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diff --git a/36298.txt b/36298.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b2a89dd --- /dev/null +++ b/36298.txt @@ -0,0 +1,29709 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook, Amenities of Literature, by Isaac Disraeli + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. 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 www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: Amenities of Literature + Consisting of Sketches and Characters of English Literature + + +Author: Isaac Disraeli + + + +Release Date: June 1, 2011 [eBook #36298] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMENITIES OF LITERATURE*** + + +E-text prepared by Marius Masi, Jonathan Ingram, and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) + + + +Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this + file which includes the original illustrations. + See 36298-h.htm or 36298-h.zip: + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36298/36298-h/36298-h.htm) + or + (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/36298/36298-h.zip) + + +Transcriber's note: + + (1) Characters following a carat (^) were printed + in superscript. + + (2) Macrons and breves above letters and dots below + letters are not identified in this text file. + + (3) [alpha], [beta], etc. stand for greek letters. + + (4) A list of corrections is at the end of this e-book. + + + + + +[Illustration: Bodleian Library, Oxford. + +London, Frederick Warne & C^o.] + + +AMENITIES OF LITERATURE, + +Consisting of Sketches and Characters of English Literature. + +by + +ISAAC DISRAELI. + +A New Edition, + +Edited by His Son, + +THE EARL OF BEACONSFIELD. + + + + + + + +[Illustration] + +London: +Frederick Warne and Co., +Bedford Street, Strand. + +London: +Bradbury, Agnew, & Co., Printers, Whitefriars. + + + + +PREFACE. + + +A history 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 ONE 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. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + + PAGE + THE DRUIDICAL INSTITUTION 1 + + BRITAIN AND THE BRITONS 12 + + THE NAME OF ENGLAND AND OF THE ENGLISH 24 + + THE ANGLO-SAXONS 28 + + CAEDMON AND MILTON 37 + + BEOWULF; THE HERO-LIFE 51 + + THE ANGLO-NORMANS 59 + + THE PAGE, THE BARON, AND THE MINSTREL 70 + + GOTHIC ROMANCES 81 + + ORIGIN OF THE VERNACULAR LANGUAGES OF EUROPE 96 + + ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 111 + + VICISSITUDES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE 128 + + DIALECTS 142 + + MANDEVILLE; OUR FIRST TRAVELLER 151 + + CHAUCER 158 + + GOWER 177 + + PIERS PLOUGHMAN 183 + + OCCLEVE; THE SCHOLAR OF CHAUCER 191 + + LYDGATE; THE MONK OF BURY 196 + + THE INVENTION OF PRINTING 203 + + THE FIRST ENGLISH PRINTER 214 + + EARLY LIBRARIES 221 + + HENRY THE SEVENTH 228 + + FIRST SOURCES OF MODERN HISTORY 234 + + ARNOLDE'S CHRONICLE 240 + + THE FIRST PRINTED CHRONICLE 243 + + HENRY THE EIGHTH; HIS LITERARY CHARACTER 250 + + BOOKS OF THE PEOPLE 256 + + THE DIFFICULTIES EXPERIENCED BY A PRIMITIVE AUTHOR 268 + + SKELTON 276 + + THE SHIP OF FOOLS 285 + + THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTER OF SIR THOMAS MORE 289 + + THE EARL OF SURREY AND SIR THOMAS WYATT 303 + + THE SPOLIATION OF THE MONASTERIES 316 + + A CRISIS AND A REACTION; ROBERT CROWLEY 322 + + PRIMITIVE DRAMAS 339 + + THE REFORMER BISHOP BALE; AND THE ROMANIST JOHN HEYWOOD, + THE COURT JESTER 353 + + ROGER ASCHAM 359 + + PUBLIC OPINION 368 + + ORTHOGRAPHY AND ORTHOEPY 381 + + THE ANCIENT METRES IN MODERN VERSE 393 + + ORIGIN OF RHYME 399 + + RHYMING DICTIONARIES 403 + + THE ARTE OF ENGLISH POESIE 405 + + THE DISCOVERIE OF WITCHCRAFT 413 + + THE FIRST JESUITS IN ENGLAND 423 + + HOOKER 439 + + SIR PHILIP SIDNEY 451 + + SPENSER 460 + + THE FAERY QUEEN 475 + + ALLEGORY 487 + + THE FIRST TRAGEDY AND THE FIRST COMEDY 502 + + THE PREDECESSORS AND CONTEMPORARIES OF SHAKESPEARE 514 + + SHAKESPEARE 529 + + THE "HUMOURS" OF JONSON 578 + + DRAYTON 584 + + THE PSYCHOLOGICAL HISTORY OF RAWLEIGH 590 + + THE OCCULT PHILOSOPHER, DR. DEE 617 + + THE ROSACRUSIAN FLUDD 642 + + BACON 650 + + THE FIRST FOUNDER OF A PUBLIC LIBRARY 661 + + EARLY WRITERS, THEIR DREAD OF THE PRESS,--THE TRANSITION + TO AUTHORS BY PROFESSION 670 + + THE AGE OF DOCTRINES 681 + + PAMPHLETS 685 + + THE OCEANA OF HARRINGTON 692 + + THE AUTHOR OF "THE GROUNDS AND REASONS OF MONARCHY" 709 + + COMMONWEALTH 712 + + THE TRUE INTELLECTUAL SYSTEM OF THE UNIVERSE 714 + + DIFFICULTIES OF THE PUBLISHERS OF CONTEMPORARY MEMOIRS 724 + + THE WAR AGAINST BOOKS 738 + + + + +AMENITIES OF LITERATURE. + +THE DRUIDICAL INSTITUTION. + + +England, 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. + +How "that was performed in our tongue, which may be compared or +preferred, either to insolent Greece or haughty Rome,"[1] becomes a tale +in the history of the human mind. + +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 ABORIGINES? 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? + +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 +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,"[2] 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. + +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 mediaeval ages was read when Greek was +unknown. The landing of Aeneas 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 CAMDEN; 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 existence of +these fabulous founders of every European people. + +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 BUCHANAN, 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 HENRY and WHITAKER, in the gravity of English history, sketched the +manners and the characteristics of an unchronicled generation from the +fragmentary romances of Ossian. + +Caesar 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 Caesar did not exceed that of Horace and Ovid, who +conceived no other origin of man than _Mater Terra_. 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 Caesar 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 _any other beginning_," exclaims our +honest VERSTEGAN, exulting in his Teutonic blood, while furnishing an +extraordinary evidence of the retreat of Tuisco and his Teutons from the +conspiracy against the skies.[3] + +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 Bet, or Alpha and Beta, or A +and B! + +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, Phoenician 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." 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. + +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 _status belli_, with no notion of the _meum_ and _tuum_; in +the same community of their women as was found in Otaheite;[4] and with +the same ignorance of property, when its representative in some form was +not 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.[5] The fierce eye, and the bearded lip, with the long hair +scattered to the waist, exhibit the Briton as he was seen by Caesar, 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. + +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."[6] This paradoxical incident +deepens in mystery when we are to be 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?[7] 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.[8] 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. + +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 of Gaul were fain to +resort to the Druids of Britain to renovate their instruction. + +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 Caesar. 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, +Caesar was not a Druid;[9] and only a Druid could have written--had he +dared!--on DRUIDHEACHT--a sacred, unspeakable word at which the people +trembled in their veneration. + +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. + +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 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![10] It was a terrible hierarchy. The golden knife which +pruned the mistletoe beneath the mystic oak, immolated the human victim. + +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! + +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 +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.[11] 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. + +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] Ben Jonson. + + [2] The existence of these _giants_ was long historical, and their + real origin was in the fourth verse of the fifth chapter of Genesis, + which no commentator shall ever explain. AYLET SAMMES in his + "Britannia Antiqua Illustrata, or the Antiquities of Ancient Britain + derived from the Phoenicians," 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 "_the bones of sea-fish_ had been taken + for _giants' bones_;--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. + + [3] 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 _English_, and our + Teutonic kinsmen and neighbours in their idiom, describe a confusion + of idle talk by the term of _Babel_, now written from our harsh love + of supernumerary consonants _Babble_; and any such workmen of Babel + are still indicated as _Babblers_.--"A Restitution of Decayed + Intelligence," 138, 4to. Antwerp, 1605. + + 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 _sounds_. See his "Dictionnaire + Etymologique, ou Origines de la Langue Francoise," ad verbum BABIL. + Not satisfied with the usual authorities deduced from _Babel_, this + verbal sage appeals to us English to demonstrate the natural + connexion between _Babbling and Childishness_; for thus he has + shrewdly opined "The English in this manner have _Babble_ and + _Baby_!" + + 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. + + [4] 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." + + 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. + + [5] 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. + + [6] 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." + + 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 Llywarc Hen." + Preface, xxi. + + This style is traditional and still kept up among Welsh and Irish + scholars, who seem familiar with an antiquity beyond record. + + [7] Toland's "History of the Druids" in his Miscellaneous Works, ii. + 163. + + [8] "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. + + 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! + + [9] Caesar was a keen observer of the Britons. He characterizes the + Kentish men, _Ex his omnibus longe sunt humanissimi_,--"Of all this + people the Kentish are far the most humane." Caesar 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 Caesar 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. + + [10] Toland's "Hist. of the Druids," 56. + + [11] 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. + + + + +BRITAIN AND THE BRITONS. + + +Britain 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 Caesar, 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. + +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.[1] Our primitive +ancestors distinguished themselves, in pride or simplicity, as _Brith_ +and _Brithon_; _Brith_ signified stained, and _Brithon_, a stained man, +according to Camden.[2] The predilection for colouring their bodies +induced the civilized Romans to designate the people who were driven to +the Caledonian forests as _Picts_, or a painted people. + +That the native term of _Brith_ or _Brithon_, 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 BRITANNIA first +appeared in their writings, bequeathed to us by the masters of the world +as their legacy of glory. + +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.[3] + +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 Caesar 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 Caesar 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 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. + +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."[4] + +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 reality of +their story and the depth of their emotions.[5] + +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 Bretagne. + +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. + +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."[6] 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.[7] + +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 +Bretagne, 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! + +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, Douce and +Ritson, sometimes conceived that Bretagne meant England; a circumstance +which might upset a whole hypothesis. + +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. + +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 "Esperance bretonne" became proverbial for all +chimerical hopes. + +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.[8] There +are improbabilities and incongruities in authentic history as hard to +reconcile as any we meet with in wild romance. + +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 _pleasant manner_, and +_by heart, as if they had been written_." 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. + +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 +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; but 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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.[9] + +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. + +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 contain also a remarkable body of +fiction in the MABINOGION, 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."[10] + +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 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,[11] 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? + +It is among the Welsh we find a singular form of artificial memory which +can be traced among no other people. These are their TRIADS. 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.[12] 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 _three_ +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 of critical +discrimination; for our feelings are less problematical than historical +events, and more permanent than the recollection of three names.[13] + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] See the opening of Speed's "Chronicle." + + [2] The historian of our land in the solemnity of his high office, + unwilling that an obscure Welsh prince named _Prydain_ 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 _sounds_, + seems to have been that of our judicious Camden. + + [3] Evelyn's "Numismata." Pinkerton has engraven ten of these + Britannias struck by the Romans in his "Essay on Medals." + + [4] Milton. + + [5] See Mr. Turner's able "Vindication of the Genuineness of the + Ancient British Bards." + + [6] 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. + + [7] "L'Art de verifier les Dates," article _Bretagne_, is thrown into + utter confusion. It seems, however, to indicate that there were many + migrations; but all is indistinct or uncertain. + + [8] 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. + + [9] Turner's "History of England during the Middle Ages," iv. 326. + + [10] "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 "Archaeology 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. + + 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.] + + [11] See Warton and Ellis. "Poesies de Marie de France" have been + published by M. de Roquefort, Paris, 1820. + + [12] "The translators do the triadist an injustice in rendering _Tri_ + by '_The Three_' when he has put no _The_ 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." + + [13] 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. + + "The three foundations of genius; the gift of God, human exertion, + and the events of life." + + "The three first requisites of genius; an eye to see nature, a heart + to feel it, and a resolution that dares follow it." + + "The three things indispensable to genius; understanding, meditation, + and perseverance." + + "The three things that improve genius; proper exertion, frequent + exertion, and successful exertion." + + "The three qualifications of poetry; endowment of genius, judgment + from experience, and felicity of thought." + + "The three pillars of judgment; bold design, frequent practice, and + frequent mistakes." + + "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 Llywarc Hen." + + + + +THE NAME OF ENGLAND AND OF THE ENGLISH. + + +Two 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 _Seax_, which had given the generic name of Saxons to their +tribe. + +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 +_white hair_ washed in blood;" and another sings how "close upon the +backs of the _pale-faced_ ones were the spear-points."[1] + +Already the name itself of _Britain_ had disappeared among the invaders. +Our island was now called "Saxony beyond the Sea," or "West Saxon land;" +and when the 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. + +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. + +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, +_Anglen_, is commemorated by the transference of its name to one of the +great European nations. The _Angles_, or _Engles_, have given their +denomination to the land of Britain--_Engle-land_ is _England_, and the +_Engles_ are the _English_.[2] + +How it happened that the very name of _Britain_ 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 LOCAL +NAMES. + +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.[3] No record 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." + +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. + +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. + +The casual occurrence of the ENGLES 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 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.[4] + +The history of LOCAL NAMES 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,[5] not too confidently to rely on etymology, or to assign too +positively any reason for the origin of LOCAL NAMES. No etymologist +could have accounted for the name of our nation had he not had recourse +to our annals. Sir WALTER RALEIGH, 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.[6] + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] "Britannia after the Romans," 62, 4to. + + [2] 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 _England_, for they write it with antiquarian + precision, _Angle-terre_--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." + + [3] 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. + + 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 _about_ 800. Speed gives a much later date, + 819. It is evident that these disagreeing dates are all hazarded + conjectures. + + [4] 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." + + [5] Sir GARDNER WILKINSON, in the curious volume of his recondite + discoveries in the land of the Pyramids. + + [6] "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. + + + + +THE ANGLO-SAXONS. + + +The 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. + +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 that the history of a whole people so +utterly cast into forgetfulness could ever be written. + +But the lost language and the forgotten characters antiquity and +religion seemed to have consecrated in the eyes of the learned +Archbishop MATTHEW PARKER, 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, _printed in the Saxon character_; we are told, +as "an invitation to English readers to draw them in unawares to an +acquaintance with the _handwriting of their ancestors_."[1] "The +invitation" was somewhat awful, and whether the guests were delighted or +dismayed, let some Saxonist tell! SPELMAN, the great legal archaeologist, +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 +SOMNER; and though he lived through distracted times which loved not +antiquity, the cell of the antiquary was hallowed by the restituted +lore. HICKES, 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 politer eyes." A lady--and she +is not the only one who has found pleasure in studying this ancient +language of our country--Mrs. ELSTOB, 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. + +None of our historians from MILTON to HUME 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. +MILTON, 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 HUME 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 BURKE in the path of Hume; and so late as in 1794, we find our +elegant antiquary, Bishop PERCY, lamenting the scanty and defective +annals of the Anglo-Saxons; naked 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. + +We find ELLIS and RITSON 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, SHARON TURNER, who +first opened these untried ways in our national antiquities.[2] + +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.[3] + +It is now ascertained that the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts are found in a +most corrupt state.[4] This fatality was occasioned by the inattention +or the unskilfulness of the caligrapher, whose task must have required a +learned pen. The Anglo-Saxon verse was regulated by a puerile system of +alliteration,[5] 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." + +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[6]--all these have perplexed the most +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 +BEOWULF. When it first fell to the hard lot of WANLEY, 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 SHARON +TURNER 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. CONYBEARE, 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. +KEMBLE. + +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.[7] 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. RITSON, in his perplexity, described this +poetry or metre as a "rhymeless sort of poetry, a kind of bombast or +insane prose, from which it is very difficult to be distinguished." +TYRWHIT and ELLIS remained wholly at a loss to comprehend the fabric of +Anglo-Saxon poesy. HICKES, 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. + +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[8] 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. + +Such prescribed formulae, 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.[9] + +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. + +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. CONYBEARE'S +poetical 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] Bp. Nicholson's Eng. Lib. + + [2] 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."--_Mr. Turner's Preface._ + + [3] 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 CONYBEARE; a more accurate transcript was + given by Mr. KEMBLE in his edition of Beowulf; and now Mr. GUEST has + furnished a third, varying from both. We cannot be certain that a + fourth may not correct the three. + + [4] "Without exception!" is the energetic cry of the translator of + Beowulf. + + [5] 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."--_Dissertation on + Anglo-Saxon Poetry, Fraser's Magazine_, xii. 81. + + [6] A striking instance how long a universal error can last, arising + from one of these obscure conceits, is noticed by Mr. GRENVILLE + PIGOTT in his "Manual of Scandinavian Mythology." + + 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, _to drink out of the skulls + of their enemies_. + + A passage in the death-song of Regner Lodbrog, literally translated, + is, "Soon shall we _drink_ out of the _curved trees of the head_;" + 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. + + 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." + + 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. + + [7] HICKES and WANLEY 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. + + [8] 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 Oehlenschlaeger, on "The Gods of the North;" whose genius + has been transfused in the nervous simplicity of the present version. + + [9] Such is the critical decision of CONYBEARE, a glorious + enthusiast. "Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry," by John Josiah + Conybeare. 1826. + + The late Mr. Price, the editor of Warton's History, announced an + elaborate work on the Anglo-Saxon poetry. The verse of CONYBEARE and + the disquisitions of PRICE 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. CONYBEARE has survived in his + brother, whose congenial tastes collected his remains; PRICE, 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. + + 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. + + + + +CAEDMON AND MILTON. + + +Caedmon, the Saxonists hail as "the Father of English Song!" + +The personal history of this bard is given in the taste of the age. +Caedmon 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. + +As once he lay slumbering in a stall, the apparition of a strange man +thus familiarly greeted him:--"Caedmon, 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! + +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. + +For a poet who had never written a verse, it was only necessary to open +his vein: a poet who could not read 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 Caedmonian Poem; assuredly they +wanted neither zeal nor hands--for the glory of the monastery of Whitby! + +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. + +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. + +The marvellous incident on which the history of Caedmon revolves may only +veil a fact which has nothing extraordinary 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 +_peasant wholly ignorant of the poetic art till he had been instructed +in a_ DREAM.[1] + +Scriptural themes were common with the poets of the monastery.[2] The +present enterprise, judging from the 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 Caedmonian 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 Caedmon 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![3] Be this as it may, for us the poem is an entity, whatever +becomes of the pretended Dreamer. + +It has become an arduous inquiry whether MILTON has not drawn largely +from the obscurity of this monkish Ennius? "In reading Caedmon," says +SHARON TURNER, "we are reminded of Milton--of a 'Paradise Lost' in rude +miniature." Conybeare advances, "the pride, rebellion, and punishments +of Satan and his princes have a resemblance to Milton so remarkable that +_much of this portion might be almost literally translated by a cento of +lines from the great poet_."[4] A recent Saxonist, in noticing "the +creation of Caedmon as beautiful," adds, "it is still more interesting +from _its singular correspondence even in expression with 'Paradise +Lost_.'" + +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. + +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 their everlasting chains and eternal fire; how the +legend became universally received may baffle inquiry.[5] + +But the coincidence of the Caedmonian 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. + +Caedmon, 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 _three nights and days_." Milton awfully describes Satan +"confounded, though immortal," rolling in the fiery gulf-- + + _Nine times the space that measures day and night_ + To mortal men. + +Caedmon describes the Deity having cast the evil angel into that "House +of perdition, down on that new bed; after, gave him a _name_ that the +highest (of the devils which they had now become) should be called +_Satan_ thenceforwards." Milton has preserved the same notice of the +origin of _the name_, thus-- + + To whom the _Arch-Enemy_, + And thence in heaven called _Satan_-- + +Satan in Hebrew signifying "the Enemy," or "the Adversary." + +The harangue of Satan to his legions by the Saxon monk cannot fail to +remind us of the first grand scene 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-- + + ----yet from these flames + No light, but rather darkness visible. + +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-- + + The bitter change + Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce, + From beds of raging _fire_ to starve in _ice_. + + The parching air + _Burns frore_, and _cold performs the effect of fire_.[6] + +The "Inferno" of Dante has also "its eternal darkness for the dwellers +in fierce _heat_ and in _ice_."[7] It is evident that the Saxon, the +Italian, and the Briton had drawn from the same source. The Satan of +Caedmon 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 + + Adamantine chains and penal fire, + +and + + A dungeon horrible on all sides round. + +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-- + + Chain'd on the burning lake, _nor ever thence + Had ris'n or heaved his head, but that the will + And high permission of all-ruling Heaven + Left him at large to his own dark designs_, + That with reiterated crimes he might + Heap on himself damnation, while he sought + Evil to others. + +The Saxon monk had not the dexterity to elude the difficult position in +which the arch-fiend was for ever fixed; 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 _departed through the doors of hell_." We are +reminded of + + The infernal doors, that on their hinges grate + Harsh thunder. + +The emissary of Satan in Caedmon had "a strong mind, lion-like in air, +_in hostile mood he dashed the fire aside with a fiend's power_."[8] +That demon flings aside the flames of hell with the bravery of his +sovereign, as we see in Milton-- + + Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool + His mighty stature; _on each hand the flames + Driv'n backward, slope their pointing spires, and roll'd + In billows_, leave in the midst a horrid vale.[9] + +Caedmon thus represents Satan:--"Then spoke the haughty king, who of +angels erst was _brightest, fairest in heaven_--beloved of his +master--_so beauteous was his form_, he was like to the light stars." + +Milton's conception of the form of Satan is the same. + + His form had not yet lost + All her _original brightness_, nor appear'd + Less than archangel ruin'd.[10] + +And, + + His countenance as the _morning star_ that guides + The starry flock, allured them.[11] + +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, Caedmon +was ever known to Milton. + +The Caedmonian manuscript is as peculiar in its history as its subject. +This poem, which we are told fixed 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,"[12] +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 JUNIUS. 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. + +We must now have recourse to a few dates. + +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. + +If Milton had any knowledge of Caedmon, 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? + +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 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.[13] + +"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,[14] from whom some 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 Caedmon, 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. + +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 Caedmon,[15] but which we entirely owe to the skill, and +punctuation, and accentuation of the recent editor, Mr. Thorpe. + +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 + + -----------to pursue + Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme-- + +of concealing what he had silently appropriated. + +There are so many probabilities against the single possibility of Milton +having had any knowledge of Caedmon, that we must decide by the numerical +force of our own suggestions. + +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.[16] + +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.[17] + +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-- + + ------who knows how long + Before had been contriving?--P. L., ix. 138. + +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. + +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 Caedmon 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, + + Whose stature reach'd the sky, and on his crest + Sat Horror plumed-- + +by the Saxon monk sunk down to a Saxon convict, "fastened by the neck, +his hands manacled, and his feet bound." + +Caedmon represents Eve, after having plucked the fruit, hastening to Adam +with the apples,-- + + Some in her hands she bare, + Some in her bosom lay, + Of the unblest fruit. + +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-- + + ------------from the tree returning, in her hand + _A bough of fairest fruit_.--ix. 850. + +In Caedmon, 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 + + ----------in her face excuse + Came prologue, and apology too prompt, + Which with bland words at will, she thus address'd. + +A description too metaphysical for the meagre invention of the old Saxon +monk! + +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 +Caedmon 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 +Caedmon,[18] with the noble conceptions and the immortal designs of the +Sistine Chapel. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] Sir Francis Palgrave's "Dissertation on Caedmon," in the + Archaeologia. + + In another work this erudite antiquary explains the marvellous part + of Caedmon'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." "Caedmon'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, _allowing for some + little exaggeration_, his poetical talents may have been _suddenly + developed in the manner described_."--"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 Mediaeval genius can + perceive nothing more in a _circumstantial legend_ than "a little + exaggeration." I seem to hear the shrill attenuated tones of Ritson, + in his usual idiomatic diction, screaming, "It is a _Lie_ and an + _Imposture_ of the stinking _Monks_!" + + 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. + "_Caedmon revait en vers et composait des poemes en dormant; Poesie + est Songe._" And thus dreams may be expounded by dreams!--"Essai sur + la Literature Anglaise," i. 55. + + [2] "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 Pere 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. + + [3] 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 [Hebrew: + behadsin], exhibits the presumed name of the Saxon monk. + + [4] 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. + + [5] 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: "_The angels + which kept not their first estate_, 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: "_God spared not the angels + that sinned, but cast them down to Hell_, 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. + + [6] Paradise Lost, ii. 594. + + [7] Inferno, Canto iii. 5. + + [8] Caedmon, p. 29. + + [9] Paradise Lost, i. 221. + + [10] Paradise Lost, i. 592. + + [11] Paradise Lost, v. 798. + + [12] Guest's "History of English Rhythms," ii. 23. + + [13] This curious literary information has been disclosed by ROGER + WILLIAMS, 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. _The secretary of the council, Mr. Milton, + for my Dutch I read him, read me many more languages._ 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. + + I am indebted for this curious notice to the prompt kindness of my + most excellent friend ROBERT SOUTHEY; 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. + + [14] Mr. SOUTHEY observes, in a letter now before me, that "VONDEL'S + 'Lucifer' was published in 1654. His 'Samson,' the same subject as + the 'Agonistes,' 1661. His 'Adam,' 1664. CAEDMON, ANDREINI, and + VONDEL, 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 _Lucifer_ is esteemed the best of his tragedies. + Milton alone excepted, he was probably the greatest poet then + living." + + This critical note furnishes curious dates. Milton was blind when the + _Lucifer_ 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 Caedmon, I submit the present chapter to Mr. + Southey's decision. + + 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. + + [15] Guest's "History of English Rhythms." + + [16] This speech, in which Satan appeals to and characterises his + Infernals, may be read in Parfait's analysis of the Mystery.--_Hist. + du Theatre Francois_, i. 79. + + [17] _L'Angeleida_ of VALVASONE, the _Adamo_ of ANDREINI, and + others.--Hayley's Conjectures on the Origin of "Paradise Lost." See + also Tiraboschi, and Ginguene. + + [18] These singular attempts at art may be inspected in above fifty + plates, in the Archaeologia, 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. + + + + +BEOWULF; THE HERO-LIFE. + + +The Anglo-Saxon poetical narrative of "The Exploits of Beowulf" forms a +striking contrast with the chronological paraphrase of Caedmon. 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. + +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.[1] 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. + +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 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.[2] But if antiquaries still wander +among shadows, the poet cannot err. BEOWULF 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. + +BEOWULF,[3] 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;[4] 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. + +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." + +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 +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. + +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." + +This scene is truly Homeric; and thus we find in the early state of +Greece, for the historian records this continual wearing of armour, +_like the barbarians_, because "their houses were unfenced, and +travelling was unsafe."[5] + +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 thirty men in the grip of his hand. God only could have +sent him." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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-- + + With witty malice studious to defame, + Scorn all his joy, and laughter all his aim. + +And like Thersites, the son of Eglaff receives a blasting 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." + +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. + +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. + +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 Caedmon, being preserved +only 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. + +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." + +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 THORKELIN 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 appear in royal Gazettes, +as not one of the least in that sad day of warfare with "our brothers." +THORKELIN 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, +BEOWULF aspires to a poetic existence. He appeals to nature and excites +our imagination--while the monk, CAEDMON, 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!" + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] See the curious delineation of the Vikings of the North, in + Turner's "Hist. of the Anglo-Saxons," i. 456, third edition. + + [2] Mr. KEMBLE, the translator of BEOWULF, 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. + + 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. + + [3] 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. + + "Rats and Mice, and such SMALL DEER," + + 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 _geer_ or _cheer_. Percy discovered in the old metrical + romance of "Sir Bevis of Southampton," the very distich which Edgar + had parodied.--Warton, iii. 83. + + [4] Thucydides, Lib. i. + + [5] Thucydides. + + + + +THE ANGLO-NORMANS. + + +The Anglo-Saxon dominion in England endured for more than five +centuries. + +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."[1] 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. + +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.[2] Already +there was a faction of Frenchified Saxons in the court of the unnational +English sovereign. + +William the Norman surveyed an empire already half Norman; and in the +prospect, with his accustomed foresight, 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. + +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.[3] + +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 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.[4] These were strongholds for the tyrant +foreigner, or open retreats for his predatory bands; stern overlookers +were they of the land! + +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 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. + +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." + +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 annual expense should never after be allowed out of the King's +exchequer."[5] + +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.[6] + +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 HIS BOOK," 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. + +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 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.[7] Nature and nationality will +outlast the transient policy of a new dynasty. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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.[8] When Tressan wrote, this striking circumstance +had not received its true elucidation; the hand of these writers had +only flowed 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! + +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-- + + Me nummerai par remembrance, + _Marie ai num, si sui de France_-- + +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 Aesopian 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 +performed for a great personage who read neither Latin nor English; it +was done for "the _love_ of the renowned Earl William Longsword"-- + + ----Cunte Willaume, + Le plus vaillant de cest Royaume. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +This precious relic has come down to us--the "Saxon Chronicle"[9]--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 VERNACULAR LANGUAGE." 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 Saxon +chronicler has recorded a defeat and retreat which Caesar suffered in his +first invasion, which would be difficult to discover in the Commentaries +of Caesar. + +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. + +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] 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. + + [2] A circumstance which Milton has recorded. + + [3] Our great lawyers probably imagined that the honour of the + country is implicated in the title usually accorded to William the + Norman; SPELMAN, the great antiquary, and BLACKSTONE, 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 + "_Conquestor, or acquirer of any estate out of the common course of + inheritance_." The first purchaser (that is, he who brought the + estate into the family which at present owns it) was styled "the + Conqueror," _and such is still the proper phrase in the law of + Scotland_. RITSON is indignant at what he calls "a pitiful forensic + quibble." + + But another great lawyer and lord chancellor, the sedate WHITELOCKE, + positively asserts that "William only conquered Harold and his army; + for he never was, nor _pretended to be_, the conqueror of England, + although the _sycophant monks of the time_ gave him that + title."--Whitelocke's "Hist. of England," 33. + + 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, _King of Englishmen_" (Rex + Anglorum), and addresses it "to all his well-beloved _French and + English people_, 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,-- + + ------------------qui regna sur la France, + Par droit de Conquete et par droit de Naissance. + + [4] The final history of these citadels may illustrate that verse of + Goldsmith which reminds us-- + + "To fly from PETTY TYRANTS--to THE THRONE!" + + 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 ROBERT SUTTON, and by + AGARD; "Curious Discourses by Eminent Antiquaries," i. 104 and 188. + + 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. + + [5] Speed, 440. + + [6] 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, _barbarico nomine_, + by the barbarous name of Pendyfig;" which was the British or Welsh + name.--"Vindication of the Ancient British Poems," 8. + + [7] Camden has noticed this striking circumstance in his "Britannia." + See also Percy's Preface to Mallett's "Northern Antiquities," xxxix. + + [8] See his Preface to the prose romance of "La Fleur des Batailles." + + [9] 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. + + The Rev. Dr. INGRAM, 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. + + + + +THE PAGE, THE BARON, AND THE MINSTREL. + + +When 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. _L'Ordenne de +Chevalerie_ is the morality of knighthood, and invests the aspirant with +every moral and political virtue as every military qualification.[1] + +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. + +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 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. + +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 _La dame de ses pensees_, 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. + +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. + +After the termination of the Crusades, the grand incident in the life of +the BARON 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 Christian performing +some secret vow, to grieve with a contrition which it seems they do not +feel at home. + +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 _pas d'armes_ was not always a +friendly invitation, for often under the guise of chivalry was concealed +the national hostility of the parties. + +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,[2] 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 buck, might have his eyes torn from their +sockets, or on the spot of his offence mount the instant gallows.[3] + +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.[4] These nobles, it +appears, were more select in their falconer and their _chef de cuisine_ +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." + +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 MINSTRELS; 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. + +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. + +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.[5] 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 the musical character, they displayed the influence of the +imagination over a rude and unlettered race-- + + ----They tellen Tales + Both of WEEPYING and of GAME. + +Chaucer has portrayed the rapture of a minstrel excited by his harp, a +portrait evidently after the life. + + Somewhat he _lisped_ for his wantonness + _To make the English swete upon his tonge_; + And in his Harping when that he had songe, + _His Eyen twinkled in his Hed aright, + As don the Sterres in a frosty night_. + +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. + +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."[6] 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 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 + + Walken fer and wyde, + Her, and ther, in every syde, + In many a diverse londe. + +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. + +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.[7] In +St. 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.[8] + +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 _La Chatelaine de Vergy_, where suddenly a scene of +immolation struck through the devoted household; or that of "La Dame du +Fayel,"[9] 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 +the fourteenth century, one century later than the histories of the +"_Chatelaine_" and the "_Dame_," 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 +noyee," beginning, + + Je ne suis pas de ceux qui disent ce n'est rien, + C'est une Femme qui se noye![10] + +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. + +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. + +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 [Symbol] became +inclosed in a circle [Symbol], and again varied by dots [Symbol].[11] +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.[12] + +The material symbol of Christianity had thus been indiscriminately +adopted without conveying with it the virtues of the Gospel. The cross +was a myth--the cross was the _Fetish_[13] 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] St. Palaye, to whom we owe the ideal of chivalry, has truly + observed, "Toutes les vertus recommandees 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. + + [2] I recollect this trait in Chaucer. The Norway hawk was among the + most valuable articles of property, valued at a sum equal to L300 of + the present day.--Nicholls, "History of Leicestershire," xxxix. + + [3] The Norman William punished men with loss of eyes for taking his + venery.--Selden's notes to "Drayton's Polyolbion," Song ii. + + An instant execution of two youths by the gamekeepers, at the command + of their Lord, appears in an ancient romance recently published in + France.--_Journal des Savans_, 1838. + + [4] 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.--ED.] + + [5] "Warton," i. 94. + + [6] "Warton," ii. 412. + + [7] 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, _Roy des Menestraulx_, 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. + + [8] _Antiquites Nationales_, par Millin, xli. Two plates exhibit this + Gothic chapel and the various musical instruments. + + [9] Both these romantic tales may be considered as authentic + narratives, though they have often been used by the writers of + fiction. _La Chatelaine de Vergy_ has been sometimes confounded with + _Le Chatelaine de Coucy_, the lover of _La Dame du Fayel_. 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. + + [10] 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 menaces et bastonnades, ne + cessait d'appeler son mari, Pouilleux, et qui, precipite dans l'eau, + haussoit encore, en s'etouffant, les mains et faisoit au-dessus de sa + tete signe de tuer des poux, forgea un conte duquel en verite tous + les jours on voit l'image expresse de l'opiniatrete des femmes." + + 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, + _s'etouffant_,--merely for correcting the filthy lubbard, her lord + and master. + + [11] Leland's "Itinerary," ii. 126. + + [12] Paston's "Letters," v. 17. + + [13] See the very curious chapter on the "Fetish Worship," in that + very original and learned work "The Doctor," v. 133. + + + + +GOTHIC ROMANCES. + + +A new 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. + +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. + +ROMANCE, 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; +and by maintaining exclusive systems, mostly fanciful and partly true, +it has been made complicate. Whether invention in the form of ROMANCE +came from the oriental tale-teller or the Scandinavian Scald, or whether +the fictions of Europe be the growth of the Provencal 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.[1] 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. + +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?[2] + +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 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. + +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. + +ROMANCE 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. + +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." + +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, +"translates de rime en prose," or "mis en beau langage." Many of the old +French metrical 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.[3] + +These Romances, in their manuscript state, were cherished objects;[4] +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. + +Studies for the artist, as for the curious antiquary,[5] we 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 _le Roman +de la Violette_, 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.[6] 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. + +The great Romance of Alexander, preserved in the 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.[7] + +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!" + +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 +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. + +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."[8] 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. + +Our master poets have drawn their waters from these ancient fountains. +SIDNEY might have been himself one of their heroes, and was no unworthy +rival of his masters: SPENSER borrowed largely, and repaid with +munificence: MILTON in his loftiest theme looked down with admiration on +this terrestrial race, + + -----------and what resounds + In fable or romance of Uther's son, + Begirt with British or Armoric knights. + +"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?"[9] + +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.[10] One Romance would produce many 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;[11] 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. RITSON has aptly treated these pseudonymous +translators as "men of straw." We may say of them all as the antiquary +DOUCE, 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. Pere Menestrier ascribed +these 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."[12] 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 _Trouveres_, who, +either in rehearsing or in composing these poetical narratives, might +urge a stronger claim. + +When Pere 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. + +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. + +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 that it was Pere +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. + +The Gothic mediaeval 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.[13] + +We cannot think less than Pere 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 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 _Sang-real_ 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. + +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. + +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, 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 STRUTT 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. + +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 it would seem that the prototype of +these feminine knights these poets also found among those old romances +which they loved. + +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 +veritable demon 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. + +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. + +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 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 THOMAS MALORY, to the English lover of ancient romance +well known by the title of _La Morte d'Arthur_. This last of these +ancient romances was finished in the ninth year of the reign of Edward +IV., about 1470. CAXTON 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 +_Bagnes_, 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," +ROGER ASCHAM plainly asserted only taught "open manslaughter and bold +bawdry." Such was the final fate of Love and Arms! + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] Warton and Percy, Ritson and Leyden, Ellis and Turner and Price, + and recently the late Abbe de la Rue. + + [2] 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 _now in the_ + 'Arabian Nights.' The Greek empire must have left deep impressions on + the Persian intellect--so also many of the Roman Catholic _Legends_ + are taken from _Apuleius_. 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. + + [3] 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. + + [4] 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 _Statutorum_ Regni Scocie + quam _Romancie_."--Laing's "Early Metrical Tales," Edinburgh, 1826. + + [5] A collection of these romances formed into three folio tomes in + manuscript was enriched by seven hundred and forty-seven miniatures, + _avec les Initiales peintes en or et couleurs_. 6093, Roxburgh Cat. + + [6] Cat. of the Duke de la Valliere, 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." + + [7] 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. + + [8] Campbell's "Essay on English Poetry." + + [9] 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 RICHARD JOHNSON, 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. + + [10] 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. + + * Douce's "Illustrations of Shakspeare." + + [11] 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. + + [12] Pere Menestrier, "Chevalerie Ancienne et Moderne," chap. v. On + HERALDS. + + [13] See Bentham's "History and Antiquities of Ely," 27. + + + + +ORIGIN OF THE VERNACULAR LANGUAGES OF EUROPE. + + +The 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. + +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.[1] It was amid this confusion of races, of idioms, and of +customs, that from this heterogeneous mass were hewed out those +VERNACULAR DIALECTS of Europe which furnished each people with their own +idiom, and which are now distinguished as the MODERN LANGUAGES. + +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 rude inflections; there is but one +organ to regulate the delicacy of orthoepy--a musical and a tutored ear. +The Gaul,[2] in cutting his words down, contracted a nasal sharpness; +and the Northmen, in the shock of their hard, redundant consonants, lost +the vowelly confluence. + +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 _Romans_, or _Romance_, or _Romaunt_, still +proud perhaps of its Roman source; but the critical Latins themselves +had distinguished it as _Rustic_, to indicate a base dialect used only +by those who were far removed from the metropolis of the world. + +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! + +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. + +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. + +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 Phoenicia, Carthage, Babylon, and +Egypt."[3] 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 derived their immortality from +the imperishable soul of their composition. All Europe was condemned to +be copiers, or in despair to be plagiarists. + +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. + +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.[4] 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. + +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 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.[5] 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 THOMAS ELYOT +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." + +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 creating a vernacular literature, reflecting +the image not of the Greeks and of the Romans, but of themselves. + +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, PETRARCH 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. DANTE 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. DANTE 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 +TIRABOSCHI. 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 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 +DANTE had penetrated beyond the palpable substances of the explorer of +facts, and the arranger of dates. DANTE, 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. +DANTE wrote, and DANTE was the classic of his country. + +The third great master of the vernacular literature of Italy was +BOCCACCIO, who threw out the fertility of his genius in the _volgare_ 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." + +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. + +It cannot be thought that the genius of the Italians always excelled +that of other countries, but the material 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. + +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. ANGELO POLITIAN 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--"perche degli spettatori fusse meglio intesa," that he +might be better understood by the audience! + +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 +VARCHI 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. + +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. + +JOACHIM DE BELLAY, 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 Francoise," in 1549, where +eloquently and learnedly he would persuade his nation to write in their +own language. FERREIRA, 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 enriched. He has thus feelingly expressed +this glorious sentiment-- + + Eu desta gloria so' fico contente + Que a minha terra amei, e a minha gente. + +In Scotland we find Sir DAVID LYNDSAY, 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. + +In our own country Lord BERNERS 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 +_maternal English tongue_;" an expression which indicates those filial +yearnings of literary patriotism which were now to give us a native +literature. + +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. + +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 THOMAS WILSON, 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 +_defence_ 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 "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. + +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. + +The predilection for composing in the Roman language long continued +among the most illustrious writers both at home and abroad. A judicious +critic in the reign of James I., Edmund Bolton, in his "Nero Caesar," +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.[6] This conduct of the University offered no +encouragement to men of learning and genius to compose in their +vernacular idiom. + +The genius of VERULAM, 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 BACON +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 CAMDEN 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 Latin language; as did +BUCHANAN that of Scotland, and DE THOU 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. + +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, +_Wiseheart_, was dignified by Buchanan with a Greek denomination, +_Sophocardus_; 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 _magister equitum_, and the marshals of France from +the _tribunus equitum_. His equivocal personages are not always +recognised in this travesty of their Roman masquerade. + +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 ANTHONY +WOOD'S elaborate work on "The History and Antiquities 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. ANTHONY WOOD 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.[7] + +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] Sidonius Apollinaris. + + [2] 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--_damn_; aureum--_or_; malum--_mal_; nudum--_nud_; + amicus--_ami_: vinum--_vin_; homo--_hom_, as anciently written; + curtus--_court_; sonus--_son_; bonus--_bon_: and thus made many + others. + + The nasal sound of our neighbours still prevails; thus Gracchus sinks + into _Gracque_; Titus Livius is but _Tite Live_; and the historian of + Alexander the Great, the dignified Quintus Curtius, is the ludicrous + _Quinte Curce_!--Auguis, "Du Genie de la Langue Francoise." + + [3] Turner's "History of England." + + [4] See "Curiosities of Literature," article Recovery of Manuscripts. + + [5] ERASMUS 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 RABELAIS 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. + + [6] Collier's "History of Dramatic Poetry," ii. 463. + + [7] We now possess this valued literary history, which none, perhaps, + but Anthony a 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 + "Athenae 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. + + + + +ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. + + +Johnson 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. + +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,[1] 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. + +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. + +We indeed triumph that the language of our forefathers 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 THE ENGLISH +LANGUAGE. 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 DIALECTS 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. + +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.[2] + +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.[3] + +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. + +An ecclesiastic paraphrased the Gospel-histories. He 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_err_ and +afft_err_; is _iss_, and it _itt_.[4] + +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 HICKES and WANLEY, 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. TYRWHIT, 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 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."[5] + +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 ORM, 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 _Orm_ fondly called his work the _Ormulum_! +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! + +Nearly a century after Layamon, in the same part of England, the monk, +ROBERT OF GLOUCESTER, 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.[6] Our chronicler 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.[7] 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. + +Another monk, ROBERT MANNYNG, of Brunne, or Bourne, in Lincolnshire, who +had versified PIERS LANGTOFT'S "Chronicle," has left a translation of +the "Manuel des Peches," ascribed to Bishop Grosteste, who composed 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.[8] 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, + + "I wrote + In symple speeche as I couthe, + That is _lightest in manne's mouthe_. + I mad (made) nought for no disours (tale-tellers), + Ne for no seggers nor harpours, + Bot for the luf (love) of symple menu + That _strange Inglis_ cann not ken." + +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." + +Whatever Robert de Brunne might allude to by his "strange Ingliss,"[9] +the same cry and the identical expressions are repeated by a writer not +many years afterwards--RICHARD ROLLE, 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 +_straunge Ynglyss_, bot _lightest_ and _communest_, 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." + +A great curiosity of the genuine homeliness of our national idiom at +this time has come down to us in a 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, + + Vor Vader and for Moder and for other Ken. + +I throw into a note what I have transcribed of this specimen of the old +Saxon-English, or, as it is called, "Semi-Saxon."[10] 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,[11] it offers a curious picture of the English 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. + +The poems of LAURENCE MINOT 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:-- + + LITHES! and I sall tell you tyll + The bataile of Halidon Hyll. + +And in another,-- + + HERKINS how long King Edward lay, + With his men before Tournay. + +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."[12] + +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 +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,"[13] 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." + +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, 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. + +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. + +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,[14] and, indeed, to which our great lawyers, the timid +slaves of precedents, long afterwards clung in their barbarous +law-French phrases mingled with their native English. + +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.[15] + +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." + +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. + +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 "_the English tongue hath in modern days begun to be +honourably enlarged and adorned, and for the better understanding of the +people_ 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 LORDS and the +COMMONS BEGAN _to have their proceedings noted down in the mother +tongue_;" and this example was therefore to be followed by the city +companies.[16] + +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, written in the French language, while the endorsed royal +answer is in English, and the order of the council in Latin.[17] The +bulletins of Henry V. to the mayor and aldermen of London are written in +English, but endorsed in French. + +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,[18] at a +time when the nobles employed Latin or French for such purposes. + +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 _to +abolish the use of the Latin tongue_; 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 THE FRENCH LANGUAGE 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.[19] 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. + +When the learned HICKES, 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 +Latin extraction. This startled TYRWHIT, 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 _form_ of our language +was still Saxon, yet the _matter_ was in a great measure French." His +successor in English philology, GEORGE ELLIS, still further faltered and +arbitrated; suggesting that the great Saxonist, to complete his +favourite scheme, would trace some _old Gaulish_ French to a _Teutonic_ +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 _modern English_ 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 SHARON TURNER has +observed that a fifth of the Saxon language has ceased to be used. A +recent critic[20] 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 _not_ Anglo-Saxon, and in our least +about one-third.[21] A cry of our 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] Mr. Hallam. + + [2] Dr. Bosworth. + + [3] 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.] + + [4] 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 _min_ and _win_ with a single _n_ only, and _lif_ with a + single f, because the i is long, as in _mine_, _wine_, and _life_. On + the other hand, wherever the consonant is doubled, the vowel + preceding is sharp and short, as _winn_, pronounced _win_, not + _wine_."--"Origin of the Germanic and Scandinavian Languages," 24. + + [5] Guest's "Hist. of English Rhythms," ii. 186. + + [6] 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. + + [7] Hearne, in his preface, exclaims in ecstacy--"This is the _first + book_ ever printed in this kingdom, it may be in _the whole world, in + the black letter_, with a mixture of _the Saxon characters_, 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. + + 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 RITSON, and by WHITAKER in his + edition of "Piers Ploughman;" and these editors assuredly have scared + away many a neophyte in our vernacular literature. RITSON 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. + + [8] 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. + + [9] 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 _this side of the + Tweed_ 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." + + [10] 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 _Ayenbyte of inwyt_, 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-- + + "Blind, and dyaf, and alsuo dumb, + Of zeventy yer al not rond, + Ne ssette by draze to the grond, + Uor peny nor mark, ne nor pond." + + At the end the monk tells us for whom he writes-- + + "Nou ich wille that ye ywite hou hitt is ywent + Thet this Boc is ywrite mid Engliss of Kent. + This Boc is ymade vor lewede men, + Vor Vader and vor Moder and vor other Ken, + Ham vor to berze uram alle manyere Zen + Thet ine have inwytte ne bleue no uoul wen. + Huo ase God is his name yzed + Thet this Boc made God him yeue that bread + Of Angles of Hauene and thereto his red, + And underuonge his Zoule, huanne that is dyad." + + [11] While Tyrwhit was busied on the "Canterbury Tales" his attention + was excited by the old cataloguer of the Cottonian manuscripts to a + _Chaucer exemplar emendate scriptum_. 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, LAURENCE MINOT. [The manuscript is + marked Galba, E. IX.; specimens were first published from it by + Tyrwhit and Warton, and the entire series ultimately by Ritson.] + + [12] 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. + + [13] "Philobiblion, sive de Amore Librorum et Institutione + Bibliothecae," 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. Aevi," 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. + + [14] Barrington on the Statutes. + + 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 _the expense of all legal + proceedings_ by being bound by the stamp-duties to write only a + stated number of words in a sheet, _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_. 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 _nisi prius, fieri facias, habeas corpus_. This + last act, in 1732, has defeated every beneficial purpose intended by + the preceding statute of 1730. + + One hardly expected to find philological acumen in the dry discussion + of law-Latin, but when the _three_ words, "_secundum formam + statuti_," require _seven_ in English, "according to the form of the + statute," one easily comprehends the heavy weight of the _stamp-duty_ + for _writing English_. The Saxons, who made no use of particles of + speech, had more merit than we were aware of. + + [15] By the Rev. JOHN LEWIS, 1731, fo., and republished by the Rev. + H. H. BABER, 1810, 4to. + + 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 linguae causa ipsis in pretio + esse debeat."--"Bib. Lat.," v. 321. + + 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. + + [16] Herbert's "History of the City Companies." + + [17] I derive this curious fact from Mr. Tyler's "History of Henry of + Monmouth," ii. 245. + + [18] These wills are preserved in Mr. Nichols' "Collection of Royal + Wills." + + [19] Le Comte de Neufchateau, "Essay on French Literature," prefixed + to the late edition of Pascal's works. + + [20] "Edinburgh Review," Oct., 1839. + + [21] 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. + + + + +VICISSITUDES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. + + +The 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. + +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. + +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. + +Under Elizabeth favourite phrases were insinuated into the dialect by +over-refined travellers, who spoke "minionlike," 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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 +_langue Romane_, 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, _more suo_, on a translation of Quintus +Curtius. It was 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. + +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 Caesar and Quintilian to those in which we are now writing.[1] 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? + +The fallacy of the systematic critics arises from the 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.[2] 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. + +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. + +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 +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."[3] Thus early were +we perilling our purity! + +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. + +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! + +A refined critic of our language then was the learned Sir JOHN CHEKE, +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 THOMAS HOBY, 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 specimen of our English, unpolluted even by a +Latinism.[4] + +"Our own tongue should be written _clean_ and _pure_, 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." + +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 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."[5] 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." ARTHUR GOLDING grieves over the disjected members of the +language:-- + + "Our English tongue driven almost out of kind (nature), + Dismember'd, hack'd, maim'd, rent, and torn, + Defaced, patch'd, marr'd, and made in scorn." + +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 _good southern_ 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, 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, CAREW 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." + +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 SPENSER,[6] then +youthful, declared that the language of CHAUCER was the purest English; +and our bard hailed, in a verse often quoted by the critics-- + + Dan Chaucer, well of English undefiled. + +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. + +Descending a complete century, in 1656 we are surprised at discovering +HEYLIN, at a period relatively modern, reiterating the language of his +ancient predecessors. This latter critic published his animadversions on +the pedantic writings of HAMON L'ESTRANGE, who had opened on us a +floodgate of Latinisms. Heylin observes: "More French and Latin words +have gained ground upon us since _the middle of Queen Elizabeth's +reign_ 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.[7] + +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 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 '_verum et bonum_' 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." + +Would we learn the true history of a modern language, we must not apply +to the CRITICS, who only press for conformity and appeal to precedents; +but we must look to those other more practical dealers in words, the +LEXICOGRAPHERS, 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. BARET, one of our +earliest 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."[8] 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. HENRY COCKRAM, 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.[9] What a +picture have we sketched of the mortality of words, through all the +fleeting stages of their decadency from TREVISA to CAXTON, from CAXTON +to BARET, from BARET to COCKRAM, and from COCKRAM to his numerous +successors! + +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 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 CUSTOM. + +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. + +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. + +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 + + --------Half appear'd + The tawny Lion, PAWING TO GET FREE + HIS HINDER PARTS. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] "Curiosities of Literature," Art. "HISTORY OF NEW WORDS." + + [2] 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:-- + + "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." + + Now we have plain, intelligible prose-- + + "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." + + [3] Sir Francis Palgrave's "Rise and Progress of the English Common + wealth;" Proofs and Illustrations, ccxiii. + + [4] This letter to the translator Hoby has been passed over by those + who collected the few letters of the learned CHEKE; 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. + + [5] Sir Thomas Wilson's "Arte of Rhetoric," 1553. + + [6] 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. + + [7] 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. + + [8] "Alvearie, or quadruple Dictionary of Four Languages," 1580. + + [9] "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 _choicest words now in use_, 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.] + + + + +DIALECTS. + + +Dialects reflect the general language diversified by localities. + +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. + +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. + +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 Bretagne, were all munificent patrons of those who cultivated 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 _Oc_, and on the north the language of _Oil_; names which +they derived from the different manner of the inhabitants pronouncing +the affirmative _Oui_. The language of the poetical Troubadours on the +south of the Loire had not the happier destiny of its rival, used by the +Trouveres 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 _naivete_ the familiar emotions of love and +friendship, and gaiety and _bonhomie_, 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 _Franchiman_.[1] + +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 language. The aboriginal Britons left some of their words +behind them in their flight, as the Romans had done in their +dominion,[2] and even the visiting Phoenician 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. + +"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? + +If etymology often furnishes a genealogy of words 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. + +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.[3] 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 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. + +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 +wou'didd'n_, or _I woudyedd'd_, is a cacophony which stands for _I wish +you would_! When the editor of a Devonshire dialect found that it was +aspersed as the most uncouth jargon in England, he appealed to the +Lancashire.[4] + +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 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. + +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. + +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 IF, which, from "The Sad Shepherd," is demonstrated to +be anciently the imperative of the verb GIF, 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.[5] + +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 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 archaeological 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.[6] 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 JOHNSON 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 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 archaeologists, ASH 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,[7] have produced a number of 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. + +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] "Dictionnaire Languedocien-francois," par l'Abbe de Sauvages. + "_Franchiman_ est forme de l'Allemand, et signifie _homme de + France_." The Abbe wrote in 1756, when he did not care to translate + too literally; the Frank-man meant the _Free man_, for the Franks + called themselves so, as "the free people." This learned Gascon, in + his zeal for the _Langue d'oc_, explains, "_Parla Franchiman_," 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 Abbe 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. + + [2] "Palgrave," 174. They also received some in exchange, many words + in Caesar being British.--Hearne's "Leland's Itinerary," vi. + + [3] 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. + + [4] 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. + + [5] Tooke's "Diversions of Purley," p. 141. + + [6] 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 _vulgarisms_ composing the language of Chaucer + and Shakspeare, and even our Bibles and Liturgies. + + [7] RAY was the first who collected "Local Words, _North Country_ and + _South_ and _East Country_." "The Exmoor Scolding and Courtship" is + an authentic specimen of the _Exmoor Language_. 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:--BROCKETT'S "North Country Words;" "Suffolk + Words and Phrases," by Major MOOR; Mr. ROGER WILBRAHAM'S "Attempt at + a Glossary of Cheshire Words;" Mr. JENNINGS' "Dialect of the West of + England," particularly the Somersetshire words; Mr. BRITTON on those + of Wiltshire; and the Rev. JOSEPH HUNTER has given "The Hallamshire + Glossary," to which are appended "Words used in Halifax," by the Rev. + JOHN WATSON, and also an addition to the "Yorkshire Words," by + THORESBY, the Leeds antiquary. + + An investigation of the origin, nature, and history of DIALECTS was + proposed by the late Dr. BOUCHER 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 BOUCHER. + + + + +MANDEVILLE; OUR FIRST TRAVELLER. + + +Mandeville 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. + +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 JOHN MANDEVILLE 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! + +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 _readers_ and +_hearers_ of my book," (for "hearers" were then more numerous than +"readers,") "to say for him a _Pater-Noster_ with an _Ave-Maria_." 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. + +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. + +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 writers--of which even Mandeville +himself has been suspected. + +The Pope decreed that not only all that Mandeville related was +veracious, but that the Latin book which his holiness possessed +contained _much more_, 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. + +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 _Ave-Marias_ 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. + +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 _Guarino detto il Meschino_, who lived a year among them to +learn his own genealogy, and then was 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! + +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 +Aelian, or Ctesias,[1] 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 _confirming_ 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 _heard say_ of wise men, it is 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. + +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 saw in +divers figures_;" that is, at the _shapes_ 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. + +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 +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. + +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 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. + +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.[2] + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] CTESIAS, 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 CUVIER, 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. + + [2] 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. + + 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.] + + + + +CHAUCER. + + +In the chronology of our poetical collectors, GOWER takes precedence of +CHAUCER 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. + +The personal history of CHAUCER, 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.[1] The whole +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. + +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. + +By royal patents and grants to the poet, we trace his 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. + +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. + +Chaucer himself has stated, "In _my youth_ I was drawn in to be +assenting to certain _conjurations_ and other _great matters of ruling +of citizens_, and those things have been my _drawers in and exciters_ in +the matters _so painted and coloured_, that _first_ to me seemed then +_noble and glorious for all the people_." + +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 _at first_ appeared to promise so well, +ended in disappointment and "penance in a dark prison." + +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 "_torcentious citizens_." 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 in an age of factions,[2] +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 +THE SHEEPY PEOPLE!" 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. + +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, they who oppose the +court are not necessarily opposing the sovereign. + +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 "TESTAMENT OF LOVE," 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. + +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, infidele a ses convictions, +traitre a son parti, tantot banni, tantot voyageur, tantot en faveur, +tantot 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 "infidele a ses +convictions." + +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 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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-- + + When that the misty vapour was agone, + And clear and fair was the morning, + The dews, like silver, shining + Upon the leaves. + +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. + + Whoso that would freely might gone (go) + Into this Park walled with green stone. + +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 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. + +His + + Garden upon a river in a green mead; + The gravel gold, the water pure as glass, + +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," + + Which in white motley that so swote doth smell. + +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-- + + So loud they sang that all the woodes rung + Like as it should shiver in pieces small, + And as methought that the Nightingale + With so great might her voice out-wrest, + Right as her heart for love would brest (burst). + +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. + +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 Provencal fancy, +and borrowed the clear azure of Italy to soften the British roughness +even of our skies? + +Tyrwhit, the able commentator of Chaucer, has thrown 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." + +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 + + How he lived, for day ne night, + I may not sleep-- + Sitting upright in my bed, + +then it was that he prescribed for his "secret sorrows" that medicine +which, "drunk deeply," makes us forget ourselves. In those hours the +poet + + Bade one reach me a Boke, + A ROMANCE, and he it me took + To read, and drive the Night away; + For methought it better play + Than play either at Chess or Tables. + +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-- + + But I ne cannot boult it to the bren, + As can the holy doctor Augustin, + Or Boece, or _the bishop Bradwardin_. + +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-- + + ---------What causeth Suevenes[3] + On the morrow or on evens? + +he playfully concludes, and modern philosophy could no better assist the +inquiry-- + + ---------Whoso of these Miracles + The causes know bet[4] than I + Define he, for I certainly + Ne can them not, ne never thinke + To busie my witte for to swinke + To know why this is more than that is, + Well worthe of this thing Clerkes, + That treaten of this and of other werkes, + For I, of none opinion + Nil. + +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-- + + Me list not of the chaf, ne of the stre, + Maken so long a tale, as of the corn. + "Man of Lawe's Ta'e." + +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. + +The Herculean labour of CHAUCER 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 Provencal 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 STEPHEN HAWES. 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. + +TYRWHIT has ingeniously constructed a metrical system to arrange the +versification to the ear of a modern 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 E 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-- + + But for the rime is light and lewde, + Yet make it somewhat agreable, + Though some verse fail in a syllable. + +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. + +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 + + Books, songs, ditees + In RIME, or else in CADENCE. + "The House of Fame." + +This circumstance arose from the custom of the age, when poems were +_recited_, and not _read_; 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 +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 Aeneid, was intended to be _sung_ to the harp as +well as _read_, as the poet himself tells us, in addressing his poem--- + + And _redde_ where so thou be, or elles _sung_. + +In the most ancient manuscripts of Chaucer's works the caesura 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. + +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 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." + +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 "DREME," or, +onwards in life, in the "TESTAMENT OF LOVE," 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 "HOUSE OF FAME," with whose fragments Pope reared "The +Temple?" Has all the enchantment of the moonlight-land of chivalry and +fairyism in "THE FLOURE AND THE LEAFE" vanished? Are we no longer to +listen to "THE COMPLAINT OF THE BLACK KNIGHT," which touched a duchess +or a queen? or the stanzas of "THE CUCKOO AND THE NIGHTINGALE," which +musically resound that musical encounter? Is the legend of pathetic +tenderness in the impassioned "TROILUS," 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. + +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. + +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;"[5] 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!"[6] + +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 repulsive +ones--the unnatural passions of Canace and Apollonius Tyrius. Of these +our Chaucer cries,-- + + Of all swiche cursed stories I say, Fy! + +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. + + --------Whoso list not to hear, + Turn over the leaf, and chese another tale! + +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. + +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. OGLE, 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 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. + +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 GOWER, a grave and learned poet, +whose copies are remarkably elegant, has descended to us in a purer +condition than CHAUCER, 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 +URRY, 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 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![7] 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. + +The famous portion of Chaucer's Miscellaneous Volume has been fortunate +in the editorial cares of TYRWHIT. 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.[8] + +It is remarkable that some of the most lively productions of several +great writers have been the work of their maturest 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. + +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, _both great friendes together_." 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] 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 aerial 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 _to state on oath_ that he was + about forty when, in truth, he was fifty-eight!"--Hippisley's + "Chapters on Early English Literature," 85. + + [2] 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." + + [3] Dreams. + + [4] Better. + + [5] Autobiography of an Opium-Eater.--"Tait's Mag." August, 1835. + + [6] Coleridge's "Table-Talk." + + [7] 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-- + + "Love wol not be _constreined_ by maistrie. + Whan maistrie cometh, the _God_ of love anon + _Beteth_ his wings, and _farewel_, he is gon"-- + + from Urry's edition, in which they appear thus transformed and + corrupted: + + Love will not be _confined_ by maisterie. + When maisterie comes, the _Lord_ of love anon + _Flutters_ his wings, and _forthwith_ is he gone. + + [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.--ED.] + + [8] 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.--ED. + + + + +GOWER. + + +In 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,--JOHN GOWER, +the poet. + +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. + +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 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. + + Watte vocat, cui Thome venit, neque Symme retardat, + Betteque, Gibbe simul Hyke venire jubent. + Colle furit, quem Gibbe juvat nocumenta parantes, + Cum quibus ad dampnum Wille coire vovet. + Grigge rapit, dam Dawe strepit, comes est quibus Hobbe, + Lorkin et in medio non minor esse putat. + Hudde ferit, quos Judde terit, dum Tebbe juvatur, + Jacke domos que viros vellit, et ense necat. + + Tom comes, thereat, when called by Wat, and Simon as forward we find; + Bet calls as quick to Gibb, and to Hyck that neither would tarry + behinde. + Gibbe, a good whelp of that litter, doth help mad Coll more mischief + to do, + And Will he doth vow, the time is come now, he'll join with their + company too. + Davie complains whiles Grigg gets the gains, and Hobb with them doth + partake; + Lorkin aloud, in the midst of the crowd, conceiveth as deep is his + stake. + Hudde doth spoil, whom Judde doth foile, and Tebbe lends his helping + hand, + But Jack, the mad-patch, men and horses doth snatch, and kills all at + his command. + +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 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. + +There is a portion in this volume which concerns the personal history of +the poet. + +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, + + To write in such a manner-wise, + Which may be wisdom to the wise, + And play to them that list to play. + +In a word, we have here the great Horatian precept by the intuition of +our earliest poet. + +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. 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. + +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. + +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. + +The marquess was a shrewd though whimsical man, and a favourite of the +king for his frankness and his love of the arts. His lordship +entertained the royal guest with extraordinary magnificence. Among his +rare curiosities was a sumptuous copy of Gower's volume. + +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. + +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. + +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-- + + A king can kill, a king can save; + A king can make a lord a knave; + And of a knave, a lord also. + +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." + +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. + +GOWER was learned, didactic, and dignified. The manuscripts of his works +are usually noble and sumptuous copies; more elegantly written and more +richly illuminated 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. GOWER stamped +with the force of ethical reasoning his smooth rhymes; and this was a +near approach to poetry itself. If in the mind of CHAUCER 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 GOWER, 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. + + + + +PIERS PLOUGHMAN. + + +Contemporary with GOWER and CHAUCER lived the singular author of "The +Visions of William concerning PIERS PLOUGHMAN;" singular in more +respects than one, for his subject, his style, and, we may add, for the +intrepidity and the force of his genius. + +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. + +In character, in execution, and in design, "The Visions of William of +PIERS PLOUGHMAN" are wholly separated from the polished poems of GOWER +and CHAUCER; 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 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. WEBBE, 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." + +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 _leaves the inquirer, +after a long peregrination, still remote from the object of his +search_"--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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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!" + +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? + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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 _the fate of the religious +houses from the hand of a king_. The visionary seer seems to have fallen +on the principle which led Erasmus to predict that "_those who were in +power_" would seize on the rich shrines, because _no other class of men_ +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. + +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, 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 "_corum populo, in eminente loco_."[1] + +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. + +The "VISIONS OF PIERS PLOUGHMAN" will always offer studies for the +poetical artist. This volume, and not Gower's nor Chaucer's, is a well +of English undefiled. SPENSER often beheld these Visions; MILTON, 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. BYRON, +though he has thrown out a crude 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 +_Dowell_ and _Dobet_, and _Dobest_, Friar _Flatterer_, _Grace_ the +Portress of the magnificent Tower of _Truth_ viewed at a distance, and +by its side the dungeon of _Care_, _Natural Understanding_, and his lean +and stern wife _Study_, 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.[2] + +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 Complaint +of the Ploughman;" "The Ploughman's Tale," inserted in Chaucer's volume; +all being equally directed against the vicious clergy of the day. + +"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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] Barrington's "Observations on the more ancient Statutes." + + [2] For the general reader I fear that "The Visions of Piers + Ploughman" must remain a sealed book. The last edition of Dr. + WHITAKER, 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.] + + + + +OCCLEVE; THE SCHOLAR OF CHAUCER. + + +Warton passed sentence on OCCLEVE 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.[1] +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. + +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 +"OCCLEVE has not had his just share of reputation. His writings greatly +assisted the growth of the popularity of our infant poetry."[2] Our +historian has furnished from the manuscripts of OCCLEVE testimonies of +his assertion. + +Among the six poems printed, one of considerable length exhibits the +habits of a dissipated young gentleman in the fourteenth century. + +OCCLEVE 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 the golden shower passed over the heads of +the clerks, dropping nothing into the hands of these innocents. + +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 + + The outward signe of Bacchus and his lure, + That at his dore hangeth day by day, + Exciteth Folk to taste of his moisture + So often that they cannot well say Nay! + +There was another invitation for this susceptible writer of the Privy +Seal. + + I dare not tell how that the fresh repair + Of Venus femel, lusty children dear, + That so goodly, so shapely were, and fair, + And so pleasant of port and of manere. + +There he loitered, + + To talk of mirth, and to disport and play. + +He never "pinched" the taverners, the cooks, the boatmen, and all such +gentry. + + Among this many in mine audience, + Methought I was ymade a man for ever-- + So tickled me that nyce reverence, + That it me made larger of dispence;-- + For Riot payeth largely ever mo; + He stinteth never till his purse be bare. + +He is at length seized amid his jollities, + + By force of the penniless maladie, + Ne lust[3] had none to Bacchus House to hie. + Fy! lack of coin departeth compaignie; + And heve purse with Herte liberal + Quencheth the thirsty heat of Hertes drie, + Where chinchy Herte[4] hath thereof but small. + +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 fare amiss. Such +is the import of the following uncouth verse:-- + + Many a servant unto his Lord saith + That all the world speaketh of him, Honour, + When the contrarie of that is sooth in faith; + And lightly leeved is this Losengour,[5] + His hony wordes wrapped in Errour, + Blindly conceived been, the more harm is, + O thou, FAVELE, of lesynges auctour,[6] + Causest all day thy Lord to fare amiss. + The Combre worldes;[7] 'clept been Enchantours + In Bookes, as I have red----. + +OCCLEVE 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.'"[8] The Letter of +Cupid is thus dated:-- + + Written in the lusty month of May, + In our Paleis where many a million + Of lovers true have habitation, + The yere of grace joyfull and jocund, + A thousand four hundred and second. + +Imagery and imagination are not required in the school of society. +Occleve seems, however, sometimes to have told a tale not amiss, for +WILLIAM BROWN, 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 Provencal, 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,-- + + Metring amiss; + +and when + + He speaks unsyttingly,[9] + Or not by just peys[10] my sentence weigh, + And not to the order of enditing obey, + And my colours set ofte sythe awry. + +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:-- + + Thou wer't acquainted with Chaucer?--Pardie! + God save his soul! + The first finder of our faire langage! + +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 of Chaucer painted on board +in the Bodleian Library.[11] 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.[12] + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] "_Poems by_ THOMAS HOCCLEVE, _never before printed, selected from + a manuscript in the possession of George Mason, with a preface, + notes, and glossary_," 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 _Occleve_, but _Occliffe_, as we find him in Chaucer's + works. + + [2] Turner's "History of England," v. 335. + + [3] No desire. + + [4] Niggardly heart. + + [5] A Chaucerian word, which well deserves preservation in the + language. + + [6] FAVELL, author of "Lyes." FAVELL, the editor of Hoccleve, + explains as _cajolerie_, 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." FAVELE in langue + Romane is Flattery--hence _Fabel_, Fabling.--Roquefort's + "Dictionnaire." The Italian FAVELLIO, parlerie, babil, + caquet--Alberti's "Grand Dictionnaire"--does not wholly convey the + idea of our modern _Humbug_, which combines _fabling_ and _caquet_. + + [7] 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. + + [8] A title which does not appear in the catalogue of his writings by + Ritson, in his "Bibliographia Poetica." + + [9] Unfittingly. + + [10] Weight; probably from the French _poids_. + + [11] 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.--ED. + + [12] 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."-- + + My master Chaucer that founde ful many spot, + Hym lyste not gruche, nor pynch at every blot; + Nor move himself to perturb his reste; + I have perde tolde, but seyd alway his beste. + + LYDGATE's "Troy." + + + + +LYDGATE; THE MONK OF BURY. + + +LYDGATE, 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. + +LYDGATE composed epics, which were the lasting favourites of two whole +centuries--so long were classical repetitions of "Troy" and of "Thebes" +not found irksome.[1] In his graver hours he instructed the world by +ethical descants, Aesopian 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.[2] + +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 DAN LYDGATE 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."[3] And now Mr. +Hallam tells us that "GRAY, 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." + +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," + + Nor rough nor barren are the winding ways + Of hoar Antiquity, but strown with flowers. + +His miniature is exquisitely touched. "He was not only the poet of his +monastery, but of the world in general. If a _disguising_ was intended +by the company of goldsmiths, a _mask_ before his majesty, a _may-game_ +for the sheriffs and aldermen of London, a _mumming_ before the +lord-mayor, a procession of _pageants_ for the festival of Corpus +Christi, or a _carol_ for the coronation, Lydgate was consulted, and +gave the poetry."[4] + +Mr. HALLAM 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." + +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." + +The other modern critics--Ritson, Percy, and Ellis--had but a slight +knowledge of DAN[5] LYDGATE. They have generally acted on the pressure +of the moment, to get up a hasty court of _Pie-poudre_--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--COLERIDGE and GRAY. 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 _the whole of Lydgate's +works from the manuscript extant_, for the almost worthless Gower."[6] +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.[7] 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, THOMAS WARTON. In the neglected quartos of GRAY we +discover that the poet had set earnestly to work on the archaeology 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 +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. + +Our ancient poet seems to be apologising for telling long stories, which +he asserts cannot be told "in wordes few"-- + + For a storye which is not plainly told, + But constreyned under _wordes few_ + For lack of truth, wher they ben new or olde, + Men by reporte cannot the matter shewe; + These oakes greate be not down yhewe + First at a stroke, but by a _long processe_; + Nor long stories a word may not expresse. + + LYDGATE, in his "Fall of Princes." + +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 LYDGATE lived; many a _stroke_ have he and +the best of his contemporaries spent upon _a sturdy old story_, 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 _length_ 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 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 _quickness +and delicate impatience of these polished times_ 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 _circumstance_, has +occasion for the same apology which I am making for Lydgate and for his +predecessors."[8] + +At the monastery of Bury we might have listened to that Gothic monk's +"goodly tale," or "notable proverb of Aesopus" 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. + +Alas! apologies only leave irremediable faults as they were! The +tediousness of Dan Lydgate remains as languid, his verse as halting, and +"Thebes" and "Troy" as desolate, as we found them! + +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] "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. + + [2] 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 _Lick-penny_," more suitable to the misadventures of its + hero,--"London _Lack-penny_," for London could not lick a penny from + the forlorn hero who had not one to offer to it. GROSE, probably + taken by the humorous designation, has placed it among his local + proverbs. + + 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. + + [3] Turner's "Hist. of England," v. + + [4] 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.] + + [5] DAN, as Ritson tells us, is a title given to the individuals of + certain religious orders, from the barbarous Latin _Domnus_, a + variation of _Dominus_, or the French _Dam_, or _Dom_. _Dan_ became a + corruption of _Don_ for _Dominus_. 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 + DON. + + [6] "Literary Remains," ii. 130. + + [7] 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. + + [8] "Gray's Works," by Matthias, ii. p. 60. + + + + +THE INVENTION OF PRINTING + + +Printing 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. + +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 _Origines Typographicae_ 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 Schoeffer, 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![1] + +The mystical eulogist of the art of printing, who declared 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.[2] +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. + +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 _origin of the Art of Printing_, Mentz appears still to +preserve the best-founded claim to the honour of being the _birth-place +of the Typographic Art_; because," he adds, "the specimens adduced in +favour of Haarlem and Strasburg, even if we should allow their +genuineness, are confessedly of _a rude and imperfect execution_." We +require no other evidence of the important 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 _high-minded inventors_ of this great art tried, +at _the very outset_, so bold a flight as the printing _an entire +Bible_. 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."[3] 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.[4] 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! + +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. + +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 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 A.D., 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." + +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 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 DISCOVERIES OF THIS SORT generally +occur ACCIDENTALLY to the mechanics in the exercise of their +calling."[5] 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. + +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. + +Thus it has happened that obscure traditions envelope 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.[6] + +The history of printing illustrates this view of its origin. The +invention has been long ascribed to GUTENBERG, 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 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 Schoeffer 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. + +While these events were occurring, COSTAR, 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. + +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 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. + +FUST 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. + +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. + +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 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;[7] 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.[8] 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. + +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.[9] Even the most philosophic of bibliographers, Daunou, +utters a cry of despair, and moreover, at this late day, 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! + +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 _in aedibus +subterraneis_--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 _every man may have them_ AT ONCE; for all the books of +this story, thus imprinted as ye see, were _begun in one day, and also +finished in one day_." 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 +_all at once_ 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! + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] The city of Haarlem designs to erect a statue of COSTAR [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 _ultima ratio regum_), will + carry conviction on the spot it is placed. Mentz has already erected + a statue of GUTENBERG. 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. + + [2] "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. + + [3] Hallam's "Introduction to the Literature of Europe," i. 211. + + [4] Twenty copies of this famous Bible exist; one is preserved in our + Royal Library. + + [5] Ottley's "Inquiry into the Early History of Engraving." See also + note in "Curiosities of Literature," vol. i, p. 43. + + [6] Dr. WETTER, of Mentz, has lately shown that, contrary to the + common opinion, Gutenberg himself printed long with _wooden blocks_; + and that, instead of the invention of moveable types having been the + result of long study, _it arose out of a "sudden fancy."_ + + 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. + + [7] Dr. Cotton's curious "Typographical Gazetteer," art. OXONIA. 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." + + [8] 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. + + [9] The fourth day of the "Bibliographical Decameron" of Dr. Dibdin + exhibits an ample view of the pending controversies on the "Origines + Typographicae." Every bibliographer has his favourite hero. The reader + will observe that I have none! And yet possibly my tale may be the + truest. + + + + +THE FIRST ENGLISH PRINTER. + + +The 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Our literature was interested in the intellectual character 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. + +The first printed book in the English language was not printed in +England. It is a translation of Raoul 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! + +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. + +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 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. + +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 _the +Company of Booksellers in London_--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 _English tongue_ unless he +have an _Englishman_ that is learned to be his corrector;" and further, +he offers to cancel and reprint any faulty leaf again.[1] + +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 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 Aeneydos 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, _as it seemeth_, no Englishman!" + +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. + +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 Aeneydos." 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 "Aeneydos," 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." + +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 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. + +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.[2] 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 impediment in his selection of authors or his +progress in translation. + +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. + +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] "State Papers of Henry the Eighth," vol. i. 589. + + [2] We have Caxton's own confession in his preface to "The Book of + Aeneydos," or the Aeneid 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," _out of Latin into English_, and + as "one that had read Virgil, Ovid, Tully, and all the other noble + poets and orators to _me unknown_." + + + + +EARLY LIBRARIES. + + +There 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. + +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. + +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 _heures_, and the _offices_ of their +chapels. These monarchs 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. + +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.[1] + +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.[2] 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 +volume,[3] 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.[4] + +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.[5] + +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.[6] + +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 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. + +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 mediaeval 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,[7] 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.[8] + +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, might rouse the curiosity which +many a barren title would repel.[9] + +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. + +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! + +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 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. + +"One thing I liked extremely in one of the towers; that was a STUDY +called PARADISE; 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." + +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. + +[Illustration: _King's Library, British Museum_ + +London, Frederick Warne & C^o.] + +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; 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. + +We have a catalogue of the library of Mary Queen of Scots, as delivered +up to her son James the Sixth, in 1578,[10] 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. + +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] "Essai Historique sur la Bibliotheque du Roi," par M. Le Prince. + + [2] 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." + + [3] 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 Francois, en un volume, qui ce commence de + Genesis, et traite du fait des Romains, de la vie des SS. Peres + Hermites, et de Merlin." + + [4] "Hist. de l'Academie Royale des Inscriptions," tome i. 421, 12mo. + + [5] It has, within the last few years, been added to the British + Museum.--ED. + + [6] _Dame_ was the lady of the knight; the _Damoiselle_, the wife of + an esquire; _Dameisel_, or _Damoiseau_, was a youth of noble + extraction, but who had not yet attained to knighthood.--Rocquefort, + "Glossaire de la Langue Romane." + + [7] Ritson's "Dissertation on Romance and Minstrelsy," lxxxi. + + [8] See an "Essay on English Monastic Libraries," by that learned and + ingenious antiquary, the Rev. Joseph Hunter. + + [9] 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." + + [10] Dibdin's "Bibliographical Decameron," iii. 245. + + + + +HENRY THE SEVENTH. + + +There 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. + +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. + +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.[1] 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." + +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. + +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 +_Insulaires_; 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. + +The king, delighting in poetry, fostered an English muse in the learned +rhyme of STEPHEN HAWES, 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. + +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. + +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 a 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."[2] +"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. + +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. + +This allegorical romance is imbued with Provencal 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, _Grace_ and _Governance_. She is Fame, her palfrey is +Pegasus, and her burning tongues are the voice of Posterity! There are +some 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! + +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. + + Her shining hair, so properly she dresses, + Aloft her forehead, with fayre golden tresses; + Her forehead stepe, with fayre browes ybent; + Her eyen gray; her nose straight and fayre; + In her white cheeks, the faire bloude it went + As among the white, the redde to repayre; + Her mouthe right small; her breathe sweet of ayre; + Her lippes soft and ruddy as a rose; + No hart alive but it would him appose. + With a little pitte in her well-favoured chynne; + Her necke long, as white as any lillye, + With vaynes blewe, in which the bloude ranne in; + Her pappes rounde, and thereto right pretye; + Her armes slender, and of goodly bodye; + Her fingers small, and thereto right longe, + White as the milk, with blewe vaynes among; + Her feet proper; she gartred well her hose; + I never sawe so fayre a creature. + +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] Speed's "History," 995. + + [2] 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_l._, 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_l._ 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. SOUTHEY, 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.] + + + + +FIRST SOURCES OF MODERN HISTORY. + + +Society 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.[1] Had it not +been for the monks, exclaimed our learned Marsham, we should not have +had a history of England. + +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. + +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 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." + +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 _Les grandes Chroniques de Saint Denys_ 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 dearth of literature the classical models of antiquity were +yet imperfectly contemplated. + +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. + +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 encyclopaedic +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" into +the "Polychronicon," and had only laid a trap for posterity by his +treacherous acrostics![2] + +These universal chroniclers usually opened, _ab initio_, 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. + +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.[3] In some respects their history +sinks to the level 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. + +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. HALL, 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. + +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. + +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 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] 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." + + These were our earliest Chronicles; the Britons possibly never wrote + any. + + [2] 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. + + [3] We have an elegant modern version of this monk's history by the + Rev. J. Sharpe. + + + + +ARNOLDE'S CHRONICLE. + + +Very 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." + +In conveying a notion of a jumble,[1] though the things themselves are +sufficiently grave, we cannot avoid a ludicrous association; yet this +should not lessen the value of its information. + +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. + +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." + +The critical decision of Warton is much too searching for a volume in +which the compiler never wrote a single 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.[2] 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 +CHRONICLE. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] In Oldys' "British Librarian" there is an accurate analysis of + the work, in which every single article is enumerated. + + [2] A similar volume to Arnolde's may be found in the "Harl. MSS.," + No. 2252. + + + + +THE FIRST PRINTED CHRONICLE. + + +The 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, ROBERT FABYAN. 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." + +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 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." + +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." + +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 might make a long rehearsal_, 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 _Sainte +Ampoule_. 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 _Sainte Ampoule_, 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. + +But the dotage of FABYAN 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 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. + +Indulging too often the civic curiosity of "a citizen and alderman," +FABYAN has been taunted for troubling posterity. "FABYAN," 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." + +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. + +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. + +The faculties of Fabyan were more level with their 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. + +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. FABYAN 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 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. + +The Chronicle of FABYAN 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. + +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. FABYAN truly was _ter Catholicus_; 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.[1] 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 trentballs--that is, thirty masses thrice told--were to be +chorused by the Grey Friars; six priests were to perform the high mass, +chant the requiem, and recite the _De Profundis_ and the _Dirige_; and +for nine years, on his mortuary day, he charges his "tenement in +Cornhill" to pay for an _Obite_! 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 _De Profundis_ from the +Psalter, the innocents were to cry forth a _Pater-Noster_ or an _Ave_! +There was a purveyance of ribs of beef and mutton and ale, "stock-fish, +if Lent," and other recommendations for "the comers to the _Dirige_ 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. + +The Chronicle of FABYAN 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 FABYAN 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. + +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 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 +_virtues_ be rehearsed," which they delicately reduced to _verses_. 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 _martyred_ +the blessed Archbishop;" our corrector of the press simply reads, "They +slew the traitorous Bishop." The _omissions_ and the commissions in the +Chronicle of FABYAN 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 FABYAN had +been "_modernized_" in later editions, his observation would seem to +have extended no further than to the style: but the style of FABYAN 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. + + +FOOTNOTE: + + [1] 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. + + + + +HENRY THE EIGHTH; HIS LITERARY CHARACTER. + + +Peace 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. + +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.[1] Trained +from his early days in scholastic 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.[2] + +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. + +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, 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. + +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 haughty prelate would willingly have +suppressed the editor in his own person. THYNNE was an intimate +acquaintance of SKELTON, whose caustic rhymes of "Colin Clout" had been +concocted at his country-house. THYNNE, 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. + +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. + +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." + +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 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 WOMEN LOVE BOOKS." 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 _musarum domicilium_. 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. + +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 _quelle bestie Inglesi_. +Raphael and Titian could not be 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. + +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.[3] 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] 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 amicitiae.'"--I + found this inscription in one of the notes of Selden to the + "Polyolbion" of Drayton. + + [2] 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." + + [3] Sir John Hawkins' "History of Music," vol. ii. + + + + +BOOKS OF THE PEOPLE. + + +The 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. + +Before the people had national books they had national songs. Even at a +period so obscure as the days of Charlemagne there were "_most ancient +songs_, 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 _barbara et +antiquissima carmina_; "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. + +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."[1] 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.[2] This was a ballad sung to the people, as +appears by the opening line,-- + + Sitteth all stille, and harkeneth to me! + +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.[3] + +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 +ROBERT of GLOUCESTER wrote his Chronicle, and that ROBERT of BRUNNE +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 naivete 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; + + Not for the lerid, but the lewed;[4] + +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) + + The state of the land, and haf it written. + +The Hermit of Hampole expressly wrote his theological poems for the +people, for those who could understand only English. + +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 Aesopian 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 HALL aptly describes as + + Sung to the wheel, and sung unto the payle.[5] + +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;[6] +such as the popular Fabliaux, which form the amusing collection of Le +Grand. + +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 encyclopaedia for the poor man, +and even for some of his betters. + +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 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. + +In France their "bibliotheque 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.[7] 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 _Volksbuecher_, or "the people's books." + +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.[8] "Reynard the Fox"--a most amusing Aesopian +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.[9] + +This political fiction has been traced in several languages 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, CASTI, seems to have +borrowed the plan of his famous political satire "Gl' Animali Parlanti" +from Reynard the Fox. + +The Germans have occasionally borrowed from us, as we also from the +Italian jest-books, many of our "tales and quick answers;" the facetiae +of Poggius and Domenichi, and others, have been a fertile source of our +own. + +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. + +The genealogy of many a tale, as well as the humours 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. + +"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.[10] 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. + +The people, however, did not advance much in intelligence, 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 facetiae, 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,[11] 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" 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 has been handed down to us the term of "MERRY-ANDREW." + +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. + +"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. + +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 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. + +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 +_amende honorable_. 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. + +"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.[12] + +All these books, written for the people, were at length consumed by the +hands of their multitudinous readers; we learn, indeed, in Anthony a +Wood's time, that some had descended to the stalls; but at the present +day some 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] Mr. Ellis has preserved it entire, with notes which make it + intelligible to any modern reader. + + [2] 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." + + [3] 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.] + + [4] _Lewed_ Mr. Campbell interprets _low_, which is not quite + correct. Hearne explains the term as signifying "the laity, laymen, + and the illiterate."--The _layman_ was always considered to be + _illiterate_, by the devices of the monks. + + [5] It is to be regretted that Mr. JAMIESON, in his "Popular + Ballads," was unavoidably prevented enlarging this class of his + songs. He has given the carols of the _Boatmen_, the _Corn-grinders_, + and the _Dairy-women_.--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."] + + [6] Hearne's "Preface to Peter Langtoft's Chronicle," xxxvii. + + [7] 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 Litterature du Colportage," (Paris, + 1854,) by M. Chas. Nisard, who was appointed to the task by a Royal + Commission.--ED. + + [8] "Foreign Quarterly Review," vol. 18. [It is reprinted in the + first Volume of Thoms' "Early English Prose Romances."] + + [9] It has been frequently reprinted, and recently in Germany, as a + _livre de luxe_, illustrated with admirable designs by Kaulbach.--ED. + + [10] 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. + + [11] 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. + + 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. + + [12] 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 "Reponse aux Impertinences de + l'Aposte Capitaine Vigoureux," by Olivier, 1617. The fire was kept up + by an ally of Olivier, in "Replique a 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. + + + + +THE DIFFICULTIES EXPERIENCED BY A PRIMITIVE AUTHOR. + + +Sir 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. + +ELYOT 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. + +This amiable scholar had been introduced at Court early in life; his +"great friend and crony was Sir Thomas More;" so plain Anthony a 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." + +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. + +His first elaborate work is entitled, "The Boke of the Governor, devised +by Sir Thomas Elyot," 1531,--a work once so popular, that it passed +through seven or eight editions, and is still valued by the collectors +of our ancient literature. + +"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. + +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. + +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, "holding each other by the +hand," indicate the order, concord, prudence, and other virtues so +necessary for the common weal. The _singles_ and _reprinses_ 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 _idea_, 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 _Veneur_, 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, (_joyeusete, +liesse, et deduit_,) 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." + +"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 _Cortegiano_ 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," 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. + +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." + +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 _persifleurs_, 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 _magnificat_." 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. + +In this early attempt to cultivate "the vulgar tongue," 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 _maturity_--"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 Caesar, it seems, had +frequently in his mouth this word _matura_--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 _redolent_ savours of sweet herbs and flowers." But his ear +was not always musical, and some of his neologisms are less +graceful--"_an alective_," to wit; "_fatigate_," to fatigue; "_ostent_," +to show, and to "_sufficate_ 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. + +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 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. + +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! + +The author has told his amusing story in the preface to a third edition, +in 1541. + +"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." + +But there was no shame in studying this science, or setting forth any +book, being-- + +"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. + +"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." + +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 +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. + +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. + +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 _to +reconcile myself to mine old studies_." + +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 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. + +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 _usque ad +aras_, 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. + +The literary history of Sir THOMAS ELYOT 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. + + + + +SKELTON. + + +At 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 + + Mine homely rudeness and dryness. + +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,-- + + Though my rime be ragged, + Tattered and jagged, + Rudely rain-beaten, + Rusty, moth-eaten, + If ye take well therewith, + It hath in it some pith. + +Whether Skelton really adopted the measures of the old tavern-minstrelsy +used by harpers, who gave "a fit 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,[1] 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. + +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 +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."[2] + +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[3] distinguishes him as "the +Inventive Skelton," and we find the following full-length portrait of +him by another:--[4] + + A poet for his art, + Whose judgment sure was high, + And had great practise of the pen, + His works they will not lie; + His termes to taunts did leane, + His talk was as he wrate, + Full quick of wit, right sharpe of wordes, + And skilful of the state; + + * * * * * + + And to the hateful minde, + That did disdaine his doings still, + A scorner of his kinde. + +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 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:-- + + Our natural tongue is rude, + And hard to be enneude + With polished termes lusty; + Our language is so rusty, + So cankered, and so full + Of frowards, and so dull, + That if I would apply + To write ordinately, + I wot not where to find + Terms to serve my mind. + +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. + +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-- + + Seldom out of prince's grace. + +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. + +Skelton was an ecclesiastic who was evidently among 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. + +"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 WILLIAM ROY, a friar; the genius, though +not the zeal, of ROY and SKELTON 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;[5] the author, however, +escaped out of the country. + +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-- + + To bear in hand, therein to read, + +and he translated Diodorus Siculus-- + + Six volumes engrossed, it doth contain. + +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,"[6] 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. + +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 side of +Lesbia's Bird, and, for its playfulness, by the Vert Vert of Gresset. + +But Skelton was never more vivid than in his Ale-wife, and all + + The mad mummyng + Of Elynour Rummyng,-- + +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.[7] "The Tunnyng of Elynoure Rummyng" is a remarkable production +of THE GROTESQUE, 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,[8] 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. + +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 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?" + +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." + +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. + +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 Tragedy of the State has been acted while +we were only lookers-on before a stage erected for the popular gaze.[9] + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] 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. + + 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,-- + + ----In a bravado, + Spent many a crusado. + + 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. + + [2] Sterne. + + [3] Henry Bradshaw. "Warton," iii. 13. + + [4] Thomas Churchyard. + + [5] 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. + + [6] It has passed through a reprint by the Roxburgh Club. + + [7] A noble amateur laid on the shrine of this antiquated beauty + 20_l._ 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." + + [8] Roscoe's "Lorenzo de' Medici," i. 290. + + [9] 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.] + + + + +THE SHIP OF FOOLS. + + +The 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. + +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. + +The severity of this decision, we own, is that of a critic of the +nineteenth century on an author of the sixteenth. + +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 _plaisanteries_--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 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. + +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. + +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 _Libro +dell' Cortigiano_; and La Casa, by his _Galateo_, 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. + +"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, of that age of simplicity which must precede an +age of refinement. + +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 _ad hominum_, 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. + +"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. + +The edition of 1570 of the "Ship of Fooles"[1] contains other +productions of Barclay. In his "Eclogues,"[2] our good priest, who did +not write, as he says, "for the laud of man," indulged his ethical and +theological vein in pastoral 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. + +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] 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. + + [2] 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.--ED. + + + + +THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTER OF SIR THOMAS MORE. + + +If 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 THOMAS MORE, 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." + +This mirthful mind had, indeed, settled on his features. ERASMUS, who +has furnished us with an enamelled portrait of MORE, 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." MORE, however, would assume +a solemn countenance when on the point of throwing out some facetious +stroke. He has so 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."[1] + +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. + +The grave and sullen pages of the polemical labours of MORE, 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 MORE 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." + +The massive folio of Sir THOMAS MORE'S "English Works"[2] 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. + +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 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. + +MORE, 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. + +MORE 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 THOMAS MORE 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. + +Domestic affection in all its naive simplicity dictated the artless +record of Roper, the companion of More, for sixteen years, and the +husband of his adored daughter Margaret.[3] 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.[4] More +than one beadsman, the votaries of their martyr, have consecrated his +memory even with their legendary faith;[5] while recent and more +philosophical writers have expatiated on the wide theme, and have +repeated the story of this great Chancellor of England.[6] + +"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 DEATH, where under his "misshapen +feet" lay the sage old man; then came "the Lady FAME," boasting that she +had survived death, and would preserve the old man's name "by the voice +of the people." But FAME was followed by TIME, "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 TIME; Time itself was mortal! and the eighth pageant +revealed the triumph of ETERNITY. The 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. + +MORE in his youth was a true poet; but in his active life he soon +deserted these shadows of the imagination. + +A modern critic has regretted, that, notwithstanding the zeal of his +biographers, we would gladly have been better acquainted with MORE'S +political life, his parliamentary speeches, his judicial decrees, and +his history as an ambassador and a courtier. + +There is not, however, wanting the most striking evidence of MORE'S +admirable independence in all these characters. I fix on his +parliamentary life. + +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 MORE was chosen the Speaker of the Commons, he addressed +Henry the Eighth on the important subject of _freedom of debate_. 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 uttered otherwise; and yet no worse will had he when he +spake it, than he had when he would gladly change it." + +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. MORE +suggested, that as WOLSEY 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 WOLSEY turned to him. MORE, 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 +_re infecta_. Shortly after, WOLSEY in his gallery at Whitehall told +MORE, "Would to God you had been at Rome, Mr. More, when I made you +Speaker!" "So would I too!" replied MORE; 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." + +This was a customary artifice with MORE. 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 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. + +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." + +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!" + +MORE 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 +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!" + +No one was more sensible than MORE 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 THOMAS +MORE. All this, however, lies on the surface. The antagonists of MORE +were not less free, nor more refined. MORE 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. + +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 MORE 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. + +The impending Reformation was hastened by a famous invective in the form +of "The Supplication of Beggars." 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." + +MORE 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. + +MORE 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. + +With MORE "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 _lies_ as the beggar +swarmeth full of _lice_. We neither will nor shall need to make much +business about this matter; we trust much better in the goodness of good +men." + +The marriage of the clergy was no doubt at first abused by some. MORE +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."[7] + +Such is the ludicrous ribaldry which runs through the polemical works of +Sir THOMAS MORE: 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." + +Writers who decide on other men and on other times by the spirit of +their own, try human affairs by a false standard. MORE 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."[8] + +Such were considered as the evidences of the true faith of the +Romanists; but MORE 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. + +"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 MORE and SHAKSPEAKE +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 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 +MORE 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.[9] + +The "UTOPIA" of Sir THOMAS MORE, 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,[10] 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. + +This famous work was written at no immature period of life, for MORE 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. MORE himself has adjudged the book "no better +worthy than to lye always in his own island, or else to be consecrated +to Vulcan." + +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, 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. + +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." + +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."[11] 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. A conversation of five minutes might have settled the +difference, for they only varied about the precise time! + +In that great revolution which was just opening in his latter days, MORE +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 MORE, by what insensible gradations is a secret +which must lie in his grave. + +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] "Sir Thomas More's Workes," 127. + + [2] "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. + + [3] 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. + + [4] 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. + + [5] _Tres Thomae._ The three Thomases are, Aquinas, a 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. + + [6] 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. + + [7] Works, fo. 346. + + [8] "Works of Sir Thomas More," 113, col. 2. + + [9] 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. + + [10] 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. + + [11] "Sir Thomas More's Workes," 348. + + + + +THE EARL OF SURREY AND SIR THOMAS WYATT. + + +Not many years intervened between the uncouth gorgeousness of HAWES, the +homely sense of BARCLAY, the anomalous genius of SKELTON, and the pure +poetry of Henry Howard the EARL of SURREY. In the poems of SURREY, and +his friend, Sir Thomas Wyatt,[1] 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. + +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 +"purpure, aureate, pulchritude, celature, facunde," and so many others, +laborious nothings! filling the verse with noise. The contemplative and +tender SURREY charms by opening some picturesque scene or dwelling on +some impressive incident. He had discerned the error of those +inartificial 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. SURREY +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. + +These rare qualities in a poet at such a period would of themselves form +an era in our literature; but SURREY also extended their limits; the +disciple of Chaucer was also the pupil of Petrarch, and the Earl of +SURREY composed the _first sonnets_ 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. + +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,[2] and Surrey perished +in the January of that year. It was indeed long a common opinion that +Trissino invented the _versi sciolti_, 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 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, _without the curiosity of +rhyme_." + +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. + +Could the life, or what we have of late called the psychological +history, of this poetic Earl of SURREY 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. + +The youth of SURREY, and his life, hardly passed beyond that period, +betrayed the buoyancy of a spirit 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, + + ----------Who saw Kelsal blaze, + Landrecy burnt, and battered Boulogne render; + At Montreuil's gate hopeless of a recure (recovery), + +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. + +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 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 SURREY. 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. + +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. + +The poems of SURREY 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. + +The secret history of SURREY was at length revealed, and the gravity of +its discloser vouched for its authenticity. Who would doubt the +testimony of plain Anthony a Wood? + +SURREY 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 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. + +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!" + +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. + +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 the incident of the magical mirror, but adds that "the +imagination of Surrey was _heated anew_ by this _interesting +spectacle_!" 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 _few anecdotes_ 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!" + +And it was a romance! and it served for history many a year![3] This +tale of literary delusion may teach all future investigators into +obscure points of history to probe them by dates. + +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. + +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 _phantastical treatise_ I +can promise is some _reasonable conveyance of history_, and variety of +mirth." Must we trust to their conscience for "the reasonable +conveyance?" + +We now trace the whole progress of this literary delusion. + +On Surrey's ideal passion, and on this passage misconceived-- + + From Tuscan came my lady's worthy race; + Fair Florence was sometime her ancient seat-- + +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 aerial journey in this +business of love and chivalry. + +This romance, of which it is said only three copies are known, was +published in 1594. Four years after, DRAYTON, 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 +a 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 +_Athenae Oxonienses_. A single moment of scrutiny would have detected the +whole fabricated narrative; but there is a charm in romance which +bewitched our luckless Anthony. + +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. + +Not one of these writers was informed of what recent researches have +demonstrated. They knew not that this 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 _seven_ years of age! that Surrey's first love broke +out when she was _nine_; that he declared his passion when she was about +_thirteen_; and finally, that Geraldine, having attained to the womanly +discretion of _fifteen_, 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. + +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. + +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 +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 +DE FOE, 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 a Wood had felicitously succeeded in his historical authority of +Tom Nash's "Life of Jack Wilton." + +In the story of SURREY and WYATT, one circumstance is too precious to be +passed over. WYATT 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 caesura; 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. + +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. + + Who list to hunt? I know where is an hind! + But as for me alas! I may no more, + The vain travail hath wearied me so sore; + I am of them that furthest come behind. + Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt, + As well as I may spend his time in vain; + Graven with diamonds, in letters plain, + There is written, her fair neck round about-- + "Noli me tangere, for Caesar's I am, + _And wild to hold, though I seem tame_." + +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 WYATT 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. + +WYATT 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. + +WYATT excelled SURREY 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. + +WIAT, 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 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. + +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. + +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 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 + + A head, where Wisdom's mysteries did frame, + Whose hammers beat still in that lively brain, + As on a stithy,[4] where some work of fame + Was daily wrought. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] "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. + + [2] "Tiraboschi," vol. vii.--Haym's "Bibliotheca Italiani." When + Conybeare communicated the same information to Dr. Bliss, it must + have been derived from Warton. + + [3] 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! + + [4] The smith's forge. + + + + +THE SPOLIATION OF THE MONASTERIES. + + +Incidents 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. + +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. + +As the scheme was managed, therefore, it was a compromise 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. + +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:[1] 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 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." + +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. + +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, 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. + +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. + +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." + +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.[2] He had, +indeed, already 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 _mumpsimus_, and others too busy and +curious in their new _sumpsimus_.[3] 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?" + +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 _a daily mass_, there to be read _perpetually while +the world shall endure_." At the same time Henry endowed the poor +knights of Windsor, 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. + +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. + +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] 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_l._" 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. + + [2] See an abstract from one of his Proclamations in "Curiosities of + Literature," vol. iii. p. 373.--ED. + + [3] This alludes to the well-known story of the old priest, who + having blunderingly used _mumpsimus_ for _sumpsimus_, would never be + put right, alleging that "he hated all novelties." + + + + +A CRISIS AND A REACTION. ROBERT CROWLEY. + + +There 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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.[1] + +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 _autos da fe_. 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 _The Whore of +Babylon_, and the _The False Gods_; but the brawls of polemics, at +least, are more tolerable than torture and the sacrifice of fire. + +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," wrote the learned +Cheke, in once addressing an armed multitude, who cruelly would not +tolerate the Christianity of their neighbours. + +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! + +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 on +the heart, and carried on a religion that was not religious. + +The introduction of _preaching_ 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 +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. + +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 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.[2] + +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. + +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; +and we listen to all their cries in the single voice of such a man. + +And such a man was ROBERT CROWLEY, 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. + +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? + +Crowley is the author of many controversial pieces, and 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. + +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. + +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 _Oppressors of the +Commoners of this Realm_. Compiled and imprinted for this only purpose, +that among them that have to do in the Parliament, 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. + +Who are "the oppressors of the poor commoners?" All the orders in +society! the clergy--the laity--and, above all, "the Possessioners!" + +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 _Possessioners_ were contented and +very willing _to sell their possessions, and give the price thereof to +be common to all the faithful believers_." 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 _it should not need to have all +things made common_." 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. + +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 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. + +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 +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. + +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. + +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 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 _carnaliter_ and +_corporaliter_; 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 _realiter_ and _substantialiter_. + +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. + +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 _hocus pocus_. This +familiar phrase, Anthony Wood informs 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! + +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. + +But the Marians also burned books, as likewise men! + +The funeral of the schoolmen carried on their biers was too recent to be +forgotten; and in return, all Bibles in 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. + +The history of this mutable period is remarkably shown in the singular +incident of Catherine, the wife of Peter Martyr, and St. Frideswide. + +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 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 philosopher his ambiguous style +will not assure us, inscribed this epitaph:-- + + _Hic jacet Religio cum Superstitione._ + +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? + +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 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! + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] It will be found in the additional manuscripts at the British + Museum. + + [2] See an article on Psalms in vol. ii. of "Curiosities of + Literature."--ED. + + + + +PRIMITIVE DRAMAS. + + +Scriptural dramas, composed by the ecclesiastics, furnished the nations +of Europe with the only drama they possessed during many centuries. +Voltaire ingeniously suggested, that GREGORY of Nazianzen, to wean the +Christians of Constantinople from the dramas of Greece and Rome, +composed sacred dramas; _The Passion of Christ_ 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.[1] 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. + +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.[2] + +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. + +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 _sing_;" but our learned Jesuit will not venture even to surmise +that "the virgin and the angel" _acted_ their parts, but merely chanted +a poem.[3] The literary antiquary Signorelli inclines to fix the +uncertain date of the first sacred drama so late as in 1445.[4] 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.[5] 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. + +The earliest of these representations necessarily would be in Latin,[6] +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 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 _vernacular idiom_. 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! + +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 ROMANCE, and were caught up by the Trouveres, 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. + +These primeval dramas are not inconsiderable objects in the philosophy +of literary history. In England,[7] 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 _Autos Sacramentales_ +still form a source of amusement and edification to the pilgrims at the +Shrine of St. Jago de Compostella, which it seems still receives such +visitors.[8] + +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,[9] 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.[10] Such was +the concourse of spectators, and indeed the performers were 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"[11] 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;[12] 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. + +These mysteries abound with a licentiousness to which 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."[13] 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. + +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 _French_ +language; but in this state they could not deeply delight the great body +of the Saxon people.[14] The monk, Ralph Higden, under the influence of +that national spirit which 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 _English_ for the people.[15] 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." + +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 MORALITY, or moral +play.[16] 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, 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. + +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 INTERLUDE, or +"_a play between_," to zest by its pleasantry the intervals of a +luxurious, and sometimes a wearisome, banquet. The most dramatic +interludes were the invention of JOHN HEYWOOD, the jester of Henry the +Eighth. The Scottish Bard, Douglas, the Bishop of Dunkeld, alludes to +these interludes, in his "Paleys of Honour." + + Grete was the preis the feast royal to sene, + At ease they eat, with INTERLUDES between.[17] + +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 Cimabue, 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. + +The mystery and the morality lingered among us; but in the improved +taste and literature of the court of Henry the Eighth, the facetious +INTERLUDE, 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 _The Passion of Christ_, always an affecting drama; and it +was again represented before this select audience: and on St. Olave's +day, the truly "miracle-play" of that legendary saint was enacted in the +church dedicated to the saint.[18] + +The history of the INTERLUDE 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. + +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.[19] 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."[20] +"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;[21] 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 +Eighth, we have the sacred drama of _Every-man_, 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 _Lusty Juventus_, 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."[22] 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 _reformation_ 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. + +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 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 Valliere 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, _Le Marchand Converti_, in +1558; and _Le Pape Malade et tirant a sa Fin_, in 1561. Allowing largely +for the gross invectives of the Calvinist--"_les impietes_"--they +display an original comic invention, and sparkle with the most lively +sallies.[23] It is remarkable that _Le Marchand Converti_, 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] 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, A.D. 572. The dramatist, however, + was an ecclesiastic, and that point only is important on the present + occasion. + + [2] TERTULLIAN, CHRYSOSTOM, LACTANTIUS, CYPRIAN, 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 PRYNNE 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 + Theatres," does not fail to appeal to the great schoolman. + + [3] "Tiraboschi," iv. + + [4] 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 _The Damned Soul_, 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. + + [5] See the note and this extraordinary blunder in _Fabliaux_, ii. + 152. + + [6] 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.--ED.] + + [7] 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. + + [8] Bouterwek. + + [9] The clergy long continued to assist at these exhibitions, if they + did not always act in them. In 1417, an _English Mystery_ was + exhibited before the Emperor Sigismund, at the Council of Constance, + on the usual subject of the Nativity. The _English Bishops_ had it + rehearsed several days, that the actors might be perfect before their + imperial audience. We are not told in what language their _English + Mystery_ 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. + + [10] The Spanish nation, unchangeable in their customs, have retained + the last remains of the ancient Mysteries in the divisions of their + dramas, called "Jornadas." + + [11] "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. + + [12] "Reliques of Ancient Poetry," i. 129. + + [13] "Dictionnaire de l'Academie Francaise."--The proverbial phrase + is accompanied by a very superfluous remark--"Ce mot a passe d'usage + avec les moeurs de ces temps anciens." See also "Dict. de Trevoux," + art. _Mystere_. + + [14] That the translation of the "Chester Plays" was made from the + _French_, and not from the _Latin_, 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. + + 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. + + The best account we have of Ralph Higden may be found in the _first_ + volume of Lardner's Cyclopaedia on "The Early History of the English + Stage," a work of some original research, at page 193. + + [15] The earliest and rudest known miracle-play in English has been + published by Mr. Halliwell--_The Harrowing of Hell_. It was written + in the reign of Edward the Second, and is a curious instance of the + childhood of the drama. + + [16] 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.--_Collier_, i. 23. + + [17] The reader may gratify his curiosity, and derive considerable + amusement, from the skilful analysis of primitive dramas, both + manuscript and printed, which Mr. COLLIER 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 + Cyclopaedia,--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 _Sotties_, + and whose chief personage takes the quality of _Prince des Sots_; and + _La Mere Sotte_, who is represented with her infant _Sots_. These + pieces still retained their devout character, with an intermixture of + profane and burlesque scenes, highly relished by the populace. "Ils + le nommerent par un quolibet vulgaire, _Jeux de Pois pilez_, et ce + fut selon toutes les apparences a cause de melange du sacre et du + profane qui regnait dans ces sortes de jeux." The cant phrase which + the people coined for this odd mixture of sacred and farcical + subjects, of _Mashed Peas_, 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 + _Sotties_ were acted by a brotherhood calling themselves _Enfans sans + Soucy_.--Parfait, "Hist. du Theatre Francais," i. 52. One of their + chief composers was PIERRE GRINGOIRE, of whose rare _Sotties_ I have + several reprints by the learned Abbe Caron. Gringoire invented and + performed his _Sotties_, 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." + + [18] Strype's "Mem. of Eccles. Hist.," iii. 379. + + [19] "Annals of the Stage," i. 107. + + [20] Warton's "Hist. of Eng. Poetry," iii. 428, 8vo. + + [21] Rastell's "Collection of Statutes," fo. 32--d. + + [22] Both these ancient dramas are reprinted in Hawkins' "Origin of + the English Drama." Many such dramas remain in manuscript. + + [23] "Bibliotheque du Theatre Francais," iii. 263, ascribed to the + Duke de la Valliere. 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 _les personnes scrupuleuses_, 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. + + + + +THE REFORMER BISHOP BALE; AND THE ROMANIST JOHN HEYWOOD, THE COURT +JESTER. + + +BALE, Bishop of Ossory, and JOHN HEYWOOD, 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 BALE, the gravest reformer, and the +inflexible Catholic HEYWOOD, noted for "his mad merry wit," form one of +those remarkable disparities which the history of literature sometimes +offers. + +BALE 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; +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. + +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.[1] + +Of JOHN HEYWOOD, 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 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 _entree_ 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."[2] 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. + +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, 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. + +The genius of HEYWOOD created "The Merrie Interlude;" unlike BALE, 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.[3] + +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. + +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 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." + +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 _The Play of the Weather_, 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 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] 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." + + [2] 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. + + [3] Dodsley's "Old Plays," vol. i. + + + + +ROGER ASCHAM. + + +It would, perhaps, have surprised ROGER ASCHAM, 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. + +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. + +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." + +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. + +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 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 _the gentlemen and yeomen of England_. +As for the Latin and Greek tongue, everything is so excellently done in +them that none can do better; _in the English tongue_, contrary, +_everything in a manner so meanly, both for the matter and handling, +that no man can do worse_." + +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. + +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. 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. + +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. + +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. + +"The Schoolmaster," with its humble title, "to teach 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.[1] + +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. + +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 Graeci," 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 _traits_ mark the boon +companion loving his leisure and his lounge. + +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. + +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. + +There is, however, reason to conclude, that he himself was not +insensible to these higher claims which his station 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." + +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;[2] and Warton is indignant 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 +THOMAS ELYOT and Sir THOMAS MORE, the volume of ASCHAM 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] 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." + + [2] Baretti's "Account of the Manners of Italy," ii. 137--the most + curious work of this Anglo-Italian. + + + + +PUBLIC OPINION. + + +How long has existed that numerous voice which we designate as "Public +Opinion;" which I shall neither define nor describe? + +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. + +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. + +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."[1] I do not recollect whether it was on this +occasion that his majesty saluted his faithful Commons as "brutes!" but +the burly tyrant treated them as such. The penalty of their debates was +to be their heads; therefore this important bill passed _nemine +contradicente_! + +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 _our own natural English tongue_," was a +_coup-d'etat_, 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. + +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 ranks were +absolutely forbidden to read it, or to have it read to them.[2] + +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. + +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.[3] Property had changed hands, and +taken new directions; and independent classes in society were rising +fast. + +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 _Romeo and Juliet_ 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.[4] + +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 +_a new gentry_, 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.[5] + +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 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." + +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. + +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 "_the_ PEOPLE had conceived a wonderful hatred against +GENTLEMEN whom they held as _their enemies_." The king seems distinctly +to distinguish the gentry from the nobility. + +In the decline of the great households a result, however, 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." + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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." + +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. + +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. + +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. Shakespeare alludes to this passion of the times: + + Some to the wars, to try their fortune there; + Some to discover islands far away. + +If our Drake was considered by the Spaniard as the most terrible of +pirates, in England he was admired as 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. + +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 RICHARD +HAKLUYT 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 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 HAKLUYT'S immense collection. + +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. + +"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 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. + +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: + + A French head join'd to neck Italian; + His thighs from Germany, his breast from Spain; + An Englishman in none, a fool in all. + +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 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. + +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 was +the royal Elizabeth still brooding over the gloomy recollection. + +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." + +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] Spelman's "History of Sacrilege." + + [2] 34 Henry VIII. + + [3] Hallam's "Constitution of England," i. 8, 4to. + + [4] 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. + + [5] "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 _The Metamorphosis of Ajax_. + + + + +ORTHOGRAPHY AND ORTHOEPY. + + +Some 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 _orthography_, 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. + +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. + + "_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._" + +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. + +"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." + +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 duplication of redundant consonants, +they were augmenting the force, even of a monosyllable![1] + +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 +_sovereign_. 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 _Leicester_, yet spelt his name _Lecester_; and Leicester +himself has subscribed his own name eight different ways.[2] + +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 _Villers_ is spelt fourteen +different ways in the deeds of that family. The simple dissyllabic but +illustrious name of _Percy_, the bishop found in family documents, they +had contrived to write in fifteen different ways. + +This unsettled state of our _orthography_, and what it often depended +on, our _orthoepy_, was an inconvenience detected even at a very early +period. The learned Sir JOHN CHEKE, 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 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. + +When Secretaries of State were also men of literature, the learned Sir +THOMAS SMITH, 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. + +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 +numerous race: "Now he is turned ORTHOGRAPHER his words are a very +fantastical banquet; just so many strange dishes." Some may amuse. One +affords a quaint definition of the combination of _orthoepy_ with +_orthography_, for he would teach "how to write or _paint the image of +man's voice_ like to the life or nature."[3] The most popular amender of +our defective orthography was probably BULLOKAR, 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 _picture_, 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.[4] I +extract from his address to his country a curious passage. "In true +orthographie, both the _eye_, the _voice_, and the _eare_ 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." + +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 +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, _oeuvres_, uvres; _francoise_, +fransaise; _temps_, tems. + +Among the early reformers of our vernacular idiom, the name of RICHARD +MULCASTER has hardly reached posterity. Our philologer has dignified a +small volume ostensibly composed for "the training of children,"[5] 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. + +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. + +"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 +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? + +"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, _even though in the end it displaced the Latin_, 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." + +"But it is objected," our learned Mulcaster proceeds, with his engaging +simplicity, that "the English tongue 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, 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?"[6] + +We, who have lived to verify the prediction, should not less esteem the +prophet; the pedagogue, MULCASTER, 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 "_in +the end it displaced the Latin_," and "FOREIGN STUDENTS" learn our +language "FOR INCREASE OF THEIR KNOWLEDGE." + +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 _ear_, and not by the +_eye_. "Yet custom," he adds, "is not the truest way of 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. + +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."[7] + +Even the learned of our own times have indulged some of these +philological reveries. One would hardly have suspected that Dr. +FRANKLIN, 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. +PINKERTON 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 _quack_ +would be a _quaco_, and _that_ would be _tha_. Plurals were to +terminate in _a_: _pens_ would be _pena_; papers, _papera_. 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, JAMES ELPHINSTONE, 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. + +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.[8] 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 sounds familiar +to his own ear, and usually to his own county. Even the dismemberment of +words, omitting or changing letters, distracts attention;[9] 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. + +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.[10] + +We may sympathise with the disconcerted foreigner who is a learner of +the English language. All words ending in _ugh_ must confound him: for +instance, _though_, _through_, and _enough_, alike written, are each +differently pronounced; and should he give us _bough_ rightly, he may be +forgiven should he blunder at _cough_; if he escape in safety from +_though_, the same wind will blow him out of _thought_. 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. + +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 _red_, as a distinction +from the present _read_, and anciently I have found it printed _redde_. +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. _G_ before _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 _b_ +in _doubt_ and _debt_, 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 _tems_, rejecting the _p_ in _temps_, they wholly lost sight of +the Latin original, _tempus_. 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] See "The Paston Letters," edited by Sir JOHN FENN; and LODGE'S + authentic and valuable Collection. + + [2] 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.] + + [3] "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_l._ 6_s._ It is in the British Museum. + + [4] "Bullokar's Booke at large for the Amendment of Orthographie for + English Speech," &c. &c., 1580, 4to; republished in 1586. + + [5] "The first part of the Elementarie, which entreateth chieflie of + the _right writing of our English Tong_," 1582, 12mo. + + [6] 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. + + [7] 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. + + I give a specimen of his words as they are written and as they are + pronounced-- + + VISIBLE LETTERS. CUSTOMARY AND FASHIONABLY. + Mayor Mair. + Worcester Wooster + Dictionary Dixnary + Bought Baut. + + "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 + + the harder to the easier \ + the harsher to the pleasanter > sound." + the longer to the shorter / + + [8] 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. + + [9] When we began to drop the letter K in such words as _physic_, + _music_, _public_, 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 _physicke_, _musicke_, + _publicke_. The modern mode, notwithstanding its prevalence, must be + considered anomalous; for other words ending with the consonants _ck_ + have not been shorn of their final _k_. We do not write _attac_, + _ransac_, _bedec_, nor _bulloc_, nor _duc_, nor good _luc_. + + 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 _k_ is not + written,--"_Dic_ gave _Jac_ a _kic_ when _Jac_ gave _Dic_ a _knoc_ on + the _bac_ with a _thic stic_." 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. + + [10] A most serious attempt was made a few years ago to establish + English spelling by sound. A journal called the _Fonetic Nuz_ (_sic_ + to give the idea of the pronunciation of the word _News_) 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.--ED. + + + + +THE ANCIENT METRES IN MODERN VERSE. + + +A strong 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? + +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.[1] +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. + +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 imitated.[2] 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 _Versi e Regole della_ +POESIA NUOVA--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. + +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'Urfe, Blaise de Vigneres, and others, adopted _blank verse_, +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 naivete. "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, 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."[3] + +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. + +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. + +The musical impression made by a period consisting of long and short +syllables arranged in a certain order is what the Greeks called +_rhythmus_, the Latins _numerus_, and we _melody_ or _measure_. 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. + +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 mechanical and severe scansion. To this +Milton seems to allude in a sonnet to Lawes, the musician-- + + Harry, whose tuneful and well-measured song + First taught our English music how to span + Words with just _note_ and _accent_, not to scan + _With Midas' ears, committing short and long_. + +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. STANYHURST has left +a memorable woful version of Virgil, and the pedantic GABRIEL HARVEY 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 TOM NASH, 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." + +A treatise on "the New Poetry," or "the Reformed Verse," for it assumed +this distinction, was expressly composed by WILLIAM WEBBE, +recommendatory of this "Reformation of our English verse."[4] Some years +after Dr. THOMAS CAMPION, 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 +RIMING, which hath, I know, deterred many excellent wits from the +exercise of English poetry."[5] He calls it "the childish titillation of +rime." + +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 "SWEET MASTER CAMPION," 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:-- + + Alas, poor book, I rue + Thy rash selfe-love; go spread thy papery wings; + Thy lightness cannot helpe, or hurt my fame. + +The poet DANIEL replied by his "Defence of Rime," an elaborate and +elegant piece of criticism, to which no reply was sent forth by the +anti-rhymers. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] For a remarkable effusion of this ancient idolatry and classical + superstition, see _Quarterly Review_, August, 1834. + + 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 _quantity_, and not by the latent + delicacy and numerosity of which modern versification is susceptible. + + [2] Quadrio, "Storia e raggione d'ogni Poesia," i. 606. + + [3] Pasquier, "Les Recherches de la France," p. 624, fo. 1533. + + [4] "A Discourse of English Poetrie; together with the Author's + Judgment touching the Reformation of our English Verse," by WILLIAM + WEBBE, graduate, 1586, 4to. + + [5] "Observations on the Art of English Poesie, by THOMAS CAMPION, + 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. + + + + +ORIGIN OF RHYME. + + +Contending 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. + +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;"[1] 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, +"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."[2] 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. + +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," (_Arte de Trovar_, 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 Provencals; 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! + +Fauchet, struck by discovering the use of Rhyme among 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 _homoioteleuton_, 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."[3] + +Since the days of ancient Fauchet, no subsequent investigators, even +such great recent literary historians as Warton, Quadrio, Crescembini +and Gray, Tiraboschi, Sismondi and Ginguene, 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.[4] 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. + +Rhyming poems are found not only in the Hebrew but in the Sanscrit, in +the Bedas, and in the Chinese poetry,[5] 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. + +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. RHYME must +therefore be considered _as universal as poetry itself_. + +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] Warton's "Second Dissertation on the Introduction of Learning + into England." + + [2] Lenglet du Fresnoy--Preface to his edition of the "Roman de la + Rose." + + [3] Much curious matter will be found in the rare volume of Fauchet + "Recueil de l'Origine de la Langue et Poesie Francoise Ryme et Romans + plus les Noms et Summaire des Oeuvres, de cxxvii. Poetes Francois, + vivant avant l'an MCCC.;" liv. i. ch. vii., 1610, 4to. + + [4] See "Two Inquiries respecting the Early Use of Rhyme," by Sharon + Turner, Esq.--_Archaeologia,_ vol. xiv. The subject further enlarged, + "On the Origin and Progress of Rhyme in the Middle Ages."--_Hist. of + England_, iv. 386. + + [5] The second book the Chinese children read is a collection + conveyed in _rhyming lines_.--_Davis on the Chinese._ + + + + +RHYMING DICTIONARIES. + + +If 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 _not overcome_. This +difficulty seems to have occurred to our earliest critics, for +GASCOIGNE, in his "Certain Notes of Instruction concerning the making +Verse or Rhyme in English"--and WEBBE, 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. + +"When you have one verse _well settled_ and _decently ordered_, which +you may dispose at your pleasure to end it with _what word you will_; +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),[1] whereof you may choose that which will _best +fit the sense_ 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 +_twenty to one but always one of these shall jump with your former word +and matter in good sense_." + +The poet in _rhyme_ 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 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. + +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 "Bibliotheque Francaise," 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. + +Among these early attempts is an extravagant one by Paul Boyer. It is a +kind of encyclopaedia, in which all the names are arranged by their +terminations, so that it furnishes a dictionary of rhymes. + +The demand for rhymes seems to have continued; for in 1660, D'Ablancourt +Fremont published a _Dictionnaire_, 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 "_plaisant a +considerer_." + +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. + + +FOOTNOTE: + + [1] Here is the first idea of "A Dictionary of Rhymes," which has + inspired so many unhappy bards. + + + + +THE ARTE OF ENGLISH POESIE. + + +Among the arts of English poesie, the most ample and most curious is an +anonymous work.[1] 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. + +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 _its bare title without any author's +name_." 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. + +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 _Godfather_, 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 _gentleman_ 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 (_as the fame is_) of one of Queen +Elizabeth's pensioners, Puttenham." The qualifying parenthesis "as the +fame is," leaves the whole evidence in a very ticklish condition. + +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.[2] + +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,[3] which our mature +critic still deemed "pretty;" but, according to one of his rhetorical +technical terms, "it holds too much of the _cachemphaton_ or _foule +speech_, 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 _corps diplomatique_, for he had been +present on some remarkable occasions at foreign courts, which we +discover by 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, _where in my youth I was brought up_, and very +well observed their manner of life and conversation; for of _mine own +country I have not made so great experience_." + +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. + +The same anomalous character is attached to the work as we have +discovered concerning the writer. + +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 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 +MAKERS," 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." + +To familiarise the technical terms of rhetoric by substituting English +descriptive ones, led to a ludicrous result. The Greek term of _histeron +proteron_ was baptised the _preposterous_; 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 +_preposterously_, that is, placing before what should follow-- + + When we had climb'd the cliff, and were ashore. + +instead of + + When we had come ashore, and climb'd the cliff. + +The _hipallage_ he calls _the changeling_, 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. _Ironia_, he calls the _dry-mock_; _sarcasmus_, the +_bitter taunt_; the Greek term _asteismus_ he calls _the merry +scoff_--it is the jest which offends not the hearer. When we mock +scornfully comes the _micterismus_, the _fleering frumpe_, as he who +said to one to whom he gave no credit, "_No doubt, sir, of that!_" The +_antiphrasis_, or the _broad flout_, 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 _charientismus_ is _the +privy nippe_, when you mock a man in a _sotto voce_; and the +_hyperbole_, as the Greeks term the figure, and the Latins _dementiens_, +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 _fleering +frumpes_, our _merry scoffs_, and our _privy nippes_, have been +intelligible all our days. + +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 _translator_, 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 _gift_ +and not an _art_, because making himself and many others so cunning in +the art, yet he sheweth himself so slender a gift in it." + +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 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. + +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: + + Now suck, child, and sleep, child, thy mother's own joy, + Her only sweet comfort to drown all annoy; + For beauty, surpassing the azured sky, + I love thee, my darling, as ball of mine eye. + +Such a stanza indeed may disappoint the reader when he finds that we are +left without any more. + +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 SIDNEY; and Wanley, in his +catalogue of the Harley Library, assigns this volume to Spenser.[4] I +lay no stress on the singular expression of Sir John Harrington, +applied to the present writer, as "the unknown _godfather_," 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. + +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." + +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. + +I find it less difficult to imagine that some stray manuscript, +possibly from the relics of SIDNEY, or perhaps the lost one of SPENSER, +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] "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. + + [2] Ames appears first to have called him _Webster_ 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 _Webster_. I cannot + otherwise account for this misnomer. Steevens, in an indistinct + reference to a manuscript, revealed it to be _George_; 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, _alias_ 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 _George_ 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 _George_ 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 _Richard_ Puttenham, "a prisoner in her Majesty's + Bench." _Richard_, therefore, may have as valid pretensions to "The + Arte of English Poesie," as _George_, and neither may be the author. + This matter is trivial, and hardly worth an inquiry. + + 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. + + [3] See page 157 of "The Arte of English Poesie." + + [4] 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!-- + + "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 _he had been told that + Edmund Spenser was the author of that book, which came out + anonymous_. 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 THOMAS BAKER to the Hon. + James West," printed in the "European Magazine," April, 1788. + + + + +THE DISCOVERIE OF WITCHCRAFT. + + +A single 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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;[1] 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? + +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 Wood, in his +peculiar style, tells us that "Scot gave himself up solely to _solid +reading_, and to the perusal of _obscure authors_ 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. + +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, 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. + +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 _a hundred years +since I should have entreated your predecessors_ 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +The FIRST 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 _second_ 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," 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! + +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. + +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, _an sint_, whether there be witches or +not; but _quomodo sint_, 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 _de existencia_, but only _de modo existendi_. 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.[2] + +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!"[3] + +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 +_real_ witches, "it would have been called atheistical by a prevailing +party." + +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 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."[4] 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!"[5] Did the doctor know that churchmen +have had no influence in creating that belief, or in enacting this +statute? + +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 "_in general_, there has been such a +thing as witchcraft, though one cannot give credit to any _particular_ +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. + +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." + +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 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. + +That such courageous and generous tempers as that of REGINALD SCOT +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] "De Prestigiis Demonum et Incantationibus ac Veneficiis," 1564. + + [2] 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, _Gabriel Ratchets_; the calling of a daker hen, in the meadow, + to be the _whistlers_; the howling of the female fox in a gill or + clough for the male, to be the cry of fairies." "The _Gabriel + Ratchets_," in our author's time, seem to have been the same with the + German _Rachtvogel_, or _Rachtraven_. The word and the superstition + are well known in Lancashire, though in a sense somewhat different; + for the _Gable-Rachets_ are supposed to be something like litters of + puppies yelping (gabbling) in the air. _Ratch_ is certainly a dog in + general. + + The _whistlers_ are the green or whistling plovers, which fly very + high in the night uttering their characteristic note.--Whitaker's + "History of Whalley." + + [3] 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:-- + + "Most honoured dear Sir, + + "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 _you_ and the _notions_ you have + communicated to the world. + + "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 + _suspected person_ 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 _wicked_, &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 _experiment_ holds that there never were any + _apparitions_, &c. I told him that this was equivalent to _an + apparition_; for here was an _ocular demonstration_ of the existence + and operation of an intelligent invisible being, &c." + + [4] In his "Exposition of the Church Catechism." + + [5] Remarks upon a late "Discourse of Free-Thinking," 1743, p. 47. + + + + +THE FIRST JESUITS IN ENGLAND. + + +The 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. + +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 _settled_?" 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 _per se malum_--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. + +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 persons effected a revolution among their +brother-exiles, of which our national history bears such memorable +traces. These extraordinary men were Dr. ALLEN, of Oriel College, a +canon in the cathedral of York, and who subsequently was invested with +the purple as the English cardinal, and ROBERT PARSONS, 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. + +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,[1] 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.[2] + +In these labours Allen had, as early as 1575, associated himself with +Parsons, who in that year had entered into 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. + +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. + +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. + +In the year 1580 PARSONS and CAMPIAN came the 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. + +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." + +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.[3] 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. + +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.[4] + +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. + +To describe this political libel as a mere invective 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. + +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 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.[5] + +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. + +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 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 Oedipus" +who has never arisen.[6] + +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. + +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. + +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 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."[7] + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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![8] 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 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. + +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. + + _Dr. Ashton to Dean Mosse._ + +"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. + +"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. + +"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. + +"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, 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. + +"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 _court_ and _country_, in England, which perhaps were mysteries +to all the nation except a few statesmen about the Queen? + +"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. + +"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 +_the bear's_ fury, contrived that this book should come as it were from +abroad, under the name of Parsons." + + _Dr. Mosse's Notes on the above Letter._ + +"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. + +"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 such a work; and I take the report to be +grounded only on a passage in the book that mentions the _papers_ +Burleigh had against Leicester." + +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-- + +"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."[9] + +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. + +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, +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.[10] It is therefore +quite evident why "the book did not look _that way_," as Dr. Ashton +expresses it, and why all Parsons' subsequent writings did. + +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, _above others_, 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 _sprung from the earth_. 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; _never had the Catholics +a more bitter enemy_; 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 religion, to the public, and to private families. This +is quite a supplement to Leicester's "Commonwealth," condensing all its +original spirit. + +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 manoeuvre in the +ear of the faithless courtier who unquestionably contributed his zealous +quota to this Leicesterian Commonwealth. + +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. + +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. + +The English writings of the Jesuit PARSONS 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] 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. + + [2] 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--"_Salvete flores martyrum._"--Plowden's + "Remarks on Missions of Gregorio Panzani," Liege, 1794, p. 97. + + [3] 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. + + [4] "Hist. Soc. Jesu." Pars quinta, Tomus posterior. Auctore Jos. + Juvencio, 1710. + + [5] 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.--"Athenae Oxon.," ii. col. 74. + + 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. + + [6] See the subsequent article on "SPENSER." + + [7] "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." + + [8] 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. + + [9] 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." + + [10] Winwood's "Memorials," vol. i., p. 51. + + + + +HOOKER. + + +The 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. + +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. + +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 MAR-PRELATES; for +these mean and scandalous satirists, and their abler chiefs, were the +true origin of Hooker's "Ecclesiastical Polity." The scandalous +pamphlets of the MAR-PRELATES 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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.[1] + +The purity and simplicity of Izaak Walton's own mind reflected the +perfect image of HOOKER; the individualising touches and the careful +statements in that vital biography seem as if Hooker himself had written +his own life. + +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. + +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 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. + +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." + +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 endure with it. The wife of Hooker tyrannized over his days, and at +last proved to be a traitress to his fame. + +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! + +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. + +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. + +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 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 _only of an human creature_, and not by the _election of the +people_." With TRAVERS 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 TRAVERS. "The words of St. +Paul," replied HOOKER. "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. + +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 was compelled to reply; and the churchmen +extolled "an answer answerless:" the buds of the great work appear among +these sterile leaves of controversy.[2] + +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. + +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." + +The humble wish was obtained, and the great work was prosecuted. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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.[3] 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;[4] 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. + +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 _jure divino_ 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. + +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. 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." + +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, _if so be that we can find it out_." Never was the _juste +milieu_ suggested with such hopeless diffidence. Such was not the tone, +nor could be the words, of our eloquent and impressive HOOKER. 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 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."[5] Here we have +an allusion to a noble termination of his system. + +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 _first book of +Ecclesiastical Polity_; a timely admonition, however, alas! timeless! I +was not surprised to find classed among "Legal Bibliography" the works +of Hooker. + +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 schisms, to maintain established authority, or rather +supremacy, was driven to take refuge in the very argument which the +Romanist used with the Protestant. + +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." + +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 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. +HOOKER 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] 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, _verbatim_, without the slightest acknowledgment, + obtains a credit for original research. Beloe is referred to for this + _authentic_ information by Burnet, in his "Specimens of English + Prose-Writers." + + [2] 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. + + [3] "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."--_Athenae + Oxonienses._ + + [4] 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. + + [5] "Ecclesiastical Polity," book First. + + + + +SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. + + +Were I another Baillet, solely occupied in collecting the "_jugemens des +scavans_"--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. + +He who first ventured to pronounce a final condemnation on "THE ARCADIA" +of Sir PHILIP SIDNEY 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.'" + +Gifford, once the Coryphaeus 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." + +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.'" + +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.[1] More recent votaries have approached the +altar of this creation of romance. + +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. SIDNEY was one of those writers +whom Shakespeare not only studied but imitated in his scenes, copied his +language, and transferred his ideas.[2] SHIRLEY, BEAUMONT and FLETCHER, +and our early dramatists turned to "THE ARCADIA" as their text-book. +Sidney enchanted two later brothers in WALLER and COWLEY; and the +dispassionate Sir WILLIAM TEMPLE was so struck by "The Arcadia," that he +found "the true spirit of the vein of ancient poetry in Sidney." The +world of fashion in Sidney's age culled their phrases out of "The +Arcadia," which served them as a complete "Academy of Compliments." + +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. + +"The Arcadia" was not one of those spurious fictions invented at random, +where an author has little personal concern in the narrative he forms. + +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. + +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 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 _Stemmata Dudleiana_, 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."[3] + +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. + +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. + +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.[4] 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. + +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. 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.[5] 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.[6] 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. + +It is the imperishable diction, the language of Shakespeare, before +Shakespeare wrote, which diffuses its enchantment 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-- + + SIDNEY, WARBLER OF POETIC PROSE! + +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.[7] 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. + +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. + +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?[8] And I fear they will not +allow for that formal complimentary style, borrowed from the Italians +and the Spaniards, which is sufficiently ludicrous. + +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. + +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 English literature, +has exhibited the beatitude of criticism in a poet-critic. + +Sir PHILIP SIDNEY 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.[9] + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] "Annual Review," iv. 547. + + [2] Who does not recognise a well-known passage in SHAKESPEARE, + copied too by COLERIDGE and BYRON, in these words of SIDNEY--"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. + + "Oh, it came o'er my ear like the sweet south, + That breathes upon a bank of violets, + Stealing and giving odour."-- + + Shaks. _Twelfth Night_, act 1, sc. i. + + "And sweeter than the gentle south-west wind, + O'er willowy meads and shadow'd waters creeping, + And Ceres' golden fields."-- + + Coleridge's _First Advent of Love_. + + "Breathing all gently o'er his cheek and mouth, + As o'er a bed of violets the sweet south."-- + + _Don Juan_, canto 2, verse 168. + + [3] 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. + + [4] See "The Arcadia," p. 267; eighth edition, 1633. + + [5] See Coleridge's "Table-Talk," ii. 178. + + [6] 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. + + [7] 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. + + [8] 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. + + [9] This summary of the character of Sidney I wrote nearly thirty + years ago, in the "Quarterly Review." + + + + +SPENSER. + + +Though 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." + +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, _Anchora Speme_ ("yet I hope"); but in +the eclogue of June we discover _Gia Speme Spenta_ ("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. + +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, and will +remain undiscovered to this day, unless the reader shall participate in +my own conviction. + +"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, _addressed to Gabriel Harvey_, 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." + +From this detection, we may infer that the Commentary was an innocent +_ruse_ of the zealous friend to overcome the resolute timidity of our +poet.[1] 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:"-- + + And when thou art past jeopardie, + Come tell me what was said of me, + And I will send more after thee. + +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.'" + +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. + +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." + +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." + +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.[2] In the Epithalamion on his own +marriage, the poet reminds + + The sacred sisters who have often times + Been to the aiding others to adorn, + Whom ye thought worthy of your graceful rymes, + That even the greatest did not greatly scorn + To hear their names sung in your simple lays, + But joyed at their praise. + +"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. + +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 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 + + A peerless prince and peerless poetess, + +by Spenser, who must, however, have closed his ear at her harsher +numbers.[3] 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 + + To his oaten pipe inclined her ear, + And it desired, at timely hours, to hear. + +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. + +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 flail "threshed out +falsehood" in their quest of Ierne, in that "Land of Ire" where justice +and the executioner were ever erratic. + +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.[4] 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. + + And when he heard the music that I made, + He found himself full greatly pleased at it; + He gan to cast great liking to my lore, + And great disliking to _my luckless lot, + That banish'd had myself, like wight forlore, + Into that waste where I was quite forgot_. + +Spenser has here disclosed involuntarily "the secret sorrow." + +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, in +1590, wearied by solicitations, throwing out the immortal lines so +painfully descriptive of + + What hell it is in suing long to bide. + +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 + + Walk'd forth to ease his pain, + Along the shore of silver-streaming Thames. + ------------------I whose sullen care, + Through discontent of my long fruitless stay + In princes' court, and expectation vain + Of idle hopes which still do fly away, + Like empty shadows, to afflict my brain. + +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. + +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, 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. + +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. + +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. + +"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! + +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-- + + On whose mighty shoulders most doth rest + The burden of this kingdom's government, + Unfitly I these idle rimes present, + The labour of lost time and wit unstay'd. + +If Spenser had complained of former cold neglect, now he had to endure, +what a poet can never forgive, bitter disdain. + +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-- + + For he that now wields all things at his will, + Scorns one and th' other, in his deeper skill. + +And he repeats the accusation in "Mother Hubbard's Tale"-- + + Oh, grief of griefs! Oh, gall of all good hearts! + To see that virtue should despised be + Of him, that first was raised for vertuous parts; + And now, broad spreading like an aged tree, + Lets none shoot up that nigh him planted be. + Oh, let the man by whom the Muse is scorn'd, + Nor alive nor dead be of the Muse adorn'd. + +We have, too, a more finished portrait of an evil _minister_ who "lifted +up his lofty towers," + + That they begin to threat the neighbour sky; + +in which unquestionably we find some of the deformities of Burleigh's +political physiognomy. + + He no count made of nobility; + The realm's chief strength and girlond of the crown-- + He made them dwell in darkness of disgrace, + For none but whom he list might come in place. + Of men of armes he had but small regard, + But kept them low, and strained very hard; + For men of learning little he esteem'd, + His wisdome he above their learning deem'd. + As for the rascal commons least he cared, + For not so common was his bounty shared. + Let God, said he, if please care for the manie, + I for myself most care before else anie. + Yet none durst speak, ne none durst of him plaine, + So great he was in grace, and rich through gaine. + +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:-- + + The rugged forehead that, with grave foresight, + Welds kingdoms, causes, and affairs of state, + My looser rimes I wote doth sharply wite, + For praising love as I have done of late. + Such ones ill judge of love, that cannot love, + Ne in their frozen heart feel kindly flame. + +But the minister could not banish him from the sovereign:-- + + To such therefore I do not sing at all, + But to that Sacred Saint, my sovereign Queen; + To her I sing of love that loveth best, + And best is loved. + +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 + + ----------Praises of divinest wits, + Who her eternize with their heavenly writs, + +I suspect that Burleigh figures again among + + -------------The salvage brood, + Who, having been with acorns always fed, + Can no whit cherish this celestial food; + But, with base thoughts, are unto blindness led, + And kept from looking on the lightsome day. + +After these indignant effusions, Spenser in proceeding with the "Faery +Queen" tergiversated in his feelings. 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.[5] 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! + + The sage old Sire, that had to name + The kingdom's care, with a white silver head, + That many high regards and reasons 'gainst her read. + +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. + +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!" +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.[6] The Lord +Treasurer got reprimanded, and the poet present payment. We cannot avoid +associating the anecdote with these lines-- + + To have thy Prince's grace, yet want her Peer's; + To have thy asking, yet wait many years. + +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, 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. + +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. + + _Wrong'd, yet not daring to express my pain_ + To you, good lord! the causer of my care, + In cloudy tears my case _I thus complain + Unto yourself, that only privy are_. + But if that any Oedipus, unware, + Shall chance, through power of some divining spright, + To read _the secret of this riddle rare_, + And know the purport of my evil plight; + Let him rest pleased with his own insight, + Ne further seek to gloze upon the text; + _But grief enough it is to grieved wight, + To feel hit fault_, and not be further vext. + But what so by myself may not be shown, + May by this Gnat's complaint be easily known. + +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 + + Wrong'd, yet not daring to express his pain, + +and yet "grieved to feel _his fault_," is "a riddle rare," supposed to +require some Oedipus 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 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." + +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, _if they really were complaints respecting himself_!" +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. + +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 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. + +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-- + + Poorly, poor man! he lived; poorly, poor man! he died. + +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 _res angusta domi_ perpetually +pressed on the morbid imagination of the fortuneless man. + +I know of no satire aimed at SPENSER; 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 SPENSER, +the truest was his keen and witty contemporary; for this town-wit has +stamped all our poet's excellences by one felicitous word--"HEAVENLY +SPENSER." + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] 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! + + 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. + + [2] 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 _only_ of Spenser's Sonnets, by the + learned Von Hammer. Foreign critics often startle one by their + fancies on English poetry. + + [3] 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. + + [4] 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. + + [5] 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. + + [6] This petition in rhyme is well known-- + + "I was promised on a time, + To have reason for my rhime; + From that time unto this season, + I received nor rhime nor reason." + + 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 _told_ and _believed_." 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? + + 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. + + + + +THE FAERY QUEEN. + + +SPENSER, 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 ARIOSTO and TASSO and OVID. + +SPENSER 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 _calibre_, 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. + +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. + +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 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-- + + --------------The full-resounding line, + The long majestic march and energy divine. + +The inanity of that race-- + + Of gentlemen who wrote with ease, + +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," + + That like a wounded snake drags its slow length along. + +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-- + + -------------Two swans of goodly hue, + Came softly swimming down along the Lee;[1]-- + +and "The Epithalamium" on the poet's own nuptials, or, as the poet +notes-- + + Song made in lieu of many ornaments, + With which my Love should duely have been deck'd. + +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 _alliteration_; 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 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.[2] + +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 _naive_ +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. + +Of all poets SPENSER 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 raises the illusion of reverie till we seem startled by +reality, and we appear to have beheld what only we have been told.[3] +Poet of poets! SPENSER made a poet at once of COWLEY, and once lent an +elegant simplicity to THOMSON. GRAY was accustomed to open Spenser when +he would frame + + Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn; + +and MILTON, 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. + +In associating the name of SPENSER with MILTON and GRAY, 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. + +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 aery sprite-- + + Forgot he was a Man, and JEALOUSY is hight.[4] + +There are two sublime descriptions of NIGHT which may be read together. +In the one she is the + + Sister of heavie Death, and nurse of Woes! + +and elsewhere she appears as + + That most ancient Grandmother of all, + Older than Jove---- + +NIGHT befriending Deceit and Shame, takes one of their 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 _restored_ 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 + + Chattering with iron teeth, and staring wide + With stonie eyes--and flock'd on every side + To gaze on EARTHLY WIGHT that with the NIGHT durst ride.[5] + +The sublime fragment on "Mutability," where Nature is viewed seated +mysteriously amid the creation, has not been excelled by the most +philosophical poets. + + Great Nature ever young, yet full of eld, + Still moving, yet immoved from her sted; + Unseen of any, yet of all beheld, + Thus sitting on her throne---- + +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. + +Whoever has passed into the house of Pride, + + Whose walls were high, but nothing strong nor thick, + +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, + + The huge great iron chests, and coffers strong, + +amid the dead men's bones scattered around those chests and coffers, has +realized the marvellous architecture of 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. + +"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. + +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 _private +gentleman_." 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[6] of Spenser, our editors and critics were little conversant +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. + +"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. + +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 DESIRE--attempting to win the Fortress of BEAUTY,--that is, +Whitehall and her Majesty![7] They stand in a car, "shadowed with 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 SPENSER nursed his +gorgeous fancy, and the Queen was the true inspirer of his romantic +Epic. + +Warton and Hurd observe that Spenser copied real _manners of his time_ +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 _manners_ and forms of chivalry prevailed among the +courtiers of Elizabeth; but such _adventures_ of chivalry as Spenser has +described in his singular poem were transplanted from the ancient +romances. The _incidents_ are therefore not of the poet's age; and we +can only read his narrative as the last of the romances. + +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. + +"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, MARSTON and HALL; Hall, indeed, suddenly +checks his censorial temerity in blaming themes made sacred by the Faery +Muse. + + Let no rebel satire dare traduce + Th' eternal legends of thy fairy Muse, + Renowned SPENSER, whom no earthly wight + Dares once to emulate---- + +The compliment to Spenser does not diminish the satire levelled at the +class. + +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. + +If Spenser attempted to infuse a rejuvenescence into the dry veins of +the old age of romance, by the vitality of _Allegory_, 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 +PHINEAS FLETCHER, in what he has fantastically named and described as +"The Purple Island," or "the little ISLE OF MAN," 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. + +CHIVALRY and ALLEGORY, two columns of our poet's renown, thus soon gave +way; and SPENSER has often suffered the heaviest penalty to which a +great poet was ever condemned--neglect! + +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 HURD, 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." + +This sharp lament broke out in 1760, when, only two years before, the +two rival editions of CHURCH and UPTON 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] The Lee is the stream. + + [2] I offer some instances of alliteration; but the beauty of such + lines can only be rightly judged by the context.-- + + "In woods, in waves, in wars, she wonts to dwell + And will be found with peril and with pain." + + "Such as a lamp whose life does fade away, + Or as the moon cloathed with cloudy night." + + "A world of waters, + Horrible, hideous, roaring with hoarse cry." + + "They cherelie chaunt, and rymes at random flung, + The fruitful spawn of their rank fantasies; + They feed the ears of fools with flattery." + + "All the day before the sunny rays, + He used to slug or sleep, in slothful shade." + + "Unpitied, unplagued, of foe or friend." + + "And with sharp shrilling shriek do bootless cry." + + "Did stand astonish'd at his curious skill, + With hungry ears to hear his harmony." + + [3] 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 _brief strokes_ and _robust power_ which characterize the + _very greatest poets_." 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 RUBENS OF ENGLISH POETRY." + + 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 SPENSER has been much admired:"-- + + The joyous birds shrouded in cheareful shade, + Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet; + Th' angelical soft trembling voices made + To th' instruments divine respondence meet; + The silver-sounding instruments did meet + With the base murmurs of the waters-fall; + The waters-fall with difference discreet, + Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call; + The gentle-warbling wind low answered to all.* + + 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 + _Twining:_-- + + "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-- + + "'The waters-fall with difference discreet.'" + + 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. + + "Th' angelical soft trembling voices made + To th' instruments divine respondence meet," + + 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? + + 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 Aeolian 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. + + 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. + + * "The Faery Queen," book II. canto xii. st. 71. + + ** "Gerusalemme Liberata," canto xvi. st. 12. + + [4] "The Faery Queen," book III. canto x. + + [5] "The Faery Queen," B. III. canto iv, st. 65, and B. I. canto v. + st. 20. + + [6] This edition of 1715, from its modernized orthography, and from + greater freedoms taken with the text, is valueless. + + [7] 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. + + + + +ALLEGORY. + + +Allegory 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 ALLEGORY as "that art in which one thing is +_related_, and another _understood_." + +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. + +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. + +A prevalent folly has usually some parent-origin; and the present one of +ALLEGORY 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 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.[1] 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. + +We may, however, smile when we discover this race of Oedipuses among the +_romanzatori_, 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 _grand +oeuvre_ 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 of popular tales called the _Gesta Romanorum_. +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 _Contes a la Fontaine_, however licentious, pass +through a moralization by the puritanical cant of hypocritical monkery. + +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-- + + Ma voi ch'avete gl'intelletti sani, + Mirate la dottrina che s'asconde, + Sotto queste coperte alte e profonde![2] + +"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! + +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 _wild sects_ 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 occult doctrine which he had caught from the seers of +the old _Romanzatori_--those Gothic Homers in whose spells he had been +bound:-- + + Forests and enchantments drear, + _Where more is meant than meets the ear_. + +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 _signori_, of mechanical critics, +protesting against his potent inventions. + + Magnanima Mensogna, hor quando e il vero + Si bello che si posse a te preporre. + +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 _loves_ and the _enchantments_"--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!"[3] + +Tasso's confession is a perpetual demonstration of _the fallacies of +allegory_. 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. + +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. + +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. + +DANTE 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 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. + +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 +_meditated on his allegory before he invented his fiction_. The +difference is immense. SPENSER 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! + +Yet this is not the sole defect of the allegorical character of the +"Faery Queen." We may suspect that when SPENSER 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, or the reality is as suddenly lost amid the mystical +fancies. + +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 _glory_ in my _general_ intention, but in my _particular_ 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 Belphoebe, 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! + +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 +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 _facts_, 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.[4] Sir Walter might +have noticed Spenser's abhorrence of the puritans. + +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 _Fleur de Lis_, 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:-- + + ----When time shall serve, + My former shield I may resume again; + To temporise is not from truth to swerve. + + Fie on such forgerie! said Arthegal, + Under one hood to shadow faces twain. + +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 Belge 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. + +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. + +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 +UPTON'S edition which startled the world by the abundance of its modern +revelations. + +JOHN UPTON, 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 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 UPTON; 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." + +"In one sense," says UPTON, "you are in Fairy-Land, yet in another you +may be in the British dominions." And further, "where the _moral_ +allusion is not apparent, you must look for an _historical_ 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. + +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. + +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 Belphoebe the patroness of +Chastity, and the Queen of England, who surprised "the gentle squire" +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-- + + From her fair eyes wiping the dewy wet, + Which softly slid; and kissing them atween, + And handling soft the hurts which she did get. + +Belphoebe on the sudden appears, and indignantly exclaims-- + + "Is this the Faith?" she said, and said no more; + But turn'd her face, and fled away for evermore. + +In a romantic scene,[5] "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 Belphoebe, +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. + +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 _before_ her marriage; and in +another adventure, where another person, _Serena_, 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 _after_ marriage. Our +diviner, as further evidence of "the double sense," discovers how +remarkably appropriate was the name of Serena to the lady of Rawleigh. + +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 perplexed the story:" but he concludes with this hardy +assumption, "If the reader cannot see through these disguises, he will +see nothing but _the dead letter_." 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? + +The readers of Upton's revelations may often be amused by his lettered +ingenuity reasoning with eager perversity. In Book II. 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 +_wine_. On his return homewards with his lady he would quench his thirst +at a fountain, but + + So soon as Bacchus with the Nymphe does lincke, + +that is, the instant the pure water reaches his viny lips, he tastes, +and he dies! + +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, as Camden +records, "dwelt in all the pollutions of unchaste embraces, and had +several children by O'Donnel's wife." + +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 + + Robs Reason of her due regality. + +And this simple incident is converted into the fate of the O'Neals, +presenting an image of the miseries of the Irish rebellion! + +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.[6] + +In regard to Spenser, after all these allusions problematical 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! + +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 + + To see their thrids so thin as spiders frame, + And eke so short that seem'd their ends out shortly came, + +let him consider the latitude of interpretation all types and symbolical +writings admit."[7] Truly that latitude has been too often abused on +graver subjects than "The Faery Queen;" but the honesty of our mystical +interpreter of double senses may plead for the extravagance of his +ingenuity whenever he needs our indulgence. + +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] We have a collection of these "Allegoricae Homericae." 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. + + [2] Berni's "Bojardo," canto xxxi. st. 2. He has hardly improved the + verse in the "Inferno," canto ix. ver. 61.-- + + O voi ch'avete gl'intelletti sani, + Mirate la dottrina che s'asconde, + _Sotto il velame degli versi strani_. + + [3] 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. + + [4] "Edinburgh Review," vol. vii. p. 215. + + [5] Book III. canto viii. + + [6] 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 Damoetas + and his ugly daughter Mopsa. + + [7] Upton's note at the close of the fifth book of "The Faery Queen." + + + + +THE FIRST TRAGEDY AND THE FIRST COMEDY. + + +In 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."[1] 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. + +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 _The Nativity_, _The Adoration of the Kings_, and _The Massacre of +the Innocents_; and in Spain, at the same period, they also called their +moral pieces comedies. The title of one of these indicates their matter, +_La Doleria del Sueno del Mundo; Comedia tratada por via de Philosophia +Moral_,--"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 _Hamlet_ 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +We owe this first TRAGEDY in our language, represented before the Queen +in 1561, by the gentlemen of the Inner Temple, to the master-spirit who +planned _The Mirror for Magistrates_, and left as its model _The +Induction_. SACKVILLE, 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 _The Mirror for Magistrates_ Sackville +had resigned that noble scheme to inferior names, so in this tragedy of +_Ferrex and Porrex_, or, as it was sometimes entitled, _The Tragedy of +Gorboduc_, while his genius struck out the same originality of plan, yet +the titlepage informs us that he accepted a coadjutor in THOMAS NORTON, +who, as much as we know of him in other things, was a worthy partner of +Sternhold and Hopkins. + +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. + +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. + +SACKVILLE, in this tragedy, did not work with the potent mastery of his +_Induction_; 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. + +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 +of passive obedience. These lines, which appear in the first edition, +were silently removed from the later ones.[2] 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. + +There is such a level equality throughout the whole style of this +drama,[3] 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 _The Mirror for Magistrates_, +the suspicion was confirmed; the scenes of _Gorboduc_ 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. + +We must not decide on _the first tragedy_ 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 "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. + +This our first tragedy attracted by its classical form the approval of +some great moderns. RYMER, 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." + +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.[4] + +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 _kings_ and _statesmen_ should be less happily imitated by a +_poet_ than a _privy-counsellor_." 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." + +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 +_Europe_. 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. + +Our literary antiquaries long doted on the first English comedy--_Gammer +Gurton's Needle_--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-- + + A little thing, with a hole in the end, as bright as any siller (silver), + Small, long, sharp at the point, and straight as any piller. + +Had a needle not been a domestic implement of more rarity than it is +since Birmingham flourished, we had not 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-- + + For Gammer Gurton's needle's sake let us have a PLAUDITE! + +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 JOHN STILL, 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 _Gammer Gurton's +Needle_ in their "Reliquary;" and literary superstition + + Swore it was the relick of a saint. + +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 "STILL had displayed the true genius of +comedy, and the choice of his _subject_ 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 _language_." 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, 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. + +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. + +So recently as in 1818 an ancient printed drama, styled _Ralph Roister +Doister_, was discovered;[5] 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." + +GAMMER GURTON is a representation of sordid rusticity. ROISTER DOISTER +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 + + So fervent hot wooing, and so far from wiving, + I trow, never was any creature living. + +He is the whetstone of a sharp parasite, whose opening monologue +exhibits his full portrait-- + + But, know ye, that for all this merry note of mine, + He might oppose me now that should ask where I dine. + +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.[6] + +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 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. + +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.[7] + +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 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 NICHOLAS UDALL." + +This was the learned UDALL, 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." + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] "A Moral and Pitiful Comedie," entitled, "All for Money," &c., by + T. Lupton, 1578. In the prologue the author calls it "A Pleasant + Tragedy." + + [2] The lines, which are very miserable, are preserved in Dodsley's + "Old Plays." + + [3] Warton has analysed this drama in his "History of English + Poetry," vol. iv. 178, 8vo. It is in the Collection of Dodsley and + Hawkins. + + [4] This our first tragedy, _Ferrex and Porrex_, offers a striking + evidence of our literary knowledge. Dryden, alluding to it, refers to + a spurious copy published under the title of _Gorboduc_ but he could + not have seen it, for he calls it _Queen Gorboduc_, whereas he is + _King_; and he appears to think that it was written in _rhyme_; and + notices Shakspeare as the inventor of blank verse! When Pope + requested Spence to reprint _Gorboduc_, they were so little cognisant + of these matters, that the spurious and defective _Gorboduc_ was + printed instead of the genuine _Ferrex and Porrex_. This ignorance of + our ancient writers lasted to a later period. + + [5] 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.] + + [6] 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. + + 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,-- + + I. + + A thing very fitte + For them that have witte + And are felowes knitte + Servants in one house to bee, + As fast fast for to sitte, + And not oft to flitte + Nor varie a whitte, + But lovingly to agree. + + II. + + No man complainyng + Nor other disdainyng + For losse or for gainyng, + But felowes or friends to bee, + No grudge remainyng, + No work refrainyng, + Nor helpe restrainyng, + But lovingly to agree. + + III. + + No man for despite + By worde or by write + His felowe to twite, + But further in honestie; + No good turns entwite + Nor old sores recite, + But let all goe quite, + And lovingly to agree. + + IV. + + After drudgerie + When they be werie, + Then to be merie, + To laugh and sing they be free + With chip and cherie, + High derie derie, + Trill on the berie, + And lovingly to agree! + + [7] Hayley. + + + + +THE PREDECESSORS AND CONTEMPORARIES OF SHAKESPEARE. + + +The 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. + +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[1] "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. + +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 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 _lieutenant de police_--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 PUBLIC +PLAYS in the boundaries of the civic jurisdiction.[2] 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 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. + +The popular fervour of the drama had now a centrical attraction; a place +of social resort, with a facility of admission, was now opened;[3] 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! + +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. + +Literature now opened a new avenue for a poor scholar, the first step of +advancement in society from a collegiate 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 + + ----doting sires, + Carked and cared to have them lettered-- + But their kind college from the teat did tent, + And forced them walk before they weaned were.[4] + +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. + +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. + +This facility of production may be accounted for, not only from the more +obvious cause which instigated their 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: _Arden of Feversham_, 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 _The Yorkshire Tragedy_, which +was printed with the name of Shakespeare in his own lifetime, and has +been held to be authentic; and surely _The Yorkshire Tragedy_ at least +possessed an equal claim with the monstrous _Titus Andronicus_[5] 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 PAINTER'S "Palace of Pleasure," these dramatists ransacked +for their plots; this source opened a fresh supply of invention, and a +combination 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. + +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.[6] 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.[7] We may judge of the prolific +production of these authors by THOMAS HEYWOOD, a fluent and natural +writer, who never allowed himself time to cross out a line, and who has +casually informed us that "he had either an entire hand, or at least a +main finger, in two hundred and twenty plays." + +The intercourse of the proprietors or managers of the theatres and these +writers has been only incidentally, and indeed accidentally, revealed to +us.[8] 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. + +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;[9] are adapted to enter into moral, if +not into literary history. + +The Psychologist, the historian of the soul among the brotherhood of +genius--for such were many among 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. + +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. + +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. + + In pride of wit, when _high desire of fame + Gave life and courage to my labouring pen_, + And first the sound and vertue of my name + Were grace and credit in the ears of men; + With those the _thronged theaters_ that presse, + I in _the circuit_ for the Lawrell strove, + Where the _full praise_, I freely must confesse, + In heate of blood and modest minde might move; + _With_ SHOWTS _and_ CLAPS _at every little_ PAWSE + When the _prowd_ ROUND _on everie side hath rung_. + +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 JOHN LYLY; +nothing of the searching and cynical MARSTON; nothing of the inventive +and flowing DEKKER; nothing of the unpremeditated strains of the fertile +HEYWOOD; nor of the pathetic WEBSTER; nor of MIDDLETON, from whose +"Witch" Shakespeare borrowed his incantations; nor of ROWLEY, whom +Shakespeare aided; nor of the equal and grave MASSINGER; nor of the +lonely and melancholy FORD. + +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-- + + The work that I was born to do is done! + The conclusion + Makes the beginning of my life; for never + Let me be said to live, till I live ever![10] + +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,[11] 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 tainted even immortal pages, and +have provoked much idle criticism either to censure or to palliate. + +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 _rifacimentos_ 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. + +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.[12] Could we penetrate into the recesses 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 +_Dido_, 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 _play_, ridiculed "the best plotter." Can we forget that in +_Eastward Hoe_, 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. + +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.[13] 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. + +Our poets had not to address scholastic critics; for, as one of them has +delivered himself,-- + + --------They would have GOOD PLAYS, and not produce + Such musty fopperies of antiquity; + Which do not suit the humorous age's back, + With clothes in fashion. + +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 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, _more suo_, +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! + +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 +"ENGLISH PLAYS, _as unlike those of other nations_, which are esteemed +for learning the languages; and many of them," he adds, "are compiled by +men of great wisdom and learning." + +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 _English plays_ he also condemned our +_English philosophy_; 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." + +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 +_bibliophile_, that 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. + +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."[14] 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.[15] This literary +phenomenon, though now apparent, was not perceived when it was +occurring. + +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.[16] We may perceive how +this 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] This Patent, corrected from a former copy in Rymer, has been + recovered by Mr. Collier.--_Annals of the Stage_, i. 211. + + [2] 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-- + + "'The Fooles of the Cittee,'-- + They establish as a rule, + Not one shall play the fool, + But they--a worthy school!" + + [3] 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!" + + [4] 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." + + [5] 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 + ROBERT YARRINGTON, 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.--_Collier_, iii. 49. + + [6] Not many years ago Isaac Reed printed _The Witch_ of MIDDLETON. + Recently another manuscript play appeared, _The Second Maiden's + Tragedy_. 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 _The Wild-Goose + Chase_ of FLETCHER, 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 THEOBALD solemnly + declared that his play, _The Double Falsehood_, 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. + + [7] 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 _"Doctor Dodypol, a + comedy_, 1600," we have scenes exquisitely fanciful--and _Jack Drum's + Entertainment_, 1601, where "the free humour of a noble housekeeper" + may be placed by the side of the most finished passages even in + Shakespeare. Yet _Doctor Dodypol_ has wholly escaped the notice even + of catalogue-scribes--and _Jack Drum_ 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. + + [8] 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.--_Collier_, iii. 105. [His Diary has been published by + the Shakespeare Society under the editorship of Mr. Payne + Collier.--ED.] + + [9] Marlow--Nash--Greene--Peele. + + [10] 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." + + 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 _Iliad_, 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. + + [11] 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.--_Annals of the Stage_, + iii. 134. + + [12] 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 _simultaneously employed_ 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. + + [13] Green, Nash, Lyly, Peele, and Marston were from the + university--Marlow and Chapman were exquisite translators from the + Greek. + + [14] The term, the Romantic School, is derived from the _langue + Romans_ or _Romane_, under which comprehensive title all the modern + languages may be included; formed, as they are, out of the wrecks of + the Latin or _Roman_ language. However this may apply to the origin + of the _languages_, the term is not expressive of the _genius_ of the + people. In the common sense of the term "Romantic," the Aeneid 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 _Gothic_, in opposition to the _Classical_, we fix the origin, + and indicate the species. + + [15] Bouterwek's Hist. of Spanish Lit. i. 128. + + [16] Two of these collections are to be valued. + + "COTGRAVE'S 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. + + 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 THOMAS HAYWARD, 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. + + 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. + + 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. + + CHARLES LAMB'S "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. + + + + +SHAKESPEARE. + + +The 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. + +SHAKESPEARE is a poet who is always now separated from other poets, and +the only one, except POPE, 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 HURD declared that "This astonishing man is the most +original THINKER and SPEAKER since the days of HOMER." + +The halo which surrounds the poetic beatitude has almost silenced +criticism in its devotion; but a literary 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Had not the felicitous genius of our bard revelled in this facility of +adopting and adapting the ready-made inventions 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. + +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 _Merchant of Venice_; 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, and their vulgar instincts. Out of this ordinary +domestic witchcraft the mightier poet raised "the weird sisters," + + That look not like the inhabitants o' the earth, + And yet are on't, + +nameless, bodiless, vanishing shadows! + + And what seemed corporal + Melted as breath into the wind. + +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! + +The life of our poet remains almost a blank, and his very name a subject +of contention.[1] Of that singular 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. + +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 inventors. We are not concerned with such tales, +for there is nothing in them which is peculiar to the idiosyncrasy of +the great poet. + +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." + +In 1586, being only twenty-two years of age, Shakespeare quitted home +for the metropolis. + +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.[2] 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. + +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.[3] + +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. + +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?[4] Yes, trust them not! There is _an upstart crow beautified +with our feathers_, that with _his tyger's heart wrapt in a player's +hide_, supposes he is as well able to _bombast[5] out a blank verse_ as +the best of you, and being _an absolute Johannes Factotum_, is, in his +own conceit, the only SHAKE-SCENE in a country." + +"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, _The Contention of the Two Houses of York and Lancaster_; +and which, with many others, Shakespeare had wholly appropriated. In the +third part of _King Henry the Sixth_, in Act I., Scene IV., it stands as +Peele or Greene had originally composed it-- + + O, tyger's heart wrapt in a woman's hide! + +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![6] + +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 _Winter's Tale_, as he took his _As You Like It_ 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. + +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 of these cunning publishers issued the +old play of _The Contention of the Two Houses_, &c., as _newly corrected +and enlarged_ 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. + +In the second and third parts of _King Henry the Sixth_, 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 +_Minutius Felix_, 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 _adopted_ are printed in the usual manner; the +speeches which he _altered_ or expanded, are marked by inverted commas; +and to all the lines entirely _composed_ 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. + +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 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. + +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 _Richard Duke of York_, 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. + + ------Doves will peck in _rescue_ (safeguard) of their brood. + Unreasonable creatures feed their young; + And though man's face be fearful to their eyes, + Yet, in protection of their tender ones, + Who hath not seen them even with those _same_ wings + Which _they have sometimes_ used _in_ fearful flight, + (Which sometime they have used with fearful flight,) + Make war with him that climb'd unto their nest, + Offering their own lives in their young's defence? + +The speech of Queen Margaret, in the third part of _Henry the Sixth_, +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:-- + + The mast but now blown overboard, + The cable broke, the holding anchor lost, &c. + +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 _King John_, and the +other of _The Contentions of the Two Houses_, 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. + +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 _originally_ 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. + +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 "_his_ 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 _ear so +barren a land_, 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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;[7] +but he must have been imperturbably careless on such matters, otherwise +he would not have suffered three editions of this spurious miscellany. + +The fate of "The Sonnets" is remarkable. Steevens boldly ejected them +from the poet's works, declaring that 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. + +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 Coryphaeus +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? + +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;[8] and the airy +Fletcher, who would have emulated Shakespeare, was guilty of sneering at +his inimitable master. The learned JONSON was apt to be critical; +CHAPMAN cast his Greek glances haughtily on the vernacular bard; MARSTON +was caustic; and DRAYTON, his intimate, who had composed two or three +tragedies, could hardly perceive any supremacy in SHAKESPEARE, and for +us, seems parsimoniously to commend his "comic vein" as strong + + As any one that traffick'd with the stage; + +while BEN JONSON is hailed as + + Lord of the theatre, who could bear + The buskin, as the sock, away. + +It was not from his dramatic brothers that SHAKESPEARE 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.[9] 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. + +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. + +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 + + That last infirmity of noble minds, + The spur of fame, + +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. + +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 +_Romeo_, _Macbeth_, and _Othello_, 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, + + The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds, + That did not better for my life provide + Than public means which public manners breeds; + Thence comes it that _my name receives a brand; + And almost thence my nature is subdued + To what it works in_, LIKE THE DYER'S HAND. + +SHAKESPEARE, in the vigour of life, withdrew from the theatre and the +metropolis, returning to his native abode.[10] "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. + +We hear nothing more of SHAKESPEARE 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 SHAKESPEARE! 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. SHAKESPEARE was wholly insensible +to the days which were to come. All this to us seems incredible! + +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 Condell, published the first folio +edition of "Mr. William Shakespeare's Comedies, Histories, and +Tragedies." + +These player-editors profess that "they have done this office to the +dead only to keep the memory of so worthy a _friend and fellow_ 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 ALL the +plays, having lost the proprietorship of several which had _stolen +abroad in Shakespeare's lifetime_, and to obtain this crafty purpose +they practised a fraudulent deception. + +_Fifteen quarto plays_ 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 _first editions_ 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. CAPEL 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. + +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. + +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. + +The player-editors supplied about twenty new dramas, and by another +adroit deception in their titlepage they announced that all the dramas +were NOW published "acording to the original copies." + +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.[11] The recollections of +these two players were so inaccurate that they at first totally omitted +the _Troilus and Cressida_, which is inserted without pagination, and +with little discrimination in the writings of Shakespeare, preserved +the barbarous _Titus Andronicus_, evidently one of Marlowe's gigantic +pieces, and the old play of "the first part of _Henry the Sixth_;" 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 _Pericles_.[12] 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 _descend to the reading of_ SUCH TRIFLES;" 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. + +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.[13] +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 CLOSET COMPANION of these +his solitudes, William Shakespeare." + +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 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.[14] 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. + +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. + +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 + + Stars shot madly from their spheres + +was mottled by the modern Gallic in phrase and in criticism, corrupting +our national taste, and thus removing 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. + +On the restored theatre, "the renowned Jonson," thus distinguished by +Shadwell, retained his supremacy in _The Fox_, _The Silent Woman_, and +_The Alchemist_, 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 _Macbeth_ +shrank into an opera under the hand of Davenant; and the _Tempest_, +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. _Romeo and Juliet_ 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.[15] + +Evelyn is a literary man, whose judgment has its value; and assuredly, +he records the taste of the court-circle. In 1661 he saw "_Hamlet, +Prince of Denmark_, played; but now, _the old plays begin to disgust +this refined age_, since his Majesty has been so long abroad." Pepys, +his contemporary, was a play-haunter: and how he relished _The Midsummer +Night's Dream_, with all its beautiful fancy, appears by his firm +opinion, that "it was the most insipid, ridiculous play he had ever +seen." _Macbeth_, though "a deep tragedy, had a strange perfection in a +_divertisement_;" that is, _Macbeth_ was Davenant's opera, with music +and dancing. But Pepys _read_ Othello, and we have his deliberate +notion; "but having lately read the _Adventures of Five Hours, Othello_ +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. + +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, _The +Yorkshire Tragedy_, had been printed with his name in his lifetime, was +given to the world. + +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 _the greatest masters_ 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 _active and ready +wits that soon tire, and will not hold out_." 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 JONSON and +SHAKESPEARE, for he that _is able to think long and judge well, will be_ +_sure to find out better things than another man can hit upon suddenly, +though of more quick and ready parts_; which is commonly but CHANCE, and +the other wit and judgment."[16] + +After this long extract, it is quite evident that with a predilection +for Shakespeare, alive at times to his true touches of nature, BUTLER +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 _Macbeth_, a _Hamlet_, a _Lear_, was a +philosophical result, which probably no one had yet dreamed of. + +If the genius of SHAKESPEARE were neglected, it was also destined to be +arraigned and condemned. + +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 _Della Crusca_ 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 Pere Rapin, in his "Reflections on Aristotle's +Treatise of Poetry," dictated "Universal Rules" for all sorts of +poetry. RYMER, the collector of our Foedera, in his earlier days, was an +excellent scholar, and cultivated elegant literature. He translated this +very work of Pere 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. + +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.[17] This critical bomb was learned and lively. The court, and +consequently the popular, tastes were classical or Gallic; RYMER 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. + +"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." + +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 _Edgar, or the +English Monarch_, in 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 Abbe 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 _Winter's Tale_ of Shakespeare, +which includes the events of twenty years! + +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.[18] Some years after, the +critique was honoured by a second edition, and in the following year +this _combat a l'outrance_ was again waged, with no diminished +intrepidity, in "A Short View of Tragedy, with some reflections on +SHAKESPEARE, and other PRACTITIONERS for the Stage," 1693. This, +notwithstanding the offensive theme, is replete with curious literature, +and some original researches in Provencal poetry. + +"Rymer is the worst critic that ever lived." Such is the warm decision +of an eloquent modern critic.[19] 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 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 RYMER 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 _Othello_ "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 _Othello's_ tragic tale before him, +the critic worms himself into "the burlesque or comic parts," and these +he insidiously lauds, to insinuate that _Othello_ 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. + +RYMER, 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 forgot Rymer and his "heroic +tragedy." The lines are now very significant. + + To SHAKESPEARE'S CRITIC, he bequeaths the curse, + _To find his faults_, and yet HIMSELF MAKE WORSE.[20] + +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, _The Winter's +Tale_, and _Measure for Measure_, are so meanly written, that the comedy +neither caused your mirth, nor the serious part your concernment." + +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. + +In 1681, the Poet Laureate, Nahum Tate, was so little acquainted with +Shakespeare, that _Lear_ 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. + +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 or person, +lisping in their cradles, with stammering tongues which nothing but +their youth and rawness can excuse." Our dramatic SHAKESPEARE and our +epic MILTON are among these venerable bards, "_rude as they were +according to their time and age_." 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. + +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.[21] + +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 _Macbeth_ 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."[22] 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 _Cato_, 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.[23] Pope's idea was similar, in his +conversation, not in his preface; and later so was Thomas Warton's.[24] + +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 SHAKESPEARE is so rarely cited in this +collection." + +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 superfoetations," 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 called "The _Beauties_ of +Shakespeare!" but amid such a disfigured text, the _faults_ 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 _general +characteristics_. The _genius of Shakespeare_ was at once comprehended +by his brother poet; but _the text_ he was continually tampering with +ended in a fatal testimony that POPE had no congenial taste for the +style, the manner, and the whole native drama of England.[25] POPE laid +himself open to the investigating eye of THEOBALD. + +The attention of THEOBALD had been drawn to our old plays by THOMAS +COXETER, an enthusiast of our ancient dramatists. This Coxeter was the +original projector of their revival, but having communicated his plan, +he witnessed the incompetent DODSLEY appropriate this fond hope of his +dreamy life, and he has left us his indignant groans.[26] + +After an interval of seven years Theobald gave his edition. His attempts +were limited to the emendation of 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." + +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.[27] 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.[28] + +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 _acted plays_ 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 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 +_Timon of Athens_ 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 _parts_, 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. + +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 +THOMAS HANMER had cradled his fancy in the idealism of publication; his +edition was to be not only "the fairest impression, beautified with the +ornaments of sculpture," but it was not to be _sold_ 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. + +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.[29] + +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 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. + +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. + +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 _inverted commas_, but carried on that ridiculous +process on his own separate account, by marking his favourites by +_double commas_. 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. + +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. + +When Johnson had issued his proposals twenty years before for an edition +of Shakespeare, he pointed to a great 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. + +But what proved more fatal to the editorial ability of JOHNSON 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 applique did not fit to his work.[30] + +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. + +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 JOHNSON, with his enduring works, is no longer +a subject of inquiry, but of history; of truths established, and not of +opinions which are mutable. + +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 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." + +In JOHNSON'S SHAKESPEARE, 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. + +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 sometimes have +referred to Johnson to confirm his own depreciating notions. + +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. + +Shortly after the first edition of Johnson, Dr. FARMER 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 +_gusto_ for the native venison, and, alluding to his Shakespearian +pursuits, exclaimed in the inspiring language of his poet-- + + Age cannot wither them, nor custom stale + Their infinite variety. + +His vivacity relieved the drowsiness of mere antiquarianism. This novel +pursuit once opened, an eager and motley pack was hallooed up, and +Shakespeare, like Actaeon, 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 + + Spirits black, white, and grey, + +are some of the most illustrious in English literature. + +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. + +When we survey the massive _variorum_ 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 +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, ISAAC REED, in one of his +prefaces, informs us, that "the works of Shakespeare, during the last +twenty years, have been the object of public attention." + +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 STEEVENS, who affected more gaiety in his chains than his +brothers in the Shakespearian galley, with bitter derision reproached +his great coadjutor MALONE, whom he looked on with the evil eye of +rivalry for drawing his knowledge from "books too mean to be formally +quoted." + +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." + +THOMAS WARTON 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 COULD 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?" + +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 the commentators have conjectured, confuted, and confounded.[31] + +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.[32] 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." + +Voltaire, in early life, to compose the _Henriade_, to escape from the +Bastile, or to conceal his espionage--for he appears to have been a +secret _employe_ of the French ministry--resided a considerable time in +England. He acquired an unusual knowledge of our language, and +published an essay on the epic poets in English.[33] 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 _Henriade_, +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-- + + Some ore + Among a mineral of metals base, + +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 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 +"superfoetations." 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.[34] + +Mrs. MONTAGUE 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 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." + +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 +_Macbeth_, 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. + +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-- + + I dare do all that may become a man, + Who dares do more is none;-- + +and when tried by the conventional code of criticism, and condemned; +the poet of creation, might have exclaimed to Rymer and to Shaftesbury-- + + The poet's eye, + Bodying forth the forms of THINGS UNKNOWN, gives to airy nothing + A local habitation and a name. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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, 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. + +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 aesthetic 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." + +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 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? + +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 _expression_, 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] 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. + + The autographs we possess of our national bard are unquestionably + written SHAKSPERE, 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 SHAGSPERE. + + That the poet himself considered that the genuine name was + SHAKESPEARE, 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 WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, 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:"-- + + "Thou hast so used thy pen, or shook thy speare, + That poets startle." + + 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,-- + + "Mellifluous Shake-speare," + + _Hierarchie of Angels_, 206. + + The question resolves itself into this--Is the name of our great bard + to descend to posterity with the barbaric curt shock of SHAKSPERE, + 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 SHAKESPEARE? + + [2] Mr. J. Payne Collier, in his "New Facts regarding the Life of + Shakespeare." + + [3] Roscius Anglicanus.--They were Richard Burbage and John Lowin. + + [4] 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." + + [5] _Bombast_ 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. + + [6] Collier's "New Facts," 13. Dyce's edition of "Greene's Dramatic + Works." + + [7] Heywood's "Apology for Actors."--The Epistle to his bookseller at + the end. + + [8] In the comedy of _Eastward Ho!_ the joint production of Jonson, + Marlowe, and Chapman,--Shakespeare is ridiculed, particularly the + madness of Hamlet and Ophelia. + + [9] ROBERT CHESTER, a fantastical versifier, whose volume is priced + in the "Bib. Anglo-Poetica" at 50_l._, but this price was too + moderate; for, at the sale of Sir M. Sykes, some ingenious lover of + absurd poetry willingly gave 61_l._ 19_s._ I have not yet seen this + extraordinary production, and derive my knowledge only from a + specimen in the catalogue. + + [10] In 1612 or 13. + + [11] 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 personae, 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-- + + "Observe and honour her as if the SEAL + Of woman's goodness only dwelt in hers." + + The poet corrected this to "the SOUL." The sagacity of an English + Bentley could hardly have conjectured the happy emendation; only the + poet himself could have supplied it. + + Again the printer's text runs-- + + "From any lip whose HONOUR writ not Lord." + + The poet corrected this also to "whose OWNER." + + 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 _errors of the press_?" 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 ZACHARY JACKSON, 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. + + * 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. + + [12] Collier's "Poetical Decameron," i. 52. STEEVENS thought _The + Yorkshire Tragedy_ to be Shakespearian; and the Rev. ALEXANDER DYCE, + struck by the Shakespearian soliloquy of the wife, decides that "it + contains passages worthy of his pen."--_Dyce's Mem. of Shakespeare_, + xxxi. + + [13] 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. + + [14] Milton, however, has been misinterpreted by some modern critics; + when, on this occasion, having quoted that passage in _Richard the + Third_ which displays his hypocrisy, Milton adds--"_Other stuff of + this sort_ 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 _matter_. Pye exclaims--"Could Milton have imagined that + _the stuff_ of Mr. William Shakespeare would be preferred to 'Comus' + and the 'Samson Agonistes?'"--212. + + [15] I derive my knowledge from the "Roscius Anglicanus" of DOWNES, + the prompter; it is a meagre chronicle, and the scribe is illiterate; + but the edition by F. WALDRON, 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. + + 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 _five_ of Jonson, and but _one_ of Shakespeare and that + _Titus Andronicus_. + + [16] Butler's "Genuine Remains," ii. 494. + + [17] _Rollo, King and no King_, and _The Maid's Tragedy_. + + [18] 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. + + [19] "Edinburgh Review," Sept. 1831. + + [20] 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 _Edgar_ is to fall in snow at the + next acting of _King Lear_, 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." + + [21] On the play-bills of that day I find the modern dramas of + _Cato_, _The Conscious Lovers_, 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 "_The Silent Woman_, + a Comedy by the _famous_ Ben Jonson;" "_Hamlet, Prince of Denmark_, + written by the _immortal_ Shakespeare;" "_The Soldier's Fortune_, + written by the late _ingenious_ Mr. Otway." Though Shakespeare bears + away the prize among these epithetical allotments, I suspect that his + _immortality_--here positively assigned to him--was owing to the + honour of the recent edition by Rowe. + + In 1741 the theatre seems to have recommended the dramas of + Shakespeare for the variety of their _historical subjects_. On one of + these bills _Richard the Third_ 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." + + [22] "Tatler"--42. + + [23] "Spectator"--39, 285. + + [24] V. iv. 186. + + [25] 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. + + [26] COXETER, 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. + + [27] 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 _costume_ or dress of the characters at the time. + + [28] 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. + + [29] See "Quarrels of Authors." + + [30] 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 + Litterature." + + [31] 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 _works of + English Authors_, particularly _Shakespeare and his Contemporaries_," + 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. + + [32] Monsieur VILLEMAIN, 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 SHAKESPEARE + 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 MOLIERE 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. Moliere is as truly an + original genius as any dramatist of any age. + + [33] 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!--_Spence._ + + 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. + + [34] Two specimens of the criticism of Voltaire may explain his + involuntary and his voluntary blunders:-- + + In _Hamlet_, 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'armee, 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. + + In _Julius Caesar_, when Voltaire translates Caesar's reply to + Metellus, who would fall at his feet to supplicate for the repeal of + his brother's banishment, the Caeesar of Shakespeare uses metaphorical + expressions. He would not yield to + + "That which melteth fools; I mean sweet words, + Low-crooked curt'sies, and base _spaniel-fawning_. + If thou dost bend, and pray, and fawn for him, + _I'd spurn thee like a cur out of my way_." + + 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!-- + + "_Les airs d'un chien couchant_ peuvent toucher un sot; + Flatte, prie a genoux, et _leche-moi les pieds_-- + Va, je te _rosserai_ comme un chien." + + _Rosser_ 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. + + + + +THE "HUMOURS" OF JONSON. + + +JONSON studied "THE HUMOURS," and not the passions. What were these +"humours"? The bard himself does not distinguish them from "manners"-- + + Their MANNERS, now call'd HUMOURS, feed the stage. + +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. + +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. + +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 the whole system in +two comedies of "Every Man IN" and "Every Man OUT of his HUMOUR." + +The vague term was least comprehended when most in use. Asper, the +censor of the times,[1] 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. + +The philosopher then offers + + To give these ignorant well-spoken days + Some taste of their abuse of this word HUMOUR. + +This rejoices his friend Cordatus: + + Oh, do not let your purpose fall, good Asper; + It cannot but arrive most acceptable, + Chiefly to such as have the happiness + Daily to see how _the poor innocent word + Is rack'd and tortured_. + +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.[2] + +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. + +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 _Huarte's Examen de Ingenios_, 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 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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, + + The wonder of a learned age. + +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 Coryphaeus 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.[3] + +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 _The Sullen Lovers_, he says that we are not to expect +the intrigue of comedy, plot and business, lest he should "let fall the +humour." And in _The Humourist_, he 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 _The Virtuoso_, where +we are told that "four of the humours are entirely new." We have his +definition of these "humours" in the epilogue to _The Humourists_, and +which is neatly expressed. + + A Humour is the bias of the mind, + By which, with violence, 'tis one way inclined; + It makes our action lean on one side still; + And, in all changes, that way bends the will. + +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. + +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] In the Introduction to _Every Man Out of his Humour_. + + [2] See Nares' "Glossary" for an account of these Humours in their + philosophical sense. + + [3] "He was not of an age, but for all time."--_Jonson._ + + + + +DRAYTON. + + +"THE POLY-OLBION" of DRAYTON 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. + +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 CAMDEN; 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." + +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 caesura, 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 +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. + +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 LELAND's magnificent view of +his designed work on "Britain," and that hint expanded by the +"Britannia" of CAMDEN, who inherited the mighty industry, without the +poetical spirit of LELAND: DRAYTON embraced both. + +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 +DRAYTON censures DANIEL, his brother poet, for being _too historical_ 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! + +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,"[1] and its numerous and, some, +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. + +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, +SELDEN, 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.[2] The +preface to the second part is remarkable for its inscription, in no good +humour, + + TO ANY THAT WILL READ IT! + +There was yet no literary public to appeal to, to save the neglected +work which the great SELDEN had deemed worthy of his studies: but there +was, as the poet indignantly designates them, "a cattle, _odi profanum +vulgus et arceo_, 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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, + + I feare, as I do stabbing, this word, state. + +According to Oldys, Drayton appears to have been an agent in the +Scottish king's intercourse with his English 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] 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. + + [2] 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. + + A modern folio edition was published by Dodsley in 1748. The + title-page assures us that this volume contains _all_ 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 _Appendix_, 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 _octavo_ edition is in fact the identical + _folio_, 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. + + 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. + + + + +THE PSYCHOLOGICAL HISTORY OF RAWLEIGH. + + +Rawleigh 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. + +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. + +This is the perspective view of his _character_ as it appears at a +distance; his was a strange and adventurous _life_! 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 catastrophe of a tragic romance. I pursue this +history as far as concerns its psychological development. + +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. + +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." + +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 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +To clip "the wing that had spread far over its nest," 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. + +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." + +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. + +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 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." + +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. 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 creation, "the face +of whose earth hath not been torn, nor the virtue and salt of the soil +spent by manurance." + +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. + +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." + +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 _to go journies of +picory_;" that is, in Gondomar's plain Spanish "piracy;" for the +Spaniards applied the term _picarro_, 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. + +Spain trembled at the efforts of a single hero of England; she seemed to +anticipate her uncertain dominion 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. + +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;"[1] but this restorative was not then administered to the lorn +stroller from Sherborne. The queen was imperturbable. + +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 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. + +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.[2] All this was done in the absence +of Essex, but not without his consent: for the three enemies were now to +be friends. + +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;[3] and in the confession of one of +Essex's desperate advisers, in their mad rising, we learn that the earl +had fixed on Rawleigh to be got rid of. + +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. + +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! + +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 + + Still kept on the mountain, and left us on the plain. + +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 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.[4] + +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, _more suo_,--"Rawleigh! Rawleigh! +o' my saul, mon, I have heard _rawly_ of thee!"[5] 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 +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.[6] + +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. + +Rawleigh, condemned, was suffered to live twelve years in the Tower, +whence he obtained a release, but not a 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _Moutons_, and +his near kinsman, Stukeley, the most infamous of traitors![7] + +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. + +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." + +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. + +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 FRANCIS +BACON." + +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 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. TRUTH and +EXPERIENCE were to be the columns which supported and adorned HISTORY. +And this we read in "The MIND 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.[8] + +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 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. + +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;[9] 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. + +The actual condition of society; the politics of past governments; the +arts, the trades, the inventions of past 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 am +not altogether ignorant in the laws of history and of the kinds._" + +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. + +"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 _surpassed in the pursuits of literature even those of +the most recluse and sedentary lives_." + +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 _eleven years' +leisure_ 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. + +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 +Mecaenas, 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 _Bibliotheca Alleniana_, 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 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-- + + Deep Hariot's mine, + In which there is no dross. + +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. + +These philosophers appear to have advanced far into 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 _ex nihilo nihil fit_. He made a _philosophical theology_, +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. + +From such accounts we can derive no knowledge of the _philosophical +theology_ 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. + +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.[10] + +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. + +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.'" + +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;[11] but the most material characteristic of his work Rawleigh +could borrow from no one--the tone and elevation of his genius. + +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."[12] + +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.[13] + +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?"[14] + +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. + +The favourite of his sovereign, thrown amid the contending suitors of a +female Court, we have found creeping 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. + +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.[15] + +Such is the psychological history of a genius of the first order of +minds, whom posterity hails among the founders of our literature. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] Lodge's "Illustrations of British History," iii. 67. + + [2] Sidney Letters, ii. 45. + + [3] 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 _blinds for + posterity_," 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. + + [4] The extraordinary means of the duplicity of this wily minister + are stated by Mr. TYTLER in the Appendix to his "Life of Rawleigh." + + [5] As _Rawleigh_, 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. + + [6] 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. + TYTLER 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." + + [7] 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. + + [8] 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. + + [9] 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 _Ficus indica_--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. + + [10] 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. + + [11] 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 _enrage_, 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 + "Athenae Oxonienses." + + [12] Preface to the "History of the World." + + [13] 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. + + [14] 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. + + [15] 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. + + + + +THE OCCULT PHILOSOPHER, DR. DEE. + + +At 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. + +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 + + --------transported, + And rapt in secret studies; + +that is, in the occult sciences; and he had + + Volumes that he prized more than his dukedom. + +These were alchemical, astrological, and cabalistical treatises. The +magical part of _The Tempest_, Warton has observed, "is founded on that +sort of philosophy which was peculiar to JOHN DEE and his associates, +and has been called 'the Rosicrucian.'" + +Dr. DEE 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 Maecenas, +Britain would not have been destitute of an Aristotle? BACON 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. + +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. + +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 +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. 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.[1] + +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;[2] 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. + +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 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.[3] 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. + +Our author published eight or ten learned works, and left unfinished +fifty, some far advanced.[4] + +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. + +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 _treasure trove_, 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 _virgula divina_, 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.[5] + +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. + +This KELLEY, 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 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. + +For this tale our antiquary WEEVER has been quipped by our antiquary +ANTHONY a WOOD, 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." + +Many strange unexplained accounts have come down to us where _Voices_ +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, _much in the +throat_." "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 _voices_ which gave the responses of the spirits. + +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. Ventriloquism has been oftener practised than has +been known to the listeners. Speaking _much in the throat_ 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. + +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,[6] 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.[7] 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.[8] + +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 throughout Europe, and crystal or beryl +was the magical medium; but as the gift of _seeing_ 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 _speculators_, and sometimes women were +_speculatrices_. 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. + +Kelley was now installed into the office of _Skryer_; 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. + +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." + +[Delta] "The great mercies of God be upon us; we beseech him to increase +our faith." + +E. K. "Amen! But while I consider these buds better they seem rather to +be white lilies." + +[Delta] "The eternal God wipe away our blackness, and make us purer and +whiter than snow." + +E. K. "They are 72 in number (angels), seeming with their heads +_alternatim_, seeming with their heads one 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." + +A VOICE. "_Est. Et quo modo est?_" + +ANOTHER VOICE. "_Male et in summo: et mensuratum est._" + +E. K. "I hear a great roaring, as if it were out of a cloud over one's +head, not perfectly like thunder." + +ANOTHER VOICE. "_The Seal is broken!_" + +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, +_Ascend_!'" + +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." + +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."[9] + +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. + +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 courts of Europe, occult philosophers found a +ready admittance. + +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.[10] 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.[11] + +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.[12] 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,[13] shows the +skilful falconer luring the bird. Dee assured the queen that "the Baron +of Bohemia" positively 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. + +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 _res angusta domi_ 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. + +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. + +A commission was immediately assigned, and it was followed by a literary +scene of singular novelty. + +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 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. + +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,[14] 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. + +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! + +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 _a Certain Studious +Gentleman_," 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. + +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!" + +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 +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 +_Alchemist_ 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. + +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. JOHN +DEE and SOME SPIRITS," 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.[15] + +MERIC CASAUBON 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 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, _as well as the work itself_!"[16] + +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.[17] + +The "True Relation of what passed many Years between Dr. DEE and SOME +SPIRITS," 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."[18] Are we to resolve 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. + +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![19] As, notwithstanding the profusion +of 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. + +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. + +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? + +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 parts; _to be serious_, 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. ROBERT HOOKE, the +eminent mathematician. + +HOOKE, 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 +_cryptography_; 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.[20] + +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] 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 Alencon, 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. + + [2] 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." + + [3] These ingenious rolls, or maps, are now deposited among the + Cottonian manuscripts. + + [4] 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. + + These unfinished writings are scattered in the COTTONIAN and the + ASHMOLEAN Collections, for their learned founders anxiously recovered + them. + + 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. + + [5] 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. + + 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 BIOT, in "Biog. Universelle," art. _Ayman + Jacques_. [An account of its use at Freiburg in discovering silver + mines, and a picture of its form, may be seen in Dr. Brown's "Travels + in Germany," 4to, 1677, p. 136.] + + 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 _treasure trove_? 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. + + [6] Sloane MSS., 3191. + + [7] 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. + + [8] This superstition retains all its freshness in the East. A + magician at Cairo recently, + + "Taking in of SHADOWS WITH A GLASS"--(_The Alchemist of Jonson_), + has, I believe, been recorded by a noble lord; having startled the + lookers-on with one shadow, painfully recognised, and another of a + great _bibliophile_, 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. + + [9] 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 _his_ Edward Kelley. + + [10] 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, ELIAS + ASHMOLE. + + [11] 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. + + [12] 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. + + [13] This letter, from the Burleigh Papers, is printed by + Strype.--_Annals_, iv. 3. + + [14] We have several manuscript letters which passed between DEE and + STOWE. They show all the warmth of their literary intercourse. Dee + offers his present aid, and promises his future assistance. + + [15] 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. + + [16] "General Dictionary," by BIRCH, art. _Meric Casaubon_--Note B. + + [17] This literary anecdote I derive from a manuscript and + contemporary note in the printed copy at the British Museum. + + [18] 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 _in the same manner_ as Kelley had + done."--_Biog. Brit>._, 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. + + [19] 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.--_Athen. Oxon._, ii. 541. + + [20] "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 XVI., G,) 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."--_Cat. of Adam Clarke's MSS._ + + + + +THE ROSACRUSIAN FLUDD. + + +The 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. + +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 Andreae, 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. + +The name of the founder seemed as mystical as the secret order, the Rose +and the Cross.[1] 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 consecrated +symbol of Christianity, described the order's holy end; such notions +might suit a mystical divine.[2] 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.[3] + +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, ROBERT +FLUDD, 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. + +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. + +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 +of all arts and sciences."[4] 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 _rarum et +densum_, 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 Naturae +Simia," or "The Ape of Nature,"--that is, ART! a single image, but a +fertile principle. + +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. + +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. + +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." + +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."[5] A curious tract +was published by FLUDD, to 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. + +We smile at the _sympathy_ 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 _the anointing of the +weapon that maketh the wound_ will heal the wound itself."[6] Indeed, +Lord Bacon himself had discovered as magical a sympathy, for he +presented Prince Henry, as "the first fruits of his philosophy, _a +sympathising stone_, 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! + +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 FLUDD conceal many profound and +original views, and many truths not yet patent. It is enough that one of +the deepest scholars, our illustrious SELDEN, 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, Pere Mersenne, who +denounced the Rosacrusian to Europe as a caco-magician, who had ensured +for himself perdition throughout eternity. + +Pere 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. Pere 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;[7] and among Machiavel, Cardan, Campanella, +and Vanini, appears the name of our pious Fludd. Mersenne expressed his +astonishment that James the First suffered such a man to live and to +write. + +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." + +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 +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] 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."--_Fuller's Worthies._ + + [2] 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 _Ros_, and, in the figure + of a cross X, they trace the three letters which compose the word + _Lux_--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. + + [3] 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. + + [4] 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 + _Encyclopaedia_, which Chambers curtailed to _Cyclopaedia_. + + [5] The collected writings of ROBERT FLUDD, 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. + + [6] "Lord Bacon's Natural History," Cent. x. 998.--"In this + experiment, upon the relation of men of credit, though myself as + _yet_ am not fully inclined to believe it," his lordship gives ten + notes or points as extraordinary as "the ointment" itself. + + [7] This list appeared in some Commentaries on Genesis, but was + suppressed in most of the copies; the whole has, however, been + recovered by Chauffepie in his Dictionary. + + + + +BACON. + + +In 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. + +Among these first INVENTORS--our epical SPENSER, our dramatic +SHAKESPEARE and JONSON, our HOOKER, who sounded the depths of the origin +of law, and our RAWLEIGH, 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. + +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. + +But from this passive obedience to a single encyclopaedic 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;"[1] 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. + +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. + +Early in the sixteenth century appeared simultaneously a number of +extraordinary geniuses. An age of philosophical 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.[2] 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. + +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"[3]--and true enough, if it were a rival +Aristotelian who cast Ramus out of the window, to be massacred by the +mob on St. 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."[4] 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. + +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. + +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." + +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 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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 +_citizen of the world, as English books are not_." 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. + +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, 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. + +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 HACKET. 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. + +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. + +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 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. PETER SHAW, in 1733, who then suggested that the noble Baconian +scheme had not been "sufficiently understood and regarded." This Dr. +SHAW 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 they have been deemed +worthy to be revived in a late edition. + +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. + +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." + +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 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. + +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, _Sic +sedebat_.[5] + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] The Abate ANDRES, in his erudite "Origine &c. d'ogni + Letteratura," gives this remarkable description--"_i_ GHIRIBIZZI + _della Dialetica e Metafisica d'Aristotele_." As we are at a loss to + discover the origin of the term _gibberish_, and as it is suitable to + the present occasion, may we conjecture that we have here found + it?--xii. 26. + + [2] Enfield, ii. 448. + + [3] Andres "Dell' Origine e Progressi d'ogni Letteratura," xv. 165. + + [4] Montagu's Bacon, iv. 46. + + [5] See "Curiosities of Literature," art. "Bacon at Home." + + + + +THE FIRST FOUNDER OF A PUBLIC LIBRARY. + + +The 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. + +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 +COLLECTORS, 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. + +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 FOUNDERS 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. + +A collection formed by a single mind, skilled in its favourite pursuit, +becomes the tangible depository of the 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. + +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.[1] 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 FRANCIS +DOUCE, 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 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 SELDEN, +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 MALONE. 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. + +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. + +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, 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 A +PUBLIC LIBRARY.[2] 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. + +Sir THOMAS BODLEY 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. + +BODLEY, 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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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 who had the honour of laying the foundation +of the Bodleian Library.[3] + +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 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 PUBLIC LIBRARY. + +"We cannot but presume that, casting (counting) what number of noble +benefactors have already concurred in a FERVOUR OF AFFECTION to that +PUBLIC PLACE OF STUDY, we shall be sure in TIME TO COME to find some +OTHERS OF THE LIKE DISPOSITION to the advancement of learning."[4] + +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 ROBERT COTTON, 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 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] 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. + + 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. + + [2] Tirabosohi, VI. pt. i, 131. + + [3] See Gutch's edition of Wood's "Annals of the University of + Oxford," vol. I. pt. ii. p. 928. + + [4] 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 "Reliquiae Bodleianae, 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. + + + + +EARLY WRITERS, THEIR DREAD OF THE PRESS; THE TRANSITION TO AUTHORS BY +PROFESSION. + + +At 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 +encyclopaedias 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, WEBBE, of innumerable sorts of English books, and +infinite fardles of printed pamphlets, "all shops were stuffed." + +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. + +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 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. + +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 +EDWARD the Sixth and MARY, 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 _Malevoli_, 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 "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. + +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." + +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! +_Ignoto_ and _Immerito_, 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 _uncertain Authors_;" 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 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. + +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. + +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," 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. + +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.[1] They even +touched on the verge of that last refinement in society, critical +coteries. We learn from Jonson, that there was "a college of 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! + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 Bruyere for +his refined causticity; but the most skilful, as Sir Thomas Overbury and +Bishop Earle, are so witty as to seem grotesque, but it is human nature +disguised in the fashions of the day.[2] + +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. + +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. + +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 JAMES THE FIRST 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. + +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. + +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 +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 _divine origin of +king-writing_! "The majesty of kings," he asserts, "is not unsuited to a +writer of books;" and proceeds--"_The first royal author_ is the King of +kings--God himself, who doth so many things for our imitation. It +pleased his divine wisdom to be _the first in this rank_, that we read +of, that did _ever write_. 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! + +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. "THE +BASILICON DORON, 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 +_to write in his own language_, "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. + +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 _Macbeth_, 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"-- + + --------What a sight it were, + To see thee on our waters yet appear; + And make those flights upon the banks of Thames, + That so did take Eliza and OUR JAMES![3] + +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. It +was by the especial command of this royal "pedant," twenty-four years +after the publication of Fairfax's _Tasso_, 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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] This technical term, designating the class of youthful loungers, + was a new term in 1596, when Sir John Davis wrote his "Epigrams"-- + + "Oft in my laughing rimes I name a GULL, + But this _new terme_ will many questions breed; + Therefore, at first, I will expresse at full + Who is a true and perfect Gull indeed." + + 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 DEKKER, of which we have a beautiful edition, + with appropriate embellishments, by Dr. Nott. + + [2] Dr. Bliss has given an excellent edition of Bishop Earle's + "Microcosmography, or a Piece of the World Discovered in Essays and + Characters." + + [3] 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. + + + + +THE AGE OF DOCTRINES. + + +We 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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.[1] + +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? + +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 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;[2] 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. + +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. + +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 Aeneas +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. + +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 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. + +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? + +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. + +But in reality what was the character of James the First? Where shall we +find it?[3] + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] James granted to the Puritans the public discussion then prayed + for--the famous conference at Hampton Court. + + [2] 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. + + [3] I have at least honestly attempted "An Inquiry into the Literary + and Political Character of James the First." + + + + +PAMPHLETS. + + +Pamphlets, 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. + +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 under Anne the nation +observed the light skirmishes of Whig and Tory pamphlets. + +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 PAMPHLETS had not yet reached perfection." + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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 _deliciae_ 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. + +The age of Charles the First may be characterised 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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.[1] + +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. + +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. + +The collection continued at Oxford many years awaiting a purchaser;[2] +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,[3] 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.[4] In 1745 a representative of the Mearne family still +held the volumes,[5] and eventually they were 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. + +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] In vol. 100, small quarto, we find the following memorandum:-- + + "Mem'dum that Col^l Will Legg and Mr. Arthur Treavor were employed by + his Majes^e K. Ch. to gett for his present use a pamphl^t 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^y 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^e at Hampton C^t (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^e 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 _durt_, 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^ties 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^y diligently and + carefully I continued the same until that most hapie restoration & + coronation of his most gratious majestie King Charle y^e 2d, whom God + long preserve. + + "GEO. THOMASON." + + 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. + + [2] 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. + + [3] 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_l._ for + them."--_Masters' Life of Rev. Thomas Baker_, p. 28. + + [4] "Phoenix 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 _Tomlinson, the bookseller_, 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. + + [5] 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.--_Hollis' Memoirs_, p. 121. + + + + +THE OCEANA OF HARRINGTON. + + +The 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,[1] +were opposed by an ideal government, more generous in its sympathies, +and less obtrusive of brute force, or "the public sword," in the OCEANA +of JAMES HARRINGTON. + +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. + +The psychological history of HARRINGTON 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." + +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 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." + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +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, that he contracted a disease by it; that never +anything did go so near to him." + +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. + +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 +"OCEANA." + +OCEANA, 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 +_empire follows the balance of property_, 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. + +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 +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.[2] 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. + +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. + +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. + +HARRINGTON 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 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 OCEANA, then it is the most equal, perfect, and +immortal commonwealth. _Quod erat demonstrandum._" + +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 +_gentleman_, 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 _the genius of a gentleman_." 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." + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +"Have I injured you?" + +"Not at all! but your father has stolen my child, and then you would +have interceded for its restoration." + +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?" + +"It is a political romance! to be dedicated to your father, and the +first copy to be opened by yourself." + +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 _single person_, 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." + +"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. + +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 in +which there is no cogging," observes the master-genius of "the Rota." + +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." HENRY NEVILLE, 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. + +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." + +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 _only valuable model of a +commonwealth_ 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 _auto da fe_ 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 TOLAND +edited this great work, and, in his life of Milton, has declared +"Oceana" to be an unrivalled model of a commonwealth, for its +_practicableness_, _equality_, and completeness; and once HOLLIS, during +the fervour of founding a republic in Corsica, recommended by public +advertisement "Oceana" as the most perfect model of a free government. + +"OCEANA" 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. + +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.[3] Constantly +he extols the 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." + +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 "OCEANA!" + +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! + +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 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." + +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. + +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. + +"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 +_public_ person, not any _magistrate_ 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." + +My Lord Lauderdale, who thus far had been very attentive, at this showed +some impatience. + +_Har._--"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 Caesar, and the commonwealth-man, +Machiavel, under the Medici, unmolested. + +"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 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!" + +Certainly no theoretical politician has ever more lucidly set before us +the cruel dilemmas of speculative science. + +The story of HARRINGTON 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. + +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, +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. + +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. + +There is one dark cloud which dusks the lustre of the name of +HARRINGTON. 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. + +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 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."[4] 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. + +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,[5] 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. + +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] 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.) + + [2] The masterpiece of legislation of Abbe 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 Abbe Sieyes' system is described. + + [3] 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-- + + "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 _France_, _Italy_, and + _Spain_ 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. _The first of these nations, which, if you stay her leisure, + will, in my mind, be France_, that recovers the health of ancient + prudence, shall certainly _govern the world_."--_Oceana_, p. 168; + edition 1771. + + [4] The Art of Law-giving, 366, 4to edition. + + [5] See the solemn denunciations of the "Biographia Britannica," p. + 2536, which are repeated by later biographers; see Chalmers. + + + + +THE AUTHOR OF "THE GROUNDS AND REASONS OF MONARCHY." + + +The author of "The Grounds and Reasons of Monarchy," whose historical +libel is perpetuated in the works of Harrington, is JOHN HALL, 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 HALL +did, we must conclude that there are meteorous beings, whose eccentric +orbits we know not how to describe. HALL, 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, _Horae Vacivae_, 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.[1] + +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.[2] + +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 _reduced_, and _the rest of +the revenue_ of the university _sequestered into the hands of the +committee_," 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. + +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.[3] + +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,[4] 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. + +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. + +A true prodigy of genius was this JOHN HALL; 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." + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] Three or four of these Essays have been reprinted in "The + Restituta," vol. iii. The original book is very rare. + + [2] See Ellis' "Specimens." + + [3] I found the origin of this eloquent and factious performance in + an account of JOHN HALL, 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. + + [4] 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.--_Brueggeman's + English Transactions._ + + + + +COMMONWEALTH. + + +When the term COMMONWEALTH 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. + +The term _Commonweal_, or _wealth_, 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 _republic_, in its popular sense, was +promulgated by the votaries of democracy. The term _Commonweal_ explains +itself; it specifies no particular polity but the public weal; and even +the term _republic_ originally meant nothing more than _res publicae_, or +"the affairs of the public." Sir THOMAS SMITH, 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. + +The ambiguity of the term _Commonwealth_ 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 +_usurped nick-name_ called a COMMONWEALTH."[1] + +It was in the revolutionary period of Charles the First that the terms +_Commonwealth_ and _Commonwealth-man_ 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. + +When Baxter wrote his "Holy Commonwealth" against 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 _already a +Commonwealth_ the most free and best constituted in the world. This was +_frankly_ acknowledged by King James the First, who styled himself _the +great servant of the Commonwealth_." One hardly suspected a republican +of gravely citing the authority of the royal sage on any position! + +The Restoration made the term _Commonwealth-man_ odious as marking out a +class of citizens in hostility to the government; and _Commonwealth_ +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 LOCKE himself when writing on "government." +"By Commonwealth," says our philosophical politician, "I must be +understood all along to mean, _not a democracy_, but any independent +community, which the Latins signified by the word _civitas_, to which +the word which best answers in our language is _Commonwealth_." 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 +_Commonwealth_ in that sense in which I find it _used by King James the +First_, and I take it to be its genuine signification--which _if anybody +dislike, I consent with him to change it for a better_!" An ample +apology! but one which hardly suits the dignity of the philosophical +writer. + + +FOOTNOTE: + + [1] Rawleigh's "Remains." + + + + +THE TRUE INTELLECTUAL SYSTEM OF THE UNIVERSE. + + +It is only in the silence of seclusion that we should open the awful +tome of "The True Intellectual System of the Universe" of RALPH +CUDWORTH.[1] 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. + +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. + +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 _mind_ discovers what the _sense_ 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. + +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 this +Cudworth calls _the divine fate_, or _immoral theism_, 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. + +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. + +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. + +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." + +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. + +In this folio of near a thousand pages, Cudworth opens 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.[2] 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." + +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;[3] +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 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 +"Bibliotheque 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.[4] + +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, 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 +Systeme Intellectuel' je trouve beaucoup de savoir, mais non pas assez +de meditation." + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 _the plastic life of Nature_, 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 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. + +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.[5] 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 _plastic life of +Nature_, 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. + +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 and Immutable +Morality"--an exposition of the dangerous doctrines of Hobbes and the +Antinomians.[6] 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. MORE, 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. + +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 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. + +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 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. + +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." + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] My copy is the folio volume of the first edition, 1678; but they + have recently reprinted Cudworth at Oxford in four volumes. + + [2] 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. + + [3] In the first edition, the _references_ 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." + + [4] 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. + + [5] Continuation des Pensees Diverses, iii. 90. + + [6] 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. + + + + +DIFFICULTIES OF THE PUBLISHERS OF CONTEMPORARY MEMOIRS. + + +The 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. + +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 this bibliographical tale offers a striking +illustration of the disingenuity alike of the assailants and the +defenders. + +The history of Lord CLARENDON 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. + +The History of Lord CLARENDON thus, from its first appearance, was +attended by the concomitant difficulties 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. + +The authenticity of the history soon became a subject of national +attention. The passions of the two great 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 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 _before it came +to the press_, such liberties as make it doubtful what part of it is +Clarendon's and what not." + +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. + +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. + +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 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, "_It will do!_" 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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. + +In this extraordinary history of the fate of a disputed 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 acted by the +learned Doctor on this occasion, and evidently spread the first rumours +of a corrupted or an altered text. + +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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 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.[1] Thus it happened, that the +editors of Clarendon and Burnet form a parallel case, suffering under +the inconveniences of editors of contemporary memoirs. + +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[2] 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; _if alterations +were made_, this may be a means of discovering. I have often wondered +why _the original MS._ of that History is not put into some public place +to answer all objections; but when I consider _a whimsical family_, my +surprise is the less. Judge BURNET 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 _quando_ 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 _all the castrations_, 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."[3] Here, then, the world possessed +sufficient 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. + +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. + +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 CLARENDON +is still paramount, and the vehement spirit of BURNET 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.[4] + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] Burnet's "History," iv. 552, edition 1823. + + [2] _Sic_ in original, but probably Tanner. + + [3] Rawlinson's Bodleian MSS., vol. ii., lett. 38. + + [4] 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. + + + + +THE WAR AGAINST BOOKS. + + +The 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. + +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. + +Although Caxton, our first printer, bore the title of _Regius +Impressor_, 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. + +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 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. + +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. + +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 WAR AGAINST BOOKS which +has not ceased in our time. + +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.[1] 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. + +The cardinal at length was shaken by terrors he had never before felt +from the hated press. This minister had writhed under the printed +personalities of the rabid SKELTON and the merciless ROY; but a pamphlet +in the form of "_The Supplication of Beggars_" is a famed invective, +which served as a prelude to the fall of the minister. The author, SIMON +FISH, 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. + +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. + +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." + +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."[2] 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. + +When the first persecution of "the new religion" occurred, it did not +abate the secret importations of Lutheran books.[3] 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. + +It was now apparent that the secrecy and velocity of conveying the novel +projects of reform, which could not 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,[4] 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. + +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. + +There were two methods by which governments could counteract the +inconveniences of the press: the one, by 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. + +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 craftsmen 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."[5] 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. + +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. + +Anterior to the invention of printing, there flourished a craft or trade +who were denominated _Stationers_; 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 _station in a street_, +either by a shop or shed, and probably when their former occupation had +gone, still retained their dealings in literature, and turned to +booksellers.[6] This denomination of _stationers_, 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. + +In the reign of Philip and Mary "the Stationers" were granted a charter +of incorporation, and were invested with the most inquisitorial powers. + +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. + +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.[7] 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 +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 _executed for a rebel_!"[8] 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. + +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 _licensed by her majesty by express words in writing_, +or by _six of her privy council_."[9] + +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. + +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."[10] 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 _some few +copies_ 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 to obtain a +quotation, without first hastening to Lambeth Palace, there to be +questioned! + +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 DAY!" 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."[11] + +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 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. + +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!"[12] + +Amid these clamours in the commonwealth of literature, the patentees +became alarmed at the danger of 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 _bought of the authors_ +for their money.'" Here we find the first notice of "copyright," and the +very inadequate notions yet entertained of its nature. + +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, _Cum privilegio ad imprimendum solum_; 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 _the first printer was at charge for the author's pains and other +extraordinary cost_; but should any succeeding printer who had "_the +copy gratis_" sell cheaper on better paper, and with notes and +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. + +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,[13] +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.[14] + +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, 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.[15] 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. + +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 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. + +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 _the royal prerogative of +printing_ any more than they had that of _coining_. 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 _magistrate_ and as _proprietor_;" 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."[16] + +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! + +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.[17] + +Among the effusions of the political Literature of the egregious Sir +ROGER L'ESTRANGE, 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 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 _honest_ printers +being impoverished by the late times." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +Such were the systematic struggles of our governments in the revival of +the severe acts for the regulation of printing at various periods. It +was long assumed that printing was not a free trade, but always to +remain under regulation. + +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." + +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. + + +FOOTNOTES: + + [1] See a curious note of Hearne's in his Glossary to "Peter + Langtoft's Chronicle," p. 685. Also Herbert's "Typog. Antiq." p. + 1435. + + [2] Strype's "Memorials," i. 344 and 218. + + [3] 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. + + [4] The book, "De Vera Differentia 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. + + [5] "Archaeologia," vol. xxv. 104. + + [6] Pegge, in his "Anecdotes of the English Language," has somewhat + crudely remarked that "the term _Stationers_ was appropriated to + _Booksellers_ 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 _Stationer_ and _Bookseller_ were + synonymous and in common use in the reign of Elizabeth, and may be + found in Baret's "Alvearie," 1573. + + [7] The Charter may be found in Herbert's "Typographical + Antiquities," p. 1584. + + [8] Strype's "Memorials," iii: part 2nd. p. 130. + + [9] 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--_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_." The first + paper made in England was at Dartford, in 1588, by a German, who was + knighted by the queen. + + [10] This decree of the Star-chamber is printed in Herbert's + "Typographical Antiquities," p. 1668. + + [11] 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. + + [12] "Archaeologia," xxv. 112. + + [13] Nichols on the Stationers' Company.--"Lit. Anecdotes," iii. + + 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. + + [14] Herbert's "Typographical Antiq."--preface. + + [15] 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. + + [16] "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, _before Caxton_, by the printer Francis + Corsellis, to prove that printing was brought into England by Henry + the Sixth. + + [17] 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. + + "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. + + + + +INDEX. + + + ABORIGINES, British, 1--5. + + ADDISON'S "Drummer," origin of, 419. + + ADVENTURES of the Elizabethan era, 375--378. + + ALCHEMY, modern opinions on, 631. + + ALLEGORY, poetic, 487--501. + + ALLEN, Cardinal, 424. + + ALLITERATION in Spenser's verse, 477. + + ANGLO-NORMANS, the, 59--69. + + ANGLO-SAXONS arrive in Britain, 17; history of their career, 28--36. + + ANONYMOUS authorship, 672. + + ARCADIA, the, of Sir P. Sidney, 451--459. + + ARIOSTO turned into allegory, 489. + + ARNOLDE'S CHRONICLE, 240--242. + + ARTHUR, King of Britain, 17. + + ASCHAM, R., and his "Schoolmaster," 359--367. + + ATTERBURY, Bishop, vindicates the genuine character of Clarendon's + History, 731. + + AUDLEY, Lord Chancellor, enriched by church-lands, 318. + + AUGMENTATION, Court of, 318. + + + BABBLE, etymology of, 3, _n._ + + BACON, Francis, Lord; a believer in occult science, 646--649; his + philosophy, 650, 660. + + BALE, Bishop, and his satires, 358. + + BARCLAY'S Eclogues, 287. + + BARON, the, of the Middle Ages, 71. + + BEOWULF and his exploits, 51--58. + + BIBLES publicly burned in Oxford, 335; first translated into English, + 369; afterwards prohibited, _ib._ + + BIBLE AND KEY, mode of discovering thieves, 420, _n._ + + BIBLIOTHEQUE BLEUE, 260. + + BODLEY, Sir Thos., founds his great library, 664--669; refuses to + include plays in his library, 525. + + BOOKS of the people, 256--267. + + BOOKS, war against, 738--756. + + BORDE, ANDREW, 263--265. + + BRANDT, S., and his "Ship of Fools," 285--288. + + BRITAIN and its early inhabitants, 12--23. + + BRUTUS lands in Britain, 2. + + BURBAGE, the actor of Shakespeare's heroes, 534. + + BURLEIGH, Lord, his hostility to Spenser, 467--471. + + BURNET, Bishop: his "History of his own time," 735--737. + + BURTON and his curious pamphlets, 267. + + BUTLER, S., criticizes Jonson and Shakespeare, 551, 552. + + + CAEDMON, the Anglo-Saxon poet, 37--50. + + CALAMY, Dr., casts doubt on Clarendon's History, 728. + + CALUMNY, and its uses, 429. + + CAMOENS explained by allegory, 489. + + CAMPIAN, the Jesuit, 425--427. + + CAMPION, Dr., his opinion of rhyme, 396. + + CASAUBON publishes Dee's intercourse with spirits, 636. + + CAXTON and his works, 212--220. + + CECIL, Lord, plots against Rawleigh, 602--604. + + CAMPERNOUN begs an estate, 317. + + CHAPMAN and his "Homer," 522. + + CHARACTERS, books of, 676. + + CHARLES I. a student of Shakespeare, 548. + + CHAUCER and his English, 136; his life and works, 158--176. + + CHEKE, Sir J., on the English language, 133. + + CHESTER Whitsun-plays, 346. + + CHIVALRY, institution of, 70. + + CLARENDON'S History, 724--737. + + CLASSIC authors neglected, 415. + + COBHAM conspiracy, the, 604. + + COCKRAM, H., his dictionary, 139, _n._ + + COLLECTORS, and their useful labours, 661. + + COMEDY, an indefinite term originally, 502; Dante so styles his poem, + _ib._; the first English comedy, 507. + + COMMONWEALTH, origin of the term, 712, 713. + + CORSELLIS, and the early Oxford press, 210. + + COSTAR, the early printer, 209. + + COTTON, Sir Robert, his famous library, 668; his melancholy death, + 669. + + COXETER prepares an edition of old plays, 559. + + CROMWELL and his grants of church lands, 318; his opinion of his + position, 699. + + CROSS, the enthusiasm for the sign of, 79. + + CROWLEY, Robert, and his works, 329--332. + + CRYPTOGRAPHY practised by Dr. Dee, 640. + + CUDWORTH, R., and his "System of the Universe," 714--723. + + + DANTE and his allegories, 491. + + DAY, John, the printer, 748. + + DEE, Dr., the occult philosopher, 617; his scholastic career, 618, + 619; his troubles at court, 620; his acquaintance with Princess + Elizabeth, 621; fixes a lucky day for her coronation, _ib._; is + consulted by her privy council, 622; his library, _ib._; his works, + 623; his mystic studies, 624--629; his foreign travels, 630--634; his + return and death, 635, 636; his connexion with spirits, 636; his + political position, 640. + + DESCARTES, a favourer of occult philosophy, 647. + + DIALECTS, 142--150. + + DICTIONARIES of rhyme, 403. + + DIGBY, Sir Kenelm, his sympathetic powder, 646. + + DIVINING ROD, account of the, 624. + + DODSLEY'S edition of old plays, 559, _n._ + + DOUCE, Francis, and his collections, 662. + + DRAMAS, primitive, 339--352. + + DRAMATIC TASTE in the time of Charles II., 550, 551. + + DRAMATISTS of the reign of Elizabeth, 516--528. + + DRAYTON, proud of theatrical praise, 621; his poetical works, + 581--589. + + DRUIDS, the, 1--11. + + DRYDEN and his criticisms on Shakespeare, 554--556. + + + "ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY," by Richard Hooker, 439--450. + + EDWARD THE SIXTH, character of, 323. + + ELIZABETH, Queen, studies under Ascham, 359--363; objects to religious + pictures, 366; her popular politics, 370--380; her sensitiveness to + public opinion, 379; compares herself to Richard II., 380; her varied + orthography, 382; fears to be thought a poetess, 672. + + ELPHINSTONE writes words as pronounced, 389. + + ELYOT, Sir Thomas, and his "Boke of the Governor," 268--275. + + ENGLAND, derivation of the name, 25. + + ENGLISH priestly colleges abroad, 424. + + ENGRAVING on copper, invention of. 206. + + EPIGRAMS, books of, 676. + + ESSEX, Earl of, introduced to Queen Elizabeth as an opponent of + Rawleigh, 596; his incompetence as a general, 600; his disgrace and + death, 602. + + + FABULOUS early history of Britain, 1. + + FABYAN'S Chronicle, 243--249. + + FAIRIES disbelieved, 416. + + FARMER, Dr., his annotations on Shakespeare, 567. + + FINIGUERRA discovers the art of engraving for printing, 206. + + FISH, S., and his "Supplication of Beggars," 741. + + FLORENCE, first public library at, 663. + + FLUDD, the occult philosopher, 642--649. + + FOREIGN CRITICISM and its value, 417. + + FOXE'S Book of Martyrs popularized, 374. + + FRANKLIN contemplates spelling by sound. 388. + + FREEDOM of the press, 756. + + FRENCH words derived from Latin, 97, _n._; ordered to be solely used + for law, 125. + + FRIENDSHIP a romantic attachment in the days of Elizabeth, 451. + + FUST'S first printed Bible, 204. + + + GAMMER GURTON'S Needle long considered the first English comedy, + 507--509. + + GENTRY, rise of, 371. + + GHOSTS, controversies concerning, 419. + + GIBBERISH, derivation of the term, 651, _n._ + + GLANVIL'S treatise on witchcraft, 418, 419. + + GORBODUC, the first English tragedy, 503--506. + + GOWER the poet, his life and works, 177--182. + + GOTHIC romances, 81--95. + + GREEK a fashionable language among ladies, 360. + + GREENE, Robt., attack on Shakespeare, 536. + + GREGORY of Nazianzen, author of the earliest sacred dramas, 339. + + GREY, Lady Jane, her classic attainments, 360. + + GUIANA, Rawleigh's voyages to, 598--600. + + GUTENBERG, the early printer, 208. + + + HAKLUYT'S collection of voyages, 377. + + HALE, Sir Matthew, and his judgment on witches, 417. + + HALL, John, and his work on monarchy, 709--711. + + HANMER, Sir T., his edition of Shakespeare, 562. + + HARIOT, Thos., the traveller, 611--613. + + HARRINGTON, Sir J., on poetry, 409; his Oceana, 692--708. + + HARVEY, Gabriel, introduces Spenser to Sir P. Sidney, 460; supposed to + be the annotator of the Shepherd's Calendar, 461. + + HAWES, Stephen, the poet, 230--233. + + HASTINGS, battle of, 60. + + HENRY the Eighth, his literary character, 250--255. + + HENRY the Seventh, as a patron of literature, 228--233. + + HENSLOW, the Elizabethan manager, 520, _n._, 523. + + HEXAMETER verse ridiculed by Nash, 396. + + HEYWOOD, John, and his works, 354--358. + + HIGDEN, R., and the Polychronicon, 236. + + HISTORY and its sources, 234--239. + + HOOKER, the favourite author of James I., 679; his Ecclesiastical + Polity, 439--450; the simplicity of his life, 440; his marriage, 441; + his uneasy mastership of the Temple, 442; his return to the country, + 444; his premature death and unconcocted manuscripts, 445--447. + + HOSKYNS, a critic and poet, temp. James I., 623, _n._ + + HUARTE'S Examination of Men's Wit, 579. + + HUMOURS, and their significance, 578. + + HUGUENOT satiric plays, 351. + + + ICELANDIC poetry, 34. + + INTERLUDES, their invention, 348. + + INVENTION of printing, 203--213. + + + JACKSON, Z., comments on Shakespeare, 547, _n._ + + JAMES I., ratifies the belief in witchcraft, 417; his literary + character, 677--680; his polemical feats, 682--684. + + JAMES, Dr., first librarian to Sir Thos. Bodley, 665--667. + + JESUITS in England, 423. + + JOHNSON'S edition of Shakespeare, 563--566. + + JONES, Dr., and his Phonography, 388. + + JONSON, Ben, employed by Henslowe--to add to other's plays, 523; his + study of humours, 578--583; assists in Rawleigh's History of the + World, 613; his literary intercourse with James I., 680. + + JOUBERT'S French orthoepy, 385. + + JUNIUS, J., a student of our ancient literature, 45--47. + + + KELLEY, Edw., the alchemist, 625--633. + + KYD'S play of Jeronimo, 523. + + + LAMBE, Chas., his specimens of the dramatic poets, 519, _n._, 528, _n._ + + LANGUAGES, European, origin of, 96--110; English, its origin, + 111--127; vicissitudes of, 128--141. + + "LEICESTER'S COMMONWEALTH," a political libel, 427--435; its author + challenged by Sir P. Sidney, 454. + + L'ESTRANGE, the book licenser, 754. + + LEXICOGRAPHERS, the Elder, 138. + + LIBRARIES, ancient, 221--227. + + LOCAL NAMES, their derivation, 27. + + LONDON in the days of Shakespeare, 673. + + LYDGATE, the Monk of Bury, 196--202. + + + MABINOGION, the, 21, _n._ + + MAGIC, early belief in, 413. + + MAGIC MIRRORS, 627, and _note_. + + MALONE'S edition of Shakespeare, 568. + + MANDEVILLE, the traveller, 151--157. + + MANUSCRIPTS, their value in the middle ages, 221--223. + + MARIE DE FRANCE, the poetess, 66. + + MARPRELATE pamphlets, 747. + + MARTYR, Peter, opposes school logic, 334; anecdotes of, 335--337. + + MASHAM, Lady, her neglect of her father's works, 722. + + MASSINGER'S plays, faulty in printed editions, 547, _n._ + + MATTHEW of Paris, the monkish chronicler, 236. + + MEMOIRS, publishers of contemporary, 724--737. + + MERSENNE, Pere, attacks the Rosacrusians, 647. + + METRES of the ancients used by the moderns, 303. + + MICROSCOPE, invention of, 207. + + MILTON resembles Caedmon, 40--50; his principles of orthography, 392; + his account of Charles I. studying Shakespeare, 548, 9. + + MINSTRELS of the Middle Ages, 75. + + MONASTERIES, spoliation of, 316--321. + + MONOPOLIES in the reign of Elizabeth, 594; of printing, 748. + + MONKERY popular with the people, 372. + + MONTAGUE, Mrs., defends Shakespeare, 572. + + MORALITIES, or moral plays, 347. + + MORE, Sir T., his psychological character, 289--302. + + MULCASTER attempts orthographical reform, 385; his praise of the + English language, 386. + + MYSTERIES, or Scriptural plays, 344--348. + + + NOBILITY, the, decline in grandeur in the time of Henry VII., 371; + decay of great households, 372; restrained in their marriages by + Elizabeth, 374. + + + OCCASIONALISTS, 423. + + OCCLEVE, the scholar of Chaucer, 191--195. + + OCEANA, the, of Sir J. Harrington, 692--705. + + OLDMIXON denies the genuine character of Clarendon's history, + 728--732. + + ORTHOEPY as a means of correcting orthography, 382--392. + + ORTHOGRAPHY in the days of Elizabeth, 382--387. + + + PAINTER'S "Palace of Pleasure," 518. + + PAMPHLETS, their history and value, 685--691. + + PARSONS the Jesuit, 424--427. + + PASTIME of Pleasure, by Hawes, 230--233. + + PARTNERSHIP in dramatic authorship, 523--524. + + PHILOSOPHERS of the 16th century, 651--653. + + PIERS PLOWMAN, his vision, 183--190. + + PINKERTON and his "improved language," 388. + + POLEMICS in the time of James I., 381--384. + + POLITICAL pamphlets, remarkable history of a curious collection, + 687--691. + + POLYOLBION, by Drayton, analysed, 584--589. + + POPE'S edition of Shakespeare, 558--590, _n._ + + POSSESSIONERS, 331. + + PREACHING, when introduced, 326. + + PREDECESSORS of Shakespeare, 514. + + PRESS, the, dreaded by early writers, 670--673. + + PRINTING, invention of, 203--213; first introduced to England, + 214--220. + + PSYCHOLOGICAL history of Rawleigh, 590. + + PUBLIC LIBRARIES first founded, 661. + + PUBLIC OPINION, rise of, 368--380. + + PURITANS in the time of James I., 681. + + PUTTENHAM'S Arte of English Poesie, 405--412. + + + RALPH ROISTER DOISTER, the first English comedy, 509. + + RAMUS opposes Aristotle, 652. + + RAWLEIGH, Sir W., his character, 590; his early career, 591; voyages + undertaken at his suggestion, 593; his favour at court, 595; his + reverse of fortune, 597; his affected romance of love to Elizabeth, + _ib._; his first voyage, 598; his restoration to the queen's favour, + 601; the Cobham conspiracy, 604; unpopularity with James I., _ib._; + last voyage, 605; death, 606; his ability as a historiographer, 607; + his great general knowledge, 608; his long imprisonment, 610; his + philosophical theology, 612. + + REED'S edition of Shakespeare, 568. + + REFORMATION, the, 324. + + RETAINERS of the old Nobility, 370. + + REYNARD the Fox, 260. + + RHYME in Italy and France, 393, 394; origin of, 399--402. + + RHYMING DICTIONARIES, 403. + + ROMANCES, Anglo-Norman, 65; Gothic, 81--95. + + ROMANS, the, in Britain, 13--16. + + ROPER'S Life of More, 291, _n._ + + ROSACRUSIAN confraternity, 642. + + ROTA, the, a political club, 699. + + ROWE'S edition of Shakespeare, 557. + + ROY, W., satirizes Wolsey, 280. + + RYMER, and his Shakespearian Criticism, 553--556. + + + SACKVILLE, Earl of Dorset, the author of the first English tragedy, + 504. + + SACRAMENT of Rome ridiculed, 334. + + SATIRES, Ancient, 257. + + SATIRISTS, early, 675. + + SAXON CHRONICLE, the, 68. + + SCOGIN THE JESTER, 263, _n._ + + SCOT, Reginald, his "Discoverie of Witchcraft," 413--422. + + SELDEN, John, notes Drayton's poem, the "Polyolbion," 586. + + SERVANT'S Song, 511, _n._ + + SHADWELL'S Lancashire Witches, 420; founds his dramatic style on + Jonson, 582. + + SHAKESPEARE, patronized by James I., 679; indebted to Sidney's Arcadia + for some poetic passages,452; his early dramas, 518--523; his + predecessors and contemporaries, 514--528; vicissitudes of his fame, + 529; his use of the plots, &c., of predecessors, 530--532; incidents + of his early life, 533, 534; his dramatic career, 534--538; his poems, + 539--540; his treatment by contemporaries, 541; popularity with the + public, 542; careless of his own fame, 543; first edition of his + works, 545; editions by Rowe, 557; Pope, 558; Theobald, 559; Sir T. + Hanmer, 561; Warburton, 563; Johnson, _ib._; the _Variorum_ edition, + 567; annotations by Rymer, 553; Farmer, 567; Reed, Steevens, Malone, + 568; Warton, 569; Voltaire, 566. + + SHIP, the, of Fools, 285--288. + + SIDNEY, Sir P., and his Arcadia, 451--453; his chivalric manners, 454; + his appreciation of the female character, 455; his great work + published by his sister, 458; the general regret at his death, 459; + critical injustice to Sidney from Horace Walpole, 451--458. + + SKELTON the poet, 276--284. + + SKULLS as drinking cups, 32, _n._ + + SMITH, Sir T., attempts to correct orthography, 383. + + SONGS, Ancient, 256--259. + + SORCERY, and its believers, 414. + + SPANISH Dramatic History, 526. + + SPELLING, and its difficulties, 389--391. + + SPENSER, incidents of his life little known, 460; his introduction to + Sir P. Sidney, _ib._; his Shepherd's Calendar, 461; his mode of Life, + 462; his Irish adventures, 464--467; his death, 473; his Faery Queen, + 475--486; its allegorical character, 492. + + SPIRITUAL visions of Dr. Dee, 628--636. + + SPOLIATION of the monasteries, 316--321. + + STAR CHAMBER decrees against books, 751. + + STATIONERS, their origin, 744. + + STEEVENS, edition of Shakespeare, 568. + + STILL, Bishop, the Author of an Early Comedy, 508. + + STONEHENGE, 10, _n._ + + SURREY, the poetical Earl of, 303--315. + + SYMPATHETIC POWDER, for magical cures, 616. + + + TALES, popular, their origin, 261. + + TARLTON'S jest against Sir W. Rawleigh, 595. + + TASSO, explains the "Gierusalemme Liberata," by allegory, 490. + + TECHNICAL terms of Rhetoric, 408. + + TELESCOPE, invention of, 207. + + THEATRES, ancient, in London, 515, 516. + + THEOBALD'S edition of Shakespeare, 559, 560. + + THOMASON'S remarkable collection of political phamphlets, 687--691. + + THORKELIN, the Danish Scholar, 57. + + TINDAL'S Testament, curious narrative concerning, 743. + + TOLAND dishonestly inserts a political libel in Harrington's works, + 708. + + TOWER OF LONDON, scientific men imprisoned in, 610. + + TRAGEDY, the first English, 503--506. + + TRAVELLERS satirized by Bishop Hall, 378. + + TRAVERS, and his controversy with Hooker, 442, 443. + + TRIADS, Welsh, 22, 23, _n._ + + TROYNOVANT founded, 2. + + TYRWHIT, editor of Chaucer, 175. + + + UDALL, N., author of the first English comedy, 513. + + UNIVERSE, Cudworth's system of the, 714--723. + + UPTON'S edition of Spenser, 495--500. + + UTOPIA, Sir T. More's, 299. + + + VARIORUM EDITION of Shakespeare, 567. + + VENICE, its government extolled, 693; fallacy of such praise, 702. + + VENTRILOQUISM practised by Magicians, 626. + + VERNACULAR dialects of Europe, 96--110; of England, 124. + + VERSE, Anglo-Saxon, 32. + + VICISSITUDES of the English language, 128--141; of the French, 130; of + the Latin, 131. + + VIRGINIA, named by Queen Elizabeth, 593. + + VOLTAIRE criticises Shakespeare, 570--572. + + + WAR against books, 738--756. + + WARBURTON'S edition of Shakespeare, 562, 563. + + WARTON, T., comments on Shakespeare, 569. + + WEAPON-SALVE, for magical cures, 646. + + WEBSTER, J., his elaborate treatise on witchcraft, 418. + + WELSH memorials of early Britain, 20. + + WICKLIFFE'S translation of the Bible, 123. + + WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY, the Monkish historian, 237. + + WILLIAM I. invades England, 59. + + WILSON, Thos., endangered at Rome for his writings on rhetoric, 106; + his translation of Demosthenes, 374. + + WITCHCRAFT, early belief in, 413. + + WITCH-FINDERS, 417. + + WOLSEY'S war against the press, 740. + + WOMEN, satires on, 265. + + WYATT, Sir T., the poet, 312--315. + + + YARRINGTON and his tragedies, 518, _n._ + + + +BRADBURY, AGNEW, & CO., PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS. + + + + + * * * * * + + + + +Transcriber's note: + +The following typographical errors have been corrected: + + Page 248: "Three 248 trentballs--that is, thirty masses thrice + told--were to be chorused by the Grey Friars; six priests were to + perform the high mass, chant the requiem, ..." 'were' amended from + 'swere'. + + Page 337: "Thus they were buried and coupled together; and a + scholar, whether a divine or a philosopher his ambiguous style will + not assure us, inscribed this epitaph:--" 'philosopher' amended + from 'philosoper'. + + Page 375: "The spirits of that age seemed busied with day-dreams, + of discovering a new people, or founding a new kingdom. Shakespeare + alludes to this passion of the times:" 'Shakespeare' amended from + 'Shakspeare'. + + Page 624: "[An account of its use at Freiburg in discovering silver + mines, and a picture of its form, may be seen in Dr. Brown's + 'Travels in Germany,' 4to, 1677, p. 136.]" 'mines' amended from + 'imines'. + + Page 687: "The age of Charles the First may be characterised as the + age of pamphlets." 'characterised' amended from 'charactersied'. + + Page 744: "But the craft did not flourish, when the craftsmen had + become numerous." 'craftsmen' amended from 'craftmen'. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK AMENITIES OF LITERATURE*** + + +******* This file should be named 36298.txt or 36298.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/3/6/2/9/36298 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +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. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project +Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you +charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. 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