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-The Project Gutenberg EBook of History of English Literature Volume 1 (of
-3), by Hippolyte Taine
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world 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.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: History of English Literature Volume 1 (of 3)
-
-Author: Hippolyte Taine
-
-Commentator: J. Scott Clark
-
-Translator: Henry Van Laun
-
-Release Date: February 2, 2020 [EBook #61308]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, VOL 1 ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature in
-memoriam of Marc D'Hooghe (Images generously made available
-by The Internet Archive.)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-#THE WORLD'S#
-GREAT CLASSICS
-
-LIBRARY
-COMMITTE 1
-
-TIMOTHY DWIGHT, D.D. LLD.
-RICHARD HENRY STODDARD
-ARTHUR RICHMOND MARSH. A.B.
-PAVL VAN DYKE, D.D.
-ALBERT ELLERY BERGH
-
-•ILLUSTRATED•WITH•NEARLY•TWO•
-•HUNDRED•PHOTOGRAVURES•ETCHINGS•
-•COLORED•PLATES•AND•FULL•
-•PAGE•PORTRAITS•OF•GREAT•AUTHORS•
-
-CLARENCE COOK--ART EDITOR
-
-•THE•COLONIAL•PRESS•
-
-•NEW•YORK•MDCCCXCIX•
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: SHAKESPEARE BEFORE SIR THOMAS LUCY.
-_Photogravure from a painting by T. Brooks._
-
-This picture brings vividly before us an interesting incident of
-Shakespeare's early days. He has just been caught red-handed in the
-crime of poaching, and is now brought before Sir Thomas Lucy to answer
-to the gamekeeper's charge. Though this incident seems well
-authenticated, little is definitely known of this period of the great
-dramatist's life. But we do know that that energy, which later achieved
-so much, in his youth ran to waste in all kinds of lawless pleasures.
-The artist here depicts Sir Thomas Lucy sitting stern and grave as he
-listens to the constable's charge against Shakespeare. A slaughtered
-deer has been brought in, as testimony against him. Shakespeare himself,
-though seeming fully aware of the gravity of his offence, appears
-nevertheless composed and prepared to answer the charge. Though the
-magistrate may not be favorably impressed by the dauntless independence
-of Shakespeare's bearing, we may be sure he excites the admiration of
-the feminine members of the household, who are watching him with
-interest. All the accessories of carved woodwork, leaded casements, and
-tapestried walls interest us as depicting the interior of a typical
-manor-house of the period.]
-
-
-HISTORY OF
-ENGLISH LITERATURE
-
-HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE TAINE
-
-TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY
-HENRY VAN LAUN
-
-WITH A SPECIAL INTRODUCTION BY
-
-J. SCOTT CLARK, A. M.
-
-PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE AT NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
-
-REVISED EDITION
-
-VOLUME I
-
-
-
-
-
-DEDICATION
-
-Even at the present day, the historian of Civilization in Europe and in
-France is amongst us, at the head of those historical studies which he
-formerly encouraged so much. I myself have experienced his kindness,
-learned by his conversation, consulted his books, and profited by that
-intellectual and impartial breadth, that active and liberal sympathy,
-with which he receives the labors and thoughts of others, even when
-these ideas are not like his own. I consider it a duty and an honor to
-inscribe this work to M. Guizot.
-
-H. A. TAINE.
-
-
-
-
-SPECIAL INTRODUCTION
-
-
-The publication of M. Taine's "History of English Literature," in 1864,
-and its translation into English, in 1872, mark an epoch in educational
-history, especially in that of America. Prior to the appearance of this
-work, the total knowledge of British writers gained in the school and
-college life of the ordinary American youth was generally derived in the
-form of blind memorization from one text-book. This book was a
-combination of minute biographical detail with the generalities and
-abstractions of criticism. The student, and the general reader as well,
-did not really study the great writers at all; he simply memorized what
-someone had written about them; and he tried, generally in vain, to
-comprehend the real concrete significance of such critical terms as
-"bald, nervous, sonorous," etc. But with the distribution of M.
-Taine's great work came the beginning of better things. It was the first
-step in an evolution by no means yet completed--a movement paralleled in
-the development of methods of scientific study during the last four
-decades. Forty years ago the pupil did not study oxygen, electricity, or
-cellulose; he simply memorized what someone had written _about_ these
-elements. He never touched and rarely saw the things themselves, and he
-counted himself fortunate if his instructor had the energy and the
-facilities to perform before the wondering class a few stock
-experiments. But all this has been changed. It is now universally
-recognized that the only sound method of studying any science is the
-laboratory method; that is, the study of the thing itself in all its
-manifestations. In methods of studying literature the progress towards a
-true scientific, that is, a laboratory method, has been much slower, but
-it seems almost equally sure. We are just now in the intermediate stage,
-where we study "editions with notes." Our educators, as a rule, have yet
-to learn that to memorize biographical data and the mere generalities
-and negations of criticism, or to trace out obscure allusions and
-doubtful meanings, is not to study a writer in any broad or fruitful
-sense. But the movement towards a true scientific method is already well
-begun; and, as we have said, to M. Taine belongs the honor of taking the
-initial step.
-
-With Taine's work in hand the thoughtful reader may realize to a large
-extent the significance of Leslie Stephen's memorable dictum: "The whole
-art of criticism consists in learning to know the human being who is
-partially revealed to us in his written and spoken words." M. Taine's
-pages continually attest his deep conviction that "the style is the
-man," in a very comprehensive sense. In his Introduction to his "History
-of English Literature," we find such statements as these:--"You study
-the document only to know the man, just as you study the fossil shell
-only to know the animal behind it; Genuine history is brought into
-existence only when the historian begins to unravel... the living man,
-toiling, impassioned, entrenched in his customs, with his voice and
-features, his gestures and dress, distinct and complete as he from whom
-we have just parted in the street; Twenty select phrases from Plato
-and Aristophanes will teach you much more than a multitude of
-dissertations and commentaries; The true critic is present at the
-drama which was enacted in the soul of the artist or the writer; the
-choice of a word, the brevity or length of a sentence, the nature
-of a metaphor, the accent of a verse, the development of an
-argument--everything is a symbol to him;... in short he works out its
-(the text's) psychology; there is a cause for ambition, for courage, for
-truth, as there is for muscular movement or animal heat." To put M.
-Taine's great and characteristic merit into a sentence, we may say that
-he was the first writer on English literature to apply to it the
-fundamental principle, patent to every person of reflection, that we
-necessarily think in concrete terms, and that, therefore, a treatise
-must be valuable just in proportion to the concreteness of its
-presentation.
-
-In order to show how great was the advance made by M. Taine's work over
-its predecessors, let us take a classic English writer at random and
-compare the treatment given him by M. Taine with that given in the
-text-book already mentioned. Suppose we open to the discussion of
-Addison. In the latter work we are told that he was born in 1672 and
-died in 1719; that he was a son of Lancelot Addison, a clergyman of some
-reputation for learning; that Addison studied at the Charter House,
-where he formed a friendship with Richard Steele; that he afterwards
-entered Oxford; that he wrote various short poems and one long one, of
-which six whole lines are given as a specimen. We are told, also, that
-Addison held, in succession, certain political offices; that he
-contributed one-sixth of the papers found in Steele's "Tatler," more
-than one-half of those in the "Spectator," and one-third of those in the
-"Guardian"; that he published a drama called "Cato," which, the book
-informs us, is "cold, solemn, and pompous, written with scrupulous
-regard for the classical unities." We learn, further, that Addison
-married a countess, and died at the early age of forty-seven; that he
-had a quarrel with Pope; that his papers published in the "Tatler," the
-"Spectator," and the "Guardian" are marked by "fertility of invention
-and singular felicity of treatment"; that their variety is wonderful,
-and that everything is treated "with singular appropriateness and
-unforced energy"; that "there is a singular harmony between the language
-and the thought" (whatever that may mean); that Addison's delineations
-of the characters of men are wonderfully delicate; that he possessed
-humor in its highest and most delicate perfection; that his hymns
-breathe a fervent and tender spirit of piety. Contrary to the usage of
-its author, the text-book gives the whole sixteen lines of Addison's
-most famous hymn--the longest illustrative quotation in the whole four
-hundred pages--one blessed little oasis in a vast desert of dry
-biographical minutiæ and the abstract generalities of criticism. In the
-eight pages devoted to Addison there are not more than ten lines of real
-criticism; and these consist, for the most part, of what, to the
-ordinary reader, are meaningless adjectives or high-sounding epithets.
-Yet this is one of the very best chapters in the book. It is certainly a
-fair specimen of the barren method generally prevalent before the
-appearance of M. Taine's work.
-
-Now let us compare his treatment of Addison. In the first place,
-scattered through the eighteen pages devoted to that writer
-(single-volume edition) we find no less than twenty-two illustrative
-passages, varying in length from six to 176 lines of very fine print. In
-his general treatment M. Taine begins by tracing the physical, social,
-and moral environment of Addison, thus leading us up to the
-consideration of the man and the writer by a natural process of
-evolution. We are first shown what kind of a man to expect, and then we
-are made acquainted with him. And all this is done with the most vivid
-and brilliant touches. Mere biographical details are either ignored or
-given incidental mention. The opening paragraph is a _tableau vivant_,
-which we see Addison at Oxford, "studious, peaceful, loving solitary
-walks under the elm avenues." We are told how, from boyhood, "his memory
-is stuffed with Latin verses"; how "this limited culture, leaving him
-weaker, made him more refined" how "he acquired a taste for the elegance
-and refinement, the triumphs and the artifices, of style"; how he became
-"an epicure in literature"; how "he naturally loved beautiful things"; how
-"Addison, good and just himself, trusted in God, also a being good and
-just"; how he writes his lay sermons; how "he cannot suffer languishing
-or lazy habits"; how "he is full of epigrams against flirtations,
-extravagant toilets, useless visits"; how "he explains God, reducing him
-to a mere magnified man"; with what literal precision he describes
-Heaven; how he "inserts prayers in his papers and forbids oaths"; how he
-made morality fashionable.
-
-These illustrations of M. Taine's method might be multiplied
-indefinitely, but enough have surely been quoted to demonstrate how
-vastly more vivid and concrete is the idea of Addison, the man and the
-writer, gained by this method in comparison with that which was in
-general vogue before the publication of M. Taine's book. In the one case
-the reader has come into contact with a mere abstraction--a man of
-straw, with not a single feature that impresses itself on the
-imagination or the memory. In the other, he has come into communion with
-a real living soul--a man "of like passions with ourselves."
-
-But the very qualities of the great French critic which make his book so
-helpful are the source of his defects as a writer. These qualities are
-national quite as much as individual. It is a truism that the French
-people lead the world in the field of criticism as applied to both
-literature and art. This superiority is strikingly illustrated also in
-St. Beuve, and is due to a certain quickness of perception, a certain
-power of concrete illustration, that seems inherent in the race of
-cultivated Frenchmen. M. Taine himself well defines this ethnic trait
-when he speaks of "France, with her Parisian culture, with her
-drawing-room manners, with her untiring analysis of characters and
-actions, her irony so ready to hit upon a weakness, her _finesse_ so
-practised in the discrimination of modes of thought." This national
-talent is almost invariably associated with a nervous, sanguine
-temperament, which easily tends to extremes of expression. We are
-therefore compelled to read M. Taine with some degree of caution when we
-are seeking exact statement and strict limitation.
-
-Again, M. Taine is sometimes inaccurate or unjust from a lack of
-sympathy. He sometimes finds it impossible to rid himself of his Gallic
-predilections and aversions, especially when treating of the Puritan
-character or the stolid English morality. He cannot appreciate the
-religious conditions that surround his subject. He is always the
-Frenchman discussing the English writer. He cannot forbear to contrast
-the effect or the reception accorded to an author's work in England with
-that which it would have received in France; as when he says, concerning
-Addison's lay sermons in the "Spectator": "I know very well what success
-a newspaper full of sermons would have in France"; and again: "If a
-Frenchman was forbidden to swear, he would probably laugh at the first
-word of the admonition." A little farther on he objects to what he
-calls, with certainly picturesque concreteness, "the sticky plaster of
-his (Addison's) morality"--an expression that has led to Minto's sharp
-retort that Addison's morality was something which it is quite
-impossible for the Gallic conscience to conceive. Another illustration
-of that bias which compels us to be somewhat on our guard in reading
-Taine is found in his treatment of Milton. Although we may admit that
-the great Puritan poet peopled his paradise with characters having
-altogether too strong a British tinge, we are almost shocked to hear
-Taine and his disciple, Edmond Scherer, dilate upon Milton's Adam as
-"your true paterfamilias, with a vote; an M. P., an old Oxford man,"
-etc., etc., or to hear them exclaim, "What a great many votes she (Eve)
-will gain among the country squires when Adam stands for Parliament!"
-Quite as striking is M. Taine's inability to understand Wordsworth.
-
-But, after making these and all other due admissions concerning Taine's
-work, the fact stands that his "History of English Literature" meets
-fully Lowell's quaint definition of a classic, when he says, "After all,
-to be delightful is a classic." In reading this work we never feel that
-we have in our hands a text-book or even a history. It is rather a
-living, moving panorama. We see again the old miracles and moralities,
-with their queer shifts and their stark incongruities; we see the
-drawing-rooms and hear the conversation of the reign of Queen Anne, and
-walk through Fleet Street with Johnson. In a word, we realize in no
-small degree the full meaning of Leslie Stephen's dictum, in that we
-really feel that we know, in some degree at least, "the human being who
-is partially revealed to us in his written and spoken words."
-
-Of course, no introduction to this work would be complete without some
-reference to the psychological theory on which it is based. We have
-reserved this point to the last because, for the general reader, what
-Taine says and how he says it, are far more interesting considerations
-than any theories on which the book may be based. In a word, the author
-held that both the character and the style of a writer are the outgrowth
-of his social and natural environment. And this environment, in Taine's
-opinion, affects not only the individual but the national character as
-manifested in the national literature. In discussing any literary
-production he would first ask: To what race and nation does the author
-belong? What is the influence of his geographical position and of his
-nation's advance in civilization? What about the duration of the
-literary phase represented by the writer in question? In developing this
-theory of the influence of environment M. Taine doubtless sometimes
-treats as permanent scientific factors influences and circumstances that
-are in their very nature variable. Yet this application of the theory is
-as consistent and plausible as it is everywhere apparent. A few
-illustrations of his psychological theory will make more plain than much
-abstract discussion the almost fatalistic nature of his method. For
-example, after vividly portraying the political and social conditions
-that had surrounded Milton from his birth, the French critic asks: "Can
-we expect urbanity here?" Again, in tracing Dryden's beginnings, he
-says: "Such circumstances announce and prepare, not an artist, but a man
-of letters." Much might be written of the detailed application of M.
-Taine's psychological theory. But the reader has already been too long
-detained from a perusal of the riches that fill the following pages.
-Charles Lamb once wrote: "I prefer the affections to the sciences." The
-majority of the readers of M. Taine will doubtless find so much to enjoy
-in his brilliant pages that they will care little for his theories, and
-will not allow certain defects in his sympathies to mar their enjoyment
-of this monumental work.
-
-J. SCOTT CLARK
-
-
-
-
-CONTENTS
-
-INTRODUCTION
-
-I. Historical documents serve only as a clue to reconstruct the visible
-individual
-
-II. The outer man is only a clue to study the inner, invisible man
-
-III. The state and the actions of the inner and invisible man have their
-causes in certain general ways of thought and feeling
-
-IV. Chief causes of thought and feeling. Their historical effects
-
-V. The three primordial forces.--Race
-
-Surroundings
-
-Epoch
-
-VI. History is a mechanical and psychological problem. Within certain
-limits man can foretell
-
-Primordial Causes
-
-VII. Law of formation of a group. Examples and indications
-
-VIII. General problem and future of history. Psychological method.
-Value of literature. Purpose in writing this book
-
-
-BOOK I.--THE SOURCE
-
-CHAPTER FIRST
-
-The Saxons
-
-SECTION I.--The Coast of the North Sea
-SECTION II.--The Northern Barbarians
-SECTION III.--Saxon Ideas
-SECTION IV.--Saxon Heroes
-SECTION V.--Pagan Poems
-SECTION VI.--Christian Poems
-SECTION VII.--Primitive Saxon Authors
-SECTION VIII.--Virility of the Saxon Race
-
-CHAPTER SECOND
-
-The Normans
-
-SECTION I.--The Feudal Man
-SECTION II.--Normans and Saxons Contrasted
-SECTION III.--French Forms of Thought
-SECTION IV.--The Normans in England
-SECTION V.--The English Tongue--Early English Literary Impulses
-SECTION VI.--Feudal Civilization
-SECTION VII.--Persistence of Saxon Ideas
-SECTION VIII.--The English Constitution
-SECTION IX.--Piers Plowman and Wyclif
-
-CHAPTER THIRD
-
-The New Tongue
-
-SECTION I.--The First Great Poet
-SECTION II.--The Decline of the Middle Ages
-SECTION III.--The Poetry of Chaucer
-SECTION IV.--Characteristics of the Canterbury Tales
-SECTION V.--The Art of Chaucer
-SECTION VI.--Scholastic Philosophy
-
-
-BOOK II.--THE RENAISSANCE
-
-CHAPTER FIRST
-
-The Pagan Renaissance
-
-_PART I.--Manners of the Time_
-
-SECTION I.--Ideas of the Middle Ages
-SECTION II.--Growth of New Ideas
-SECTION III.--Popular Festivals
-SECTION IV.--Influence of Classic Literature
-
-_PART II.--Poetry_
-
-SECTION I.--Renaissance of Saxon Genius
-SECTION II.--The Earl of Surrey
-SECTION III.--Surrey's Style
-SECTION IV.--Development of Artistic Ideas
-SECTION V.--Wherein Lies the Strength of the Poetry of this Period
-SECTION VI--Edmund Spenser
-SECTION VII.--Spenser in his Relation to the Renaissance
-
-_PART III.--Prose_
-
-SECTION I.--The Decay of Poetry
-SECTION II.--The Intellectual Level of the Renaissance
-SECTION III.--Robert Burton
-SECTION IV.--Sir Thomas Browne
-SECTION V.--Francis Bacon
-
-CHAPTER SECOND
-
-The Theatre
-
-SECTION I.--The Public and the Stage
-SECTION II.--Manners of the Sixteenth Century
-SECTION III.--Some Aspects of the English Mind
-SECTION IV.--The Poets of the Period
-SECTION V.--Formation of the Drama
-SECTION VI.--Furious Passions--Exaggerated Characters
-SECTION VII.--Female Characters
-
-CHAPTER THIRD
-
-Ben Jonson
-
-SECTION I.--The Man--His Life
-SECTION II.--His Freedom and Precision of Style
-SECTION III.--The Dramas Catiline and Sejanus
-SECTION IV.--Comedies
-SECTION V.--Limits of Jonson's Talent--His Smaller Poems--His Masques
-SECTION VI.--General Idea of Shakespeare
-
-CHAPTER FOURTH
-
-Shakespeare
-
-SECTION I.--Life and Character of Shakespeare
-SECTION II.--Shakespeare's Style--Copiousness--Excesses
-SECTION III.--Shakespeare's Language And Manners
-SECTION IV.--Dramatis Personæ
-SECTION V.--Men of Wit
-SECTION VI.--Shakespeare's Women
-SECTION VII.--Types of Villains
-SECTION VIII.--Principal Characters
-SECTION IX.--Characteristics of Shakespeare's Genius
-
-INDEX
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: HIPPOLYTE ADOLPHE PAINE.
-_Photogravure from an engraving._
-
-This picture shows the eminent French critic as he appeared thirty years
-ago. At that period his fame as a literary savant was spreading to the
-four quarters of the world, and he was lecturing daily to the crowds of
-students who had flocked to Paris to study literature under his
-guidance. In personal appearance he was unlike the traditional scholar,
-but resembled, in his quick, nervous energy and plain business-like
-ways, a keen-witted man of affairs. He was simple in dress, as the
-picture shows, and it is a noteworthy fact that the honors he received
-never caused him to lose his self-poise, or to cease his severe studies,
-which he carried on with diligence to the very day of his death. His
-face denotes the cool, critical, and well-balanced scholar, with the
-initiative to enter new fields of thought, and the will-power to impress
-his opinions upon others.]
-
-
-
-
-ILLUSTRATIONS
-
-SHAKESPEARE BEFORE SIR THOMAS LUCY
-Photogravure from the original painting
-
-ADOLPHE HIPPOLYTE TAINE
-Photogravure from an engraving
-
-GEOFFREY CHAUCER
-Photogravure from an old engraving
-
-THE NEW PSALTER OF THE VIRGIN MARY
-Fac-simile example of Printing and Engraving in the Fifteenth Century
-
-TITLE-PAGE OF THE HYPNEROTOMACHIA
-Fac-simile example of Printing and Engraving in the Sixteenth Century
-
-
-
-
-HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE
-
-
-
-
-INTRODUCTION
-
-
-I. Historical documents serve only as a clue to reconstruct the visible
-individual
-
-
-History, within a hundred years in Germany, and within sixty years in
-France, has undergone a transformation, owing to a study of literatures.
-
-The discovery has been made that a literary work is not a mere play of
-the imagination, the isolated caprice of an excited brain, but a
-transcript of contemporary manners and customs and the sign of a
-particular state of intellect. The conclusion derived from this is that,
-through literary monuments, we can retrace the way in which men felt and
-thought many centuries ago. This method has been tried and found
-successful.
-
-We have meditated over these ways of feeling and thinking and have
-accepted them as facts of prime significance. We have found that they
-were dependent on most important events, that they explain these, and
-that these explain them, and that henceforth it was necessary to give
-them their place in history, and one of the highest. This place has been
-assigned to them, and hence all is changed in history—the aim, the
-method, the instrumentalities, and the conceptions of laws and of
-causes. It is this change as now going on, and which must continue to go
-on, that is here attempted to be set forth.
-
-On turning over the large stiff pages of a folio volume, or the yellow
-leaves of a manuscript, in short, a poem, a code of laws, a confession
-of faith, what is your first comment? You say to yourself that the work
-before you is not of its own creation. It is simply a mold like a fossil
-shell, an imprint similar to one of those forms embedded in a stone by
-an animal which once lived and perished. Beneath the shell was an animal
-and behind the document there was a man. Why do you study the shell
-unless to form some idea of the animal? In the same way do you study the
-document in order to comprehend the man; both shell and document are
-dead fragments and of value only as indications of the complete living
-being. The aim is to reach this being; this is what you strive to
-reconstruct. It is a mistake to study the document as if it existed
-alone by itself. That is treating things merely as a pedant, and you
-subject yourself to the illusions of a book-worm. At bottom mythologies
-and languages are not existences; the only realities are human beings
-who have employed words and imagery adapted to their organs and to suit
-the original cast of their intellects. A creed is nothing in itself. Who
-made it? Look at this or that portrait of the sixteenth century, the
-stern, energetic features of an archbishop or of an English martyr.
-Nothing exists except through the individual; it is necessary to know
-the individual himself. Let the parentage of creeds be established, or
-the classification of poems, or the growth of constitutions, or the
-transformations of idioms, and we have only cleared the ground. True
-history begins when the historian has discerned beyond the mists of ages
-the living, active man, endowed with passions, furnished with habits,
-special in voice, feature, gesture, and costume, distinctive and
-complete, like anybody that you have just encountered in the street. Let
-us strive then, as far as possible, to get rid of this great interval of
-time which prevents us from observing the man with our eyes, the eyes of
-our own head. What revelations do we find in the calendered leaves of a
-modern poem? A modern poet, a man like De Musset, Victor Hugo,
-Lamartine, or Heine, graduated from a college and travelled, wearing a
-dress-coat and gloves, favored by ladies, bowing fifty times and
-uttering a dozen witticisms in an evening, reading daily newspapers,
-generally occupying an apartment on the second story, not over-cheerful
-on account of his nerves, and especially because, in this dense
-democracy in which we stifle each other, the discredit of official rank
-exaggerates his pretensions by raising his importance, and, owing to the
-delicacy of his personal sensations, leading him to regard himself as a
-Deity. Such is what we detect behind modern meditations and sonnets.
-
-Again, behind a tragedy of the seventeenth century there is a poet, one,
-for example, like Racine, refined, discreet, a courtier, a fine talker,
-with majestic perruque and ribboned shoes, a monarchist and zealous
-Christian, "God having given him the grace not to blush in any society
-on account of zeal for his king or for the Gospel," clever in
-interesting the monarch, translating into proper French "the _gaulois_
-of Amyot," deferential to the great, always knowing how to keep his
-place in their company, assiduous and respectful at Marly as at
-Versailles, amid the formal creations of a decorative landscape and the
-reverential bows, graces, intrigues, and finesses of the braided
-seigniors who get up early every morning to obtain the reversion of an
-office, together with the charming ladies who count on their fingers the
-pedigrees which entitle them to a seat on a footstool. On this point
-consult Saint-Simon and the engravings of Pérelle, the same as you have
-just consulted Balzac and the water-color drawings of Eugène Lami.
-
-In like manner, on reading a Greek tragedy, our first care is to figure
-to ourselves the Greeks, that is to say, men who lived half-naked in the
-gymnasiums or on a public square under a brilliant sky, in full view of
-the noblest and most delicate landscape, busy in rendering their bodies
-strong and agile, in conversing together, in arguing, in voting, in
-carrying out patriotic piracies, and yet idle and temperate, the
-furniture of their houses consisting of three earthen jars and their
-food of two pots of anchovies preserved in oil, served by slaves who
-afford them the time to cultivate their minds and to exercise their
-limbs, with no other concern than that of having the most beautiful
-city, the most beautiful processions, the most beautiful ideas, and the
-most beautiful men. In this respect, a statue like the "Meleager" or the
-"Theseus" of the Parthenon, or again a sight of the blue and lustrous
-Mediterranean, resembling a silken tunic out of which islands arise like
-marble bodies, together with a dozen choice phrases selected from the
-works of Plato and Aristophanes, teach us more than any number of
-dissertations and commentaries.
-
-And so again, in order to understand an Indian Purana, one must begin by
-imagining the father of a family who, "having seen a son on his son's
-knees," follows the law and, with axe and pitcher, seeks solitude under
-a banyan trees, talks no more, multiplies his fastings, lives naked with
-four fires around him under the fifth fire, that terrible sun which
-endlessly devours and resuscitates all living things; who fixes his
-imagination in turn for weeks at a time on the foot of Brahma, then on
-his knee, on his thigh, on his navel, and so on, until, beneath the
-strain of this intense meditation, hallucinations appear, when all the
-forms of being, mingling together and transformed into each other,
-oscillate to and fro in this vertiginous brain until the motionless man,
-with suspended breath and fixed eyeballs, beholds the universe melting
-away like vapor over the vacant immensity of the Being in which he hopes
-for absorption. In this case the best of teachings would be a journey in
-India; but, for lack of a better one, take the narratives of travellers
-along with works in geography, botany, and ethnology. In any event,
-there must be the same research. A language, a law, a creed, is never
-other than an abstraction; the perfect thing is found in the active man,
-the visible corporeal figure which eats, walks, fights, and labors. Set
-aside the theories of constitutions and their results, of religions and
-their systems, and try to observe men in their workshops or offices, in
-their fields along with their own sky and soil, with their own homes,
-clothes, occupations and repasts, just as you see them when, on landing
-in England or in Italy, you remark their features and gestures, their
-roads and their inns, the citizen on his promenades and the workman
-taking a drink. Let us strive as much as possible to supply the place of
-the actual, personal, sensible observation that is no longer
-practicable, this being the only way in which we can really know the
-man; let us make the past present; to judge of an object it must be
-present; no experience can be had of what is absent. Undoubtedly, this
-sort of reconstruction is always imperfect; only an imperfect judgment
-can be based on it; but let us do the best we can; incomplete knowledge
-is better than none at all, or than knowledge which is erroneous, and
-there is no other way of obtaining knowledge approximatively of bygone
-times than by seeing approximatively the men of former times.
-
-Such is the first step in history. This, step was taken in Europe at the
-end of the last century when the imagination took fresh flight under the
-auspices of Lessing and Walter Scott, and a little later in France under
-Chateaubriand, Augustin Thierry, Michelet, and others. We now come to
-the second step.
-
-
-
-
-II. The outer man is only a clue to study the inner, invisible man
-
-
-On observing the visible man with your own eyes what do you try to find
-in him? The invisible man. These words which your ears catch, those
-gestures, those airs of the head, his attire and sensible operations of
-all kinds, are, for you, merely so many expressions; these express
-something, a soul. An inward man is hidden beneath the outward man, and
-the latter simply manifests the former. You have observed the house in
-which he lives, his furniture, his costume, in order to discover his
-habits and tastes, the degree of his refinement or rusticity, his
-extravagance or economy, his follies or his cleverness. You have
-listened to his conversation and noted the inflections of his voice, the
-attitudes he has assumed, so as to judge of his spirit, self-abandonment
-or gayety, his energy or his rigidity. You consider his writings, works
-of art, financial and political schemes, with a view to measure the
-reach and limits of his intelligence, his creative power and
-self-command, to ascertain the usual order, kind, and force of his
-conceptions, in what way he thinks and how he resolves. All these
-externals are so many avenues converging to one centre, and you follow
-these only to reach that centre; here is the real man, namely, that
-group of faculties and of sentiments which produces the rest. Behold a
-new world, an infinite world; for each visible action involves an
-infinite train of reasonings and emotions, new or old sensations which
-have combined to bring this into light and which, like long ledges of
-rock sunk deep in the earth, have cropped out above the surface and
-attained their level. It is this subterranean world which forms the
-second aim, the special object of the historian. If his critical
-education suffices, he is able to discriminate under every ornament in
-architecture, under every stroke of the brush in a picture, under each
-phrase of literary composition, the particular sentiment out of which
-the ornament, the stroke, and the phrase have sprung; he is a spectator
-of the inward drama which has developed itself in the breast of the
-artist or writer; the choice of words, the length or shortness of the
-period, the species of metaphor, the accent of a verse, the chain of
-reasoning--all are to him an indication; while his eyes are reading the
-text his mind and soul are following the steady flow and ever-changing
-series of emotions and conceptions from which this text has issued; he
-is working out its psychology. Should you desire to study this
-operation, regard the promoter and model of all the high culture of the
-epoch, Goethe, who, before composing his "Iphigenia" spent days in
-making drawings of the most perfect statues and who, at last, his eyes
-filled with the noble forms of antique scenery and his mind penetrated
-by the harmonious beauty of antique life, succeeded in reproducing
-internally, with such exactness, the habits and yearnings of Greek
-imagination as to provide us with an almost twin sister of the
-"Antigone" of Sophocles and of the goddesses of Phidias. This exact and
-demonstrated divination of bygone sentiments has, in our days, given a
-new life to history. There was almost complete ignorance of this in the
-last century; men of every race and of every epoch were represented as
-about alike, the Greek, the barbarian, the Hindoo, the man of the
-Renaissance and the man of the eighteenth century, cast in the same mold
-and after the same pattern, and after a certain abstract conception
-which served for the whole human species. There was a knowledge of man
-but not of men. There was no penetration into the soul itself; nothing
-of the infinite diversity and wonderful complexity of souls had been
-detected; it was not known that the moral organization of a people or of
-an age is as special and distinct as the physical structure of a family
-of plants or of an order of animals. History to-day, like zoölogy, has
-found its anatomy, and whatever branch of it is studied, whether
-philology, languages or mythologies, it is in this way that labor must
-be given to make it produce new fruit. Among so many writers who, since
-Herder, Ottfried Müller, and Goethe have steadily followed and
-rectified this great effort, let the reader take two historians and two
-works, one "The Life and Letters of Cromwell" by Carlyle, and the other
-the "Port Royal" of Sainte-Beuve. He will see how precisely, how
-clearly, and how profoundly we detect the soul of a man beneath his
-actions and works; how, under an old general and in place of an
-ambitious man vulgarly hypocritical, we find one tormented by the
-disordered reveries of a gloomy imagination, but practical in instinct
-and faculties, thoroughly English and strange and incomprehensible to
-whoever has not studied the climate and the race; how, with about a
-hundred scattered letters and a dozen or more mutilated speeches, we
-follow him from his farm and his team to his general's tent and to his
-Protector's throne, in his transformation and in his development, in his
-struggles of conscience and in his statesman's resolutions, in such a
-way that the mechanism of his thought and action becomes visible and the
-ever renewed and fitful tragedy, within which racked this great gloomy
-soul, passes like the tragedies of Shakespeare into the souls of those
-who behold them. We see how, behind convent disputes and the obstinacy
-of nuns, we recover one of the great provinces of human psychology; how
-fifty or more characters, rendered invisible through the uniformity of a
-narration careful of the properties, come forth in full daylight, each
-standing out clear in its countless diversities; how, underneath
-theological dissertations and monotonous sermons, we discern the
-throbbings of ever-breathing hearts, the excitements and depressions of
-the religious life, the unforeseen reaction and pell-mell stir of
-natural feeling, the infiltrations of surrounding society, the
-intermittent triumphs of grace, presenting so many shades of difference
-that the fullest description and most flexible style can scarcely garner
-in the vast harvest which the critic has caused to germinate in this
-abandoned field. And the same elsewhere. Germany, with its genius, so
-pliant, so broad, so prompt in transformations, so fitted for the
-reproduction of the remotest and strangest states of human thought;
-England, with its matter-of-fact mind, so suited to the grappling with
-moral problems, to making them clear by figures, weights, and measures,
-by geography and statistics, by texts and common sense; France, at
-length, with its Parisian culture and drawing-room habits, with its
-unceasing analysis of characters and of works, with its ever ready irony
-at detecting weaknesses, with its skilled finesse in discriminating
-shades of thought--all have ploughed over the same ground, and we now
-begin to comprehend that no region of history exists in which this deep
-sub-soil should not be reached if we would secure adequate crops between
-the furrows.
-
-Such is the second step, and we are now in train to follow it out. Such
-is the proper aim of contemporary criticism. No one has done this work
-so judiciously and on so grand a scale as Sainte-Beuve; in this respect,
-we are all his pupils; literary, philosophic, and religious criticism in
-books, and even in the newspapers, is to-day entirely changed by his
-method. Ulterior evolution must start from this point. I have often
-attempted to expose what this evolution is; in my opinion, it is a new
-road open to history and which I shall strive to describe more in
-detail.
-
-
-
-
-III. The state and the actions of the inner and invisible man have their
-causes in certain general ways of thought and feeling
-
-
-After having observed in a man and noted down one, two, three, and then
-a multitude of, sentiments, do these suffice and does your knowledge of
-him seem complete? Does a memorandum book constitute a psychology? It is
-not a psychology, and here, as elsewhere, the search for causes must
-follow the collection of facts. It matters not what the facts may be,
-whether physical or moral, they always spring from causes; there are
-causes for ambition, for courage, for veracity, as well as for
-digestion, for muscular action, and for animal heat. Vice and virtue are
-products like vitriol and sugar; every complex fact grows out of the
-simple facts with which it is affiliated and on which it depends. We
-must therefore try to ascertain what simple facts underlie moral
-qualities the same as we ascertain those that underlie physical
-qualities, and, for example, let us take the first fact that comes to
-hand, a religious system of music, that of a Protestant church. A
-certain inward cause has inclined the minds of worshippers towards these
-grave, monotonous melodies, a cause much greater than its effect; that
-is to say, a general conception of the veritable outward forms of
-worship which man owes to God; it is this general conception which has
-shaped the architecture of the temple, cast out statues, dispensed with
-paintings, effaced ornaments, shortened ceremonies, confined the members
-of a congregation to high pews which cut off the view, and governed the
-thousand details of decoration, posture, and all other externals. This
-conception itself again proceeds from a more general cause, an idea of
-human conduct in general, inward and outward, prayers, actions,
-dispositions of every sort that man is bound to maintain toward the
-Deity; it is this which has enthroned the doctrine of grace, lessened
-the importance of the clergy, transformed the sacraments, suppressed
-observances, and changed the religion of discipline into one of
-morality. This conception, in its turn, depends on a third one, still
-more general, that of moral perfection as this is found in a perfect
-God, the impeccable judge, the stern overseer, who regards every soul as
-sinful, meriting punishment, incapable of virtue or of salvation, except
-through a stricken conscience which He provokes and the renewal of the
-heart which He brings about. Here is the master conception, consisting
-of duty erected into the absolute sovereign of human life, and which
-prostrates all other ideals at the feet of the moral ideal. Here we
-reach what is deepest in man; for, to explain this conception, we must
-consider the race he belongs to, say the German, the Northman, the
-formation and character of his intellect, his ways in general of
-thinking and feeling, that tardiness and frigidity of sensation which
-keeps him from rashly and easily falling under the empire of sensual
-enjoyments, that bluntness of taste, that irregularity and those
-outbursts of conception which arrest in him the birth of refined and
-harmonious forms and methods; that disdain of appearances, that yearning
-for truth, that attachment to abstract, bare ideas which develop
-conscience in him at the expense of everything else. Here the search
-comes to an end. We have reached a certain primitive disposition, a
-particular trait belonging to sensations of all kinds, to every
-conception peculiar to an age or to a race, to characteristics
-inseparable from every idea and feeling that stir in the human breast.
-Such are the grand causes, for these are universal and permanent causes,
-present in every case and at every moment, everywhere, and always
-active, indestructible, and inevitably dominant in the end, since,
-whatever accidents cross their path, being limited and partial, end in
-yielding to the obscure and incessant repetition of their energy; so
-that the general structure of things and all the main features of events
-are their work, all religions and philosophies, all poetic and
-industrial systems, all forms of society and of the family, all, in
-fine, being imprints bearing the stamp of their seal.
-
-
-
-
-IV. Chief causes of thought and feeling. Their historical effects
-
-
-There is, then, a system in human ideas and sentiments, the prime motor
-of which consists in general traits, certain characteristics of thought
-and feeling common to men belonging to a particular race, epoch, or
-country. Just as crystals in mineralogy, whatever their diversity,
-proceed from a few simple physical forms, so do civilizations in
-history, however these may differ, proceed from a few spiritual forms.
-One is explained by a primitive geometrical element as the other is
-explained by a primitive psychological element. In order to comprehend
-the entire group of mineralogical species we must first study a regular
-solid in the general, its facets and angles, and observe in this
-abridged form the innumerable transformations of which it is
-susceptible. In like manner, if we would comprehend the entire group of
-historic varieties we must consider beforehand a human soul in the
-general, with its two or three fundamental faculties, and, in this
-abridgment, observe the principal forms it may present. This sort of
-ideal tableau, the geometrical as well as psychological, is not very
-complex, and we soon detect the limitations of organic conditions to
-which civilizations, the same as crystals, are forcibly confined. What
-do we find in man at the point of departure? Images or representations
-of objects, namely, that which floats before him internally, lasts a
-certain time, is effaced, and then returns after contemplating this or
-that tree or animal, in short, some sensible object. This forms the
-material basis of the rest and the development of this material basis is
-twofold, speculative or positive, just as these representations end in a
-general conception or in an active resolution. Such is man, summarily
-abridged. It is here, within these narrow confines, that human
-diversities are encountered, now in the matter itself and again in the
-primordial twofold development. However insignificant in the elements
-they are of vast significance in the mass, while the slightest change in
-the factors leads to gigantic changes in the results. According as the
-representation is distinct, as if stamped by a coining-press, or
-confused and blurred; according as it concentrates in itself a larger or
-smaller number of the characters of an object; according as it is
-violent and accompanied with impulsions or tranquil and surrounded with
-calmness, so are all the operations and the whole running-gear of the
-human machine entirely transformed. In like manner again, according as
-the ulterior development of the representation varies, so does the whole
-development of the man vary. If the general conception in which this
-ends is merely a dry notation in Chinese fashion, language becomes a
-kind of algebra, religion and poetry are reduced to a minimum,
-philosophy is brought down to a sort of moral and practical common
-sense, science to a collection of recipes, classifications, and
-utilitarian mnemonics, the mind itself taking a wholly positive turn.
-If, on the contrary, the general conception in which the representation
-culminates is a poetic and figurative creation, a living symbol, as with
-the Aryan races, language becomes a sort of shaded and tinted epic in
-which each word stands as a personage, poesy and religion assume
-magnificent and inexhaustible richness, and metaphysics develops with
-breadth and subtlety without any consideration of positive bearings; the
-whole intellect, notwithstanding the deviation and inevitable weaknesses
-of the effort, is captivated by the beautiful and sublime, thus
-conceiving an ideal type which, through its nobleness and harmony,
-gathers to itself all the affections and enthusiasms of humanity. If, on
-the other hand, the general conception in which the representation
-culminates is poetic but abrupt, is reached not gradually but by sudden
-intuition, if the original operation is not a regular development but a
-violent explosion--then, as with the Semitic races, metaphysical power
-is wanting; the religious conception becomes that of a royal God,
-consuming and solitary; science cannot take shape, the intellect grows
-rigid and too headstrong to reproduce the delicate ordering of nature;
-poetry cannot give birth to aught but a series of vehement, grandiose
-exclamations, while language no longer renders the concatenation of
-reasoning and eloquence, man being reduced to lyric enthusiasm, to
-ungovernable passion, and to narrow and fanatical action. It is in this
-interval between the particular representation and the universal
-conception that the germs of the greatest human differences are found.
-Some races, like the classic, for example, pass from the former to the
-latter by a graduated scale of ideas regularly classified and more and
-more general; others, like the Germanic, traverse the interval in leaps,
-with uniformity and after prolonged and uncertain groping. Others, like
-the Romans and the English, stop at the lowest stages; others, like the
-Hindoos and Germans, mount to the uppermost. If, now, after considering
-the passage from the representation to the idea, we regard the passage
-from the representation to the resolution, we find here elementary
-differences of like importance and of the same order, according as the
-impression is vivid, as in Southern climes, or faint, as in Northern
-climes, as it ends in instantaneous action as with barbarians, or
-tardily as with civilized nations, as it is capable or not of growth, of
-inequality, of persistence and of association. The entire system of
-human passion, all the risks of public peace and security, all labor and
-action, spring from these sources. It is the same with the other
-primordial differences; their effects embrace an entire civilization,
-and may be likened to those algebraic formulæ which, within narrow
-bounds, describe beforehand the curve of which these form the law. Not
-that this law always prevails to the end; sometimes, perturbations
-arise, but, even when this happens, it is not because the law is
-defective, but because it has not operated alone. New elements have
-entered into combination with old ones; powerful foreign forces have
-interfered to oppose primitive forces. The race has emigrated, as with
-the ancient Aryans, and the change of climate has led to a change in the
-whole intellectual economy and structure of society. A people has been
-conquered like the Saxon nation, and the new political structure has
-imposed on it customs, capacities, and desires which it did not possess.
-The nation has established itself permanently in the midst of
-downtrodden and threatening subjects, as with the ancient Spartans,
-while the necessity of living, as in an armed encampment, has violently
-turned the whole moral and social organization in one unique direction.
-At all events, the mechanism of human history is like this. We always
-find the primitive mainspring consisting of some widespread tendency of
-soul and intellect, either innate and natural to the race or acquired by
-it and due to some circumstance forced upon it. These great given
-mainsprings gradually produce their effects, that is to say, at the end
-of a few centuries they place the nation in a new religious, literary,
-social, and economic state; a new condition which, combined with their
-renewed effort, produces another condition, sometimes a good one,
-sometimes a bad one, now slowly, now rapidly, and so on; so that the
-entire development of each distinct civilization may be considered as
-the effect of one permanent force which, at every moment, varies its
-work by modifying the circumstances where it acts.
-
-
-
-
-V. The three primordial forces.--Race
-
-
-Three different sources contribute to the production of this elementary
-moral state, race, environment, and epoch. What we call race consists of
-those innate and hereditary dispositions which man brings with him into
-the world and which are generally accompanied with marked differences of
-temperament and of bodily structure. They vary in different nations.
-Naturally, there are varieties of men as there are varieties of cattle
-and horses, some brave and intelligent, and others timid and of limited
-capacity; some capable of superior conceptions and creations, and others
-reduced to rudimentary ideas and contrivances; some specially fitted for
-certain works, and more richly furnished with certain instincts, as we
-see in the better endowed species of dogs, some for running and others
-for fighting, some for hunting and others for guarding houses and
-flocks. We have here a distinct force; so distinct that, in spite of the
-enormous deviations which both the other motors impress upon it, we
-still recognize, and which a race like the Aryan people, scattered from
-the Ganges to the Hebrides, established under all climates, ranged along
-every degree of civilization, transformed by thirty centuries of
-revolutions, shows nevertheless in its languages, in its religions, in
-its literatures, and in its philosophies, the community of blood and of
-intellect which still to-day binds together all its offshoots. However
-they may differ, their parentage is not lost; barbarism, culture and
-grafting, differences of atmosphere and of soil, fortunate or
-unfortunate occurrences, have operated in vain; the grand
-characteristics of the original form have lasted, and we find that the
-two or three leading features of the primitive imprint are again
-apparent under the subsequent imprints with which time has overlaid
-them. There is nothing surprising in this extraordinary tenacity.
-Although the immensity of the distance allows us to catch only a glimpse
-in a dubious light of the origin of species,[1] the events of history
-throw sufficient light on events anterior to history to explain the
-almost unshaken solidity of primordial traits. At the moment of
-encountering them, fifteen, twenty, and thirty centuries before our era,
-in an Aryan, Egyptian, or Chinese, they represent the work of a much
-greater number of centuries, perhaps the work of many myriads of
-centuries. For, as soon as an animal is born it must adapt itself to its
-[surroundings]; it breathes in another way, it renews itself differently,
-it is otherwise stimulated according as the atmosphere, the food, and
-the temperature are different. A different climate and situation create
-different necessities and hence activities of a different kind; and
-hence, again, a system of different habits, and, finally a system of
-different aptitudes and instincts. Man, thus compelled to put himself in
-equilibrium with circumstances, contracts a corresponding temperament
-and character, and his character, like his temperament, are acquisitions
-all the more stable because of the outward impression being more deeply
-imprinted in him by more frequent repetitions and transmitted to his
-offspring by more ancient heredity. So that at each moment of time, the
-character of a people may be considered as a summary of all antecedent
-actions and sensations; that is to say, as a quantity and as a weighty
-mass, not infinite,[2] since all things in nature are limited, but
-disproportionate to the rest and almost impossible to raise, since each
-minute of an almost infinite past has contributed to render it heavier,
-and, in order to turn the scale, it would require, on the other side, a
-still greater accumulation of actions and sensations. Such is the first
-and most abundant source of these master faculties from which historic
-events are derived; and we see at once that if it is powerful it is
-owing to its not being a mere source, but a sort of lake, and like a
-deep reservoir wherein other sources have poured their waters for a
-multitude of centuries.
-
-When we have thus verified the internal structure of a race we must
-consider the environment in which it lives. For man is not alone in the
-world; nature envelops him and other men surround him; accidental and
-secondary folds come and overspread the primitive and permanent fold,
-while physical or social circumstances derange or complete the natural
-groundwork surrendered to them. At one time climate has had its effect.
-Although the history of Aryan nations can be only obscurely traced from
-their common country to their final abodes, we can nevertheless affirm
-that the profound difference which is apparent between the Germanic
-races on the one hand, and the Hellenic and Latin races on the other,
-proceeds in great part from the differences between the countries in
-which they have established themselves--the former in cold and moist
-countries, in the depths of gloomy forests and swamps, or on the borders
-of a wild ocean, confined to melancholic or rude sensations, inclined to
-drunkenness and gross feeding, leading a militant and carnivorous life;
-the latter, on the contrary, living amidst the finest scenery, alongside
-of a brilliant, sparkling sea inviting navigation and commerce, exempt
-from the grosser cravings of the stomach, disposed at the start to
-social habits and customs, to political organization, to the sentiments
-and faculties which develop the art of speaking, the capacity for
-enjoyment and invention in the sciences, in art, and in literature. At
-another time, political events have operated, as in the two Italian
-civilizations: the first one tending wholly to action, to conquest, to
-government, and to legislation, through the primitive situation of a
-city of refuge, a frontier emporium, and of an armed aristocracy which,
-importing and enrolling foreigners and the vanquished under it, sets two
-hostile bodies facing each other, with no outlet for its internal
-troubles and rapacious instincts but systematic warfare; the second one,
-excluded from unity and political ambition on a grand scale by the
-permanency of its municipal system, by the cosmopolite situation of its
-pope and by the military intervention of neighboring states, and
-following the bent of its magnificent and harmonious genius, is wholly
-carried over to the worship of voluptuousness and beauty. Finally, at
-another time, social conditions have imposed their stamp as, eighteen
-centuries ago, by Christianity, and twenty-five centuries ago by
-Buddhism, when, around the Mediterranean as in Hindostan, the extreme
-effects of Aryan conquest and organization led to intolerable
-oppression, the crushing of the individual, utter despair, the whole
-world under the ban of a curse, with the development of metaphysics and
-visions, until man, in this dungeon of despondency, feeling his heart
-melt, conceived of abnegation, charity, tender love, gentleness,
-humility, human brotherhood, here in the idea of universal nothingness,
-and there under that of the fatherhood of God. Look around at the
-regulative instincts and faculties implanted in a race; in brief, the
-turn of mind according to which it thinks and acts at the present day;
-we shall find most frequently that its work is due to one of these
-prolonged situations, to these enveloping circumstances, to these
-persistent gigantic pressures brought to bear on a mass of men who, one
-by one, and all collectively, from one generation to another, have been
-unceasingly bent and fashioned by them, in Spain a crusade of eight
-centuries against the Mohammedans, prolonged yet longer even to the
-exhaustion of the nation through the expulsion of the Moors, through the
-spoliation of the Jews, through the establishment of the Inquisition,
-through the Catholic wars; in England, a political establishment of
-eight centuries which maintains man erect and respectful, independent
-and obedient, all accustomed to struggling together in a body under the
-sanction of law; in France, a Latin organization which, at first imposed
-on docile barbarians, then levelled to the ground under the universal
-demolition, forms itself anew under the latent workings of national
-instinct, developing under hereditary monarchs and ending in a sort of
-equalized, centralized, administrative republic under dynasties exposed
-to revolutions. Such are the most efficacious among the observable
-causes which mold the primitive man; they are to nations what education,
-pursuit, condition, and abode are to individuals, and seem to comprise
-all, since the external forces which fashion human matter, and by which
-the outward acts on the inward, are comprehended in them.
-
-There is, nevertheless, a third order of causes, for, with the forces
-within and without, there is the work these have already produced
-together, which work itself contributes towards producing the ensuing
-work; beside the permanent impulsion and the given environment there is
-the acquired momentum. When national character and surrounding
-circumstances operate it is not on a _tabula rasa_, but on one already
-bearing imprints. According as this _tabula_ is taken at one or at
-another moment so is the imprint different, and this suffices to render
-the total effect different. Consider, for example, two moments of a
-literature or of an art, French tragedy under Corneille and under
-Voltaire, and Greek drama under Æschylus and under Euripides, Latin
-poetry under Lucretius and under Claudian, and Italian painting under Da
-Vinci and under Guido. Assuredly, there is no change of general
-conception at either of these two extreme points; ever the same human
-type must be portrayed or represented in action; the cast of the verse,
-the dramatic structure, the physical form have all persisted. But there
-is this among these differences, that one of the artists is a precursor
-and the other a successor, that the first one has no model and the
-second one has a model; that the former sees things face to face, and
-that the latter sees them through the intermediation of the former, that
-many departments of art have become more perfect, that the simplicity
-and grandeur of the impression have diminished, that what is pleasing
-and refined in form has augmented--in short, that the first work has
-determined the second. In this respect, it is with a people as with a
-plant; the same sap at the same temperature and in the same soil
-produces, at different stages of its successive elaborations, different
-developments, buds, flowers, fruits, and seeds, in such a way that the
-condition of the following is always that of the preceding and is born
-of its death. Now, if you no longer regard a brief moment, as above, but
-one of those grand periods of development which embraces one or many
-centuries like the Middle Ages, or our last classic period, the
-conclusion is the same. A certain dominating conception has prevailed
-throughout; mankind, during two hundred years, during five hundred
-years, have represented to themselves a certain ideal figure of man, in
-mediæval times the knight and the monk, in our classic period the
-courtier and refined talker; this creative and universal conception has
-monopolized the entire field of action and thought, and, after spreading
-its involuntarily systematic works over the world, it languished and
-then died out, and now a new idea has arisen, destined to a like
-domination and to equally multiplied creations. Note here that the
-latter depends in part on the former, and that it is the former, which,
-combining its effect with those of national genius and surrounding
-circumstances, will impose their bent and their direction on new-born
-things. It is according to this law that great historic currents are
-formed, meaning by this, the long rule of a form of intellect or of a
-master idea, like that period of spontaneous creations called the
-Renaissance, or that period of oratorical classifications called the
-Classic Age, or that series of mystic systems called the Alexandrine and
-Christian [epoch], or that series of mythological efflorescences found at
-the origins of Germany, India, and Greece. Here as elsewhere, we are
-dealing merely with a mechanical problem: the total effect is a compound
-wholly determined by the grandeur and direction of the forces which
-produce it. The sole difference which separates these moral problems
-from physical problems lies in this, that in the former the directions
-and grandeur cannot be estimated by or stated in figures with the same
-precision as in the latter. If a want, a faculty, is a quantity capable
-of degrees, the same as pressure or weight, this quantity is not
-measurable like that of the pressure or weight. We cannot fix it in an
-exact or approximative formula; we can obtain or give of it only a
-literary impression; we are reduced to noting and citing the prominent
-facts which make it manifest and which nearly, or roughly, indicate
-about what grade on the scale it must be ranged at. And yet,
-notwithstanding the methods of notation are not the same in the moral
-sciences as in the physical sciences, nevertheless, as matter is the
-same in both, and is equally composed of forces, directions and
-magnitudes, we can still show that in one as in the other, the final
-effect takes place according to the same law. This is great or small,
-according as the fundamental forces are great or small and act more or
-less precisely in the same sense, according as the distinct effects of
-race, environment and epoch combine to enforce each other or combine to
-neutralize each other. Thus are explained the long impotences and the
-brilliant successes which appear irregularly and with no apparent reason
-in the life of a people; the causes of these consist in internal
-concordances and contrarieties. There was one of these concordances
-when, in the seventeenth century, the social disposition and
-conversational spirit innate in France encountered drawing-room
-formalities and the moment of oratorical analysis; when, in the
-nineteenth century, the flexible, profound genius of Germany encountered
-the age of philosophic synthesis and of cosmopolite criticism. One of
-these contrarieties happened when, in the seventeenth century, the
-blunt, isolated genius of England awkwardly tried to don the new polish
-of urbanity, and when, in the sixteenth century, the lucid, prosaic
-French intellect tried to gestate a living poesy. It is this secret
-concordance of creative forces which produced the exquisite courtesy and
-noble cast of literature under Louis XIV and Bossuet, and the grandiose
-metaphysics and broad critical sympathy under Hegel and Goethe. It is
-this secret contrariety of creative forces which produced the literary
-incompleteness, the licentious plays, the abortive drama of Dryden and
-Wycherly, the poor Greek importations, the gropings, the minute beauties
-and fragments of Ronsard and the Pleiad. We may confidently affirm that
-the unknown creations toward which the current of coming ages is bearing
-us will spring from and be governed by these primordial forces; that, if
-these forces could be measured and computed we might deduce from them,
-as from a formula, the characters of future civilization; and that if,
-notwithstanding the evident rudeness of our notations, and the
-fundamental inexactitude of our measures, we would nowadays form some
-idea of our general destinies, we must base our conjectures on an
-examination of these forces. For, in enumerating them, we run through
-the full circle of active forces; and when the race, the environment,
-and the moment have been considered--that is to say the inner
-mainspring, the pressure from without, and the impulsion already
-acquired--we have exhausted not only all real causes but again all
-possible causes of movement.
-
-
-
-
-VI. History is a mechanical and psychological problem. Within certain
-limits man can foretell
-
-
-There remains to be ascertained in what way these causes, applied to a
-nation or to a century, distribute their effects. Like a spring issuing
-from an elevated spot and diffusing its waters, according to the height,
-from ledge to ledge, until it finally reaches the low ground, so does
-the tendency of mind or of soul in a people, due to race, epoch, or
-environment, diffuse itself in different proportions, and by regular
-descent, over the different series of facts which compose its
-civilization.[3] In preparing the geographical map of a country,
-starting at its watershed, we see the slopes, just below this common
-point, dividing themselves into five or six principal basins, and then
-each of the latter into several others, and so on until the whole
-country, with its thousands of inequalities of surface, is included in
-the ramifications of this network. In like manner, in preparing the
-psychological map of the events and sentiments belonging to a certain
-human civilization, we find at the start five or six well determined
-provinces--religion, art, philosophy, the state, the family, and
-industries; next, in each of these provinces, natural departments, and
-then finally, in each of these departments, still smaller territories
-until we arrive at those countless details of life which we observe
-daily in ourselves and around us. If, again, we examine and compare
-together these various groups of facts we at once find that they are
-composed of parts and that all have parts in common. Let us take first
-the three principal products of human intelligence--religion, art, and
-philosophy. What is a philosophy but a conception of nature and of its
-[primordial causes] under the form of abstractions and formulas? What
-underlies a religion and an art if not a conception of this same nature,
-and of these same primordial causes, under the form of more or less
-determinate symbols, and of more or less distinct personages, with this
-difference, that in the first case we believe that they exist, and in
-the second case that they do not exist. Let the reader consider some of
-the great creations of the intellect in India, in Scandinavia, in
-Persia, in Rome, in Greece, and he will find that art everywhere is a
-sort of philosophy become sensible, religion a sort of poem regarded as
-true, and philosophy a sort of art and religion, desiccated and reduced
-to pure abstractions. There is, then, in the centre of each of these
-groups a common element, the conception of the world and its origin, and
-if they differ amongst each other it is because each combines with the
-common element a distinct element; here the power of abstraction, there
-the faculty of personifying with belief, and, finally, the talent for
-personifying without belief. Let us now take the two leading products of
-human association, the Family and the State. What constitutes the State
-other than the sentiment of obedience by which a multitude of men
-collect together under the authority of a chief? And what constitutes
-the Family other than the sentiment of obedience by which a wife and
-children act together under the direction of a father and husband? The
-Family is a natural, primitive, limited state, as the State is an
-artificial, ulterior, and expanded Family, while beneath the differences
-which arise from the number, origin, and condition of its members, we
-distinguish, in the small as in the large community, a like fundamental
-disposition of mind which brings them together and unites them. Suppose,
-now, that this common element receives from the environment, the epoch,
-and the race peculiar characteristics, and it is clear that all the
-groups into which it enters will be proportionately modified. If the
-sentiment of obedience is merely one of fear,[4] you encounter, as in
-most of the Oriental states, the brutality of despotism, a prodigality
-of vigorous punishments, the exploitation of the subject, servile
-habits, insecurity of property, impoverished production, female slavery,
-and the customs of the harem. If the sentiment of obedience is rooted in
-the instinct of discipline, sociability, and honor, you find, as in
-France, a complete military organization, a superb administrative
-hierarchy, a weak public spirit with outbursts of patriotism, the
-unhesitating docility of the subject along with the hotheadedness of the
-revolutionist, the obsequiousness of the courtier along with the reverse
-of the gentleman, the charm of refined conversation along with home and
-family bickerings, conjugal equality together with matrimonial
-incompatibilities under the necessary constraints of the law. If,
-finally, the sentiment of obedience is rooted in the instinct of
-subordination and in the idea of duty, you perceive, as in Germanic
-nations, the security and contentment of the household, the firm
-foundations of domestic life, the slow and imperfect development of
-worldly matters, innate respect for established rank, superstitious
-reverence for the past, maintenance of social inequalities, natural and
-habitual deference to the law. Similarly in a race, just as there is a
-difference of aptitude for general ideas, so will its religion, art, and
-philosophy be different. If man is naturally fitted for broader
-universal conceptions and inclined at the same time to their
-derangement, through the nervous irritability of an overexcited
-organization, we find, as in India, a surprising richness of gigantic
-religious creations, a splendid bloom of extravagant transparent epics,
-a strange concatenation of subtle, imaginative philosophic systems, all
-so intimately associated and so interpenetrated with a common sap, that
-we at once recognize them, by their amplitude, by their color, and by
-their disorder, as productions of the same climate and of the same
-spirit. If, on the contrary, the naturally sound and well-balanced man
-is content to restrict his conceptions to narrow bounds in order to cast
-them in more precise forms, we see, as in Greece, a theology of artists
-and narrators, special gods that are soon separated from objects and
-almost transformed at once into substantial personages, the sentiment of
-universal unity nearly effaced and scarcely maintained in the vague
-notion of destiny, a philosophy, rather than subtle and compact,
-grandiose and systematic, narrow metaphysically[5] but incomparable in
-its logic, sophistry, and morality, si poesy and arts superior to
-anything we have seen in lucidity, naturalness, proportion, truth, and
-beauty. If, finally, man is reduced to narrow conceptions deprived of
-any speculative subtlety, and at the same time finds that he is absorbed
-and completely hardened by practical interests, we see, as in Rome,
-rudimentary deities, mere empty names, good for denoting the petty
-details of agriculture, generation, and the household, veritable
-marriage and farming labels, and, therefore, a null or borrowed
-mythology, philosophy, and poesy. Here, as elsewhere, comes in the law
-of mutual dependencies.[6] A civilization is a living unit, the parts of
-which hold together the same as the parts of an organic body. Just as in
-an animal, the instincts, teeth, limbs, bones, and muscular apparatus
-are bound together in such a way that a variation of one determines a
-corresponding variation in the others, and out of which a skilful
-naturalist, with a few bits, imagines and reconstructs an almost
-complete body, so, in a civilization, do religion, philosophy, the
-family scheme, literature and the arts form a system in which each local
-change involves a general change, so that an experienced historian, who
-studies one portion apart from the others, sees beforehand and partially
-predicts the characteristics of the rest. There is nothing vague in this
-dependence. The regulation of all this in the living body consists,
-first, of the tendency to manifest a certain primordial type, and, next,
-the necessity of its possessing organs which can supply its wants and
-put itself in harmony with itself in order to live. The regulation in a
-civilization consists in the presence in each great human creation of an
-elementary producer equally present in other surrounding creations, that
-is, some faculty and aptitude, some efficient and marked disposition,
-which, with its own peculiar character, introduces this with that into
-all operations in which it takes part, and which, according to its
-variations, causes variation in all the works in which it cooperates.
-
-
-
-
-VII. Law of formation of a group. Examples and indications
-
-
-Having reached this point, we can obtain a glimpse of the principal
-features of human transformation, and can now search for the general
-laws which regulate not only events, but classes of events; not only
-this religion or that literature, but the whole group of religions or of
-literatures. If, for example, it is admitted that a religion is a
-metaphysical poem associated with belief; if it is recognized, besides,
-that there are certain races and certain environments in which belief,
-poetic faculty, and metaphysical faculty display themselves in common
-with unwonted vigor; if we consider that Christianity and Buddhism were
-developed at periods of grand systematizations and in the midst of
-sufferings like the oppression which stirred up the fanatics of
-Cevennes; if, on the other hand, it is recognized that primitive
-religions are born at the dawn of human reason, during the richest
-expansion of human imagination, at times of the greatest _naïveté_ and
-of the greatest credulity; if we consider, again, that Mohammedanism
-appeared along with the advent of poetic prose and of the conception of
-material unity, amongst a people destitute of science and at the moment
-of a sudden development of the intellect--we might conclude that
-religion is born and declines, is reformed and transformed, according as
-circumstances fortify and bring together, with more or less precision
-and energy, its three generative instincts; and we would then comprehend
-why religion is endemic in India among specially exalted imaginative and
-philosophic intellects; why it blooms out so wonderfully and so grandly
-in the Middle Ages, in an oppressive society, amongst new languages and
-literatures; why it develops again in the sixteenth century with a new
-character and an heroic enthusiasm, at the time of an universal
-renaissance and at the awakening of the Germanic races; why it swarms
-out in so many bizarre sects in the rude democracy of America and under
-the bureaucratic despotism of Russia; why, in fine, it is seen spreading
-out in the Europe of to-day in such different proportions and with such
-special traits, according to such differences of race and of
-civilizations. And so for every kind of human production, for letters,
-music, the arts of design, philosophy, the sciences, state industries,
-and the rest. Each has some moral tendency for its direct cause, or a
-concurrence of moral tendencies; given the cause, it appears; the cause
-withdrawn, it disappears; the weakness or intensity of the cause is the
-measure of its own weakness or intensity. It is bound to that like any
-physical phenomenon to its condition, like dew to the chilliness of a
-surrounding atmosphere, like dilatation to heat. Couples exist in the
-moral world as they exist in the physical world, as rigorously linked
-together and as universally diffused. Whatever in one case produces,
-alters, or suppresses the first term, produces, alters, and suppresses
-the second term as a necessary consequence. Whatever cools the
-surrounding atmosphere causes the fall of dew. Whatever develops
-credulity, along with poetic conceptions of the universe, engenders
-religion. Thus have things come about, and thus will they continue to
-come about. As soon as the adequate and necessary condition of one of
-these vast apparitions becomes known to us our mind has a hold on the
-future as well as on the past. We can confidently state under what
-circumstances it will reappear, foretell without rashness many portions
-of its future history, and sketch with precaution some of the traits of
-its ulterior development.
-
-
-
-
-VIII. General problem and future of history. Psychological method.
-Value of literature. Purpose in writing this book
-
-
-History has reached this point at the present day, or rather it is
-nearly there, on the threshold of this inquest. The question as now
-stated is this: Given a literature, a philosophy, a society, an art, a
-certain group of arts, what is the moral state of things which produces
-it? And what are the conditions of race, epoch, and environment the best
-adapted to produce this moral state? There is a distinct moral state for
-each of these formations and for each of their branches; there is one
-for art in general as well as for each particular art; for architecture,
-painting, sculpture, music, and poetry, each with a germ of its own in
-the large field of human psychology; each has its own law, and it is by
-virtue of this law that we see each shoot up, apparently haphazard,
-singly and alone, amidst the miscarriages of their neighbors, like
-painting in Flanders and Holland in the seventeenth century, like poetry
-in England in the sixteenth century, like music in Germany in the
-eighteenth century. At this moment, and in these countries, the
-conditions for one art and not for the others are fulfilled, and one
-branch only has bloomed out amidst the general sterility. It is these
-laws of human vegetation which history must now search for; it is this
-special psychology of each special formation which must be got at; it is
-the composition of a complete table of these peculiar conditions that
-must now be worked out. There is nothing more delicate and nothing more
-difficult. Montesquieu undertook it, but in his day the interest in
-history was too recent for him to be successful; nobody, indeed, had any
-idea of the road that was to be followed, and even at the present day we
-scarcely begin to obtain a glimpse of it. Just as astronomy, at bottom,
-is a mechanical problem, and physiology, likewise, a chemical problem,
-so is history, at bottom, a problem of psychology. There is a particular
-system of inner impressions and operations which fashions the artist,
-the believer, the musician, the painter, the nomad, the social man; for
-each of these, the filiation, intensity, and interdependence of ideas
-and of emotions are different; each has his own moral history, and his
-own special organization, along with some master tendency and with some
-dominant trait. To explain each of these would require a chapter devoted
-to a profound internal analysis, and that is a work that can scarcely be
-called sketched out at the present day. But one man, Stendhal, through a
-certain turn of mind and a peculiar education, has attempted it, and
-even yet most of his readers find his works paradoxical and obscure. His
-talent and ideas were too premature. His admirable insight, his profound
-sayings carelessly thrown out, the astonishing precision of his notes
-and logic, were not understood; people were not aware that, under the
-appearances and talk of a man of the world, he explained the most
-complex of internal mechanisms; that his finger touched the great
-mainspring, that he brought scientific processes to bear in the history
-of the heart, the art of employing figures, of decomposing, of deducing;
-that he was the first to point out fundamental causes such as
-nationalities, climates, and temperaments; in short, that he treated
-sentiments as they should be treated, that is to say, as a naturalist
-and physicist, by making classifications and estimating forces. On
-account of all this he was pronounced dry and eccentric and allowed to
-live in isolation, composing novels, books of travel and taking notes,
-for which he counted upon, and has obtained, about a dozen or so of
-readers. And yet his works are those in which we of the present day may
-find the most satisfactory efforts that have been made to clear the road
-I have just striven to describe. Nobody has taught one better how to
-observe with one's own eyes, first, to regard humanity around us and
-life as it is, and next, old and authentic documents; how to read more
-than merely the black and white of the page; how to detect under old
-print and the scrawl of the text the veritable sentiment and the train
-of thought, the mental state in which the words were penned. In his
-writings, as in those of Sainte-Beuve and in those of the German
-critics, the reader will find how much is to be derived from a literary
-document; if this document is rich and we know how to interpret it, we
-will find in it the psychology of a particular soul, often that of an
-age, and sometimes that of a race. In this respect, a great poem, a good
-novel, the confessions of a superior man, are more instructive than a
-mass of historians and histories; I would give fifty volumes of charters
-and a hundred diplomatic files for the memoirs of Cellini, the epistles
-of Saint Paul, the table-talk of Luther, or the comedies of
-Aristophanes. Herein lies the value of literary productions. They are
-instructive because they are beautiful; their usefulness increases with
-their perfection; and if they provide us with documents, it is because
-they are monuments. The more visible a book renders sentiments the more
-literary it is, for it is the special office of literature to take note
-of sentiments. The more important the sentiments noted in a book the
-higher its rank in literature, for it is by representing what sort of a
-life a nation or an epoch leads, that a writer rallies to himself the
-sympathies of a nation or of an epoch. Hence, among the documents which
-bring before our eyes the sentiments of preceding generations, a
-literature, and especially a great literature, is incomparably the best.
-It resembles those admirable instruments of remarkable sensitiveness
-which physicists make use of to detect and measure the most profound and
-delicate changes that occur in a human body. There is nothing
-approaching this in constitutions or religions; the articles of a code
-or of a catechism do no more than depict mind in gross and without
-finesse; if there are documents which show life and spirit in politics
-and in creeds, they are the eloquent discourses of the pulpit and the
-tribune, memoirs and personal confessions, all belonging to literature,
-so that, outside of itself, literature embodies whatever is good
-elsewhere. It is mainly in studying literatures that we are able to
-produce moral history, and arrive at some knowledge of the psychological
-laws on which events depend.
-
-I have undertaken to write a history of a literature and to ascertain
-the psychology of a people; in selecting this one, it is not without a
-motive. A people had to be taken possessing a vast and complete
-literature, which is rarely found. There are few nations which,
-throughout their existence, have thought and written well in the full
-sense of the word. Among the ancients, Latin literature is null at the
-beginning, and afterward borrowed and an imitation. Among the moderns,
-German literature is nearly a blank for two centuries.[7] Italian and
-Spanish literatures come to an end in the middle of the seventeenth
-century. Ancient Greece, and modern France and England, alone offer a
-complete series of great and expressive monuments. I have chosen the
-English because, as this still exists and is open to direct observation,
-it can be better studied than that of an extinct civilization of which
-fragments only remain; and because, being different, it offers better
-than that of France very marked characteristics in the eyes of a
-Frenchman. Moreover, outside of what is peculiar to English
-civilization, apart from a spontaneous development, it presents a forced
-deviation due to the latest and most effective conquest to which the
-country was subject; the three given conditions out of which it
-issues--race, climate, and the Norman conquest--are clearly and
-distinctly visible in its literary monuments; so that we study in this
-history the two most potent motors of human transformation, namely,
-nature and constraint, and we study them, without any break or
-uncertainty, in a series of authentic and complete monuments. I have
-tried to define these primitive motors, to show their gradual effects,
-and explain how their insensible operation has brought religions and
-literary productions into full light, and how the inward mechanism is
-developed by which the barbarous Saxon became the Englishman of the
-present day.
-
-
-
-
-[Footnote 1: Darwin, "The Origin of Species." Prosper Lucas, "De
-l'Hérédité."]
-
-[Footnote 2: Spinosa, "Ethics," part IV., axiom.]
-
-[Footnote 3: For this scale of coordinate effects consult, "Langues
-Sémitiques," by Renan, ch. I; "Comparison des civilisations Grecque
-et Romaine," vol. I., ch. I., 3d ed., by Mommsen; "Conséquences
-de la démocratie," vol. III., by De Tocqueville.]
-
-[Footnote 4: "L'Esprit des Lois," by Montesquieu; the essential
-principles of the three governments.]
-
-[Footnote 5: The birth of the Alexandrine philosophy is due to contact
-with the Orient. Aristotle's metaphysical views stand alone. Moreover,
-with him as with Plato, they afford merely a glimpse. By way of
-contrast see systematic power in Plotinus, Proclus, Schelling, and
-Hegel, or again in the admirable boldness of Brahmanic and Buddhist
-speculation.]
-
-[Footnote 6: I have very often made attempts to state this law,
-especially in the preface to "Essais de Critique et d'Histoire."]
-
-[Footnote 7: From 1550 to 1750.]
-
-
-
-
-BOOK I.--THE SOURCE
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER FIRST
-
-
-The Saxons
-
-
-SECTION I.--The Coast of the North Sea
-
-
-As you coast the North Sea from the Scheldt to Jutland, you will mark in
-the first place that the characteristic feature is the want of slope;
-marsh, waste, shoal; the rivers hardly drag themselves along, swollen
-and sluggish, with long, black-looking waves; the flooding stream oozes
-over the banks, and appears further on in stagnant pools. In Holland the
-soil is but a sediment of mud; here and there only does the earth cover
-it with a crust, shallow and brittle, the mere alluvium of the river,
-which the river seems ever about to destroy. Thick clouds hover above,
-being fed by ceaseless exhalations. They lazily turn their violet
-flanks, grow black, suddenly descend in heavy showers; the vapor, like a
-furnace-smoke, crawls forever on the horizon. Thus watered, plants
-multiply; in the angle between Jutland and the continent, in a fat muddy
-soil, "the verdure is as fresh as that of England."[8] Immense forests
-covered the land even after the eleventh century. The sap of this humid
-country, thick and potent, circulates in man as in the plants; man's
-respiration, nutrition, sensations and habits affect also his faculties
-and his frame.
-
-The land produced after this fashion has one enemy, to wit, the sea.
-Holland maintains its existence only by virtue of its dykes. In 1654
-those in Jutland burst, and fifteen thousand of the inhabitants were
-swallowed up. One need only see the blast of the North swirl down upon
-the low level of the soil, wan and ominous:[9] the vast yellow sea
-dashes against the narrow belt of flat coast which seems incapable of a
-moment's resistance; the wind howls and bellows; the sea-mews cry; the
-poor little ships flee as fast as they can, bending almost to the
-gunwale, and endeavor to find a refuge in the mouth of the river, which
-seems as hostile as the sea. A sad and precarious existence, as it were
-face to face with a beast of prey. The Frisians, in their ancient laws,
-speak already of the league they have made against "the ferocious
-ocean." Even in a calm this sea is unsafe. "Before me rolleth a waste of
-water... and above me go rolling the storm-clouds, the formless dark
-gray daughters of air, which from the sea, in cloudy buckets scoop up
-the water, ever wearied lifting and lifting, and then pour it again in
-the sea, a mournful, wearisome business. Over the sea, flat on his face,
-lies the monstrous terrible North wind, sighing and sinking his voice as
-in secret, like an old grumbler, for once in good humor, unto the ocean
-he talks, and he tells her wonderful stories."[10] Rain, wind, and surge
-leave room for naught but gloomy and melancholy thoughts. The very joy
-of the billows has in it an inexplicable restlessness and harshness.
-From Holland to Jutland, a string of small deluged islands[11] bears
-witness to their ravages; the shifting sands which the tide drifts up
-obstruct and impede the banks and entrance of the rivers.[12] The first
-Roman fleet, a thousand sail, perished there; to this day ships wait a
-month or more in sight of port, tossed upon the great white waves, not
-daring to risk themselves in the shifting winding channel, notorious for
-its wrecks. In winter a breast-plate of ice covers the two streams; the
-sea drives back the frozen masses as they descend; they pile themselves
-with a crash upon the sandbanks, and sway to and fro; now and then you
-may see a vessel, seized as in a vice, split in two beneath their
-violence. Picture, in this foggy clime, amid hoar-frost and storm, in
-these marshes and forests, half-naked savages, a kind of wild beasts,
-fishers and hunters, but especially hunters of men; these are they,
-Saxons, Angles, Jutes, Frisians;[13] later on, Danes, who during the
-fifth and the ninth centuries, with their swords and battle-axes, took
-and kept the island of Britain.
-
-A rude and foggy land, like their own, except in the depth of its sea
-and the safety of its coasts, which one day will call up real fleets and
-mighty vessels; green England--the word rises to the lips and expresses
-all. Here also moisture pervades everything; even in summer the mist
-rises; even on clear days you perceive it fresh from the great
-sea-girdle, or rising from vast but ever slushy meadows, undulating with
-hill and dale, intersected with hedges to the limit of the horizon. Here
-and there a sunbeam strikes on the higher grasses with burning flash,
-and the splendor of the verdure dazzles and almost blinds you. The
-overflowing water straightens the flabby stems; they grow up, rank,
-weak, and filled with sap; a sap ever renewed, for the gray mists creep
-under a stratum of motionless vapor, and at distant intervals the rim of
-heaven is drenched by heavy showers. "There are yet commons as at the
-time of the Conquest, deserted, abandoned,[14] wild, covered with furze
-and thorny plants, with here and there a horse grazing in solitude.
-Joyless scene, unproductive soil![15] What a labor it has been to
-humanize it! What impression it must have made on the men of the South,
-the Romans of Cæsar! I thought, when I saw it, of the ancient Saxons,
-wanderers from West and North, who came to settle in this land of marsh
-and fogs, on the border of primeval forests, on the banks of these great
-muddy streams, which roll down their slime to meet the waves.[16] They
-must have lived as hunters and swineherds; growing, as before, brawny,
-fierce, gloomy. Take civilization from this soil, and there will remain
-to the inhabitants only war, the chase, gluttony, drunkenness. Smiling
-love, sweet poetic dreams, art, refined and nimble thought, are for the
-happy shores of the Mediterranean. Here the barbarian, ill housed in his
-mud-hovel, who hears the rain pattering whole days among the oak
-leaves--what dreams can he have, gazing upon his mud-pools and his
-sombre sky?"
-
-
-
-
-SECTION II.--The Northern Barbarians
-
-
-Huge white bodies, cool-blooded, with fierce blue eyes, reddish flaxen
-hair; ravenous stomachs, filled with meat and cheese, heated by strong
-drinks; of a cold temperament, slow to love,[17] home-stayers, prone to
-brutal drunkenness: these are to this day the features which descent and
-climate preserve in the race, and these are what the Roman historians
-discovered in their former country. There is no living, in these lands,
-without abundance of solid food; bad weather keeps people at home;
-strong drinks are necessary to cheer them; the senses become blunted,
-the muscles are braced, the will vigorous. In every country the body of
-man is rooted deep into the soil of nature; and in this instance still
-deeper, because, being uncultivated, he is less removed from nature. In
-Germany storm-beaten, in wretched boats of hide, amid the hardships and
-dangers of seafaring life, they were pre-eminently adapted for endurance
-and enterprise, inured to misfortune, scorners of danger. Pirates at
-first: of all kinds of hunting the man-hunt is most profitable and most
-noble; they left the care of the land and flocks to the women and
-slaves; seafaring, war, and pillage[18] was their whole idea of a
-freeman's work. They dashed to sea in their two-sailed barks, landed
-anywhere, killed everything; and having sacrificed in honor of their
-gods the tithe of their prisoners, and leaving behind them the red light
-of their burnings, went farther on to begin again. "Lord," says a
-certain litany, "deliver us from the fury of the Jutes. Of all
-barbarians[19] these are strongest of body and heart, the most
-formidable,"--we may add, the most cruelly ferocious. When murder
-becomes a trade, it becomes a pleasure. About the eighth century, the
-final decay of the great Roman corpse which Charlemagne had tried to
-revive, and which was settling down into corruption, called them like
-vultures to the prey. Those who had remained in Denmark, with their
-brothers of Norway, fanatical pagans, incensed against the Christians,
-made a descent on all the surrounding coasts. Their sea-kings,[20] "who
-had never slept under the smoky rafters of a roof, who had never drained
-the ale-horn by an inhabited hearth," laughed at wind and storms, and
-sang: "The blast of the tempest aids our oars; the bellowing of heaven,
-the howling of the thunder, hurt us not; the hurricane is our servant,
-and drives us whither we wish to go. We hewed with our swords," says a
-song attributed to Ragnar Lodbrog; "was it not like that hour when my
-bright bride I seated by me on the couch?" One of them, at the monastery
-of Peterborough, kills with his own hand all the monks, to the number of
-eighty-four; others, having taken King Ælla, divided his ribs from the
-spine, drew his lungs out, threw salt into his wounds. Harold Harefoot,
-having seized his rival Alfred, with six hundred men, had them maimed,
-blinded, hamstrung, scalped, or embowelled.[21] Torture and carnage,
-greed of danger, fury of destruction, obstinate and frenzied bravery of
-an over-strong temperament, the unchaining of the butcherly
-instincts--such traits meet us at every step in the old Sagas. The
-daughter of the Danish Jarl, seeing Egil taking his seat near her,
-repels him with scorn, reproaching him with "seldom having provided the
-wolves with hot meat, with never having seen for the whole autumn a
-raven croaking over the carnage." But Egil seized her and pacified her
-by singing: "I have marched with my bloody sword, and the raven has
-followed me. Furiously we fought, the fire passed over the dwellings of
-men; we have sent to sleep in blood those who kept the gates." From such
-table-talk, and such maidenly tastes, we may judge of the rest.[22]
-
-Behold them now in England, more settled and wealthier: do you expect to
-find them much changed? Changed it may be, but for the worse, like the
-Franks, like all barbarians who pass from action to enjoyment. They are
-more gluttonous, carving their hogs, filling themselves with flesh,
-swallowing down deep draughts of mead, ale, spiced wines, all the
-strong, coarse drinks which they can procure, and so they are cheered
-and stimulated. Add to this the pleasure of the fight. Not easily with
-such instincts can they attain to culture; to find a natural and ready
-culture, we must look amongst the sober and sprightly populations of the
-south. Here the sluggish and heavy[23] temperament remains long buried
-in a brutal life; people of the Latin race never at a first glance see
-in them aught but large gross beasts, clumsy and ridiculous when not
-dangerous and enraged. Up to the sixteenth century, says an old
-historian, the great body of the nation were little else than herdsmen,
-keepers of cattle and sheep; up to the end of the eighteenth drunkenness
-was the recreation of the higher ranks; it is still that of the lower;
-and all the refinement and softening influence of civilization have not
-abolished amongst them the use of the rod and the fist. If the
-carnivorous, warlike, drinking savage, proof against the climate, still
-shows beneath the conventions of our modern society and the softness of
-our modern polish, imagine what he must have been when, landing with his
-band upon a wasted or desert country, and becoming for the first time a
-settler, he saw extending to the horizon the common pastures of the
-border country, and the great primitive forests which furnished stags
-for the chase and acorns for his pigs. The ancient histories tell us
-that they had a great and a coarse appetite.[24] Even at the time of the
-Conquest the custom of drinking to excess was a common vice with men of
-the highest rank, and they passed in this way whole days and nights
-without intermission. Henry of Huntingdon, in the twelfth century,
-lamenting the ancient hospitality, says that the Norman kings provided
-their courtiers with only one meal a day, while the Saxon kings used to
-provide four. One day, when Athelstan went with his nobles to visit his
-relative Ethelfleda, the provision of mead was exhausted at the first
-salutation, owing to the copiousness of the draughts; but Dunstan,
-forecasting the extent of the royal appetite, had furnish the house so
-that the cup-bearers, as is the custom at royal feasts, were able the
-whole day to serve it out in horns and other vessels, and the liquor was
-not found to be deficient. When the guests were satisfied, the harp
-passed from hand to hand, and the rude harmony of their deep voices
-swelled under the vaulted roof. The monasteries themselves in Edgard's
-time kept up games, songs, and dances till midnight. To shout, to drink,
-to gesticulate, to feel their veins heated and swollen with wine, to
-hear and see around them the riotous orgies, this was the first need of
-the barbarians.[25] The heavy human brute gluts himself with sensations
-and with noise.
-
-For such appetites there was a stronger food--I mean blows and battle.
-In vain they attached themselves to the soil, became tillers of the
-ground, in distinct communities and distinct regions, shut[26] in their
-march with their kindred and comrades, bound together, separated from
-the mass, enclosed by sacred landmarks, by primeval oaks on which they
-cut the figures of birds and beasts, by poles set up in the midst of the
-marsh, which whosoever removed was punished with cruel tortures. In vain
-these Marches and Ga's[27] were grouped into states, and finally formed
-a half-regulated society, with assemblies and laws, under the lead of a
-single king; its very structure indicates the necessities to supply
-which it was created. They united in order to maintain peace; treaties
-of peace occupy their Parliaments; provisions for peace are the matter
-of their laws. War was waged daily and everywhere; the aim of life was,
-not to be slain, ransomed, mutilated, pillaged, hanged, and of course,
-if it was a woman, violated.[28] Every man was obliged to appear armed,
-and to be ready, with his burgh or his township, to repel marauders, who
-went about in bands.[29] The animal was yet too powerful, too impetuous,
-too untamed. Anger and covetousness in the first place brought him upon
-his prey. Their history, I mean that of the Heptarchy, is like a history
-of "kites and crows."[30] They slew the Britons or reduced them to
-slavery, fought the remnant of the Welsh, Irish, and Picts, massacred
-one another, were hewn down and cut to pieces by the Danes. In a hundred
-years, out of fourteen kings of Northumbria, seven were slain and six
-deposed. Penda of Mercia killed five kings, and in order to take the
-town of Bamborough, demolished all the neighboring villages, heaped
-their ruins into an immense pile, sufficient to burn all the
-inhabitants, undertook to exterminate the Northumbrians, and perished
-himself by the sword at the age of eighty. Many amongst them were put to
-death by the thanes; one thane was burned alive; brothers slew one
-another treacherously. With us civilization has interposed, between the
-desire and its fulfilment, the counteracting and softening preventive of
-reflection and calculation; here, the impulse is sudden, and murder and
-every kind of excess spring from it instantaneously. King Edwy[31]
-having married Elgiva, his relation within the prohibited degrees,
-quitted the hall where he was drinking on the very day of his
-coronation, to be with her. The nobles thought themselves insulted, and
-immediately Abbot Dunstan went himself to seek the young man. "He found
-the adulteress," says the monk Osbern, "her mother, and the king
-together on the bed of debauch. He dragged the king thence violently,
-and setting the crown upon his head, brought him back to the nobles."
-Afterwards Elgiva sent men to put out Dunstan's eyes, and then, in a
-revolt, saved herself and the king by hiding in the country; but the men
-of the North having seized her, "hamstrung her, and then subjected her
-to the death which she deserved."[32] Barbarity follows barbarity. At
-Bristol, at the time of the Conquest, as we are told by a historian of
-the time,[33] it was the custom to buy men and women in all parts of
-England, and to carry them to Ireland for sale in order to make money.
-The buyers usually made the young women pregnant, and took them to
-market in that condition, in order to insure a better price. "You might
-have seen with sorrow long files of young people of both sexes and of
-the greatest beauty, bound with ropes, and daily exposed for sale. ...
-They sold in this manner as slaves their nearest relatives, and even
-their own children." And the chronicler adds that, having abandoned this
-practice, they "thus set an example to all the rest of England." Would
-you know the manners of the highest ranks, in the family of the last
-king?[34] At a feast in the king's hall, Harold was serving Edward the
-Confessor with wine, when Tostig, his brother, moved by envy, seized him
-by the hair. They were separated. Tostig went to Hereford, where Harold
-had ordered a royal banquet to be prepared. There he seized his
-brother's attendants, and cutting off their heads and limbs, he placed
-them in the vessels of wine, ale, mead, and cider, and sent a message to
-the king: "If you go to your farm, you will find there plenty of salt
-meat, but you will do well to carry some more with you." Harold's other
-brother, Sweyn, had violated the abbess Elgiva, assassinated Beorn the
-thane, and being banished from the country had turned pirate. When we
-regard their deeds of violence, their ferocity, their cannibal jests, we
-see that they were not far removed from the sea-kings, or from the
-followers of Odin, who ate raw flesh, hung men as victims on the sacred
-trees of Upsala, and killed themselves to make sure of dying as they had
-lived, in blood. A score of times the old ferocious instinct reappears
-beneath the thin crust of Christianity. In the eleventh century,
-Siward,[35] the great Earl of Northumberland, was afflicted with a
-dysentery; and feeling his death near, exclaimed, "What a shame for me
-not to have been permitted to die in so many battles, and to end thus by
-a cow's death! At least put on my breastplate, gird on my sword, set my
-helmet on my head, my shield in my left hand, my battle-axe in my right,
-so that a stout warrior, like myself, may die as a warrior." They did as
-he bade, and thus died he honorably in his armor. They had made one
-step, and only one, from barbarism.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION III.--Saxon Ideas
-
-
-Under this native barbarism there were noble dispositions, unknown to
-the Roman world, which were destined to produce a better people out of
-its ruins. In the first place, "a certain earnestness, which leads them
-out of frivolous sentiments to noble ones."[36] From their origin in
-Germany this is what we find them, severe in manners, with grave
-inclinations and a manly dignity. They live solitary, each one near the
-spring or the wood which has taken his fancy.[37] Even in villages the
-cottages were detached; they must have independence and free air. They
-had no taste for voluptuousness; love was tardy, education severe, their
-food simple; all the recreation they indulged in was the hunting of the
-aurochs, and a dance amongst naked swords. Violent intoxication and
-perilous wagers were their weakest points; they sought in preference not
-mild pleasures, but strong excitement. In everything, even in their rude
-and masculine instincts, they were men. Each in his own home, on his
-land and in his hut, was his own master, upright and free, in no wise
-restrained or shackled. If the commonweal received anything from him, it
-was because he gave it. He gave his vote in arms in all great
-conferences, passed judgment in the assembly, made alliances and wars on
-his own account, moved from place to place, showed activity and
-daring.[38] The modern Englishman existed entire in this Saxon. If he
-bends, it is because he is quite willing to bend; he is no less capable
-of self-denial than of independence; self-sacrifice is not uncommon, a
-man cares not for his blood or his life. In Homer the warrior often
-gives way, and is not blamed if he flees. In the Sagas, in the Edda, he
-must be over-brave; in Germany the coward is drowned in the mud, under a
-hurdle. Through all outbreaks of primitive brutality gleams obscurely
-the grand idea of duty, which is, the self-constraint exercised in view
-of some noble end. Marriage was pure amongst them, chastity instinctive.
-Amongst the Saxons the adulterer was punished by death; the adulteress
-was obliged to hang herself, or was stabbed by the knives of her
-companions. The wives of the Cimbrians, when they could not obtain from
-Marius assurance of their chastity, slew themselves with their own
-hands. They thought there was something sacred in a woman; they married
-but one, and kept faith with her. In fifteen centuries the idea of
-marriage is unchanged amongst them. The wife, on entering her husband's
-home, is aware that she gives herself altogether,[39] "that she will
-have but one body, one life with him; that she will have no thought, no
-desire beyond; that she will be the companion of his perils and labors;
-that she will suffer and dare as much as he, both in peace and war." And
-he, like her, knows that he gives himself. Having chosen his chief, he
-forgets himself in him, assigns to him his own glory, serves him to the
-death. "He is infamous as long as he lives, who returns from the field
-of battle without his chief."[40] It was on this voluntary subordination
-that feudal society was based. Man in this race can accept a superior,
-can be capable of devotion and respect. Thrown back upon himself by the
-gloom and severity of his climate, he has discovered moral beauty while
-others discover sensuous beauty. This kind of naked brute, who lies all
-day by his fireside, sluggish and dirty, always eating and drinking,[41]
-whose rusty faculties cannot follow the clear and fine outlines of
-happily created poetic forms, catches a glimpse of the sublime in his
-troubled dreams. He does not see it, but simply feels it; his religion
-is already within, as it will be in the sixteenth century, when he will
-cast off the sensuous worship imported from Rome, and hallow the faith
-of the heart.[42] His gods are not enclosed in walls; he has no idols.
-What he designates by divine names is something invisible and grand,
-which floats through nature, and is conceived beyond nature,[43] a
-mysterious infinity which the sense cannot touch, but which "reverence
-alone can feel"; and when, later on, the legends define and alter this
-vague divination of natural powers, one idea remains at the bottom of
-this chaos of giant-dreams, namely, that the world is a warfare, and
-heroism the highest good.
-
-In the beginning, say the old Icelandic legends,[44] there were two
-worlds, Niflheim the frozen, and Muspell the burning. From the falling
-snow-flakes was born the giant Ymir. "There was in times of old, where
-Ymir dwelt, nor sand nor sea, nor gelid waves; earth existed not, nor
-heaven above; 'twas a chaotic chasm, and grass nowhere." There was but
-Ymir, the horrible frozen Ocean, with his children, sprung from his feet
-and his armpits; then their shapeless progeny, Terrors of the abyss,
-barren Mountains, Whirlwinds of the North, and other malevolent beings,
-enemies of the sun and of life; then the cow Andhumbla, born also of
-melting snow, brings to light, whilst licking the hoar-frost from the
-rocks, a man Bur, whose grandsons kill the giant Ymir. "From his flesh
-the earth was formed, and from his bones the hills, the heaven from the
-skull of that ice-cold giant, and from his blood the sea; but of his
-brains the heavy clouds are all created." Then arose war between the
-monsters of winter and the luminous fertile gods, Odin the founder,
-Baldur the mild and benevolent, Thor the summer-thunder, who purifies
-the air, and nourishes the earth with showers. Long fought the gods
-against the frozen Jötuns, against the dark bestial powers, the Wolf
-Fenrir, the great Serpent, whom they drown in the sea, the treacherous
-Loki, whom they bind to the rocks, beneath a viper whose venom drops
-continually on his face. Long will the heroes who by a bloody death
-deserve to be placed "in the halls of Odin, and there wage a combat
-every day," assist the gods in their mighty war. A day will, however,
-arrive when gods and men will be conquered. Then
-
-
-"trembles Yggdrasil's ash yet standing; groans that ancient tree, and
-the Jötun Loki is loosed. The shadows groan on the ways of Hel,[45]
-until the fire of Surt has consumed the tree. Hrym steers from the east,
-the waters rise, the mundane snake is coiled in jötun-rage. The worm
-beats the water, and the eagle screams; the pale of beak tears
-carcasses; (the ship) Naglfar is loosed. Surt from the South comes with
-flickering flame; shines from his sword the Val-god's sun. The stony
-hills are dashed together, the giantesses totter; men tread the path of
-Hel, and heaven is cloven. The sun darkens, earth in ocean sinks, fall
-from heaven the bright stars, fire's breath assails the all-nourishing
-tree, towering fire plays against heaven itself."[46]
-
-
-The gods perish, devoured one by one by the monsters; and the celestial
-legend, sad and grand now like the life of man, bears witness to the
-hearts of warriors and heroes.
-
-There is no fear of pain, no care for life; they count it as dross when
-the idea has seized upon them. The trembling of the nerves, the
-repugnance of animal instinct which starts back before wounds and death,
-are all lost in an irresistible determination. See how in their epic[47]
-the sublime springs up amid the horrible, like a bright purple flower
-amid a pool of blood. Sigurd has plunged his sword into the dragon
-Fafnir, and at that very moment they looked on one another; and Fafnir
-asks, as he dies, "Who art thou? and who is thy father? and what thy
-kin, that thou wert so hardy as to bear weapons against me? A hardy
-heart urged me on thereto, and a strong hand and this sharp sword....
-Seldom hath hardy eld a faint-heart youth." After this triumphant
-eagle's cry Sigurd cuts out the worm's heart; but Regin, brother of
-Fafnir, drinks blood from the wound, and falls asleep. Sigurd, who was
-roasting the heart, raises his finger thoughtlessly to his lips.
-Forthwith he understands the language of the birds. The eagles scream
-above him in the branches. They warn him to mistrust Regin. Sigurd cuts
-off the latter's head, eats of Fafnir's heart, drinks his blood and his
-brother's. Amongst all these murders their courage and poetry grow.
-Sigurd has subdued Brynhild, the untamed maiden, by passing through the
-flaming fire; they share one couch for three nights, his naked sword
-betwixt them. "Nor the damsel did he kiss, nor did the Hunnish king to
-his arm lift her. He the blooming maid to Giuki's son delivered,"
-because, according to his oath, he must send her to her betrothed
-Gunnar. She, setting her love upon him, "Alone she sat without, at eve
-of day, began aloud with herself to speak: 'Sigurd must be mine; I must
-die, or that blooming youth clasp in my arms.'" But seeing him married,
-she brings about his death. "Laughed then Brynhild, Budli's daughter,
-once only, from her whole soul, when in her bed she listened to the loud
-lament of Giuki's daughter." She put on her golden corslet, pierced
-herself with the sword's point, and as a last request said:
-
-
-"Let in the plain be raised a pile so spacious, that for us all like
-room may be; let them burn the Hun (Sigurd) on the one side of me, on
-the other side my household slaves, with collars splendid, two at our
-heads, and two hawks; let also lie between us both the keen-edged sword,
-as when we both one couch ascended; also five female thralls, eight male
-slaves of gentle birth fostered with me."[48]
-
-
-All were burnt together; yet Gudrun the widow continued motionless by
-the corpse, and could not weep. The wives of the jarls came to console
-her, and each of them told her own sorrows, all the calamities of great
-devastations and the old life of barbarism.
-
-
-"Then spoke Giaflang, Giuki's sister: 'Lo, up on earth I live most
-loveless, who of five mates must see the ending, of daughters twain and
-three sisters, of brethren eight, and abide behind lonely.' Then spake
-Herborg, Queen of Hunland: 'Crueller tale have I to tell of my seven
-sons, down in the Southlands, and the eight man, my mate, felled in the
-death-mead. Father and mother, and four brothers on the wide sea the
-winds and death played with; the billows beat on the bulwark boards.
-Alone must I sing o'er them, alone must I array them, alone must my
-hands deal with their departing; and all this was in one season's
-wearing, and none was left for love or solace. Then was I bound a prey
-of the battle when that same season wore to its ending; as a tiring may
-must I bind the shoon of the duke's high dame, every day at dawning.
-From her jealous hate gat I heavy mocking, cruel lashes she laid upon
-me."[49]
-
-
-All was in vain; no word could draw tears from those dry eyes. They were
-obliged to lay the bloody corpse before her, ere her tears would come.
-Then tears flowed through the pillow; as "the geese withal that were in
-the home-field, the fair fowls the may owned, fell a-screaming." She
-would have died, like Sigrun, on the corpse of him whom alone she had
-loved, if they had not deprived her of memory by a magic potion. Thus
-affected, she departs in order to marry Atli, king of the Huns; and yet
-she goes against her will, with gloomy forebodings: for murder begets
-murder; and her brothers, the murderers of Sigurd, having been drawn to
-Atli's court, fall in their turn into a snare like that which they had
-themselves laid. Then Gunnar was bound, and they tried to make him
-deliver up the treasure. He answers with a barbarian's laugh:
-
-
-"'Högni's heart in my hand shall lie, cut bloody from the breast of the
-valiant chief, the king's son, with a dull-edged knife.' They the heart
-cut out from Hialli's breast; on a dish, bleeding, laid it, and it to
-Gunnar bare. Then said Gunnar, lord of men: 'Here have I the heart of
-the timid Hialli, unlike the heart of the bold Högni; for much it
-trembles as in the dish it lies; it trembled more by half while in his
-breast it lay.' Högni laughed when to his heart they cut the living
-crest-crasher; no lament uttered he. All bleeding on a dish they laid
-it, and it to Gunnar bare. Calmly said Gunnar, the warrior Niflung:
-'Here have I the heart of the bold Högni, unlike the heart of the timid
-Hialli; for it little trembles as in the dish it lies: it trembled less
-while in his breast it lay. So far shalt thou, Atli! be from the eyes of
-men as thou wilt from the treasures be. In my power alone is all the
-hidden Niflung's gold, now that Högni lives not. Ever was I wavering
-while we both lived: now am I so no longer, as I alone survive.'"[50]
-
-
-It was the last insult of the self-confident man, who values neither his
-own life nor that of another, so that he can satiate his vengeance. They
-cast him into the serpent's den, and there he died, striking his harp
-with his foot. But the inextinguishable flame of vengeance passed from
-his heart to that of his sister. Corpse after corpse fall on each other;
-a mighty fury hurls them open-eyed to death. She killed the children she
-had by Atli, and one day on his return from the carnage, gave him their
-hearts to eat, served in honey, and laughed coldly as she told him on
-what he had fed. "Uproar was on the benches, portentous the cry of men,
-noise beneath the costly hangings. The children of the Huns wept; all
-wept save Gudrun, who never wept or for her bear-fierce brothers, or for
-her dear sons, young, simple."[51] Judge from this heap of ruin and
-carnage to what excess the will is strung. There were men amongst them,
-Berserkirs,[52] who in battle seized with a sort of madness, showed a
-sudden and superhuman strength, and ceased to feel their wounds. This is
-the conception of a hero as engendered by this race in its infancy. Is
-it not strange to see them place their happiness in battle, their beauty
-in death? Is there any people, Hindoo, Persian, Greek, or Gallic, which
-has formed so tragic a conception of life? Is there any which has
-peopled its infantine mind with such gloomy dreams? Is there any which
-has so entirely banished from its dreams the sweetness of enjoyment, and
-the softness of pleasure? Endeavors, tenacious and mournful endeavors,
-an ecstasy of endeavors--such was their chosen condition. Carlyle said
-well, that in the sombre obstinacy of an English laborer still survives
-the tacit rage of the Scandinavian warrior. Strife for strife's
-sake--such is their pleasure. With what sadness, madness, destruction,
-such a disposition breaks its bonds, we shall see in Shakespeare and
-Byron; with what vigor and purpose it can limit and employ itself when
-possessed by moral ideas, we shall see in the case of the Puritans.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION IV.--Saxon Heroes
-
-
-They have established themselves in England; and however disordered the
-society which binds them together, it is founded, as in Germany, on
-generous sentiment. War is at every door, I am aware, but warlike
-virtues are within every house; courage chiefly, then fidelity. Under
-the brute there is a free man, and a man of spirit. There is no man
-amongst them who, at his own risk,[53] will not make alliance, go forth
-to fight, undertake adventures. There is no group of free men amongst
-them, who, in their Witenagemote, is not forever concluding alliances
-one with another. Every clan, in its own district, forms a league of
-which all the members, "brothers of the sword," defend each other, and
-demand revenge for the spilling of blood, at the price of their own.
-Every chief in his hall reckons that he has friends, not mercenaries, in
-the faithful ones who drink his beer, and who, having received as marks
-of his esteem and confidence, bracelets, swords, and suits of armor,
-will cast themselves between him and danger on the day of battle.[54]
-Independence and boldness rage amongst this young nation with violence
-and excess; but these are of themselves noble things; and no less noble
-are the sentiments which serve them for discipline--to wit, an
-affectionate devotion, and respect for plighted faith. These appear in
-their laws, and break forth in their poetry. Amongst them greatness of
-heart gives matter for imagination. Their characters are not selfish and
-shifty, like those of Homer. They are brave hearts, simple and strong,
-faithful to their relatives, to their master in arms, firm and steadfast
-to enemies and friends, abounding in courage, and ready for sacrifice.
-"Old as I am," says one, "I will not budge hence. I mean to die by my
-lord's side, near this man I have loved so much. He kept his word, the
-word he had given to his chief, to the distributor of gifts, promising
-him that they should return to the town, safe and sound to their homes,
-or that they would fall both together, in the thick of the carnage,
-covered with wounds. He lies by his master's side, like a faithful
-servant." Though awkward in speech, their old poets find touching words
-when they have to paint these manly friendships. We cannot without
-emotion hear them relate how the old "king embraced the best of his
-thanes, and put his arms about his neck, how the tears flowed down the
-cheeks of the gray-haired chief.... The valiant man was so dear to him.
-He could not stop the flood which mounted from his breast. In his heart,
-deep in the chords of his soul, he sighed in secret after the beloved
-man." Few as are the songs which remain to us, they return to this
-subject again and again. The wanderer in a reverie dreams about his
-lord:[55] It seems to him in his spirit as if he kisses and embraces
-him, and lays head and hands upon his knees, as oft before in the olden
-time, when he rejoiced in his gifts. Then he wakes--a man without
-friends. He sees before him the desert tracks, the seabirds dipping in
-the waves, stretching wide their wings, the frost and the snow, mingled
-with falling hail. Then his heart's wounds press more heavily. The exile
-says:
-
-
-"In blithe habits full oft we, too, agreed that nought else should
-divide us except death alone; at length this is changed, and as if it
-had never been is now our friendship. To endure enmities man orders me
-to dwell in the bowers of the forest, under the oak-tree in this earthy
-cave. Cold is this earth-dwelling: I am quite wearied out. Dim are the
-dells, high up are the mountains, a bitter city of twigs, with briars
-overgrown, a joyless abode.... My friends are in the earth; those loved
-in life, the tomb holds them. The grave is guarding, while I above alone
-am going. Under the oak-tree, beyond this earth-cave, there I must sit
-the long summer-day."
-
-
-Amid their perilous mode of life, and the perpetual appeal to arms,
-there exists no sentiment more warm than friendship, nor any virtue
-stronger than loyalty.
-
-Thus supported by powerful affection and trysted word, society is kept
-wholesome. Marriage is like the state. We find women associating with
-the men, at their feasts, sober and respected.[56] She speaks, and they
-listen to her; no need for concealing or enslaving her, in order to
-restrain or retain her. She is a person and not a thing. The law demands
-her consent to marriage, surrounds her with guarantees, accords her
-protection. She can inherit, possess, bequeath, appear in courts of
-justice, in county assemblies, in the great congress of the elders.
-Frequently the name of the queen and of several other ladies is
-inscribed in the proceedings of the Witenagemote. Law and tradition
-maintain her integrity, as if she were a man, and side by side with men.
-Her affections captivate her, as if she were a man, and side by side
-with men. In Alfred[57] there is a portrait of the wife, which for
-purity and elevation equals all that we can devise with our modern
-refinements. "Thy wife now lives for thee--for thee alone. She has
-enough of all kind of wealth for this present life, but she scorns them
-all for thy sake alone. She has forsaken them all, because she had not
-thee with them. Thy absence makes her think that all she possesses is
-nought. Thus, for love of thee, she is wasted away, and lies near death
-for tears and grief." Already, in the legends of the Edda, we have seen
-the maiden Sigrun at the tomb of Helgi, "as glad as the voracious hawks
-of Odin, when they of slaughter know, of warm prey," desiring to sleep
-still in the arms of death, and die at last on his grave. Nothing here
-like the love we find in the primitive poetry of France, Provence,
-Spain, and Greece. There is an absence of gayety, of delight; outside of
-marriage it is only a ferocious appetite, an outbreak of the instinct of
-the beast. It appears nowhere with its charm and its smile; there is no
-love-song in this ancient poetry. The reason is, that with them love is
-not an amusement and a pleasure, but a promise and a devotion. All is
-grave, even sombre, in civil relations as well as in conjugal society.
-As in Germany, amid the sadness of a melancholic temperament and the
-savagery of a barbarous life, the most tragic human faculties, the deep
-power of love and the grand power of will, are the only ones that sway
-and act.
-
-This is why the hero, as in Germany, is truly heroic. Let us speak of
-him at length; we possess one of their poems, that of Beowulf, almost
-entire. Here are the stories, which the thanes, seated on their stools,
-by the light of their torches, listened to as they drank the ale of
-their king: we can glean thence their manners and sentiments, as in the
-Iliad and the Odyssey those of the Greeks. Beowulf is a hero, a
-knight-errant before the days of chivalry, as the leaders of the German
-bands were feudal chiefs before the institution of feudalism.[58] He has
-"rowed upon the sea, his naked sword hard in his hand, amidst the fierce
-waves and coldest of storms, and the rage of winter hurtled over the
-waves of the deep." The sea-monsters, "the many-colored foes, drew him
-to the bottom of the sea, and held him fast in their gripe." But he
-reached "the wretches with his point and with his war-bill. The mighty
-sea-beast received the war-rush through his-hands," and he slew nine
-Nicors (sea-monsters). And now behold him, as he comes across the waves
-to succor the old King Hrothgar, who with his vassals sits afflicted in
-his great mead-hall, high and curved with pinnacles. For "a grim
-stranger, Grendel, a mighty haunter of the marshes," had entered his
-hall during the night, seized thirty of the thanes who were asleep, and
-returned in his war-craft with their carcasses; for twelve years the
-dreadful ogre, the beastly and greedy creature, father of Orks and
-Jötuns, devoured men and emptied the best of houses. Beowulf, the great
-warrior, offers to grapple with the fiend, and foe to foe contend for
-life, without the bearing of either sword or ample shield, for he has
-"learned also that the wretch for his cursed hide recketh not of
-weapons," asking only that if death takes him, they will bear forth his
-bloody corpse and bury it; mark his fen-dwelling, and send to Hygelác,
-his chief, the best of war-shrouds that guards his breast.
-
-He is lying in the hall, "trusting in his proud strength; and when the
-mists of night arose, lo, Grendel comes, tears open the door," seized a
-sleeping warrior: "he tore him unawares, he bit his body, he drank the
-blood from the veins, he swallowed him with continual tearings." But
-Beowulf seized him in turn, and "raised himself upon his elbow."
-
-
-"The lordly hall thundered, the ale was spilled,... both were enraged;
-savage and strong warders; the house resounded; then was it a great
-wonder that the wine-hall withstood the beasts of war, that it fell not
-upon the earth, the fair palace; but it was thus fast.... The noise
-arose, new enough; a fearful terror fell on the North Danes, on each of
-those who from the wall heard the outcry, God's denier sing his dreadful
-lay, his song of defeat, lament his wound.[59]... The foul wretch
-awaited the mortal wound; a mighty gash was evident upon his shoulder;
-the sinews sprung asunder, the junctures of the bones burst; success in
-war was given to Beowulf. Thence must Grendel fly sick unto death, among
-the refuges of the fens, to seek his joyless dwelling. He all the better
-knew that the end of his life, the number of his days was gone by."[60]
-
-
-For he had left on the ground, "hand, arm, and shoulder"; and "in the
-lake of Nicors, where he was driven, the rough wave was boiling with
-blood, the foul spring of waves all mingled, hot with poison; the dye,
-discolored with death, bubbled with warlike gore." There remained a
-female monster, his mother, who, like him, "was doomed to inhabit the
-terror of waters, the cold streams," who came by night, and amidst drawn
-swords tore and devoured another man, Æschere, the king's best friend.
-A lamentation arose in the palace, and Beowulf offered himself again.
-They went to the den, a hidden land, the refuge of the wolf, near the
-windy promontories, where a mountain stream rusheth downwards under the
-darkness of the hills, a flood beneath the earth; the wood fast by its
-roots overshadoweth the water; there may one by night behold a marvel,
-fire upon the flood; the stepper over the heath, when wearied out by the
-hounds, sooner will give up his soul, his life upon the brink, than
-plunge therein to hide his head. Strange dragons and serpents swam
-there; "from time to time the horn sang a dirge, a terrible song."
-Beowulf plunged into the wave, descended, passed monsters who tore his
-coat of mail, to the ogress, the hateful manslayer, who, seizing him in
-her grasp, bore him off to her dwelling. A pale gleam shone brightly,
-and there, face to face, the good champion perceived
-
-
-"the she-wolf of the abyss, the mighty sea-woman; he gave the war-onset
-with his battle-bill; he held not back the swing of the sword, so that
-on her head the ring-mail sang aloud a greedy war-song.... The beam of
-war would not bite. Then caught the prince of the War-Geáts Grendel's
-mother by the shoulders... twisted the homicide, so that she bent upon
-the floor... She drew her knife broad, brown-edged (and tried to
-pierce), the twisted breast-net which protected his life.... Then saw he
-among the weapons a bill fortunate in victory, an old gigantic sword,
-doughty of edge, ready for use, the work of giants. He seized the belted
-hilt; the warrior of the Scyldings, fierce and savage whirled the
-ring-mail; despairing of life, he struck furiously, so that it grappled
-hard with her about the neck; it broke the bone-rings, the bill passed
-through all the doomed body; she sank upon the floor; the sword was
-bloody, the man rejoiced in his deed; the beam shone, light stood
-within, even as from heaven mildly shines the lamp of the
-firmament."[61]
-
-
-Then he saw Grendel dead in a corner of the hall; and four of his
-companions, having with difficulty raised the monstrous head, bore it by
-the hair to the palace of the king.
-
-That was his first labor; and the rest of his life was similar. When he
-had reigned fifty years on earth, a dragon, who had been robbed of his
-treasure, came from the hill and burned men and houses "with waves of
-fire. Then did the refuge of earls command to make for him a
-variegated shield, all of iron; he knew well enough that a shield of
-wood could not help him, lindenwood opposed to fire.... The prince of
-rings was then too proud to seek the wide flier with a troop, with a
-large company; he feared not for himself that battle, nor did he make
-any account of the dragon's war, his laboriousness and valor." And yet
-he was sad, and went unwillingly, for he was "fated to abide the end."
-Then "he was ware of a cavern, a mound under the earth, nigh to the sea
-wave, the clashing of waters, which cave was full within of embossed
-ornaments and wires. ... Then the king, hard in war, sat upon the
-promontory, whilst he, the prince of the Geáts, bade farewell to his
-household comrades. ... I, the old guardian of my people, seek a feud."
-He "let words proceed from his breast," the dragon came, vomiting fire;
-the blade bit not his body, and the king "suffered painfully, involved
-in fire." His comrades had "turned to the wood, to save their lives,"
-all save Wiglaf, who "went through the fatal smoke," knowing well "that
-it was not the old custom" to abandon relation and prince, "that he
-alone... shall suffer distress, shall sink in battle. The worm came
-furious, the foul insidious stranger, variegated with waves of fire,...
-hot and warlike fierce, he clutched the whole neck with bitter banes; he
-was bloodied with life-gore, the blood boiled in waves."[62] They, with
-their swords, carved the worm in the midst. Yet the wound of the king
-became burning and swelled; "he soon discovered that poison boiled in
-his breast within, and sat by the wall upon a stone"; "he looked upon
-the work of giants, how the eternal cavern held within stone arches fast
-upon pillars." Then he said--
-
-
-"I have held this people fifty years; there was not any king of my
-neighbors, who dared to greet me with warriors, to oppress me with
-terror.... I held mine own well, I sought not treacherous malice, nor
-swore unjustly many oaths; on account of all this, I, sick with mortal
-wounds, may have joy.... Now do thou go immediately to behold the hoard
-under the hoary stone, my dear Wiglaf.... Now, I have purchased with my
-death a hoard of treasures; it will be yet of advantage at the need of
-the people.... I give thanks... that I might before my dying day obtain
-such for my peoples... longer may I not here be."[63]
-
-
-This is thorough and real generosity, not exaggerated and pretended, as
-it will be later on in the romantic imaginations of babbling clerics,
-mere composers of adventure. Fiction as yet is not far removed from
-fact; the man breathes manifest beneath the hero. Rude as the poetry is,
-its hero is grand; he is so, simply by his deeds. Faithful, first to his
-prince, then to his people, he went alone, in a strange land, to venture
-himself for the delivery of his fellow-men; he forgets himself in death,
-while thinking only that it profits others. "Each one of us," he says in
-one place, "must abide the end of his present life." Let, therefore,
-each do justice, if he can, before his death. Compare with him the
-monsters whom he destroys, the last traditions of the ancient wars
-against inferior races, and of the primitive religion; think of his life
-of danger, nights upon the waves, man grappling with the brute creation;
-man's indomitable will crushing the breasts of beasts; man's powerful
-muscles which, when exerted, tear the flesh of the monsters; you will
-see reappear through the mist of legends, and under the light of poetry,
-the valiant men who, amid the madness of war and the raging of their own
-mood, began to settle a people and to found a state.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION V.--Pagan Poems
-
-
-One poem nearly whole and two or three fragments are all that remain of
-this lay-poetry of England. The rest of the pagan current, German and
-barbarian, was arrested or overwhelmed, first by the influx of the
-Christian religion, then by the conquest of the Norman-French. But what
-remains more than suffices to show the strange and powerful poetic
-genius of the race, and to exhibit beforehand the flower in the bud.
-
-If there has ever been anywhere a deep and serious poetic sentiment, it
-is here. They do not speak, they sing, or rather they shout. Each little
-verse is an acclamation, which breaks forth like a growl; their strong
-breasts heave with a groan of anger or enthusiasm, and a vehement or
-indistinct phrase or expression rises suddenly, almost in spite of them,
-to their lips. There is no art, no natural talent, for describing singly
-and in order the different parts of an object or an event. The fifty
-rays of light which every phenomenon emits in succession to a regular
-and well-directed intellect, come to them at once in a glowing and
-confused mass, disabling them by their force and convergence. Listen to
-their genuine war-chants, unchecked and violent, as became their
-terrible voices. To this day, at this distance of time, separated as
-they are by manners, speech, ten centuries, we seem to hear them still:
-
-
-"The army goes forth: the birds sing, the cricket chirps, the
-war-weapons sound, the lance clangs against the shield. Now shineth the
-moon, wandering under the sky. Now arise deeds of woe, which the enmity
-of this people prepares to do.... Then in the court came the tumult of
-war-carnage. They seized with their hands the hollow wood of the shield.
-They smote through the bones of the head. The roofs of the castle
-resounded, until Garulf fell in battle, the first of earth-dwelling men,
-son of Guthlaf. Around him lay many brave men dying. The raven whirled
-about, dark and sombre, like a willow leaf. There was a sparkling of
-blades, as if all Finsburg were on fire. Never have I heard of a more
-worthy battle in war."[64]
-
-
-This is the song on Athelstan's victory at Brunanburh:
-
-
-"Here Athelstan king, of earls the lord, the giver of the bracelets of
-the nobles, and his brother also, Edmund the ætheling, the Elder a
-lasting glory won by slaughter in battle, with the edges of swords, at
-Brunanburh. The wall of shields they cleaved, they hewed the noble
-banners: with the rest of the family, the children of Edward....
-Pursuing, they destroyed the Scottish people and the ship-fleet.... The
-field was colored with the warriors' blood! After that the sun on
-high,... the greatest star! glided over the earth, God's candle bright!
-till the noble creature hastened to her setting. There lay soldiers many
-with darts struck down, Northern men over their shields shot. So were
-the Scots; weary of ruddy battle.... The screamers of war they left
-behind; the raven to enjoy, the dismal kite, and the black raven with
-horned beak, and the hoarse toad; the eagle, afterwards to feast on the
-white flesh; the greedy battle-hawk, and the grey beast, the wolf in the
-wood."[65]
-
-
-Here all is imagery. In their impassioned minds events are not bald,
-with the dry propriety of an exact description; each fits in with its
-pomp of sound, shape, coloring; it is almost a vision which is raised,
-complete, with its accompanying emotions, joy, fury, excitement. In
-their speech, arrows are "the serpents of Hel, shot from bows of horn";
-ships are "great sea-steeds," the sea is "a chalice of waves," the
-helmet is "the castle of the head"; they need an extraordinary speech to
-express their vehement sensations, so that after a time, in Iceland,
-where this kind of poetry was carried on to excess, the earlier
-inspiration failed, art replaced nature, the Skalds were reduced to a
-distorted and obscure jargon. But whatever be the imagery, here, as in
-Iceland, though unique, it is too feeble. The poets have not satisfied
-their inner emotion, if it is only expressed by a single word. Time
-after time they return to and repeat their idea. "The sun on high, the
-great star, God's brilliant candle, the noble creature!" Four times
-successively they employ the same thought, and each time under a new
-aspect. All its different aspects rise simultaneously before the
-barbarian's eyes, and each word was like a fit of the semi-hallucination
-which possessed him. Verily, in such a condition, the regularity of
-speech and of ideas is disturbed at every turn. The succession of
-thought in the visionary is not the same as in a reasoning mind. One
-color induces another; from sound he passes to sound; his imagination is
-like a diorama of unexplained pictures. His phrases recur and change; he
-emits the word that comes to his lips without hesitation; he leaps over
-wide intervals from idea to idea. The more his mind is transported, the
-quicker and wider the intervals traversed. With one spring he visits the
-poles of his horizon, and touches in one moment objects which seemed to
-have the world between them. His ideas are entangled without order;
-without notice, abruptly, the poet will return to the idea he has
-quitted, and insert it in the thought to which he is giving expression.
-It is impossible to translate these incongruous ideas, which quite
-disconcert our modern style. At times they are unintelligible.[66]
-Articles, particles, everything capable of illuminating thought, of
-marking the connection of terms, of producing regularity of ideas, all
-rational and logical artifices, are neglected.[67] Passion bellows forth
-like a great shapeless beast; and that is all. It rises and starts in
-little abrupt lines; it is the acme of barbarism. Homer's happy poetry
-is copiously developed, in full narrative, with rich and extended
-imagery. All the details of a complete picture are not too much for him;
-he loves to look at things, he lingers over them, rejoices in their
-beauty, dresses them in splendid words; he is like the Greek girls, who
-thought themselves ugly if they did not bedeck arms and shoulders with
-all the gold coins from their purse, and all the treasures from their
-caskets; his long verses flow by with their cadences, and spread out
-like a purple robe under an Ionian sun. Here the clumsy-fingered poet
-crowds and clashes his ideas in a narrow measure; if measure there be,
-he barely observes it; all his ornament is three words beginning with
-the same letter. His chief care is to abridge, to imprison thought in a
-kind of mutilated cry.[68] The force of the internal impression, which,
-not knowing how to unfold itself, becomes condensed and doubled by
-accumulation; the harshness of the outward expression, which,
-subservient to the energy and shocks of the inner sentiment, seek only
-to exhibit it intact and original, in spite of and at the expense of all
-order and beauty—such are the characteristics of their poetry, and
-these also will be the characteristics of the poetry which is to follow.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION VI.--Christian Poems
-
-
-A race so constituted was predisposed to Christianity, by its gloom, its
-aversion to sensual and reckless living, its inclination for the serious
-and sublime. When their sedentary habits had reconciled their souls to a
-long period of ease, and weakened the fury which fed their sanguinary
-religion, they readily inclined to a new faith. The vague adoration of
-the great powers of nature, which eternally fight for mutual
-destruction, and, when destroyed, rise up again to the combat, had long
-since disappeared in the dim distance. Society, on its formation,
-introduced the idea of peace and the need for justice, and the war-gods
-faded from the minds of men, with the passions which had created them. A
-century and a half after the invasion by the Saxons,[69] Roman
-missionaries, bearing a silver cross with a picture of Christ, came in
-procession chanting a litany. Presently the high priest of the
-Northumbrians declared in presence of the nobles that the old gods were
-powerless, and confessed that formerly "he knew nothing of that which he
-adored"; and he among the first, lance in hand, assisted to demolish
-their temple. Then a chief rose in the assembly, and said:
-
-
-"You remember, it may be, O king, that which sometimes happens in winter
-when you are seated at table with your earls and thanes. Your fire is
-lighted, and your hall warmed, and without is rain and snow and storm.
-Then comes a swallow flying across the hall; he enters by one door, and
-leaves by another. The brief moment while he is within is pleasant to
-him; he feels not rain nor cheerless winter weather; but the moment is
-brief--the bird flies away in the twinkling of an eye, and he passes
-from winter to winter. Such, methinks, is the life of man on earth,
-compared with the uncertain time beyond. It appears for a while; but
-what is the time which comes after—the time which was before? We know
-not. If, then, this new doctrine may teach us somewhat of greater
-certainty, it were well that we should regard it."
-
-
-This restlessness, this feeling of the infinite and dark beyond, this
-sober, melancholy eloquence, were the harbingers of spiritual life.[70]
-We find nothing like it amongst the nations of the south, naturally
-pagan, and preoccupied with the present life. These utter barbarians
-embrace Christianity straightway, through sheer force of mood and clime.
-To no purpose are they brutal, heavy, shackled by infantine
-superstitions, capable, like King Canute, of buying for a hundred golden
-talents the arm of Augustine. They possess the idea of God. This grand
-God of the Bible, omnipotent and unique, who disappears almost entirely
-in the Middle Ages,[71] obscured by His court and His family, endures
-amongst them in spite of absurd or grotesque legends. They do not blot
-Him out under pious romances, by the elevation of the saints, or under
-feminine caresses, to benefit the infant Jesus and the Virgin. Their
-grandeur and their severity raise them to His high level; they are not
-tempted, like artistic and talkative nations, to replace religion by a
-fair and agreeable narrative. More than any race in Europe, they
-approach, by the simplicity and energy of their conceptions, the old
-Hebraic spirit. Enthusiasm is their natural condition; and their new
-Deity fills them with admiration, as their ancient deities inspired them
-with fury. They have hymns, genuine odes, which are but a concrete of
-exclamations. They have no development; they are incapable of
-restraining or explaining their passion; it bursts forth, in raptures,
-at the vision of the Almighty. The heart alone speaks here--a strong,
-barbarous heart. Cædmon, their old poet,[72] says Bede, was a more
-ignorant man than the others, who knew no poetry; so that in the hall,
-when they handed him the harp, he was obliged to withdraw, being unable
-to sing like his companions. Once, keeping night-watch over the stable,
-he fell asleep. A stranger appeared to him, and asked him to sing
-something, and these words came into his head: "Now we ought to praise
-the Lord of heaven, the power of the Creator, and His skill, the deeds
-of the Father of glory; how he, being eternal God, is the author of all
-marvels; who, almighty guardian of the human race, created first for the
-sons of men the heavens as the roof of their dwelling, and then the
-earth." Remembering this when he woke,[73] he came to the town, and they
-brought him before the learned men, before the abbess Hilda, who, when
-they had heard him, thought that he had received a gift from heaven, and
-made him a monk in the abbey. There he spent his life listening to
-portions of Holy Writ, which were explained to him in Saxon, "ruminating
-over them like a pure animal, turned them into most sweet verse." Thus
-is true poetry born. These men pray with all the emotion of a new soul;
-they kneel; they adore; the less they know the more they think. Someone
-has said that the first and most sincere hymn is this one word O! Theirs
-were hardly longer; they only repeated time after time some deep
-passionate word, with monotonous vehemence. "In heaven art Thou, our aid
-and succor, resplendent with happiness! All things bow before Thee,
-before the glory of Thy Spirit. With one voice they call upon Christ;
-they all cry: Holy, holy art Thou, King of the angels of heaven, our
-Lord! and Thy judgments are just and great; they reign forever and in
-all places, in the multitude of Thy works." We are reminded of the songs
-of the servants of Odin, tonsured now, and clad in the garments of
-monks. Their poetry is the same; they think of God, as of Odin, in a
-string of short, accumulated, passionate images, like a succession of
-lightning-flashes; the Christian hymns are a sequel to the pagan. One of
-them, Adhelm, stood on a bridge leading to the town where he lived, and
-repeated warlike and profane odes as well as religious poetry, in order
-to attract and instruct the men of his time. He could do it without
-changing his key. In one of them, a funeral song, Death speaks. It was
-one of the last Saxon compositions, containing a terrible Christianity,
-which seems at the same time to have sprung from the blackest depths of
-the Edda. The brief metre sounds abruptly, with measured stroke, like
-the passing bell. It is as if we hear the dull resounding responses
-which roll through the church, while the rain beats on the dim glass,
-and the broken clouds sail mournfully in the sky; and our eyes, glued to
-the pale face of a dead man feel beforehand the horror of the damp grave
-into which the living are about to cast him.
-
-
-"For thee was a house built ere thou wert born; for thee was a mould
-shapen ere thou of thy mother earnest. Its height is not determined, nor
-its depth measured; nor is it closed up (however long it may be) until I
-thee bring where thou shalt remain; until I shall measure thee and the
-sod of the earth. Thy house is not highly built; it is unhigh and low.
-When thou art in it, the heel-ways are low, the sideways unhigh. The
-roof is built thy breast full high; so thou shalt in earth dwell full
-cold, dim, and dark. Doorless is that house, and dark it is within.
-There thou art fast detained, and Death holds the key. Loathly is that
-earth-house, and grim to dwell in. There thou shalt dwell, and worms
-shall share thee. Thus thou art laid, and leavest thy friends. Thou hast
-no friend that will come to thee, who will ever inquire how that house
-liketh thee, who shall ever open for thee the door, and seek thee, for
-soon thou becomest loathly and hateful to look upon."[74]
-
-
-Has Jeremy Taylor a more gloomy picture? The two religious poetries,
-Christian and pagan, are so like, that one might mingle their
-incongruities, images, and legends. In Beowulf, altogether pagan, the
-Deity appears as Odin, more mighty and serene, and differs from the
-other only as a peaceful Bretwalda[75] differs from an adventurous and
-heroic bandit-chief. The Scandinavian monsters, Jötuns, enemies of the
-Æsir,[76] have not vanished; but they descend from Cain, and the giants
-drowned by the flood.[77] Their new hell is nearly the ancient
-Nástrand,[78] "a dwelling deadly cold, full of bloody eagles and pale
-adders"; and the dreadful last day of judgment, when all will crumble
-into dust, and make way for a purer world, resembles the final
-destruction of Edda, that "twilight of the gods," which will end in a
-victorious regeneration, an everlasting joy "under a fairer sun."
-
-By this natural conformity they were able to make their religious poems
-indeed poems. Power in spiritual productions arises only from the
-sincerity of personal and original sentiment. If they can relate
-religious tragedies, it is because their soul was tragic, and in a
-degree biblical. They introduce into their verses, like the old prophets
-of Israel, their fierce vehemence, their murderous hatreds, their
-fanaticism, all the shudderings of their flesh and blood. One of them,
-whose poem is mutilated, has related the history of Judith--with what
-inspiration we shall see. It needed a barbarian to display in such
-strong light excesses, tumult, murder, vengeance, and combat.
-
-
-"Then was Holofernes exhilarated with wine; in the halls of his guests
-he laughed and shouted, he roared and dinned. Then might the children of
-men afar off hear how the stern one stormed and clamored, animated and
-elated with wine. He admonished amply that they should bear it well to
-those sitting on the bench. So was the wicked one over all the day, the
-lord and his men, drunk with wine, the stern dispenser of wealth; till
-that they swimming lay over drunk, all his nobility, as they were
-death-slain."[79]
-
-
-The night having arrived, he commands them to bring into his tent "the
-illustrious virgin"; then, going to visit her, he falls drunk on his
-bed. The moment was come for "the maid of the Creator, the holy woman."
-
-
-"She took the heathen man fast by his hair; she drew him by his limbs
-towards her disgracefully; and the mischiefful odious man at her
-pleasure laid; so as the wretch she might the easiest well command. She
-with the twisted locks struck the hateful enemy, meditating hate, with
-the red sword, till she had half cut off his neck; so that he lay in a
-swoon, drunk and mortally wounded. He was not then dead, not entirely
-lifeless. She struck then earnest, the woman illustrious in strength,
-another time the heathen hound, till that his head rolled forth upon the
-floor. The foul one lay without a coffer; backward his spirit turned
-under the abyss, and there was plunged below, with sulphur fastened;
-forever afterward wounded by worms. Bound in torments, hard imprisoned,
-in hell he burns. After his course he need not hope, with darkness
-overwhelmed, that he may escape from that mansion of worms; but there he
-shall remain; ever and ever, without end, henceforth in that
-cavern-house, void of the joys of hope."[80]
-
-
-Had anyone ever heard a sterner accent of satisfied hate? When Clovis
-listened to the Passion play, he cried, "Why was I not there with my
-Franks!" So here the old warrior instinct swelled into flame over the
-Hebrew wars. As soon as Judith returned,
-
-
-"Men under helms (went out) from the holy city at the dawn itself. They
-dinned shields; men roared loudly. At this rejoiced the lank wolf in the
-wood, and the wan raven, the fowl greedy of slaughter, both from the
-west, that the sons of men for them should have thought to prepare their
-fill on corpses. And to them flew in their paths the active devourer,
-the eagle, hoary in his feathers. The willowed kite, with his horned
-beak, sang the song of Hilda. The noble warriors proceeded, they in
-mail, to the battle, furnished with shields, with swelling banners. ...
-They then speedily let fly forth showers of arrows, the serpents of
-Hilda, from their horn bows; the spears on the ground hard stormed. Loud
-raged the plunderers of battle; they sent their darts into the throng of
-the chiefs.... They that awhile before the reproach of the foreigners,
-the taunts of the heathen endured."[81]
-
-
-Amongst all these unknown poets[82] there is one whose name we know,
-Cædmon, perhaps the old Cædmon who wrote the first hymn; like him, at
-all events, who, paraphrasing the Bible with a barbarian's vigor and
-sublimity, has shown the grandeur and fury of the sentiment with which
-the men of these times entered into their new religion. He also sings
-when he speaks; when he mentions the ark, it is with a profusion of
-poetic names, "the floating house, the greatest of floating chambers,
-the wooden fortress, the moving roof, the cavern, the great sea-chest,"
-and many more. Every time he thinks of it, he sees it with his mind,
-like a quick luminous vision, and each time under a new aspect, now
-undulating on the muddy waves, between two ridges of foam, now casting
-over the water its enormous shadow, black and high like a castle, "now
-enclosing in its cavernous sides" the endless swarm of caged beasts.
-Like the others, he wrestles with God in his heart; triumphs like a
-warrior over destruction and victory; and in relating the death of
-Pharaoh, can hardly speak from anger, or see, because the blood mounts
-to his eyes.
-
-
-"The folk was affrighted, the flood-dread seized on their sad souls;
-ocean wailed with death, the mountain heights were with blood
-be-steamed, the sea foamed gore, crying was in the waves, the water full
-of weapons, a death-mist rose; the Egyptians were turned back; trembling
-they fled, they felt fear: would that host gladly find their homes;
-their vaunt grew sadder: against them, as a cloud, rose the fell rolling
-of the waves; there came not any of that host to home, but from behind
-enclosed them fate with the wave. Where ways ere lay sea raged. Their
-might was merged, the streams stood, the storm rose high to heaven; the
-loudest army-cry the hostile uttered; the air above was thickened with
-dying voices.... Ocean raged, drew itself up on high, the storms rose,
-the corpses rolled."[83]
-
-
-Is the song of the Exodus more abrupt, more vehement, or more savage?
-These men can speak of the creation like the Bible, because they speak
-of destruction like the Bible. They have only to look into their own
-hearts in order to discover an emotion sufficiently strong to raise
-their souls to the height of their Creator. This emotion existed already
-in their pagan legends; and Cædmon, in order to recount the origin of
-things, has only to turn to the ancient dreams, such as have been
-preserved in the prophecies of the Edda.
-
-
-"There had not here as yet, save cavern-shade, aught been; but this wide
-abyss stood deep and dim, strange to its Lord, idle and useless; on
-which looked with his eyes the King firm of mind, and beheld these
-places void of joys; saw the dark cloud lower in eternal night, swart
-under heaven, dark and waste, until this worldly creation through the
-word existed of the Glory-King.... The earth as yet was not green with
-grass; ocean cover'd, swart in eternal night, far and wide the dusky
-ways."[84]
-
-
-In this manner will Milton hereafter speak, the descendant of the Hebrew
-seers, last of the Scandinavian seers, but assisted in the development
-of his thought by all the resources of Latin culture and civilization.
-And yet he will add nothing to the primitive sentiment. Religious
-instinct is not acquired; it belongs to the blood, and is inherited with
-it. So it is with other instincts; pride in the first place, indomitable
-self-conscious energy, which sets man in opposition to all domination,
-and inures him against all pain. Milton's Satan exists already in
-Cædmon's, as the picture exists in the sketch; because both have their
-model in the race; and Caedmon found his originals in the northern
-warriors, as Milton did in the Puritans:
-
-
-"Why shall I for his favor serve, bend to him in such vassalage? I may
-be a god as he. Stand by me, strong associates, who will not fail me in
-the strife. Heroes stern of mood, they have chosen me for chief,
-renowned warriors! with such may one devise counsel, with such capture
-his adherents; they are my zealous friends, faithful in their thoughts;
-I may be their chieftain, sway in this realm; thus to me it seemeth not
-right that I in aught need cringe to God for any good; I will no longer
-be his vassal."[85]
-
-
-He is overcome: shall he be subdued? He is cast into the place "where
-torment they suffer, burning heat intense, in midst of hell, fire, and
-broad flames; so also the bitter seeks smoke and darkness"; will he
-repent? At first he is astonished, he despairs; but it is a hero's
-despair.
-
-
-"This narrow place is most unlike that other that we ere knew,[86] high
-in heaven's kingdom, which my master bestow'd on me.... Oh, had I power
-of my hands, and might one season be without, be one winter's space,
-then with this host I--But around me lie iron bonds, presseth this cord
-of chain: I am powerless! me have so hard the clasps of hell, so firmly
-grasped! Here is a vast fire above and underneath, never did I see a
-loathlier landskip; the flame abateth not, hot over hell. Me hath the
-clasping of these rings, this hard-polish'd band, impeded in my course,
-debarr'd me from my way; my feet are bound, my hands manacled,... so
-that with aught I cannot from these limb-bonds escape."[87]
-
-
-As there is nothing to be done against God, it is His new creature, man,
-whom he must attack. To him who has lost everything, vengeance is left;
-and if the conquered can enjoy this, he will find himself happy; "he
-will sleep softly, even under his chains."
-
-
-
-
-SECTION VII.--Primitive Saxon Authors
-
-
-Here the foreign culture ceased. Beyond Christianity it could not graft
-upon this barbarous stock any fruitful or living branch. All the
-circumstances which elsewhere mellowed the wild sap, failed here. The
-Saxons found Britain abandoned by the Romans; they had not yielded, like
-their brothers on the Continent, to the ascendancy of a superior
-civilization; they had not become mingled with the inhabitants of the
-land; they had always treated them like enemies or slaves, pursuing like
-wolves those who escaped to the mountains of the west, treating like
-beasts of burden those whom they had conquered with the land. While the
-Germans of Gaul, Italy, and Spain became Romans, the Saxons retained
-their language, their genius and manners, and created in Britain a
-Germany outside of Germany. A hundred and fifty years after the Saxon
-invasion, the introduction of Christianity and the dawn of security
-attained by a society inclining to peace, gave birth to a kind of
-literature; and we meet with the venerable Bede, and later on, Alcuin,
-John Scotus Erigena, and some others, commentators, translators,
-teachers of barbarians, who tried not to originate but to compile, to
-pick out and explain from the great Greek and Latin encyclopædia
-something which might suit the men of their time. But the wars with the
-Danes came and crushed this humble plant, which, if left to itself,
-would have come to nothing.[88] When Alfred[89] the Deliverer became
-king, "there were very few ecclesiastics," he says, "on this side of the
-Humber, who could understand in English their own Latin prayers, or
-translate any Latin writing into English. On the other side of the
-Humber I think there were scarce any; there were so few that, in truth,
-I cannot remember a single man south of the Thames, when I took the
-kingdom, who was capable of it." He tried, like Charlemagne, to instruct
-his people, and turned into Saxon for their use several works, above all
-some moral books, as the "de Consolatione" of Boethius; but this very
-translation bears witness to the barbarism of his audience. He adapts
-the text in order to bring it down to their intelligence; the pretty
-verses of Boethius, somewhat pretentious, labored, elegant, crowded with
-classical allusions of a refined and compact style worthy of Seneca,
-become an artless, long-drawn-out and yet desultory prose, like a
-nurse's fairy tale, explaining everything, recommencing and breaking off
-its phrases, making ten turns about a single detail; so low was it
-necessary to stoop to the level of this new intelligence, which had
-never thought or known anything. Here follows the Latin of Boethius, so
-affected, so pretty, with the English translation affixed:
-
-
-"Quondam funera conjugis
-Vates Threicius gemens,
-Postquam flebilibus modis
-Silvas currere, mobiles
-Amnes stare coegerat,
-Junxitque intrepidum latus
-Sævis cerva leonibus,
-Nec visum timuit lepus
-Jam cantu placidum canem;
-Cum flagrantior intima
-Fervor pectoris ureret,
-Nec qui cuncta subegerant
-Mulcerent dominum modi;
-Immites superos querens,
-Infernas adiit domos.
-Illic blanda sonantibus
-Chordis carmina temperans,
-Quidquid praecipuis Deæ
-Matris fontibus hauserat,
-Quod luctus dabat impotens,
-Quod luctum geminans amor,
-Deflet Tartara commovens,
-Et dulci veniam prece
-Umbrarum dominos rogat.
-Stupet tergeminus novo
-Captus carmine janitor;
-Quæ sontes agitant metu
-Ultrices scelerum Deæ
-Jam mœstæ lacrymis madent.
-Non Ixionium caput
-Velox præcipitat rota,
-Et longa site perditus
-Spernit flumina Tantalus.
-Vultur dum satur est modis
-Non traxit Tityi jecur.
-Tandem, vincimur, arbiter
-Umbrarum miserans ait.
-Donemus comitem viro,
-Emptam carmine conjugem.
-Sed lex dona coerceat,
-Nec, dum Tartara liquerit,
-Fas sit lumina flectere.
-Quis legem det amantibus!
-Major lex fit amor sibi.
-Heu! noctis prope terminos
-Orpheus Eurydicem suam
-Vidit, perdidit, occidit.
-Vos hæc fabula respicit,
-Quicunque in superum diem
-Mentem ducere quæritis.
-Nam qui tartareum in specus
-Victus lumina flexerit,
-Quidquid præcipuum trahit
-Perdit, dum videt inferos."
-
---_Book III. Metre 12._
-
-
-The English translation follows:
-
-
-"It happened formerly that there was a harper in the country called
-Thrace, which was in Greece. The harper was inconceivably good. His name
-was Orpheus. He had a very excellent wife, called Eurydice. Then began
-men to say concerning the harper, that he could harp so that the wood
-moved, and the stones stirred themselves at the sound, and wild beasts
-would run thereto, and stand as if they were tame; so still, that though
-men or hounds pursued them, they shunned them not. Then said they, that
-the harper's wife should die, and her soul should be led to hell. Then
-should the harper become so sorrowful that he could not remain among the
-men, but frequented the wood, and sat on the mountains, both day and
-night, weeping and harping, so that the woods shook, and the rivers
-stood still, and no hart shunned any lion, nor hare any hound; nor did
-cattle know any hatred, or any fear of others, for the pleasure of the
-sound. Then it seemed to the harper that nothing in this world pleased
-him. Then thought he that he would seek the gods of hell, and endeavor
-to allure them with his harp, and pray that they would give him back his
-wife. When he came thither, then should there come towards him the dog
-of hell, whose name was Cerberus--he should have three heads—and began
-to wag his tail, and play with him for his harping. Then was there also
-a very horrible gatekeeper, whose name should be Charon. He had also
-three heads, and he was very old. Then began the harper to beseech him
-that he would protect him while he was there, and bring him thence again
-safe. Then did he promise that to him, because he was desirous of the
-unaccustomed sound. Then went he further until he met the fierce
-goddesses, whom the common people call Parcæ, of whom they say, that
-they know no respect for any man, but punish every man according to his
-deeds; and of whom they say, that they control every man's fortune. Then
-began he to implore their mercy. Then began they to weep with him. Then
-went he farther, and all the inhabitants of hell ran towards him, and
-led him to their king: and all began to speak with him, and to pray that
-which he prayed. And the restless wheel which Ixion, the king of the
-Lapithæ, was bound to for his guilt, that stood still for his harping.
-And Tantalus the king, who in this world was immoderately greedy, and
-whom that same vice of greediness followed there, he became quiet. And
-the vulture should cease, so that he tore not the liver of Tityus the
-king, which before therewith tormented him. And all the punishments of
-the inhabitants of hell were suspended, whilst he harped before the
-king. When he long and long had harped, then spoke the king of the
-inhabitants of hell, and said, Let us give the man his wife, for he has
-earned her by his harping. He then commanded him that he should well
-observe that he never looked backwards after he departed hence; and
-said, if he looked backwards, that he should lose the woman. But men can
-with great difficulty, if at all, restrain love! Wellaway! What! Orpheus
-then led his wife with him till he came to the boundary of light and
-darkness. Then went his wife after him. When he came forth into the
-light, then looked be behind his back towards the woman. Then was she
-immediately lost to him. This fable teaches every man who desires to fly
-the darkness of hell, and to come to the light of the true good, that he
-look not about him to his old vices, so that he practise them again as
-fully as he did before. For whosoever with full will turns his mind to
-the vices which he had before forsaken, and practises them, and they
-then fully please him, and he never thinks of forsaking them; then loses
-he all his former good unless he again amend it."[90]
-
-
-A man speaks thus when he wishes to impress upon the mind of his hearers
-an idea which is not clear to them. Boethius had for his audience
-senators, men of culture, who understood as well as we the slightest
-mythological allusion. Alfred is obliged to take them up and develop
-them, like a father or a master, who draws his little boy between his
-knees, and relates to him names, qualities, crimes and their
-punishments, which the Latin only hints at. But the ignorance is such
-that the teacher himself needs correction. He takes the Parcæ for the
-Erinyes, and gives Charon three heads like Cerberus. There is no
-adornment in his version; no delicacy as in the original. Alfred has
-hard work to make himself understood. What, for instance, becomes of the
-noble Platonic moral, the apt interpretation after the style of
-Iamblichus and Porphyry? It is altogether dulled. He has to call
-everything by its name, and turn the eyes of his people to tangible and
-visible things. It is a sermon suited to his audience of thanes; the
-Danes whom he had converted by the sword needed a clear moral. If he had
-translated for them exactly the last words of Boethius, they would have
-opened wide their big stupid eyes and fallen asleep.
-
-For the whole talent of an uncultivated mind lies in the force and
-oneness of its sensations. Beyond that it is powerless. The art of
-thinking and reasoning lies above it. These men lost all genius when
-they lost their fever-heat. They lisped awkwardly and heavily dry
-chronicles, a sort of historical almanacs. You might think them
-peasants, who, returning from their toil, came and scribbled with chalk
-on a smoky table the date of a year of scarcity, the price of corn, the
-changes in the weather, a death. Even so, side by side with the meagre
-Bible chronicles, which set down the successions of kings, and of Jewish
-massacres, are exhibited the exaltation of the psalms and the transports
-of prophecy. The same lyric poet can be alternately a brute and a
-genius, because his genius comes and goes like a disease, and instead of
-having it he simply is ruled by it.
-
-
-"AD. 611. This year Cynegils succeeded to the government in Wessex, and
-held it one-and-thirty winters. Cynegils was the son of Ceol, Ceol of
-Cutha, Cutha of Cynric.
-
-"614. This year Cynegils and Cnichelm fought at Bampton, and slew two
-thousand and forty-six of the Welsh.
-
-"678. This year appeared the comet-star in August, and shone every
-morning during three months like a sunbeam. Bishop Wilfrid being driven
-from his bishopric by King Everth, two bishops were consecrated in his
-stead.
-
-"901. This year died Alfred, the son of Ethelwulf, six nights before the
-mass of All Saints. He was king over all the English nation, except that
-part that was under the power of the Danes. He held the government one
-year and a half less than thirty winters; and then Edward his son took
-to the government.
-
-"902. This year there was the great fight at the Holme, between the men
-of Kent and the Danes.
-
-"1077. This year were reconciled the King of the Franks, and William,
-King of England. But it was continued only a little while. This year was
-London burned, one night before the Assumption of St. Mary, so terribly
-as it never was before since it was built."[91]
-
-
-It is thus the poor monks speak, with monotonous dryness, who, after
-Alfred's time, gather up and take note of great visible events; sparsely
-scattered we find a few moral reflections, a passionate emotion, nothing
-more. In the tenth century we see King Edgar give a manor to a bishop,
-on condition that he will put into Saxon the monastic regulation written
-in Latin by Saint Benedict. Alfred himself was almost the last man of
-culture; he, like Charlemagne, became so only by dint of determination
-and patience. In vain the great spirits of this age endeavor to link
-themselves to the relics of the fine, ancient civilization, and to raise
-themselves above the chaotic and muddy ignorance in which the others
-flounder. They rise almost alone, and on their death the rest sink again
-into the mire. It is the human beast that remains master; the mind
-cannot find a place amidst the outbursts and the desires of the flesh,
-gluttony and brute force. Even in the little circle where he moves, his
-labor comes to nought. The model which he proposed to himself oppresses
-and enchains him in a cramping imitation; he aspires but to be a good
-copyist; he produces a gathering of centos which he calls Latin verses;
-he applies himself to the discovery of expressions, sanctioned by good
-models; he succeeds only in elaborating an emphatic, spoiled Latin,
-bristling with incongruities. In place of ideas, the most profound
-amongst them serve up the defunct doctrines of defunct authors. They
-compile religious manuals and philosophical manuals from the Fathers.
-Erigena, the most learned, goes to the extent of reproducing the old
-complicated dreams of Alexandrian metaphysics. How far these
-speculations and reminiscences soar above the barbarous crowd which
-howls and bustles in the depths below, no words can express. There was a
-certain king of Kent in the seventh century who could not write. Imagine
-bachelors of theology discussing before an audience of wagoners, not
-Parisian wagoners, but such as survive in Auvergne or in the Vosges.
-Among these clerks, who think like studious scholars in accordance with
-their favorite authors, and are doubly separated from the world as
-scholars and monks, Alfred alone, by his position as a layman and a
-practical man, descends in his Saxon translations and his Saxon verses
-to the common level; and we have seen that his effort, like that of
-Charlemagne, was fruitless. There was an impassable wall between the old
-learned literature and the present chaotic barbarism. Incapable, yet
-compelled, to fit into the ancient mould, they gave it a twist. Unable
-to reproduce ideas, they reproduced a metre. They tried to eclipse their
-rivals in versification by the refinement of their composition, and the
-prestige of a difficulty overcome. So, in our own colleges, the good
-scholars imitate the clever divisions and symmetry of Claudian rather
-than the ease and variety of Vergil. They put their feet in irons, and
-showed their smartness by running in shackles; they weighted themselves
-with rules of modern rhyme and rules of ancient metre; they added the
-necessity of beginning each verse with the same letter that began the
-last. A few, like Adhelm, wrote square acrostics, in which the first
-line, repeated at the end, was found also to the left and right of the
-piece. Thus made up of the first and last letters of each verse, it
-forms a border to the whole piece, and the morsel of verse is like a
-piece of tapestry. Strange literary tricks, which changed the poet into
-an artisan. They bear witness to the difficulties which then impeded
-culture and nature, and spoiled at once the Latin form and the Saxon
-genius.
-
-Beyond this barrier, which drew an impassable line between civilization
-and barbarism, there was another, no less impassable, between the Latin
-and Saxon genius. The strong German imagination, in which glowing and
-obscure visions suddenly meet and abruptly overflow, was in contrast
-with the reasoning spirit, in which ideas gather and are developed only
-in a regular order; so that if the barbarian, in his classical attempts,
-retained any part of his primitive instincts, he succeeded only in
-producing a grotesque and frightful monster. One of them, this very
-Adhelm, a relative of King Ina, who sang on the town-bridge profane and
-sacred hymns alternately, too much imbued with Saxon poesy, simply to
-imitate the antique models, adorned his Latin prose and verse with all
-the "English magnificence."[92] You might compare him to a barbarian who
-seizes a flute from the skilled hands of a player of Augustus's court,
-in order to blow on it with inflated lungs, as if it were the bellowing
-horn of an aurochs. The sober speech of the Roman orators and senators
-becomes in his hands full of exaggerated and incoherent images; he
-violently connects words, uniting them in a sudden and extravagant
-manner; he heaps up his colors, and utters extraordinary and
-unintelligible nonsense, like that of the later Skalds; in short, he is
-a latinized Skald, dragging into his new tongue the ornaments of
-Scandinavian poetry, such as alliteration, by dint of which he
-congregates in one of his epistles fifteen consecutive words, all
-beginning with the same letter; and in order to make up his fifteen, he
-introduces a barbarous Græcism amongst the Latin words.[93] Amongst the
-others, the writers of legends, you will meet many times with
-deformation of Latin, distorted by the outburst of a too vivid
-imagination; it breaks out even in their scholastic and scientific
-writing. Here is part of a dialogue between Alcuin and prince Pepin, a
-son of Charlemagne, and he uses like formulas the little poetic and bold
-phrases which abound in the national poetry. "What is winter? the
-banishment of summer. What is spring? the painter of the earth. What is
-the year? the world's chariot. What is the sun? the splendor of the
-world, the beauty of heaven, the grace of nature, the honor of day, the
-distributor of the hours. What is the sea? the path of audacity, the
-boundary of the earth, the receptacle of the rivers, the fountain of
-showers." More, he ends his instructions with enigmas, in the spirit of
-the Skalds, such as we still find in the old manuscripts with the
-barbarian songs. It was the last feature of the national genius, which,
-when it labors to understand a matter, neglects dry, clear, consecutive
-deduction, to employ grotesque, remote, oft-repeated imagery, and
-replaces analysis by intuition.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION VIII.--Virility of the Saxon Race
-
-
-Such was this race, the last born of the sister races, which, in the
-decay of the other two, the Latin and the Greek, brings to the world a
-new civilization, with a new character and genius. Inferior to these in
-many respects, it surpasses them in not a few. Amidst the woods and mire
-and snows, under a sad, inclement sky, gross instincts have gained the
-day during this long barbarism. The German has not acquired gay humor,
-unreserved facility, the feeling for harmonious beauty; his great
-phlegmatic body continues savage and stiff, greedy and brutal; his rude
-and unpliable mind is still inclined to savagery, and restive under
-culture. Dull and congealed, his ideas cannot expand with facility and
-freedom, with a natural sequence and an instinctive regularity. But this
-spirit, void of the sentiment of the beautiful, is all the more apt for
-the sentiment of the true. The deep and incisive impression which he
-receives from contact with objects, and which as yet he can only express
-by a cry, will afterwards liberate him from the Latin rhetoric, and will
-vent itself on things rather than on words. Moreover, under the
-constraint of climate and solitude, by the habit of resistance and
-effort, his ideal is changed. Manly and moral instincts have gained the
-empire over him; and amongst them the need of independence, the
-disposition for serious and strict manners, the inclination for devotion
-and veneration, the worship of heroism. Here are the foundations and the
-elements of a civilization, slower but sounder, less careful of what is
-agreeable and elegant, more based on justice and truth.[94] Hitherto at
-least the race is intact, intact in its primitive coarseness; the Roman
-cultivation could neither develop nor deform it. If Christianity took
-root, it was owing to natural affinities, but it produced no change in
-the native genius. Now approaches a new conquest, which is to bring this
-time men, as well as ideas. The Saxons, meanwhile, after the wont of
-German races, vigorous and fertile, have within the past six centuries
-multiplied enormously. They were now about two millions, and the Norman
-army numbered sixty thousand.[95] In vain these Normans become
-transformed, gallicized; by their origin, and substantially in
-themselves they are still the relatives of those whom they conquered. In
-vain they imported their manners and their poesy, and introduced into
-the language a third part of its words; this language continues
-altogether German in element and in substance.[96] Though the grammar
-changed, it changed integrally, by an internal action, in the same sense
-as its continental cognates. At the end of three hundred years the
-conquerors themselves were conquered; their speech became English; and
-owing to frequent intermarriage, the English blood ended by gaining the
-predominance over the Norman blood in their veins. The race finally
-remains Saxon. If the old poetic genius disappears after the Conquest,
-it is as a river disappears, and flows for a while underground. In five
-centuries it will emerge once more.
-
-
-
-
-[Footnote 8: Malte-Brun, IV. 398. Not counting bays, gulfs, and canals,
-the sixteenth part of the country is covered by water. The dialect
-of Jutland bears still a great resemblance to English.]
-
-[Footnote 9: See Ruysdaal's painting in Mr. Baring's collection.
-Of the three Saxon islands, North Strandt, Busen, and Heligoland,
-North Strandt was inundated by the sea in 1300, 1483, 1532, 1615,
-and almost destroyed in 1634. Busen is a level plain, beaten by
-storms, which it has been found necessary to surround by a dyke.
-Heligoland was laid waste by the sea in 800, 1300, 1500, 1649, the
-last time so violently that only a portion of it remained.--Turner,
-"History of Anglo-Saxons," 1852, I. 97.]
-
-[Footnote 10: Heine, "The North Sea," translated by Charles G.
-Leland. See Tacitus, "Annals," book 2, for the impressions of the
-Romans, "truculentia cœli."]
-
-[Footnote 11: Watten, Platen, Sande, Düneninseln.]
-
-[Footnote 12: Nine or ten miles out near Heligoland, are the
-nearest soundings of about fifty fathoms.]
-
-[Footnote 13: Palgrave, "Saxon Commonwealth," vol. I.]
-
-[Footnote 14: "Notes of a Journey in England."]
-
-[Footnote 15: Léonce de Lavergne, "De l'Agriculture anglaise."
-"The soil is much worse than that of France."]
-
-[Footnote 16: There are at least four rivers in England	passing
-by the name of "Ouse," which is only another form of "ooze."--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 17: Tacitus, "De moribus Germanorum," passim: Diem
-noctemque continuare potando, nulli proborum.--Sera juvenum
-Venus.--Totos dies juxta focum atque ignem agunt. Dargaud, "Voyage
-en Danemark. They take six meals per day, the first at five
-o'clock in the morning. One should see the faces and meals at
-Hamburg and at Amsterdam."]
-
-[Footnote 18: Bede, v. 10. Sidonius, VIII. 6. Lingard, "History
-of England," 1854, I. chap. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 19: Zozimos, III. 147. Amm. Marcellinus, XXVIII. 526.]
-
-[Footnote 20: Aug. Thierry, "Hist. S. Edmundi," VI. 441. See
-Ynglingasaga, and especially Egil's Saga.]
-
-[Footnote 21: Lingard, "History of England," I. 164, says, however,
-"Every tenth man out of the six hundred received his liberty,
-and of the rest a few were selected for slavery."--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 22: Franks, Frisians, Saxons, Danes, up the gaps that
-exist in the history of Norwegians, Icelanders are one and the
-same people. Their language, laws, religion, poetry, differ
-but little. The more northern continue longest in their primitive
-manners. Germany in the fourth and fifth centuries, Denmark and
-Norway in the seventh and eighth. Iceland in the tenth and eleventh
-centuries, present the same condition, and the muniments of each
-country will fill up the gaps that exist in the history of the others.]
-
-[Footnote 23: Tacitus, De moribus Germanotum, XXII: Gens nec
-astuta nec callida.]
-
-[Footnote 24: William of Malmesbury. Henry of Huntingdon, VI. 365.]
-
-[Footnote 25: Tacitus, "De moribus Germanorum," XXII., XXIII.]
-
-[Footnote 26: Kemble, "Saxons in England," 1849, I. 70, II. 184.
-"The Acts of an Anglo-Saxon parliament are a series of treaties
-of peace between all the associations which make up the State;
-a continual revision and renewal of the alliances offensive and
-defensive of all the free men. They are universally mutual contracts
-for the maintenance of the frid or peace."]
-
-[Footnote 27: A large district; the word is still existing in
-German, as Rheingau, Breiasgau.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 28: Turner, "History of the Anglo-Saxons," II. 440,
-Laws of Ina.]
-
-[Footnote 29: Such a band consisted of thirty-five men or more.]
-
-[Footnote 30: Milton's expression. Lingard's History, I. chap. 3.
-This history bears much resemblance to that of the Franks in Gaul.
-See Gregory of Tours. The Saxons, like the Franks, somewhat softened,
-but rather degenerated, were pillaged and massacred by those of their
-Northern brothers who still remained in a savage state.]
-
-[Footnote 31: Vita S. Dunstani, "Anglia Sacra," II.]
-
-[Footnote 32: It is amusing to compare the story of Edwy and Elgiva
-in Turner, II. 216, etc., and then Lingard, I. 132, etc. The
-first accuses Dunstan, the other defends him.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 33: "Life of Bishop Wolstan."]
-
-[Footnote 34: Tantæ sævitiæ erant fratres illi quod, cum alicujus
-nitidam villam conspicerent, dominatorem de nocte interfici juberent,
-totamque progeniem illius possessionemque defuncti obtinerent.
-Turner, III. 27. Henry of Huntingdon, VI. 367.]
-
-[Footnote 35: "Pene gigas statura," says the chronicler. Henry of
-Huntingdon, VI. 367. Kemble, I. 393. Turner, II. 318.]
-
-[Footnote 36: Grimm, "Mythology," 53, Preface.]
-
-[Footnote 37: Tacitus, XX. XXIII., XI., XII. et passim. We may
-still see the traces of this taste in English dwellings.]
-
-[Footnote 38: Ibid. XIII.]
-
-[Footnote 39: Tacitus, XIX., VIII., XVI. Kemble, I. 232.]
-
-[Footnote 40: Tacitus, XIV.]
-
-[Footnote 41: "In omni domo, nudi et sordidi... Plus per otium
-transigunt, dediti somno, ciboque, otos dies juxta focum atque
-ignem agunt."]
-
-[Footnote 42: Grimm, 53, Preface. Tacitus, X.]
-
-[Footnote 43: "Deorum nominibus appellant secretum illud, quod
-sola reverentia vident." Later on, at Upsala for instance, they
-had images (Adam of Bremen, "Historia Ecclesiastica"). Wuotan (Odin),
-signifies etymologically the All-Powerful, him who penetrates
-and circulates through everything (Grimm, "Mythology").]
-
-[Footnote 44: "Sæmundar Edda, Snorra Edda," ed. Copenhagen, three
-vols., passim. Mr. Bergmann has translated several of these poems
-into French, which Mr. Taine quotes. The translator has generally
-made use of the edition of Mr. Thorpe, London, 1866.]
-
-[Footnote 45: Hel, the goddess of death, born of Loki and Angrboda.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 46: Thorpe, "The Edda of Sæmund, the Vala's Prophecy,"
-str. 48-56, p. 9 et passim.]
-
-[Footnote 47: "Fafnismâl Edda." This epic is common to the Northern
-races, as is the Iliad to the Greek populations, and is found almost
-entire in Germany in the Nibelungen Lied. The translator has also
-used Magnusson and Morris's poetical version of the "Völsunga
-Saga," and certain songs of the "Elder Edda," London, 1870.]
-
-[Footnote 48: "Thorpe, The Edda of Sæmund, Third Lay of Sigurd
-Fafnicide," str. 62-64, p. 83.]
-
-[Footnote 49: Magnusson and Morris, "Story of the Volsungs and
-Nibelungs, Lamentation of Guaran," p. 118 et passim.]
-
-[Footnote 50: Thorpe, "The Edda of Sæmund, Lay of Atli," str.
-21-27, p. 117.]
-
-[Footnote 51: Ibid., str. 38, p. 119.]
-
-[Footnote 52: This word signifies men who fought without a breastplate,
-perhaps in shirts only; Scottice, "Baresarks."--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 53: See the "Life of Sweyn," of Hereward, etc., even up
-to the time of the Conquest.]
-
-[Footnote 54: Beowulf, passim. Death of Byrhtnoth.]
-
-[Footnote 55: "The Wanderer, the Exile's Song, Codex Exoniensis,"
-published by Thorpe.]
-
-[Footnote 56: Turner, "History of the Anglo-saxons", III. 63.]
-
-[Footnote 57: Alfred borrows his portrait from Boethius, but
-almost entirely rewrites it.]
-
-[Footnote 58: Kemble thinks that the origin of this poem is very
-ancient, perhaps contemporary with the invasion of the Angles
-and Saxons, but that the version we possess is later than the
-seventh century.--Kemble's "Beowulf," text and translation, 1833.
-The characters are Danish.]
-
-[Footnote 59: Kemble's "Beowulf," XI. p. 32.]
-
-[Footnote 60: Ibid. XII. p. 34.]
-
-[Footnote 61: "Beowulf," XXII., XXIII. p. 62 et passim.]
-
-[Footnote 62: "Beowulf," XXXIII., XXXVI. p. 94 et passim.]
-
-[Footnote 63: Ibid, XXXVII., XXXVIII. p. 110 et passim. I have
-throughout always used the very words of Kemble's translation.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 64: Conybeare's "Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry,"
-1826, "Battle of Finsborough," p. 175. The complete collection of
-Anglo-Saxon poetry has been published by M. Grein.]
-
-[Footnote 65: Turner, "History of Anglo-Saxons," III. book 9,
-ch. I. p. 245.]
-
-[Footnote 66: The cleverest Anglo-Saxon scholars, Turner, Conybeare,
-Thorpe, recognize this difficulty.]
-
-[Footnote 67: Turner, III. 231 et passim. The translations in French,
-however literal, do injustice to the text; that language is too clear,
-too logical. No Frenchman can understand this extraordinary phase of
-intellect, except by taking a dictionary, and deciphering some pages
-of Anglo-Saxon for a fortnight.]
-
-[Footnote 68: Turner remarks that the same idea expressed by King
-Alfred, in prose and then in verse takes in the first case seven
-words, in the second five.--"History of the Anglo-Saxons," III. 235.]
-
-[Footnote 69: 596-625. Aug. Thierry, I. 81; Bede, XII. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 70: Jouffroy, "Problem of Human Destiny."]
-
-[Footnote 71: Michelet, preface to "La Renaissance"; Didron,
-"Histoire de Dieu."]
-
-[Footnote 72: About 630. See "Codex Exoniensis," Thorpe.]
-
-[Footnote 73: Bede, IV. 24.]
-
-[Footnote 74: Conybeare's "Illustrations," p. 271.]
-
-[Footnote 75: Bretwalda was a species of warking, or temporary and
-elective chief of all the Saxons.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 76: The Æsir (sing. As) are the gods of the Scandinavian
-nations, of whom Odin was the chief.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 77: Kemble, I. I. XII. In this chapter he has collected
-many features which show the endurance of the ancient mythology.]
-
-[Footnote 78: Nástrand is the strand or shore of the dead.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 79: Turner, "History of Anglo-Saxons," III. book 9, ch. 3,
-p. 271.]
-
-[Footnote 80: Ibid. III. book o, ch. 3, p. 272.]
-
-[Footnote 81: Turner, "History of Anglo-Saxons," III. book 9, ch. 3,
-p. 274.]
-
-[Footnote 82: Grein, "Bibliothek der Angelsæchsischen poesie."]
-
-[Footnote 83: Thorpe, "Cædmon," 1832, XLVII. p. 206.]
-
-[Footnote 84: Ibid. II. p. 7. A likeness exists between this song
-and corresponding portions of the Edda.]
-
-[Footnote 85: Ibid. IV. p. 18.]
-
-[Footnote 86: This is Milton's opening also. (See "Paradise Lost,"
-book I. verse 242, etc.) One would think that he must have had some
-knowledge of Cædmon from the translation of Junius.]
-
-[Footnote 87: Thorpe, "Cædmon," IV. p. 23.]
-
-[Footnote 88: They themselves feel their impotence and decrepitude.
-Bede, dividing the history of the world into six periods, says that
-the fifth, which stretches from the return out of Babylon to the
-birth of Christ, is the senile period; the sixth is the present,
-"ætas decrepita, totius morte sæculi consummanda."]
-
-[Footnote 89: Died in 901; Adhelm died 709, Bede died 735, Alcuin
-lived under Charlemagne, Erigena under Charles the Bald (843-877).]
-
-[Footnote 90: Fox's "Alfred's Boethius," chap. 35, sec. 6, 1864.]
-
-[Footnote 91: All these extracts are taken from Ingram's "Saxon
-Chronicle," 1823.]
-
-[Footnote 92: William of Malmesbury's expression.]
-
-[Footnote 93: Primitus (pantorum procerum prætorumque pio potissimum
-paternoque præsertim privilegio) panegyricum poemataque passim
-prosatori sub polo promulgantes, stridula vocum symphonia ac melodiæ
-cantilenæque carmine modulaturi hymnizemus.]
-
-[Footnote 94: In Iceland, the country of the fiercest sea-kings,
-crimes are unknown; prisons have been turned to other uses;
-fines are the only punishment.]
-
-[Footnote 95: Following Doomsday Book, Mr. Turner reckons at
-three hundred thousand the heads of families mentioned. If each
-family consisted of five persons, that would make one million
-five hundred thousand people. He adds five hundred thousand
-for the four northern counties, for London and several large
-towns, for the monks and provincial clergy not enumerated....
-We must accept these figures with caution. Still they agree
-with those of Mackintosh, George Chalmers, and several others.
-Many facts show that the Saxon population was very numerous,
-and quite out of proportion to the Norman population.]
-
-[Footnote 96: Warton, "History of English Poetry," 1840, 3 vols.,
-Preface.]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER SECOND
-
-
-The Normans
-
-
-SECTION I.--The Feudal Man
-
-
-A century and a half had passed on the Continent since, amid the
-universal decay and dissolution, a new society had been formed, and new
-men had risen up. Brave men had at length made a stand against the
-Norsemen and the robbers. They had planted their feet in the soil, and
-the moving chaos of the general subsidence had become fixed by the
-effort of their great hearts and of their arms. At the mouths of the
-rivers, in the defiles of the mountains, on the margin of the waste
-borders, at all perilous passes, they had built their forts, each for
-himself, each on his own land, each with his faithful band; and they had
-lived like a scattered but watchful army, encamped and confederate in
-their castles, sword in hand in front of the enemy. Beneath this
-discipline a formidable people had been formed, fierce hearts in strong
-bodies,[97] intolerant of restraint, longing for violent deeds, born for
-constant warfare because steeped in permanent warfare, heroes and
-robbers, who, as an escape from their solitude, plunged into adventures,
-and went, that they might conquer a country or win Paradise, to Sicily,
-to Portugal, to Spain, to Palestine, to England.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION II.--Normans and Saxons Contrasted
-
-
-On September 27, 1066, at the mouth of the Somme, there was a great
-sight to be seen; four hundred large sailing vessels, more than a
-thousand transports, and sixty thousand men, were on the point of
-embarking.[98] The sun shone splendidly after long rain; trumpets
-sounded, the cries of this armed multitude rose to heaven; as far as the
-eye could see, on the shore, in the wide-spreading river, on the sea
-which opens out thence broad and shining, masts and sails extended like
-a forest; the enormous fleet set out wafted by the south wind.[99] The
-people which it carried were said to have come from Norway, and they
-might have been taken for kinsmen of the Saxons, with whom they were to
-fight; but there were with them a multitude of adventurers, crowding
-from all quarters, far and near, from north and south, from Maine and
-Anjou, from Poitou and Brittany, from Ile-de-France and Flanders, from
-Aquitaine and Burgundy;[100] and, in short, the expedition itself was
-French.
-
-How comes it that, having kept its name, it had changed its nature? and
-what series of renovations had made a Latin out of a German people? The
-reason is, that this people, when they came to Neustria, were neither a
-national body, nor a pure race. They were but a band; and as such,
-marrying the women of the country, they introduced foreign blood into
-their children. They were a Scandinavian band, but swelled by all the
-bold knaves and all the wretched desperadoes who wandered about the
-conquered country;[101] and as such they received foreign blood into
-their veins. Moreover, if the nomadic band was mixed, the settled band
-was much more so; and peace by its transfusions, like war by its
-recruits, had changed the character of the primitive blood. When Rollo,
-having divided the land amongst his followers, hung the thieves and
-their abettors, people from every country gathered to him. Security,
-good stern justice, were so rare, that they were enough to repeople a
-land.[102] He invited strangers, say the old writers, "and made one
-people out of so many folk of different natures." This assemblage of
-barbarians, refugees, robbers, immigrants, spoke Romance or French so
-quickly, that the second Duke, wishing to have his son taught Danish,
-had to send him to Bayeux, where it was still spoken. The great masses
-always form the race in the end, and generally the genius and language.
-Thus this people, so transformed, quickly became polished; the composite
-race showed itself of a ready genius, far more wary than the Saxons
-across the Channel, closely resembling their neighbors of Picardy,
-Champagne, and Ile-de-France. "The Saxons," says an old writer,[103]
-"vied with each other in their drinking feats, and wasted their income
-by day and night in feasting, whilst they lived in wretched hovels; the
-French and Normans, on the other hand, living inexpensively in their
-fine, large houses, were besides refined in their food and studiously
-careful in their dress." The former, still weighted by the German
-phlegm, were gluttons and drunkards, now and then aroused by poetical
-enthusiasm; the latter, made sprightlier by their transplantation and
-their alloy, felt the cravings of the mind already making themselves
-manifest. "You might see amongst them churches in every village, and
-monasteries in the cities, towering on high, and built in a style
-unknown before," first in Normandy, and later in England.[104] Taste had
-come to them at once--that is, the desire to please the eye, and to
-express a thought by outward representation, which was quite a new idea:
-the circular arch was raised on one or on a cluster of columns; elegant
-mouldings were placed about the windows; the rose window made its
-appearance, simple, yet, like the flower which gives it its name "_rose
-des buissons_"; and the Norman style unfolded itself, original yet
-proportioned between the Gothic, whose richness it foreshadowed, and the
-Romance, whose solidity it recalled.
-
-With taste, just as natural and just as quickly, was developed the
-spirit of inquiry. Nations are like children; with some the tongue is
-readily loosened, and they comprehend at once; with others it is
-loosened with difficulty, and they are slow of comprehension. The men we
-are here speaking of had educated themselves nimbly, as Frenchmen do.
-They were the first in France who unravelled the language, regulating it
-and writing it so well, that to this day we understand their codes and
-their poems. In a century and a half they were so far cultivated as to
-find the Saxons "unlettered and rude."[105] That was the excuse they
-made for banishing them from the abbeys and all valuable ecclesiastical
-offices. And, in fact, this excuse was rational, for they instinctively
-hated gross stupidity. Between the Conquest and the death of King John,
-they established five hundred and fifty-seven schools in England. Henry
-Beauclerk, son of the Conqueror, was trained in the sciences; so were
-Henry II and his three sons; Richard, the eldest of these, was a poet.
-Lanfranc, first Norman Archbishop of Canterbury, a subtle logician, ably
-argued the Real Presence; Anselm, his successor, the first thinker of
-the age, thought he had discovered a new proof of the existence of God,
-and tried to make religion philosophical by adopting as his maxim,
-"_Crede ut intelligas._" The notion was doubtless grand, especially in
-the eleventh century; and they could not have gone more promptly to
-work. Of course the science I speak of was but scholastic, and these
-terrible folios slay more understandings than they confirm. But people
-must begin as they can; and syllogism, even in Latin, even in theology,
-is yet an exercise of the mind and a proof of the understanding. Among
-the continental priests who settled in England, one established a
-library; another, founder of a school, made the scholars perform the
-play of Saint Catherine; a third wrote in polished Latin, "epigrams as
-pointed as those of Martial." Such were the recreations of an
-intelligent race, eager for ideas, of ready and flexible genius, whose
-clear thought was not clouded, like that of the Saxon brain, by drunken
-hallucinations and the vapors of a greedy and well-filled stomach. They
-loved conversations, tales of adventure. Side by side with their Latin
-chroniclers, Henry of Huntingdon, William of Malmesbury, thoughtful men
-already, who could not only relate, but criticise here and there, there
-were rhyming chronicles in the vulgar tongue, as those of Geoffroy
-Gaimar, Bénoît de Sainte-Maure, Robert Wace. Do not imagine that their
-verse-writers were sterile of words or lacking in details. They were
-talkers, tale-tellers, speakers above all, ready of tongue, and never
-stinted in speech. Not singers by any means; they speak--this is their
-strong point, in their poems as in their chronicles. They were the
-earliest who wrote the "Song of Roland"; upon this they accumulated a
-multitude of songs concerning Charlemagne and his peers, concerning
-Arthur and Merlin, the Greeks and Romans, King Horn, Guy of Warwick,
-every prince and every people. Their minstrels (_trouvères_), like
-their knights, draw in abundance from Welsh, Franks, and Latins, and
-descend upon East and West in the wide field of adventure. They address
-themselves to a spirit of inquiry, as the Saxons to enthusiasm, and
-dilute in their long, clear, and flowing narratives the lively colors of
-German and Breton traditions; battles, surprises, single combats,
-embassies, speeches, processions, ceremonies, huntings, a variety of
-amusing events, employ their ready and wandering imaginations. At first,
-in the "Song of Roland," it is still kept in check; it walks with long
-strides, but only walks. Presently its wings have grown; incidents are
-multiplied; giants and monsters abound, the natural disappears, the song
-of the jongleur grows a poem under the hands of the _trouvère_; he
-would speak, like Nestor of old, five, even six years running, and not
-grow tired or stop. Forty thousand verses are not too much to satisfy
-their gabble; a facile mind, copious, inquisitive, descriptive, such is
-the genius of the race. The Gauls, their fathers, used to delay
-travellers on the road to make them tell their stories, and boasted,
-like these, "of fighting well and talking with ease."
-
-With chivalric poetry, they are not wanting in chivalry; principally, it
-may be, because they are strong, and a strong man loves to prove his
-strength by knocking down his neighbors; but also from a desire of fame,
-and as a point of honor. By this one word honor the whole spirit of
-warfare is changed. Saxon poets painted war as a murderous fury, as a
-blind madness which shook flesh and blood, and awakened the instincts of
-the beast of prey; Norman poets describe it as a tourney. The new
-passion which they introduce is that of vanity and gallantry; Guy of
-Warwick dismounts all the knights in Europe, in order to deserve the
-hand of the prude and scornful Félice. The tourney itself is but a
-ceremony, somewhat brutal I admit, since it turns upon the breaking of
-arms and limbs, but yet brilliant and French. To show skill and courage,
-display the magnificence of dress and armor, be applauded by and please
-the ladies--such feelings indicate men of greater sociality, more under
-the influence of public opinion, less the slaves of their own passions,
-void both of lyric inspiration and savage enthusiasm, gifted by a
-different genius, because inclined to other pleasures.
-
-Such were the men who at this moment were disembarking in England to
-introduce their new manners and a new spirit, French at bottom, in mind
-and speech, though with special and provincial features; of all the most
-matter-of-fact, with an eye to the main chance, calculating, having the
-nerve and the dash of our own soldiers, but with the tricks and
-precautions of lawyers; heroic undertakers of profitable enterprises;
-having gone to Sicily and Naples, and ready to travel to Constantinople
-or Antioch, so it be to take a country or bring back money; subtle
-politicians, accustomed in Sicily to hire themselves to the highest
-bidder, and capable of doing a stroke of business in the heat of the
-Crusade, like Bohémond, who, before Antioch, speculated on the dearth
-of his Christian allies, and would only open the town to them under
-condition of their keeping it for himself; methodical and persevering
-conquerors, expert in administration, and fond of scribbling on paper,
-like this very William, who was able to organize such an expedition, and
-such an army, and kept a written roll of the same, and who proceeded to
-register the whole of England in his Domesday Book. Sixteen days after
-the disembarkation, the contrast between the two nations was manifested
-at Hastings by its visible effects.
-
-The Saxons "ate and drank the whole night. You might have seen them
-struggling much, and leaping and singing," with shouts of laughter and
-noisy joy.[106] In the morning they packed behind their palisades the
-dense masses of their heavy infantry, and with battle-axe hung round
-their neck awaited the attack. The wary Normans weighed the chances of
-heaven and hell, and tried to enlist God upon their side. Robert Wace,
-their historian and compatriot, is no more troubled by poetical
-imagination than they were by warlike inspiration; and on the eve of the
-battle his mind is as prosaic and clear as theirs.[107] The same spirit
-showed itself in the battle. They were for the most part bowmen and
-horsemen, well skilled, nimble, and clever. Taillefer, the _jongleur_,
-who asked for the honor of striking the first blow, went singing, like a
-true French volunteer, performing tricks all the while.[108] Having
-arrived before the English, he cast his lance three times in the air,
-then his sword, and caught them again by the handle; and Harold's clumsy
-foot-soldiers, who only knew how to cleave coats of mail by blows from
-their battle-axes, "were astonished, saying to one another that it was
-magic." As for William, amongst a score of prudent and cunning actions,
-he performed two well-calculated ones, which, in this sore
-embarrassment, brought him safe out of his difficulties. He ordered his
-archers to shoot into the air; the arrows wounded many of the Saxons in
-the face and one of them pierced Harold in the eye. After this he
-simulated flight; the Saxons, intoxicated with joy and wrath, quitted
-their entrenchments, and exposed themselves to the lances of his
-horsemen. During the remainder of the contest they only make a stand by
-small companies, fight with fury, and end by being slaughtered. The
-strong, mettlesome, brutal race threw themselves on the enemy like a
-savage bull; the dexterous Norman hunters wounded them adroitly, knocked
-them down, and placed them under the yoke.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION III.--French Forms of Thought
-
-
-What then is this French race, which by arms and letters make such a
-splendid entrance upon the world, and is so manifestly destined to rule,
-that in the East, for example, their name of Franks will be given to all
-the nations of the West? Wherein consists this new spirit, this
-precocious pioneer, this key of all Middle-Age civilization? There is in
-every mind of the kind a fundamental activity which, when incessantly
-repeated, moulds its plan, and gives it its direction; in town or
-country, cultivated or not, in its infancy and its age, it spends its
-existence and employs its energy in conceiving an event or an object.
-This is its original and perpetual process; and whether it change its
-region, return, advance, prolong, or alter its course, its whole motion
-is but a series of consecutive steps; so that the least alteration in
-the size, quickness, or precision of its primitive stride transforms and
-regulates the whole course, as in a tree the structure of the first
-shoot determines the whole foliage, and governs the whole growth.[109]
-When the Frenchman conceives an event or an object, he conceives quickly
-and distinctly; there is no internal disturbance, no previous
-fermentation of confused and violent ideas, which, becoming concentrated
-and elaborated, end in a noisy outbreak. The movement of his
-intelligence is nimble and prompt, like that of his limbs; at once and
-without effort he seizes upon his idea. But he seizes that alone; he
-leaves on one side all the long entangling off-shoots whereby it is
-entwined and twisted amongst its neighboring ideas; he does not
-embarrass himself with nor think of them; he detaches, plucks, touches
-but slightly, and that is all. He is deprived, or if you prefer it, he
-is exempt from those sudden half-visions which disturb a man, and open
-up to him instantaneously vast deeps and far perspectives. Images are
-excited by internal commotion; he, not being so moved, imagines not. He
-is only moved superficially; he is without large sympathy; he does not
-perceive an object as it is, complex and combined, but in parts, with a
-discursive and superficial knowledge. That is why no race in Europe is
-less poetical. Let us look at their epics; none are more prosaic. They
-are not wanting in number: "The Song of Roland, Garin le Loherain,"
-"Ogier le Danois,"[110] "Berthe aux grands Pieds." There is a library of
-them. Though their manners are heroic and their spirit fresh, though
-they have originality, and deal with grand events, yet, spite of this,
-the narrative is as dull as that of the babbling Norman chroniclers.
-Doubtless when Homer relates he is as clear as they are, and he develops
-as they do: but his magnificent titles of rosy-fingered Morn, the
-wide-bosomed Air, the divine and nourishing Earth, the earth-shaking
-Ocean, come in every instant and expand their purple bloom over the
-speeches and battles, and the grand abounding similes which interrupt
-the narrative tell of a people more inclined to enjoy beauty than to
-proceed straight to fact. But here we have facts, always facts, nothing
-but facts; the Frenchman wants to know if the hero will kill the
-traitor, the lover wed the maiden; he must not be delayed by poetry or
-painting. He advances nimbly to the end of the story, not lingering for
-dreams of the heart or wealth of landscape. There is no splendor, no
-color, in his narrative; his style is quite bare, and without figures;
-you may read ten thousand verses in these old poems without meeting one.
-Shall we open the most ancient, the most original, the most eloquent, at
-the most moving point, the "Song of Roland," when Roland is dying? The
-narrator is moved, and yet his language remains the same, smooth,
-accentless, so penetrated by the prosaic spirit, and so void of the
-poetic! He gives an abstract of motives, a summary of events, a series
-of causes for grief, a series of causes for consolation.[111] Nothing
-more. These men regard the circumstance or the action by itself, and
-adhere to this view. Their idea remains exact, clear, and simple, and
-does not raise up a similar image to be confused with the first, to
-color or transform itself. It remains dry; they conceive the divisions
-of the object one by one, without ever collecting them, as the Saxons
-would, in an abrupt, impassioned, glowing semi-vision. Nothing is more
-opposed to their genius than the genuine songs and profound hymns, such
-as the English monks were singing beneath the low vaults of their
-churches. They would be disconcerted by the unevenness and obscurity of
-such language. They are not capable of such an access of enthusiasm and
-such excess of emotion. They never cry out, they speak, or rather they
-converse, and that at moments when the soul, overwhelmed by its trouble,
-might be expected to cease thinking and feeling. Thus Amis, in a
-mystery-play, being leprous, calmly requires his friend Amille to slay
-his two sons, in order that their blood may heal him of his leprosy; and
-Amille replies still more calmly.[112] If ever they try to sing, even in
-heaven, "a roundelay high and clear," they will produce little rhymed
-arguments, as dull as the dullest talk.[113] Pursue this literature to
-its conclusion; regard it, like that of the Skalds, at the time of its
-decadence, when its vices, being exaggerated, display, like those of the
-Skalds, only still more strongly the kind of mind which produced it. The
-Skalds fall off into nonsense; it loses itself into babble and
-platitude. The Saxon could not master his craving for exaltation; the
-Frenchman could not restrain the volubility of his tongue. He is too
-diffuse and too clear; the Saxon is too obscure and brief. The one was
-excessively agitated and carried away; the other explains and develops
-without measure. From the twelfth century the Gestes spun out degenerate
-into rhapsodies and psalmodies of thirty or forty thousand verses.
-Theology enters into them; poetry becomes an interminable, intolerable
-litany, where the ideas, expounded, developed, and repeated _ad
-infinitum_, without one outburst of emotion or one touch of originality,
-flow like a clear and insipid stream, and send off their reader, by dint
-of their monotonous rhymes, into a comfortable slumber. What a
-deplorable abundance of distinct and facile ideas! We meet with it again
-in the seventeenth century, in the literary gossip which took place at
-the feet of men of distinction; it is the fault and the talent of the
-race. With this involuntary art of perceiving, and isolating
-instantaneously and clearly each part of every object, people can speak,
-even for speaking's sake, and forever.
-
-Such is the primitive process; how will it be continued? Here appears a
-new trait in the French genius, the most valuable of all. It is
-necessary to comprehension that the second idea shall be contiguous to
-the first; otherwise that genius is thrown out of its course and
-arrested; it cannot proceed by irregular bounds; it must walk step by
-step, on a straight road; order is innate in it; without study, and in
-the first place, it disjoints and decomposes the object or event,
-however complicated and entangled it may be, and sets the parts one by
-one in succession to each other, according to their natural connection.
-True, it is still in a state of barbarism; yet its intelligence is a
-reasoning faculty, which spreads, though unwittingly. Nothing is more
-clear than the style of the old French narratives and of the earliest
-poems: we do not perceive that we are following a narrator, so easy is
-the gait, so even the road he opens to us, so smoothly and gradually
-every idea glides into the next; and this is why he narrates so well.
-The chroniclers Villehardouin, Joinville, Froissart, the fathers of
-prose, have an ease and clearness approached by none, and beyond all, a
-charm, a grace, which they had not to go out of their way to find. Grace
-is a national possession in France, and springs from the native delicacy
-which has a horror of incongruities; the instinct of Frenchmen avoids
-violent shocks in works of taste as well as in works of argument; they
-desire that their sentiments and ideas shall harmonize, and not clash.
-Throughout they have this measured spirit, exquisitely refined.[114]
-They take care, on a sad subject, not to push emotion to its limits;
-they avoid big words. Think how Joinville relates in six lines the death
-of the poor sick priest who wished to finish celebrating the mass, and
-"nevermore did sing, and died." Open a mystery-play, "Théophilus," or
-that of the "Queen of Hungary," for instance: when they are going to
-burn her and her child, she says two short lines about "this gentle dew
-which is so pure an innocent," nothing more. Take a fabliau, even a
-dramatic one: when the penitent knight, who has undertaken to fill a
-barrel with his tears, dies in the hermit's company, he asks from him
-only one last gift: "Do but embrace me, and then I'll die in the arms of
-my friend." Could a more touching sentiment be expressed in more sober
-language? We must say of their poetry what is said of certain pictures:
-This is made out of nothing. Is there in the world anything more
-delicately graceful than the verses of Guillaume de Lorris? Allegory
-clothes his ideas so as to dim their too great brightness; ideal,
-figures, half transparent, float about the lover, luminous, yet in a
-cloud, and lead him amidst all the delicate and gentle-hued ideas to the
-rose, whose "sweet odor embalms all the plain." This refinement goes so
-far, that in Thibaut of Champagne and in Charles of Orleans it turns to
-affectation and insipidity. In them all impressions grow more slender;
-the perfume is so weak that one often fails to catch it; on their knees
-before their lady they whisper their waggeries and conceits; they love
-politely and wittily, they arrange ingeniously in a bouquet their
-"painted words," all the flowers of "fresh and beautiful language"; they
-know how to mark fleeting ideas in their flight, soft melancholy, vague
-reverie; they are as elegant as talkative, and as charming as the most
-amiable abbés of the eighteenth century. This lightness of touch is
-proper to the race, and appears as plainly under the armor and amid the
-massacres of the Middle Ages as mid the courtesies and the musk-scented,
-wadded coats of the last court. You will find it in their coloring as in
-their sentiments. They are not struck by the magnificence of nature,
-they see only her pretty side; they paint the beauty of a woman by a
-single feature, which is only polite, saying, "She is more gracious than
-the rose in May." They do not experience the terrible emotion, ecstasy,
-sudden oppression of heart which is displayed in the poetry of
-neighboring nations; they say discreetly, "She began to smile, which
-vastly became her." They add, when they are in a descriptive humor,
-"that she had a sweet and perfumed breath," and a body "white as
-new-fallen snow on a branch." They do not aspire higher; beauty pleases,
-but does not transport them. They enjoy agreeable emotions, but are not
-fitted for deep sensations. The full rejuvenescence of being, the warm
-air of spring which renews and penetrates all existence, suggests but a
-pleasing couplet; they remark in passing, "Now is winter gone, the
-hawthorn blossoms, the rose expands," and so pass on about their
-business. It is a light gladsomeness, soon gone, like that which an
-April landscape affords. For an instant the author glances at the mist
-of the streams rising about the willow trees, that pleasant vapor which
-imprisons the brightness of the morning; then, humming a burden of a
-song, he returns to his narrative. He seeks amusement, and herein lies
-his power.
-
-In life, as in literature, it is pleasure he aims at, not sensual
-pleasure or emotion. He is lively, not voluptuous; dainty, not a
-glutton. He takes love for a pastime, not for an intoxication. It is a
-pretty fruit which he plucks, tastes, and leaves. And we must remark yet
-further, that the best of the fruit in his eyes is the fact of its being
-forbidden. He says to himself that he is duping a husband, that "he
-deceives a cruel woman, and thinks he ought to obtain a pope's
-indulgence for the deed."[115] He wishes to be merry--it is the state he
-prefers, the end and aim of his life; and especially to laugh at other
-people. The short verse of his fabliaux gambols and leaps like a
-schoolboy released from school, over all things respected or
-respectable; criticising the Church, women, the great, the monks.
-Scoffers, banterers, our fathers have abundance both of expression and
-matter; and the matter comes to them so naturally, that without culture,
-and surrounded by coarseness, they are as delicate in their raillery as
-the most refined. They touch upon ridicule lightly, they mock without
-emphasis, as it were innocently; their style is so harmonious, that at
-first sight we make a mistake, and do not see any harm in it. They seem
-artless; they look so very demure; only a word shows the imperceptible
-smile: it is the ass, for example, which they call the high priest, by
-reason of his padded cassock and his serious air, and who gravely begins
-"to play the organ." At the close of the history, the delicate sense of
-comicality has touched you, though you cannot say how. They do not call
-things by their names, especially in love matters; they let you guess
-it; they assume that you are as sharp and knowing as themselves.[116] A
-man might discriminate, embellish at times, perhaps refine upon them,
-but their first traits are incomparable. When the fox approaches the
-raven to steal the cheese, he begins as a hypocrite, piously and
-cautiously, and as one of the family. He calls the raven his "good
-father Don Rohart, who sings so well"; he praises his voice, "so sweet
-and fine. You would be the best singer in the world if you kept clear
-of nuts." Reynard is a rogue, an artist in the way of invention, not a
-mere glutton; he loves roguery for its own sake; he rejoices in his
-superiority, and draws out his mockery. When Tibert, the cat, by his
-counsel hung himself at the bell-rope, wishing to ring it, he uses
-irony, enjoys and relishes it, pretends to wax impatient with the poor
-fool whom he has caught, calls him proud, complains because the other
-does not answer, and because he wishes to rise to the clouds-and visit
-the saints. And from beginning to end this long epic of Reynard the Fox
-is the same; the raillery never ceases, and never fails to be agreeable.
-Reynard has so much wit that he is pardoned for everything. The
-necessity for laughter is national--so indigenous to the French, that a
-stranger cannot understand, and is shocked by it. This pleasure does not
-resemble physical joy in any respect, which is to be despised for its
-grossness; on the contrary, it sharpens the intelligence, and brings to
-light many a delicate or ticklish idea. The fabliaux are full of truths
-about men, and still more about women, about people of low rank, and
-still more about those of high rank; it is a method of philosophizing by
-stealth and boldly, in spite of conventionalism, and in opposition to
-the powers that be. This taste has nothing in common either with open
-satire, which is offensive because it is cruel; on the contrary, it
-provokes good humor. We soon see that the jester is not ill-disposed,
-that he does not wish to wound: if he stings, it is as a bee, without
-venom; an instant later he is not thinking of it; if need be, he will
-take himself as an object of his pleasantry; all he wishes is to keep up
-in himself and in us sparkling and pleasing ideas. Do we not see here in
-advance an abstract of the whole French literature, the incapacity for
-great poetry, the sudden and durable perfection of prose, the excellence
-of all the moods of conversation and eloquence, the reign and tyranny of
-taste and method, the art and theory of development and arrangement, the
-gift of being measured, clear, amusing, and piquant? We have taught
-Europe how ideas fall into order, and which ideas are agreeable; and
-this is what our Frenchmen of the eleventh century are about to teach
-their Saxons during five or six centuries, first with the lance, next
-with the stick, next with the birch.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION IV.--The Normans in England
-
-
-Consider, then, this Frenchman or Norman, this man from Anjou or Maine,
-who in his well-knit coat of mail, with sword and lance, came to seek
-his fortune in England. He took the manor of some slain Saxon, and
-settled himself in it with his soldiers and comrades, gave them land,
-houses, the right of levying taxes, on condition of their fighting under
-him and for him, as men-at-arms, marshals, standard-bearers; it was a
-league in case of danger. In fact, they were in a hostile and conquered
-country, and they have to maintain themselves. Each one hastened to
-build for himself a place of refuge, castle or fortress,[117] well
-fortified, of solid stone, with narrow windows, strengthened with
-battlements, garrisoned by soldiers, pierced with loopholes. Then these
-men went to Salisbury, to the number of sixty thousand, all holders of
-land, having at least enough to maintain a man with horse or arms.
-There, placing their hands in William's they promised him fealty and
-assistance; and the king's edict declared that they must be all united
-and bound together like brothers in arms, to defend and succor each
-other. They are an armed colony, stationary, like the Spartans amongst
-the Helots; and they make laws accordingly. When a Frenchman is found
-dead in any district, the inhabitants are to give up the murderer, or
-failing to do so, they must pay forty-seven marks as a fine; if the dead
-man is English, it rests with the people of the place to prove it by the
-oath of four near relatives of the deceased. They are to beware of
-killing a stag, boar, or fawn; for an offence against the forest-laws
-they will lose their eyes. They have nothing of all their property
-assured to them except as alms, or on condition of paying tribute, or by
-taking the oath of allegiance. Here a free Saxon proprietor is made a
-body-slave on his own estate.[118] Here a noble and rich Saxon lady
-feels on her shoulder the weight of the hand of a Norman valet, who is
-become by force her husband or her lover. There were Saxons of one sol,
-or of two sols, according to the sum which they gained for their
-masters; they sold them, hired them, worked them on joint account, like
-an ox or an ass. One Norman abbot has his Saxon predecessors dug up,
-their bones thrown without the gates. Another keeps men-at-arms, who
-bring his recalcitrant monks to reason by blows of their swords.
-Imagine, if you can, the pride of these new lords, conquerors,
-strangers, masters, nourished by habits of violent activity, and by the
-savagery, ignorance, and passions of feudal life. "They thought they
-might do whatsoever they pleased," say the old chroniclers. "They shed
-blood indiscriminately, snatched the morsel of bread from the mouth of
-the wretched, and seized upon all the money, the goods, the land."[119]
-Thus "all the folk in the low country were at great pains to seem humble
-before Ivo Taillebois, and only to address him with one knee on the
-ground; but although they made a point of paying him every honor, and
-giving him all and more than all which they owed him in the way of rent
-and service, he harassed, tormented, tortured, imprisoned them, set his
-dogs upon their cattle, ... broke the legs and backbones of their beasts
-of burden, ... and sent men to attack their servants on the road with
-sticks and swords."[120] The Normans would not and could not borrow any
-idea or custom from such boors;[121] they despised them as coarse and
-stupid. They stood amongst them, as the Spaniards amongst the Americans
-in the sixteenth century, superior in force and culture, more versed in
-letters, more expert in the arts of luxury. They preserved their manners
-and their speech. England, to all outward appearance--the court of the
-king, the castles of the nobles, the palaces of the bishops, the houses
-of the wealthy--was French; and the Scandinavian people, of whom sixty
-years ago the Saxon kings used to have poems sung to them, thought that
-the nation had forgotten its language, and treated it in their laws as
-though it were no longer their sister.
-
-It was a French literature, then, which was at this time domiciled
-across the channel,[122] and the conquerors tried to make it purely
-French, purged from all Saxon alloy. They made such a point of this that
-the nobles in the reign of Henry II sent their sons to France, to
-preserve them from barbarisms. "For two hundred years," says
-Higden,[123] "children in scole, agenst the usage and manir of all other
-nations beeth compelled for to leve hire own langage, and for to
-construe hir lessons and hire thynges in Frensche." The statutes of the
-universities obliged the students to converse either in French or Latin.
-"Gentilmen children beeth taught to speke Frensche from the tyme that
-they bith rokked in hire cradell; and uplondissche men will likne
-himself to gentylmen, and fondeth with greet besynesse for to speke
-Frensche." Of course the poetry is French. The Norman brought his
-minstrel with him; there was Taillefer, the _jongleur_, who sang the
-"Song of Roland" at the battle of Hastings; there was Adeline, the
-_jongleuse_, received an estate in the partition which followed the
-Conquest. The Norman who ridicules the Saxon kings, who dug up the Saxon
-saints and cast them without the walls of the church, loved none but
-French ideas and verses. It was into French verse that Robert Wace
-rendered the legendary history of the England which was conquered, and
-the actual history of the Normandy in which he continued to live. Enter
-one of the abbeys where the minstrels come to sing, "where the clerks
-after dinner and supper read poems, the chronicles of kingdoms, the
-wonders of the world,"[124] you will only find Latin or French verses,
-Latin or French prose. What becomes of English? Obscure, despised, we
-hear it no more, except in the mouths of degraded franklins, outlaws of
-the forest, swineherds, peasants, the lowest orders. It is no longer, or
-scarcely written; gradually we find in the Saxon Chronicle that the
-idiom alters, is extinguished; the Chronicle itself ceases within a
-century after the Conquest.[125] The people who have leisure or security
-enough to read or write are French; for them authors devise and compose;
-literature always adapts itself to the taste of those who can appreciate
-and pay for it. Even the English[126] endeavor to write in French: thus
-Robert Grostête, in his allegorical poem on Christ; Peter Langtoft, in
-his "Chronicle of England," and in his "Life of Thomas à Becket"; Hugh
-de Rotheland, in his poem of "Hippomedon"; John Hoveden, and many
-others. Several write the first half of the verse in English, and the
-second in French; a strange sign of the ascendancy which is moulding and
-oppressing them. Even in the fifteenth century[127] many of these poor
-folk are employed in this task; French is the language of the court,
-from it arose all poetry and elegance; he is but a clodhopper who is
-inapt at that style. They apply themselves to it as our old scholars did
-to Latin verses; they are gallicized as those were latinized, by
-constraint, with a sort of fear, knowing well that they are but
-schoolboys and provincials. Gower, one of their best poets, at the end
-of his French works, excuses himself humbly for not having "_de
-Français la faconde. Pardonnez moi_," he says, "_que de ce je forsvoie;
-je suis Anglais._"
-
-And yet, after all, neither the race nor the tongue has perished. It is
-necessary that the Norman should learn English, in order to command his
-tenants; his Saxon wife speaks it to him, and his sons receive it from
-the lips of their nurse; the contagion is strong, for he is obliged to
-send them to France, to preserve them from the jargon which on his
-domain threatens to overwhelm and spoil them. From generation to
-generation the contagion spreads; they breathe it in the air, with the
-foresters in the chase, the farmers in the field, the sailors on the
-ships: for these coarse people, shut in by their animal existence, are
-not the kind to learn a foreign language; by the simple weight of their
-dullness they impose their idiom on their conquerors, at all events such
-words as pertain to living things. Scholarly speech, the language of
-law, abstract and philosophical expressions--in short, all words
-depending on reflection and culture may be French, since there is
-nothing to prevent it. This is just what happens; these kind of ideas
-and this kind of speech are not understood by the commonalty, who, not
-being able to touch them, cannot change them. This produces a French, a
-colonial French, doubtless perverted, pronounced with closed mouth, with
-a contortion of the organs of speech, "after the school of
-Stratford-atte-Bow"; yet it is still French. On the other hand, as
-regards the speech employed about common actions and visible objects, it
-is the people, the Saxons, who fix it; these living words are too firmly
-rooted in his experience to allow of being parted with, and thus the
-whole substance of the language comes from him. Here, then, we have the
-Norman who, slowly and constrainedly, speaks and understands English, a
-deformed, gallicized English, yet English, in sap and root; but he has
-taken his time about it, for it has required two centuries. It was only
-under Henry III that the new tongue is complete, with the new
-constitution; and that, after the like fashion, by alliance and
-intermixture; the burgesses come to take their seats in Parliament with
-the nobles, at the same time that Saxon words settle down in the
-language side by side with French words.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION V.--The English Tongue--Early English Literary Impulses
-
-
-So was modern English formed, by compromise, and the necessity of being
-understood. But we can well imagine that these nobles, even while
-speaking the rising dialect, have their hearts full of French tastes and
-ideas; France remains the home of their mind, and the literature which
-now begins, is but translation. Translators, copyists, imitators--there
-is nothing else. England is a distant province, which is to France what
-the United States were, thirty years ago, to Europe: she exports her
-wool, and imports her ideas. Open the "Voyage and Travaile of Sir John
-Maundeville,"[128] the oldest prose-writer, the Villehardouin of the
-country: his book is but the translation of a translation.[129] He
-writes first in Latin, the language of scholars; then in French, the
-language of society; finally he reflects, and discovers that the barons,
-his compatriots, by governing the Saxon churls, have ceased to speak
-their own Norman, and that the rest of the nation never knew it; he
-translates his manuscript into English, and, in addition, takes care to
-make it plain, feeling that he speaks to less expanded understandings.
-He says in French: "_Il advint une fois que Mahomet allait dans une
-chapelle où il y avait un saint ermite. Il entra en la chapelle où il y
-avait une petite huisserie et basse, et était bien petite la chapelle;
-et alors devint la porte si grande qu'il semblait que ce fut la porte
-d'un palais._"
-
-He stops, corrects himself, wishes to explain himself better for his
-readers across the Channel, and says in English: "And at the Desertes of
-Arabye, he wente into a Chapelle where a Eremyte duelte. And whan he
-entred in to the Chapelle that was but a lytille and a low thing, and
-had but a lytill Dore and a low, than the Entree began to wexe so gret
-and so large, and so highe, as though it had ben of a gret Mynstre, or
-the Zate of a Paleys."[130] You perceive that he amplifies, and thinks
-himself bound to clinch and drive in three or four times in succession
-the same idea, in order to get it into an English brain; his thought is
-drawn out, dulled, spoiled in the process. Like every copy, the new
-literature is mediocre, and repeats what it imitates, with fewer merits
-and greater faults.
-
-Let us see, then, what our Norman baron gets translated for him; first,
-the chronicles of Geoffroy Gaimar and Robert Wace, which consist of the
-fabulous history of England continued up to their day, a dull-rhymed
-rhapsody, turned into English in a rhapsody no less dull. The first
-Englishman who attempts it is Layamon,[131] a monk of Ernely, still
-fettered in the old idiom, who sometimes happens to rhyme, sometimes
-fails, altogether barbarous and childish, unable to develop a continuous
-idea, babbling in little confused and incomplete phrases, after the
-fashion of the ancient Saxons; after him a monk, Robert of
-Gloucester,[132] and a canon, Robert of Brunne, both as insipid and
-clear as their French models, having become gallicized, and adopted the
-significant characteristics of the race, namely, the faculty and habit
-of easy narration, of seeing moving spectacles without deep emotion, of
-writing prosaic poetry, of discoursing and developing, of believing that
-phrases ending in the same sounds form real poetry. Our honest English
-versifiers, like their preceptors in Normandy and Ile-de-France,
-garnished with rhymes their dissertations and histories, and called them
-poems. At this epoch, in fact, on the Continent, the whole learning of
-the schools descends into the street; and Jean de Meung, in his poem of
-"La Rose," is the most tedious of doctors. So in England, Robert of
-Brunne transposes into verse the "Manuel des péchés" of Bishop
-Grostête; Adam Davie,[133] certain Scripture histories; Hampole[134]
-composes the "Pricke of Conscience." The titles alone make one yawn:
-what of the text?
-
-
-"Mankynde mad ys do Goddus wylle,
-And alle Hys byddyngus to fulfille;
-For of al Hys makyng more and les,
-Man most principal creature es.
-Al that He made for man hit was done,
-As ye schal here after sone."[135]
-
-
-There is a poem! You did not think so; call it a sermon, if you will
-give it its proper name. It goes on, well divided, well prolonged,
-flowing, but void of meaning; the literature which surrounds and
-resembles it bears witness of its origin by its loquacity and its
-clearness.
-
-It bears witness to it by other and more agreeable features. Here and
-there we find divergences more or less awkward into the domain of
-genius; for instance, a ballad full of quips against Richard, King of
-the Romans, who was taken at the battle of Lewes. Sometimes, charm is
-not lacking, nor sweetness either. No one has ever spoken so bright and
-so well to the ladies as the French of the Continent, and they have not
-quite forgotten this talent while settling in England. You perceive it
-readily in the manner in which they celebrate the Virgin. Nothing could
-be more different from the Saxon sentiment, which is altogether
-biblical, than the chivalric adoration of the sovereign Lady, the
-fascinating Virgin and Saint, who was the real deity of the Middle Ages.
-It breathes in this pleasing hymn:
-
-
-"Blessed beo thu, lavedi,
-Ful of hovene blisse;
-Swete flur of parais,
-Moder of milternisse....
-I-blessed beo thu, Lavedi,
-So fair and so briht;
-Al min hope is uppon the,
-Bi day and bi nicht....
-Bricht and scene quen of storre,
-So me liht and lere.
-In this false fikele world,
-So me led and steore."[136]
-
-
-There is but a short and easy step between this tender worship of the
-Virgin and the sentiments of the court of love. The English rhymesters
-take it; and when they wish to praise their earthly mistresses, they
-borrow, here as elsewhere, the ideas and the very form of French verse.
-One compares his lady to all kinds of precious stones and flowers;
-others sing truly amorous songs, at times sensual.
-
-
-"Bytuene Mershe and Aueril,
-When spray biginneth to springe.
-The lutel foul hath hire wyl
-On hyre lud to synge,
-Ich libbe in loue longinge
-For semlokest of alle thynge.
-He may me blysse bringe,
-Icham in hire baundoun.
-An hendy hap ich abbe yhent,
-Ichot from heuene it is me sent.
-From alle wymmen my love is lent,
-And lyht on Alisoun."[137]
-
-
-Another sings:
-
-
-"Suete lemmon, y preye the, of loue one speche,
-Whil y lyue in world so wyde other nulle y seche.
-With thy loue, my suete leof, mi bliss thou mihtes eche
-A suete cos of thy mouth mihte be my leche."[138]
-
-
-Is not this the lively and warm imagination of the south? they speak of
-springtime and of love, "the fine and lovely weather" like _trouvères_,
-even like _troubadours._ The dirty, smoke-grimed cottage, the black
-feudal castle, where all but the master lie higgledy-piggledy on the
-straw in the great stone hall, the cold rain, the muddy earth, make the
-return of the sun and the warm air delicious.
-
-
-"Sumer is i-cumen in,
-Lhude sing cuccu:
-Groweth sed, and bloweth med,
-And springeth the wde nu.
-Sing cuccu, cuccu.
-Awe bleteth after lomb,
-Llouth after calue cu,
-Bulluc sterteth, bucke verteth:
-Murie sing cuccu,
-Cuccu, cuccu.
-Wel singes thu cuccu;
-Ne swik thu nauer nu.
-Sing, cuccu nu,
-Sing, cuccu."[139]
-
-
-Here are glowing pictures, such as Guillaume de Lorris was writing at
-the same time, even richer and more lifelike, perhaps because the poet
-found here for inspiration that love of country life which in England is
-deep and national. Others, more imitative, attempt pleasantries like
-those of Rutebeuf and the fabliaux, frank quips,[140] and even
-satirical, loose waggeries. Their true aim and end is to hit out at the
-monks. In every French country or country which imitates France, the
-most manifest use of convents is to furnish material for sprightly and
-scandalous stories. One writes, for instance, of the kind of life the
-monks lead at the abbey of Cocagne:
-
-
-"There is a wel fair abbei,
-Of white monkes and of grei.
-Ther beth bowris and halles:
-Al of pasteiis beth the wallis,
-Of fleis, of fisse, and rich met,
-The likfullist that man may et.
-Fluren cakes beth the schingles alle.
-Of cherche, cloister, boure, and halle.
-The pinnes beth fat podinges
-Rich met to princes and kinges....
-Though paradis be miri and bright
-Cokaign is of fairir sight,...
-Another abbei is ther bi,
-Forsoth a gret fair nunnerie....
-When the someris dai is hote
-The young nunnes takith a bote...
-And doth ham forth in that river
-Both with ores and with stere....
-And each monk him takith on,
-And snellich berrith forth har prei
-To the mochil grei abbei,
-And techith the nunnes an oreisun,
-With iamblene up and down."
-
-
-This is the triumph of gluttony and feeding. Moreover many things could
-be mentioned in the Middle Ages which are now unmentionable. But it was
-the poems of chivalry, which represented to him the bright side of his
-own mode of life, that the baron preferred to have translated. He
-desired that his _trouvère_ should set before his eyes the magnificence
-which he displayed, and the luxury and enjoyments which he has
-introduced from France. Life at that time, without and even during war,
-was a great pageant, a brilliant and tumultuous kind of fête. When
-Henry II travelled, he took with him a great number of horsemen,
-foot-soldiers, baggage-wagons, tents, pack-horses, comedians, courtesans
-and their overseers, cooks, confectioners, posture-makers, dancers,
-barbers, go-betweens, hangers-on.[141] In the morning when they start,
-the assemblage begins to shout, sing, hustle each other, make racket and
-rout, "as if hell were let loose." William Longchamps, even in time of
-peace, would not travel without a thousand horses by way of escort. When
-Archbishop à Becket came to France, he entered the town with two
-hundred knights, a number of barons and nobles, and an army of servants,
-all richly armed and equipped, he himself being provided with
-four-and-twenty suits; two hundred and fifty children walked in front,
-singing national songs; then dogs, then carriages, then a dozen
-pack-horses, each ridden by an ape and a man; then equerries with
-shields and war-horses; then more equerries, falconers, a suit of
-domestics, knights, priests; lastly, the archbishop himself, with his
-private friends. Imagine these processions, and also these
-entertainments; for the Normans, after the Conquest, "borrowed from the
-Saxons the habit of excess in eating and drinking."[142] At the marriage
-of Richard Plantagenet, Earl of Cornwall, they provided thirty thousand
-dishes.[143] They also continued to be gallant, and punctiliously
-performed the great precept of the love courts; for in the Middle Ages
-the sense of love was no more idle than the others. Moreover,
-tournaments were plentiful; a sort of opera prepared for their own
-entertainment. So ran their life, full of adventure and adornment, in
-the open air and in the sunlight, with show of cavalcades and arms; they
-act a pageant, and act it with enjoyment. Thus the King of Scots, having
-come to London with a hundred knights, at the coronation of Edward I,
-they all dismounted, and made over their horses and superb caparisons to
-the people; as did also five English lords, imitating their example. In
-the midst of war they took their pleasure. Edward III, in one of his
-expeditions against the King of France, took with him thirty falconers,
-and made his campaign alternately hunting and fighting.[144] Another
-time, says Froissart, the knights who joined the army carried a plaster
-over one eye, having vowed not to remove it until they had performed an
-exploit worthy of their mistresses. Out of the very exuberancy of spirit
-they practised the art of poetry; out of the buoyancy of their
-imagination they made a sport of life. Edward III built at Windsor a
-hall and a round table; and at one of his tourneys in London, sixty
-ladies, seated on palfreys, led, as in a fairy tale, each her knight by
-a golden chain. Was not this the triumph of the gallant and frivolous
-French fashions? Edward's wife Philippa sat as a model to the artists
-for their Madonnas. She appeared on the field of battle; listened to
-Froissart, who provided her with moral-plays, love-stories, and "things
-fair to listen to." At once goddess, heroine, and scholar, and all this
-so agreeably, was she not a true queen of refined chivalry? Now, as also
-in France under Louis of Orleans and the Dukes of Burgundy, this most
-elegant and romanesque civilization came into full bloom, void of common
-sense, given up to passion, bent on pleasure, immoral and brilliant,
-but, like its neighbors of Italy and Provence, for lack of serious
-intention, it could not last.
-
-Of all these marvels the narrators make display in their stories. Here
-is a picture of the vessel which took the mother of King Richard into
-England:
-
-
-"Swlk on ne seygh they never non;
-All it was whyt of huel-bon,
-And every nayl with gold begrave:
-Off pure gold was the stave.
-Her mast was of yvory;
-Off samyte the sayl wytterly.
-Her ropes wer off tuely sylk,
-Al so whyt as ony mylk.
-That noble schyp was al withoute,
-With clothys of golde sprede aboute;
-And her loof and her wyndas,
-Off asure forsothe it was."[145]
-
-
-On such subjects they never run dry. When the King of Hungary wishes to
-console his afflicted daughter, he proposes to take her to the chase in
-the following style:
-
-
-"To-morrow ye shall in hunting fare:
-And ride, my daughter, in a chair;
-It shall be covered with velvet red,
-And cloths of fine gold all about your head,
-With damask white and azure blue,
-Well diapered with lilies new.
-Your pommels shall be ended with gold,
-Your chains enamelled many a fold,
-Your mantle of rich degree,
-Purple pall and ermine free.
-Jennets of Spain that ben so light,
-Trapped to the ground with velvet bright.
-Ye shall have harp, sautry, and song,
-And other mirths you among.
-Ye shall have Rumney and Malespine,
-Both hippocras and Vernage wine;
-Montrese and wine of Greek,
-Both Algrade and despice eke,
-Antioch and Bastarde,
-Pyment also and garnarde;
-Wine of Greek and Muscadel,
-Both clare, pyment, and Rochelle,
-The reed your stomach to defy,
-And pots of osey set you by.
-You shall have venison ybake,
-The best wild fowl that may be take;
-A leish of harehound with you to streek,
-And hart, and hind, and other like.
-Ye shall be set at such a tryst,
-That hart and hynd shall come to you fist,
-Your disease to drive you fro,
-To hear the bugles there yblow.
-Homeward thus shall ye ride,
-On hawking by the river's side,
-With gosshawk and with gentle falcon,
-With bugle-horn and merlion.
-When you come home your menie among,
-Ye shall have revel, dance, and song;
-Little children, great and small,
-Shall sing as does the nightingale.
-Then shall ye go to your evensong,
-With tenors and trebles among.
-Threescore of copes of damask bright,
-Full of pearls they shall be pight.
-Your censors shall be of gold,
-Indent with azure many a fold;
-Your quire nor organ song shall want,
-With contre-note and descant.
-The other half on organs playing,
-With young children full fain singing.
-Then shall ye go to your supper,
-And sit in tents in green arber,
-With cloth of arras pight to the ground,
-With sapphires set of diamond.
-A hundred knights, truly told,
-Shall play with bowls in alleys cold,
-Your disease to drive away;
-To see the fishes in pools play,
-To a drawbridge then shall ye,
-Th' one half of stone, th' other of tree;
-A barge shall meet you full right,
-With twenty-four oars full bright,
-With trumpets and with clarion,
-The fresh water to row up and down....
-Forty torches burning bright
-At your bridge to bring you light.
-Into your chamber they shall you bring,
-With much mirth and more liking.
-Your blankets shall be of fustian,
-Your sheets shall be of cloth of Rennes.
-Your head sheet shall be of pery pight,
-With diamonds set and rubies bright.
-When you are laid in bed so soft,
-A cage of gold shall hang aloft,
-With long paper fair burning,
-And cloves that be sweet smelling.
-Frankincense and olibanum,
-That when ye sleep the taste may come;
-And if ye no rest can take,
-All night minstrels for you shall wake."[146]
-
-
-Amid such fancies and splendors the poets delight and lose themselves,
-and the woof, like the embroideries of their canvas, bears the mark of
-this love of decoration. They weave it out of adventures, of
-extraordinary and surprising events. Now it is the life of King Horn,
-who, thrown into a boat when a lad, is wrecked upon the coast of
-England, and, becoming a knight, reconquers the kingdom of his father.
-Now it is the history of Sir Guy, who rescues enchanted knights, cuts
-down the giant Colbrand, challenges and kills the Sultan in his tent. It
-is not for me to recount these poems, which are not English, but only
-translations; still, here as in France, there are many of them; they
-fill the imagination of the young society, and they grow in
-exaggeration, until, falling to the lowest depth of insipidity and
-improbability, they are buried forever by Cervantes. What would people
-say of a society which had no literature but the opera with its
-unrealities? Yet it was a literature of this kind which formed the
-intellectual food of the Middle Ages. People then did not ask for truth,
-but entertainment, and that vehement and hollow, full of glare and
-startling events. They asked for impossible voyages, extravagant
-challenges, a racket of contests, a confusion of magnificence and
-entanglement of chances. For introspective history they had no liking,
-cared nothing for the adventures of the heart, devoted their attention
-to the outside. They remained children to the last, with eyes glued to a
-series of exaggerated and colored images, and, for lack of thinking, did
-not perceive that they had learnt nothing.
-
-What was there beneath this fanciful dream? Brutal and evil human
-passions, unchained at first by religious fury, then delivered up to
-their own devices, and, beneath a show of external courtesy, as vile as
-ever. Look at the popular king, Richard Cœur de Lion, and reckon up his
-butcheries and murders: "King Richard," says a poem, "is the best king
-ever mentioned in song."[147] I have no objection; but if he has the
-heart of a lion, he has also that brute's appetite. One day, under the
-walls of Acre, being convalescent, he had a great desire for some pork.
-There was no pork. They killed a young Saracen, fresh and tender, cooked
-and salted him, and the king ate him and found him very good; whereupon
-he desired to see the head of the pig. The cook brought it in trembling.
-The king falls a-laughing, and says the army has nothing to fear from
-famine, having provisions ready at hand. He takes the town, and
-presently Saladin's ambassadors come to sue for pardon for the
-prisoners. Richard has thirty of the most noble beheaded, and bids his
-cook boil the heads, and serve one to each ambassador, with a ticket
-bearing the name and family of the dead man. Meanwhile, in their
-presence, he eats his own with a relish, bids them tell Saladin how the
-Christians make war, and ask him if it is true that they fear him. Then
-he orders the sixty thousand prisoners to be led into the plain:
-
-
-"They were led into the place full even.
-There they heard angels of heaven;
-They said: 'Seigneures, tuez, tuez!
-Spares hem nought, and beheadeth these!'
-King Richard heard the angels' voice,
-And thanked God and the holy cross."
-
-
-Thereupon they behead them all. When he took a town, it was his wont to
-murder everyone, even children and women. Such was the devotion of the
-Middle Ages, not only in romances, as here, but in history. At the
-taking of Jerusalem the whole population, seventy thousand persons, were
-massacred.
-
-Thus even in chivalrous stories the fierce and unbridled instincts of
-the bloodthirsty brute break out. The authentic narratives show it.
-Henry II, irritated at a page, attempted to tear out his eyes.[148] John
-Lackland let twenty-three hostages die in prison of hunger. Edward II
-caused at one time twenty-eight nobles to be hanged and disemboweled,
-and was himself put to death by the insertion of a red-hot iron into his
-bowels. Look in Froissart for the debaucheries and murders in France as
-well as in England, of the Hundred Years' War, and then for the
-slaughters of the Wars of the Roses. In both countries feudal
-independence ended in civil war, and the Middle Age founders under its
-vices. Chivalrous courtesy, which cloaked the native ferocity,
-disappears like some hangings suddenly consumed by the breaking out of a
-fire; at that time in England they killed nobles in preference, and
-prisoners, too, even children, with insults, in cold blood. What, then,
-did man learn in this civilization and by this literature? How was he
-humanized? What precepts of justice, habits of reflection, store of true
-judgments, did this culture interpose between his desires and his
-actions, in order to moderate his passion? He dreamed, he imagined a
-sort of elegant ceremonial in order the better to address lords and
-ladies; he discovered the gallant code of little Jehan de Saintré. But
-where is the true education? Wherein has Froissart profited by all his
-vast experience? He was a fine specimen of a babbling child; what they
-called his poesy, the _poèsie neuve_, is only a refined gabble, a
-senile puerility. Some rhetoricians, like Christine de Pisan, try to
-round their periods after an ancient model; but all their literature
-amounts to nothing. No one can think. Sir John Maundeville, who
-travelled all over the world a hundred and fifty years after
-Villehardouin, is as contracted in his ideas as Villehardouin himself.
-Extraordinary legends and fables, every sort of credulity and ignorance,
-abound in his book. When he wishes to explain why Palestine has passed
-into the hands of various possessors instead of continuing under one
-government, he says that it is because God would not that it should
-continue longer in the hands of traitors and sinners, whether Christians
-or others. He has seen at Jerusalem, on the steps of the temple, the
-footmarks of the ass which our Lord rode on Palm Sunday. He describes
-the Ethiopians as a people who have only one foot, but so large that
-they can make use of it as a parasol. He instances one island "where be
-people as big as gyants, of 28 feet long, and have no clothing but
-beasts' skins"; then another island "where there are many evil and foul
-women, but have precious stones in their eyes, and have such force that
-if they behold any man with wrath, they slay him with beholding, as the
-basilisk doth." The good man relates; that is all: doubt and
-common-sense scarcely exist in the world he lives in. He has neither
-judgment nor reflection; he piles facts one on top of another, with no
-further connection; his book is simply a mirror which reproduces
-recollections of his eyes and ears. "And all those who will say a Pater
-and an Ave Maria in my behalf, I give them an interest and a share in
-all the holy pilgrimages I ever made in my life." That is his farewell,
-and accords with all the rest. Neither public morality nor public
-knowledge has gained anything from these three centuries of culture.
-This French culture, copied in vain throughout Europe, has but
-superficially adorned mankind, and the varnish with which it decked them
-is already tarnished everywhere or scales off. It was worse in England,
-where the thing was more superficial and the application worse than in
-France, where foreign hands laid it on, and where it could only half
-cover the Saxon crust, where that crust was worn away and rough. That is
-the reason why, during three centuries, throughout the whole first
-feudal age, the literature of the Normans in England, made up of
-imitations, translations, and clumsy copies, ends in nothing.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION VI.--Feudal Civilization
-
-
-Meantime, what has become of the conquered people? Has the old stock, on
-which the brilliant Continental flowers were grafted, engendered no
-literary shoot of its own? Did it continue barren during all this time
-under the Norman axe, which stripped it of all its buds? It grew very
-feebly, but it grew nevertheless. The subjugated race is not a
-dismembered nation, dislocated, uprooted, sluggish, like the populations
-of the Continent, which, after the long Roman oppression, were given up
-to the unrestrained invasion of barbarians; it increased, remained fixed
-in its own soil, full of sap: its members were not displaced; it was
-simply lopped in order to receive on its crown a cluster of foreign
-branches. True, it had suffered, but at last the wound closed, the saps
-mingled. Even the hard, stiff ligatures with which the Conqueror bound
-it, henceforth contributed to its fixity and vigor. The land was mapped
-out; every title verified, defined in writing;[149] every right or
-tenure valued; every man registered as to his locality, and also his
-condition, duties, descent, and resources, so that the whole nation was
-enveloped in a network of which not a mesh would break. Its future
-development had to be within these limits. Its constitution was settled,
-and in this positive and stringent enclosure men were compelled to
-unfold themselves and to act. Solidarity and strife; these were the two
-effects of the great and orderly establishment which shaped and held
-together, on one side the aristocracy of the conquerors, on the other
-the conquered people; even as in Rome the systematic fusing of conquered
-peoples into the plebs, and the constrained organization of the
-patricians in contrast with the plebs, enrolled the private individuals
-in two orders, whose opposition and union formed the state. Thus, here
-as in Rome, the national character was moulded and completed by the
-habit of corporate action, the respect for written law, political and
-practical aptitude, the development of combative and patient energy. It
-was the Domesday Book which, binding this young society in a rigid
-discipline, made of the Saxon the Englishman of our own day.
-
-Gradually and slowly, amidst the gloomy complainings of the chroniclers,
-we find the new man fashioned by action, like a child who cries because
-steel stays, though they improve his figure, give him pain. However
-reduced and downtrodden the Saxons were, they did not all sink into the
-populace. Some,[150] almost in every county, remained lords of their
-estates, on the condition of doing homage for them to the king. Many
-became vassals of Norman barons, and remained proprietors on this
-condition. A greater number became socagers, that is, free proprietors,
-burdened with a tax, but possessed of the right of alienating their
-property; and the Saxon villeins found patrons in these, as the plebs
-formerly did in the Italian nobles who were transplanted to Rome. The
-patronage of the Saxons who preserved their integral position was
-effective, for they were not isolated: marriages from the first united
-the two races, as it had the patricians and plebeians of Rome;[151] a
-Norman brother-in-law to a Saxon, defended himself in defending him. In
-those turbulent times, and in an armed community, relatives and allies
-were obliged to stand shoulder to shoulder in order to keep their
-ground. After all, it was necessary for the new-comers to consider their
-subjects, for these subjects had the heart and courage of men: the
-Saxons, like the plebeians at Rome, remembered their native rank and
-their original independence. We can recognize it in the complaints and
-indignation of the chroniclers, in the growling and menaces of popular
-revolt, in the long bitterness with which they continually recalled
-their ancient liberty, in the favor with which they cherished the daring
-and rebellion of outlaws. There were Saxon families at the end of the
-twelfth century who had bound themselves by a perpetual vow to wear long
-beards from father to son in memory of the national custom and of the
-old country. Such men, even though fallen to the condition of socagers,
-even sunk into villeins, had a stiffer neck than the wretched colonists
-of the Continent, trodden down and moulded by four centuries of Roman
-taxation. By their feelings as well as by their condition, they were the
-broken remains, but also the living elements, of a free people. They did
-not suffer the extremities of oppression. They constituted the body of
-the nation, the laborious, courageous body which supplied its energy.
-The great barons felt that they must rely upon them in their resistance
-to the king. Very soon, in stipulating for themselves, they stipulated
-for all freemen,[152] even for merchants and villeins. Thereafter "No
-merchant shall be dispossessed of his merchandise, no villein of the
-instruments of his labor; no freeman, merchant, or villein shall be
-taxed unreasonably for a small crime; no freeman shall be arrested, or
-imprisoned, or disseized of his land, or outlawed, or destroyed in any
-manner, but by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the
-land." Thus protected they raise themselves and act. In each county
-there was a court, where all freeholders, small or great, came to
-deliberate about the municipal affairs, administer justice, and appoint
-tax-assessors. The red-bearded Saxon, with his clear complexion and
-great white teeth, came and sat by the Norman's side; these were
-franklins like the one whom Chaucer describes:
-
-
-"A Frankelein was in this compagnie;
-White was his herd, as is the dayesie.
-Of his complexion he was sanguin,
-Wel loved he by the morwe a sop in win.
-To liven in delit was ever his wone,
-For he was Epicures owen sone,
-That held opinion that plein delit
-Was veraily felicite parfite.
-An housholder, and that a grete was he,
-Seint Julian he was in his contree.
-His brede, his ale, was alway after on;
-A better envyned man was no wher non.
-Withouten bake mete never his hous,
-Of fish and flesh, and that so plenteous,
-It snewed in his hous of mete and drinke,
-Of all deintees that men coud of thinke;
-After the sondry sesons of the yere,
-So changed he his mete and his soupere.
-Ful many a fat partrich had he in mewe,
-And many a breme, and many a luce in stewe.
-Wo was his coke but if his sauce were
-Poinant and sharpe, and redy all his gere.
-His table, dormant in his halle alway
-Stode redy covered alle the longe day.
-At sessions ther was he lord and sire.
-Ful often time he was knight of the shire.
-An anelace and a gipciere all of silk,
-Heng at his girdle, white as morwe milk.
-A shereve hadde he ben, and a contour.
-Was no wher swiche a worthy vavasour."[153]
-
-
-With him occasionally in the assembly, oftenest among the audience, were
-the yeomen, farmers, foresters, tradesmen, his fellow-countrymen,
-muscular and resolute men, not slow in the defence of their property,
-and in supporting him who would take their cause in hand, with voice,
-fist and weapons. Is it likely that the discontent of such men to whom
-the following description applies could be overlooked?
-
-
-"The Miller was a stout carl for the nones,
-Ful bigge he was of braun and eke of bones;
-That proved wel, for over all ther he came,
-At wrastling he wold bere away the ram.
-He was short shuldered brode, a thikke gnarre,
-Ther n'as no dore, that he n'olde heve of barre,
-Or breke it at a renning with his hede.
-His berd as any sowe or fox was rede,
-And therto brode, as though it were a spade.
-Upon the cop right of his nose he hade
-A wert, and thereon stode a tufte of heres,
-Rede as the bristles of a sowes eres:
-His nose-thirles blacke were and wide.
-A swerd and bokeler bare he by his side.
-His mouth as wide was as a forneis,
-He was a jangler and a goliardeis,
-And that was most of sinne, and harlotries.
-Wel coude he stelen corne and tollen thries.
-And yet he had a thomb of gold parde.
-A white cote and a blew hode wered he.
-A baggepipe wel coude he blowe and soune,
-And therwithall he brought us out of toune."[154]
-
-
-Those are the athletic forms, the square build, the jolly John Bulls of
-the period, such as we yet find them, nourished by meat and porter,
-sustained by bodily exercise and boxing. These are the men we must keep
-before us, if we will understand how political liberty has been
-established in this country. Gradually they find the simple knights,
-their colleagues in the county court, too poor to be present with the
-great barons at the royal assemblies, coalescing with them. They become
-united by community of interests, by similarity of manners, by nearness
-of condition; they take them for their representatives, they elect
-them.[155] They have now entered upon public life, and the advent of a
-new reinforcement gives them a perpetual standing in their changed
-condition. The towns laid waste by the Conquest are gradually repeopled.
-They obtain or exact charters; the townsmen buy themselves out of the
-arbitrary taxes that were imposed on them; they get possession of the
-land on which their houses are built; they unite themselves under mayors
-and aldermen. Each town now, within the meshes of the great feudal net,
-is a power. The Earl of Leicester, rebelling against the king, summons
-two burgesses from each town to Parliament,[156] to authorize and
-support him. From that time the conquered race, both in country and
-town, rose to political life. If they were taxed, it was with their
-consent; they paid nothing which they did not agree to. Early in the
-fourteenth century their united deputies composed the House of Commons;
-and already, at the close of the preceding century, the Archbishop of
-Canterbury, speaking in the name of the king, said to the pope, "It is
-the custom of the kingdom of England, that in all affairs relating to
-the state of this kingdom, the advice of all who are interested in them
-should be taken."
-
-
-
-
-SECTION VII.--Persistence of Saxon Ideas
-
-
-If they have acquired liberties, it is because they have obtained them
-by force; circumstances have assisted, but character has done more. The
-protection of the great barons and the alliance of the plain knights
-have strengthened them; but it was by their native roughness and energy
-that they maintained their independence. Look at the contrast they offer
-at this moment to their neighbors. What occupies the mind of the French
-people? The fabliaux, the naughty tricks of Reynard, the art of
-deceiving Master Isengrin, of stealing his wife, of cheating him out of
-his dinner, of getting him beaten by a third party without danger to
-one's self; in short, the triumph of poverty and cleverness over power
-united to folly. The popular hero is already the artful plebeian,
-chaffing, light-hearted, who, later on, will ripen into Panurge and
-Figaro, not apt to withstand you to your face, too sharp to care for
-great victories and habits of strife, inclined by the nimbleness of his
-wit to dodge round an obstacle; if he but touch a man with the tip of
-his finger, that man tumbles into the trap. But here we have other
-customs: it is Robin Hood, a valiant outlaw, living free and bold in the
-green forest, waging frank and open war against sheriff and law.[157] If
-ever a man was popular in his country, it was he. "It is he," says an
-old historian, "whom the common people love so dearly to celebrate in
-games and comedies, and whose history, sung by fiddlers, interests them
-more than any other." In the sixteenth century he still had his
-commemoration day, observed by all the people in the small towns and in
-the country. Bishop Latimer, making his pastoral tour, announced one day
-that he would preach in a certain place. On the morrow, proceeding to
-the church, he found the doors closed, and waited more than an hour
-before they brought him the key. At last a man came and said to him,
-"Syr, thys ys a busye day with us; we cannot heare you: it is Robyn
-Hoodes Daye. The parishe are gone abrode to gather for Robyn Hoode.... I
-was fayne there to geve place to Robyn Hoode."[158] The bishop was
-obliged to divest himself of his ecclesiastical garments and proceed on
-his journey, leaving his place to archers dressed in green, who played
-on a rustic stage the parts of Robin Hood, Little John, and their band.
-In fact, he was the national hero. Saxon in the first place and waging
-war against the men of law, against bishops and archbishops, whose sway
-was so heavy; generous, moreover, giving to a poor ruined knight
-clothes, horse, and money to buy back the land he had pledged to a
-rapacious abbot; compassionate too, and kind to the poor, enjoining his
-men not to injure yeomen and laborers; but above all, rash, bold, proud,
-who would go and draw his bow before the sheriff's eyes and to his face;
-ready with blows, whether to give or take. He slew fourteen out of
-fifteen foresters who came to arrest him; he slays the sheriff, the
-judge, the town gatekeeper; he is ready to slay as many more as like to
-come; and all this joyously, jovially, like an honest fellow who eats
-well, has a hard skin, lives in the open air, and revels in animal life.
-
-
-"In somer when the shawes be sheyne,
-And leves be large and long,
-Hit is fulle mery in feyre foreste
-To here the foulys song."
-
-
-That is how many ballads begin; and the fine weather, which makes the
-stags and oxen butt with their horns, inspires them with the thought of
-exchanging blows with sword or stick. Robin dreamed that two yeomen were
-thrashing him, and he wants to go and find them, angrily repelling
-Little John, who offers to go first:
-
-
-"Ah John, by me thou settest noe store,
-And that I farley finde:
-How offt send I my men before,
-And tarry myselfe behinde?
-
-"It is no cunnin a knave to ken,
-An a man but heare him speake;
-An it were not for bursting of my bowe,
-John, I thy head wold breake."[159]...
-
-
-He goes alone, and meets the robust yeoman, Guy of Gisborne,
-
-
-"He that had neyther beene kythe nor kin,
-Might have seen a full fayre fight,
-To see how together these yeomen went
-With blades both browne and bright,
-
-"To see how these yeomen together they fought
-Two howres of a summer's day;
-Yett neither Robin Hood nor sir Guy
-Them fettled to flye away."[160]
-
-
-You see Guy the yeoman is as brave as Robin Hood; he came to seek him in
-the wood, and drew the bow almost as well as he. This old popular poetry
-is not the praise of a single bandit, but of an entire class, the
-yeomanry. "God haffe mersy on Robin Hodys solle, and saffe all god
-yemanry." That is how many ballads end. The brave yeoman, inured to
-blows, a good archer, clever at sword and stick, is the favorite. There
-were also, redoubtable, armed townsfolk, accustomed to make use of their
-arms. Here they are at work:
-
-
-"'O that were a shame,' said jolly Robin,
-'We being three, and thou but one,'
-The pinder[161] leapt back then thirty good foot,
-'Twas thirty good foot and one.
-
-"He leaned his back fast unto a thorn,
-And his foot against a stone,
-And there he fought a long summer's day,
-A summer's day so long.
-
-"Till that their swords on their broad bucklers
-Were broke fast into their hands."[162]
-
-
-Often even Robin does not get the advantage:
-
-
-"'I pass not for length,' bold Arthur reply'd,
-'My staff is of oke so free;
-Eight foot and a half, it will knock down a calf,
-And I hope it will knock down thee.'
-
-"Then Robin could no longer forbear,
-He gave him such a knock,
-Quickly and soon the blood came down
-Before it was ten a clock.
-
-"Then Arthur he soon recovered himself,
-And gave him such a knock on the crown,
-That from every side of bold Robin Hood's head
-The blood came trickling down.
-
-"Then Robin raged like a wild boar,
-As soon as he saw his own blood:
-Then Bland was in hast, he laid on so fast,
-As though he had been cleaving of wood.
-
-"And about and about and about they went,
-Like two wild bores in a chase,
-Striving to aim each other to maim,
-Leg, arm, or any other place.
-
-"And knock for knock they lustily dealt,
-Which held for two hours and more,
-Till all the wood rang at every bang,
-They ply'd their work so sore.
-
-"Hold thy hand, hold thy hand,' said Robin Hood,
-'And let thy quarrel fall;
-For here we may thrash our bones all to mesh,
-And get no coyn at all.
-
-"And in the forrest of merry Sherwood,
-Hereafter thou shalt be free.'
-'God a mercy for nought, my freedom I bought,
-I may thank my staff, and not thee.'"[163]...
-
-
-"Who are you, then?" says Robin:
-
-
-"'I am a tanner,' bold Arthur reply'd,
-'In Nottingham long I have wrought;
-And if thou'lt come there, I vow and swear,
-I will tan thy hide for nought.'
-
-"'God a mercy, good fellow,' said jolly Robin,
-'Since thou art so kind and free;
-And if thou wilt tan my hide for nought,
-I will do as much for thee.'"[164]
-
-
-With these generous offers, they embrace; a free exchange of honest
-blows always prepares the way for friendship. It was so Robin Hood tried
-Little John, whom he loved all his life after. Little John was seven
-feet high, and being on a bridge, would not give way. Honest Robin would
-not use his bow against him, but went and cut a stick seven feet long;
-and they agreed amicably to fight on the bridge until one should fall
-into the water. They fall to so merrily that "their bones ring." In the
-end Robin falls, and he feels only the more respect for Little John.
-Another time, having a sword with him, he was thrashed by a tinker who
-had only a stick. Full of admiration, he gives him a hundred pounds.
-Again he was thrashed by a potter, who refused him toll; then by a
-shepherd. They fight to amuse themselves. Even nowadays boxers give each
-other a friendly grip before setting to; they knock one another about in
-this country honorably, without malice, fury, or shame. Broken teeth,
-black eyes, smashed ribs, do not call for murderous vengeance: it would
-seem that the bones are more solid and the nerves less sensitive in
-England than elsewhere. Blows once exchanged, they take each other by
-the hand, and dance together on the green grass:
-
-
-"Then Robin took them both by the hands,
-And danc'd round about the oke tree.
-'For three merry men, and three merry men,
-And three merry men we be.'"
-
-
-Moreover, these people, in each parish, practised the bow every Sunday,
-and were the best archers in the world; from the close of the fourteenth
-century the general emancipation of the villeins multiplied their number
-greatly, and you can now understand how, amidst all the operations and
-changes of the great central powers, the liberty of the subject
-survived. After all, the only permanent and unalterable guarantee, in
-every country and under every constitution, is this unspoken declaration
-in the heart of the mass of the people, which is well understood on all
-sides: "If any man touches my property, enters my house, obstructs or
-molests me, let him beware. I have patience, but I have also strong
-arms, good comrades, a good blade, and, on occasion, a firm resolve,
-happen what may, to plunge my blade up to its hilt in his throat."
-
-
-
-
-SECTION VIII.--The English Constitution
-
-
-Thus thought Sir John Fortescue, Chancellor of England under Henry VI,
-exiled in France during the Wars of the Roses, one of the oldest
-prose-writers, and the first who weighed and explained the constitution
-of his country.[165] He says:
-
-
-"It is cowardise and lack of hartes and corage that kepeth the Frenchmen
-from rysyng, and not povertye;[166] which corage no Frenche man hath
-like to the English man. It hath ben often seen in Englond that iij or
-iv thefes, for povertie, hath sett upon vij or viij true men, and robbyd
-them al. But it hath not ben seen in Fraunce, that vij or viij thefes
-have ben hardy to robbe iij or iv true men. Wherfor it is right seld
-that Frenchmen be hangyd for robberye, for that they have no hertys to
-do so terryble an acte. There be therfor mo men hangyd in Englond, in a
-yere, for robberye and manslaughter, than ther be hangid in Fraunce for
-such cause of crime in vij yers."[167]
-
-
-This throws a startling and terrible light on the violent condition of
-this armed community, where sudden attacks are an every-day matter, and
-everyone, rich and poor, lives with his hand on his sword. There were
-great bands of malefactors under Edward I, who infested the country, and
-fought with those who came to seize them. The inhabitants of the towns
-were obliged to gather together with those of the neighboring towns,
-with hue and cry, to pursue and capture them. Under Edward III there
-were barons who rode about with armed escorts and archers, seizing the
-manors, carrying off ladies and girls of high degree, mutilating,
-killing, extorting ransoms from people in their own houses, as if they
-were in an enemy's land, and sometimes coming before the judges at the
-sessions in such guise and in so great force that the judges were afraid
-and dared not administer justice.[168] Read the letters of the Paston
-family, under Henry VI and Edward IV, and you will see how private war
-was at every door, how it was necessary for a man to provide himself
-with men and arms, to be on the alert for defence of his property, to be
-self-reliant, to depend on his own strength and courage. It is this
-excess of vigor and readiness to fight which, after their victories in
-France, set them against one another in England, in the butcheries of
-the Wars of the Roses. The strangers who saw them were astonished at
-their bodily strength and courage, at the great pieces of beef "which
-feed their muscles, at their military habits, their fierce obstinacy, as
-of savage beasts."[169] They are like their bulldogs, an untamable race,
-who in their mad courage "cast themselves with shut eyes into the den of
-a Russian bear, and get their head broken like a rotten apple." This
-strange condition of a militant community, so full of danger, and
-requiring so much effort, does not make them afraid. King Edward having
-given orders to send disturbers of the peace to prison without legal
-proceedings, and not to liberate them, on bail or otherwise, the Commons
-declared the order "horribly vexatious"; resist it, refuse to be too
-much protected. Less peace, but more independence. They maintain the
-guarantees of the subject at the expense of public security, and prefer
-turbulent liberty to arbitrary order. Better suffer marauders whom they
-could fight, than magistrates under whom they would have to bend.
-
-This proud and persistent notion gives rise to, and fashions Fortescue's
-whole work:
-
-
-"Ther be two kynds of kyngdomys, of the which that one ys a lordship
-callid in Latyne Dominium regale, and that other is callid Dominium
-politicum et regale."
-
-
-The first is established in France, and the second in England.
-
-
-"And they dyversen in that the first may rule his people by such lawys
-as he makyth hymself, and therefor, he may set upon them talys, and
-other impositions, such as he wyl hymself, without their assent. The
-secund may not rule hys people by other laws than such as they assenten
-unto; and therfor he may set upon them non impositions without their own
-assent."[170]
-
-
-In a state like this, the will of the people is the prime element of
-life. Sir John Fortescue says further:
-
-
-"A king of England cannot at his pleasure make any alterations in the
-laws of the land, for the nature of his government is not only regal,
-but political."
-
-"In the body politic, the first thing which lives and moves is the
-intention of the people, having in it the blood, that is, the prudential
-care and provision for the public good, which it transmits and
-communicates to the head, as to the principal part, and to all the rest
-of the members of the said body politic, whereby it subsists and is
-invigorated. The law under which the people is incorporated may be
-compared to the nerves or sinews of the body natural.... And as the
-bones and all the other members of the body preserve their functions and
-discharge their several offices by the nerves, so do the members of the
-community by the law. And as the head of the body natural cannot change
-its nerves or sinews, cannot deny to the several parts their proper
-energy, their due proportion and aliment of blood, neither can a king
-who is the head of the body politic change the laws thereof, nor take
-from the people what is theirs by right, against their consents.... For
-he is appointed to protect his subjects in their lives, properties, and
-laws, for this very end and purpose he has the delegation of power from
-the people."
-
-
-Here we have all the ideas of Locke in the fifteenth century, so
-powerful is practice to suggest theory! so quickly does man discover, in
-the enjoyment of liberty, the nature of liberty! Fortescue goes further;
-he contrasts, step by step, the Roman law, that inheritance of all Latin
-peoples, with the English law, that heritage of all Teutonic peoples:
-one the work of absolute princes, and tending altogether to the
-sacrifice of the individual; the other the work of the common will,
-tending altogether to protect the person. He contrasts the maxims of the
-imperial jurisconsults, who accord "force of law to all which is
-determined by the prince," with the statutes of England, which "are not
-enacted by the sole will of the prince,... but with the concurrent
-consent of the whole kingdom, by their representatives in Parliament,...
-more than three hundred select persons." He contrasts the arbitrary
-nomination of imperial officers with the election of the sheriff, and
-says:
-
-
-"There is in every county a certain officer, called the king's sheriff,
-who, amongst other duties of his office, executes within his county all
-mandates and judgments of the king's courts of justice: he is an annual
-officer; and it is not lawful for him, after the expiration of his year,
-to continue to act in his said office, neither shall he be taken in
-again to execute the said office within two years thence next ensuing.
-The manner of his election is thus: Every year, on the morrow of
-All-Souls, there meet in the King's Court of Exchequer all the king's
-counsellors, as well lords spiritual and temporal, as all other the
-king's justices, all the barons of the Exchequer, the Master of the
-Rolls, and certain other officers, when all of them, by common consent,
-nominate three of every county knights or esquires, persons of
-distinction, and such as they esteem fittest qualified to bear the
-office of sheriff of that county for the year ensuing. The king only
-makes choice of one out of the three so nominated and returned, who, in
-virtue of the king's letters patent, is constituted High Sheriff of that
-county."
-
-
-He contrasts the Roman procedure, which is satisfied with two witnesses
-to condemn a man, with the jury, the three permitted challenges, the
-admirable guarantees of justice with which the uprightness, number,
-repute, and condition of the juries surround the sentence. About the
-juries he says:
-
-
-"Twelve good and true men being sworn, as in the manner above related,
-legally qualified, that is, having, over and besides their movables,
-possessions in land sufficient, as was said, wherewith to maintain their
-rank and station; neither inspected by, nor at variance with either of
-the parties; all of the neighborhood; there shall be read to them, in
-English, by the Court, the record and nature of the plea."[171]
-
-
-Thus protected, the English commons cannot be other than flourishing.
-Consider, on the other hand, he says to the young prince whom he is
-instructing, the condition of the commons in France. By their taxes, tax
-on salt, on wine, billeting of soldiers, they are reduced to great
-misery. You have seen them on your travels....
-
-
-"The same Commons be so impoverishid and distroyyd, that they may unneth
-lyve. Thay drink water, thay eate apples, with bred right brown made of
-rye. They eate no fleshe, but if it be selden, a litill larde, or of the
-entrails or heds of bests sclayne for the nobles and merchants of the
-land. They weryn no wollyn, but if it be a pore cote under their
-uttermost garment, made of grete convass, and cal it a frok. Their hosyn
-be of like canvas, and passen not their knee, wherfor they be gartrid
-and their thyghs bare. Their wifs and children gone bare fote. ... For
-sum of them, that was wonte to pay to his lord for his tenement which he
-hyrith by the year a scute payth now to the kyng, over that scute, fyve
-skuts. Wher thrugh they be artyd by necessite so to watch, labour and
-grub in the ground for their sustenance, that their nature is much
-wasted, and the kynd of them brought to nowght. Thay gone crokyd and ar
-feeble, not able to fight nor to defend the realm; nor they have wepon,
-nor monye to buy them wepon withal.... This is the frute first of hyre
-Jus regale.... But blessed be God, this land ys rulid under a better
-lawe, and therfor the people thereof be not in such penurye, nor therby
-hurt in their persons, but they be wealthie and have all things
-necessarie to the sustenance of nature. Wherefore they be myghty and
-able to resyste the adversaries of the realms that do or will do them
-wrong. Loo, this is the fruit of Jus politicum et regale, under which we
-lyve."[172] "Everye inhabiter of the realme of England useth and
-enjoyeth at his pleasure all the fruites that his land or cattel
-beareth, with al the profits and commodities which by his owne travayle,
-or by the labour of others, hae gaineth; not hindered by the iniurie or
-wrong deteinement of anye man, but that hee shall bee allowed a
-reasonable recompence.[173]... Hereby it commeth to passe that the men
-of that lande are riche, havying aboundaunce of golde and silver, and
-other thinges necessarie for the maintenaunce of man's life. They drinke
-no water, unless it be so, that some for devotion, and uppon a zeale of
-penaunce, doe abstaine from other drinks. They eate plentifully of all
-kindes of fleshe and fishe. They weare fine woolen cloth in all their
-apparel; they have also aboundaunce of bed-coveringes in their houses,
-and of all other woolen stuffe. They have greate store of all
-hustlementes and implementes of householde, they are plentifully
-furnished with al instruments of husbandry, and all other things that
-are requisite to the accomplishment of a quiet and wealthy lyfe,
-according to their estates and degrees. Neither are they sued in the
-lawe, but onely before ordinary iudges, where by the lawes of the lande
-they are iustly intreated. Neither are they arrested or impleaded for
-their moveables or possessions, or arraigned of any offence, bee it
-never so great and outragious, but after the lawes of the land, and
-before the iudges aforesaid."[174]
-
-
-All this arises from the constitution of the country and the
-distribution of the land. Whilst in other countries we find only a
-population of paupers, with here and there a few lords, England is
-covered and filled with owners of lands and fields; so that "therein so
-small a thorpe cannot bee founde, wherein dwelleth not a knight, an
-esquire, or suche a housholder as is there commonly called a franklayne,
-enryched with greate possessions. And also other freeholders, and many
-yeomen able for their livelodes to make a jurye in fourme
-afore-mentioned. For there bee in that lande divers yeomen, which are
-able to dispend by the yeare above a hundred poundes."[175] Harrison
-says:[176]
-
-
-"This sort of people, have more estimation than labourers and the common
-sort of artificers, and these commonlie live wealthilie, keepe good
-houses, and travell to get riches. They are for the most part farmers to
-gentlemen," and keep servants of their own. "These were they that in
-times past made all France afraid. And albeit they be not called master,
-as gentlemen are, or sir, as to knights apperteineth, but onelie John
-and Thomas, etc., yet have they beene found to have done verie good
-service; and the kings of England, in foughten battels, were wont to
-remaine among them (who were their footmen) as the French kings did
-among their horssemen: the prince thereby showing where his chiefe
-strength did consist."
-
-
-Such men, says Fortescue, might form a legal jury, and vote, resist, be
-associated, do everything wherein a free government consists; for they
-were numerous in every district; they were not down-trodden like the
-timid peasants of France; they had their honor and that of their family
-to maintain; "they be well provided with arms; they remember that they
-have won battles in France."[177] Such is the class, still obscure, but
-more rich and powerful every century, which, founded by the down-trodden
-Saxon aristocracy, and sustained by the surviving Saxon character,
-ended, under the lead of the inferior Norman nobility and under the
-patronage of the superior Norman nobility, in establishing and settling
-a free constitution, and a nation worthy of liberty.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION IX.--Piers Plowman and Wyclif
-
-
-When, as here, men are endowed with a serious character, have a resolute
-spirit, and possess independent habits, they deal with their conscience
-as with their daily business, and end by laying hands on church as well
-as state. Already for a long time the exactions of the Roman See had
-provoked the resistance of the people,[178] and the higher clergy became
-unpopular. Men complained that the best livings were given by the pope
-to non-resident strangers; that some Italian, unknown in England,
-possessed fifty or sixty benefices in England; that English money poured
-into Rome; and that the clergy, being judged only by clergy, gave
-themselves up to their vices, and abused their state of immunity. In the
-first years of Henry III's reign there were nearly a hundred murders
-committed by priests then alive. At the beginning of the fourteenth
-century the ecclesiastical revenue was twelve times greater than the
-civil; about half the soil was in the hands of the clergy. At the end of
-the century the commons declared that the taxes paid to the church were
-five times greater than the taxes paid to the crown; and some years
-afterwards,[179] considering that the wealth of the clergy only served
-to keep them in idleness and luxury, they proposed to confiscate it for
-the public benefit. Already the idea of the Reformation had forced
-itself upon them. They remembered how in the ballads Robin Hood ordered
-his folk to spare the yeomen, laborers, even knights, if they are good
-fellows, but never to let abbots or bishops escape. The prelates were
-grievously oppressing the people by means of their privileges,
-ecclesiastical courts, and tithes; when suddenly, amid the pleasant
-banter or the monotonous babble of the Norman versifiers, we hear the
-indignant voice of a Saxon, a man of the people and a victim of
-oppression, thundering against them.
-
-It is the vision of Piers Plowman, written, it is supposed, by a secular
-priest of Oxford.[180] Doubtless the traces of French taste are
-perceptible. It could not be otherwise; the people from below can never
-quite prevent themselves from imitating the people above, and the most
-unshackled popular poets, Burns and Béranger, too often preserve an
-academic style. So here a fashionable machinery, the allegory of the
-Roman de la Rose, is pressed into service. We have Do-well,
-Covetousness, Avarice, Simony, Conscience, and a whole world of talking
-abstractions. But, in spite of these vain foreign phantoms, the body of
-the poem is national, and true to life. The old language reappears in
-part; the old metre altogether; no morer rhymes, but barbarous
-alliterations; no more jesting, but a harsh gravity, a sustained
-invective, a grand and sombre imagination, heavy Latin texts, hammered
-down as by a Protestant hand. Piers Plowman went to sleep on the Malvern
-hills, and there had a wonderful dream:
-
-
-"Thanne gan I meten--a merveillous swevene,
-That I was in a wildernesse--wiste I nevere where;
-And as I biheeld into the eest,--an heigh to the sonne,
-I seigh a tour on a toft,--trieliche y-maked,
-A deep dale bynethe--a dongeon thereinne
-With depe diches and derke--and dredfulle of sighte.
-A fair feeld ful of folk--fond I ther bitwene,
-Of alle manere of men,--the meene and the riche,
-Werchynge and wandrynge--as the world asketh.
-Some putten hem to the plough,--pleiden ful selde,
-In settynge and sowynge--swonken ful harde,
-And wonnen that wastours--with glotonye dystruyeth."[181]
-
-
-A gloomy picture of the world, like the frightful dreams which occur so
-often in Albert Durer and Luther. The first reformers were persuaded
-that the earth was given over to evil; that the devil had on it his
-empire and his officers; that Antichrist, seated on the throne of Rome,
-displayed ecclesiastical pomps to seduce souls and cast them into the
-fire of hell. So here Anti-christ, with raised banner, enters a convent;
-bells are rung; monks in solemn procession go to meet him, and receive
-with congratulations their lord and father.[182] With seven great
-giants, the seven deadly sins, he besieges Conscience; and the assault
-is led by Idleness, who brings with her an army of more than a thousand
-prelates: for vices reign, more hateful from being in holy places, and
-employed in the church of God in the devil's service.
-
-
-"Ac now is Religion a rydere--a romere aboute,
-A ledere of love-dayes--and a lond-buggere,
-A prikere on a palfrey--fro manere to manere....
-And but if his knave knele--that shal his coppe brynge,
-He loureth on hym, and asketh hym--who taughte hym curteisie."[183]
-
-
-But this sacrilegious show has its day, and God puts His hand on men in
-order to warn them. By order of Conscience, Nature sends forth a host of
-plagues and diseases from the planets:
-
-
-"Kynde Conscience tho herde,--and cam out of the planetes,
-And sente forth his forreyours--feveres and fluxes,
-Coughes and cardiaclescrampes and tooth-aches,
-Reumes and radegundes,--and roynous scabbes,
-Biles and bocches,--and brennynge agues,
-Frenesies and foule yveles,--forageres of kynde....
-There was 'Harrow! and Help!--Here cometh Kynde!
-With Deeth that is dredful--to undo us alle!'
-The lord that lyved after lust--tho aloud cryde....
-Deeth cam dryvynge after,--and al to duste passhed
-Kynges and knyghtes,--kaysers and popes,...
-Manye a lovely lady--and lemmans of knyghtes,
-Swowned and swelted for sorwe of hise dyntes."[184]
-
-
-Here is a crowd of miseries, like those which Milton has described in
-his vision of human life; tragic pictures and emotions, such as the
-reformers delight to dwell upon. There is a like speech delivered by
-John Knox, before the fair ladies of Mary Stuart, which tears the veil
-from the human corpse just as coarsely, in order to exhibit its shame.
-The conception of the world, proper to the people of the north, all sad
-and moral, shows itself already. They are never comfortable in their
-country; they have to strive continually against cold or rain. They
-cannot live there carelessly, lying under a lovely sky, in a sultry and
-clear atmosphere, their eyes filled with the noble beauty and happy
-serenity of the land. They must work to live; be attentive, exact, keep
-their houses wind and water tight, trudge doggedly through the mud
-behind their plough, light their lamps in their shops during the day.
-Their climate imposes endless inconvenience, and exacts endless
-endurance. Hence arise melancholy and the idea of duty. Man naturally
-thinks of life as of a battle, oftener of black death which closes this
-deadly show, and leads so many plumed and disorderly processions to the
-silence and the eternity of the grave. All this visible world is vain;
-there is nothing true but human virtue--the courageous energy with which
-man attains to self-command, the generous energy with which he employs
-himself in the service of others. On this view, then, his eyes are
-fixed; they pierce through worldly gauds, neglect sensual joys, to
-attain this. By such inner thoughts and feelings the ideal model is
-displaced; a new source of action springs up--the idea of righteousness.
-What sets them against ecclesiastical pomp and insolence is neither the
-envy of the poor and low, nor the anger of the oppressed, nor a
-revolutionary desire to experimentalize abstract truth, but conscience.
-They tremble lest they should not work out their salvation if they
-continue in a corrupt church; they fear the menaces of God, and dare not
-embark on the great journey with unsafe guides. "What is righteousness?"
-asked Luther, anxiously, "and how shall I obtain it?" With like anxiety
-Piers Plowman goes to seek Dowell, and asks each one to show him where
-he shall find him. "With us," say the friars. "Contra quath ich,
-_Septies in die cadit justus_, and ho so syngeth certys doth nat wel;"
-so he betakes himself to "study and writing," like Luther; the clerks at
-table speak much of God and of the Trinity, "and taken Bernarde to
-witnesse, and putteth forth presompcions... ac the carful mai crie and
-quaken atte gate, bothe a fyngred and a furst, and for defaute spille ys
-non so hende to have hym yn. Clerkus and knyghtes carpen of God ofte,
-and haveth hym muche in hure mouthe, ac mene men in herte;" and heart,
-inner faith, living virtue, are what constitute true religion. This is
-what these dull Saxons had begun to discover. The Teutonic conscience,
-and English good-sense, too, had been aroused, as well as individual
-energy, the resolution to judge and decide alone, by and for one's self.
-"Christ is our hede that sitteth on hie, Heddis ne ought we have no mo,"
-says a poem, attributed to Chaucer, and which, with others, claims
-independence for Christian consciences.[185]
-
-
-"We ben his membres bothe also,
-Father he taught us call him all,
-Maisters to call forbad he tho;
-Al maisters ben wickid and fals."
-
-
-No other mediator between man and God. In vain the doctors state that
-they have authority for their words; there is a word of greater
-authority, to wit, God's. We hear it in the fourteenth century, this
-grand "word of God." It quitted the learned schools, the dead languages,
-the dusty shelves on which the clergy suffered it to sleep, covered with
-a confusion of commentators and Fathers.[186] Wycliff appeared and
-translated it like Luther, and in a spirit similar to Luther's. "Cristen
-men and wymmen, olde and yonge, shulden studie fast in the Newe
-Testament, for it is of ful autorite, and opyn to undirstonding of
-simple men, as to the poyntis that be moost nedeful to salvacioun."[187]
-Religion must be secular, in order to escape from the hands of the
-clergy, who monopolize it; each must hear and read for himself the word
-of God; he will then be sure that it has not been corrupted; he will
-feel it better, and, more, he will understand it better, for
-
-
-"ech place of holy writ, both opyn and derk, techit mekenes and charite;
-and therfore he that kepith mekenes and charite hath the trewe
-undirstondyng and perfectioun of al holi writ.... Therfore no simple man
-of wit be aferd unmesurabli to studie in the text of holy writ... and no
-clerk be proude of the verrey undirstondyng of holy writ, for whi
-undirstonding of hooly writ with outen charite that kepith Goddis
-heestis, makith a man depper dampned... and pride and covetise of
-clerkis is cause of her blindees and eresie, and priveth them fro verrey
-undirstondyng of holy writ."[188]
-
-
-These are the memorable words that began to circulate in the markets and
-in the schools. They read the translated Bible, and commented on it;
-they judged the existing Church after it. What judgments these serious
-and untainted minds passed upon it, with what readiness they pushed on
-to the true religion of their race, we may see from their petition to
-Parliament.[189] One hundred and thirty years before Luther, they said
-that the pope was not established by Christ, that pilgrimages and
-image-worship were akin to idolatry, that external rites are of no
-importance, that priests ought not to possess temporal wealth, that the
-doctrine of transubstantiation made a people idolatrous, that priests
-have not the power of absolving from sin. In proof of all this they
-brought forward texts of Scripture. Fancy these brave spirits, simple
-and strong souls, who began to read at night in their shops, by
-candle-light; for they were shopkeepers--tailors, skinners, and
-bakers--who, with some men of letters, began to read, and then to
-believe, and finally got themselves burned.[190] What a sight for the
-fifteenth century, and what a promise! It seems as though, with liberty
-of action, liberty of mind begins to appear; that these common folk will
-think and speak; that under the conventional literature, imitated from
-France, a new literature is dawning; and that England, genuine England,
-half-mute since the Conquest, will at last find a voice.
-
-She had not yet found it. King and peers ally themselves to the Church,
-pass terrible statutes, destroy books, burn heretics alive, often with
-refinement of torture--one in a barrel, another hung by an iron chain
-around his waist. The temporal wealth of the clergy had been attacked,
-and therewith the whole English constitution; and the great
-establishment above crushed out with its whole weight the revolutionists
-from below. Darkly, in silence, while the nobles were destroying each
-other in the Wars of the Roses, the commons went on working and living,
-separating themselves from the established Church, maintaining their
-liberties, amassing wealth, but not going further.[191] Like a vast rock
-which underlies the soil, yet crops up here and there at distant
-intervals, they barely show themselves. No great poetical or religious
-work displays them to the light. They sang; but their ballads, first
-ignored, then transformed, reach us only in a late edition. They prayed;
-but beyond one or two indifferent poems, their incomplete and repressed
-doctrine bore no fruit. We may well see from the verse, tone, and drift
-of their ballads that they are capable of the finest poetic
-originality,[192] but their poetry is in the hands of yeomen and
-harpers. We perceive, by the precocity and energy of their religious
-protests, that they are capable of the most severe and impassioned
-creeds; but their faith remains hidden in the shop-parlors of a few
-obscure sectaries. Neither their faith nor their poetry has been able to
-attain its end or issue. The Renaissance and the Reformation, those two
-national outbreaks, are still far off; and the literature of the period
-retains to the end, like the highest ranks of English society, almost
-the perfect stamp of its French origin and its foreign models.
-
-
-
-
-[Footnote 97: See, amidst other delineations of their manners,
-the first accounts of the first Crusade. Godfrey clove a Saracen
-down to his waist. In Palestine, a widow was compelled, up to the
-age of sixty, to marry again, because no fief could remain without
-a defender. A Spanish leader said to his exhausted soldiers after
-a battle, "You are too weary and too much wounded, but come and
-fight with me against this other band; the fresh wounds which we
-shall receive will make us forget those which we have." At this
-time, says the General Chronicle of Spain, kings, counts, and
-nobles, and all the knights, that they might be ever ready, kept
-their horses in the chamber where they slept with their wives.]
-
-[Footnote 98: For difference in numbers of the fleet and men
-see Freeman, "History of the Norman Conquest," 3 vols., 1867,
-III. 381, 387.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 99: For all the details see "Anglo-Norman Chronicles,"
-III. 4, as quoted by Aug. Thierry. I have myself seen the locality
-and the country.]
-
-[Footnote 100: Of three columns of attack at Hastings, two were
-composed of auxiliaries. Moreover, the chroniclers are not at
-fault upon this critical point; they agree in stating that England
-was conquered by Frenchmen.]
-
-[Footnote 101: It was a Rouen fisherman, a soldier of Rollo, who
-killed the Duke of France at the mouth of the Eure. Hastings, the
-famous' sea-king, was a laborer's son from the neighborhood of Troyes.]
-
-[Footnote 102: "In the tenth century," says Stendhal, "a man wished
-for two things: First, not to be slain; second, to have a good
-leather coat." See Fontenelle's "Chronicle."]
-
-[Footnote 103: William of Malmesbury.]
-
-[Footnote 104: Churches in London, Sarum, Norwich, Durham, Chichester
-Peterborough, Rochester, Hereford, Gloucester, Oxford, etc.--William
-of Malmesbury.]
-
-[Footnote 105: Ordericus Vitalis.]
-
-[Footnote 106: Robert Wace, "Roman du Rou."]
-
-[Footnote 107: Ibid.
-Et li Normanz et li Franfceiz
-Tote nuit firent oreisons,
-Et furent en aflicions.
-De lor péchiés confèz se firent
-As proveires les regehirent,
-Et qui n'en out proveires prèz,
-A son veizin se fist confèz,
-Pour ço ke samedi esteit
-Ke la bataille estre debveit.
-Unt Normanz a pramis e voé,
-Si com li cler l'orent loé,
-Ke à ce jor mez s'il veskeient,
-Char ni saunc ne mangereient
-Giffrei, éveske de Coustances.
-A plusors joint lor pénitances.
-Cli reçut li confessions
-Et dona l' béneiçons.]
-
-[Footnote 108: Robert Wace, "Roman du Rou"
-Taillefer ki moult bien cantout
-Sur un roussin qui tot alout
-Devant li dus alout cantant
-De Kalermaine e de Rolant,
-E d'Oliver et des vassals
-Ki moururent à Roncevals.
-Quant ils orent chevalchié tant
-K'as Engleis vindrent aprismant:
-"Sires! dist Taillefer, merci!
-Je vos ai languement servi.
-Tut mon servise me debvez,
-Hui, si vos plaist, me le rendez
-Por tout guerredun vos requier,
-Et si vos voil forment preier,
-Otreiez-mei, ke jo n'i faille,
-Li primier colp de la bataille."
-Et li dus répont: "Je l'otrei."
-Et Taillefer point à desrei;
-Devant toz li altres se mist,
-Un Englez féri, si l'ocist.
-De sos le pis, parmie la pance,
-Li fist passer ultre la lance,
-A terre estendu l'abati.
-Poiz trait l'espée, altre féri.
-Poiz a crié: "Venez, venez!
-Ke fetes-vos? Férez, férez!"
-Done l'unt Englez avironé,
-Al secund colp k'il ou doné.]
-
-[Footnote 109: The idea of types is applicable throughout all
-physical and moral nature.]
-
-[Footnote 110: Danois is a contraction of le d'Ardennois, from
-the Ardennes.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 111: Genin, "Chanson de Roland":
-Co sent Rollans que la mort le trespent,
-Devers la teste sur le quer li descent;
-Desuz un pin i est alet curant,
-Sur l'herbe verte si est culchet adenz;
-Desuz lui met l'espée et l'olifan;
-Turnat sa teste vers la paîene gent,
-Pour ço l'at fait que il voelt veirement
-Que Carles diet e trestute sa gent;
-Li gentilz quens, qu'il fut mort cunquérant.
-Cleimet sa culpe, e menut e suvent,
-Pur ses pecchez en puroffrid lo guant.
-Li quens Rollans se iut desuz un pin,
-Envers Espaigne en ad turnet sun vis,
-De plusurs choses a remembrer le prist.
-De tantes terres cume li bers cunquist,
-De dulce France des humes de sun lign,
-De Carlemagne sun seignor ki l'nurrit.
-Ne poet muer n'en plurt et ne susprit.
-Mais lui meisme ne volt mettre en ubli.
-Cleimet sa culpe, si priet Dieu mercit:
-"Veire paterne, ki unques ne mentis,
-Seint Lazaron de mort resurrexis,
-Et Daniel des lions guaresis,
-Guaris de mei l'arome de tuz perilz,
-Pur les pecchez que en ma vie fis."
-Sun destre guant à Deu en puroffrit.
-Seint Gabriel de sa main l'ad pris.
-Desur sun bras teneit le chef enclin,
-Juntes ses mains est alet à sa fin.
-Deus i tramist sun angle cherubin,
-Et seint Michel qu'on cleimet del péril
-Ensemble ad els seint Gabriel i vint,
-L'anme del cunte portent en pareis.]
-
-[Footnote 112: Mon trés-chier ami débonnaire,
-Vous m'avez une chose ditte
-Oui n'est pas à faire petite
-Mais que l'on doit moult rersongnier.
-Et nonpourquant, sanz eslongnier,
-Puisque garison autrement
-Ne povez avoir vraiement,
-Pour vostre amour les occiray,
-Et le sang vous apporteray.]
-
-[Footnote 113: Vraiz Diex, moult est excellente,
-Et de grant charité plaine,
-Vostre bonté souveraine.
-Car vostre grâce présente,
-A toute personne humaine,
-Vraix Diex, moult est excellente,
-Puisqu'elle a cuer et entente,
-Et que a ce desir l'amaine
-Que de vous servir se paine.]
-
-[Footnote 114: See H. Taine, "La Fontaine and His Fables," p. 15.]
-
-[Footnote 115: La Fontaine, "Contes, Richard Minutolo."]
-
-[Footnote 116: Parler lui veut d'une besogne
-Où crois que peu conquerrérois
-Si la besogne vous nommois.]
-
-[Footnote 117: At King Stephen's death there were 1,115 castles.]
-
-[Footnote 118: A. Thierry, "Histoire de la Conquête de l'Angleterre," II.]
-
-[Footnote 119: William of Malmesbury. A. Thierry, II. 20, 122-203.]
-
-[Footnote 120: A. Thierry.]
-
-[Footnote 121: "In the year 652," says Warton, I. 3, "it was the common
-practice of the Anglo-Saxons to send their youth to the monasteries of
-France for education; and not only the language but the manners of the
-French were esteemed the most polite accomplishments."]
-
-[Footnote 122: Warton, I. 5.]
-
-[Footnote 123: Trevisa's translation of the Polycronycon.]
-
-[Footnote 124: Statutes of foundation of New College, Oxford. In the
-abbey of Glastonbury, in 1247: Liber de excidio Trojæ, gesta Ricardi
-regis, gesta Alexandri Magni, etc. In the abbey of Peterborough: Amys
-et Amelion, Sir Tristam, Guy de Bourgogne, gesta Otuclis les prophéties
-de Merlin, le Charlemagne de Turpin, la destruction de Troie, etc.
-Warton, ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 125: In 1154.]
-
-[Footnote 126: Warton, I. 72-78.]
-
-[Footnote 127: In 1400. Warton, II. 248. Gower died in 1408; his
-French ballads belong to the end of the fourteenth century.]
-
-[Footnote 128: He wrote in 1356, and died in 1372.]
-
-[Footnote 129: "And for als moche as it is longe time passed that
-ther was no generalle Passage ne Vyage over the See, and many Men
-desiren for to here speke of the holy Lond, and han thereof gret
-Solace and Comfort, I, John Maundevylle, Knyght, alle be it I be
-not worthi, that was born in Englond, in the town of Seynt-Albones,
-passed the See in the Zeer of our Lord Jesu-Crist 1322, in the
-Day of Seynt Michelle, and hidreto have been longe tyme over the
-See, and have seyn and gon thorghe manye dyverse londes, and many
-Provynces, and Kingdomes, and Iles."
-
-"And zee shulle undirstonde that I have put this Boke out of Latyn
-into Frensche, and translated it azen out of Frensche, into Englyssche,
-that every Man of my Nacioun may undirstonde it."--Sir John Maundeville's
-"Voyage and Travaile," ed. Halliwell, 1866, prologue, p. 4.]
-
-[Footnote 130: Sir John Maundeville's "Voyage and Travaile," ed.
-Halliwell, 1866, XII., p. 139. It is confessed that the original
-on which Wace depended for his ancient "History of England"
-is the Latin compilation of Geoffrey of Monmouth.]
-
-[Footnote 131: Extract from the account of the proceedings at Arthur's
-coronation given by Layamon, in his translation of Wace, executed about
-1180. Madden's "Layamon," 1847, II. p. 625 et passim:
-Tha the king igeten hafde
-And al his mon-weorede,
-Tha bugen ut of burhge
-Theines swithe balde.
-Alle tha kinges,
-And heore here-thringes.
-Alle tha biscopes,
-And alle tha clærckes,
-All the eorles,
-And alle tha beornes.
-Alle the theines,
-Alle the sweines,
-Feire iscrudde,
-Helde geond felde.
-Summe heo gunnen æruen,
-Summe heo gunnen urnen,
-Summe heo gunnen lepen,
-Summe heo gunnen sceoten,
-Summe heo wræstleden
-And wither-gome makeden,
-Summe heo on uelde
-Pleouweden under scelde,
-Summe heo driven balles
-Wide geond tha feldes.
-Monianes kunnes gomen
-Ther heo gunnen driuen.
-And wha swa mihte iwinne
-Wurthscipe of his gomene,
-Hine me ladde mid songe
-At foren than leod kinge;
-And the king, for his gomene,
-Gaf him geven gode.
-Alle tha quene
-The icumen weoren there.
-And alle tha lafdies,
-Leoneden geond walles.
-To bihalden the dugethen.
-And that folc plæie.
-This ilæste threo dæges,
-Swulc gomes and swulc plæges,
-Tha, at than veorthe dæie
-The king gon to spekene
-And agæf his goden cnihten
-All heore rihten;
-He gef seolver, he gæf gold,
-He gef hors, he gef lond,
-Castles, and clœthes eke;
-His monnen he iquende.]
-
-[Footnote 132: After 1297.]
-
-[Footnote 133: About 1312.]
-
-[Footnote 134: About 1349.]
-
-[Footnote 135: Warton, II. 36.]
-
-[Footnote 136: Time of Henry III., "Reliquiae Antiquæ," edited by
-Messrs. Wright and Halliwell, I. 102.]
-
-[Footnote 137: About 1278. Warton, I. 28.]
-
-[Footnote 138: Ibid., I. 31.]
-
-[Footnote 139: Ibid. I. 30.]
-
-[Footnote 140: "Poem of the Owl and Nightingale," who dispute
-as to which has the finest voice.]
-
-[Footnote 141: Letter of Peter of Blois.]
-
-[Footnote 142: William of Malmesbury.]
-
-[Footnote 143: At the installation feast of George Nevill, Archbishop
-of York, the brother of Guy of Warwick, there were consumed 104
-oxen and 6 wild bulls, 1000 sheep, 304 calves, as many hogs, 2000
-swine, 500 stags, bucks, and does, 204 kids, 22,802 wild or tame
-fowl, 300 quarters of corn, 300 tuns of ale, 100 of wine, a pipe
-of hypocras, 12 porpoises and seals.]
-
-[Footnote 144: These prodigalities and refinements grew to excess
-under his grandson Richard II.]
-
-[Footnote 145: Warton, I. 156.]
-
-[Footnote 146: Warton, I. 176, spelling modernized.]
-
-[Footnote 147: Warton, I. 123:
-"In Fraunce these rhymes were wroht,
-Every Englyshe ne knew it not."]
-
-[Footnote 148: See Lingard's "History," II. 55, note 4.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 149: Domesday Book. Froude's "History England", 1858, 1. 13:
-"Through all these arrangements a single aim is visible, that every
-man in England should have his definite place and definite duty
-assigned to him, and that no human being should be at liberty to
-lead at his own pleasure an unaccountable existence. The discipline
-of an army was transferred to the details of social life."]
-
-[Footnote 150: Domesday Book, "tenants-in-chief."]
-
-[Footnote 151: According to Ailred (temp. Hen. II), "a king, many
-bishops and abbots, many great earls and noble knights descended
-both from English and Norman blood, constituted a support to the
-one and an honor to the other. At present," says another author
-of the same period, "as the English and Normans dwell together,
-and have constantly intermarried, the two nations are so completely
-mingled together, that at least as regards freemen, one can scarcely
-distinguish who is Norman and who English.... The villeins attached
-to the soil," he says again, "are alone of pure Saxon blood."]
-
-[Footnote 152: Magna Charta, 1215.]
-
-[Footnote 153: "Chaucer's Works," ed. Sir H. Nicholas, 6 vols.,
-1845, "Prologue to the Canterbury Tales," II. p. 11, line 333.]
-
-[Footnote 154: Prologue to "The Canterbury Tales," II. p. 17,
-line 547.]
-
-[Footnote 155: From 1214, and also in 1225 and 1254. Guizot, "Origin
-of the Representative System in England," pp. 297-299.]
-
-[Footnote 156: In 1264.]
-
-[Footnote 157: Aug. Thierry, IV. 56. Ritson's "Robin Hood," 1832.]
-
-[Footnote 158: Latimer's "Sermons," ed. Arber, 6th Sermon, 1869, p. 173.]
-
-[Footnote 159: Ritson, "Robin Hood Ballads," I. IV. verses 41-48.]
-
-[Footnote 160: Ibid, verses 145-152.]
-
-[Footnote 161: A pinder's task was to pin the sheep in the fold, cattle
-in the penfold or pound (Richardson).--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 162: Ritson, II. 3, verses 17-26.]
-
-[Footnote 163: Ibid. II. 6, verses 58-89.]
-
-[Footnote 164: Ritson, verses 94-101.]
-
-[Footnote 165: "The Difference between an Absolute and Limited
-Monarchy--A learned Commendation of the Politic Laws of England"
-(Latin). I frequently quote from the second work, which is more
-full and complete.]
-
-[Footnote 166: The courage which finds utterance here is coarse;
-the English instincts are combative and independent. The French
-race, and the Gauls generally, are perhaps the most reckless of
-life of any.]
-
-[Footnote 167: "The Difference," etc., 3d ed. 1724, ch. XIII. p. 98.
-There are nowadays in France 42 highway robberies as against 738 in
-England. In 1843, there were in England four times as many accusations
-of crimes and offences as in France, having regard to the number of
-inhabitants (Moreau de Jonnès).]
-
-[Footnote 168: Statute of Winchester, 1285; Ordinance of 1378.]
-
-[Footnote 169: Benvenuto Cellini, quoted by Froude, I. 20, "History
-of England." Shakespeare, "Henry V," conversation of French lords
-before the battle of Agincourt.]
-
-[Footnote 170: "The Difference." etc.]
-
-[Footnote 171: The original of this very famous treatise, "de Laudibus
-Legum Angliæ," was written in Latin between 1464 and 1470, first
-published in 1537, and translated into English in 1775 by Francis
-Gregor. I have taken these extracts from the magnificent edition of Sir
-John Fortescue's works published in 1869 for private distribution, and
-edited by Thomas Fortescue, Lord Clermont. Some of the pieces quoted,
-left in the old spelling, are taken from an older edition, translated
-by Robert Mulcaster in 1567.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 172: "Of an Absolute and Limited Monarchy," 3d ed. 1724,
-ch. III. p. 15.]
-
-[Footnote 173: Commines bears the same testimony.]
-
-[Footnote 174: "De Laudibus," etc., ch. XXXVI.]
-
-[Footnote 175: "The might of the realme most stondyth upon archers
-which be not rich men." Compare Hallam, II. 482. All this takes us
-back as far as the Conquest, and farther. "It is reasonable to suppose
-that the greater part of those who appear to have possessed small
-freeholds or parcels of manors were no other than the original nation....
-A respectable class of free socagers, having in general full right of
-alienating their lands, and holding them probably at a small certain
-rent from the lord of the manor, frequently occurs in the Domesday Book."
-At all events, there were in Domesday Book Saxons "perfectly exempt
-from villenage." This class is mentioned with respect in the treatises
-of Glanvil and Bracton. As for the villeins, they were quickly liberated
-in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, either by their own energies
-or by becoming copyholders. The Wars of the Roses still further raised
-the commons; orders were frequently issued, previous to a battle,
-to slay the nobles and spare the commoners.]
-
-[Footnote 176: "Description of England," 275.]
-
-[Footnote 177: The following is a portrait of a yeoman, by Latimer, in
-the first sermon preached before Edward VI, March 8, 1549: "My father
-was a yeoman, and had no lands of his own; only he had a farm of £3 or
-£4 by year at the uttermost, and hereupon he tilled so much as kept
-half-a-dozen men. He had walk for a hundred sheep, and my mother
-milked thirty kine. He was able, and did find the king a harness, with
-himself and his horse; while he came to the place that he should receive
-the king's wages. I can remember that I buckled his harness when he went
-unto Blackheath field. He kept me to school, or else I had not been able
-to have preached before the King's Majesty now. He married my sisters
-with £5 or 20 nobles a-piece, so that he brought them up in godliness
-and fear of God; he kept hospitality for his poor neighbours, and some
-alms he gave to the poor; and all this did he of the said farm. Where
-he that now hath it payeth £16 by the year, or more, and is not able
-to do anything for his prince, for himself, nor for his children, or
-give a cup of drink to the poor."
-
-This is from the sixth sermon, preached before the young king, April
-12, 1549: "In my time my poor father was as diligent to teach me to
-shoot as to learn (me) any other thing; and so, I think, other men did
-their children. He taught me how to draw, how to lay my body in my bow,
-and not to draw with strength of arms, as other nations do, but with
-strength of the body. I had my bows bought me according to my age and
-strength; as I increased in them, so my bows were made bigger and
-bigger; for men shall never shoot well except they be brought up
-in it. It is a goodly art, a wholesome kind of exercise, and much
-commended in physic."]
-
-[Footnote 178: In 1246, 1376. Thierry, III. 79.]
-
-[Footnote 179: 1404-1409. The commons declared that with these
-revenues the king would be able to maintain 15 earls, 1500 knights,
-6,200 squires, and 100 hospitals; each earl receiving annually 300
-marks; each knight 100 marks, and the produce of four ploughed lands;
-each squire 40 marks, and the produce of two ploughed lands.]
-
-[Footnote 180: About 1362.]
-
-[Footnote 181: "Piers Ploughman's Vision and Creed," ed. T. Wright,
-1856, I. p. 2, lines 21-44.]
-
-[Footnote 182: The Archdeacon of Richmond, on his tour in 1216,
-came to the priory of Bridlington with ninety-seven horses,
-twenty-one dogs, and three falcons.]
-
-[Footnote 183: "Piers Ploughman's Vision," I. p. 191, lines
-6,217-6,228.]
-
-[Footnote 184: Ibid. II. Last book, p. 430, lines 14,084-14,135.]
-
-[Footnote 185: "Piers Plowman's Crede; the Plowman's Tale," first printed
-in 1550. There were three editions in one year, it was so manifestly
-Protestant.]
-
-[Footnote 186: Knighton, about 1400, wrote thus of Wyclif: "Transtulit
-de Latino in anglicam linguam, non angelicam. Unde per ipeum fit vulgare,
-et magis apertum laicis et mulieribus legere scientibus quam solet esse
-clericis admodum litteratis, et bene intelligentibus. Et sic evangelica
-margerita spargitur et a porcis conculcatur... (ita) ut laicis commune
-æternum quod ante fuerat clericis et ecolesiæ doctoribus talentum
-supernum."]
-
-[Footnote 187: Wyclif's Bible, ed. Forshall and Madden, 1850, preface to
-Oxford edition, p. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 188: Ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 189: In 1395.]
-
-[Footnote 190: 1401, William Sawtré, the first Lollard burned alive.]
-
-[Footnote 191: Commines, v. ch. 19 and 20: "In my opinion, of all kingdoms
-of the world of which I have any knowledge, where the public weal is best
-observed, and least violence is exercised on the people, and where no
-buildings are overthrown or demolished in war, England is the best; and
-the ruin and misfortune falls on them who wage the war.... The kingdom
-of England has this advantage beyond other nations, that the people and
-the country are not destroyed or burnt, nor the buildings demolished;
-and ill-fortune falls on men of war, and especially on the nobles."]
-
-[Footnote 192: See the ballads of "Chevy Chase, The Nut-Brown
-Maid," etc. Many of them are admirable little dramas.]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER THIRD
-
-
-The New Tongue
-
-
-SECTION I.--The First Great Poet
-
-
-Amid so many barren endeavors, throughout the long impotence of Norman
-literature, which was content to copy, and of Saxon literature, which
-bore no fruit, a definite language was nevertheless formed, and there
-was room for a great writer. Geoffrey Chaucer appeared, a man of mark,
-inventive though a disciple, original though a translator, who by his
-genius, education, and life, was enabled to know and to depict a whole
-world, but above all to satisfy the chivalric world and the splendid
-courts which shone upon the heights.[193] He belonged to it, though
-learned and versed in all branches of scholastic knowledge; and he took
-such a share in it that his life from beginning to end was that of a man
-of the world, and a man of action. We find him by turns in King Edward's
-army, in the king's train, husband of a maid of honor to the queen, a
-pensioner, a placeholder, a member of Parliament, a knight, founder of a
-family which was hereafter to become allied to royalty. Moreover, he was
-in the king's council, brother-in-law of John of Gaunt, employed more
-than once in open embassies or secret missions at Florence, Genoa,
-Milan, Flanders, commissioner in France for the marriage of the Prince
-of Wales, high up and low down on the political ladder, disgraced,
-restored to place. This experience of business, travel, war, and the
-court, was not like a book-education. He was at the Court of Edward III,
-the most splendid in Europe, amidst tourneys, grand receptions,
-magnificent displays; he took part in the pomps of France and Milan;
-conversed with Petrarch, perhaps with Boccaccio and Froissart; was actor
-in, and spectator of, the finest and most tragical of dramas. In these
-few words, what ceremonies and cavalcades are implied! what processions
-in armor, what caparisoned horses, bedizened ladies! what display of
-gallant and lordly manners! what a varied and brilliant world, well
-suited to occupy the mind and eyes of a poet! Like Froissart, and better
-than he, Chaucer could depict the castles of the nobles, their
-conversations, their talk of love, and anything else that concerned
-them, and please them by his portraiture.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION II.--The Decline of the Middle Ages
-
-
-Two notions raised the Middle Ages above the chaos of barbarism: one
-religious, which had fashioned the gigantic cathedrals, and swept the
-masses from their native soil to hurl them upon the Holy Land; the other
-secular, which had built feudal fortresses, and set the man of courage
-erect and armed, within his own domain: the one had produced the
-adventurous hero, the other the mystical monk; the one, to wit, the
-belief in God, the other the belief in self. Both, running to excess,
-had degenerated by the violence of their own strength: the one had
-exalted independence into rebellion, the other had turned piety into
-enthusiasm: the first made man unfit for civil life, the second drew him
-back from natural life: the one, sanctioning disorder, dissolved
-society; the other, enthroning infatuation, perverted intelligence.
-Chivalry had need to be repressed because it issued in brigandage;
-devotion restrained because it induced slavery. Turbulent feudalism grew
-feeble, like oppressive theocracy; and the two great master passions,
-deprived of their sap and lopped of their stem, gave place by their
-weakness to the monotony of habit and the taste for worldliness, which
-shot forth in their stead and flourished under their name.
-
-Gradually, the serious element declined, in books as in manners, in
-works of art as in books. Architecture, instead of being the handmaid of
-faith, became the slave of fantasy. It was exaggerated, became too
-ornamental, sacrificing general effect to detail, shot up its steeples
-to unreasonable heights, decorated its churches with canopies,
-pinnacles, trefoiled gables, open-work galleries. "Its whole aim was
-continually to climb higher, to clothe the sacred edifice with a gaudy
-bedizenment, as if it were a bride on her wedding morning."[194] Before
-this marvellous lacework, what emotion could one feel but a pleased
-astonishment? What becomes of Christian sentiment before such scenic
-ornamentations? In like manner literature sets itself to play. In the
-eighteenth century, the second age of absolute monarchy, we saw on one
-side finials and floriated cupolas, on the other pretty _vers de
-societé_, courtly and sprightly tales, taking the place of severe
-beauty-lines and noble writings. Even so in the fourteenth century, the
-second age of feudalism, they had on one side the stone fretwork and
-slender efflorescence of aërial forms, and on the other finical verses
-and diverting stories, taking the place of the old grand architecture
-and the old simple literature. It is no longer the overflowing of a true
-sentiment which produces them, but the craving for excitement. Consider
-Chaucer, his subjects, and how he selects them. He goes far and wide to
-discover them, to Italy, France, to the popular legends, the ancient
-classics. His readers need diversity, and his business is to "provide
-fine tales": it was in those days the poet's business.[195] The lords at
-table have finished dinner, the minstrels come and sing, the brightness
-of the torches falls on the velvet and ermine, on the fantastic figures,
-the motley, the elaborate embroidery of their long garments; then the
-poet arrives, presents his manuscript, "richly illuminated, bound in
-crimson velvet, embellished with silver clasps and bosses, roses of
-gold": they ask him what his subject is, and he answers "Love."
-
-
-
-
-SECTION III.--The Poetry of Chaucer
-
-
-In fact, it is the most agreeable subject, fittest to make the evening
-hours pass sweetly, amid the goblets filled with spiced wine and the
-burning perfumes. Chaucer translated first that great storehouse of
-gallantry, the "Roman de la Rose." There is no pleasanter entertainment.
-It is about a rose which the lover wished to pluck: the pictures of the
-May months, the groves, the flowery earth, the green hedgerows, abound
-and display their bloom. Then come portraits of the smiling ladies,
-Richesse, Fraunchise, Gaiety, and by way of contrast, the sad
-characters, Daunger and Travail, all fully and minutely described, with
-detail of features, clothing, attitude; they walk about, as on a piece
-of tapestry, amid landscapes, dances, castles, among allegorical groups,
-in lively sparkling colors, displayed, contrasted, ever renewed and
-varied so as to entertain the sight. For an evil has arisen, unknown to
-serious ages--_ennui_; novelty and brilliancy followed by novelty and
-brilliancy are necessary to withstand it; and Chaucer, like Boccaccio
-and Froissart, enters into the struggle with all his heart. He borrows
-from Boccaccio his history of Palamon and Arcite, from Lollius his
-history of Troilus and Cressida, and rearranges them. How the two young
-Theban knights, Arcite and Palamon, both fall in love with the beautiful
-Emily, and how Arcite, victorious in tourney, falls and dies,
-bequeathing Emily to his rival; how the fine Trojan knight Troilus wins
-the favor of Cressida, and how Cressida abandons him for Diomedes--these
-are still tales in verse, tales of love. A little tedious they may be;
-all the writings of this age, French, or imitated from French, are born
-of too prodigal minds; but how they glide along! A winding stream, which
-flows smoothly on level sand, and sparkles now and again in the sun, is
-the only image we can compare it to. The characters speak too much, but
-then they speak so well! Even when they dispute we like to listen, their
-anger and offences are so wholly based on a happy overflow of unbroken
-converse. Remember Froissart, how slaughters, assassinations, plagues,
-the butcheries of the Jacquerie, the whole chaos of human misery,
-disappears in his fine ceaseless humor, so that the furious and grinning
-figures seem but ornaments and choice embroideries to relieve the skein
-of shaded and colored silk which forms the groundwork of his narrative!
-but, in particular, a multitude of descriptions spread their gilding
-over all. Chaucer leads you among arms, palaces, temples, and halts
-before each beautiful thing. Here:
-
-
-"The statue of Venus glorious for to see
-Was naked fleting in the large see,
-And fro the navel doun all covered was
-With wawes grene, and bright as any glas.
-A citole in hire right hand hadde she,
-And on hire hed, ful semely for to see,
-A rose gerlond fressh, and wel smelling,
-Above hire hed hire doves fleckering."[196]
-
-
-Further on, the temple of Mars:
-
-
-"First on the wall was peinted a forest,
-In which ther wonneth neyther man ne best,
-With knotty knarry barrein trees old
-Of stubbes sharpe and hidous to behold;
-In which ther ran a romble and a swough
-As though a storme shuld bresten every bough:
-And dounward from an hill under a bent.
-Ther stood the temple of Mars armipotent,
-Wrought all of burned stele, of which th' entree
-Was longe and streite, and gastly for to see.
-Aud therout came a rage and swiche a vise,
-That it made all the gates for to rise.
-The northern light in at the dore shone,
-For window on the wall ne was ther none,
-Thurgh which men mighten any light discerne.
-The dore was all of athamant eterne,
-Yclenched overthwart and endelong
-With yren tough, and for to make it strong,
-Every piler the temple to sustene
-Was tonne-gret, of yren bright and shene."[197]
-
-
-Everywhere on the wall were representations of slaughter; and in the
-sanctuary
-
-
-"The statue of Mars upon a carte stood
-Armed, and loked grim as he were wood,...
-A wolf ther stood beforne him at his fete
-With eyen red, and of a man he ete."[198]
-
-
-Are not these contrasts well designed to rouse the imagination? You will
-meet in Chaucer a succession of similar pictures. Observe the train of
-combatants who come to joust in the tilting field for Arcite and
-Palamon:
-
-
-"With him ther wenten knightes many on.
-Som wol ben armed in an habergeon
-And in a brestplate, and in a gipon;
-And som wol have a pair of plates large;
-And som wol have a Pruce sheld, or a targe,
-Som wol ben armed on his legges wele,
-And have an axe, and som a mace of stele....
-Ther maist thou se coming with Palamon
-Licurge himself, the grete king of Trace:
-Blake was his berd, and manly was his face.
-The cercles of his eyen in his hed
-They gloweden betwixen yelwe and red,
-And like a griffon loked he about,
-With kemped heres on his browes stout;
-His limmes gret, his braunes hard and stronge,
-His shouldres brode, his armes round and longe.
-And as the guise was in his contree,
-Ful highe upon a char of gold stood he,
-With foure white bolles in the trais.
-Instede of cote-armure on his harnais,
-With nayles yelwe, and bright as any gold,
-He hadde a beres skin, cole-blake for old.
-His longe here was kempt behind his bak,
-As any ravenes fether it shone for blake.
-A wreth of gold arm-gret, of huge weight,
-Upon his hed sate ful of stones bright,
-Of fine rubins and of diamants.
-About his char ther wenten white alauns,
-Twenty and mo, as gret as any stere,
-To hunten at the leon or the dere,
-And folwed him, with mosel fast ybound,
-Colered with gold, and torettes filed round.
-An hundred lordes had he in his route,
-Armed ful wel, with hertes sterne and stoute.
-With Arcita, in stories as men find,
-The gret Emetrius the king of Inde,
-Upon a stede bay, trapped in stele,
-Covered with cloth of gold diapred wele,
-Came riding like the god of armes Mars.
-His cote-armure was of a cloth of Tars,
-Couched with perles, white, and round and grete.
-His sadel was of brent gold new ybete;
-A mantelet upon his shouldres hanging
-Bret-ful of rubies red, as fire sparkling.
-His crispe here like ringes was yronne,
-And that was yelwe, and glitered as the sonne.
-His nose was high, his eyen bright citrin,
-His lippes round, his color was sanguin....
-And as a leon he his loking caste.
-Of five and twenty yere his age I caste.
-His berd was well begonnen for to spring;
-His vois was a trompe thondering.
-Upon his hed he wered of laurer grene
-A gerlond fresshe and lusty for to sene.
-Upon his hond he bare for his deduit
-An egle tame, as any lily whit.
-An hundred lordes had he with him there,
-All armed save hir hedes in all hir gere,
-Ful richely in alle manere things....
-About this king ther ran on every part
-Ful many a tame leon and leopart."[199]
-
-
-A herald would not describe them better nor more fully. The lords and
-ladies of the time would recognize here their tourneys and masquerades.
-
-There is something more pleasant than a fine narrative, and that is a
-collection of fine narratives, especially when the narratives are all of
-different colorings. Froissart gives us such under the name of
-Chronicles; Boccaccio still better; after him the lords of the _Cent
-Nouvelles Nouvelles_; and, later still, Marguerite of Navarre. What more
-natural among people who meet, talk and wish to amuse themselves? The
-manners of the time suggest them; for the habits and tastes of society
-had begun, and fiction thus conceived only brings into books the
-conversations which are heard in the hall and by the wayside. Chaucer
-describes a troop of pilgrims, people of every rank, who are going to
-Canterbury; a knight, a sergeant of law, an Oxford clerk, a doctor, a
-miller, a prioress, a monk, who agree to tell a story all round:
-
-
-"For trewely comfort ne mirthe is non,
-To riden by the way domb as the ston."
-
-
-They tell their stories accordingly; and on this slender and flexible
-thread all the jewels of feudal imagination, real or false, contribute
-one after another their motley shapes to form a necklace, side by side
-with noble and chivalrous stories: we have the miracle of an infant
-whose throat was cut by Jews, the trials of patient Griselda, Canace and
-marvellous fictions of Oriental fancy, obscene stories of marriage and
-monks, allegorical or moral tales, the fable of the cock and hen, a list
-of great unfortunate persons: Lucifer, Adam, Samson, Nebuchadnezzar,
-Zenobia, Crœsus, Ugolino, Peter of Spain. I leave out some, for I must
-be brief. Chaucer is like a jeweller with his hands full: pearls and
-glass beads, sparkling diamonds and common agates, black jet and ruby
-roses, all that history and imagination had been able to gather and
-fashion during three centuries in the East, in France, in Wales, in
-Provence, in Italy, all that had rolled his way, clashed together,
-broken or polished by the stream of centuries, and by the great jumble
-of human memory, he holds in his hand, arranges it, composes therefrom a
-long sparkling ornament, with twenty pendants, a thousand facets, which
-by its splendor, variety, contrasts, may attract and satisfy the eyes of
-those most greedy for amusement and novelty.
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: GEOFFREY CHAUCER.
-_Photogravure from an old engraving._]
-
-
-
-
-He does more. The universal outburst of unchecked curiosity demands a
-more refined enjoyment: reverie and fantasy alone can satisfy it; not
-profound and thoughtful fantasy as we find it in Shakespeare, nor
-impassioned and meditative reverie as we find it in Dante, but the
-reverie and fantasy of the eyes, ears, external senses, which in poetry
-as in architecture call for singularity, wonders, accepted challenges,
-victories gained over the rational and probable, and which are satisfied
-only by what is crowded and dazzling. When we look at a cathedral of
-that time, we feel a sort of fear. Substance is wanting; the walls are
-hollowed out to make room for windows, the elaborate work of the
-porches, the wonderful growth of the slender columns, the thin curvature
-of arches--everything seems to menace us; support has been withdrawn to
-give way to ornament. Without external prop or buttress, and artificial
-aid of iron clamp-work, the building would have crumbled to pieces on
-the first day; as it is, it undoes itself; we have to maintain on the
-spot a colony of masons continually to ward off the continual decay. But
-our sight grows dim in following the wavings and twistings of the
-endless fretwork; the dazzling rose-window of the portal and the painted
-glass throw a checkered light on the carved stalls of the choir, the
-gold-work of the altar, the long array of damascened and glittering
-copes, the crowd of statues, tier above tier; and amid this violet
-light, this quivering purple, amid these arrows of gold which pierce the
-gloom, the entire building is like the tail of a mystical peacock. So
-most of the poems of the time are barren of foundation; at most a trite
-morality serves them for mainstay: in short, the poet thought of nothing
-else than displaying before us a glow of colors and a jumble of forms.
-They are dreams or visions; there are five or six in Chaucer, and you
-will meet more on your advance to the Renaissance. But the show is
-splendid. Chaucer is transported in a dream to a temple of glass,[200]
-on the walls of which are figured in gold all the legends of Ovid and
-Vergil, an infinite train of characters and dresses, like that which, on
-the painted glass in the churches, occupied then the gaze of the
-faithful. Suddenly a golden eagle, which soars near the sun, and
-glitters like a carbuncle, descends with the swiftness of lightning, and
-carries him off in his talons above the stars, dropping him at last
-before the House of Fame, splendidly built of beryl, with shining
-windows and lofty turrets, and situated on a high rock of almost
-inaccessible ice. All the southern side was graven with the names of
-famous men, but the sun was continuously melting them. On the northern
-side, the names, better protected, still remained. On the turrets
-appeared the minstrels and "gestiours," with Orpheus, Arion, and the
-great harpers, and behind them myriads of musicians, with horns, flutes,
-bagpipes, and reeds, on which they played, and which filled the air;
-then all the charmers, magicians, and prophets. He enters, and in a high
-hall, plated with gold, embossed with pearls, on a throne of carbuncle,
-he sees a woman seated, a "noble quene," amidst an infinite number of
-heralds, whose embroidered cloaks bore the arms of the most famous
-knights in the world, and heard the sounds of instruments, and the
-celestial melody of Calliope and her sisters. From her throne to the
-gate was a row of pillars, on which stood the great historians and
-poets; Josephus on a pillar of lead and iron; Statius on a pillar of
-iron stained with tiger's blood; Ovid, "Venus's clerk," on a pillar of
-copper; then, on one higher than the rest, Homer and Livy, Dares the
-Phrygian, Guido Colonna, Geoffrey of Monmouth, and the other historians
-of the war of Troy. Must I go on copying this phantasmagoria, in which
-confused erudition mars picturesque invention, and frequent banter shows
-signs that the vision is only a planned amusement? The poet and his
-reader have imagined for half-an-hour decorated halls and bustling
-crowds; a slender thread of common-sense has ingeniously crept along the
-transparent golden mist which they amuse themselves with following. That
-suffices; they are pleased with their fleeting fancies, and ask no more.
-
-Amid this exuberancy of mind, amid these refined cravings, and this
-insatiate exaltation of imagination and the senses, there was one
-passion, that of love, which, combining all, was developed in excess,
-and displayed in miniature the sickly charm, the fundamental and fatal
-exaggeration, which are the characteristics of the age, and which,
-later, the Spanish civilization exhibits both in its flower and its
-decay. Long ago, the courts of love in Provence had established the
-theory. "Each one who loves," they said, "grows pale at the sight of her
-whom he loves; each action of the lover ends in the thought of her whom
-he loves. Love can refuse nothing to love."[201] This search after
-excessive sensation had ended in the ecstasies and transports of Guido
-Cavalcanti, and of Dante; and in Languedoc a company of enthusiasts had
-established themselves, love-penitents, who, in order to prove the
-violence of their passion, dressed in summer in furs and heavy garments,
-and in winter in light gauze, and walked thus about the country, so that
-several of them fell ill and died. Chaucer, in their wake, explained in
-his verses the craft of love,[202] the Ten Commandments, the twenty
-statutes of love; and praised his lady, his "daieseye," his "Margarite,"
-his "vermeil rose"; depicted love in ballads, visions, allegories,
-didactic poems, in a hundred guises. This is chivalrous, lofty love, as
-it was conceived in the Middle Ages; above all, tender love. Troilus
-loves Cressida like a troubadour; without Pandarus, her uncle, he would
-have languished, and ended by dying in silence. He will not reveal the
-name of her he loves. Pandarus has to tear it from him, perform all the
-bold actions himself, plan every kind of stratagem. Troilus, however,
-brave and strong in battle, can but weep before Cressida, ask her
-pardon, and faint. Cressida, on her side, has every delicate feeling.
-When Pandarus brings her Troilus's first letter, she begins by refusing
-it, and is ashamed to open it: she opens it only because she is told the
-poor knight is about to die. At the first words "all rosy hewed tho woxe
-she"; and though the letter is respectful, she will not answer it. She
-yields at last to the importunities of her uncle, and answers Troilus
-that she will feel for him the affection of a sister. As to Troilus, he
-trembles all over, grows pale when he sees the messenger return, doubts
-his happiness, and will not believe the assurance which is given him:
-
-
-"But right so as these holtes and these hayis
-That han in winter dead ben and dry,
-Revesten hem in grene, whan that May is....
-Right in that selfe wise, sooth for to sey,
-Woxe suddainly his herte full of joy."[203]
-
-
-Slowly, after many troubles, and thanks to the efforts of Pandarus, he
-obtains her confession; and in this confession what a delightful charm!
-
-
-"And as the newe abashed nightingale,
-That stinteth first, whan she beginneth sing,
-Whan that she heareth any heerdes tale,
-Or in the hedges any wight stearing,
-And after siker doeth her voice outring:
-Right so Creseide, whan that her drede stent,
-Opened her herte and told him her entent."[204]
-
-
-He, as soon as he perceived a hope from afar,
-
-
-"In chaunged voice, right for his very drede,
-Which voice eke quoke, and thereto his manere,
-Goodly abasht, and now his hewes rede,
-Now pale, unto Cresseide his ladie dere,
-With looke doun cast, and humble iyolden chere,
-Lo, the alderfirst word that him astart
-Was twice: 'Mercy, mercy, O my sweet herte!'"[205]
-
-
-This ardent love breaks out in impassioned accents, in bursts of
-happiness. Far from being regarded as a fault, it is the source of all
-virtue. Troilus becomes braver, more generous, more upright, through it;
-his speech runs now on love and virtue; he scorns all villany; he honors
-those who possess merit, succors those who are in distress; and
-Cressida, delighted, repeats all day, with exceeding liveliness, this
-song, which is like the warbling of a nightingale:
-
-
-"Whom should I thanken but you, god of love,
-Of all this blisse, in which to bathe I ginne?
-And thanked be ye, lorde for that I love,
-This is the right life that I am inne,
-To flemen all maner vice and sinne:
-This doeth me so to vertue for to entende
-That daie by daie I in my will amende.
-And who that saieth that for to love is vice,...
-He either is envious, or right nice,
-Or is unmightie for his shreudnesse
-To loven....
-But I with all mine herte and all my might,
-As I have saied, woll love unto my last,
-My owne dere herte, and all mine owne knight,
-In whiche mine herte growen is so fast,
-And his in me, that it shall ever last."[206]
-
-
-But misfortune comes. Her father Calchas demands her back, and the
-Trojans decide that they will give her up in exchange for prisoners. At
-this news she swoons, and Troilus is about to slay himself. Their love
-at this time seems imperishable; it sports with death, because it
-constitutes the whole of life. Beyond that better and delicious life
-which it created, it seems there can be no other:
-
-
-"But as God would, of swough she abraide,
-And gan to sighe, and Troilus she cride,
-And he answerde: 'Lady mine, Creseide,
-Live ye yet?' and let his swerde doun glide:
-'Ye herte mine, that thanked be Cupide,'
-(Quod she), and therwithal she sore sight,
-And he began to glade her as he might.
-
-"Took her in armes two and kist her oft,
-And her to glad, he did al his entent,
-For which her gost, that flikered aie a loft,
-Into her wofull herte ayen it went:
-But at the last, as that her eye glent
-Aside, anon she gan his sworde aspie,
-As it lay bare, and gan for feare crie.
-
-"And asked him why had he it out draw,
-And Troilus anon the cause her told,
-And how himself therwith he wold have slain,
-For which Creseide upon him gan behold,
-And gan him in her armes faste fold,
-And said: 'O mercy God, lo which a dede!
-Alas, how nigh we weren bothe dede!'"[207]
-
-
-At last they are separated, with what vows and what tears! and Troilus,
-alone in his chamber, murmurs:
-
-
-"'Where is mine owne lady lefe and dere?
-Where is her white brest, where is it, where?
-Where been her armes, and her eyen clere
-That yesterday this time with me were?'...
-Nor there nas houre in al the day or night,
-Whan he was ther as no man might him here,
-That he ne sayd: 'O lovesome lady bright,
-How have ye faren sins that ye were there?
-Welcome ywis mine owne lady dere!'...
-Fro thence-forth he rideth up and doune,
-And every thing came him to remembraunce,
-As he rode forth by the places of the toune,
-In which he whilom had all his pleasaunce:
-'Lo, yonder saw I mine owne lady daunce,
-And in that temple with her eien clere,
-Me caught first my right lady dere.
-And yonder have I herde full lustely
-My dere herte laugh, and yonder play
-Saw her ones eke ful blisfully,
-And yonder ones to me gan she say,
-"Now, good sweete, love me well I pray."
-And yonde so goodly gan she me behold,
-That to the death mine herte is to her hold,
-And at the corner in the yonder house
-Herde I mine alderlevest lady dere,
-So womanly, with voice melodiouse,
-Singen so wel, so goodly, and so clere,
-That in my soule yet me thinketh I here
-The blissful sowne, and in that yonder place,
-My lady first me toke unto her grace.'"[208]
-
-
-None has since found more true and tender words. These are the charming
-"poetic branches" which flourished amid gross ignorance and pompous
-parades. Human intelligence in the Middle Age had blossomed on that side
-where it perceived the light.
-
-But mere narrative does not suffice to express his felicity and fancy;
-the poet must go where "shoures sweet of rain descended soft."
-
-
-"And every plaine was clothed faire
-With new greene, and maketh small floures
-To springen here and there in field and in mede,
-So very good and wholsome be the shoures,
-That it renueth that was old and dede,
-In winter time; and out of every sede
-Springeth the hearbe, so that every wight
-Of this season wexeth glad and light....
-In which (grove) were okes great, streight as a line,
-Under, the which the grasse so fresh of hew
-Was newly sprong, and an eight foot or nine
-Every tree well fro his fellow grew."
-
-
-He must forget himself in the vague felicity of the country, and, like
-Dante, lose himself in ideal light and allegory. The dreams love, to
-continue true, must not take too visible a form, nor enter into a too
-consecutive history; they must float in a misty distance; the soul in
-which they hover can no longer think of the laws of existence; it
-inhabits another world; it forgets itself in the ravishing emotion which
-troubles it, and sees its well-loved visions rise, mingle, come and go,
-as in summer we see the bees on a hill-slope flutter in a haze of light,
-and circle round and round the flowers.
-
-"One morning,"[209] a lady sings, "at the dawn of day, I entered an
-oak-grove"
-
-
-"With branches brode, laden with leves new,
-That sprongen out ayen the sunne-shene,
-Some very red, and some a glad light grenc....[210]
-
-"And I, that all this pleasaunt sight sie,
-Thought sodainly I felt so sweet and aire
-Of the eglentere, that certainely
-There is no hert, I deme, in such dispaire,
-Ne with thoughts froward and contraire,
-So overlaid, but it should soone have bote,
-If it had ones felt this savour sote.
-
-"And as I stood, and cast aside mine eie,
-I was ware of the fairest medler tree
-That ever yet in all my life I sie,
-As full of blossomes as it might be;
-Therein a goldfinch leaping pretile
-Fro bough to bough; and, as him list, he eet
-Here and there of buds and floures sweet....
-
-"And as I sat, the birds harkening thus,
-Methought that I heard voices sodainly,
-The most sweetest and most delicious
-That ever any wight, I trow truly,
-Heard in their life, for the armony
-And sweet accord was in so good musike,
-That the voice to angels most was like."[211]
-
-
-Then she sees arrive "a world of ladies... in surcotes white of
-velvet... set with emerauds... as of great pearles round and orient, and
-diamonds fine and rubies red." And all had on their head "a rich fret of
-gold... full of stately riche stones set," with "a chapelet of branches
-fresh and grene... some of laurer, some of woodbind, some of agnus
-castus"; and at the same time came a train of valiant knights in
-splendid array, with harness of red gold, shining in the sun, and noble
-steeds, with trappings "of cloth of gold, and furred with ermine." These
-knights and ladies were the servants of the Leaf, and they sate under a
-great oak, at the feet of their queen.
-
-From the other side came a bevy of ladies as resplendent as the first,
-but crowned with fresh flowers. These were the servants of the Flower.
-They alighted, and began to dance in the meadow. But heavy clouds
-appeared in the sky, and a storm broke out. They wished to shelter
-themselves under the oak, but there was no more room; they ensconced
-themselves as they could in the hedges and among the brushwood; the rain
-came down and spoiled their garlands, stained their robes, and washed
-away their ornaments; when the sun returned, they went to ask succor
-from the queen of the Leaf; she, being merciful, consoled them, repaired
-the injury of the rain, and restored their original beauty. Then all
-disappears as in a dream.
-
-The lady was astonished, when suddenly a fair dame appeared and
-instructed her. She learned that the servants of the Leaf had lived like
-brave knights, and those of the Flower had loved idleness and pleasure.
-She promises to serve the Leaf, and came away.
-
-Is this an allegory? There is at least a lack of wit. There is no
-ingenious enigma; it is dominated by fancy, and the poet thinks only of
-displaying in quiet verse the fleeting and brilliant train which had
-amused his mind, and charmed his eyes.
-
-Chaucer himself, on the first of May, rises and goes out into the
-meadows. Love enters his heart with the balmy air; the landscape is
-transfigured, and the birds begin to speak:
-
-
-"There sate I downe among the faire flours,
-And saw the birds trip out of hir bours,
-There as they rested them all the night,
-They were so joyfull of the dayes light,
-They began of May for to done honours.
-
-"They coud that service all by rote,
-There was many a lovely note,
-Some song loud as they had plained,
-And some in other manner voice yfained
-And some all out with the ful throte.
-
-"The proyned hem and made hem right gay,
-And daunceden, and lepten on her spray,
-And evermore two and two in fere,
-Right so as they had chosen hem to yere,
-In Feverere upon saint Valentines day.
-
-"And the river that I sate upon,
-It made such a noise as it ron,
-Accordaunt with the birdes armony,
-Methought it was the best melody
-That might ben yheard of any mon."[212]
-
-
-This confused harmony of vague noises troubles the sense; a secret
-languor enters the soul. The cuckoo throws his monotonous voice like a
-mournful and tender sigh between the white ash-tree boles; the
-nightingale makes his triumphant notes roll and ring above the leafy
-canopy; fancy breaks in unsought, and Chaucer hears them dispute of
-Love. They sing alternately an antistrophic song, and the nightingale
-weeps for vexation to hear the cuckoo speak in depreciation of Love. He
-is consoled, however, by the poet's voice, seeing that he also suffers
-with him:
-
-
-"'For love and it hath doe me much wo.'
-'Ye use' (quod she) 'this medicine
-Every day this May or thou dine
-Go looke upon the fresh daisie,
-And though thou be for wo in point to die,
-That shall full greatly lessen thee of thy pine.
-
-"'And looke alway that thou be good and trew,
-And I wol sing one of the songes new,
-For love of thee, as loud as I may crie:'
-And than she began this song full hie,
-'I shrewe all hem that been of love untrue.'"[213]
-
-
-To such exquisite delicacies love, as with Petrarch, had carried poetry;
-by refinement even, as with Petrarch, it is lost now and then in its
-wit, conceits, clinches. But a marked characteristic at once separates
-it from Petrarch. If over-excited, it is also graceful, polished, full
-of archness, banter, fine sensual gayety, somewhat gossipy, as the
-French always paint love. Chaucer follows his true masters, and is
-himself an elegant speaker, facile, ever ready to smile, loving choice
-pleasures, a disciple of the "Roman de la Rose," and much less Italian
-than French.[214] The bent of French character makes of love not a
-passion, but a gay banquet, tastefully arranged, in which the service is
-elegant, the food exquisite, the silver brilliant, the two guests in
-full dress, in good humor, quick to anticipate and please each other,
-knowing how to keep up the gayety, and when to part. In Chaucer, without
-doubt, this other altogether worldly vein runs side by side with the
-sentimental element. If Troilus is a weeping lover, Pandarus is a lively
-rascal, who volunteers for a singular service with amusing urgency,
-frank immorality, and carries it out carefully, gratuitously,
-thoroughly. In these pretty attempts Chaucer accompanies him as far as
-possible, and is not shocked. On the contrary, he makes fun out of it.
-At the critical moment, with transparent hypocrisy, he shelters himself
-behind his "author." If you find the particulars free, he says, it is
-not my fault; "so writen clerks in hir bokes old," and "I mote, aftir
-min auctour, telle...." Not only is he gay, but he jests throughout the
-whole tale. He sees clearly through the tricks of feminine modesty; he
-laughs at it archly, knowing full well what is behind; he seems to be
-saying, finger on lip: "Hush! let the grand words roll on, you will be
-edified presently." We are, in fact, edified; so is he, and in the nick
-of time he goes away, carrying the light: "For ought I can aspies, this
-light nor I ne serven here of nought. Troilus," says uncle Pandarus,
-"if ye be wise, sweveneth not now, lest more folke arise." Troilus takes
-care not to swoon; and Cressida at last, being alone with him, speaks
-wittily and with prudent delicacy; there is here an exceeding charm, no
-coarseness. Their happiness covers all, even voluptuousness, with a
-profusion and perfume of its heavenly roses. At most a slight spice of
-archness flavors it: "and gode thrift he had full oft." Troilus holds
-his mistress in his arms: "with worse hap God let us never mete." The
-poet is almost as well pleased as they: for him, as for the men of his
-time, the sovereign good is love, not damped, but satisfied; they ended
-even by thinking such love a merit. The ladies declared in their
-judgments, that when people love, they can refuse nothing to the
-beloved. Love has become law; it is inscribed in a code; they combine it
-with religion; and there is a sacrament of love, in which the birds in
-their anthems sing matins.[215] Chaucer curses with all his heart the
-covetous wretches, the business men, who treat is as a madness:
-
-
-"As would God, tho wretches that despise
-Service of love had eares al so long
-As had Mida, ful of covetise,...
-To teachen hem, that they been in the vice
-And lovers not, although they hold hem nice,
-... God yeve hem mischaunce,
-And every lover in his trouth avaunce."[216]
-
-
-He clearly lacks severity, so rare in southern literature. The Italians
-in the Middle Ages made a virtue of joy; and you perceive that the world
-of chivalry, as conceived by the French, expanded morality so as to
-confound it with pleasure.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION IV.--Characteristics of the Canterbury Tales
-
-
-There are other characteristics still more gay. The true Gallic
-literature crops up; obscene tales, practical jokes on one's neighbor,
-not shrouded in the Ciceronian style of Boccaccio, but related lightly
-by a man in good humor;[217] above all, active roguery, the trick of
-laughing at your neighbor's expense. Chaucer displays it better than
-Rutebeuf, and sometimes better than La Fontaine. He does not knock his
-men down; he pricks them as he passes, not from deep hatred or
-indignation, but through sheer nimbleness of disposition, and quick
-sense of the ridiculous; he throws his gibes at them by handfuls. His
-man of law is more a man of business than of the world:
-
-
-"No wher so besy a man as he ther n'as,
-And yet he semed besier than he was."[218]
-
-
-His three burgesses:
-
-
-"Everich, for the wisdom that he can
-Was shapelich for to ben an alderman.
-For catel hadden they ynough and rent,
-And eke hir wives wolde it wel assent."[219]
-
-
-Of the mendicant Friar he says:
-
-
-"His wallet lay beforne him in his lappe,
-Bret-ful of pardon come from Rome al hote."[220]
-
-
-The mockery here comes from the heart, in the French manner, without
-effort, calculation, or vehemence. It is so pleasant and so natural to
-banter one's neighbor! Sometimes the lively vein becomes so copious that
-it furnishes an entire comedy, indelicate certainly, but so free and
-life-like! Here is the portrait of the Wife of Bath, who has buried five
-husbands:
-
-
-"Bold was hire face, and fayre and rede of hew,
-She was a worthy woman all hire live;
-Housbondes at the chirche dore had she had five,
-Withouten other compagnie in youthe....
-In all the parish wif ne was ther non,
-That to the offring before hire shulde gon,
-And if ther did, certain so wroth was she.
-That she was out of alle charitee."[221]
-
-
-What a tongue she has! Impertinent, full of vanity, bold, chattering,
-unbridled, she silences everybody, and holds forth for an hour before
-coming to her tale. We hear her grating, high-pitched, loud, clear
-voice, wherewith she deafened her husbands. She continually harps upon
-the same ideas, repeats her reasons, piles them up and confounds them,
-like a stubborn mule who runs along shaking and ringing his bells, so
-that the stunned listeners remain open-mouthed, wondering that a single
-tongue can spin out so many words. The subject was worth the trouble.
-She proves that she did well to marry five husbands, and she proves it
-clearly, like a woman who knew it, because she had tried it:
-
-
-"God bad us for to wex and multiplie;
-That gentil text can I wel understond;
-Eke wel I wot, he sayd, that min husbond
-Shuld leve fader and moder, and take to me;
-But of no noumbre mention made he,
-Of bigamie or of octogamie;
-Why shuld men than speke of it vilanie?
-Lo here the wise king dan Solomon,
-I trow he hadde wives mo than on,
-(As wolde God it leful were to me
-To be refreshed half so oft as he,)
-Which a gift of God had he for alle his wives?...
-Blessed be God that I have wedded five.
-Welcome the sixthe whan that ever he shall....
-He (Christ) spake to hem that wold live parfitly,
-And lordings (by your leve), that am nat I;
-I wol bestow the flour of all myn age
-In th' actes and the fruit of mariage....
-An husbond wol I have, I wol not lette,
-Which shal be both my dettour and my thrall,
-And have his tribulation withall
-Upon his flesh, while that I am his wif."[222]
-
-
-Here Chaucer has the freedom of Molière, and we possess it no longer.
-His good wife justifies marriage in terms just as technical as
-Sganarelle. It behooves us to turn the pages quickly, and follow in the
-lump only this Odyssey of marriages. The experienced wife, who has
-journeyed through life with five husbands, knows the art of taming them,
-and relates how she persecuted them with jealousy, suspicion, grumbling,
-quarrels, blows given and received; how the husband, checkmated by the
-continuity of the tempest, stooped at last, accepted the halter, and
-turned the domestic mill like a conjugal and resigned ass:
-
-
-"For as an hors, I coude bite and whine;
-I coude plain, and I was in the gilt....
-I plained first, so was our werre ystint.
-They were ful glad to excusen hem ful blive
-Of thing, the which they never agilt hir live....
-I swore that all my walking out by night
-Was for to espien wenches that he dight....
-For though the pope had sitten hem beside,
-I wold not spare hem at hir owen bord....
-But certainly I made folk swiche chere,
-That in his owen grese I made him frie
-For anger, and for veray jalousie.
-By God, in erth I was his purgatorie,
-For which I hope his soule be in glorie."[223]
-
-
-She saw the fifth first at the burial of the fourth:
-
-
-"And Jankin oure clerk was on of tho:
-As helpe me God, whan that I saw him go
-Aftir the bere, me thought he had a paire
-Of legges and of feet, so clene and faire,
-That all my herte I yave unto his hold.
-He was, I trow, a twenty winter old,
-And I was fourty, if I shal say soth....
-As helpe me God, I was a lusty on,
-And faire, and riche, and yonge, and well begon."[224]
-
-
-"Yonge," what a word! Was human delusion ever more happily painted? How
-life-like is all, and how easy the tone. It is the satire of marriage.
-You will find it twenty times in Chaucer. Nothing more is wanted to
-exhaust the two subjects of French mockery than to unite with the satire
-of marriage the satire of religion.
-
-We find it here; and Rabelais is not more bitter. The monk whom Chaucer
-paints is a hypocrite, a jolly fellow, who knows good inns and jovial
-hosts better than the poor and the hospitals:
-
-
-"A Frere there was, a wanton and a mery...
-Ful wel beloved, and familier was he
-With frankeleins over all in his contree,
-And eke with worthy wimmen of the toun...
-Full swetely herde he confession,
-And pleasant was his absolution.
-He was an esy man to give penance,
-Ther as he wiste to han a good pitance:
-For unto a poure ordre for to give
-Is signe that a man is wel yshrive....
-And knew wel the tavernes in every toun,
-And every hosteler and gay tapstere,
-Better than a lazar and a beggere....
-It is not honest, it may not avance,
-As for to delen with no swich pouraille,
-But all with riche and sellers of vitaille....
-For many a man so hard is of his herte,
-He may not wepe, although him sore smerte.
-Therfore in stede of weping and praieres,
-Men mote give silver to the poure freres."[225]
-
-
-This lively irony had an exponent before in Jean de Meung. But Chaucer
-pushes it further, and gives it life and motion. His monk begs from
-house to house, holding out his wallet:
-
-
-"In every hous he gan to pore and prie,
-And begged mele and chese, or elles corn....
-'Yeve us a bushel whete, or malt, or reye,
-A Goddes kichel, or a trippe of chese,
-Or elles what you list, we may not chese;
-A Goddes halfpeny, or a masse peny;
-Or yeve us of your braun, if ye have any,
-A dagon of your blanket, leve dame,
-Our suster dere (lo here I write your name).'...
-And whan that he was out at dore, anon,
-He planed away the names everich on."[226]
-
-
-He has kept for the end of his circuit, Thomas, one of his most liberal
-clients. He finds him in bed, and ill; here is excellent fruit to suck
-and squeeze:
-
-
-"'God wot,' quod he, 'laboured have I ful sore.
-And specially for thy salvation,
-Have I sayd many a precious orison....
-I have this day ben at your chirche at messe...
-And ther I saw our dame, a, wher is she?'"[227]
-
-
-The dame enters:
-
-
-"This frere ariseth up ful curtisly,
-And hire embraceth in his armes narwe,
-And kisseth hire swete and chirketh as a sparwe."[228]...
-
-
-Then, in his sweetest and most caressing voice, he compliments her, and
-says:
-
-
-"'Thanked be God that you yaf soule and lif,
-Yet saw I not this day so faire a wif
-In all the chirche, God so save me.'"[229]
-
-
-Have we not here already Tartuffe and Elmire? But the monk is with a
-farmer, and can go to work more quickly and directly. When the
-compliments ended, he thinks of the substance, and asks the lady to let
-him talk alone with Thomas. He must inquire after the state of his soul:
-
-
-"'I wol with Thomas speke a litel throw:
-Thise curates ben so negligent and slow
-To gropen tendrely a conscience....
-Now, dame,' quod he, 'jeo vous die sanz doute,
-Have I nat of a capon but the liver,
-And of your white bred nat but a shiver,
-And after that a rosted pigges hed
-(But I ne wolde for me no beest were ded),
-Than had I with you homly suffisance.
-I am a man of litel sustenance,
-My spirit hath his fostring in the Bible.
-My body is ay so redy and penible
-To waken, that my stomak is destroied.'"[230]
-
-
-Poor man, he raises his hands to heaven, and ends with a sigh.
-
-The wife tells him her child died a fortnight before. Straightway he
-manufactures a miracle; how could he earn his money in any better way?
-He had a revelation of this death in the "dortour" of the convent; he
-saw the child carried to paradise; he rose with his brothers, "with many
-a tere trilling on our cheke," and they sang a _Te Deum_:
-
-
-"'For, sire and dame, trusteth me right wel,
-Our orisons ben more effectuel,
-And more we seen of Cristes secree thinges
-Than borel folk, although that they be kinges.
-We live in poverte, and in abstinence,
-And borel folk in richesse and dispence....
-Lazer and Dives liveden diversely,
-And divers guerdon hadden they therby.'"[231]
-
-
-Presently he spurts out a whole sermon, in a loathsome style, and with
-an interest which is plain enough. The sick man, wearied, replies that
-he has already given half his fortune to all kinds of monks, and yet he
-continually suffers. Listen to the grieved exclamation, the true
-indignation of the mendicant monk, who sees himself threatened by the
-competition of a brother of the cloth to share his client, his revenue,
-his booty, his food-supplies:
-
-
-"The frere answered: 'O Thomas, dost thou so?
-What nedeth you diverse freres to seche?
-What nedeth him that hath a parfit leche,
-To sechen other leches in the toun?
-Your inconstance is your confusion.
-Hold ye than me, or elles our covent,
-To pray for you ben insufficient?
-Thomas, that jape n' is not worth a mite,
-Your maladie is for we han to lite.'"[232]
-
-
-Recognize the great orator; he employs even the grand style to keep the
-supplies from being cut off:
-
-
-"'A, yeve that covent half a quarter otes;
-And yeve that covent four and twenty grotes;
-And yeve that frere a peny, and let him go:
-Nay, nay, Thomas, it may no thing be so.
-What is a ferthing worth parted on twelve?
-Lo, eche thing that is oned in himself
-Is more strong, than whan it is yscatered...
-Thou woldest han our labour al for nought.'"[233]
-
-
-Then he begins again his sermon in a louder tone, shouting at each word,
-quoting examples from Seneca and the classics, a terrible fluency, a
-trick of his trade, which, diligently applied, must draw money from the
-patient. He asks for gold, "to make our cloistre,"
-
-
-"... 'And yet, God wot, uneth the fundament
-Parfourmed is, ne of our pavement
-N' is not a tile yet within our wones;
-By God, we owen fourty pound for stones.
-Now help Thomas, for him that harwed helle,
-For elles mote we oure bokes selle,
-And if ye lacke oure predication,
-Than goth this world all to destruction.
-For who so fro this world wold us bereve,
-So God me save, Thomas, by your leve,
-He wold bereve out of this world the sonne.'"[234]
-
-
-In the end, Thomas in a rage promises him a gift, tells him to put his
-hand in the bed and take it, and sends him away duped, mocked, and
-covered with filth.
-
-We have descended now to popular farce; when amusement must be had at
-any price, it is sought, as here, in broad jokes, even in filthiness. We
-can see how these two coarse and vigorous plants have blossomed in the
-dung of the Middle Ages. Planted by the sly fellows of Champagne and
-Ile-de-France, watered by the _trouvères_, they were destined fully to
-expand, speckled and ruddy, in the large hands of Rabelais. Meanwhile
-Chaucer plucks his nosegay from it. Deceived husbands, mishaps in inns,
-accidents in bed, cuffs, kicks, and robberies, these suffice to raise a
-loud laugh. Side by side with noble pictures of chivalry, he gives us a
-train of Flemish grotesque figures, carpenters, joiners, friars,
-summoners; blows abound, fists descend on fleshy backs; many nudities
-are shown; they swindle one another out of their corn, their wives; they
-pitch one another out of a window; they brawl and quarrel. A bruise, a
-piece of open filthiness, passes in such society for a sign of wit. The
-summoner, being rallied by the friar, gives him tit for tat:
-
-
-"'This Frere bosteth that he knoweth helle,
-And, God it wot, that is but litel wonder,
-Freres and fendes ben but litel asonder.
-For parde, ye han often time herd telle
-How that a Frere ravished was to helle
-In spirit ones by a visoun,
-And as an angel lad him up and doun,
-To shewen him the peines that ther were,...
-And unto Sathanas he lad him doun.
-(And now hath Sathanas,' saith he, 'a tayl
-Broder than of a Carrike is the sayl.)
-Hold up thy tayl, thou Sathanas, quod he,
-....... and let the Frere see
-Wher is the nest of Freres in this place.
-And er than half a furlong way of space,
-Right so as bees out swarmen of an hive,
-Out of the devils... ther gonnen to drive.
-A twenty thousand Freres on a route,
-And thurghout hell they swarmed all aboute,
-And com agen, as fast as they may gon.'"[235]
-
-
-Such were the coarse buffooneries of the popular imagination.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION V.--The Art of Chaucer
-
-
-It is high time to return to Chaucer himself. Beyond the two notable
-characteristics which settle his place in his age and school of poetry,
-there are others which take him out of his age and school. If he was
-romantic and gay like the rest, it was after a fashion of his own. He
-observes characters, notes their differences, studies the coherence of
-their parts, endeavors to describe living individualities--a thing
-unheard of in his time, but which the renovators in the sixteenth
-century, and first among them Shakespeare, will do afterwards. Is it
-already the English positive common-sense and aptitude for seeing the
-inside of things which begins to appear? A new spirit, almost manly,
-pierces through, in literature as in painting, with Chaucer as with Van
-Eyck, with both at the same time; no longer the childish imitation of
-chivalrous life[236] or monastic devotion, but the grave spirit of
-inquiry and craving for deep truths, whereby art becomes complete. For
-the first time, in Chaucer as in Van Eyck, the character described
-stands out in relief; its parts are connected; it is no longer an
-unsubstantial phantom. You may guess its past and foretell its future
-action. Its externals manifest the personal and incommunicable details
-of its inner nature, and the infinite complexity of its economy and
-motion. To this day, after four centuries, that character is
-individualjzed and typical; it remains distinct in our memory, like the
-creations of Shakespeare and Rubens. We observe this growth in the very
-act. Not only does Chaucer, like Boccaccio, bind his tales into a single
-history; but in addition--and this is wanting in Boccaccio--he begins
-with the portrait of all his narrators, knight, summoner, man of law,
-monk, bailiff or reeve, host, about thirty distinct figures, of every
-sex, condition, age, each painted with his disposition, face, costume,
-turns of speech, little significant actions, habits, antecedents, each
-maintained in his character by his talk and subsequent actions, so that
-we can discern here, sooner than in any other nation, the germ of the
-domestic novel as we write it to-day. Think of the portraits of the
-franklin, the miller, the mendicant friar, and wife of Bath. There are
-plenty of others which show the broad brutalities, the coarse, tricks,
-and the pleasantries of vulgar life, as well as the gross and plentiful
-feastings of sensual life. Here and there honest old swashbucklers, who
-double their fists, and tuck up their sleeves; or contented beadles,
-who, when they have drunk, will speak nothing but Latin. But by the side
-of these there are some choice characters; the knight, who went on a
-crusade to Granada and Prussia, brave and courteous:
-
-
-"And though that he was worthy he was wise,
-And of his port as meke as is a mayde.
-He never yet no vilanie ne sayde
-In alle his lif, unto no manere wight,
-He was a veray parfit gentil knight."[237]
-
-"With him, ther was his sone, a yonge Squier,
-A lover, and a lusty bacheler,
-With lockes crull as they were laide in presse.
-Of twenty yere of age he was I gesse.
-Of his stature he was of even lengthe,
-And wonderly deliver, and grete of strengthe.
-And he hadde be somtime in chevachie,
-In Flaundres, in Artois, and in Picardie,
-And borne him wel, as of so litel space,
-In hope to stonden in his ladies grace.
-Embrouded was he, as it were a mede
-Alle ful of fresshe floures, white and rede.
-Singing he was, or floyting alle the day,
-He was as fresshe, as is the moneth of May.
-Short was his goune, with sieves long and wide.
-Wel coude he sitte on hors, and fayre ride.
-He coude songes make, and wel endite,
-Juste and eke dance, and wel pourtraie and write.
-So hote he loved, that by nightertale
-He slep no more than doth the nightingale.
-Curteis he was, lowly and servisable,
-And carf befor his fader at the table."[238]
-
-
-There is also a poor and learned clerk of Oxford; and finer still, and
-more worthy of a modern hand, the Prioress, "Madame Eglantine," who as a
-nun, a maiden, a great lady, is ceremonious, and shows signs of
-exquisite taste. Would a better be found nowadays in a German chapter,
-amid the most modest and lively bevy of sentimental and literary
-canonesses?
-
-
-"Ther was also a Nonne, a Prioresse,
-That of hire smiling was ful simple and coy
-Hire gretest othe n'as but by Seint Eloy;
-And she was cleped Madame Eglentine.
-Ful wel she sange the service devine,
-Entuned in hire nose ful swetely;
-And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetisly
-After the scole of Stratford-atte-bowe,
-For Frenche of Paris was to hire unknowe.
-At mete was she wel ytaughte withalle;
-So lette no morsel from hire lippes falle,
-No wette hire fingres in hire sauce depe.
-Wel coude she carie a morsel, and wel kepe,
-Thatte no drope ne fell upon hire brest.
-In curtesie was sette ful moche hire lest.
-Hire over lippe wiped she so clene,
-That in hire cuppe was no ferthing sene
-Of grese, whan she dronken hadde hire draught,
-Ful semely after hire mete she raught.
-And sikerly she was of grete disport
-And ful plesant, and amiable of port,
-And peined hire to contrefeten chere
-Of court, and ben estatelich of manere,
-And to ben holden digne of reverence."[239]
-
-
-Are you offended by these provincial affectations? Not at all; it is
-delightful to behold these nice and pretty ways, these little
-affectations, the waggery and prudery, the half-worldly, half-monastic
-smile. We inhale a delicate feminine perfume, preserved and grown old
-under the stomacher:
-
-
-"But for to speken of hire conscience,
-She was so charitable and so pitous,
-She wolde wepe if that she saw a mous
-Caughte in a trappe, if it were ded or bledde.
-Of smale houndes hadde she, that she fedde
-With rosted flesh, and milk, and wastel brede.
-But sore wept she if on of hem were dede,
-Or if men smote it with a yerde smert:
-And all was conscience and tendre herte."[240]
-
-
-Many elderly ladies throw themselves into such affections as these for
-lack of others. Elderly! what an objectionable word have I employed! She
-was not elderly:
-
-
-"Ful semely hire wimple ypinched was,
-Hire nose tretis; hire eyen grey as glas;
-Hire mouth ful smale, and therto soft and red;
-But sikerly she hadde a fayre forehed.
-It was almost a spanne brode I trowe;
-For hardily she was not undergrowe.
-Ful fetise was hire cloke, as I was ware.
-Of small corall aboute hire arm she bare
-A pair of bedes, gauded al with grene;
-And thereon heng a broche of gold ful shene,
-On whiche was first ywritten a crouned A,
-And after, Amor vincit omnia."[241]
-
-
-A pretty ambiguous device, suitable either for gallantry or devotion;
-the lady was both of the world and the cloister: of the world, you may
-see it in her dress; of the cloister, you gather it from "another Nonne
-also with hire hadde she, that was hire chapelleine, and Preestes thre";
-from the Ave Maria which she sings, the long edifying stories which she
-relates. She is like a fresh, sweet, and ruddy cherry, made to ripen in
-the sun, but which, preserved in an ecclesiastical jar, has become
-candied and insipid in the syrup.
-
-Such is the power of reflection which begins to dawn, such the high art.
-Chaucer studies here, rather than aims at amusement; he ceases to
-gossip, and thinks; instead of surrendering himself to the facility of
-flowing improvisation, he plans. Each tale is suited to the teller; the
-young squire relates a fantastic and Oriental history; the tipsy miller
-a loose and comical story; the honest clerk the touching legend of
-Griselda. All these tales are bound together, and that much better than
-by Boccaccio, by little veritable incidents, which spring from the
-characters of the personages, and such as we light upon in our travels.
-The horsemen ride on in good humor, in the sunshine, in the open
-country; they converse. The miller has drunk too much ale, and will
-speak, "and for no man forbere." The cook goes to sleep on his beast,
-and they play practical jokes on him. The monk and the summoner getup a
-dispute about their respective lines of business. The host restores
-peace, makes them speak or be silent, like a man who has long presided
-in the inn parlor, and who has often had to check brawlers. They pass
-judgment on the stories they listen to: declaring that there are few
-Griseldas in the world; laughing at the misadventures of the tricked
-carpenter; drawing a lesson from the moral tale. The poem is no longer,
-as in the contemporary literature, a mere procession, but a painting in
-which the contrasts are arranged, the attitudes chosen, the general
-effect calculated, so that it becomes life and motion; we forget
-ourselves at the sight, as in the case of every lifelike work; and we
-long to get on horseback on a fine sunny morning, and canter along green
-meadows with the pilgrims to the shrine of the good saint of Canterbury.
-
-Weigh the value of the words "general effect." According as we plan it
-or not, we enter on our maturity or infancy! The whole future lies in
-these two words. Savages or half savages, warriors of the Heptarchy or
-knights of the Middle Ages; up to this period, no one had reached to
-this point. They had strong emotions, tender at times, and each
-expressed them according to the original gift of his race, some by short
-cries, others by continuous babble. But they did not command or guide
-their impressions; they sang or conversed by impulse, at random,
-according to the bent of their disposition, leaving their ideas to
-present themselves as they might, and when they hit upon order, it was
-ignorantly and involuntarily. Here for the first time appears a
-superiority of intellect, which at the instant of conception suddenly
-halts, rises above itself, passes judgment, and says to itself, "This
-phrase tells the same thing as the last--remove it; these two ideas are
-disjointed—connect them; this description is feeble--reconsider it."
-When a man can speak thus he has an idea, not learned in the schools,
-but personal and practical, of the human mind, its process and needs,
-and of things also, their composition and combinations; he has a style,
-that is, he is capable of making everything understood and seen by the
-human mind. He can extract from every object, landscape, situation,
-character, the special and significant marks, so as to group and arrange
-them, in order to compose an artificial work which surpasses the natural
-work in its purity and completeness. He is capable, as Chaucer was, of
-seeking out in the old common forest of the Middle Ages, stories and
-legends, to replant them in his own soil, and make them send out new
-shoots. He has the right and the power, as Chaucer had, of copying and
-translating, because by dint of retouching he impresses on his
-translations and copies his original mark; he re-creates what he
-imitates, because through or by the side of worn-out fancies and
-monotonous stories, he can display, as Chaucer did, the charming ideas
-of an amiable and elastic mind, the thirty master-forms of the
-fourteenth century, the splendid freshness of the verdurous landscape
-and spring-time of England. He is not far from conceiving an idea of
-truth and life. He is on the brink of independent thought and fertile
-discovery. This was Chaucer's position. At the distance of a century and
-a half, he has affinity with the poets of Elizabeth[242] by his gallery
-of pictures, and with the reformers of the sixteenth century by his
-portrait of the good parson.
-
-Affinity merely. He advanced a few steps beyond the threshold of his
-art, but he paused at the end of the vestibule. He half opens the great
-door of the temple, but does not take his seat there; at most, he sat
-down in it only at intervals. In "Arcite and Palamon," in "Troilus and
-Cressida," he sketches sentiments, but does not create characters; he
-easily and naturally traces the winding course of events and
-conversations, but does not mark the precise outline of a striking
-figure. If occasionally, as in the description of the temple of Mars,
-after the "Thebaid" of Statius, feeling at his back the glowing breeze
-of poetry, he draws out his feet, clogged with the mud of the Middle
-Ages, and at a bound stands upon the poetic plain on which Statius
-imitated Vergil and equalled Lucan, he, at other times, again falls back
-into the childish gossip of the _trouvères_, or the dull gabble of
-learned clerks--to "Dan Phebus or Apollo-Delphicus." Elsewhere, a
-commonplace remark on art intrudes in the midst of an impassioned
-description. He uses three thousand verses to conduct Troilus to his
-first interview. He is like a precocious and poetical child, who mingles
-in his love-dreams quotations from his grammar and recollections of his
-alphabet.[243] Even in the "Canterbury Tales" he repeats himself,
-unfolds artless developments, forgets to concentrate his passion or his
-idea. He begins a jest, and scarcely ends it. He dilutes a bright
-coloring in a monotonous stanza. His voice is like that of a boy
-breaking into manhood. At first a manly and firm accent is maintained,
-then a shrill sweet sound shows that his growth is not finished, and
-that his strength is subject to weakness. Chaucer sets out as if to quit
-the Middle Ages; but in the end he is there still. To-day he composes
-the "Canterbury Tales"; yesterday he was translating the "Roman de la
-Rose." To-day he is studying the complicated machinery of the heart,
-discovering the issues of primitive education or of the ruling
-disposition, and creating the comedy of manners; to-morrow he will have
-no pleasure but in curious events, smooth allegories, amorous
-discussions, imitated from the French, or learned moralities from the
-ancients. Alternately he is an observer and a _trouvère_; instead of
-the step he ought to have advanced, he has but made a half-step.
-
-Who has prevented him, and the others who surround him? We meet with the
-obstacle in the tales he has translated of Melibeus, of the Parson, in
-his "Testament of Love" in short, so long as he writes verse, he is at
-his ease; as soon as he takes to prose, a sort of chain winds around his
-feet and stops him. His imagination is free, and his reasoning a slave.
-The rigid scholastic divisions, the mechanical manner of arguing and
-replying, the ergo, the Latin quotations, the authority of Aristotle and
-the Fathers, come and weigh down his budding thought. His native
-invention disappears under the discipline imposed. The servitude is so
-heavy that even in the work of one of his contemporaries, the "Testament
-of Love," which, for a long time, was believed to be written by Chaucer,
-amid the most touching plaints and the most smarting pains, the
-beautiful ideal lady, the heavenly mediator who appears in a vision,
-Love, sets her theses, establishes that the cause of a cause is the
-cause of the thing caused, and reasons as pedantically as they would at
-Oxford. In what can talent, even feeling, end, when it is kept down by
-such shackles? What succession of original truths and new doctrines
-could be found and proved, when in a moral tale, like that of Melibeus
-and his wife Prudence, it was thought necessary to establish a formal
-controversy, to quote Seneca and Job, to forbid tears, to bring forward
-the weeping Christ to authorize tears, to enumerate every proof, to call
-in Solomon, Cassiodorus, and Cato; in short, to write a book for
-schools? The public cares only for pleasant and lively thoughts; not
-serious and general ideas; these latter are for a special class only. As
-soon as Chaucer gets into a reflective mood, straightway Saint Thomas,
-Peter Lombard, the manual of sins, the treatise on definition and
-syllogism, the army of the ancients and of the Fathers, descend from
-their glory, enter his brain, speak in his stead; and the _trouvère's_
-pleasant voice becomes the dogmatic and sleep-inspiring voice of a
-doctor. In love and satire he has experience, and he invents; in what
-regards morality and philosophy he has learning, and copies. For an
-instant, by a solitary leap, he entered upon the close observation, and
-the genuine study of man; he could not keep his ground, he did not take
-his seat, he took a poetic excursion; and no one followed him. The level
-of the century is lower; he is on it himself for the most part. He is in
-the company of narrators like Froissart, of elegant speakers like
-Charles of Orléans, of gossipy and barren verse-writers like Gower,
-Lydgate, and Occleve. There is no fruit, but frail and fleeting
-blossoms, many useless branches, still more dying or dead branches; such
-is this literature. And why? Because it had no longer a root; after
-three centuries of effort, a heavy instrument cut it underground. This
-instrument was the Scholastic Philosophy.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION VI.--Scholastic Philosophy
-
-
-Beneath every literature there is a philosophy. Beneath, every work of
-art is an idea of nature and of life; this idea leads the poet. Whether
-the author knows it or not, he writes in order to exhibit it; and the
-characters which he fashions, like the events which he arranges, only
-serve to bring to light the dim creative conception which raises and
-combines them. Underlying Homer appears the noble life of heroic
-paganism and of happy Greece. Underlying Dante, the sad and violent life
-of fanatical Catholicism and of the much-hating Italians. From either we
-might draw a theory of man and of the beautiful. It is so with others;
-and this is how, according to the variations, the birth, blossoms,
-decline, or sluggishness of the master-idea, literature varies, is born,
-flourishes, degenerates, comes to an end. Whoever plants the one, plants
-the other: whoever undermines the one, undermines the other. Place in
-all the minds of any age a new grand idea of nature and life, so that
-they feel and produce it with their whole heart and strength, and you
-will see them, seized with the craving to express it, invent forms of
-art and groups of figures. Take away from these minds every grand new
-idea of nature and life, and you will see them, deprived of the craving
-to express all-important thoughts, copy, sink into silence, or rave.
-
-What has become of all these all-important thoughts? What labor worked
-them out? What studies nourished them? The laborers did not lack zeal.
-In the twelfth century the energy of their minds was admirable. At
-Oxford there were thirty thousand scholars. No building in Paris could
-contain the crowd of Abelard's disciples; when he retired to solitude,
-they accompanied him in such a multitude that the desert became a town.
-No difficulty repulsed them. There is a story of a young boy, who,
-though beaten by his master, was wholly bent on remaining with him, that
-he might still learn. When the terrible encyclopædia of Aristotle was
-introduced, though disfigured and unintelligible it was devoured. The
-only question presented to them, that of universals, so abstract and
-dry, so embarrassed by Arabic obscurities and Greek subtitles, during
-centuries, was seized upon eagerly. Heavy and awkward as was the
-instrument supplied to them, I mean syllogism, they made themselves
-masters of it, rendered it still more heavy, plunged it into every
-object and in every direction. They constructed monstrous books, in
-great numbers, cathedrals of syllogism, of unheard-of architecture, of
-prodigious finish, heightened in effect by intensity of intellectual
-power, which the whole sum of human labor has only twice been able to
-match.[244] These young and valiant minds thought they had found the
-temple of truth; they rushed at it headlong, in legions, breaking in the
-doors, clambering over the walls, leaping into the interior, and so
-found themselves at the bottom of a moat. Three centuries of labor at
-the bottom of this black moat added not one idea to the human mind.
-
-For consider the questions which they treat of. They seem to be
-marching, but are merely marking time. People would say, to see them
-moil and toil, that they will educe from heart and brain some great
-original creed, and yet all belief was imposed upon them from the
-outset. The system was made; they could only arrange and comment upon
-it. The conception comes not from them, but from Constantinople.
-Infinitely complicated and subtle as it is, the supreme work of Oriental
-mysticism and Greek metaphysics, so disproportioned to their young
-understanding, they exhaust themselves to reproduce it, and moreover
-burden their unpractised hands with the weight of a logical instrument
-which Aristotle created for theory and not for practice, and which ought
-to have remained in a cabinet of philosophical curiosities, without
-being ever carried into the field of action. "Whether the divine essence
-engendered the Son, or was engendered by the Father; why the three
-persons together are not greater than one alone; attributes determine
-persons, not substance, that is, nature; how properties can exist in the
-nature of God, and not determine it; if created spirits are local and
-can be circumscribed; if God can know more things than He is aware
-of";[245]--these are the ideas which they moot: what truth could issue
-thence? From hand to hand the chimera grows, and spreads wider its
-gloomy wings. "Can God cause that, the place and body being retained,
-the body shall have no position, that is, existence in place?--Whether
-the impossibility of being engendered is a constituent property of the
-First Person of the Trinity--Whether identity, similitude, and equality
-are real relations in God."[246] Duns Scotus distinguishes three kinds
-of matter: matter which is firstly first, secondly first, thirdly first.
-According to him, we must clear this triple hedge of thorny abstractions
-in order to understand the production of a sphere of brass. Under such a
-regimen, imbecility soon makes its appearance. Saint Thomas himself
-considers, "whether the body of Christ arose with its wounds--whether
-this body moves with the motion of the host and the chalice in
-consecration--whether at the first instant of conception Christ had the
-use of free judgment--whether Christ was slain by himself or by
-another?" Do you think you are at the limits of human folly? Listen. He
-considers "whether the dove in which the Holy Spirit appeared was a real
-animal--whether a glorified body can occupy one and the same place at
-the same time as another glorified body--whether in the state of
-innocence all children were masculine?" I pass over others as to the
-digestion of Christ, and some still more untranslatable.[247] This is
-the point reached by the most esteemed doctor, the most judicious mind,
-the Bossuet of the Middle Ages. Even in this ring of inanities the
-answers are laid down. Roscellinus and Abelard were excommunicated,
-exiled, imprisoned, because they swerved from it. There is a complete
-minute dogma which closes all issues; there is no means of escaping;
-after a hundred wriggles and a hundred efforts you must come and tumble
-into a formula. If by mysticism you try to fly over their heads, if by
-experience you endeavor to creep beneath, powerful talons await you at
-your exit. The wise man passes for a magician, the enlightened man for a
-heretic. The Waldenses, the Catharists, the disciples of John of Parma,
-were burned; Roger Bacon died only just in time, otherwise he might have
-been burned. Under this constraint men ceased to think; for he who
-speaks of thought, speaks of an effort at invention, an individual
-creation, an energetic action. They recite a lesson, or sing a
-catechism; even in paradise, even in ecstasy and the divinest raptures
-of love, Dante thinks himself bound to show an exact memory and a
-scholastic orthodoxy. How then with the rest? Some, like Raymond Lully,
-set about inventing an instrument of reasoning to serve in place of the
-understanding. About the fourteenth century, under the blows of Occam,
-this verbal science began to totter; they saw that its entities were
-only words; it was discredited. In 1367, at Oxford, of thirty thousand
-students, there remained six thousand;[248] they still set their
-"Barbara and Felapton," but only in the way of routine. Each one in turn
-mechanically traversed the petty region of threadbare cavils, scratched
-himself in the briers of quibbles, and burdened himself with his bundle
-of texts; nothing more. The vast body of science which was to have
-formed and vivified the whole thought of man, was reduced to a
-text-book.
-
-So, little by little, the conception which fertilized and ruled all
-others, dried up; the deep spring, whence flowed all poetic streams, was
-found empty; science furnished nothing more to the world. What further
-works could the world produce? As Spain, later on, renewing the Middle
-Ages, after having shone splendidly and foolishly by her chivalry and
-devotion, by Lope de Vega and Calderon, Loyola and St. Theresa, became
-enervated through the Inquisition and through casuistry, and ended by
-sinking into a brutish silence; so the Middle Ages, outstripping Spain,
-after displaying the senseless heroism of the Crusades, and the poetical
-ecstasy of the cloister, after producing chivalry and saintship, Francis
-of Assisi, St. Louis, and Dante, languished under the Inquisition and
-the scholastic learning, and became extinguished in idle raving and
-inanity.
-
-Must we quote all these good people who speak without having anything to
-say? You may find them in Warton;[249] dozens of translators, importing
-the poverties of French literature, and imitating imitations; rhyming
-chroniclers, most commonplace of men, whom we only read because we must
-accept history from every quarter, even from imbeciles; spinners and
-spinsters of didactic poems, who pile up verses on the training of
-falcons, on heraldry, on chemistry; editors of moralities, who invent
-the same dream over again for the hundredth time, and get themselves
-taught universal history by the goddess Sapience. Like the writers of
-the Latin decadence, these folk only think of copying, compiling,
-abridging, constructing in text-books, in rhymed memoranda, the
-encyclopædia of their times.
-
-Listen to the most illustrious, the grave Gower--"morall Gower," as he
-was called![250] Doubtless here and there he contains a remnant of
-brilliancy and grace. He is like an old secretary of a Court of Love,
-André le Chapelain or any other, who would pass the day in solemnly
-registering the sentences of ladies, and in the evening, partly asleep
-on his desk, would see in a half-dream their sweet smile and their
-beautiful eyes.[251] The ingenious but exhausted vein of Charles of
-Orléans still flows in his French ballads. He has the same fondling
-delicacy, almost a little affected. The poor little poetic spring flows
-yet in thin, transparent streamlets over the smooth pebbles, and murmurs
-with a babble, pretty, but so low that at times you cannot hear it. But
-dull is the rest! His great poem, "Confessio Amantis," is a dialogue
-between a lover and his confessor, imitated chiefly from Jean de Meung,
-having for object, like the "Roman de la Rose," to explain and classify
-the impediments of love. The superannuated theme is always reappearing,
-covered by a crude erudition. You will find here an exposition of
-hermetic science, lectures on the philosophy of Aristotle, a treatise on
-politics, a litany of ancient and modern legends gleaned from the
-compilers, marred in the passage by the pedantry of the schools and the
-ignorance of the age. It is a cartload of scholastic rubbish; the sewer
-tumbles upon this feeble spirit, which of itself was flowing clearly,
-but now, obstructed by tiles, bricks, plaster, ruins from all quarters
-of the globe, drags on darkened and sluggish. Gower, one of the most
-learned of his time,[252] supposed that Latin was invented by the old
-prophetess Carmentis; that the grammarians, Aristarchus, Donatus, and
-Didymus, regulated its syntax, pronunciation, and prosody; that it was
-adorned by Cicero with the flowers of eloquence and rhetoric; then
-enriched by translations from the Arabic, Chaldæan, and Greek; and that
-at last, after much labor of celebrated writers, it attained its final
-perfection in Ovid, the poet of love. Elsewhere he discovered that
-Ulysses learned rhetoric from Cicero, magic from Zoroaster, astronomy
-from Ptolemy, and philosophy from Plato. And what a style! so long, so
-dull,[253] so drawn out by repetitions, the most minute details,
-garnished with references to his text, like a man who, with his eyes
-glued to his Aristotle and his Ovid, a slave of his musty parchments,
-can do nothing but copy and string his rhymes together. Schoolboys even
-in old age, they seem to believe that every truth, all wit, is their
-great wood-bound books; that they have no need to find out and invent
-for themselves; that their whole business is to repeat; that this is, in
-fact, man's business. The scholastic system had enthroned the dead
-letter, and peopled the world with dead understandings.
-
-After Gower come Occleve and Lydgate.[254] "My father Chaucer would
-willingly have taught me," says Occleve, "but I was dull, and learned
-little or nothing." He paraphrased in verse a treatise of Egidius, on
-government; these are moralities. There are others, on compassion, after
-Augustine, and on the art of dying; then love-tales; a letter from
-Cupid, dated from his court in the month of May. Love and
-moralities,[255] that is, abstractions and affectation, were the taste
-of the time; and so, in the time of Lebrun, of Esménard, at the close
-of contemporaneous French literature,[256] they produced collections of
-didactic poems, and odes to Chloris. As for the monk Lydgate, he had
-some talent, some imagination, especially in high-toned descriptions: it
-was the last flicker of a dying literature; gold received a golden
-coating, precious stones were placed upon diamonds, ornaments multiplied
-and made fantastic; as in their dress and buildings, so in their
-style.[257] Look at the costumes of Henry IV and Henry V, monstrous
-heart-shaped or horn-shaped head-dresses, long sleeves covered with
-ridiculous designs, the plumes, and again the oratories, armorial tombs,
-little gaudy chapels, like conspicuous flowers under the naves of the
-Gothic perpendicular. When we can no more speak to the soul, we try to
-speak to the eyes. This is what Lydgate does, nothing more. Pageants or
-shows are required of him, "disguisings" for the company of goldsmiths;
-a mask before the king, a May entertainment for the sheriffs of London,
-a drama of the creation for the festival of Corpus Christi, a
-masquerade, a Christmas show; he gives the plan and furnishes the
-verses. In this matter he never runs dry; two hundred and fifty-one
-poems are attributed to him. Poetry thus conceived becomes a
-manufacture; it is composed by the yard. Such was the judgment of the
-Abbot of St. Albans, who, having got him to translate a legend in verse,
-pays a hundred shillings for the whole, verse, writing, and
-illuminations, placing the three works on a level. In fact, no more
-thought was required for the one than for the others. His three great
-works, "The Fall of Princes, The Destruction of Troy," and "The Siege
-of Thebes," are only translations or paraphrases, verbose, erudite,
-descriptive, a kind of chivalrous processions, colored for the twentieth
-time, in the same manner, on the same vellum. The only point which rises
-above the average, at least in the first poem, is the idea of
-Fortune,[258] and the violent vicissitudes of human life. If there was a
-philosophy at this time, this was it. They willingly narrated horrible
-and tragic histories; gather them from antiquity down to their own day;
-they were far from the trusting and passionate piety which felt the hand
-of God in the government of the world; they saw that the world went
-blundering here and there like a drunken man. A sad and gloomy world,
-amused by eternal pleasures, oppressed with a dull misery, which
-suffered and feared without consolation or hope, isolated between the
-ancient spirit in which it had no living hope, and the modern spirit
-whose active science it ignored. Fortune, like a black smoke, hovers
-over all, and shuts out the sight of heaven. They picture it as follows:
-
-
-"Her face semyng cruel and terrible
-And by disdaynè menacing of loke,...
-An hundred handes she had, of eche part...
-Some of her handes lyft up men alofte,
-To hye estate of worldlye dignitè;
-Another hande griped ful unsofte,
-Which cast another in grete adversite."[259]
-
-
-They look upon the great unhappy ones, a captive king, a dethroned
-queen, assassinated princes, noble cities destroyed,[260] lamentable
-spectacles as exhibited in Germany and France, and of which there will
-be plenty in England; and they can only regard them with a harsh
-resignation. Lydgate ends by reciting a commonplace of mechanical piety,
-by way of consolation. The reader makes the sign of the cross, yawns,
-and goes away. In fact, poetry and religion are no longer capable of
-suggesting a genuine sentiment. Authors copy, and copy again. Hawes[261]
-copies the "House of Fame" of Chaucer, and a sort of allegorical amorous
-poem, after the "Roman de la Rose." Barclay[262] translates the "Mirror
-of Good Manners" and the "Ship of Fools." Continually we meet with dull
-abstractions, used up and barren; it is the scholastic phase of poetry.
-If anywhere there is an accent of greater originality, it is in this
-"Ship of Fools," and in Lydgate's "Dance of Death," bitter buffooneries,
-sad gayeties, which, in the hands of artists and poets, were having
-their run throughout Europe. They mock at each other, grotesquely and
-gloomily; poor, dull, and vulgar figures, shut up in a ship, or made to
-dance on their tomb to the sound of a fiddle, played by a grinning
-skeleton. At the end of all this mouldy talk, and amid the disgust which
-they have conceived for each other, a clown, a tavern Triboulet,[263]
-composer of little jeering and macaronic verses, Skelton[264] makes his
-appearance, a virulent pamphleteer, who, jumbling together French,
-English, Latin phrases, with slang, and fashionable words, invented
-words, intermingled with short rhymes, fabricates a sort of literary
-mud, with which he bespatters Wolsey and the bishops. Style, metre,
-rhyme, language, art of every kind, is at an end; beneath the vain
-parade of official style there is only a heap of rubbish. Yet, as he
-says,
-
-
-"Though my rhyme be ragged,
-Tattered and gagged,
-Rudely rain-beaten,
-Rusty, moth-eaten,
-Yf ye take welle therewithe,
-It hath in it some pithe."
-
-
-It is full of political animus, sensual liveliness, English and popular
-instincts; it lives. It is a coarse life, still elementary, swarming
-with ignoble vermin, like that which appears in a great decomposing
-body. It is life, nevertheless, with its two great features which it is
-destined to display: the hatred of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which
-is the Reformation; the return to the senses and to natural life, which
-is the Renaissance.
-
-
-
-
-[Footnote 193: Born between 1328 and 1345, died in 1400.]
-
-[Footnote 194: Renan, "De l'Art au Moyen Age."]
-
-[Footnote 195: See Froissart, his life with the Count of Foix
-and with King Richard II.]
-
-[Footnote 196: "Knight's Tale," II. p. 59, lines 1957-1964.]
-
-[Footnote 197: "Knight's Tale," II. p. 59, lines 1977-1996.]
-
-[Footnote 198: Ibid., p. 61, lines 2043-2050.]
-
-[Footnote 199: "Knight's Tale," II. p. 63, lines 2120-2188.]
-
-[Footnote 200: The House of Fame.]
-
-[Footnote 201: André le Chapelain, 1170.]
-
-[Footnote 202: Also the "Court of Love," and perhaps "The Assemble
-of Ladies" and "La Belle Dame sans Merci."]
-
-[Footnote 203: "Troilus and Cressida," vol, V. bk. 3, p. 12.]
-
-[Footnote 204: "Troilus and Cressida," vol. V. bk. 3, p. 40.]
-
-[Footnote 205: Ibid. p. 4.]
-
-[Footnote 206: "Troilus and Cressida," vol. IV. bk. 2, p. 292.]
-
-[Footnote 207: Ibid. vol. V. bk. 4, p. 97.]
-
-[Footnote 208: "Troilus and Cressida," vol. V. bk. 5, p. 119 et passim.]
-
-[Footnote 209: "The Flower and the Leaf," VI. p. 244, lines 6-32.]
-
-[Footnote 210: Ibid. p. 245, line 33.]
-
-[Footnote 211: Ibid. VI. p. 246, lines 78-133.]
-
-[Footnote 212: "The Cuckow and Nightingale," VI. p. 121, lines 67-85.]
-
-[Footnote 213: Ibid. p. 126, lines 230-241.]
-
-[Footnote 214: Stendhal, "On Love: the difference of Love-taste
-and Love-passion."]
-
-[Footnote 215: "The Court of Love," about 1353, et seq. See also
-the "Testament of Love."]
-
-[Footnote 216: "Troilus and Cressida," vol. V. III. pp. 44, 45.]
-
-[Footnote 217: The story of the pear-tree (Merchant's Tale), and
-of the cradle (Reeve's Tale), for instance, in the "Canterbury
-Tales."]
-
-[Footnote 218: "Canterbury Tales" prologue, p. 10, line 323.]
-
-[Footnote 219: Ibid. p. 12, line 373.]
-
-[Footnote 220: "Canterbury Tales," prologue, p. 21, line 688.]
-
-[Footnote 221: Ibid. II. prologue, p. 14, line 460.]
-
-[Footnote 222: "Canterbury Tales," ii., Wife of Bath's
-Prologue, p. 168, lines 5610-5739.]
-
-[Footnote 223: Ibid. p. 179, lines 5968-6072.]
-
-[Footnote 224: "Canterbury Tales," ii., Wife of Bath's Prologue,
-p. 185, lines 6177-6188.]
-
-[Footnote 225: Ibid, prologue, II. p. 7, line 208 et passim.]
-
-[Footnote 226: "Canterbury Tales," The Sompnoures Tale, II. p. 220,
-lines 7319-7340.]
-
-[Footnote 227: Ibid. p. 221, line 7366.]
-
-[Footnote 228: Ibid. p. 221, line 7384.]
-
-[Footnote 229: Ibid. p. 222, line 7389.]
-
-[Footnote 230: "Canterbury Tales," II., The Sompnoures Tale, p. 222,
-lines 7397-7429.]
-
-[Footnote 231: Ibid. p. 223, lines 7450-7460.]
-
-[Footnote 232: Ibid. p. 226, lines 7536-7544.]
-
-[Footnote 233: "Canterbury Tales," II., The Sompnoures Tale, p. 226,
-lines 7545-7553.]
-
-[Footnote 234: Ibid. p. 230, lines 7685-7695.]
-
-[Footnote 235: "Canterbury Tales," II., The Sompnoures Prologue,
-p. 217, lines 7254-7279.]
-
-[Footnote 236: See in "The Canterbury Tales" the Rhyme of Sir Topas,
-a parody on the chivalric histories. Each character there seems a
-precursor of Cervantes.]
-
-[Footnote 237: Prologue to "Canterbury Tales," II. p. 3, lines 68-72.]
-
-[Footnote 238: Prologue to "Canterbury Tales," II. p. 3, lines 79-100.]
-
-[Footnote 239: Prologue to "Canterbury Tales," II. p. 4, lines 118-141.]
-
-[Footnote 240:  Ibid. p. 5, lines 142-150.]
-
-[Footnote 241: Ibid. p. 5, lines 151-162.]
-
-[Footnote 242: Tennyson, in his "Dream of Fair Women," sings:
-"Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath
-Preluded those melodious bursts, that fill
-The spacious times of great Elizabeth
-With sounds that echo still."--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 243: Speaking of Cressida, IV. book I. p. 236, he says:
-"Right as our first letter is now an a,
-In beautie first so stood she makeles,
-Her goodly looking gladed all the prees,
-Nas never seene thing to be praised so derre,
-Nor under cloude blacke so bright a sterre."]
-
-[Footnote 244: Under Proclus and under Hegel. Duns Scotus, at the age of
-thirty-one, died, leaving beside his sermons and commentaries, twelve
-folio volumes, in a small close handwriting, in a style like Hegel's, on
-the same subject as Proclus treats of. Similarly with Saint Thomas and the
-whole train of schoolmen. No idea can be formed of such a labor before
-handling the books themselves.]
-
-[Footnote 245: Peter Lombard, "Book of Sentences." It was the classic
-of the Middle Ages.]
-
-[Footnote 246: Duns Scotus, ed. 1639.]
-
-[Footnote 247: Utrum angelus diligat se ipsum dilectione naturali
-vel electiva? Utrum in statu innocentiæ fuerit generatio per coitum?
-Utrum omnes fuissent nati in sexu masculino? Utrum cognitio angeli
-posset dici matutina et vespertina? Utrum martyribus aureola debeatur?
-Utrum virgo Maria fuerit virgo in concipiendo? Utrum remanserit virgo post
-partum? The reader may look out in the text the reply to these last two
-questions. (S. Thomas, "Summa Theologica," ed. 1677.)]
-
-[Footnote 248: The Rev. Henry Anstey, in his Introduction to
-"Munimenta Academica," Lond. 1868, says that "the statement
-of Richard of Armagh that there were in the thirteenth century
-30,000 scholars at Oxford is almost incredible." P. XLVIII.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 249: "History of English Poetry," vol. II.]
-
-[Footnote 250: Contemporary with Chaucer. The "Confessio Amantis"
-dates from 1393.]
-
-[Footnote 251: "History of Rosiphele. Ballads."]
-
-[Footnote 252: Warton, II. 240.]
-
-[Footnote 253: See, for instance his description of the sun's crown,
-the most poetical passage in book VII.]
-
-[Footnote 254: 1420, 1430.]
-
-[Footnote 255: This is the title Froissart (1397) gave to his collection
-when presenting it to Richard II.]
-
-[Footnote 256: Lebrun, 1729-1807; Esménard, 1770-1812.]
-
-[Footnote 257: Lydgate, "The Destruction of Troy"--description of
-Hector's chapel. Especially read the Pageants or Solemn Entries.]
-
-[Footnote 258: See the Vision of Fortune, a gigantic figure. In
-this painting he shows both feeling and talent.]
-
-[Footnote 259: Lydgate, "Fall of Princes." Warton, II. 280.]
-
-[Footnote 260: The War of the Hussites, The Hundred Years' War,
-and The War of the Roses.]
-
-[Footnote 261: About 1506. "The Temple of Glass. Passetyme of
-Pleasure."]
-
-[Footnote 262: About 1500.]
-
-[Footnote 263: The court fool in Victor Hugo's drama of "Le Roi
-s'amuse."--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 264: Died 1529; Poet-Laureate 1489. His "Bouge of Court,"
-his "Crown of Laurel," his "Elegy on the Death of the Earl of
-Northumberland," are well written, and belong to official poetry.]
-
-
-
-
-BOOK II.--THE RENAISSANCE
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER FIRST
-
-
-The Pagan Renaissance
-
-
-_PART I.--Manners of the Time_
-
-
-SECTION I.--Ideas of the Middle Ages
-
-
-For seventeen centuries a deep and sad thought had weighed upon the
-spirit of man, first to overwhelm it, then to exalt and to weaken it,
-never losing its hold throughout this long space of time. It was the
-idea of the weakness and decay of the human race. Greek corruption,
-Roman oppression, and the dissolution of the ancient world, had given
-rise to it; it, in its turn, had produced a stoical resignation, an
-epicurean indifference, Alexandrian mysticism, and the Christian hope in
-the kingdom of God. "The world is evil and lost, let us escape by
-insensibility, amazement, ecstasy." Thus spoke the philosophers; and
-religion, coming after, announced that the end was near; "Prepare, for
-the kingdom of God is at hand." For a thousand years universal ruin
-incessantly drove still deeper into their hearts this gloomy thought;
-and when man in the feudal state raised himself, by sheer force of
-courage and muscles, from the depths of final imbecility and general
-misery, he discovered his thought and his work fettered by the crushing
-idea, which, forbidding a life of nature and worldly hopes, erected into
-ideals the obedience of the monk and the dreams of fanatics.
-
-It grew ever worse and worse. For the natural result of such a
-conception, as of the miseries which engender it, and the discouragement
-which it gives rise to, is to do away with personal action, and to
-replace originality by submission. From the fourth century, gradually
-the dead letter was substituted for the living faith. Christians
-resigned themselves into the hands of the clergy, they into the hands of
-the pope. Christian opinions were subordinated to theologians, and
-theologians to the Fathers. Christian faith was reduced to the
-accomplishment of works, and works to the accomplishment of ceremonies.
-Religion, fluid during the first centuries, was now congealed into a
-hard crystal, and the coarse contact of the barbarians had deposited
-upon its surface a layer of idolatry; theocracy and the Inquisition, the
-monopoly of the clergy and the prohibition of the Scriptures, the
-worship of relics and the sale of indulgences began to appear. In place
-of Christianity, the church; in place of a free creed, enforced
-orthodoxy; in place of moral fervor, fixed religious practices; in place
-of the heart and stirring thought, outward and mechanical discipline:
-such are the characteristics of the Middle Ages. Under this constraint
-thinking society had ceased to think; philosophy was turned into a
-text-book, and poetry into dotage; and mankind, slothful and crouching,
-delivering up their conscience and their conduct into the hands of their
-priests, seemed but as puppets, fit only for reciting a catechism and
-mumbling over beads.[265]
-
-At last invention makes another start; and it makes it by the efforts of
-the lay society, which rejected theocracy, kept the State free, and
-which presently discovered, or rediscovered, one after another, the
-industries, sciences, and arts. All was renewed; America and the Indies
-were added to the map of the world; the shape of the earth was
-ascertained, the system of the universe propounded, modern philology was
-inaugurated, the experimental sciences set on foot, art and literature
-shot forth like a harvest, religion was transformed; there was no
-province of human intelligence and action which was not refreshed and
-fertilized by this universal effort. It was so great that it passed from
-the innovators to the laggards, and reformed Catholicism in the face of
-Protestantism which it formed. It seems as though men had suddenly
-opened their eyes and seen. In fact, they attain a new and superior kind
-of intelligence. It is the proper feature of this age that men no longer
-make themselves masters of objects by bits, or isolated, or through
-scholastic or mechanical classifications, but as a whole, in general and
-complete views, with the eager grasp of a sympathetic spirit, which
-being placed before a vast object, penetrates it in all its parts, tries
-it in all its relations, appropriates and assimilates it, impresses upon
-itself its living and potent image, so life-like and so powerful, that
-it is fain to translate it into externals through a work of art or an
-action. An extraordinary warmth of soul, a superabundant and splendid
-imagination, reveries, visions, artists, believers, founders,
-creators--that is what such a form of intellect produces; for to create
-we must have, as had Luther and Loyola, Michel Angelo and Shakespeare,
-an idea, not abstract, partial, and dry, but well defined, finished,
-sensible--a true creation, which acts inwardly, and struggles to appear
-to the light. This was Europe's grand age, and the most notable epoch of
-human growth. To this day we live from its sap; we only carry on its
-pressure and efforts.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION II.--Growth of New Ideas
-
-
-When human power is manifested so clearly and in such great works, it is
-no wonder if the ideal changes, and the old pagan idea reappears. It
-recurs, bringing with it the worship of beauty and vigor, first in
-Italy; for this, of all countries in Europe, is the most pagan, and the
-nearest to the ancient civilization; thence in France and Spain, and
-Flanders, and even in Germany; and finally in England. How is it
-propagated? What revolution of manners reunited mankind at this time,
-everywhere, under a sentiment which they had forgotten for fifteen
-hundred years? Merely that their condition had improved, and they felt
-it. The idea ever expresses the actual situation, and the creatures of
-the imagination, like the conceptions of the mind, only manifest the
-state of society and the degree of its welfare; there is a fixed
-connection between what man admires and what he is. While misery
-overwhelms him, while the decadence is visible, and hope shut out, he is
-inclined to curse his life on earth, and seek consolation in another
-sphere. As soon as his sufferings are alleviated, his power made
-manifest, his prospects brightened, he begins once more to love the
-present life, to be self-confident, to love and praise energy, genius,
-all the effective faculties which labor to procure him happiness. About
-the twentieth year of Elizabeth's reign, the nobles gave up shield and
-two-handed sword for the rapier;[266] a little, almost imperceptible
-fact, yet vast, for it is like the change which sixty years ago made us
-give up the sword at court, to leave us with our arms swinging about in
-our black coats. In fact, it was the close of feudal life, and the
-beginning of court life, just as today court life is at an end, and the
-democratic reign has begun. With the two-handed swords, heavy coats of
-mail, feudal keeps, private warfare, permanent disorder, all the
-scourges of the Middle Ages retired, and faded into the past. The
-English had done with the Wars of the Roses. They no longer ran the risk
-of being pillaged to-morrow for being rich, and hanged the next day for
-being traitors; they have no further need to furbish up their armor,
-make alliances with powerful nations, lay in stores for the winter,
-gather together men-at-arms, scour the country to plunder and hang
-others.[267] The monarchy, in England, as throughout Europe, establishes
-peace in the community,[268] and with peace appear the useful arts.
-Domestic comfort follows civil security; and man, better furnished in
-his home, better protected in his hamlet, takes pleasure in his life on
-earth, which he has changed, and means to change.
-
-Toward the close of the fifteenth century[269] the impetus was given;
-commerce and the woolen trade made a sudden advance, and such an
-enormous one that corn-fields were changed into pasture-lands, "whereby
-the inhabitants of the said town (Manchester) have gotten and come into
-riches and wealthy livings,"[270] so that in 1553, 40,000 pieces of
-cloth were exported in English ships. It was already the England which
-we see to-day, a land of green meadows, intersected by hedgerows,
-crowded with cattle, and abounding in ships--a manufacturing opulent
-land, with a people of beef-eating toilers, who enrich it while they
-enrich themselves. They improved agriculture to such an extent that in
-half a century the produce of an acre was doubled.[271] They grew so
-rich that at the beginning of the reign of Charles I the Commons
-represented three times the wealth of the Upper House. The ruin of
-Antwerp by the Duke of Parma[272] sent to England "the third part of the
-merchants and manufacturers, who made silk, damask, stockings, taffetas,
-and serges." The defeat of the Armada and the decadence of Spain opened
-the seas to English merchants.[273] The toiling hive, who would dare,
-attempt, explore, act in unison, and always with profit, was about to
-reap its advantages and set out on its voyages, buzzing over the
-universe.
-
-At the base and on the summit of society, in all ranks of life, in all
-grades of human condition, this new welfare became visible. In 1534,
-considering that the streets of London were "very noyous and foul, and
-in many places thereof very jeopardous to all people passing and
-repassing, as well on horseback as on foot," Henry VIII began the paving
-of the city. New streets covered the open spaces where the young men
-used to run races and to wrestle. Every year the number of taverns,
-theatres, gambling-rooms, bear-gardens, increased. Before the time of
-Elizabeth the country-houses of gentlemen were little more than
-straw-thatched cottages, plastered with the coarsest clay, lighted only
-by trellises. "Howbeit," says Harrison (1580), "such as be latelie
-builded are commonlie either of bricke or hard stone, or both; their
-roomes large and comelie, and houses of office further distant from
-their lodgings." The old wooden houses were covered with plaster,
-"which, beside the delectable whitenesse of the stuffe itselfe, is laied
-on so even and smoothlie, as nothing in my judgment can be done with
-more exactnesse."[274] This open admiration shows from what hovels they
-had escaped. Glass was at last employed for windows, and the bare walls
-were covered with hangings, on which visitors might see, with delight
-and astonishment, plants, animals, figures. They began to use stoves,
-and experienced the unwonted pleasure of being warm. Harrison notes
-three important changes which had taken place in the farm-houses of his
-time:
-
-
-"One is, the multitude of chimnies lately erected, whereas in their
-yoong daies there were not above two or three, if so manie, in most
-uplandishe townes of the realme.... The second is the great (although
-not generall), amendment of lodging, for our fathers (yea and we
-ourselves also) have lien full oft upon straw pallets, on rough mats
-covered onelie with a sheet, under coverlets made of dagswain, or
-hop-harlots, and a good round log under their heads, insteed of a
-bolster or pillow. If it were so that the good man of the house, had
-within seven yeares after his marriage purchased a matteres or
-flockebed, and thereto a sacke of chaffe to rest his head upon, he
-thought himselfe to be as well lodged as the lord of the towne....
-Pillowes (said they) were thought meet onelie for women in childbed....
-The third thing is the exchange of vessell, as of treene platters into
-pewter, and wodden spoones into silver or tin; for so common was all
-sorts of treene stuff in old time, that a man should hardlie find four
-peeces of pewter (of which one was peradventure a salt) in a good
-farmers house."[275]
-
-
-It is not possession, but acquisition, which gives men pleasure and
-sense of power; they observe sooner a small happiness, new to them, than
-a great happiness which is old. It is not when all is good, but when all
-is better, that they see the bright side of life, and are tempted to
-make a holiday of it. This is why at this period they did make a holiday
-of it, a splendid show, so like a picture that it fostered painting in
-Italy, so like a piece of acting that it produced the drama in England.
-Now that the axe and sword of the civil wars had beaten down the
-independent nobility, and the abolition of the law of maintenance had
-destroyed the petty royalty of each great feudal baron, the lords
-quitted their sombre castles, battlemented fortresses, surrounded by
-stagnant water, pierced with narrow windows, a sort of stone
-breastplates of no use but to preserve the life of their master. They
-flock into new palaces with vaulted roofs and turrets, covered with
-fantastic and manifold ornaments, adorned with terraces and vast
-staircases, with gardens, fountains, statues, such as were the palaces
-of Henry VIII and Elizabeth, half Gothic and half Italian,[276] whose
-convenience, splendor, and symmetry announced already habits of society,
-and the taste for pleasure. They came to court and abandoned their old
-manners; the four meals which scarcely sufficed their former voracity
-were reduced to two; gentlemen soon became refined, placing their glory
-in the elegance and singularity of their amusements and their clothes.
-They dressed magnificently in splendid materials, with the luxury of men
-who rustle silk and make gold sparkle for the first time: doublets of
-scarlet satin; cloaks of sable, costing a thousand ducats; velvet shoes,
-embroidered with gold and silver, covered with rosettes and ribbons;
-boots with falling tops, from whence hung a cloud of lace, embroidered
-with figures of birds, animals, constellations, flowers in silver, gold,
-or precious stones; ornamented shirts costing ten pounds a piece. "It is
-a common thing to put a thousand goats and a hundred oxen on a coat, and
-to carry a whole manor on one's back."[277] The costumes of the time
-were shrines. When Elizabeth died, they found three thousand dresses in
-her wardrobe. Need we speak of the monstrous ruffs of the ladies, their
-puffed-out dresses, their stomachers stiff with diamonds? Asa singular
-sign of the times, the men were more changeable and more bedecked than
-they. Harrison says:
-
-
-"Such is our mutabilitie, that to daie there is none to the Spanish
-guise, to morrow the French toies are most fine and delectable, yer long
-no such apparell as that which is after the high Alman fashion, by and
-by the Turkish maner is generallie best liked of, otherwise the Morisco
-gowns, the Barbarian sleeves... and the short French breeches.... And
-as these fashions are diverse, so likewise it is a world to see the
-costlinesse and the curiositie; the excesse and the vanitie; the pompe
-and the braverie; the change and the varietie; and finallie, the
-ficklenesse and the follie that is in all degrees."[278]
-
-
-Folly, it may have been, but poetry likewise. There was something more
-than puppyism in this masquerade of splendid costume. The overflow of
-inner sentiment found this issue, as also in drama and poetry. It was an
-artistic spirit which induced it. There was an incredible outgrowth of
-living forms from their brains. They acted like their engravers, who
-give us in their frontispieces a prodigality of fruits, flowers, active
-figures, animals, gods, and pour out and confuse the whole treasure of
-nature in every corner of their paper. They must enjoy the beautiful;
-they would be happy through their eyes; they perceive in consequence
-naturally the relief and energy of forms. From the accession of Henry
-VIII to the death of James I we find nothing but tournaments,
-processions, public entries, masquerades. First come the royal banquets,
-coronation displays, large and noisy pleasures of Henry VIII. Wolsey
-entertains him
-
-
-"In so gorgeous a sort and costlie maner, that it was an heaven to
-behold. There wanted no dames or damosels meet or apt to danse with the
-maskers, or to garnish the place for the time: then was there all kind
-of musike and harmonie, with fine voices both of men and children. On a
-time the king came suddenlie thither in a maske with a dozen maskers all
-in garments like sheepheards, made of fine cloth of gold, and crimosin
-sattin paned,... having sixteene torch-bearers.... In came a new banket
-before the king wherein were served two hundred diverse dishes, of
-costlie devises and subtilities. Thus passed they foorth the night with
-banketting, dansing, and other triumphs, to the great comfort of the
-king, and pleasant regard of the nobilitie there assembled."[279]
-
-
-Count, if you can, the mythological entertainments, the theatrical
-receptions, the open-air operas played before Elizabeth, James, and
-their great lords.[280] At Kenilworth the pageants lasted ten days.
-There was everything; learned recreations, novelties, popular plays,
-sanguinary spectacles, coarse farces, juggling and feats of skill,
-allegories, mythologies, chivalric exhibitions, rustic and national
-commemorations. At the same time, in this universal outburst and sudden
-expanse, men become interested in themselves, find their life desirable,
-worthy of being represented and put on the stage complete; they play
-with it, delight in looking upon it, love its ups and downs, and make of
-it a work of art. The queen is received by a sibyl, then by giants of
-the time of Arthur, then by the Lady of the Lake, Sylvanus, Pomona,
-Ceres, and Bacchus, every divinity in turn presents her with the
-first-fruits of his empire. Next day, a savage, dressed in moss and ivy,
-discourses before her with Echo in her praise. Thirteen bears are set
-fighting against dogs. An Italian acrobat performs wonderful feats
-before the whole assembly. A rustic marriage takes place before the
-queen, then a sort of comic fight amongst the peasants of Coventry, who
-represent the defeat of the Danes. As she is returning from the chase,
-Triton, rising from the lake, prays her, in the name of Neptune, to
-deliver the enchanted lady, pursued by a cruel knight, Syr Bruse sauns
-Pitee. Presently the lady appears, surrounded by nymphs, followed close
-by Proteus, who is borne by an enormous dolphin. Concealed in the
-dolphin, a band of musicians with a chorus of ocean-deities, sing the
-praise of the powerful, beautiful, chaste queen of England.[281] You
-perceive that comedy is not confined to the theatre; the great of the
-realm and the queen herself become actors. The cravings of the
-imagination are so keen that the court becomes a stage. Under James I,
-every year, on Twelfth-day, the queen, the chief ladies and nobles,
-played a piece called a Masque, a sort of allegory combined with dances,
-heightened in effect by decorations and costumes of great splendor, of
-which the mythological paintings of Rubens can alone give an idea:
-
-
-"The attire of the lords was from the antique Greek statues. On their
-heads they wore Persic crowns, that were with scrolls of gold plate
-turned outward, and wreathed about with a carnation and silver net-lawn.
-Their bodies were of carnation cloth of silver; to express the naked, in
-manner of the Greek thorax, girt under the breasts with a broad belt of
-cloth of gold, fastened with jewels; the mantles were of coloured silke;
-the first, sky-colour; the second, pearl-colour; the third, flame
-colour; the fourth, tawny. The ladies attire was of white cloth of
-silver, wrought with Juno's birds and fruits; a loose under garment,
-full gathered, of carnation, striped with silver, and parted with a
-golden zone; beneath that, another flowing garment, of watchet cloth of
-silver, laced with gold; their hair carelessly bound under the circle of
-a rare and rich coronet, adorned with all variety, and choice of jewels;
-from the top of which flowed a transparent veil, down to the ground.
-Their shoes were azure and gold, set with rubies and diamonds."[282]
-
-
-I abridge the description, which is like a fairy tale. Fancy that all
-these costumes, this glitter of materials, this sparkling of diamonds,
-this splendor of nudities, was displayed daily at the marriage of the
-great, to the bold sounds of a pagan epithalamium. Think of the feasts
-which the Earl of Carlisle introduced, where was served first of all a
-table loaded with sumptuous viands, as high as a man could reach, in
-order to remove it presently, and replace it by another similar table.
-This prodigality of magnificence, these costly follies, this unbridling
-of the imagination, this intoxication of eye and ear, this comedy played
-by the lords of the realm, like the pictures of Rubens, Jordaens, and
-their Flemish contemporaries, so open an appeal to the senses, so
-complete a return to nature, that our chilled and gloomy age is scarcely
-able to imagine it.[283]
-
-
-
-
-SECTION III.--Popular Festivals
-
-
-To vent the feelings, to satisfy the heart and eyes, to set free boldly
-on all the roads of existence the pack of appetites and instincts, this
-was the craving which the manners of the time betrayed. It was "merry
-England," as they called it then. It was not yet stern and constrained.
-It expanded widely, freely, and rejoiced to find itself so expanded. No
-longer at court only was the drama found, but in the village. Strolling
-companies betook themselves thither, and the country folk supplied any
-deficiencies, when necessary. Shakespeare saw, before he depicted them,
-stupid fellows, carpenters, joiners, bellows-menders, play Pyramus and
-Thisbe, represent the lion roaring as gently as any sucking dove, and
-the wall, by stretching out their hands. Every holiday was a pageant, in
-which townspeople, workmen, and children bore their parts. They were
-actors by nature. When the soul is full and fresh, it does not express
-its ideas by reasonings; it plays and figures them; it mimics them; that
-is the true and original language, the children's tongue, the speech of
-artists, of invention, and of joy. It is in this manner they please
-themselves with songs and feasting, on all the symbolic holidays with
-which tradition has filled the year.[284] On the Sunday after
-Twelfth-night the laborers parade the streets, with their shirts over
-their coats, decked with ribbons, dragging a plough to the sound of
-music, and dancing a sword-dance; on another day they draw in a cart a
-figure made of ears of corn, with songs, flutes, and drums; on another,
-Father Christmas and his company; or else they enact the history of
-Robin Hood, the bold archer, around the May-pole, or the legend of Saint
-George and the Dragon. We might occupy half a volume in describing all
-these holidays, such as Harvest Home, All Saints, Martinmas,
-Sheepshearing, above all Christmas, which lasted twelve days, and
-sometimes six weeks. They eat and drink, junket, tumble about, kiss the
-girls, ring the bells, satiate themselves with noise: coarse drunken
-revels, in which man is an unbridled animal, and which are the
-incarnation of natural life. The Puritans made no mistake about that.
-Stubbes says:
-
-
-"First, all the wilde heades of the parishe, conventying together, chuse
-them a ground capitaine of mischeef, whan they innoble with the title of
-my Lorde of Misserule, and hym they crown with great solemnitie, and
-adopt for their kyng. This kyng anoynted, chuseth for the twentie,
-fourtie, three score, or a hundred lustie guttes like to hymself to
-waite uppon his lordely maiestie.... Then have they their hobbie horses,
-dragons, and other antiques, together with their baudie pipers and
-thunderyng drommers, to strike up the devilles daunce withall: then
-marche these heathen companie towardes the churche and churche-yarde,
-their pipers pipyng, their drommers thonderyng, their stumppes dauncyng,
-their belles rynglyng, their handkerchefes swyngyng about their heads
-like madmen, their hobbie horses and other monsters skirmishyng amongest
-the throng; and in this sorte they goe to the churche (though the
-minister be at praier or preachyng), dauncyng, and swingyng their
-handkercheefes over their heades, in the churche, like devilles
-incarnate, with such a confused noise, that no man can heare his owne
-voice. Then the foolishe people they looke, they stare, they laugh, they
-fleere, and mount upon formes and pewes, to see these goodly pageauntes,
-solemnized in this sort. Then after this, aboute the churche they goe
-againe and againe, and so forthe into the churche-yarde, where they have
-commonly their sommer haules, their bowers, arbours, and banquettyng
-houses set up, wherein they feaste, banquet, and daunce all that daie,
-and peradventure all that night too. And thus these terrestriall furies
-spend the Sabbaoth daie!... An other sorte of fantasticall fooles bringe
-to these helhoundes (the Lorde of Misrule and his complices) some bread,
-some good ale, some newe cheese, some olde cheese, some custardes, some
-cakes, some flaunes, some tartes, some creame, some meate, some one
-thing, some an other."
-
-
-He continues thus:
-
-
-"Against Maie, every parishe, towne and village essemble themselves
-together, bothe men, women, and children, olde and yong, even all
-indifferently; they goe to the woodes where they spende all the night in
-pleasant pastymes, and in the mornyng they returne, bringing with them
-birch, bowes, and branches of trees, to deck their assemblies with-all.
-But their cheefest iewell they bringe from thence is their Maie poole,
-whiche they bring home with great veneration, as thus: They have twenty
-or fourtie yoke of oxen, every ox havyng a sweete nosegaie of flowers
-tyed on the tippe of his homes, and these oxen, drawe home this Maie
-poole (this stinckyng idoll rather)... and thus beyng reared up, they
-strawe the grounde aboute, binde greene boughes about it, sett up sommer
-haules, bowers, and arbours hard by it; and then fall they to banquet
-and feast, to leape and daunce aboute it, as the heathen people did at
-the dedication of their idolles.... Of a hundred maides goyng to the
-woode over night, there have scarcely the third parte returned home
-againe undefiled."[285]
-
-
-"On Shrove Tuesday," says another,[286] "at the sound of a bell, the
-folk become insane, thousands at a time, and forget all decency and
-common-sense.... It is to Satan and the devil that they pay homage and
-do sacrifice to in these abominable pleasures." It is in fact to nature,
-to the ancient Pan, to Freya, to Hertha, her sisters, to the old
-Teutonic deities who survived the Middle Ages. At this period, in the
-temporary decay of Christianity, and the sudden advance of corporal
-well-being, man adored himself, and there endured no life within him but
-that of paganism.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION IV.--Influence of Classic Literature
-
-
-To sum up, observe the process of ideas at this time. A few sectarians,
-chiefly in the towns and of the people, clung gloomily to the Bible. But
-the court and the men of the world sought their teachers and their
-heroes from pagan Greece and Rome. About 1490[287] they began to read
-the classics; one after the other they translated them; it was soon the
-fashion to read them in the original. Queen Elizabeth, Jane Grey, the
-Duchess of Norfolk, the Countess of Arundel, and many other ladies, were
-conversant with Plato, Xenophon, and Cicero in the original, and
-appreciated them. Gradually, by an insensible change, men were raised to
-the level of the great and healthy minds who had freely handled ideas of
-all kinds fifteen centuries before. They comprehended not only their
-language, but their thought; they did not repeat lessons from, but held
-conversations with them; they were their equals, and found in them
-intellects as manly as their own. For they were not scholastic
-cavillers, miserable compilers, repulsive pedants, like the professors
-of jargon whom the Middle Ages had set over them, like gloomy Duns
-Scotus, whose leaves Henry VII's visitors scattered to the winds. They
-were gentlemen, statesmen, the most polished and best educated men in
-the world, who knew how to speak, and draw their ideas, not from books,
-but from things, living ideas, and which entered of themselves into
-living souls. Across the train of hooded schoolmen and sordid cavillers
-the two adult and thinking ages were united, and the moderns, silencing
-the infantine or snuffling voices of the Middle Ages, condescended only
-to converse with the noble ancients. They accepted their gods, at least
-they understand them, and keep them by their side. In poems, festivals,
-on hangings, almost in all ceremonies, they appear, not restored by
-pedantry merely, but kept alive by sympathy, and endowed by the arts
-with a life as flourishing and almost as profound as that of their
-earliest birth. After the terrible night of the Middle Ages, and the
-dolorous legends of spirits and the damned, it was a delight to see
-again Olympus shining upon us from Greece; its heroic and beautiful
-deities once more ravishing the heart of men; they raised and instructed
-this young world by speaking to it the language of passion and genius;
-and this age of strong deeds, free sensuality, bold invention, had only
-to follow its own bent, in order to discover in them its masters and the
-eternal promoters of liberty and beauty.
-
-Nearer still was another paganism, that of Italy; the more seductive
-because more modern, and because it circulates fresh sap in an ancient
-stock; the more attractive, because more sensuous and present, with its
-worship of force and genius, of pleasure and voluptuousness. The
-rigorists knew this well, and were shocked at it. Ascham writes:
-
-
-"These bee the inchantementes of Circes, brought out of Italie to marre
-mens maners in England; much, by example of ill life, but more by
-preceptes of fonde bookes, of late translated out of Italian into
-English, sold in every shop in London.... There bee moe of these
-ungratious bookes set out in Printe wythin these fewe monethes, than
-have bene sene in England many score yeares before.... Than they have in
-more reverence the triumphes of Petrarche: than the Genesis of Moses:
-They make more account of Tullies offices, than S. Paules epistles: of a
-tale in Bocace than a storie of the Bible."[288]
-
-
-In fact, at that time Italy clearly led in everything, and civilization
-was to be drawn thence, as from its spring. What is this civilization
-which is thus imposed on the whole of Europe, whence every science and
-every elegance comes, whose laws are obeyed in every court, in which
-Surrey, Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare sought their models and their
-materials? It was pagan in its elements and its birth; in its language,
-which is but Latin, hardly changed; in its Latin traditions and
-recollections, which no gap has interrupted; in its constitution, whose
-old municipal life first led and absorbed the feudal life; in the genius
-of its race, in which energy and joy always abounded. More than a
-century before other nations--from the time of Petrarch, Rienzi,
-Boccaccio--the Italians began to recover the lost antiquity, to set free
-the manuscripts buried in the dungeons of France and Germany, to
-restore, interpret, comment upon, study the ancients, to make themselves
-Latin in heart and mind, to compose in prose and verse with the polish
-of Cicero and Vergil, to hold sprightly converse and intellectual
-pleasures as the ornament and the fairest flower of life.[289] They
-adopt not merely the externals of the life of the ancients, but its very
-essence; that is, preoccupation with the present life, forgetfulness of
-the future, the appeal to the senses, the renunciation of Christianity.
-"We must enjoy," sang their first poet, Lorenzo de Medici, in his
-pastorals and triumphal songs: "there is no certainty of tomorrow." In
-Pulci the mocking incredulity breaks out, the bold and sensual gayety,
-all the audacity of the free-thinkers, who kicked aside in disgust the
-worn-out monkish frock of the Middle Ages. It was he who, in a jesting
-poem, puts at the beginning of each canto a Hosanna, an _In principio_,
-or a sacred text from the mass-book.[290] When he had been inquiring
-what the soul was, and how it entered the body, he compared it to jam
-covered up in white bread quite hot. What would become of it in the
-other world? "Some people think they will there discover becafico's,
-plucked ortolans, excellent wine, good beds, and therefore they follow
-the monks, walking behind them. As for us, dear friend, we shall go into
-the black valley, where we shall hear no more Alleluias." If you wish
-for a more serious thinker, listen to the great patriot, the Thucydides
-of the age, Machiavelli, who, contrasting Christianity and paganism,
-says that the first places "supreme happiness in humility, abjection,
-contempt for human things, while the other makes the sovereign good
-consist in greatness of soul, force of body, and all the qualities which
-make men to be feared." Whereon he boldly concludes that Christianity
-teaches man "to support evils, and not to do great deeds"; he discovers
-in that inner weakness the cause of all oppressions; declares that "the
-wicked saw that they could tyrannize without fear over men, who, in
-order to get to paradise, were more disposed to suffer than to avenge
-injuries." Through such sayings, in spite of his constrained
-genuflexions, we can see which religion he prefers. The ideal to which
-all efforts were turning, on which all thoughts depended, and which
-completely raised this civilization, was the strong and happy man,
-possessing all the powers to accomplish his wishes, and disposed to use
-them in pursuit of his happiness.
-
-If you would see this idea in its grandest operation, you must seek it
-in the arts, such as Italy made them and carried throughout Europe,
-raising or transforming the national schools with such originality and
-vigor that all art likely to survive is derived from hence, and the
-population of living figures with which they have covered our walls
-denotes, like Gothic architecture of French tragedy, a unique epoch of
-human intelligence. The attenuated mediæval Christ--a miserable,
-distorted, and bleeding earth-worm; the pale and ugly Virgin--a poor old
-peasant woman, fainting beside the cross of her Son; ghastly martyrs,
-dried up with fasts, with entranced eyes; knotty-fingered saints with
-sunken chests--all the touching or lamentable visions of the Middle Ages
-have vanished: the train of godheads which are now developed show
-nothing but flourishing frames, noble, regular features, and fine, easy
-gestures; the names, the names only, are Christian. The new Jesus is a
-"crucified Jupiter," as Pulci called him; the Virgins which Raphael
-sketched naked, before covering them with garments,[291] are beautiful
-girls, quite earthly, related to the Fornarina. The saints which Michel
-Angelo arranges and contorts in heaven in his picture of the Last
-Judgment are an assembly of athletes, capable of fighting well and
-daring much. A martyrdom, like that of Saint Laurence, is a fine
-ceremony in which a beautiful young man, without clothing, lies amidst
-fifty men dressed and grouped as in an ancient gymnasium. Is there one
-of them who had macerated himself? Is there one who had thought with
-anguish and tears of the judgment of God, who had worn down and subdued
-his flesh, who had filled his heart with the sadness and sweetness of
-the gospel? They are too vigorous for that; they are in too robust
-health; their clothes fit them too well; they are too ready for prompt
-and energetic action. We might make of them strong soldiers or superb
-courtesans, admirable in a pageant or at a ball. So, all that the
-spectator accords to their halo of glory is a bow or a sign of the
-cross; after which his eyes find pleasure in them; they are there simply
-for the enjoyment of the eyes. What the spectator feels at the sight of
-a Florentine Madonna is the splendid creature, whose powerful body and
-fine growth bespeak her race and her vigor; the artist did not paint
-moral expression as nowadays, the depth of a soul tortured and refined
-by three centuries of culture. They confine themselves to the body, to
-the extent even of speaking enthusiastically of the spinal column
-itself, "which is magnificent"; of the shoulder-blades, which in the
-movements of the arm "produce an admirable effect. You will next draw
-the bone which it situated between the hips. It is very fine, and is
-called the sacrum."[292] The important point with them is to represent
-the nude well. Beauty with them is that of the complete skeleton, sinews
-which are linked together and tightened, the thighs which support the
-trunk, the strong chest breathing freely, the pliant neck. What a
-pleasure to be naked! How good it is in the full light to rejoice in a
-strong body, well-formed muscles, a spirited and bold soul! The splendid
-goddesses reappear in their primitive nudity, not dreaming that they are
-nude; you see from the tranquillity of their look, the simplicity of
-their expression, that they have always been thus, and that shame has
-not yet reached them. The soul's life is not here contrasted, as amongst
-us, with the body's life; the one is not so lowered and degraded that we
-dare not show its actions and functions; they do not hide them; man does
-not dream of being all spirit. They rise, as of old, from the luminous
-sea, with their rearing steeds tossing up their manes, champing the bit,
-inhaling the briny savor, whilst their companions wind the
-sounding-shell; and the spectators,[293] accustomed to handle the sword,
-to combat naked with the dagger or double-handled blade, to ride on
-perilous roads, sympathize with the proud shape of the bended back, the
-effort of the arm about to strike, the long quiver of the muscles which,
-from neck to heel, swell out, to brace a man, or to throw him.
-
-
-
-
-_PART II.--Poetry_
-
-
-
-
-SECTION I.--Renaissance of Saxon Genius
-
-
-Transplanted into different races and climates, this paganism receives
-from each, distinct features and a distinct character. In England it
-becomes English; the English Renaissance is the Renaissance of the Saxon
-genius. Invention recommences; and to invent is to express one's genius.
-A Latin race can only invent by expressing Latin ideas; a Saxon race by
-expressing Saxon ideas; and we shall find in the new civilization and
-poetry, descendants of Caedmon and Adhelm, of Piers Plowman, and Robin
-Hood.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION II.--The Earl of Surrey
-
-
-Old Puttenham says:
-
-
-"In the latter end of the same king (Henry the eighth) reigne, sprong up
-a new company of courtly makers, of whom Sir Thomas Wyat th' elder and
-Henry Earle of Surrey were the two chieftaines, who having travailed
-into Italie, and there tasted the sweete and stately measures and stile
-of the Italian Poesie, as novices newly crept out of the schooles of
-Dante, Arioste, and Petrarch, they greatly pollished our rude and homely
-maner of vulgar Poesie, from that it had bene before, and for that cause
-may justly be sayd the first reformers of our English meetre and
-stile."[294]
-
-
-Not that their style was very original, or openly exhibits the new
-spirit: the Middle Ages is nearly ended, but not quite. By their side
-Andrew Borde, John Bale, John Heywood, Skelton himself, repeat the
-platitudes of the old poetry and the coarseness of the old style. Their
-manners, hardly refined, were still half feudal; on the field, before
-Landrecies, the English commander wrote a friendly letter to the French
-governor of Térouanne, to ask him "if he had not some gentlemen
-disposed to break a lance in honor of the ladies," and promised to send
-six champions to meet them. Parades, combats, wounds, challenges, love,
-appeals to the judgment of God, penances--all these are found in the
-life of Surrey as in a chivalric romance. A great lord, an earl, a
-relative of the king, who had figured in processions and ceremonies, had
-made war, commanded fortresses, ravaged countries, mounted to the
-assault, fallen in the breach, had been saved by his servant,
-magnificent, sumptuous, irritable, ambitious, four times imprisoned,
-finally beheaded. At the coronation of Anne Boleyn he wore the fourth
-sword; at the marriage of Anne of Cleves he was one of the challengers
-at the jousts. Denounced and placed in durance, he offered to fight in
-his shirt against an armed adversary. Another time he was put in prison
-for having eaten flesh in Lent. No wonder if this prolongation of
-chivalric manners brought with it a prolongation of chivalric poetry; if
-in an age which had known Petrarch, poets displayed the sentiments of
-Petrarch. Lord Berners, Sackville, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and Surrey in the
-first rank, were like Petrarch, plaintive and platonic lovers. It was
-pure love to which Surrey gave expression; for his lady, the beautiful
-Geraldine, like Beatrice and Laura, was an ideal personage, and a child
-of thirteen years.
-
-And yet, amid this languor of mystical tradition, a personal feeling had
-sway. In this spirit which imitated, and that badly at times, which
-still groped for an outlet and now and then admitted into its polished
-stanzas the old, simple expressions and stale metaphors of heralds of
-arms and _trouvères_, there was already visible the Northern
-melancholy, the inner and gloomy emotion. This feature, which presently,
-at the finest moment of its richest blossom, in the splendid
-expansiveness of natural life, spreads a sombre tint over the poetry of
-Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, already in the first poet separates this
-pagan yet Teutonic world from the other, wholly voluptuous, which in
-Italy, with lively and refined irony, had no taste, except for art and
-pleasure. Surrey translated the Ecclesiastes into verse. Is it not
-singular, at this early hour, in this rising dawn, to find such a book
-in his hand? A disenchantment, a sad or bitter dreaminess, an innate
-consciousness of the vanity of human things, are never lacking in this
-country and in this race; the inhabitants support life with difficulty,
-and know how to speak of death. Surrey's finest verses bear witness thus
-soon to his serious bent, this instinctive and grave philosophy. He
-records his griefs, regretting his beloved Wyatt, his friend Clère, his
-companion the young Duke of Richmond, all dead in their prime. Alone, a
-prisoner at Windsor, he recalls the happy days they have passed
-together:
-
-
-"So cruel prison how could betide, alas,
-As proud Windsor, where I in lust and joy,
-With a Kinges son, my childish years did pass,
-In greater feast than Priam's son of Troy.
-
-"Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour,
-The large green courts, where we were wont to hove,
-With eyes cast up into the Maiden's tower,
-And easy sighs, such as folk draw in love.
-
-"The stately seats, the ladies bright of hue,
-The dances short, long tales of great delight,
-With words and looks, that tigers could but rue;
-Where each of us did plead the other's right.
-
-"The palme-play, where, despoiled for the game,
-With dazed eyes oft we by gleams of love
-Have miss'd the ball, and got sight of our dame,
-To bait her eyes, which kept the leads above....
-
-"The secret thoughts, imparted with such trust;
-The wanton talk, the divers change of play;
-The friendship sworn, each promise kept so just,
-Wherewith we past the winter night away.
-
-"And with his thought the blood forsakes the face;
-The tears berain my cheeks of deadly hue:
-The which, as soon as sobbing sighs, alas!
-Up-supped have, thus I my plaint renew:
-
-"O place of bliss! renewer of my woes!
-Give me account, where is my noble fere?
-Whom in thy walls thou dost each night enclose;
-To other lief; but unto me most dear.
-
-"Echo, alas! that doth my sorrow rue,
-Returns thereto a hollow sound of plaint."[295]
-
-
-So in love, it is the sinking of a weary soul, to which he gives vent:
-
-
-"For all things having life, sometime hath quiet rest;
-The bearing ass, the drawing ox, and every other beast;
-The peasant, and the post, that serves at all assays;
-The ship-boy, and the galley-slave, have time to take their ease;
-Save I, alas! whom care of force doth so constrain,
-To wail the day, and wake the night, continually in pain,
-From pensiveness to plaint, from plaint to bitter tears,
-From tears to painful plaint again; and thus my life it wears."[296]
-
-
-That which brings joy to others brings him grief:
-
-
-"The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings,
-With green hath clad the hill, and eke the vale.
-The nightingale with feathers new she sings;
-The turtle to her mate hath told her tale.
-Summer is come, for every spray now springs;
-The hart has hung his old head on the pale;
-The buck in brake his winter coat he flings;
-The fishes flete with new repaired scale;
-The adder all her slough away she slings;
-The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale;
-The busy bee her honey now she mings;
-Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale.
-And thus I see among these pleasant things
-Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs!"[297]
-
-
-For all that, he will love on to his last sigh:
-
-
-"Yea, rather die a thousand times, than once to false my faith;
-And if my feeble corpse, through weight of woful smart
-Do fail, or faint, my will it is that still she keep my heart.
-And when this carcass here to earth shall be refar'd,
-I do bequeath my wearied ghost to serve her afterward."[298]
-
-
-An infinite love, and pure as Petrarch's; and she is worthy of it. In
-the midst of all these studied or imitated verses, an admirable portrait
-stands out, the simplest and truest we can imagine, a work of the heart
-now, and not of the memory, which behind the Madonna of chivalry shows
-the English wife, and beyond feudal gallantry domestic bliss. Surrey
-alone, restless, hears within him the firm tones of a good friend, a
-sincere counsellor, Hope, who speaks to him thus:
-
-
-"For I assure thee, even by oath,
-And thereon take my hand and troth,
-That she is one of the worthiest,
-The truest, and the faithfullest;
-The gentlest and the meekest of mind
-That here on earth a man may find:
-And if that love and truth were gone,
-In her it might be found alone.
-For in her mind no thought there is,
-But how she may be true, I wis;
-And tenders thee and all thy heale,
-And wishes both thy health and weal;
-And loves thee even as far forth than
-As any woman may a man;
-And is thine own, and so she says;
-And cares for thee ten thousand ways.
-Of thee she speaks, on thee she thinks;
-With thee she eats, with thee she drinks;
-With thee she talks, with thee she moans;
-With thee she sighs, with thee she groans;
-With thee she says 'Farewell mine own!'
-When thou, God knows, full far art gone.
-And even, to tell thee all aright,
-To thee she says full oft 'Good night!'
-And names thee oft her own most dear,
-Her comfort, weal, and all her cheer;
-And tells her pillow all the tale
-How thou hast done her woe and bale;
-And how she longs, and plains for thee,
-And says, 'Why art thou so from me?'
-Am I not she that loves thee best!
-Do I not wish thine ease and rest?
-Seek I not how I may thee please?
-Why art thou then so from thine ease?
-If I be she for whom thou carest,
-For whom in torments so thou farest,
-Alas! thou knowest to find me here,
-Where I remain thine own most dear.
-Thine own most true, thine own most just,
-Thine own that loves thee still, and must;
-Thine own that cares alone for thee,
-As thou, I think, dost care for me;
-And even the woman, she alone,
-That is full bent to be thine own."[299]
-
-
-Certainly it is of his wife[300] that he is thinking here, not of an
-imaginary Laura. The poetic dream of Petrarch has become the exact
-picture of deep and perfect conjugal affection, such as yet survives in
-England; such as all the poets, from the authoress of the "Nutbrown
-Maid" to Dickens,[301] have never failed to represent.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION III.--Surrey's Style
-
-
-An English Petrarch: no juster title could be given to Surrey, for it
-expresses his talent as well as his disposition. In fact, like Petrarch,
-the oldest of the humanists, and the earliest exact writer of the modern
-tongue, Surrey introduces a new style, the manly style, which marks a
-great change of the mind; for this new form of writing is the result of
-superior reflection, which, governing the primitive impulse, calculates
-and selects with an end in view. At last the intellect has grown capable
-of self-criticism, and actually criticises itself. It corrects its
-unconsidered works, infantine and incoherent, at once incomplete and
-superabundant; it strengthens and binds them together; it prunes and
-perfects them; it takes from them the master idea, to set it free and to
-show it clearly. This is what Surrey does, and his education had
-prepared him for it; for he had studied Vergil as well as Petrarch, and
-translated two books of the Æneid, almost verse for verse. In such
-company a man cannot but select his ideas and connect his phrases. After
-their example, Surrey gauges the means of striking the attention,
-assisting the intelligence, avoiding fatigue and weariness. He looks
-forward to the last line whilst writing the first. He keeps the
-strongest word for the last, and shows the symmetry of ideas by the
-symmetry of phrases. Sometimes he guides the intelligence by a
-continuous series of contrasts to the final image; a kind of sparkling
-casket, in which he means to deposit the idea which he carries, and to
-which he directs our attention from the first.[302] Sometimes he leads
-his reader to the close of a long flowery description, and then suddenly
-checks him with a sorrowful phrase.[303] He arranges his process, and
-knows how to produce effects; he uses even classical expressions, in
-which two substantives, each supported by its adjective, are balanced on
-either side of the verb.[304] He collects his phrases in harmonious
-periods, and does not neglect the delight of the ears any more than of
-the mind. By his inversions he adds force to his ideas, and weight to
-his argument. He selects elegant or noble terms, rejects idle words and
-redundant phrases. Every epithet contains an idea, every metaphor a
-sentiment. There is eloquence in the regular development of his thought;
-music in the sustained accent of his verse.
-
-Such is the new-born art. Those who have ideas, now possess an
-instrument capable of expressing them. Like the Italian painters, who in
-fifty years had introduced or discovered all the technical tricks of the
-brush, English writers, in half a century, introduce or discover all the
-artifices of language, period, elevated style, heroic verse, soon the
-grand stanza, so effectually, that a little later the most perfect
-versifiers, Dryden, and Pope himself, says Dr. Nott, will add scarce
-anything to the rules, invented or applied, which were employed in the
-earliest efforts.[305] Even Surrey is too near to these authors, too
-constrained in his models, not sufficiently free; he has not yet felt
-the fiery blast of the age; we do not find in him a bold genius, an
-impassioned writer capable of wide expansion, but a courtier, a lover of
-elegance, who, penetrated by the beauties of two finished literatures,
-imitates Horace and the chosen masters of Italy, corrects and polishes
-little morsels, aims at speaking perfectly fine language. Amongst
-semi-barbarians he wears a full dress becomingly. Yet he does not wear
-it completely at his ease: he keeps his eyes too exclusively on his
-models, and does not venture on frank and free gestures. He is sometimes
-as a school-boy, makes too great use of "hot" and "cold," wounds and
-martyrdom. Although a lover, and a genuine one, he thinks too much that
-he must be so in Petrarch's manner, that his phrase must be balanced and
-his image kept up. I had almost said that, in his sonnets of
-disappointed love, he thinks less often of the strength of love than of
-the beauty of his writing. He has conceits, ill-chosen words; he uses
-trite expressions; he relates how Nature, having formed his lady, broke
-the mould, he assigns parts to Cupid and Venus; he employs the old
-machinery of the troubadours and the ancients, like a clever man who
-wishes to pass for a gallant. At first scarce any mind dares be quite
-itself: when a new art arises, the first artist listens not to his
-heart, but to his masters, and asks himself at every step whether he be
-setting foot on solid ground, or whether he is not stumbling.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION IV.--Development of Artistic Ideas
-
-
-Insensibly the growth became complete, and at the end of the century all
-was changed. A new, strange, overloaded style had been formed, destined
-to remain in force until the Restoration, not only in poetry, but also
-in prose, even in ceremonial speech and theological discourse,[306] so
-suitable to the spirit of the age that we meet with it at the same time
-throughout the world of Europe, in Ronsard and d'Aubigné, in Calderon,
-Gongora, and Marini. In 1580 appeared "Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit," by
-Lyly, which was its text-book, its masterpiece, its caricature, and was
-received with universal admiration.[307] "Our nation," says Edward
-Blount, "are in his debt for a new English which hee taught them. All
-our ladies were then his scollers; and that beautie in court who could
-not parley Euphuesme was as little regarded as shee which now there
-speakes not French." The ladies knew the phrases of Euphues by heart:
-strange, studied, and refined phrases, enigmatical; whose author seems
-of set purpose to seek the least natural expressions and the most
-farfetched, full of exaggeration and antithesis, in which mythological
-allusions, reminiscences from alchemy, botanical and astronomical
-metaphors, all the rubbish and medley of learning, travels, mannerism,
-roll in a flood of conceits and comparisons. Do not judge it by the
-grotesque picture that Walter Scott drew of it. Sir Piercie Shafton is
-but a pedant, a cold and dull copyist; it is its warmth and originality
-which give this style a true force and an accent of its own. You must
-conceive it, not as dead and inert, such as we have it to-day in old
-books, but springing from the lips of ladies and young lords in
-pearl-bedecked doublet, quickened by their vibrating voices, their
-laughter, the flash of their eyes, the motion of their hands as they
-played with the hilt of their swords or with their satin cloaks. They
-were full of life, their heads filled to overflowing; and they amused
-themselves, as our sensitive and eager artists do, at their ease in the
-studio. They did not speak to convince or be understood, but to satisfy
-their excited imagination, to expend their overflowing wit.[308] They
-played with words, twisted, put them out of shape, enjoyed sudden views,
-strong contrasts, which they produced one after another, ever and anon,
-and in great quantities. They cast flower on flower, tinsel on tinsel:
-everything sparkling delighted them; they gilded and embroidered and
-plumed their language like their garments. They cared nothing for
-clearness, order, common-sense; it was a festival of madness; absurdity
-pleased them. They knew nothing more tempting than a carnival of
-splendors and oddities; all was huddled together: a coarse gayety, a
-tender and sad word, a pastoral, a sounding flourish of unmeasured
-boasting, a gambol of a Jack-pudding. Eyes, ears, all the senses, eager
-and excited, are satisfied by this jingle of syllables, the display of
-fine high-colored words, the unexpected clash of droll or familiar
-images, the majestic roll of well-poised periods. Every one had his own
-oaths, his elegances, his style. "One would say," remarks Heylyn, "that
-they are ashamed of their mother-tongue, and do not find it sufficiently
-varied to express the whims of their mind." We no longer imagine this
-inventiveness, this boldness of fancy, this ceaseless fertility of
-nervous sensibility: there was no genuine prose at that time; the poetic
-flood swallowed it up. A word was not an exact symbol, as with us; a
-document which from cabinet to cabinet carried a precise thought. It was
-part of a complete action, a little drama; when they read it they did
-not take it by itself, but imagined it with the intonation of a hissing
-and shrill voice, with the puckering of the lips, the knitting of the
-brows, and the succession of pictures which crowd behind it, and which
-it calls forth in a flash of lightning. Each one mimics and pronounces
-it in his own style, and impresses his own soul upon it. It was a song,
-which like the poet's verse, contains a thousand things besides the
-literal sense, and manifests the depth, warmth, and sparkling of the
-source whence it flowed. For in that time, even when the man was feeble,
-his work lived; there is some pulse in the least productions of this
-age; force and creative fire signalize it; they penetrate through
-bombast and affectation. Lyly himself, so fantastic that he seems to
-write purposely in defiance of common-sense, is at times a genuine poet;
-a singer, a man capable of rapture, akin to Spenser and Shakespeare; one
-of those introspective dreamers who see dancing fairies, the purpled
-cheeks of goddesses, drunken, amorous woods, as he says
-
-
-"Adorned with the presence of my love,
-The woods I fear such secret power shall prove,
-As they'll shut up each path, hide every way,
-Because they still would have her go astray."[309]
-
-
-The reader must assist me, and assist himself. I cannot otherwise give
-him to understand what the men of this age had the felicity to
-experience.
-
-Luxuriance and irregularity were the two features of this spirit and
-this literature--features common to all the literatures of the
-Renaissance, but more marked here than elsewhere, because the German
-race is not confined, like the Latin, by the taste for harmonious forms,
-and prefers strong impression to fine expression. We must select amidst
-this crowd of poets; and here is one amongst the first, who exhibits, by
-his writings as well as by his life, the greatness and the folly of the
-prevailing manners and the public taste: Sir Philip Sidney, nephew of
-the Earl of Leicester, a great lord and a man of action, accomplished in
-every kind of culture; who, after a good training in classical
-literature, travelled in France, Germany, and Italy; read Plato and
-Aristotle, studied astronomy and geometry at Venice; pondered over the
-Greek tragedies, the Italian sonnets, the pastorals of Montemayor, the
-poems of Ronsard; displaying an interest in science, keeping up an
-exchange of letters with the learned Hubert Languet; and withal a man of
-the world, a favorite of Elizabeth, having had enacted in her honor a
-flattering and comic pastoral; a genuine "jewel of the court"; a judge,
-like d'Urfé, of lofty gallantry and fine language; above all,
-chivalrous in heart and deed, who wished to follow maritime adventure
-with Drake, and, to crown all, fated to die an early and heroic death.
-He was a cavalry officer, and had saved the English army at Gravelines.
-Shortly after, mortally wounded, and dying of thirst, as some water was
-brought to him, he saw by his side a soldier still more desperately
-hurt, who was looking at the water with anguish in his face: "Give it to
-this man," said he; "his necessity is still greater than mine." Do not
-forget the vehemence and impetuosity of the Middle Ages; one hand ready
-for action, and kept incessantly on the hilt of the sword or poniard.
-"Mr. Molineux," wrote he to his father's secretary, "if ever I know you
-to do so much as read any letter I write to my father, without his
-commandment or my consent, I will thrust my dagger into you. And trust
-to it, for I speak it in earnest." It was the same man who said to his
-uncle's adversaries that they "lied in their throat"; and to support his
-words, promised them a meeting in three months in any place in Europe.
-The savage energy of the preceding age remains intact, and it is for
-this reason that poetry took so firm a hold on these virgin souls. The
-human harvest is never so fine as when cultivation opens up a new soil.
-Impassioned, moreover, melancholy and solitary, he naturally turned to
-noble and ardent fantasy; and he was so much the poet that he had no
-need of verse.
-
-Shall I describe his pastoral epic, the "Arcadia"? It is but a
-recreation, a sort of poetical romance, written in the country for the
-amusement of his sister; a work of fashion, which, like "Cyrus" and
-"Clélie,"[310] is not a monument, but a document. This kind of books
-shows only the externals, the current elegance and politeness, the
-jargon of the fashionable world--in short, that which should be spoken
-before ladies; and yet we perceive from it the bent of the public
-opinion. In "Clélie," oratorical development, delicate and collected
-analysis, the flowing converse of men seated quietly in elegant
-arm-chairs; in the "Arcadia," fantastic imagination, excessive
-sentiment, a medley of events which suited men scarcely recovered from
-barbarism. Indeed, in London they still used to fire pistols at each
-other in the streets; and under Henry VIII and his children, Queens, a
-Protector, the highest nobles, knelt under the axe of the executioner.
-Armed and perilous existence long resisted in Europe the establishment
-of peaceful and quiet life. It was necessary to change society and the
-soil, in order to transform men of the sword into citizens. The high
-roads of Louis XIV and his regular administration, and more recently the
-railroads and the _sergents de ville_, freed the French from habits of
-violence and a taste for dangerous adventure. Remember that at this
-period men's heads were full of tragical images. Sidney's "Arcadia"
-contains enough of them to supply half a dozen epics. "It is a trifle,"
-says the author; "my young head must be delivered." In the first
-twenty-five pages you meet with a shipwreck, an account of pirates, a
-half-drowned prince rescued by shepherds, a journey in Arcadia, various
-disguises, the retreat of a king withdrawn into solitude with his wife
-and children, the deliverance of a young imprisoned lord, a war against
-the Helots, the conclusion of peace, and many other things. Read on, and
-you will find princesses shut up by a wicked fairy, who beats them, and
-threatens them with death if they refuse to marry her son; a beautiful
-queen condemned to perish by fire if certain knights do not come to her
-succor; a treacherous prince tortured for his wicked deeds, then cast
-from the top of a pyramid; fights, surprises, abductions, travels: in
-short, the whole programme of the most romantic tales. That is the
-serious element: the agreeable is of a like nature; the fantastic
-predominates. Improbable pastoral serves, as in Shakespeare or Lope de
-Vega, for an intermezzo to improbable tragedy. You are always coming
-upon dancing shepherds. They are very courteous, good poets, and subtle
-metaphysicians. Several of them are disguised princes who pay their
-court to the princesses. They sing continually, and get up allegorical
-dances; two bands approach, servants of Reason and Passion; their hats,
-ribbons, and dress are described in full. They quarrel in verse, and
-their retorts, which follow close on one another, over-refined, keep up
-a tournament of wit. Who cared for what was natural or possible in this
-age? There were such festivals at Elizabeth's "progresses"; and you have
-only to look at the engravings of Sadeler, Martin de Vos, and Goltzius,
-to find this mixture of sensitive beauties and philosophical enigmas.
-The Countess of Pembroke and her ladies were delighted to picture this
-profusion of costumes and verses, this play beneath the trees. They had
-eyes in the sixteenth century, senses which sought satisfaction in
-poetry--the same satisfaction as in masquerading and painting. Man was
-not yet a pure reasoner; abstract truth was not enough for him. Rich
-stuffs, twisted about and folded; the sun to shine upon them, a large
-meadow studded with white daisies; ladies in brocaded dresses, with bare
-arms, crowns on their heads, instruments of music behind the trees--this
-is what the reader expects; he cares nothing for contrasts; he will
-readily accept a drawing-room in the midst of the fields.
-
-What are they going to say there? Here comes out that nervous
-exaltation, in all its folly, which is characteristic of the spirit of
-the age; love rises to the thirty-sixth heaven. Musidorus is the brother
-of Céladon; Pamela is closely related to the severe heroines of
-"Astrée";[311] all the Spanish exaggerations abound and all the Spanish
-falsehoods. For in these works of fashion or of the Court, primitive
-sentiment never retains its sincerity: wit, the necessity to please, the
-desire for effect, of speaking better than others, alter it, influence
-it, heap up embellishments and refinements, so that nothing is left but
-twaddle. Musidorus wished to give Pamela a kiss. She repels him. He
-would have died on the spot; but luckily remembers that his mistress
-commanded him to leave her, and finds himself still able to obey her
-command. He complains to the trees, weeps in verse: there are dialogues
-where Echo, repeating the last word, replies; duets in rhyme, balanced
-stanzas, in which the theory of love is minutely detailed; in short, all
-the grand airs of ornamental poetry. If they send a letter to their
-mistress, they speak to it, tell the ink: "Therfore mourne boldly, my
-inke; for while shee lookes upon you, your blacknesse will shine: cry
-out boldly my lamentation; for while shee reades you, your cries will be
-musicke."[312]
-
-Again, two young princesses are going to bed: "They impoverished their
-clothes to enrich their bed, which for that night might well scorne the
-shrine of Venus; and there cherishing one another with deare, though
-chaste embracements; with sweete, though cold kisses; it might seeme
-that love was come to play him there without dart, or that wearie of his
-owne fires, he was there to refresh himselfe betwen their sweete
-breathing lippes."[313]
-
-In excuse of these follies, remember that they have their parallels in
-Shakespeare. Try rather to comprehend them, to imagine them in their
-place, with their surroundings, such as they are; that is, as the excess
-of singularity and inventive fire. Even though they mar now and then the
-finest ideas, yet a natural freshness pierces through the disguise. Take
-another example: "In the time that the morning did strew roses and
-violets in the heavenly floore against the coming of the sun, the
-nightingales (striving one with the other which could in most dainty
-varietie recount their wronge-caused sorrow) made them put off their
-sleep."
-
-In Sidney's second work, "The Defence of Poesie," we meet with genuine
-imagination, a sincere and serious tone, a grand, commanding style, all
-the passion and elevation which he carries in his heart and puts into
-his verse. He is a muser, a Platonist, who is penetrated by the
-doctrines of the ancients, who takes things from a lofty point of view,
-who places the excellence of poetry not in pleasing effect, imitation,
-or rhyme, but in that creative and superior conception by which the
-artist creates anew and embellishes nature. At the same time, he is an
-ardent man, trusting in the nobleness of his aspirations and in the
-width of his ideas, who puts down the brawling of the shoppy, narrow,
-vulgar Puritanism, and glows with the lofty irony, the proud freedom, of
-a poet and a lord.
-
-In his eyes, if there is any art or science capable of augmenting and
-cultivating our generosity, it is poetry. He draws comparison after
-comparison between it and philosophy or history, whose pretensions he
-laughs at and dismisses.[314] He fights for poetry as a knight for his
-lady, and in what heroic and splendid style! He says: "I never heard the
-old Song of Percie and Douglas, that I found not my heart moved more
-than with a trumpet: and yet it is sung but by some blinde Crowder, with
-no rougher voyce, than rude stile; which beeing so evill apparelled in
-the dust and Cobweb of that uncivil age, what would it work, trimmed in
-the gorgeous eloquence of Pindare?"[315]
-
-The philosopher repels, the poet attracts: "Nay hee doth as if your
-journey should lye through a faire vineyard, at the very first, give you
-a cluster of grapes, that full of that taste, you may long to passe
-further."[316]
-
-What description of poetry can displease you? Not pastoral so easy and
-genial? "Is it the bitter but wholesome Iambicke, who rubbes the galled
-minde, making shame the Trumpet of villanie, with bold and open crying
-out against naughtinesse?"[317]
-
-At the close he reviews his arguments, and the vibrating martial accent
-of his political period is like a trump of victory: "So that since the
-excellencies of it (poetry) may bee so easily and so justly confirmed,
-and the low-creeping objections so soone trodden downe, it not being an
-Art of lyes, but of true doctrine: not of effeminatenesse, but of
-notable stirring of courage; not of abusing man's wit, but of
-strengthening man's wit; not banished, but honoured by Plato; let us
-rather plant more Laurels for to ingarland the Poets heads than suffer
-the ill-savoured breath of such wrong speakers, once to blow upon the
-cleare springs of Poesie."[318]
-
-From such vehemence and gravity you may anticipate what his verses will
-be.
-
-Often, after reading the poets of this age, I have looked for some time
-at the contemporary prints, telling myself that man, in mind and body,
-was not then such as we see him to-day. We also have our passions, but
-we are no longer strong enough to bear them. They unsettle us; we are no
-longer poets without suffering for it. Alfred de Musset, Heine, Edgar
-Poe, Burns, Byron, Shelley, Cowper, how many shall I instance? Disgust,
-mental and bodily degradation, disease, impotence, madness, suicide, at
-best a permanent hallucination or feverish raving--these are nowadays
-the ordinary issues of the poetic temperament. The passion of the brain
-gnaws our vitals, dries up the blood, eats into the marrow, shakes us
-like a tempest, and the human frame, such as civilization has made us,
-is not substantial enough long to resist it. They, who have been more
-roughly trained, who are more inured to the inclemencies of climate,
-more hardened by bodily exercise, more firm against danger, endure and
-live. Is there a man living who could withstand the storm of passions
-and visions which swept over Shakespeare, and end, like him, as a
-sensible citizen and landed proprietor in his small county? The muscles
-were firmer, despair less prompt. The rage of concentrated attention,
-the half hallucinations, the anguish and heaving of the breast, the
-quivering of the limbs bracing themselves involuntarily and blindly for
-action, all the painful yearnings which accompany grand desires,
-exhausted them less; this is why they desired longer, and dared more.
-D'Aubigné, wounded with many sword-thrusts, conceiving death at hand,
-had himself bound on his horse that he might see his mistress once more,
-and rode thus several leagues, losing blood all the way, and arriving in
-a swoon. Such feelings we glean still from their portraits, in the
-straight looks which pierce like a sword; in that strength of back, bent
-or twisted; in the sensuality, energy, enthusiasm, which breathe from
-their attitude or look. Such feelings we still discover in their poetry,
-in Greene, Lodge, Jonson, Spenser, Shakespeare, in Sidney, as in all the
-rest. We quickly forget the faults of taste which accompany them, the
-affectation, the uncouth jargon. Is it really so uncouth? Imagine a man
-who with closed eyes distinctly sees the adored countenance of his
-mistress, who keeps it before him all the day; who is troubled and
-shaken as he imagines ever and anon her brow, her lips, her eyes; who
-cannot and will not be separated from his vision; who sinks daily deeper
-in this passionate contemplation; who is every instant crushed by mortal
-anxieties, or transported by the raptures of bliss: he will lose the
-exact conception of objects. A fixed idea becomes a false idea. By dint
-of regarding an object under all its forms, turning it over, piercing
-through it, we at last deform it. When we cannot think of a thing
-without being dazed and without tears, we magnify it, and give it a
-character which it has not. Hence strange comparisons, over-refined
-ideas, excessive images, become natural. However far Sidney goes,
-whatever object he touches, he sees throughout the universe only the
-name and features of Stella. All ideas bring him back to her. He is
-drawn ever and invincibly by the same thought: and comparisons which
-seem farfetched, only express the unfailing presence and sovereign power
-of the besetting image. Stella is ill; it seems to Sidney that "Joy,
-which is inseparate from those eyes, Stella, now learnes (strange case)
-to weepe in thee."[319] To us, the expression is absurd. Is it so for
-Sidney, who for hours together had dwelt on the expression of those
-eyes, seeing in them at last all the beauties of heaven and earth, who,
-compared to them, finds all light dull and all happiness stale? Consider
-that in every extreme passion ordinary laws are reversed, that our logic
-cannot pass judgment on it, that we find in it affectation,
-childishness, witticisms, crudity, folly, and that to us violent
-conditions of the nervous machine are like an unknown and marvellous
-land, where common-sense and good language cannot penetrate. On the
-return of spring, when May spreads over the fields her dappled dress of
-new flowers, Astrophel and Stella sit in the shade of a retired grove,
-in the warm air, full of birds' voices and pleasant exhalations. Heaven
-smiles, the wind kisses the trembling leaves, the inclining trees
-interlace their sappy branches, amorous earth swallows greedily the
-rippling water:
-
-
-"In a grove most rich of shade,
-Where birds wanton musike made,
-May, then yong, his py'd weeds showing,
-New perfum'd with flowers fresh growing,
-
-"Astrophel with Stella sweet,
-Did for mutuall comfort meet,
-Both within themselves oppressed,
-But each in the other blessed....
-
-"Their eares hungry of each word,
-Which the deere tongue would afford,
-But their tongues restrain'd from walking,
-Till their hearts had ended talking.
-
-"But when their tongues could not speake,
-Love it selfe did silence breake;
-Love did set his lips asunder,
-Thus to speake in love and wonder....
-
-"This small winde which so sweet is,
-See how it the leaves doth kisse,
-Each tree in his best attyring,
-Sense of love to love inspiring."[320]
-
-
-On his knees, with beating heart, oppressed, it seems to him that his
-mistress becomes transformed:
-
-
-"Stella, soveraigne of my joy,...
-Stella, starre of heavenly fire,
-Stella, load-starre of desire,
-Stella, in whose shining eyes
-Are the lights of Cupid's skies....
-Stella, whose voice when it speakes
-Senses all asunder breakes;
-Stella, whose voice when it singeth,
-Angels to acquaintance bringeth."[321]
-
-
-These cries of adoration are like a hymn. Every day he writes thoughts
-of love which agitate him, and in this long journal of a hundred pages
-we feel the heated breath swell each moment. A smile from his mistress,
-a curl lifted by the wind, a gesture--all are events. He paints her in
-every attitude; he cannot see her too constantly. He talks to the birds,
-plants, winds, all nature. He brings the whole world to Stella's feet.
-At the notion of a kiss he swoons:
-
-
-"Thinke of that most gratefull time,
-When thy leaping heart will climbe,
-In my lips to have his biding.
-There those roses for to kisse,
-Which doe breath a sugred blisse,
-Opening rubies, pearles dividing."[322]
-
-"O joy, too high for my low stile to show:
-O blisse, fit for a nobler state than me:
-Envie, put out thine eyes, lest thou do see
-What Oceans of delight in me do flow.
-My friend, that oft saw through all maskes my wo,
-Come, come, and let me powre my selfe on thee;
-Gone is the winter of my miserie,
-My spring appeares, O see what here doth grow,
-For Stella hath with words where faith doth shine,
-Of her high heart giv'n me the monarchie:
-I, I, O I may say that she is mine."[323]
-
-
-There are Oriental splendors in the dazzling sonnet in which he asks why
-Stella's cheeks have grown pale:
-
-
-"Where be those Roses gone, which sweetned so our eyes?
-Where those red cheekes, with oft with faire encrease doth frame
-The height of honour in the kindly badge of shame?
-Who hath the crimson weeds stolne from my morning skies?"[324]
-
-
-As he says, his "life melts with too much thinking." Exhausted by
-ecstasy, he pauses; then he flies from thought to thought, seeking
-relief for his wound, like the Satyr whom he describes:
-
-
-"Prometheus, when first from heaven hie
-He brought downe fire, ere then on earth not seene,
-Fond of delight, a Satyr standing by,
-Gave it a kisse, as it like sweet had beene.
-
-"Feeling forthwith the other burning power,
-Wood with the smart with showts and shryking shrill,
-He sought his ease in river, field, and bower,
-But for the time his griefe went with him still."[325]
-
-
-At last calm returned; and whilst this calm lasts, the lively, glowing
-spirit plays like a flickering flame on the surface of the deep brooding
-fire. His love-songs and word-portraits, delightful pagan and chivalric
-fancies, seem to be inspired by Petrarch or Plato. We feel the charm and
-sportiveness under the seeming affectation:
-
-
-"Faire eyes, sweete lips, deare heart, that foolish I
-Could hope by Cupids helpe on you to pray;
-Since to himselfe he doth your gifts apply,
-As his maine force, choise sport, and easefull stray.
-
-"For when he will see who dare him gainsay,
-Then with those eyes he lookes, lo by and by
-Each soule doth at Loves feet his weapons lay,
-Glad if for her he give them leave to die.
-
-"When he will play, then in her lips he is,
-Where blushing red, that Loves selfe them doth love,
-With either lip he doth the other kisse:
-But when he will for quiets sake remove
-From all the world, her heart is then his rome,
-Where well he knowes, no man to him can come."[326]
-
-
-Both heart and sense are captive here. If he finds the eyes of Stella
-more beautiful than anything in the world, he finds her soul more lovely
-than her body. He is a Platonist when he recounts how Virtue, wishing to
-be loved of men, took Stella's form to enchant their eyes, and make them
-see the heaven which the inner sense reveals to heroic souls. We
-recognize in him that entire submission of heart, love turned into a
-religion, perfect passion which asks only to grow, and which, like the
-piety of the mystics, finds itself always too insignificant when it
-compares itself with the object loved:
-
-
-"My youth doth waste, my knowledge brings forth toyes,
-My wit doth strive those passions to defend,
-Which for reward spoyle it with vaine annoyes,
-I see my course to lose my selfe doth bend:
-I see and yet no greater sorrow take,
-Than that I lose no more for Stella's sake."[327]
-
-
-At last, like Socrates in the banquet, he turns his eyes to deathless
-beauty, heavenly brightness:
-
-
-"Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust,
-And thou my minde aspire to higher things:
-Grow rich in that which never taketh rust:
-Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings....
-O take fast hold, let that light be thy guide,
-In this small course which birth drawes out to death."[328]
-
-
-Divine love continues the earthly love; he was imprisoned in this, and
-frees himself. By this nobility, these lofty aspirations, recognize one
-of those serious souls of which there are so many in the same climate
-and race. Spiritual instincts pierce through the dominant paganism, and
-ere they make Christians, make Platonists.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION V.--Wherein Lies the Strength of the Poetry of this Period
-
-
-Sidney was only a soldier in an army; there is a multitude about him, a
-multitude of poets. In fifty-two years, without counting the drama, two
-hundred and thirty-three are enumerated,[329] of whom forty have genius
-or talent: Breton, Donne, Drayton, Lodge, Greene, the two Fletchers,
-Beaumont, Spenser, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Wither, Warner,
-Davison, Carew, Suckling, Herrick; we should grow tired in counting
-them. There is a crop of them, and so there is at the same time in
-Catholic and heroic Spain; and as in Spain it was a sign of the times,
-the mark of a public want, the index to an extraordinary and transient
-condition of the mind. What is this condition which gives rise to so
-universal a taste for poetry? What is it breathes life into their books?
-How happens it that amongst the least, in spite of pedantries,
-awkwardnesses, in the rhyming chronicles or descriptive cyclopedias, we
-meet with brilliant pictures and genuine love-cries? How happens it that
-when this generation was exhausted, true poetry ended in England, as
-true painting in Italy and Flanders? It was because an epoch of the mind
-came and passed away--that, namely, of instinctive and creative
-conception. These men had new senses, and no theories in their heads.
-Thus, when they took a walk, their emotions were not the same as ours.
-What is sunrise to an ordinary man? A white smudge on the edge of the
-sky, between bosses of clouds, amid pieces of land, and bits of road,
-which he does not see because he has seen them a hundred times. But for
-them, all things have a soul; I mean that they feel within themselves,
-indirectly, the uprising and severance of the outlines, the power and
-contrast of tints, the sad or delicious sentiment, which breathes from
-this combination and union like a harmony or a cry. How sorrowful is the
-sun, as he rises in a mist above the sad sea-furrows; what an air of
-resignation in the old trees rustling in the night rain; what a feverish
-tumult in the mass of waves, whose dishevelled locks are twisted forever
-on the surface of the abyss! But the great torch of heaven, the luminous
-god, emerges and shines; the tall, soft, pliant herbs, the evergreen
-meadows, the expanding roof of lofty oaks--the whole English landscape,
-continually renewed and illumined by the flooding moisture, diffuses an
-inexhaustible freshness. These meadows, red and white with flowers, ever
-moist and ever young, slip off their veil of golden mist, and appear
-suddenly, timidly, like beautiful virgins. Here is the cuckoo-flower,
-which springs up before the coming of the swallow; there the hare-bell,
-blue as the veins of a woman; the marigold, which sets with the sun,
-and, weeping, rises with him. Drayton, in his "Polyolbion," sings
-
-
-"Then from her burnisht gate the goodly glittring East
-Guilds every lofty top, which late the humorous Night
-Bespangled had with pearle, to please the Mornings sight;
-On which the mirthfull Quires, with their cleere open throats,
-Unto the joyfull Morne so straine their warbling notes,
-That Hills and Valleys ring, and even the ecchoing Ayre
-Seemes all compos'd of sounds, about them everywhere....
-Thus sing away the Morne, untill the mounting Sunne,
-Through thick exhaled fogs, his golden head hath runne,
-And through the twisted tops of our close Covert creeps,
-To kiss the gentle Shade, this while that sweetly sleeps."[330]
-
-
-A step further, and you will find the old gods reappear. They reappear,
-these living gods--these living gods mingled with things which you
-cannot help meeting as soon as you meet nature again. Shakespeare, in
-the "Tempest," sings:
-
-
-"Ceres, most bounteous lady thy rich leas
-Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, and pease;
-Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep,
-And flat meads thatch'd with stover, them to keep;
-Thy banks with peoned and lilied brims,
-Which spongy April at thy hest betrims,
-To make cold nymphs chaste crowns...
-Hail, many-colour'd messenger (Iris)...
-Who, with thy saffron wings, upon my flowers
-Diffusest honey-drops, refreshing showers,
-And with each end of thy blue bow dost crown
-My bosky acres and my unshrubb'd down."[331]
-
-
-In "Cymbeline" he says:
-
-
-"They are as gentle as zephyrs, blowing below the violet.
-Not wagging his sweet head."[332]
-
-
-Greene writes:
-
-
-"When Flora, proud in pomp of all her flowers,
-Sat bright and gay,
-And gloried in the dew of Iris' showers,
-And did display
-Her mantle chequered all with gaudy green."[333]
-
-
-The same author also says:
-
-
-"How oft have I descending Titan seen,
-His burning locks couch in the sea-queen's lap;
-And beauteous Thetis his red body wrap
-In watery robes, as he her lord had been!"[334]
-
-
-So Spenser, in his "Faërie Queene," sings:
-
-
-"The joyous day gan early to appeare;
-And fayre Aurora from the deawy bed
-Of aged Tithone gan herselfe to reare
-With rosy cheekes, for shame as blushing red:
-Her golden locks, for hast, were loosely shed
-About her eares, when Una her did marke
-Clymbe to her charet, all with flowers spred,
-From heven high to chace the chearelesse darke;
-With mery note her lowd salutes the mounting larke."[335]
-
-
-All the splendor and sweetness of this moist and well-watered land; all
-the specialties, the opulence of its dissolving tints, of its variable
-sky, its luxuriant vegetation, assemble thus about the gods, who gave
-them their beautiful form.
-
-In the life of every man there are moments when, in presence of objects,
-he experiences a shock. This mass of ideas, of mangled recollections, of
-mutilated images, which lie hidden in all corners of his mind, are set
-in motion, organized, suddenly developed like a flower. He is
-enraptured; he cannot help looking at and admiring the charming creature
-which has just appeared; he wishes to see it again, and others like it,
-and dreams of nothing else. There are such moments in the life of
-nations, and this is one of them. They are happy in contemplating
-beautiful things, and wish only that they should be the most beautiful
-possible. They are not preoccupied, as we are, with theories. They do
-not excite themselves to express moral or philosophical ideas. They wish
-to enjoy through the imagination, through the eyes, like those Italian
-nobles, who, at the same time, were so captivated by fine colors and
-forms that they covered with paintings not only their rooms and their
-churches, but the lids of their chests and the saddles of their horses.
-The rich and green sunny country; young, gayly attired ladies, blooming
-with health and love; half-draped gods and goddesses, masterpieces and
-models of strength and grace--these are the most lovely objects which
-man can contemplate, the most capable of satisfying his senses and his
-heart--of giving rise to smiles and joy; and these are the objects which
-occur in all the poets in a most wonderful abundance of songs,
-pastorals, sonnets, little fugitive pieces, so lively, delicate, easily
-unfolded, that we have never since had their equals. What though Venus
-and Cupid have lost their altars? Like the contemporary painters of
-Italy, they willingly imagine a beautiful naked child, drawn on a
-chariot of gold through the limpid air; or a woman, redolent with youth,
-standing on the waves, which kiss her snowy feet. Harsh Ben Jonson is
-ravished with the scene. The disciplined battalion of his sturdy verses
-changes into a band of little graceful strophes, which trip as lightly
-as Raphael's children. He sees his lady approach, sitting on the chariot
-of Love, drawn by swans and doves. Love leads the car; she passes calm
-and smiling, and all hearts, charmed by her divine looks, wish no other
-joy than to see and serve her forever.
-
-
-"See the chariot at hand here of Love,
-Wherein my lady rideth!
-Each that draws is a swan or a dove,
-And well the car Love guideth.
-As she goes, all hearts do duty
-Unto her beauty;
-And, enamoured, do wish, so they might
-But enjoy such a sight,
-That they still were to run by her side,
-Through swords, through seas, whither she would ride.
-Do but look on her eyes, they do light
-All that Love's world compriseth!
-Do but look on her hair, it is bright
-As Love's star when it riseth!...
-Have you seen but a bright lily grow,
-Before rude hands have touched it?
-Have you marked but the fall o' the snow,
-Before the soil hath smutched it?
-Have you felt the wool of beaver?
-Or swan's down ever?
-Or have smelt o' the bud o' the brier?
-Or the nard in the fire?
-Or have tasted the bag of the bee?
-O so white! O so soft! O so sweet is she!"[336]
-
-
-What can be more lively, more unlike measured and artificial mythology?
-Like Theocritus and Moschus, they play with their smiling gods, and
-their belief becomes a festival. One day, in an alcove of a wood, Cupid
-meets a nymph asleep:
-
-
-"Her golden hair o'erspread her face,
-Her careless arms abroad were cast,
-Her quiver had her pillow's place,
-Her breast lay bare to every blast."[337]
-
-
-He approaches softly, steals her arrows, and puts his own in their
-place. She hears a noise at last, raises her reclining head, and sees a
-shepherd approaching. She flees; he pursues. She bends her bow, and
-shoots her arrows at him. He only becomes more ardent, and is on the
-point of seizing her. In despair, she takes an arrow, and buries it in
-her lovely body. Lo! she is changed, she stops, smiles, loves, draws
-near him.
-
-
-"Though mountains meet not, lovers may.
-What other lovers do, did they.
-The god of Love sat on a tree,
-And laught that pleasant sight to see."[338]
-
-
-A drop of archness falls into the medley of artlessness and voluptuous
-charm; it was so in Longus, and in all that delicious nosegay called the
-Anthology. Not the dry mocking of Voltaire, of folks who possessed only
-wit, and always lived in a drawing-room; but the raillery of artists,
-lovers whose brain is full of color and form, who, when they recount a
-bit of roguishness, imagine a stooping neck, lowered eyes, the blushing
-of vermilion cheeks. One of these fair ones says the following verses,
-simpering, and we can even see now the pouting of her lips:
-
-
-"Love in my bosom like a bee
-Doth suck his sweet.
-Now with his wings he plays with me,
-Now with his feet.
-Within my eyes he makes his rest,
-His bed amid my tender breast,
-My kisses are his daily feast.
-And yet he robs me of my rest.
-Ah! wanton, will ye!"[339]
-
-
-What relieves these sportive pieces is their splendor of imagination.
-There are effects and flashes which we hardly dare quote, dazzling and
-maddening, as in the _Song of Songs_:
-
-
-"Her eyes, fair eyes, like to the purest lights
-That animate the sun, or cheer the day;
-In whom the shining sunbeams brightly play,
-Whiles fancy doth on them divine delights.
-
-"Her cheeks like ripened lilies steeped in wine,
-Or fair pomegranate kernels washed in milk,
-Or snow-white threads in nets of crimson silk,
-Or gorgeous clouds upon the sun's decline.
-
-"Her lips are roses over-washed with dew,
-Or like the purple of Narcissus' flower...
-
-"Her crystal chin like to the purest mould,
-Enchased with dainty daisies soft and white,
-Where fancy's fair pavilion once is pight,
-Whereas embraced his beauties he doth hold.
-
-"Her neck like to an ivory shining tower,
-Where through with azure veins sweet nectar runs,
-Or like the down of swans where Senesse woons,
-Or like delight that doth itself devour.
-
-"Her paps are like fair apples in the prime,
-As round as orient pearls, as soft as down;
-They never vail their fair through winter's frown,
-But from their sweets love sucked his summer time."[340]
-
-"What need compare, where sweet exceeds compare?
-Who draws his thoughts of love from senseless things,
-Their pomp and greatest glories doth impair,
-And mounts love's heaven with overladen wings."[341]
-
-
-I can well believe that things had no more beauty then than now; but I
-am sure that men found them more beautiful.
-
-When the power of embellishment is so great, it is natural that they
-should paint the sentiment which unites all joys, whither all dreams
-converge--ideal love, and in particular, artless and happy love. Of all
-sentiments, there is none for which we have more sympathy. It is of all
-the most simple and sweet. It is the first motion of the heart, and the
-first word of nature. It is made up of innocence and self-abandonment.
-It is clear of reflection and effort. It extricates us from complicated
-passion, contempt, regret, hate, violent desires. It penetrates us, and
-we breathe it as the fresh breath of the morning wind, which has swept
-over flowery meads. The knights of this perilous court inhaled it, and
-were enraptured, and so rested in the contrast from their actions and
-their dangers. The most severe and tragic of their poets turned aside to
-meet it, Shakespeare among the evergreen oaks of the forest of
-Arden,[342] Ben Jonson in the woods of Sherwood,[343] amid the wide
-shady glades, the shining leaves and moist flowers, trembling on the
-margin of lonely springs. Marlowe himself, the terrible painter of the
-agony of Edward II, the impressive and powerful poet, who wrote
-"Faustus, Tamerlane" and the "Jew of Malta," leaves his sanguinary
-dramas, his high-sounding verse, his images of fury, and nothing can be
-more musical and sweet than his song. A shepherd, to gain his lady-love,
-says to her:
-
-
-"Come live with me and be my Love,
-And we will all the pleasures prove
-That hills and valleys, dale and field,
-And all the craggy mountains yield.
-There we will sit upon the rocks,
-And see the shepherds feed their flocks,
-By shallow rivers, to whose falls
-Melodious birds sing madrigals.
-There will I make thee beds of roses
-And a thousand fragrant posies,
-A cap of flowers, and a kirtle
-Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle.
-A gown made of the finest wool,
-Which from our pretty lambs we pull,
-Fair lined slippers for the cold,
-With buckles of the purest gold.
-A belt of straw and ivy buds,
-With coral clasps and amber studs;
-And if these pleasures may thee move,
-Come live with me and be my Love....
-The shepherd swains shall dance and sing
-For thy delight each May-morning:
-If these delights thy mind may move,
-Then live with me and be my Love."[344]
-
-
-The unpolished gentlemen of the period, returning from hawking, were
-more than once arrested by such rustic pictures; such as they were, that
-is to say, imaginative and not very citizen-like, they had dreamed of
-figuring in them on their own account. But while entering into, they
-reconstructed them; they reconstructed them in their parks, prepared for
-Queen Elizabeth's entrance, with a profusion of costumes and devices,
-not troubling themselves to copy rough nature exactly. Improbability did
-not disturb them; they were not minute imitators, students of manners:
-they created; the country for them was but a setting, and the complete
-picture came from their fancies and their hearts. Romantic it may have
-been, even impossible, but it was on this account the more charming. Is
-there a greater charm than putting on one side this actual world which
-fetters or oppresses us, to float vaguely and easily in the azure and
-the light, on the summit of the cloud-capped land of fairies, to arrange
-things according to the pleasure of the moment, no longer feeling the
-oppressive laws, the harsh and resisting framework of life, adorning and
-varying everything after the caprice and the refinements of fancy? That
-is what is done in these little poems. Usually the events are such as
-happen nowhere, or happen in the land where kings turn shepherds and
-marry shepherdesses. The beautiful Argentile[345] is detained at the
-court of her uncle, who wishes to deprive her of her kingdom, and
-commands her to marry Curan, a boor in his service; she flees, and Curan
-in despair goes and lives two years among the shepherds. One day he
-meets a beautiful country-woman, and loves her; gradually, while
-speaking to her, he thinks of Argentile, and weeps; he describes her
-sweet face, her lithe figure, her blue-veined delicate wrists, and
-suddenly sees that the peasant girl is weeping. She falls into his arms,
-and says, "I am Argentile." Now Curan was a king's son, who had
-disguised himself thus for love of Argentile. He resumes his armor, and
-defeats the wicked king. There never was a braver knight; and they both
-reigned long in Northumberland. From a hundred such tales, tales of the
-spring-time, the reader will perhaps bear with me while I pick out one
-more, gay and simple as a May morning. The Princess Dowsabel came down
-one morning into her father's garden: she gathers honeysuckles,
-primroses, violets, and daisies; then, behind a hedge, she heard a
-shepherd singing, and that so finely that she loved him at once. He
-promises to be faithful, and asks for a kiss. Her cheeks became as
-crimson as a rose:
-
-
-"With that she bent her snow white knee,
-Down by the shepherd kneeled she,
-And him she sweetly kiss'd.
-With that the shepherd whoop'd for joy;
-Quoth he: 'There's never shepherd's boy
-That ever was so blest.'"[346]
-
-
-Nothing more; is it not enough? It is but a moment's fancy; but they had
-such fancies every moment. Think what poetry was likely to spring from
-them, how superior to common events, how free from literal imitation,
-how smitten with ideal beauty, how capable of creating a world beyond
-our sad world. In fact, among all these poems there is one truly divine,
-so divine that the reasoners of succeeding ages have found it wearisome,
-that even now but few understand it--Spenser's "Faërie Queene." One day
-M. Jourdain, having turned Mamamouchi[347] and learned orthography, sent
-for the most illustrious writers of the age. He settled himself in his
-arm-chair, pointed with his finger at several folding-stools for them to
-sit down, and said:
-
-
-"I have read your little productions, gentlemen. They have afforded me
-much pleasure. I wish to give you some work to do. I have given some
-lately to little Lulli,[348] your fellow-laborer. It was at my command
-that he introduced the sea-shell at his concerts--a melodious
-instrument, which no one thought of before, and which has such a
-pleasing effect. I insist that you will work out my ideas as he has
-worked them out, and I give you an order for a poem in prose. What is
-not prose, you know, is verse; and what is not verse is prose. When I
-say, 'Nicolle, bring me my slippers and give me my nightcap,' I speak
-prose. Take this sentence as your model. This style is much more
-pleasing than the jargon of unfinished lines which you call verse. As
-for the subject, let it be myself. You will describe my flowered
-dressing-gown which I have put on to receive you in, and this little
-green velvet undress which I wear underneath, to do my morning exercise
-in. You will set down that this chintz costs a louis an ell. The
-description, if well worked out, will furnish some very pretty
-paragraphs, and will enlighten the public as to the cost of things. I
-desire also that you should speak of my mirrors, my carpets, my
-hangings. My tradesmen will let you have their bills; don't fail to put
-them in. I shall be glad to read in your works, all fully and naturally
-set forth, about my father's shop, who, like a real gentleman, sold
-cloth to oblige his friends; my maid Nicolle's kitchen, the genteel
-behavior of Brusquet, the little dog of my neighbor M. Dimanche. You
-might also explain my domestic affairs: there is nothing more
-interesting to the public than to hear how a million may be scraped
-together. Tell them also that my daughter Lucile has not married that
-little rascal Cléonte, but M. Samuel Bernard, who made his fortune as a
-_fermier-général_, keeps his carriage and is going to be a minister of
-state. For this I will pay you liberally, half a louis for a yard of
-writing. Come back in a month, and let me see what my ideas have
-suggested to you."
-
-
-We are the descendants of M. Jourdain, and this is how we have been
-talking to the men of genius from the beginning of the century, and the
-men of genius have listened to us. Hence arise our shoppy and realistic
-novels. I pray the reader to forget them, to forget himself, to become
-for a while a poet, a gentleman, a man of the sixteenth century. Unless
-we bury the M. Jourdain who survives in us, we shall never understand
-Spenser.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION VI--Edmund Spenser
-
-
-Spenser belonged to an ancient family, allied to great houses; was a
-friend to Sidney and Raleigh, the two most accomplished knights of the
-age--a knight himself, at least in heart; who had found in his
-connections, his friendships, his studies, his life, everything
-calculated to lead him to ideal poetry. We find him at Cambridge, where
-he imbues himself with the noblest ancient philosophies; in a northern
-country, where he passes through a deep and unfortunate passion; at
-Penshurst, in the castle and in the society where the "Arcadia" was
-produced; with Sidney, in whom survived entire the romantic poetry and
-heroic generosity of the feudal spirit; at court, where all the
-splendors of a disciplined and gorgeous chivalry were gathered about the
-throne; finally, at Kilcolman, on the borders of a lake, in a lonely
-castle, from which the view embraced an amphitheatre of mountains, and
-the half of Ireland. Poor on the other hand,[349] not fit for court, and
-though favored by the queen, unable to obtain from his patrons anything
-but inferior employment; in the end, wearied of solicitations, and
-banished to his dangerous property in Ireland, whence a rebellion
-expelled him, after his house and child had been burned; he died three
-months later, of misery and a broken heart.[350] Expectations and
-rebuffs, many sorrows and many dreams, some few joys, and a sudden and
-frightful calamity, a small fortune and a premature end; this indeed was
-a poet's life. But the heart within was the true poet--from it all
-proceeded; circumstances furnished the subject only; he transformed them
-more than they him; he received less than he gave. Philosophy and
-landscapes, ceremonies and ornaments, splendors of the country and the
-court, on all which he painted or thought, he impressed his inward
-nobleness. Above all, his was a soul captivated by sublime and chaste
-beauty, eminently platonic; one of these lofty and refined souls most
-charming of all, who, born in the lap of nature, draw thence their
-sustenance, but soar higher, enter the regions of mysticism, and mount
-instinctively in order to expand on the confines of a loftier world.
-Spenser leads us to Milton, and thence to Puritanism, as Plato to
-Vergil, and thence to Christianity. Sensuous beauty is perfect in both,
-but their main worship is for moral beauty. He appeals to the Muses:
-
-
-"Revele to me the sacred noursery
-Of vertue, which with you doth there remaine,
-Where it in silver bowre does hidden ly
-From view of men and wicked worlds disdaine!"
-
-
-He encourages his knight when he sees him droop. He is wroth when he
-sees him attacked. He rejoices in his justice, temperance, courtesy. He
-introduces in the beginning of a song, long stanzas in honor of
-friendship and justice. He pauses, after relating a lovely instance of
-chastity, to exhort women to modesty. He pours out the wealth of his
-respect and tenderness at the feet of his heroines. If any coarse man
-insults them, he calls to their aid nature and the gods. Never does he
-bring them on his stage without adorning their name with splendid
-eulogy. He has an adoration for beauty worthy of Dante and Plotinus. And
-this, because he never considers it a mere harmony of color and form,
-but an emanation of unique, heavenly, imperishable beauty, which no
-mortal eye can see, and which is the masterpiece of the great Author of
-the worlds.[351] Bodies only render it visible; it does not live in
-them; charm and attraction are not in things, but in the immortal idea
-which shines through them:
-
-
-"For that same goodly hew of white and red,
-With which the cheekes are sprinckled, shall decay,
-And those sweete rosy leaves, so fairly spred
-Upon the lips, shall fade and fall away
-To that they were, even to corrupted clay:
-That golden wyre, those sparckling stars so bright,
-Shall turne to dust, and lose their goodly light.
-But that faire lampe, from whose celestiall ray
-That light proceedes, which kindleth lovers fire,
-Shall never be extinguisht nor decay;
-But, when the vitall spirits doe expyre,
-Upon her native planet shall retyre;
-For it is heavenly borne, and cannot die,
-Being a parcell of the purest skie."[352]
-
-
-In presence of this ideal of beauty, love is transformed:
-
-
-"For Love is lord of Truth and Loialtie,
-Lifting himself out of the lowly dust,
-On golden plumes up to the purest skie,
-Above the reach of loathly sinfull lust,
-Whose base affect through cowardly distrust
-Of his weake wings dare not to heaven fly,
-But like a moldwarpe in the earth doth ly."[353]
-
-
-Love such as this contains all that is good, and fine, and noble. It is
-the prime source of life, and the eternal soul of things. It is this
-love which, pacifying the primitive discord, has created the harmony of
-the spheres, and maintains this glorious universe. It dwells in God, and
-is God himself, come down in bodily form to regenerate the tottering
-world and save the human race; around and within animated beings, when
-our eyes can pierce outward appearances, we behold it as a living light,
-penetrating and embracing every creature. We touch here the sublime
-sharp summit where the world of mind and the world of sense unite; where
-man, gathering with both hands the loveliest flowers of either, feels
-himself at the same time a pagan and a Christian.
-
-So much, as a testimony to his heart. But he was also a poet, that is,
-pre-eminently a creator and a dreamer, and that most naturally,
-instinctively, unceasingly. We might go on forever describing this
-inward condition of all great artists; there would still remain much to
-be described. It is a sort of mental growth with them; at every instant
-a bud shoots forth, and on this another and still another; each
-producing, increasing, blooming of itself, so that after a few moments
-we find first a green plant crop up, then a thicket, then a forest. A
-character appears to them, then an action, then a landscape, then a
-succession of actions, characters, landscapes, producing, completing,
-arranging themselves by instinctive development, as when in a dream we
-behold a train of figures which, without any outward compulsion, display
-and group themselves before our eyes. This fount of living and changing
-forms is inexhaustible in Spenser; he is always imaging; it is his
-specialty. He has but to close his eyes, and apparitions arise; they
-abound in him, crowd, overflow; in vain he pours them forth; they
-continually float up, more copious and more dense. Many times, following
-the inexhaustible stream, I have thought of the vapors which rise
-incessantly from the sea, ascend, sparkle, commingle their golden and
-snowy scrolls, while underneath them new mists arise, and others again
-beneath, and the splendid procession never grows dim or ceases.
-
-But what distinguishes him from all others is the mode of his
-imagination. Generally with a poet his mind ferments vehemently and by
-fits and starts; his ideas gather, jostle each other, suddenly appear in
-masses and heaps, and burst forth in sharp, piercing, concentrative
-words; it seems that they need these sudden accumulations to imitate the
-unity and life-like energy of the objects which they reproduce; at least
-almost all the poets of that time, Shakespeare at their head, act thus.
-Spenser remains calm in the fervor of invention. The visions which would
-be fever to another, leave him at peace. They come and unfold themselves
-before him, easily, entire, uninterrupted, without starts. He is epic,
-that is, a narrator, not a singer like an ode-writer, nor a mimic like a
-play-writer. No modern is more like Homer. Like Homer and the great
-epic-writers, he only presents consecutive and noble, almost classical
-images, so nearly ideas, that the mind seizes them unaided and unawares.
-Like Homer, he is always simple and clear: he makes no leaps, he omits
-no argument, he robs no word of its primitive and ordinary meaning, he
-preserves the natural sequence of ideas. Like Homer, again, he is
-redundant, ingenuous, even childish. He says everything, he puts down
-reflections which we have made beforehand; he repeats without limit his
-grand ornamental epithets. We can see that he beholds objects in a
-beautiful uniform light, with infinite detail; that he wishes to show
-all this detail, never fearing to see his happy dream change or
-disappear; that he traces its outline with a regular movement, never
-hurrying or slackening. He is even a little prolix, too unmindful of the
-public, too ready to lose himself and dream about the things he beholds.
-His thought expands in vast repeated comparisons, like those of the old
-Ionic poet. If a wounded giant falls, he finds him
-
-
-"As an aged tree,
-High growing on the top of rocky clift,
-Whose hart-strings with keene steele nigh hewen be,
-The mightie trunck halfe rent with ragged rift,
-Doth roll adowne the rocks, and fall with fearefull drift.
-
-"Or as a castle, reared high and round,
-By subtile engins and malitious slight
-Is undermined from the lowest ground,
-And her foundation forst, and feebled quight,
-At last downe falles; and with her heaped hight
-Her hastie ruine does more heavie make,
-And yields it selfe unto the victours might:
-Such was this Gyaunt's fall, that seemd to shake
-The stedfast globe of earth, as it for feare did quake."[354]
-
-
-He develops all the ideas which he handles. All his phrases become
-periods. Instead of compressing, he expands. To bear this ample thought
-and its accompanying train, he requires a long stanza, ever renewed,
-long alternate verses, reiterated rhymes, whose uniformity and fullness
-recall the majestic sounds which undulate eternally through the woods
-and the fields. To unfold these epic faculties, and to display them in
-the sublime region where his soul is naturally borne, he requires an
-ideal stage, situated beyond the bounds of reality, with personages who
-could hardly exist, and in a world which could never be.
-
-He made many miscellaneous attempts in sonnets, elegies, pastorals,
-hymns of love, little sparkling word-pictures;[355] they were but
-essays, incapable for the most part of supporting his genius. Yet
-already his magnificent imagination appeared in them; gods, men,
-landscapes, the world which he sets in motion is a thousand miles from
-that in which we live. His "Shepherd's Calendar"[356] is a
-thought-inspiring and tender pastoral, full of delicate loves, noble
-sorrows, lofty ideas, where no voice is heard but of thinkers and poets.
-His "Visions of Petrarch and Du Bellay" are admirable dreams, in which
-palaces, temples of gold, splendid landscapes, sparkling rivers,
-marvellous birds, appear in close succession as in an Oriental
-fairy-tale. If he sings a "Prothalamion," he sees two beautiful swans,
-white as snow, who come softly swimming down amidst the songs of nymphs
-and vermeil roses, while the transparent water kisses their silken
-feathers, and murmurs with joy:
-
-
-"There, in a meadow, by the river's side,
-A flocke of Nymphes I chaunced to espy,
-All lovely daughters of the Flood thereby,
-With goodly greenish locks, all loose untyde,
-As each had bene a bryde;
-And each one had a little wicker basket,
-Made of fine twigs, entrayled curiously,
-In which they gathered flowers to fill their flasket,
-And with fine fingers cropt full feateously
-The tender stalkes on hye.
-Of every sort, which in that meadow grew,
-They gathered some; the violet, pallid blew,
-The little dazie, that at evening closes,
-The virgin lillie, and the primrose trew,
-With store of vermeil roses,
-To deck their bridegroomes posies
-Against the brydale-day, which was not long:
-Sweet Themmes! runne softly, till I end my song.
-
-"With that I saw two Swannes of goodly hewe
-Come softly swimming downe along the lee;
-Two fairer birds I yet did never see;
-The snow, which doth the top of Pindus strew,
-Did never whiter shew...
-So purely white they were,
-That even the gentle stream, the which them bare,
-Seem'd foule to them, and bad his billowes spare
-To wet their silken feathers, least they might
-Soyle their fayre plumes with water not so fayre,
-And marre their beauties bright,
-That shone as heavens light,
-Against their brydale day, which was not long:
-Sweet Themmes! runne softly, till I end my song!"[357]
-
-
-If he bewails the death of Sidney, Sidney becomes a shepherd, he is
-slain like Adonis; around him gather weeping nymphs:
-
-
-"The gods, which all things see, this same beheld,
-And, pittying this paire of lovers trew,
-Transformed them there lying on the field,
-Into one flowre that is both red and blew:
-It first growes red, and then to blew doth fade,
-Like Astrophel, which thereinto was made.
-
-"And in the midst thereof a star appeares,
-As fairly formd as any star in skyes:
-Resembling Stella in her freshest yeares,
-Forth darting beames of beautie from her eyes;
-And all the day it standeth full of deow,
-Which is the teares, that from her eyes did flow."[358]
-
-
-His most genuine sentiments become thus fairy-like. Magic is the mould
-of his mind, and impresses its shape on all that he imagines or thinks.
-Involuntarily he robs objects of their ordinary form. If he looks at a
-landscape, after an instant he sees it quite differently. He carries it,
-unconsciously, into an enchanted land; the azure heaven sparkles like a
-canopy of diamonds, meadows are clothed with flowers, a biped population
-flutters in the balmy air, palaces of jasper shine among the trees,
-radiant ladies appear on carved balconies above galleries of emerald.
-This unconscious toil of mind is like the slow crystallizations of
-nature. A moist twig is cast into the bottom of a mine, and is brought
-out again a hoop of diamonds.
-
-At last he finds a subject which suits him, the greatest joy permitted
-to an artist. He removes his epic from the common ground which, in the
-hands of Homer and Dante, gave expression to a living creed, and
-depicted national heroes. He leads us to the summit of fairy-land,
-soaring above history, on that extreme verge where objects vanish and
-pure idealism begins: "I have undertaken a work," he says, "to represent
-all the moral virtues, assigning to every virtue a knight to be the
-patron and defender of the same; in whose actions and feats of armes and
-chivalry the operations of that vertue, whereof he is the protector, are
-to be expressed, and the vices and unruly appetites that oppose
-themselves against the same, to be beaten downe and overcome."[359] In
-fact he gives us an allegory as the foundation of his poem, not that he
-dreams of becoming a wit, a preacher of moralities, a propounder of
-riddles. He does not subordinate image to idea; he is a seer, not a
-philosopher. They are living men and actions which he sets in motion;
-only from time to time, in his poem, enchanted palaces, a whole train of
-splendid visions trembles and divides like a mist, enabling us to catch
-a glimpse of the thought which raised and arranged it. When in his
-Garden of Adonis we see the countless forms of all living things
-arranged in due order, in close compass, awaiting life, we conceive with
-him the birth of universal love, the ceaseless fertility of the great
-mother, the mysterious swarm of creatures which rise in succession from
-her "wide wombe of the world." When we see his Knight of the Cross
-combating with a horrible woman-serpent in defence of his beloved lady
-Una, we dimly remember that, if we search beyond these two figures, we
-shall find behind one, Truth, behind the other, Falsehood. We perceive
-that his characters are not flesh and blood, and that all these
-brilliant phantoms are phantoms, and nothing more. We take pleasure in
-their brilliancy, without believing in their substantiality; we are
-interested in their doings, without troubling ourselves about their
-misfortunes. We know that their tears and cries are not real. Our
-emotion is purified and raised. We do not fall into gross illusion; we
-have that gentle feeling of knowing ourselves to be dreaming. We, like
-him, are a thousand leagues from actual life, beyond the pangs of
-painful pity, unmixed terror, violent and bitter hatred. We entertain
-only refined sentiments, partly formed, arrested at the very moment they
-were about to affect us with too sharp a stroke. They slightly touch us,
-and we find ourselves happy in being extricated from a belief which was
-beginning to be oppressive.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION VII.--Spenser in his Relation to the Renaissance
-
-
-What world could furnish materials to so elevated a fancy? One only,
-that of chivalry; for none is so far from the actual. Alone and
-independent in his castle, freed from all the ties which society,
-family, toil, usually impose on the actions of men, the feudal hero had
-attempted every kind of adventure, but yet he had done less than he
-imagined; the boldness of his deeds had been exceeded by the madness of
-his dreams. For want of useful employment and an accepted rule, his
-brain had labored on an unreasoning and impossible track, and the
-urgency of his wearisomeness had increased beyond measure his craving
-for excitement. Under this stimulus his poetry had become a world of
-imagery. Insensibly strange conceptions had grown and multiplied in his
-brains, one over the other, like ivy woven round a tree, and the
-original trunk had disappeared beneath their rank growth and their
-obstruction. The delicate fancies of the old Welsh poetry, the grand
-ruins of the German epics, the marvellous splendors of the conquered
-East, all the recollections which four centuries of adventure had
-scattered among the minds of men, had become gathered into one great
-dream; and giants, dwarfs, monsters, the whole medley of imaginary
-creatures, of superhuman exploits and splendid follies, were grouped
-around a unique conception, exalted and sublime love, like courtiers
-prostrated at the feet of their king. It was an ample and buoyant
-subject-matter, from which the great artists of the age, Ariosto, Tasso,
-Cervantes, Rabelais, had hewn their poems. But they belonged too
-completely to their own time, to admit of their belonging to one which
-had passed.[360] They created a chivalry afresh, but it was not genuine.
-The ingenious Ariosto, an ironical epicurean, delights his gaze with it,
-and grows merry over it, like a man of pleasure, a sceptic who rejoices
-doubly in his pleasure because it is sweet, and because it is forbidden.
-By his side poor Tasso, inspired by a fanatical, revived, factitious
-Catholicism, amid the tinsel of an old school of poetry, works on the
-same subject, in sickly fashion, with great effort and scant success.
-Cervantes, himself a knight, albeit he loves chivalry for its nobleness,
-perceives its folly, and crushes it to the ground, with heavy blows, in
-the mishaps of the wayside inns. More coarsely, more openly, Rabelais, a
-rude commoner, drowns it with a burst of laughter, in his merriment and
-nastiness. Spenser alone takes it seriously and naturally. He is on the
-level of so much nobleness, dignity, reverie. He is not yet settled and
-shut in by that species of exact common-sense which was to found and
-cramp the whole modern civilization. In his heart he inhabits the poetic
-and shadowy land from which men were daily drawing farther and farther
-away. He is enamored of it, even to its very language; he revives the
-old words, the expressions of the Middle Ages, the style of Chaucer,
-especially in the "Shepherd's Calendar." He enters straightway upon the
-strangest dreams of the old story-tellers, without astonishment, like a
-man who has still stranger dreams of his own. Enchanted castles,
-monsters and giants, duels in the woods, wandering ladies, all spring up
-under his hands, the mediæval fancy with the mediaeval generosity; and
-it is just because this world is unreal that it so suits his humor.
-
-Is there in chivalry sufficient to furnish him with matter? That is but
-one world, and he has another. Beyond the valiant men, the glorified
-images of moral virtues, he has the gods, finished models of sensible
-beauty; beyond Christian chivalry he has the pagan Olympus; beyond the
-idea of heroic will which can only be satisfied by adventures and
-danger, there exists calm energy, which, by its own impulse, is in
-harmony with actual existence. For such a poet one ideal is not enough;
-beside the beauty of effort he places the beauty of happiness; he
-couples them, not deliberately as a philosopher, nor with the design of
-a scholar like Goethe, but because they are both lovely; and here and
-there, amid armor and passages of arms, he distributes satyrs, nymphs,
-Diana, Venus, like Greek statues amid the turrets and lofty trees of an
-English park. There is nothing forced in the union; the ideal epic, like
-a superior heaven, receives and harmonizes the two worlds; a beautiful
-pagan dream carries on a beautiful dream of chivalry; the link consists
-in the fact that they are both beautiful. At this elevation the poet has
-ceased to observe the differences of races and civilizations. He can
-introduce into his picture whatever he will; his only reason is, "That
-suited"; and there could be no better. Under the glossy-leaved oaks, by
-the old trunk so deeply rooted in the ground, he can see two knights
-cleaving each other, and the next instant a company of Fauns who came
-there to dance. The beams of light which have poured down upon the
-velvet moss, the green turf of an English forest, can reveal the
-dishevelled locks and white shoulders of nymphs. Do we not see it in
-Rubens? And what signify discrepancies in the happy and sublime illusion
-of fancy? Are there more discrepancies? Who perceives them, who feels
-them? Who does not feel, on the contrary, that to speak the truth, there
-is but one world, that of Plato and the poets; that actual phenomena are
-but outlines--mutilated, incomplete and blurred outlines--wretched
-abortions scattered here and there on Time's track, like fragments of
-clay, half moulded, then cast aside, lying in an artist's studio; that,
-after all, invisible forces and ideas, which forever renew the actual
-existences, attain their fulfilment only in imaginary existences; and
-that the poet, in order to express nature in its entirety, is obliged to
-embrace in his sympathy all the ideal forms by which nature reveals
-itself? This is the greatness of his work; he has succeeded in seizing
-beauty in its fulness, because he cared for nothing but beauty.
-
-The reader will feel that it is impossible to give in full the plot of
-such a poem. In fact, there are six poems, each of a dozen cantos, in
-which the action is ever diverging and converging again, becoming
-confused and starting again; and all the imaginings of antiquity and of
-the Middle Ages are, I believe, combined in it. The knight "pricks along
-the plaine," among the trees, and at a crossing of the paths meets other
-knights with whom he engages in combat; suddenly from within a cave
-appears a monster, half woman and half serpent, surrounded by a hideous
-offspring; further on a giant, with three bodies; then a dragon, great
-as a hill, with sharp talons and vast wings. For three days he fights
-them, and twice overthrown, he comes to himself only by aid of "a
-gracious ointment." After that there are savage tribes to be conquered,
-castles surrounded by flames to be taken. Meanwhile ladies are wandering
-in the midst of forests, on white palfreys, exposed to the assaults of
-miscreants, now guarded by a lion which follows them, now delivered by a
-band of satyrs who adore them. Magicians work manifold charms; palaces
-display their festivities; tilt-yards provide endless tournaments;
-sea-gods, nymphs, fairies, kings, intermingle in these feasts,
-surprises, dangers.
-
-You will say it is a phantasmagoria. What matter, if we see it? And we
-do see it, for Spenser does. His sincerity communicates itself to us. He
-is so much at home in this world that we end by finding ourselves at
-home in it too. He shows no appearance of astonishment at astonishing
-events; he comes upon them so naturally that he makes them natural; he
-defeats the miscreants, as if he had done nothing else all his life.
-Venus, Diana, and the old deities, dwell at his gate and enter his
-threshold without his taking any heed of them. His serenity becomes
-ours. We grow credulous and happy by contagion, and to the same extent
-as he. How could it be otherwise? Is it possible to refuse credence to a
-man who paints things for us with such accurate details and in such
-lively colors? Here with a dash of his pen he describes a forest for
-you; and are you not instantly in it with him Beech trees with their
-silvery stems, "loftie trees iclad with sommers pride, did spred so
-broad, that heavens light did hide"; rays of light tremble on the bark
-and shine on the ground, on the reddening ferns and low bushes, which,
-suddenly smitten with the luminous track, glisten and glimmer. Footsteps
-are scarcely heard on the thick beds of heaped leaves; and at distant
-intervals, on the tall herbage, drops of dew are sparkling. Yet the
-sound of a horn reaches us through the foliage; how sweetly yet
-cheerfully it falls on the ear, amidst this vast silence! It resounds
-more loudly; the clatter of a hunt draws near; "eft through the thicke
-they heard one rudely rush;" a nymph approaches, the most chaste and
-beautiful in the world. Spenser sees her; nay more, he kneels before
-her:
-
-
-"Her face so faire, as flesh it seemed not,
-But hevenly pourtraict of bright angels hew,
-Cleare as the skye, withouten blame or blot,
-Through goodly mixture of complexions dew;
-And in her cheekes the vermeill red did shew
-Like roses in a bed of lillies shed,
-The which ambrosiall odours from them threw,
-And gazers sence with double pleasure fed,
-Hable to heale the sicke and to revive the ded.
-
-"In her faire eyes two living lamps did flame,
-Kindled above at th' Hevenly Makers light,
-And darted fyrie beames out of the same;
-So passing persant, and so wondrous bright,
-That quite bereav'd the rash beholders sight:
-In them the blinded god his lustfull fyre
-To kindle oft assayd, but had no might;
-For, with dredd maiestie and awfull yre,
-She broke his wanton darts, and quenched bace desyre.
-
-"Her yvorie forhead, full of bountie brave,
-Like a broad table did itselfe dispred,
-For Love his loftie triumphes to engrave,
-And write the battailes of his great godhed:
-All good and honour might therein be red;
-For there their dwelling was. And, when she spake
-Sweete wordes, like dropping honny, she did shed;
-And 'twixt the perles and rubins softly brake
-A silver sound, that heavenly musicke seemd to make.
-
-"Upon her eyelids many Graces sate,
-Under the shadow of her even browes,
-Working belgardes and amorous retrate;
-And everie one her with a grace endowes,
-And everie one with meekenesse to her bowes:
-So glorious mirrhour of celestiall grace,
-And soveraine moniment of mortall vowes,
-How shall frayle pen descrive her heavenly face,
-For feare, through want of skill, her beauty to disgrace.
-
-"So faire, and thousand thousand times more faire,
-She seemd, when she presented was to sight;
-And was yclad, for heat of scorching aire,
-All in a silken Camus lilly whight,
-Purfled upon with many a folded plight,
-Which all above besprinckled was throughout
-With golden aygulets, that glistred bright,
-Like twinckling starres; and all the skirt about
-Was hemd with golden fringe.
-
-"Below her ham her weed did somewhat trayne,
-And her streight legs most bravely were embayld
-In gilden buskins of costly cordwayne,
-All bard with golden bendes, which were entayld
-With curious antickes, and full fayre aumayld.
-Before, they fastned were under her knee
-In a rich iewell, and therein entrayld
-The ends of all the knots, that none might see
-How they within their fouldings close enwrapped bee.
-
-"Like two faire marble pillours they were seene,
-Which doe the temple of the gods support,
-Whom all the people decke with girlands greene,
-And honour in their festivall resort;
-Those same with stately grace and princely port
-She taught to tread, when she herselfe would grace;
-But with the woody nymphes when she did play,
-Or when the flying libbard she did chace,
-She could them nimbly move, and after fly apace.
-
-"And in her hand a sharpe bore-speare she held,
-And at her backe a bow and quiver gay,
-Stuft with steel-headed dartes wherewith she queld
-The salvage beastes in her victorious play,
-Knit with a golden bauldricke which forelay
-Athwart her snowy brest, and did divide
-Her daintie paps; which, like young fruit in May,
-Now little gan to swell, and being tide
-Through her thin weed their places only signifide.
-
-"Her yellow lockes, crisped like golden wyre,
-About her shoulders weren loosely shed,
-And, when the winde emongst them did inspyre,
-They waved like a penon wyde dispred
-And low behinde her backe were scattered:
-And, whether art it were or heedlesse hap,
-As through the flouring forrest rash she fled,
-In her rude heares sweet flowres themselves did lap,
-And flourishing fresh leaves and blossomes did enwrap."[361]
-
-"The daintie rose, the daughter of her morne,
-More deare than life she tendered, whose flowre
-The girlond of her honour did adorne;
-Ne suffered she the middayes scorching powre.
-Ne the sharp northerne wind thereon to showre;
-But lapped up her silken leaves most chayre,
-Whenso the froward skye began to lowre;
-But, soone as calmed was the cristall ayre,
-She did it fayre dispred, and let to flourish fayre."[362]
-
-
-He is on his knees before her, I repeat, as a child on Corpus Christi
-day, among flowers and perfumes, transported with admiration, so that he
-sees a heavenly light in her eyes, and angel's tints on her cheeks, even
-impressing into her service Christian angels and pagan graces to adorn
-and await upon her; it is love which brings such visions before him:
-
-
-"Sweet love, that doth his golden wings embay
-In blessed nectar and pure pleasures well."
-
-
-Whence this perfect beauty, this modest and charming dawn, in which he
-assembles all the brightness, all the sweetness, all the virgin graces
-of the full morning? What mother begat her, what marvellous birth
-brought to light such a wonder of grace and purity? One day, in a
-sparkling, solitary fountain, where the sunbeams shone, Chrysogone was
-bathing with roses and violets.
-
-
-"It was upon a sommers shinie day,
-When Titan faire his beamës did display,
-In a fresh fountaine, far from all mens vew,
-She bath'd her brest the boyling heat t' allay;
-She bath'd with roses red and violets blew,
-And all the sweetest flowers that in the forrest grew.
-Till faint through yrkesome wearines adowne
-Upon the grassy ground herselfe she layd
-To sleepe, the whiles a gentle slombring swowne
-Upon her fell all naked bare displayd."[363]
-
-
-The beams played upon her body, and "fructified" her. The months rolled
-on. Troubled and ashamed, she went into the "wildernesse," and sat down,
-"every sence with sorrow sore opprest." Meanwhile Venus, searching for
-her boy Cupid, who had mutinied and fled from her, "wandered in the
-world." She had sought him in courts, cities, cottages, promising
-"kisses sweet, and sweeter things, unto the man that of him tydings to
-her brings."
-
-
-"Shortly unto the wastefull woods she came,
-Whereas she found the goddesse (Diana) with her crew,
-After late chace of their embrewed game,
-Sitting beside a fountaine in a rew;
-Some of them washing with the liquid dew
-From off their dainty limbs the dusty sweat
-And soyle, which did deforme their lively hew;
-Others lay shaded from the scorching heat,
-The rest upon her person gave attendance great.
-She, having hong upon a bough on high
-Her bow and painted quiver, had unlaste
-Her silver buskins from her nimble thigh,
-And her lanck loynes ungirt, and brests unbraste,
-After her heat the breathing cold to taste;
-Her golden lockes, that late in tresses bright
-Embreaded were for hindring of her haste,
-Now loose about her shoulders hong undight,
-And were with sweet Ambrosia all besprinckled light."[364]
-
-
-Diana, surprised thus, repulses Venus, "and gan to smile, in scorne of
-her vaine playnt," swearing that if she should catch Cupid, she would
-clip his wanton wings. Then she took pity on the afflicted goddess, and
-set herself with her to look for the fugitive. They came to the "shady
-covert" where Chrysogone, in her sleep, had given birth "unawares" to
-two lovely girls, "as faire as springing day." Diana took one, and made
-her the purest of all virgins. Venus carried off the other to the Garden
-of Adonis, "the first seminary of all things, that are borne to live and
-dye"; where Psyche, the bride of Love, disports herself; where Pleasure,
-their daughter, wantons with the Graces; where Adonis, "lapped in
-flowres and pretious spycery, liveth in eternal bliss," and came back
-to life through the breath of immortal Love. She brought her up as her
-daughter, selected her to be the most faithful of loves, and after long
-trials, gave her hand to the good knight Sir Scudamore.
-
-That is the kind of thing we meet with in the wondrous forest. Are you
-ill at ease there, and do you wish to leave it because it is wondrous?
-At every bend in the alley, at every change of the light, a stanza, a
-word, reveals a landscape or an apparition. It is morning, the white
-dawn gleams faintly through the trees; bluish vapors veil the horizon,
-and vanish in the smiling air; the springs tremble and murmur faintly
-amongst the mosses, and on high the poplar leaves begin to stir and
-flutter like the wings of butterflies. A knight alights from his horse,
-a valiant knight, who has unhorsed many a Saracen, and experienced many
-an adventure. He unlaces his helmet, and on a sudden you perceive the
-cheeks of a young girl:
-
-
-"Which doft, her golden lockes, that were upbound
-Still in a knot, unto her heeles downe traced,
-And like a silken veile in compasse round
-About her backe and all her bodie wound;
-Like as the shining skie in summers night,
-What time the dayes with scorching heat abound,
-Is creasted all with lines of firie light,
-That it prodigious seemes in common peoples sight."[365]
-
-
-It is Britomart, a virgin and a heroine, like Clorinda or Marfisa,[366]
-but how much more ideal! The deep sentiment of nature, the sincerity of
-reverie, the ever-flowing fertility of inspiration, the German
-seriousness, reanimate in this poem classical or chivalrous conceptions,
-even when they are the oldest or the most trite. The train of splendors
-and of scenery never ends. Desolate promontories, cleft with gaping
-chasms; thunder-stricken and blackened masses of rocks, against which
-the hoarse breakers dash; palaces sparkling with gold, wherein ladies,
-beauteous as angels, reclining carelessly on purple cushions, listen
-with sweet smiles to the harmony of music played by unseen hands; lofty
-silent walks, where avenues of oaks spread their motionless shadows over
-clusters of virgin violets, and turf which never mortal foot has trod;
-to all these beauties of art and nature he adds the marvels of
-mythology, and describes them with as much of love and sincerity as a
-painter of the Renaissance or an ancient poet. Here approach on chariots
-of shell, Cymoënt and her nymphs:
-
-
-"A teme of dolphins raunged in aray
-Drew the smooth charett of sad Cymoënt;
-They were all taught by Triton to obay
-To the long raynes at her commaundëment:
-As swifte as swallowes on the waves they went,
-That their brode flaggy finnes no fome did reare,
-Ne bubling rowndell they behinde them sent;
-The rest, of other fishes drawen weare;
-Which with their finny oars the swelling sea did sheare."[367]
-
-
-Nothing, again, can be sweeter or calmer than the description of the
-palace of Morpheus:
-
-
-"He, making speedy way through spersed ayre,
-And through the world of waters wide and deepe.
-To Morpheus house doth hastily repaire.
-Amid the bowels of the earth full steepe,
-And low, where dawning day doth never peepe
-His dwelling is; there Tethys his wet bed
-Doth ever wash, and Cynthia still doth steepe
-In silver deaw his ever-drouping hed,
-Whiles sad Night over him her mantle black doth spred.
-And, more to lulle him in his slumber soft,
-A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe
-And ever-drizzling raine upon the loft,
-Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne
-Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swowne.
-No other noyse, nor peoples troublous cryes,
-As still are wont t' annoy the walled towne,
-Might there be heard: but careless Quiet lyes,
-Wrapt in eternall silence farre from enimyes."
-
-
-Observe also in a corner of this forest, a band of satyrs dancing under
-the green leaves. They come leaping like wanton kids, as gay as birds of
-joyous spring. The fair Hellenore, whom they have chosen for "May-lady,"
-"daunst lively" also, laughing, and "with girlonds all bespredd." The
-wood re-echoes the sound of their "merry pypes. Their horned feet the
-greene gras wore. All day they daunced with great lustyhedd," with
-sudden motions and alluring looks, while about them their flock feed on
-"the brouzes" at their pleasure. In every book we see strange
-processions pass by, allegorical and picturesque shows, like those which
-were then displayed at the courts of princes; now a masquerade of Cupid,
-now of the Rivers, now of the Months, now of the Vices. Imagination was
-never more prodigal or inventive. Proud Lucifera advances in a chariot
-"adorned all with gold and girlonds gay," beaming like the dawn,
-surrounded by a crowd of courtiers whom she dazzles with her glory and
-splendor: "six unequall beasts" draw her along, and each of these is
-ridden by a Vice. Idleness "upon a slouthfull asse... in habit blacke...
-like to an holy monck," sick for very laziness, lets his heavy head
-droop, and holds in his hand a breviary which he does not read;
-Gluttony, on "a filthie swyne," crawls by in his deformity, "his
-belly... upblowne with luxury, and eke with fatnesse swollen were his
-eyne; and like a crane his necke was long and fyne," dressed in
-vine-leaves, through which one can see his body eaten by ulcers, and
-vomiting along the road the wine and flesh with which he is glutted.
-Avarice seated between "two iron coffers, upon a camell loaden all
-with gold," is handling a heap of coin, with threadbare coat, hollow
-cheeks, and feet stiff with gout. Envy "upon a ravenous wolfe still did
-chaw between his cankred teeth a venemous tode, that all the poison ran
-about his chaw," and his discolored garment "ypainted full of eies,"
-conceals a snake wound about his body. Wrath, covered with a torn and
-bloody robe, comes riding on a lion, brandishing about his head "a
-burning brond," his eyes sparkling, his face pale as ashes, grasping in
-his feverish hand the haft of his dagger. The strange and terrible
-procession passes on, led by the solemn harmony of the stanzas; and the
-grand music of oft-repeated rhymes sustains the imagination in this
-fantastic world, which, with its mingled horrors and splendors, has just
-been opened to its flight.
-
-Yet all this is little. However much mythology and chivalry can supply,
-they do not suffice for the needs of this poetical fancy. Spenser's
-characteristic is the vastness and overflow of his picturesque
-invention. Like Rubens, whatever he creates is beyond the region of all
-traditions, but complete in all parts, and expresses distinct ideas. As
-with Rubens, his allegory swells its proportions beyond all rule, and
-withdraws fancy from all law, except in so far as it is necessary to
-harmonize forms and colors. For, if ordinary minds receive from allegory
-a certain weight which oppresses them, lofty imaginations receive from
-it wings which carry them aloft. Freed by it from the common conditions
-of life, they can dare all things, beyond imitation, apart from
-probability, with no other guides but their inborn energy and their
-shadowy instincts. For three days Sir Guyon is led by the cursed spirit,
-the tempter Mammon, in the subterranean realm, across wonderful gardens,
-trees laden with golden fruits, glittering palaces, and a confusion of
-all worldly treasures. They have descended into the bowels of the earth,
-and pass through caverns, unknown abysses, silent depths. "An ugly
-Feend... with monstrous stalke behind him stept," without Guyon's
-knowledge, ready to devour him on the least show of covetousness. The
-brilliancy of the gold lights up hideous figures, and the beaming metal
-shines with a beauty more seductive in the gloom of the infernal prison.
-
-
-"That Houses forme within was rude and strong,
-Lyke an huge cave hewne out of rocky clifte,
-From whose rough vaut the ragged breaches hong
-Embost with massy gold of glorious guifte,
-And with rich metall loaded every rifte,
-That heavy ruine they did seeme to threatt;
-And over them Arachne high did lifte
-Her cunning web, and spred her subtile nett,
-Enwrapped in fowle smoke and clouds more black than iett.
-
-"Both roofe, and floore, and walls, were all of gold,
-But overgrowne with dust and old decay,
-And hid in darknes, that none could behold
-The hew thereof; for vew of cheerfull day
-Did never in that House itselfe display,
-But a faint shadow of uncertein light;
-Such as a lamp; whose life does fade away;
-Or as the moone, cloathed with dowdy night,
-Does show to him that walkes in feare and sad affright.
-
-"In all that rowme was nothing to be seene
-But huge great yron chests and coffers strong,
-All bard with double bends, that none could weene
-Them to enforce by violence or wrong;
-On every side they placed were along.
-But all the grownd with sculs was scattered
-And dead mens bones, which round about were flong;
-Whose lives, it seemed, whilome there were shed,
-And their vile carcases now left unburied....
-
-"Thence, forward he him ledd and shortly brought
-Unto another rowme, whose dore forthright
-To him did open as it had beene taught:
-Therein an hundred raunges weren pight,
-And hundred fournaces all burning bright;
-By every fournace many Feends did byde,
-Deformed creatures, horrible in sight;
-And every Feend his busie paines applyde
-To melt the golden metall, ready to be tryde.
-
-"One with great bellowes gathered filling ayre,
-And with forst wind the fewell did inflame;
-Another did the dying bronds repayre
-With yron tongs, and sprinckled ofte the same
-With liquid waves, fiers Vulcans rage to tame,
-Who, maystring them, renewd his former heat:
-Some scumd the drosse that from the metall came;
-Some stird the molten owre with ladles great:
-And every one did swincke, and every one did sweat...
-
-"He brought him, through a darksom narrow strayt,
-To a broad gate all built of beaten gold:
-The gate was open; but therein did wayt
-A sturdie Villein, stryding stiffe and bold,
-As if the Highest God defy he would:
-In his right hand an yron club he held,
-But he himselfe was all of golden mould,
-Yet had both life and sence, and well could weld
-That cursed weapon, when his cruell foes he queld....
-
-"He brought him in. The rowme was large and wyde,
-As it some gyeld or solemne temple weare;
-Many great golden pillours did upbeare
-The massy roofe, and riches huge sustayne;
-And every pillour decked was full deare
-With crownes, and diademes, and titles vaine,
-Which mortall princes wore whiles they on earth did rayne.
-
-"A route of people there assembled were,
-Of every sort and nation under skye,
-Which with great uprore preaced to draw nere
-To th' upper part, where was advaunced hye
-A stately siege of soveraine maiestye;
-And thereon satt a Woman gorgeous gay,
-And richly cladd in robes of royaltye,
-That never earthly prince in such aray
-His glory did enhaunce, and pompous pryde display....
-
-"There, as in glistring glory she did sitt,
-She held a great gold chaine ylincked well,
-Whose upper end to highest heven was knitt.
-And lower part did reach to lowest hell."[368]
-
-
-No artist's dream matches these visions: the glow of the furnaces
-beneath the vaults of the cavern, the lights flickering over the crowded
-figures, the throne, and the strange glitter of the gold shining in
-every direction through the darkness. The allegory assumes gigantic
-proportions. When the object is to show temperance struggling with
-temptations, Spenser deems it necessary to mass all the temptations
-together. He is treating of a general virtue; and as such a virtue is
-capable of every sort of resistance, he requires from it every sort of
-resistance alike; after the test of gold, that of pleasure. Thus the
-grandest and the most exquisite spectacles follow and are contrasted
-with each other, and all are supernatural; the graceful and the terrible
-are side by side--the happy gardens close by with the cursed
-subterranean cavern.
-
-
-"No gate, but like one, being goodly dight
-With bowes and braunches, which did broad dilate
-Their clasping armes in wanton wreathings intricate:
-
-"So fashioned a porch with rare device,
-Archt over head with an embracing vine,
-Whose bounches hanging downe seemed to entice
-All passers-by to taste their lushious wine,
-And did themselves into their hands incline,
-As freely offering to be gathered;
-Some deepe empurpled as the hyacine,
-Some as the rubine laughing sweetely red,
-Some like faire emeraudes, not yet well ripened....
-
-"And in the midst of all a fountaine stood,
-Of richest substance that on earth might bee,
-So pure and shiny that the silver flood
-Through every channell running one might see;
-Most goodly it with curious ymageree
-Was over-wrought, and shapes of naked boyes,
-Of which some seemed with lively iollitee
-To fly about, playing their wanton toyes,
-Whylest others did themselves embay in liquid ioyes.
-
-"And over all of purest gold was spred
-A trayle of yvie in his native hew;
-For the rich metall was so coloured,
-That wight, who did not well avis'd it vew,
-Would surely deeme it to bee yvie trew;
-Low his lascivious armes adown did creepe,
-That themselves dipping in the silver dew
-Their fleecy flowres they fearfully did steepe,
-Which drops of christall seemd for wantones to weep.
-
-"Infinit streames continually did well
-Out of this fountaine, sweet and faire to see,
-The which into an ample laver fell,
-And shortly grew to such great quantitie,
-That like a little lake it seemd to bee;
-Whose depth exceeded not three cubits hight,
-That through the waves one might the bottom see,
-All pav'd beneath with jaspar shining bright,
-That seemd the fountaine in that sea did sayle upright....
-
-"The ioyes birdes, shrouded in chearefull shade,
-Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet;
-Th' angelicall soft trembling voyces made
-To th' instruments divine respondence meet;
-The silver-sounding instruments did meet
-With the base murmur 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....
-
-"Upon a bed of roses she was layd,
-As faint through heat, or dight to pleasant sin;
-And was arayd, or rather disarayd,
-All in a vele of silke and silver thin,
-That hid no whit her alabaster skin,
-But rather shewd more white, if more might bee:
-More subtile web Arachne cannot spin;
-Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see
-Of scorched deaw, do not in th' ayre more lightly flee.
-
-"Her snowy brest was bare to ready spoyle
-Of hungry eies, which n' ote therewith be fild;
-And yet, through languour of her late sweet toyle,
-Few drops, more cleare then nectar, forth distild,
-That like pure orient perles adowne it trild;
-And her faire eyes, sweet smyling in delight,
-Moystened their fierie beames, with which she thrild
-Fraile harts, yet quenched not, like starry lights
-Which sparckling on the silent waves, does seeme more bright."[369]
-
-
-Do we find here nothing but fairy land? Yes; here are finished pictures
-true and complete, composed with a painter's feeling, with choice of
-tints and outlines; our eyes are delighted by them. This reclining
-Acrasia has the pose of a goddess, or of one of Titian's courtesans. An
-Italian artist might copy these gardens, these flowing waters, these
-sculptured loves, those wreaths of creeping ivy thick with glossy leaves
-and fleecy flowers. Just before, in the infernal depths, the lights,
-with their long streaming rays, were fine, half smothered by the
-darkness; the lofty throne in the vast hall, between the pillars, in the
-midst of a swarming multitude, connected all the forms around it by
-drawing all looks towards one centre. The poet, here and throughout, is
-a colorist and an architect. However fantastic his world may be, it is
-not factitious; if it does not exist, it might have been; indeed, it
-should have been; it is the fault of circumstances if they do not so
-group themselves as to bring it to pass; taken by itself, it possesses
-that internal harmony by which a real thing, even a still higher
-harmony, exists, inasmuch as, without any regard to real things, it is
-altogether, and in its least detail, constructed with a view to beauty.
-Art has made its appearance; this is the great characteristic of the
-age, which distinguishes the "Faërie Queene" from all similar tales
-heaped up by the Middle Ages. Incoherent, mutilated, they lie like
-rubbish, or rough-hewn stones, which the weak hands of the _trouvères_
-could not build into a monument. At last the poets and artists appear,
-and with them the conception of beauty, to wit, the idea of general
-effect. They understand proportions, relations, contrasts; they compose.
-In their hands the blurred vague sketch becomes defined, complete,
-separate; it assumes color--is made a picture. Every object thus
-conceived and imaged acquires a definite existence as soon as it assumes
-a true form; centuries after, it will be acknowledged and admired, and
-men will be touched by it; and more, they will be touched by its author;
-for, besides the object which he paints, the poet paints himself. His
-ruling idea is stamped upon the work which it produces and controls.
-Spenser is superior to his subject, comprehends it fully, frames it with
-a view to its end, in order to impress upon it the proper mark of his
-soul and his genius. Each story is modulated with respect to another,
-and all with respect to a certain effect which is being worked out. Thus
-a beauty issues from this harmony--the beauty in the poet's heart--which
-his whole work strives to express; a noble and yet a cheerful beauty,
-made up of moral elevation and sensuous seductions, English in
-sentiment, Italian in externals, chivalric in subject, modern in its
-perfection, representing a unique and wonderful epoch, the appearance of
-paganism in a Christian race, and the worship of form by an imagination
-of the North.
-
-
-
-
-
-_PART III.--Prose_
-
-
-
-
-SECTION I.--The Decay of Poetry
-
-
-Such an epoch can scarcely last, and the poetic vitality wears itself
-out by its very efflorescence, so that its expansion leads to its
-decline. From the beginning of the seventeenth century the subsidence of
-manners and genius grows apparent. Enthusiasm and respect decline. The
-minions and court-fops intrigue and pilfer, amid pedantry, puerility,
-and show. The court plunders, and the nation murmurs. The Commons begin
-to show a stern front, and the king, scolding them like a schoolmaster,
-gives way before them like a little boy. This sorry monarch (James I)
-suffers himself to be bullied by his favorites, writes to them like a
-gossip, calls himself a Solomon, airs his literary vanity, and in
-granting an audience to a courtier, recommends him to become a scholar,
-and expects to be complimented on his own scholarly attainments. The
-dignity of the government is weakened, and the people's loyalty is
-cooled. Royalty declines, and revolution is fostered. At the same time,
-the noble chivalric paganism degenerates into a base and coarse
-sensuality. The king, we are told, on one occasion, had got so drunk
-with his royal brother Christian of Denmark, that they both had to be
-carried to bed. Sir John Harrington says:
-
-
-"The ladies abandon their sobriety, and are seen to roll about in
-intoxication.... The Lady who did play the Queen's part (in the Masque
-of the Queen of Sheba) did carry most precious gifts to both their
-Majesties; but, forgetting the steppes arising to the canopy, overset
-her caskets into his Danish Majesties lap, and fell at his feet, tho I
-rather think it was in his face. Much was the hurry and confusion;
-cloths and napkins were at hand, to make all clean. His Majestie then
-got up and would dance with the Queen of Sheba; but he fell down and
-humbled himself before her, and was carried to an inner chamber and laid
-on a bed of state; which was not a little defiled with the presents of
-the Queen which had been bestowed on his garments; such as wine, cream,
-jelly, beverage, cakes, spices, and other good matters. The
-entertainment and show went forward, and most of the presenters went
-backward, or fell down; wine did so occupy their upper chambers. Now did
-appear, in rich dress, Hope, Faith, and Charity: Hope did assay to
-speak, but wine rendered her endeavours so feeble that she withdrew, and
-hoped the king would excuse her brevity: Faith... left the court in a
-staggering condition.... They were both sick and spewing in the lower
-hall. Next came Victory, who... by a strange medley of versification...
-and after much lamentable utterance was led away like a silly captive,
-and laid to sleep in the outer steps of the anti-chamber. As for Peace,
-she most rudely made war with her olive branch, and laid on the pates of
-those who did oppose her coming. I ne'er did see such lack of good
-order, discretion, and sobriety in our Queen's days."[370]
-
-
-Observe that these tipsy women were great ladies. The reason is, that
-the grand ideas which introduce an epoch, end, in their exhaustion, by
-preserving nothing but their vices; the proud sentiment of natural life
-becomes a vulgar appeal to the senses. An entrance, an arch of triumph
-under James I, often represented obscenities; and later, when the
-sensual instincts, exasperated by Puritan tyranny, begin to raise their
-heads once more, we shall find under the Restoration excess revelling in
-its low vices, and triumphing in its shamelessness.
-
-Meanwhile literature undergoes a change; the powerful breeze which had
-wafted it on, and which, amidst singularity, refinement, exaggerations,
-had made it great, slackened and diminished. With Carew, Suckling, and
-Herrick, prettiness takes the place of the beautiful. That which strikes
-them is no longer the general features of things; and they no longer try
-to express the inner character of what they describe. They no longer
-possess that liberal conception, that instinctive penetration, by which
-we sympathize with objects, and grow capable of creating them anew. They
-no longer boast of that overflow of emotions, that excess of ideas and
-images, which compelled a man to relieve himself by words, to act
-externally, to represent freely and boldly the interior drama which made
-his whole body and heart tremble. They are rather wits of the court,
-cavaliers of fashion, who wish to show off their imagination and style.
-In their hands love becomes gallantry; they write songs, fugitive
-pieces, compliments to the ladies. There are no more upwellings from the
-heart. They write eloquent phrases in order to be applauded, and
-flattering exaggerations in order to please. The divine faces, the
-serious or profound looks, the virgin or impassioned expressions which
-burst forth at every step in the early poets, have disappeared; here we
-see nothing but agreeable countenances, painted in agreeable verses.
-Blackguardism is not far off; we meet with it already in Suckling, and
-crudity to boot, and prosaic epicurism; their sentiment is expressed
-before long, in such a phrase as: "Let us amuse ourselves, and a fig for
-the rest." The only objects they can still paint are little graceful
-things, a kiss, a May-day festivity, a dewy primrose, a daffodil, a
-marriage morning, a bee.[371] Herrick and Suckling especially produce
-little exquisite poems, delicate, ever pleasant or agreeable, like those
-attributed to Anacreon, or those which abound in the Anthology. In fact,
-here, as at the Grecian period alluded to, we are in the decline of
-paganism; energy departs, the reign of the agreeable begins. People do
-not relinquish the worship of beauty and pleasure, but dally with them.
-They deck and fit them to their taste; they cease to subdue and bend
-men, who enjoy them whilst they amuse them. It is the last beam of a
-setting sun; the genuine poetic sentiment dies out with Sedley, Waller,
-and the rhymesters of the Restoration; they write prose in verse; their
-heart is on a level with their style, and with an exact language we find
-the commencement of a new age and a new art.
-
-Side by side with prettiness comes affectation; it is the second mark of
-their decadence. Instead of writing to express things, they write to say
-them well; they outbid their neighbors, and strain every mode of speech;
-they push art over on the one side to which it had a leaning; and as in
-this age it had a leaning towards vehemence and imagination, they pile
-up their emphasis and coloring. A jargon always springs out of a style.
-In all arts, the first masters, the inventors, discover the idea, steep
-themselves in it, and leave it to effect its outward form. Then come the
-second class, the imitators, who sedulously repeat this form, and alter
-it by exaggeration. Some nevertheless have talent, as Quarles, Herbert,
-Habington, Donne in particular, a pungent satirist, of terrible
-crudeness,[372] a powerful poet, of a precise and intense imagination,
-who still preserves something of the energy and thrill of the original
-inspiration.[373] But he deliberately spoils all these gifts, and
-succeeds with great difficulty in concocting a piece of nonsense. For
-instance, the impassioned poets had said to their mistress that if they
-lost her, they should hate all other women. Donne, in order to eclipse
-them, says:
-
-
-"O do not die, for I shall hate
-All women so, when thou art gone,
-That thee I shall not celebrate
-When I remember thou wast one."[374]
-
-
-Twenty times while reading him we rub our brow, and ask with
-astonishment, how a man could have so tormented and contorted himself,
-strained his style, refined on his refinement, hit upon such absurd
-comparisons? But this was the spirit of the age; they made an effort to
-be ingeniously absurd. A flea had bitten Donne and his mistress, and he
-says:
-
-
-"This flea is you and I, and this
-Our mariage bed and mariage temple is.
-Though Parents grudge, and you, w' are met,
-And cloyster'd in these living walls of Jet.
-Though use make you apt to kill me,
-Let not to that selfe-murder added be,
-And sacrilege, three sins in killing three."[375]
-
-
-The Marquis de Mascarille[376] never found anything to equal this. Would
-you have believed a writer could invent such absurdities? She and he
-made but one, for both are but one with the flea, and so one could not
-be killed without the other. Observe that the wise Malherbe wrote very
-similar enormities, in the "Tears of St. Peter," and that the sonneteers
-of Italy and Spain reach simultaneously the same height of folly, and
-you will agree that throughout Europe at that time they were at the
-close of a poetical epoch.
-
-On this boundary line of a closing and a dawning literature a poet
-appeared, one of the most approved and illustrious of his time, Abraham
-Cowley,[377] a precocious child, a reader and a versifier like Pope, and
-who, like Pope, having known passions less than books, busied himself
-less about things than about words. Literary exhaustion has seldom been
-more manifest. He possesses all the capacity to say what pleases him,
-but he has precisely nothing to say. The substance has vanished, leaving
-in its place an empty form. In vain he tries the epic, the Pindaric
-strophe, all kinds of stanzas, odes, short lines, long lines; in vain he
-calls to his assistance botanical and philosophical similes, all the
-erudition of the university, all the recollections of antiquity, all the
-ideas of new science: we yawn as we read him. Except in a few
-descriptive verses, two or three graceful tendernesses,[378] he feels
-nothing, he speaks only; he is a poet of the brain. His collection of
-amorous pieces is but a vehicle for a scientific test, and serves to
-show that he has read the authors, that he knows geography, that he is
-well versed in anatomy, that he has a smattering of medicine and
-astronomy, that he has at his service comparisons and allusions enough
-to rack the brains of his readers. He will speak in this wise:
-
-
-"Beauty, thou active--passive ill!
-Which dy'st thyself as fast as thou dost kill!"
-
-
-Or will remark that his mistress is to blame for spending three hours
-every morning at her toilet, because
-
-
-"They make that Beauty Tyranny,
-That's else a Civil-government."
-
-
-After reading two hundred pages, you feel disposed to box his ears. You
-have to think, by way of consolation, that every grand age must draw to
-a close, that this one could not do so otherwise, that the old glow of
-enthusiasm, the sudden flood of rapture, images, whimsical and audacious
-fancies, which once rolled through the minds of men, arrested now and
-cooled down, could only exhibit dross, a curdling scum, a multitude of
-brilliant and offensive points. You say to yourself that, after all,
-Cowley had perhaps talent; you find that he had in fact one, a new
-talent, unknown to the old masters, the sign of a new culture, which
-needs other manners, and announces a new society. Cowley had these
-manners, and belongs to this society. He was a well-governed,
-reasonable, well-informed, polished, well-educated man, who, after
-twelve years of service and writing in France, under Queen Henrietta,
-retires at last wisely into the country, where he studies natural
-history, and prepares a treatise on religion, philosophizing on men and
-life, fertile in general reflections and ideas, a moralist, bidding his
-executor "to let nothing stand in his writings which might seem the
-least in the world to be an offence against religion or good manners."
-Such intentions and such a life produce and indicate less a poet, that
-is, a seer, a creator, than a literary man; I mean a man who can think
-and speak, and who therefore ought to have read much, learned much,
-written much, ought to possess a calm and clear mind, to be accustomed
-to polite society, sustained conversation, pleasantry. In fact, Cowley
-is an author by profession, the oldest of those who in England deserve
-the name. His prose is as easy and sensible as his poetry is contorted
-and unreasonable. A polished man, writing for polished men, pretty much
-as he would speak to them in a drawing-room--this I take to be the idea
-which they had of a good author in the seventeenth century. It is the
-idea which Cowley's essays leave of his character; it is the kind of
-talent which the writers of the coming age take for their model, and he
-is the first of that grave and amiable group which, continued in Temple,
-reaches so far as to include Addison.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION II.--The Intellectual Level of the Renaissance
-
-
-Having reached this point, the Renaissance seemed to have attained its
-limit, and, like a drooping and faded flower, to be ready to leave its
-place for a new bud which began to spring up amongst its withered
-leaves. At all events, a living and unexpected shoot sprang from the old
-declining stock. At the moment when art languished, science shot forth;
-the whole labor of the age ended in this. The fruits are not unlike; on
-the contrary, they come from the same sap, and by the diversity of the
-shape only manifest two distinct periods of the inner growth which has
-produced them. Every art ends in a science, and all poetry in a
-philosophy. For science and philosophy do but translate into precise
-formulas the original conceptions which art and poetry render sensible
-by imaginary figures: when once the idea of an epoch is manifested in
-verse by ideal creations, it naturally comes to be expressed in prose by
-positive arguments. That which had struck men on escaping from
-ecclesiastical oppression and monkish asceticism was the pagan idea of a
-life true to nature, and freely developed. They had found nature buried
-behind scholasticism, and they had expressed it in poems and paintings;
-in Italy by superb healthy corporeality, in England by vehement and
-unconventional spirituality, with such divination of its laws,
-instincts, and forms, that we might extract from their theatre and their
-pictures a complete theory of soul and body. When enthusiasm is past,
-curiosity begins. The sentiment of beauty gives way to the need of
-truth. The theory contained in works of imagination frees itself. The
-gaze continues fixed on nature, not to admire now, but to understand.
-From painting we pass to anatomy, from the drama to moral philosophy,
-from grand poetical divinations to great scientific views; the second
-continue the first, and the same mind displays itself in both; for what
-art had represented, and science proceeds to observe, are living things,
-with their complex and complete structure, set in motion by their
-internal forces, with no supernatural intervention. Artists and savants
-all set out, without knowing it themselves, from the same master
-conception, to wit, that nature subsists of herself, that every
-existence has in its own womb the source of its action, that the causes
-of events are the innate laws of things; an all-powerful idea, from
-which was to issue the modern civilization, and which, at the time I
-write of, produced in England and Italy, as before in Greece, genuine
-sciences, side by side with a complete art: after da Vinci and Michel
-Angelo, the school of anatomists, mathematicians, naturalists, ending
-with Galileo; after Spenser, Ben Jonson, and Shakespeare, the school of
-thinkers who surround Bacon and lead up to Harvey.
-
-We have not far to look for this school. In the interregnum of
-Christianity the dominating bent of mind belongs to it. It was paganism
-which reigned in Elizabeth's court, not only in letters, but in
-doctrine--a paganism of the North, always serious, generally sombre, but
-which was based, like that of the South, on natural forces. In some men
-all Christianity had passed away; many proceeded to atheism through
-excess of rebellion and debauchery, like Marlowe and Greene. With
-others, like Shakespeare, the idea of God scarcely makes its
-appearance; they see in our poor short human life only a dream, and
-beyond it the long sad sleep: for them, death is the goal of life; at
-most, a dark gulf, into which man plunges, uncertain of the issue. If
-they carry their gaze beyond, they perceive,[379] not the spiritual soul
-welcomed into a purer world, but the corpse abandoned to the damp earth,
-or the ghost hovering about the churchyard. They speak like sceptics or
-superstitious men, never as true believers. Their heroes have human, not
-religious, virtues; against crime they rely on honor and the love of the
-beautiful, not on piety and the fear of God. If others, at intervals,
-like Sidney and Spenser, catch a glimpse of the Divine, it is as a vague
-ideal light, a sublime Platonic phantom, which has no resemblance to a
-personal God, a strict inquisitor of the slightest motions of the heart.
-He appears at the summit of things, like the splendid crown of the
-world, but He does not weigh upon human life; He leaves it intact and
-free, only turning it towards the beautiful. Man does not know as yet
-the sort of narrow prison in which official cant and respectable creeds
-were, later on, to confine activity and intelligence. Even the
-believers, sincere Christians like Bacon and Sir Thomas Browne, discard
-all oppressive sternness, reduce Christianity to a sort of moral poetry,
-and allow naturalism to subsist beneath religion. In such a broad and
-open channel, speculation could spread its wings. With Lord Herbert
-appeared a systematic deism; with Milton and Algernon Sidney, a
-philosophical religion; Clarendon went so far as to compare Lord
-Falkland's gardens to the groves of Academe. Against the rigorism of the
-Puritans, Chillingworth, Hales, Hooker, the greatest doctors of the
-English Church, give a large place to natural reason--so large, that
-never, even to this day, has it made such an advance.
-
-An astonishing irruption of facts--the discovery of America, the revival
-of antiquity, the restoration of philology, the invention of the arts,
-the development of industries, the march of human curiosity over the
-whole of the past and the whole of the globe--came to furnish
-subject-matter, and prose began its reign. Sidney, Wilson, Ascham, and
-Puttenham explored the rules of style; Hakluyt and Purchas compiled the
-cyclopædia of travel and the description of every land; Holinshed,
-Speed, Raleigh, Stowe, Knolles, Daniel, Thomas May, Lord Herbert,
-founded history; Camden, Spelman, Cotton, Usher, and Selden inaugurate
-scholarship; a legion of patient workers, of obscure collectors, of
-literary pioneers, amassed, arranged, and sifted the documents which Sir
-Robert Cotton and Sir Thomas Bodley stored up in their libraries; whilst
-Utopians, moralists, painters of manners--Thomas More, Joseph Hall, John
-Earle, Owen Feltham, Burton--described and passed judgment on the modes
-of life, continued with Fuller, Sir Thomas Browne, and Izaak Walton up
-to the middle of the next century, and add to the number of
-controversialists and politicians who, with Hooker, Taylor,
-Chillingworth, Algernon Sidney, Harrington, study religion, society,
-church, and state. A copious and confused fermentation, from which
-abundance of thoughts rose, but few notable books. Noble prose, such as
-was heard at the court of Louis XIV, in the house of Pollio, in the
-schools at Athens, such as rhetorical and sociable nations know how to
-produce, was altogether lacking. These men had not the spirit of
-analysis, the art of following step by step the natural order of ideas,
-nor the spirit of conversation, the talent never to weary or shock
-others. Their imagination is too little regulated, and their manners too
-little polished. They who had mixed most in the world, even Sidney,
-speak roughly what they think, and as they think it. Instead of glossing
-they exaggerate. They blurt out all, and withhold nothing. When they do
-not employ excessive compliments, they take to coarse jokes. They are
-ignorant of measured liveliness, refined raillery, delicate flattery.
-They rejoice in gross puns, dirty allusions. They mistake involved
-charades and grotesque images for wit. Though they are great lords and
-ladies, they talk like ill-bred persons, lovers of buffoonery, of shows,
-and bear-fights. With some, as Overbury or Sir Thomas Browne, prose is
-so much run over by poetry, that it covers its narrative with images,
-and hides ideas under its pictures. They load their style with flowery
-comparisons, which produce one another, and mount one above another, so
-that sense disappears, and ornament only is visible. In short, they are
-generally pedants, still stiff with the rust of the school; they divide
-and subdivide, propound theses, definitions; they argue solidly and
-heavily, and quote their authors in Latin, and even in Greek; they
-square their massive periods, and learnedly knock their adversaries
-down, and their readers too, as a natural consequence. They are never on
-the prose-level, but always above or below--above by their poetic
-genius, below by the weight of their education and the barbarism of
-their manners. But they think seriously and for themselves; they are
-deliberate; they are convinced and touched by what they say. Even in the
-compiler we find a force and loyalty of spirit, which give confidence
-and cause pleasure. Their writings are like the powerful and heavy
-engravings of their contemporaries, the maps of Hofnagel for instance,
-so harsh and so instructive; their conception is sharp and clear; they
-have the gift of perceiving every object, not under a general aspect,
-like the classical writers, but specially and individually. It is not
-man in the abstract, the citizen as he is everywhere, the countryman as
-such, that they represent, but James or Thomas, Smith or Brown, of such
-a parish, from such an office, with such and such attitude or dress,
-distinct from all others; in short, they see, not the idea, but the
-individual. Imagine the disturbance that such a disposition produces in
-a man's head, how the regular order of ideas becomes deranged by it; how
-every object, with the infinite medley of its forms, properties,
-appendages, will thenceforth fasten itself by a hundred points of
-contact unforeseen to other objects, and bring before the mind a series
-and a family; what boldness language will derive from it; what familiar,
-picturesque, absurd words, will break forth in succession; how the dash,
-the unforeseen, the originality and inequality of invention, will stand
-out. Imagine, at the same time, what a hold this form of mind has on
-objects, how many facts it condenses in each conception; what a mass of
-personal judgments, foreign authorities, suppositions, guesses,
-imaginations, it spreads over every subject; with what venturesome and
-creative fecundity it engenders both truth and conjecture. It is an
-extraordinary chaos of thoughts and forms, often abortive, still more
-often barbarous, sometimes grand. But from this superfluity something
-lasting and great is produced; namely, science, and we have only to
-examine more closely into one or two of these works to see the new
-creation emerge from the blocks and the debris.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION III.--Robert Burton
-
-
-Two writers especially display this state of mind. The first, Robert
-Burton, a clergyman and university recluse, who passed his life in
-libraries, and dabbled in all the sciences, as learned as Rabelais,
-having an inexhaustible and overflowing memory; unequal, moreover,
-gifted with enthusiasm, and spasmodically gay, but as a rule sad and
-morose, to the extent of confessing in his epitaph that melancholy made
-up his life and his death; in the first place original, liking his own
-common-sense, and one of the earliest models of that singular English
-mood which, withdrawing man within himself, develops in him, at one time
-imagination, at another scrupulosity, at another oddity, and makes of
-him, according to circumstances, a poet, an eccentric, a humorist, a
-madman, or a puritan. He read on for thirty years, put an encyclopædia
-into his head, and now, to amuse and relieve himself, takes a folio of
-blank paper. Twenty lines of a poet, a dozen lines of a treatise on
-agriculture, a folio page of heraldry, a description of rare fishes, a
-paragraph of a sermon on patience, the record of the fever fits of
-hypochondria, the history of the particle that, a scrap of
-metaphysics--that is what passes through his brain in a quarter of an
-hour; it is a carnival of ideas and phrases, Greek, Latin, German,
-French, Italian, philosophical, geometrical, medical, poetical,
-astrological, musical, pedagogic, heaped one on the other; an enormous
-medley, a prodigious mass of jumbled quotations, jostling thoughts, with
-the vivacity and the transport of a feast of unreason.
-
-
-"This roving humour (though not with like success) I have ever had, and,
-like a ranging spaniel that barks at every bird he sees, leaving his
-game, I have followed all, saving that which I should, and may justly
-complain, and truly, _qui ubique est, nusquam est_, which Gesner did in
-modesty, that I have read many books, but to little purpose, for want of
-good method, I have confusedly tumbled over divers authors in our
-libraries with small profit, for want of art, order, memory, judgment. I
-never travelled but in map or card, in which my unconfined thoughts have
-freely expatiated, as having ever been especially delighted with the
-study of cosmography. Saturn was lord of my geniture, culminating, etc.,
-and Mars principal significator of manners, in partile conjunction with
-mine ascendent; both fortunate in their houses, etc. I am not poor, I am
-not rich; _nihil est, nihil deest_; I have little; I want nothing: all
-my treasure is in Minerva's tower. Greater preferment as I could never
-get, so am I not in debt for it. I have a competency (_laus Deo_) from
-my noble and munificent patrons. Though I live still a collegiat
-student, as Democritus in his garden, and lead a monastique life, _ipse
-mihi theatrum_, sequestred from those tumults and troubles of the world,
-_et tanquam in speculâ positus_ (as he said), in some high place above
-you all, like _Stoïcus sapiens, omnia sœcula prœterita prœsentiaque
-videns, uno velut intuitu_, I hear and see what is done abroad, how
-others run, ride, turmoil, and macerate themselves in court and
-countrey. Far from these wrangling lawsuits, _aulœ vanitatem, fori
-ambitionem, ridere mecum soleo_: I laugh at all, only secure, lest my
-suit go amiss, my ships perish, corn and cattle miscarry, trade decay; I
-have no wife nor children, good or bad, to provide for; a mere spectator
-of other men's fortunes and adventures, and how they act their parts,
-which methinks are diversely presented unto me, as from a common theatre
-or scene. I hear new news every day: and those ordinary rumours of war,
-plagues, fires, inundations, thefts, murders, massacres, meteors,
-comets, spectrums, prodigies, apparitions; of towns taken, cities
-besieged in France, Germany, Turkey, Persia, Poland, etc., daily musters
-and preparations, and such like, which these tempestuous times afford,
-battles fought, so many men slain, monomachies, shipwracks, piracies,
-and sea-fights, peace, leagues, stratagems, and fresh alarms--a vast
-confusion of vows, wishes, actions, edicts, petitions, lawsuits, pleas,
-laws, proclamations, complaints, grievances--are daily brought to our
-ears: new books every day, pamphlets, currantoes, stories, whole
-catalogues of volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes, opinions, schisms,
-heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion, etc. Now come tidings
-of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertainments, jubilies, embassies,
-tilts and tournaments, trophies, triumphs, revels, sports, playes: then
-again, as in a new shifted scene, treasons, cheating tricks, robberies,
-enormous villanies in all kinds, funerals, burials, death of princes,
-new discoveries, expeditions; now comical, then tragical matters. To-day
-we hear of new lords and officers created, to-morrow of some great men
-deposed, and then again of fresh honours conferred: one is let loose,
-another imprisoned: one purchaseth, another breaketh: he thrives, his
-neighbour turns bankrupt; now plenty, then again dearth and famine; one
-runs, another rides, wrangles, laughs, weeps, etc. Thus I daily hear,
-and such like, both private and publick news."[380]
-
-"For what a world of books offers itself, in all subjects, arts, and
-sciences, to the sweet content and capacity of the reader? In
-arithmetick, geometry, perspective, optick, astronomy, architecture,
-_sculptura, pictura_, of which so many and such elaborate treatises are
-of late written: in mechanicks and their mysteries, military matters,
-navigation, riding of horses, fencing, swimming, gardening, planting,
-great tomes of husbandry, cookery, faulconry, hunting, fishing, fowling,
-etc., with exquisite pictures of all sports, games, and what not. In
-musick, metaphysicks, natural and moral philosophy, philologie, in
-policy, heraldry, genealogy, chronology, etc., they afford great tomes,
-or those studies of antiquity, etc., _et quid subtilius arithmeticis
-inventionibus? quia jucundius musicis rationibus? quid divinius
-astronomicis? quid rectius geometricis demonstrationibus?_ What so sure,
-what so pleasant? He that shall but see the geometrical tower of
-Garezenda at Bologne in Italy, the steeple and clock at Strasborough,
-will admire the effects of art, or that engine of Archimedes to remove
-the earth itself, if he had but a place to fasten his instrument.
-_Archimedis cochlea_, and rare devises to corrivate waters, musick
-instruments, and trisyllable echoes again, again, and again repeated,
-with miriades of such. What vast tomes are extant in law, physick, and
-divinity, for profit, pleasure, practice, speculation, in verse or
-prose, etc.! Their names alone are the subject of whole volumes; we have
-thousands of authors of all sorts, many great libraries, full well
-furnished, like so many dishes of meat, served out for several palates,
-and he is a very block that is affected with none of them. Some take an
-infinite delight to study the very languages wherein these books are
-written--Hebrew, Greek, Syriack, Chalde, Arabick, etc. Methinks it would
-well please any man to look upon a geographical map (_suavi animum
-delectatione allicere, ob incredibilem rerum varietatem et jucunditatem,
-et ad pleniorem sui cognitionem excitare_), chorographical,
-topographical delineations; to behold, as it were, all the remote
-provinces, towns, cities of the world, and never to go forth of the
-limits of his study; to measure, by the scale and compasse, their
-extent, distance, examine their site. Charles the Great (as Platina
-writes) had three faire silver tables, in one of which superficies was a
-large map of Constantinople, in the second Rome neatly engraved, in the
-third an exquisite description of the whole world; and much delight he
-took in them. What greater pleasure can there now be, than to view those
-elaborate maps of Ortelius, Mercator, Hondius, etc.? to peruse those
-books of cities put out by Braunus and Hogenbergius? to read those
-exquisite descriptions of Maginus, Munster, Herrera, Laet, Merula,
-Boterus, Leander Albertus, Camden, Leo Afer, Adricomius, Nic. Gerbelius,
-etc.? those famous expeditions of Christopher Columbus, Americus
-Vespucius, Marcus Polus the Venetian, Lod. Vertomannus, Aloysius
-Cadamustus, etc.? those accurate diaries of Portugals, Hollanders, of
-Bartison, Oliver a Nort, etc., Hacluit's Voyages, Pet. Martyr's Decades,
-Benzo, Lerius, Linschoten's relations, those Hodaeporicons of Jod. a
-Meggen, Brocarde the Monke, Bredenbachius, Jo. Dublinius, Sands, etc.,
-to Jerusalem, Egypt, and other remote places of the world? those
-pleasant itineraries of Paulus Hentzerus, Jodocus Sincerus, Dux Polonus,
-etc.? to read Bellonius observations, P. Gillius his survayes; those
-parts of America, set out, and curiously cut in pictures, by Fratres a
-Bry? To see a well cut herbal, hearbs, trees, flowers, plants, all
-vegetals, expressed in their proper colours to the life, as that of
-Matthiolus upon Dioscorides, Delacampius, Lobel, Bauhinus, and that last
-voluminous and mighty herbal of Besler of Noremberge; wherein almost
-every plant is to his own bignesse. To see birds, beasts, and fishes of
-the sea, spiders, gnats, serpents, flies, etc., all creatures set out by
-the same art, and truly expressed in lively colours, with an exact
-description of their natures, vertues, qualities, etc., as hath been
-accurately performed by Ælian, Gesner, Ulysses Aldrovandus, Bellonius,
-Rondoletius, Hippolytus Salvianus, etc."[381]
-
-
-He is never-ending; words, phrases, overflow, are heaped up, overlap
-each other, and flow on, carrying the reader along, deafened, stunned,
-half drowned, unable to touch ground in the deluge. Burton is
-inexhaustible. There are no ideas which he does not iterate under fifty
-forms: when he has exhausted his own, he pours out upon us other
-men's--the classics, the rarest authors, known only by savants—authors
-rarer still, known only to the learned; he borrows from all. Underneath
-these deep caverns of erudition and science, there is one blacker and
-more unknown than all the others, filled with forgotten authors, with
-crackjaw names, Besler of Nuremberg, Adricomius, Linschoten, Brocarde,
-Bredenbachius. Amidst all these antediluvian monsters, bristling with
-Latin terminations, he is at his ease; he sports with them, laughs,
-skips from one to the other, drives them all abreast. He is like old
-Proteus, the sturdy rover, who in one hour, with his team of
-hippopotami, makes the circuit of the ocean.
-
-What subject does he take? Melancholy, his own individual mood; and he
-takes it like a schoolman. None of St. Thomas Aquinas's treatises is
-more regularly constructed than his. This torrent of erudition flows in
-geometrically planned channels, turning off at right angles without
-deviating by a line. At the head of every part you will find a
-synoptical and analytical table, with hyphens, brackets, each division
-begetting its subdivisions, each subdivision its sections, each section
-its subsections: of the malady in general, of melancholy in particular,
-of its nature, its seat, its varieties, causes, symptoms, prognosis; of
-its cure by permissible means, by forbidden means, by dietetic means, by
-pharmaceutical means. After the scholastic process, he descends from the
-general to the particular, and disposes each emotion and idea in its
-labelled case. In this framework, supplied by the Middle Ages, he heaps
-up the whole, like a man of the Renaissance--the literary description of
-passions and the medical description of madness, details of the hospital
-with a satire on human follies, physiological treatises side by side
-with personal confidences, the recipes of the apothecary with moral
-counsels, remarks on love with the history of evacuations. The
-discrimination of ideas has not yet been effected; doctor and poet, man
-of letters and savant, he is all at once; for want of dams, ideas pour
-like different liquids into the same vat, with strange spluttering and
-bubbling, with an unsavory smell and odd effect. But the vat is full,
-and from this admixture are produced potent compounds which no preceding
-age has known.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION IV.--Sir Thomas Browne
-
-
-For in this mixture there is an effectual leaven, the poetic sentiment,
-which stirs up and animates the vast erudition, which will not be
-confined to dry catalogues; which, interpreting every fact, every
-object, disentangles or divines a mysterious soul within it, and
-agitates the whole mind of man, by representing to him the restless
-world within and without him as a grand enigma. Let us conceive a
-kindred mind to Shakespeare's, a scholar and an observer instead of an
-actor and a poet, who in place of creating is occupied in comprehending,
-but who, like Shakespeare, applies himself to living things, penetrates
-their internal structure, puts himself in communication with their
-actual laws, imprints in himself fervently and scrupulously the smallest
-details of their outward appearance; who at the same time extends his
-penetrating surmises beyond the region of observation, discerns behind
-visible phenomena some world obscure yet sublime, and trembles with a
-kind of veneration before the vast, indistinct, but peopled darkness on
-whose surface our little universe hangs quivering. Such a one is Sir
-Thomas Browne, a naturalist, a philosopher, a scholar, a physician, and
-a moralist, almost the last of the generation which produced Jeremy
-Taylor and Shakespeare. No thinker bears stronger witness to the
-wandering and inventive curiosity of the age. No writer has better
-displayed the brilliant and sombre imagination of the North. No one has
-spoken with a more eloquent emotion of death, the vast night of
-forgetfulness, of the all-devouring pit, of human vanity, which tries to
-create an ephemeral immortality out of glory or sculptured stones. No
-one has revealed, in more glowing and original expressions, the poetic
-sap which flows through all the minds of the age.
-
-
-"But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals
-with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who
-can but pity the founder of the pyramids? Herostratus lives that burnt
-the temple of Diana, he is almost lost that built it. Time hath spared
-the epitaph of Adrian's horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we
-compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad
-have equal duration; and Thersites is like to live as long as Agamemnon.
-Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more
-remarkable persons forgot than any that stand remembered in the known
-account of time? Without the favour of the everlasting register, the
-first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life
-had been his only chronicle.
-
-"Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as
-though they had not been, to be found in the register of God, not in the
-record of man. Twenty-seven names make up the first story before the
-flood, and the recorded names ever since contain not one living century.
-The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of
-time far surpasseth the day, and who knows when was the equinox? Every
-hour adds unto the current arithmetick which scarce stands one moment.
-And since death must be the Lucina of life, and even Pagans could doubt,
-whether thus to live were to die; since our longest sun sets at right
-declensions, and makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be
-long before we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes; since
-the brother of death daily haunts us with dying mementos, and time, that
-grows old in itself, bids us hope no long duration;--diuturnity is a
-dream, and folly of expectation.
-
-"Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with
-memory a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our
-felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart
-upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or
-themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce
-callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which
-notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to
-come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision of nature,
-whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days; and our
-delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows
-are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions.... All was vanity, feeding
-the wind, and folly. The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath
-spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise, Mizraim
-cures wounds, and Pharaoh is sold for balsams.... Man is a noble animal,
-splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing nativities and
-deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the
-infancy of his nature.... Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the
-irregularities of vain glory, and wild enormities of ancient
-magnanimity."[382]
-
-
-These are almost the words of a poet, and it is just this poet's
-imagination which urges him onward into science.[383] Face to face with
-the productions of nature he abounds in conjectures, comparisons; he
-gropes about, proposing explanations, making trials, extending his
-guesses like so many flexible and vibrating feelers into the four
-corners of the globe, into the most distant regions, of fancy and truth.
-As he looks upon the tree-like and foliaceous crusts which are formed
-upon the surface of freezing liquids, he asks himself if this be not a
-regeneration of vegetable essences, dissolved in the liquid. At the
-sight of curdling blood or milk, he inquires whether there be not
-something analogous to the formation of the bird in the egg, or to the
-coagulation of chaos which gave birth to our world. In presence of that
-impalpable force which makes liquids freeze, he asks if apoplexy and
-cataract are not the effects of a like power, and do not indicate also
-the presence of a congealing agency. He is in presence of nature as an
-artist, a man of letters in presence of a living countenance, marking
-every feature, every movement of physiognomy, so as to be able to divine
-the passions and the inner disposition, ceaselessly correcting and
-undoing his interpretations, kept in agitation by thought of the
-invisible forces which operate beneath the visible envelope. The whole
-of the Middle Ages and of antiquity, with their theories and
-imaginations, Platonism, Cabalism, Christian theology, Aristotle's
-substantial forms, the specific forms of the alchemists--all human
-speculations, entangled and transformed one with the other, meet
-simultaneously in his brain, so as to open up to him vistas of this
-unknown world. The accumulation, the pile, the confusion, the
-fermentation and the inner swarming, mingled with vapors and flashes,
-the tumultuous overloading of his imagination and his mind, oppress and
-agitate him. In this expectation and emotion his curiosity takes hold of
-everything; in reference to the least fact, the most special, the most
-obsolete, the most chimerical, he conceives a chain of complicated
-investigations, calculating how the ark could contain all creatures,
-with their provision of food; how Perpenna, at a banquet, arranged the
-guests so as to strike Sertorius; what trees must have grown on the
-banks of Acheron, supposing that there were any; whether quincunx
-plantations had not their origin in Eden, and whether the numbers and
-geometrical figures contained in the lozenge-form are not met with in
-all the productions of nature and art. You may recognize here the
-exuberance and the strange caprices of an inner development too ample
-and too strong. Archæology, chemistry, history, nature, there is
-nothing in which he is not passionately interested, which does not cause
-his memory and his inventive powers to overflow, which does not summon
-up within him the idea of some force, certainly admirable, possibly
-infinite. But what completes his picture, what signalizes the advance of
-science, is the fact that his imagination provides a counterbalance
-against itself. He is as fertile in doubts as he is in explanations. If
-he sees a thousand reasons which tend to one view, he sees also a
-thousand which tend to the contrary. At the two extremities of the same
-fact, he raises up to the clouds, but in equal piles, the scaffolding of
-contradictory arguments. Having made a guess, he knows that it is but a
-guess; he pauses, ends with a perhaps, recommends verification. His
-writings consist only of opinions, given as such; even his principal
-work is a refutation of popular errors. In the main, he proposes
-questions, suggests explanations, suspends his judgments, nothing more;
-but this is enough; when the search is so eager, when the paths in which
-it proceeds are so numerous, when it is so scrupulous in securing its
-hold, the issue of the pursuit is sure; we are but a few steps from the
-truth.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION V.--Francis Bacon
-
-
-In this band of scholars, dreamers, and inquirers, appears the most
-comprehensive, sensible, originative of the minds of the age, Francis
-Bacon, a great and luminous intellect, one of the finest of this poetic
-progeny, who, like his predecessors, was naturally disposed to clothe
-his ideas in the most splendid dress: in this age, a thought did not
-seem complete until it had assumed form and color. But what
-distinguishes him from the others is, that with him an image only serves
-to concentrate meditation. He reflected long, stamped on his mind all
-the parts and relations of his subject; he is master of it, and then,
-instead of exposing this complete idea in a graduated chain of
-reasoning, he embodies it in a comparison so expressive, exact, lucid,
-that behind the figure we perceive all the details of the idea, like
-liquor in a fine crystal vase. Judge of his style by a single example:
-
-
-"For as water, whether it be the dew of Heaven or the springs of the
-earth, easily scatters and loses itself in the ground, except it be
-collected into some receptacle, where it may by union and consort
-comfort and sustain itself (and for that cause, the industry of man hath
-devised aqueducts, cisterns, and pools, and likewise beautified them
-with various ornaments of magnificence and state, as well as for use and
-necessity); so this excellent liquor of knowledge, whether it descend
-from divine inspiration or spring from human sense, would soon perish
-and vanish into oblivion, if it were not preserved in books, traditions,
-conferences, and especially in places appointed for such matters as
-universities, colleges, and schools, where it may have both a fixed
-habitation, and means and opportunity of increasing and collecting
-itself."[384]
-
-"The greatest error of all the rest, is the mistaking or misplacing of
-the last or farthest end of knowledge: for men have entered into a
-desire of learning and knowledge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity and
-inquisitive appetite; sometimes to entertain their minds with variety
-and delight; sometimes for ornament and reputation; and sometimes to
-enable them to victory of wit and contradiction; and most times for
-lucre and profession; and seldom sincerely to give a true account of
-their gift of reason, to the benefit and use of men: as if there were
-sought in knowledge a couch whereupon to rest a searching and restless
-spirit; or a terrace, for a wandering and variable mind to walk up and
-down with a fair prospect; or a tower of state, for a proud mind to
-raise itself upon; or a fort or commanding ground, for strife and
-contention; or a shop, for profit or sale; and not a rich storehouse,
-for the glory of the Creator, and the relief of man's estate."[385]
-
-
-This is his mode of thought, by symbols, not by analysis; instead of
-explaining his idea, he transposes and translates it--translates it
-entire, to the smallest details, enclosing all in the majesty of a grand
-period, or in the brevity of a striking sentence. Thence springs a style
-of admirable richness, gravity, and vigor, now solemn and symmetrical,
-now concise and piercing, always elaborate, and full of color.[386]
-There is nothing in English prose superior to his diction.
-
-Thence is derived also his manner of conceiving things. He is not a
-dialectician, like Hobbes or Descartes, apt in arranging ideas, in
-educing one from another, in leading his reader from the simple to the
-complex by an unbroken chain. He is a producer of conceptions and of
-sentences. The matter being explored, he says to us: "Such it is; touch
-it not on that side; it must be approached from the other." Nothing
-more; no proof, no effort to convince: he affirms, and does nothing
-more; he has thought in the manner of artists and poets, and he speaks
-after the manner of prophets and seers. _Cogitata et visa_ this title of
-one of his books might be the title of all. The most admirable, the
-"Novum Organum," is a string of aphorisms--a collection, as it were, of
-scientific decrees, as of an oracle who foresees the future and reveals
-the truth. And to make the resemblance complete, he expresses them by
-poetical figures, by enigmatic abbreviations, almost in Sibylline
-verses: _Idola specûs, Idola tribûs, Idola fori, Idola theatri_,
-everyone will recall these strange names, by which he signifies the four
-kinds of illusions to which man is subject.[387] Shakespeare and the
-seers do not contain more vigorous or expressive condensations of
-thought, more resembling inspiration, and in Bacon they are to be found
-everywhere. On the whole, his process is that of the creators; it is
-intuition, not reasoning. When he has laid up his store of facts, the
-greatest possible, on some vast subject, on some entire province of the
-mind, on the whole anterior philosophy, on the general condition of the
-sciences, on the power and limits of human reason, he casts over all
-this a comprehensive view, as it were a great net, brings up a universal
-idea, condenses his idea into a maxim, and hands it to us with the
-words, "Verify and profit by it."
-
-There is nothing more hazardous, more like fantasy, than this mode of
-thought, when it is not checked by natural and good strong sense. This
-common-sense, which is a kind of natural divination, the stable
-equilibrium of an intellect always gravitating to the true, like the
-needle to the pole, Bacon possesses in the highest degree. He has a
-pre-eminently practical, even an utilitarian mind, such as we meet with
-later in Bentham, and such as their business habits were to impress more
-and more upon the English. At the age of sixteen, while at the
-university, he was dissatisfied with Aristotle's philosophy,[388] not
-that he thought meanly of the author, whom, on the contrary, he calls a
-great genius; but because it seemed to him of no practical utility,
-incapable of producing works which might promote the well-being of men.
-We see that from the outset he struck upon his dominant idea; all else
-comes to him from this; a contempt for antecedent philosophy, the
-conception of a different system, the entire reformation of the sciences
-by the indication of a new goal, the definition of a distinct method,
-the opening up of unsuspected anticipations.[389] It is never
-speculation which he relishes, but the practical application of it. His
-eyes are turned not to heaven, but to earth; not to things abstract and
-vain, but to things palpable and solid; not to curious, but to
-profitable truths. He seeks to better the condition of men, to labor for
-the welfare of mankind, to enrich human life with new discoveries and
-new resources, to equip mankind with new powers and new instruments of
-action, His philosophy itself is but an instrument, _organum_, a sort of
-machine or lever constructed to enable the intellect to raise a weight,
-to break through obstacles, to open up vistas, to accomplish tasks,
-which had hitherto surpassed its power. In his eyes, every special
-science, like science in general, should be an implement. He invites
-mathematicians to quit their pure geometry, to study numbers only with a
-view to natural philosophy, to seek formulas only to calculate real
-quantities and natural motions. He recommends moralists to study the
-soul, the passions, habits, temptations, not merely in a speculative
-way, but with a view to the cure or diminution of vice, and assigns to
-the science of morals as its goal the amelioration of morals. For him,
-the object of science is always the establishment of an art; that is,
-the production of something of practical utility; when he wished to
-describe the efficacious nature of his philosophy by a tale, he
-delineated in the "New Atlantis," with a poet's boldness and the
-precision of a seer, almost employing the very terms in use now, modern
-applications, and the present organization of the sciences, academies,
-observatories, air-balloons, submarine vessels, the improvement of land,
-the transmutation of species, regenerations, the discovery of remedies,
-the preservation of food. The end of our foundation, says his principal
-personage, is the knowledge of causes and secret motions of things, and
-the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all
-things possible. And this "possible" is infinite.
-
-How did this grand and just conception originate? Doubtless common-sense
-and genius, too, were necessary to its production; but neither
-common-sense nor genius was lacking to men: there had been more than one
-who, observing, like Bacon, the progress of particular industries,
-could, like him, have conceived of universal industry, and from certain
-limited ameliorations have advanced to unlimited amelioration. Here we
-see the power of connection; men think they do everything by their
-individual thought, and they can do nothing without the assistance of
-the thoughts of their neighbors; they fancy that they are following the
-small voice within them, but they only hear it because it is swelled by
-the thousand buzzing and imperious voices, which, issuing from all
-surrounding or distant circumstances, are confounded with it in an
-harmonious vibration. Generally they hear it, as Bacon did, from the
-first moment of reflection; but it had become inaudible among the
-opposing sounds which came from without to smother it. Could this
-confidence in the infinite enlargement of human power, this glorious
-idea of the universal conquest of nature, this firm hope in the
-continual increase of well-being and happiness, have germinated, grown,
-occupied an intelligence entirely, and thence have struck its roots,
-been propagated and spread over neighboring intelligences, in a time of
-discouragement and decay, when men believed the end of the world at
-hand, when things were falling into ruin about them, when Christian
-mysticism, as in the first centuries, ecclesiastical tyranny, as in the
-fourteenth century, were convincing them of their impotence, by
-perverting their intellectual efforts and curtailing their liberty. On
-the contrary, such hopes must then have seemed to be outbursts of pride,
-or suggestions of the carnal mind. They did seem so; and the last
-representatives of ancient science, and the first of the new, were
-exiled or imprisoned, assassinated or burned. In order to be developed
-an idea must be in harmony with surrounding civilization; before man can
-expect to attain the dominion over nature, or attempts to improve his
-condition, amelioration must have begun on all sides, industries have
-increased, knowledge have been accumulated, the arts expanded, a hundred
-thousand irrefutable witnesses must have come incessantly to give proof
-of his power and assurance of his progress. The "masculine birth of the
-time" (_temporis partus masculus_) is the title which Bacon applies to
-his work, and it is a true one. In fact, the whole age co-operated in
-it; by this creation it was finished. The consciousness of human power
-and prosperity gave to the Renaissance its first energy, its ideal, its
-poetic materials, its distinguishing features; and now it furnishes it
-with its final expression, its scientific doctrine, and its ultimate
-object.
-
-We may add also, its method. For, the end of a journey once determined,
-the route is laid down, since the end always determines the route; when
-the point to be reached is changed, the path of approach is changed, and
-science, varying its object, varies also its method. So long as it
-limited its effort to the satisfying an idle curiosity, opening out
-speculative vistas, establishing a sort of opera in speculative minds,
-it could launch out any moment into metaphysical abstractions and
-distinctions: it was enough for it to skim over experience; it soon
-quitted it, and came all at once upon great words, quiddities, the
-principle of individuation, final causes. Half proofs sufficed science;
-at bottom it did not care to establish a truth, but to get an opinion;
-and its instrument, the syllogism, was serviceable only for refutations,
-not for discoveries; it took general laws for a starting-point instead
-of a point of arrival; instead of going to find them, it fancied them
-found. The syllogism was good in the schools, not in nature; it made
-disputants, not discoverers. From the moment that science had art for an
-end, and men studied in order to act, all was transformed; for we cannot
-act without certain and precise knowledge. Forces, before they can be
-employed, must be measured and verified; before we can build a house, we
-must know exactly the resistance of the beams, or the house will
-collapse; before we can cure a sick man, we must know with certainty the
-effect of a remedy, or the patient will die. Practice makes certainty
-and exactitude a necessity to science, because practice is impossible
-when it has nothing to lean upon but guesses and approximations. How can
-we eliminate guesses and approximations? How introduce into science,
-solidity and precision? We must imitate the cases in which science,
-issuing in practice, has proved to be precise and certain, and these
-cases are the industries. We must, as in the industries, observe, essay,
-grope about, verify, keep our mind fixed on sensible and particular
-things, advance to general rules only step by step; not anticipate
-experience, but follow it; not imagine nature, but interpret it. For
-every general effect, such as heat, whiteness, hardness, liquidity, we
-must seek a general condition, so that in producing the condition we may
-produce the effect. And for this it is necessary, by fit rejections and
-exclusions, to extract the condition sought from the heap of facts in
-which it lies buried, construct the table of cases from which the effect
-is absent, the table where it is present, the table where the effect is
-shown in various degrees, so as to isolate and bring to light the
-condition which produced it.[390] Then we shall have, not useless
-universal axioms, but efficacious mediate axioms, true laws from which
-we can derive works, and which are the sources of power in the same
-degree as the sources of light.[391] Bacon described and predicted in
-this modern science and industry, their correspondence, method,
-resources, principle; and after more than two centuries it is still to
-him that we go even at the present day to look for the theory of what we
-are attempting and doing.
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: CHOICE EXAMPLES OF EARLY PRINTING AND ENGRAVING.
-
-Fac-similes from Rare and Curious Books.
-
-_THE NEW PSALTER OF THE VIRGIN MARY._
-
-The "Novum Beatæ Mariæ Virginis Psalterium" was printed by the
-Cistercians monks of the monastery of Sienna, in the duchy of Magdeburg,
-near Wittemberg, in 1492. The present illustration shows the page of
-dedication, in which mention is made of the Emperor Frederick, whose
-arms, the double-headed eagle, appears in the border. The book was
-printed in the year before the emperor died. The border is an easy and
-flowing design of roses, which are always considered an emblem of the
-Virgin. The volume is a remarkable production, rare and much prized by
-collectors.]
-
-
-
-
-Beyond this great view, he has discovered nothing. Cowley, one of his
-admirers, rightly said that, like Moses on Mount Pisgah, he was the
-first to announce the promised land; but he might have added quite as
-justly, that, like Moses, he did not enter there. He pointed out the
-route, but did not travel it; he taught men how to discover natural
-laws, but discovered none. His definition of heat is extremely
-imperfect. His "Natural History" is full of fanciful explanations.[392]
-Like the poets, he peoples nature with instincts and desires; attributes
-to bodies an actual voracity, to the atmosphere a thirst for light,
-sounds, odors, vapors which it drinks in; to metals a sort of haste to
-be incorporated with acids. He explains the duration of the bubbles of
-air which float on the surface of liquids, by supposing that air has a
-very small or no appetite for height. He sees in every quality, weight,
-ductility, hardness, a distinct essence which has its special cause; so
-that when a man knows the cause of every quality of gold, he will be
-able to put all these causes together, and make gold. In the main, with
-the alchemists, Paracelsus and Gilbert, Kepler himself, with all the men
-of his time, men of imagination, nourished on Aristotle, he represents
-nature as a compound of secret and living energies, inexplicable and
-primordial forces, distinct and indecomposable essences, adapted each by
-the will of the Creator to produce a distinct effect. He almost saw
-souls endowed with latent repugnances and occult inclinations, which
-aspire to or resist certain directions, certain mixtures, and certain
-localities. On this account also he confounds everything in his
-researches in an undistinguishable mass, vegetative and medicinal
-properties, mechanical and curative, physical and moral, without
-considering the most complex as depending on the simplest, but each on
-the contrary in itself, and taken apart, as an irreducible and
-independent existence. Obstinate in this error, the thinkers of the age
-mark time without advancing. They see clearly with Bacon the wide field
-of discovery, but they cannot enter upon it. They want an idea, and for
-want of this idea they do not advance. The disposition of mind which but
-now was a lever, is become an obstacle: it must be changed, that the
-obstacle may be got rid of. For ideas, I mean great and efficacious
-ones, do not come at will nor by chance, by the effort of an individual,
-or by a happy accident. Methods and philosophies, as well as literatures
-and religions, arise from the spirit of the age; and this spirit of the
-age makes them potent or powerless. One state of public intelligence
-excludes a certain kind of literature; another, a certain scientific
-conception. When it happens thus, writers and thinkers labor in vain,
-the literature is abortive, the conception does not make its appearance.
-In vain they turn one way and another, trying to remove the weight which
-hinders them; something stronger than themselves paralyzes their hands
-and frustrates their endeavors. The central pivot of the vast wheel on
-which human affairs move must be displaced one notch, that all may move
-with its motion. At this moment the pivot was moved, and thus a
-revolution of the great wheel begins, bringing round a new conception of
-nature, and in consequence that part of the method which was lacking. To
-the diviners, the creators, the comprehensive and impassioned minds who
-seized objects in a lump and in masses, succeeded the discursive
-thinkers, the systematic thinkers, the graduated and clear logicians,
-who, disposing ideas in continuous series, lead the hearer gradually
-from the simple to the most complex by easy and unbroken paths.
-Descartes superseded Bacon; the classical age obliterated the
-Renaissance; poetry and lofty imagination gave way before rhetoric,
-eloquence, and analysis. In this transformation of mind, ideas were
-transformed. Everything was drained dry and simplified. The universe,
-like all else, was reduced to two or three notions; and the conception
-of nature, which was poetical, became mechanical. Instead of souls,
-living forces, repugnances, and attractions, we have pulleys, levers,
-impelling forces. The world, which seemed a mass of instinctive powers,
-is now like a mere machinery of cog-wheels. Beneath this adventurous
-supposition lies a large and certain truth; that there is, namely, a
-scale of facts, some at the summit very complex, others at the base very
-simple; those above having their origin in those below, so that the
-lower ones explain the higher; and that we must seek the primary laws of
-things in the laws of motion. The search was made, and Galileo found
-them. Thenceforth the work of the Renaissance, outstripping the extreme
-point to which Bacon had pushed it, and at which he had left it, was
-able to proceed onward by itself, and did so proceed, without limit.
-
-
-
-
-[Footnote 265: See, at Bruges, the pictures of Hemling (fifteenth
-century). No paintings enable us to understand so well the ecclesiastical
-piety of the Middle Ages, which was altogether like that of the
-Buddhists.]
-
-[Footnote 266: The first carriage was in 1564. It caused much
-astonishment. Some said that it was "a great sea-shell brought
-from China"; others, "that it was a temple in which cannibals
-worshipped the devil."]
-
-[Footnote 267: For a picture of this state of things, see Fenn's
-"Paston Letters."]
-
-[Footnote 268: Louis XI in France, Ferdinand and Isabella in Spain,
-Henry VII in England. In Italy the feudal regime ended earlier, by
-the establishment of republics and principalities.]
-
-[Footnote 269: 1488, Act of Parliament on Enclosures.]
-
-[Footnote 270: A "Compendious Examination," 1581, by William
-Strafford. Act of Parliament, 1541.]
-
-[Footnote 271 Between 1377 and 1588 the increase was from two and a
-half to five millions.]
-
-[Footnote 272: In 1585; Ludovic Guicciardini.]
-
-[Footnote 273: Henry VIII at the beginning of his reign had but one
-ship of war. Elizabeth sent out one hundred and fifty against the
-Armada. In 1553 was founded a company to trade with Russia. In 1578
-Drake circumnavigated the globe. In 1600 the East India Company was
-founded.]
-
-[Footnote 274: Nathan Drake, "Shakespeare and his Times," 1817, I. V.
-72 et passim.]
-
-[Footnote 275: Nathan Drake, "Shakespeare and his Times," I. V. 102.]
-
-[Footnote 276: This was called the Tudor style. Under James I, in the
-hands of Inigo Jones, it became	entirely Italian, approaching the
-antique.]
-
-[Footnote 277: Burton, "Anatomy of Melancholy," 12th ed. 1821.
-Stubbes, "Anatomie of Abuses," ed. Turnbull, 1836.]
-
-[Footnote 278: Nathan Drake, "Shakespeare and his Times," II. 6, 87.]
-
-[Footnote 279: Holinshed (1586), 1808, 6 vols. III. 763 et passim.]
-
-[Footnote 280: Ibid., Reign of Henry VII "Elizabeth and James
-Progresses," by Nichols.]
-
-[Footnote 281: Laneham's Entertainment at Killingworth Castle, 1575.
-Nichols's "Progresses," vol. I. London, 1788.]
-
-[Footnote 282: Ben Jonson's works, ed. Gifford, 1816, 9 vols. "Masque
-of Hymen," vol. VII. 76.]
-
-[Footnote 283: Certain private letters also describe the court of
-Elizabeth as a place where there was little piety or practice of
-religion, and where all enormities reigned in the highest degree.]
-
-[Footnote 284: Nathan Drake, "Shakespeare and his Times," chap.
-V. and VI.]
-
-[Footnote 285: Stubbes, "Anatomie of Abuses," p. 168 et passim.]
-
-[Footnote 286: Hentzner's "Travels in England" (Bentley's
-translation). He thought that the figure carried about in the
-Harvest Home represented Ceres.]
-
-[Footnote 287: Warton, vol. II. sec. 35. Before 1600 all the great
-poets were translated into English, and between 1550 and 1616 all
-the great historians of Greece and Rome. Lyly in 1500 first taught
-Greek in public.]
-
-[Footnote 288: Ascham, "The Scholemaster" (1570), ed. Arber, 1870,
-first book, 78 et passim.]
-
-[Footnote 289: Ma il vero e principal ornemento dell' animo in
-ciascuno penso io che siano le lettere, benche i Franchesi solamente
-conoscano la nobilita dell'arme... et tutti i litterati tengon per
-vilissimi huomini. Castiglione "Il Cortegiano," ed. 1585, p. 112.]
-
-[Footnote 290: See Burchard (the Pope's Steward) account of the
-festival at which Lucretia Borgia was present. Letters of Aretinus,
-"Life of Cellini," etc.]
-
-[Footnote 291: See his sketches at Oxford, and those of Fra
-Bartolomeo at Florence. See also the Martyrdom of St. Laurence,
-by Baccio Bandinelli.]
-
-[Footnote 292: Benvenuto Cellini, "Principles of the Art of Design."]
-
-[Footnote 293: "Life of Cellini." Compare also these exercises which
-Castiglione prescribes for a well-educated man, in his "Cortegiano,"
-ed. 1585, p. 55: "Peró voglio che il nostro cortegiano sia perfetto
-cavaliere d'ogni sella.... Et perche degli Italiani è peculiar
-laude il cavalcare bene alia brida, il maneggiar con raggione massimamente
-cavalli aspri, il corre lance, il giostare, sia in questo de meglior
-Italiani.... Nel torneare, teper un passo, combattere una sbarra, sia
-buono tra il miglior francesi.... Nel giocare a canne, correr torri,
-lanciar haste e dardi, sia tra Spagnuoli eccelente.... Conveniente
-è ancor sapere saltare, e correre;... ancor nobile exercitio il gioco
-di palla.... Non di minor laude estimo il voltegiar a cavallo."]
-
-[Footnote 294: Puttenham, "The Arte of English Poesie," ed. Arber,
-1869, book I. ch. 31, p. 74.]
-
-[Footnote 295: Surrey's "Poems," Pickering, 1831, p. 17.]
-
-[Footnote 296: Ibid. "The faithful lover declareth his pains and his
-uncertain joys, and with only hope recomforteth his woful heart," p. 53.]
-
-[Footnote 297: Ibid. "Description of Spring, wherein everything
-renews, save only the lover," p. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 298: Ibid. p. 50.]
-
-[Footnote 299: Syrrey's "Poems. A description of the restless state
-of the lover when absent from the mistress of his heart," p. 78]
-
-[Footnote 300: In another piece, "Complaint on the Absence of her
-Lover being upon the Sea," he speaks in direct terms of his wife,
-almost as affectionately.]
-
-[Footnote 301: Greene, Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster, Shakespeare,
-Ford, Otway, Richardson, De Foe, Fielding, Dickens, Thackeray, etc.]
-
-[Footnote 302: "The Frailty and Hurtfulness of Beauty."]
-
-[Footnote 303: "Description of Spring. A Vow to Love Faithfully."]
-
-[Footnote 304: "Complaint of the Lover Disdarned."]
-
-[Footnote 305: Surrey, ed. Nott.]
-
-[Footnote 306: The Speaker's address to Charles II on his restoration.
-Compare it with the speech of M. de Fontanes under the Empire. In each
-case it was the close of a literary epoch. Read for illustration the
-speech before the University of Oxford, "Athenæ Oxonienses," I. 193.]
-
-[Footnote 307: His second work, "Euphues and his England," appeared in
-1581.]
-
-[Footnote 308: See Shakespeare's young men, Mercutio especially.]
-
-[Footnote 309: "The Maid her Metamorphosis."]
-
-[Footnote 310: Two French novels of the age of Louis XIV, each in
-ten volumes, and written by Mademoiselle de Scudéry.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 311: Celadon, a rustic lover in "Astrée," a French novel
-in five volumes, named after the heroine, and written by d'Urfé
-(d. 1625).--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 312: "Arcadia," ed. fol. 1629, p. 117.]
-
-[Footnote 313: "Arcadia," ed. fol. 1629, p. 114.]
-
-[Footnote 314: "The Defence of Poesie," ed. fol. 1629, p. 558: "I
-dare undertake, that Orlando Furioso, or honest King Arthur, will
-never displease a soldier: but the quidditie of Ens and prima materia,
-will hardly agree with a Corselet." See also, in the same book, the
-very lively and spirited personification of History and Philosophy,
-full of genuine talent.]
-
-[Footnote 315: "The Defence of Poesie," ed. fol. 1629, p. 553.]
-
-[Footnote 316: Ibid. p. 550.]
-
-[Footnote 317: Ibid. p. 552.]
-
-[Footnote 318: Ibid. p. 560. Here and there we find also verse as
-spirited as this:
-"Or Pindar's Apes, flaunt they in
-phrases	fine,
-Enam'ling with pied flowers their
-thoughts of gold."--p. 568.]
-
-[Footnote 319: "Astrophel and Stella," ed. fol. 1629, 101st sonnet,
-p. 613.]
-
-[Footnote 320: Ibid. 8th song, p. 603.]
-
-[Footnote 321: "Astrophel and Stella" (1629), 8th song, 604.]
-
-[Footnote 322: Ibid. 10th song, p. 610.]
-
-[Footnote 323: Ibid, sonnet 69, p. 555.]
-
-[Footnote 324: "Astrophel and Stella" (1629), sonnet 102, p. 614.]
-
-[Footnote 325: Ibid. p. 525: this sonnet is headed E. D. Wood, in
-his "Athen. Oxon." i., says it was written by Sir Edward Dyer,
-Chancellor of the Most noble Order of the Garter.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 326: Ibid, sonnet 43, p. 545.]
-
-[Footnote 327: "Astrophel and Stella" (1629), sonnet 18, p. 573.]
-
-[Footnote 328: Ibid, last sonnet, p. 539.]
-
-[Footnote 329: Nathan Drake, "Shakspeare and his Times," I. Part 2,
-ch. 2, 3, 4. Among these 233 poets the authors of isolated pieces are
-not reckoned, but only those who published or collected their works.]
-
-[Footnote 330: Drayton's "Polyolbion," ed. 1622, 13th song, p. 214.]
-
-[Footnote 331: Shakespeare's "Tempest," act IV. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 332: Ibid, act IV. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 333: Greene's Poems, ed. Bell, "Eurymachus in Laudem
-Mirimidæ," p. 73.]
-
-[Footnote 334: Ibid. Melicertus's description of his Mistress, p. 38.]
-
-[Footnote 335: Spenser's Works, ed. Todd, 1863, "The Faërie Queene,"
-I. c. II, st. 51.]
-
-[Footnote 336: Ben Jonson's Poems, ed. R. Bell. Celebration of Charis;
-her Triumph, p. 125.]
-
-[Footnote 337: "Cupid's Pastime," unknown author, ab. 1621.]
-
-[Footnote 338: Ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 339: "Rosalind's Madrigal."]
-
-[Footnote 340: Greene's Poems, ed. R. Bell, Menaphon's Eclogue, p. 41.]
-
-[Footnote 341: Ibid., Melicertus's Eclogue, p. 43.]
-
-[Footnote 342: "As you Like It."]
-
-[Footnote 343: "The Sad Shepherd." See also Beaumont and Fletcher,
-"The Faithful Shepherdess."]
-
-[Footnote 344: This poem was, and still is, frequently attributed
-to Shakespeare. It appears as his in Knight's edition, published a
-few years ago. Izaak Walton, however, writing about fifty years after
-Marlowe's death, attributes it to him. In Palgrave's "Golden Treasury,"
-it is also ascribed to the same author. As a confirmation, let us state
-that Ithamore, in Marlowe's "Jew of Malta," says to the courtesan
-(Act IV. Sc. 4):
-"Thou in those groves, by Dis above,
-Shalt live with me, and be my love."--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 345: Chalmers's "English Poets"; William Warner, "Fourth Book
-of Albion's England," ch. XX. p. 551.]
-
-[Footnote 346: Chalmers's "English Poets," M. Drayton's "Fourth
-Eclogue," IV. p. 436.]
-
-[Footnote 347: M. Jourdain is the hero of Molière's comedy, "Le
-Bourgeois Gentilhomme," the type of a vulgar and successful upstart;
-Mamamouchi is a mock title.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 348: Lulli, a celebrated Italian composer of the time
-of Molière.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 349: It is very doubtful whether Spenser was so poor as
-he is generally believed to have been.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 350: "He died for want of bread, in King Street." Ben
-Jonson, quoted by Drummond.]
-
-[Footnote 351: "Hymns of Love and Beauty"; Of Heavenly Love and Beauty.]
-
-[Footnote 352: "A Hymne in Honour of Beautie," lines 92-105.]
-
-[Footnote 353: "A Hymne in Honour of Love," lines 176-182.]
-
-[Footnote 354: "The Faërie Queene," I. c. 8, stanzas 22, 23.]
-
-[Footnote 355: "The Shepherd's Calendar, Amoretti, Sonnets,
-Prothalamion, Epithalamion, Muiopotmos, Vergil's Gnat, The Ruines
-of Time, The Teares of the Muses," etc.]
-
-[Footnote 356: Published in 1580: dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney.]
-
-[Footnote 357: "Prothalamion," lines 19-54.]
-
-[Footnote 358: "Astrophel and Stella," lines 181-192.]
-
-[Footnote 359: Words attributed to him by Lodowick Bryskett,
-"Discourse of Civil Life," ed. 1606, p. 26.]
-
-[Footnote 360: Ariosto, 1474-1533. Tasso, 1544-1595. Cervantes,
-1547-1616. Rabelais, 1483-1553.]
-
-[Footnote 361: "The Faërie Queene," II. c. 3, stanzas 22-30.]
-
-[Footnote 362: Ibid. III. c. 5, stanza 51.]
-
-[Footnote 363: "The Faërie Queene," III. c. 6, stanzas 6 and 7.]
-
-[Footnote 364: Ibid, stanzas 17 and 18.]
-
-[Footnote 365: "The Faërie Queene," IV. c. 1, stanza 13.]
-
-[Footnote 366: Clorinda, the heroine of the infidel army in Tasso's
-epic poem, "Jerusalem Delivered"; Marfisa, an Indian Queen, who figures
-in Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso," and also, in Boyardo's "Orlando
-Innamorato."--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 367: "The Faërie Queene," III. c. 4, stanza 33.]
-
-[Footnote 368: "The Faërie Queene," II. c. 7, stanzas 28-46.]
-
-[Footnote 369: "The Faërie Queene," II. c. 12, stanzas 53-78.]
-
-[Footnote 370: "Nugæ Antiquæ," I. 349 et passim.]
-
-[Footnote 371: "Some asked me where the Rubies grew,
-And nothing I did say;
-But with my finger pointed to
-The lips of Julia.
-Some ask'd how Pearls did grow, and where;
-Then spake I to my girle,
-To part her lips, and shew me there
-The quarelets of Pearl.
-One ask'd me where the roses grew;
-I bade him not go seek;
-But forthwith bade my Julia show
-A bud in either cheek."
---Herrick's "Hesperides," ed. Walford, 1859; The Rock of Rubies, p. 32.
-
-"About the sweet bag of a bee,
-Two Cupids fell at odds;
-And whose the pretty prize shu'd be,
-They vow'd to ask the Gods.
-Which Venus hearing, thither came,
-And for their boldness stript them;
-And taking thence from each his flame,
-With rods of mirtle whipt them.
-Which done, to still their wanton cries,
-When quiet grown sh'ad seen them.
-She kist and wip'd their dove-like eyes,
-And gave the bag between them."
---Herrick, Ibid. The Bag of the Bee, p. 42.
-
-"Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
-Pr'ythee, why so pale?
-Will, when looking well can't move her,
-Looking ill prevail?
-Pr'ythee, why so pale?
-Why so dull and mute, young sinner?
-Pr'ythee, why so mute?
-Will, when speaking well can't win her,
-Saying nothing do't?
-Pr'ythee, why so mute?
-Quit, quit for shame; this will not move,
-This cannot take her;
-If of herself she will not love,
-Nothing can make her.
-The devil take her!"
---Sir John Suckling's Works, ed. A. Suckling, 1836, p. 70.
-
-"As when a lady, walking Flora's bower,
-Picks here a pink, and there a gilly-flower,
-Now plucks a violet from her purple bed,
-And then a primrose, the year's maidenhead,
-There nips the brier, here the lover's pansy,
-Shifting her dainty pleasures with her fancy,
-This on her arms, and that she lists to wear
-Upon the borders of her curious hair;
-At length a rose-bud (passing all the rest)
-She plucks, and bosoms in her lily breast."--Quarles, Stanzas.]
-
-[Footnote 372: See, in particular, his satire against courtiers. The
-following is against imitators:
-"But he is worst, who (beggarly) doth chaw
-Others wit's fruits, and in his ravenous maw
-Rankly digested, doth those things out-spew,
-As his owne things; and they 're his owne, 't is true,
-For if one eate my meate, though it be knowne
-The meat was mine, th' excrement is his owne."
---Donne's "Satires," 1639. Satire II. p. 128.]
-
-[Footnote 373: "When I behold a stream, which from the spring
-Doth with doubtful melodious murmuring,
-Or in a speechless slumber calmly ride
-Her wedded channel's bosom, ana there chide
-And bend her brows, and swell, if any bough
-Does but stoop down to kiss her utmost brow;
-Yet if her often gnawing kisses win
-The traiterous banks to gape and let her in,
-She rusheth violently and doth divorce
-Her from her native and her long-kept course,
-And roares, and braves it, and in gallant scorn
-In flatt'ring eddies promising return,
-She flouts her channel, which thenceforth is dry.
-Then say I: That is she, and this am I."--Donne, Elegy VI.]
-
-[Footnote 374: Donne's Poems, 1639, "A Feaver," p. 15.]
-
-[Footnote 375: Ibid. "The Flea," p. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 376: A valet in Molière's "Les Précieuses Ridicules," who
-apes and exaggerates his master's manners and style, and pretends to
-be a marquess. He also appears in "L'Etourdi" and "Le dépit Amoureux,"
-by the same author.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 377: 1608-1667. I refer to the eleventh edition, of 1710.]
-
-[Footnote 378: "The Spring" ("The Mistress," I. 72).]
-
-[Footnote 379: See in Shakespeare, "The Tempest, Measure for
-Measure, Hamlet"; in Beaumont and Fletcher, "Thierry and Theodoret,"
-Act IV; Webster, passim.]
-
-[Footnote 380: "Anatomy of Melancholy," 12th ed. 1821, 2 vols; Democritus
-to the Reader, I. 4.]
-
-[Footnote 381: "Anatomy of Melancholy," I. part 2, sec. 2, Mem. 4,
-p. 420 et passim.]
-
-[Footnote 382: "The Works of Sir Thomas Browne," ed. Wilkin, 1852, 3
-vols. "Hydriotaphia," III. ch. V. 14 et passim.]
-
-[Footnote 383: See Milsand, Étude sur Sir Thomas Browne, in the "Revue
-des Deux Mondes," 1858.]
-
-[Footnote 384: Bacon's Works. Translation of the "De Augmentis
-Scientiarum," Book II; To the King.]
-
-[Footnote 385: Ibid. Book I. The true end of learning mistaken.]
-
-[Footnote 386: Especially in the Essays.]
-
-[Footnote 387: See also "Novum Organum," Books I and II; the
-twenty-seven kinds of examples, with their metaphorical names:
-Instantiæ crucis, divortii januæ, Instantiæ innuentes, polychrestæ,
-magicæ, etc.]
-
-[Footnote 388: "The Works of Francis Bacon," London, 1824, vol. VII.
-p. 2. "Latin Biography," by Rawley.]
-
-[Footnote 389: This point is brought out by the review of Lord Macaulay.
-"Critical and Historical Essays," vol. III.]
-
-[Footnote 390: "Novum Organum," II. 15 and 16.]
-
-[Footnote 391: Ibid. I. I. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 392: "Natural History," 800, 24, etc. "De Augmentis," III. 1.]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER SECOND
-
-
-The Theatre
-
-
-We must look at this world more closely, and beneath the ideas which are
-developed seek for the living men; it is the theatre especially which is
-the original product of the English Renaissance, and it is the theatre
-especially which will exhibit the men of the English Renaissance. Forty
-poets, amongst them ten of superior rank, as well as one, the greatest
-of all artists who have represented the soul in words; many hundreds of
-pieces, and nearly fifty masterpieces; the drama extended over all the
-provinces of history, imagination, and fancy--expanded so as to embrace
-comedy, tragedy, pastoral and fanciful literature--to represent all
-degrees of human condition, and all the caprices of human invention--to
-express all the perceptible details of actual truth, and all the
-philosophic grandeur of general reflection; the stage disencumbered of
-all precept and freed from all imitation, given up and appropriated in
-the minutest particulars to the reigning taste and public intelligence;
-all this was a vast and manifold work, capable by its flexibility, its
-greatness, and its form, of receiving and preserving the exact imprint
-of the age and of the nation.[393]
-
-
-
-
-SECTION I.--The Public and the Stage
-
-
-Let us try, then, to set before our eyes this public, this audience, and
-this stage--all connected with one another, as in every natural and
-living work; and if ever there was a living and natural work, it is
-here. There were already seven theatres in London, in Shakespeare's
-time, so brisk and universal was the taste for dramatic representations.
-Great and rude contrivances, awkward in their construction, barbarous in
-their appointments; but a fervid imagination readily supplied all that
-they lacked, and hardy bodies endured all inconveniences without
-difficulty. On a dirty site, on the banks of the Thames, rose the
-principal theatre, the Globe, a sort of hexagonal tower, surrounded by a
-muddy ditch, on which was hoisted a red flag. The common people could
-enter as well as the rich: there were sixpenny, twopenny, even penny
-seats; but they could not see it without money. If it rained, and it
-often rains in London, the people in the pit, butchers, mercers, bakers,
-sailors, apprentices, receive the streaming rain upon their heads. I
-suppose they did not trouble themselves about it; it was not so long
-since they began to pave the streets of London; and when men, like
-these, have had experience of sewers and puddles, they are not afraid of
-catching cold. While waiting for the piece, they amuse themselves after
-their fashion, drink beer, crack nuts, eat fruit, howl, and now and then
-resort to their lists; they have been known to fall upon the actors, and
-turn the theatre upside down. At other times they were dissatisfied and
-went to the tavern to give the poet a hiding, or toss him in a blanket;
-they were coarse fellows, and there was no month when the cry of "Clubs"
-did not call them out of their shops to exercise their brawny arms. When
-the beer took effect, there was a great upturned barrel in the pit, a
-peculiar receptacle for general use. The smell rises, and then comes the
-cry, "Burn the juniper!" They burn some in a plate on the stage, and the
-heavy smoke fills the air. Certainly the folk there assembled could
-scarcely get disgusted at anything, and cannot have had sensitive noses.
-In the time of Rabelais there was not much cleanliness to speak of.
-Remember that they were hardly out of the Middle Ages and that in the
-Middle Ages man lived on a dunghill.
-
-Above them, on the stage, were the spectators able to pay a shilling,
-the elegant people, the gentlefolk. These were sheltered from the rain,
-and if they chose to pay an extra shilling, could have a stool. To this
-were reduced the prerogatives of rank and the devices of comfort: it
-often happened that there were not stools enough; then they lie down on
-the ground: this was not a time to be dainty. They play cards, smoke,
-insult the pit, who gave it them back without stinting, and throw apples
-at them into the bargain. They also gesticulate, swear in Italian,
-French, English;[394] crack aloud jokes in dainty, composite, high-colored
-words: in short, they have the energetic, original, gay manners of
-artists, the same humor, the same absence of constraint, and, to
-complete the resemblance, the same desire to make themselves singular,
-the same imaginative cravings, the same absurd and picturesque devices,
-beards cut to a point, into the shape of a fan, a spade, the letter T,
-gaudy and expensive dresses, copied from five or six neighboring
-nations, embroidered, laced with gold, motley, continually heightened in
-effect or changed for others: there was, as it were, a carnival in their
-brains as well as on their backs.
-
-With such spectators illusions could be produced without much trouble:
-there were no preparations or perspectives; few or no movable scenes:
-their imaginations took all this upon them. A scroll in big letters
-announced to the public that they were in London or Constantinople; and
-that was enough to carry the public to the desired place. There was no
-trouble about probability. Sir Philip Sidney writes:
-
-
-"You shall have Asia of the one side, and Africke of the other, and so
-many other under-kingdomes, that the Plaier when hee comes in, must ever
-begin with telling where hee is, or else the tale will not be conceived.
-Now shall you have three Ladies walke to gather flowers, and then wee
-must beleeve the stage to be a garden. By and by wee heare newes of
-shipwracke in the same place, then wee are to blame if we accept it not
-for a rocke;... while in the meane time two armies flie in, represented
-with foure swordes and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not
-receive it for a pitched field? Now of time they are much more liberall.
-For ordinary it is, that two young Princes fall in love, after many
-traverses, shee is got with childe, delivered of a faire boy, hee is
-lost, groweth a man, falleth in love, and is readie to get another
-childe; and all this in two hours space."[395]
-
-
-Doubtless these enormities were somewhat reduced under Shakespeare; with
-a few hangings, crude representations of animals, towers, forests, they
-assisted somewhat the public imagination. But after all, in
-Shakespeare's plays, as in all others, the imagination from within is
-chiefly drawn upon for the machinery; it must lend itself to all,
-substitute all, accept for a queen a young man who has just been shaved,
-endure in one act ten changes of place, leap suddenly over twenty years
-or five hundred miles,[396] take half a dozen supernumeraries for forty
-thousand men, and to have represented by the rolling of the drums all
-the battles of Caesar, Henry V, Coriolanus, Richard III. And
-imagination, being so overflowing and so young, accepts all this. Recall
-your own youth; for my part, the deepest emotions I have ever felt at a
-theatre were given to me by a strolling bevy of four young girls,
-playing comedy and tragedy on a stage in a coffee-house; true, I was
-eleven years old. So in this theatre, at this moment, their souls were
-fresh, as ready to feel everything as the poet was to dare everything.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION II.--Manners of the Sixteenth Century
-
-
-These are but externals; let us try to advance further, to observe the
-passions, the bent of mind, the inner man: it is this inner state which
-raised and modelled the drama, as everything else; invisible
-inclinations are everywhere the cause of visible works, and the interior
-shapes the exterior. What are these townspeople, courtiers, this public,
-whose taste fashions the theatre? what is there peculiar in the
-structure and condition of their minds? The condition must needs be
-peculiar; for the drama flourishes all of a sudden, and for sixty years
-together, with marvellous luxuriance, and at the end of this time is
-arrested so that no effort could ever revive it. The structure must be
-peculiar; for of all theatres, old and new, this is distinct in form,
-and displays a style, action, characters, an idea of life, which are not
-found in any age or any country beside. This particular feature is the
-free and complete expansion of nature.
-
-What we call nature in men is, man such as he was before culture and
-civilization had deformed and reformed him. Almost always, when a new
-generation arrives at manhood and consciousness, it finds a code of
-precepts impose on it with all the weight and authority of antiquity. A
-hundred kinds of chains, a hundred thousand kinds of ties, religion,
-morality, good breeding, every legislation which regulates sentiments,
-morals, manners, fetter and tame the creature of impulse and passion
-which breathes and frets within each of us. There is nothing like that
-here. It is a regeneration, and the curb of the past is wanting to the
-present. Catholicism, reduced to external ceremony and clerical
-chicanery, had just ended; Protestantism, arrested in its first gropings
-after truth, or straying into sects, had not yet gained the mastery; the
-religion of discipline was grown feeble, and the religion of morals was
-not yet established; men ceased to listen to the directions of the
-clergy, and has not yet spelled out the law of conscience. The church
-was turned into an assembly-room, as in Italy; the young fellows came to
-St. Paul's to walk, laugh, chatter, display their new cloaks; the thing
-had even passed into a custom. They paid for the noise they made with
-their spurs, and this tax was a source of income to the canons;[397]
-pickpockets, loose girls, came there by crowds; these latter struck
-their bargains while service was going on. Imagine, in short, that the
-scruples of conscience and the severity of the Puritans were at that
-time odious and ridiculed on the stage, and judge of the difference
-between this sensual, unbridled England, and the correct, disciplined,
-stiff England of our own time. Ecclesiastical or secular, we find no
-signs of rule. In the failure of faith, reason had not gained sway, and
-opinion is as void of authority as tradition. The imbecile age, which
-has just ended, continues buried in scorn, with its ravings, its
-verse-makers, and its pedantic text-books; and out of the liberal
-opinions derived from antiquity, from Italy, France, and Spain, everyone
-could pick and choose as it pleased him, without stooping to restraint
-or acknowledging a superiority. There was no model imposed on them, as
-nowadays; instead of affecting imitation, they affected
-originality.[398] Each strove to be himself, with his own oaths,
-peculiar ways, costumes, his specialties of conduct and humor, and to be
-unlike everyone else. They said not, "So and so is done," but "I do so
-and so." Instead of restraining, they gave free vent to themselves.
-There was no etiquette of society; save for an exaggerated jargon of
-chivalresque courtesy, they are masters of speech and action on the
-impulse of the moment. You will find them free from decorum, as of all
-else. In this outbreak and absence of fetters, they resemble fine strong
-horses let loose in the meadow. Their inborn instincts have not been
-tamed, nor muzzled, nor diminished.
-
-On the contrary, they have been preserved intact by bodily and military
-training; and escaping as they were from barbarism, not from
-civilization, they had not been acted upon by the innate softening and
-hereditary tempering which are new transmitted with the blood, and
-civilize a man from the moment of his birth. This is why man, who for
-three centuries has been a domestic animal, was still almost a savage
-beast, and the force of his muscles and the strength of his nerves
-increased the boldness and energy of his passions. Look at these
-uncultivated men, men of the people, how suddenly the blood warms and
-rises to their face; their fists double, their lips press together, and
-those vigorous bodies rush at once into action. The courtiers of that
-age were like our men of the people. They had the same taste for the
-exercise of their limbs, the same indifference toward the inclemencies
-of the weather, the same coarseness of language, the same undisguised
-sensuality. They were carmen in body and gentlemen in sentiment, with
-the dress of actors and the tastes of artists. "At fourtene," says John
-Hardyng, "a lordes sonnes shalle to felde hunte the dere, and catch an
-hardynesse. For dere to hunte and slea, and see them blede, ane
-hardyment gyffith to his courage.... At sextene yere, to werray and to
-wage, to juste and ryde, and castels to assayle... and every day his
-armure to assay in fete of armes with some of his meyne."[399] When
-ripened to manhood, he is employed with the bow, in wrestling, leaping,
-vaulting. Henry VII's court, in its noisy merriment, was like a village
-fair. The king, says Holinshed, exercised himself "dailie in shooting,
-singing, dancing, wrestling, casting of the barre, plaieing at the
-recorders, flute, virginals, in setting of songs, and making of
-ballads." He leaps the moats with a pole, and was once within an ace of
-being killed. He is so fond of wrestling, that publicly, on the field of
-the Cloth of Gold, he seized Francis I in his arms to try a throw with
-him. This is how a common soldier or a bricklayer nowadays tries a new
-comrade. In fact, they regarded gross jests and brutal buffooneries as
-amusements, as soldiers and bricklayers do now. In every nobleman's
-house there was a fool, whose business it was to utter pointed jests, to
-make eccentric gestures, horrible faces, to sing licentious songs, as we
-might hear now in a beer-house. They thought insults and obscenity a
-joke. They were foul-mouthed, they listened to Rabelais's words
-undiluted, and delighted in conversation which would revolt us. They had
-no respect for humanity; the rules of proprieties and the habits of good
-breeding began only under Louis XIV, and by imitation of the French; at
-this time they all blurted out the word that fitted in, and that was
-most frequently a coarse word. You will see on the stage, in
-Shakespeare's "Pericles," the filth of a haunt of vice.[400] The great
-lords, the well-dressed ladies, speak billingsgate. When Henry V pays
-his court to Catherine of France, it is with the coarse bearing of a
-sailor who may have taken a fancy to a sutler; and like the tars who
-tattoo a heart on their arms to prove their love for the girls they left
-behind them, there were men who "devoured sulphur and drank urine"[401]
-to win their mistress by a proof of affection. Humanity is as much
-lacking as decency.[402] Blood, suffering, does not move them. The court
-frequents bear and bull baitings, where dogs are ripped up and chained
-beasts are sometimes beaten to death, and it was, says an officer of the
-palace, "a charming entertainment."[403] No wonder they used their arms
-like clodhoppers and gossips. Elizabeth used to beat her maids of honor,
-"so that these beautiful girls could often be heard crying and lamenting
-in a piteous manner." One day she spat upon Sir Mathew's fringed coat;
-at another time, when Essex, whom she was scolding, turned his back, she
-gave him a box on the ear. It was then the practice of great ladies to
-beat their children and their servants. Poor Jane Grey was sometimes so
-wretchedly "boxed, struck, pinched, and ill-treated in other manners
-which she dare not relate," that she used to wish herself dead. Their
-first idea is to come to words, to blows, to have satisfaction. As in
-feudal times, they appeal at once to arms, and retain the habit of
-taking the law in their own hands, and without delay. "On Thursday
-laste," writes Gilbert Talbot to the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury,
-"as my Lorde Rytche was rydynge in the streates, there was one Wyndam
-that stode in a dore, and shotte a dagge at him, thynkynge to have
-slayne him. ... The same daye, also, as Sr John Conway was goynge in the
-streetes, Mr. Lodovyke Grevell came sodenly upon him, and stroke him on
-the hedd wth a sworde.... I am forced to trouble yor Honors wth thes
-tryflynge matters, for I know no greater."[404] No one, not even the
-queen, is safe among these violent dispositions.[405] Again, when one
-man struck another in the precincts of the court, his hand was cut off,
-and the arteries stopped with a red-hot iron. Only such atrocious
-imitations of their own crimes, and the painful image of bleeding and
-suffering flesh, could tame their vehemence and restrain the uprising of
-their instincts. Judge now what materials they furnish to the theatre,
-and what characters they look for at the theatre. To please the public,
-the stage cannot deal too much in open lust and the strongest passions;
-it must depict man attaining the limit of his desires, unchecked, almost
-mad, now trembling and rooted before the white palpitating flesh which
-his eyes devour, now haggard and grinding his teeth before the enemy
-whom he wishes to tear to pieces, now carried beyond himself and
-overwhelmed at the sight of the honors and wealth which he covets,
-always raging and enveloped in a tempest of eddying ideas, sometimes
-shaken by impetuous joy, more often on the verge of fury and madness,
-stronger, more ardent, more daringly let loose to infringe on reason and
-law than ever. We hear from the stage as from the history of the time,
-these fierce murmurs: the sixteenth century is like a den of lions.
-
-Amid passions so strong as these there is not one lacking. Nature
-appears here in all its violence, but also in all its fulness. If
-nothing had been weakened, nothing had been mutilated. It is the entire
-man who is displayed, heart, mind, body, senses, with his noblest and
-finest aspirations, as with his most bestial and savage appetites,
-without the preponderance of any dominant circumstance to cast him
-altogether in one direction, to exalt or degrade him. He has not become
-rigid, as he will be under Puritanism. He is not uncrowned as in the
-Restoration. After the hollowness and weariness of the fifteenth
-century, he rose up by a second birth, as before in Greece man had risen
-by a first birth; and now, as then, the temptations of the outer world
-came combined to raise his faculties from their sloth and torpor. A sort
-of generous warmth spread over them to ripen and make them flourish.
-Peace, prosperity, comfort began; new industries and increasing activity
-suddenly multiplied objects of utility and luxury tenfold. America and
-India, by their discovery, caused the treasures and prodigies heaped up
-afar over distant seas to shine before their eyes; antiquity
-rediscovered, sciences mapped out, the Reformation begun, books
-multiplied by printing, ideas by books, doubled the means of enjoyment,
-imagination, and thought. People wanted to enjoy, to imagine, and to
-think; for the desire grows with the attraction, and here all
-attractions were combined. There were attractions for the senses, in the
-chambers which they began to warm, in the beds newly furnished with
-pillows, in the coaches which they began to use for the first time.
-There were attractions for the senses, in the chambers which they began
-to warm, in the beds newly furnished with pillows, in the coaches which
-they began to use for the first time. There were attractions for the
-imagination in the new palaces, arranged after the Italian manner; in
-the variegated hangings from Flanders; in the rich garments,
-gold-embroidered, which, being continually changed, combined the fancies
-and the splendors of all Europe. There were attractions for the mind, in
-the noble and beautiful writings which, spread abroad, translated,
-explained, brought in philosophy, eloquence, and poetry, from restored
-antiquity, and from the surrounding renaissances. Under this appeal all
-aptitudes and instincts at once started up; the low and the lofty, ideal
-and sensual love, gross cupidity and pure generosity. Recall what you
-yourself experienced, when from being a child you became a man: what
-wishes for happiness, what breadth of anticipation, what intoxication of
-heart wafted you towards all joys; with what impulse your hands seized
-involuntarily and all at once every branch of the tree, and would not
-let a single fruit escape. At sixteen years, like Chérubin,[406] we
-wish for a servant girl while we adore a Madonna; we are capable of
-every species of covetousness, and also of every species of self-denial;
-we find virtue more lovely, our meals more enjoyable; pleasure has more
-zest, heroism more worth: there is no allurement which is not keen; the
-sweetness and novelty of things are too strong; and in the hive of
-passions which buzzes within us, and stings us like the sting of a bee,
-we can do nothing but plunge, one after another, in all directions. Such
-were the men of this time, Raleigh, Essex, Elizabeth, Henry VIII
-himself, excessive and inconstant, ready for devotion and for crime,
-violent in good and evil, heroic with strange weaknesses, humble with
-sudden changes of mood, never vile with premeditation like the
-roisterers of the Restoration, never rigid on principle like the
-Puritans of the Revolution, capable of weeping like children,[407] and
-of dying like men, often base courtiers, more than once true knights,
-displaying constantly, amidst all these contradictions of bearing, only
-the fulness of their characters. Thus prepared, they could take in
-everything, sanguinary ferocity and refined generosity, the brutality of
-shameless debauchery, and the most divine innocence of love, accept all
-the characters, prostitutes and virgins, princes and mountebanks, pass
-quickly from trivial buffoonery to lyrical sublimities, listen
-alternately to the quibbles of clowns and the songs of lovers. The drama
-even, in order to imitate and satisfy the fertility of their nature,
-must talk all tongues, pompous, inflated verse, loaded with imagery, and
-side by side with this, vulgar prose: more, it must distort its natural
-style and limits; put songs, poetical devices, into the discourse of
-courtiers and the speeches of statesmen; bring on the stage the fairy
-world of the opera, as Middleton says, gnomes, nymphs of the land and
-sea, with their groves and their meadows; compel the gods to descend
-upon the stage, and hell itself to furnish its world of marvels. No
-other theatre is so complicated; for nowhere else do we find men so
-complete.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION III.--Some Aspects of the English Mind
-
-
-In this free and universal expansion, the passions had their special
-bent withal, which was an English one, inasmuch as they were English.
-After all, in every age, under every civilization, a people is always
-itself. Whatever be its dress, goat-skin blouse, gold-laced doublet,
-black dress-coat, the five or six great instincts which it possessed in
-its forests, follow it in its palaces and offices. To this day, warlike
-passions, a gloomy humor, subsist under the regularity and propriety of
-modern manners.[408] Their native energy and harshness pierce through
-the perfection of culture and the habits of comfort. Rich young men, on
-leaving Oxford, go to hunt bears on the Rocky Mountains, the elephant in
-South Africa, live under canvas, box, jump hedges on horseback, sail
-their yachts on dangerous coasts, delight in solitude and peril. The
-ancient Saxon, the old rover of the Scandinavian seas, has not perished.
-Even at school the children roughly treat one another, withstand one
-another, fight like men; and their character is so indomitable that they
-need the birch and blows to reduce them to the discipline of law. Judge
-what they were in the sixteenth century; the English race passed then
-for the most warlike of Europe, the most redoubtable in battle, the most
-impatient of anything like slavery.[409] "English savages" is what
-Cellini calls them; and the "great shins of beef" with which they fill
-themselves, keep up the force and ferocity of their instincts. To harden
-them thoroughly, institutions work in the same groove with nature. The
-nation is armed, every man is brought up like a soldier, bound to have
-arms according to his condition, to exercise himself on Sundays or
-holidays; from the yeoman to the lord, the old military constitution
-keeps them enrolled and ready for action.[410] In a state which
-resembles an army it is necessary that punishments, as in an army, shall
-inspire terror; and to make them worse, the hideous Wars of the Roses,
-which on every flaw of the succession to the throne are ready to break
-out again, are ever present in their recollection. Such instincts, such
-a constitution, such a history, raise before them, with tragic severity,
-an idea of life: death is at hand, as well as wounds, the block,
-tortures. The fine cloaks of purple which the renaissances of the South
-displayed joyfully in the sun, to wear like a holiday garment, are here
-stained with blood, and edged with black. Throughout,[411] a stern
-discipline, and the axe ready for every suspicion of treason; great men,
-bishops, a chancellor, princes, the king's relatives, queens, a
-protector, all kneeling in the straw, sprinkled the Tower with their
-blood; one after the other they marched past, stretched out their necks;
-the Duke of Buckingham, Queen Anne Boleyn, Queen Catherine Howard, the
-Earl of Surrey, Admiral Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, Lady Jane Grey
-and her husband, the Duke of Northumberland, Mary Stuart, the Earl of
-Essex, all on the throne, or on the steps of the throne, in the highest
-rank of honors, beauty, youth, and genius; of the bright procession
-nothing is left but senseless trunks, marred by the tender mercies of
-the executioner. Shall I count the funeral pyres, the hangings, living
-men cut down from the gibbet, disembowelled, quartered,[412] their limbs
-cast into the fire, their heads exposed on the walls? There is a page in
-Holinshed which reads like a death register:
-
-
-"The five and twentith daie of Maie (1535), was in saint Paules church
-at London examined nineteene men and six women born in Holland, whose
-opinions were (heretical). Fourteene of them were condemned, a man and a
-woman of them were burned in Smithfield, the other twelve were sent to
-other townes, there to be burnt. On the nineteenth of June were three
-moonkes of the Charterhouse hanged, drawne, and quartered at Tiburne,
-and their heads and quarters set up about London, for denieng the king
-to be supreme head of the church. Also the one and twentith of the same
-moneth, and for the same cause, doctor John Fisher, bishop of Rochester,
-was beheaded for denieng of the supremacie, and his head set upon London
-bridge, but his bodie buried within Barking churchyard. The pope had
-elected him a cardinall, and sent his hat as far as Calais, but his head
-was off before his hat was on: so that they met not. On the sixt of
-Julie, was Sir Thomas Moore beheaded for the like crime, that is to wit,
-for denieng the king to be supreme head."[413]
-
-
-None of these murders seem extraordinary; the chroniclers mention them
-without growing indignant; the condemned go quietly to the block, as if
-the thing were perfectly natural. Anne Boleyn said seriously, before
-giving up her head to the executioner: "I praie God save the king, and
-send him long to reigne over you, for a gentler, nor a more merciful
-prince was there never."[414] Society is, as it were, in a state of
-siege, so incited that beneath the idea of order everyone entertained
-the idea of the scaffold. They saw it, the terrible machine, planted on
-all the highways of human life; and the byways as well as the highways
-led to it. A sort of martial law, introduced by conquests into civil
-affairs, entered thence into ecclesiastical matters,[415] and social
-economy ended by being enslaved by it. As in a camp,[416] expenditure,
-dress, the food of each class, are fixed and restricted; no one might
-stray out of his district, be idle, live after his own devices. Every
-stranger was seized, interrogated; if he could not give a good account
-of himself, the parish-stocks bruised his limbs; as in time of war he
-would have passed for a spy and an enemy, if caught amidst the army. Any
-person, says the law,[417] found living idly or loiteringly for the
-space of three days, shall be marked with a hot iron on his breast, and
-adjudged as a slave to the man who shall inform against him. This one
-"shall take the same slave, and give him bread, water, or small drink,
-and refuse meat, and cause him to work, by beating, chaining, or
-otherwise, in such work and labour as he shall put him to, be it never
-so vile." He may sell him, bequeath him, let him out for hire, or trade
-upon him "after the like sort as they may do of any other their moveable
-goods or chattels," put a ring of iron about his neck or leg; if he runs
-away and absents himself for fourteen days, he is branded on the
-forehead with a hot iron, and remains a slave for the whole of his life;
-if he runs away a second time, he is put to death. Sometimes, says More,
-you might see a score of thieves hung on the same gibbet. In one
-year[418] forty persons were put to death in the county of Somerset
-alone, and in each county there were three or four hundred vagabonds who
-would sometimes gather together and rob in armed bands of sixty at a
-time. Follow the whole of this history closely, the fires of Mary, the
-pillories of Elizabeth, and it is plain that the moral tone of the land,
-like its physical condition, is harsh by comparison with other
-countries. They have no relish in their enjoyments, as in Italy; what is
-called Merry England is England given up to animal spirits, a coarse
-animation, produced by abundant feeding, continued prosperity, courage,
-and self-reliance; voluptuousness does not exist in this climate and
-this race. Mingled with the beautiful popular beliefs, the lugubrious
-dreams and the cruel nightmare of witchcraft make their appearance.
-Bishop Jewell, preaching before the queen, tells her that witches and
-sorcerers within these last few years are marvellously increased. Some
-ministers assert
-
-
-"That they have had in their parish at one instant xvij or xviij
-witches; meaning such as could worke miracles supernaturallie; that they
-work spells by which men pine away even unto death, their colour fadeth,
-their flesh rotteth, their speech is benumbed, their senses are bereft;
-that instructed by the devil, they make ointments of the bowels and
-members of children, whereby they ride in the aire, and accomplish all
-their desires. When a child is not baptized, or defended by the sign of
-the cross, then the witches catch them from their mothers sides in the
-night,... kill them... or after buriall steale them out of their graves,
-and seeth them in a caldron, untill their flesh be made potable.... It
-is an infallible rule, that everie fortnight, or at the least everie
-moneth, each witch must kill one child at the least for hir part."
-
-
-Here was something to make the teeth chatter with fright. Add to this
-revolting and absurd descriptions, wretched tomfooleries, details about
-the infernal caldron, all the nastinesses which could haunt the trite
-imagination of a hideous and drivelling old woman, and you have the
-spectacles, provided by Middleton and Shakespeare, and which suit the
-sentiments of the age and the national humor. The fundamental gloom
-pierces through the glow and rapture of poetry. Mournful legends have
-multiplied; every churchyard has its ghost; wherever a man has been
-murdered his spirit appears. Many people dare not leave their village
-after sunset. In the evening, before bed-time, men talk of the coach
-which is seen drawn by headless horses, with headless postilions and
-coachmen, or of unhappy spirits who, compelled to inhabit the plain,
-under the sharp northeast wind, pray for the shelter of a hedge or a
-valley. They dream terribly of death:
-
-
-"To die and go we know not where;
-To lie in cold obstruction and to rot;
-This sensible warm motion to become
-A kneaded clod; and the delighted spirit
-To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside
-In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice;
-To be imprison'd in the viewless winds,
-And blown with restless violence round about
-The pendent world; or to be worse than worst
-Of those that lawless and incertain thought
-Imagine howling: 'tis too horrible!"[419]
-
-
-The greatest speak with a sad resignation of the infinite obscurity
-which embraces our poor, short, glimmering life, our life, which is but
-a troubled dream;[420] the sad state of humanity, which is but passion,
-madness, and sorrow; the human being who is himself, perhaps, but a vain
-phantom, a grievous sick man's dream. In their eyes we roll down a fatal
-slope, where chance dashes us one against the other, and the inner
-destiny which urges us onward, only shatters after it has blinded us.
-And at the end of all is "the silent grave, no conversation, no joyful
-tread of friends, no voice of lovers, no careful father's counsel;
-nothing's heard, nor nothing is, but all oblivion, dust, and endless
-darkness."[421] If yet there were nothing. "To die, to sleep; to sleep,
-perchance to dream." To dream sadly, to fall into a nightmare like the
-nightmare of life, like that in which we are struggling and crying
-to-day, gasping with hoarse throat!--this is their idea of man and of
-existence, the national idea, which fills the stage with calamities and
-despair, which makes a display of tortures and massacres, which abounds
-in madness and crime, which holds up death as the issue throughout. A
-threatening and sombre fog veils their mind like their sky, and joy,
-like the sun, only appears in its full force now and then. They are
-different from the Latin race, and in the common Renaissance they are
-regenerated otherwise than the Latin races. The free and full
-development of pure nature which, in Greece and Italy, ends in the
-painting of beauty and happy energy, ends here in the painting of
-ferocious energy, agony, and death.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION IV.--The Poets of the Period
-
-
-Thus was this theatre produced; a theatre unique in history, like the
-admirable and fleeting epoch from which it sprang, the work and the
-picture of this young world, as natural, as unshackled, and as tragic as
-itself. When an original and national drama springs up, the poets who
-establish it carry in themselves the sentiments which it represents.
-They display better than other men the feelings of the public, because
-those feelings arc stronger in them than in other men. The passions
-which surround them, break forth in their heart with a harsher or a
-juster cry, and hence their voices become the voices of all. Chivalric
-and Catholic Spain had her interpreters in her enthusiasts and her Don
-Quixotes: in Calderon, first a soldier, afterwards a priest; in Lope de
-Vega, a volunteer at fifteen, a passionate lover, a wandering duelist, a
-soldier of the Armada, finally, a priest and familiar of the Holy
-Office; so full of fervor that he fasts till he is exhausted, faints
-with emotion while singing mass, and in his flagellations stains the
-walls of his cell with blood. Calm and noble Greece had in her principal
-tragic poet one of the most accomplished and fortunate of her sons:[422]
-Sophocles, first in song and palaestra; who at fifteen sang, unclad, the
-pæan before the trophy of Salamis, and who afterwards, as ambassador,
-general, ever loving the gods and impassioned for his state, presented,
-in his life as in his works, the spectacle of the incomparable harmony
-which made the beauty of the ancient world, and which the modern world
-will never more attain to. Eloquent and worldly France, in the age which
-carried the art of good manners and conversation to its highest pitch,
-finds, to write her oratorical tragedies and to paint her drawing-room
-passions, the most able craftsman of words, Racine, a courtier, a man of
-the world; the most capable, by the delicacy of his tact and the
-adaptation of his style, of making men of the world and courtiers speak.
-So in England the poets are in harmony with their works. Almost all are
-Bohemians; they sprang from the people,[423] were educated, and usually
-studied at Oxford or Cambridge, but they were poor, so that their
-education contrasts with their condition. Ben Jonson is the step-son of
-a bricklayer, and himself a bricklayer; Marlowe is the son of a
-shoemaker; Shakespeare of a wool merchant; Massinger of a servant of a
-noble family.[424] They live as they can, get into debt, write for their
-bread, go on the stage. Peele, Lodge, Marlowe, Ben Jonson, Shakespeare,
-Heywood, are actors; most of the details which we have of their lives
-are taken from the journal of Henslowe, a retired pawnbroker, later a
-money-lender and manager of a theatre, who gives them work, advances
-money to them, receives their manuscripts or their wardrobes as
-security. For a play he gives seven or eight pounds; after the year 1600
-prices rise, and reach as high as twenty or twenty-five pounds. It is
-clear that, even after this increase, the trade of author scarcely
-brings in bread. In order to earn money, it was necessary, like
-Shakespeare, to become a manager, to try to have a share in the property
-of a theatre; but such success is rare, and the life which they lead, a
-life of actors and artists, improvident, full of excess, lost amid
-debauchery and acts of violence, amidst women of evil fame, in contact
-with young profligates, among the temptations of misery, imagination and
-license, generally leads them to exhaustion, poverty, and death. Men
-received enjoyment from them, but neglected and despised them. One
-actor, for a political allusion, was sent to prison, and only just
-escaped losing his ears; great men, men in office, abused them like
-servants. Heywood, who played almost every day, bound himself, in
-addition, to write a sheet daily, for several years composes at
-haphazard in taverns, labors and sweats like a true literary hack, and
-dies leaving two hundred and twenty pieces, of which most are lost. Kyd,
-one of the earliest in date, died in misery. Shirley, one of the last,
-at the end of his career, was obliged to become once more a
-schoolmaster. Massinger dies unknown; and in the parish register we find
-only this sad mention of him: "Philip Massinger, a stranger." A few
-months after the death of Middleton, his widow was obliged to ask alms
-of the City, because he had left nothing. Imagination, as Drummond said
-of Ben Jonson, oppressed their reason; it is the common failing of
-poets. They wish to enjoy, and give themselves wholly up to enjoyment;
-their mood, their heart governs them; in their life, as in their works,
-impulses are irresistible; desire comes suddenly, like a wave, drowning
-reason, resistance--often even giving neither reason nor resistance time
-to show themselves.[425] Many are roisterers, sad roisterers of the same
-sort, such as Musset and Murger, who give themselves up to every
-passion, and "drown their sorrows in the bowl"; capable of the purest
-and most poetic dreams, of the most delicate and touching tenderness,
-and who yet can only undermine their health and mar their fame. Such
-are Nash, Decker, and Greene; Nash, a fantastic satirist, who abused his
-talent, and conspired like a prodigal against good fortune; Decker, who
-passed three years in the King's Bench prison; Greene, above all, a
-pleasing wit, copious, graceful, who took a delight in destroying
-himself, publicly with tears confessing his vices,[426] and the next
-moment plunging into them again. These are mere androgynes, true
-courtesans, in manners, body, and heart. Quitting Cambridge, "with good
-fellows as free-living as himself," Greene had travelled over Spain,
-Italy, "in which places he sawe and practizde such villainie as is
-abhominable to declare." You see the poor man is candid, not sparing
-himself; he is natural; passionate in everything, repentance or
-otherwise; above all of ever-varying mood; made for self-contradiction;
-not self-correction. On his return he became, in London, a supporter of
-taverns, a haunter of evil places. In his "Groatsworth of Wit bought
-with a Million of Repentance" he says:
-
-
-"I was dround in pride, whoredom was my daily exercise, and gluttony
-with drunkenness was my onely delight.... After I had wholly betaken me
-to the penning of plaies (which was my continuall exercise) I was so far
-from calling upon God that I sildome thought on God, but tooke such
-delight in swearing and blaspheming the name of God that none could
-thinke otherwise of me than that I was the child of perdition. These
-vanities and other trifling pamphlets I penned of love and vaine
-fantasies was my chiefest stay of living; and for those my vaine
-discourses I was beloved of the more vainer sort of people, who being my
-continuall companions, came still to my lodging, and there would
-continue quaffing, carowsing, and surfeting with me all the day long....
-If I may have my disire while I live I am satisfied; let me shift after
-death as I may.... 'Hell!' quoth I; 'what talke you of hell to me? I
-know if I once come there I shall have the company of better men than
-myselfe; I shall also meete with some madde knaves in that place, and so
-long as I shall not sit there alone, my care is the lesse.... If I
-feared the judges of the bench no more than I dread the judgments of God
-I would before I slept dive into one carles bagges or other, and make
-merrie with the shelles I found in them so long as they would last.'"
-
-
-A little later he is seized with remorse, marries, depicts in delicious
-verse the regularity and calm of an upright life; then returns to
-London, spends his property and his wife's fortune with "a sorry ragged
-queane," in the company of ruffians, pimps, sharpers, courtesans;
-drinking, blaspheming, wearing himself out by sleepless nights and
-orgies; writing for bread, sometimes amid the brawling and effluvia of
-his wretched lodging, lighting upon thoughts of adoration and love,
-worthy of Rolla;[427] very often disgusted with himself, seized with a
-fit of weeping between two merry bouts, and writing little pieces to
-accuse himself, to regret his wife, to convert his comrades, or to warn
-young people against the tricks of prostitutes and swindlers. He was
-soon worn out by this kind of life; six years were enough to exhaust
-him. An indigestion arising from Rhenish wine and pickled herrings
-finished him. If it had not been for his landlady, who succored him, he
-"would have perished in the streets." He lasted a little longer, and
-then his light went out; now and then he begged her "pittifully for a
-penny pott of malmesie"; he was covered with lice, he had but one shirt,
-and when his own was "awashing," he was obliged to borrow her husband's.
-"His doublet and hose and sword were sold for three shillinges," and the
-poor folks paid the cost of his burial, four shillings for the winding
-sheet, and six and fourpence for the burial.
-
-In such low places, on such dunghills, amid such excesses and violence,
-dramatic genius forced its way, and amongst others, that of the first,
-of the most powerful, of the true founder of the dramatic school,
-Christopher Marlowe.
-
-Marlowe was an ill-regulated, dissolute, outrageously vehement and
-audacious spirit, but grand and sombre, with the genuine poetic frenzy;
-pagan moreover, and rebellious in manners and creed. In this universal
-return to the senses, and in this impulse of natural forces which
-brought on the Renaissance, the corporeal instincts and the ideas which
-hallow them, break forth impetuously. Marlowe, like Greene, like
-Kett,[428] is a sceptic, denies God and Christ, blasphemes the Trinity,
-declares Moses "a juggler," Christ more worthy of death than Barabas,
-says that "yf he wer to write a new religion, he wolde undertake both a
-more excellent and more admirable methode," and "almost in every company
-he commeth, perswadeth men to Athiesme."[429] Such were the rages, the
-rashnesses, the excesses which liberty of thought gave rise to in these
-new minds, who for the first time, after so many centuries, dared to
-walk unfettered. From his father's shop, crowded with children, from the
-straps and awls, he found himself studying at Cambridge, probably
-through the patronage of a great man, and on his return to London, in
-want, amid the license of the green-room, the low houses and taverns,
-his head was in a ferment, and his passions became excited. He turned
-actor; but having broken his leg in a scene of debauchery, he remained
-lame, and could no longer appear on the boards. He openly avowed his
-infidelity, and a prosecution was begun, which, if time had not failed,
-would probably have brought him to the stake. He made love to a drab,
-and in trying to stab his rival, his hand was turned, so that his own
-blade entered his eye and his brain, and he died, cursing and
-blaspheming. He was only thirty years old.
-
-Think what poetry could emanate from a life so passionate, and occupied
-in such a manner! First, exaggerated declamation, heaps of murder,
-atrocities, a pompous and furious display of tragedy bespattered with
-blood, and passions raised to a pitch of madness. All the foundations of
-the English stage, "Ferrex and Porrex, Cambyses, Hieronymo," even
-the "Pericles" of Shakespeare, reach the same height of extravagance,
-magniloquence and horror.[430] It is the first outbreak of youth. Recall
-Schiller's "Robbers," and how modern democracy has recognized for the
-first time its picture in the metaphors and cries of Charles Moor.[431]
-So here the characters struggle and roar, stamp on the earth, gnash
-their teeth, shake their fists against heaven. The trumpets sound, the
-drums beat, coats of mail file past armies clash, men stab each other,
-or themselves; speeches are full of gigantic threats and lyrical
-figures;[432] kings die, straining a bass voice; "now doth ghastly death
-with greedy talons gripe my bleeding heart, and like a harpy tires on my
-life." The hero in "Tamburlaine the Great"[433] is seated on a chariot
-drawn by chained kings; he burns towns, drowns women and children, puts
-men to the sword, and finally, seized with an inscrutable sickness,
-raves in monstrous outcries against the gods, whose hands afflict his
-soul, and whom he would fain dethrone. There already is the picture of
-senseless pride, of blind and murderous rage, which passing through many
-devastations, at last arms against heaven itself. The overflowing of
-savage and immoderate instinct produces this mighty sounding verse, this
-prodigality of carnage, this display of splendors and exaggerated
-colors, this railing of demoniacal passions, this audacity of grand
-impiety. If in the dramas which succeed it, "The Massacre at Paris,"
-"The Jew of Malta," the bombast decreases, the violence remains. Barabas
-the Jew maddened with hate, is henceforth no longer human; he has been
-treated by the Christians like a beast, and he hates them like a beast.
-He advises his servant Ithamore in the following words:
-
-
-"Hast thou no trade? then listen to my words,
-And I will teach thee that shall stick by thee:
-First, be thou void of these affections,
-Compassion, love, vain hope, and heartless fear;
-Be mov'd at nothing, see thou pity none,
-But to thyself smile when the Christians moan.
-... I walk abroad a-nights,
-And kill sick people groaning under walls;
-Sometimes I go about and poison wells....
-Being young, I studied physic, and began
-To practice first upon the Italian;
-There I enrich'd the priests with burials,
-And always kept the sexton's arms in ure
-With digging graves and ringing dead men's knells....
-I fill'd the jails with bankrouts in a year,
-And with young orphans planted hospitals;
-And every moon made some or other mad,
-And now and then one hang himself for grief,
-Pinning upon his breast a long great scroll
-How I with interest tormented him."[434]
-
-
-All these cruelties he boasts of and chuckles over, like a demon who
-rejoices in being a good executioner, and plunges his victims in the
-very extremity of anguish. His daughter has two Christian suitors; and
-by forged letters he causes them to slay each other. In despair she
-takes the veil, and to avenge himself he poisons his daughter and the
-whole convent. Two friars wish to denounce him, then to convert him; he
-strangles the first, and jokes with his slave Ithamore, a cut-throat by
-profession, who loves his trade, rubs his hands with joy, and says:
-
-
-"Pull amain,
-'Tis neatly done, sir; here's no print at all.
-So, let him lean upon his staff; excellent! he stands as if he were
-begging of bacon."[435]
-"O mistress, I have the bravest, gravest, secret, subtle, bottlenosed
-knave to my master, that ever gentleman had."[436]
-
-
-The second friar comes up, and they accuse him of the murder.
-
-
-"_Barabas._ Heaven bless me! what, a friar a murderer!
-When shall you see a Jew commit the like?
-_Ithamore._ Why, a Turk could ha' done no more.
-_Bar._ To-morrow is the sessions; you shall do it--
-Come Ithamore, let's help to take him hence.
-_Friar._ Villains, I am a sacred person; touch me not.
-_Bar._ The law shall touch you; we'll but lead you, we:
-'Las, I could weep at your calamity!"[437]
-
-
-We have also two other poisonings, an infernal machine to blow up the
-Turkish garrison, a plot to cast the Turkish commander into a well.
-Barabas falls into it himself, and dies in the hot caldron,[438]
-howling, hardened, remorseless, having but one regret, that he had not
-done evil enough. These are the ferocities of the Middle Ages; we might
-find them to this day among the companions of Ali Pacha, among the
-pirates of the Archipelago; we retain pictures of them in the paintings
-of the fifteenth century, which represent a king with his court, seated
-calmly round a living man who is being flayed; in the midst the flayer
-on his knees is working conscientiously, very careful not to spoil the
-skin.[439]
-
-All this is pretty strong, you will say; these people kill too readily,
-and too quickly. It is on this very account that the painting is a true
-one. For the specialty of the men of the time, as of Marlowe's
-characters, is the abrupt commission of a deed; they are children,
-robust children. As a horse kicks out instead of speaking, so they pull
-out their knives instead of asking an explanation. Nowadays we hardly
-know what nature is; instead of observing it we still retain the
-benevolent prejudices of the eighteenth century; we only see it
-humanized by two centuries of culture, and we take its acquired calm for
-an innate moderation. The foundations of the natural man are
-irresistible impulses, passions, desires, greeds; all blind. He sees a
-woman,[440] thinks her beautiful; suddenly he rushes towards her; people
-try to restrain him, he kills these people, gluts his passion, then
-thinks no more of it, save when at times a vague picture of a moving
-lake of blood crosses his brain and makes him gloomy. Sudden and extreme
-resolves are confused in his mind with desire; barely planned, the thing
-is done; the wide interval which a Frenchman places between the idea of
-an action and the action itself is not to be found here.[441] Barabas
-conceived murders, and straightway murders were accomplished; there is
-no deliberation, no pricks of conscience; that is how he commits a score
-of them; his daughter leaves him, he becomes unnatural, and poisons her;
-his confidential servant betrays him, he disguises himself, and poisons
-him. Rage seizes these men like a fit, and then they are forced to kill.
-Benvenuto Cellini relates how, being offended, he tried to restrain
-himself, but was nearly suffocated; and that in order to cure himself,
-he rushed with his dagger upon his opponent. So, in "Edward the Second,"
-the nobles immediately appeal to arms; all is excessive and unforeseen:
-between two replies the heart is turned upside down, transported to the
-extremes of hate or tenderness. Edward, seeing his favorite Gaveston
-again, pours out before him his treasure, casts his dignities at his
-feet, gives him his seal, himself, and, on a threat from the Bishop of
-Coventry, suddenly cries:
-
-
-"Throw off his golden mitre, rend his stole,
-And in the channel christen him anew."[442]
-
-
-Then, when the queen supplicates:
-
-
-"Fawn not on me, French strumpet! get thee gone....
-Speak not unto her: let her droop and pine."[443]
-
-
-Furies and hatreds clash together like horsemen in battle. The Earl of
-Lancaster draws his sword on Gaveston to slay him, before the king;
-Mortimer wounds Gaveston. These powerful loud voices growl; the noblemen
-will not even let a dog approach the prince, and rob them of their rank.
-Lancaster says of Gaveston:
-
-
-"... He comes not back,
-Unless the sea cast up his shipwrack'd body.
-_Warwick._ And to behold so sweet a sight as that,
-There's none here but would run his horse to death."[444]
-
-
-They have seized Gaveston, and intend to hang him "at a bough"; they
-refuse to let him speak a single minute with the king. In vain they are
-entreated; when they do at last consent, they are sorry for it; it is a
-prey they want immediately, and Warwick, seizing him by force, "strake
-off his head in a trench." Those are the men of the Middle Ages. They
-have the fierceness, the tenacity, the pride of big, well-fed,
-thorough-bred bull-dogs. It is this sternness and impetuosity of
-primitive passions which produced the Wars of the Roses, and for thirty
-years drove the nobles on each other's swords and to the block.
-
-What is there beyond all these frenzies and gluttings of blood? The idea
-of crushing necessity and inevitable ruin in which everything sinks and
-comes to an end. Mortimer, brought to the block, says with a smile:
-
-
-"Base Fortune, now I see, that in thy wheel
-There is a point, to which, when men aspire,
-They tumble headlong down: that point I touch'd,
-And, seeing there was no place to mount up higher,
-Why should I grieve at my declining fall?--
-Farewell, fair queen; weep not for Mortimer,
-That scorns the world, and, as a traveller,
-Goes to discover countries yet unknown."[445]
-
-
-Weigh well these grand words; they are a cry from the heart, the
-profound confession of Marlowe, as also of Byron, and of the old
-sea-kings. The northern paganism is fully expressed in this heroic and
-mournful sigh: it is thus they imagine the world so long as they remain
-on the outside of Christianity, or as soon as they quit it. Thus, when
-men see in life, as they did, nothing but a battle of unchecked
-passions, and in death but a gloomy sleep, perhaps filled with mournful
-dreams, there is no other supreme good but a day of enjoyment and
-victory. They glut themselves, shutting their eyes to the issue, except
-that they may be swallowed up on the morrow. That is the master-thought
-of "Doctor Faustus," the greatest of Marlowe's dramas: to satisfy his
-soul, no matter at what price, or with what results:
-
-
-"A sound magician is a mighty god....
-How am I glutted with conceit of this!...
-I'll have them fly to India for gold,
-Ransack the ocean for orient pearl....
-I'll have them read me strange philosophy,
-And tell the secrets of all foreign kings;
-I'll have them wall all Germany with brass,
-And make swift Rhine circle fair Wertenberg....
-Like lions shall they guard us when we please;
-Like Almain rutters with their horsemen's staves,
-Or Lapland giants, trotting by our sides;
-Sometimes like women, or unwedded maids,
-Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows
-Than have the white breasts of the queen of love."[446]
-
-
-What brilliant dreams, what desires, what vast or voluptuous wishes,
-worthy of a Roman Cæsar or an Eastern poet, eddy in this teeming brain!
-To satiate them, to obtain four-and-twenty years of power, Faustus gave
-his soul, without fear, without need of temptation, at the first outset,
-voluntarily, so sharp is the prick within:
-
-
-"Had I as many souls as there be stars,
-I'd give them all for Mephistophilis.
-By him I'll be great emperor of the world,
-And make a bridge thorough the moving air....
-Why shouldst thou not? Is not thy soul thine own?"[447]
-
-
-And with that he gives himself full swing: he wants to know everything,
-to have everything; a book in which he can behold all herbs and trees
-which grow upon the earth; another in which shall be drawn all the
-constellations and planets; another which shall bring him gold when he
-wills it, and "the fairest courtezans"; another which summons "men in
-armour" ready to execute his commands, and which holds "whirlwinds,
-tempests, thunder and lightning" chained at his disposal. He is like a
-child, he stretches out his hands for everything shining; then grieves
-to think of hell, then lets himself be diverted by shows:
-
-
-"_Faustus._ O this feeds my soul!
-_Lucifer._ Tut, Faustus, in hell is all manner of delight.
-_Faustus._ Oh, might I see hell, and return again,
-How happy were I then!..."[448]
-
-
-He is conducted, being invisible, over the whole world: lastly to Rome,
-amongst the ceremonies of the pope's court. Like a schoolboy during a
-holiday, he has insatiable eyes, he forgets everything before a pageant,
-he amuses himself in playing tricks, in giving the pope a box on the
-ear, in beating the monks, in performing magic tricks before princes,
-finally in drinking, feasting, filling his belly, deadening his
-thoughts. In his transport he becomes an atheist, and says there is no
-hell, that those are "old wives' tales." Then suddenly the sad idea
-knocks at the gates of his brain.
-
-
-"I will renounce this magic, and repent...
-My heart's so harden'd I cannot repent:
-Scarce can I name salvation, faith, or heaven,
-But fearful echoes thunder in mine ears,
-'Faustus, thou are damn'd!' then swords and knives,
-Poison, guns, halters, and envenom'd steel
-Are laid before me to despatch myself;
-And long ere this I should have done the deed,
-Had not sweet pleasure conquer'd deep despair.
-Have not I made blind Homer sing to me
-Of Alexander's love and Œnon's death?
-And hath not he, that built the walls of Thebes
-With ravishing sound of his melodious harp,
-Made music with my Mephistophilis?
-Why should I die, then, or basely despair?
-I am resolv'd; Faustus shall ne'er repent.--
-Come Mephistophilis, let us dispute again,
-And argue of divine astrology.
-Tell me, are there many heavens above the moon?
-Are all celestial bodies but one globe,
-As is the substance of this centric earth?..."[449]
-"One thing... let me crave of thee
-To glut the longing of my heart's desire....
-Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships,
-And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
-Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!
-Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies!--
-Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again.
-Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips,
-And all is dross that is not Helena....
-O thou art fairer than the evening air
-Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars!"[450]
-
-
-"Oh, my God, I would weep! but the devil draws in my tears. Gush forth
-blood, instead of tears! yea, life and soul! Oh, he stays my tongue! I
-would lift up my hands; but see, they hold them, they hold them; Lucifer
-and Mephistophilis...."[451]
-
-
-"Ah, Faustus,
-Now hast thou but one bare hour to live,
-And then thou must be damn'd perpetually!
-Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven,
-That time may cease, and midnight never come....
-The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike,
-The devil will come, and Faustus must be damn'd.
-Oh, I'll leap up to my God!--Who pulls me down?--
-See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament!
-One drop would save my soul, half a drop: ah, my Christ,
-Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ,
-Yet will I call on him....
-Ah, half the hour is past! 'twill all be past anon....
-Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years,
-A hundred thousand, and at last be sav'd....
-It strikes, it strikes....
-Oh soul, be chang'd into little water-drops,
-And fall into the ocean, ne'er be found!"[452]
-
-
-There is the living, struggling, natural, personal man, not the
-philosophic type which Goethe has created, but a primitive and genuine
-man, hot-headed, fiery, the slave of his passions, the sport of his
-dreams, wholly engrossed in the present, moulded by his lusts,
-contradictions, and follies, who amidst noise and starts, cries of
-pleasure and anguish, rolls, knowing it and willing it, down the slope
-and crags of his precipice. The whole English drama is here, as a plant
-in its seed, and Marlowe is to Shakespeare what Perugino was to Raphael.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION V.--Formation of the Drama
-
-
-Gradually art is being formed; and toward the close of the century it is
-complete. Shakespeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Webster,
-Massinger, Ford, Middleton, Heywood, appear together, or close upon each
-other, a new and favored generation, flourishing largely in the soil
-fertilized by the efforts of the generation which preceded them.
-Henceforth the scenes are developed and assume consistency, the
-characters cease to move all of a piece, the drama is no longer like a
-piece of statuary. The poet who a little while ago knew only how to
-strike or kill, introduces now a sequence of situation and a rationale
-in intrigue. He begins to prepare the way for sentiments, to forewarn us
-of events, to combine effects, and we find a theatre at last, the most
-complete, the most life-like, and also the most strange that ever
-existed.
-
-We must follow its formation, and regard the drama when it was formed,
-that is, in the minds of its authors. What was going on in these minds?
-What sorts of ideas were born there, and how were they born? In the
-first place, they see the event, whatever it be, and they see it as it
-is; I mean that they have it within themselves, with its persons and
-details, beautiful and ugly, even dull and grotesque. If it is a trial,
-the judge is there, in their minds, in his place, with his physiognomy
-and his warts; the plaintiff in another place, with his spectacles and
-brief-bag; the accused is opposite, stooping and remorseful; each with
-his friends, cobblers, or lords; then the buzzing crowd behind, all with
-their grinning faces, their bewildered or kindling eyes.[453] It is a
-genuine trial which they imagine, a trial like those they have seen
-before the justice, where they screamed or shouted as witnesses or
-interested parties, with their quibbling terms, their pros and cons, the
-scribblings, the sharp voices of the counsel, the stamping of feet, the
-crowding, the smell of their fellow-men, and so forth. The endless
-myriads of circumstances which accompany and influence every event,
-crowd round that event in their heads, and not merely the externals,
-that is, the visible and picturesque traits, the details of color and
-costume, but also, and chiefly, the internals, that is, the motions of
-anger and joy, the secret tumult of the soul, the ebb and flow of ideas
-and passions which are expressed by the countenance, swell the veins,
-make a man to grind his teeth, to clench his fists, which urge him on or
-restrain him. They see all the details, the tides that sway a man, one
-from without, another from within, one through another, one within
-another, both together without faltering and without ceasing. And what
-is this insight but sympathy, an imitative sympathy, which puts us in
-another's place, which carries over their agitations to our own breasts,
-which makes our life a little world, able to reproduce the great one in
-abstract? Like the characters they imagine, poets and spectators make
-gestures, raise their voices, act. No speech or story can show their
-inner mood, but it is the scenic effect which can manifest it. As some
-men invent a language for their ideas, so these act and mimic them;
-theatrical imitation and figured representation is their genuine speech:
-all other expression, the lyrical song of Æschylus, the reflective
-symbolism of Goethe, the oratorical development of Racine, would be
-impossible for them. Involuntarily, instantaneously, without forecast,
-they cut life into scenes, and carry it piecemeal on the boards; this
-goes so far that often a mere character becomes an actor,[454] playing a
-part within a part; the scenic faculty is the natural form of their
-mind. Beneath the effort of this instinct, all the accessory parts of
-the drama come before the footlights and expand before your eyes. A
-battle has been fought; instead of relating it, they bring it before the
-public, trumpets and drums, pushing crowds, slaughtering combatants. A
-shipwreck happens; straightway the ship is before the spectator, with
-the sailors' oaths, the technical orders of the pilot. Of all the
-details of human life,[455] tavern-racket and statesmen's councils,
-scullion's talk and court processions, domestic tenderness and
-pandering--none is to small or too lofty: these things exist in
-life--let them exist on the stage, each in full, in the rough,
-atrocious, or absurd, just as they are, no matter how. Neither in
-Greece, nor Italy, nor Spain, nor France, has an art been seen which
-tried so boldly to express the soul, and its innermost depths—the
-truth, and the whole truth.
-
-How did they succeed, and what is this new art which tramples on all
-ordinary rules? It is an art for all that, since it is natural; a great
-art, since it embraces more things, and that more deeply than others do,
-like the art of Rembrandt and Rubens; but like theirs, it is a Teutonic
-art, and one whose every step is in contrast with those of classical
-art. What the Greeks and Romans, the originators of the latter, sought
-in everything, was charm and order. Monuments, statues, and paintings,
-the theatre, eloquence and poetry, from Sophocles to Racine, they shaped
-all their work in the same mould, and attained beauty by the same
-method. In the infinite entanglement and complexity of things, they
-grasped a small number of simple ideas, which they embraced in a small
-number of simple representations, so that the vast confused vegetation
-of life is presented to the mind from that time forth, pruned and
-reduced, and perhaps easily embraced at a single glance. A square of
-walls with rows of columns all alike; a symmetrical group of draped or
-undraped forms; a young man standing up and raising one arm; a wounded
-warrior who will not return to the camp, though they beseech him: this,
-in their noblest epoch, was their architecture, their painting, their
-sculpture, and their theatre. No poetry but a few sentiments not very
-intricate, always natural, not toned down, intelligible to all; no
-eloquence but a continuous argument, a limited vocabulary, the loftiest
-ideas brought down to their sensible origin, so that children can
-understand such eloquence and feel such poetry; and in this sense they
-are classical.[456] In the hands of Frenchmen, the last inheritors of
-the simple art, these great legacies of antiquity undergo no change. If
-poetic genius is less, the structure of mind has not altered. Racine
-puts on the stage a sole action, whose details he adjusts, and whose
-course he regulates; no incident, nothing unforeseen, no appendices or
-incongruities; no secondary intrigue. The subordinate parts are effaced;
-at the most four or five principal characters, the fewest possible; the
-rest, reduced to the condition of confidants, take the tone of their
-masters, and merely reply to them. All the scenes are connected, and
-flow insensibly one into the other, and every scene, like the entire
-piece, has its order and progress. The tragedy stands out symmetrically
-and clear in the midst of human life, like a complete and solitary
-temple which limns its regular outline on the luminous azure of the sky,
-in England all is different. All that the French call proportion and
-fitness is wanting; Englishmen do not trouble themselves about them,
-they do not need them. There is no unity; they leap suddenly over twenty
-years, or five hundred leagues. There are twenty scenes in an act--we
-stumble without preparation from one to the other, from tragedy to
-buffoonery; usually it appears as though the action gained no ground;
-the different personages waste their time in conversation, dreaming,
-displaying their character. We were moved, anxious for the issue, and
-here they bring us in quarrelling servants, lovers making poetry. Even
-the dialogue and speeches, which we would think ought particularly to be
-of a regular and continuous flow of engrossing ideas, remain stagnant,
-or are scattered in windings and deviations. At first sight we fancy we
-are not advancing, we do not feel at every phrase that we have made a
-step. There are none of those solid pleadings, none of those conclusive
-discussions, which every moment add reason to reason, objection to
-objection; people might say that the different personages only knew how
-to scold, to repeat themselves, and to mark time. And the disorder is as
-great in general as in particular things. They heap a whole reign, a
-complete war, an entire novel, into a drama; they cut up into scenes an
-English chronicle or an Italian novel: this is all their art; the events
-matter little; whatever they are, they accept them. They have no idea of
-progressive and individual action. Two or three actions connected
-endwise, or entangled one within another, two or three incomplete
-endings badly contrived, and opened up again; no machinery but death,
-scattered right and left and unforeseen: such is the logic of their
-method. The fact is, that our logic, the Latin, fails them. Their mind
-does not march by the smooth and straightforward paths of rhetoric and
-eloquence. It reaches the same end, but by other approaches. It is at
-once more comprehensive and less regular than ours. It demands a
-conception more complete, but less consecutive. It proceeds, not as with
-us, by a line of uniform steps, but by sudden leaps and long pauses. It
-does not rest satisfied with a simple idea drawn from a complex fact,
-but demands the complex fact entire, with its numberless
-particularities, its interminable ramifications. It sees in man not a
-general passion--ambition, anger, or love; not a pure
-quality--happiness, avarice, folly; but a character, that is, the
-imprint, wonderfully complicated, which inheritance, temperament,
-education, calling, age, society, conversation, habits, have stamped on
-every man; an incommunicable and individual imprint, which, once stamped
-in a man, is not found again in any other. It sees in the hero not only
-the hero, but the individual, with his manner of walking, drinking,
-swearing, blowing his nose; with the tone of his voice, whether he is
-thin or fat;[457] and thus plunges to the bottom of things, with every
-look, as by a miner's deep shaft. This sunk, it little cares whether the
-second shaft be two paces or a hundred from the first; enough that it
-reaches the same depth, and serves equally well to display the inner and
-visible layer. Logic is here from beneath, not from above. It is the
-unity of a character which binds the two actions of the personage, as
-the unity of an impression connects the two scenes of a drama. To speak
-exactly, the spectator is like a man whom we should lead along a wall
-pierced at separate intervals with little windows; at every window he
-catches for an instant a glimpse of a new landscape, with its million
-details: the walk over, if he is of Latin race and training, he finds a
-medley of images jostling in his head, and asks for a map that he may
-recollect himself; if he is of German race and training, he perceives as
-a whole, by natural concentration, the wide country which he has only
-seen piecemeal. Such a conception, by the multitude of details which it
-combines, and by the depth of the vistas which it embraces, is a
-half-vision which shakes the whole soul. What its works are about to
-show us is, with what energy, what disdain of contrivance, what
-vehemence of truth, it dares to coin and hammer the human medal; with
-what liberty it is able to reproduce in full prominence worn-out
-characters, and the extreme flights of virgin nature.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION VI.--Furious Passions--Exaggerated Characters
-
-
-Let us consider the different personages which this art, so suited to
-depict real manners, and so apt to paint the living soul, goes in search
-of amidst the real manners and the living souls of its time and country.
-They are of two kinds, as befits the nature of the drama: one which
-produces terror, the other which moves to pity; these graceful and
-feminine, those manly and violent. All the differences of sex, all the
-extremes of life, all the resources of the stage, are embraced in this
-contrast; and if ever there was a complete contrast, it is here.
-
-The reader must study for himself some of these pieces, or he will have
-no idea of the fury into which the stage is hurled: force and transport
-are driven every instant to the point of atrocity, and further still, if
-there be any further. Assassinations, poisonings, tortures, outcries of
-madness and rage; no passion and no suffering are too extreme for their
-energy or their effort. Anger is with them a madness, ambition a frenzy,
-love a delirium. Hippolyto, who has lost his mistress, says, "Were thine
-eyes clear as mine, thou mightst behold her, watching upon yon
-battlements of stars, how I observe them."[458] Aretus, to be avenged on
-Valentinian, poisons him after poisoning himself, and with the
-death-rattle in his throat, is brought to his enemy's side, to give him
-a foretaste of agony. Queen Brunhalt has panders with her on the stage,
-and causes her two sons to slay each other. Death everywhere; at the
-close of every play, all the great people wade in blood: with slaughter
-and butcheries, the stage becomes a field of battle or a
-churchyard.[459] Shall I describe a few of these tragedies? In the "Duke
-of Milan," Francesco, to avenge his sister, who has been seduced, wishes
-to seduce in his turn the Duchess Marcelia, wife of Sforza, the seducer;
-he desires her, he will have her; he says to her, with cries of love and
-rage:
-
-
-"For with this arm I'll swim through seas of blood,
-Or make a bridge, arch'd with the bones of men,
-But I will grasp my aims in you, my dearest,
-Dearest, and best of women!"[460]
-
-
-For he wishes to strike the duke through her, whether she lives or dies,
-if not by dishonor, at least by murder; the first is as good as the
-second, nay, better, for so he will do a greater injury. He calumniates
-her, and the duke, who adores her, kills her; then, being undeceived,
-loses his senses, will not believe she is dead, has the body brought in,
-kneels before it, rages and weeps. He knows now the name of the traitor,
-and at the thought of him he swoons or raves:
-
-
-"I'll follow him to hell, but I will find him,
-And there live a fourth Fury to torment him.
-Then, for this cursed hand and arm that guided
-The wicked steel, I'll have them, joint by joint,
-With burning irons sear'd off, which I will eat,
-I being a vulture fit to taste such carrion."[461]
-
-
-Suddenly he gasps for breath, and falls; Francesco has poisoned him. The
-duke dies, and the murderer is led to torture. There are worse scenes
-than this; to find sentiments strong enough, they go to those which
-change the very nature of man. Massinger puts on the stage a father who
-judges and condemns his daughter, stabbed by her husband; Webster and
-Ford, a son who assassinates his mother; Ford, the incestuous loves of a
-brother and sister.[462] Irresistible love overtakes them; the ancient
-love of Pasiphaë and Myrrha, a kind of madness-like enchantment, and
-beneath which the will entirely gives way. Giovanni says:
-
-
-"Lost! I am lost! My fates have doom'd my death!
-The more I strive, I love; the more I love,
-The less I hope: I see my ruin certain....
-I have even wearied heaven with pray'rs, dried up
-The spring of my continual tears, even starv'd
-My veins with daily fasts: what wit or art
-Could counsel, I have practis'd; but, alas!
-I find all these but dreams, and old men's tales,
-To fright unsteady youth: I am still the same;
-Or I must speak, or burst."[463]
-
-
-What transports follow! what fierce and bitter joys, and how short too,
-how grievous and mingled with anguish, especially for her! She is
-married to another. Read for yourself the admirable and horrible scene
-which represents the wedding night. She is pregnant, and Soranzo, the
-husband, drags her along the ground, with curses, demanding the name of
-her lover:
-
-
-"Come strumpet, famous whore?...
-Harlot, rare, notable harlot,
-That with thy brazen face maintain'st thy sin,
-Was there no man in Parma to be bawd
-To your loose cunning whoredom else but I?
-Must your hot itch and plurisy of lust,
-The heyday of your luxury, be fed
-Up to a surfeit, and could none but I
-Be pick'd out to be cloak to your close tricks,
-Your belly-sports?--Now I must be the dad
-To all that gallimaufry that is stuff'd
-In thy corrupted bastard-bearing womb?
-Say, must I?
-_Annabella._ Beastly man? why, 'tis thy fate.
-I su'd not to thee....
-_S._ Tell me by whom."[464]
-
-
-She gets excited, feels and cares for nothing more, refuses to tell the
-name of her lover, and praises him in the following words. This praise
-in the midst of danger is like a rose she has plucked, and of which the
-odor intoxicates her:
-
-
-"_A._ Soft! 'twas not in my bargain.
-Yet somewhat, sir, to stay your longing stomach
-I am content t' acquaint you with _the_ man,
-The more than man, that got this sprightly boy--
-(For 'tis a boy, and therefore glory, sir,
-Your heir shall be a son.)
-_S._ Damnable monster?
-_A._ Nay, and you will not hear, I'll speak no more.
-_S._ Yes, speak, and speak thy last.
-_A._ A match, a match?...
-You, why you are not worthy once to name
-His name without true worship, or, indeed,
-Unless you kneel'd to hear another name him.
-_S._ What was he call'd?
-_A._ We are not come to that;
-Let it suffice that you shall have the glory
-To father what so brave a father got....
-_S._ Dost thou laugh?
-Come, whore, tell me your lover, or, by truth,
-I'll hew thy flesh to shreds; who is't?"[465]
-
-
-She laughs; the excess of shame and terror has given her courage; she
-insults him, she sings; so like a woman!
-
-
-"_A._ (Sings) _Che morte piu dolce che morire per amore._
-_S._ Thus will I pull thy hair, and thus I'll drag
-Thy lust be-leper'd body through the dust....
-(_Hales her up and down_)
-_A._ Be a gallant hangman....
-I leave revenge behind, and thou shalt feel't....
-(_To Vasquez._) Pish, do not beg for me, I prize my life
-As nothing; if the man will needs be mad,
-Why, let him take it."[466]
-
-
-In the end all is discovered, and the two lovers know they must die. For
-the last time, they see each other in Annabella's chamber, listening to
-the noise of the feast below which shall serve for their funeral feast.
-Giovanni, who has made his resolve like a madman, sees Annabella richly
-dressed, dazzling. He regards her in silence, and remembers the past. He
-weeps and says:
-
-
-"These are the funeral tears,
-Shed on your grave; these furrow'd-up my cheeks
-When first I lov'd and knew not how to woo....
-Give me your hand: how sweetly life doth run
-In these well-colour'd veins! How constantly
-These palms do promise health!...
-Kiss me again, forgive me.... Farewell."[467]
-
-
-He then stabs her, enters the banqueting room, with her heart upon his
-dagger:
-
-
-"Soranzo see this heart, which was thy wife's.
-Thus I exchange it royally for thine."[468]
-
-
-He kills him, and casting himself on the swords of banditti, dies. It
-would seem that tragedy could go no further.
-
-But it did go further; for if these are melodramas, they are sincere,
-composed, not like those of to-day, by Grub Street writers for peaceful
-citizens, but by impassioned men, experienced in tragical arts, for a
-violent, over-fed, melancholy race. From Shakespeare to Milton, Swift,
-Hogarth, no race has been more glutted with coarse expressions and
-horrors, and its poets supply them plentifully; Ford less so than
-Webster; the latter a sombre man, whose thoughts seem incessantly to be
-haunting tombs and charnel-houses. "Places in court," he says, "are but
-like beds in the hospital, where this man's head lies at that man's
-foot, and so lower and lower."[469] Such are his images. No one has
-equalled Webster in creating desperate characters, utter wretches,
-bitter misanthropes,[470] in blackening and blaspheming human life,
-above all, in depicting the shameless depravity and refined ferocity of
-Italian manners.[471] The Duchess of Malfi has secretly married her
-steward Antonio, and her brother learns that she has children; almost
-mad[472] with rage and wounded pride, he remains silent, waiting until
-he knows the name of the father; then he arrives all of a sudden, means
-to kill her, but so that she shall taste the lees of death. She must
-suffer much, but above all, she must not die too quickly! She must
-suffer in mind; these griefs are worse than the body's. He sends
-assassins to kill Antonio, and meanwhile comes to her in the dark, with
-affectionate words; he pretends to be reconciled, and suddenly shows her
-waxen figures, covered with wounds, whom she takes for her slaughtered
-husband and children. She staggers under the blow, and remains in gloom
-without crying out. Then she says:
-
-
-"Good comfortable fellow,
-Persuade a wretch that's broke upon the wheel
-To have all his bones new set; entreat him live
-To be executed again. Who must despatch me?...
-_Bosola._ Come, be of comfort, I will save your life.
-_Duchess._ Indeed, I have not leisure to tend
-So small a business.
-_B._ Now, by my life, I pity you.
-_D._ Thou art a fool, then,
-To waste thy pity on a thing so wretched
-As cannot pity itself. I am full of daggers."[473]
-
-
-Slow words, spoken in a whisper, as in a dream, or as if she were
-speaking of a third person. Her brother sends to her a company of
-madmen, who leap and howl and rave around her in mournful wise; a
-pitiful sight, calculated to unseat the reason; a kind of foretaste of
-hell. She says nothing, looking upon them; her heart is dead, her eyes
-fixed, with vacant stare:
-
-
-"_Cariola._ What think you of, madam?
-_Duchess._ Of nothing:
-When I muse thus, I sleep.
-_C._ Like a madman, with your eyes open?
-_D._ Dost thou think we shall know one another
-In the other world?
-_C._ Yes, out of question.
-_D._ O that it were possible we might
-But hold some two days' conference with the dead!
-From them I should learn somewhat, I am sure,
-I never shall know here. I'll teach thee a miracle;
-I am not mad yet, to my cause of sorrow:
-The heaven o'er my head seems made of molten brass,
-The earth of flaming sulphur, yet I am not mad.
-I am acquainted with sad misery
-As the tann'd galley-slave is with his oar...."[474]
-
-
-In this state, the limbs, like those of one who has been newly executed,
-still quiver, but the sensibility is worn out; the miserable body only
-stirs mechanically; it has suffered too much. At last the gravedigger
-comes with executioners, a coffin, and they sing before her a funeral
-dirge:
-
-
-"_Duchess._ Farewell, Cariola...
-I pray thee, look thou giv'st my little boy
-Some syrup for his cold, and let the girl
-Say her prayers ere she sleep.--Now, what you please:
-What death?
-_Bosola._ Strangling; here are your executioners.
-_D._ I forgive them:
-The apoplexy, catarrh, or cough o' the lungs
-Would do as much as they do.... My body
-Bestow upon my women, will you?...
-Go, tell my brothers, when I am laid out,
-They then may feed in quiet."[475]
-
-
-After the mistress the maid; the latter cries and struggles:
-
-
-"_Cariola._ I will not die; I must not; I am contracted
-To a young gentleman.
-_1st Executioner._ Here's your wedding-ring.
-_C._ If you kill me now,
-I am damn'd. I have not been at confession
-This two years.
-_B._ When?[476]
-_C._ I am quick with child."[477]
-
-
-They strangle her also, and the two children of the duchess. Antonio is
-assassinated; the cardinal and his mistress, the duke and his confidant,
-are poisoned or butchered; and the solemn words of the dying, in the
-midst of this butchery, utter, as from funereal trumpets, a general
-curse upon existence:
-
-
-"We are only like dead walls or vaulted graves,
-That, ruin'd yield no echo. Fare you well....
-O this gloomy world!
-In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness,
-Doth womanish and fearful mankind live!"[478]
-
-"In all our quest of greatness,
-Like wanton boys, whose pastime is their care,
-We follow after bubbles blown in the air.
-Pleasure of life, what is't? only the good hours
-Of an ague; merely a preparative to rest,
-To endure vexation....
-Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust,
-Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust."[479]
-
-
-You will find nothing sadder or greater from the Edda to Lord Byron.
-
-We can well imagine what powerful characters are necessary to sustain
-these terrible dramas. All these personages are ready for extreme acts;
-their resolves break forth like blows of a sword; we follow, meet at
-every change of scene their glowing eyes, wan lips, the starting of
-their muscles, the tension of their whole frame. Their powerful will
-contracts their violent hands, and their accumulated passion breaks out
-in thunderbolts, which tear and ravage all around them, and in their own
-hearts. We know them, the heroes of this tragic population, Iago,
-Richard III, Lady Macbeth, Othello, Coriolanus, Hotspur, full of genius,
-courage, desire, generally mad or criminal, always self-driven to the
-tomb. There are as many around Shakespeare as in his own works. Let me
-exhibit one character more, written by the same dramatist, Webster. No
-one, except Shakespeare, has seen further into the depths of diabolical
-and unchained nature. The "White Devil" is the name which he gives to
-his heroine. His Vittoria Corombona receives as her lover the Duke of
-Brachiano, and at the first interview dreams of the issue:
-
-
-"To pass away the time, I'll tell your grace
-A dream I had last night."
-
-
-It is certainly well related, and still better chosen, of deep meaning
-and very clear import. Her brother Flaminio says, aside:
-
-
-"Excellent devil! she hath taught him in a dream
-To make away his duchess and her husband."[480]
-
-
-So, her husband, Camillo, is strangled, the Duchess poisoned, and
-Vittoria, accused of the two crimes, is brought before the tribunal.
-Step by step, like a soldier brought to bay with his back against a
-wall, she defends herself, refuting and defying advocates and judges,
-incapable of blenching or quailing, clear in mind, ready in word, amid
-insults and proofs, even menaced with death on the scaffold. The
-advocate begins to speak in Latin.
-
-
-"_Vittoria._ Pray my lord, let him speak his usual tongue;
-I'll make no answer else.
-_Francisco de Medicis._ Why, you understand Latin.
-_V._ I do, sir; but amongst this auditory
-Which come to hear my cause, the half or more
-May be ignorant in't."
-
-
-She wants a duel, bare-breasted, in open day, and challenges the
-advocate:
-
-
-"I am at the mark, sir: I'll give aim to you,
-And tell you how near you shoot."
-
-
-She mocks his legal phraseology, insults him, with biting irony:
-
-
-"Surely, my lords, this lawyer here hath swallow'd
-Some pothecaries' bills, or proclamations;
-And now the hard and undigestible words
-Come up, like stones we use give hawks for physic:
-Why, this is Welsh to Latin."
-
-
-Then, to the strongest adjuration of the judges:
-
-
-"To the point,
-Find me but guilty, sever head from body,
-We'll part good friends; I scorn to hold my life
-At yours, or any man's entreaty, sir....
-These are but feigned shadows of my evils:
-Terrify babes, my lord, with painted devils;
-I am past such needless palsy. For your names
-Of whore and murderess, they proceed from you,
-As if a man should spit against the wind;
-The filth returns in's face."[481]
-
-
-Argument for argument: she has a parry for every blow: a parry and a
-thrust:
-
-
-"But take you your course: it seems you have beggar'd me first,
-And now would fain undo me. I have houses.
-Jewels, and a poor remnant of crusadoes:
-Would those would make you charitable!"
-
-
-Then, in a harsher voice:
-
-
-"In faith, my lord, you might go pistol flies;
-The sport would be more noble."
-
-
-They condemn her to be shut up in a house of convertites:
-
-
-"_V._ A house of convertites! What's that?
-_Monticelso._ A house of penitent whores.
-_V._ Do the noblemen in Rome
-Erect it for their wives, that I am sent
-To lodge there?"[482]
-
-
-The sarcasm comes home like a sword-thrust; then another behind it; then
-cries and curses. She will not bend, she will not weep. She goes off
-erect, bitter and more haughty than ever:
-
-
-"I will not weep;
-No, I do scorn to call up one poor tear
-To fawn on your injustice: bear me hence
-Unto this house of what's your mitigating title?
-_Mont._ Of convertites.
-_V._ It shall not be a house of convertites;
-My mind shall make it honester to me
-Than the Pope's palace, and more peaceable
-Than thy soul, though thou art a cardinal."[483]
-
-
-Against her furious lover, who accuses her of unfaithfulness, she is as
-strong as against her judges; she copes with him, casts in his teeth the
-death of his duchess, forces him to beg pardon, to marry her; she will
-play the comedy to the end, at the pistol's mouth, with the
-shamelessness and courage of a courtesan and an empress;[484] snared at
-last, she will be just as brave and more insulting when the dagger's
-point threatens her:
-
-
-"Yes, I shall welcome death
-As princes do some great ambassadors;
-I'll meet thy weapon half way.... 'Twas a manly blow;
-The next thou giv'st, murder some sucking infant;
-And then thou wilt be famous."[485]
-
-
-When a woman unsexes herself, her actions transcend man's, and there is
-nothing which she will not suffer or dare.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION VII.--Female Characters
-
-
-Opposed to this band of tragic characters, with their distorted
-features, brazen fronts, combative attitudes, is a troop of sweet and
-timid figures, pre-eminently tender-hearted, the most graceful and
-loveworthy whom it has been given to man to depict. In Shakespeare you
-will meet them in Miranda, Juliet, Desdemona, Virgilia, Ophelia,
-Cordelia, Imogen; but they abound also in the others; and it is a
-characteristic of the race to have furnished them, as it is of the drama
-to have represented them. By a singular coincidence, the women are more
-of women, the men more of men, here than elsewhere. The two natures go
-each to its extreme: in the one to boldness, the spirit of enterprise
-and resistance, the warlike, imperious, and unpolished character; in the
-other to sweetness, devotion, patience, inextinguishable
-affection[486]--a thing unknown in distant lands, in France especially
-so: a woman in England gives herself without drawing back, and places
-her glory and duty in obedience, forgiveness, adoration, wishing and
-professing only to be melted and absorbed daily deeper and deeper in him
-whom she has freely and forever chosen.[487] It is this, an old German
-instinct, which these great painters of instinct diffuse here, one and
-all: Penthea, Dorothea, in Ford and Greene; Isabella and the Duchess of
-Malfi, in Webster; Bianca, Ordella, Arethusa, Juliana, Euphrasia,
-Amoret, and others, in Beaumont and Fletcher: there are a score of them
-who, under the severest tests and the strongest temptations, display
-this wonderful power of self-abandonment and devotion.[488] The soul, in
-this race, is at once primitive and serious. Women keep their purity
-longer than elsewhere. They lose respect less quickly; weigh worth and
-characters less suddenly: they are less apt to think evil, and to take
-the measure of their husbands. To this day, a great lady, accustomed to
-company, blushes in the presence of an unknown man, and feels bashful
-like a little girl: the blue eyes are dropped, and a child-like shame
-flies to her rosy cheeks. Englishwomen have not the smartness, the
-boldness of ideas, the assurance of bearing, the precocity, which with
-the French make of a young girl, in six months, a woman of intrigue and
-the queen of a drawing-room.[489] Domestic life and obedience are more
-easy to them. More pliant and more sedentary, they are at the same time
-more concentrated and introspective, more disposed to follow the noble
-dream called duty, which is hardly generated in mankind but by silence
-of the senses. They are not tempted by the voluptuous sweetness which in
-southern countries is breathed out in the climate, in the sky, in the
-general spectacle of things; which dissolves every obstacle, which
-causes privation to be looked upon as a snare and virtue as a theory.
-They can rest content with dull sensations, dispense with excitement,
-endure weariness; and in this monotony of a regulated existence, fall
-back upon themselves, obey a pure idea, employ all the strength of their
-hearts in maintaining their moral dignity. Thus supported by innocence
-and conscience, they introduce into love a profound and upright
-sentiment, abjure coquetry, vanity, and flirtation: they do not lie nor
-simper. When they love, they are not tasting a forbidden fruit, but are
-binding themselves for their whole life. Thus understood, love becomes
-almost a holy thing; the spectator no longer wishes to be spiteful or to
-jest; women do not think of their own happiness, but of that of the
-loved ones; they aim not at pleasure, but at devotion. Euphrasia,
-relating her history to Philaster, says:
-
-
-"My father oft would speak
-Your worth and virtue; and, as I did grow
-More and more apprehensive, I did thirst
-To see the man so prais'd; but yet all this
-Was but a maiden longing, to be lost
-As soon as found; till sitting in my window,
-Printing my thoughts in lawn, I saw a god,
-I thought (but it was you), enter our gates.
-My blood flew out, and back again as fast,
-As I had puff'd it forth and suck'd it in
-Like breath: Then was I call'd away in haste
-To entertain you. Never was a man,
-Heav'd from a sheep-cote to a sceptre, rais'd
-So high in thoughts as I: You left a kiss
-Upon these lips then, which I mean to keep
-From you forever. I did hear you talk,
-Far above singing! After you were gone,
-I grew acquainted with my heart, and search'd
-What stirr'd it so: Alas! I found it love;
-Yet far from lust; for could I but have liv'd
-In presence of you, I had had my end."[490]
-
-
-She had disguised herself as a page,[491] followed him, was his servant;
-what greater happiness for a woman than to serve on her knees the man
-she loves? She let him scold her, threaten her with death, wound her.
-
-
-"Blest be that hand!
-It meant me well. Again, for pity's sake!"[492]
-
-
-Do what he will, nothing but words of tenderness and adoration can
-proceed from this heart, these wan lips. Moreover, she takes upon
-herself a crime of which he is accused, contradicts him when he asserts
-his guilt, is ready to die in his place. Still more, she is of use to
-him with the Princess Arethusa, whom he loves; she justifies her rival,
-brings about their marriage, and asks no other thanks but that she may
-serve them both. And strange to say, the princess is not jealous.
-
-
-"_Euphrasia._ Never, Sir, will I
-Marry; it is a thing within my vow:
-But if I may have leave to serve the princess,
-To see the virtues of her lord and her,
-I shall have hope to live.
-_Arethusa._... Come, live with me;
-Live free as I do. She that loves my lord,
-Curst be the wife that hates her!"[493]
-
-
-What notion of love have they in this country? Whence happens it that
-all selfishness, all vanity, all rancor, every little feeling, either
-personal or base, flees at its approach? How comes it that the soul is
-given up wholly, without hesitation, without reserve, and only dreams
-thenceforth of prostrating and annihilating itself, as in the presence
-of a god? Biancha, thinking Cesario ruined, offers herself to him as his
-wife; and learning that he is not so, gives him up straightway, without
-a murmur:
-
-
-"_Biancha._ So dearly I respected both your fame
-And quality, that I would first have perish'd
-In my sick thoughts, than e'er have given consent
-To have undone your fortunes, by inviting
-A marriage with so mean a one as I am:
-I should have died sure, and no creature known
-The sickness that had kill'd me... Now since I know
-There is no difference 'twixt your birth and mine,
-Not much 'twixt our estates (if any be,
-The advantage is on my side) I come willingly
-To tender you the first-fruits of my heart,
-And am content t' accept you for my husband.
-Now when you are at the lowest....
-_Cesario._ Why, Biancha,
-Report has cozen'd thee; I am not fallen
-From my expected honors or possessions,
-Tho' from the hope of birth-right.
-_B._ Are you not?
-Then I am lost again! I have a suit too;
-You'll grant it, if you be a good man....
-Pray do not talk of aught what I have said t'ye....
-... Pity me;
-But never love me more!... I'll pray for you,
-That you may have a virtuous wife, a fair one;
-And when I'm dead...
-_C._ Fy, fy!
-_B._ Think on me sometimes,
-With mercy for this trespass!
-_C._ Let us kiss
-At parting, as at coming!
-_B._ This I have
-As a free dower to a virgin's grave,
-All goodness dwell with you!"[494]
-
-
-Isabella, Brachiano's duchess, is defrayed, insulted by her faithless
-husband; to shield him from the vengeance of her family, she takes upon
-herself the blame of the rupture, purposely plays the shrew, and leaving
-him at peace with his courtesan, dies embracing his picture. Arethusa
-allows herself to be wounded by Philaster, stays the people who would
-hold back the murderer's arm, declares that he has done nothing, that it
-is not he, prays for him, loves him in spite of all, even to the end, as
-though all his acts were sacred, as if he had power of life and death
-over her. Ordella devotes herself, that the king, her husband, may have
-children;[495] she offers herself for a sacrifice, simply, without grand
-words, with her whole heart:
-
-
-"_Ordella._ Let it be what it may then, what it dare,
-I have a mind will hazard it.
-_Thierry._ But, hark you;
-What may that woman merit, makes this blessing?
-_O._ Only her duty, sir.
-_T._ 'Tis terrible!
-_O._ 'Tis so much the more noble.
-_T._ 'Tis full of fearful shadows!
-_O._ So is sleep, sir,
-Or anything that's merely ours, and mortal;
-We were begotten gods else: but those fears,
-Feeling but once the fires of noble thoughts,
-Fly, like the shapes of clouds we form, to nothing.
-_T._ Suppose it death!
-_O._ I do.
-_T._ And endless parting
-With all we can call ours, with all our sweetness,
-With youth, strength, pleasure, people, time, nay reason!
-For in the silent grave, no conversation,
-No joyful tread of friends, no voice of lovers,
-No careful father's counsel, nothing's heard,
-Nor nothing is, but all oblivion,
-Dust and endless darkness: and dare you, woman,
-Desire this place?
-_O._ 'Tis of all sleeps the sweetest:
-Children begin it to us, strong men seek it,
-And kings from height of all their painted glories
-Fall, like spent exhalations, to this centre....
-_T._ Then you can suffer?
-_O._ As willingly as say it.
-_T._ Martell, a wonder!
-Here is a woman that dares die.--Yet, tell me,
-Are you a wife?
-_O._ I am, sir.
-_T._ And have children?--
-She sighs and weeps!
-_O._ Oh, none, sir.
-_T._ Dare you venture
-For a poor barren praise you ne'er shall hear,
-To part with these sweet hopes?
-_O._ With all but Heaven."[496]
-
-
-Is not this prodigious? Can you understand how one human being can thus
-be separated from herself, forget and lose herself in another? They do
-so lose themselves, as in an abyss. When they love in vain and without
-hope, neither reason nor life resist; they languish, grow mad, die like
-Ophelia. Aspasia, forlorn,
-
-
-"Walks discontented, with her watry eyes
-Bent on the earth. The unfrequented woods
-Are her delight; and when she sees a bank
-Stuck full of flowers, she with a sigh will tell
-Her servants what a pretty place it were
-To bury lovers in; and make her maids
-Pluck 'em, and strew her over like a corse.
-She carries with her an infectious grief,
-That strikes all her beholders; she will sing
-The mournful'st things that ever ear hath heard,
-And sigh and sing again; and when the rest
-Of our young ladies, in their wanton blood,
-Tell mirthful tales in course, that fill the room
-With laughter, she will with so sad a look
-Bring forth a story of the silent death
-Of some forsaken virgin, which her grief
-Will put in such a phrase, that, ere she end,
-She'll send them weeping one by one away."[497]
-
-
-Like a spectre about a tomb, she wanders forever about the remains of
-her destroyed love, languishes, grows pale, swoons, ends by causing
-herself to be killed. Sadder still are those who, from duty or
-submission, allow themselves to be married while their heart belongs to
-another. They are not resigned, do not recover, like Pauline in
-"Polyeucte." They are crushed to death. Penthea, in Ford's "Broken
-Heart," is as upright, but not so strong, as Pauline; she is the English
-wife, not the Roman, stoical and calm.[498] She despairs sweetly,
-silently, and pines to death. In her innermost heart she holds herself
-married to him to whom she has pledged her soul: it is the marriage of
-the heart which in her eyes is alone genuine; the other is only
-disguised adultery. In marrying Bassanes she has sinned against Orgilus;
-moral infidelity is worse than legal infidelity, and thenceforth she is
-fallen in her own eyes. She says to her brother:
-
-
-"Pray, kill me....
-Kill me, pray; nay, will ye
-_Ithocles._ How does thy lord esteem thee?
-_P._ Such an one
-As only you have made me; a faith-breaker,
-A spotted whore; forgive me, I am one--
-In act, not in desires, the gods must witness....
-For she's that wife to Orgilus, and lives
-In known adultery with Bassanes,
-Is, at the best, a whore. Wilt kill me now?...
-The handmaid to the wages
-Of country toil, drinks the untroubled streams
-With leaping kids, and with the bleating lambs,
-And so allays her thirst secure; whiles I
-Quench my hot sighs with fleetings of my tears."[499]
-
-
-With tragic greatness, from the height of her incurable grief, she
-throws her gaze on life:
-
-
-"My glass of life, sweet princess, hath few minutes
-Remaining to run down; the sands are spent;
-For by an inward messenger I feel
-The summons of departure short and certain.... Glories
-Of human greatness are but pleasing dreams,
-And shadows soon decaying; on the stage
-Of my mortality, my youth hath acted
-Some scenes of vanity, drawn out at length
-By varied pleasures, sweeten'd in the mixture,
-But tragical in issue... That remedy
-Must be a winding-sheet, a fold of lead,
-And some untrod-on corner in the earth."[500]
-
-
-There is no revolt, no bitterness; she affectionately assists her
-brother who has caused her unhappiness; she tries to enable him to win
-the woman he loves; feminine kindness and sweetness overflow in her in
-the depths of her despair. Love here is not despotic, passionate, as in
-southern climes. It is only deep and sad; the source of life is dried
-up, that is all; she lives no longer, because she cannot; all go by
-degrees--health, reason, soul; in the end she becomes mad, and behold
-her dishevelled, with wide staring eyes, with words that can hardly find
-utterance. For ten days she has not slept, and will not eat any more;
-and the same fatal thought continually afflicts her heart, amidst vague
-dreams of maternal tenderness and happiness brought to nought, which
-come and go in her mind like phantoms:
-
-
-"Sure, if we were all sirens, we would sing pitifully,
-And 'twere a comely music, when in parts
-One sung another's knell; the turtle sighs
-When he hath lost his mate; and yet some say
-He must be dead first: 'tis a fine deceit
-To pass away in a dream! indeed, I've slept
-With mine eyes open, a great while. No falsehood
-Equals a broken faith; there's not a hair
-Sticks on my head, but, like a leaden plummet,
-It sinks me to the grave: I must creep thither;
-The journey is not long....
-Since I was first a wife, I might have been
-Mother to many pretty prattling babes;
-They would have smiled when I smiled; and, for certain,
-I should have cried when they cried:--truly, brother,
-My father would have pick'd me out a husband,
-And then my little ones had been no bastards;
-But 'tis too late for me to marry now,
-I'm past child-bearing; Tis not my fault....
-Spare your hand;
-Believe me, I'll not hurt it....
-Complain not though I wring it hard: I'll kiss it,
-Oh, 'tis a fine soft palm!--hark, in thine ear;
-Like whom do I look, prithee?--nay, no whispering,
-Goodness! we had been happy; too much happiness
-Will make folk proud, they say....
-There is no peace left for a ravish'd wife,
-Widow'd by lawless marriage; to all memory
-Penthea's, poor Penthea's name is strumpeted....
-Forgive me; Oh! I faint."[501]
-
-
-She dies, imploring that some gentle voice may sing her a plaintive air,
-a farewell ditty, a sweet funeral song. I know nothing in the drama more
-pure and touching.
-
-When we find a constitution of soul so new, and capable of such great
-effects, it behooves us to look at the bodies. Man's extreme actions
-come not from his will, but his nature.[502] In order to understand the
-great tensions of the whole machine, we must look upon the whole--I mean
-man's temperament, the manner in which his blood flows, his nerves
-quiver, his muscles act, the moral interprets the physical, and human
-qualities have their root in the animal species. Consider then the
-species in this case--namely, the race; for the sisters of Shakespeare's
-Ophelia and Virgilia, Goethe's Clara and Margaret, Otway's Belvidera,
-Richardson's Pamela, constitute a race by themselves, soft and fair,
-with blue eyes, lily whiteness, blushing, of timid delicacy, serious
-sweetness, framed to yield, bend, cling. Their poets feel it clearly
-when they bring them on the stage; they surround them with the poetry
-which becomes them, the murmur of streams, the pendant willow-tresses,
-the frail and humid flowers of the country, so like themselves:
-
-
-"The flower, that's like thy face, pale primrose, nor
-The azure harebell, like thy veins; no, nor
-The leaf of eglantine, whom not to slander,
-Out-sweeten'd not thy breath."[503]
-
-
-They make them sweet, like the south wind, which with its gentle breath
-causes the violets to bend their heads, abashed at the slightest
-reproach, already half bowed down by a tender and dreamy
-melancholy.[504] Philaster, speaking of Euphrasia, whom he takes to be a
-page, and who has disguised herself in order to be near him, says:
-
-
-"Hunting the buck,
-I found him sitting by a fountain-side,
-Of which he borrow'd some to quench his thirst,
-And paid the nymph again as much in tears.
-A garland lay him by, made by himself,
-Of many several flowers, bred in the bay,
-Stuck in that mystic order, that the rareness
-Delighted me: But ever when he turn'd
-His tender eyes upon 'em, he would weep,
-As if he meant to make 'em grow again.
-Seeing such pretty helpless innocence
-Dwell in his face, I asked him all his story.
-He told me, that his parents gentle dy'd,
-Leaving him to the mercy of the fields,
-Which gave him roots; and of the crystal springs,
-Which did not stop their courses; and the sun,
-Which still, he thank'd him, yielded him his light.
-Then he took up his garland, and did shew
-What every flower, as country people hold,
-Did signify; and how all, order'd thus,
-Express'd his grief: And, to my thoughts, did read
-The prettiest lecture of his country art
-That could be wish'd.... I gladly entertain'd him,
-Who was as glad to follow; and have got
-The trustiest, loving'st, and the gentlest boy
-That ever master kept."[505]
-
-
-The idyl is self-produced among these human flowers: the dramatic action
-is stopped before the angelic sweetness of their tenderness and modesty.
-Sometimes even the idyl is born com plete and pure, and the whole
-theatre is occupied by a sentimental and poetical kind of opera. There
-are two or three such plays in Shakespeare; in rude Jonson, "The Sad
-Shepherd"; in Fletcher, "The Faithful Shepherdess." Ridiculous titles
-nowadays, for they remind us of the interminable platitudes of d'Urfé,
-or the affected conceits of Florian; charming titles, if we note the
-sincere and overflowing poetry which they contain. Amoret, the faithful
-shepherdess, lives in an imaginary country, full of old gods, yet
-English, like the dewy verdant landscapes in which Rubens sets his
-nymphs dancing:
-
-
-"Thro' yon same bending plain
-That flings his arms down to the main,
-And thro' these thick woods, have I run,
-Whose bottom never kiss'd the sun
-Since the lusty spring began."...
-
-"For to that holy wood is consecrate
-A virtuous well, about whose flow'ry banks
-The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds,
-By the pale moon-shine, dipping oftentimes
-Their stolen children, so to make them free
-From dying flesh, and dull mortality...[506]
-
-"See the dew-drops, how they kiss
-Ev'ry little flower that is;
-Hanging on their velvet heads,
-Like a rope of christal beads.
-See the heavy clouds low falling,
-And bright Hesperus down calling
-The dead Night from underground."[507]
-
-
-These are the plants and the aspects of the ever fresh English country,
-now enveloped in a pale diaphanous mist, now glistening under the
-absorbing sun, teeming with grasses so full of sap, so delicate, that in
-the midst of their most brilliant splendor and their most luxuriant
-life, we feel that to-morrow will wither them. There, on a summer night,
-the young men and girls, after their custom,[508] go to gather flowers
-and plight their troth. Amoret and Perigot are together; Amoret,
-
-
-"Fairer far
-Than the chaste blushing morn, or that fair star
-That guides the wand'ring seaman thro' the deep,"
-
-
-modest like a virgin, and tender as a wife, says to Perigot:
-
-
-"I do believe thee: 'Tis as hard for me
-To think thee false, and harder, than for thee
-To hold me foul."[509]
-
-
-Strongly as she is tried, her heart, once given, never draws back.
-Perigot, deceived, driven to despair, persuaded that she is unchaste,
-strikes her with his sword, and casts her bleeding to the ground. The
-"sullen shepherd" throws her into a well; but the god lets fall "a drop
-from his watery locks" into the wound; the chaste flesh closes at the
-touch of the divine water, and the maiden, recovering, goes once more in
-search of him she loves:
-
-
-"Speak, if thou be here,
-My Perigot! Thy Amoret, thy dear,
-Calls on thy loved name.... 'Tis thy friend,
-Thy Amoret; come hither, to give end
-To these consumings. Look up, gentle boy,
-I have forgot those pains and dear annoy
-I suffer'd for thy sake, and am content
-To be thy love again. Why hast thou rent
-Those curled locks, where I have often hung
-Ribbons, and damask-roses, and have flung
-Waters distill'd to make thee fresh and gay,
-Sweeter than nosegays on a bridal day?
-Why dost thou cross thine arms, and hang thy face
-Down to thy bosom, letting fall apace,
-From those two little Heav'ns, upon the ground,
-Show'rs of more price, more orient, and more round,
-Than those that hang upon the moon's pale brow?
-Cease these complainings, shepherd! I am now
-The same I ever was, as kind and free,
-And can forgive before you ask of me:
-Indeed, I can and will."[510]
-
-
-Who could resist her sweet and sad smile? Still deceived, Perigot wounds
-her again; she falls, but without anger.
-
-
-"So this work hath end!
-Farewell, and live! be constant to thy friend
-That loves thee next."[511]
-
-
-A nymph cures her, and at last Perigot, disabused, comes and throws
-himself on his knees before her. She stretches out her arms; in spite of
-all that he had done, she was not changed:
-
-
-"I am thy love,
-Thy Amoret, for evermore thy love!
-Strike once more on my naked breast, I'll prove
-As constant still. Oh, could'st thou love me yet,
-How soon could I my former griefs forget!"[512]
-
-
-Such are the touching and poetical figures which these poets introduce
-in their dramas, or in connection with their dramas, amidst murders,
-assassinations, the clash of swords, the howl of slaughter, striving
-against the raging men who adore or torment them, like them carried to
-excess, transported by their tenderness as the others by their violence;
-it is a complete exposition, as well as a perfect opposition of the
-feminine instinct ending in excessive self-abandonment, and of masculine
-harshness ending in murderous inflexibility. Thus built up and thus
-provided, the drama of the age was enabled to bring out the inner depths
-of man, and to set in motion the most powerful human emotions; to bring
-upon the stage Hamlet and Lear, Ophelia and Cordelia, the death of
-Desdemona and the butcheries of Macbeth.
-
-
-
-
-[Footnote 393: "The very age and body of the time, his form and
-pressure."--Shakespeare.]
-
-[Footnote 394: Ben Jonson, "Every Man in his Humour"; "Cynthia's Revels."]
-
-[Footnote 395: "The Defence of Poesie," ed. 1629, p. 562.]
-
-[Footnote 396: "Winter's Tale, Cymbeline, Julius Cæsar."]
-
-[Footnote 397: Strype, in his "Annals of the Reformation" (1571),
-says: "Many now were wholly departed from the communion of the church,
-and came no more to hear divine service in their parish churches, nor
-received the holy sacrament, according to the laws of the realm."
-Richard Baxter, in his "Life," published in 1696, says: "We lived in
-a country that had but little preaching at all.... In the village
-where I lived the Reader read the Common Prayer briefly; and the rest
-of the day, even till dark night almost, except Eating time, was spent
-in Dancing under a Maypole ana a great tree, not far from my father's
-door, where all the Town did meet together. And though one of my father's
-own Tenants was the piper, he could not restrain him nor break the
-sport. So that we could not read the Scripture in our family without
-the great disturbance of the Taber and Pipe and noise in the street."]
-
-[Footnote 398: Ben Jonson, "Every Man in his Humour."]
-
-[Footnote 399: "The Chronicle" of John Hardyng (1436), ed. H. Ellis,
-1812, Preface.]
-
-[Footnote 400: Act IV. sc. 2 and 4. See also the character of Calypso
-in Massinger; Putana in Ford; Protalyce in Beaumont and Fletcher.]
-
-[Footnote 401: Middleton, "Dutch Courtezan."]
-
-[Footnote 402: Commission given by Henry VIII to the Earl of Hertford,
-1544: "You are there to put all to fire and sword; to burn Edinburgh
-town, and to raze and deface it, when you have sacked it, and gotten
-what you can out of it.... Do what you can out of hand, and without
-long tarrying, to beat down and overthrow the castle, sack Holyrood-House,
-and as many towns and villages about Edinburgh as ye conveniently can;
-sack Leith, and burn and subvert it, and all the rest, putting man,
-woman, and child to fire and sword, without exception, when any resistance
-shall be made against you; and this done, pass over to the Fife land,
-and extend like extremities and destructions in all towns and villages
-whereunto ye may reach conveniently, not forgetting amongst all the rest,
-so to spoil and turn upside down the cardinal's town of St. Andrew's,
-as the upper stone may be the nether, and not one stick stand by another,
-sparing no creature alive within the same, specially such as either in
-friendship or blood be allied to the cardinal. This journey shall
-succeed most to his majesty's honour."]
-
-[Footnote 403: Laneham, "A Goodly Relief."]
-
-[Footnote 404: February 13, 1587. Nathan Drake, "Shakspeare and his
-Times," II. p. 165. See also the same work for all these details.]
-
-[Footnote 405: Essex, when struck by the queen, put his hand on the
-hilt of his sword.]
-
-[Footnote 406: A page in the "Mariage de Figaro," a comedy by
-Beaumarchais.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 407: The great Chancellor Burleigh often wept, so harshly
-was he used by Elizabeth.]
-
-[Footnote 408: Compare, to understand this character, the parts assigned
-to James Harlowe by Richardson, old Osborne by Thackeray, Sir Giles
-Overreach by Massinger, and Manly by Wycherley.]
-
-[Footnote 409: Hentzner's "Travels"; Benvenuto Cellini. See passim,
-the costumes printed in Venice and Germany: "Belicosissimi." Froude,
-I. pp. 19, 52.]
-
-[Footnote 410: This is not so true of the English now, if it was in
-the sixteenth century, as it is of Continental nations. The French
-lycées are far more military in character than English schools.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 411: Froude's "History of England," vols. I. II. III.]
-
-[Footnote 412: "When his heart was torn out he uttered a deep
-groan."--"Execution of Parry;" Strype, III. 251.]
-
-[Footnote 413: Holinshed, "Chronicles of England," III. p. 793.]
-
-[Footnote 414: Holinshed, "Chronicles of England," III, p. 797.]
-
-[Footnote 415: Under Henry IV and Henry V.]
-
-[Footnote 416: Froude, I. 15.]
-
-[Footnote 417: In 1547.]
-
-[Footnote 418: In 1596.]
-
-[Footnote 419: Shakespeare, "Measure for Measure," Act III. I. See
-also "The Tempest, Hamlet, Macbeth."]
-
-[Footnote 420: "We are such stuff
-As dreams are made on, and our little life
-Is rounded with a sleep."--"Tempest," IV. I.]
-
-[Footnote 421: Beaumont and Fletcher, "Thierry and Theodoret," Act IV. I.]
-
-[Footnote 422: Αιεηονήθη δ’ ὲν παισὶ καὶ περὶ παλαΐστραν καὶ μουσικὴν,
-ὲξ ὼν ὰμφοτέοων ὲστέφανώθη... Φιλαθηναιότατος καὶ θεοφιλής.--Scholiast.]
-
-[Footnote 423: Except Beaumont and Fletcher.]
-
-[Footnote 424: Hartley Coleridge, in his "Introduction to the
-Dramatic Works of Massinger and Ford," says of Massinger's father:
-"We are not certified of the situation which he held in the noble
-house-hold (Earl of Pembroke), but we may be sure that it was neither
-menial nor mean. Service in those days was not derogatory to gentle
-birth."--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 425: See, amongst others, "The Woman Killed with Kindness," by
-Heywood. Mrs. Frankfort, so upright of heart, accepts Wendoll at his
-first offer. Sir Francis Acton, at the sight of her whom he wishes to
-dishonor, and whom he hates, falls "into an ecstasy," and dreams of
-nothing save marriage. Compare the sudden transport of Juliet, Romeo,
-Macbeth, Miranda, etc.; the counsel of Prospero to Fernando, when he
-leaves him alone for a moment with Miranda.]
-
-[Footnote 426: Compare "La Vie de Bohême" and "Les Nuits d'Hiver," by
-Murger; "Confession d'un Enfant du Siècle," by A. de Musset.]
-
-[Footnote 427: The hero of one of Alfred de Musset's poems.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 428: Burnt in 1589.]
-
-[Footnote 429: I have used Marlowe's Works, ed. Dyce, 3 vols. 1850.
-Append, I. vol. 3.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 430: See especially "Titus Andronicus," attributed to
-Shakespeare: there are parricides, mothers whom they cause to
-eat their children, a young girl who appears on the stage violated,
-with her tongue and hands cut off.]
-
-[Footnote 431: The chief character in Schiller's "Robbers," a
-virtuous brigand and redresser of wrongs.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 432: For in a field, whose superficies
-Is cover'd with a liquid purple veil,
-And sprinkled with the brains of slaughter'd men.
-My royal chair of state shall be advanc'd;
-And he that means to place himself therein,
-Must armed wade up to the chin in blood....
-And I would strive to swim through pools of blood,
-Or make a bridge of murder'd carcasses,
-Whose arches should be fram'd with bones of Turks
-Ere I would lose the title of a king.--"Tamburlaine," part II. I. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 433: The editor of Marlowe's Works, Pickering, 1826, says in
-his Introduction: "Both the matter and style of 'Tamburlaine,' however,
-differ materially from Marlowe's other compositions, and doubts have
-more than once been suggested as to whether the play was properly
-assigned to him. We think that Marlowe did not write it." Dyce is of
-a contrary opinion.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 434: Marlowe's "The Jew of Malta," II. p. 275 et passim.]
-
-[Footnote 435: Ibid. IV. p. 311.]
-
-[Footnote 436: Ibid. III. p. 291.]
-
-[Footnote 437: Ibid. IV. p. 313.]
-
-[Footnote 438: Up to this time, in England, poisoners were cast into
-a boiling caldron.]
-
-[Footnote 439: In the Museum of Ghent.]
-
-[Footnote 440: See in the "Jew of Malta" the seduction of Ithamore,
-by Bellamira, a rough, but truly admirable picture.]
-
-[Footnote 441: Nothing could be falser than the hesitation and arguments
-of Schiller's "William Tell"; for a contrast, see Goethe's "Goetz von
-Berlichingen." In 1377, Wycliff pleaded in St. Paul's before the bishop
-of London, and that raised a quarrel. The Duke of Lancaster, Wycliff's
-protector, "threatened to drag the bishop out of the church by the hair";
-and next day the furious crowd sacked the duke's palace.]
-
-[Footnote 442: Marlowe, "Edward the Second," I. p. 173.]
-
-[Footnote 443: Ibid. p. 186.]
-
-[Footnote 444: Ibid. p. 188.]
-
-[Footnote 445: Marlowe, "Edward the Second," last scene, p. 288.]
-
-[Footnote 446: Marlowe, "Doctor Faustus," I. p. 9 et passim.]
-
-[Footnote 447: Marlowe, "Doctor Faustus," I. pp. 22, 29.]
-
-[Footnote 448: Ibid. p. 43.]
-
-[Footnote 449: Marlowe, "Doctor Faustus," I. p. 37.]
-
-[Footnote 450: Ibid. p. 75.]
-
-[Footnote 451: Ibid. p. 78.]
-
-[Footnote 452: Marlowe "Doctor Faustus," I. p. 80.]
-
-[Footnote 453: See the trial of Vittoria Corombona, of Virginia in
-Webster, of Coriolanus and Julius Cæsar in Shakespeare.]
-
-[Footnote 454: Falstaff in Shakespeare; the queen in "London," by
-Greene and Decker; Rosalind in Shakespeare.]
-
-[Footnote 455: In Webster's "Duchess of Malfi" there is an admirable
-accouchement scene.]
-
-[Footnote 456: This is, in fact, the English view of the French mind,
-which is doubtless a refinement, many times refined, of the classical
-spirit. But M. Taine has seemingly not taken into account such
-products as the Medea on the one hand, and the works of Aristophanes
-and the Latin sensualists on the other.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 457: See Hamlet, Coriolanus, Hotspur. The queen in
-"Hamlet" (v. 2) says: "He (Hamlet) is fat, and scant of breath."]
-
-[Footnote 458: Middleton, "The Honest Whore," part I. IV. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 459: Beaumont and Fletcher, "Valentinian, Thierry and
-Theodoret." See Massinger's "Picture," which resembles Musset's
-"Barberine." Its crudity, the extraordinary repulsive energy, will
-show the difference of the two ages.]
-
-[Footnote 460: Massinger's Works, ed. H. Coleridge, 1859, "Duke of
-Milan," II. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 461: Ibid. V. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 462: Massinger, "The Fatal Dowry"; Webster and Ford, "A
-late Murther of the Sonne upon the Mother" (a play not extant); "'Tis
-pity she's a Whore." See also Ford's "Broken Heart," with its sublime
-scenes of agony and madness.]
-
-[Footnote 463: Ford's Works, ed. H. Coleridge, 1859.]
-
-[Footnote 464: Ibid. IV. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 465: Ford's Works, ed. H. Coleridge, 1859, IV. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 466: Ibid. IV. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 467: Ibid. V. 5.]
-
-[Footnote 468: Ibid. V. 6.]
-
-[Footnote 469: Webster's Works, ed. Dyce, 1857, "Duchess of Malfi," I. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 470: The characters of Bosola, Flaminio.]
-
-[Footnote 471: See Stendhal, "Chronicles of Italy, The Cenci, The
-Duchess of Palliano," and all the biographies of the time; of the Borgias,
-of Bianca Capello, of Vittoria Corombona.]
-
-[Footnote 472: Ferdinand, one of the brothers, says (II. 5):
-"I would have their bodies
-Burnt in a coal-pit with the ventage stopp'd,
-That their curs'd smoke might not ascend to heaven;
-Or dip the sheets they lie in in pitch or sulphur,
-Wrap them in't, and then light them as a match;
-Or else to boil their bastard to a cullis,
-And give't his lecherous father to renew
-The sin of his back."]
-
-[Footnote 473: "Duchess of Malfi," IV. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 474: Ibid. IV. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 475: "Duchess of Malfi," IV. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 476: "When," an exclamation of impatience, equivalent to
-"make haste," very common among the old English dramatists.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 477: "Duchess of Malfi," IV. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 478: Ibid. V. 5.]
-
-[Footnote 479: Ibid. V. 4 and 5.]
-
-[Footnote 480: "Vittoria Corombona," I. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 481: Webster Dyce, 1857, "Vittoria Corombona," p. 20, 21.]
-
-[Footnote 482: Ibid. III. 2, p. 23.]
-
-[Footnote 483: "Vittoria Corombona," III. 2, p. 24.]
-
-[Footnote 484: Compare Mme. Marneffe in Balzac's "La Cousine Bette."]
-
-[Footnote 485: "Vittoria Corombona," V. last scene, pp. 49, 50.]
-
-[Footnote 486: Hence the happiness and strength of the marriage tie. In
-France it is but an association of two comrades, tolerably alike and
-tolerably equal, which gives rise to endless disturbance and bickering.]
-
-[Footnote 487: See the representation of this character throughout English
-and German literature. Stendhal, an acute observer, saturated with
-Italian and French morals and ideas, is astonished at this phenomenon.
-He understands nothing of this kind of devotion, "this slavery which
-English husbands have had the wit to impose on their wives under the
-name of duty." These are "the manners of a seraglio." See also "Corinne,"
-by Mme de Staël.]
-
-[Footnote 488: A perfect woman already: meek and patient.--Heywood.]
-
-[Footnote 489: See, by way of contrast, all Molière's women, so French;
-even Agnes and little Louison.]
-
-[Footnote 490: Beaumont and Fletcher, Works, ed. G. Colman, 3 vols. 1811,
-"Philaster", V.]
-
-[Footnote 491: Like Kaled in Byron's "Lara."]
-
-[Footnote 492: "Philaster," IV.]
-
-[Footnote 493: Ibid. V.]
-
-[Footnote 494: Beaumont and Fletcher, "The Fair Maid of the Inn," IV.]
-
-[Footnote 495: Beaumont and Fletcher, "Thierry and Theodoret, The Maid's
-Tragedy, Philaster." See also the part of Lucina in "Valentinian."]
-
-[Footnote 496: "Thierry and Theodoret," IV, 1.]
-
-[Footnote 497: Beaumont and Fletcher, "The Maid's Tragedy," I.]
-
-[Footnote 498: Pauline says, in Corneille's "Polyeucte" (III. 2):
-"Avant qu'abandonner mon âme à mes douleurs,
-Il me faut essayer la force de mes pleurs;
-En qualité de femme ou de fille, j'espère
-Qu'ils vaincront un époux, ou fléchiront un père.
-Que si sur l'un et l'autre ils manquent de pouvoir,
-Je ne prendrai conseil que de mon désespoir.
-Apprends-moi cependant ce qu'ils ont fait au temple."
-
-We could not find a more reasonably and reasoning woman. So with Éliante,
-and Henrietta in Molière.]
-
-[Footnote 499: Ford's "Broken Heart," III. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 500: Ibid. 5.]
-
-[Footnote 501: Ford's "Broken Heart," IV. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 502: Schopenhauer, "Metaphysics of Love and Death." Swift
-also said that death and love are the two things in which man is
-fundamentally irrational. In fact, it is the species and the instinct
-which are displayed in them, not the will and the individual.]
-
-[Footnote 503: "Cymbeline," IV. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 504: The death of Ophelia, the obsequies of Imogen.]
-
-[Footnote 505: "Philaster," I.]
-
-[Footnote 506: Beaumont and Fletcher, "The Faithful Shepherdess," I.]
-
-[Footnote 507: Ibid, II.]
-
-[Footnote 508: See the description in Nathan Drake, "Shakspeare and his
-Times."]
-
-[Footnote 509: Beaumont and Fletcher, "The Faithful Shepherdess," I.]
-
-[Footnote 510: Ibid. IV.]
-
-[Footnote 511: Ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 512: Beaumont and Fletcher, "The Faithful Shepherdess," V.
-Compare, as an illustration of the contrast of races, the Italian
-pastorals, Tasso's "Aminta," Guarini's "Il Pastor fido," etc.]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER THIRD
-
-
-Ben Jonson
-
-
-SECTION I.--The Man--His Life
-
-
-When a new civilization brings a new art to light, there are about a
-dozen men of talent who partly express the general idea, surrounding one
-or two men of genius who express it thoroughly. Guillen de Castro, Perez
-de Montalvan, Tirzo de Molina, Ruiz de Alarcon, Agustin Moreto,
-surrounding Calderon and Lope de Vega; Crayer, Van Oost, Rombouts, Van
-Thulden, Vandyke, Honthorst, surrounding Rubens; Ford, Marlowe,
-Massinger, Webster, Beaumont, Fletcher, surrounding Shakespeare and Ben
-Jonson. The first constitute the chorus, the others are the leading men.
-They sing the same piece together, and at times the chorist is equal to
-the solo artist; but only at times. Thus, in the dramas which I have
-just referred to, the poet occasionally reaches the summit of his art,
-hits upon a complete character, a burst of sublime passion; then he
-falls back, gropes amid qualified successes, rough sketches, feeble
-imitations, and at last takes refuge in the tricks of his trade. It is
-not in him, but in great men like Ben Jonson and Shakespeare, that we
-must look for the attainment of his idea and the fulness of his art.
-"Numerous were the wit-combats," says Fuller, "betwixt him (Shakespeare)
-and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an
-English man-of-war. Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher
-in learning; solid, but slow in his performances. Shakespeare, with the
-English man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn
-with all tides, tack about and take advantage of all winds, by the
-quickness of his wit and invention."[513] Such was Ben Jonson physically
-and morally, and his portraits do but confirm this just and animated
-outline: a vigorous, heavy, and uncouth person; a broad and long face,
-early disfigured by scurvy, a square jaw, large cheeks; his animal
-organs as much developed as those of his intellect: the sour aspect of a
-man in a passion or on the verge of a passion; to which add the body of
-an athlete, about forty years of age, "mountain belly, ungracious gait."
-Such was the outside, and the inside is like it. He was a genuine
-Englishman, big and coarsely framed, energetic, combative, proud, often
-morose, and prone to strange splenetic imaginations. He told Drummond
-that for a whole night he imagined "that he saw the Carthaginians and
-Romans fighting on his great toe."[514] Not that he is melancholic by
-nature; on the contrary, he loves to escape from himself by free and
-noisy, unbridled merriment, by copious and varied converse, assisted by
-good Canary wine, which he imbibes, and which ends by becoming a
-necessity to him. These great phlegmatic butchers' frames require a
-generous liquor to give them a tone, and to supply the place of the sun
-which they lack. Expansive moreover, hospitable, even lavish, with a
-frank imprudent spirit,[515] making him forget himself wholly before
-Drummond, his Scotch host, an over-rigid and malicious pedant, who has
-marred his ideas and vilified his character.[516] What we know of his
-life is in harmony with his person; he suffered much, fought much, dared
-much. He was studying at Cambridge, when his stepfather, a bricklayer,
-recalled him, and taught him to use the trowel. He ran away, enlisted as
-a common soldier, and served in the English army, at that time engaged
-against the Spaniards in the Low Countries, killed and despoiled a man
-in single combat, "in the view of both armies." He was a man of bodily
-action, and he exercised his limbs in early life.[517] On his return to
-England, at the age of nineteen, he went on the stage for his
-livelihood, and occupied himself also in touching up dramas. Having been
-challenged, he fought a duel, was seriously wounded, but killed his
-adversary; for this he was cast into prison, and found himself "nigh the
-gallows." A Catholic priest visited and converted him; quitting his
-prison penniless, at twenty years of age, he married. At last, four
-years later, his first successful play was acted. Children came, he must
-earn bread for them; and he was not inclined to follow the beaten track
-to the end, being persuaded that a fine philosophy--a special nobleness
-and dignity—ought to be introduced into comedy--that it was necessary
-to follow the example of the ancients, to imitate their severity and
-their accuracy, to be above the theatrical racket and the common
-improbabilities in which the vulgar delighted. He openly proclaimed his
-intention in his prefaces, sharply railed at his rivals, proudly set
-forth on the stage[518] his doctrines, his morality, his character. He
-thus made bitter enemies, who defamed him outrageously and before their
-audiences, whom he exasperated by the violence of his satires, and
-against whom he struggled without intermission to the end. He did more,
-he constituted himself a judge of the public corruption, sharply
-attacked the reigning vices, "fearing no strumpet's drugs, nor ruffian's
-stab."[519] He treated his hearers like schoolboys, and spoke to them
-always like a censor and a master. If necessary, he ventured further.
-His companions, Marston and Chapman, had been committed to prison for
-some reflections on the Scotch in one of their pieces called
-"Eastward-Hoe"; and the report spreading that they were in danger of
-losing their noses and ears, Jonson, who had written part of the piece,
-voluntarily surrendered himself a prisoner, and obtained their pardon.
-On his return, amid the feasting and rejoicing, his mother showed him a
-violent poison which she intended to put into his drink, to save him
-from the execution of the sentence; and "to show that she was not a
-coward," adds Jonson, "she had resolved to drink first." We see that in
-vigorous actions he found examples in his own family. Toward the end of
-his life, money was scarce with him; he was liberal, improvident; his
-pockets always had holes in them, and his hand was always ready to give;
-though he had written a vast quantity, he was still obliged to write in
-order to live. Paralysis came on, his scurvy became worse, dropsy set
-in. He could not leave his room, nor walk without assistance. His last
-plays did not succeed. In the epilogue to the "New Inn" he says:
-
-
-"If you expect more than you had to-night,
-The maker is sick and sad....
-All that his faint and fait'ring tongue doth crave,
-Is, that you not impute it to his brain,
-That's yet unhurt, altho, set round with pain,
-It cannot long hold out."
-
-
-His enemies brutally insulted him:
-
-
-"Thy Pegasus...
-He had bequeathed his belly unto thee,
-To hold that little learning which is fled
-Into thy guts from out thy emptye head."
-
-
-Inigo Jones, his colleague, deprived him of the patronage of the court.
-He was obliged to beg a supply of money from the Lord Treasurer, then
-from the Earl of Newcastle:
-
-
-"Disease, the enemy, and his engineers,
-Want, with the rest of his concealed compeers,
-Have cast a trench about me, now five years....
-The muse not peeps out, one of hundred days;
-But lies blocked up and straitened, narrowed in,
-Fixed to the bed and boards, unlike to win
-Health, or scarce breath, as she had never been."[520]
-
-
-His wife and children were dead; he lived alone, forsaken, waited on by
-an old woman. Thus almost always sadly and miserably is dragged out and
-ends the last act of the human comedy. After so many years, after so
-many sustained efforts, amid so much glory and genius, we find a poor
-shattered body, drivelling and suffering, between a servant and a
-priest.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION II.--His Freedom and Precision of Style
-
-
-This is the life of a combatant, bravely endured, worthy of the
-seventeenth century by its crosses and its energy; courage and force
-abounded throughout. Few writers have labored more, and more
-conscientiously; his knowledge was vast, and in this age of eminent
-scholars he was one of the best classics of his time, as deep as he was
-accurate and thorough, having studied the most minute details and
-understood the true spirit of ancient life. It was not enough for him to
-have stored his mind from the best writers, to have their whole works
-continually in his mind, to scatter his pages whether he would or no,
-with recollections of them. He dug into the orators, critics,
-scholiasts, grammarians, and compilers of inferior rank; he picked up
-stray fragments; he took characters, jokes, refinements, from Athenæus,
-Libanius, Philostratus. He had so well entered into and digested the
-Greek and Latin ideas, that they were incorporated with his own. They
-enter into his speech without incongruity; they spring forth in him as
-vigorous as at their first birth; he originates even when he remembers.
-On every subject he had this thirst for knowledge, and this gift of
-mastering knowledge. He knew alchemy when he wrote the "Alchemist." He
-is familiar with alembics, retorts, receivers, as if he had passed his
-life seeking after the philosopher's stone. He explains incineration,
-calcination, imbibition, rectification, reverberation, as well as
-Agrippa and Paracelsus. If he speaks of cosmetics,[521] he brings out a
-shopful of them; we might make out of his plays a dictionary of the
-oaths and costumes of courtiers; he seems to have a specialty in all
-branches. A still greater proof of his force is, that his learning in no
-wise mars his vigor; heavy as is the mass with which he loads himself,
-he carries it without stooping. This wonderful mass of reading and
-observation suddenly begins to move, and falls like a mountain on the
-overwhelmed reader. We must hear Sir Epicure Mammon unfold the vision of
-splendors and debauchery, in which he means to plunge, when he has
-learned to make gold. The refined and unchecked impurities of the Roman
-decadence, the splendid obscenities of Heliogabalus, the gigantic
-fancies of luxury and lewdness, tables of gold spread with foreign
-dainties, draughts of dissolved pearls, nature devastated to provide a
-single dish, the many crimes committed by sensuality against nature,
-reason, and justice, the delight in defying and outraging law--all
-these images pass before the eyes with the dash of a torrent and the
-force of a great river. Phrase follows phrase without intermission,
-ideas and facts crowd into the dialogue to paint a situation, to give
-clearness to a character, produced from this deep memory, directed by
-this solid logic, launched by this powerful reflection. It is a pleasure
-to see him advance weighted with so many observations and recollections,
-loaded with technical details and learned reminiscences, without
-deviation or pause, a genuine literary Leviathan, like the war elephants
-which used to bear towers, men, weapons, machines, on their backs, and
-ran as swiftly with their freight as a nimble steed.
-
-In the great dash of this heavy attempt, he finds a path which suits
-him. He has his style. Classical erudition and education made him a
-classic, and he writes like his Greek models and his Roman masters. The
-more we study the Latin races and literatures in contrast with the
-Teutonic, the more fully we become convinced that the proper and
-distinctive gift of the first is the art of development; that is, of
-drawing up ideas in continuous rows, according to the rules of rhetoric
-and eloquence, by studied transitions, with regular progress, without
-shock or bounds. Jonson received from his acquaintance with the ancients
-the habit of decomposing ideas, unfolding them bit by bit in natural
-order, making himself understood and believed. From the first thought to
-the final conclusion, he conducts the reader by a continuous and uniform
-ascent. The track never fails with him as with Shakespeare. He does not
-advance like the rest by abrupt intuitions, but by consecutive
-deductions; we can walk with him without need of bounding, and we are
-continually kept upon the straight path: antithesis of words unfolds
-antithesis of thoughts; symmetrical phrases guide the mind through
-difficult ideas; they are like barriers set on either side of the road
-to prevent our falling into the ditch. We do not meet on our way
-extraordinary, sudden, gorgeous images, which might dazzle or delay us;
-we travel on, enlightened by moderate and sustained metaphors. Jonson
-has all the methods of Latin art; even, when he wishes it, especially on
-Latin subjects, he has the last and most erudite, the brilliant
-conciseness of Seneca and Lucan, the squared, equipoised, filed-off
-antithesis, the most happy and studied artifices of oratorical
-architecture.[522] Other poets are nearly visionaries; Jonson is almost
-a logician.
-
-Hence his talent, his successes, and his faults: if he has a better
-style and better plots than the others, he is not, like them, a creator
-of souls. He is too much of a theorist, too preoccupied by rules. His
-argumentative habits spoil him when he seeks to shape and motion
-complete and living men. No one is capable of fashioning these unless he
-possesses, like Shakespeare, the imagination of a seer. The human being
-is so complex that the logician who perceives his different elements in
-succession can hardly study them all, much less gather them all in one
-flash, so as to produce the dramatic response or action in which they
-are concentrated and which should manifest them. To discover such
-actions and responses, we need a kind of inspiration and fever. Then the
-mind works as in a dream. The characters move within the poet, almost
-involuntarily: he waits for them to speak, he remains motionless,
-hearing their voices, wholly wrapt in contemplation, in order that he
-may not disturb the inner drama which they are about to act in his soul.
-That is his artifice: to let them alone. He is quite astonished at their
-discourse; as he observes them he forgets that it is he who invents
-them. Their mood, character, education, disposition of mind, situation,
-attitude, and actions, form within him so well-connected a whole, and so
-readily unite into palpable and solid beings, that he dares not
-attribute to his reflection or reasoning a creation so vast and speedy.
-Beings are organized in him as in nature; that is, of themselves, and by
-a force which the combinations of his art could not replace.[523] Jonson
-has nothing wherewith to replace it but these combinations of art. He
-chooses a general idea--cunning, folly, severity--and makes a person out
-of it. This person is called Crites, Asper, Sordido, Deliro, Pecunia,
-Subtil, and the transparent name indicates the logical process which
-produced it. The poet took an abstract quality, and putting together all
-the actions to which it may give rise, trots it out on the stage in a
-man's dress. His characters, like those of La Bruyère and Theophrastus,
-were hammered out of solid deductions. Now it is a vice selected from
-the catalogue of moral philosophy, sensuality thirsting for gold: this
-perverse double inclination becomes a personage, Sir Epicure Mammon;
-before the alchemist, before the famulus, before his friend, before his
-mistress, in public or alone, all his words denote a greed of pleasure
-and of gold, and they express nothing more.[524] Now it is a mania
-gathered from the old sophists, a babbling with horror of noise; this
-form of mental pathology becomes a personage, Morose; the poet has the
-air of a doctor who has undertaken to record exactly all the desires of
-speech, all the necessities of silence, and to record nothing else. Now
-he picks out a ridicule, an affectation, a species of folly, from the
-manners of the dandies and the courtiers; a mode of swearing, an
-extravagant style, a habit of gesticulating, or any other oddity
-contracted by vanity or fashion. The hero whom he covers with these
-eccentricities is overloaded by them. He disappears beneath his enormous
-trappings; he drags them about with him everywhere; he cannot get rid of
-them for an instant. We no longer see the man under the dress; he is
-like a manikin, oppressed under a cloak, too heavy for him. Sometimes,
-doubtless, his habits of geometrical construction produce personages
-almost life-like. Bobadil, the grave boaster; Captain Tucca, the begging
-bully, inventive buffoon, ridiculous talker; Amorphus the traveller, a
-pedantic doctor of good manners, laden with eccentric phrases, create as
-much illusion as we can wish; but it is because they are flitting
-comicalities and low characters. It is not necessary for a poet to study
-such creatures; it is enough that he discovers in them three or four
-leading features; it is of little consequence if they always present
-themselves with the same attitudes; they produce laughter, like the
-Countess d'Escarbagans or any of the Fâcheux in Molière; we want
-nothing else of them. On the contrary, the others weary and repel us.
-They are stage-masks, not living figures. Having acquired a fixed
-expression, they persist to the end of the piece in their unvarying
-grimace or their eternal frown. A man is not an abstract passion. He
-stamps the vices and virtues which he possesses with his individual
-mark. These vices and virtues receive, on entering into him, a bent and
-form which they have not in others. No one is unmixed sensuality. Take a
-thousand sensualists, and you will find a thousand different modes of
-sensuality; for there are a thousand paths, a thousand circumstances and
-degrees, in sensuality. If Jonson wanted to make Sir Epicure Mammon a
-real being, he should have given him the kind of disposition, the
-species of education, the manner of imagination, which produce
-sensuality. When we wish to construct a man, we must dig down to the
-foundations of mankind; that is, we must define to ourselves the
-structure of his bodily machine, and the primitive gait of his mind.
-Jonson has not dug sufficiently deep, and his constructions are
-incomplete; he has built on the surface, and he has built but a single
-story. He was not acquainted with the whole man and he ignored man's
-basis; he put on the stage and gave a representation of moral treatises,
-fragments of history, scraps of satire; he did not stamp new beings on
-the imagination of mankind.
-
-He possesses all other gifts, and in particular the classical; first of
-all, the talent for composition. For the first time we see a connected,
-well-contrived plot, a complete intrigue, with its beginning, middle,
-and end; subordinate actions well arranged, well combined; an interest
-which grows and never flags; a leading truth which all the events tend
-to demonstrate; a ruling idea which all the characters unite to
-illustrate; in short, an art like that which Molière and Racine were
-about to apply and teach. He does not, like Shakespeare, take a novel
-from Greene, a chronicle from Holinshed, a life from Plutarch, such as
-they are, to cut them into scenes, irrespective of likelihood,
-indifferent as to order and unity, caring only to set up men, at times
-wandering into poetic reveries, at need finishing up the piece abruptly
-with a recognition or a butchery. He governs himself and his characters;
-he wills and he knows all that they do, and all that he does. But beyond
-his habits of Latin regularity, he possesses the great faculty of his
-age and race--the sentiment of nature and existence, the exact knowledge
-of precise detail, the power in frankly and boldly handling frank
-passions. This gift is not wanting in any writer of the time; they do
-not fear words that are true, shocking, and striking details of the
-bedchamber or medical study; the prudery of modern England and the
-refinement of monarchical France veil not the nudity of their figures,
-or dim the coloring of their pictures. They live freely, amply, amidst
-living things; they see the ins and outs of lust raging without any
-feeling of shame, hypocrisy, or palliation; and they exhibit it as they
-see it, Jonson as boldly as the rest, occasionally more boldly than the
-rest, strengthened as he is by the vigor and ruggedness of his athletic
-temperament, by the extraordinary exactness and abundance of his
-observations and his knowledge. Add also his moral loftiness, his
-asperity, his powerful chiding wrath, exasperated and bitter against
-vice, his will strengthened by pride and by conscience:
-
-
-"With an armed and resolved hand,
-I'll strip the ragged follies of the time
-Naked as at their birth... and with a whip of steel,
-Print wounding lashes in their iron ribs.
-I fear no mood stampt in a private brow,
-When I am pleas'd t' unmask a public vice.
-I fear no strumpet's drugs, nor ruffian's stab,
-Should I detect their hateful luxuries;"[525]
-
-
-above all, a scorn of base compliance, an open disdain for
-
-
-"Those jaded wits
-That run a broken pace for common hire,"[526]
-
-
-an enthusiasm, or deep love of
-
-
-"A happy muse,
-Borne on the wings of her immortal thought,
-That kicks at earth with a disdainful heel,
-And beats at heaven gates with her bright hoofs."[527]
-
-
-Such are the energies which he brought to the drama and to comedy; they
-were great enough to insure him a high and separate position.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION III.--The Dramas Catiline and Sejanus
-
-
-For whatever Jonson undertakes, whatever be his faults, haughtiness,
-rough-handling, predilection for morality and the past, antiquarian and
-censorious instincts, he is never little or dull. It signifies nothing
-that in his latinized tragedies, "Sejanus, Catiline," he is fettered
-by the worship of the old worn models of the Roman decadence; nothing
-that he plays the scholar, manufactures Ciceronian harangues, hauls in
-choruses imitated from Seneca, holds forth in the style of Lucan and the
-rhetors of the empire; he more than once attains a genuine accent;
-through his pedantry, heaviness, literary adoration of the ancients,
-nature forces its way; he lights, at his first attempt, on the
-crudities, horrors, gigantic lewdness, shameless depravity of imperial
-Rome; he takes in hand and sets in motion the lusts and ferocities, the
-passions of courtesans and princesses, the daring of assassins and of
-great men, which produced Messalina, Agrippina, Catiline, Tiberius.[528]
-In the Rome which he places before us we go boldly and straight to the
-end; justice and pity oppose no barriers. Amid these customs of victors
-and slaves, human nature is upset, corruption and villainy are held as
-proofs of insight and energy. Observe how, in "Sejanus," assassination
-is plotted and carried out with marvellous coolness. Livia discusses
-with Sejanus the methods of poisoning her husband, in a clear style,
-without circumlocution, as if the subject were how to gain a lawsuit or
-to serve up a dinner. There are no equivocations, no hesitation, no
-remorse in the Rome of Tiberius. Glory and virtue consist in power;
-scruples are for base minds; the mark of a lofty heart is to desire all
-and to dare all. Macro says rightly:
-
-
-"Men's fortune there is virtue; reason their will;
-Their license, law; and their observance, skill.
-Occasion is their foil; conscience, their stain;
-Profit, their lustre; and what else is, vain."[529]
-
-
-Sejanus addresses Livia thus:
-
-
-"Royal lady,...
-Yet, now I see your wisdom, judgment, strength,
-Quickness, and will, to apprehend the means
-To your own good and greatness, I protest
-Myself through rarified, and turn'd all aflame
-In your affection."[530]
-
-
-These are the loves of the wolf and his mate; he praises her for being
-so ready to kill. And observe in one moment the morals of a prostitute
-appear behind the manners of the poisoner. Sejanus goes out, and
-immediately, like a courtesan, Livia turns to her physician, saying:
-
-
-"How do I look to-day?
-_Eudemus._ Excellent clear, believe it. This same fucus
-Was well laid on.
-_Livia._ Methinks 'tis here not white.
-_E._ Lend me your scarlet, lady. 'Tis the sun
-Hath giv'n some little taint unto the ceruse,
-You should have us'd of the white oil I gave you.
-Sejanus, for your love! His very name
-Commandeth above Cupid or his shafts....
-[_Paints her cheeks._]
-"'Tis now well, lady, you should
-Use of the dentrifice I prescrib'd you too,
-To clear your teeth, and the prepar'd pomatum,
-To smooth the skin. A lady cannot be
-Too curious of her form, that still would hold
-The heart of such a person, made her captive,
-As you have his: who, to endear him more
-In your clear eye, hath put away his wife...'"
-Fair Apicata, and made spacious room
-To your new pleasures.
-_L._ Have not we return'd
-That with our hate to Drusus, and discovery
-Of all his counsels?...
-_E._ When will you take some physic, lady?
-_L._ When
-I shall, Eudemus: but let Drusus' drug
-Be first prepar'd.
-_E._ Were Lygdus made, that's done....
-I'll send you a perfume, first to resolve
-And procure sweat, and then prepare a bath
-To cleanse and clear the cutis; against when
-I'll have an excellent new fucus made
-Resistive 'gainst the sun, the rain or wind,
-Which you shall lay on with a breath or oil,
-As you best like, and last some fourteen hours.
-This change came timely, lady, for your health."[531]
-
-
-He ends by congratulating her on her approaching change of husbands;
-Drusus was injuring her complexion; Sejanus is far preferable; a
-physiological and practical conclusion. The Roman apothecary kept on the
-same shelf his medicine-chest, his chest of cosmetics, and his box of
-poisons.[532]
-
-After this we find one after another all the scenes of Roman life
-unfolded, the bargain of murder, the comedy of justice, the
-shamelessness of flattery, the anguish and vacillation of the Senate.
-When Sejanus wishes to buy a conscience, he questions, jokes, plays
-round the offer he is about to make, throws it out as if in pleasantry,
-so as to be able to withdraw it, if need be; tempt, on the crudities,
-horrors, gigantic lewdness, shameless depravity of imperial Rome; he
-takes in hand and sets in motion the lusts and ferocities, the passions
-of courtesans and princesses, the daring of assassins and of great men,
-which produced Messalina, Agrippina, Catiline, Tiberius.[533] In the
-Rome which he places before us we go boldly and straight to the end;
-justice and pity oppose no barriers. Amid these customs of victors and
-slaves, human nature is upset, corruption and villainy are held as
-proofs of insight and energy. Observe how, in "Sejanus," assassination
-is plotted and carried out with marvellous coolness. Livia discusses
-with Sejanus the methods of poisoning her husband, in a clear style,
-without circumlocution, as if the subject were how to gain a lawsuit or
-to serve up a dinner. There are no equivocations, no hesitation, no
-remorse in the Rome of Tiberius. Glory and virtue consist in power;
-scruples are for base minds; the mark of a lofty heart is to desire all
-and to dare all. Macro says rightly:
-
-
-"Men's fortune there is virtue; reason their will;
-Their license, law; and their observance, skill.
-Occasion is their foil; conscience, their stain;
-Profit, their lustre; and what else is, vain."[534]
-
-
-Sejanus addresses Livia thus:
-
-
-"Royal lady,...
-Yet, now I see your wisdom, judgment, strength,
-Quickness, and will, to apprehend the means
-To your own good and greatness, I protest
-Myself through rarified, and turn'd all aflame
-In your affection."[535]
-
-
-These are the loves of the wolf and his mate; he praises her for being
-so ready to kill. And observe in one moment the morals of a prostitute
-appear behind the manners of the poisoner. Sejanus goes out, and
-immediately, like a courtesan, Livia turns to her physician, saying:
-
-
-"How do I look to-day?
-_Eudemus._ Excellent clear, believe it. This same fucus
-Was well laid on.
-_Livia._ Methinks 'tis here not white.
-_E._ Lend me your scarlet, lady. 'Tis the sun
-Hath giv'n some little taint unto the ceruse,
-You should have us'd of the white oil I gave you.
-Sejanus, for your love! His very name
-Commandeth above Cupid or his shafts...."
-[_Paints her cheeks._]
-"'Tis now well, lady, you should
-Use of the dentrifice I prescrib'd you too,
-To clear your teeth, and the prepar'd pomatum,
-To smooth the skin. A lady cannot be
-Too curious of her form, that still would hold
-The heart of such a person, made her captive,
-As you have his: who, to endear him more
-In your clear eye, hath put away his wife...
-Fair Apicata, and made spacious room
-To your new pleasures.
-_L._ Have not we return'd
-That with our hate to Drusus, and discovery
-Of all his counsels?...
-_E._ When will you take some physic, lady?
-_L._ When
-I shall, Eudemus: but let Drusus' drug
-Be first prepar'd.
-_E._ Were Lygdus made, that's done....
-I'll send you a perfume, first to resolve
-And procure sweat, and then prepare a bath
-To cleanse and clear the cutis; against when
-I'll have an excellent new fucus made
-Resistive 'gainst the sun, the rain or wind,
-Which you shall lay on with a breath or oil,
-As you best like, and last some fourteen hours.
-This change came timely, lady, for your health."[536]
-
-
-He ends by congratulating her on her approaching change of husbands;
-Drusus was injuring her complexion; Sejanus is far preferable; a
-physiological and practical conclusion. The Roman apothecary kept on the
-same shelf his medicine-chest, his chest of cosmetics, and his box of
-poisons.[537]
-
-After this we find one after another all the scenes of Roman life
-unfolded, the bargain of murder, the comedy of justice, the
-shamelessness of flattery, the anguish and vacillation of the Senate.
-When Sejanus wishes to buy a conscience, he questions, jokes, plays
-round the offer he is about to make, throws it out as if in pleasantry,
-so as to be able to withdraw it, if need be; then, when the intelligent
-look of the rascal, whom he is trafficking with, shows that he is
-understood:
-
-
-"Protest not,
-Thy looks are vows to me....
-Thou art a man, made to make consuls. Go."[538]
-
-
-Elsewhere, the senator Latiaris in his own house storms before his
-friend Sabinus against tyranny, openly expresses a desire for liberty,
-provoking him to speak. Then two spies who were hid "between the roof
-and ceiling," cast themselves on Sabinus, crying, "Treason to Cæsar!"
-and drag him, with his face covered, before the tribunal, thence to "be
-thrown upon the Gemonies."[539] So, when the Senate is assembled,
-Tiberius has chosen beforehand the accusers of Silius, and their parts
-distributed to them. They mumble in a corner, whilst aloud is heard, in
-the emperor's presence:
-
-
-"Cæsar,
-Live long and happy, great and royal Cæsar;
-The gods preserve thee and thy modesty,
-Thy wisdom and thy innocence....
-Guard
-His meekness, Jove, his piety, his care,
-His bounty."[540]
-
-
-Then the herald cites the accused; Varro, the consul, pronounces the
-indictment; After hurls upon them his bloodthirsty eloquence: the
-senators get excited; we see laid bare, as in Tacitus and Juvenal, the
-depths of Roman servility, hypocrisy, insensibility, the venomous craft
-of Tiberius. At last, after so many others, the turn of Sejanus comes.
-The fathers anxiously assemble in the temple of Apollo; for some days
-past Tiberius has seemed to be trying to contradict himself; one day he
-appoints the friends of his favorite to high places, and the next day
-sets his enemies in eminent positions. The senators mark the face of
-Sejanus, and know not what to anticipate; Sejanus is troubled, then
-after a moment's cringing is more arrogant than ever. The plots are
-confused, the rumors contradictory. Macro alone is in the confidence of
-Tiberius, and soldiers are seen, drawn up at the porch of the temple,
-ready to enter at the slightest commotion. The formula of convocation is
-read, and the council marks the names of those who do not respond to the
-summons; then Regulus addresses them, and announces that Cæsar
-
-
-Propounds to this grave Senate, the bestowing
-Upon the man he loves, honor'd Sejanus,
-The tribunitial dignity and power:
-Here are his letters, signed with his signet.
-What pleaseth now the Fathers to be done?
-"_Senators._ Read, read them, open, publicly read them.
-_Cotta._ Cæsar hath honor'd his own greatness much
-In thinking of this act.
-_Trio._	It was a thought
-Happy, and worthy Cæsar.
-_Latiaris._ And	the lord
-As worthy it, on whom it is directed!
-_Haterius._ Most worthy!
-_Sanquinius._ Rome did never boast the virtue
-That could give envy bounds, but his: Sejanus--
-_1st Sen._ Honor'd and noble!
-_2d Sen._ Good and great Sejanus!
-_Prœcones._ Silence!"[541]
-
-
-Tiberius's letter is read. First, long, obscure, and vague phrases,
-mingled with indirect protestations and accusations, foreboding
-something and revealing nothing. Suddenly comes an insinuation against
-Sejanus. The fathers are alarmed, but the next line reassures them. A
-word or two further on the same insinuation is repeated with greater
-exactness. "Some there be that would interpret this his public severity
-to be particular ambition; and that, under a pretext of service to us,
-he doth but remove his own lets: alleging the strengths he hath made to
-himself, by the praetorian soldiers, by his faction in court and Senate,
-by the offices he holds himself, and confers on others, his popularity
-and dependents, his urging (and almost driving) us to this our unwilling
-retirement, and lastly, his aspiring to be our son-in-law." The fathers
-rise: "This is strange!" Their eager eyes are fixed on the letter, on
-Sejanus, who perspires and grows pale; their thoughts are busy with
-conjectures, and the words of the letter fall one by one, amidst a
-sepulchral silence, caught up as they fall with all devouring and
-attentive eagerness. The senators anxiously weigh the value of these
-shifty expressions, fearing to compromise themselves with the favorite
-or with the prince, all feeling that they must understand, if they value
-their lives.
-
-
-"'_Your wisdoms, conscript fathers, are able to examine, and censure
-these suggestions. But, were they left to our absolving voice, we durst
-pronounce them, as we think them, most malicious._'
-_Senator._ O, he has restor'd all; list.
-_Prœco. 'Yet are they offered to be averr'd, and on the lives of the
-informers._'"[542]
-
-
-At this word the letter becomes menacing. Those next Sejanus forsake
-him. "Sit farther.... Let's remove!" The heavy Sanquinius leaps panting
-over the benches. The soldiers come in; then Macro. And now, at last,
-the letter orders the arrest of Sejanus.
-
-
-"_Regulus._ Take him hence;
-And all the gods guard Cæsar!
-_Trio._ Take him hence.
-_Haterius._ Hence.
-_Cotta._ To the dungeon with him.
-_Sanquinius._ He deserves it.
-_Senator._ Crown all our doors with bays.
-_San._ And let an ox,
-With gilded horns and garlands, straight be led
-Unto the Capitol.
-_Hat._ And sacrific'd
-To Jove, for Cæsar's safety.
-_Tri._ All our gods
-Be present still to Cæsar!...
-_Cot._ Let all the traitor's titles be defac'd.
-_Tri._ His images and statues be pull'd down....
-_Sen._ Liberty, liberty, liberty! Lead on,
-And praise to Macro that hath saved Rome!"[543]
-
-
-It is the baying of a furious pack of hounds, let loose at last on him,
-under whose hand they had crouched, and who had for a long time beaten
-and bruised them. Jonson discovered in his own energetic soul the energy
-of these Roman passions; and the clearness of his mind, added to his
-profound knowledge, powerless to construct characters, furnished him
-with general ideas and striking incidents, which suffice to depict
-manners.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION IV.--Comedies
-
-
-Moreover, it was to this that he turned his talent. Nearly all his work
-consists of comedies, not sentimental and fanciful as Shakespeare's, but
-imitative and satirical, written to represent and correct follies and
-vices. He introduced a new model; he had a doctrine; his masters were
-Terence and Plautus. He observes the unity of time and place, almost
-exactly. He ridicules the authors who, in the same play,
-
-
-"Make a child now swaddled, to proceed
-Man, and then shoot up, in one beard and weed,
-Past threescore years; or, with three rusty swords,
-And help of some few foot and half-foot words,
-Fight over York and Lancaster's long jars....
-He rather prays you will be pleas'd to see."[544]
-
-
-He wishes to represent on the stage
-
-
-"One such to-day, as other plays shou'd be;
-Where neither chorus wafts you o'er the seas,
-Nor creaking throne comes down the boys to please:
-Nor nimble squib is seen to' make afeard
-The gentlewomen....
-But deeds, and language, such as men do use....
-You, that have so grac'd monsters, may like men."[545]
-
-
-Men, as we see them in the streets, with their whims and humors--
-
-
-"When some one peculiar quality
-Doth so possess a man, that it doth draw
-All his affects, his spirits, and his powers
-In their conductions, all to run one way,
-This may be truly said to be a humor."[546]
-
-
-It is these humors which he exposes to the light, not with the artist's
-curiosity, but with the moralist's hate:
-
-
-"I will scourge those apes,
-And to these courteous eyes oppose a mirror,
-As large as is the stage whereon we act;
-Where they shall see the time's deformity
-Anatomized in every nerve, and sinew,
-With constant courage, and contempt of fear....
-My strict hand
-Was made to seize on vice, and with a gripe
-Squeeze out the humour of such spongy souls,
-As lick up every idle vanity."[547]
-
-
-Doubtless a determination so strong and decided does violence to the
-dramatic spirit. Jonson's comedies are not rarely harsh; his characters
-are too grotesque, laboriously constructed, mere automatons; the poet
-thought less of producing living beings than of scotching a vice; the
-scenes get arranged, or are confused together in a mechanical manner; we
-see the process, we feel the satirical intention throughout; delicate
-and easy-flowing imitation is absent, as well as the graceful fancy
-which abounds in Shakespeare. But if Jonson comes across harsh passions,
-visibly evil and vile, he will derive from his energy and wrath the
-talent to render them odious and visible, and will produce a "Volpone,"
-a sublime work, the sharpest picture of the manners of the age, in which
-is displayed the full brightness of evil lusts, in which lewdness,
-cruelty, love of gold, shamelessness of vice, display a sinister yet
-splendid poetry, worthy of one of Titian's bacchanals.[548] All this
-makes itself apparent in the first scene, when Volpone says:
-
-
-"Good morning to the day; and next, my gold!----
-Open the shrine, that I may see my saint."
-
-
-This saint is his piles of gold, jewels, precious plate:
-
-
-"Hail the world's soul, and mine!... O thou son of Sol,
-But brighter than thy father, let me kiss,
-With adoration, thee, and every relick
-Of sacred treasure in this blessed room."[549]
-
-
-Presently after, the dwarf, the eunuch, and the hermaphrodite of the
-house sing a sort of pagan and fantastic interlude; they chant in
-strange verses the metamorphoses of the hermaphrodite, who was first the
-soul of Pythagoras. We are at Venice, in the palace of the magnifico
-Volpone. These deformed creatures, the splendor of gold, this strange
-and poetical buffoonery, carry the thought immediately to the sensual
-city, queen of vices and of arts.
-
-The rich Volpone lives like an ancient Greek or Roman. Childless and
-without relatives, playing the invalid, he makes all his flatterers hope
-to be his heir, receives their gifts,
-
-
-"Letting the cherry knock against their lips,
-And draw it by their mouths, and back again."[550]
-
-
-Glad to have their gold, but still more glad to deceive them, artistic
-in wickedness as in avarice, and just as pleased to look at a contortion
-of suffering as at the sparkle of a ruby.
-
-The advocate Voltore arrives, bearing a "huge piece of plate." Volpone
-throws himself on his bed, wraps himself in furs, heaps up his pillows,
-and coughs as if at the point of death:
-
-
-"_Volpone._ I thank you, signior Voltore,
-Where is the plate? mine eyes are bad.... Your love
-Hath taste in this, and shall not be unanswer'd....
-I cannot now last long.... I fell me going--
-Uh, uh, uh, uh!"[551]
-
-
-He closes his eyes, as though exhausted:
-
-
-"_Voltore._ Am I inscrib'd his heir for certain?
-_Mosca_ (_Volpone's Parasite_).	Are you!
-I do beseech you, sir, you will vouchsafe
-To write me in your family. All my hopes
-Depend upon your worship: I am lost,
-Except the rising sun do shine on me.
-_Volt._ It shall both shine and warm thee, Mosca.
-_M._ Sir,
-I am man, that hath not done your love
-All the worst offices: here I wear your keys,
-See all your coffers and your caskets lock'd,
-Keep the poor inventory of your jewels,
-Your plate and monies; am your steward, sir,
-Husband your goods here.
-_Volt._ But am I sole heir?
-_M._ Without a partner, sir; confirm'd this morning
-The wax is warm yet, and the ink scarce dry
-Upon the parchment.
-_Volt._ Happy, happy me!
-By what good chance, sweet Mosca?
-_M._ Your desert, sir;
-I know no second cause."[552]
-
-
-And he details the abundance of the wealth in which Voltore is about to
-revel, the gold which is to pour upon him, the opulence which is to flow
-in his house as a river:
-
-
-"When will you have your inventory brought, sir?
-Or see a copy of the will?"
-
-
-The imagination is fed with precise words, precise details. Thus, one
-after another, the would-be heirs come like beasts of prey. The second
-who arrives is an old miser, Corbaccio, deaf, "impotent," almost dying,
-who, nevertheless, hopes to survive Volpone. To make more sure of it, he
-would fain have Mosca give his master a narcotic. He has it about him,
-this excellent opiate: he has had it prepared under his own eyes, he
-suggests it. His joy on finding Volpone more ill than himself is
-bitterly humorous:
-
-
-"_Corbaccio._ How does your patron?...
-_Mosca._ His mouth
-Is ever gaping, and his eyelids hang.
-_C._ Good.
-_M._ A freezing numbness stiffens all his joints,
-And makes the color of his flesh like lead.
-_C._ 'Tis good.
-_M._ His pulse beats slow, and dull.
-_C._ Good symptoms still.
-_M._ And from his brain--
-_C._ I conceive you; good.
-_M._ Flows a cold sweat, with a continual rheum,
-Forth the resolved corners of his eyes.
-_C._ Is't possible? Yet I am better, ha!
-How does he, with the swimming of his head?
-_M._ O, sir, 'tis past the scotomy; he now
-Hath lost his feeling, and hath left to snort:
-You hardly can perceive him, that he breathes.
-_C._ Excellent, excellent! sure I shall outlast him:
-This makes me young again, a score of years."[553]
-
-
-If you would be his heir, says Mosca, the moment is favorable, but you
-must not let yourself be forestalled. Voltore has been here, and
-presented him with this piece of plate:
-
-
-"_C._ See, Mosca, look,
-Here, I have brought a bag of bright chequines.
-Will quite weigh down his plate....
-_M._ Now, would I counsel you, make home with speed;
-There, frame a will; whereto you shall inscribe
-My master your sole heir....
-_C._ This plot
-Did I think on before....
-_M._ And you so certain to survive him--
-_C._ Ay.
-_M._ Being so lusty a man--
-_C._ 'Tis true."[554]
-
-
-And the old man hobbles away, not hearing the insults and ridicule
-thrown at him, he is so deaf.
-
-When he is gone the merchant Corvino arrives, bringing an orient pearl
-and a splendid diamond:
-
-
-"_Corvino._ Am I his heir?
-_Mosca._ Sir, I am sworn, I may not show the will
-Till he be dead; but here has been Corbaccio,
-Here has been Voltore, here were others too,
-I cannot number 'em, they were so many;
-All gaping here for legacies: but I,
-Taking the vantage of his naming you,
-_Signior Corvino, Signior Corvino_, took
-Paper, and pen, and ink, and there I asked him,
-Whom he would have his heir? Corvino. Who
-Should be executor? Corvino. And,
-To any question he was silent to,
-I still interpreted the nods he made,
-Through weakness, for consent: and sent home th' others,
-Nothing bequeath'd them, but to cry and curse.
-_Cor._ O my dear Mosca!... Has he children?
-_M._ Bastards,
-Some dozen, or more, that he begot on beggars,
-Gypsies, and Jews, and black-moors, when he was drunk....
-Speak out:
-You may be louder yet....
-Faith, I could stifle him rarely with a pillow,
-As well as any woman that should keep him.
-_C._ Do as you will; but I'll begone."[555]
-
-
-Corvino presently departs; for the passions of the time have all the
-beauty of frankness. And Volpone, casting aside his sick man's garb,
-cries:
-
-
-"My divine Mosca!
-Thou hast to-day out gone thyself.... Prepare
-Me music, dances, banquets, all delights;
-The Turk is not more sensual in his pleasures,
-Than will Volpone."[556]
-
-
-On this invitation, Mosca draws a most voluptuous portrait of Corvino's
-wife, Celia. Smitten with a sudden desire, Volpone dresses himself as a
-mountebank, and goes singing under her windows with all the
-sprightliness of a quack; for he is naturally a comedian, like a true
-Italian, of the same family as Scaramouch, as good an actor in the
-public square as in his house. Having once seen Celia, he resolves to
-obtain her at any price:
-
-
-"Mosca, take my keys,
-Gold, plate, and jewels, all's at thy devotion;
-Employ them how thou wilt; nay, coin me too:
-So thou, in this, but crown my longings, Mosca."[557]
-
-
-Mosca then tells Corvino that some quack's oil has cured his master, and
-that they are looking for a "young woman, lusty and full of juice," to
-complete the cure:
-
-
-"Have you no kinswoman?
-Odso--Think, think, think, think, think, think, think, sir.
-One o' the doctors offer'd there his daughter.
-_Corvino._ How!
-_Mosca._ Yes, signior Lupo, the physician.
-_C._ His daughter!
-_M._ And a virgin, sir....
-_C._ Wretch!
-Covetous wretch."[558]
-
-
-Though unreasonably jealous, Corvino is gradually induced to offer his
-wife. He has given too much already, and would not lose his advantage.
-He is like a half-ruined gamester, who with a shaking hand throws on the
-green cloth the remainder of his fortune. He brings the poor sweet
-woman, weeping and resisting. Excited by his own hidden pangs, he
-becomes furious:
-
-
-"Be damn'd!
-Heart, I will drag thee hence, home, by the hair;
-Cry thee a strumpet through the streets; rip up
-Thy mouth unto thine ears; and slit thy nose;
-Like a raw rochet!--Do not tempt me; come,
-Yield, I am loth--Death! I will buy some slave
-Whom I will kill, and bind thee to him, alive;
-And at my window hang you forth, devising
-Some monstrous crime, which I, in capital letters,
-Will eat into thy flesh with aquafortis,
-And burning corsives, on this stubborn breast.
-Now, by the blood thou hast incensed, I'll do it!
-_Celia._ Sir, what you please, you may, I am your martyr.
-_Corvino._ Be not thus obstinate, I have not deserv'd it:
-Think who it is intreats you. Prithee, sweet;--
-Good faith thou shalt have jewels, gowns, attires,
-What thou wilt think, and ask. Do but go kiss him,
-Or touch him, but. For my sake.--At my suit.--
-This once.--No! not! I shall remember this.
-Will you disgrace me thus? Do you thirst my undoing?"[559]
-
-
-Mosca turned a moment before, to Volpone:
-
-
-"Sir,
-Signior Corvino... hearing of the consultation had
-So lately, for your health, is come to offer,
-Or rather, sir, to prostitute.--
-_Corvino._ Thanks, sweet Mosca.
-_Mosca._ Freely, unask'd, or unintreated.
-_C._ Well.
-_Mosca._ As the true fervent instance of his love,
-His own most fair and proper wife; the beauty
-Only of price in Venice.--
-_C._ 'Tis well urg'd."[560]
-
-
-Where can we see such blows launched and driven hard, full in the face,
-by the violent hand of satire? Celia is alone with Volpone, who,
-throwing off his feigned sickness, comes upon her "as fresh, as hot, as
-high, and in as jovial plight," as on the gala days of the Republic,
-when he acted the part of the lovely Antinous. In his transport he sings
-a love-song; his voluptuousness culminates in poetry; for poetry was
-then in Italy the blossom of vice. He spreads before her pearls,
-diamonds, carbuncles. He is in raptures at the sight of the treasures,
-which he displays and sparkles before her eyes:
-
-
-"Take these,
-And wear, and lose them: yet remains an ear-ring
-To purchase them again, and this whole state.
-A gem but worth a private patrimony,
-Is nothing: we will eat such at a meal,
-The heads of parrots, tongues of nightingales,
-The brains of peacocks, and of estriches,
-Shall be our food....
-Conscience? 'Tis the beggar's virtue....
-Thy baths shall be of the juice of July flowers,
-Spirit of roses, and of violets,
-The milk of unicorns, and panthers' breath
-Gather'd in bags, and mixt with Cretan wines.
-Our drink shall be prepared gold and amber;
-Which we will take, until my roof whirl round
-With the vertigo: and my dwarf shall dance,
-My eunuch sing, my fool make up the antic,
-Whilst we, in changed shapes, act Ovid's tales,
-Thou, like Europa now, and I like Jove,
-Then I like Mars, and thou like Erycine;
-So, of the rest, till we have quite run through,
-And wearied all the fables of the gods."[561]
-
-
-We recognize Venice in this splendor of debauchery--Venice, the throne
-of Aretinus, the country of Tintoretto and Giorgione. Volpone seizes
-Celia: "Yield, or I'll force thee!" But suddenly Bonario, disinherited
-son of Corbaccio, whom Mosca had concealed there with another design,
-enters violently, delivers her, wounds Mosca, and accuses Volpone before
-the tribunal, of imposture and rape.
-
-The three rascals who aim at being his heirs, work together to save
-Volpone. Corbaccio disavows his son, and accuses him of parricide.
-Corvino declares his wife an adulteress, the shameless mistress of
-Bonario. Never on the stage was seen such energy of lying, such open
-villany. The husband, who knows his wife to be innocent, is the most
-eager:
-
-
-"This woman (please your fatherhoods) is a whore,
-Of most hot exercise, more than a partrich,
-Upon record.
-_1st Advocate._ No more.
-_Corvino._ Neighs like a jennet.
-_Notary._ Preserve the honor of the court.
-_C._ I shall,
-And modesty of your most reverend ears.
-And yet I hope that I may say, these eyes
-Have seen her glued unto that piece of cedar,
-That fine well-timber'd gallant; and that here
-The letters may be read, thorough the horn,
-That make the story perfect....
-_3d Adv._ His grief hath made him frantic. (_Celia swoons._)
-_C._ Rare! Prettily feign'd! again!"[562]
-
-
-They have Volpone brought in, like a dying man; manufacture false
-"testimony," to which Voltore gives weight with his advocate's tongue,
-with words worth a sequin apiece. They throw Celia and Bonario into
-prison, and Volpone is saved. This public imposture is for him only
-another comedy, a pleasant pastime, and a masterpiece.
-
-
-"_Mosca._ To gull the court.
-_Volpone._ And quite divert the torrent
-Upon the innocent....
-_M._ You are not taken with it enough, methinks.
-_V._ O, more than if I had enjoy'd the wench?"[563]
-
-
-To conclude, he writes a will in Mosca's favor, has his death reported,
-hides behind a curtain, and enjoys the looks of the would-be heirs. They
-had just saved him from being thrown into prison, which makes the fun
-all the better; the wickedness will be all the greater and more
-exquisite. "Torture 'em rarely," Volpone says to Mosca. The latter
-spreads the will on the table, and reads the inventory aloud. "Turkey
-carpets nine. Two cabinets, one of ebony, the other mother-of-pearl. A
-perfum'd box, made of an onyx." The heirs are stupefied with
-disappointment, and Mosca drives them off with insults. He says to
-Corvino:
-
-
-"Why should you stay here? with what thought, what promise?
-Hear you; do you not know, I know you an ass,
-And that you would most fain have been a wittol,
-If fortune would have let you? That you are
-A declar'd cuckold, on good terms? This pearl,
-You'll say, was yours? Right: this diamond?
-I'll not deny't, but thank you. Much here else?
-It may be so. Why, think that these good works
-May help to hide your bad. [_Exit Corvino._]...
-_Corbaccio._ I am cozen'd, cheated, by a parasite slave;
-Harlot, thou hast gull'd me.
-_Mosca._ Yes, sir. Stop your mouth,
-Or I shall draw the only tooth is left.
-Are not you he, that filthy covetous wretch,
-With the three legs, that here, in hope of prey,
-Have, any time this three years, snufft about,
-With your most grov'ling nose, and would have hir'd
-Me to the pois'ning of my patron, sir?
-Are not you he that have to-day in court
-Profess'd the disinheriting of your son?
-Perjur'd yourself? Go home, and die, and stink."[564]
-
-
-Volpone goes out disguised, comes to each of them in turn, and succeeds
-in wringing their hearts. But Mosca, who has the will, acts with a high
-hand, and demands of Volpone half his fortune. The dispute between the
-two rascals discovers their impostures, and the master, the servant,
-with the three would-be heirs, are sent to the galleys, to prison, to
-the pillory--as Corvino says, to
-
-
-"Have mine eyes beat out with stinking fish,
-Bruis'd fruit, and rotten eggs.--'Tis well. I'm glad,
-I shall not see my shame yet."[565]
-
-
-No more vengeful comedy has been written, none more persistently athirst
-to make vice suffer, to unmask, triumph over, and to punish it.
-
-Where can be the gayety of such a theatre? In caricature and farce.
-There is a rough gayety, a sort of physical, external laughter which
-suits this combative, drinking, blustering mood. It is thus that this
-mood relaxes from war-waging and murderous satire; the pastime is
-appropriate to the manners of the time, excellent to attract men who
-look upon hanging as a good joke, and laugh to see the Puritan's ears
-cut. Put yourself for an instant in their place, and you will think like
-them, that "The Silent Woman" is a masterpiece. Morose is an old
-monomaniac, who has a horror of noise, but loves to speak. He inhabits a
-street so narrow that a carriage cannot enter it. He drives off with his
-stick the bear-leaders and sword-players, who venture to pass under his
-windows. He has sent away his servant whose shoes creaked; and Mute, the
-new one, wears slippers "soled with wool," and only speaks in a whisper
-through a tube. Morose ends by forbidding the whisper, and makes him
-reply by signs. He is also rich, an uncle, and he ill-treats his nephew
-Sir Dauphine Eugenie, a man of wit, but who lacks money. We anticipate
-all the tortures which poor Morose is to suffer. Sir Dauphine finds him
-a supposed silent woman, the beautiful Epicœne. Morose, enchanted by
-her brief replies and her voice, which he can hardly hear, marries her,
-to play his nephew a trick. It is his nephew who has played him a trick.
-As soon as she is married, Epicœne speaks, scolds, argues as loud and
-as long as a dozen women: "Why, did you think you had married a statue?
-or a motion only? one of the French puppets, with the eyes turned with a
-wire? or some innocent out of the hospital, that would stand with her
-hands thus, and a plaise mouth, and look upon you?"[566]
-
-She orders the servants to speak louder; she opens the doors wide to her
-friends. They arrive in shoals, offering their noisy congratulations to
-Morose. Five or six women's tongues overwhelm him all at once with
-compliments, questions, advice, remonstrances. A friend of Sir Dauphine
-comes with a band of music, who play all together, suddenly, with their
-whole force. Morose says, "O, a plot, a plot, a plot, a plot, upon me!
-This day I shall be their anvil to work on; they will grate me asunder.
-'Tis worse than the noise of a saw."[567] A procession of servants is
-seen coming, with dishes in their hands; it is the racket of a tavern
-which Sir Dauphine is bringing to his uncle. The guests clash the
-glasses, shout, drink healths; they have with them a drum and trumpets
-which make great noise. Morose flees to the top of the house, puts "a
-whole nest of night-caps" on his head and stuffs up his ears. Captain
-Otter cries, "Sound, Tritons o' the Thames! _Nunc est bibendum, nunc
-pede libero._ Villains, murderers, sons of the earth and traitors,"
-cries Morose from above, "what do you there?" The racket increases. Then
-the captain, somewhat "jovial," maligns his wife, who falls upon him and
-gives him a good beating. Blows, cries, music, laughter, resound like
-thunder. It is the poetry of uproar. Here is a subject to shake coarse
-nerves, and to make the mighty chests of the companions of Drake and
-Essex shake with uncontrollable laughter. "Rogues, hell-hounds,
-Stentors! ... They have rent my roof, walls, and all my windows asunder,
-with their brazen throats!" Morose casts himself on his tormentors with
-his long sword, breaks the instruments, drives away the musicians,
-disperses the guests amidst an inexpressible uproar, gnashing his teeth,
-looking haggard. Afterwards they pronounce him mad and discuss his
-madness before him.[568] The disease in Greek is called _μανία_, in
-Latin _insania, furor, vel ecstasis melancholica_; that is, _egressio_,
-when a man _ex melancholico evadit fanaticus._... But he may be but
-phreneticus yet, mistress; and phrenetis is only delirium, or so. They
-talk of the books which he must read aloud to cure him. They add, by way
-of consolation, that his wife talks in her sleep, "and snores like a
-porpoise. O redeem me, fate; redeem me, fate!" cries the poor
-man.[569] "For how many causes may a man be divorced, nephew?" Sir
-Dauphine chooses two knaves, and disguises them, one as a priest, the
-other as a lawyer, who launch at his head Latin terms of civil and canon
-law, explain to Morose the twelve cases of nullity, jingle in his ears
-one after another the most barbarous words in their obscure vocabulary,
-wrangle, and make between them as much noise as a couple of bells in a
-belfry. Following their advice, he declares himself impotent. The
-wedding-guests propose to toss him in a blanket; others demand an
-immediate inspection. Fall after fall, shame after shame; nothing serves
-him: his wife declares that she consents to "take him with all his
-faults." The lawyer proposes another legal method; Morose shall obtain a
-divorce by proving that his wife is faithless. Two boasting knights, who
-are present, declare that they have been her lovers. Morose, in
-raptures, throws himself at their knees, and embraces them. Epicœne
-weeps, and Morose seems to be delivered. Suddenly the lawyer decides
-that the plan is of no avail, the infidelity having been committed
-before the marriage. "O, this is worst of all worst worsts that hell
-could have devis'd! marry a whore, and so much noise!" There is Morose
-then, declared impotent and a deceived husband, at his own request, in
-the eyes of the whole world, and moreover married forever. Sir Dauphine
-comes in like a clever rascal, and as a succoring deity. "Allow me but
-five hundred during life, uncle, and I free you." Morose signs the deed
-of gift with alacrity; and his nephew shows him that Epicœne is a boy
-in disguise.[570] Add to this enchanting farce the funny parts of the
-two accomplished and gallant knights, who, after having boasted of their
-bravery, receive gratefully, and before the ladies, flips and
-kicks.[571] Never was coarse physical laughter more adroitly produced.
-In this broad coarse gayety, this excess of noisy transport, you
-recognize the stout roisterer, the stalwart drinker who swallowed
-hogsheads of Canary, and made the windows of the Mermaid shake with his
-bursts of humor.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION V.--Limits of Jonson's Talent--His Smaller Poems--His Masques
-
-
-Jonson did not go beyond this; he was not a philosopher like Molière,
-able to grasp and dramatize the crisis of human life, education,
-marriage, sickness, the chief characters of his country and century, the
-courtier, the tradesman, the hypocrite, the man of the world.[572] He
-remained on a lower level, in the comedy of plot,[573] the painting of
-the grotesque,[574] the representation of too transient subjects of
-ridicule,[575] too general vices.[576] If at times, as in the
-"Alchemist," he has succeeded by the perfection of plot and the vigor of
-satire, he has miscarried more frequently by the ponderousness of his
-work and the lack of comic lightness. The critic in him mars the artist;
-his literary calculations strip him of spontaneous invention; he is too
-much of a writer and moralist, not enough of a mimic and an actor. But
-he is loftier from another side, for he is a poet; almost all writers,
-prose-authors, preachers even, were so at the time we speak of. Fancy
-abounded, as well as the perception of colors and forms, the need and
-wont of enjoying through the imagination and the eyes. Many of Jonson's
-pieces, the "Staple of News, Cynthia's Revels," are fanciful and
-allegorical comedies like those of Aristophanes. He there dallies with
-the real, and beyond the real, with characters who are but theatrical
-masks, abstractions personified, buffooneries, decorations, dances,
-music, pretty laughing whims of a picturesque and sentimental
-imagination. Thus, in "Cynthia's Revels," three children come on
-"pleading possession of the cloke" of black velvet, which an actor
-usually wore when he spoke the prologue. They draw lots for it; one of
-the losers, in revenge, tells the audience beforehand the incidents of
-the piece. The others interrupt him at every sentence, put their hands
-on his mouth, and taking the cloak one after the other, begin to
-criticise the spectators and authors. This child's play, these gestures
-and loud voices, this little amusing dispute, divert the public from
-their serious thoughts, and prepare them for the oddities which they are
-to look upon.
-
-We are in Greece, in the valley of Gargaphie, where Diana[577] has
-proclaimed "a solemn revels." Mercury and Cupid have come down, and
-begin by quarrelling; the latter says: "My light feather-heel'd coz,
-what are you any more than my uncle Jove's pander? a lacquey that runs
-on errands for him, and can whisper a light message to a loose wench
-with some round volubility?... One that sweeps the gods' drinking-room
-every morning, and sets the cushions in order again, which they threw
-one at another's head over night?"[578]
-
-They are good-tempered gods. Echo, awoke by Mercury, weeps for the "too
-beauteous boy Narcissus":
-
-
-"That trophy of self-love, and spoil of nature,
-Who, now transformed into this drooping flower,
-Hangs the repentant head, back from the stream....
-Witness thy youth's dear sweets, here spent untasted,
-Like a fair taper, with his own flame wasted!...
-And with thy water let this curse remain,
-As an inseparate plague, that who but taste
-A drop thereof, may, with the instant touch,
-Grow doatingly enamour'd on themselves."[579]
-
-
-The courtiers and ladies drink thereof, and behold, a sort of a review
-of the follies of the time, arranged, as in Aristophanes, in an
-improbable farce, a brilliant show. A silly spendthrift, Asotus, wishes
-to become a man of the court and of fashionable manners; he takes for
-his master Amorphus, a learned traveller, expert in gallantry, who, to
-believe himself, is
-
-
-"An essence so sublimated and refined by travel... able... to speak the
-mere extraction of language; one that... was your first that ever
-enrich'd his country with the true laws of the duello; whose optics have
-drunk the spirit of beauty in some eight-score and eighteen princes'
-courts, where I have resided, and been there fortunate in the amours of
-three hundred forty and five ladies, all nobly if not princely
-descended,... in all so happy, as even admiration herself doth seem to
-fasten her kisses upon me."[580]
-
-
-Asotus learns at this good school the language of the court, fortifies
-himself like other people with quibbles, learned oaths, and metaphors;
-he fires off in succession supersubtle tirades, and duly imitates the
-grimaces and tortuous style of his masters. Then, when he has drunk the
-water of the fountain, becoming suddenly pert and rash, he proposes to
-all comers a tournament of "court compliment." This odd tournament is
-held before the ladies; it comprises four jousts, and at each the
-trumpets sound. The combatants perform in succession "the _bare
-accost_; the _better regard_; the _solemn address_;" and "the perfect
-close."[581] In this grave buffoonery the courtiers are beaten. The
-severe Crites, the moralist of the play, copies their language, and
-pierces them with their own weapons. Already, with grand declamation, he
-had rebuked them thus:
-
-
-"O vanity,
-How are thy painted beauties doated on,
-By light, and empty idiots! how pursu'd
-With open and extended appetite!
-How they do sweat, and run themselves from breath,
-Rais'd on their toes, to catch thy airy forms,
-Still turning giddy, till they reel like drunkards,
-That buy the merry madness of one hour,
-With the long irksomeness of following time!"[582]
-
-
-To complete the overthrow of the vices, appear two symbolical masques,
-representing the contrary virtues. They pass gravely before the
-spectators, in splendid array, and the noble verses exchanged by the
-goddess and her companions raise the mind to the lofty regions of serene
-morality, whither the poet desires to carry us:
-
-
-"Queen, and huntress, chaste and fair,
-Now the sun is laid to sleep,
-Seated in thy silver chair,
-State in wonted manner keep....
-Lay thy bow of pearl apart,
-And thy crystal shining quiver;
-Give unto the flying hart
-Space to breathe, how short soever."[583]
-
-
-In the end, bidding the dancers to unmask, Cynthia shows that the vices
-have disguised themselves as virtues. She condemns them to make fit
-reparation, and to bathe themselves in Helicon. Two by two they go off
-singing a palinode, whilst the chorus sings the supplication "Good
-Mercury defend us."[584] Is it an opera or a comedy? It is a lyrical
-comedy; and if we do not discover in it the airy lightness of
-Aristophanes, at least we encounter, as in the "Birds" and the "Frogs,"
-the contrasts and medleys of poetic invention, which, through caricature
-and ode, the real and the impossible, the present and the past, sent
-forth to the four quarters of the globe, simultaneously unites all kinds
-of incompatibilities, and culls all flowers.
-
-Jonson went further than this, and entered the domain of pure poetry. He
-wrote delicate, voluptuous, charming love poems, worthy of the ancient
-idyllic muse.[585] Above all, he was the great, the inexhaustible
-inventor of Masques, a kind of masquerades, ballets, poetic choruses, in
-which all the magnificence and the imagination of the English
-Renaissance is displayed. The Greek gods, and all the ancient Olympus,
-the allegorical personages whom the artists of the time delineate in
-their pictures; the antique heroes of popular legends; all worlds, the
-actual, the abstract, the divine, the human, the ancient, the modern,
-are searched by his hands, brought on the stage to furnish costumes,
-harmonious groups, emblems, songs, whatever can excite, intoxicate the
-artistic sense. The _élite_, moreover, of the kingdom is there on the
-stage. They are not mountebanks moving about in borrowed clothes,
-clumsily worn, for which they are still in debt to the tailor; they are
-ladies of the court, great lords, the queen, in all the splendor of
-their rank and pride, with real diamonds, bent on displaying their
-riches, so that the whole splendor of the national life is concentrated
-in the opera which they enact, like jewels in a casket. What dresses!
-what profusion of splendors! what medley of strange characters, gipsies,
-witches, gods, heroes, pontiffs, gnomes, fantastic beings! How many
-metamorphoses, jousts, dances, marriage songs! What variety of scenery,
-architecture, floating isles, triumphal arches, symbolic spheres! Gold
-glitters; jewels flash; purple absorbs the lustre-lights in its costly
-folds; streams of light shine upon the crumpled silks; diamond
-necklaces, darting flame, clasp the bare bosoms of the ladies; strings
-of pearls are displayed, loop after loop, upon the silver-sown brocaded
-dresses; gold embroidery, weaving whimsical arabesques, depicts upon
-their dresses flowers, fruits, and figures, setting picture within
-picture. The steps of the throne bear groups of Cupids, each with a
-torch in his hand.[586] On either side the fountains cast up plumes of
-pearls; musicians, in purple and scarlet, laurel-crowned, make harmony
-in the bowers. The trains of masques cross, commingling their groups;
-"the one half in orange-tawny and silver, the other in sea-green and
-silver. The bodies and short skirts (were of) white and gold to both."
-
-Such pageants Jonson wrote year after year, almost to the end of his
-life, true feasts for the eyes, like the processions of Titian. Even
-when he grew to be old, his imagination, like that of Titian, remained
-abundant and fresh. Though forsaken, lying gasping on his bed, feeling
-the approach of death, in his supreme bitterness he did not lose his
-faculties, but wrote "The Sad Shepherd," the most graceful and pastoral
-of his pieces. Consider that this beautiful dream arose in a
-sick-chamber, amidst medicine bottles, physic, doctors, with a nurse at
-his side, amidst the anxieties of poverty and the choking-fits of a
-dropsy! He is transported to a green forest, in the days of Robin Hood,
-amidst the gay chase and the great barking greyhounds. There are the
-malicious fairies, who, like Oberon and Titania, lead men to flounder in
-mishaps. There are open-souled lovers, who, like Daphne and Chloe, taste
-with awe the painful sweetness of the first kiss. There lived Earine,
-whom the stream has "suck'd in," whom her lover, in his madness, will
-not cease to lament:
-
-
-"Earine,
-Who had her very being, and her name
-With the first knots or buddings of the spring,
-Born with the primrose or the violet,
-Or earliest roses blown: when Cupid smil'd,
-And Venus led the graces out to dance,
-And all the flowers and sweets in nature's lap
-Leap'd out, and made their solemn conjuration
-To last but while she liv'd!"...[587]
-"But she, as chaste as was her name, Earine,
-Died undeflower'd: and now her sweet soul hovers
-Here in the air above us."[588]
-
-
-Above the poor old paralytic artist, poetry still hovers like a haze of
-light. Yes, he had cumbered himself with science, clogged himself with
-theories, constituted himself theatrical critic and social censor,
-filled his soul with unrelenting indignation, fostered a combative and
-morose disposition; but divine dreams never left him. He is the brother
-of Shakespeare.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION VI.--General Idea of Shakespeare
-
-
-So now at last we are in the presence of one, whom we perceived before
-us through all the vistas of the Renaissance, like some vast oak to
-which all the forest ways converge. I will treat of Shapespeare by
-himself. In order to take him in completely, we must have a wide and
-open space. And yet how shall we comprehend him? how lay bare his inner
-constitution? Lofty words, eulogies, are all used in vain; he needs no
-praise, but comprehension merely; and he can only be comprehended by the
-aid of science. As the complicated revolutions of the heavenly bodies
-become intelligible only by use of a superior calculus, as the delicate
-transformations of vegetation and life need for their explanation the
-intervention of the most difficult chemical formulas, so the great works
-of art can be interpreted only by the most advanced psychological
-systems; and we need the loftiest of all these to attain to
-Shakespeare's level--to the level of his age and his work, of his genius
-and of his art.
-
-After all practical experience and accumulated observations of the soul,
-we find as the result that wisdom and knowledge are in man only effects
-and fortuities. Man has no permanent and distinct force to secure truth
-to his intelligence, and common-sense to his conduct. On the contrary,
-he is naturally unreasonable and deceived. The parts of his inner
-mechanism are like the wheels of clock-work, which go of themselves,
-blindly, carried away by impulse and weight, and which yet sometimes, by
-virtue of a certain unison, end by indicating the hour. This final
-intelligent motion is not natural, but fortuitous; not spontaneous, but
-forced; not innate, but acquired. The clock did not always go regularly;
-on the contrary, it had to be regulated little by little, with much
-difficulty. Its regularity is not insured; it may go wrong at any time.
-Its regularity is not complete; it only approximately marks the time.
-The mechanical force of each piece is always ready to drag all the rest
-from their proper action, and to disarrange the whole agreement. So
-ideas, once in the mind, pull each their own way blindly and separately,
-and their imperfect agreement threatens confusion every moment. Strictly
-speaking, man is mad, as the body is ill, by nature; reason and health
-come to us as a momentary success, a lucky accident.[589] If we forget
-this, it is because we are now regulated, dulled, deadened, and because
-our internal motion has become gradually, by friction and reparation,
-half harmonized with the motion of things. But this is only a semblance;
-and the dangerous primitive forces remain untamed and independent under
-the order which seems to restrain them. Let a great danger arise, a
-revolution take place, they will break out and explode, almost as
-terribly as in earlier times. For an idea is not a mere inner mark,
-employed to designate one aspect of things, inert, always ready to fall
-into order with other similar ones, so as to make an exact whole.
-However it may be reduced and disciplined, it still retains a sensible
-tinge which shows its likeness to an hallucination; a degree of
-individual persistence which shows its likeness to a monomania; a
-network of singular affinities which shows its likeness to the ravings
-of delirium. Being such, it is beyond question the rudiment of a
-nightmare, a habit, an absurdity. Let it become once developed in its
-entirety, as its tendency leads it,[590] and you will find that it is
-essentially an active and complete image, a vision drawing along with it
-a train of dreams and sensations, which increases of itself, suddenly,
-by a sort of rank and absorbing growth, and which ends by possessing,
-shaking, exhausting the whole man. After this, another, perhaps entirely
-opposite, and so on successively: there is nothing else in man, no free
-and distinct power: he is in himself but the process of these headlong
-impulses and swarming imaginations: civilization has mutilated,
-attenuated, but not destroyed them; shocks, collisions, transports,
-sometimes at long intervals a sort of transient partial equilibrium:
-this is his real life, the life of a lunatic, who now and then simulates
-reason, but who is in reality "such stuff as dreams are made on";[591]
-and this is man, as Shakespeare has conceived him. No writer, not even
-Molière, has penetrated so far beneath the semblance of common-sense
-and logic in which the human machine is enclosed, in order to
-disentangle the brute powers which constitute its substance and its
-mainspring.
-
-How did Shakespeare succeed? and by what extraordinary instinct did he
-divine the remote conclusions, the deepest insights of physiology and
-psychology? He had a complete imagination; his whole genius lies in that
-complete imagination. These words seem commonplace and void of meaning.
-Let us examine them closer, to understand what they contain. When we
-think a thing, we, ordinary men, we only think a part of it; we see one
-side, some isolated mark, sometimes two or three marks together; for
-what is beyond, our sight fails us; the infinite network of its
-infinitely complicated and multiplied properties escapes us; we feel
-vaguely that there is something beyond our shallow ken, and this vague
-suspicion is the only part of our idea which at all reveals to us the
-great beyond. We are like tyro naturalists, quiet people of limited
-understanding, who, wishing to represent an animal, recall its name and
-ticket in the museum, with some indistinct image of its hide and figure;
-but their mind stops there. If it so happens that they wish to complete
-their knowledge, they lead their memory, by regular classifications,
-over the principal characters of the animal, and slowly, discursively,
-piecemeal, bring at last the bare anatomy before their eyes. To this
-their idea is reduced, even when perfected; to this also most frequently
-is our conception reduced, even when elaborated. What a distance there
-is between this conception and the object, how imperfectly and meanly
-the one represents the other, to what extent this mutilates that; how
-the consecutive idea, disjoined in little, regularly arranged and inert
-fragments, resembles but slightly the organized, living thing, created
-simultaneously, ever in action, and ever transformed, words cannot
-explain. Picture to yourself, instead of this poor dry idea, propped up
-by a miserable mechanical linkwork of thought, the complete idea, that
-is, an inner representation, so abundant and full that it exhausts all
-the properties and relations of the object, all its inward and outward
-aspects; that it exhausts them instantaneously; that it conceives of the
-entire animal, its color, the play of the light upon its skin, its form,
-the quivering of its outstretched limbs, the flash of its eyes, and at
-the same time its passion of the moment, its excitement, its dash; and
-beyond this its instincts, their composition, their causes, their
-history; so that the hundred thousand characteristics which make up its
-condition and its nature find their analogues in the imagination which
-concentrates and reflects them: there you have the artist's conception,
-the poet's--Shakespeare's; so superior to that of the logician, of the
-mere savant or man of the world, the only one capable of penetrating to
-the very essence of existences, of extricating the inner from beneath
-the outer man, of feeling through sympathy, and imitating without
-effort, the irregular oscillation of human imaginations and impressions,
-of reproducing life with its infinite fluctuations, its apparent
-contradictions, its concealed logic; in short, to create as nature
-creates. This is what is done by the other artists of this age; they
-have the same kind of mind, and the same idea of life: you will find in
-Shakespeare only the same faculties, with a still stronger impulse; the
-same idea, with a still more prominent relief.
-
-
-
-
-[Footnote 513: Fuller's "Worthies," ed. Nuttall, 1840, 3 vols. III. 284.]
-
-[Footnote 514: There is a similar hallucination to be met with in the
-life of Lord Castlereagh, who afterwards committed suicide.]
-
-[Footnote 515: His character lies between those of Fielding and Dr.
-Johnson.]
-
-[Footnote 516: Mr. David Laing remarks, however, in Drummond's defence,
-that as "Jonson died August 6, 1637, Drummond survived till December 4,
-1649, and no portion of these Notes (Conversations) were made public till
-1711, or sixty-two years after Drummond's death, and seventy-four after
-Jonson's, which renders quite nugatory all Gifford's accusations of
-Drummond's having published them 'without shame.' As to Drummond decoying
-Jonson under his roof with any premeditated design on his reputation, as
-Mr. Campbell has remarked, no one can seriously believe it."--"Archæologica
-Scotica," vol. IV. page 243.—-Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 517: At the age of forty-four he went to Scotland on foot.]
-
-[Footnote 518: Parts of "Crites" and "Asper."]
-
-[Footnote 519: "Every Man out of his Humour," I; Gifford's "Jonson,"
-p. 30.]
-
-[Footnote 520: Ben Jonson's Poems, ed. Bell, An Epistle Mendicant,
-to Richard, Lord Weston, Lord High Treasurer (1631), p. 244.]
-
-[Footnote 521: "The Devil is an Ass."]
-
-[Footnote 522: Sejanus, Catiline, passim.]
-
-[Footnote 523: Alfred de Musset, preface to "La Coupe et les Lèvres."
-Plato: "Ion."]
-
-[Footnote 524: Compare Sir Epicure Mammon with Baron Hulot from Balzac's
-"Cousine Bette." Balzac, who is learned like Jonson, creates real beings
-like Shakespeare.]
-
-[Footnote 525: "Every Man out of his Humour," Prologue.]
-
-[Footnote 526: "Poetaster," I. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 527: Ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 528: See the second act of "Catiline."]
-
-[Footnote 529: "The Fall of Sejanus," III. last scene.]
-
-[Footnote 530: Ibid. II.]
-
-[Footnote 531: "The Fall of Sejanus." II.]
-
-[Footnote 532: See "Catiline," Act II; a very fine scene, no less plain
-spoken and animated, on the dissipation	of the higher ranks in Rome.]
-
-[Footnote 533: "The Fall of Sejanus," I.]
-
-[Footnote 534: Ibid. IV.]
-
-[Footnote 535: Ibid. III.]
-
-[Footnote 536: "The Fall of Sejanus," V.]
-
-[Footnote 537: "The Fall of Sejanus," V.]
-
-[Footnote 538: Ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 539: "Every Man in his Humour," Prologue.]
-
-[Footnote 540: Ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 541: Ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 542: "Every Man in his Humour," Prologue.]
-
-[Footnote 543: Compare "Volpone" with Regnard's "Légataire"; the end of
-the sixteenth with the beginning of the eighteenth century.]
-
-[Footnote 544: "Volpone," I. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 545: "Volpone," I. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 546: Ibid. I. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 547: Ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 548: "Volpone," I. 4.]
-
-[Footnote 549: "Volpone," I. 4.]
-
-[Footnote 550: Ibid. I. 5.]
-
-[Footnote 551: "Volpone," I. 5.]
-
-[Footnote 552: Ibid. II. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 553: Ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 554:  "Volpone," III. 5. We pray reader to pardon us for Ben
-Jonson's broadness. If I omit it, I cannot depict the sixteenth century.
-Grant the same the indulgence to the historian as to the anatomist.]
-
-[Footnote 555: Ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 556: "Volpone," III. 5.]
-
-[Footnote 557: "Volpone" IV. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 558: Ibid. V. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 559: "Volpone," V. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 560: Ibid. V. 8.]
-
-[Footnote 561: "Epicœne," III. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 562: Ibid. III. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 563: Compare M. de Pourceaugnac in Molière.]
-
-[Footnote 564: "Epicœne," IV. I, 2.]
-
-[Footnote 565: Ibid. V.]
-
-[Footnote 566: Compare Polichinelle in "Le Malade imaginaire"; Géronte
-in "Les Fourberies de Scapin."]
-
-[Footnote 567: Compare "L'École des Femmes, Tartuffe, Le Misanthrope,
-Le Bourgeois-gentilhomme, Le Malade imaginaire, Georges Dandin."]
-
-[Footnote 568: Compare "Les Fourberies de Scapin."]
-
-[Footnote 569: Compare "Les Fâcheux."]
-
-[Footnote 570: Compare "Les Précieuses Ridicules."]
-
-[Footnote 571: Compare the plays of Destouches.]
-
-[Footnote 572: By Diana, Queen Elizabeth is meant.]
-
-[Footnote 573: "Cynthia's Revels," I. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 574: Ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 575: "Cynthia's Revels," I. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 576: Ibid. V. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 577: Ibid. I. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 578: Ibid. V. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 579: "Cynthia's Revels," last scene.]
-
-[Footnote 580: Celebration of Charis; "Miscellaneous Poems."]
-
-[Footnote 581: "Masque of Beauty."]
-
-[Footnote 582: "The Sad Shepherd," I. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 583: "The Sad Shepherd," III. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 584: This idea may be expanded psychologically: external
-perception, memory, are real hallucinations, etc. This is the
-analytical aspect: under another aspect reason and health are the
-natural goals.]
-
-[Footnote 585: See Spinoza and Dugald Stewart: Conception in its natural
-state is belief.]
-
-[Footnote 586: "Tempest," IV. 1.]
-
-
-
-
-CHAPTER FOURTH
-
-
-Shakespeare
-
-
-I am about to describe an extraordinary species of mind, perplexing to
-all the French modes of analysis and reasoning, all-powerful, excessive,
-master of the sublime as well as of the base; the most creative mind
-that ever engaged in the exact copy of the details of actual existence,
-in the dazzling caprice of fancy, in the profound complications of
-superhuman passions; a nature poetical, immoral, inspired, superior to
-reason by the sudden revelations of its seer's madness; so extreme in
-joy and grief, so abrupt of gait, so agitated and impetuous, in its
-transports, that this great age alone could have cradled such a child.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION I.--Life and Character of Shakespeare
-
-
-Of Shakespeare all came from within--I mean from his soul and his
-genius; circumstances and the externals contributed but slightly to his
-development.[592] He was intimately bound up with his age; that is, he
-knew by experience the manners of country, court, and town; he had
-visited the heights, depths, the middle ranks of mankind; nothing more.
-In all other respects his life was commonplace; its irregularities,
-troubles, passions, successes, were, on the whole, such as we meet with
-everywhere else.[593] His father, a glover and wool-stapler, in very
-easy circumstances, having married a sort of country heiress, had become
-high-bailiff and chief alderman in his little town; but when Shakespeare
-was nearly fourteen he was on the verge of ruin, mortgaging his wife's
-property, obliged to resign his municipal offices, and to remove his son
-from school to assist him in his business. The young fellow applied
-himself to it as well as he could, not without some scrapes and frolics:
-if we are to believe tradition, he was one of the thirsty souls of the
-place, with a mind to support the reputation of his little town in its
-drinking powers. Once, they say, having been beaten at Bideford in one
-of these ale-bouts, he returned staggering from the fight, or rather
-could not return, and passed the night with his comrades under an
-apple-tree by the roadside. Without doubt he had already begun to write
-verses, to rove about like a genuine poet, taking part in the noisy
-rustic feasts, the gay allegorical pastorals, the rich and bold outbreak
-of pagan and poetical life, as it was then to be found in an English
-village. At all events, he was not a pattern of propriety, and his
-passions were as precocious as they were imprudent. While not yet
-nineteen years old, he married the daughter of a substantial yeoman,
-about eight years older than himself--and not too soon, as she was about
-to become a mother.[594] Other of his outbreaks were no more fortunate.
-It seems that he was fond of poaching, after the manner of the time,
-being "much given to all unluckinesse in stealing venison and rabbits,"
-says the Rev. Richard Davies;[595] "particularly from Sir Thomas Lucy,
-who had him oft whipt and sometimes imprisoned, and at last made him fly
-the country;... but his revenge was so great, that he is his Justice
-Clodpate." Moreover, about this time Shakespeare's father was in prison,
-his affairs were not prosperous, and he himself had three children,
-following one close upon the other; he must live, and life was hardly
-possible for him in his native town. He went to London, and took to the
-stage: took the lowest parts, was a "servant" in the theatre, that is,
-an apprentice, or perhaps a supernumerary. They even said that he had
-begun still lower, and that to earn his bread he had held gentlemen's
-horses at the door of the theatre.[596] At all events he tasted misery,
-and felt, not in imagination, but in fact, the sharp thorn of care,
-humiliation, disgust, forced labor, public discredit, the power of the
-people. He was a comedian, one of "His Majesty's poor players"[597]--a
-sad trade, degraded in all ages by the contrasts and the falsehoods
-which it allows: still more degraded then by the brutalities of the
-crowd, who not seldom would stone the actors, and by the severities of
-the magistrates, who would sometimes condemn them to lose their ears. He
-felt it, and spoke of it with bitterness:
-
-
-"Alas, 'tis true I have gone here and there
-And made myself a motley to the view,
-Gored mine own thoughts, sold cheap what is most dear."[598]
-
-
-And again:
-
-
-"When in disgrace with fortune[599] and men's eyes,
-I all alone beweep my outcast state,
-And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
-And look upon myself and curse my fate,
-Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
-Featured like him, like him with friends possessed....
-With what I most enjoy contented least;
-Yet in those thoughts myself almost despising."[600]
-
-
-We shall find further on the traces of this long-enduring disgust, in
-his melancholy characters, as where he says:
-
-
-"For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
-The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
-The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
-The insolence of office and the spurns
-The patient merit of the unworthy takes,
-When he himself might his quietus make
-With a bare bodkin?"[601]
-
-
-But the worst of this undervalued position is, that it eats into the
-soul. In the company of actors we become actors: it is vain to wish to
-keep clean, if you live in a dirty place; it cannot be. No matter if a
-man braces himself; necessity drives him into a corner and sullies him.
-The machinery of the decorations, the tawdriness and medley of the
-costumes, the smell of the tallow and the candles, in contrast with the
-parade of refinement and loftiness, all the cheats and sordidness of the
-representation, the bitter alternative of hissing or applause, the
-keeping of the highest and lowest company, the habit of sporting with
-human passions, easily unhinge the soul, drive it down the slope of
-excess, tempt it to loose manners, green-room adventures, the loves of
-strolling actresses. Shakespeare escaped them no more than Molière, and
-grieved for it, like Molière:
-
-
-"O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide,
-The guilty goddess of my harmful deeds,
-That did not better for my life provide
-Than public means which public manners breeds."[602]
-
-
-They used to relate in London how his comrade Burbadge, who played
-Richard III, having a rendezvous with the wife of a citizen, Shakespeare
-went before, was well received, and was pleasantly occupied, when
-Burbage arrived, to whom he sent the message that William the Conqueror
-came before Richard III.[603] We may take this as an example of the
-tricks and somewhat coarse intrigues which are planned, and follow in
-quick succession, on this stage. Outside the theatre he lived with
-fashionable young nobles, Pembroke, Montgomery, Southampton,[604] and
-others, whose hot and licentious youth gratified his imagination and
-senses by the example of Italian pleasures and elegancies. Add to this
-the rapture and transport of poetical nature, and this kind of afflux,
-this boiling over of all the powers and desires which takes place in
-brains of this kind, when the world for the first time opens before
-them, and you will understand the "Venus and Adonis, the first heir of
-his invention." In fact, it is a first cry, a cry in which the whole man
-is displayed. Never was seen a heart so quivering to the touch of
-beauty, of beauty of every kind, so delighted with the freshness and
-splendor of things, so eager and so excited in adoration and enjoyment,
-so violently and entirely carried to the very essence of voluptuousness.
-His Venus is unique; no painting of Titian's has a more brilliant and
-delicious coloring;[605] no strumpet-goddess of Tintoretto or Giorgione
-is more soft and beautiful:
-
-
-"With blindfold fury she begins to forage,
-Her face doth reek and smoke, her blood doth boil....
-And glutton-like she feeds, yet never filleth;
-Her lips are conquerors, his lips obey,
-Paying what ransom the insulter willeth;
-Whose vulture thought doth pitch the price so high,
-That she will draw his lips' rich treasure dry."[606]
-
-"Even as an empty eagle, sharp by fast,
-Tires with her beak on feathers, flesh and bone,
-Shaking her wings, devouring all in haste,
-Till either gorge be stuff'd or prey be gone;
-Even so she kiss'd his brow, his cheek, his chin,
-And where she ends she doth anew begin."[607]
-
-
-All is taken by storm, the senses first, the eyes dazzled by carnal
-beauty, but the heart also from whence the poetry overflows: the fulness
-of youth inundates even inanimate things; the country looks charming
-amidst the rays of the rising sun, the air, saturated with brightness,
-makes a gala-day:
-
-
-"Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest,
-From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,
-And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast
-The sun riseth in his majesty;
-Who doth the world so gloriously behold
-That cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold."[608]
-
-
-An admirable debauch of imagination and rapture, yet disquieting; for
-such a mood will carry one a long way.[609] No fair and frail dame in
-London was without "Adonis" on her table.[610] Perhaps Shakespeare
-perceived that he had transcended the bounds, for the tone of his next
-poem, the "Rape of Lucrece," is quite different; but as he had already a
-mind liberal enough to embrace at the same time, as he did afterwards in
-his dramas, the two extremes of things, he continued none the less to
-follow his bent. The "sweet abandonment of love" was the great
-occupation of his life; he was tender-hearted, and he was a poet:
-nothing more is required to be smitten, deceived, to suffer, to traverse
-without pause the circle of illusions and troubles, which whirls and
-whirls round, and never ends.
-
-He had many loves of this kind, amongst others one for a sort of Marion
-Delorme,[611] a miserable deluding despotic passion, of which he felt
-the burden and the shame, but from which nevertheless he could not and
-would not free himself. Nothing can be sadder than his confessions, or
-mark better the madness of love, and the sentiment of human weakness:
-
-
-"When my love swears that she is made of truth,
-I do believe her, though I know she lies."[612]
-
-
-So spoke Alceste of Célimène;[613] but what a soiled Célimène is the
-creature before whom Shakespeare kneels, with as much of scorn as of
-desire!
-
-
-"Those lips of thine,
-That have profaned their scarlet ornaments
-And seal'd false bonds of love as oft as mine,
-Robb'd others' beds' revenues of their rents.
-Be it lawful I love thee, as thou lov'st those
-Whom thine eyes woo as mine importune thee."[614]
-
-
-This is plain-speaking and deep shamelessness of soul, such as we find
-only in the stews; and these are the intoxications, the excesses, the
-delirium into which the most refined artists fall, when they resign
-their own noble hand to these soft, voluptuous, and clinging ones. They
-are higher than princes, and they descend to the lowest depths of
-sensual passion. Good and evil then lose their names; all things are
-inverted:
-
-
-"How sweet and lovely dost thou make the shame
-Which, like a canker in the fragrant rose,
-Doth spot the beauty of thy budding name!
-O, in what sweets dost thou thy sins enclose!
-That tongue that tells the story of thy days,
-Making lascivious comments on thy sport,
-Cannot dispraise but in a kind of praise;
-Naming thy name blesses an ill report."[615]
-
-
-What are proofs, the will, reason, honor itself, when the passion is so
-absorbing? What can be said further to a man who answers, "I know all
-that you are going to say, and what does it all amount to?" Great loves
-are inundations, which drown all repugnance and all delicacy of soul,
-all preconceived opinions and all received principles. Thenceforth the
-heart is dead to all ordinary pleasures: it can only feel and breathe on
-one side. Shakespeare envies the keys of the instrument over which his
-mistress's fingers run. If he looks at flowers, it is she whom he
-pictures beyond them; and the extravagant splendors of dazzling poetry
-spring up in him repeatedly, as soon as he thinks of those glowing black
-eyes:
-
-
-"From you have I been absent in the spring,
-When proud-pied April dress'd in all his trim,
-Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
-That heavy Saturn laugh'd and leap'd with him."[616]
-
-
-He saw none of it:
-
-
-"Nor did I wonder at the lily's white,
-Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose."[617]
-
-
-All this sweetness of spring was but her perfume and her shade:
-
-
-"The forward violet thus I did chide:
-'Sweet thief, whence didst thou steal thy sweet that smells,
-If not from my love's breath? The purple pride,
-Which on thy soft cheek for complexion dwells
-In my love's veins thou hast too grossly dyed.'
-The lily I condemned for thy hand,
-And buds of marjoram had stol'n thy hair:
-The roses fearfully on thorns did stand,
-One blushing shame, another white despair:
-A third, nor red nor white, had stol'n of both
-And to his robbery had annex'd thy breath;...
-More flowers I noted, yet I none could see
-But sweet or color it had stol'n from thee."[618]
-
-
-Passionate archness, delicious affectations, worthy of Heine and the
-contemporaries of Dante, which tell us of long rapturous dreams
-concentrated on one subject. Under a sway so imperious and sustained,
-what sentiment could maintain its ground? That of family? He was married
-and had children--a family which he went to see "once a year"; and it
-was probably on his return from one of these journeys that he used the
-words above quoted. Conscience? "Love is too young to know what
-conscience is." Jealousy and anger?
-
-
-"For, thou betraying me, I do betray
-My nobler part to my gross body's treason."[619]
-
-
-Repulses?
-
-
-"He is contented thy poor drudge to be
-To stand in thy affairs, fall by thy side."[620]
-
-
-He is no longer young; she loves another, a handsome, young,
-light-haired fellow, his own dearest friend, whom he has presented to
-her, and whom she wishes to seduce:
-
-
-"Two loves I have of comfort and despair,
-Which like two spirits do suggest me still:
-The better angel is a man right fair,
-The worser spirit a woman color'd ill.
-To win me soon to hell, my female evil
-Tempteth my better angel from my side."[621]
-
-
-And when she has succeeded in this,[622] he dares not confess it to
-himself, but suffers all, like Molière. What wretchedness is there in
-these trifles of every-day life! How man's thoughts instinctively place
-by Shakespeare's side the great unhappy French poet (Molière), also a
-philosopher by nature, but more of a professional laugher, a mocker of
-old men in love, a bitter railer at deceived husbands, who, after having
-played in one of his most approved comedies, said aloud to a friend, "My
-dear fellow, I am in despair; my wife does not love me!" Neither glory,
-nor work, nor invention satisfies these vehement souls: love alone can
-gratify them, because, with their senses and heart, it contents also
-their brain; and all the powers of man, imagination like the rest, find
-in it their concentration and their employment. "Love is my sin," he
-said, as did Musset and Heine; and in the Sonnets we find traces of yet
-other passions, equally abandoned; one in particular, seemingly for a
-great lady. The first half of his dramas, "Midsummer Night's Dream,"
-"Romeo and Juliet," the "Two Gentlemen of Verona," preserve the warm
-imprint more completely; and we have only to consider his latest women's
-character,[623] to see with what exquisite tenderness, what full
-adoration, he loved them to the end.
-
-In this is all his genius; his was one of those delicate souls which,
-like a perfect instrument of music, vibrate of themselves at the
-slightest touch. This fine sensibility was the first thing observed in
-him. "My darling Shakespeare, Sweet Swan of Avon": these words of Ben
-Jonson only confirm what his contemporaries reiterate. He was
-affectionate and kind, "civil in demeanor, and excellent in the qualitie
-he professes";[624] if he had the impulse, he had also the effusion of
-true artists; he was loved, men were delighted in his company; nothing
-is more sweet or winning than this charm, this half-feminine abandonment
-in a man. His wit in conversation was ready, ingenious, nimble; his
-gayety brilliant; his imagination fluent, and so copious, that, as his,
-friends tell us, he never erased what he had written; at least when he
-wrote out a scene for the second time, it was the idea which he would
-change, not the words, by an after-glow of poetic thought, not with a
-painful tinkering of the verse. All these characteristics are combined
-into a single one: he had a sympathetic genius; I mean that naturally he
-knew how to forget himself and become transfused into all the objects
-which he conceived. Look around you at the great artists of your time,
-try to approach them, to become acquainted with them, to see them as
-they think, and you will observe the full force of this word. By an
-extraordinary instinct, they put themselves at once in a position of
-existences; men, animals, flowers, plants, landscapes, whatever the
-objects are, living or not, they feel by intuition the forces and
-tendencies which produce the visible external; and their soul,
-infinitely complex, becomes by its ceaseless metamorphoses a sort of
-abstract of the universe. This is why they seem to live more than other
-men; they have no need to be taught, they divine. I have seen such a
-man, a propos of a piece of armor, a costume, a collection of furniture,
-enter into the Middle Ages more fully than three savants together. They
-reconstruct, as they build, naturally, surely, by an inspiration which
-is a winged chain of reasoning. Shakespeare had only an imperfect
-education, "small Latin and less Greek," barely French and Italian,[625]
-nothing else; he had not travelled, he had only read the current
-literature of his day, he had picked up a few law words in the court of
-his little town: reckon up, if you can, all that he knew of man and of
-history. These men see more objects at a time; they grasp them more
-closely than other men, more quickly and thoroughly; their mind is full,
-and runs over. They do not rest in simple reasoning; at every idea their
-whole being, reflections, images, emotions, are set a-quiver. See them
-at it; they gesticulate, mimic their thought, brim over with
-comparisons; even in their talk they are imaginative and original, with
-familiarity and boldness of speech, sometimes happily, always
-irregularly, according to the whims and starts of the adventurous
-improvisation. The animation, the brilliancy of their language is
-marvellous; so are their fits, the wide leaps which they couple widely
-removed ideas, annihilating distance, passing from pathos to humor, from
-vehemence to gentleness. This extraordinary rapture is the last thing to
-quit them. If perchance ideas fail, or if their melancholy is too
-violent, they still speak and produce, even if it be nonsense: they
-become clowns, though at their own expense, and to their own hurt. I
-know one of these men who will talk nonsense when he thinks he is dying,
-or has a mind to kill himself; the inner wheel continues to turn, even
-upon nothing, that wheel which man must needs see ever turning, even
-though it tear him as it turns; his buffoonery is an outlet: you will
-find him, this inextinguishable urchin, this ironical puppet, at
-Ophelia's tomb, at Cleopatra's death-bed, at Juliet's funeral. High or
-low, these men must always be at some extreme. They feel their good and
-their ill too deeply; they expatiate too abundantly on each condition of
-their soul, by a sort of involuntary novel. After their traducings and
-the disgusts by which they debase themselves beyond measure they rise
-and become exalted in a marvellous fashion, even trembling with pride
-and joy. "Haply," says Shakespeare, after one of these dull moods:
-
-
-"Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
-Like to the lark at break of day arising
-From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's gate."[626]
-
-
-Then all fades away, as in a furnace where a stronger flare than usual
-has left no substance fuel behind it.
-
-
-"That time of year thou mayst in me behold
-When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
-Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
-Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
-In me thou see'st the twilight of such day
-As after sunset fadeth in the west,
-Which by and by black night doth take away,
-Death's second self, that seals up all in rest...."[627]
-
-"No longer mourn for me when I am dead
-Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
-Give warning to the world that I am fled
-From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
-Nay, if you read this line, remember not
-The hand that writ it; for I love you so.
-That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot
-If thinking on me then should make you woe."[628]
-
-
-These sudden alternatives of joy and sadness, divine transports and
-grand melancholies, exquisite tenderness and womanly depressions, depict
-the poet, extreme in emotions, ceaselessly troubled with grief or
-merriment, feeling the slightest shock, more strong, more dainty in
-enjoyment and suffering than other men, capable of more intense and
-sweeter dreams, within whom is stirred an imaginary world of graceful or
-terrible beings, all impassioned like their author.
-
-Such as I have described him, however, he found his resting-place.
-Early, at least what regards outward appearances, he settled down to an
-orderly, sensible, almost humdrum existence, engaged in business,
-provident of the future. He remained on the stage for at least seventeen
-years, though taking secondary parts;[629] he sets his wits at the same
-time to the touching up of plays with so much activity, that Greene
-called him "an upstart crow beautified with our feathers;... an absolute
-Johannes factotum, in his owne conceyte the onely shake-scene in a
-countrey."[630] At the age of thirty-three he had amassed money enough
-to buy at Stratford a house with two barns and two gardens, and he went
-on steadier and steadier in the same course. A man attains only to easy
-circumstances by his own labor; if he gains wealth, it is by making
-others labor for him. This is why, to the trades of actor and author,
-Shakespeare added those of manager and director of a theatre. He
-acquired a share in the Blackfriars and Globe theatres, farmed tithes,
-bought large pieces of land, more houses, gave a dowry to his daughter
-Susanna, and finally retired to his native town on his property, in his
-own house, like a good landlord, an honest citizen, who manages his
-fortune fitly, and takes his share of municipal work. He had an income
-of two or three hundred pounds, which would be equivalent to about eight
-or twelve hundred at the present time, and according to tradition, lived
-cheerfully and on good terms with his neighbors; at all events, it does
-not seem that he thought much about his literary glory, for he did not
-even take the trouble to collect and publish his works. One of his
-daughters married a physician, the other a wine merchant; the last did
-not even know how to sign her name. He lent money, and cut a good figure
-in this little world. Strange close; one which at first sight resembles
-more that of a shopkeeper than of a poet. Must we attribute it to that
-English instinct which places happiness in the life of a country
-gentleman and a landlord with a good rent-roll, well connected,
-surrounded by comforts, who quietly enjoys his undoubted
-respectability,[631] his domestic authority, and his county standing? Or
-rather, was Shakespeare, like Voltaire, a common-sense man, though of an
-imaginative brain, keeping a sound judgment under the sparkling of his
-genius, prudent from scepticism, saving through a desire for
-independence, and capable, after going the round of human ideas, of
-deciding with Candide,[632] that the best thing one can do in this world
-is "to cultivate one's garden"? I had rather think, as his full and
-solid head suggests,[633] that by the mere force of his overflowing
-imagination he escaped, like Goethe, the perils of an overflowing
-imagination; that in depicting passion, he succeeded, like Goethe, in
-deadening passion; that the fire did not break out in his conduct,
-because it found issue in his poetry; that his theatre kept pure his
-life; and that, having passed, by sympathy, through every kind of folly
-and wretchedness that is incident to human existence, he was able to
-settle down amidst them with a calm and melancholic smile, listening,
-for the sake of relaxation, to the aerial music of the fancies in which
-he revelled.[634] I am willing to believe, lastly, that in frame as in
-other things, he belonged to his great generation and his great age;
-that with him, as with Rabelais, Titian, Michel Angelo, and Rubens, the
-solidity of the muscles was a counterpoise to the sensibility of the
-nerves; that in those days the human machine, more severely tried and
-more firmly constructed, could withstand the storms of passion and the
-fire of inspiration; that soul and body were still at equilibrium; that
-genius was then a blossom, and not, as now, a disease. We can but make
-conjectures about all this: if we would become acquainted more closely
-with the man, we must seek him in his works.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION II.--Shakespeare's Style--Copiousness--Excesses
-
-
-Let us then look for the man, and in his style. The style explains the
-work; whilst showing the principal features of the genius, it infers the
-rest. When we have once grasped the dominant faculty, we see the whole
-artist developed like a flower.
-
-Shakespeare imagines with copiousness and excess; he scatters metaphors
-profusely over all he writes; every instant abstract ideas are changed
-into images; it is a series of paintings which is unfolded in his mind.
-He does not seek them, they come of themselves; they crowd within him,
-covering his arguments; they dim with their brightness the pure light of
-logic. He does not labor to explain or prove; picture on picture, image
-on image, he is forever copying the strange and splendid visions which
-are engendered one after another, and are heaped up within him. Compare
-to our dull writers this passage, which I take at hazard from a tranquil
-dialogue:
-
-
-"The single and peculiar life is bound,
-With all the strength and armor of the mind,
-To keep itself from noyance; but much more
-That spirit upon whose weal depend and rest
-The lives of many. The cease of majesty
-Dies not alone; but, like a gulf, doth draw
-What's near it with it: it is a massy wheel,
-Fix'd on the summit of the highest mount,
-To whose huge spokes ten thousand lesser things
-Are mortised and adjoin'd; which, when it falls,
-Each small annexment, petty consequence,
-Attends the boisterous ruin. Never alone
-Did the king sigh, but with a general groan."[635]
-
-
-Here we have three successive images to express the same thought. It is
-a whole blossoming; a bough grows from the trunk, from that another,
-which is multiplied into numerous fresh branches. Instead of a smooth
-road, traced by a regular line of dry and cunningly fixed landmarks, you
-enter a wood, crowded with interwoven trees and luxuriant bushes, which
-conceal and prevent your progress, which delight and dazzle your eyes by
-the magnificence of their verdure and the wealth of their bloom. You are
-astonished at first, modern mind that you are, business man, used to the
-clear dissertations of classical poetry; you become cross; you think the
-author is amusing himself, and that through conceit and bad taste he is
-misleading you and himself in his garden thickets. By no means; if he
-speaks thus, it is not from choice, but of necessity; metaphor is not
-his whim, but the form of his thought. In the height of passion, he
-imagines still. When Hamlet, in despair, remembers his father's noble
-form, he sees the mythological pictures with which the taste of the age
-filled the very streets:
-
-
-"A station like the herald Mercury
-New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill."[636]
-
-
-This charming vision, in the midst of a bloody invective, proves that
-there lurks a painter underneath the poet. Involuntarily and out of
-season, he tears off the tragic mask which covered his face; and the
-reader discovers, behind the contracted features of this terrible mask,
-a graceful and inspired smile which he did not expect to see.
-
-Such an imagination must needs be vehement. Every metaphor is a
-convulsion. Whosoever involuntarily and naturally transforms a dry idea
-into an image, has his brain on fire; true metaphors are flaming
-apparitions, which are like a picture in a flash of lightning. Never, I
-think, in any nation of Europe, or in any age of history, has so grand a
-passion been seen. Shakespeare's style is a compound of frenzied
-expressions. No man has submitted words to such a contortion. Mingled
-contrasts, tremendous exaggerations, apostrophes, exclamations; the
-whole fury of the ode, confusion of ideas, accumulation of images, the
-horrible and the divine, jumbled into the same line; it seems to my
-fancy as though he never writes a word without shouting it. "What have I
-done?" the queen asks Hamlet. He answers:
-
-
-"Such an act
-That blurs the grace and blush of modesty,
-Calls virtue hypocrite, takes off the rose
-From the fair forehead of an innocent love,
-And sets a blister there, makes marriage-vows
-As false as dicers' oaths: O, such a deed
-As from the body of contraction plucks
-The very soul, and sweet religion makes
-A rhapsody of words: Heaven's face doth glow;
-Yea, this solidity and compound mass,
-With tristful visage, as against the doom,
-Is thought-sick at the act."[637]
-
-
-It is the style of frenzy. Yet I have not given all. The metaphors are
-all exaggerated, the ideas all verge on the absurd. All is transformed
-and disfigured by the whirlwind of passion. The contagion of the crime,
-which he denounces, has marred all nature. He no longer sees anything in
-the world but corruption and lying. To vilify the virtuous were little;
-he vilifies virtue herself. Inanimate things are sucked into this
-whirlpool of grief. The sky's red tint at sunset, the pallid darkness
-spread by night over the landscape, become the blush and the pallor of
-shame, and the wretched man who speaks and weeps sees the whole world
-totter with him in the dimness of despair.
-
-Hamlet, it will be said, is half-mad; this explains the vehemence of his
-expressions. The truth is that Hamlet, here, is Shakespeare. Be the
-situation terrible or peaceful, whether he is engaged on an invective or
-a conversation, the style is excessive throughout. Shakespeare never
-sees things tranquilly. All the powers of his mind are concentrated in
-the present image or idea. He is buried and absorbed in it. With such a
-genius, we are on the brink of an abyss; the eddying water dashes in
-headlong, swallowing up whatever objects it meets, and only bringing
-them to light transformed and mutilated. We pause stupefied before these
-convulsive metaphors, which might have been written by a fevered hand in
-a night's delirium, which gather a pageful of ideas and pictures in half
-a sentence, which scorch the eyes they would enlighten. Words lose their
-meaning; constructions are put out of joint; paradoxes of style,
-apparently false expressions, which a man might occasionally venture
-upon with diffidence in the transport of his rapture, become the
-ordinary language. Shakespeare dazzles, repels, terrifies, disgusts,
-oppresses; his verses are a piercing and sublime song, pitched in too
-high a key, above the reach of our organs, which offends our ears, of
-which our mind alone can divine the justice and beauty.
-
-Yet this is little; for that singular force of concentration is
-redoubled by the suddenness of the dash which calls it into existence.
-In Shakespeare there is no preparation, no adaptation, no development,
-no care to make himself understood. Like a too fiery and powerful horse,
-he bounds, but cannot run. He bridges in a couple of words an enormous
-interval; is at the two poles in a single instant. The reader vainly
-looks for the intermediate track; dazed by these prodigious leaps, he
-wonders by what miracle the poet has entered upon a new idea the very
-moment when he quitted the last, seeing perhaps between the two images a
-long scale of transitions, which we mount with difficulty step by step,
-but which he has spanned in a stride. Shakespeare flies, we creep. Hence
-comes a style made up of conceits, bold images, shattered in an instant
-by others still bolder, barely indicated ideas completed by others far
-removed, no visible connection, but a visible incoherence; at every step
-we halt, the track failing; and there, far above us, lo, stands the
-poet, and we find that we have ventured in his footsteps, through a
-craggy land, full of precipices, which he threads as if it were a
-straightforward road, but on which our greatest efforts barely carry us
-along.
-
-What will you think, further, if we observe that these vehement
-expressions, so natural in their up-welling, instead of following one
-after the other, slowly and with effort, are hurled out by hundreds,
-with an impetuous ease and abundance, like the bubbling waves from a
-welling spring, which are heaped together, rise one above another, and
-find nowhere room enough to spread and exhaust themselves? You may find
-in "Romeo and Juliet" a score of examples of this inexhaustible
-inspiration. The two lovers pile up an infinite mass of metaphors,
-impassioned exaggerations, clenches, contorted phrases, amorous
-extravagances. Their language is like the trill of nightingales.
-Shakespeare's wits, Mercutio, Beatrice, Rosalind, his clowns, buffoons,
-sparkle with far-fetched jokes, which rattle out like a volley of
-musketry. There is none of them but provides enough play on words to
-stock a whole theatre. Lear's curses, or Queen Margaret's, would suffice
-for all the madmen in an asylum, or all the oppressed of the earth. The
-sonnets are a delirium of ideas and images, labored at with an obstinacy
-enough to make a man giddy. His first poem, "Venus and Adonis," is the
-sensual ecstasy of a Correggio, insatiable and excited. This exuberant
-fecundity intensifies qualities already in excess, and multiplies a
-hundred-fold the luxuriance of metaphor, the incoherence of style, and
-the unbridled vehemence of expression.[638]
-
-All that I have said may be compressed into a few words. Objects were
-taken into his mind organized and complete; they pass into ours
-disjointed, decomposed, fragmentarily. He thought in the lump, we think
-piecemeal; hence his style and our style--two languages not to be
-reconciled. We, for our part, writers and reasoners, can note precisely
-by a word each isolated fraction of an idea, and represent the due order
-of its parts by the due order of our expressions. We advance gradually;
-we follow the filiations, refer continually to the roots, try and treat
-our words as numbers, our sentences as equations; we employ but general
-terms, which every mind can understand, and regular constructions, into
-which any mind can enter; we attain justness and clearness, not life.
-Shakespeare lets justness and clearness look out for themselves, and
-attains life. From amidst his' complex conception and his colored
-semi-vision, he grasps a fragment, a quivering fibre, and shows it; it
-is for you, from this fragment, to divine the rest. He, behind the word,
-has a whole picture, an attitude, a long argument abridged, a mass of
-swarming ideas; you know them, these abbreviative, condensive words:
-these are they which we launch out amidst the fire of invention, in a
-fit of passion--words of slang or of fashion, which appeal to local
-memory or individual experience;[639] little desultory and incorrect
-phrases, which, by their irregularity, express the suddenness and the
-breaks of the inner sensation; trivial words, exaggerated figures.[640]
-There is a gesture beneath each, a quick contraction of the brows, a
-curl of laughing lips, a clown's trick, an unhinging of the whole
-machine. None of them mark ideas, all suggest images; each is the
-extremity and issue of a complete mimic action; none is the expression
-and definition of a partial and limited idea. This is why Shakespeare is
-strange and powerful, obscure and creative, beyond all the poets of his
-or any other age; the most immoderate of all violators of language, the
-most marvellous of all creators of souls, the farthest removed from
-regular logic and classical reason, the one most capable of exciting in
-us a world of forms and of placing living beings before us.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION III.--Shakespeare's Language And Manners
-
-
-Let us reconstruct this world, so as to find in it the imprint of its
-creator. A poet does not copy at random the manners which surround him;
-he selects from this vast material, and involuntarily brings upon the
-stage the habits of the heart and conduct which best suit his talent. If
-he is a logician, a moralist, an orator, as, for instance, one of the
-French great tragic poets (Racine) of the seventeenth century, he will
-only represent noble manners; he will avoid low characters; he will have
-a horror of menials and the plebs; he will observe the greatest decorum
-amidst the strongest outbreaks of passion; he will reject as scandalous
-every low or indecent word; he will give us reason, loftiness, good
-taste throughout; he will suppress the familiarity, childishness,
-artlessness, gay banter of domestic life; he will blot out precise
-details, special traits, and will carry tragedy into a serene and
-sublime region, where his abstract personages, unencumbered by time and
-space, after an exchange of eloquent harangues and able dissertations,
-will kill each other becomingly, and as though they were merely
-concluding a ceremony. Shakespeare does just the contrary, because his
-genius is the exact opposite. His master faculty is an impassioned
-imagination, freed from the shackles of reason and morality. He abandons
-himself to it, and finds in man nothing that he would care to lop off.
-He accepts nature and finds it beautiful in its entirety. He paints it
-in its littlenesses, it deformities, its weaknesses, its excesses, its
-irregularities, and its rages; he exhibits man at his meals, in bed, at
-play, drunk, mad, sick; he adds that which ought not to be seen to that
-which passes on the stage. He does not dream of ennobling, but of
-copying human life, and aspires only to make his copy more energetic and
-more striking than the original.
-
-Hence the morals of this drama; and first, the want of dignity. Dignity
-arises from self-command. A man selects the most noble of his acts and
-attitudes, and allows himself no other. Shakespeare's characters select
-none, but allow themselves all. His kings are men, and fathers of
-families. The terrible Leontes, who is about to order the death of his
-wife and his friend, plays like a child with his son: caresses him,
-gives him all the pretty pet names which mothers are wont to employ; he
-dares be trivial; he gabbles like a nurse; he has her language and
-fulfils her duties:
-
-
-"_Leontes._ What, hast smutch'd thy nose?
-They say it is a copy out of mine. Come, captain,
-We must be neat; not neat, but cleanly, captain:...
-Come, sir page,
-Look on me with your welkin eye: sweet villain!
-Most dear'st! my collop... Looking on the lines
-Of my boy's face, methoughts I did recoil
-Twenty-three years, and saw myself unbreech'd,
-In my green velvet coat, my dagger muzzled,
-Lest it should bite its master....
-How like, methought, I then was to this kernel,
-This squash, this gentleman!... My brother,
-Are you so fond of your young prince as we
-Do seem to be of ours?
-_Polixenes._ If at home, sir,
-He's all my exercise, my mirth, my matter,
-Now my sworn friend and then mine enemy,
-My parasite, my soldier, statesman, all:
-He makes a July's day short as December,
-And with his varying childness cures in me
-Thoughts that would thick my blood."[641]
-
-
-There are a score of such passages in Shakespeare. The great passions,
-with him as in nature, are preceded or followed by trivial actions,
-small-talk, commonplace sentiments. Strong emotions are accidents in our
-life: to drink, to eat, to talk of indifferent things, to carry out
-mechanically a habitual duty, to dream of some stale pleasure or some
-ordinary annoyance, that is in which we employ all our time. Shakespeare
-paints us as we are; his heroes bow, ask people for news, speak of rain
-and fine weather, as often and as casually as ourselves, on the very eve
-of falling into the extremity of misery, or of plunging into fatal
-resolutions. Hamlet asks what's o'clock, finds the wind biting, talks of
-feasts and music heard without; and this quiet talk, so unconnected with
-the action, so full of slight, insignificant facts, which chance alone
-has raised up and guided, lasts until the moment when his father's
-ghost, rising in the darkness, reveals the assassination which it is his
-duty to avenge.
-
-Reason tells us that our manners should be measured; this is why the
-manners which Shakespeare paints are not so. Pure nature is violent,
-passionate: it admits no excuses, suffers no middle course, takes no
-count of circumstances, wills blindly, breaks out into railing, has the
-irrationality, ardor, anger of children. Shakespeare's characters have
-hot blood and a ready hand. They cannot restrain themselves, they
-abandon themselves at once to their grief, indignation, love, and plunge
-desperately down the steep slope, where their passion urges them. How
-many need I quote? Timon, Posthumus, Cressida, all the young girls, all
-the chief characters in the great dramas; everywhere Shakespeare paints
-the unreflecting impetuosity of the impulse of the moment. Capulet tells
-his daughter Juliet that in three days she is to marry Earl Paris, and
-bids her be proud of it; she answers that she is not proud of it, and
-yet she thanks the earl for this proof of love. Compare Capulet's fury
-with the anger of Orgon,[642] and you may measure the difference of the
-two poets and the two civilizations:
-
-
-"_Capulet._ How now, how now, chop-logic! What is this?
-'Proud,' and 'I thank you,' and 'I thank you not;'
-And yet 'not proud,' mistress minion, you,
-Thank me no thankings, nor proud me no prouds,
-But fettle your fine joints 'gainst Thursday next,
-To go with Paris to Saint Peter's church,
-Or I will drag thee on a hurdle thither.
-Out, you green-sickness carrion! out, you baggage!
-You tallow-face!
-_Juliet._ Good father, I beseech you on my knees,
-Hear me with patience but to speak a word.
-_C._ Hang thee, young baggage! disobedient wretch
-I tell thee what: get thee to church o' Thursday,
-Or never after look me in the face:
-Speak not, reply not, do not answer me;
-My fingers itch....
-_Lady C._ You are too hot.
-_C._ God's bread! it makes me mad:
-Day, night, hour, tide, time, work, play,
-Alone, in company, still my care hath been
-To have her match'd: and having now provided
-A gentleman of noble parentage,
-Of fair demesnes, youthful, and nobly train'd,
-Stuff'd, as they say, with honorable parts,
-Proportion'd as one's thoughts would wish a man;
-And then to have a wretched puling fool,
-A whining mammet, in her fortune's tender,
-To answer, '_I'll not wed; I cannot love,
-I am too young; I pray you, pardon me_,'--
-But, an you will not wed, I'll pardon you:
-Graze where you will, you shall not house with me:
-Look to't, think on't, I do not use to jest.
-Thursday is near; lay hand on heart, advise:
-An you be mine, I'll give you to my friend;
-An you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets,
-For, by my soul, I'll ne'er acknowledge thee."[643]
-
-
-This method of exhorting one's child to marry is peculiar to Shakespeare
-and the sixteenth century. Contradiction to these men was like a red rag
-to a bull; it drove them mad.
-
-We might be sure that in this age, and on this stage, decency was a
-thing unknown. It is wearisome, being a check; men got rid of it,
-because it was wearisome. It is a gift of reason and morality; as
-indecency is produced by nature and passion. Shakespeare's words are too
-indecent to be translated. His characters call things by their dirty
-names, and compel the thoughts to particular images of physical love.
-The talk of gentlemen and ladies is full of coarse allusions; we should
-have to find out an alehouse of the lowest description to hear like
-words nowadays.[644]
-
-It would be in an alehouse too that we should have to look for the rude
-jests and brutal kind of wit which form the staple of these
-conversations. Kindly politeness is the slow fruit of advanced
-reflection; it is a sort of humanity and kindliness applied to small
-acts and everyday discourse; it bids man soften towards others, and
-forget himself for the sake of others; it constrains genuine nature,
-which is selfish and gross. This is why it is absent from the manners of
-the drama we are considering. You will see carmen, out of sportiveness
-and good humor, deal one another hard blows; so it is pretty well with
-the conversation of the lords and ladies of Shakespeare who are in a
-sportive mood; for instance, Beatrice and Benedick, very well bred folk
-as things go,[645] with a great reputation for wit and politeness, whose
-smart retorts create amusement for the bystanders. These "skirmishes of
-wit" consist in telling one another plainly: You are a coward, a
-glutton, an idiot, a buffoon, a rake, a brute! You are a parrot's
-tongue, a fool, a... (the word is there). Benedick says:
-
-
-"I will go... to the Antipodes... rather than hold three
-words' conference with this harpy.... I cannot endure my
-Lady Tongue....
-_Don Pedro._ You have put him down, lady, you have put him down.
-_Beatrice._ So I would not he should do me, my lord, lest I should
-prove the mother of fools."[646]
-
-
-We can infer the tone they use when in anger. Emilia, in "Othello,"
-says:
-
-
-"He call'd her whore; a beggar in his drink
-Could not have laid such terms upon his callat."[647]
-
-
-They have a vocabulary of foul words as complete as that of Rabelais,
-and they exhaust it. They catch up handfuls of mud and hurl it at their
-enemy, not conceiving themselves to be smirched.
-
-Their actions correspond. They go without shame or pity to the limits of
-their passion. They kill, poison, violate, burn; the stage is full of
-abominations. Shakespeare lugs upon the stage all the atrocious deeds of
-the Civil Wars. These are the ways of wolves and hyenas. We must read of
-Jack Cade's sedition[648] to gain an idea of this madness and fury. We
-might imagine we were seeing infuriated beasts, the murderous
-recklessness of a wolf in a sheepfold, the brutality of a hog fouling
-and rolling himself in filth and blood. They destroy, kill, butcher each
-other; with their feet in the blood of their victims, they call for food
-and drink; they stick heads on pikes and make them kiss one another, and
-they laugh.
-
-
-"_Jack Cade._ There shall be in England seven halfpenny loaves sold for
-a penny.... There shall be no money; all shall eat and drink on my
-score, and I will apparel them all in one livery.... And here sitting
-upon London-stone, I charge and command that, of the city's cost, the
-pissing-conduit run nothing but claret wine this first year of our
-reign.... Away, burn all the records of the realm; my mouth shall be the
-parliament of England.... And henceforth all things shall be in
-common.... What canst thou answer to my majesty for giving up of
-Normandy unto Mounsieur Basimecu, the dauphin of France?... The proudest
-peer in the realm shall not wear a head on his shoulders, unless he pay
-me tribute; there shall not a maid be married, but she shall pay to me
-her maidenhead ere they have it. (_Re-enter rebels with the heads of
-Lord Say and his son-in-law._) But is not this braver? Let them kiss one
-another, for they loved well when they were alive."[649]
-
-
-Man must not be let loose; we know not what lusts and rage may brood
-under a sober guise. Nature was never so hideous, and this hideousness
-is the truth.
-
-Are these cannibal manners only met with among the scum? Why, the
-princes are worse. The Duke of Cornwall orders the old Earl of
-Gloucester to be tied to a chair, because, owing to him, King Lear has
-escaped:
-
-
-"Fellows, hold the chair.
-Upon these eyes of thine I'll set my foot.
-(_Gloucester is held down in the chair, while Cornwall plucks
-out one of his eyes, and sets his foot on it._)
-_Glou._ He that will think to live till he be old,
-Give me some help! O cruel: O you gods!
-_Regan._ One side will mock another; the other too.
-_Cornwall._ If you see vengeance--
-_Servant._ Hold	your hand, my lord:
-I have served you ever since I was a child;
-But better service have I never done you,
-Than now to bid you hold.
-_Regan._ How now, you dog!
-_Serv._ If you did wear a beard upon your chin,
-I'd shake it on this quarrel. What do you mean?
-_Corn._ My villain! (_Draws and runs at him._)
-_Serv._ Nay, then, come on, and take the chance of anger.
-(_Draws; they fight; Cornwall is wounded._)
-_Regan._ Give me thy sword. A peasant stands up thus.
-(_Snatches a sword, comes behind, and stabs him._)
-_Serv._ O, I am slain! My lord, you have one eye left
-To see some mischief on him. O!	(_Dies._)
-_Corn._ Lest it see more, prevent it. Out, vile jelly!
-Where is thy lustre now?
-_Glou._ All dark and comfortless. Where's my son?...
-_Regan._ Go thrust him out at gates, and let him smell
-His way to Dover."[650]
-
-
-Such are the manners of that stage. They are unbridled, like those of
-the age, and like the poet's imagination. To copy the common actions of
-every-day life, the puerilities and feeblenesses to which the greatest
-continually sink, the outbursts of passion which degrade them, the
-indecent, harsh, or foul words, the atrocious deeds in which license
-revels, the brutality and ferocity of primitive nature, is the work of a
-free and unencumbered imagination. To copy this hideousness and these
-excesses with a selection of such familiar, significant, precise
-details, that they reveal under every word of every personage a complete
-civilization, is the work of a concentrated and all-powerful
-imagination. This species of manners and this energy of description
-indicate the same faculty, unique and excessive, which the style had
-already indicated.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION IV.--Dramatis Personæ
-
-
-On this common background stands out in striking relief a population of
-distinct living figures, illuminated by an intense light. This creative
-power is Shakespeare's great gift, and it communicates an extraordinary
-significance to his words. Every phrase pronounced by one of its
-characters enables us to see, besides the idea which it contains and the
-emotion which prompted it, the aggregate of the qualities and the entire
-character which produced it--the mood, physical attitude, bearing, look
-of the man, all instantaneously, with a clearness and force approached
-by no one. The words which strike our ears are not the thousandth part
-of those we hear within; they are like sparks thrown off here and there;
-the eyes catch rare flashes of flame; the mind alone perceives the vast
-conflagration of which they are the signs and the effect. He gives us
-two dramas in one: the first strange, convulsive, curtailed, visible;
-the other consistent, immense, invisible; the one covers the other so
-well, that as a rule we do not realize that we are perusing words: we
-hear the roll of those terrible voices, we see contracted features,
-glowing eyes, pallid faces; we see the agitation, the furious
-resolutions which mount to the brain with the feverish blood, and
-descend to the sharp-strung nerves. This property possessed by every
-phrase to exhibit a world of sentiments and forms, comes from the fact
-that the phrase is actually caused by a world of emotions and images.
-Shakespeare, when he wrote, felt all that we feel, and much besides. He
-had the prodigious faculty of seeing in a twinkling of the eye a
-complete character, body, mind, past and present, in every detail and
-every depth of his being, with the exact attitude and the expression of
-face, which the situation demanded. A word here and there of Hamlet or
-Othello would need for its explanation three pages of commentaries; each
-of the half-understood thoughts, which the commentator may have
-discovered, has left its trace in the turn of the phrase, in the nature
-of the metaphor, in the order of the words; nowadays, in pursuing these
-traces, we divine the thoughts. These innumerable traces have been
-impressed in a second, within the compass of a line. In the next line
-there are as many, impressed just as quickly, and in the same compass.
-You can gauge the concentration and the velocity of the imagination
-which creates thus.
-
-These characters are all of the same family. Good or bad, gross or
-delicate, witty or stupid, Shakespeare gives them all the same kind of
-spirit which is his own. He has made of them imaginative people, void of
-will and reason, impassioned machines, vehemently jostled one against
-another, who were outwardly whatever is most natural and most abandoned
-in human nature. Let us act the play to ourselves, and see in all its
-stages this clanship of figures, this prominence of portraits.
-
-Lowest of all are the stupid folk, babbling or brutish. Imagination
-already exists there, where reason is not yet born; it exists also there
-where reason is dead. The idiot and the brute blindly follow the
-phantoms which exist in their benumbed or mechanical brains. No poet has
-understood this mechanism like Shakespeare. His Caliban, for instance, a
-deformed savage, fed on roots, growls like a beast under the hand of
-Prospero, who has subdued him. He howls continually against his master,
-though he knows that every curse will be paid back with "cramps and
-aches." He is a chained wolf, trembling and fierce, who tries to bite
-when approached, and who crouches when he see's the lash raised. He has
-a foul sensuality, a loud base laugh, the gluttony of degraded humanity.
-He wishes to violate Miranda in her sleep. He cries for his food, and
-gorges himself when he gets it. A sailor who had landed in the island,
-Stephano, gives him wine; he kisses his feet, and takes him for a god;
-he asks if he has not dropped from heaven, and adores him. We find in
-him rebellious and baffled passions, which are eager to rise again and
-to be satiated. Stephano had beaten his comrade. Caliban cries, "Beat
-Him enough: after a little time I'll beat him too." He prays Stephano to
-come with him and murder Prospero in his sleep; he thirsts to lead him
-there, dances through joy and sees his master already with his "weasand"
-cut, and his brains scattered on the earth:
-
-
-"Prithee, my king, be quiet. See'st thou here,
-This is the mouth o' the cell: no noise, and enter.
-Do that good mischief which may make this island
-Thine own forever, and I, thy Caliban,
-For aye thy foot-licker."[651]
-
-
-Others, like Ajax and Cloten, are more like men, and yet it is pure mood
-that Shakespeare depicts in them, as in Caliban. The clogging corporeal
-machine, the mass of muscles, the thick blood sluggishly moving along in
-the veins of these fighting men, oppress the intelligence, and leave no
-life but for animal passions. Ajax uses his fists, and devours meat;
-that is his existence; if he is jealous of Achilles, it is pretty much
-as a bull is jealous of his fellow. He permits himself to be restrained
-and led by Ulysses, without looking before him: the grossest flattery
-decoys him. The Greeks have urged him to accept Hector's challenge.
-Behold him puffed up with pride, scorning to answer anyone, not knowing
-what he says or does. Thersites cries, "Good-morrow, Ajax"; and he
-replies, "Thanks, Agamemnon." He has no further thought than to
-contemplate his enormous frame, and roll majestically his big stupid
-eyes. When the day of the fight has come, he strikes at Hector as on an
-anvil. After a good while they are separated. "I am not warm yet," says
-Ajax, "let us fight again."[652] Cloten is less massive than this
-phlegmatic ox; but he is just as idiotic, just as vainglorious, just as
-coarse. The beautiful Imogen, urged by his insults and his scullion
-manners, tells him that his whole body is not worth as much a
-Posthumus's meanest garment. He is stung to the quick, repeats the words
-several times; he cannot shake off the idea, and runs at it again and
-again with his head down, like an angry ram:
-
-
-"_Cloten._ 'His garment?' Now, the devil--
-_Imogen._ To Dorothy my woman hie thee presently--
-_C._ 'His garment?'... You have abused me: 'His meanest
-garment!'... I'll be revenged: 'His meanest garment!' Well."[653]
-
-
-He gets some of Posthumus's garments, and goes to Milford Haven,
-expecting to meet Imogen there. On his way he mutters thus:
-
-
-"With that suit upon my back, will I ravish her: first kill him, and in
-her eyes; there shall she see my valor, which will then be a torment to
-her contempt. He on the ground, my speech of insultment ended on his
-dead body, and when my lust has dined--which, as I say, to vex her I
-will execute in the clothes that she so praised--to the court I'll knock
-her back, foot her home again."[654]
-
-
-Others again, are but babblers: for example, Polonius, the grave
-brainless counsellor; a great baby, not yet out of his "swathing
-clouts"; a solemn booby, who rains on men a shower of counsels,
-compliments, and maxims; a sort of court speaking-trumpet, useful in
-grand ceremonies, with the air of a thinker, but fit only to spout
-words. But the most complete of all these characters is that of the
-nurse in "Romeo and Juliet," a gossip, loose in her talk, a regular
-kitchen oracle, smelling of the stewpan and old boots, foolish,
-impudent, immoral, but otherwise a good creature, and affectionate to
-her nurse-child. Mark this disjointed and never-ending gossip's babble:
-
-
-"_Nurse._ 'Faith I can tell her age unto an hour.
-_Lady Capulet._ She's not fourteen....
-_Nurse._ Come Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen.
-Susan and she--God rest all Christian souls!--
-Were of an age: well, Susan is with God;
-She was too good for me: but, as I said,
-On Lammas-eve at night shall she be fourteen;
-That shall she, marry; I remember it well.
-'Tis since the earthquake now eleven years;
-And she was wean'd--I never shall forget it--
-Of all the days of the year, upon that day:
-For I had then laid wormwood to my dug,
-Sitting in the sun under the dove-house wall;
-My lord and you were then at Mantua:--
-Nay, I do bear a brain:--but, as I said,
-When it did taste the wormwood on the nipple
-Of my dug and felt it bitter, pretty fool,
-To see it tetchy and fall out with the dug!
-Shake, quoth the dove-house: 'twas no need, I trow,
-To bid me trudge:
-And since that time it is eleven years;
-For then she could stand alone; nay, by the rood,
-She could have run and waddled all about;
-For even the day before, she broke her brow."[655]
-
-
-Then she tells an indecent anecdote, which she begins over again four
-times. She is silenced: what then? She has her anecdote in her head, and
-cannot cease repeating it and laughing to herself. Endless repetitions
-are the mind's first step. The vulgar do not pursue the straight line of
-reasoning and of the story; they repeat their steps, as it were merely
-marking time: struck with an image, they keep it for an hour before
-their eyes, and are never tired of it. If they do advance, they turn
-aside to a hundred subordinate ideas before they get at the phrase
-required. They allow themselves to be diverted by all the thoughts which
-come across them. This is what the nurse does; and when she brings
-Juliet news of her lover, she torments and wearies her, less from a wish
-to tease than from a habit of wandering from the point:
-
-
-"_Nurse._ Jesu, what haste? can you not stay awhile?
-Do you not see that I am out of breath?
-_Juliet._ How art thou out of breath, when thou hast breath
-To say to me that thou art out of breath?
-Is thy news good, or bad? answer to that;
-Say either, and I'll stay the circumstance:
-Let me be satisfied: is't good or bad?
-_N._ Well, you have made a simple choice; you know not how to choose
-a man: Romeo! no, not he: though his face be better than any man's,
-yet his legs excels all men's; and for a hand and a foot, and a body,
-though they be not to be talked on, yet they are past compare: he is
-not the flower of courtesy, but, I'll warrant him, as gentle as a lamb.
-Go thy ways, wench; serve God. What, have you dined at home?
-_J._ No, no: but all this did I know before.
-What says he of our marriage? what of that?
-_N._ Lord, how my head aches! what a head have I!
-It beats as it would fall in twenty pieces.
-My back o' t'other side--O, my back, my back!
-Beshrew your heart for sending me about,
-To catch my death with jaunting up and down!
-_J._ I' faith, I am sorry that thou art not well.
-Sweet, sweet, sweet nurse, tell me, what says my love?
-_N._ Your love says, like an honest gentleman, and a courteous, and
-a kind, and a handsome, and, I warrant, a virtuous--Where is your
-mother?"[656]
-
-
-It is never-ending. Her gabble is worse when she comes to announce to
-Juliet the death of her cousin and the banishment of Romeo. It is the
-shrill cry and chatter of an overgrown asthmatic magpie. She laments,
-confuses the names, spins roundabout sentences, ends by asking for
-_aqua-vitœ._ She curses Romeo, then brings him to Juliet's chamber.
-Next day Juliet is ordered to marry Earl Paris; Juliet throws herself
-into her nurse's arms, praying for comfort, advice, assistance. The
-other finds the true remedy: Marry Paris,
-
-
-"O, he's a lovely gentleman!
-Romeo's a dishclout to him: an eagle, madam,
-Hath not so green, so quick, so fair an eye
-As Paris hath. Beshrew my very heart,
-I think you are happy in this second match.
-For it excels your first."[657]
-
-
-This cool immorality, these weather-cock arguments, this fashion of
-estimating love like a fishwoman, completes the portrait.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION V.--Men of Wit
-
-
-The mechanical imagination produces Shakespeare's fool-characters: a
-quick, venturesome, dazzling, unquiet imagination, produces his men of
-wit. Of wit there are many kinds. One, altogether French, which is but
-reason, a foe to paradox, scorner of folly, a sort of incisive
-common-sense, having no occupation but to render truth amusing and
-evident, the most effective weapon with an intelligent and vain people:
-such was the wit of Voltaire and the drawing-rooms. The other, that of
-improvisators and artists, is a mere inventive rapture, paradoxical,
-unshackled, exuberant, a sort of self-entertainment, a phantasmagoria of
-images, flashes of wit, strange ideas, dazing and intoxicating, like the
-movement and illumination in a ball-room. Such is the wit of Mercutio,
-of the clowns, of Beatrice, Rosalind, and Benedick. They laugh, not from
-a sense of the ridiculous, but from the desire to laugh. You must look
-elsewhere for the campaigns with aggressive reason makes against human
-folly. Here folly is in its full bloom. Our folk think of amusement, and
-nothing more. They are good-humored; they let their wit prance gayly
-over the possible and the impossible. They play upon words, contort
-their sense, draw absurd and laughable inferences, send them back to one
-another, and without intermission, as if with shuttlecocks, and vie with
-each other in singularity and invention. They dress all their ideas in
-strange or sparkling metaphors. The taste of the time was for
-masquerades; their conversation is a masquerade of ideas. They say
-nothing in a simple style; they only seek to heap together subtle
-things, far-fetched, difficult to invent and to understand; all their
-expressions are over-refined, unexpected, extraordinary; they strain
-their thought, and change it into a caricature. "Alas, poor Romeo!" says
-Mercutio, "he is already dead; stabbed with a white wench's black eye;
-shot through the ear with a love-song, the very pin of his heart cleft
-with the blind bow-boy's butt-shaft."[658] Benedick relates a
-conversation he has just held with his mistress: "O, she misused me past
-the endurance of a block! an oak, but with one green leaf on it would
-have answered her; my very visor began to assume life, and scold with
-her."[659] These gay and perpetual extravagances show the bearing of the
-speakers. They do not remain quietly seated in their chairs, like the
-Marquesses in the "Misanthrope"; they whirl round, leap, paint their
-faces, gesticulate boldly their ideas; their wit-rockets end with a
-song. Young folk, soldiers and artists, they let off their fireworks of
-phrases, and gambol round about. "There was a star danced, and under
-that was I born."[660] This expression of Beatrice's aptly describes the
-kind of poetical, sparkling, unreasoning, charming wit, more akin to
-music than to literature, a sort of dream, which is spoken out aloud,
-and whilst wide awake, not unlike that described by Mercutio:
-
-
-"O, then, I see Queen Mab hath been with you.
-She is the fairies' midwife; and she comes
-In shape no bigger than an agate-stone
-On the fore-finger of an alderman,
-Drawn with a team of little atomies
-Athwart men's noses as they lie asleep;
-Her wagon-spokes made of long spinners' legs,
-The cover of the wings of grasshoppers,
-The traces of the smallest spider's web,
-The collars of the moonshine's watery beams,
-Her whip of cricket's bone, the lash of film,
-Her wagoner a small gray-coated gnat,
-Not half so big as a round little worm
-Prick'd from the lazy finger of a maid;
-Her chariot is an empty hazel-nut,
-Made by the joiner squirrel or old grub,
-Time out o' mind the fairies' coachmakers.
-And in this state she gallops night by night
-Through lovers' brains, and then they dream of love;
-O'er courtiers' knees, that dream on court'sies straight,
-O'er lawyers' fingers, who straight dream on fees,
-O'er ladies' lips, who straight on kisses dream....
-Sometime she gallops o'er a courtier's nose,
-And then dreams he of smelling out a suit;
-And sometime comes she with a tithe-pig's tail
-Tickling a person's nose as a' lies asleep,
-Then dreams he of another benefice:
-Sometime she driveth o'er a soldier's neck,
-And then dreams he of cutting foreign throats,
-Of breaches, ambuscadoes, Spanish blades,
-Of healths five-fathom deep: and then anon
-Drums in his ear, at which he starts and wakes,
-And being thus frighted swears a prayer or two
-And sleeps again. This is that very Mab
-That plats the manes of horses in the night,
-And bakes the elf-locks in foul sluttish hairs,
-Which once untangled much misfortune bodes...
-This is she."[661]
-
-
-
-
-[Illustration: CHOICE EXAMPLES OF BOOK ILLUMINATION.
-Fac-similes from Illuminated Manuscripts and Illustrated Books
-of Early Date.
-
-_TITLE-PAGE OF THE HYPNEROTOMACHIA._
-
-The present frontispiece belongs to a French translation of the work of
-Poliphilo, the only book with decorated borders and insertions ever
-published by the Venetian Aldi. They printed the Hypnerotomachia in
-1499, and it was reproduced in a French translation, with the present
-title-page by the Parisian printer, Jacques Kerver, in 1546. All the
-profuse embellishments of the Aldine edition were retained, but the
-title-page here reproduced is from a design of the famous French
-sculptor, Jean Goujon.]
-
-
-
-Romeo interrupts him, or he would never end. Let the reader compare with
-the dialogue of the French theatre this little poem
-
-
-"Child of an idle brain,
-Begot of nothing but vain fantasy,"[662]
-
-
-introduced without incongruity in the midst of a conversation of the
-sixteenth century, and he will understand the difference between the wit
-which devotes itself to reasoning, or to record a subject for laughter,
-and that imagination which is self-amused with its own act.
-
-Falstaff has the passions of an animal, and the imagination of a man of
-wit. There is no character which better exemplifies the fire and
-immorality of Shakespeare. Falstaff is a great supporter of disreputable
-places, swearer, gamester, idler, wine-bibber, as low as he well can be.
-He has a big belly, bloodshot eyes, bloated face, shaking legs; he
-spends his life with his elbows among the tavern-jugs, or asleep on the
-ground behind the arras; he only wakes to curse, lie, brag, and steal.
-He is as big a swindler as Panurge, who had sixty-three ways of making
-money, "of which the honestest was by sly theft." And what is worse, he
-is an old man, a knight, a courtier, and well educated. Must he not be
-odious and repulsive? By no means; we cannot help liking him. At bottom,
-like his brother Panurge, he is "the best fellow in the world." He has
-no malice in his composition; no other wish than to laugh and be amused.
-When insulted, he bawls out louder than his attackers, and pays them
-back with interest in coarse words and insults; but he owes them no
-grudge for it. The next minute he is sitting down with them in a low
-tavern, drinking their health like a brother and comrade. If he has
-vices, he exposes them so frankly that we are obliged to forgive him
-them. He seems to say to us, "Well, so I am, what then? I like drinking:
-isn't the wine good? I take to my heels when hard hitting begins; don't
-blows hurt? I get into debt, and do fools out their money; isn't it nice
-to have money in your pocket? I brag; isn't it natural to want to be
-well thought of?"--"Dost thou hear, Hal? thou knowest, in the state of
-innocency, Adam fell; and what should poor Jack Falstaff do in the days
-of villainy? Thou seest I have more flesh than another man, and
-therefore more frailty."[663] Falstaff is so frankly immoral, that he
-ceases to be so. Conscience ends at a certain point; nature assumes its
-place, and man rushes upon what he desires, without more thought of
-being just or unjust than an animal in the neighboring wood. Falstaff,
-engaged in recruiting, has sold exemptions to all the rich people, and
-only enrolled starved and half-naked wretches. There's but a shirt and a
-half in all his company: that does not trouble him. Bah: "they'll find
-linen enough on every hedge." The prince, who has seen them, says, "I
-did never see such pitiful rascals. Tut, tut," answers Falstaff, "good
-enough to toss; food for powder; they'll fill a pit as well as better;
-tush, man, mortal men, mortal men."[664] His second excuse is his
-unfailing spirit. If ever there was a man who could jabber, it is he.
-Insults and oaths, curses, jobations, protests, flow from him as from an
-open barrel. He is never at a loss; he devises a shift for every
-difficulty. Lies sprout out of him, fructify, increase, beget one
-another, like mushrooms on a rich and rotten bed of earth. He lies still
-more from his imagination and nature than from interest and necessity.
-It is evident from the manner in which he strains his fictions. He says
-he has fought alone against two men. The next moment it is four.
-Presently we have seven, then eleven, then fourteen. He is stopped in
-time, or he would soon be talking of a whole army. When unmasked, he
-does not lose his temper, and is the first to laugh at his boastings.
-"Gallants, lads, boys, hearts of gold.... What, shall we be merry? shall
-we have a play extempore?"[665] He does the scolding part of King Henry
-with so much truth that we might take him for a king, or an actor. This
-big potbellied fellow, a coward, a cynic, a brawler, a drunkard, a lewd
-rascal, a pothouse poet, is one of Shakespeare's favorites. The reason
-is, that his morals are those of pure nature, and Shakespeare's mind is
-congenial with his own.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION VI.--Shakespeare's Women
-
-
-Nature is shameless and gross amidst this mass of flesh, heavy with wine
-and fatness. It is delicate in the delicate body of women, but as
-unreasoning and impassioned in Desdemona as in Falstaff. Shakespeare's
-women are charming children, who feel in excess and love passionately.
-They have unconstrained manners, little rages, nice words of friendship,
-a coquettish rebelliousness, a graceful volubility, which recall the
-warbling and the prettiness of birds. The heroines of the French stage
-are almost men; these are women, and in every sense of the word. More
-imprudent than Desdemona a woman could not be. She is moved with pity
-for Cassio, and asks a favor for him passionately, recklessly, be the
-thing just or no, dangerous or no. She knows nothing of man's laws, and
-does not think of them. All that she sees is, that Cassio is unhappy:
-
-
-"Be thou assured, good Cassio... My lord shall never rest;
-I'll watch him, tame and talk him out of patience;
-His bed shall seem a school, his board a shrift;
-I'll intermingle everything he does
-With Cassio's suit."[666]
-
-
-She asks her favor:
-
-
-"_Othello._ Not now, sweet Desdemona; some other time.
-_Desdemona._ But shall't be shortly?
-_O._ The sooner, sweet, for you.
-_Des._ Shall't be to-night at supper?
-_O._ No, not to-night.
-_Des._ To-morrow dinner, then?
-_O._ I shall not dine at home;
-I meet the captains at the citadel.
-_Des._ Why, then, to-morrow night; or Tuesday morn;
-On Tuesday noon, or night; on Wednesday morn;
-I prithee, name the time, but let it not
-Exceed three days: in faith, he's penitent."[667]
-
-
-She is somewhat astonished to see herself refused: she scolds Othello.
-He yields: who would not yield seeing a reproach in those lovely sulking
-eyes? O, says she, with a pretty pout:
-
-
-"This is not a boon;
-'Tis as I should entreat you wear your gloves,
-Or feed on nourishing dishes, or keep you warm,
-Or sue to you to do peculiar profit
-To your own person."[668]
-
-
-A moment after, when he prays her to leave him alone for a while, mark
-the innocent gayety, the ready observance, the playful child's tone:
-
-
-"Shall I deny you? no: farewell, my lord....
-Emilia, come: Be as your fancies teach you;
-Whate'er you be, I am obedient."[669]
-
-
-This vivacity, this petulance, does not prevent shrinking modesty and
-silent timidity: on the contrary, they spring from a common cause,
-extreme sensibility. She who feels much and quickly has more reserve and
-more passion than others; she breaks out or is silent; she says nothing
-or everything. Such is this Imogen.
-
-
-"So tender of rebukes that words are strokes,
-And strokes death to her."[670]
-
-
-Such is Virgilia, the sweet wife of Coriolanus; her heart is not a Roman
-one; she is terrified at her husband's victories: when Volumnia
-describes him stamping on the field of battle, and wiping his bloody
-brow with his hand, she grows pale:
-
-
-"His bloody brow! O Jupiter, no blood!...
-Heavens bless my lord from fell Aufidius!"[671]
-
-
-She wishes to forget all that she knows of these dangers; she dare not
-think of them. When asked if Coriolanus does not generally return
-wounded, she cries, "O, no, no, no." She avoids this cruel picture, and
-yet nurses a secret pang at the bottom of her heart. She will not leave
-the house: "I'll not over the threshold till my lord return."[672] She
-does not smile, will hardly admit a visitor; she would blame herself, as
-for a lack of tenderness, for a moment's forgetfulness or gayety. When
-he does return, she can only blush and weep. This exalted sensibility
-must needs end in love. All Shakespeare's women love without measure,
-and nearly all at first sight. At the first look Juliet cast on Romeo,
-she says to the nurse:
-
-
-"Go, ask his name: if he be married,
-My grave is like to be my wedding bed."[673]
-
-
-It is the revelation of their destiny. As Shakespeare has made them,
-they cannot but love, and they must love till death. But this first look
-is an ecstasy: and this sudden approach of love is a transport. Miranda
-seeing Fernando, fancies that she sees "a thing divine." She halts
-motionless, in the amazement of this sudden vision, at the sound of
-these heavenly harmonies which rise from the depths of her heart. She
-weeps, on seeing him drag the heavy logs; with her slender white hands
-she would do the work whilst he reposed. Her compassion and tenderness
-carry her away; she is no longer mistress of her words, she says what
-she would not, what her father has forbidden her to disclose, what an
-instant before she would never have confessed. The too full heart
-overflows unwittingly, happy, and ashamed at the current of joy and new
-sensations with which an unknown feeling has flooded her:
-
-
-"_Miranda._ I am a fool to weep at what I am glad of....
-_Fernando._ Wherefore weep you?
-_M._ At mine unworthiness that dare not offer
-What I desire to give, and much less take
-What I shall die to want....
-I am your wife, if you will marry me;
-If not, I'll die your maid."[674]
-
-
-This irresistible invasion of love transforms the whole character. The
-shrinking and tender Desdemona, suddenly, in full Senate, before her
-father, renounces her father; dreams not for an instant of asking his
-pardon, or consoling him. She will leave for Cyprus with Othello,
-through the enemy's fleet and the tempest. Everything vanishes before
-the one and adored image which has taken entire and absolute possession
-of her whole heart. So, extreme evils, bloody resolves, are only the
-natural sequence of such love. Ophelia becomes mad, Juliet commits
-suicide; no one but looks upon such madness and death as necessary. You
-will not then discover virtue in these souls, for by virtue is implied a
-determinate desire to do good, and a rational observance of duty. They
-are only pure through delicacy or love. They recoil from vice as a gross
-thing, not as an immoral thing. What they feel is not respect for the
-marriage vow, but adoration of their husband. "O sweetest, fairest
-lily!" So Cymbeline speaks of one of these frail and lovely flowers
-which cannot be torn from the tree to which they have grown, whose least
-impurity would tarnish their whiteness. When Imogen learns that her
-husband means to kill her as being faithless, she does not revolt at the
-outrage; she has no pride, but only love. "False to his bed!" She faints
-at the thought that she is no longer loved. When Cordelia hears her
-father, an irritable old man, already almost insane, ask her how she
-loves him, she cannot make up her mind to say aloud the flattering
-protestations which her sisters have been lavishing. She is ashamed to
-display her tenderness before the world, and to buy a dowry by it. He
-disinherits her, and drives her away; she holds her tongue. And when she
-afterwards finds him abandoned and mad, she goes on her knees before
-him, with such a touching emotion, she weeps over that dear insulted
-head with so gentle a pity, that you might fancy it was the tender voice
-of a desolate but delighted mother, kissing the pale lips of her child:
-
-
-"O yon kind gods,
-Cure this great breach in his abused nature!
-The untuned and jarring senses, O, wind up
-Of this child-changed father!...
-O my dear father! Restoration hang
-Thy medicine on my lips; and let this kiss
-Repair those violent harms that my two sisters
-Have in thy reverence made!... Was this a face
-To be opposed against the warring winds?
-... Mine enemy's dog,
-Though he had bit me, should have stood that night
-Against my fire....
-How does my royal lord? How fares your majesty?"[675]
-
-
-If, in short, Shakespeare comes across a heroic character, worthy of
-Corneille, a Roman, such as the mother of Coriolanus, he will explain by
-passion what Corneille would have explained by heroism. He will depict
-it violent and thirsting for the violent feelings of glory. She will not
-be able to refrain herself. She will break out into accents of triumph
-when she sees her son crowned; into imprecations of vengeance when she
-sees him banished. She will descend to the vulgarities of pride and
-anger; she will abandon herself to mad effusions of joy, to dreams of an
-ambitious fancy,[676] and will prove once more that the impassioned
-imagination of Shakespeare has left its trace in all the creatures whom
-it has called forth.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION VII.--Types of Villains
-
-
-Nothing is easier to such a poet than to create perfect villains.
-Throughout he is handling the unruly passions which make their
-character, and he never hits upon the moral law which restrains them;
-but at the same time, and by the same faculty, he changes the inanimate
-masks, which the conventions of the stage mould on an identical pattern,
-into living and illusory figures. How shall a demon be made to look as
-real as a man? Iago is a soldier of fortune who has roved the world from
-Syria to England, who, nursed in the lowest ranks, having had close
-acquaintance with the horrors of the wars of the sixteenth century, had
-drawn thence the maxims of a Turk and the philosophy of a butcher;
-principles he has none left. "O my reputation, my reputation!" cries the
-dishonored Cassio. "As I am an honest man," says Iago, "I thought you
-had received some bodily wound; there is more sense in that than in
-reputation."[677] As for woman's virtue, he looks upon it like a man who
-has kept company with slave-dealers. He estimates Desdemona's love as he
-would estimate a mare's: that sort of thing lasts so long--then... And
-then he airs an experimental theory with precise details and nasty
-expressions like a stud doctor. "It cannot be that Desdemona should long
-continue her love to the Moor, nor he his to her.... These Moors are
-changeable in their wills;... the food that to him now is as luscious as
-locusts, shall be to him shortly as bitter as coloquintida. She must
-change for youth: when she is sated with his body, she will find the
-error of her choice."[678] Desdemona, on the shore, trying! to forget
-her cares, begs him to sing the praises of her sex. For every portrait
-he finds the most insulting insinuations. She insists, and bids him take
-the case of a deserving woman. "Indeed," he replies, "she was a wight,
-if ever such wight were,... to suckle fools and chronicle small
-beer."[679] He also says, when Desdemona asks him what he would write in
-praise of her: "O gentle lady do not put me to't, for I am nothing, if
-not critical."[680] This is the key to his character. He despises man;
-to him Desdemona is a little wanton wench, Cassio an elegant
-word-shaper, Othello a mad bull, Roderigo an ass to be basted, thumped,
-made to go. He diverts himself by setting these passions at issue; he
-laughs at it as at a play. When Othello, swooning, shakes in his
-convulsions, he rejoices at this capital result: "Work on, my medicine,
-work! Thus credulous fools are caught."[681] You would take him for one
-of the poisoners of the time, studying the effect of a new potion on a
-dying dog. He only speaks in sarcasms; he has them ready for everyone,
-even for those whom he does not know. When he wakes Brabantio to inform
-him of the elopement of his daughter, he tells him the matter in coarse
-terms, sharpening the sting of the bitter pleasantry, like a
-conscientious executioner, rubbing his hands when he hears the culprit
-groan under the knife. "Thou art a villain!" cries Brabantio. "You
-are--a senator!" answers Iago. But the feature which really completes
-him, and makes him take rank with Mephistopheles, is the atrocious truth
-and the cogent reasoning by which he likens his crime to virtue.[682]
-Cassio, under his advice, goes to see Desdemona, to obtain her
-intercession for him; this visit is to be the ruin of Desdemona and
-Cassio. Iago, left alone, hums for an instant quietly, then cries:
-
-
-"And what's he then that says I play the villain?
-When this advice is free I give and honest,
-Probal to thinking and indeed the course
-To win the Moor again."[683]
-
-
-To all these features must be added a diabolical energy,[684] an
-inexhaustible inventiveness in images, caricatures, obscenity, the
-manners of a guard-room, the brutal bearing and tastes of a trooper,
-habits of dissimulation, coolness, hatred, and patience, contracted amid
-the perils and devices of a military life, and the continuous miseries
-of long degradation and frustrated hope; you will understand how
-Shakespeare could transform abstract treachery into a concrete form, and
-how Iago's atrocious vengeance is only the natural consequence of his
-character, life, and training.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION VIII.--Principal Characters
-
-
-How much more visible is this impassioned and unfettered genius of
-Shakespeare in the great characters which sustain the whole weight of
-the drama! The startling imagination, the furious velocity of the
-manifold and exuberant ideas, passion let loose, rushing upon death and
-crime, hallucinations, madness, all the ravages of delirium bursting
-through will and reason: such are the forces and ravings which engender
-them. Shall I speak of dazzling Cleopatra, who holds Antony in the
-whirlwind of her devices and caprices, who fascinates and kills, who
-scatters to the winds the lives of men as a handful of desert dust, the
-fatal Eastern sorceress who sports with love and death, impetuous,
-irresistible, child of air and fire, whose life is but a tempest, whose
-thought, ever barbed and broken, is like the crackling of a lightning
-flash? Of Othello, who, beset by the graphic picture of physical
-adultery, cries at every word of Iago like a man on the rack; who, his
-nerves hardened by twenty years of war and shipwreck, grows mad and
-swoons for grief, and whose soul, poisoned by jealousy, is distracted
-and disorganized in convulsions and in stupor? Or of old King Lear,
-violent and weak, whose half-unseated reason is gradually toppled over
-under the shocks of incredible treacheries, who presents the frightful
-spectacle of madness, first increasing, then complete, of curses,
-bowlings, superhuman sorrows, into which the transport of the first
-access of fury carries him, and then of peaceful incoherence, chattering
-imbecility, into which the shattered man subsides; a marvellous
-creation, the supreme effort of pure imagination, a disease of reason,
-which reason could never have conceived?[685] Amid so many portraitures
-let us choose two or three to indicate the depth and nature of them all.
-The critic is lost in Shakespeare, as in an immense town; he will
-describe a couple of monuments, and entreat the reader to imagine the
-city.
-
-Plutarch's Coriolanus is an austere, coldly haughty patrician, a general
-of the army. In Shakespeare's hands he becomes a coarse soldier, a man
-of the people as to his language and manners, an athlete of war, with a
-voice like a trumpet; whose eyes by contradiction are filled with a rush
-of blood and anger, proud and terrible in mood, a lion's soul in the
-body of a bull. The philosopher Plutarch told of him a lofty philosophic
-action, saying that he had been at pains to save his landlord in the
-sack of Corioli. Shakespeare's Coriolanus has indeed the same
-disposition, for he is really a good fellow; but when Lartius asks him
-the name of this poor Volscian, in order to secure his liberty, he yawns
-out:
-
-
-"By Jupiter! forgot.
-I am weary; yea, my memory is tired.
-Have we no wine here?"[686]
-
-
-He is hot, he has been fighting, he must drink; he leaves his Volscian
-in chains, and thinks no more of him. He fights like a porter, with
-shouts and insults, and the cries from that deep chest are heard above
-the din of the battle like the sounds from a brazen trumpet. He has
-scaled the walls of Corioli, he has butchered till he is gorged with
-slaughter. Instantly he turns to the army of Cominius, and arrives red
-with blood, "as he were flay'd. Come I too late?" Cominius begins to
-compliment him. "Come I too late?" he repeats. The battle is not yet
-finished: he embraces Cominius:
-
-
-"O! let me clip ye
-In arms as sound as when I woo'd, in heart
-As merry as when our nuptial day was done."[687]
-
-
-For the battle is a real holiday to him. Such senses, such a strong
-frame, need the outcry, the din of battle, the excitement of death and
-wounds. This haughty and indomitable heart needs the joy of victory and
-destruction. Mark the display of his patrician arrogance and his
-soldier's bearing, when he is offered the tenth of the spoils:
-
-
-"I thank you, general;
-But cannot make my heart consent to take
-A bribe to pay my sword."[688]
-
-
-The soldiers cry, Marcius! Marcius! and the trumpets sound. He gets into
-a passion: rates the brawlers:
-
-
-"No more, I say! For that I have not wash'd
-My nose that bled, or foil'd some debile wretch--
-... You shout me forth
-In acclamations hyperbolical;
-As if I loved my little should be dieted
-In praises sauced with lies."[689]
-
-
-They are reduced to loading him with honors: Cominius gives him a
-war-horse; decrees him the cognomen of Coriolanus; the people shout
-Caius Marcius Coriolanus! He replies:
-
-
-"I will go wash;
-And when my face is fair, you shall perceive
-Whether I blush or no: howbeit, I thank you.
-I mean to stride your steed."[690]
-
-
-This loud voice, loud laughter, blunt acknowledgment, of a man who can
-act and shout better than speak, foretell the mode in which he will
-treat the plebeians. He loads them with insults; he cannot find abuse
-enough for the cobblers, tailors, envious cowards, down on their knees
-for a coin. "To beg of Hob and Dick! Bid them wash their faces and
-keep their teeth clean." But he must beg, if he would be consul; his
-friends constrain him. It is then that the passionate soul, incapable of
-self-restraint, such as Shakespeare knew how to paint, breaks forth
-without hinderance. He is there in his candidate's gown, gnashing his
-teeth, and getting up his lesson in this style:
-
-
-"What must I say?
-'I pray, sir'--Plague upon't! I cannot bring
-My tongue to such a pace:--'Look, sir, my wounds!
-I got them in my country's service, when
-Some certain of your brethren roar'd and ran
-From the noise of our own drums.'"[691]
-
-
-The tribunes have no difficulty in stopping the election of a candidate
-who begs in this fashion. They taunt him in full Senate, reproach him
-with his speech about the corn. He repeats it, with aggravations. Once
-roused, neither danger nor prayer restrains him:
-
-
-"His heart's his mouth:
-And, being angry, does forget that ever
-He heard the name of death."[692]
-
-
-He rails against the people, the tribunes, ediles, flatterers of the
-plebs. "Come, enough," says his friend Menenius. "Enough, with
-over-measure," says Brutus the tribune. He retorts:
-
-
-"No, take more:
-What may be sworn by, both divine and human,
-Seal what I end withal!... At once pluck out
-The multitudinous tongue; let them not lick
-The sweet which is their poison."[693]
-
-
-The tribune cries, Treason! and bids seize him. He cries:
-
-
-"Hence, old goat!...
-Hence, rotten thing! or I shall shake thy bones
-Out of thy garments!"[694]
-
-
-He strikes him, drives the mob off: he fancies himself amongst
-Volscians. "On fair ground I could beat forty of them!" And when his
-friends hurry him off, he threatens still, and
-
-
-"Speak(s) o' the people
-As if you (he) were a god to punish, not
-A man of their infirmity."[695]
-
-
-Yet he bends before his mother, for he has recognized in her a soul as
-lofty and a courage as intractable as his own. He has submitted from his
-infancy to the ascendancy of this pride which he admires. Volumnia
-reminds him: "My praises made thee first a soldier." Without power over
-himself, continually tossed on the fire of his too hot blood, he has
-always been the arm, she the thought. He obeys from involuntary respect,
-like a soldier before his general, but with what effort!
-
-
-"_Coriolanus._ The smiles of knaves
-Tent in my cheeks, and schoolboys' tears take up
-The glances of my sight! a beggar's tongue
-Make motion through my lips, and my arm'd knees
-Who bow'd but in my stirrup, bend like his
-That hath received an alms!--I will not do't....
-_Volumnia._ ... Do as thou list.
-Thy valiantness was mine, thou suck'dst it from me,
-But owe thy pride thyself.
-_Cor._ Pray, be content:
-Mother, I am going to the market-place;
-Chide me no more. I'll mountebank their loves,
-Cog their hearts from them, and come home beloved
-Of all the trades in Rome."[696]
-
-
-He goes, and his friends speak for him. Except a few bitter asides, he
-appears to be submissive. Then the tribunes pronounce the accusation,
-and summon him to answer as a traitor:
-
-
-"_Cor._ How! traitor!
-_Men._ Nay, temperately: your promise.
-_Cor._ The fires i' the lowest hell fold-in the people!
-Call me their traitor! Thou injurious tribune!
-Within thine eyes sat twenty thousand deaths,
-In thy hands clutch'd as many millions, in
-Thy lying tongue both numbers, I would say,
-'Thou liest,' unto thee with a voice as free
-As I do pray the gods."[697]
-
-
-His friends surround him, entreat him: he will not listen; he foams at
-the mouth, he is like a wounded lion:
-
-
-"Let them pronounce the steep Tarpeian death,
-Vagabond exile, flaying, pent to linger
-But with a grain a day, I would not buy
-Their mercy at the price of one fair word."[698]
-
-
-The people vote exile, supporting by their shouts the sentence of the
-tribune:
-
-
-"_Cor._ You common cry of curs! whose breath I hate
-As reek o' the rotten fens, whose love I prize
-As the dead carcasses of unburied men
-That do corrupt my air, I banish you.... Despising,
-For you, the city, thus I turn my back:
-There is a world elsewhere."[699]
-
-
-Judge of his hatred by these raging words. It goes on increasing whilst
-waiting for vengeance. We find him next with the Volscian army before
-Rome. His friends kneel before him, he lets them kneel. Old Menenius,
-who had loved him as a son, only comes now to be driven away. "Wife,
-mother, child, I know not."[700] He knows not himself. For this strength
-of hating in a noble heart is the same as the force of loving. He has
-transports of tenderness as of rage, and can contain himself no more in
-joy than in grief. He runs, spite of his resolution, to his wife's arms;
-he bends his knee before his mother. He had summoned the Volscian chiefs
-to make them witnesses of his refusals; and before them, he grants all,
-and weeps. On his return to Corioli, an insulting word from Aufidius
-maddens him, and drives him upon the daggers of the Volscians. Vices and
-virtues, glory and misery, greatness and feebleness, the unbridled
-passion which composes his nature, endowed him with all.
-
-If the life of Coriolanus is the history of a mood, that of Macbeth is
-the history of a monomania. The witches' prophecy has sunk into his mind
-at once, like a fixed idea. Gradually this idea corrupts the rest, and
-transforms the whole man. He is haunted by it; he forgets the thanes who
-surround him and "who stay upon his leisure"; he already sees in the
-future an indistinct chaos of images of blood:
-
-
-"... Why do I yield to that suggestion
-Whose horrid image doth unfix my hair
-And make my seated heart knock at my ribs?...
-My thought, whose murder yet is but fantastical,
-Shakes so my single state of man that function
-Is smother'd in surmise, and nothing is
-But what is not."[701]
-
-
-This is the language of hallucination. Macbeth's hallucination becomes
-complete when his wife has persuaded him to assassinate the king. He
-sees in the air a blood-stained dagger, "in form as palpable, as this
-which now I draw." His whole brain is filled with grand and terrible
-phantoms, which the mind of a common murderer could never have
-conceived: the poetry of which indicates a generous heart, enslaved to
-an idea of fate, and capable of remorse:
-
-
-"... Now o'er the one half world
-Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse
-The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates
-Pale Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder,
-Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf,
-Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,
-With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design
-Moves like a ghost.... (_A bell rings._)
-I go, and it is done; the bell invites me.
-Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell
-That summons thee to heaven or to hell."[702]
-
-
-He has done the deed, and returns tottering, haggard, like a drunken
-man. He is horrified at his bloody hands, "these hangman's hands."
-Nothing now can cleanse them. The whole ocean might sweep over them, but
-they would keep the hue of murder. "What hands are here? ha, they pluck
-out mine eyes!" He is disturbed by a word which the sleeping
-chamberlains uttered:
-
-
-"One cried, 'God bless us!' and 'Amen' the other;
-As they had seen me with these hangman's hands.
-Listening their fear, I could not say 'Amen,'
-When they did say, 'God bless us!'...
-But wherefore could not I pronounce 'Amen!'
-I had most need of blessing, and 'Amen'
-Stuck in my throat."[703]
-
-
-Then comes a strange dream; a frightful vision of the punishment that
-awaits him descends upon him.
-
-Above the beating of his heart, the tingling of the blood which seethes
-in his brain, he had heard them cry:
-
-
-"'Sleep no more!
-Macbeth does murder sleep,' the innocent sleep,
-Sleep that knits up the ravell'd sleave of care,
-The death of each day's life, sore labor's bath,
-Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course,
-Chief nourisher in life's feast."[704]
-
-
-And the voice, like an angel's trumpet, calls him by all his titles:
-
-
-"'Glamis hath murder'd sleep, and therefore Cawdor
-Shall sleep no more; Macbeth shall sleep no more!'"[705]
-
-
-This idea, incessantly repeated, beats in his brain, with monotonous and
-quick strokes, like the tongue of a bell. Insanity begins; all the force
-of his mind is occupied by keeping before him, in spite of himself, the
-image of the man whom he has murdered in his sleep:
-
-
-"To know my deed, 'twere best not know myself. (_Knock._)
-Wake Duncan with thy knocking! I would thou couldst!"[706]
-
-
-Thenceforth, in the rare intervals in which the fever of his mind is
-assuaged, he is like a man worn out by a long malady. It is the sad
-prostration of maniacs worn out by their fits of rage:
-
-
-"Had I but died an hour before this chance,
-I had lived a blessed time; for from this instant
-There's nothing serious in mortality:
-All is but toys: renown and grace is dead;
-The wine of life is drawn, and the mere lees
-Is left this vault to brag of."[707]
-
-
-When rest has restored force to the human machine, the fixed idea shakes
-him again, and drives him onward, like a pitiless horseman, who has left
-his panting horse only for a moment, to leap again into the saddle, and
-spur him over precipices. The more he has done, the more he must do:
-
-
-"I am in blood
-Stepp'd in so far that, should I wade no more,
-Returning were as tedious as go o'er..."[708]
-
-
-He kills in order to preserve the fruit of his murders. The fatal
-circlet of gold attracts him like a magic jewel; and he beats down, from
-a sort of blind instinct, the heads, which he sees between the crown and
-him:
-
-
-"But let the frame of things disjoint, both the worlds suffer,
-Ere we will eat our meal in fear and sleep
-In the affliction of these terrible dreams
-That shake us nightly: better be with the dead,
-Whom we to gain our peace, have sent to peace,
-Than on the torture of the mind to lie
-In restless ecstasy. Duncan is in his grave;
-After life's fitful fever he sleeps well;
-Treason has done his worst: nor steel, nor poison,
-Malice domestic, foreign levy, nothing,
-Can touch him further."[709]
-
-
-Macbeth has ordered Banquo to be murdered, and in the midst of a great
-feast he is informed of the success of his plan. He smiles, and proposes
-Banquo's health. Suddenly, conscience-smitten, he sees the ghost of the
-murdered man; for this phantom, which Shakespeare summons, is not a mere
-stage-trick: we feel that here the supernatural is unnecessary, and that
-Macbeth would create it even if hell would not send it. With muscles
-twitching, dilated eyes, his mouth half open with deadly terror, he sees
-it shake its bloody head, and cries with that hoarse voice, which is
-only to be heard in maniacs' cells:
-
-
-"Prithee, see there? Behold! look! lo! how say you?
-Why, what care I? If thou canst nod, speak too.
-If charnel-houses and our graves must send
-Those that we bury back, our monuments
-Shall be the maws of kites....
-Blood hath been shed ere now, i' the olden time,...
-Ay, and since too, murders have been perform'd
-Too terrible for the ear: the times have been,
-That, when the brains were out, the man would die,
-And there an end; but now they rise again,
-With twenty mortal murders on their crowns,
-And push us from our stools:...
-Avaunt! and quit my sight! let the earth hide thee!
-Thy bones are marrowless, thy blood is cold;
-Thou hast no speculation in those eyes
-Which thou dost glare with!"[710]
-
-
-His body trembling like that of an epileptic, his teeth clenched,
-foaming at the mouth, he sinks on the ground, his limbs writhe, shaken
-with convulsive quiverings, whilst a dull sob swells his panting breast,
-and dies in his swollen throat. What joy can remain for a man beset by
-such visions? The wide dark country, which he surveys from his towering
-castle, is but a field of death, haunted by ominous apparitions;
-Scotland, which he is depopulating, a cemetery,
-
-
-"Where... the dead man's knell
-Is there scarce ask'd for who; and good men's lives
-Expire before the flowers in their caps.
-Dying or ere they sicken."[711]
-
-
-His soul is "full of scorpions." He has "supp'd full with horrors," and
-the loathsome odor of blood has disgusted him with all else. He goes
-stumbling over the corpses which he has heaped up, with the mechanical
-and desperate smile of a maniac-murderer. Thenceforth death, life, all
-is one to him; the habit of murder has placed him out of the pale of
-humanity. They tell him that his wife is dead:
-
-
-"_Macbeth._ She should have died hereafter;
-There would have been a time for such a word.
-To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
-Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
-To the last syllable of recorded time,
-And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
-The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
-Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player
-That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
-And then is heard no more: it is a tale
-Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
-Signifying nothing."[712]
-
-
-There remains for him the hardening of the heart in crime, the fixed
-belief in destiny. Hunted down by his enemies, "bearlike, tied to a
-stake," he fights, troubled only by the prediction of the witches, sure
-of being invulnerable so long as the man whom they have described does
-not appear. Henceforth his thoughts dwell on a supernatural world, and
-to the last he walks with his eyes fixed on the dream, which has
-possessed him, from the first.
-
-The history of Hamlet, like that of Macbeth, is a story of moral
-poisoning. Hamlet has a delicate soul, an impassioned imagination, like
-that of Shakespeare. He has lived hitherto, occupied in noble studies,
-skilful in mental and bodily exercises, with a taste for art, loved by
-the noblest father, enamored of the purest and most charming girl,
-confiding, generous, not yet having perceived, from the height of the
-throne to which he was born, aught but the beauty, happiness, grandeur
-of nature and humanity.[713] On this soul, which character and training
-make more sensitive than others, misfortune suddenly falls, extreme,
-overwhelming of the very kind to destroy all faith and every motive for
-action: with one glance he has seen all the vileness of humanity; and
-this insight is given him in his mother. His mind is yet intact; but
-judge from the violence of his style, the crudity of his exact details,
-the terrible tension of the whole nervous machine, whether he has not
-already one foot on the verge of madness:
-
-
-"O that this too, too solid flesh would melt,
-Thaw and resolve itself into a dew!
-Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd
-His canon 'gainst self-slaughter! O God! God!
-How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable,
-Seem to me all the uses of this world!
-Fie on't! ah fie! 'tis an unweeded garden,
-That grows to seed; things rank and gross in nature
-Possess it merely. That it should come to this!
-But two months dead: nay, not so much, not two:
-So excellent a king,... so loving to my mother
-That he might not let e'en the winds of heaven
-Visit her face too roughly. Heaven and earth!
-... And yet, within a month--
-Let me not think on't--Frailty, thy name is woman!--
-A little month, or ere those shoes were old
-With which she follow'd my poor father's body,...
-Ere yet the salt of most unrighteous tears
-Had left the flushing in her galled eyes,
-She married. O, most wicked speed, to post
-With such dexterity to incestuous sheets!
-It is not nor it cannot come to good!
-But break, my heart; for I must hold my tongue!"[714]
-
-
-Here already are contortions of thought, a beginning of hallucination,
-the symptoms of what is to come after. In the middle of conversation the
-image of his father rises before his mind. He thinks he sees him. How
-then will it be when the "canonised bones have burst their cerements,"
-"the sepulchre hath oped his ponderous and marble jaws," and when the
-ghost comes in the night, upon a high "platform" of land, to tell him of
-the tortures of his prison of fire, and of the fratricide, who has
-driven him thither? Hamlet grows faint, but grief strengthens him, and
-he has a desire for living:
-
-
-"Hold, hold, my heart;
-And you my sinews, grow not instant old,
-But bear me stiffly up! Remember thee!
-Ay, thou poor ghost, while memory holds a seat
-In this distracted globe.--Remember thee?
-Yea, from the table of my memory
-I'll wipe away all trivial fond records,
-All saws of books, all forms, all pressures past,...
-And thy commandment all alone shall live,...
-O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
-My tables--meet it is I set it down,
-That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
-At least I'm sure it may be so in Denmark:
-So, uncle, there you are."[715]	(_Writing._)
-
-
-This convulsive outburst, this fevered writing hand, this frenzy of
-intentness, prelude the approach of a kind of monomania. When his
-friends come up, he treats them with the speeches of a child or an
-idiot. He is no longer master of his words; hollow phrases whirl in his
-brain, and fall from his mouth as in a dream. They call him; he answers
-by imitating the cry of a sportsman whistling to his falcon: "Hillo, ho,
-ho, boy! come, bird, come." Whilst he is in the act of swearing them to
-secrecy, the ghost below repeats "Swear." Hamlet cries, with a nervous
-excitement and a fitful gayety:
-
-
-"Ah ha, boy! say'st thou so? art thou there, truepenny?
-Come on--you hear this fellow in the cellarage--
-Consent to swear....
-_Ghost_ (_beneath_). Swear.
-_Hamlet. Hic et ubique?_ then we'll shift our ground.
-Come hither, gentlemen.... Swear by my sword.
-_Ghost_ (_beneath_). Swear.
-_Ham._ Well said, old mole! canst work i' the earth so fast?
-A worthy pioneer!"[716]
-
-
-Understand that as he says this his teeth chatter, "pale as his shirt,
-his knees knocking each other." Intense anguish ends with a kind of
-laughter, which is nothing else than a spasm. Thenceforth Hamlet speaks
-as though he had a continuous nervous attack. His madness is feigned, I
-admit; but his mind, as a door whose hinges are twisted, swings and
-bangs with every wind with a mad haste and with a discordant noise. He
-has no need to search for the strange ideas, apparent incoherencies,
-exaggerations, the deluge of sarcasms which he accumulates. He finds
-them within him; he does himself no violence, he simply gives himself up
-to himself. When he has the piece played which is to unmask his uncle,
-he raises himself, lounges on the floor, lays his head in Ophelia's lap;
-he addresses the actors, and comments on the piece to the spectators;
-his nerves are strung, his excited thought is like a surging and
-crackling flame, and cannot find fuel enough in the multitude of objects
-surrounding it, upon all of which it seizes. When the king rises
-unmasked and troubled, Hamlet sings, and says, "Would not this, sir, and
-a forest of feathers--if the rest of my fortunes turn Turk with me--with
-two Provincial roses on my razed shoes, get me a fellowship in a cry of
-players, sir!"[717] And he laughs terribly, for he is resolved on
-murder. It is clear that this state is a disease, and that the man will
-not survive it.
-
-In a soul so ardent of thought, and so mighty of feeling, what is left
-but disgust and despair? We tinge all nature with the color of our
-thoughts; we shape the world according to our own ideas; when our soul
-is sick, we see nothing but sickness in the universe:
-
-
-"This goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this
-most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhanging
-firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire, why, it
-appears no other thing to me than a foul and pestilent congregation of
-vapors. What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite
-in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how
-like an angel! in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the world!
-the paragon of animals! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of
-dust? man delights not me: no, nor woman neither."[718]
-
-
-Henceforth his thought sullies whatever it touches. He rails bitterly
-before Ophelia against marriage and love. Beauty! Innocence! Beauty is
-but a means of prostituting innocence: "Get thee to a nunnery: why
-wouldst thou be a breeder of sinners?... What should such fellows as I
-do crawling between earth and heaven? We are arrant knaves, all; believe
-none of us."[719]
-
-When he has killed Polonius by accident, he hardly repents it; it is one
-fool less. He jeers lugubriously:
-
-
-"_King._ Now Hamlet, where's Polonius?
-_Hamlet._ At supper.
-_K._ At supper! where?
-_H._ Not where he eats, but where he is eaten: a certain convocation
-of politic worms are e'en at him."[720]
-
-
-And he repeats in five or six fashions these gravedigger jests. His
-thoughts already inhabit a churchyard; to this hopeless philosophy a
-genuine man is a corpse. Public functions, honors, passions, pleasures,
-projects, science, all this is but a borrowed mask, which death removes,
-so that people may see what we are, an evil-smelling and grinning skull.
-It is this sight he goes to see by Ophelia's grave. He counts the skulls
-which the gravedigger turns up; this was a lawyer's, that a countier's.
-What bows, intrigues, pretensions, arrogance! And here now is a clown
-knocking it about with his spade, and playing "at loggats with 'em."
-Cæsar and Alexander have turned to clay and make the earth fat; the
-masters of the world have served to "patch a wall. Now get you to my
-lady's chamber, and tell her, let her paint an inch thick, to this favor
-she must come; make her laugh at that."[721] When a man has come to
-this, there is nothing left but to die.
-
-This heated imagination, which explains Hamlet's nervous disease and his
-moral poisoning, explains also his conduct. If he hesitates to kill his
-uncle, it is not from horror of blood or from our modern scruples. He
-belongs to the sixteenth century. On board ship he wrote the order to
-behead Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, and to do so without giving them
-"shriving-time." He killed Polonius, he caused Ophelia's death, and has
-no great remorse for it. If for once he spared his uncle, it was because
-he found him praying, and was afraid of sending him to heaven. He
-thought he was killing him when he killed Polonius. What his imagination
-robs him of, is the coolness and strength to go quietly and with
-premeditation to plunge a sword into a breast. He can only do the thing
-on a sudden suggestion; he must have a moment of enthusiasm; he must
-think the king is behind the arras, or else, seeing that he himself is
-poisoned, he must find his victim under his foil's point. He is not
-master of his acts; opportunity dictates them; he cannot plan a murder,
-but must improvise it. A too lively imagination exhausts the will, by
-the strength of images which it heaps up, and by the fury of intentness
-which absorbs it. You recognize in him a poet's soul, made not to act,
-but to dream, which is lost in contemplating the phantoms of its
-creation, which sees the imaginary world too clearly to play a part in
-the real world; an artist whom evil chance has made a prince, whom worse
-chance has made an avenger of crime, and who, destined by nature for
-genius, is condemned by fortune to madness and unhappiness. Hamlet is
-Shakespeare, and, at the close of this gallery of portraits which have
-all some features of his own, Shakespeare has painted himself in the
-most striking of all.
-
-If Racine or Corneille had framed a psychology, they would have said,
-with Descartes: Man is an incorporeal soul, served by organs, endowed
-with reason and will, dwelling in palaces or porticos, made for
-conversation and society, whose harmonious and ideal action is developed
-by discourse and replies, in a world constructed by logic beyond the
-realms of time and place.
-
-If Shakespeare had framed a psychology, he would have said, with
-Esquirol:[722] Man is a nervous machine, governed by a mood, disposed to
-hallucinations, carried away by unbridled passions, essentially
-unreasoning, a mixture of animal and poet, having instead of mind
-rapture, instead of virtue sensibility, imagination for prompter and
-guide, and led at random, by the most determinate and complex
-circumstances, to sorrow, crime, madness, and death.
-
-
-
-
-SECTION IX.--Characteristics of Shakespeare's Genius
-
-
-Could such a poet always confine himself to the imitation of nature?
-Will this poetical world which is going on in his brain never break
-loose from the laws of the world of reality? Is he not powerful enough
-to follow his own laws? He is; and the poetry of Shakespeare naturally
-finds an outlet in the fantastical. This is the highest grade of
-unreasoning and creative imagination. Despising ordinary logic, it
-creates another; it unites facts and ideas in a new order, apparently
-absurd, in reality regular; it lays open the land of dreams, and its
-dreams seem to us the truth.
-
-When we enter upon Shakespeare's comedies, and even his
-half-dramas,[723] it is as though we met him on the threshold, like an
-actor to whom the prologue is committed, to prevent misunderstanding on
-the part of the public, and to tell them: "Do not take too seriously
-what you are about to hear: I am amusing myself. My brain, being full of
-fancies, desired to array them, and here they are. Palaces, distant
-landscapes, transparent clouds which blot in the morning the horizon
-with their gray mists, the red and glorious flames into which the
-evening sun descends, white cloisters in endless vista through the
-ambient air, grottos, cottages, the fantastic pageant of all human
-passions, the irregular sport of unlooked-for adventures--this is the
-medley of forms, colors, sentiments, which I let become entangled and
-confused in my presence, a many-tinted skein of glistening silks, a
-slender arabesque, whose sinuous curves, crossing and mingled, bewilder
-the mind by the whimsical variety of their infinite complications. Don't
-regard it as a picture. Don't look for a precise composition, a sole and
-increasing interest, the skilful management of a well-ordered and
-congruous plot. I have tales and novels before me which I am cutting up
-into scenes. Never mind the _finis_, I am amusing myself on the road. It
-is not the end of the journey which pleases me, but the journey itself.
-Is there any need in going so straight and quick? Do you only care to
-know whether the poor merchant of Venice will escape Shylock's knife?
-Here are two happy lovers, seated under the palace walls on a calm
-night; wouldn't you like to listen to the peaceful reverie which arises
-like a perfume from the bottom of their hearts?"
-
-
-"'How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
-Here will we sit and let the sounds of music
-Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
-Become the touches of sweet harmony.
-Sit, Jessica. Look how the floor of heaven
-Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold:
-There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st,
-But in his motion like an angel sings,
-Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims;
-Such harmony is in immortal souls;
-But whilst this muddy vesture of decay
-Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.
-(_Enter musicians._)
-Come, ho! and wake Diana with a hymn:
-With sweetest touches pierce your mistress' ear.
-And draw her home with music.
-_Jessica._ I am never merry when I hear sweet music.'"[724]
-
-
-"Have I not the right, when I see the big laughing face of a clownish
-servant, to stop near him, see him gesticulate, frolic, gossip, go
-through his hundred pranks and his hundred grimaces, and treat myself to
-the comedy of his spirit and gayety? Two fine gentlemen pass by. I hear
-the rolling fire of their metaphors, and I follow their skirmish of wit.
-Here in a corner is the artless arch face of a young wench. Do you
-forbid me to linger by her, to watch her smiles, her sudden blushes, the
-childish pout of her rosy lips, the coquetry of her pretty motions? You
-are in a great hurry if the prattle of this fresh and musical voice
-can't stop you. Is it no pleasure to view this succession of sentiments
-and faces? Is your fancy so dull that you must have the mighty mechanism
-of a geometrical plot to shake it? My sixteenth century playgoers were
-easier to move. A sunbeam that had lost its way on an old wall, a
-foolish song thrown into the middle of a drama, occupied their mind as
-well as the blackest of catastrophes. After the horrible scene in which
-Shylock brandished his butcher's knife before Antonio's bare breast,
-they saw just as willingly the petty household wrangle, and the amusing
-bit of raillery which ends the piece. Like soft moving water, their soul
-rose and sank in an instant to the level of the poet's emotion, and
-their sentiments readily flowed in the bed he had prepared for them.
-They let him stray here and there on his journey, and did not forbid him
-to make two voyages at once. They allowed several plots in one. If but
-the slightest thread united them it was sufficient. Lorenzo eloped with
-Jessica, Shylock was frustrated in his revenge, Portia's suitors failed
-in the test imposed upon them; Portia, disguised as a doctor of laws,
-took from her husband the ring which he had promised never to part with;
-these three or four comedies, disunited, mingled, were shuffled and
-unfolded together, like an unknotted skein in which threads of a hundred
-colors are entwined. Together with diversity, my spectators allowed
-improbability. Comedy is a slight winged creature, which flutters from
-dream to dream, whose wings you would break if you held it captive in
-the narrow prison of common-sense. Do not press its fictions too hard;
-do not probe their contents. Let them float before your eyes like a
-charming swift dream. Let the fleeting apparition plunge back into the
-bright misty land from whence it came. For an instant it deluded you;
-let it suffice. It is sweet to leave the world of realities behind you;
-the mind rests amidst impossibilities. We are happy when delivered from
-the rough chains of logic, to wander amongst strange adventures, to live
-in sheer romance, and know that we are living there. I do not try to
-deceive you, and make you believe in the world where I take you. A man
-must disbelieve it in order to enjoy it. We must give ourselves up to
-illusion, and feel that we are giving ourselves up to it. We must smile
-as we listen. We smile in "The Winter's Tale" when Hermione descends
-from her pedestal, and when, Leontes discovers his wife in the statue,
-having believed her to be dead. We smile in "Cymbeline" when we see the
-lone cavern in which the young princes have lived like savage hunters.
-Improbability deprives emotions of their sting. The events interest or
-touch us without making us suffer. At the very moment when sympathy is
-too intense, we remind ourselves that it is all a fancy. They become
-like distant objects, whose distance softens their outline, and wraps
-them in a luminous veil of blue air. Your true comedy is an opera. We
-listen to sentiments without thinking too much of plot. We follow the
-tender or gay melodies without reflecting that they interrupt the
-action. We dream elsewhere on hearing music; here I bid you dream on
-hearing verse."
-
-Then the speaker of the prologue retires, and the actors come on.
-
-"As You Like It" is a caprice.[725] Action there is none; interest
-barely; likelihood still less. And the whole is charming. Two cousins,
-princes' daughters, come to a forest with a court clown, Celia disguised
-as a shepherdess, Rosalind as a boy. They find here the old duke,
-Rosalind's father, who, driven out of his duchy, lives with his friends
-like a philosopher and a hunter. They find amorous shepherds, who with
-songs and prayers pursue intractable shepherdesses. They discover or
-they meet with lovers who become their husbands. Suddenly it is
-announced that the wicked Duke Frederick, who had usurped the crown, has
-just retired to a cloister, and restored the throne to the old exiled
-duke. Everyone gets married, everyone dances, everything ends with a
-"rustic revelry." Where is the pleasantness of these puerilities? First,
-the fact of its being puerile; the absence of the serious is refreshing;
-There are no events, and there is no plot. We gently follow the easy
-current of graceful or melancholy emotions, which takes us away and
-moves us about without wearying. The place adds to the illusion and
-charm. It is an autumn forest, in which the sultry rays permeate the
-blushing oak leaves, or the half-stripped, ashes tremble and smile to
-the feeble breath of evening. The lovers wander by brooks that "brawl"
-under antique roots. As you listen to them you see the slim birches,
-whose cloak of lace grows glossy under the slant rays of the sun that
-gilds them, and the thoughts wander down the mossy vistas in which their
-footsteps are not heard. What better place could be chosen for the
-comedy of sentiment and the play of heart-fancies? Is not this a fit
-spot in which to listen to love-talk? Someone has seen Orlando,
-Rosalind's lover, in this glade; she hears it and blushes. "Alas the
-day!... What did he, when thou sawest him? What said he? How looked he?
-Wherein went he? What makes he here? Did he ask for me? Where remains
-he? How parted he with thee? and when shalt thou see him again?" Then,
-with a lower voice, somewhat hesitating: "Looks he as freshly as he did
-the day he wrestled?" She is not yet exhausted: "Do you not know I am a
-woman? When I think, I must speak. Sweet, say on."[726] One question
-follows another, she closes the mouth of her friend, who is ready to
-answer. At every word she jests, but agitated, blushing, with a forced
-gayety; her bosom heaves, and her heart beats. Nevertheless she is
-calmer when Orlando comes; bandies words with him; sheltered under her
-disguise, she makes him confess that he loves Rosalind. Then she plagues
-him, like the frolic, the wag, the coquette she is. "Why, how now,
-Orlando, where have you been all this while? You a lover?" Orlando
-repeats that he loves Rosalind, and she pleases herself by making him
-repeat it more than once. She sparkles with wit, jests, mischievous
-pranks; pretty fits of anger, feigned sulks, bursts of laughter,
-deafening babble, engaging caprices. "Come, woo me, woo me; for now I am
-in a holiday humor, and like enough to consent. What would you say to me
-now, an I were your very, very Rosalind?" And every now and then she
-repeats with an arch smile, "And I am your Rosalind; am I not your
-Rosalind?"[727] Orlando protests that he would die. Die! Who ever
-thought of dying for love? Leander? He took one bath too many in the
-Hellespont; so poets have said he died for love. Troilus? A Greek broke
-his head with a club; so poets have said he died for love. Come, come,
-Rosalind will be softer. And then she plays at marriage with him, and
-makes Celia pronounce the solemn words. She irritates and torments her
-pretended husband; tells him all the whims she means to indulge in, all
-the pranks she will play, all the teasing he will have to endure. The
-retorts come one after another like fireworks. At every phrase we follow
-the looks of these sparkling eyes, the curves of this laughing mouth,
-the quick movements of this supple figure. It is a bird's petulance and
-volubility. "O coz, coz, coz, my pretty little coz, that thou didst know
-how many fathom deep I am in love." Then she provokes her cousin Celia,
-sports with her hair, calls her by every woman's name. Antitheses
-without end, words all a-jumble, quibbles, pretty exaggerations,
-word-racket; as you listen, you fancy it is the warbling of a
-nightingale. The trill of repeated metaphors, the melodious roll of the
-poetical gamut, the summer-warbling rustling under the foliage, change
-the piece into a veritable opera. The three lovers end by chanting a
-sort of trio. The first throws out a fancy, the others take it up. Four
-times this strophe is renewed; and the symmetry of ideas, added to the
-jingle of the rhymes, makes of a dialogue a concerto of love:
-
-
-"_Phebe._ Good shepherd, tell this youth what 'tis to love.
-_Silvius._ It is to be all made of sighs and tears;
-And so am I for Phebe.
-_P._ And I for Ganymede.
-_Orlando._ And I for Rosalind.
-_Rosalind._ And I for no woman....
-_S._ It is to be all made of fantasy,
-All made of passion, and all made of wishes,
-All adoration, duty, and observance,
-All humbleness, all patience and impatience,
-All purity, all trial, all observance;
-And so I am for Phebe.
-_P._ And so am I for Ganymede.
-_O._ And so am I for Rosalind.
-_R._ And so am I for no woman."[728]
-
-
-The necessity of singing is so urgent that a minute later songs break
-out of themselves. The prose and the conversation end in lyric poetry.
-We pass straight on into these odes. We do not find ourselves in a new
-country. We feel the emotion and foolish gayety as if it were a holiday.
-We see the graceful couple whom the song of the two pages brings before
-us, passing in the misty light "o'er the green corn-field," amid the hum
-of sportive insects, on the finest day of the flowering spring-time.
-Unlikelihood grows natural, and we are not astonished when we see Hymen
-leading the two brides by the hand to give them to their husbands.
-
-Whilst the young folk sing, the old folk talk. Their life also is a
-novel, but a sad one. Shakespeare's delicate soul, bruised by the shocks
-of social life, took refuge in contemplations of solitary life. To
-forget the strife and annoyances of the world, he must bury himself in a
-wide silent forest, and
-
-
-"Under the shade of melancholy boughs,
-Loose and neglect the creeping hours of time."[729]
-
-
-We look at the bright images which the sun carves on the white
-beech-boles, the shade of trembling leaves flickering on the thick moss,
-the long waves of the summit of the trees; then the sharp sting of care
-is blunted; we suffer no more, simply remembering that we suffered once;
-we feel nothing but a gentle misanthropy, and being renewed, we are the
-better for it. The old duke is happy in his exile. Solitude has given
-him rest, delivered him from flattery, reconciled him to nature. He
-pities the stags which he is obliged to hunt for food:
-
-
-"Come, shall we go and kill us venison?
-And yet it irks me the poor dappled fools,
-Being native burghers of this desert city,
-Should in their own confines with forked heads
-Have their round haunches gored."[730]
-
-
-Nothing sweeter than this mixture of tender compassion, dreamy
-philosophy, delicate sadness, poetical complaints, and rustic songs. One
-of the lords sings:
-
-
-"Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
-Thou art not so unkind
-As man's ingratitude;
-Thy tooth is not so keen,
-Because thou art not seen,
-Although thy breath be rude.
-Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
-Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
-Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
-This life is most jolly."[731]
-
-
-Amongst these lords is found a soul that suffers more, Jacques the
-melancholy, one of Shakespeare's best-loved characters, a transparent
-mask behind which we perceive the face of the poet. He is sad because he
-is tender; he feels the contact of things too keenly, and what leaves
-others indifferent, makes him weep.[732] He does not scold, he is sad;
-he does not reason, he is moved; he has not the combative spirit of a
-reforming moralist; his soul is sick and weary of life. Impassioned
-imagination leads quickly to disgust. Like opium, it excites and
-shatters. It leads man to the loftiest philosophy, then lets him down to
-the whims of a child. Jacques leaves other men abruptly, and goes to the
-quiet nooks to be alone. He loves his sadness, and would not exchange it
-for joy. Meeting Orlando, he says:
-
-
-"Rosalind is your love's name?
-_Orlando._ Yes, just.
-_Jacques._ I do not like her name."[733]
-
-
-He has the fancies of a nervous woman. He is scandalized because Orlando
-writes sonnets on the forest trees. He is eccentric, and finds subjects
-of grief and gayety where others would see nothing of the sort:
-
-
-"A fool, a fool! I met a fool i' the forest,
-A motley fool; a miserable world!
-As I do live by food, I met a fool;
-Who laid him down and bask'd him in the sun,
-And rail'd on Lady Fortune in good terms,
-In good set terms and yet a motley fool...."
-
-
-Jacques hearing him moralize in such a manner begins to laugh "sans
-intermission" that a fool could be so meditative:
-
-
-"O noble fool; a worthy fool! Motley's the only wear....
-O that I were a fool!
-I am ambitious for a motley coat."[734]
-
-
-The next minute he returns to his melancholy dissertations, bright
-pictures whose vivacity explains his character, and betrays Shakespeare,
-hiding under his name:
-
-
-"All the world's a stage,
-And all the men and women merely players:
-They have their exits and their entrances;
-And one man in his time plays many parts,
-His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
-Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
-And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel,
-And shining morning face, creeping like snail
-Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
-Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
-Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier,
-Full of strange oaths and bearded like the pard,
-Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel,
-Seeking the bubble reputation
-Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice,
-In fair round belly with good capon lined,
-With eyes severe and beard of formal cut,
-Full of wise saws and modern instances;
-And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
-Into the lean and slipper'd pantaloon,
-With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
-His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
-For his shrunk shank; and his big manly voice,
-Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
-And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
-That ends this strange eventful history,
-In second childishness and mere oblivion,
-Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything."[735]
-
-
-"As you Like it" is a half dream. "Midsummer Night's Dream" is a
-complete one.
-
-The scene, buried in the far-off mist of fabulous antiquity, carries us
-back to Theseus, Duke of Athens, who is preparing his palace for his
-marriage with the beautiful queen of the Amazons. The style, loaded with
-contorted images, fills the mind with strange and splendid visions, and
-the airy elf-world divert the comedy into the fairy-land from whence it
-sprung.
-
-Love is still the theme: of all sentiments, is it not the greatest
-fancy-weaver? But love is not heard here in the charming, prattle of
-Rosalind; it is glaring, like the season of the year. It does not brim
-over in slight conversations, in supple and skipping prose; it breaks
-forth into big rhyming odes, dressed in magnificent metaphors, sustained
-by impassioned accents, such as a warm night, odorous and star-spangled,
-inspires in a poet and a lover. Lysander and Hermia agree to meet.
-
-
-"_Lysander._ To-morrow night when Phoebe doth behold
-Her silver visage in the watery glass,
-Decking with liquid pearl the bladed grass,
-A time that lovers' flights doth still conceal,
-Through Athens' gates have we devised to steal.
-_Hermia._ And in the wood, where often you and I
-Upon faint primrose-beds were wont to lie....
-There my Lysander and myself shall meet."[736]
-
-
-They get lost, and fall asleep, wearied, under the trees. Puck squeezes
-in the youth's eyes the juice of a magic flower, and changes his heart.
-Presently, when he awakes, he will become enamored of the first woman he
-sees. Meanwhile Demetrius, Hermia's rejected lover, wanders with Helena,
-whom he rejects, in the solitary wood. The magic flower changes him in
-turn, he now loves Helena. The lovers flee and pursue one another,
-beneath the lofty trees, in the calm night. We smile at their
-transports, their complaints, their ecstasies, and yet we join in them.
-This passion is a dream, and yet it moves us: It is like those airy webs
-which we find at morning on the crest of the hedgerows where the dew has
-spread them, and whose weft sparkles like a jewel-casket. Nothing can be
-more fragile, and nothing more graceful. The poet sports with emotions;
-he mingles, confuses, redoubles, interweaves them; he twines and
-untwines these loves like the mazes of a dance, and we see the noble and
-tender figures pass by the verdant bushes, beneath the radiant eyes of
-the stars, now wet with tears, now bright with rapture. They have the
-abandonment of true love, not the grossness of sensual love. Nothing
-causes us to fall from the ideal world in which Shakespeare conducts us.
-Dazzled by beauty, they adore it, and the spectacle of their happiness,
-their emotion, and their tenderness, is a kind of enchantment.
-
-Above these two couples flutters and hums the swarm of elves and
-fairies. They also love. Titania, their queen, has a young boy for her
-favorite, son of an Indian king, of whom Oberon, her husband, wishes to
-deprive her. They quarrel, so that the elves creep for fear into the
-acorn cups, in the golden primroses. Oberon, by way of vengeance,
-touches Titania's sleeping eyes with the magic flower, and thus on
-waking the nimblest and most charming of the fairies finds herself
-enamored of a stupid blockhead with an ass's head. She kneels before
-him; she sets on his "hairy temples a coronet of fresh and fragrant
-flowers":
-
-
-"And that same dew, which sometime on the buds
-Was wont to swell like round and orient pearls,
-Stood now within the pretty floweret's eyes,
-Like tears that did their own disgrace bewail."[737]
-
-
-She calls round her all her fairy attendants;
-
-
-"Be kind and courteous to this gentleman;
-Hop in his walks, and gambol in his eyes;
-Feed him with apricocks and dewberries,
-With purple grapes, green figs, and mulberries;
-The honey-bags steal from the humble-bees,
-And for night-tapers crop their waxen thighs
-And light them at the fiery glow-worm's eyes,
-To have my love to bed and to arise;
-And pluck the wings from painted butterflies
-To fan the moonbeams from his sleeping eyes....
-Come, wait upon him; lead him to my bower.
-The moon, methinks, looks with a watery eye;
-And when she weeps, weeps every little flower,
-Lamenting some enforced chastity.
-Tie up my love's tongue, bring him silently."[738]
-
-
-It was necessary, for her love brayed horribly, and to all the offers of
-Titania, replied with a petition for hay. What can be sadder and sweeter
-than this irony of Shakespeare? What raillery against love, and what
-tenderness for love! The sentiment is divine; its object unworthy. The
-heart is ravished, the eyes blind. It is a golden butterfly, fluttering
-in the mud; and Shakespeare, whilst painting its misery, preserves all
-its beauty:
-
-
-"Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed,
-While I thy amiable cheeks do coy,
-And stick musk-roses in thy sleek smooth head,
-And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy....
-Sleep thou, and I will wind thee in my arms....
-So doth the woodbine the sweet honeysuckle
-Gently entwist; the female ivy so
-Enrings the barky fingers of the elm.
-O, how I love thee! how I dote on thee!"[739]
-
-
-At the return of morning, when
-
-
-"The eastern gate, all fiery red,
-Opening on Neptune with fair blessed beams,
-Turns into yellow gold his salt green streams,"[740]
-
-
-the enchantment ceases, Titania awakes on her couch of wild thyme and
-drooping violets. She drives the monster away; her recollections of the
-night are effaced in a vague twilight:
-
-
-"These things seem small and undistinguishable,
-Like far-off mountains turned into clouds."[741]
-
-
-And the fairies
-
-
-"Go seek some dew drops here
-And hang a pearl in every cowslip's ear."[742]
-
-
-Such is Shakespeare's fantasy, a slight tissue of bold inventions, of
-ardent passions, melancholy mockery, dazzling poetry, such as one of
-Titania's elves would have made. Nothing could be more like the poet's
-mind than these nimble genii, children of air and flame, whose flights
-"compass the globe" in a second, who glide over the foam of the waves
-and skip between the atoms of the winds. Ariel flies, an invisible
-songster, around shipwrecked men to console them, discovers the thoughts
-of traitors, pursues the savage beast Caliban, spreads gorgeous visions
-before lovers, and does all in a lightning-flash:
-
-
-"Where the bee sucks, there suck I:
-In a cowslip's bell I lie....
-Merrily, merrily shall I live now
-Under the blossom that hangs on the bough....
-I drink the air before me, and return
-Or ere your pulse twice beat."[743]
-
-
-Shakespeare glides over things on as swift a wing, by leaps as sudden,
-with a touch as delicate.
-
-What a soul! what extent of action, and what sovereignty of an unique
-faculty! what diverse creations, and what persistence of the same
-impress! There they all are united, and all marked by the same sign,
-void of will and reason, governed by mood, imagination, or pure passion,
-destitute of the faculties contrary to those of the poet, dominated by
-the corporeal type which his painter's eyes have conceived, endowed by
-the habits of mind and by the vehement sensibility which he finds in
-himself.[744] Go through the groups, and you will only discover in them
-divers forms and divers states of the same power. Here, a herd of
-brutes, dotards, and gossips, made up of a mechanical imagination;
-further on, a company of men of wit, animated by a gay and foolish
-imagination; then, a charming swarm of women whom their delicate
-imagination raises so high, and their self-forgetting love carries so
-far; elsewhere a band of villains, hardened by unbridled passions,
-inspired by artistic rapture; in the centre a mournful train of grand
-characters, whose excited brain is filled with sad or criminal visions,
-and whom an inner destiny urges to murder, madness, or death. Ascend one
-stage, and contemplate the whole scene: the aggregate bears the same
-mark as the details. The drama reproduces promiscuously uglinesses,
-basenesses, horrors, unclean details, profligate and ferocious manners,
-the whole reality of life just as it is, when it is unrestrained by
-decorum, common-sense, reason, and duty. Comedy, led through a
-phantasmagoria of pictures, gets lost in the likely and the unlikely,
-with no other connection but the caprice of an amused imagination,
-wantonly disjointed and romantic, an opera without music, a concerto of
-melancholy and tender sentiments, which bears the mind into the
-supernatural world, and brings before our eyes on its fairy-wings the
-genius which has created it. Look now. Do you not see the poet behind
-the crowd of his creations? They have heralded his approach. They have
-all shown somewhat of him. Ready, impetuous, impassioned, delicate, his
-genius is pure imagination, touched more vividly and by slighter things
-than ours. Hence his style, blooming with exuberant images, loaded with
-exaggerated metaphors, whose strangeness is like incoherence, whose
-wealth is superabundant, the work of a mind, which, at the least
-incitement, produces too much and takes too wide leaps. Hence this
-involuntary psychology, and this terrible penetration, which
-instantaneously perceiving all the effects of a situation, and all the
-details of a character, concentrates them in every response, and gives
-to a figure a relief and a coloring which create illusion. Hence our
-emotion and tenderness. We say to him, as Desdemona to Othello: "I love
-thee for the battles, sieges, fortunes thou hast passed, and for the
-distressful stroke that thy youth suffered."
-
-
-
-
-[Footnote 587: Halliwell's "Life of Shakespeare."]
-
-[Footnote 588: Born 1564, died 1616. He adapted plays as early as 1591.
-The first play entirely from his pen appeared in 1593.--Payne Collier.]
-
-[Footnote 589: Mr. Halliwell and other commentators try to prove that at
-this time the preliminary trothplight was regarded as the real marriage;
-that this trothplight had taken place, and that there was therefore no
-irregularity in Shakespeare's conduct.]
-
-[Footnote 590: Halliwell, 123.]
-
-[Footnote 591: All these anecdotes are traditions, and consequently more
-or less doubtful; but the other facts are authentic.]
-
-[Footnote 592: Terms of an extant document. He is named along with Burbage
-and Greene.]
-
-[Footnote 593: Sonnet 110.]
-
-[Footnote 594: See Sonnets 91 and 111; also "Hamlet," III. 2. Many of
-Hamlet's words would come better from the mouth of an actor than a
-prince. See also the 66th Sonnet, "Tired with all these."]
-
-[Footnote 595: Sonnet 29.]
-
-[Footnote 596: "Hamlet," III. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 597: Sonnet 111.]
-
-[Footnote 598: Anecdote written in 1602 on the authority of Tooley the
-actor.]
-
-[Footnote 599: The Earl of Southampton was nineteen years old when
-Shakespeare dedicated his "Adonis" to him.]
-
-[Footnote 600: See Titian's picture. Loves of the Gods, at Blenheim.]
-
-[Footnote 601: "Venus and Adonis," lines 548-553.]
-
-[Footnote 602: Ibid. lines 55-60.]
-
-[Footnote 603: Ibid, lines 853-858.]
-
-[Footnote 604: Compare the first pieces of Alfred de Musset, "Contes
-d'Italie et d'Espagne."]
-
-[Footnote 605: Crawley, quoted by Ph. Chasles, "Études sur Shakspeare."]
-
-[Footnote 606: A famed French courtesan (1613-1650), the heroine of a
-drama of that name, by Victor Hugo, having for its subject-matter:
-"Love purifies everything."--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 607: Sonnet 138.]
-
-[Footnote 608: Two characters in Molière's "Misanthrope." The scene
-referred to is Act V. Scene 7.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 609: Sonnet 142.]
-
-[Footnote 610: Sonnet 95.]
-
-[Footnote 611: Sonnet 98.]
-
-[Footnote 612: Ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 613: Sonnet 99.]
-
-[Footnote 614: Sonnet 151.]
-
-[Footnote 615: Sonnet 151.]
-
-[Footnote 616: Sonnet 144; also the "Passionate Pilgrim," 2.]
-
-[Footnote 617: This new interpretation of the Sonnets is due to the
-ingenious and learned conjectures of M. Ph. Chasles.--For a short history
-of these Sonnets, see Dyce's "Shakspeare," I. pp. 96-102. This learned
-editor says: "I contend that allusions scattered through the whole series
-are not to be hastily referred to the personal circumstances of
-Shakspeare."--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 618: Miranda, Desdemona, Viola. The following are the first
-words of the Duke in "Twelfth Night":
-"If music be the food of love, play on;
-Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
-The appetite may sicken, and so die.
-That strain again! it had a dying fall:
-O, it came o'er my ear like the sweet
-south,
-That breathes upon a bank of violets,
-Stealing and giving odor! Enough;
-no more:
-'Tis not so sweet now as it was before.
-O spirit of love! how quick and fresh
-art thou,
-That, notwithstanding thy capacity
-Receiveth as the sea, nought enters
-there.
-Of what validity and pitch soever,
-But falls into abatement and low price.
-Even in a minute: so full of shapes is
-fancy
-That it alone is high-fantastical."]
-
-[Footnote 619: H. Chettle, in repudiating Greene's sarcasm, attributed
-it to him.]
-
-[Footnote 620: Dyce, "Shakespeare," I. 27: "Of French and Italian, I
-apprehend, he knew but little."--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 621: Sonnet 29.]
-
-[Footnote 622: Sonnet 73.]
-
-[Footnote 623: Sonnet 71.]
-
-[Footnote 624: The part in which he excelled was that of the ghost in
-"Hamlet."]
-
-[Footnote 625: Greene's "A Groatsworth of Wit," etc.]
-
-[Footnote 626: "He was a respectable man. A good word; what does it
-mean? He kept a gig."--From Thurtell's trial for the murder of Weare.]
-
-[Footnote 627: The model of an optimist, the hero of one of Voltaire's
-tales.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 628: See his portraits, and in particular his bust.]
-
-[Footnote 629: Especially in his later plays: "Tempest, Twelfth Night."]
-
-[Footnote 630: "Hamlet," III. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 631: Act III. Scene 4.]
-
-[Footnote 632: Act III. Scene 4.]
-
-[Footnote 633: This is why, in the eyes of a writer of the seventeenth
-century, Shakespeare's style is the most obscure, pretentious, painful,
-barbarous, and absurd, that could be imagined.]
-
-[Footnote 634: Shakespeare's vocabulary is the most copious of all. It
-comprises about 15,000 words; Milton's only 8,000.]
-
-[Footnote 635: See the conversation of Laertes and his sister, and of
-Laertes and Polonius, in "Hamlet." The style is foreign to the situation;
-and we see here plainly the natural and necessary process of
-Shakespeare's thought.]
-
-[Footnote 636: "Winter's Tale," I. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 637: One of Molière's characters in "Tartuffe."--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 638: "Romeo and Juliet," III. 5.]
-
-[Footnote 639: "Henry VIII," II. 3, and many other scenes.]
-
-[Footnote 640: "Much Ado about Nothing." See also the manner in which
-Henry V in Shakespeare's "King Henry V" pays court to Katharine of
-France (V. 2).]
-
-[Footnote 641: Ibid. II. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 642: Act IV. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 643: Second part of "Henry VI," IV. 6.]
-
-[Footnote 644: "Henry VI," 2d part, IV. 2, 6, 7.]
-
-[Footnote 645: "King Lear," III. 7.]
-
-[Footnote 646: "The Tempest," IV. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 647: See "Troilus and Cressida," II. 3, the jesting manner in
-which the generals drive on this fierce brute.]
-
-[Footnote 648: "Cymbeline," II. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 649: Ibid. III. 5.]
-
-[Footnote 650: "Romeo and Juliet," I. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 651: "Romeo and Juliet," II. 5.]
-
-[Footnote 652: Ibid. III. 5.]
-
-[Footnote 653: "Romeo and Juliet," II. 4.]
-
-[Footnote 654: "Much Ado about Nothing," II. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 655: "Romeo and Juliet," II. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 656: Ibid. I. 4.]
-
-[Footnote 657: "Romeo and Juliet," I. 4.]
-
-[Footnote 658: First part of "King Henry IV," III. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 659: First Part of "King Henry IV," IV. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 660: Ibid. II. 4.]
-
-[Footnote 661: "Othello," III. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 662: Ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 663: Ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 664: "Othello," III. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 665: "Cymbeline," III. 5.]
-
-[Footnote 666: "Coriolanus," I. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 667: Ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 668: "Romeo and Juliet," I. 5.]
-
-[Footnote 669: "The Tempest," III. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 670: "King Lear," IV. 7.]
-
-[Footnote 671: "O ye're well met: the hoarded plague o' the gods
-Requite your love!
-If that I could for weeping, you should hear--
-Nay, and you shall hear some....
-I'll tell thee what; yet go:
-Nay but thou shalt stay too: I would my son
-Were in Arabia, and thy tribe before him,
-His good sword in his hand."--Coriolanus, IV. 2.
-
-See again, "Coriolanus," I. 3, the frank and abandoned triumph of a woman
-of the people, "I sprang not more in joy at first hearing he was a
-man-child than now in first seeing he had proved himself a man."]
-
-[Footnote 672: Ibid. I. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 673: "Othello," II. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 674: Ibid. II. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 675: "Othello," II. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 676: Ibid. IV. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 677: See the like cynicism and scepticism in Richard III. Both
-begin by slandering human nature, and both are misanthropical of malice
-prepense.]
-
-[Footnote 678: "Othello," II. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 679: See his conversation with Brabantio, then with Roderigo,
-Act I.]
-
-[Footnote 680: See again, in Timon, and Hotspur more particularly,
-perfect examples of vehement and unreasoning imagination.]
-
-[Footnote 681: "Coriolanus," I. 9.]
-
-[Footnote 682: Ibid. I. 6.]
-
-[Footnote 683: Ibid. I. 9.]
-
-[Footnote 684: "Coriolanus," I. 9.]
-
-[Footnote 685: Ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 686: Ibid. II. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 687: Ibid. II. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 688: "Coriolanus," III. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 689: Ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 690: Ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 691: Ibid. III. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 692: "Coriolanus," III. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 693: Ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 694: Ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 695: Ibid. V. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 696: "Macbeth," I. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 697: Ibid. II. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 698: "Macbeth," II. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 699: Ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 700: Ibid.]
-
-[Footnote 701: Ibid. II. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 702: "Macbeth," II. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 703: Ibid. III. 4.]
-
-[Footnote 704: Ibid. III. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 705: "Macbeth," III. 4.]
-
-[Footnote 706: Ibid. IV. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 707: "Macbeth," V. 5.]
-
-[Footnote 708: Goethe, "Wilhelm Meister."]
-
-[Footnote 709: "Hamlet," I. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 710: Ibid. I. 5.]
-
-[Footnote 711: "Hamlet," I. 5.]
-
-[Footnote 712: Ibid. III. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 713: "Hamlet," II, 2.]
-
-[Footnote 714: Ibid. III, 1.]
-
-[Footnote 715: Ibid. IV. 3.]
-
-[Footnote 716: "Hamlet," V. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 717: A French physician (1772-1844), celebrated for his
-endeavors to improve the treatment of the insane.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 718: "Twelfth Night, As You Like it, Tempest, Winter's
-Tale," etc., "Cymbeline, Merchant of Venice," etc.]
-
-[Footnote 719: "Merchant of Venice," V. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 720: In English, a word is wanting to express the French
-"fantaisie" used by M. Taine, in describing this scene: what in music
-is called a capriccio. Tennyson calls the "Princess" a medley, but it
-is ambiguous.--Tr.]
-
-[Footnote 721: "As You Like It," III. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 722: Ibid. IV. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 723: "As You Like It," V, 2.]
-
-[Footnote 724: "As You Like It," II. 7.]
-
-[Footnote 725: Ibid. II. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 726: Ibid. II. 7.]
-
-[Footnote 727: Compare Jacques with the Alceste  of Molière. It is
-the contrast between a misanthrope through reasoning and one through
-imagination.]
-
-[Footnote 728: "As You Like It," III. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 729: Ibid. II. 7.]
-
-[Footnote 730: "As You Like It," II. 7.]
-
-[Footnote 731: "Midsummer Night's Dream," I. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 732: "Midsummer Night's Dream," IV. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 733: "Midsummer Night's Dream," III. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 734: Ibid. IV. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 735: Ibid. III. 2.]
-
-[Footnote 736: Ibid. IV. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 737: "Midsummer Night's Dream," II. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 738: "Tempest," V. 1.]
-
-[Footnote 739: There is the same law in the organic and in the moral
-world. It is what Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire calls unity of composition.]
-
-
-
-
-
-INDEX
-
-
-_The Roman Numerals Refer to the Volumes.--The Arabic Figures to the Pages
-of Each Volume._
-
-
-Abelard, I. 158, 160
-Addison, Joseph, II. 265, 292, 300, 311;
-his life and writings, 327-359; III. 83,
-95, 259, 272, 280, 306
-Adhelm, I. 58, see footnote 89, 69, 70, 185
-Agriculture, improvement in, in sixteenth
-century, I. 172; in the nineteenth,
-III. 43, 168
-Akenside, Mark, III. 36
-Alcuin, I. 64, 70
-Alexander VI, Pope, II. 5
-Alexandrian philosophy, I. 21, see footnote 5
-Alfred the Great, I. 64, 69
-Alison, Sir Archibald, III. 44
-Amory, Thomas, II. 438
-Angelo, Michel, I. 183, 366; III. 27
-Anglo-Saxon poetry, I. 53
-Ann of Cleaves, I. 186
-Anselm, I. 76
-Anthology the, I. 209, 240
-Arbuthnot, Dr. John, II. 381
-Architecture, Norman, I. 75, 127; the
-Tudor style, 174
-Ariosto, I. 185, 222, see footnote 360, see footnote 366; II. 236
-Aristocracy British, in the nineteenth
-century, III. 169 seq.
-Arkwright, Sir Richard, II. 320
-Armada, the I. 173, 279
-Arnold, Dr. Thomas, III. 100, 178
-Arthur and Merlin, romance of, I. 77
-Ascham, Roger, I. 181, 246, see footnote 288; II. 3
-Athelstan, I. 36, 54
-Augier, Emile, III. 208
-Austen, Jane, III. 85
-
-Bacon, Francis, Lord, I. 245, 255, see footnote 384; II.
-34, 39; III. 268 seq. 284
-Bacon, Roger, I. 161
-Bain, Alexander, III. 185
-Bakewell, Robert, II. 320
-Bale, John, I. 186
-Balzac, Honoré de, I. 3; III. 215, 254
-Barclay, Alexander, I. 165
-Barclay, John, II. 292
-Barclay, Robert, I. 58
-Barrow, Isaac, II. 292, 295 seq.
-Baxter, Richard, I. 268; II. 56, 292
-Bayly's (Lewis) Practice of Piety, II. 62
-Beattie, Tames, II. 440; III. 36
-Beauclerk, Henry, I. 76
-Beaumont, Francis, I. 291, see footnote 421, see footnote 423,
-see footnote 459, see footnote 490, see footnote 494,
-see footnote 495, see footnote 497, see footnote 506,
-see footnote 509, see footnote 512;
-II. 41, 45, 100
-Becket, Thomas à, I. 97
-Beckford, W., III. 77
-Bede, the Venerable, I. 64, see footnote 18, see footnote 69
-see footnote 73, see footnote 88, see footnote 89
-Bedford, Duke of (John Russell), II. 310
-Beethovan, Lewis van, III. 87
-Behn, Mrs. Aphra, II. 157, 254
-Bell, Currer. See Brontë, Charlotte
-Bénoit de Sainte-Maure, I. 76
-Bentham, Jeremy, II. 320
-Bently, Richard, II. 303
-Beowolf, an Anglo-Saxon epic poem, I.
-49
-Béranger, II. 11; III. 287
-Berkeley, Bishop, II. 303
-Berkley, Sir Charles, II. 141
-Berners, Lord, I. 186
-Best, Paul, II. 50
-Bible, English. See Wiclif, Tyndale
-Blackmore, Sir Richard, II. 224
-Blount, Edward, I. 192
-Boccaccio, I. 126, 132; II. 266
-Bodley, Sir Thomas, I. 246
-Boethius, I. 64, see footnote 90
-Boileau, II. 144, 184, 224, 262, 284; III. 7,
-4, 345
-Boleyn, Ann, I. 276
-Bolingbroke, Lord (Henry St. John), II.
-275, 303; III. 8
-Bonner, Edmund, II. 33
-Borde, Andrew, I. 186
-Borgia, Cæsar, II. 5, 6
-Borgia, Lucretia, I. 182; II. 5
-Bossu (or Lebossu), II. 224
-Bossuet, I. 18; II. 233; III. 25, 306
-Boswell, James, II. 444 seq.
-Bourchier. See Berners
-Boyle, the Hon. Robert, II. 303
-Bridaine, Father, II. 298
-Britons, ancient, I. 38
-Brontë, Charlotte (Currer Bell), III. 85,
-100, 185
-Browne, Sir Thomas, I. 245, 246, 252,
-see footnote 382, see footnote 383; II. 34, 39
-Browning, Mrs., III. 100, 185
-Brunanburh, Athelstan's victory at, celebrated
-in Saxon song, I. 54
-Buckingham, Duke of (John Sheffield),
-II. 153, 180, 184
-Buckle, Henry Thomas, III. 154 seq., 176
-Bulwer, Sir Henry Lytton, III. 85, 185
-Bunyan, John, II. 58-70, 133
-Burke, Edmund, II. 303, 317-326, 444; III.
-286, 306
-Burleigh, Lord (William Cecil), I. see footnote 407;
-III. 286
-Burnet, Bishop, II. 202
-Burney, Francisca (Madame D'Arblay),
-II. 283, 320, 444; III. 275
-Burns, Robert, II. 251; Sketch of his life
-and works, III. 48-65
-Burton, Robert, I. see footnote 277, 248; II. 34, 100
-Busby, Dr. Richard, II. 256
-Bute, Lord, II. 273 seq., 310
-Butler, Bishop, II. 320
-Butler, Samuel, II. 137-140, 303
-Byng, Admiral, II. 310
-Byron, Lord, III. 11; his life and works,
-102-151
-
-Cædmon, hymns of, I. 57, 61; his metrical
-paraphrase of parts of the Bible,
-see footnote 83, 61, 185
-Calamy, Edmund, II. 58
-Calderon, I. 161, 279; II. 155
-Calvin, John, II. 11, 45, 301
-Camden, William, I. 246
-Campbell, Thomas, III. 76, 112
-Carew, Thomas, I. 238
-Carlyle, Thomas, I. 6; III. 100, 176; style
-and mind, 308 seq.; vocation, 327 seq.;
-philosophy, morality, and criticism,
-336 seq.; conception of history, 348
-Carteret, John (Earl Granville), II. 311
-Castlereagh, Lord, I. see footnote 514
-Catherine, St., play of, I. 76
-Cellini, Benvenuto, I. 26, see footnote 169, see footnote 290
-see footnote 292, see footnote 293, see footnote 409
-Cervantes, I. 100, see footnote 360, 222; II. 410
-Chalmers, George, I. see footnote 95, see footnote 345, see footnote 346
-Chandos, Duke of (John Brydges), III. 8
-Chapman, George, I. 330
-Charles of Orleans, I. 84, 158
-Charles I of England, III. 276
-Charles II and his court, II. 140 seq.
-Chateaubriand, I. 4; II. 346
-Chatham. See Pitt
-Chaucer, I. 106, 126, 155, see footnote 153; II. 265
-Chesterfield, Lord, II. 278 seq., 444; III. 15
-Chevy Chase, ballad of, I. 125
-Chillingworth, William, I. 245; II. 35, 38,
-300
-Christianity, introduction of, into Britain,
-I. 56, 63 seq.
-Chroniclers, French, I. 83
-Chroniclers, Saxon, I. 68
-Cibber, Colley, III. 8, 17
-Cimbrians, the, I. 41
-Clarendon, Lord Chancellor (Edward
-Hyde), I. 245; II. 140
-Clarke, Dr. John, II. 289, 301
-Classic spirit in Europe, its origin and
-nature, II. 170-173
-Classical authors translated, I. 180, 190
-Clive, Lord, III. 272
-Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, III. 73
-Collier, Jeremy, II. 225, 256
-Collins, William, III. 37
-Colman, George, II. 220
-Comedy-writers, English, II. 188 seq.
-Comines, Philippe de, I. 124
-Commerce in sixteenth century, I. 172;
-III. 165 seq.
-Comte, Auguste, III. 362
-Condillac, Stephen-Bonnot de, III. 333,
-363
-Congreve, William, II. 188-210, 283
-Conybeare, J. J., I. see footnote 64, see footnote 66, see footnote 74
-Corbet, Bishop, II. 35
-Corneille, II. 224, 236
-Cotton, Sir Robert, I. 246
-Court pageantries in the sixteenth century,
-I. 176, 177
-Coventry, Sir John, II. 142
-Coverdale, Miles, II. 20
-Cowley, Abraham, I. 242; II. 34, 71
-Cowper, William, III. 67-73
-Crabbe, George, III. 71, 112
-Cranmer, Archbishop, II. 15, 23
-Crashaw, Richard, II. 34
-Criticism and History, III. 267 seq.
-Cromwell, Oliver, I. 6; II. 35, 50; III.
-276, 319, 351
-Crowne, John, II. 157
-Curll, Edmund, III. 18
-
-Daniel, Samuel, I. 246
-Dante, I. 135, 158, 161; II. 110; III. 335
-Darwin, Charles, I. see footnote 1
-Davie, Adam, I. 93
-Davies, Sir John, II. 34
-Daye, John, II. 47
-Decker, Thomas, I. 281, see footnote 454
-De Foe, II. 307, 402-410; III. 169
-Delille, James, III. 21
-Denham, Sir John, II. 185-188
-Denmark, I. 34, 35
-Dennis, John, II. 331
-Descartes, II. 149, 233; III. 333
-Dickens, Charles, III. 85, 100; his novels,
-187-221
-Domesday Book, I. 104, see footnote 149, see footnote 150,
-see footnote 175
-Donne, John, I. see footnote 372, see footnote 373, see footnote 374, 241;
-II. 35
-Dorat, C. J., III. 16, 140
-Dorset, Earl of (Charles Sackville), II.
-179, 180
-Drake, Admiral, I. see footnote 273
-Drake, Dr. Nathan, I. see footnote 274, see footnote 275, see footnote 278
-see footnote 284, see footnote 329, see footnote 404, see footnote 508
-Drama, formation of the, I. 291 seq.
-Drayton, Michael, I. 204, see footnote 330, see footnote 346; II. 34
-Drummond, William, II. 100
-Dryden, John, I. 18; II. 100; his comedies,
-153-157, 184; his life and writings,
-II. 222-272, 332; III. 5, 329
-Dudevant, Madame (George Sand), III.
-207
-Dunstan, St., I. 36
-Durer, Albert, II. 9, 10
-Dyer, Sir Edward, I. see footnote 325
-
-Earle, John, I. 246
-Eddas, the Scandinavian, I. 42; III.
-123, 124
-Edgeworth, Maria, III. 253
-Edward VI, II. 28
-Edwy and Elgiva, story of, I. 38, see footnote 32
-Eliot, George. See Evans, Mary A.
-England, climate of, I. 33
-English Constitution, formation of the,
-I. 105
-Elizabeth, Queen, I. 175, 245, 270
-Elwin, Whitwell, III. 5 seq.
-Erigena, John Scotus, I. 64, see footnote 89, 69
-Esménard, Joseph Alphonse, I. see footnote 256
-Essex, Robert, Earl of, I. 270, 273
-Etheredge, Sir George, II. 137, 158
-Evans, Mary A. (George Eliot), III. 85,
-179, 185
-Eyck, Van, I. 151
-
-Falkland, Lord, I. 245
-Farnese, Pietro Luigi, II. 6
-Farquhar, George, II. 188, 209
-Faust, III. 47
-Feltham, Owen, I. 246
-Fenn, Sir John, I. see footnote 267
-Ferguson, Dr. Adam, II. 304; III. 271
-Fermor, Mrs. Arabella, III. 15, 16
-Feudalism, the protection and character
-of, I. 73
-Fichte, III. 335
-Fielding, Henry, I. 319; II. 135, 434-433,
-450
-Fitmore, Sir Robert, II. 305
-Finsborough, Battle of, an Anglo-Saxon
-poem, I. 54
-Fisher, John, Bishop of Rochester, I.
-275; II. 26
-Flemish artists, I. 170, 178
-Fletcher, Giles, II. 34
-Fletcher, John, I. 291, 307; II. 45, 100
-Ford, John, I. 291, 297, 312; II. 248
-Fortescue, Sir John, I. 113, see footnote 171
-Fox, Charles James, II. 276, 311, 315 seq.
-Fox, George, II. 52, 58, 133
-Fox, John, II. 13 seq.
-Francis of Assisi, I. 161
-Freeman, Edward A., I. see footnote 98
-Frisians, the, I. 32, 33
-Froissart, I. 83, 102, 126, 127
-132, see footnote 195, see footnote 255
-Froude, J. A., I. see footnote 149, see footnote 411; II. 15 seq.
-Fuller, Thomas, I. 318, see footnote 513
-
-Gaimar, Geoffroy, I. 76, 92
-Gainsborough, Thomas, landscape painter,
-II. 220
-Garrick, David, II. 444, 448
-Gaskell, Mrs. Elisabeth C., III. 85, 185
-Gay, John, II. 211, 279; III. 4. 29-32
-Geoffrey of Monmouth, I. see footnote 130
-German ideas, introduction of, in Europe
-and England, III; 328 seq.
-Germany, drinking habits in, II. 7
-Gibbon, Edward, II. 444
-Gladstone, William Ewart, III. 274
-Glencoe, Massacre of, III. 302 seq.
-Glover, Richard, III. 37
-Godwin, William, II. 95
-Goethe, I. 6, 18, see footnote 441, see footnote 708;
-II. 111, 118, 430; III. 48, 74, 125-131, 327 seq.
-Goldsmith, Oliver, II. 211, 307, 440-443
-Goltzius, I. 196
-Gower, John, I. 90, 163, see footnote 127
-Grammont, Count de, II. 135, 169, 170
-Gray, Thomas, III. 36
-Greene, Robert, I. 206, see footnote 301, see footnote 333, 281,
-see footnote 340, 306
-Grenville, George, II. 310
-Gresset, J. B. Lewis, III. 16
-Grey, Lady Jane, I. 180, 270
-Grostete, Robert, I. 90, 93
-Grote, George, III. 185
-Guicciardini, Ludovic, I. 173
-Guido, I. 16
-Guizot, I. see footnote 155; III. 276, 282, 305
-Guy of Warwick, I. 77, see footnote 143
-
-Habington, William, I. 240
-Hakluyt, Richard, I. 246
-Hale, Sir Matthew, II. 16
-Hales, John, I. 245; II. 35, 37, 301
-Halifax, Charles, Montague, Earl of, II.
-329, 334. 361, 366
-Hall, Bishop, Joseph, I. 246; II. 35
-Hallam, Henry, I. 118; III. 276
-Hamilton, Anthony, II. 136 seq.
-Hamilton, Sir William, III. 185
-Hampden, John, III. 276
-Hampole, I. 93
-Hardyng, John, I. 269
-Harrington, Sir John, I. 237
-Harrison, William, I. 173
-Hastings, Warren, II. 317; III. 272, 285
-seq., 291
-Hawes, Stephen, I. 165
-Hegel, I. 18, see footnote 244; II. 271, 331 seq.
-Heine, I. 2, see footnote 10, 360; III. 39, 48, 74, 87
-Hemling, Hans, I. 170
-Henry Beauclerk, I. 76
-Henry of Huntingdon, I. 36, see footnote 24, see footnote 34, see
-footnote 35, 76
-Henry VIII and his Court, I. 269; II. 15
-Herbert, George, I. 240
-Herbert, Lord, I. 246
-Herder, John Godfrey von, I. 6
-Herrick, Robert, I. 204, 238, see footnote 371
-Hertford, Earl of, I. see footnote 402
-Hervey, Lord, III. 26
-Heywood, Mrs. Eliza, III. 18
-Heywood, John, I. 186, 280, see footnote 425, see footnote 488
-Hill, Aaron, III. 8
-History, philosophy of. See the Introduction,
-passim.
-Hobbes, Thomas, II. 147-152, 250
-Hogarth, William, II. 450-453; III. 18
-Holinslied's Chronicles, I. 176, 246, 275
-Holland, I. 31
-Homer and Spenser, I. 217
-Hooker, Richard, I. 245; II. 35 seq.
-Horn, Ring, romance of, I. 77, 100
-Hoveden, John, I. 90
-Howard, John, II. 320
-Howe, John, III. 299
-Hugo, Victor, I. 2, see footnote 263, see footnote 606; II. 270;
-III. 74, 87
-Hume, David, II. 304, 440; III. 294, 352
-Hunter, William, martyrdom of, II.
-31, 32
-Hutcheson, Francis, II. 304, 320; III. 271
-
-Iceland and its legends, I. 35, 42
-Independency in the sixteenth century,
-II. 49 seq., 90
-Industry, British, in the nineteenth century,
-III. 165 seq.
-Irish, the ancient, I. 38
-Italian writings and ideas, taste for, in
-sixteenth century, I. 181, 182; vices of
-the Italian Renaissance, II. 3-7
-
-James I and his Court, I. 237
-James II, III. 282
-Jewell, Bishop, I. 277
-Johnson, Samuel, I. 319; II. 303, 321, 444-453;
-III. 10, 38, 345
-Joinville, Sire de, I. 83
-Jones, Inigo, I. see footnote 276, 321
-Jones, Sir William, II. 444
-Jonson, Ben, I. see footnote 282, 208, see footnote 394, see footnote 398,
-280, see footnote 520;
-II. 100; III. 155; sketch of his life, I. 318; his
-learning, style, etc., 321; his
-dramas, 327; his comedies, 333;
-compared with Molière, 345; fanciful
-comedies and smaller poems, 345
-Jordaens, Jacob, I. 178
-Jowett, Benjamin, III. 100, 334
-Judith, poem of, I. 60, 61
-Junius, Letters of, II. 311 seq.; III. 106
-Jutes, the, and their country, I. 31
-
-Keats, John, III. 130
-Kemble, John M., I. see footnote 26, see footnote 35, see footnote 39,
-see footnote 58, see footnote 59
-see footnote 63, see footnote 77
-Knighton, Henry, I. see footnote 186
-Knolles, Richard, I. 246
-Knox, John, II. 8, 28; III. 354
-Kyd, Thomas, I. 280
-
-Lackland, John, I. 102
-LaHarpe, III. 345
-Lamartine, I. 2; III. 74, 87
-Lamb, Charles, III. 73, 76
-Languet, Hubert, I. 194
-Latimer, Bishop, I. 109; II. 17, 27 seq.
-Lanfranc, first Norman Archbishop of
-Canterbury, I. 76
-Langtoft, Peter, I. 90
-Laud, Archbishop, II. 38; III. 287
-Lavergne, Léonce de, I. see footnote 15
-Law, William, II. 303
-Layamon, I. 92, see footnote 131
-Lebrun, Ponce Denis Econchard, I. 163, see footnote 256
-Lee, Nathaniel, II. 241
-Leibnitz, III. 23
-Leighton, Dr. Alexander, II. 49, 88
-Lely, Sir Peter, II. 320
-Leo X, Pope, II. 4
-Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim, I. 4
-Lingard, Dr. John, I. see footnote 18, see footnote 21, see footnote 30,
-see footnote 32, see footnote 148
-Locke, John, II. 71, 300, 303 seq., 320
-Lockhart, John Gibson, III. 78 seq.
-Lodge, Thomas, I. 204, 280
-Lombard, Peter, I. 157, see footnote 245
-Loménie de Brienne, Cardinal, III. 311
-London in Henry VIII's time, I. 173;
-in the present day, III. 164
-Longchamps, William, I. 97
-Longus, Greek romance-writer, I. 209
-Lorris, Guillaume de, I. 84, 95
-Loyola, I. 161, 171; III. 273
-Ludlow, Edmund, II. 51
-Lulli, a renowned Italian composer, II.
-233
-Lully, Raymond; I. 161
-Luther, Martin, I. 26, 171; II. 3-7; and the
-Reformation, 7
-Lydgate, John, I. 158, 163, 164, see footnote 257, 165, see footnote 259
-Lyly, John, I. see footnote 287, 192, 194
-Lyly, William, I. 180
-
-Macaulay, Thomas Babington (Lord),
-III. 100; his works, 267-307
-Machiavelli, I. 183
-Mackenzie, Henry, III. 35, 51
-Mackintosh, Sir James, III. 276
-Macpherson, James, III. 36
-Malcolm, Sir John, III. 78
-Malherbe, Francis de, III. 329
-Malte-brun, Conrad, I. see footnote 8
-Mandeville, Bernard, II. 303
-Manners of the people in the sixteenth
-century, I. 178
-Marguerite of Navarre, I. 132
-Marlborough, Duchess of, III. 26
-Marlborough, Duke of, II. 275, 307; III.
-259
-Marlowe, Christopher, I. 211, see footnote 344, 280, see footnote 429,
-see footnote 433, see footnote 344, see footnote 442, see footnote 445,
-see footnote 446, see footnote 447, see footnote 449, see footnote 452;
-III. 73;
-his dramas, I. 282
-Marston, John, I. 320
-Martyr, Peter, II. 23
-Martyrs in the reign of Mary, II. 30-34
-Marvell, Andrew, II. 254
-Masques, under James I, I. 177, 348
-Massillon, II. 28
-Massinger, Philip, I. see footnote 400, 280, see footnote 424, see
-footnote 459, see footnote 460, see footnote 462, 297
-Maundeville, Sir John, I. 91, see footnote 128, see footnote 129, see
-footnote 130, 102
-May, Thomas, II. 57
-Medici, Lorenzo de, I. 182
-Melanchthon, Philip, II. 13, 23
-Merlin, I. 77, see footnote 124
-Meung, Jean de, I. 93, 162
-Michelet, Jules, I. 4, see footnote 71; III. 325
-Middleton, Thomas, I. see footnote 401, 273, 277, 291, see footnote 458
-Mill, John Stuart, III. 100, 176, 360-408
-Milton, John, I. 62, see footnote 86, 215, 245; II. 71-84; his
-prose writings, 84-100; his poetry, 100-128,
-347, 348; III. 272
-Molière, I. see footnote 347, see footnote 348, see footnote 489, see
-footnote 563, see footnote 608, 361; II. 188 seq., 418; III. 214
-Mommsen, Theodor, I. see footnote 3
-Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, II. 424;
-III. 8, 15
-Montesquieu, Ch., I. see footnote 4, 25
-Moore, Thomas, II. 440; III. 75 seq., 138
-More, Sir Thomas, I. 246, 275
-Müller, Max, III. 361
-Muller, Ottfried, I. 6
-Murray, John, III. 78, 138, 140
-Musset, Alfred de, I. 2, 199, see footnote 426, see footnote 427, see
-footnote 459, see footnote 523, 358;
-II. 267; III. 39, 74, 87, 430 seq.
-
-Nash, Thomas, I. 281
-Nayler, James, II. 53, 57
-Neal's History of the Puritans, II. 53, 88
-Newcastle, Duchess of (Margaret Lucas),
-II. 187
-Newspaper, first daily, III. 44
-Newton, Sir Isaac, II. 289, 301
-Nicole, Peter, II. 283
-Norman Conquest, the, I. 71, 72, 73; its
-effects on the national language and
-literature, 87, 123; III. 151
-Normans, the character of, I. 74; how
-they became French, 75; their taste
-and architecture, 75; their literature,
-chivalry, and success, 76; their position
-and tyranny in England, 87; III.
-152
-Nott, Dr. John, I. 191
-Novel, the English--its characteristics,
-II. 402 seq.; the modern school of novelists,
-III. 185 seq.
-Nut-brown Maid, the--an ancient ballad,
-I. see footnote 192
-
-Oates, Titus, II. 257
-Occam, William, I. 161
-Occleve, Thomas, I. 163
-Ochin, Bernard, II. 23
-Oliphant, Mrs., II. 424
-Olivers, Thomas, II. 290
-Orrery, Earl of, III. 8
-Otway, Thomas, II. 241, 248
-Ouseley, Sir William, III. 78
-Overbury, Sir Thomas, I. see footnote 192, 246
-Owen, John, II. 58
-
-Paganism of poetry and painting in
-Italy in the sixteenth century, I. 181
-Paley, William, II. 300
-Palgrave, Sir Francis, I. see footnote 13, see footnote 344
-Parnell, Dr. Thomas, III. 4
-Pascal, III. 300, 400; III. 25, 306
-Pastoral poetry, I. 204
-Peele, George, I. 280
-Penn, William, II. 288; III. 299
-Pepys, Samuel, II. 142, 143, 146
-Percy, Thomas, III. 73
-Petrarch, I. 126, 185, 163
-Philips, Ambrose, III. 4
-Philosophy and history, III. 308 seq.
-Philosophy and poetry, connection of,
-I. 157
-Picts, I. 38
-Pickering, Dr. Gilbert, II. 223
-Piers Plowman's Crede, I. 122
-Piers Ploughman, Vision of, I. 120
-185
-Pitt, William, first Earl of Chatham, II.
-276, 310 seq.; III. 275
-Pitt, William (second son of the preceding),
-II. 311, 217 seq.; III. 65
-Pleiad, the, I. 18
-Pluche, Abbé, II. 342
-Poe, Edgar Allan, II. 405
-Pope, Alexander, II. 252, 328, 332, 381;
-III. 5-28, 112, 117, 28O
-Prayer-book, English, II. 23-27
-Preaching at the Reformation period,
-II. 27
-Presbyterians and Independents in the
-sixteenth century, II. 49 seq., 90
-Price, Dr. Richard, II. 304, 321; III. 271
-Priestly, Dr., III. 66
-Prior, Matthew, III. 4, 28
-Proclus, I. see footnote 5, see footnote 244
-Prynne, William, II. 57
-Pulci, an Italian painter, I. 182
-Pultock, Robert, II. 438
-Purchas, Samuel, I. 246
-Puritans, the, II. 45 seq., 132 seq.
-Puttenham, George, I. 185, see footnote 294, 246
-Pym, John, III. 276
-
-Quarles, Francis, I. 240, see footnote 371
-
-Rabelais, I. 149, 222, see footnote 360, 265, 366; II. 144, 388,
-438
-Racine, I. 371; II. 224, 284; III. 218, 306
-Raleigh, Sir Walter, I. 214, 246, 273; II, 34
-Rapin, II. 224
-Ray, John, II. 303
-Reformation in England made way for
-by the Saxon character and the situation
-of the Norman Church, I. 122,
-165; II. 7 seq.
-Reid, Thomas, II. 304, 320, 440
-Renaissance, the English; manners of
-the time, I. 169; the theatre its
-original product, 264
-Renan, Ernest, I. see footnote 3, see footnote 194
-Restoration, period of the, in England,
-II. 131 seq., 209
-Revolution, period of the, in England,
-II. 273 seq.
-Reynolds, Sir Joshua, II. 220, 320, 444
-Richard Cœur de Lion, I. 101
-Richardson, Samuel, II. 135, 303, 412-424,
-444; III. 8, 35
-Ridley, Nicholas, II. 30
-Ritson, Joseph, I. see footnote 157, see footnote 159, see footnote 162,
-see footnote 164
-Robert of Brunne, I. 93
-Robert of Gloucester, I. 93
-Robertson, Dr. William, II. 440; III. 3,
-38, 352
-Robespierre, II. 284
-Robin Hood ballads, I. 109, 178, 185
-Rochester, Earl of (John Wilmot), II.
-143 seq., 184, 337; III. 28, 140
-Rogers, John, martyrdom of, II. 31
-Rogers, Samuel, III. 112
-Roland, Song of, I. 77, 81
-Rollo, a Norse leader, I. 74
-Ronsard, Peter de, I. 18
-Roscellinus, I. 160
-Roscommon, Earl of, II. 184
-Roses, wars of the, I. 114, 124, 169, 287
-Rotheland, Hugh de, I. 90
-Rousseau, Jean-Baptiste, III. 22
-Rousseau, Jean Jacques, II. 447; III. 16, 34
-Royer-Collard, Pierre-Paul, III. 392
-Rubens, I. 151, 177, 178, 232, 366; III. 27
-Rückert, III. 74
-Russel, Lord William, II. 141
-
-Sacheverell, Dr., II. 273, 306
-Sacy, Lemaistre de, II. 22
-Sadeler, I. 196
-Sainte-Beuve, I. 6
-St. John. See Bolingbroke, Lord
-Saint-Simon, I. 3; III. 217
-St. Theresa, I. 161
-Saintré, Jehan de, I. 102
-Sand, George. See Dudevant, Madame
-Savage, Richard, III. 18
-Sawtré, William, I. 124
-Saxons, the, I. 31; characteristics of
-the race, 71; contrast with the Normans,
-74, 75; their endurance, 103;
-their invasion of England, III. 151, 152
-Scaliger, III. 345
-Schelling, I. 22
-Schiller, III. 48, 74, 87
-Scotland in the seventeenth century, II.
-134
-Scott, Sir Walter, I. 4; II. 222, 361 seq.,
-440; III. 74, 105, 107, 260; his novels and
-poems, 78-85
-Scotus, Duns, I. 159
-Scudéry, Mademoiselle de, I. 195
-Sedley, Sir Charles, I. 240; II. 179
-Selden, John, I. 246
-Seres, William, II. 47
-Settle, Elkanah, II. 225, 240
-Sévigné, Madame de, III. 15, 306
-Shadwell, Thomas, II. 157, 240, 261
-Shaftesbury, Anthony Cooper, third
-Earl of, II. 304
-Shakespeare, William, I. see footnote 169, see footnote 274, 186, see
-footnote 301, see footnote 308, 206, see footnote 331, 245
-280; II. 230, 238 seq.; III. 155; general
-idea of, I. 350; his life and character,
-354; his style, 366, and manners,
-372; his dramatis personæ,
-377; his men of wit, 382, and
-women, 386; his villains, 391, 392;
-the principal characters in his plays,
-393; fancy, imagination--ideas of
-existence--love; harmony between the
-artist and his work, 407
-Shelley, Percy Bysshe, III. 74, 95-100, 130
-Shenstone, William, III. 37
-Sheridan, Richard Brinsley, II. 212 seq.,
-311, 440
-Sherlock, Bishop, II. 292, 301, 412
-Shirley, James, I. 280; II. 153
-Sidney, Algernon, I. 245; II. 71, 141
-Sidney, Sir Phillip, I. 186, 194, 245,
-266; II. 39; III. 155
-Skelton, John, I. 165
-Smart, Christopher, III. 37
-Smith, Adam, II. 304, 320
-Smith, Sidney, II. 282; III. 100
-Smollett, Tobias, II. 308, 433-437, 440
-Society in Great Britain in the present
-day, III. 169 seq.; in England and in
-France, 430 seq.
-South, Dr. Robert, II. 292, 295
-Southern, Thomas, II. 241
-Southey, Robert, II. 438; III. 72, 76, 134,
-287
-Speed, John, I. 246
-Spelman, Sir Henry, I. 246
-Spencer, Herbert, III. 185
-Spencer, Edmund, I. 186, 207, 213,245;
-II. 71, 110; his life, character and
-poetry, I. 214; II. 236; III. 155, 424
-Stanley, Arthur Penrhyn, III. 100, 334
-Steele, Sir Richard, II. 311, 327; III. 259
-Stendhal, Count de, I. 25, see footnote 214, see footnote 471, see
-footnote 487
-Sterling, John, III. 309 seq.
-Sterne, Laurence, II. 437-440; III. 35
-Stewart, Dugald, II. 320, 440; III. 61
-Stillingfleet, Bishop, II. 292, 301
-Stowe, John, I. 246
-Strafford, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of,
-III. 276 seq.
-Strafford, William, I. 172
-Strype, John, I. 268
-Stubbes, John, I. see footnote 277, 179, see footnote 285
-Suckling, Sir John, I. 238, see footnote 371; II. 181
-Sue, Eugène, III. 220
-Surrey, Henry Howard, Earl of, I. 185;
-II. 16
-Swift, Jonathan, II. 135. 224, 303, 311, 327
-seq.; III. 259, 288; sketch of his life, II.
-360-368; his wit, 368-371; his pamphlets,
-371-379; his poetry, 380-389; his philosophy,
-etc., 389-401
-
-Taillefer, I. 79, 89
-Tasso, I. 222, see footnote 360, see footnote 366, see footnote 512
-Taylor, Jeremy, I. 246; II. 35, 38, 44
-Temple, Sir William, II. 173, 365, 389;
-III. 3, 272
-Teniers, David, III. 83
-Tennyson, Alfred, III. 100, 185, 410-438
-Thackeray, William M. III. 85, 100; his
-novels, 223-265
-Theatre, the, in the sixteenth century, I.
-264; after the Restoration, II. 153-155,
-188 seq., 226 seq.
-Thibaut of Champagne, I. 84
-Thierry, Augustin, I. 4, see footnote 20, see footnote 69, see footnote 99,
-see footnote 118, see footnote 119, see footnote 120, see footnote 157,
-see footnote 178; III. 305
-Thiers, Louis Adolphe, III. 282, 305
-Thomson, James, III. 32-35
-Thorpe, John, I. see footnote 46, see footnote 48, see footnote 50,
-see footnote 66, see footnote 72, see footnote 83, see footnote 87
-Tickell, Thomas, III. 4
-Tillotson, Archbishop, II. 292 seq.
-Tindal, Matthew, II. 303
-Titian, I. 236, see footnote 600, 366
-Tocqueville, Alexis de, I. see footnote 3
-Toland, John, II. 303
-Toleration Act, the, III. 298, 299, 300
-Tomkins, Thomas, II. 32
-Townley, James, II. 220
-Turner, Sharon, I. see footnote 9, see footnote 28, see footnote 32,
-see footnote 34, see footnote 35, see footnote 56, see footnote 65,
-see footnote 66, see footnote 67, see footnote 28, see footnote 79,
-see footnote 81, see footnote 95,54
-Tutchin, John, III. 18
-Tyndale, William, II. 19 seq., 28, 47
-
-Urfé, Honoré d', I. see footnote 311, 315
-Usher, James, I. 246
-
-Vanbrugh, Sir John, II. 187-209
-Vane, Sir Harry, II. 143
-Vega, Lope de, I. 161, 279; II. 155
-Village feasts of sixteenth century described,
-I. 178
-Villehardouin, a French chronicler, I.
-83, 102
-Vinci, Leonardo da, I. 16
-Voltaire, I. 16; II. 447; III. 22, 137, 346
-Vos, Martin de, I. 196
-
-Wace, Robert, I. 76, 78, see footnote 106, see footnote 108, 89, see
-footnote 130, see footnote 131
-Waller, Edmund, I. 240; II. 71, 153, 181-184;
-III. 3
-Walpole, Horace, III. 15
-Walpole, Sir Robert, II. 274, 280
-Walton, Isaac, I. 246
-Warburton, Bishop, II. 303
-Warner, William, I. 212
-Warton, Thomas, I. see footnote 96, see footnote 122, see footnote 124,
-see footnote 126, see footnote 127, see footnote 135, see footnote 137,
-see footnote 145, see footnote 146, see footnote 147, see footnote 252,
-see footnote 259, see footnote 287; III. 73
-Watt, James, II. 320
-Watteau, Anthony, III. 14
-Watts, Isaac, III. 37
-Webster, John, I. 291, 297; II. 248
-Wesley, John, II. 280-291
-Wetherell, Elizabeth, III. 179
-Wharton, Lord, III. 26
-Whitfield, George, II. 289-230
-Wiclif, John, I. 123, 286; II. 15
-Wilkes, John, II. 310
-William III, II. 173
-Wither, George, II. 35
-William of Malmesbury, I. 75
-William the Conqueror, I. 78
-Windham, William, II. 311
-Witenagemote, the, I. 46
-Wollastom William Hyde, III. 271
-Wolsey, Cardinal, I. 165; II. 16
-Wordsworth, William, III. 73, 88-95
-Wortley, Lady Mary. See Montagu
-Wyatt, Sir Thomas, I. 185, 180, 187
-Wycherley, William, I. 18; II. 157-167,
-178, 187, 188, 202, 250, 337
-
-Yonge, Charlotte Mary, III. 179
-Young, Arthur, II. 320
-Young, Edward, III. 37
-
-
-
-
-
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