovering +our own exact faces. Satires on manners, descriptive of +the lighter follies and the more involved artifices of social +life, could hitherto have had no scope. The great in station +alone constituted what may be considered as society, +without any of those marking differences resulting from +the inequalities of fortune. Satire then, as with Skelton, +was an invective discharged at some potent individual at +the risk of life; or it was an attack on a whole body, as +Piers Ploughman’s on the clergy of the times, while +Will, or John, or Piers, whatever was his name, hid himself +behind a hedge on Malvern Hills. Society, in the +modern acceptation, of a miscellaneous mixture, which +equalizes men even in their inequality, supplying passing +objects for raillery or indignation, opened that wider +stage, which a growing metropolis only could exhibit. +We must become intimate with men to sound even the +depths of superficial follies, and declamation may even fall +short in the conception of some enormous criminal. Society +must have considerably advanced before a town-satirist +could appear.</p> + +<p>The change in style was not less remarkable than that +in manners. Towards the close of the reign of Elizabeth, +after the wild luxuriance of fancy which had everywhere +covered the fresh soil of the public mind, in the +riot of our genius, a great change was occurring in the +minds of our writers. Nature, in her open paths of sunshine, +no longer busied them, while they stole into the +bye-corners of abstract ideas, and roved after glittering +conceits. Philosophy introduced itself into poetry, and +wit became the substitute for passion. It was then that +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page676" id="page676"></a>676</span> +Sir John Davies wrote his “Immortality of the Soul,” +which still remains a model of didactic verse; and +Donne, “The Progress of the Soul,” a progress which he +did not venture to conclude—a poem the most creative and +eccentric in the language, but which must be reserved for +the few. Donne, who closed his life as a St. Austin, had +opened it as a Catullus.</p> + +<p>The depth of sentiment was contracted into sententious +epigrams, alike in prose and verse; and in the display of +their ingenuity, the remotest objects were brought into +collision, and the most differing things into a strange +coherence, to startle by surprises, and to make us admire +these wonders by their novelty. They cast about them +their pointed antitheses, and often subsided into a clink +of similar syllables, and the clench of an ambiguous +word.</p> + +<p>In all matters they affected curt phrases; and it has +been observed that even the colloquial style was barbarously +elliptical. They spoke gruff and short, affecting +brevity of words, which was probably held to be epigrammatic. +It became fashionable to write what they +entitled books of “Epigrams” and books of “Characters.” +They appear to have taken their notion of an epigram from +the Greek anthology, where the term was confined to any +inscription for a statue or a tomb, or any object to be +commemorated. Modern literature, in adopting the term, +has applied it to a different purpose from its original signification. +An epigram now is a short satire closing with +a point of wit. Wit, in our present sense, was yet unpractised, +and the modern epigram was not yet discovered. +Ben Jonson has composed books of epigrams; but, though +he has censured Sir John Harrington’s as not being epigrams, +but mere narratives, has written himself in the +prevalent style of his day. They are short poems on persons, +and on incidents in his own life, which he poured +out to relieve his own feelings when they were outraged, +and, so far, they are a reflection of the poet’s state of +mind—the autobiography of his potent intellect. As +among these epigrammatists we never had a Martial, so +among these character-writers we could hardly expect a +La Bruyère for his refined causticity; but the most skilful, +as Sir Thomas Overbury and Bishop Earle, are so +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page677" id="page677"></a>677</span> +witty as to seem grotesque, but it is human nature disguised +in the fashions of the day.<a name="fa2c60" id="fa2c60" href="#ft2c60"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p>This infection of style must have come from a higher +source than a mere fashionable affectation of the day, for +it endured through half a century. The axiomatic style +of Bacon in his “Essaies,” which first appeared in 1597, +probably set the model of the curt period for these +Senecas in prose and verse, who found no difficulty in +putting together short sentences, without, however, having +discovered the art of short thoughts.</p> + +<p>This change in style is considered as characteristic of +the age of James, but it began before his reign. The age +of this monarch has been universally condemned as the +age of pedantry, and of quibbles and conceits, all which, +indeed, have been liberally ascribed to his taste; but in the +plentiful evidence of his wit and humour, it would be +difficult to find an instance of these bastard ornaments of +style.</p> + +<p>In the history of literature the names of sovereigns +usually only serve to mark its dates; and an “author-sovereign,” +to use Lord Shaftesbury’s emphatic expression, +can exercise no prerogative, and yields even his precedence. +In more than one respect <span class="sc">James the First</span> may form an +exception, for the barren list of his writings alone might +serve to indicate the age; their subjects were not so +peculiar to this monarch’s taste as they were common with +higher geniuses than his majesty.</p> + +<p>When on the throne of England, it was deemed advisable +to collect his majesty’s writings, the honour of the +editorship was conferred on Montague, Bishop of Winton, +whom Fuller has characterised as “a potent courtier;” +and the courtly potency of the prelatical editor effuses +itself before the “majesty of kings” in the most awful of +all prefaces.</p> + +<p>Cavillers there were, who, on distinct principles, objected +to a king being a writer of books, carrying on war “by +the pen instead of the pike, and spending his passion on +paper instead of powder.” This was a military cry from +those whose “occupation had long gone.” Others, more +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page678" id="page678"></a>678</span> +critically nice, assumed that, “since writing of books had +grown into a trade, it was as discreditable for a king to +become an author as it would be for him to be a practitioner +in a profession.” Such objectors were not difficult +to put down, and the bishop has furnished an ample +catalogue of “royal authors” among all great nations; +and, in our own, from Alfred to Elizabeth. The royal +family of James were particularly distinguished for their +literary acquirements. As that was the day when no +argument could be urged without standing by the side of +some authority, the bishop had done well, and no scholar +in an upper class could have done better; but this bishop +was imprudent, his restless courtliness fatigued his pen +till he found a <i>divine origin of king-writing</i>! “The majesty +of kings,” he asserts, “is not unsuited to a writer +of books;” and proceeds—“<i>The first royal author</i> is the +King of kings—God himself, who doth so many things +for our imitation. It pleased his divine wisdom to be <i>the +first in this rank</i>, that we read of, that did <i>ever write</i>. +He wrote on the tables on both sides, which was the +work of God.” This was in the miserable strain of those +unnatural thoughts and remote analogies which were long +to disfigure the compositions even of our scholars. How +James and the bishop looked on one another at their first +meeting, after this preface was fairly read, one would like +to learn; but here we have the age!</p> + +<p>One work by this royal author must not pass away with +the others; it is not only stamped with the idiosyncrasy +of the author, but it is one of those original effusions +which are precious to the history of man. “<span class="sc">The Basilicon +Doron</span>, or His Majesty’s Instructions to His +Dearest Son Henry the Prince,” is a genuine composition +in the vernacular idiom; not the prescribed labour of a +secretary, nor the artificial composition of the salaried +literary man, but warm with the personal emotions of the +royal author. He writes for the Prince of Scotland, and +about the Scottish people; he instructs the prince even +by his own errors and misfortunes. Some might be surprised +to find the king strenuously warning the prince +against pedantry; exhorting his pupil to avoid what he +calls any “corrupt leide, as book-language and pen-and-ink +terms;” counselling him <i>to write in his own language</i>, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page679" id="page679"></a>679</span> +“for it best becometh a king to purify and make famous +his own tongue.” To have ventured on so complete an +emancipation from the prevalent prejudices, in the creation +of a vernacular literature, is one evidence, among many, +that this royal author was not a mere pedant; and the +truth is, that his writings on popular subjects are colloquially +unostentatious; abstaining from those oratorical +periods and rhetorical fancies which the scholar indulged +in his speeches and proclamations—the more solemn +labours of his own hand.</p> + +<p>It is due to the literary character of James the First +to notice his prompt sympathies with the productions of +genius. This monarch had not exceeded his twentieth +year when we find him in an intercourse with men of +letters and science at home and abroad. The death of +Sidney called forth an elegiac poem, and the works of the +astronomer Tycho Brahe are adorned by a poetical tribute +from the royal hand; during the winter the king passed +in Denmark he was a frequent visitor of the philosopher, +on whom he conferred an honour and a privilege. That +he addressed a letter to Shakspeare, grateful for the compliments +received in <i>Macbeth</i>, there is little reason to +doubt; for Davenant, the possessor of the letter, which +was finally lost, told it to the Duke of Buckingham; few +traditions are so clearly traced to their source; and indeed +some mark of James’s attention to Shakspeare is positively +told by Ben Jonson in his Elegy on “The Swan of +Avon”—</p> + +<table class="reg f90" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>————What a sight it were,</p> +<p>To see thee on our waters yet appear;</p> +<p>And make those flights upon the banks of Thames,</p> +<p>That so did take Eliza and <span class="sc">our James</span>!<a name="fa3c60" id="fa3c60" href="#ft3c60"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">Hooker was the favourite vernacular author of James; +and his earliest inquiry, on his arrival in England, was +after Hooker, whose death he deeply regretted. James +wrote a congratulatory letter to Lord Bacon on his great +work; the king at least bowed to the genius of the man. +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page680" id="page680"></a>680</span> +It was by the especial command of this royal “pedant,” +twenty-four years after the publication of Fairfax’s <i>Tasso</i>, +that a second edition revived that version; and he provided +Herbert the poet with a sinecure or pension, that +his muse might cease to be disturbed. James the First +was not only the patron of Ben Jonson, but admitted the +bard to a literary intercourse; and it is probable that we +owe to those conferences some of the splendour of the +Masques, and in which there are many strokes of the +familiar acquaintance of the poet with his royal admirer. +More grave and important objects sometimes engaged his +attention. It was James the First who assigned to the +learned Usher the task of unfolding the antiquities of the +British churches; and it was under the protection of this +monarch that Father Paul composed the famous history, +which, as fast as it was written, was despatched to England +by our ambassador, Sir Henry Wotton; and, in this +country, this great history was first published. These +are not the only testimonies of his strong affection for +literature and literary men; but they may surprise some +who only hear of a pedant-king, who in reality was only +a “learned” one.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c60" id="ft1c60" href="#fa1c60"><span class="fn">1</span></a> This technical term, designating the class of youthful loungers, +was a new term in 1596, when Sir John Davis wrote his “Epigrams”—</p> + +<table class="reg" summary="poem"><tr><td> <div class="poemr"> +<p>“Oft in my laughing rimes I name a <span class="sc">Gull</span>,</p> + <p class="i2">But this <i>new terme</i> will many questions breed;</p> +<p class="i05">Therefore, at first, I will expresse at full</p> + <p class="i2">Who is a true and perfect Gull indeed.”</p> +</div> </td></tr></table> + +<p class="noind">His delineation is admirable; Gifford, in his “Jonson,” quotes it at +length,—i. 14. But whoever may be curious about these masculine +“birds” will be initiated into the mysteries of “Gullery” by “The +Gulls’ Horn-book” of <span class="sc">Dekker</span>, of which we have a beautiful edition, +with appropriate embellishments, by Dr. Nott.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c60" id="ft2c60" href="#fa2c60"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Dr. Bliss has given an excellent edition of Bishop Earle’s +“Microcosmography, or a Piece of the World Discovered in Essays and +Characters.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c60" id="ft3c60" href="#fa3c60"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Every atom of candour is to be grudged to this hapless monarch; +it is lamentable to see such a writer as Mr. Hallam prompt instantly to +confirm a mere suggestion of Mr. Collier, that James could never have +written a letter to Shakespeare, incapacitated to sympathize with the +genial effusions of our poet.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page681" id="page681"></a>681</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE AGE OF DOCTRINES.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">We</span> now leave the age of Imagination for the age of +Doctrines; we have entered into another reign; and, a +new epoch arises in our Literature, our tastes, and our +manners.</p> + +<p>We turn from the noble wrestlings of power, the +stirrings of adventure, and the commanding genius of the +Maiden Queen, to the uninterrupted level of a long protracted +tranquillity; a fat soil, where all flourished to the +eye, while it grew into rankness, and an atmosphere of +corruption; breeding, in its unnatural heat, clouds of +insects. A monarch arrived in the flush of new dominion +with a small people, who, as an honest soul among them +said, “having been forty years in the desert, were rushing +to take possession of the promised land.” All was to be +the festival of an unbroken repose—a court of shows and +sports, the rejoicings of three kingdoms.</p> + +<p>But the queen, with these dominions, had bequeathed +her successor two troublesome legacies, in two redoubtable +portions of the English public; both the Romanists, and +those numerous dissenters, emphatically called Puritans, +were looking up to the new monarch, while the “true +protestants of Elizabeth” closed not their eyes in watchfulness +over both papist and presbyter.</p> + +<p>To the monarch from the Kirk of Scotland, which he +had extolled for “the sincerest Kirk in the world,” as +suited a Scottish sovereign, and who had once glanced +with a presbyter’s eye on “an evil mass in England,” the +English bishops hastened to offer the loyalty of their +church. His more ancient acquaintance, the puritans, +were not behind the bishops, nor without hope, to settle +what they held to be “the purity” of church discipline; +but James had drunk large draughts of a Scottish presbytery, +and knew what lay at the bottom—he had tasted +the dregs. He did not like the puritans, and he told +them why; to unking and to unbishop was “the parity” +of their petty model of Geneva. The new monarch +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page682" id="page682"></a>682</span> +declared, perhaps he would not otherwise have been +received, that “he came to maintain what the queen had +established,”—he demanded from the puritans conformity +to the State, and probably little imagined that they preferred +martyrdom. James lived to see the day when +silencing, ejecting, and expatiating, ended in no other +conformity than the common sufferings of the party.<a name="fa1c61" id="fa1c61" href="#ft1c61"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p>The claims of the Romanists were more tender than +those of the sons of John Knox; they prayed only for a +toleration. The monarch, delayed what he dared not +concede. He is charged by the non-conformist with +being “very charitable” to these votaries of an indefeasible +right of monarchy, and his project of “meeting +them half-way” startled the English protestant. What +does the king mean? Are our doctrines the same? are +we to return to the confessional? purchase plenary +pardons? require absolution and the salvation of souls +from the bishop of Rome?</p> + +<p>The main objection of the king himself to what he +styled “the corruption of the mother-church,” was the +papal supremacy, and its pretended power of deposing +monarchs, or of granting a dispensation for their murder. +Here the popular patriot exclaimed, “Was the great +revolution of civil liberty made only for the prince’s +safety?” Whatever might be this reverie of a coalition +with Rome, Rome for ever baffled it, by the never-ceasing +principle of her one and indivisible divine autocracy. +“The celestial court,” omnipotent and omniscient, hurled +its bolt at the pacific heretic of England. It menaced his +title, while its priests busily inculcated that “anything +may be done against heretics, because they are worse than +Turks and infidels;” then barrels of gunpowder were +placed under his throne, and the papal breves equally +shook his dominion by absolving the Romanists of England +from their oath of allegiance. The English monarch +chose to be the advocate of his own cause, to vindicate +his regal rights, and to protest before all Europe against +this monstrous usurpation. He wrote “The Apology for +the Oath of Allegiance,” and we must concede to his tract +this merit, that if the cause were small, boundless and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page683" id="page683"></a>683</span> +enduring was the effect. In every country in Europe, +through all the ranks of the learned, and for many a year, +this effusion of James occupied the pens alike of the +advocates of the apostolical court, and of the promulgators +of the emancipation of mankind;<a name="fa2c61" id="fa2c61" href="#ft2c61"><span class="sp">2</span></a> nor is it remotely connected +with the noble genius of Paul Sarpi, whose great +work was first published in London, and patronized by the +English monarch.</p> + +<p>It was on a nation divided into unequal parts of irreconcileable +opinions that James conferred the dubious +blessing of a long peace; for twenty years there were no +wars but the battle of pens, and the long artillery of a +hundred volumes.</p> + +<p>Polemical studies become political when the heads of +parties mask themselves under some particular doctrine. +Opinion only can neutralize opinion; but in the age of +doctrines before us, authority was considered stronger +than opinion, and in their unsettled notions and contested +principles, each party seemed to itself impregnable. +Every Æneas brandished his weapon, but could never +wound the flitting chimeras. It was in the spirit of the +age that Dr. Sutcliffe, the Dean of Exeter, laid the +foundations of a college for controversies or disputations +at Chelsea, on the banks of the quiet Thames. In this +institution the provost and the fellows were unceasingly +to answer the Romanist and the Mar-Prelate. The +fervent dean scraped together all his properties in many +an odd shape to endow it, obtained a charter, and obscured +his own name by calling it “King James’s College.” He +lived to see a small building begun, but which, like +the controversies, was not to be finished. A college for controversy +verily required inexhaustible funds. When the +day arrived that those became the masters whom those +dogmatists had so constantly refuted, the controversial +college was oddly changed into a manufactory of leather-guns, +which probably were not more efficacious.</p> + +<p>James ascended the English throne as a poor man +comes to a large inheritance. In securing peace he deemed +he had granted the people all they desired, and he was +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page684" id="page684"></a>684</span> +the only monarch who cast a generous thought on their +social recreations. That image of peace and of delight was +to be reflected in the court: and in that enchanted circle +of flattery and of hope, the silvery voices of his silken +parasites told how “he gave like a king;” but he himself, +a man of simple habits, with an utter carelessness +of money, learned a lesson which he never rightly comprehended, +how an exchequer might be voided.</p> + +<p>James was a polemical monarch when polemics were +political. But what creed or system did this royal polemic +wholly adopt? Born of Roman Catholic parents and +not abhorrent to the mother-church, for the childhood of +antiquity had its charms for him; brought up among the +Scottish presbyterians, with whom he served a long accommodating +apprenticeship of royalty, and with the doctrines +of the Anglican Church become the sovereign of three +realms, did James, like his brother of France, modify his +creed, for a crown, by the state-religion?</p> + +<p>Behold this luckless philosopher on the throne closing +the last accompts of his royalty with nothing but zeros +in his own favour. By puritans hated, by Romanists +misliked, and surrounded by trains of the “blue-bonnets,” +who were acted on the stage, and balladed in the streets; +little gracious with his English subjects, to whom from +the first “the coming-in” seemed as much like an invasion +as an accession; never forgiven by the foreigner for his +insular genius, whose pacific policy refused to enter into a +project of visionary conquest; and finally falling into a +new age, when the monarch, reduced to a mere metaphysical +abstraction, whose prerogative and privilege were +alike indefinite, had to wrestle with “the five hundred +kings,” as James once called the Commons; deservedly or +undeservedly, this monarch for all parties was a convenient +subject for panegyric or for libel, true or false.</p> + +<p>But in reality what was the character of James the +First? Where shall we find it?<a name="fa3c61" id="fa3c61" href="#ft3c61"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c61" id="ft1c61" href="#fa1c61"><span class="fn">1</span></a> James granted to the Puritans the public discussion then prayed +for—the famous conference at Hampton Court.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c61" id="ft2c61" href="#fa2c61"><span class="fn">2</span></a> A curious list of some of the more remarkable controversialists on +both sides may be found in Irving’s “Lives of the Scottish Poets,” ii. 234.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c61" id="ft3c61" href="#fa3c61"><span class="fn">3</span></a> I have at least honestly attempted “An Inquiry into the Literary +and Political Character of James the First.”</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page685" id="page685"></a>685</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">PAMPHLETS.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">Pamphlets,</span> those leaves of the hour, and volumes of a +season and even of a week, slight and evanescent things as +they appear, and scorned at by opposite parties, while each +cherishes their own, are in truth the records of the public +mind, the secret history of a people which does not always +appear in the more open narrative; the true bent and +temper of the times, the contending interests, the appeal +of a party, or the voice of the nation, are nowhere so +vividly brought before us as by these advocates of their +own cause, too deeply interested to disguise their designs, +and too contracted in their space to omit their essential +points.</p> + +<p>Of all the nations of Europe our country first offered a +rapid succession of these busy records of men’s thoughts, +their contending interests, their mightier passions, their +aspirations, and sometimes even their follies. Wherever +pamphlets abound there is freedom, and therefore have we +been a nation of pamphleteers. Even at the time when +the press was not yet free, an invincible pamphlet struck a +terror; the establishment of the Anglican Church under +Elizabeth disturbed the little synagogue of puritans, and +provoked the fury of the Mar-Prelate pamphlets; the +pacific reign of James covered the land with a new harvest +of agricultural pamphlets; but when we entered on an +age when men thought what they listed, and wrote what +they thought, pamphlets ran through the land, and then +the philosophical speculator on human affairs read what +had never before been written; the troubles of Charles the +First and the nation sounded the trumpet of civil war by +the blast of pamphlets; state-plots and state-cabals were +hatched at least by the press, under the second Charles, +and popery and arbitrary government terrified the nation +by their pamphlets; the principles of English government +and toleration expanded in the pamphlets of the reign of +William the Third, even Locke’s Treatises on Toleration +and on Government were at first but pamphlets; and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page686" id="page686"></a>686</span> +under Anne the nation observed the light skirmishes of +Whig and Tory pamphlets.</p> + +<p>Our neighbours in their great revolutionary agitation, if +they could not comprehend our constitution, imitated our +arts of insurgency, and from the same impulses at length +rivalled us; but the very term of pamphlet is English; +and the practice seemed to them so novel, that a recent +French biographer designates an early period of the French +revolution as one when “the art of <span class="scs">PAMPHLETS</span> had not +yet reached perfection.”</p> + +<p>The history of pamphlets would form an extraordinary +history; but whoever gathers a history from pamphlets +must prepare for contradiction. Rushworth had formed +a great collection to supply the materials of his volumes, +but speaks slightly of them, while insinuating his own +sagacity in separating truth from falsehood; but he concluded +“very suspiciously,” observed Oldys, that none +need trouble themselves with any further examination than +what he had been pleased to make. This suspicion was +more manifest when Nalson began another collection from +pamphlets to shake the evidence of the pamphlets of +Rushworth. Each had found what he craved for; for +whoever will look only into those on his favourite side, finds +enough written with his own passions, but he will obtain +little extension of knowledge, for this is much like looking +at his own face in the glass.</p> + +<p>But we must not consider pamphlets wholly in a political +view; their circuit is boundless, holding all the world of +man; they enter into every object of human interest. The +silent revolutions in manners, language, habits, are there +to be traced; the interest which was taken on novel objects +of discovery would be wholly lost were it not for these +records; and, indeed, it is the multiplicity of pamphlets +on a particular topic or object which appear at a particular +period, that offer the truest picture of public +opinion.</p> + +<p>Those who would not dare to compose a volume have +fluttered in the leaves of a pamphlet. Three or four ideas +are a good stock to set up a pamphlet, and look well in it, +as picked wares in a shop-window. The mute who cannot +speak at a dinner or on the hustings, is eloquent in a +pamphlet; and he who speaks only to excite the murmurs +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page687" id="page687"></a>687</span> +of his auditors, amply vindicates himself by a pamphlet. +I doubt whether there is a single important subject to +which some English pamphlet may not form a necessary +supplement. Many eminent in rank, or who, from their +position, have never written anything else, have written a +pamphlet; and as the motive must he urgent which induces +any such to have recourse to their pen, so the matter +is of deeper interest; and it has often happened that the +public have thence derived information which else had not +reached them. The heads of parties have sometimes issued +these manifestoes; and the tails, in the form of a pamphlet, +have sometimes let out secrets for which they have been +reprimanded.</p> + +<p>Some of the most original conceptions, whose very errors +or peculiarities even may instruct, lie hidden in pamphlets. +These effusions of a more permanent nature than those of +politics, are usually literary, scientific, or artistical, the +spontaneous productions of amateurs, the precious suggestions, +and sometimes the original discoveries of taste or +enthusiasm. These are the <i>deliciæ</i> of the amenities of +literature; and such pamphlets have often escaped our +notice, since their writers were not authors, and had no +works of their own among which to shelter them.</p> + +<p>The age of Charles the First may be <span class="correction" title="amended from charactersied">characterised</span> as the +age of pamphlets. Of that remarkable period, we possess +an extraordinary collection, which amounts to about thirty +thousand pieces, uniformly bound in two thousand volumes +of various sizes, accompanied by twelve folio volumes of +the catalogue chronologically arranged, exhibiting their +full titles. Even the date of the day is noted when each +pamphlet was published. It includes a hundred in manuscript +written on the king’s side, which at the time were +not allowed to be printed. The formation of this collection +is a romantic incident in the annals of Bibliography.</p> + +<p>In that critical year, 1640, a bookseller of the name of +Thomason conceived the idea of preserving, in that new +age of contested principles, an unbroken chain of men’s +arguments, and men’s doings. We may suppose that this +collector, commencing with the year 1640, and continuing +without omission or interruption to the year 1660, could +not at first have imagined the vast career he had to +run; there was, perhaps, sagacity in the first thought, but +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page688" id="page688"></a>688</span> +there was far more intrepidity in never relinquishing this +favourite object during these perilous twenty years, amid +a conflict of costly expenditure, of personal danger, and +almost insurmountable difficulties.</p> + +<p>The design was carried on in secrecy through confidential +servants, who at first buried the volumes as they collected +them; but they soon became too numerous for such a mode +of concealment. The owner, dreading that the ruling +government would seize on the collection, watched the +movements of the army of the Commonwealth, and carried +this itinerant library in every opposite direction. Many +were its removals, northward or westward, but the danger +became so great, and the collection so bulky, that he had +at one time an intention to pass them over into Holland, +but feared to trust his treasure to the waves. He at +length determined to place them in his warehouses, in the +form of tables round the room, covered with canvas. It is +evident that the loyalty of the man had rendered him a +suspected person; for he was once dragged from his bed, +and imprisoned for seven weeks, during which time, however, +the collection suffered no interruption, nor was the +secret betrayed.</p> + +<p>The secret was, however, evidently not unknown to +some faithful servants of the king; for when, in 1647, his +Majesty at Hampton Court desired to see a particular +pamphlet, it was obtained for him from this collection, +though the collector was somewhat chary of the loan, +fearing the loss of what he felt as a limb of his body, not +probably recoverable. The king had the volume with +him in his flight towards the Isle of Wight; but it was +returned to the owner, with his Majesty’s earnest exhortation, +that he should diligently continue the collection. +A slight accident which happened to the volume +occasioned the collector to leave this interesting incident +on record.<a name="fa1c62" id="fa1c62" href="#ft1c62"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page689" id="page689"></a>689</span></p> + +<p>When Cromwell ruled, a place of greater security was +sought for than the owner’s warehouses: a fictitious sale +was made to the University of Oxford, who would be more +able to struggle for their preservation than a private +individual, if the Protector discovered and claimed +these distracted documents of the history of his own +times.</p> + +<p>Mr. Thomason lived to complete his design; he witnessed +the restoration, and died in 1666, leaving his +important collection, which was still lodged at Oxford, and +which he describes in his will “as not to be paralleled,” +in trust to be sold for the benefit of his children. His +will affords an evidence that he was a person of warm +patriotic feelings, with a singular turn of mind, for he left +a stipend of forty shillings for two sermons to be annually +preached, one of which was to commemorate the destruction +of the Armada.</p> + +<p>The collection continued at Oxford many years awaiting +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page690" id="page690"></a>690</span> +a purchaser;<a name="fa2c62" id="fa2c62" href="#ft2c62"><span class="sp">2</span></a> and at length appears to have been bought +by Mearne, “the king’s stationer,” at the command of the +Secretary of State for Charles the Second; but Charles, +who would little value old pamphlets, and more particularly +these, which only reminded him of such mortifying +occurrences, by an order in council in 1684 munificently +allowed the widow of Mearne to dispose of them as well as +she could. In 1709 we find them offered to Lord Weymouth,<a name="fa3c62" id="fa3c62" href="#ft3c62"><span class="sp">3</span></a> +and in 1732 they were still undisposed of; but +in those times of loyal rebellion, either for the assumption +or the restoration of the throne, that of the Commonwealth +excited so little interest, and this extraordinary +collection was so depreciated, that Oldys then considered +it would not reach the twentieth part of the four thousand +pounds which it was said that the collector had once +refused for it.<a name="fa4c62" id="fa4c62" href="#ft4c62"><span class="sp">4</span></a> In 1745 a representative of the Mearne +family still held the volumes,<a name="fa5c62" id="fa5c62" href="#ft5c62"><span class="sp">5</span></a> and eventually they were +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page691" id="page691"></a>691</span> +purchased at the small price of three or four hundred +pounds by George the Third, and by him were presented +to the national library, where they now bear the name of +the King’s Pamphlets.</p> + +<p>Thus having escaped from seizure and dispersion, this +noble collection remained in the hands of those who priced +it as a valueless incumbrance, and yet seem to have +respected the object of the enterprise, for they preserved it +entire. It may be some consolation to such intrepid collectors +that their intelligence and their fervour are not in +vain, and however they may fail in the attainment of their +motive, a great end may fortunately be achieved.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c62" id="ft1c62" href="#fa1c62"><span class="fn">1</span></a> In vol. 100, small quarto, we find the following memorandum:—</p> + +<p>“Mem’dum that Col<span class="sp">l</span> Will Legg and Mr. Arthur Treavor were employed +by his Majes<span class="sp">e</span> K. Ch. to gett for his present use a pamphl<span class="sp">t</span> which +his majestie had then occasion to make use of, & not meeting with it, +they both come to me, having heard that I did employ myself to rake up +all such things from the beginning of that Parliament, and finding it +with me, told me it was for his majestys own use. I told them all I +had were at his maj<span class="sp">y</span> command and service, & withal told them if I +should part with it & loose it—presuming that when his majestie had +done with it, that little account would be made of it, and that if I +should loose it, by that loss a limb of my collection, which I should be +very loath to see, well knowing it would be impossible to supplie it if +it should happen to be lost; with which answer they returned to his +majes<span class="sp">e</span> at Hampton C<span class="sp">t</span> (as I take it) & tould him they had found the +person which had it, & withal how loath he that had it was to part +with it, he much fearing its loss. Whereupon they came to me again +from his maj<span class="sp">e</span> to tell me that upon the word of a king (to use the +king’s own expressions) they would safely return it, whereupon immediately +by them I sent it to his majestie. Who having done with it, & +having it with him when he was going towards the Isle of Wight, let +it fall in the <i>durt</i>, and then calling for the two persons (who attended +him) delivered it to them with a charge as they would answer it another +day, that they should both speedily & safely return it to him from +whom they had received it, and withal to desire the party to go on +& continue what had begun. Which book, together with his Maj<span class="sp">ties</span> +signification to me, by these worthy and faithful gents, I received both +speedily and safely. My volume hath that mark of honour which no +other volume in my collection hath, & v<span class="sp">y</span> diligently and carefully I continued +the same until that most hapie restoration & coronation of his +most gratious majestie King Charle y<span class="sp">e</span> 2d, whom God long preserve.</p> + +<p class="rgt">“<span class="sc">Geo. Thomason</span>.”</p> + +<p>The volume bears the “honours” of its mischance. There are a +great number of stains on the edges of the leaves—some more than an +inch in depth. The accident must have happened on the road in the +king’s flight, from the marks of the mud.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c62" id="ft2c62" href="#fa2c62"><span class="fn">2</span></a> In 1676, Dr. Barlow, one of the trustees, writes to the Rev. +George Thomason, who was a Fellow of Queen’s College and the eldest +son of the collector, respecting the collection and its value. The letter +is printed in Beloe’s “Anecdotes of Literature,” vol. ii.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c62" id="ft3c62" href="#fa3c62"><span class="fn">3</span></a> A letter from Dr. Jenkin, who was chaplain to Lord Weymouth, +to Mr. Baker, Dec. 3, 1709:—“There is another rarity then to be +sold, which is proffered to my lord—a Collection of Pamphlets, in +number 30,000, bound in 2000 volumes. The collection was begun by +Charles 1st in 1640, and continued to 1660. In a printed paper, +where I saw this account, it is said the collectors refused 4000<i>l.</i> for +them.”—<i>Masters’ Life of Rev. Thomas Baker</i>, p. 28.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c62" id="ft4c62" href="#fa4c62"><span class="fn">4</span></a> “Phœnix Britannicus,”—“Oldys’ Dissertation upon Pamphlets,” +p. 556. Oldys drew up an account of these pamphlets from “The +Memoirs of the Curious,” published in 1701. He says, that the Collection +was made by <i>Tomlinson, the bookseller</i>, and the Catalogue by +Marmaduke Foster, the auctioneer; and relates a traditional story, +that it is reported that Charles the First gave ten pounds for reading +one of these pamphlets, at the owner’s house in St. Paul’s Churchyard. +This collection was not commenced until Nov. 1640, and the king left +London in Jan. 1642; during this time the collection could not be very +numerous, nor would there be that difficulty in seeing a pamphlet as at +the subsequent more distracted period. It is curious to trace the origin +of traditionary tales; they often stand on a rickety foundation. We +find that the king did borrow a pamphlet, but at a time when he could +not hasten to St. Paul’s Churchyard to read it; we may presume that +the bookseller did not charge his majesty so disloyal a price as ten +pounds for the perusal of a single pamphlet; he probably received only +the king’s approbation of his design, which doubtless was no slight +stimulus to its completion.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c62" id="ft5c62" href="#fa5c62"><span class="fn">5</span></a> A Mr. Sisson, a druggist in Ludgate-street, who died in 1749; +they then became the property of his relative; Miss Sisson, who seems +gladly to have disburdened herself of this domestic grievance in 1761.—<i>Hollis’ +Memoirs</i>, p. 121.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page692" id="page692"></a>692</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE OCEANA OF HARRINGTON.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">The</span> hardy paradoxes, not wholly without foundation, and +the humiliating truths so mortifying to human nature, of +the mighty “Leviathan,” whose author was little disposed +to flatter or to elevate his brothers,<a name="fa1c63" id="fa1c63" href="#ft1c63"><span class="sp">1</span></a> were opposed by an +ideal government, more generous in its sympathies, and +less obtrusive of brute force, or “the public sword,” in the +<span class="sc">Oceana</span> of <span class="sc">James Harrington</span>.</p> + +<p>Free from mere party motives of the Monarchist or the +Commonwealth-man, for he gratified neither, Harrington +was the greatest of political theorists; and his “political +architecture,” with all his “models of government, +notional and practicable,” still remains for us, and has not +been overlooked by some framers of constitutions.</p> + +<p>The psychological history of <span class="sc">Harrington</span> combines +with his works. His was a thoughtful youth, like that of +Sidney, of Milton, and Gray, which never needed correction, +but rather kept those around him in awe. Among the +usual studies of his age, it was an enterprise to have acquired +the modern languages, as entering into an extensive +plan of foreign travel, which the boy had already decided +on. The death of his father before his legal age enabled +him to realise this project. Political studies, however, had +not yet occurred to him; and when he left England, he +“knew no more of monarchy, anarchy, aristocracy, and +democracy or oligarchy, than as hard words for which he +was obliged to look into the dictionary.”</p> + +<p>In Holland, he first contemplated on the image of +popular liberty, recent from the yoke of Spain; it was a +young people rejoicing in the holiday of freedom. There +he found a friend in the fugitive Queen of Bohemia: his +uncle, Lord Harrington, had been the governor of that +spirited princess. He passed over into Denmark with the +crownless elector, soliciting for that aid which no political +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page693" id="page693"></a>693</span> +prudence could afford. He resisted the seductions of those +noble friendships in pursuit of his great plan. He entered +France, he loitered in Germany, and at length advanced +into Italy. At Rome, he refused to bestow on his holiness +the prostrate salutation, and when some Englishmen complained +of their compatriot’s stiffness to Charles the First, +who reminded the young philosopher that he might have +performed a courteous custom as to a temporal prince, the +reply was happy—“having kissed his majesty’s hand, he +would always hold it beneath him to kiss any prince’s +toe.”</p> + +<p>Our future political theorist was deeply struck in his +admiration of the aristocratic government of Venice, which +he conceived to be the most perfect and durable government +hitherto planned by the wit of man. Such was the +prevalent notion throughout Europe concerning a government +existing in secrecy and mystery! In Italy, he found +Politics, Literature and Art, and provided himself with a +rich store of Italian books, especially on political topics. +Machiavelli with him was “the prince of Politicians;” +but he has opened his great work with the name of +another Italian, “Janotti (Giannotti), the most excellent +describer of the Commonwealth of Venice.” Giannotti is +a name which, though it has not shared the celebrity of +Machiavelli, seems to have been that of a more practical +politician, for Giannotti at length obtained that honourable +secretaryship of Florence, the loss of which, it is said, so +deeply mortified the lofty spirit of his greater rival, that +the illustrious ex-secretary died of grief, which his philosophy +should have quieted.</p> + +<p>Harrington returned home an accomplished cavalier; +but the commonwealth of Holland, the aristocracy of +Venice, the absolute monarchy of France, imperial Germany, +and what else he had contemplated in the northern +courts, must have furnished to his thoughtful mind the +elements of his theory of politics.</p> + +<p>He returned home to the privacy of his studies, refusing +any public employment; but that he kept up an intercourse +with the court, appears by his personal acquaintance +with the king. Many years form a blank in his life; +once indeed he had made an ineffectual attempt to enter +parliament, but failed, though his sentiments were well +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page694" id="page694"></a>694</span> +known in favour of popular government. It is probable, +that in that unhappy period, when persons and events +were alike of so mixed and ambiguous a character, our +philosopher could not sympathize with the clash of temporary +passions.</p> + +<p>When the king was to be conveyed from Newcastle in +1646, Harrington was chosen to attend his person as “a +gentleman well known to the king before, and who had +never engaged with any party whatever.” He was then +in his thirty-fifth year.</p> + +<p>This appointment of Harrington was agreeable to the +king. Charles found in Harrington the character he well +knew how to appreciate. He conversed on books, and pictures, +and foreign affairs, and found a ripe scholar, a travelled +mind, and a genius overflowing with strange speculative +notions. Their conversations were free; Harrington did +not conceal his predilection for commonwealth institutions, +at which the king was impatient. Neither could bring +the other to his own side, for each was fixed in taking +opposite views; the one looking to the advantages of +monarchy, and the other to those of a republic. The only +subject they could differ on, never interrupted their affections; +the theoretical commonwealth-man, and the practical +monarch, in their daily intercourse, found that they +had a heart for each other.</p> + +<p>In Charles the First, Harrington discovered a personage +unlike the distorted image which political passions had +long held out. In adversity the softened prince seemed +only to be “the man of sorrows.” On one occasion Harrington +vindicated the king’s conduct, and urged that the +royal concessions were satisfactory. This strong personal +attachment to Charles alarmed the party in +power. Harrington was ordered away. He subsequently +visited the king when at St. James’s, and was present at +the awful act of the decapitation. Charles presented Harrington +with a last memorial. Aubrey, who knew +Harrington, may tell the rest of his story. “Mr. Harrington +was on the scaffold with the king when he was +beheaded; and I have ofttimes heard him speak of King +Charles the First with the greatest zeal and passion +imaginable; and that his death gave him so great grief, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page695" id="page695"></a>695</span> +that he contracted a disease by it; that never anything +did go so near to him.”</p> + +<p>The agony of that terrible day afflicted Harrington +with a malady from which he was never afterwards freed; +a profound melancholy preyed upon his spirits; he withdrew +into utter seclusion, not to mourn, but to despond. +His friends were alarmed at a hermit’s melancholy; some +imagined that his affection for the king had deranged his +intellect; others ascribed his seclusion to mere discontent +with the times.</p> + +<p>To rid himself of friendly importunities, and to evince +that his mind was not deranged, whatever might be his +feelings, he confided to his circle that he had long been +occupied in the study of civil government, to invent an art +which should prevent the disorders of a state. It was his +opinion that “a government is not of so accidental or +arbitrary institution as people imagine; for in society +there are natural causes producing their necessary effects +as well as in the earth or the air.” The passionless sage was +so discriminately just, that he declared that “our late +troubles were not wholly to be ascribed to the misgovernment +of the prince, nor to the stubbornness of the people; +but to the nature of certain changes which had happened +to the nation.” He then, for their curious admiration, +disclosed the perfect model of a commonwealth in his +“<span class="sc">Oceana</span>.”</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Oceana</span>, or England, was the model of “a free state;” +a political “equality” was its basis; equality to be guarded +by a number of devices. Harrington laid the foundation +of politics, on the principle that <i>empire follows the balance +of property</i>, whether lodged in one, in a few, or in many. +Toland asserts that this was as noble a discovery as that +of the circulation of the blood, of printing, gunpowder, or +the compass, or optic glasses; the Newtonian gravity had +not then been established, or, doubtless, it had been +enumerated.</p> + +<p>To preserve the political equality, there were to be +“balances” in dominion and in property. An agrarian law, +by its distributions suitable to the rank of the individual, +and which were never to be enlarged nor diminished, +would prevent any man, or any party, overpowering the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page696" id="page696"></a>696</span> +people by their possessions. All those states in Europe +which were the remains of Gothic dominion, were thrown +into internal conflicts by their “overbalances.” The overbalance +of one man was tyranny; of a few, was oligarchy; +of the many, was rebellion, or anarchy.<a name="fa2c63" id="fa2c63" href="#ft2c63"><span class="sp">2</span></a> The perpetual +shifting of their “balances” had produced all their disturbances. +He traced this history in extinct governments, +as well as in our own. So refined were his political optics, +that he discerned when our kings had broken Magna +Charta some thirty times; and during the reign of Charles +the First, he asserts that these “balances” had been altered +nine times.</p> + +<p>The “balance of property” being the foundation of the +commonwealth, the superstructure was raised of magistracy. +Magistracy was to proceed by “rotation,” and to +be settled by the “ballot.” The senate was to be elected +by the purity of suffrage, which was to be found in the +balloting-box. And in this rotatory government, the +third part of the senate would be wheeled out at their +fixed terms. The senate by these self-purgations would +renovate its youth; and the sovereign authority, by this +unceasing movement, would act in its perpetual integrity.</p> + +<p>In this equal commonwealth no party can be at variance +with, or gain ground upon another; and as there can be +no factions, so neither will there be any seditions; because +the people are without the power or the interest to raise +commotions; they would be as likely to throw themselves +into the sea as to disturb the state. It is one of his +political axioms, that where the public interest governs, it +is a government of laws; but where a private interest, it +is a government of men, and not of laws.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Harrington</span> was no admirer of a mixed monarchy; +his political logic includes some important truths. “In +a mixed monarchy, the nobility sometimes imposing chains +on the king or domineering over the people, the king is +either oppressing the people without control, or contending +with the nobility, as their protectors; and the people are +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page697" id="page697"></a>697</span> +frequently in arms against both king and nobles, till at +last one of the three estates becomes master of the other +two, or till they so mutually weaken one another, that +either they fall a prey to some more potent government, +or naturally grow into a commonwealth—therefore mixed +monarchy is not a perfect government; but if no such +parties can possibly exist in <span class="sc">Oceana</span>, then it is the most +equal, perfect, and immortal commonwealth. <i>Quod erat +demonstrandum.</i>”</p> + +<p>The “equality” of Harrington, however, was not fashioned +to any vulgar notions of a levelling democracy. +He maintained the distinctions of orders in society. The +great founder of a commonwealth was first a <i>gentleman</i>, +from Moses downwards; though, he says, “there be great +divines, poets, lawyers, great men in all professions, the +genius of a great politician is peculiar to <i>the genius of a +gentleman</i>.” And further, “An army may as well consist +of soldiers without officers, or of officers without soldiers, +as a commonwealth (especially such an one as is capable +of greatness) consist of a people without gentry, or of a +gentry without a people.”</p> + +<p>A work of such original invention, replete with the +most curious developments of all former political institutions, +of which the author proposed to resume the advantages +and to supply the deficiencies, from the ancient +commonwealth of Moses to the recent republic of the +Hollanders, and moreover throwing out some novel general +views of our own national history, formed a volume opportune +to engage public attention. It was enlivened by the +pleasing form of a romance, where, in the council of the +legislators, the debaters plead for their favourite form of +government with infinite spirit.</p> + +<p>The publication of “Oceana” was, however, long retarded; +first, by the honesty of our sage, and, secondly, +by the influence of two very opposite parties equally +alarmed. Harrington was anxious that his proselytes +should debate his opinions, and even partially promulgate +them in their pamphlets, before he ventured to publish +them. What he ably elucidated they faithfully repeated: +the consequence of this indiscretion was, that the novelty +had lost its gloss; and, when finally his great discovery +of empire following the balance of property appeared, the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page698" id="page698"></a>698</span> +author was reproached for its obviousness. Every great +principle appears obvious when once ascertained. The +vague rumours that had spread that a new model of +government was about to appear, made the Cromwellites +and the cavaliers alike alert in their opposition; the bashaws +of the great sultan, the new lords and major-generals +of the Protector, sate uneasy in their usurped +seats; the cavaliers, who knew Harrington’s predisposition +for republican institutions, loudly remonstrated. The +author was compelled to send his papers to the printers +by stealth and by snatches, dispersing them among different +presses. The first edition of “Oceana” exhibits a +strange appearance, in a confusion of all sorts of types and +characters—black letter, Italian and Roman, accompanied +by an unparalleled “List of Errors of the Press,” being +several folio pages with double columns! The author has +even marked the lacerations of his panting and hunted +volume from “a spaniel questing who hath sprung my +book out of one press into two other.” The myrmidons +of Oliver hunted down their game from press to press, and +at length pounced on their prey, and, with a Pyrrhic +triumph, bore it to Whitehall.</p> + +<p>All solicitations of the author to retrieve his endeared +volume proved fruitless; in despair he ventured on a +singular expedient. Lady Claypole, the daughter of the +Protector, studied to be exceedingly gracious, and to play +the princess. Unacquainted with her ladyship, Harrington +requested an audience; waiting in the antechamber, her +little daughter soon attracted his attention; carrying her +in his arms, he entered the presence-chamber, and declared +that he had a design to steal the young lady—not from +love, but for revenge.</p> + +<p>“Have I injured you?”</p> + +<p>“Not at all! but your father has stolen my child, and +then you would have interceded for its restoration.”</p> + +<p>The parable of the parental author was easily explained; +the pleasing manners of the elegant cavalier, which were +not commonly seen in the new court of the protectorate, +doubtless assisted the petitioner with the recent princess +of the revolution. “Are you sure,” she earnestly inquired, +“that your book contains nothing against my father’s +government?”</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page699" id="page699"></a>699</span></p> + +<p>“It is a political romance! to be dedicated to your +father, and the first copy to be opened by yourself.”</p> + +<p>Lady Claypole conceived there could not be any treason +in a romance. She persuaded Oliver to look it over himself; +the Protector, who there found himself as “the Lord +Archon of Oceana,” and probably with his sharp judgment +deeming the whole a “romance,” returned it, drily observing, +that “the power which he had got by the sword +he would not quit for a little paper-shot:” but he added, +with his accustomed sanctimonious policy, that “he as +little approved as the gentleman of the government of a +<i>single person</i>, but that he had been compelled to take +the office of High-Constable to preserve the peace among +all parties who could never agree among themselves.”</p> + +<p>“Oceana” was published at a crisis when the people +were still to be enchanted by the name of “Commonwealth,” +though they began to think that they had been +mistaken in their choice, since their grievances had been +heavier than under the old monarchy which they had dissolved. +Harrington familiarly compared their present +unquiet state to that of a company of puppy-dogs cramped +up in a bag, when finding themselves ill at ease for want +of room, every one of them bites the tail or the foot of +his neighbour, supposing that to be the source of his +misery. To such a restless people, a continual change of +rulers on the rotatory system seemed a great relief; any +worse than their present masters they would not suppose. +“The Rota” of Harrington became so popular, that a +club was established bearing its name; and they held +their debates every evening with doors open for auditors +or orators.</p> + +<p>This political club was the resort of the finest geniuses +of the age, many of whom have left their eminent names +in our history and our literature. The members sat at a +circular table—the table of ancient knighthood and modern +equality, which left a passage open within its circuit +to have their coffee delivered hot without any interruption +to the speaker or “the state of the nation.” A contemporary +assures us that these debates were more ingenious +and spirited than he had ever heard, and that those in +parliament were flat to them. Every decision how affairs +should be carried was left to the balloting-box—“a box +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page700" id="page700"></a>700</span> +in which there is no cogging,” observes the master-genius +of “the Rota.”</p> + +<p>This “balloting” and the principle of “rotation” were +hateful to the parliamentarians; for, as we are told, “they +were cursed tyrants, in love with their power, and this +was death to them.” <span class="sc">Henry Neville</span>, the author of +“Plato Redivivus,” the constant associate of Harrington, +and who, Hobbes (alluding to the “Oceana”) said, “had +a finger in the pye,” had the boldness to propose the system +of “rotation” to the House, warning them that, if +they did not accept that model of government, they would +shortly fall into ruins. In their then ticklish condition, +the House had the decency to return their thanks, and +the intrepidity to keep their places.</p> + +<p>This perfectioned model of a government, when opened +for the inspection of mankind, exhibited a glorious framework; +but it seemed questionable whether this political +clockwork or intellectual mechanism could perform its +exact librations, depending on a number of “balances” to +preserve its nice equilibrium; and whether it could last +for perpetuity by that “rotatory” motion by wheels which +were never to cease. Some objected, that the author in +the science of politics had been fascinated, as some in mechanics, +who imagined that they had discovered “the +perpetual motion.” But this objection the constructor of +this “political architecture” indignantly rejected. He +knew that the capacity of matter can only work as long +as it lasts, and therefore there can be no perpetual motion; +but “the mathematician must not take God to be such as +he is. The equal commonwealth is built up by the understandings +of the people. Now the people never die—they +are not brute matter. This movement of theirs comes +from the hands of the Eternal Mover, even God himself.”</p> + +<p>This romance of politics has been pronounced by a high +authority as “one of the boasts of English literature;” +and the philosophic Hume has even ventured to pronounce +the work as “the <i>only valuable model of a commonwealth</i> +that has yet been offered to the public.” Perhaps the +historian would pass it off as “the only valuable one,” +from a conviction that it was perfectly harmless. It is +worthy of remark, that when, in 1688, a grand <i>auto da fè</i> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page701" id="page701"></a>701</span> +was performed by the university of Oxford on certain political +works—when they condemned to the flames Baxter’s +“Holy Commonwealth,” written against Harrington’s +“Heathen Commonwealth,” as Baxter calls “Oceana,” +with Hobbes, and Milton, and others—no one proposed +this condign punishment to the manes of Harrington, +considering, no doubt, that a romance was too impracticable +as a political system. Yet the republican party has +always held to “Oceana” as their text-book; and it was +with this view that <span class="sc">Toland</span> edited this great work, and, +in his life of Milton, has declared “Oceana” to be an unrivalled +model of a commonwealth, for its <i>practicableness</i>, +<i>equality</i>, and completeness; and once <span class="sc">Hollis</span>, during the +fervour of founding a republic in Corsica, recommended +by public advertisement “Oceana” as the most perfect +model of a free government.</p> + +<p>“<span class="sc">Oceana</span>” has perpetuated a thoughtful politician’s +dreams. But are there no realities in dreams? Even in +dreaming, a great artist often combines conceptions too +fugitive, too mysterious, too beauteous, for his palpable +canvas. And thus the fanciful pictures of our philosophical +politician were the results of his deep and varied +studies in the ancient and modern writings on the science +of politics—from Aristotle to Machiavel, from Machiavel +to Hobbes. His pages are studded with axioms of policy, +and impress us by many an enduring truth. His style is +not always polished, and is sometimes perplexed; but no +writer has exceeded him in the felicity and boldness of his +phrases; and his pen, though busied on higher matters, +sparkles with imagery and illustration.</p> + +<p>That a mind so sagacious and even predictive as was +that of Harrington’s in the uncertainty of human events +should be led away by theoretical fallacies, is an useful example +for political speculators.<a name="fa3c63" id="fa3c63" href="#ft3c63"><span class="sp">3</span></a> Constantly he extols the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page702" id="page702"></a>702</span> +dark mysterious dominion of aristocratic Venice, “being a +commonwealth having no causes of dissolution.” He +dwells on “the rotation of its senate,” and its prompt, +remedial, concealed power. “It is immortal in its nature; +and to this day she stands with one thousand years of +tranquillity on her back: notwithstanding,” he thoughtfully +adds, “that this government consists of men not +without sin.”</p> + +<p>A single day of treason sufficed to terminate this immortal +commonwealth of Venice, with all its “ballotings” +and “its rotations,” and its hidden and horrible +dictature, where sate the council of “Three” in their dark +conclave, like the sister-fates, the arbiters of every soul in +Venice. Alas for that folly of the wise, who, in the delusion +of a theory, to support the edifice of imagination +disguise the truths which might shake it! The advocate +of a free state, he who pretends to draw sovereignty from +the hands of a people, is the perpetual eulogist of the +most refined tyranny that ever swayed the destiny of a +people. Spirit of Harrington! meditate in thy sepulchral +city, motionless and naked as she lies, there to correct so +many passages of admiration which spread their illusion +in thy “<span class="sc">Oceana</span>!”</p> + +<p>Harrington was equally fallible on the strength of his +political axiom, “that the balance of power depends on +that of property;” applying it to his own critical period, +he pronounced that it was impossible ever to re-establish +monarchy among English commonwealth-men. Property +had changed possessors; it could never revert to its former +owners. Four years after “Oceana” was published, and +“the Rota Club” was still illumining the nation, the +commonwealth returned to monarchy by a beck, and +without a word!</p> + +<p>Theoretical politicians too often omit in their artificial +constructions, and their moral calculations, something +more prompt to act in the conduct of men than even their +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page703" id="page703"></a>703</span> +interests—the stirring passions of ambition, of faction, and +the vacillations of “the sovereign people,” now maddening +for a republic, now rushing into a monarchy, “tumbling +and tossing upon their bed of sickness.”</p> + +<p>When the Restoration arrived, however it may have +deranged the system, it seems not to have disturbed the +systematiser. He observed, that “the king comes in; if he +calls a parliament of the cavaliers on our great estates, let +them sit seven years, and they will all turn commonwealth-men.” +He retained in all its force his master-passion +of ideal politics. He now decided to reduce +“Oceana” into plain axioms, divested of tedious argumentation, +and formal demonstration, adapted to the most +vulgar capacities. He was easily induced to offer some +immediate instructions for the king’s service. A paper +was first shown to some of the courtiers, who suspected +treason in any scheme where their particular interests +were not at all consulted. One morning, when Harrington +was busily engaged, with all his aphorisms lying loose on +a table before him, suddenly entered Sir William Poulteney, +and other officers, to seize on the philosopher and +the philosophy “for treasonable designs and practices.” +As they were huddling together the scattered members of +the “Oceanic” mind, the innocent philosopher, innocent of +treason, begged the favour of “stitching them together” +before they were taken to Whitehall. The derangement +of his system appeared to him more dreadful than seeing +himself hurried to the Tower.</p> + +<p>Harrington had kept up his intimacy with old friends, +among whom were many commonwealth-men, from Major +Wildman, an intriguing Cromwellite, down to the notorious +Barebones, on whom he declared, however, that he +had only called, “at his shop” thrice in his life. He was +now involved in a pretended plot, which the Chancellor +himself, though furnished with accounts of the meetings +of certain parties, declared that he could make nothing of. +A speculative politician was a very suspicious person in +the days of restoration. Harrington, assuredly, was no +plotter. Our philosopher contrived to send his sisters his +examination before his relative Lord Lauderdale and others, +curious for its topics of discussion, and the poignancy of +the dialogue. I cannot pass by one singular passage.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page704" id="page704"></a>704</span></p> + +<p>“You charge me with being eminent in principles contrary +to the king’s government, and the laws of this nation. +Some, my lord, say, that I, being a private man, +have been so mad as to meddle with politics; what had a +private man to do with government? My lord, there is +not any <i>public</i> person, not any <i>magistrate</i> that has written +in politics, worth a button. All they that have been excellent +in this way have been private men, as private men +as myself. There is Plato, there is Aristotle, there is +Livy, there is Machiavel. My lord, I can sum up Aristotle’s +politics in a very few words; he says there is the +barbarous monarchy, such a one where the people have no +votes in making the laws; he says there is the heroic monarchy, +such a one where the people have their votes in +making the laws; and then he says there is democracy, +and affirms that a man cannot be said to have liberty but +in a democracy only.”</p> + +<p>My Lord Lauderdale, who thus far had been very attentive, +at this showed some impatience.</p> + +<p><i>Har.</i>—“I say Aristotle says so; I have not said so +much. And under what prince was it? Was it not +under Alexander, the greatest prince in the world? Did +Alexander hang up Aristotle, did he molest him?” And +he proceeds with Livy, who wrote under Cæsar, and the +commonwealth-man, Machiavel, under the Medici, unmolested.</p> + +<p>“I wrote under an usurper, Oliver. He having started +up into the throne, his officers kept a murmuring for a +commonwealth. He told them that he knew not what +they meant, but let any one show him that there was any +such thing as a commonwealth, they should see that he +sought not himself; the Lord knew he only sought to +make good the cause. Upon this some sober men thought +that if any in England could show what a commonwealth +was, it was myself. I wrote, and after I had written, +Oliver never answered his officers as he had done before; +therefore I wrote not against the king’s government; and +if the law could have punished me, Oliver had done it; +therefore my writing was not obnoxious to the law. +After Oliver, the parliament said they were a commonwealth; +I said they were not; and proved it, insomuch +that the parliament accounted me a cavalier, and one that +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page705" id="page705"></a>705</span> +had no other design in my writing than to bring in the +king; and now the king, first of any man, makes me a +Roundhead!”</p> + +<p>Certainly no theoretical politician has ever more lucidly +set before us the cruel dilemmas of speculative science.</p> + +<p>The story of <span class="sc">Harrington</span> now becomes calamitous. +In vain his sisters petitioned that the prisoner, for his justification, +should be brought to trial,—no one dared to +present the petition to parliament. He was suddenly +carried off to St. Nicholas Island, near Plymouth, and by +favour afterwards was lodged in Plymouth Castle, where +the governor treated the state-prisoner with the kindness +he had long wanted. His health gradually gave way; his +mind fell into disorder; his high spirit and his heated +brain could not brook this tormenting durance; his intellect +was at times clouded by some singular delusions; and +his family imagined that it was intended that he should +never more write “Oceanas.” The physician of the castle +had prescribed constant doses of guaiacum taken in coffee. +At length, other physicians were despatched by his +family; they found an emaciated patient deprived of +sleep, and under their hands testified that the copious use +of this deleterious beverage, with such drying drugs, was +sufficient to occasion hypochondriasm, and even frenzy, in +any one who had not even a predisposition. The surly +physician of the state-prison insisted that Harrington +counterfeited madness.</p> + +<p>His delusions never left him, yet otherwise his faculties +remained unaltered. He had strange fancies about the operations +of the animal spirits, good and evil, and often +alarmed his friends by his vivacious descriptions of these +invisible agencies. “Nature,” he said, “which works +under a veil, is the heart of God.” But how are we to +account, in a mind otherwise sane, for his notion that his +thoughts transpired from him, and took the shapes of flies +or bees? Aubrey has given a gossiper’s account of this +ludicrous hypochondriasm. Harrington had a summer-house +revolving on a pivot, which he turned at will to +face the sun; there sat the great author of “Oceana,” +whisking a fox’s brush to disperse this annoyance of his +transpired thoughts in the flies or bees, which, whenever +they issued from crevices, he would appeal to those present, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page706" id="page706"></a>706</span> +whether it was not evident to them that they had +emerged from his brain? An eminent physician had flattered +himself that he would be able to out-reason this +delusion, by that force of argument and positive demonstration +to which his illustrious patient only would +attend; but the physician discovered that no argument +could avail with the most invincible disputant in Europe. +The sanity of the man only strengthened his insanity. +Besides, our philosopher believed that he had discovered a +new system of physiology, in what he called “The Mechanics +of Nature.” Harrington declared that his fate +was that of Democritus, who, having made a great discovery +in anatomy, was deemed mad by his associates, till +Hippocrates appeared, and attested the glorious truth, +confounding the laughers for ever! He now resolved to +prove against his doctors, that his notions were not, as +they alleged, hypochondriacal whims, or fanciful delusions. +Among his manuscripts was found this promised treatise, +thus opening—“Having been for nine months, some say, +in a disease, I in a cure, I have been the wonder of physicians, +and they mine!” It is much to be regretted that +the first part of this singular design has only reached us, +wherein he has laid down his axioms, many of which are +indisputable, coherent, and philosophical, however chimerical +might have been their application to his particular +notions. The narrative of his own disorder, which was +to form the second part, would have been a great psychological +curiosity, for the philosopher was there to have told +us, how “he had felt and saw Nature; that is, how she +came first into his senses, and by the senses into the understanding,” +and “to speak to men that have had the +same sensations as himself.” The logical deliriums of +Harrington, it is not impossible, might have thrown a +beam of light on “The Human Nature” of Hobbes, and +“The Understanding” of Locke.</p> + +<p>It is for the medical character to develop the mysteries +of this condition of man; but this moral phenomenon +of the partial delusions of the noblest intellect remains +an enigma they have not yet solved. Harrington never +recovered his physical energy, while his “Understanding” +betrayed no symptoms of any decay in the exercise of his +vigorous faculties.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page707" id="page707"></a>707</span></p> + +<p>There is one dark cloud which dusks the lustre of the +name of <span class="sc">Harrington</span>. Opening the volume of his works, +we are startled by an elaborate treatise on “The Grounds +and Reasons of Monarchy.” It is not merely one of the +most eloquent invectives against monarchical institutions, +but it overflows with the most withering defamations, +such as were prevalent at that distempered season, when +the popular writers accumulated horrors on the memories +of their late sovereigns, to metamorphose their monarchs +into monsters. In this terrible state-libel, all kings are +anathematised: James the First was the murderer of his +son; Charles the First was a parricide. Of that “resolute +tyrant Charles,” we have an allusion to “his actions of +the day; his actions of the night;”—from which we must +infer that they were equally criminal.</p> + +<p>The reader, already acquainted with the intimate intercourse +of our author with Charles the First, and with all +his permanent emotions, which probably induced his +mental disorder, must start at the disparity of the writing +with the writer. A thorough-paced partisan has here +acted on the base principle of reviling the individual, +whom he privately acknowledged to be wholly of an +opposite character. It would be a solecism in human +nature, had Harrington sent forth an historical calumny, +which only to have read must have inflicted a deep pang +in his heart. He was a philosopher, who neither flattered +nor vilified the prince nor the people; their common +calamities he ascribes to inevitable causes, which had been +long working those changes independent of either. In +the reigns of James and Charles, according to his favourite +principle, “The English Balance,” in favour of “popularity,” +was “running like a bowl down hill.” He does +justice to the sagacity of the indolent James, who, he +tells us, “not seldom prophesied sad things to his successors;” +and of Charles the First, on succeeding to his +father, Harrington has expressed himself with the utmost +political wisdom and felicity of illustration. “There +remained nothing to the destruction of a monarchy, +retaining but the name, more than a prince who, by +contending, should make the people to feel those advantages +which they could not see. And this happened +to the next king (Charles), who, too secure in that undoubted +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page708" id="page708"></a>708</span> +right whereby he was advanced to the throne +which had no foundation, dared to put this to an unseasonable +trial, on whom, therefore, fell the tower in Silo. +Nor may we think they on whom this tower fell were +sinners above all men; but that we, unless we repent and +look better to the true foundations, must likewise perish.”<a name="fa4c63" id="fa4c63" href="#ft4c63"><span class="sp">4</span></a> +All that our philosopher had to deliver to the world on +the many contested points of that unhappy reign, was the +illustration of his principle, and not the infamy of vulgar +calumny. With the philosophic Harrington, Charles the +First was but “a doomed man;” not more a sinner, +because the tower of Silo had fallen upon his head, than +those who stood without. This was true philosophy, the +other was faction.</p> + +<p>The treatise on “The Grounds and Reasons of Monarchy,” +prominently placed at the opening of the works +of Harrington, and inseparably combined with his opinions +by the reference in the general index—this treatise which +has settled like a gangrene on the fair character of the +author of “Oceana,” which has called down on his devoted +head the execrations of honourable men,<a name="fa5c63" id="fa5c63" href="#ft5c63"><span class="sp">5</span></a> and which +has misled many generations of readers, is the composition +of a salaried party writer, in no way connected with +our author. Toland, the first editor of Harrington’s +works, introduced into the volume this anonymous invective, +which has thus come down to us sanctioned by the +philosopher’s name. There was no plea of any connexion +between the two authors, and much less between their +writings. The editor of the edition of 1771 has silently +introduced the name of the real author in the table of +contents, but without prefixing it to the tract, or without +any further indication to inform the reader.</p> + +<p>Whether zeal for “the cause” led Toland to this +editorial delinquency, or whether he fell into this inadvertence +from deficient acumen, it remains a literary +calamity not easily paralleled, for a great author is condemned +for what he never could have written.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c63" id="ft1c63" href="#fa1c63"><span class="fn">1</span></a> I must refer the reader for the development of the system of +Hobbes to the Essay on Hobbes in the “Quarrels of Authors,” (last +edition, p. 436.)</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c63" id="ft2c63" href="#fa2c63"><span class="fn">2</span></a> The masterpiece of legislation of Abbé Sieyes, who, during the +French Revolution, had always a new constitution in his pocket, was +founded on this principle of “checks and balances in the state,” evidently +adopted from Harrington. In Scott’s “Life of Napoleon,” +vol. iv., the Abbé Sieyes’ system is described.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c63" id="ft3c63" href="#fa3c63"><span class="fn">3</span></a> I think that Harrington presciently detected the latent causes of a +great revolution in France. The curiosity of the passage may compensate +for its length—</p> + +<p>“Where there is tumbling and tossing upon the bed of sickness, it +must end in death or recovery. Though the people of the world, in +the dregs of the Gothic empire, be yet tumbling and tossing upon the +bed of sickness, they cannot die; nor is there any means of recovery +for them but by ancient prudence; whence, of necessity, it must come +to pass that this drug be better known. If <i>France</i>, <i>Italy</i>, and <i>Spain</i> +were not all sick—all corrupted together, there would be none of them +so; for the sick would not be able to withstand the sound, nor the +sound to preserve their health without curing of the sick. <i>The first of +these nations, which, if you stay her leisure, will, in my mind, be +France</i>, that recovers the health of ancient prudence, shall certainly +<i>govern the world</i>.”—<i>Oceana</i>, p. 168; edition 1771.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c63" id="ft4c63" href="#fa4c63"><span class="fn">4</span></a> The Art of Law-giving, 366, 4to edition.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c63" id="ft5c63" href="#fa5c63"><span class="fn">5</span></a> See the solemn denunciations of the “Biographia Britannica,” +p. 2536, which are repeated by later biographers; see Chalmers.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page709" id="page709"></a>709</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE AUTHOR OF “THE GROUNDS AND +REASONS OF MONARCHY.”</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">The</span> author of “The Grounds and Reasons of Monarchy,” +whose historical libel is perpetuated in the works of Harrington, +is <span class="sc">John Hall</span>, of Gray’s Inn, sometimes described +of Durham; one of those fervid spirits who take +the bent of the times in a revolutionary period. He +must be classed among those precocious minds which +astonish their contemporaries by acquisitions of knowledge, +combined with the finest genius, and in their boyhood +betray no immaturity. We may receive with some +suspicion accounts of such gifted youths, though they +come from competent judges; but when we are reminded +of the Rowley of Chatterton, and find what <span class="sc">Hall</span> did, +we must conclude that there are meteorous beings, whose +eccentric orbits we know not how to describe. <span class="sc">Hall</span>, +prevented by the civil wars from entering the university, +pursued his studies in the privacy of the library at Durham. +When the war ceased, he was admitted at Cambridge; +and in 1646 published, in his nineteenth year, +<i>Horæ Vacivæ</i>, or “Essays, with some Occasional Considerations.” +These are essays in prose; and at a time +when our literature could boast of none except the masterpieces +of Lord Bacon, a boy of nineteen sends forth this +extraordinary volume. Even our plain Anthony caught +the rapture; for he describes its appearance—“the sudden +breaking forth of which amazed not only the university, +but the more serious part of men in the three nations, +when they (the Essays) were spread.” Here is the +puerility of a genius of the first order! A boy’s essays +raised the admiration of “the three nations!” and they +remain still remarkable! This youth seems to have +modelled his manner on Bacon for the turn of his thoughts, +and on Seneca for the point and sparkle of his periods. +The dwarf rose strong as a giant.<a name="fa1c64" id="fa1c64" href="#ft1c64"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page710" id="page710"></a>710</span></p> + +<p>The boy having astonished the world by a volume of +his prose, amazed them in the succeeding year by a +volume of his verse, poetry as graceful as the prose was +nervous; his verses still adorn the most elegant of our +modern anthologies.<a name="fa2c64" id="fa2c64" href="#ft2c64"><span class="sp">2</span></a></p> + +<p>Attracted to the metropolis, he entered as a student +at Gray’s Inn; and there his political character soon +assumed the supremacy over his literary. He sided with +the independents, the ultra-commonwealth-men, and satirised +the presbyterians, the friends of monarchy. He +plunged into extreme measures; courting his new masters +by the baseness of a busy pen, he justified Barebones’ +parliament, got up a state-pamphlet against the Hollanders, +proposed the reform of the universities, “to have +the Frier-like list of the fellowships <i>reduced</i>, and <i>the +rest of the revenue</i> of the university <i>sequestered into the +hands of the committee</i>,” of which, probably, he might +himself have been one. The exchequer was opened; he +received “present sums of money;” and the council +granted their scribe a considerable pension.</p> + +<p>During this life of political activity, Hall, in 1650, +was commanded by the council of state to repair to +Scotland, to attend on Cromwell, for the purpose of settling +affairs in favour of the commonwealth, and to wean the +Scots from their lingering affection for the surviving +Stuart. It was then that Hall, in his vocation, sent +forth the thunder of a party-pamphlet, “The Grounds +and Reasons of Monarchy.” This extraordinary tract +consists of two parts: the first, more elaborately composed, +is an argumentative exposition of anti-monarchical +doctrines; in the second, to bring the business home to +their bosoms, he offers a demonstration of his principles, +in a review of the whole Scottish history, sarcastically +reminding them of their kings “crowned with happy +reigns, and quiet deaths (two successively scarce dying +naturally).” It is a mass of invectives and calumnies +in the disguise of grave history; and this historical libel, +concocted for a particular time and a particular place, was +eagerly received at Edinburgh, and immediately republished +in London, where it was sure of as warm a reception.<a name="fa3c64" id="fa3c64" href="#ft3c64"><span class="sp">3</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page711" id="page711"></a>711</span></p> + +<p>Hall’s passion for literature must have been intense; for +amid these discordant days, he found time to glide into +hours of refreshing studies. He gave us the first vernacular +version of “The Sublime” of Longinus,<a name="fa4c64" id="fa4c64" href="#ft4c64"><span class="sp">4</span></a> and left +another of the moral Hierocles. This gifted youth with +sportive facility turned English into Latin, or Latin into +English; it has been recorded of him that he translated +the greater part of a singular work of the Alchemical +Maier, in one afternoon over his wine at a tavern; and he +entranced the ear of that universal patron, Edward Bendlowes, +by turning into Latin verse three hundred lines of +his mystical poem of “Theophila,” at one sitting.</p> + +<p>In this impassioned existence, excited by the acrimony of +politics, and the enthusiasm of study, he fell into reckless +dissipation, and undermined a constitution which, probably, +had all the delicacy and sensitiveness of his genius. He +sunk in the struggle of celebrity and personal indulgence, +and hastened back to his family to die, when he had hardly +attained to manhood.</p> + +<p>A true prodigy of genius was this <span class="sc">John Hall</span>; for not +only he could warm into admiration our literary antiquary, +but the greater philosopher Hobbes, not prone to flattery, +has left a memorial of this impassioned and precocious +being. “Had not his debauches and intemperance diverted +him from the more severe studies, he had made an extraordinary +person; for no man had ever done so great things +at his age.”</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c64" id="ft1c64" href="#fa1c64"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Three or four of these Essays have been reprinted in “The Restituta,” +vol. iii. The original book is very rare.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c64" id="ft2c64" href="#fa2c64"><span class="fn">2</span></a> See Ellis’ “Specimens.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c64" id="ft3c64" href="#fa3c64"><span class="fn">3</span></a> I found the origin of this eloquent and factious performance in an +account of <span class="sc">John Hall</span>, prefixed to his translation of “Hierocles on the +Golden Verses of Pythagoras:” it proceeds from a friend—John Davies +of Kidwelly. The treatise of Hall, in its original edition, is so rare, +that no copy has been found at the British Museum, nor in the King’s +Library; it was, however, reprinted at the time in London.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c64" id="ft4c64" href="#fa4c64"><span class="fn">4</span></a> A piece of great learning, entitled ‘The Height of Eloquence,’ +written in Greek, by Dionysius Longinus, rendered into English from +the original, by John Hall, Esq., London, 1652, 8vo.—<i>Brüggeman’s +English Transactions.</i></p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page712" id="page712"></a>712</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">COMMONWEALTH.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">When</span> the term <span class="sc">Commonwealth</span> deeply occupied the +minds of men, they had formed no settled notions about +the thing itself; the term became equivocal, of such wide +signification that it was misunderstood and misapplied, +and always ambiguous; and a confusion of words led many +writers into a confusion of notions.</p> + +<p>The term <i>Commonweal</i>, or <i>wealth</i>, indeed appears in our +statutes, in the speeches of our monarchs, and in the political +works of our writers, long before the idea of a <i>republic</i>, +in its popular sense, was promulgated by the votaries of +democracy. The term <i>Commonweal</i> explains itself; it +specifies no particular polity but the public weal; and +even the term <i>republic</i> originally meant nothing more than +<i>res publicæ</i>, or “the affairs of the public.” Sir <span class="sc">Thomas +Smith</span>, the learned secretary to Elizabeth, who has written +on the English constitution, entitles his work “The Commonwealth +of England.” James the First justly called +himself “the great servant of the Commonwealth.” The +Commonwealth, meaning the kingdom of England, is the +style of all the learned in law.</p> + +<p>The ambiguity of the term <i>Commonwealth</i> soon caused +it to be perverted by the advocates of popular government, +who do not distinguish the State from the people; this +appears as early as the days of Rawleigh, who tells us, that +“the government of all the common and baser sort is by +an <i>usurped nick-name</i> called a <span class="sc">Commonwealth</span>.”<a name="fa1c65" id="fa1c65" href="#ft1c65"><span class="sp">1</span></a></p> + +<p>It was in the revolutionary period of Charles the First +that the terms <i>Commonwealth</i> and <i>Commonwealth-man</i> were +adopted by the governing party, as precisely describing +their purity of devotion to the public weal. In the temper +of the times the Commonwealth became opposed to the +monarchy, and the Commonwealth-man to the royalist. +Cromwell ironically asked what was a Commonwealth? +affecting an ignorance of the term.</p> + +<p>When Baxter wrote his “Holy Commonwealth” against +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page713" id="page713"></a>713</span> +Harrington’s “Heathenish Commonwealth,” he had said, +“I plead the cause of monarchy as better than democracy +or aristocracy.” Toland, a Commonwealth-man in the +new sense, referring to Baxter’s work, exclaims that “A +monarchy is an odd way of modelling a Commonwealth.” +Baxter alluded to an English Commonwealth in its primitive +sense, and Toland restricted the term to its modern +application. Indeed, Toland exults in the British constitution +being a Commonwealth in the popular sense, in his +preface to his edition of Harrington’s works, and has the +merit of bringing forward as his authority the royal name +of James the First, and which afterwards seems to have +struck Locke as so apposite that he condescended to repeat +it. The passage in Toland is curious: “It is undeniably +manifest that the English government is <i>already a Commonwealth</i> +the most free and best constituted in the world. +This was <i>frankly</i> acknowledged by King James the First, +who styled himself <i>the great servant of the Commonwealth</i>.” +One hardly suspected a republican of gravely citing the +authority of the royal sage on any position!</p> + +<p>The Restoration made the term <i>Commonwealth-man</i> +odious as marking out a class of citizens in hostility to +the government; and <i>Commonwealth</i> seems, in any sense, +to have long continued such an offensive word that it required +the nicest delicacy to handle it. The use of the +term has even drawn an apology from <span class="sc">Locke</span> himself +when writing on “government.” “By Commonwealth,” +says our philosophical politician, “I must be understood +all along to mean, <i>not a democracy</i>, but any independent +community, which the Latins signified by the word +<i>civitas</i>, to which the word which best answers in our language +is <i>Commonwealth</i>.” However, Locke does not close +his sentence without some trepidation for the use of an +unequivocal term, obnoxious even under the new monarchy +of the revolution. “To avoid ambiguity, I crave leave to +use the word <i>Commonwealth</i> in that sense in which I +find it <i>used by King James the First</i>, and I take it to be +its genuine signification—which <i>if anybody dislike, I consent +with him to change it for a better</i>!” An ample +apology! but one which hardly suits the dignity of the +philosophical writer.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c65" id="ft1c65" href="#fa1c65"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Rawleigh’s “Remains.”</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page714" id="page714"></a>714</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE TRUE INTELLECTUAL SYSTEM OF THE +UNIVERSE.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">It</span> is only in the silence of seclusion that we should open +the awful tome of “The True Intellectual System of the +Universe” of <span class="sc">Ralph Cudworth</span>.<a name="fa1c66" id="fa1c66" href="#ft1c66"><span class="sp">1</span></a> The history and the +fate of this extraordinary result of human knowledge and +of sublime metaphysics, are not the least remarkable in +the philosophy of bibliography.</p> + +<p>The first intention of the author of this elaborate and +singular work, was a simple inquisition into the nature of +that metaphysical necessity, or destiny, which has been introduced +into the systems both of philosophy and religion, +wherein man is left an irresponsible agent in his actions, +and is nothing more than the blind instrument of inevitable +events over which he holds no control.</p> + +<p>This system of “necessity,” or fate, our inquirer traced +to three different systems, maintained on distinct principles. +The ancient Democritic or atomical physiology +endows inert matter with a motive power. It views a +creation, and a continued creation, without a creator. The +disciple of this system is as one who cannot read, who +would only perceive lines and scratches in the fairest +volume, while the more learned comprehend its large and +legible characters; in the mighty volume of nature, the +<i>mind</i> discovers what the <i>sense</i> may not, and reads “those +sensible delineations by its own inward activity,” which +wisdom and power have with their divinity written on +every page. The absurd system of the atomist or the +mere materialist, Cudworth names the atheistic.</p> + +<p>The second system of “necessity” is that of the theists, +who conceive that the will of the Deity, producing in us +good or evil, is determined by no immutability of goodness +and justice, but an arbitrary will omnipotent; and therefore +all qualities, good and evil, are merely so by our own +conventional notions, having no reality in nature. And +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page715" id="page715"></a>715</span> +this Cudworth calls <i>the divine fate</i>, or <i>immoral theism</i>, +being a religion divesting the Creator of the intellectual +and moral government of the universe; all just and unjust, +according to this hypothesis, being mere factitious things. +This “necessity” seems the predestination of Calvinism, +with the immorality of antinomianism.</p> + +<p>The third sort of fatalists do not deny the moral attributes +of the Deity, in his nature essentially benevolent and +just; therefore there is an immutability in natural justice +and morality, distinct from any law or arbitrary custom; +but as these theists are necessarians, the human being is +incapacitated to receive praise or blame, rewards or punishments, +or to become the object of retributive justice; +whence they deduce their axiom that nothing could possibly +have been otherwise than it is.</p> + +<p>To confute these three fatalisms, or false hypotheses of +the system of the universe, Cudworth designed to dedicate +three great works; one against atheism, another against +immoral theism, and the third against the theism whose +doctrine was the inevitable “necessity” which determined +all actions and events, and deprived man of his free agency.</p> + +<p>These licentious systems were alike destructive of social +virtues; and our ethical metaphysician sought to trace +the Deity as an omnipotent understanding Being, a +supreme intelligence, presiding over all, in his own nature +unchangeable and eternal, but granting to his creatures +their choice of good and evil by an immutable morality. +In the system of the visible and corporeal world the sage +contemplated on the mind which everywhere pervaded it; +and his genius launched forth into the immensity of “The +Intellectual System of the Universe.”</p> + +<p>In this comprehensive design he maintains that the +ancients had ever preserved the idea of one Supreme Being, +distinct from all other gods. That multitude of pagan +deities, poetical and political, were but the polyonomy, or +the many names or attributes, of one God, in which the +unity of the Divine Being was recognised. In the deified +natures of things, the intelligent worshipped God; the +creator in the created. The pagan religion, however +erroneous, was not altogether nonsensical, as the atheists +would represent it.</p> + +<p>In this folio of near a thousand pages, Cudworth opens +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page716" id="page716"></a>716</span> +the occult sources of remote antiquity; and all the knowledge +which the most recondite records have transmitted +are here largely dispersed. There is no theogony and no +cosmogony which remains unexplored; the Chaldean +oracles, and the Hermaic hooks, and the Trismegistic +writings, are laid open for us; the arcane theology of the +Egyptians is unveiled; and we may consult the Persian +Zoroaster, the Grecian Orpheus, the mystical Pythagoras, +and the allegorising Plato. No poet was too imaginative, +no sophist was too obscure, to be allowed to rest in the +graves of their oblivion. All are here summoned to meet +together, as at the last tribunal of their judgment-day. +And they come with their own words on their lips, and +they commune with us with their own voices; for this +great magician of mind, who had penetrated into the recesses +of mythic antiquity to descry its dim and uncertain +truths, has recorded their own words with the reverence +of a votary to their faiths. “The sweetness of philology +allays the severity of philosophy; the main thing, in the +meantime, being the philosophy of religion.<a name="fa2c66" id="fa2c66" href="#ft2c66"><span class="sp">2</span></a> But for +our parts, we neither call Philology nor yet Philosophy +our mistress, but serve ourselves of either as occasion requireth.” +Such are the words of the historian of “The +Intellectual System of the Universe.”</p> + +<p>It is this mine of recondite quotations in their original +languages, most accurately translated, which has imparted +such an enduring value to this treasure of the ancient +theology, philosophy, and literature;<a name="fa3c66" id="fa3c66" href="#ft3c66"><span class="sp">3</span></a> for however subtle +and logical was the master-mind which carried on his trains +of reasoning, its abstract and abstruse nature could not +fail to prove repulsive to the superficial, for few could follow +the genius who led them into “the very darkest recesses +of antiquity,” while his passionless sincerity was often repugnant +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page717" id="page717"></a>717</span> +to the narrow creed of the orthodox. What, +therefore, could the consequence of this elaborate volume +when given to the world be, but neglect or hatred? And +long was “The Intellectual System” lost among a thoughtless +or incurious race of readers. It appeared in 1678. It +was nearly thirty years afterwards, when the neglected +author was no more, in 1703, that Le Clerc, a great reader +of English writers, furnished copious extracts in his +“Bibliothèque Choisie,” which introduced it to the knowledge +of foreigners, and provoked a keen controversy with +Bayle. This last great critic, who could only decide by +the translated extracts, proved to be a formidable antagonist +of Cudworth. At length, in 1733, more than half +a century subsequent to its publication, Mosheim gave a +Latin version, with learned illustrations. The translation +was not made without great difficulty; and a French one, +which had been begun, was abandoned. Cudworth has +invented many terms, compound or obscure; and though +these may be traced to their sources, yet when a single +novel term may allude to metaphysical notions or to +recondite knowledge, the learning is less to be admired +than the defective perspicacity is to be regretted. It was, +however, this edition of a foreigner which awakened the +literary ardour of the author’s countrymen towards their +neglected treasure, and in 1743 “The True Intellectual +System” at length reached a second edition, republished +by Birch.<a name="fa4c66" id="fa4c66" href="#ft4c66"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> + +<p>The seed of immortal thoughts are not sown to perish, +even in the loose soil where they have long lain disregarded. +“The Intellectual System” has furnished many +writers with their secondary erudition, and possibly may +have given rise to that portion of “The Divine Legation” +of Warburton, whose ancient learning we admire for its +ingenuity, while we retreat from its paradoxes; for there +is this difference between this solid and that fanciful erudition, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page718" id="page718"></a>718</span> +that Warburton has proudly made his subject full of +himself, while Cudworth was earnest only to be full of his +subject. The glittering edifice of Paradox was raised on +moveable sands; but the more awful temple has been hewn +out of rocks which time can never displace. Even in our +own days, Dugald Stewart has noticed that some German +systems, stripped of their deep neological disguise, have +borrowed from Cudworth their most valuable materials. +The critical decision of Leibnitz must not, however, be +rejected; for if there is some severity in its truth, there is +truth in its severity. “Dans ‘Le Système Intellectuel’ +je trouve beaucoup de savoir, mais non pas assez de méditation.”</p> + +<p>Such is the great work of a great mind! We have +already shown its hard fate in the neglect of the contemporaries +of the author—that thoughtless and thankless +world many a great writer is doomed to address; and we +must now touch on those human infirmities to which all +systems of artificial theology and speculative notions are +unhappily obnoxious.</p> + +<p>In stating the arguments of the atheists at full, and +opposing those of their adversaries, this true inquirer suffered +the odium of Atheism itself! “It is pleasant +enough,” says Lord Shaftesbury, “that the pious Cudworth +was accused of giving the upper hand to the atheist +for having only stated their reasons and those of their +adversaries fairly together.” The truth seems, that our +learned and profound author was not orthodox in his +notions. To explain the difficulty of the Resurrection +of bodies which in death resolve themselves into their +separate elements, Cudworth assumed that they would not +appear in their substance as a body of flesh, but in some +ethereal form. In his researches he discovered the Trinity +of Plato, of Pythagoras, and of Parmenides, and that of +the Persian Mithra of three Hypostases, numerically distinct, +in the unity of the Godhead; this spread an alarm +among his brothers the clergy, and Cudworth was perpetually +referred to as an unquestionable authority by the +heterodox writers on the mystery of the Christian Trinity. +Even his great principle, that the Unity of the Deity was +known to the polytheists, was impugned by a catholic +divine as derogatory of revelation, he insisting that the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page719" id="page719"></a>719</span> +Pagan divinities were only a commemoration of human +beings. Yet the notion of Cudworth, so amply illustrated, +was not peculiar to him, for it had already been promulgated +by Lord Herbert, and by the ancients themselves.</p> + +<p>As all such results contradicted received opinions, this +pious and learned man was condemned by some as “an +Arian, a Socinian, or at best a deist.” Some praised his +prudence, while others intimated his dissimulation; on +several dogmas he delivers himself with great reserve, and +even so ambiguously, that his own opinions are not easily +ascertained, and are sometimes even contradictory. There +have been more recent philosophers, who, from their prejudices, +have hardly done justice to the search for truth of +Cudworth; he is depreciated by Lord Bolingbroke, who, +judging the philosopher by the colour of his coat, has +treated the divine with his keenest severity, as “one who +read too much to think enough, and admired too much to +think freely.” Bolingbroke might envy the learning +which he could not rival, and borrow from those recondite +stores the knowledge which otherwise might not have +reached him.</p> + +<p>Our great author had indeed the heel of Achilles. +Exercising the most nervous logic, and the most subtle +metaphysics, he was also deeply imbued with Platonic +reveries. Ambitious, in his inquiries, to discuss subjects +placed far beyond the reach of human faculties, he delighted, +with his eager imagination, to hover about those +impassable precincts which Providence and Nature have +eternally closed against the human footstep. It was this +disposition of his mind which gave birth to the wild hypothesis +of <i>the plastic life of Nature</i>, to unfold the inscrutable +operations of Providence in the changeless forms of existence. +There is nothing more embarrassing to atheism, +in deriving the uninterrupted phenomena of nature from +a fortuitous mechanism of inert matter, than to be compelled +to ascribe the unvaried formation of animals to a +cause which has no idea of what it performs, although its +end denotes an intention; executing an undeviating system +without any intelligence of the laws which govern it. We +cannot indeed conceive every mite, or gnat, or fly, to be +the immediate handwork of the ceaseless labours of the +Deity, though so perfectly artificial is even its wing or its +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page720" id="page720"></a>720</span> +leg that the Divine Artificer seems visible in the minutest +production. Cudworth, to solve the enigma, fancifully +concluded that the Deity had given a plastic faculty to +matter—“A vital and spiritual, but unintelligent and +necessary, agent to execute its purposes.” He raised up +a sort of middle substance between matter and spirit—it +seemed both or neither; and our philosopher, roving +through the whole creation, sometimes describes it as an +inferior subordinate agent of the Deity, doing the drudgery, +without consciousness; lower than animal life; a kind of +drowsy unawakened mind, not knowing, but only doing, +according to commands and laws impressed upon it.</p> + +<p>The consequence deduced by the subtle Bayle from this +fanciful system was, that, had the Deity ever given such +a plastic faculty, it was an evidence that it is not repugnant +to the nature of things, that unintelligent and +necessary agents should operate, and therefore a motive +power might be essential to matter, and things thus might +exist of themselves.<a name="fa5c66" id="fa5c66" href="#ft5c66"><span class="sp">5</span></a> It weakened the great objection +against atheism. Philosophers, to extricate themselves +from occult phenomena, have too often flung over the +gaping chasms which they cannot fill up, the slight plank +of a vague conjecture, or have constructed the temporary +bridge of an artificial hypothesis; and thus they have +hazarded what yields no sure footing. Of this “folly of +the wise,” the inexplicable ether of Newton, the whirling +worlds or vortices of Descartes, and the vibrations and the +vibratiuncles of Hartley, among so many similar fancies of +other philosophers, furnish a memorable evidence. The +<i>plastic life of Nature</i>, as explained by Cudworth, only +substituted a novel term for a blind, unintelligent agent, +and could neither endure the ridicule of Bolingbroke nor +the logic of Bayle, and is thrown aside among the deceitful +fancies of scholastic dreamers.</p> + +<p>There was indeed from his earliest days a tinge of +Platonic refinement in the capacious understanding of this +great metaphysician. The theses he maintained at college +were the dawn of the genius of his future works. One +was on “The Eternal Differences between Good and Evil,” +which probably led long after to his treatise on “Eternal +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page721" id="page721"></a>721</span> +and Immutable Morality”—an exposition of the dangerous +doctrines of Hobbes and the Antinomians.<a name="fa6c66" id="fa6c66" href="#ft6c66"><span class="sp">6</span></a> The other +question he disputed was, that “there are incorporeal substances +immortal in their own nature”—a topic he afterwards +investigated in “The True Intellectual System of +the Universe”—against the principles of the Epicurean +philosophy. These scholastic exercises are an evidence +that the youthful student was already shaping in his +mind the matters and the subjects of his future great work. +Beautiful is this unity of mind which we discover in every +master-genius! Even into his divinity he seems to have +carried the same fanciful refinement; he maintained that +“the Lord’s Supper was a feast upon a sacrifice;” and +such was the charm of this mysterious doctrine, that it +was adopted by some of the greatest divines and scholars. +It is not therefore surprising that Cudworth was held in +the highest estimation by the Platonic Dr. <span class="sc">More</span>, of which +I give a remarkable instance. Cudworth, as other divines, +wrote on Daniel’s prophecy of the seventy weeks, which, +he says in a letter, is “A Defence of Christianity against +Judaism, the seventy weeks never having yet been sufficiently +cleared and improved.” Since the days of Cudworth +others have “cleared and improved,” and his +“demonstration” is not even noticed among subsequent +“demonstrations;” but Judaism still remains. Yet on +this theological reverie, Dr. More has used this forcible +language:—“Mr. Cudworth has demonstrated the manifestation +of the Messiah to have fallen out at the end of +the sixty-ninth week, and his passion in the midst of the +seventieth. This demonstration is of as much price and +worth in theology, as either the circulation of the blood in +physic, or the motion of the earth in natural philosophy.” +This is not only a curious instance of the argumentative +theology of that period, but of the fascination of a most +refining genius influencing kindred imaginations.</p> + +<p>We now come to record the melancholy fate of this +great work, in connexion with its great author. He had +arranged it into three elaborate volumes; but we possess +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page722" id="page722"></a>722</span> +only the first—the refutation of atheism; that subject, +however, is of itself complete. Although I know not any +private correspondence of Cudworth, after the publication +of “The Intellectual System,” which might more positively +reveal the state of his feelings, and the cause of the suppression +of his work, in which he had made considerable +progress, yet we are acquainted with circumstances which +too clearly describe its unhappy fate. We learn from Warburton +that this pious and learned scholar was the victim +of calumny, and that, too sensitive to his injuries, he grew +disgusted with his work; his ardour slackened, and the +mass of his papers lay in cold neglect. The philosophical +divine participated in the fate of the few who, like him, +searched for truth freed from the manacles of received +opinions.</p> + +<p>Cudworth left his manuscripts to the care of his daughter, +Lady Masham, the friend of Locke, who passed his latter +days in her house at Oates. Her ladyship was literary, +but the reverse of a Platonical genius; she wrote against +the Platonic Norris’ “Love of God,” and admitted in her +religion no principles which were not practicable in morals, +and seems to have been rather the disciple of the author of +“The Human Understanding,” than the daughter of the +author of “The Intellectual System.” For the good sense +of Lady Masham erudition lost its curiosity, and imagination +its charm; and she probably with some had certain misgivings +of the tendency of her father’s writings! He had +himself been careless of them, for we know of no testamentary +direction for their preservation. By her these +unvalued manuscripts were not placed in a cabinet, but +thrown in a heap into the dark corner of some neglected +shelf in the library at Oates. And from thence, after the +lapse of half a century, they were turned out, with some +old books, by the last Lord Masham, to make room for a +fashionable library for his second lady. A bookseller +purchased them with a notion that this waste paper contained +the writings of Locke, and printing a Bible under +the editorship of the famous Dr. Dodd, introduced the +scripture notes, found among the heap, in the commentary, +under the name of Locke. The papers were accidentally +discovered to be parts of “The Intellectual System,” and +after having suffered mutilation and much confusion in the +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page723" id="page723"></a>723</span> +various mischances which they passed through, they finally +repose among our national collections; fragments on fragments +which may yet be inspected by those whose intrepidity +would patiently venture on the discoveries which +lie amid this mass of theological metaphysics. They are +thus described in Ayscough’s “Catalogue,” 4983:—“Collection +of Confused Thoughts, Memorandums, &c., +relating to the Eternity of Torments—Thoughts on Pleasure—Commonplace +Book of Motives to Moral Duties, +two volumes; and five volumes on Free-will.” This description +is imperfect; and many other subjects, the +groundwork of his future inquiries, will be found in these +voluminous manuscripts. One volume, still highly valued, +was snatched from the wreck, Cudworth’s “Treatise Concerning +Eternal and Immutable Morality,” which was +edited by Dr. Chandler many years after the death of the +author.</p> + +<p>After all, we possess a mighty volume, subject no longer +to neglect nor to mischance. “The True Intellectual +System of the Universe” exists without a parallel for its +matter, its subject, and its manner. Its matter furnishes +the unsunned treasures of ancient knowledge, the history +of the thoughts, the imaginations, and the creeds of the +profoundest intellects of mankind on the Deity. Its subject, +though veiled in metaphysics more sublime than +human reasoning can pierce, yet shows enough for us to +adore. And its manner, brightened by a subdued Platonism, +inculcates the immutability of moral distinctions, +and vindicates the free agency of the human being against +the impious tenets which deliver him over a blind captive +to an inexorable “necessity.”</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c66" id="ft1c66" href="#fa1c66"><span class="fn">1</span></a> My copy is the folio volume of the first edition, 1678; but they +have recently reprinted Cudworth at Oxford in four volumes.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c66" id="ft2c66" href="#fa2c66"><span class="fn">2</span></a> A remarkable expression, which we supposed was peculiar to the +more enlarged views of our own age. But who can affix precise notions +to general terms? Cudworth’a notion of “the philosophy of religion” +was probably restricted to the history of the ancient philosophies +of religion.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c66" id="ft3c66" href="#fa3c66"><span class="fn">3</span></a> In the first edition, the <i>references</i> of its numerous quotations were +few and imperfect; Dr. Birch, in the edition of 1743, supplied those +that were wanting from Mosheim’s Latin translation of the work. +Warburton observed that “all the translations from the Greek are +wonderfully exact.”</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c66" id="ft4c66" href="#fa4c66"><span class="fn">4</span></a> It may be regretted that this valuable mass of curious erudition is +not furnished with an ordinary index. A singular clue to the labyrinth +the author has offered, by a running head on every single one of the +thousand pages; and a minutely analytical table of the contents is appended +to the mighty tome. This indeed impresses us with a full +conception of the sublimity of the work itself; but our intimacy with +this multitude of matters is greatly interrupted by the want of a ready +reference to particulars which an ordinary index would have afforded.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c66" id="ft5c66" href="#fa5c66"><span class="fn">5</span></a> Continuation des Pensées Diverses, iii. 90.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c66" id="ft6c66" href="#fa6c66"><span class="fn">6</span></a> This volume, still read and valued, was fortunately saved amidst +the wreck of the author’s manuscripts, and was published from his +own autograph copy which he had prepared for the press, so late as +1781, 8vo.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page724" id="page724"></a>724</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">DIFFICULTIES OF THE PUBLISHERS OF +CONTEMPORARY MEMOIRS.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">The</span> editors of contemporary memoirs have often suffered +an impenetrable mystery to hang over their publications, +by an apparent suppression of the original. By this +studious evasion of submitting the manuscript to public +inspection, they long diminished the credit of the printed +volumes. Enemies whose hostility the memorialists had +raised up, in the meanwhile practised every artifice of +detraction, racking their invention to persuade the world +that but little faith was due to these pretended revelations; +while the editors, mute and timorous, from private +motives which they wished to conceal, dared not explain, +in their lifetime, the part which they had really taken in +editing these works. In the course of years, circumstances +often became too complicated to be disentangled, or were +of too delicate a nature to be nakedly exposed to the +public scrutiny; the accusations grew more confident, the +defence more vague, the suspicions more probable, the +rumours and the hearsays more prevalent—the public +confidence in the authenticity of these contemporary memoirs +was thus continually shaken.</p> + +<p>Such has been the fate of the history of the Earl of +Clarendon, which, during a long interval of time, had to +contend with prudential editors, and its perfidious opponents. +And it is only at this late day that we are enabled +to draw the veil from the mystery of its publication, and +to reconcile the contradictory statements, so positively +alleged by the assertors of the integrity of the text, and +the impugners of its genuineness. We now can adjust +with certainty so many vague protestations of its authenticity, +by those who could not themselves have known it, +with the sceptical cavils which at times seemed not always +doubtful, and with one infamous charge which was not less +positive than it proved to be utterly fictitious. The fate +and character of this great historical work was long involved +in the most intricate and obscure incidents; and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page725" id="page725"></a>725</span> +this bibliographical tale offers a striking illustration of +the disingenuity alike of the assailants and the defenders.</p> + +<p>The history of Lord <span class="sc">Clarendon</span> was composed by the +express desire of Charles the First. This prince, in the +midst of his fugitive and troubled life, seemed still regardful +of posterity; and we might think, were it not too +flattering to his judgment, that by his selection of this +historian, he anticipated the genius of an immortal +writer. We know the king carefully conveyed to the +noble author many historical documents, to furnish this +vindication, or apology, of the calamitous measures to +which that fated sovereign was driven. The earnest performance +of this design, fervid with the eloquence of the +writer, proceeding on such opposite principles to those of +the advocates of popular freedom, and bearing on its awful +front the condemnatory title of “The Rebellion,” provoked +their indignant feelings; and from its first appearance +they attempted to blast its credit, by sinking it into +a mere party production. But the elevated character of +“The Chancellor of Human Nature,” as Warburton emphatically +described him, stood almost beyond the reach +of his assailants: it was by a circuitous attack that they +contrived to depreciate the work, by pointing their assault +on the presumed editors of the posthumous history. And +though the genius of the historian, and the peculiarity of +his style, could not but be apparent through the whole of +this elaborate work, yet rumours soon gathered from +various quarters, that the text had been tampered with by +“the Oxford editors;” and some, judging by the preface, +and the heated and party dedication to the queen, which, +it has been asserted, afterwards induced the Tory frenzy of +Sacheverell, imagined that the editors had converted the +history into a vehicle of their own passions. The “History +of Clarendon” was declared to be mutilated, interpolated, +and, at length, even forged; the taint of suspicion long +weakened the confidence of general readers. Even Warburton +suspected that the editors had taken the liberty of +omitting passages; but, with a reliance on their honour, +he believed they had never dared to incorporate any additions +of their own.</p> + +<p>The History of Lord <span class="sc">Clarendon</span> thus, from its first +appearance, was attended by the concomitant difficulties +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page726" id="page726"></a>726</span> +of contemporary history, as we shall find the editors soon +discovered when they sat down to their task; difficulties +which occasioned their peculiar embarrassments. Even +the noble author himself had considered that “a piece +of this nature, wherein the infirmities of some, and the +malice of others, both things and persons, must be boldly +looked upon and mentioned, is not likely to appear in the +age in which it was written.” Lord Clarendon seems to +have been fully aware that the freedom of the historical +pen is equally displeasing to all parties. A contemporary +historian is doomed to the peculiar unhappiness of encountering +living witnesses, prompt to challenge the correctness +of his details, and the fairness of his views; for +him the complaints of friends will not be less unreasonable +than the clamours of foes. And this happened to the +present work. The history was not only assailed by men +of a party, but by men of a family. They whose relatives +had immolated their persons, and wrecked their fortunes, +by their allegiance to the royal cause, were mortified by +the silence of the historian; the writer was censured for +omissions which had never entered into his design; for +he was writing less a general history of the civil war, than +a particular one of “the Rebellion,” as he deemed it. +Others eagerly protested against the misrepresentation of +the characters of their ancestors; but as all family feelings +are in reality personal ones, such interested accusers may +not be less partial and prejudiced than the contemporary +historian himself. He, at least, should be allowed to possess +the advantage of a more immediate knowledge of +what he narrates, and the right of that free opinion, +which deprived of, he would cease to be “the servant of +posterity.” Lord Lansdowne was indignant at the severity +of the military portrait of his ancestor, Sir Richard +Greenvill, and has left a warm apology to palliate a conduct +which Clarendon had honestly condemned; and +recently, the late Earl of Ashburnham wrote two agreeable +volumes to prove that Clarendon was jealous of the +royal favour which the feeble Ashburnham enjoyed, and +to which the descendant ascribed the depreciation of that +favourite’s character.</p> + +<p>The authenticity of the history soon became a subject +of national attention. The passions of the two great +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page727" id="page727"></a>727</span> +factions which ruled our political circles had broken forth +from these kindling pages of the recent history of their +own day. They were treading on ashes which covered +latent fires. Whenever a particular sentence raised the +anger of some, or a provoking epithet for ever stuck to a +favourite personage, the offended parties were willing to +believe that these might be interpolations; for it was +positively affirmed that such there were. Twenty years +after its first publication, we find Sir Joseph Jekyl, in the +House of Commons, solemnly declaring that he had reason +to believe that the “History of the Rebellion” had not +been printed faithfully.</p> + +<p>An incident of a very singular nature had occurred, even +before the publication of the History, which assuredly +was unknown to the editors. Dr. Calamy, the historian +of the non-conformists, at the time that Lord Clarendon’s +History was printing at Oxford, was himself on the point +of publishing his Narrative of Baxter, and was anxious to +ascertain the statements of his lordship on certain matters +which entered into his own history. This astute divine, +with something of the cunning of the serpent, whatever +might be his dove-like innocence, hit upon an extraordinary +expedient, by submitting the dignity of his order to pass +through a most humiliating process. The crafty doctor +posted to Oxford, and there, cautiously preserving the incognito, +after ingratiating himself into the familiarity of +the waiter, and then of the perruquier, he succeeded in +procuring a secret communication with one of the +printers. The good man exults in the wonders which +sometimes may be opened to us by what he terms “a +silver key rightly applied.” The doctor had invented the +treason, and now had only to seek for the traitor. A +faithless workman supplied him with a sight of all the +sheets printed, and, with a still grosser violation of the +honour of the craft, exposed the naked manuscript itself +to the prying eyes of the critical dissenter. To the +honour of Clarendon, as far as concerned Calamy’s narrative, +there was no disagreement; but the aspect of the +manuscript puzzled the learned doctor. It appeared not to +be the original, but a transcript, wherein he observed +“alterations and interlineations;” paragraphs were struck +out, and insertions added. Here seemed an important +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page728" id="page728"></a>728</span> +discovery, not likely to remain buried in the breast of the +historian of the non-conformists; and he gradually let it +out among his literary circle. The appearance of the +manuscript fully warranted the conviction, of him who +was not unwilling to believe, that the History of Clarendon +had been moulded by the hands of those dignitaries +of Oxford who were supposed to be the real +editors. The History was soon called in contempt, “The +Oxford History.” The earliest rumours of a corrupt text +probably originated in this quarter, as it is now certain, +since the confession of Dr. Calamy appears in his diary, +that he was the first who had discovered the extraordinary +state of the manuscript.</p> + +<p>Some inaccuracies, great negligence of dates, certain +apparent contradictions, and some imperfect details—often +occasioned by the noble emigrant’s distant retirements, +deprived, as we now know, of his historical collections—did +not tend to dissipate the prevalent suspicions. The +manuscript was frequently called for, but on inquiry it was +not found in the Bodleian Library—it was said to be +locked up in a box deposited in the library of the Earl of +Rochester, who had died since the publication. Sometimes +they heard of a transcript and sometimes of an original; +it was reported that the autograph work by Lord +Clarendon, among other valuables, had been destroyed in +the fire of the Earl of Rochester’s house at New Park. +The inquirers became more importunate in their demands, +and more clamorous in their expostulations.</p> + +<p>About this period, Oldmixon, one of the renowned of +the Dunciad, stepped forth as a political adventurer in +history. He enlisted on the popular side; he claimed the +honours of the most devoted patriotism; but in what +degree he may have merited these will best appear when +we shall more intimately discover the man himself. Oldmixon +had wholly engaged with a party, and being an +industrious hand, had assigned to himself a good deal of +work. Preparatory to his copious History of the Stuarts, +he had preluded by two smaller works his “Critical History +of England,” and his “Clarendon and Whitelocke +Compared.” He had repeatedly insinuated his suspicions +that the “History of the Rebellion” was not the entire +work of Clarendon; but the more formal attack, by specifying +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page729" id="page729"></a>729</span> +the falsified passages, at length appeared in the +preface to his History of the Stuarts. The subject of the +genuineness of Clarendon’s text had so long engaged +public discussion, that it evidently induced this writer to +particularise it, among other professed discoveries, on his +extensive titlepage, as one not the least likely to invite +the eager curiosity of his readers. The heavy charge was +here announced to be at length brought to a positive demonstration. +We perceive the writer’s complacency, when +with an air of triumph he declared, “to all which is prefixed +some account of the liberties taken with Clarendon’s +History <i>before it came to the press</i>, such liberties as make +it doubtful what part of it is Clarendon’s and what not.”</p> + +<p>It is here we find the anonymous communication of “A +gentleman of distinction,” who was soon known to be +Colonel Ducket, an M.P., and a Commissioner of the +Excise. The colonel details a conversation with Edmund +Smith, the poet, who died at his seat, that “there had +been a fine History written by Lord Clarendon; but what +was published under his name was patchwork, and might +as properly be called the history of the deans Aldrich, +Smalridge, and Atterbury; for to his knowledge it was +altered, and he himself was employed to interpolate the +original.” In a copy of the history, Smith had scored +numerous passages of this sort, and particularly the +famous one of Cinna, which had been applied to the character +of Hampden.</p> + +<p>We may conceive the sensation produced by this apparently +authenticated tale. Oldmixon in triumph confirms +it too from another quarter; for he appeals to “A reverend +divine now living, who saw the Oxford copy by +which the book was printed, altered, and interpolated.” +This divine was our Dr. Calamy, who could not deny +what he had truly affirmed.</p> + +<p>The anonymous voucher for this extraordinary charge +which appears in the preface, was an after-thought of our +historical scribe at the late hour of publication, when it +must have occurred to him that the world would require +the most positive testimony of such a foul forgery. It is +remarkable that Oldmixon had already, in the body of his +work, broadly embroidered the narrative. We may form +some notion of the mode in which this impetuous writer +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page730" id="page730"></a>730</span> +composed history, blending his passions with his facts, by +observing what he did in the present matter. In the text +of his history we discover the tale solemnly worked up +into a tragic scene of penitential remorse on a death-bed; +and, still farther to appropriate and confirm the exciting +narrative of this forgery, he had artfully bolstered it up by +an accompanying anecdote. When Smith the poet had +foisted in the description of Cataline, (or Cinna, as it is +erroneously written in Clarendon,) one of the doctors +slapped him on the back, exclaiming with an asseveration, +“<i>It will do!</i>” And our historian proceeds: “The remorse +he expressed for being concerned in this imposture +were his last words.” He then declares that in the +highly-finished portraits of Clarendon, “all likeness is lost +in a barren superfluity of words, and the workings of a +prejudiced imagination, where one may suppose the drawing +was his own. But that there has been much daubing +in some places, and more dirt in others, put in by his +editors, is now incontestable. In those clumsy painters +into whose hands his work fell, there is something so very +false and base, that such coin could only come from a college +mint.” Thus, inconsiderately, but not the less maliciously, +Oldmixon filled his rapid page, and betrays his +eagerness to snatch at any floating rumour or loose conversation, +which he gives the world with the confidence, +though he could not with the dignity, of historical truth. +And it is this reckless abandonment of his pen in his +post-haste and partial works of history, which must ever +weaken our trust in those more interesting portions for +whose authority he refers to unknown manuscripts; and +the more so, when we often detect his maimed and +warped, and even interpolated quotations; and farther, recollect +that Oldmixon stands himself a convicted criminal +at the bar of history, having been detected in interpolating +the historian Daniel when employed as editor by Kennet, +which sunk the value of the first edition of that historical +collection.</p> + +<p>How was this positive and particularising charge to be +refuted? Years had elapsed, and Smith had never whispered +such an important secret to any friend. The original +manuscript had not yet appeared to confront the detractor, +and to prove the fidelity of the editors. There +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page731" id="page731"></a>731</span> +are difficulties which truth cannot always surmount. It +is not only easier to raise a falsehood than to prove a +truth, but it is possible that there may be accidents which +may wholly prevent the discovery of truth. Of an accusation +made years after the event, and the persons no +longer in existence, we may never be enabled to remove +the objections which it has succeeded in raising.</p> + +<p>From this calamity the History of Clarendon had a +narrow escape. All the parties concerned were no longer +in life, save one, who seemed as much lost to the world—Atterbury, +forgotten in exile. The authenticity of the +History of Clarendon was, however, the concern of literary +Europe. Foreign journalists conveyed the astounding +tale, assuring the literary exile that if he remained silent, +the accusation must be considered as proved. The reply +did not linger, for a simple fact demolished this inartificial +fabric. Atterbury solemnly declared that he had never +seen any manuscript of Lord Clarendon’s History; that +he believed he had never exchanged a word in his life with +Smith, whose habitual conduct was too loose to tolerate; +and if that were true which Ducket had affirmed, that +“Smith had died with a lie in his mouth.” Atterbury +added some new information respecting the real editors, +who were Dean Aldrich and Bishop Sprat, and the late +Earl of Rochester, the son of Lord Clarendon.</p> + +<p>This unexpected confutation from the sole survivor of +the accused parties revived the dismayed Clarendonians. +The cards had changed; and these in their turn called for +a sight of that copy of Clarendon said to have been scored +by Smith. Oldmixon, baffled and mortified, appealed to +his communicator; the most idle prevarications were +alleged; and Colonel Ducket even cavilled at the wording +of the letter which Oldmixon had published. Both parties +were anxious to fling the odium on the other, but +neither had the honesty to retract the slander. We may +believe that they were both convinced that the manuscript +of Clarendon had been tampered with, but that neither +could ascertain either the matter or the manner. Ducket +died during their embarrassment, and to his last day persisted +in confirming his account, and even furnishing fresh +particulars, as Oldmixon assures us.</p> + +<p>In this extraordinary history of the fate of a disputed +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page732" id="page732"></a>732</span> +manuscript, which all had inquired after, and none had +found, an incident occurred which put to rout Oldmixon +and the numerous objectors to its authenticity. Seven books +of the Clarendon manuscripts at length were discovered +lodged in the custody of a lawyer in Bartlett’s Buildings, +Holborn, who was one of the executors of the second +Earl of Clarendon; and, to the utter dismay of Oldmixon, +the often-controverted passage of Hampden was to be +seen in the original writing of the noble author. Several +distinguished personages were admitted to consult the +autograph; but when others applied, who came formally +armed with an autograph letter of Lord Clarendon, to +compare the writing with the manuscript, the lawyer was +alarmed at the hostile investigation, and cautiously +evaded an inspection by these eager inquirers, perhaps +judging that whatever might be the consequence, the +trouble was certain.</p> + +<p>Oldmixon, in his last distress, persisted in declaring +that he was not bound to trust in the genuineness of a +manuscript of which he was refused the examination. It +must be acknowledged, that any partial view of the Clarendon +manuscript, seen by a few, was not sufficient to +establish its authority with the public; and certainly till +the recent edition by Dr. Bandinel appeared, admirably +collated, the aspersions and surmises of the objectors to +its genuineness had by no means been removed, and, we +may add, were not wholly unfounded.</p> + +<p>This history of the great work of Lord Clarendon +would be imperfect did we not develope the real causes +which so long continued to obscure the inquiry, and +involve its mysterious publication in the most perplexing +intricacy.</p> + +<p>Lord Clarendon himself not only doubted the propriety +of the publication, but had even consented to its +suppression till a “fit season, which was not likely to be +in the present age.” His elevated genius looked far +onward to posterity. In his remarkable will, he recommended +his sons to consult Archbishop Sancroft and +Bishop Morley; and it was only his second son, the Earl +of Rochester, who took an active part. The position of +editors was as delicate as it was perilous, and it has been +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page733" id="page733"></a>733</span> +aptly described by the last editor, who at length has +furnished us with a complete Clarendon. “The immediate +descendants of the principal actors were alive; many +were high in favour; others were connected by the closer +links of friendship or alliance.” The change of a virulent +epithet might be charitable, and spare the ulcerated +memories of a family; and time, which blunts the keen +edge of political animosities, might plead for the omission +of “the unfavourable part of a character,” which happened +to be rather of a domestic than of a public nature.</p> + +<p>All these were important causes which perplexed the +editorship of the History of Lord Clarendon; and there +were also minor ones which operated on the publication. +Difficulties occurred in the arrangement of the parts. +The Earl hardly lived to revise his work; portions of the +“Life” had been marked by him to be transferred to the +“History.” The first transcript by Shaw, the secretary +of the author, was discovered to be very incorrect. It +was necessary that a fairer copy should repair the negligence +of the secretary’s. Dean Aldrich read the proofs, +and transmitted them to the Earl of Rochester, accompanied +by the manuscript copy which the earl preserved. +The corrections on the proofs were by his hand. Sprat, +Bishop of Rochester, who then had the reputation of +being the most skilful critic in our vernacular idiom, it +appears, suggested some verbal alterations. But it was +affirmed, that the Earl of Rochester had been so scrupulous +in altering the style of his father, and so cautious not to +allow of any variations from the original, that the strictures +of Sprat had not been complied with, which however +was not true; for though the Earl of Rochester +would allow no hand but his own to correct the proofs, +there were omissions and verbal alterations, and occasionally +may be found what went far beyond the mere +change of words or phrases.</p> + +<p>The manuscript which Calamy saw at the press shows +that the transcript, however fair, had required corrections, +and probably some confusion had sometimes occurred in +transferring passages from the “Life” into the “History.” +This only can account for the reasonable suspicions of “The +Curious Impertinent,” which part had been so gratuitously +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page734" id="page734"></a>734</span> +acted by the learned Doctor on this occasion, and evidently +spread the first rumours of a corrupted or an +altered text.</p> + +<p>The pretended forgery on Clarendon was nothing but a +gross imposture. Who was most deeply concerned in the +fabricated lie, we cannot now ascertain. Of the poet, +however, we know that after frequent admonitions he had +been expelled his college, for habitual irregularities; and +having lost his election of the censorship of the college, +indulged vindictive feelings towards Dean Aldrich. It +was his delight to ridicule and vituperate the Christ +Church deans,—and he might have called the History of +Clarendon, “patch-work,” from some imperfect knowledge +picked up at the Oxford press. The poet, whose +conversation flowed with his wine, on a visit at the seat of +Colonel Ducket, indulging to excess his Epicurean tastes, +there died suddenly of repletion, by prescribing for himself +so potent a dose, that the apothecary warned him of +“the perilous stuff,” which advice was received with contempt. +As the scored Clarendon by Smith was never +brought forth, it probably never existed to the extent +described; and as Smith died unexpectedly, there could +have been no scene of a death-bed repentance, about a +forgery which had never been committed. The party-lie +caught up in conversation was too suitable to the purposes +of Oldmixon’s History not to be preserved, and even +exaggerated; Ducket found a ready tool in a popular +historian, who was not too critical in his researches, whenever +they answered his end.</p> + +<p>But Truth is the daughter of Time—all the Clarendon +manuscripts at length were collected together, and now +securely repose in the Bodleian Library, where had they +been deposited at first, the anxiety and contention which +for half a century disturbed the peace of honest inquirers +had been spared. Why they were not there placed, open +to public inspection, is no longer difficult to conjecture. +Although no historical fact in the main had been altered, +yet omissions and variations, and some of a delicate +nature, there were, sufficient to awaken the keen glance +of a malicious or an offended observer. The anxious +solicitude to withdraw the manuscripts till they might +more safely be examined, at a remote period, was the real +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page735" id="page735"></a>735</span> +and the sole cause of their mysterious concealment; and +led many from party-motives to question the authenticity, +and others to defend the genuineness, of which they were +so many years without any evidence.</p> + +<p>This bibliographical tale affords a striking illustration +of the nature of hearsays, surmises, and cavils; of confident +accusations, but ill parried by vague defences; of +the infamous fictions to which party-men can be driven; +all which were the consequences of that apparent suppression +of the original work, which had occurred from +the critical difficulties which await the editors of contemporary +memoirs. The disingenuity of both parties, +however, is not less observable, for while the Clarendonians +maintained that the editors, as these had protested, +scrupulously followed the manuscript, they themselves +had never seen the original, and the Oldmixons as +audaciously assumed that it was interpolated and mutilated, +without, however, producing any other evidence than +their own surmises, or gross fictions of popular rumours.</p> + +<p>With the fate of Clarendon before his eyes, a witness +of the injury which this mysterious mode of publishing +the History of Lord Clarendon had occasioned, the son +of Bishop Burnet suffered that congenial work, the +“History of his own Times,” to participate in the same +ill-fortune. On the publication of the first volume, this +editor promised that the autograph “should be deposited +in the Cottonian Library for the satisfaction of the public, +as soon as the second volume should be printed.” This +was not done; the editor was repeatedly called on to +perform that solemn contract in which he had engaged +with the public. A recent fire had damaged many of the +Cottonian manuscripts, and this was now pleaded as an +excuse for not trusting the bishop’s manuscript to the +chance of destruction. Expostulation only met with +evasion. We are not now ignorant of the real cause of +this breach of a solemn duty. The bishop in his will had +expressly enjoined that his History should be given in +the state in which he had himself left it. But the freedom +of the paternal pen had alarmed the filial editor. +He found himself in the exact position which the son of +Lord Clarendon had already preoccupied. Omissions +were made to abate the displeasure of those who would +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page736" id="page736"></a>736</span> +have writhed under the severity of the historian’s censure—characters +were but partially delineated, and the tale +sometimes was left half told. It happened that the +bishop had often submitted his manuscript to the eyes of +many during his life-time. Curious researchers into facts, +and profound observers of opinions, had become diligent +extractors, more particularly the supervisor of the printed +proofs; and when the printed volumes appeared, most of +these omissions stood as living testimonials to the faithlessness +of the prudential editor. The margins of various +copies, among the curious in Literature, overflowed with +the castrations: the forbidden fruit was plucked. We now +have the History of Burnet not entirely according to “the +will” of the fervid chronicler, but as far as its restored +passages could be obtained; for some, it is evident, have +never been recovered.<a name="fa1c67" id="fa1c67" href="#ft1c67"><span class="sp">1</span></a> Thus it happened, that the editors +of Clarendon and Burnet form a parallel case, suffering +under the inconveniences of editors of contemporary +memoirs.</p> + +<p>The perplexed feeling of the times in regard to both +these Histories we may catch from a manuscript letter of +the great collector, Dr. Rawlinson:—“Among Bishop +Turner’s<a name="fa2c67" id="fa2c67" href="#ft2c67"><span class="sp">2</span></a> manuscripts,” Rawlinson writes, “are observations +on Lord Clarendon’s History, when sent him by old +Edward’s son, the Nonjuror, who gave it to Alma Mater; +<i>if alterations were made</i>, this may be a means of discovering. +I have often wondered why <i>the original MS.</i> of that +History is not put into some public place to answer all objections; +but when I consider <i>a whimsical family</i>, my surprise +is the less. Judge <span class="sc">Burnet</span> has promised under his +hand, on the backside of every title of the second volume +of his father’s History of his Life and Times, to put in the +originals into some public library; but <i>quando</i> is the case. +I purchased the MS. of a gentleman who corrected the +press, when that book was printed, and amongst his +papers I have <i>all the castrations</i>, many of which, I believe, +he communicated to Dr. Beach’s sons, whom T. Burnet +had abused in a life of his father, at the end of the second +volume.”<a name="fa3c67" id="fa3c67" href="#ft3c67"><span class="sp">3</span></a> Here, then, the world possessed sufficient +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page737" id="page737"></a>737</span> +evidence at the time of their early appearance, that these +Histories had suffered variations and omissions—by the +heirs of their authors, and the imperfect executors of their +solemn and testamentary will.</p> + +<p>I cannot quit the present subject without a remark on +these great party Histories of Clarendon and Burnet. +Both have passed through the fiery ordeal of national +opinion,—and both, with some of their pages singed, remain +unconsumed: the one criticized for its solemn +eloquence, the other ridiculed for its homely simplicity; +the one depreciated for its partiality, the other for its inaccuracy; +both alike, as we have seen, by their opposite +parties, once considered as works utterly rejected from the +historical shelf.</p> + +<p>But Posterity reverences Genius, for posterity only can +decide on its true worth. Time, potent over criticism, has +avenged our two great writers of the history of their own +days. The awful genius of <span class="sc">Clarendon</span> is still paramount, +and the vehement spirit of <span class="sc">Burnet</span> has often its secret +revelations confirmed. Such shall ever be the fate of those +precious writings, which, though they have to contend +with the passions of their own age, yet, originating in the +personal intercourse of the writers with the subject of their +narratives, possess an endearing charm which no criticism +can dissolve, a reality which outlasts fiction, and a truth +which diffuses its vitality over pages which cannot die.<a name="fa4c67" id="fa4c67" href="#ft4c67"><span class="sp">4</span></a></p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c67" id="ft1c67" href="#fa1c67"><span class="fn">1</span></a> Burnet’s “History,” iv. 552, edition 1823.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c67" id="ft2c67" href="#fa2c67"><span class="fn">2</span></a> <i>Sic</i> in original, but probably Tanner.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c67" id="ft3c67" href="#fa3c67"><span class="fn">3</span></a> Rawlinson’s Bodleian MSS., vol. ii., lett. 38.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c67" id="ft4c67" href="#fa4c67"><span class="fn">4</span></a> I refer the reader to “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. ii. art. “Of +Suppressors and Dilapidators of Manuscripts;” he will there find that +in the case of the Marquis of Halifax’ Diary, of which to secure its +preservation the writer had left two copies, both were silently destroyed +by two opposite partisans, the one startled at some mean deceptions +of the Revolutionists of 1688, and the other at the Catholic intrigues +of the court.</p> +</div> + +<div class="center art1"><img style="width:225px; height:30px; vertical-align: middle;" src="images/img7.jpg" alt="" /></div> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page738" id="page738"></a>738</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">THE WAR AGAINST BOOKS.</p> + +<p class="noind"><span class="sc chap1">The</span> history of our literature, at the early era of printing, +till the first indications appear of what is termed “copyright,” +forms a chapter in the history of our civilization +which has not been opened to us.</p> + +<p>This history includes two important incidents in our +literary annals; the one, an exposition of the complicate +arts practised by an alarmed government to possess an +absolute control over the printers, which annihilated the +freedom of the press; and the other, the contests of those +printers and booksellers who had grants and licenses, and +other privileges of a monopoly, with the rest of the brotherhood, +who maintained an equal right of publication, and +contended for the freedom of the trade.</p> + +<p>Although Caxton, our first printer, bore the title of +<i>Regius Impressor</i>, printed books were still so rare in this +country under Richard the Third, that an act of parliament +in 1483 contains a proviso in favour of aliens to encourage +the importation of books. During a period of forty years, +books were supplied by foreign printers, some of whom +appear to have accompanied their merchandise, and to have +settled themselves here. It became necessary to repeal +this privilege conceded to foreign presses, when under +Henry the Eighth the art of printing was skilfully exercised +by the King’s natural subjects, and to protect the +English printers lest their art should decline from a failure +of encouragement.</p> + +<p>Our earliest printers were the vendors and the binders of +their own books, and their domicile on their title-pages +directed the curious to their abodes. Few in number, +their limited editions, it is conjectured, did not exceed +from two to four hundred copies. The first printers were +generally men of competent wealth; and every book was +the sole property of its single printer. The separate departments +of author, bookseller, and bookbinder, were not +yet required, for as yet there was no “reading public.” +Some of our ancient printers combined all these characters +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page739" id="page739"></a>739</span> +in themselves. The commerce of literature had not yet +opened in the speculative vendors of books, and that race +of writers who have been designated in the modern phrase +as “authors by profession.” The very nature of literary +property could only originate in a more advanced and +intellectual state of society, when unsettled opinions and +contending principles would create a growing demand for +books which no one yet contemplated, and a property, of +a novel and peculiar nature, in the very thoughts and +words of a writer.</p> + +<p>The art of printing, confined within a few hands, was +usually practised under the patronage of the King, or the +Archbishop, or some nobleman. There existed not the +remotest suspicion, that the simple machinery of the printer’s +press, could ever be converted into an engine of torture to try +the strength, or the truth, of the church and the state. +Sedition, or any allusion to public affairs, never entered the +brains of the ingenious mechanics, solely occupied in lowering +the prices of the text-writers in the manuscript market, +by their own novel and wondrous transcript. Their first +wares had consisted of romances which were consulted as +authentic histories; “dictes, or sayings,” of ancient sages +which no one cared to contradict; and homilies and allegories +whose voluminousness had no tediousness. Neither +did the higher powers ever imagine that any control seemed +needful over the printer’s press. They only lent the +sanction of their names, or the shelter of their abode, at +the Abbey of Westminster or the monastery of St. Albans, +to encourage the manufacture of a novel curiosity, for its +beautiful toy, a printed book—and the press at first was at +once free and innocent.</p> + +<p>But the day of portents was not slow in its approach—a +stirring age pressed on, an age for books. Under Henry +the Eighth, books became the organs of the passions of +mankind, and were not only printed, but spread about; for +if the presses of England dared not disclose the hazardous +secrets of the writers, the people were surreptitiously furnished +with English books from foreign presses. It was +then that the jealousy of the state opened its hundred +eyes on the awful track of the strange omnipotence of the +press. Then first began that <span class="sc">War against Books</span> +which has not ceased in our time.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page740" id="page740"></a>740</span></p> + +<p>Perhaps he who first, with a statesman’s prescient view, +had contemplated on this novel and unknown power, and, +as we shall see, had detected its insidious steps stealing +into the cabinet of the sovereign, was the great minister of +this great monarch. It has been surmised that the cardinal +aimed to crush the head of the serpent, by stopping +the printing press in the monastery at St. Albans, of which +he was the abbot; for that press remained silent for half +a century. In a convocation the cardinal expressed his +hostility against printing; assuring the simple clergy that, +if they did not in time suppress printing, printing would +suppress them.<a name="fa1c68" id="fa1c68" href="#ft1c68"><span class="sp">1</span></a> This great statesman, at this early +period, had taken into view its remote consequences. Lord +Herbert has curiously assigned to the cardinal his ideas as +addressed to the pope:—“This new invention of printing +has produced various effects of which your Holiness cannot +be ignorant. If it has restored books and learning, it has +also been the occasion of those sects and schisms which +daily appear. Men begin to call in question the present +faith and tenets of the church; and the laity read the +Scriptures; and pray in their vulgar tongue. Were this +suffered, the common people might come to believe that +there was not so much use of the clergy. If men were +persuaded that they could make their own way to God, and +in their ordinary language as well as Latin, the authority +of the mass would fall, which would be very prejudicious +to our ecclesiastical orders. The mysteries of religion +must be kept in the hands of priests—the secret +and arcanum of church government. Nothing remains +more to be done than to prevent further apostacy. +For this purpose, since printing could not be put down, it +were best to set up learning against learning; and, by +introducing able persons to dispute, to suspend the laity +between fears and controversies. Since printing cannot be +put down, it may still be made useful.” Thus, the statesman, +who could not by a single blow annihilate this monster +of all schism, would have wrestled with it with a +statesman’s policy.</p> + +<p>The cardinal at length was shaken by terrors he had +never before felt from the hated press. This minister had +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page741" id="page741"></a>741</span> +writhed under the printed personalities of the rabid +<span class="sc">Skelton</span> and the merciless <span class="sc">Roy</span>; but a pamphlet in the +form of “<i>The Supplication of Beggars</i>” is a famed invective, +which served as a prelude to the fall of the +minister. The author, <span class="sc">Simon Fish</span>, had been a student +of Gray’s Inn, where, in an Aristophanic interlude, he had +enacted his grace the cardinal to the life, and deemed himself +fortunate to escape from his native shores to elude the +gripe of Wolsey. In this pamphlet all the poverty of the +nation,—for our national poverty at all times is the cry of +“The Beggars,”—the taxation, and the grievances, are all +laid to the oppression of the whole motley prelacy. These +were the thieves and the freebooters, the cormorants and +the wolves of the state, and the king had nothing more to +do than to put them to the cart’s tail, and end all the beggary +of England by appropriating the monastic lands.</p> + +<p>On a day of a procession at Westminster this seditious +tract, aiming at the annihilation of the whole revenues of +churchmen, was found scattered in the streets. Wolsey +had the copies carefully gathered and delivered to him, to +prevent any from reaching the king’s eyes. Merchants, at +that day, were often itinerants in their way of trade with +their foreign correspondents, and frequently conveyed to +England these writings of our fugitive reformers. Two of +these merchants, by the favour of Anne Bullen, had a +secret interview with the king. They offered to recite to +the royal ear the substance of the suppressed libel. “I +dare say you have it all by heart,” the king shrewdly observed, +and listened. After a pause, Henry let fall this +remarkable observation—“If a man should pull down an +old stone wall, and begin at the lower part, the upper +might chance to fall on his head.” What at that moment +was passing in the sagacious mind of the future regal +reformer, is now more evident than probably it was to its +first hearers. Wolsey, suspicious and troubled, came to +warn the king of “a pestilent heretical libel being abroad.” +Henry, suddenly drawing the very libel out of his bosom, +presented a portentous copy to the startled and falling +minister. The book became a court-book; and “the +witty atheistical author,” as the Roman Catholic historian +designated him, was invited back to England under the +safeguard of the royal protection.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page742" id="page742"></a>742</span></p> + +<p>But the secret, and, perhaps, the yet obscure influence +of the press, must often have been apparent to Henry the +Eighth, when the king sat in council. There he marked +the alarms of Wolsey, and the terrified remonstrances of +the entire body of “the Papelins;” and when the day +came that their ejectors filled their seats, the king discovered, +that though the objects were changed, the same +dread of the press continued. The war against books +commenced; an expurgatory index, or a catalogue of prohibited +books, chiefly English, was sent forth before Henry +had broken with the papal power; subsequently, the fresher +proclamation declared the books of the Papelins to be +“seditious,” as the use of “the new learning” had been +anathematized as “heretical.”</p> + +<p>In these rapid events, dates become as essential as arguments. +In 1526, anti-popery books, with their dispersers, +were condemned as heretical. In 1535, all books favouring +popery were decreed to be “seditious books.” There were +books on the king’s supremacy, for or against, which cost +some of their writers their heads; and there were “injunctions +against English books,” frequently renewed as “pestilent +and infectious learnings.”<a name="fa2c68" id="fa2c68" href="#ft2c68"><span class="sp">2</span></a> All these show that now +the press had obtained activity, and betray the uneasy condition +of the ruling powers, who were startled by a supernatural +voice which they had never before heard.</p> + +<p>When the first persecution of “the new religion” occurred, +it did not abate the secret importations of Lutheran books.<a name="fa3c68" id="fa3c68" href="#ft3c68"><span class="sp">3</span></a> +These with the merchant had become an article of commerce; +and with the zealous dispensers, an article of faith: +both alike ventured their lives in conveying them to +London, and other places, and even smuggled them into +the universities. They landed their prohibited goods in +the most distant places, at Colchester, or in Norfolk. One +of these chapmen in this hazardous commodity of free-thinking +was at last caught at his bookbinder’s. He suffered +at the flaming stake, and others met his fate.</p> + +<p>It was now apparent that the secrecy and velocity of +conveying the novel projects of reform, which could not +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page743" id="page743"></a>743</span> +otherwise have been communicated to the great body of +the people, till this awful instrument had been set to +work; the unity of opinion which it might create among +the confused multitude; and the passions which a party +either in terror, or in triumph, could artfully rouse in the +sympathies of men; were felt and acknowledged by the +monarch, who had himself staked the possession of his +independent dominion on the energy and the eloquence of a +single book,<a name="fa4c68" id="fa4c68" href="#ft4c68"><span class="sp">4</span></a> to prepare his people for his meditated emancipation +from the Tiara; and were any other proof wanting, +we discover the terror of the Bishop of Durham, on +the appearance of “a little book printed in English, +issuing from Newcastle.” His lordship writes in great +trepidation to the minister Cromwell, of this portentous +little book, “like to do great harm among the people,” and +advising that “letters be directed to all havens, towns, and +other places, to forbid the book to be sold.” All the ports +to be closed against “a little book brought by some folks +from Newcastle!” These incidents were certain demonstrations +of the political influence of this new sovereignty +of the printing-press.</p> + +<p>In the simplicity of this early era of printing, the same +bishop had all the copies of Tindal’s Testament bought up +at Antwerp, and burned. The English merchant employed +on this occasion was a secret follower of the modern apostle, +who, on his part, gladly furnished all the unsold copies which +had hung on hand, anxious to correct a new edition which he +was too poor to publish. When one of the Tindalites was +promised his pardon if he would reveal the name of the +person who had encouraged this new edition, he accepted +the grace; and he assured the Lord Chancellor that the +greatest encourager and supporter of his Antwerp friends +had been the bishop himself, who, by buying up half the +unsold impression, had enabled them to produce a second. +This was the first lesson which taught that it is easier +to burn authors than books.</p> + +<p>There were two methods by which governments could +counteract the inconveniences of the press: the one, by +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page744" id="page744"></a>744</span> +clipping its wings, and contracting the sphere of its action, +which we shall see was early attempted; and the other, by +adroitly turning its vehemence into an opposite direction, +making the press contend with the press, and by division +weaken its dominion.</p> + +<p>Henry the Eighth left the age he had himself created, +with its awakened spirit. The three succeeding reigns, +acting in direct opposition to each other, disturbed the +minds of the people; controversies raged, and books multiplied. +The sphere of publication widened, in this vertiginous +era, printers greatly increased in the reign of +Edward the Sixth. But the craft did not flourish, when +the <span class="correction" title="amended from craftmen">craftsmen</span> had become numerous. We have the contemporary +authority of one of the most eminent printers, that +the practice of the art, and the cost of the materials, +had become so exceedingly chargeable, that the printers +were driven by necessity to throw themselves into the hands +of “the Stationers,” or booksellers, for “small gains.”<a name="fa5c68" id="fa5c68" href="#ft5c68"><span class="sp">5</span></a> +It is probable that at this period, the printers perceived +that vending their books at the printing-office was not a +mode which made them sufficiently public. This is the +first indication that the printing, and the publication or +the sale of books, were becoming separate trades.</p> + +<p>In this history of the progress of the press in our +country, the Stationers’ Company now appears. This institution +becomes an important branch of our investigation, +for its influence over our literature, for its monopoly, +opposed to the interests of other publishers, and above all, +for the practice of the government in converting this company +into a ready instrument to restrain the freedom of +the press.</p> + +<p>Anterior to the invention of printing, there flourished a +craft or trade who were denominated <i>Stationers</i>; they were +scribes and limners, and dealers in manuscript copies, and +in parchment and paper, and other literary wares. It is +believed by our antiquaries that they derived their denomination +from their fixed locality, or <i>station in a street</i>, +either by a shop or shed, and probably when their former +occupation had gone, still retained their dealings in literature, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page745" id="page745"></a>745</span> +and turned to booksellers.<a name="fa6c68" id="fa6c68" href="#ft6c68"><span class="sp">6</span></a> This denomination of +<i>stationers</i>, indicating their stationary residence, would also +distinguish them from the itinerant vendors, who in a +more subordinate capacity at a later period, appear to have +hawked about the town and the country pamphlets and +other portable books.</p> + +<p>In the reign of Philip and Mary “the Stationers” were +granted a charter of incorporation, and were invested with +the most inquisitorial powers.</p> + +<p>The favours of a tyrant are usually favours to individuals +who profit at the cost of the community, and who +themselves overlooking every principle of justice, bind up +their own selfish monopoly with the prosperity of criminal +power. This we discover in the Company of Stationers, +who were the willing dupes of that absolute power in the +State which had created the corporation to do its watchful +work, to carry on the war against books, and by their passive +obedience they secured to themselves those privileges, +and licenses, and other monopolies, which they now amply +enjoyed.</p> + +<p>By this charter of the Stationers, it was specified that +no one was to exercise the art of printing, unless he was +one of the society; and the corporation, with their extraordinary +but lawful authority, were to search as often as +they pleased any house or chamber, &c., of any stamper or +printer, or binder, or seller, of any manner of books, which +they deemed obnoxious to the State, or their own interest!—to +seize, burn, take away, or destroy, or convert to their +own use.<a name="fa7c68" id="fa7c68" href="#ft7c68"><span class="sp">7</span></a> The Stationers were, in fact, a Spanish inquisition +for the cabinet of Philip and Mary, and whom the +queen consulted on critical occasions, for her majesty once +sent for the warden to inquire whether they had seen or +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page746" id="page746"></a>746</span> +heard of a sort of books sent from Zurich? The war +against books was never pushed to such extremities as in a +proclamation of Philip and Mary, which Strype calls, “a +short but terrible proclamation.” Here we learn that +“whoever finds books of heresy, sedition, and treason, and +does not forthwith burn the same without showing or +reading them to any other person, shall be <i>executed for a +rebel</i>!”<a name="fa8c68" id="fa8c68" href="#ft8c68"><span class="sp">8</span></a> It is evident, that the grant of this incorporation +was designed to make the interests of the company +subservient to those of the court; for by the intermediate +aid of the vigilant Stationers, every printer would be controlled, +since none were allowed to be printers who were +not members of this corporation, and therefore amenable +to its laws.</p> + +<p>In the succeeding reign of Elizabeth everything +changed except these state-proclamations in the war +against books. The object had altered, but not the objection, +for though the books were different the Elizabethan +style is identical with the Marian. The same plenary +powers of the Stationers were strengthened by an additional +injunction, by which the government held the whole +brotherhood with a closer grasp. The company were +commissioned not only “to search into bookbinders’ shops, +as well as printing-offices, for unlawful and heretical books,” +but they were responsible for “any unruly printer who +might endanger the church and state,” and “who for +covetousness regard not what they print, whereby ariseth +great disorder by publication of unfruitful, vain, and +infamous books and papers. None shall print any manner +of book except the same be first <i>licensed by her majesty by +express words in writing</i>, or by <i>six of her privy council</i>.”<a name="fa9c68" id="fa9c68" href="#ft9c68"><span class="sp">9</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page747" id="page747"></a>747</span></p> + +<p>When we recollect that the Stationers’ Company under +Mary, were composed of the very same individuals who +two years after under Elizabeth, were busily ornamenting +their shelves with all their late “seditious and heretical” +books, and in removing out of sight all their late lawful +and loyal ware, this transition of the feelings must have +placed them in a position painful as it was ridiculous. +But the true genius of a commercial body is of no +party, save the predominant; pliant with their interests, +a corporation, like a republic, in their zealous +union can do that with public propriety which, in the +individuals it is composed of, would be incongruous and +absurd.</p> + +<p>The rage of government in this war against books was +still sharper at a later period, provoked by the spread of +the Mar-prelate pamphlets. A decree of the Star-chamber +in 1586, among other orders, allows no printer to +have an additional press without license; awards that +there shall be no printing in any obscure part of a house; +nor any printer out of the city of London, excepting at +the two Universities; and till “the excessive multitude of +printers be abated, diminished, or by death given over,” +no one shall resume that trade; and that the wardens of +the Stationers’ Company, with assistants, shall enter at all +times warehouses, shops, &c., to seize all “letter-presses, +and other printing instruments, to be defaced, melted, +sawed in pieces, broken or battered at the smith’s forge.”<a name="fa10c68" id="fa10c68" href="#ft10c68"><span class="sp">10</span></a> +Amid all this book-phobia, a curious circumstance +occurred. The learned could not prosecute their studies +for the prohibition against many excellent works, written +by those who were “addicted to the errors of Popery in +foreign parts,” and which also contained “matters against +the state of this land.” In this dilemma, a singular expedient +was adopted. The archbishop allowed “Ascanius +de Renialme, a merchant bookseller, to bring into this +realm <i>some few copies</i> of every such sort of books, upon +this condition only, that they be first brought to me, and +so delivered only to such persons whom we deem most +meet men to have the reading of them.” At this time it +must have been an affair of considerable delicacy and difficulty +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page748" id="page748"></a>748</span> +to obtain a quotation, without first hastening to +Lambeth Palace, there to be questioned!</p> + +<p>Printing and literature, during the long reign of Elizabeth, +in spite of all these Star-chamber edicts, amazingly +increased; there seemed to be a swell from all the presses. +Of 175 stationers, 140 had taken their freedom since this +queen’s accession. “So much had printing and learning +come in request under the Reformation,” observes our historical +antiquary Strype. And such was the proud exultation +of the great printer John Day, that when he compared +the darkness of the preceding period with what this +publisher of Fox’s mighty tomes of Martyrology deemed +its purer enlightenment, he never printed his name without +this pithy insinuation to the reader, “Arise, for it is +<span class="sc">Day</span>!” Books not only multiplied, but unquestionably it +was at this period that first appeared the art of aiding +these ephemeral productions of the press which supplied +the wants of numerous readers. The rights of authors +had hitherto derived a partial existence in privilege conceded +by the royal patron, but it was now that they first +gathered the fuller harvests of public favour. We shall +shortly find a notice among the book-trade of what is +termed “copyright.”<a name="fa11c68" id="fa11c68" href="#ft11c68"><span class="sp">11</span></a></p> + +<p>If the freedom of the press had been wholly wrested +from the printers, it was not the sole grievance in the +present state of our literature, for another custom had been +assumed which hung on the royal prerogative—that of +granting letters patent, or privileged licenses, under the +broad seal to individuals, to deal in a specific class of +books, to the exclusion of every other publisher. Possibly +the same secret motive which had contrived the absolute +control of the press, suggested the grants of these privileges. +One enjoyed the privilege of printing Bibles; +another all law-books; another grammars; another +“almanacks and prognostications;” and another, ballads +and books in prose and metre. These privileges assuredly +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page749" id="page749"></a>749</span> +increased the patronage of the great, and the dispensations +of these favours were doubtless often abused. A singing +man had the license for printing music-books, which he +extended to that of being the sole vendor of all ruled +paper, on the plea that where there were ruled lines, +musical notes might be pricked down; and a private gentleman, +who was neither printer nor stationer, had the +privilege of printing grammars and other things, which he +farmed out for a considerable annual revenue, by which +means these books were necessarily enhanced in price.</p> + +<p>Such monopolies, which entered into the erroneous +policy of that age, and the corrupt practices of patronage, +long continued a source of discontent among the generality. +This was now a period when the spirit of the +times raised up men who would urge their independent +rights. A struggle ensued between the monopolists and +the excluded, who clamoured for the freedom of the trade. +“Unruly printers” not only resisted when their own +houses were besieged by “the searchers” of the stationers, +but openly persisted in printing any “lawful +books” they chose, in defiance of any royal privilege. A +busy lawyer had been feed, who questioned this stretch of +the prerogative. But the patriotism or the despair of +these “unruly printers” led to the Clink or to Ludgate—to +imprisonment or to bankruptcy! The day had not yet +arrived when civil freedom, though youthful and bold, +with impunity could “kick against the pricks” of the +prerogative. It is curious here to discover that the +aggrieved had even formed “a trade-union” for contributions +to defend suits at law against the privileged; and +when they were reminded that this mode only aggravated +their troubles, and were asked by the sleek monopolists +what they would gain if all were in common, which, as +the privileged assumed, “would make havoc for one man +to undo another,” that is, those who were patentless +would undo the patentees—these Cains, in the bitterness +of their hearts, fiercely replied to their more favoured +brothers, “We should make you beggars like ourselves!”<a name="fa12c68" id="fa12c68" href="#ft12c68"><span class="sp">12</span></a></p> + +<p>Amid these clamours in the commonwealth of literature, +the patentees became alarmed at the danger of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page750" id="page750"></a>750</span> +having their patents revoked. The booksellers had +become the more prosperous race, and some of these, combining +with the Stationers’ Company, opposed the privileged +few. The advocates for the freedom of the trade +advanced a proposition too tender to be handled by the +Doctor of Civil Law, who was chosen for the arbitrator. +At once these boldly impugned the prerogative royal itself +in its exercise of granting privileges to printers, which +they declared was against law; and however they might +more successfully urge, that the better policy for the +public was to admit of competition, and moderating of +prices by this freedom of publication, they add, “So, too, +let every man print what ‘lawful book’ he choose, without +any exceptions, even ‘any book of which the copies +thereof had been <i>bought of the authors</i> for their money.’” +Here we find the first notice of “copyright,” and the very +inadequate notions yet entertained of its nature.</p> + +<p>The plea of the patentees more skilfully addressed the +Doctor of Civil Law by their assumption of the irrefragable +rights of the royal prerogative. Their own privileges +they maintained by the custom, as they showed +that “all princes in Christendom had granted privileges +for printing, sometimes for a term of years, or for life; +that ancient books bore this inscription, <i>Cum privilegio ad +imprimendum solum</i>; that the queen’s progenitors had +exercised this right, and would any dare to lessen her +majesty’s prerogative?” All infringers had ever been +punished. They further urged, that the good of the commonwealth +required that printing should be in the hands +of known men, being an art most dangerous and pernicious +if it were not straitened and restrained by politic +order of the prince or magistrates. With truer arguments +they alleged that many useful books were now published +unprofitable to the patentees, who had no other +means of repaying themselves but by the sale of other books +restricted to them by the protection of their privileges; +and finally, they declared that the public were incurring +some danger that good books might not be printed at all +if privileges were revoked, for <i>the first printer was at +charge for the author’s pains and other extraordinary cost</i>; +but should any succeeding printer who had “<i>the copy +gratis</i>” sell cheaper on better paper, and with notes and +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page751" id="page751"></a>751</span> +additions, it would put an end to the sale of the original +edition; and they pithily conclude with the old wisdom, +that “It is easier to amend than to invent.” Here again +we see specified the cost of “copyright” in the publication +of a new book.</p> + +<p>This attempt to open the freedom of the trade, which +occurred about 1583, the twenty-fifth year of the reign of +Elizabeth, at length was not wholly unsuccessful; the +monopolists conceded certain advantages,<a name="fa13c68" id="fa13c68" href="#ft13c68"><span class="sp">13</span></a> and about +twenty years subsequently, towards the end of that +queen’s reign, when the craft of authorship, adapting its +wares to the fashion of the day, was practised by a whole +race of popular writers, the booksellers became almost the +sole publishers of books, employing the printers in their +single capacity.<a name="fa14c68" id="fa14c68" href="#ft14c68"><span class="sp">14</span></a></p> + +<p>In this war against books, the severe decree of the Star +Chamber, 1586, was renewed with stricter prohibitions, +and more penal severity by a decree of the Star Chamber, +under Charles the First, in 1637. Printing and printers +were now placed under the supervision of the great officers +of state; law-books were to be judiciously approved by +the lord chief-justice; historical works were to be submitted +to the secretaries of state; heraldry was left to the +lord marshal; divinity, physic, philosophy, and poetry, +were to be sanctioned by the Archbishop of Canterbury +or the Bishop of London. Two copies of every work +were to be preserved in custody, to prevent any alterations +being made in the published volumes, which would be +detected on their comparison. Admirable preparatory and +preventive measures! Here would ensue a general purgation +of every atom in the human system, occasioning obstructions +to the doctrines and discipline of the Church of +England, and the state of government. The aim of all +these decrees and proclamations was to abridge the number +of printers, and to invigorate the absolute power conferred +on the Stationers’ Company, who had long delivered themselves, +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page752" id="page752"></a>752</span> +bound hand and foot, to the government, for the +servile possession of their privileges. Printers were still +limited to twenty, as in the reign of Elizabeth, and only +four letter-founders allowed. Every printed book on paper +was to bear the impress of the printer’s name, on pain of +corporal punishment. They held books in such terror, +that even those which had formerly been licensed, were +not allowed to be reprinted, without being “reviewed,” as +they express it, and re-watched by placing on guard this +double sentinel. There are some extraordinary clauses +which betray the feeble infancy of the rude policy of that +day. The decree tells us that “printing in corners without +license had been usually done by journeymen out of +work,” and to provide against this source of inquietude, it +compels the printers to employ all journeymen out of +employ, “though the printer should be able to do his own +work without these journeymen;” and in the same spirit +of compulsion, it ordains that all such unemployed shall +be obliged to work whenever called on.<a name="fa15c68" id="fa15c68" href="#ft15c68"><span class="sp">15</span></a> Masters and +men were equally amenable to fines impossible to be paid, +and penal pains almost too horrible to endure, short of +life, but not of ruin: a dark, a merciless, a mocking tribunal +where the judges sate the prosecutors, and whose unwritten +laws hung on their own lips; and where to discharge any +accused person as innocent was looked on as a reproach of +their negligence, or an imputation of their sagacity.</p> + +<p>Did the severity of these decrees produce the evils they +encountered, or was it the existence of the evils which +provoked the issue of these edicts? Did the terrific executions +eradicate the political mischief? There was no +free press in Elizabeth’s reign, and yet libels abounded! +The government compulsively contracted the press by +their twenty stationary printers; and behold! moveable +presses, whose ubiquity was astonishing as their ceaseless +working. An invisible printer mysteriously scattered his +publications here and there, during the contest of the +Mar-prelate faction with the bishops; and the libels of +the Jesuit Parsons, and others of the Roman party, were +as rife against her majesty and her minister. The same +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page753" id="page753"></a>753</span> +occurred when the Star-chamber was guided by the genius +of Laud; the altar was raised, and the sacerdotal knife +struck! but the groans of the immolated victims were a +shout of triumph. A clear demonstration that nothing is +really gained by the temporary suppressions which power +may enforce; the sealed book circulates till it is hoarded, +and the author pilloried, mutilated, or hanged, obtains a +popularity, which often his own genius afforded him no +chance to acquire.</p> + +<p>The secret design of all these entangling edicts was to +hold the printers in passive obedience to the government, +whatever that government might be; for each separate +government, though acting on opposite principles, manifested +a remarkable uniformity in their proceedings with +the press. In the arbitrary days of Charles the Second, +an extraordinary, if not an audacious, attempt was made +to wrest the art of printing out of the hands of its professors, +and to place the press wholly at the disposal of +the sovereign. This usurping doctrine was founded on a +startling plea. As our monarchs had granted privileges +to the earliest printers, and, from the introduction of the +art into England, had never ceased their patronage or +their control, it was inferred, that our kings had never +yielded <i>the royal prerogative of printing</i> any more than +they had that of <i>coining</i>. The “mystery” of printing, in +the style of the lawyers, was “a flower of the crown!”—the +exercise of the prerogative; and therefore every printer +in England must be a sworn servant of the crown. At +such a period we are not surprised to find an express +treatise put forth to demonstrate to his sacred majesty, +that “printing belonged to him, in his public and private +capacity, as supreme <i>magistrate</i> and as <i>proprietor</i>;” in reality +there was to be but one printer for all England, and that +printer the king! This was giving at once the most elevated +and the most degraded notions of “the divine art,” which +this servile assumer describes can “not only bereave the king +of his good name, but of the very hearts of his people.”<a name="fa16c68" id="fa16c68" href="#ft16c68"><span class="sp">16</span></a></p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page754" id="page754"></a>754</span></p> + +<p>We observe the lamentations of these advocates of +arbitrary power over the freedom of the press, or, as such +maintained, the confusion produced “by the exorbitant +and unlawful exercise of printing in modern times.” They +appeal to the miseries and calamities not only recently +witnessed in our own country, but in Germany, France, +the Netherlands, and Switzerland. Wherever they track +a footstep of the liberty of the press, they pause to discover +its accompanying calamity. One of these writers, to convey +an adequate notion of the spread and political influence +of the press, has thrown out a very excitable remark:—“Had +this art been known in the time of the grand profession +of the Donatist and Arian heresy, it would have +drowned the world in a second deluge of blood and confusion, +to its utter destruction long time since.” A stroke of +church history which might suggest a whole volume!</p> + +<p>The interests of the printers had coincided with the +designs of government, in limiting the number of presses; +for the policy of their narrow confederacy was, the fewer +printers the more printing! But the interests of the booksellers +were quite opposite; they were for encouraging supernumerary +printers, and overstocking the printing-offices +with journeymen, and by this means they succeeded in bringing +the printers down to their price or their purpose; and +it is insinuated, on the Machiavelian principle, that the +number being greater than could live honestly by the +trade, one-half must be knaves, or starve. And it seems +that “knaves” were in greater requisition by the publishers +of “the unlawful,” or, as these were afterwards +called on the establishment of a licenser of the press, “the +unlicensed books,” who revelled in their seductive profits.<a name="fa17c68" id="fa17c68" href="#ft17c68"><span class="sp">17</span></a></p> + +<p>Among the effusions of the political Literature of the +egregious Sir <span class="sc">Roger L’Estrange</span>, versed in the arcana of +the publishing system of his day, I discover a project which +terminated in renewing the office of the Licenser of Books, +in his own person; the only pitiful preferment the Restoration +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page755" id="page755"></a>755</span> +brought the clamorous Loyalist. Our literary knight +addressed Charles the Second, to impress on his Majesty +the urgency of an immediate regulation of the press; +“this great business of the press being now engrossed by +Oliver’s creatures, and the <i>honest</i> printers being impoverished +by the late times.”</p> + +<p>This project to regulate the press by L’Estrange, chiefly +turned on the dexterous management of the printers. He +calculated, for four thousand pounds, to buy up the presses +of the poor printers, who were willing to be reimbursed, +and look to better trades. The bolder project was to +emancipate the printers from the tyranny of the booksellers, +by which means they would no longer be necessitated +to print whatever their masters ordered. The +printers at this moment had menaced to separate themselves +from the stationers, with a view of their own.</p> + +<p>The printers had been gradually deprived of any shares +in new publications; they had been thrown out of all +copyright, and probably had grown somewhat jealous of +their prosperous masters; the printers complained that +they were nothing else than slaves to the booksellers. +They called for an independent company of “the +mystery,” and reverting to the custom of the early +printers, they desired to have their own presses under +their own management, and to print only the copies of +which they themselves were the proprietors.</p> + +<p>The future licenser of the press, who was throwing his +net to haul in all these fish at a cast, took advantage of +this project, which at once was levelled at the freedom of +the trade, and the freedom of the press. Printers solely +working on their own copies, would indeed check “the +ungovernable ambition of the booksellers,” by diminishing +their copyrights; while those “unhappy printers” would +be relieved, who at present have no other work than what +“the great dealers in treasonous or seditious books” furnished +them. All these were but the ostensible motives, +for the real object designed was that the printers should +become the creatures of the patronage of government, +and, by the diminution of their number, the contracted +circle would be the more easily managed.</p> + +<p>Such were the systematic struggles of our governments +in the revival of the severe acts for the regulation of +<span class="pagenum"><a name="page756" id="page756"></a>756</span> +printing at various periods. It was long assumed that +printing was not a free trade, but always to remain under +regulation.</p> + +<p>When Dr. Johnson, labouring under the pressure of his +ancient notions, contending with the clear perception of +his sceptical sagacity, once stood awed before the sublime +effusion of Milton’s “Areopagitica,” he hazarded this +opinion, for by balancing his notions it cannot be accepted +as a decision: “The danger of such unbounded liberty, +and the danger of bounding it, have produced a problem in +the science of government which human understanding +seems unable to solve.”</p> + +<p>And whatever either the advocates or the adversaries of +the freedom of the press may allege, this problem in the +science of government remains as insoluble at this day as +at any former period—a truth demonstrated by a circumstance +which has repeatedly occurred in our own political +history. The noble treatise of Milton for a free press had +not the slightest influence on that very parliament whose +members had long suffered from its oppression. The Catholics +clamoured for a free press under Charles the +Second, but the same act operating against them under +James the Second, from the use of the press by the Protestant +party—the liberty of the press was then condemned +as exorbitant and intolerable. The advocates of a +free press thus become its adversaries whenever they +themselves form the ruling power. Orators for the freedom +of the press suddenly send forth outcries against its +abuses; but as those, whoever the party may be, who are +in place, are called the government, it always happens that +the opposition, whatever may be their principles, must +submit to the risk of being deemed seditious libellers.</p> + +<hr class="foot" /> <div class="note"> + +<p><a name="ft1c68" id="ft1c68" href="#fa1c68"><span class="fn">1</span></a> See a curious note of Hearne’s in his Glossary to “Peter Langtoft’s +Chronicle,” p. 685. Also Herbert’s “Typog. Antiq.” p. 1435.</p> + +<p><a name="ft2c68" id="ft2c68" href="#fa2c68"><span class="fn">2</span></a> Strype’s “Memorials,” i. 344 and 218.</p> + +<p><a name="ft3c68" id="ft3c68" href="#fa3c68"><span class="fn">3</span></a> A curious and a copious catalogue of these books, “though the +books themselves are almost perished,” may be seen in Strype’s +“Ecclesiastical Memorials,” i. 165.</p> + +<p><a name="ft4c68" id="ft4c68" href="#fa4c68"><span class="fn">4</span></a> The book, “De Verâ Differentiâ inter Regiam Potestatem et +Ecclesiasticam,” was called “The King’s Book.” It seems that the +scholastic monarch gave some finishing strokes to what had probably +passed through the hands of his most expert casuists.</p> + +<p><a name="ft5c68" id="ft5c68" href="#fa5c68"><span class="fn">5</span></a> “Archæologia,” vol. xxv. 104.</p> + +<p><a name="ft6c68" id="ft6c68" href="#fa6c68"><span class="fn">6</span></a> Pegge, in his “Anecdotes of the English Language,” has somewhat +crudely remarked that “the term <i>Stationers</i> was appropriated to +<i>Booksellers</i> in the year 1622;” but it was so long before. It is extraordinary +that Mr. Todd, well read in our literary history, admits this +imperfect disclosure of Pegge into the “Dictionary of the English +Language.” The term <i>Stationer</i> and <i>Bookseller</i> were synonymous and +in common use in the reign of Elizabeth, and may be found in Baret’s +“Alvearie,” 1573.</p> + +<p><a name="ft7c68" id="ft7c68" href="#fa7c68"><span class="fn">7</span></a> The Charter may be found in Herbert’s “Typographical Antiquities,” +p. 1584.</p> + +<p><a name="ft8c68" id="ft8c68" href="#fa8c68"><span class="fn">8</span></a> Strype’s “Memorials,” iii: part 2nd. p. 130.</p> + +<p><a name="ft9c68" id="ft9c68" href="#fa9c68"><span class="fn">9</span></a> In the Lansdowne Manuscripts, 43, fol. 76, will be found “an +act to restrain the licentious printing of unprofitable and hurtful +books,” 1580. After declaring that the art of printing is “a most +happy and profitable invention,” it is pointed at those “who pen or +translate in the English tongue poesies, ditties, and songs, serving for +a great part of them to none other end, what titles soever they bear, +but to set up an art of making lascivious and ungodly love, to the +intolerable corruption of life and manners—<i>and to the no small or +sufferable waste of the treasure of this realm, which is thereby consumed +in paper, a forren and chargeable commoditie</i>.” The first +paper made in England was at Dartford, in 1588, by a German, who +was knighted by the queen.</p> + +<p><a name="ft10c68" id="ft10c68" href="#fa10c68"><span class="fn">10</span></a> This decree of the Star-chamber is printed in Herbert’s “Typographical +Antiquities,” p. 1668.</p> + +<p><a name="ft11c68" id="ft11c68" href="#fa11c68"><span class="fn">11</span></a> The privilege of a royal grant to the author was the only protection +the author had for any profits of his work. Henry the Eighth +granted Palsgrave his exclusive right for the printing of his book for +seven years. Bishop Cooper obtained a privilege for the sale of his +“Thesaurus” for twelve years; and a translator of Tacitus, for his +version, during his natural life.</p> + +<p><a name="ft12c68" id="ft12c68" href="#fa12c68"><span class="fn">12</span></a> “Archæologia,” xxv. 112.</p> + +<p><a name="ft13c68" id="ft13c68" href="#fa13c68"><span class="fn">13</span></a> Nichols on the Stationers’ Company.—“Lit. Anecdotes,” iii.</p> + +<p>We have a list “of books yielded by the richer printers who had +licenses from the queen;” but whether they were only copies bestowed +in charity for the poorer “stationers,” or given up by the monopolists, +I do not understand.—Herbert’s “Typographical Antiq.” p. 1672.</p> + +<p><a name="ft14c68" id="ft14c68" href="#fa14c68"><span class="fn">14</span></a> Herbert’s “Typographical Antiq.”—preface.</p> + +<p><a name="ft15c68" id="ft15c68" href="#fa15c68"><span class="fn">15</span></a> This remarkable “Decree of Starr-chamber concerning Printing” +was in the possession of Thomas Hollis, and is printed in the Appendix +to his curious Memoirs, p. 641.</p> + +<p><a name="ft16c68" id="ft16c68" href="#fa16c68"><span class="fn">16</span></a> “The Original and Growth of Printing, collected out of History +and the Records of this Kingdom,” &c., by Richard Atkyns, Esq., +1664. In this rare tract first appeared a narrative of the introduction +of printing into Oxford, <i>before Caxton</i>, by the printer Francis Corsellis, +to prove that printing was brought into England by Henry the Sixth.</p> + +<p><a name="ft17c68" id="ft17c68" href="#fa17c68"><span class="fn">17</span></a> For “unlicensed books” the printer charged twenty-five per cent. +extra, but the booksellers sold them for double and treble the cost of +other books.</p> + +<p>“Considerations and Proposals in order to the Regulation of the +Press, together with diverse instances of Treasonous and Seditious +Pamphlets, proving the necessity thereof,” 1663.</p> +</div> + +<hr class="art" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page757" id="page757"></a>757</span></p> + +<p class="chap2 center">INDEX.</p> + +<div class="list f90"> +<p><span class="sc">Aborigines</span>, British, <a href="#page1">1</a>—<a href="#page5">5</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Addison’s</span> “Drummer,” origin of, <a href="#page419">419</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Adventures</span> of the Elizabethan era, <a href="#page375">375</a>—<a href="#page378">378</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Alchemy</span>, modern opinions on, <a href="#page631">631</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Allegory</span>, poetic, <a href="#page487">487</a>—<a href="#page501">501</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Allen</span>, Cardinal, <a href="#page424">424</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Alliteration</span> in Spenser’s verse, <a href="#page477">477</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Anglo-Normans</span>, the, <a href="#page59">59</a>—<a href="#page69">69</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Anglo-Saxons</span> arrive in Britain, <a href="#page17">17</a>; + history of their career, <a href="#page28">28</a>—<a href="#page36">36</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Anonymous</span> authorship, <a href="#page672">672</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Arcadia</span>, the, of Sir P. Sidney, <a href="#page451">451</a>—<a href="#page459">459</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Ariosto</span> turned into allegory, <a href="#page489">489</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Arnolde’s Chronicle</span>, <a href="#page240">240</a>—<a href="#page242">242</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Arthur</span>, King of Britain, <a href="#page17">17</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Ascham</span>, R., and his “Schoolmaster,” 359—<a href="#page367">367</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Atterbury</span>, Bishop, vindicates the +genuine character of Clarendon’s +History, <a href="#page731">731</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Audley</span>, Lord Chancellor, enriched by church-lands, <a href="#page318">318</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Augmentation</span>, Court of, <a href="#page318">318</a>.</p> + +<p class="pt2"><span class="sc">Babble</span>, etymology of, <a href="#page3">3</a>, <i>n.</i></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Bacon</span>, Francis, Lord; a believer in occult science, <a href="#page646">646</a>—<a href="#page649">649</a>; + his philosophy, <a href="#page650">650</a>, <a href="#page660">660</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Bale</span>, Bishop, and his satires, <a href="#page358">358</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Barclay’s</span> Eclogues, <a href="#page287">287</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Baron</span>, the, of the Middle Ages, <a href="#page71">71</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Beowulf</span> and his exploits, <a href="#page51">51</a>—<a href="#page58">58</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Bibles</span> publicly burned in Oxford, <a href="#page335">335</a>; + first translated into English, <a href="#page369">369</a>; + afterwards prohibited, <i>ib.</i></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Bible and Key</span>, mode of discovering thieves, <a href="#page420">420</a>, <i>n.</i></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Bibliotheque Bleue</span>, <a href="#page260">260</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Bodley</span>, Sir Thos., founds his great library, <a href="#page664">664</a>—<a href="#page669">669</a>; + refuses to include plays in his library, <a href="#page525">525</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Books</span> of the people, <a href="#page256">256</a>—<a href="#page267">267</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Books</span>, war against, <a href="#page738">738</a>—<a href="#page756">756</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Borde, Andrew</span>, <a href="#page263">263</a>—<a href="#page265">265</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Brandt</span>, S., and his “Ship of Fools,” 285—<a href="#page288">288</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Britain</span> and its early inhabitants, <a href="#page12">12</a>—<a href="#page23">23</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Brutus</span> lands in Britain, <a href="#page2">2</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Burbage</span>, the actor of Shakespeare’s heroes, <a href="#page534">534</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Burleigh</span>, Lord, his hostility to Spenser, <a href="#page467">467</a>—<a href="#page471">471</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Burnet</span>, Bishop: his “History of his own time,” 735—<a href="#page737">737</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Burton</span> and his curious pamphlets, <a href="#page267">267</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Butler</span>, S., criticizes Jonson and Shakespeare, <a href="#page551">551</a>, <a href="#page552">552</a>.</p> + +<p class="pt2"><span class="sc">Cædmon</span>, the Anglo-Saxon poet, <a href="#page37">37</a>—<a href="#page50">50</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Calamy</span>, Dr., casts doubt on Clarendon’s History, <a href="#page728">728</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Calumny</span>, and its uses, <a href="#page429">429</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Camoens</span> explained by allegory, <a href="#page489">489</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Campian</span>, the Jesuit, <a href="#page425">425</a>—<a href="#page427">427</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Campion</span>, Dr., his opinion of rhyme, <a href="#page396">396</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Casaubon</span> publishes Dee’s intercourse with spirits, <a href="#page636">636</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Caxton</span> and his works, <a href="#page212">212</a>—<a href="#page220">220</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Cecil</span>, Lord, plots against Rawleigh, <a href="#page602">602</a>—<a href="#page604">604</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Campernoun</span> begs an estate, <a href="#page317">317</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Chapman</span> and his “Homer,” 522.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Characters</span>, books of, <a href="#page676">676</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Charles I.</span> a student of Shakespeare, <a href="#page548">548</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Chaucer</span> and his English, <a href="#page136">136</a>; + his life and works, <a href="#page158">158</a>—<a href="#page176">176</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Cheke</span>, Sir J., on the English language, <a href="#page133">133</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Chester</span> Whitsun-plays, <a href="#page346">346</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Chivalry</span>, institution of, <a href="#page70">70</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Clarendon’s</span> History, <a href="#page724">724</a>—<a href="#page737">737</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Classic</span> authors neglected, <a href="#page415">415</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Cobham</span> conspiracy, the, <a href="#page604">604</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Cockram</span>, H., his dictionary, <a href="#page139">139</a>, <i>n.</i></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Collectors</span>, and their useful labours, <a href="#page661">661</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page758" id="page758"></a>758</span></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Comedy</span>, an indefinite term originally, <a href="#page502">502</a>; + Dante so styles his poem, <i>ib.</i>; + the first English comedy, <a href="#page507">507</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Commonwealth</span>, origin of the term, <a href="#page712">712</a>, <a href="#page713">713</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Corsellis</span>, and the early Oxford press, <a href="#page210">210</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Costar</span>, the early printer, <a href="#page209">209</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Cotton</span>, Sir Robert, his famous library, <a href="#page668">668</a>; + his melancholy death, <a href="#page669">669</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Coxeter</span> prepares an edition of old plays, <a href="#page559">559</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Cromwell</span> and his grants of church lands, <a href="#page318">318</a>; + his opinion of his position, <a href="#page699">699</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Cross</span>, the enthusiasm for the sign of, <a href="#page79">79</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Crowley</span>, Robert, and his works, <a href="#page329">329</a>—<a href="#page332">332</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Cryptography</span> practised by Dr. Dee, <a href="#page640">640</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Cudworth, R.</span>, and his “System of the Universe,” 714—<a href="#page723">723</a>.</p> + +<p class="pt2"><span class="sc">Dante</span> and his allegories, <a href="#page491">491</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Day</span>, John, the printer, <a href="#page748">748</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Dee</span>, Dr., the occult philosopher, <a href="#page617">617</a>; + his scholastic career, <a href="#page618">618</a>, <a href="#page619">619</a>; + his troubles at court, <a href="#page620">620</a>; + his acquaintance with Princess Elizabeth, <a href="#page621">621</a>; + fixes a lucky day for her coronation, <i>ib.</i>; + is consulted by her privy council, <a href="#page622">622</a>; + his library, <i>ib.</i>; + his works, <a href="#page623">623</a>; + his mystic studies, <a href="#page624">624</a>—<a href="#page629">629</a>; + his foreign travels, <a href="#page630">630</a>—<a href="#page634">634</a>; + his return and death, <a href="#page635">635</a>, <a href="#page636">636</a>; + his connexion with spirits, <a href="#page636">636</a>; + his political position, <a href="#page640">640</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Descartes</span>, a favourer of occult philosophy, <a href="#page647">647</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Dialects</span>, <a href="#page142">142</a>—<a href="#page150">150</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Dictionaries</span> of rhyme, <a href="#page403">403</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Digby</span>, Sir Kenelm, his sympathetic powder, <a href="#page646">646</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Divining Rod</span>, account of the, <a href="#page624">624</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Dodsley’s</span> edition of old plays, <a href="#page559">559</a>, <i>n.</i></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Douce</span>, Francis, and his collections, <a href="#page662">662</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Dramas</span>, primitive, <a href="#page339">339</a>—<a href="#page352">352</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Dramatic Taste</span> in the time of Charles II., <a href="#page550">550</a>, <a href="#page551">551</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Dramatists</span> of the reign of Elizabeth, <a href="#page516">516</a>—<a href="#page528">528</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Drayton</span>, proud of theatrical praise, <a href="#page621">621</a>; + his poetical works, <a href="#page581">581</a>—<a href="#page589">589</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Druids</span>, the, <a href="#page1">1</a>—<a href="#page11">11</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Dryden</span> and his criticisms on Shakespeare, <a href="#page554">554</a>—<a href="#page556">556</a>.</p> + +<p class="pt2">“<span class="sc">Ecclesiastical Polity</span>,” by Richard Hooker, <a href="#page439">439</a>—<a href="#page450">450</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Edward the Sixth</span>, character of, <a href="#page323">323</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Elizabeth</span>, Queen, studies under Ascham, <a href="#page359">359</a>—<a href="#page363">363</a>; + objects to religious pictures, <a href="#page366">366</a>; + her popular politics, <a href="#page370">370</a>—<a href="#page380">380</a>; + her sensitiveness to public opinion, <a href="#page379">379</a>; + compares herself to Richard II., <a href="#page380">380</a>; + her varied orthography, <a href="#page382">382</a>; + fears to be thought a poetess, <a href="#page672">672</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Elphinstone</span> writes words as pronounced, <a href="#page389">389</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Elyot</span>, Sir Thomas, and his “Boke of the Governor,” 268—<a href="#page275">275</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">England</span>, derivation of the name, <a href="#page25">25</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">English</span> priestly colleges abroad, <a href="#page424">424</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Engraving</span> on copper, invention of. 206.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Epigrams</span>, books of, <a href="#page676">676</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Essex</span>, Earl of, introduced to Queen Elizabeth as an opponent of Rawleigh, <a href="#page596">596</a>; + his incompetence as a general, <a href="#page600">600</a>; + his disgrace and death, <a href="#page602">602</a>.</p> + +<p class="pt2"><span class="sc">Fabulous</span> early history of Britain, <a href="#page1">1</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Fabyan’s</span> Chronicle, <a href="#page243">243</a>—<a href="#page249">249</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Fairies</span> disbelieved, <a href="#page416">416</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Farmer</span>, Dr., his annotations on Shakespeare, <a href="#page567">567</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Finiguerra</span> discovers the art of engraving for printing, <a href="#page206">206</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Fish, S.</span>, and his “Supplication of Beggars,” 741.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Florence</span>, first public library at, <a href="#page663">663</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Fludd</span>, the occult philosopher, <a href="#page642">642</a>—<a href="#page649">649</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Foreign Criticism</span> and its value, <a href="#page417">417</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Foxe’s</span> Book of Martyrs popularized, <a href="#page374">374</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Franklin</span> contemplates spelling by sound. 388.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Freedom</span> of the press, <a href="#page756">756</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">French</span> words derived from Latin, <a href="#page97">97</a>, <i>n.</i>; + ordered to be solely used for law, <a href="#page125">125</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Friendship</span> a romantic attachment in the days of Elizabeth, <a href="#page451">451</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page759" id="page759"></a>759</span></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Fust’s</span> first printed Bible, <a href="#page204">204</a>.</p> + +<p class="pt2"><span class="sc">Gammer Gurton’s</span> Needle long considered the first English comedy, <a href="#page507">507</a>—<a href="#page509">509</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Gentry</span>, rise of, <a href="#page371">371</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Ghosts</span>, controversies concerning, <a href="#page419">419</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Gibberish</span>, derivation of the term, <a href="#page651">651</a>, <i>n.</i></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Glanvil’s</span> treatise on witchcraft, <a href="#page418">418</a>, <a href="#page419">419</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Gorboduc</span>, the first English tragedy, <a href="#page503">503</a>—<a href="#page506">506</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Gower</span> the poet, his life and works, <a href="#page177">177</a>—<a href="#page182">182</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Gothic</span> romances, <a href="#page81">81</a>—<a href="#page95">95</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Greek</span> a fashionable language among ladies, <a href="#page360">360</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Greene</span>, Robt., attack on Shakespeare, <a href="#page536">536</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Gregory</span> of Nazianzen, author of the earliest sacred dramas, <a href="#page339">339</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Grey</span>, Lady Jane, her classic attainments, <a href="#page360">360</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Guiana</span>, Rawleigh’s voyages to, <a href="#page598">598</a>—<a href="#page600">600</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Gutenberg</span>, the early printer, <a href="#page208">208</a>.</p> + +<p class="pt2"><span class="sc">Hakluyt’s</span> collection of voyages, <a href="#page377">377</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Hale</span>, Sir Matthew, and his judgment on witches, <a href="#page417">417</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Hall</span>, John, and his work on monarchy, <a href="#page709">709</a>—<a href="#page711">711</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Hanmer</span>, Sir T., his edition of Shakespeare, <a href="#page562">562</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Hariot</span>, Thos., the traveller, <a href="#page611">611</a>—<a href="#page613">613</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Harrington</span>, Sir J., on poetry, <a href="#page409">409</a>; + his Oceana, <a href="#page692">692</a>—<a href="#page708">708</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Harvey</span>, Gabriel, introduces Spenser to Sir P. Sidney, <a href="#page460">460</a>; + supposed to be the annotator of the Shepherd’s Calendar, <a href="#page461">461</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Hawes</span>, Stephen, the poet, <a href="#page230">230</a>—<a href="#page233">233</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Hastings</span>, battle of, <a href="#page60">60</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Henry</span> the Eighth, his literary character, <a href="#page250">250</a>—<a href="#page255">255</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Henry</span> the Seventh, as a patron of literature, <a href="#page228">228</a>—<a href="#page233">233</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Henslow</span>, the Elizabethan manager, <a href="#page520">520</a>, <i>n.</i>, <a href="#page523">523</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Hexameter</span> verse ridiculed by Nash, <a href="#page396">396</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Heywood</span>, John, and his works, <a href="#page354">354</a>—<a href="#page358">358</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Higden, R.</span>, and the Polychronicon, <a href="#page236">236</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">History</span> and its sources, <a href="#page234">234</a>—<a href="#page239">239</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Hooker</span>, the favourite author of James I., <a href="#page679">679</a>; + his Ecclesiastical Polity, <a href="#page439">439</a>—<a href="#page450">450</a>; + the simplicity of his life, <a href="#page440">440</a>; + his marriage, <a href="#page441">441</a>; + his uneasy mastership of the Temple, <a href="#page442">442</a>; + his return to the country, <a href="#page444">444</a>; + his premature death and unconcocted manuscripts, <a href="#page445">445</a>—<a href="#page447">447</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Hoskyns</span>, a critic and poet, temp. James I., <a href="#page623">623</a>, <i>n.</i></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Huarte’s</span> Examination of Men’s Wit, <a href="#page579">579</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Humours</span>, and their significance, <a href="#page578">578</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Huguenot</span> satiric plays, <a href="#page351">351</a>.</p> + +<p class="pt2"><span class="sc">Icelandic</span> poetry, <a href="#page34">34</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Interludes</span>, their invention, <a href="#page348">348</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Invention</span> of printing, <a href="#page203">203</a>—<a href="#page213">213</a>.</p> + +<p class="pt2"><span class="sc">Jackson, Z.</span>, comments on Shakespeare, <a href="#page547">547</a>, <i>n.</i></p> + +<p><span class="sc">James I.</span>, ratifies the belief in witchcraft, <a href="#page417">417</a>; + his literary character, <a href="#page677">677</a>—<a href="#page680">680</a>; + his polemical feats, <a href="#page682">682</a>—<a href="#page684">684</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">James</span>, Dr., first librarian to Sir Thos. Bodley, <a href="#page665">665</a>—<a href="#page667">667</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Jesuits</span> in England, <a href="#page423">423</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Johnson’s</span> edition of Shakespeare, <a href="#page563">563</a>—<a href="#page566">566</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Jones</span>, Dr., and his Phonography, <a href="#page388">388</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Jonson</span>, Ben, employed by Henslowe—to add to other’s plays, <a href="#page523">523</a>; + his study of humours, <a href="#page578">578</a>—<a href="#page583">583</a>; + assists in Rawleigh’s History of the World, <a href="#page613">613</a>; + his literary intercourse with James I., <a href="#page680">680</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Joubert’s</span> French orthoepy, <a href="#page385">385</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Junius, J.</span>, a student of our ancient literature, <a href="#page45">45</a>—<a href="#page47">47</a>.</p> + +<p class="pt2"><span class="sc">Kelley</span>, Edw., the alchemist, <a href="#page625">625</a>—<a href="#page633">633</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Kyd’s</span> play of Jeronimo, <a href="#page523">523</a>.</p> + +<p class="pt2"><span class="sc">Lambe</span>, Chas., his specimens of the dramatic poets, <a href="#page519">519</a>, <i>n.</i>, <a href="#page528">528</a>, <i>n.</i></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Languages</span>, European, origin of, <a href="#page96">96</a>—<a href="#page110">110</a>; + English, its origin, <a href="#page111">111</a>—<a href="#page127">127</a>; + vicissitudes of, <a href="#page128">128</a>—<a href="#page141">141</a>.</p> + +<p>“<span class="sc">Leicester’s Commonwealth</span>,” a political libel, <a href="#page427">427</a>—<a href="#page435">435</a>; + its author challenged by Sir P. Sidney, <a href="#page454">454</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page760" id="page760"></a>760</span></p> + +<p><span class="sc">L’Estrange</span>, the book licenser, <a href="#page754">754</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Lexicographers</span>, the Elder, <a href="#page138">138</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Libraries</span>, ancient, <a href="#page221">221</a>—<a href="#page227">227</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Local Names</span>, their derivation, <a href="#page27">27</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">London</span> in the days of Shakespeare, <a href="#page673">673</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Lydgate</span>, the Monk of Bury, <a href="#page196">196</a>—<a href="#page202">202</a>.</p> + +<p class="pt2"><span class="sc">Mabinogion</span>, the, <a href="#page21">21</a>, <i>n.</i></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Magic</span>, early belief in, <a href="#page413">413</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Magic Mirrors</span>, <a href="#page627">627</a>, and <i>note</i>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Malone’s</span> edition of Shakespeare, <a href="#page568">568</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Mandeville</span>, the traveller, <a href="#page151">151</a>—<a href="#page157">157</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Manuscripts</span>, their value in the middle ages, <a href="#page221">221</a>—<a href="#page223">223</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Marie de France</span>, the poetess, <a href="#page66">66</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Marprelate</span> pamphlets, <a href="#page747">747</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Martyr</span>, Peter, opposes school logic, <a href="#page334">334</a>; + anecdotes of, <a href="#page335">335</a>—<a href="#page337">337</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Masham</span>, Lady, her neglect of her father’s works, <a href="#page722">722</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Massinger’s</span> plays, faulty in printed editions, <a href="#page547">547</a>, <i>n.</i></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Matthew</span> of Paris, the monkish chronicler, <a href="#page236">236</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Memoirs</span>, publishers of contemporary, <a href="#page724">724</a>—<a href="#page737">737</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Mersenne</span>, Père, attacks the Rosacrusians, <a href="#page647">647</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Metres</span> of the ancients used by the moderns, <a href="#page303">303</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Microscope</span>, invention of, <a href="#page207">207</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Milton</span> resembles Cædmon, <a href="#page40">40</a>—<a href="#page50">50</a>; + his principles of orthography, <a href="#page392">392</a>; + his account of Charles I. studying Shakespeare, <a href="#page548">548</a>, <a href="#page9">9</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Minstrels</span> of the Middle Ages, <a href="#page75">75</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Monasteries</span>, spoliation of, <a href="#page316">316</a>—<a href="#page321">321</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Monopolies</span> in the reign of Elizabeth, <a href="#page594">594</a>; + of printing, <a href="#page748">748</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Monkery</span> popular with the people, <a href="#page372">372</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Montague</span>, Mrs., defends Shakespeare, <a href="#page572">572</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Moralities</span>, or moral plays, <a href="#page347">347</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">More</span>, Sir T., his psychological character, <a href="#page289">289</a>—<a href="#page302">302</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Mulcaster</span> attempts orthographical reform, <a href="#page385">385</a>; + his praise of the English language, <a href="#page386">386</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Mysteries</span>, or Scriptural plays, <a href="#page344">344</a>—<a href="#page348">348</a>.</p> + +<p class="pt2"><span class="sc">Nobility</span>, the, decline in grandeur in the time of Henry VII., <a href="#page371">371</a>; + decay of great households, <a href="#page372">372</a>; + restrained in their marriages by Elizabeth, <a href="#page374">374</a>.</p> + +<p class="pt2"><span class="sc">Occasionalists</span>, <a href="#page423">423</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Occleve</span>, the scholar of Chaucer, <a href="#page191">191</a>—<a href="#page195">195</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Oceana</span>, the, of Sir J. Harrington, <a href="#page692">692</a>—<a href="#page705">705</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Oldmixon</span> denies the genuine character of Clarendon’s history, <a href="#page728">728</a>—<a href="#page732">732</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Orthoepy</span> as a means of correcting orthography, <a href="#page382">382</a>—<a href="#page392">392</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Orthography</span> in the days of Elizabeth, <a href="#page382">382</a>—<a href="#page387">387</a>.</p> + +<p class="pt2"><span class="sc">Painter’s</span> “Palace of Pleasure,” 518.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Pamphlets</span>, their history and value, <a href="#page685">685</a>—<a href="#page691">691</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Parsons</span> the Jesuit, <a href="#page424">424</a>—<a href="#page427">427</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Pastime</span> of Pleasure, by Hawes, <a href="#page230">230</a>—<a href="#page233">233</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Partnership</span> in dramatic authorship, <a href="#page523">523</a>—<a href="#page524">524</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Philosophers</span> of the 16th century, <a href="#page651">651</a>—<a href="#page653">653</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Piers Plowman</span>, his vision, <a href="#page183">183</a>—<a href="#page190">190</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Pinkerton</span> and his “improved language,” 388.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Polemics</span> in the time of James I., <a href="#page381">381</a>—<a href="#page384">384</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Political</span> pamphlets, remarkable history of a curious collection, <a href="#page687">687</a>—<a href="#page691">691</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Polyolbion</span>, by Drayton, analysed, <a href="#page584">584</a>—<a href="#page589">589</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Pope’s</span> edition of Shakespeare, <a href="#page558">558</a>—<a href="#page590">590</a>, <i>n.</i></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Possessioners</span>, <a href="#page331">331</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Preaching</span>, when introduced, <a href="#page326">326</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Predecessors</span> of Shakespeare, <a href="#page514">514</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Press</span>, the, dreaded by early writers, <a href="#page670">670</a>—<a href="#page673">673</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Printing</span>, invention of, <a href="#page203">203</a>—<a href="#page213">213</a>; + first introduced to England, <a href="#page214">214</a>—<a href="#page220">220</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Psychological</span> history of Rawleigh, <a href="#page590">590</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Public Libraries</span> first founded, <a href="#page661">661</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Public Opinion</span>, rise of, <a href="#page368">368</a>—<a href="#page380">380</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page761" id="page761"></a>761</span></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Puritans</span> in the time of James I., <a href="#page681">681</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Puttenham’s</span> Arte of English Poesie, <a href="#page405">405</a>—<a href="#page412">412</a>.</p> + +<p class="pt2"><span class="sc">Ralph Roister Doister</span>, the first English comedy, <a href="#page509">509</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Ramus</span> opposes Aristotle, <a href="#page652">652</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Rawleigh</span>, Sir W., his character, <a href="#page590">590</a>; + his early career, <a href="#page591">591</a>; + voyages undertaken at his suggestion, <a href="#page593">593</a>; + his favour at court, <a href="#page595">595</a>; + his reverse of fortune, <a href="#page597">597</a>; + his affected romance of love to Elizabeth, <i>ib.</i>; + his first voyage, <a href="#page598">598</a>; + his restoration to the queen’s favour, <a href="#page601">601</a>; + the Cobham conspiracy, <a href="#page604">604</a>; + unpopularity with James I., <i>ib.</i>; + last voyage, <a href="#page605">605</a>; + death, <a href="#page606">606</a>; + his ability as a historiographer, <a href="#page607">607</a>; + his great general knowledge, <a href="#page608">608</a>; + his long imprisonment, <a href="#page610">610</a>; + his philosophical theology, <a href="#page612">612</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Reed’s</span> edition of Shakespeare, <a href="#page568">568</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Reformation</span>, the, <a href="#page324">324</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Retainers</span> of the old Nobility, <a href="#page370">370</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Reynard</span> the Fox, <a href="#page260">260</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Rhyme</span> in Italy and France, <a href="#page393">393</a>, <a href="#page394">394</a>; + origin of, <a href="#page399">399</a>—<a href="#page402">402</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Rhyming Dictionaries</span>, <a href="#page403">403</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Romances</span>, Anglo-Norman, <a href="#page65">65</a>; + Gothic, <a href="#page81">81</a>—<a href="#page95">95</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Romans</span>, the, in Britain, <a href="#page13">13</a>—<a href="#page16">16</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Roper’s</span> Life of More, <a href="#page291">291</a>, <i>n.</i></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Rosacrusian</span> confraternity, <a href="#page642">642</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Rota</span>, the, a political club, <a href="#page699">699</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Rowe’s</span> edition of Shakespeare, <a href="#page557">557</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Roy</span>, W., satirizes Wolsey, <a href="#page280">280</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Rymer</span>, and his Shakespearian Criticism, <a href="#page553">553</a>—<a href="#page556">556</a>.</p> + +<p class="pt2"><span class="sc">Sackville</span>, Earl of Dorset, the author of the first English tragedy, <a href="#page504">504</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Sacrament</span> of Rome ridiculed, <a href="#page334">334</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Satires</span>, Ancient, <a href="#page257">257</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Satirists</span>, early, <a href="#page675">675</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Saxon Chronicle</span>, the, <a href="#page68">68</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Scogin the Jester</span>, <a href="#page263">263</a>, <i>n.</i></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Scot</span>, Reginald, his “Discoverie of Witchcraft,” 413—<a href="#page422">422</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Selden</span>, John, notes Drayton’s poem, the “Polyolbion,” 586.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Servant’s</span> Song, <a href="#page511">511</a>, <i>n.</i></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Shadwell’s</span> Lancashire Witches, <a href="#page420">420</a>; + founds his dramatic style on Jonson, <a href="#page582">582</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Shakespeare</span>, patronized by James I., <a href="#page679">679</a>; + indebted to Sidney’s Arcadia for some poetic passages,452; + his early dramas, <a href="#page518">518</a>—<a href="#page523">523</a>; + his predecessors and contemporaries, <a href="#page514">514</a>—<a href="#page528">528</a>; + vicissitudes of his fame, <a href="#page529">529</a>; + his use of the plots, &c., of predecessors, <a href="#page530">530</a>—<a href="#page532">532</a>; + incidents of his early life, <a href="#page533">533</a>, <a href="#page534">534</a>; + his dramatic career, <a href="#page534">534</a>—<a href="#page538">538</a>; + his poems, <a href="#page539">539</a>—<a href="#page540">540</a>; + his treatment by contemporaries, <a href="#page541">541</a>; + popularity with the public, <a href="#page542">542</a>; + careless of his own fame, <a href="#page543">543</a>; + first edition of his works, <a href="#page545">545</a>; + editions by Rowe, <a href="#page557">557</a>; + Pope, <a href="#page558">558</a>; + Theobald, <a href="#page559">559</a>; + Sir T. Hanmer, <a href="#page561">561</a>; + Warburton, <a href="#page563">563</a>; + Johnson, <i>ib.</i>; + the <i>Variorum</i> edition, <a href="#page567">567</a>; + annotations by Rymer, <a href="#page553">553</a>; + Farmer, <a href="#page567">567</a>; + Reed, Steevens, Malone, <a href="#page568">568</a>; + Warton, <a href="#page569">569</a>; + Voltaire, <a href="#page566">566</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Ship</span>, the, of Fools, <a href="#page285">285</a>—<a href="#page288">288</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Sidney</span>, Sir P., and his Arcadia, <a href="#page451">451</a>—<a href="#page453">453</a>; + his chivalric manners, <a href="#page454">454</a>; + his appreciation of the female character, <a href="#page455">455</a>; + his great work published by his sister, <a href="#page458">458</a>; + the general regret at his death, <a href="#page459">459</a>; + critical injustice to Sidney from Horace Walpole, <a href="#page451">451</a>—<a href="#page458">458</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Skelton</span> the poet, <a href="#page276">276</a>—<a href="#page284">284</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Skulls</span> as drinking cups, <a href="#page32">32</a>, <i>n.</i></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Smith</span>, Sir T., attempts to correct orthography, <a href="#page383">383</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Songs</span>, Ancient, <a href="#page256">256</a>—<a href="#page259">259</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Sorcery</span>, and its believers, <a href="#page414">414</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Spanish</span> Dramatic History, <a href="#page526">526</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Spelling</span>, and its difficulties, <a href="#page389">389</a>—<a href="#page391">391</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Spenser</span>, incidents of his life little known, <a href="#page460">460</a>; + his introduction to Sir P. Sidney, <i>ib.</i>; + his Shepherd’s Calendar, <a href="#page461">461</a>; + his mode of Life, <a href="#page462">462</a>; + his Irish adventures, <a href="#page464">464</a>—<a href="#page467">467</a>; + his death, <a href="#page473">473</a>; + his Faery Queen, <a href="#page475">475</a>—<a href="#page486">486</a>; + its allegorical character, <a href="#page492">492</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Spiritual</span> visions of Dr. Dee, <a href="#page628">628</a>—<a href="#page636">636</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Spoliation</span> of the monasteries, <a href="#page316">316</a>—<a href="#page321">321</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Star Chamber</span> decrees against books, <a href="#page751">751</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Stationers</span>, their origin, <a href="#page744">744</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Steevens</span>, edition of Shakespeare, <a href="#page568">568</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="page762" id="page762"></a>762</span></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Still</span>, Bishop, the Author of an Early Comedy, <a href="#page508">508</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Stonehenge</span>, <a href="#page10">10</a>, <i>n.</i></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Surrey</span>, the poetical Earl of, <a href="#page303">303</a>—<a href="#page315">315</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Sympathetic Powder</span>, for magical cures, <a href="#page616">616</a>.</p> + +<p class="pt2"><span class="sc">Tales</span>, popular, their origin, <a href="#page261">261</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Tarlton’s</span> jest against Sir W. Rawleigh, <a href="#page595">595</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Tasso</span>, explains the “Gierusalemme Liberata,” by allegory, <a href="#page490">490</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Technical</span> terms of Rhetoric, <a href="#page408">408</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Telescope</span>, invention of, <a href="#page207">207</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Theatres</span>, ancient, in London, <a href="#page515">515</a>, <a href="#page516">516</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Theobald’s</span> edition of Shakespeare, <a href="#page559">559</a>, <a href="#page560">560</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Thomason’s</span> remarkable collection of political phamphlets, <a href="#page687">687</a>—<a href="#page691">691</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Thorkelin</span>, the Danish Scholar, <a href="#page57">57</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Tindal’s</span> Testament, curious narrative concerning, <a href="#page743">743</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Toland</span> dishonestly inserts a political libel in Harrington’s works, <a href="#page708">708</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Tower of London</span>, scientific men imprisoned in, <a href="#page610">610</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Tragedy</span>, the first English, <a href="#page503">503</a>—<a href="#page506">506</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Travellers</span> satirized by Bishop Hall, <a href="#page378">378</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Travers</span>, and his controversy with Hooker, <a href="#page442">442</a>, <a href="#page443">443</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Triads</span>, Welsh, <a href="#page22">22</a>, <a href="#page23">23</a>, <i>n.</i></p> + +<p><span class="sc">Troynovant</span> founded, <a href="#page2">2</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Tyrwhit</span>, editor of Chaucer, <a href="#page175">175</a>.</p> + +<p class="pt2"><span class="sc">Udall</span>, N., author of the first English comedy, <a href="#page513">513</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Universe</span>, Cudworth’s system of the, <a href="#page714">714</a>—<a href="#page723">723</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Upton’s</span> edition of Spenser, <a href="#page495">495</a>—<a href="#page500">500</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Utopia</span>, Sir T. More’s, <a href="#page299">299</a>.</p> + +<p class="pt2"><span class="sc">Variorum Edition</span> of Shakespeare, <a href="#page567">567</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Venice</span>, its government extolled, <a href="#page693">693</a>; + fallacy of such praise, <a href="#page702">702</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Ventriloquism</span> practised by Magicians, <a href="#page626">626</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Vernacular</span> dialects of Europe, <a href="#page96">96</a>—<a href="#page110">110</a>; + of England, <a href="#page124">124</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Verse</span>, Anglo-Saxon, <a href="#page32">32</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Vicissitudes</span> of the English language, <a href="#page128">128</a>—<a href="#page141">141</a>; + of the French, <a href="#page130">130</a>; + of the Latin, <a href="#page131">131</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Virginia</span>, named by Queen Elizabeth, <a href="#page593">593</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Voltaire</span> criticises Shakespeare, <a href="#page570">570</a>—<a href="#page572">572</a>.</p> + +<p class="pt2"><span class="sc">War</span> against books, <a href="#page738">738</a>—<a href="#page756">756</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Warburton’s</span> edition of Shakespeare, <a href="#page562">562</a>, <a href="#page563">563</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Warton</span>, T., comments on Shakespeare, <a href="#page569">569</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Weapon-salve</span>, for magical cures, <a href="#page646">646</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Webster</span>, J., his elaborate treatise on witchcraft, <a href="#page418">418</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Welsh</span> memorials of early Britain, <a href="#page20">20</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Wickliffe’s</span> translation of the Bible, <a href="#page123">123</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">William of Malmesbury</span>, the Monkish historian, <a href="#page237">237</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">William</span> I. invades England, <a href="#page59">59</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Wilson</span>, Thos., endangered at Rome for his writings on rhetoric, <a href="#page106">106</a>; + his translation of Demosthenes, <a href="#page374">374</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Witchcraft</span>, early belief in, <a href="#page413">413</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Witch-finders</span>, <a href="#page417">417</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Wolsey’s</span> war against the press, <a href="#page740">740</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Women</span>, satires on, <a href="#page265">265</a>.</p> + +<p><span class="sc">Wyatt</span>, Sir T., the poet, <a href="#page312">312</a>—<a href="#page315">315</a>.</p> + +<p class="pt2"><span class="sc">Yarrington</span> and his tragedies, <a href="#page518">518</a>, <i>n.</i></p> +</div> + +<p> </p> +<hr class="art" /> +<p> </p> + +<p class="center pt2 f80">BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.</p> + +<p> </p> +<p> </p> +<hr class="pg" /> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMENITIES OF LITERATURE***</p> +<p>******* This file should be named 36298-h.txt or 36298-h.zip *******</p> +<p>This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:<br /> +<a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/6/2/9/36298">http://www.gutenberg.org/3/6/2/9/36298</a></p> +<p>Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed.</p> + +<p>Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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