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LIBRARY VERITAS
SCIENTIA
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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
E-PLURIBUS UNUM
TUEBOR
SI-QUAERIS PENINSULAM AMOENAM
CIRCUMSPICE
!
:
CLEMENT MAROT
AND OTHER STUDIES
39965-
BY HENRY MORLEY
PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.
IN TWO VOLUMES-VOL. II.
LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1871.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STREET,
AND CHARING CROSS.
7
recat. 010-9-28 furg
CONTENTS OF VOL. II.
CHAPTER X.
PAGE
IN EXILE AT FERRARA
1
CHAPTER XI.
EXILE AT VENICE HOME AGAIN
CHAPTER XII.
LAST EXILE AND LAST HOME
OTHER STUDIES.
ANDREAS VESALIUS..
:
:
20
39
CONRAD GESNER
CYRANO DE BERGERAC
COLLEGE WORK
ENGLISH FOR ENGLISHWOMEN
GABRIEL HARVEY
•
:
:
:
:
INFLUENCE OF THE CELT ON ENGLISH LITERATURE
AN OLD STUDENT OF ENGLISH
:
65
97
:
132
175
214
:
229
248
285
THE OPENING OF CEDMON'S PARAPHRASE (Translated into
modern English)
297
INDEX
307
CLEMENT MAROT.
CHAPTER X.
IN EXILE AT FERRARA.
CLEMENT MAROT was about forty years old when,
stripped of his means of life and condemned to the
stake, he took refuge with the surviving daughter of
his father's patroness, the good Queen Anne of Brit-
tany. At Duchess Renée's court, and nearest to her in
confidence, was her instructress and friend, Madame de
Soubise, the same friend of the Marots who had first
procured for Jean his place at court. She it was who
now commended Clement to Anne's daughter. Renée
knew him well by repute. When, as a girl, her mind
throve under the friendly influence of Marguerite of
Alençon, she had known the poet Marot as an honoured
servant of that household, and she knew that he was a
boy about her mother's court when she was herself
a child there. But she had not known him personally.¹
1 " Tu sçais mon nom, sans sçavoir ma personne,
Et que judis fut serviteur mon père
Dè ta mère Anne, en son règne prospére.
VOL. II.
Epitre de C. M. à Madame la Duchesse de Ferrare.”
B
2
CLEMENT MAROT.
Other men of mark sought refuge at the little court of
Ferrara, for a time even Calvin; but few could have
been more welcome to Renée than Clement Marot, who
had now won the first name among the living poets of
her country.
Anxiety and sickness had set their mark upon his
face, but the good heart, still young, uttered its music
gracefully as ever. Marot was a short man, rather
squarely built. His curling black hair, not worn long,
was already very grey, and his beard, not worn short,
was a couple of years later quite grey. Lines of care
and sickness were set in his high, broad forehead. His
moustache flowed into his whiskers and beard, his com-
plexion was dark, his nose short and broad, his whole
expression grave and kindly. Socrates might have had
some such face in middle life. The black eyes that
sparkle at a jest, the prompt smile, the swift mobility of
feature, must have been part of the charm in the man
himself; but in the woodcut effigies we see a face
cheerfully but intensely thoughtful.
From his exile in Ferrara Clement Marot addressed
a letter in verse to King Francis.' The king, he said,
might think that his absence confessed guilt. Not so;
but he knew how many corrupt judges in Paris saved
the guilty, and dealt cruelly with the innocent. He
was content, therefore, not to fall into their hands.
True, all were not unjust, but too many were; and
many of them had been made enemies by his writing
L'Enfer, and because he had read it before his Majesty.
S
ur l'exil de Marot, au Roy, du temps de son exil à Ferrare."
LETTER TO FRANCIS.
3
In many ways they had made known their grudge.
One day they even came to him when he was ill and
took him prisoner, arresting one under arrest already
and in danger of death. They would have taken him
from his bed to prison if the king, unsolicited, had not
then interfered on his behalf, for which goodness Marot
gives lasting thanks.
"The unjust magistrates do not wish me," he says,
"more ill than the Sorbonne, ignorant enemy of the
noble trilingual college [Royal College of France]
which you have established. It is forbidden to quote
Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, because they are the speech
of heretics. Truly is it said, only the ignorant hate
knowledge. And in their hearts it will be found, O.
king! that they complain also of you who give light by
your care for arts and letters.
They and their court have threatened to my face,
And in my absence, danger and disgrace;
Their mildest threat, to give me my release
By execution. O that God might please,
For blessing of a land made desolate,
That on my blood their longing they might sate,
And the abuses wherein they are hemmed,
Clearly by all be witnessed and condemned.
O, four times, five times, happy were to me
Death, though it came with sharpest cruelty,
Could it come to me as the death that saves
A living million from being slaves."
"It is evident, then, that they have an old tooth
watering for me, and, as they could not convict me of
any crime, knew how to give you a bad impression of
your servant, so that afterwards they might fulfil their
B 2
CLEMENT MAROT.
4
malice at their ease.
And to this end they have not
been ashamed to send you many a tale and false rumour
against me, of which they are the first inventors. I
say No to them :
"Luther did not come down from heaven for me;
Luther was not nailed to the cross to be
My Saviour, for my sins to suffer shame,
And I was not baptized in Luther's name.
The Name I was baptized in sounds so sweet,
That at the sound of it, what we entreat
The Eternal Father gives. This is alone
The Name in and by which, under God's throne,
The wicked world is saved. So great its worth,
That it bows every knee, of things on earth,
In heaven, or hell. The Name by which the hand
Of God has saved me from the wolfish band.
O Lord, my God, this faith in me forgive,
That for thy glory thou hast let me live.
(The twisted serpents and the shapes nen scorn,
Surely are also for thy glory born.)
Then, since it hath not pleased thee to allow
That my vile flesh pass into ashes now,
Make me to seek, while yet I write for men,
Thine honour in the service of my pen.
And if predestined this my body be,
One day in flames to die by Thy decree,
Not for a foolish cause be this, O Lord
My God, but for Thyself and for Thy Word.
And may the torture, Father, I entreat,
Not wring my soul with anguish so complete,
That from its memory the pain should thrust
Thee in whom only lieth all its trust;
So that I may, when the long rest draws nigh,
Call upon Thee with the last breath I sigh.”
"What do I say? Where am I? Noble king,
pardon me, for my mind was wandering. To come
back, then, to what I talked about. Rhadamanthus
LETTER TO FRANCIS.
5
LO
and his men, while I was at Blois, seized in Paris, with
violent hands, all my great treasures, the hoards of my
avarice, that is to say, my papers, my books, and my
labours. O sacrilegious judge! who privileged you to
carry seizure and massacre into the chamber of the
sacred Muses? It is very true that they found there
forbidden books; but that is not an offence in a poet,
who should be allowed a loose rein and have nothing
hidden from him, whether it be magic, necromantic, or
cabalistical. There is no doctrine, oral or written,
which can be wrong for a true poet to have in his head
that he may do his duty as a writer:
"Often it profits us to know what's ill;
Use of it we can turn from if we will.
But if I read all books, where's the offence?
The Giver of all good has given sense
To choose what differs not from Holy Writ,
And has the grace and peace of God in it.
And that which differs, when it has been tried
By the right touchstone, can be thrown aside.
For Scripture is the test whereby we find
The finest gold; and if we have a mind
To make the worth of any gold appear,
That stone will prove it when we place it near.
"The judge," Marot continues, "showed his feeling
against me when, among the first, he attacked me who
was absent; when vile and scandalous things were done
to procure my grief and hurt and death. Knowing this, I
trusted so much in your goodness, that I left Blois, sire,
to present myself to you. But some one came, and said
to me, 'If you go, friend, you are not wise; for you
might have a severe greeting from your master.' Then,
6
CLEMENT MAROT.
like the boat that to avoid a rock steers suddenly into
the open sea, I fled the court, fearing to meet the
danger of severity where I have before found only
kindness and protection. For I knew that the averted
eye of a prince is the most terrible thing upon earth.
"Then I went, avoiding this peril, not to a foreign
land or prince, but to serve in my turn my second
master and his spouse, your sister, to whom I was
happily given by your hand sixteen years ago.
"Then soon afterwards, royal crowned chief, knowing
that several, whose lives have been better than mine,
were burnt so cruelly that great part of the nation
marvelled, I abandoned, guilty of no crime, ungrateful
France-ungrateful, most ungrateful to her poet; and
in leaving her my heart was not much wounded with
sorrow. You speak not true, Marot," he then adds
suddenly; “you felt great sorrow when you thought
upon your little children!
"And so," he goes on, "at last I passed the great
cold mountains and entered the Lombard plains. Then
in Italy I turned my steps whither God guided, to the
dwelling of a princess generous with your pure blood,
your fair sister and cousin-german, daughter of the king,
so much feared and renowned, whom the chronicles call
Father of the People. Having come into her duchy of
Ferrara, she has graciously received and entertained
me, because my writing pleases her and also because I
have been of your household. Therefore, O sire! since
I am with her, you may conclude with a free heart that
your servant cannot be justly reproached with having
LETTER TO FRANCIS.
7
abandoned you. If I lose your service, it is my mis-
fortune, not my fault."
The generous tone of this letter needs no comment.
There is not a trace of shrinking from the poet's sense
of right. He speaks his inmost heart when he says
that he seeks to be saved only by the name of Christ,
and even follows Luther's own teaching when he says
that he is not Lutheran but Christian; that the Bible
is his only rule of right. How little he flinches from
his principle is evident from his reference to the cruel
executions at which Francis had assisted on the 21st of
January-executions of men to whose pure lives, which
he calls better than his own, Marot gives fearless praise
in the face of the king who burnt them.
To the same time belongs another poem of Marot's,
called the Complaint of a Christian Shepherd Boy,'
which is a rustic eclogue, through which the poet, as a
shepherd boy, breathes out his thoughts to God under
the name of Pan, the god of shepherds. Pan takes the
same place in the allegory of several parts of Spenser's
Shepheard's Calender, and some lines of invocation in this
piece of Marot's seem to be paraphrased by Spenser in
his December eclogue. But these stanzas of Spenser
beginning:
“O sovereign Pan! thou God of Shepherds all,
Which of our tender lambkins takest keep;
And when our flocks into mischance mought fall,
Dost save from mischief the unwary sheep-"
¹ La Complainte d'un Pastoreau Chrestien. Faite en forme
d'Eglogue Rustique, dressant sa plainte à Dieu, sous la personne de
Pan, Dieu des Bergiers.
со
CLEMENT MAROT.
are, in fact, Spenser's version of the opening of another
of Marot's Sad Shepherd Eclogues, which belongs to the
same period, and has an introductory invocation very
similar to that of the Complaint of a Christian Shepherd
Boy. Spenser's whole December Eclogue is, we shall
find, only a paraphrase from another poem by Clement
Marot, which has some family likeness to that now to
be described.
Marot sings that he heard lately a sad and lonely
shepherd boy complaining in the woods. Then, drawing
near to where he lay upon the flowers, he heard his
lament, addressing Pan, who is in all places known
as the great god of the shepherds. And he said:
"O mighty Pan! whom every shepherd holds for
his great god, who only preservest everywhere our
cots and our enclosures, and keepest our sheep when
they are in their folds from perishing, thou whose eye
looketh down upon all parts of earth, turn thy regard a
little to this part, and towards thy humble shepherd
boy show favour and the brightness of thy countenance.
For I am so sad, O Pan!
"I am so sad that I am spiritless, if the benign grace
of thy clemency be not vouchsafed me soon. Alas!
O Pan, I must lament, in fields and woods lament, to
see how shepherds from all parts are driven and
scattered by false pastors; they fly pain brought near
to them, are pilgrims to far lands, where the re-
membrance of their little homes deprives them of all
joy but in thy name, the only name of thee their
comforter.
COMPLAINT OF A SHEPHERD BOY.
9
"But, though it is a blessing and delight to rest the
whole desire on thee alone, yet is it, Pan, grievous that
shepherd boys fly thus into strange lands, and leave
their cots, where in sweet songs they used to praise
thy name, thine excellence, as they best could, and
now they wander idly mourning through the plains.
"One sighs for the fat oxen left behind and for the
well-fed sheep upon his fields; another mourns his
cottage; half their grief should make men pity them.
And I, O Pan! I know not whether grief for my hard
lot or hope is saddest. Pleasure is a pain as keen as
thought of ill; and should be so, when by this cruel
storm I see the labour from thy vineyard lost; and
that not our whole grief, for, what is worse, it has
destroyed the seed.
-
"How long, O sublime Pan! permittest thou the
sordid race, these evil and forsworn false shepherds, to
rule flocks within thy fields? How long, O Pan, great
and all-merciful! permittest thou this people to oppress
us, and drive out them who seek thy praise and glory!
"I have seen the time, O Pan, when I was used to
walk the woods and praise thy mighty name. I have
seen the time when joyously my muse attuned the soft
pipes to thy law and love. But now I am filled with
numberless regrets; my crook is left, my reeds are
laid aside :
"But the worst pain that my grief dwells upon,
Is sharpness of regret for Marion-
She is, O Pan, thy humble shepherdess—
And for the shepherd-babe in her caress.
10
CLEMENT MAROT.
O, Pan, great God, it fills my heart to think
How, when we two would sit to meat and drink,
Or when the night her mantle overhead
Across the fair light-giving Phœbus spread,
I taught her and her household gathered near,
Saying to them, “O my companions dear,
Let us praise Pan who reigns by power divine,
Through all the fields within the world's confine ;
From whom, by his high grace alone we hold,
The blessing that sheep thrive within our fold;
Who watches to defend us from each snare,
That in our cots we may live free from care.
""
Then, too, with Marion, I'd wish; and say,
Might it please Pan, this six-months'-boy, some day-
This shepherd-babe that feeds upon your breast--
Should live to sound his flute among the best.
Ah, to work with him I'd have such good will,
That he should tune his reeds with proper skill,
Or play his hautboy, or what else he can,
In canticles of praise to the great Pan.
And that, O Pan, was all my heart's desire
When home and leisure taught me to aspire,
And that the frolic which amused me best
In those days when with her I was at rest
Within the walls lent me, O Pan, by thee,
Winter and summer-time our home to be.
But steady now no more does Fortune keep,
For now I have left Marion to weep
Within her home, where the poor shepherd lass
In weary plaint, I know, her days must pass,
Straying among the fields, of ease bereft ;
Cattle, and sheep, and the small lambs I've left,
And besides that there wander idle now
Twelve oxen wherewith I was used to plough."
1
1 Work done in accordance with the teaching of the Apostles.
To represent the Evangelists as four oxen at the plough was a
familiar mediæval allegory.
COMPLAINT OF A SHEPHERD BOY.
11
"But of these griefs," Marot proceeds, "thy shep-
herd boy knows none more cruel than the piteous
massacre made by false pastors in thy holy fane; to
see the inhuman deeds daily done there without regard
to thee, O Pan! who still beholdest all men, and art
looking down always from thy high dwelling-place.
"Alas! how often have my own two eyes seen the
seditious doings of these pastors! Alas! how often,
under saintly cloak, have they hurt wrongfully the
tender lambs! O, and how often from my little home
have I seen their accursed cruelty; how often, by ways
feigning to be just, have seen the pillage of the flock
whereof, O Pan, they profess care that renders them more
able to deceive: foxes, disguised, who eat the tenderest
among the sheep; wolves, who turn flocks out of the
safer way into the desert; thieves, who enter in but by
the window and work damnably by wicked practices upon
the flocks. A whole day were too little to recount but
a small part of what these eyes have seen. But, O
true Pan, my only lord and god! my soul compels my
voice to utterance. Have not I seen these pastors'
perverse ways and diverse trafficking? Have not I seen
their malign look and damnable intrigue? Have not
I seen, at rest in the green shade, how perilous their
babblings that betray, great grief to me, the flocks in
open day? More often than I wished, too, have I seen
how thy pure temple has been made unclean.
"Then to myself I whispered, My great god Pan
sees this all, beholding from on high what is done in
his temple by these men; some time he will remember
12
CLEMENT MAROT.
their misdeeds and put out his strong arm. But still I
grieve, seeing—and thou, sure witness, seest all-the
flocks no better cared for, daily worse, and thee con-
spired against.
"For wholesome food they give a windy pasture to
the flocks, and straw for grain, so that the healthy
sheep, born to be fat and cheerful, pine away. Alas!
what shepherd could contain himself, seeing such ills?
Faithless he, sure, would be if he made no complaint.
Pastors I see in deepest grief. Their hearts melt into
sighs. I hear the bitter plaint of my companions; see
the shepherd boys chased from their cots and folds.
And is it not, O Pan, fierce fury that forbids our songs
of thee and of thy holy name to rise from all our fields
and celebrate thy praise, thy praise forbidden in the
fields or fanes? Alas! these pastors by their laws
have made a silence among those who honour thee.
Sudden destruction, death, these pastors bring on him
who speaks of thee.
"For this cause I hang up my useless reeds, the
reeds that once on the least hint were tuned to lively
song, poured out with such good heart that at its music
all our villagers danced with more glee, more lightly,
faster, too, than when the hare leaps from its form for
play among the heather. They were prompt, O Pan,
with a good heart and will to worship thee, and join
with me to bless thy holy name. But now our hearts
and pipes, our flageolets and spinets, are all mute; no
shepherd dares to tune upon his harp a song in praise
of thee.
COMPLAINT OF A SHEPHERD BOY.
13
"O mighty Pan, from thy high place look down upon
our grief. Make haste to succour thy poor straying
flock that cries to thee for help incessantly! If by thy
singular grace thou listenest to this my humblest
orison and prayer, never, O Pan, will I forget thy love
and mercy to us, but will publish it to my companions
in all places. Then pastors of every nation, in glad
throng, will bless the happy tidings of their peace.
The shepherdesses, lightly tripping in, will carol praise
to thee; great oxen low, sheep bleat content and plea-
sure, birds of heaven, bright with all plumage, warble
thy sweet praise.
"And I, who pray for this, will not be last to praise
thee, but will take my reeds again, wherein is such
delight for me that loss of melody they make is loss
of all the good in life. And is it not right that it
be so, since all its harmony is but of thee. My flute
now hanging from an oak will then be taken down,
and, fingering the stops, I shall pour out a loud note
through the woods, at sound whereof the naiads and the
nymphs will leave their haunts, and shepherds gather
round to hear and share the fulness of my joy. Then
will, O Pan, the meanest of its notes rise to thank-
offering that praises thee, and my full heart sing praises
in thy fane.
"Up now my soul, 'tis time to cease from grief!
Tongue end thy sorrowing, for I must seek my rest
yonder by that high rock. Besides, I feel the night
1
1 "That spiritual Rock that followed them; and that Rock was
Christ.” (1 Cor. x. 4.)
14
CLEMENT MAROT.
fast drawing on. In meadows near, I see the shepherds
gathering their flocks, and through the fields there's
not a shepherd left but looks for shelter till the night
is past. And by the trembling of this oak I know that
Pan, my god, has pity upon me; firm joy therefore has
passed into my heart, because I know that he has
listened to my prayer.
""
Surely there is true pathos in the poet's simple
recollection of his home, the household that was drawn
about him once in prayer: of Marion with her infant at
the breast, the father's dreaming of the future for his
child, and his high hope shared with the mother that
whatever its course, through whatever instrument its
music was to flow, it was a life to bless by teaching
it to worship God.
Clement Marot was received with honour by the
Duchess Renée. Le Laboureur says that he was wel-
comed by her as another Ovid. He paid for his enter-
tainment by use of his art, and at this time set a
fashion among French poets for writing Blasons and
Contreblasons, pieces accumulating praise or dispraise.
Great admiration for his blason sur le beau Tetin led
others to write blasons on the hair, the eyes, the eye-
brows, ear, neck, forehead, nose, and so forth; and hist
Coq à l'Ane letters, of which the second was written at
Ferrara, set many pens at work to raise laughter by
gay rambling lines of satire. But nobody else con-
trived to put like depth of earnestness into the form of
idle jest, to say so much with the air of comical dis-
jointed chatter.
DEATH OF POPE CLEMENT.
15
The second Coq à l'Ane contains an allusion to the
capture of Tunis by Charles V. in the middle of the
year 1535, but a reference to the protection he receives
at Renée's court shows that he was at Ferrara still.
It was written, therefore, in the latter part of the year.
Its satire chiefly falls on the Sorbonne, the prominent
thought being the persecution of the reformers, but
there is a passing reference to the king's appetite for
war, and lust of conquest:
"What is gossip's last new strain?
When will the king give us war again?
O the pretty bit of land!
I must have it in my hand.
Nevertheless, it is understood,
A gipsy woman wears a hood."
Ten thousand slaves set free by the capture of Tunis,
clothed and returned to their several countries, spread
the fame of Charles V. through Europe at a time when
Francis had again plunged into war with him for con-
quest of land in Italy. After all his plotting to secure
aid of the pope, a greater King than himself baulked
his diplomacy. Death claimed Pope Clement VII.
As far, therefore, as Rome was concerned, Francis had
tied his second son to the pope's niece for nothing.
Alexander Farnese succeeded to the Papacy as Paul III.
in October, 1534. Again, the triumph of the Sorbonne
in Paris, and the cruelties of persecution, alienated
from King Francis the Protestant princes of Germany.
How could he now play them against Charles, who had
conceded at Ratisbon a toleration not to be secured
in France? Again, the King of England had thrown off
•
16
CLEMENT MAROT.
the pope, and cared no more to meddle with Italian
politics. Nevertheless, Francis sent his force against
Milan, and seized on the way the Duchy of Savoy, on
plea of claims made in the name of his mother, Louise
of Savoy, and upon other pleas. Charles found, when
he came back from Tunis, his brother-in-law of Savoy
asking for help to regain his duchy. It was a help he
was not then able to give. But King Death intervened
then with another stroke of his diplomacy, and on the
24th of October he summoned away Francis Sforza,
Duke of Milan, the man against whom King Francis
had said he made war. Sforza was gone. He left no
child, and Charles V. took possession of the vacant fief
of Milan. Francis put in his claim, with which the
emperor then dallied to gain time; and Marot's second
Coq à l'Ane letter was written after the death of Sforza,
during the first month of this dalliance.
66
Full outbreak of war was deferred until the summer
of the next year, 1536. In April, 1536, Charles
vehemently denounced at Rome, before the pope, and
the French and other ambassadors, the perfidies of his
rival, and his incessant stir of strife. "Let us," he said,
spare the blood of our subjects, strip to our shirts, and
fight together on some island, bridge, or galley, with
Burgundy and Milan for the stakes; and then let us
join forces against Turk and heretic. If he will fight
he shall fight, and that to the uttermost. He shall
fight till one of us is brought to the condition of the
poorest gentleman in his dominions." In May, Charles
at the head of his own force marched to the attack,
DUCHESS RENÉE.
17
leading ten thousand horse and forty thousand foot.
He entered Piedmont, while his sister and his brother
were supplied with money for simultaneous attacks
on Picardy and on Champagne. To some it seemed
that the last days of France were come.
Hercules of Este, Duke of Ferrara, was sorely troubled
by the state of politics, while Renée his wife was
gathering French scholars and reformers at her court,
and helping all poor French who came to her. There
is tradition that in one year she relieved ten thousand,
and when reasoned with on the expense said, "What
would you have? They are my countrymen. Were it
not for the stupid Salic law they would be also my
subjects." She was good, generous, earnest, but ob-
strusively French, at a time when French alliances.
were dangerous for an Italian prince, and when vials
of wrath were being filled to pour out over France and
her unquiet king. The Duke of Ferrara sought his
safety in alliance with the Pope and favour of the
Emperor, who looked at him but coldly. There was
an unsettled question, too, of homage for the Duchy.
The duke's gorge was rising against his wife, against
all Frenchmen and Frenchwomen, and especially
against French protestants. The days were near when
Clement Marot and his fellow exiles would no longer
find a quiet place of refuge at Ferrara.
Among Marot's epigrams and letters of compliment,
is one to the Duke of Ferrara, several are to the
duchess, to Madame de Soubise and to her daughter,
Anne, married to Antoine sire de Pons, who was then
VOL. II.
C
18
CLEMENT MAROT.
acting at the duke's court as first gentleman of the
chamber. But the storm without soon rolled into his
haven. Rabelais writing in 1536, from Rome to the
Bishop of Maillezais, reported in one of his letters,
"My Lord Bishop of Limoges, who was the king's
ambassador at Ferrara, seeing the duke, without ac-
quainting him with his design, was gone to the emperor,
is returned to France. It is feared that Renée will
receive no little displeasure by it; the duke having
removed Madame de Soubise her governess, and ordered
her to be served by Italians, which does not look
well."
To Renée this was the beginning of more serious
troubles. When the duke drove away from her these
cherished companions, no doubt he resented, as both
French and protestant, the influence of Madame de
Soubise on Renée's mind. Marot paid homage to her
at her parting. His friendship, he said, followed her
not only because long since she was the first cause of
the kind reception which his father had, when he first
came to the court of Louis XII., to whose wife Anne
she was the friend best beloved; nor only because
here at Ferrara she had obtained a like reception for
his son; so that her kindness seems to be inclined
towards the little family of the Marots; "but because,"
he said, "by instinct of nature you and yours love
literature, knowledge, virtues that look heavenward,
liberal arts, and all who exercise them. Adieu, then,
noble lady, friendly always to the Muses, by whom the
deserted Muses have so often been consoled. Adieu,
FAREWELL TO FERRARA.
19
the hand that once drew out of Flanders into France
the Belgian Jean le Maire, who had a soul like Homer's.
Snow and rain vex her not, fair winds play on her
path! She has sorrow enough in the parting from
her mistress. But since heaven wills that it be so,
may good come of it. For seven years here, and in
all for thirty years or more, most noble lady, you have
served mother and daughter. It is right that you
seek home and rest, serving God only for your future
years. Honour you take with you; honour follows
you, best guerdon of your labours; and we shall soon
know from your absence what your presence was
to us."
If Marot and his friends were not immediately
driven from Ferrara, the duke was against them, and
their presence could only increase the troubles of his
wife. At the time, therefore, when Charles V. began
to pour war into France, the exiled poet bade farewell
to Duchess Renée, and wandered away to find some
other place of painful rest.
C 2
20
CLEMENT MAROT.
CHAPTER XI.
EXILE AT VENICE-HOME AGAIN.
VENICE, in 1536, maintained, at much cost to herself,
an armed neutrality among the contests of the world.
King Francis offered for her alliance lands in Italy of
which he had not an acre to give, and talked to her
of the terrors of the great Turk, Solyman the Magni-
ficent, from whom Venice did not believe she had any-
thing to fear. The power of the Sultan Solyman, his
invasion of Hungary, and long war with the Austrians,
the recent defeat by Charles of the Turkish Pirate
Admiral Barbarossa at Tunis, suggested to the mind
of Francis that, as the enemy of Charles, he ought to
be the friend of Solyman. At a time, therefore, when
repression of the Turks, then at the height of their
power, masters of Egypt, Syria, and Palestine, Greece,
Albania, Servia, Bosnia, and Macedonia, recent con-
querors of a great part of Hungary and of the island
of Rhodes, was a part of the religious aspiration of all
Christendom, King Francis was about to scandalize his
neighbours by entering into friendly treaty with the
Turk. He was the first Christian sovereign who joined
hands with the unbeliever. But he had not stretched
his hand out to Marot.
ECLOGUE TO FRANCIS.
21
1
The poet at this time of his refuge among the neutral
citizens of Venice, if not somewhat later, wrote that little
pastoral upon the course of his own life which Spenser
has paraphrased in the December eclogue of his Shep-
heard's Calender. Spenser has varied Marot's motto at
the close by a Latin paraphrase of its meaning: Vivitur
ingenio, cætera mortis erunt.
"A shepherd boy named Robin lately went alone
among the beeches, shady trees, and there with bold
heart, being by himself, he made the woods and the calm
air resound as thus he sang: 'O sovereign god Pan
who never yet hast been slow to protect our folds and
flocks and those in charge of them, and liftest up all
gentle shepherd boys who have not meadows, cottages,
or herds, thee I beseech if ever in these low ways thou
deignest to hear little rustic songs, hearken awhile
from thy green cabinet the rural song of little Robinet.""
So Marot began. Thus begins Spenser:
"The gentle shepherd sat beside a spring
All in the shadow of a bushy brere,
That Colin hight, which well could pipe and sing
For he of Tityrus his songs did lere:
There as he sat in secret shade alone,
Thus, gan he make of love his piteous moan.
O sovereign Pan! thou God of shepherds all
Which of our tender lambkins takest keep,
And when our flocks into mischance mought fall
Dost save from mischief the unwary sheep,
Als of their masters hast no less regard
Then of the flocks which thou dost watch and ward;
¹ Eclogue au Roy, soubz les noms de Pan et Robin.
22
CLEMENT MAROT.
I thee beseech (so be thou deign to hear
Rude ditties tuned to shepherd's oaten reed
Or if I ever sonnet sang so clear
As it with pleasaunce mought thy fancy feed)
Hearken awhile, from thy green cabinet
The rural song of careful Colinet."
Marot continues:
“In the spring season of my idle youth I was like the
swallow who flies, now here, now there; that age led
me without fear or care whither the heart said I
should go. In the woods, without fear of the wolves,
I often went to gather the holly, to make birdlime, to
take singing birds all differing in song and plumage;
or I used to make traps to take them, and cages to put
them in; or swam across the deep rivers, or patched
the rags at my knee. Then I learnt to shoot straight
and far, for chase of wolves, and to knock nuts down.
O how many a time have I climbed the trees to take
from her nest the pie or the jay, or to throw down to
my companions, who spread their hats, the fruits already
ripe and fair to see.”
Spenser continues:
"Whilome in youth, when flowered my joyful spring,
Like swallow swift I wandered here and there;
For heat of heedless lust me so did sting
That I of doubled danger had no fear :
I went the wasteful woods and forests wide,
Withouten dread of wolves to bene espied.
I wont to range amid the mazy thicket
And gather nuts to make me Christmas game,
And joyed oft to chase the trembling pricket
Or hunt the heartless hare till she were tame.
What recked I of wintry ages waste?
Tho deemed I my spring would ever last.
MAROT AND SPENSER.
23
How often have I scaled the craggy oak
All to dislodge the raven of her nest?
How have I wearied with many a stroke
The stately walnut tree, the while the rest
Under the tree fell all for nuts at strife?
For ylike to me was liberty and life."
In this paraphrase, as in that of the eclogue on Louise
of Savoy, it will be observed that there is something
lost by erasure of the local colouring which by its truth
gives so great a charm to Marot's verse. In Marot's
lament for Louise, stern realities in the condition of
France, longing for peace in an afflicted nation, genuine
sympathy with mourners, blend with the fresh strain
of religion. These disappear, or become simply poetical
ornament, in Spenser's lament for Dido. So in this
eclogue one feels that Marot is painting with a vigorous
simplicity-and in verse hardly less musical than
Spenser's-from true recollections and a lively present
sense of his own life in the France of the sixteenth
century, and that the homely incidents which Spenser
passes over, as well as the wilder features that he tames,
as when Marot's wolf became Spenser's hare, show in
Marot the strength as well as grace of a true artist.
Marot goes on:-" Sometimes I went to the moun-
tains and sometimes to the depths of the valleys to find
the homes of the martens, the hedgehogs or white ermines,
or went step by step along the thickets searching for the
nests of the goldfinches, or of the yellowhammers, the
chaffinches, or linnets. Yet already I used to make
some notes of rustic song, and under the young elms
sounded the reeds when almost a child. I could not
で
​21
CLEMENT MAROT.
well say or think who taught me to begin so soon;
either a nature inclined to the Muses, or my fortune.
that so marked me for your service; if it was not one
of these I may be sure that it was both. Seeing which
the good Janot [Jean Marot], my father, would wager
with Jaquet his comrade two twin lambs against a
fat calf that some day, O sacred Pan, I should make
songs in thy praise, songs that is which would please
thee. And I remember how often on holidays when
we looked from afar on our feeding flocks it was his
custom to give me a lesson in the sweet sounding of
the flute, or the inditing of some rural song to be sung
in the manner of the shepherds. Of evenings, too,
when the scattered flocks were folded, the good old
man worked for me, and watched late with me by the
lamp, as shepherds by the fireside stoop over their
magpies or starlings. True it is that this gave trouble
to him, but it was so full of pleasure that in doing
it he was like the good shepherd who is watering
some young plant in his little garden, or bringing
to the teat the lamb that he loves best in all his
flock. And the great labour he took surely was
that, after his example, in a day to come, I might
sing thy praise, O Pan, who enlarged his bounds, pre-
served the verdure of his fields, and kept his flock from
frost."
This picture of Clement's early bent towards song,
and the tender reference to his father's careful train-
ing, is represented by the next stanza of Spenser's
eclogue :—
MAROT AND SPENSER.
25
"And for I was in thilk same looser years,
(Whether the Muse so wrought me from my birth
Or I too much believed my shepherd peers)
Somedele ybent to song and music's mirth
A good old shepherd, Wrenoch was his name,
Made me by art more cunning in the same."
There can be little doubt that Marot contrived this
poem with a double sense, like that which is frequent
in the Faerie Queene. Pan is as distinctly God in
Marot's eclogue, as the Fairy Queen is the Glory of
God in Spenser's allegory. But as Queen Elizabeth
might find herself, and was referred to purposely some-
times by double senses, in Gloriana, so in this poem
Marot meant that King Francis should be able to read
himself into Pan, the god of shepherds, patron of poets.
Francis had been the later source of Jean Marot's
income, Clement was trained to serve him, Francis
wrote verse himself, as the next passage indicates. But
Marot's put his soul also into the deeper sense of the
allegory. Also there was the word of God uttered in
music on the lips of the psalmist and the prophets.
And to that Marot was even planning to attune the
voices of his countrymen.
60 6
Recalling still the time when Jean Marot hung over
his son as guide and protector, Clement proceeds thus:
'Pan,' he would say, 'is the triumphant God over the
pastors. It is he, my child, who first pierced the reeds
and took counsel with himself to form them into flutes.
Even he also deigns to be careful in use of the art
which I will teach you. Learn it, then, that the hills
and woods, the rocks and pools, may learn from your
26
CLEMENT MAROT,
voice to sing after you the high name of this great God
who is so often in my mind: for it is he through whom
your field, your vine will yield abundance, and who
will make you to dwell pleasantly among the sacred
rills. There you will have on one side the great
enclosure of thick willows where the honey bees go to
suck flowers for their pasture, and will often lull you
to sleep by their soft humming, even then when you
shall feel your rustic flute weary with its much music.
Then soon afterwards, from the next thicket, the pie
will wake you with its chattering, the
awaken you to sing again your best.'
for my good, the good Janot spoke to
then I minded. For then I had no care within my
heart for cattle or for any pasturage.”
dove, too, will
Thus, careful
me, and little
For this record of fatherly religious counsel, Spenser
substitutes, in two stanzas, the advent of Love to the
young Shepherd. Marot continues:
When the Spring fails us, and the Summer comes,
then the herb grows in form and strength. So when I,
too, had passed out of my spring, and my days came to
their summer, the sense grew, but not the care. Then
I employed my mind, and body too, on things most
suited to that age, in building cotes of wood that could
be carried, in rolling them from place to place, in
strewing rushes on their floors; in trimming trellises,
bushes, and hedges; in the right interlacing of the
hurdles that were to close the sheep folds; or in weaving,
to make cheese, baskets of osier with rush fastenings of
which I used, for I loved her then, to make presents to
MAROT AND SPENSER.
27
Helen the blonde. I learnt the names of the four parts.
of the world. I learnt the names of the winds which
proceed from them, their qualities, and what weather
they bring; of which the birds, those wise diviners of
the fields, gave me instruction by their flight and song.
I learnt also, when I went to the pastures to avoid
dangerous herbage, and to know and cure many ailments
which sometimes hurt the creatures in our fields; but
above all things, by as much as I loved the white rose.
more than the hawthorn, I loved best to sound my
pipes and make them resound through all bucolic notes
and songs; songs of lament and melancholy songs. So
that one day the listening oreads, fauns, dryads, sylphs,
and satyrs, wept to hear, and the more sovereign gods
wept also, and the shepherdess Margot who is of worth
so great. No wonder that they wept, for I caused my
pipes to sing the death, alas, the death of Loisette,
who now takes delight in looking down from heaven
upon her flocks here below."
In Spenser this passage is paraphrased by the follow-
ing stanzas:
"Then as the spring gives place to elder time
And bringeth forth the fruit of summer's pride;
Also my age, now passed youthly prime
To things of riper season self applied,
And learned of lighter timber cotes to frame,
Such as might save my sheep and me from shame.
To make fine cages for the nightingale
And baskets of bulrushes was my wont:
Who to entrap the fish in winding sale
Was better seen, or hurtful beasts to hunt?
I learned also the signs of heaven to ken
How Phoebe fails, where Venus sits, and when.
28
CLEMENT MAROT.
And tried Time yet taught me greater things ;
The sudden rising of the raging seas,
The sooth of birds by beating of their wings,
The power of herbs, both which can hurt and ease,
And which be wont t'enrage the restless sheep,
And which be wont to work eternal sleep."
A stanza representing plaint of love is then substi-
tuted by Spenser for these next thoughts of Marot:
“Another time, for love of my beloved, I hung up
my pipes against all comers, and on that day it was
hard to know which of the two had won the prize,
Merlin or I, when with noble step Thony came into the
field to bring us to accord, and adorned two shepherd's
crooks of equal length with many violets, then gave
them to us for his pleasure, but I yielded the right of
ehoice to Merlin."
This is Marot's brotherly reference to Mellin de St.
Gelais, the poet of his own time who stood next himself in
reputation. The Thony who stepped nobly was another
poet of the day, distinct from Antoine Heroët. Scattered
about, Marot's writing is abundant evidence of his fine
sense of the brotherhood of letters. The sense of his
own genius only made him the more able to perceive
and prompt to recognize the genius of others. There
was room in his heart to
"Welcome all who lead or follow
To the oracle of Apollo."
Love of his work meant brotherhood with all his honest
fellow workers, and with all who, out of fellow feeling,
gave to work of his and theirs willing attention. Marot
proceeds:
ECLOGUE TO FRANCIS.
29
"And dost thou think, O kind God Pan, that the
practice and the daily pains I took to sound the flute,
were only that I might obtain the prize? No; but I
sought to learn so well that thou, who art the Prince of
Shepherds, shouldst take pleasure in the hearing of my
song, as in the hearing of the wave upon the shore, or
the fall of the water springs from the high rocks into
the valley. Truly this was the greatest care that I had
then, and I take to witness of it the golden Phœbus,
who looks down on me and sees me if this close wood
do not shut him out, and who has seen me cross many
a rock and many a flood that I might come nearer
to thee.
in
"Then did the gods of heaven and of earth make me
so happy; even the wood gods, that thou had'st pleasure
my little rustic notes, and did'st listen to my hymns
and canticles, permitting me to sing them in thy temple,
where still I contemplate the image of thy grandeur
which bears in one hand the rich and strong pastoral
crook of hard service-wood, and the other holds the pipe
of seven reeds, made according to the harmony of the
Heavens, wherein are the seven high and radiant gods,
and denoting the seven Liberal Arts which are inscribed
within thy holy head girt with its crown of pine.
"Thus and then in the summer of my days it pleased
me more in our rustic meetings to have done that, O
Pan, which was pleasing to thee, or which might in
some measure delight thine ear, than to have as many
sheep as Tityrus. And a hundred times more did it
please me to hear said, 'Pan looks with favour on the
30
CLEMENT MAROT.
!
shepherd Robin,' than to see three hundred cattle about
my home. For then I had no care within my heart
for cattle or for any pasturage.
"But now that I am in Autumn, I know not what
unaccustomed care surprises me, so that the strain of
song becomes in me, not weary or vain, but sad and
slow; and, in truth, often stretched on the grass, I hear
my pipes, hung on a tree in the fresh breeze, murmur
against me that I had made them idle. Then suddenly
desire awakes again, and wishing to do wrondrously in
song, finds fixed before its eyes this Care which makes
it sad, dismays it; for so swarthy pale is Care, so ugly,
that at sight of her the rustic Muse, even the bold
heroic Muse, is chilled. Both in a moment turn and
fly from her, like sheep before the wolf's gaunt
hideousness.
"I hear on the other side the harsh noise of the wood-
pecker, the kite whistle, and the bittern boom, see the
starling, the heron, and the swallow strangely wheel
about, warning me that cold has come of the sad Winter
that unclothes the earth. On the other side I hear the
north wind whistling winter, and my flocks, in dread of
it and worse, keep themselves crouching huddled in a
heap. To hear them bleat one would say that they
wished with me to call thee to their help, and that they
know that thou hast fed them from their birth.”
Spenser continues the adaptation of Marot's idea of
the change of seasons, and advent of winter to the love
plaint in his December eclogue. It will be enough to
quote two stanzas in illustration:
MAROT AND SPENSER.
31
"So now my year draws to his latter term,
My spring is spent, my summer burnt up quite,
My harvest hastes to stir up winter stern
And bids him claim with rigorous rage his right.
So now his storms with many a sturdy stour,
So now his blustering blast each coast does scour.
The careful cold hath nipt my rugged rind
And in my face deep furrows ald hath pight;
My head besprent with hoary frost I find,
And by mine eye the crow his claw doth wright,
Delight is laid abed; and pleasure past;
No sun now shines; clouds have all overcast."
Then follows Spenser's close. Thus ends Marot:
"I do not ask, O sovereign goodness, for two thousand
acres of pasture in Touraine, nor for a thousand oxen
wandering over the grass of the Auvergne hills. It is
enough for me if thou save my Flock from the wolves,
the bears, the lions, and the lynxes, and me from
frost, for coming winter has begun to snow upon my
head.
"Then Care will no more spoil my song but fly from
me more swiftly than she makes the Muses fly before
her, when she shall see that I have thy favour. Then
my pipe which hangs from the oak will quickly be
taken down by me, and I shall sing in safety, throughout
the winter, more loudly and clearly than ever I did in
summer time. Then in knowledge, music, and tone,
one of my verses shall be worth a song, a song worth a
rustic eclogue, and an eclogue a bucolic. What shall I
say more? Let come what may: rather shall the
Rhone run upwards, rather shall the great forest have
no branches in it, swans become black, crows white,
32
CLEMENT MAROT.
than I forget thee, O Pan great of renown, or cease to
give praise to thy high name. Up, my sheep, flock
small and lean, leap around me with glad heart, for
already Pan from his green mansion has done this good
to me, that he has heard my prayer." 1
While Clement Marot thus looked through the
earthly to the heavenly king, Francis and France were
also in sore trouble. Paul Jovius had been bidden to
take much paper to record the victories of Charles over
the French in France. The Marquis of Saluces, stupid
as that ancestor who tried Griselda's patience, held
Piedmont for Francis. He believed that the end of
France was come with this invasion, and revolted to the
66
¹ Edmund Kirke whose explanations of the Shepheard's Calender
fall very far short of a true insight into his friend's work, makes one
or two references to Marot. In his gloss on Spenser's name of Colin
Clout,—taken undoubtedly from Skelton,-E. K. writes, Colin
Cloute is a name not greatly used, and yet have I seen a poesie of
M. Skelton's under that title. But indeed the word of Colin
French, and used by the French poet Marot, if he be worthy of the
name of a poet, in a certain Eclogue." On the name of Roffy in the
ninth Eclogue E. K. says that it is "the name of a shepherd in
Marot his eclogue of Robin and the king," It is, as we have seen,
Marot's pastoral form of the name of his publisher Pierre Roffet.
Upon the 11th Eclogue, E. K. states in the argument that it is made
in imitation of "Marot his song, which he made upon the death of
Loyes the French Queen." But of the twelfth Eclogue he gives us
no hint that it also is made in imitation of one of "Marot his songs,"
being that one before mentioned of Robin and the King. Thomas
Warton was the first to point out the parellel, but he overstated it
in saying that Spenser's twelfth Eclogue was "literally translated "
from Marot's Pan and Robin. Less direct intimations of the
influence of Marot on young Spenser are to be found also in other
passages of Spenser's early verse.
LETTER TO THE DAUPHIN.
33
enemy. But Francis now profited by the counsel of
Montmorenci and the brothers Du Bellay.
Jean du Bellay, Bishop of Paris, who had been made
a Cardinal in 1535, was returned from Rome in 1536,
when the great invasion threatened France with her
last ruin. Francis made him his Lieutenant-General to
watch over Picardy and Champagne. As he understood
the art of war, Jean du Bellay undertook also the defence
of Paris, which he fortified with ramparts and boule-
vards. Francis meanwhile fortified his efficient servant
with gifts of benefices and the utmost favour. The
influence of this liberal bishop on the king would favour
the desire of Marot for restoration to his home, and for
the well-being of his little household, that "flock small
and lean.” With the influence of Jean du Bellay came
that of Marguerite, who, in the same year 1536, madė
her friend Gerard Roussel bishop of Oléron.¹ There was
good hope, therefore, for Marot, who, at this time, wrote
a letter in verse to the Dauphin, which that prince
received not many weeks before his death. "I never,'
said Marot," asked anything of you.
that is bold to ask? Exiled Marot.
write? Because, in truth, he dares not come and speak.
He dares not breathe the air of France; but he would
fly thither, if he had his wish. It is not much that I
1
""
Who is it now
And why does he
Jacques Le Fevre died in the following year, 1537, and be-
queathed to Roussel his library. Roussel lived till 1550. In that
year he preached at Mauléon against having too many festival days,
whereby he stirred such wrath in zealots of the other way of thinking
that they rushed on him and threw him from his pulpit, so that he
was half killed, and died afterwards of the hurt thus received.
VOL. II.
D
34
CLEMENT MAROT.
ask and hope from you: that you will speak for me to
your dear father, the king, that he may grant me a safe
conduct for half a year, or for six months if he don't like
half a year, not that I may visit my estates, but that I
may see my little Marotkins and arrange a matter that
weighs heavily upon me; also that I may say farewell
to my friends and old companions, for you know, and I
know still better, that the fury of pursuit gave me no
time to do this. Also that I may see again the Royal
Court, my schoolmistress. If I find there a thousand
caps off, a thousand Good days! coming from all sides,
so many God bless yous! so many to embrace me,—it
will be a pleasant language of some sort. And then,
Marot, is it good keeping to be exiled and banned from
France? Ah! no, monsieur. When I have taken my
greetings, Adieu, messieurs! Adieu, my darling! And
that done, the comrade will be gone, his term is up.
But if the king would take me back, as of old, I do not
say I should be pleased; a vassal must obey his prince.
He would take me, if he knew how soberly I have learnt
of late to speak; for these Lombards with whom I live
have given me a strong lesson in good manners-never
to say a word of God, speak little, play the poltroon. I
pause on one word for an hour: if any one speak to me,
I answer with a nod. But I pray let me have the safe
conduct, and then there will be time enough to tell of
this. In fine, royal offspring, I want only a small writ;
one often gets that for an enemy, and why not for a
friend? And it is not right that Champagne should be
closed more completely against me than against any
INVASION OF FRANCE.
35
Jack of Spain, for I am a good Frenchman, though I
was not born at Paris. If I am thought of, as I hope
to be, I've undertaken to repay with an exquisite work,
that, spite of time and spite of fire and spite of sword,
and spite of death, shall make King Francis and his
noble Dauphin live for ever."
There is a trace of manly reproach in this half pathetic
badinage, when Marot says that the king would take
him again if he knew how he had learnt from the Lom-
bards not to speak of God, and to be afraid to utter
what is in his heart, and when he refers to the invaders
of France who force their way into the land from which
he is exiled who loves it.
But Marot's return was delayed. He dates his third
Coq à l'Ane letter to Lyon Jamet from Venice, an exile
still during the invasion of Provence, on which he
dwells. The same letter contains also some details of
that flight from France, of which he says in the letter
to the Dauphin that heat of pursuit allowed him no
time for farewells. He had a very narrow escape at
Bordeaux.
In the war of invasion which Francis bad at last pro-
voked, France stood on the defensive. It was wisdom
in her chiefs to lay her fields waste, that they might
not feed the enemy. Jrovence was desolated by Mont-
morenci for the good of France. In a strong camp at
Avignon, well victualled by way of a river that ran
through it, Montmorenci gathered and entrenched an
army. Francis entrenched himself at Valence with
another force. arseilles and Arles 'were well gar-
D 2
36
CLEMENT MAROT.
dog
risoned; elsewhere all Provence was laid waste and
abandoned by its inhabitants. Fortifications, mills,
wells, ovens, were demolished; the whole population
was removed, and all food that could not be carried
away was destroyed. Charles entered Provence, depen-
dent for provisions on his fleet, which was at the mercy
of the winds, and would have supplied him insufficiently
if the wind could have been made always to blow as he
commanded. The common reliance of that day upon
an invader's power of living, at least to a certain extent,
on the enemy, proved vain for Charles V. in Provence,
where to possess all was to possess nothing but barren
land, in the midst of which French armies lay quiet, in
camps that he could not take and out of which he
could not tempt them. It was very difficult to keep
the French troops quiet. Montmorenci was much
troubled by their tumultuous impatience, and they
could not have been held in hand much longer, when
Charles, having in two months lost half his army by
disease and famine, retreated. He was harassed by
light troops and crowds of peasantry until the retreat
became flight and the dead and dying were left on the
road. The third Coq à l'Ane letter, sent from Venice
at the end of July, 1536, says, "It is true that the
Emperor has passed from Italy into Provence. The
French cry, 'Live France;' the Spaniards, 'Live the
Emperor.' There is not laughter enough in the world
for all. There is no courage without a fear. Is it not
too great a mistake, for goods that are merely earth, to
maintain such horrible war? I would as soon be a calf
DEATH OF THE DAUPHIN.
37
that goes straight to the slaughter-house as go to such
a butchery. 'Fy, fy de mourir pour la gloire !'"
But the king's hunger for land and thirst for glory
had brought France almost to a struggle for existence,
and it was not in vain that Provence suffered the ut-
most pains of war. France was saved. The invasion
of Champagne was averted by the dexterous diplomacy
of Jean du Bellay. Picardy was invaded, but suffi-
ciently defended by its nobles. Charles, who had been
confident of success, went back to Spain; and he left
Francis no wiser than before.
But King Francis had lost his eldest son, the
Dauphin, who died suddenly at the age of twenty.
His death may have been rightly ascribed to the
drinking of cold water when heated with a game at
tennis; but his cupbearer, an Italian noble, was
charged with having poisoned him, and, under torture,
when some will say anything to get a relaxation of the
agony, he confessed, and accused the imperial generals
-even Charles himself-of instigation to the crime.
Marot added verses upon him to the epitaphs in his
Cimetière, and two lines in the epitaph show that Marot
shared the French belief that the king's eldest son
had been poisoned by the Count of Montecuculi at the
instigation of Charles V.
He wrote that epitaph in France; for in winter-
time, late in the year 1536, Clement Marot was
permitted to return to his own country. On his way
to Paris he found at Lyons, where he had many
friends, the Cardinal de Tournon in authority as the
38
CLEMENT MAROT.
king's lieutenant-general in that district, and ad-
dressed to him one of his metrical letters. In the
course of this letter Marot said, "Nature draws us
to the place of our birth; the very beasts return to
their own holes. I found all pleasant on the home-
ward road; rocks, north wind, hail, and snow, seemed
Spring to me, and I return a thousand thanks that I
again see Lyons, where I had hoped to bring my
greeting to the King Francis. But, since he is not here,
to whom can I bring it but to you who take his place?
And gladly I salute you, who are a friend of the Muses.
God keep from harm the caressing air of the noble
city!" The poet received warm welcome in Lyons,
and acknowledged it in a poem of cordial adieu
to the gentle city, where the old, he said, pay court
only to virtue, and the youth seek the wisdom
that death cannot take away. They often visited
him, not for his own merit. He thanks his little
Muse for that. He is the ugly husband, she the
pretty wife.
"Farewell, Rhone, running straight
to Avignon! I go to Paris." And to Paris he goes
singing, and greets the king, the queen, Marguerite of
Navarre, the court, and France with a musical Dieu
gard when he returns to his old life early in the next
year, 1537. He ends the poem with a Dieu gard also
for his enemies. But not a word now to the world
outside about that one beloved fold of his, with its
sheep little and lean. God alone heard his Dieu gard
to Marion and to the little ones.
}
TRUCE.
39
CHAPTER XII.
LAST EXILE AND LAST HOME.
!
KING Francis resumed war in the year after the narrow
escape of the kingdom. It was his turn to be confi-
dent. After peurile formalities, the parliament of Paris
declared Flanders and Artois re-united to the crown of
France, and Francis advancing to the Low Countries,
began a campaign. But the course of war was again
arrested by the intervention of the ladies. Queen
Eleonore of France and the queen of Hungary, two
sisters of Charles, obtained a ten month's truce for the
Low Countries, and afterwards proceeded to secure a
truce for three months in Piedmont. Pope Paul III.
proposed an interview between the contending mon-
archs. A truce for ten years was signed, on the 18th of
June, 1538, and afterwards they met as great friends at
Aigues-Mortes. Francis then cultivated the friendship
of the emperor. He fell off from his allegiance as an
ally of Solyman, and the Protestants, whom he had
favoured fitfully when they formed one of the elements
of antagonism to Charles, again felt the weight of his
orthodoxy. Then the clouds began slowly to drift
again over the little household of Marot.
Meanwhile Clement was happy with home, friends,
and countrymen. Grace of a kindly nature was on all
40
CLEMENT MAROT.
lladic
his work. He endeavoured to commend to the king
grave thought with an air of levity, and poured out his
religious feeling in such pieces as his poem of The
Rich in Poverty, Joyous in Affliction, and Content in
Suffering,'¹ a purely didactic strain of resignation to
God in the sorrows of the world, which bids the worldly
put on Christ and lay up treasures in heaven. Among
his later pieces of this kind we have most insight into
his life from one entitled Balladin. This poem calls
on lovers of the ball or dance to cease their footing,
and the instruments to cease to keep tune to their feet,
while he tells of a virgin named Christine (Christianity)
who came from the East then more than fifteen hundred
years ago, and is still known for her beauty as Christine
the Fair. She has seen age after age without herself
losing the flower of her youth. She was not rich, but
of a good house, and came as a simple shepherdess.
She was ever active, always kind, and the best of all
dancers, because the heart went with every step and
movement of her body. Her speech won most of those
who listened to it, and many died for the love of her.
Thus her voice and her fame reached to the utter-
most parts of the earth, where a woman was bred whose
name was Simonne (Simony), who was full of envy at
her fame. From a servant, this woman became queen
over kings, and in some places which her fame reached
was known as Simonne the Great. But John of the
Eagle, when he was taken up to the firmament, gave
1 Le Riche en Pauvreté, Joyeux en Affliction, et Content en
Souffrance.
BALLADIN.
41
1
her another name. She has not remained young, like
Christine, but ages daily, and will die of age. She was
in high favour; but those who had seen Christine
after her said she was painted, and were not surprised
because that is the custom of the country. Simonne
had three parts of all worldly goods, and was endea-
vouring to get for herself the other part. She was
covetous of purple and fine linen, that she might have
her body clothed more richly than her soul. She was
idle and proud, and the instruments she played were
basilisk and bomb and cannon. She chanted day and
night many things that were not in her heart. But
she danced heavily and out of time; for she was deaf,
and also she would not heed instruments that played
in tune.
In speech Simonne was sharp and deceitful. Not by
her beauty or grace, but by her wealth, she won to
herself servants. None, therefore, suffered pain for
her; but they repaid her by putting to death the
servants of Christine, when they said that she only was
worthy to be followed. They murdered so many as to
lessen not their love to their mistress but their num-
ber. So the fair shepherdess fled to the most barbarous
parts of all Europe, and left you Simonne the Great to
dance in her place.
Simonne had reigned in pomp through dark days for
nearly a thousand years, when Apollo shot a ray of
light through the thick air. Christine was concealed
then on a rock in Saxony,² whence she came forth as
2 The Wartburg.
1 Revelations xvii.
42
CLEMENT MAROT
fair as ever, turned her bright eyes on all sides, and
called each one to her, singing these verses:
"Come unto me, all ye who are oppressed,
Come to me, old and young, from east and west,
Go not elsewhere, on other ways you fall.
Come unto me, whose love would win you all,
Come unto me, and I will give you rest.”
Few heard at first; and then the whole world listened.
But when Simonne heard the soft sound of that song
she grew leaner by half for spite; because against her
the soft speech of Christine is raised as a sharp sword,
and someday it will kill her. Loyal lovers, were there
ever words so strange? To you softer than honey and
to the disloyal bitter as gall! When Cicero spoke, the
ignorant learnt nothing. By the voice of Christine
rustics―untaught barbarians-find her high teaching
clear. Christine travelled through Europe softly sum-
moning her friends, who left wealth, home, themselves,
to follow her. Lovers of many nations came, full of
dispute; but when they drew near to her, dissension
ceased. For love of her, nothing was said of recom-
pense:
"Let us leave, let us leave, the true follower says,
All the troublesome, intricate questions we raise ;
Let us do, let us do, what fulfils her desire,
A heart without love always asks for its hire;
Let our care be, without more ado, to love well,
For she knows what we need ere with her we can dwell."
The fair one travelled till she reached the river
Loire, where more than twenty times she cast eyes on
BALLADIN.
43
me;¹ for my eyes had not the light to see her with.
She came near, and said to me "Awake, it is time, my
friend! You have slept too long in the gloom, awake!”
By those few words I knew her, and a load of tor-
menting grief went from my heart. I felt more free
than I had ever been, and said, "O merciful Christine,
do you return in pristine shape to suffer the assaults of
slander? I beseech you keep me in your grace; but I
do not know what I shall do to acquire it, for there is
no health in me. Yet be pleased so to give it that it
never passes from me, for threat, or torment, or false
seeming, or the pains of death." When Christine heard
me, she said: “My heart is glad when I find my lost
sheep on the plain. Now put off this fleece you wear.
You have been among the lovers of Simonne; now you
must forsake the old colours, and to win one good
suffer a thousand griefs.
“None can know, though little or low,
None can know, though prince or grandee,
Escape from pains of trouble or woe,
Who take up their cross to come after me."
If you have rightly learnt the art of love, you know
that every lover must conform himself to the ways of
his mistress. You must study my ways and learn to
follow me in the dance; for he who cannot dance with
me wins not my love. Make friends, then, with my
lovers, and learn of them, and study day and night
my Music in my Books. Do that, and you will become
1 At Blois.
44
CLEMENT MAROT.
""
a good dancer. Then boldly return to me.' At these
words I left her, and love bore me on his wings through
the woods wherein Orson was nursed by the bear and
through the lovely and delicious valley.—
Jean Marot had said of knights going to the wars,
that to look at them you would not think that they had
ever danced. Dancing was then among the constant
pleasures of the court, and Clement Marot, with the
snow on his head before its time, pleasant companion as
he still was, sat among the dancers and thus moralized
the perfect stepping to a music without discord, into
Christian obedience to the law of love.
6
There was a tilt among the poets after Marot's return
to court in 1537. Marot was abused roundly by
François Sagon and others, and replied whimsically in
like strain, and in the assumed character of Fripelippes,
Marot's valet.' The dispute is always assumed to have
originated in violent personal attacks upon Marot, dic-
tated by a serious hostility. It may be so. But what
the Scotch called Flytings were a form of literature
in those days. Dunbar and Kennedy, two friendly
poets, exhausted powers of abuse in 'flyting' one
another for the amusement of their friends. James IV.
flyted a little with Sir David Lindsay. Skelton's abuse
of Garnische, and the battle between Clement Marot
and François Sagon, in which many amused themselves
on either side, were possibly but other forms of the
same kind of rough jousting with the pen. When men
met bodily to knock one another down for sport, the
humour of the time might find little offence in an
POETICAL JOUSTS.
45
ingenious duel by assault and battery with staves of
verse.
François Sagon was a poet of no great mark, born at
Rouen and secretary to the abbot of St. Evroul, in
Normandy. In 1537, when he crossed pens with Marot
he had been hardly known for more than four years as
a poet. This is the first thought of Fripelippes. He
observes that his master is not attacked by a Saint
Gelais, a Heroët, a Rabelais, a Brodeaux, a Scève, a
Chappuy, nor by Papillon or Thenot, but by a herd of
young calves, new rhymers who seek fame by attacking
men of mark. There is no need to write against them:
their own writings confound them. The other leader of
the attack was La Hueterie; and Fripelippes compares
these friends to two asses rubbing against each other.
There is a letter, in verse, by Charles Fontaine to Sagon
and La Hueterie which was at first attributed to Marot,
and the jest was for a time lively. Marot's Fripelippes
was answered by divers pens. There was a Grand
Genealogy of Fripelippes; and Sagon invented himself
a page, Matthieu de Boutigni, who wrote at length the
"Abatement of the Cackle"-Le Rabais du Caquet-of
Fripelippes and of Marot. The Rabais of Sagon had
its answers. There was a shower of epistles, apologies,
remonstrances, epigrams, epitaphs of Sagon, huitains,
and dizains, mostly French, some Latin, by many
hands. There was enough rhymed flyting from all
sides to fill a volume of fair bulk; and it seems to have
been kept up on all sides as, according to the humour
of the day, a bit of fun. Marot himself only contri-
buted the letter in the name of Fripelippes.
46
CLEMENT MAROT.
Of the poets then most in repute at court next to
Marot stood Mellin de Saint Gelais. He was four or
five years older than Marot, and survived him. Mellin
was born at Angoulême; had studied Law at Padua; gave
up Law for the Church; and became, though a man of
much learning, a lively and fashionable lyric poet
at the court of Francis, who could' sing his own pieces
to his own accompaniment. Francis gave him the
abbey of Reclus, and, when he lived on into the next
reign, Henry II. made him his almoner. He avoided all
the risks which Marot found in those days attendant on
expression of a noble sense of life, and he went out of
the world as gaily as he had lived in it. Doctors, over
his death-bed, were in warm dispute as to the remedies
for his disease. "Gentlemen," he said, "I will save you
trouble," turned his face to the wall, and died. All
Clement Marot's references to him are very cordial.
When he speaks of the imitation of his blasons, and
especially admires the verse of one writer whom he does
not know, he notes that his friend Mellin had not cor-
tributed to the collection, and contrives then to intro-
duce expressions of a high respect for his genius. But
Mellin de Saint Gelais, with a liberal interest in the life
of his time was idle, and did not care to give his soul
to his work as Marot did; therefore his work does not
survive as Marot's does.
To Rabelais Marot addressed an epigram, para-
phrased from Martial's¹ saying "If we were at peace,
and could make our own use of our time, living in
1 Lib. v. epig. 20. "Si tecum mihi chare Martialis.”
Habelan
MELLIN DE SAINT GELAIS.
47
freedom as men ought to live, we should not need to
follow courts, or suits, or pleadings, nor rich houses
with their smoky scutcheons, but with place and work
to our minds, could enjoy ourselves in pleasant shade.
Alas, now we do not live for ourselves, and we know
that we let our good time fly from us.
But if one
knows that, why does one not live well?"
The version
is so close as to be rather a translation than a para-
phrase; but its thought is adopted, and becomes signi-
ficant when addressed by Marot to Rabelais in days
wherein there was no educated people to enable a poor
man of genius to do his work without dependence on
the goodwill of a patron for his daily bread.
Of the other writers named by Fripelippes as Marot's
friends, Antoine Heroët, who lived to be Bishop of
Digne, was a student of Plato, whose dialogue on love,
the Phædrus, he translated, and whose philosophy runs
through the sketch of an ideal woman in his poem of
the Parfaite Amye. This poem produced a little courtly
flyting. La Borderie opposed to the Platonic lady a
more earthly standard of perfection in his Amye de
Cour. Charles Fontaine took the side of Heroët and
the pure womanly ideal in his Contr' Amye. Paul
Angier followed with an Apology for the Court Lady.
Victor Brodeaux, whom Marot called his son, wrote
but a few short pieces, delicately turned, and died young,
leaving a son who rose to repute for his learning. The
next poet upon Marot's list of contemporaries in the
year 1547 is Maurice Scěve, a poet of Lyons whom
the new race of poets then arising praised as a scholarly
48
CLEMENT MAROT.
1
!
66
writer and forerunner of Ronsard. Claude Chappuy,
who is next named, served, like Marot, as valet-de-
chambre in the court of Francis. Papillon was a poet
and friend on whose behalf Marot wrote one of his
genial letters in verse to the king. He had found
Papillon, he said, sick and sad, and sought to comfort
him. Papillon put his dry hand in Marot's, and told
him that he wished to write a letter to the king for
help, but the doctor had forbidden use of the pen.
Courage, then," said Marot, "the letter shall be written.
You shall get well if you can be cured by rhyming."
"He thanked me," said Marot to the king, "a hundred
times, when I left him, and went up Parnassus to write
this to you. If Theseus went down to hell for Pirithous,
why should not I go up Parnassus to make known the
sorrows of a friend. If Pluto, who was hostile, rewarded
that friendship, can I suppose that your heart, which is
friendly, will take it ill in this that my hand serves my
friend, when we are both your servants. I believe
rather that you will thank one and show your pity to
the other."
But the king's sister Marguerite is entitled to a
foremost place in any mention of the poets of this time.
Her poetical works published at Lyons in 1547 as
Marguerites de la Marguerite des Princesses form two
volumes; one sacred, the other secular; and were
edited by Symon de la Haye, a squire in her house-
hold. Besides the Mirror of a Sinful Soul, one of these
volumes contains several Miracle Plays written by
Queen Marguerite, to be acted before her people. One
CONTEMPORARY POETS.
49
on The Nativity has the usual incidental Shepherd
Play, or Bergerie, but it is more graceful and less.
farcical than was customary. One on The Adoration
of the Magi allies itself to the Morality by introducing
Philosophy, Tribulation, and Divine Intelligence among
the characters, and there is allegory mixed with the play
of The Desert which represents in the desert Joseph,
Mary and the Infant Jesus with God and the Angels.
In the other volume are a comedy and a farce, both
corresponding to our English Interludes of the same
period; and among these and the other poems short and
long, while much is conventional, there is enough of
honest truth and genius to entitle them to a place of
lasting honour in the literature of the reign of Francis I.
On New Year's Day, in 1537, James V. of Scotland,
who had been ready in 1536 to aid his French ally in
the time of danger, married the consumptive eldest
daughter of King Francis. James and his bride left
Paris for Scotland early in the spring. Marot honoured
the marriage with a poem of congratulation, but at
Midsummer the young wife was dead.
The king himself in the same year barely escaped
death by fever. Marot in congratulating him on his
recovery, says that he may almost call himself successor
to his own posterity, for he was so ill that the people
already had looked upon his son as king of France. Then
another illness in 1539 caused Marot to write, on the
king's recovery two longer pieces, an ode to the Goddess
Health, and an ode which represents Queen Eleonore's
sense of the value of her husband on occasion of his
VOL, IJ.
E
50
CLEMENT MAROT.
•
sickness and his convalescence. The king recovered
and outlived the poet.
Among Marot's writings of the year 1538, is a letter
to Marguerite of Navarre, written in the person of her
little daughter Jeanne d'Albret, who was expecting
Marguerite's return to Blois. There was the fresh
heart in Marot still, and with grey head and furrowed
forehead he could represent with gentle playfulness,
a little girl's innocent prattling to her mother.
When the peace was in question, in 1538, between
Francis and Charles, Marot wrote an ode or canticle of
Christianity. Accord between them meant assuage-
ment of a thousand sorrows of the people, and in Marot's
poem Christianity calls upon Charles, however distant,
to come near to Francis, not for battle but to bring
back Peace from heaven. "If you caused Mars to
descend, can you not make him ascend again and give
place to fair Peace, the humble daughter of God. If
you two do not this, the world labours for it in vain.”
Marot represents Christianity as calling upon the
triumphant princes to have pity on the peoples their
children, whose wretched condition it would be too long
and pitiful to tell, and if they could not pity them, then
let them have compassion on the noble blood of France
and Spain. Mars used to stain his darts with the blood
of simple soldiers, now he takes noble chiefs, who fall
by the shot of the soldier. How many of those you
most favoured have been killed within these last ten
years? How many more will perish, if you do not now
seek peace? United, strengthened with paternal pity,
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS.
51
choose some place where Pallas may shelter you in a
heavenly cloud from the deceivers and peace breakers."
The peace was made at Nice, and for a time King
Francis showed enthusiasm for his new ally. On his
way through France, opened to him by Francis that he
might more readily advance against revolted Ghent,
Charles V. on New Year's Day of 1540 rode into Paris
side by side with his friend Francis I. Marot's verse,
of course, celebrated that glad sight. But in about two
years Francis and Charles were at war again; Francis
joined the Turk, and this time so effectively that he
brought in the infidels to fight with him. His ally, the
Pirate-Admiral Barbarossa, in the winter of 1543 carried
off to Constantinople fourteen thousand Italians as
slaves taken in the quarrel of the King of France. The
King of England joined the clash of arms, and there
was no peace upon earth when Marot was taken to the
peace of heaven.
Marot had many friends in the bright city of Lyons,
which in those days was a centre of intellectual energy,
because it was a place of resort for merchants, a centre
of traffic between Italy, France, England, Flanders, and
Germany. There were at this time in Lyons nearly
forty Florentine houses, and its August fair brought
traders from all parts of Europe. One of Marot's
friends in Lyons was M. de Villeroi, whom he had
served in his youth as page. To him, in kindly recol-
lection of old times, he dedicated in 1538 a reprint of
the poem written while the poet was in his service, the
Temple of Cupid. In the same year also there appeared
E 2
52
CLEMENT MAROT.
at Lyons, at the time of the August Fair, a new edition
of Marot's poems from the press of his friend Etienne
Dolet.
6
Etienne Dolet, like Marot, poet and reformer, was
about thirteen years younger than his friend Clement;
his age being twenty-nine when he printed in 1538 the
works of Marot, under the superintendence of their
author. Before that time there had been many editions
of the Adolescence Clementine. The first finished printing
in August, 1532; the second, with some additions, in
November of the same year; the third, without more
additions, in February, 1533 (New Style); the fourth,
which was like the third, finished printing in June,
1533-these all for Pierre Roffet of the sign of The
Faulcheur' in Paris. An edition, in four parts, was
printed in 1534 for François Juste at Lyons, the other
editions had appeared about the same time in Lyons,
one printed for Guillaume Boulle. There was an
edition also printed by Jeau de Channey in Avignon.
Pierre Roffet issued at Paris another edition in 1535;
Bonnemere of Paris issued two editions, one in 1536,
another in 1538. An edition appeared at Antwerp
from the house of Jean Steels in 1536, and another in
Paris in 1538, printed by Denys Janot, at the time when
Marot was editing his poems at Lyons for Etienne
Dolet, now under the name of The Works of Clement
Marot of Cahors, augmented with two books of epigrams,
and a great number of other works not hitherto printed
The whole carefully revised by himself and better
arranged. In a letter to Dolet of the last day of July,
}
EDITIONS OF HIS WORKS.
53
1538, Marot said that he now repudiated others, and
made this the author's edition of his writings. There
was an edition of Marot's writings under the name of
Works, published in the same year, and in 1539 by
François Juste at Lyons, one also in Paris both in 1538
and 1539. There was another at Antwerp in 1539,
and of more that steadily continued to appear, the most
interesting of those published up to the time of Marot's
death, was a beautiful new edition of the works by Dolet
in 1542, and a Lyons edition of 1544, the year of Marot's
death, which is the first in which the works were
classified as we meet with them in later issues. This
recital of editions is of interest only as evidence of the
strong hold taken by the earnest genius of Marot upon
the life of his own time. He was not only an amuser
Where there was a town life, liberal and
people, as far as they were able to
He expressed the purest aspirations of
France in his time, was always a true Frenchman. His
work suggests to us what France might have been, and
may yet be with better kings or calmer power to adjust
the limits of authority.
of the court.
energetic, the
read, read him.
Immeasurable was the loss of France by the want of
nobility and strength of character in Francis I. He
was a lively Frenchman, too, and clever; but he wanted
few of the faults and all the strength of his race.
Master of France at a critical transition time, if he had
been capable of feeling heartily with his sister Mar-
guerite and his poet Marot, if instead of showing
weakness in the luxury and license of his court and in
་
54
CLEMENT MAROT.
the misery brought on his people by an irrational war,
he had shown energy in development of the true forces
of his kingdom, France might have been spared the
civil war that followed, and the wreck of her best hopes
by its disastrous close.
Etienne Dolet, who in 1538 printed for Marot the
first collection of his writings which he dignified by
the title of his Works, was another of the men then
representing the best energies of France.
He sur-
vived Marot only two years, and was then at the
age of thirty-seven, tortured, strangled, and burnt in
the place Maubert. He was born at Orleans in 1509,
came to Paris at the age of twelve, and learnt Latin of
Nicolas Beroald, some of whose religious Latin verses
Marot has translated. Between the ages of seventeen
and twenty, Dolet was a student at Padua. He was
then for a time secretary to the French ambassador at
Venice, continued his studies in literature, and became
poet as the lover of a young Venetian Elena, who died.
In 1530 he returned to France, aged twenty-one, a
strong Ciceronian, and began work at commentaries on
the Latin language. Eager in search for knowledge,
Etienne Dolet went to learn law at Toulouse.
He was
made orator by the French scholars in the University;
gave offence to the parliament of Toulouse by free
speaking on their behalf; and, in March, 1533, was
sent to prison. He was released; still libelled, threat-
ened, and at last, because he thought for himself too
freely, expelled from Toulouse. He withdrew to Lyons,
visited Paris in 1534, and in the following year returned
to Lyons, where he printed, in 1536 and 1538, his two
ETIENNE DOLET.
55
folio volumes of Commentaries on the Latin Language,
which he dedicated and presented to King Francis.
Marot lauds their worth in one of his epigrams. A
third volume was to follow, if health permitted, and
if the author were not hindered by incessant calumny
and persecution. In the interval between the publi-
cation of the first and second volume of his commen-
taries Dolet obtained, in March, 1537, the king's license
for ten years to be the printer of all books of his own
writing and of other works of modern or ancient
authors which had been duly revised, corrected, illus-
trated, or annotated by him. He married at the same
time, and trusted to live, not by patronage of the great
but by his printing-press, of which, with scholarly en-
thusiasm and earnest interest in the stir of life about
him, he intended to make only the noblest use. He
began to print in 1538. His first book, Cato Christianus,
was a declaration of his faith, in exposition of the ten
commandments and the Lord's Prayer. It is significant
that such a man should, in the same year, at the very
outset of such an enterprise, issue also the works of
Clement Marot.
Meanwhile Marot, again at the centre of authority in
France, had devised a plan for bringing among king
and courtiers the music of the sacred Temple into
favour. Immediately, or very soon, after his return
from exile at Ferrara and Venice, he began to turn the
Psalms of David into song, and succeeded in getting
king and courtiers to bring them into fashion. A man's
character may in part be inferred from the tone of
those who address him, and the mere instinct of cour-
56
CLEMENT MAROT.
tesy would cause Marot to adapt his manner with the
king to the king's character and humour. Although
the poet cannot keep his heart out of his work, and does
not seek to do so, he knows that when he speaks to the
king he must give some air of levity to gravest thought.
The king was humoured into encouragement. It is
said that the dauphin took to himself one of the
psalms translated by Marot for a hunting song, and
that others took one this psalm and one that, setting
them to light song tunes or airs from the vaudevilles.
If so, it must have been sad satisfaction to Marot to
place even in this way the praise of the great God Pan,
the Almighty Father, upon the lips of careless shep-
herds. The king was delighted at first. When on New
Year's Day of the year 1540 Francis and Charles
rode into Paris side by side, Clement Marot, at the
suggestion or with the goodwill of Francis, presented
to Charles V. the thirty Psalms which he had, up to
that time, translated; and Charles is said to have
acknowledged the gift with a present of two hundred
gold doubloons. It was a happy day for Marot when
the men whose lust for earth had exiled Peace, rode
together as allies, and he could dare to say to them
both, through the words of David, "the earth is the
Lord's and the fulness thereof."
"Mais sa montagne est un sainct lieu :
Qui viendra donc au mont de Dieu ?
Qui est-ce qui là tiendra place?
L'homme de mains et cueur lavé,
En vanité non eslevé,
Et qui n'a juré en fallace.”
MAROT'S VERSIFIED PSALMS.
57
It did not at first occur to Francis that this was flat
heresy, if not sedition. He encouraged Marot to go on.
The book, containing thirty psalms, of which versions
were made with help from the scholarship of the
College Royal, was dedicated in verse to King Francis,
and the dedication began with the inevitable parallel
between Francis and David,-as Alcuin had found
David a parallel for Charlemagne, and Dryden found
him afterwards a parallel for Charles II. Marot
gives the greater part of his dedicatory verse to a
genuine expression of his sense of the sublime beauty
of the Psalms, whose theme is above the themes of
Virgil and Homer; which soar above Horace as the
eagle above the lark; whose inspiration is direct from
God; which figure Christ in David; and which fit
themselves to all the wants and aspirations of the soul.
They had been dark to the people; but now, by the
help of those who under Francis had learnt Hebrew,
their sense was clear to all men, and here thirty were
adapted to the voices of his countrymen. This dedica-
tion was followed by a metrical address to the ladies of
France. "When," Marot asked here, "will the Golden
Time come wherein God alone is adored, praised, sung
as He ordains, and His glory shall not be given to
another?" He called on the matrons and maidens of
France, whom God had made to be His temple, to turn
from the bad example of those who put unclean songs
in their lips. "Here is," he said, "matter without
offence to sing. But no songs please you that are not
of Love. Certes, they are of nothing else but Love;
58
CLEMENT MAROT.
***
Love itself by Supreme Wisdom was their composer,
and vain man was the transcriber only. That Love
gave you language and voices for your notes of praise.
It is a love that will not torment your hearts, but fill
your whole souls with the pleasure angels share. For His
Spirit will come into your hearts, and stir your lips,
and guide your fingers on the spinet towards holy
strains. O happy he who shall see the blossoming of
that time when the rustic at his plough, the driver in
the street, the workman in his shop, solaces labour with
the praise of God! Shall that time come sooner to
them than to you? Begin, Ladies, begin! Help on the
Golden Age, and, singing with gentle hearts these sacred
strains, exchange the everchanging God of Foolish.
Love for the God of a Love that will not change."
But to the Sorbonne this was all very bad. The
Psalms are a piece of theology, and to attempt to
interpret them aright is the especial business of the
Theological Faculty. What right has a light-hearted
court poet to turn them into song, and set princes and
ladies, working men and working women, to sing with
David, “I will bless the Lord at all times: His praise
shall be continually in my mouth," and that even
without any special authorization from the Syndic of
the Faculty?
There is a little octavo printed in 1542, without
printer's name or place of publication, except in a
colophon which is but a jest against the pope :
"Printed at Rome, by command of the pope, by
Theodore Brüss, German, his printer in ordinary, the
1
MAROT'S VERSIFIED PSALMS.
59
·
15th of February." This book is entitled The Form
of Prayer in French Churches, and French Hymns
which are sung in various Churches. It contains
Marot's thirty Psalms, which in that year were added
by Etienne Dolet to his new edition of Marot's Works,
with eight other Psalms by another hand. It was not
good Christianity to twit the pope at the end of a book
of devotion; but the pope and his friends were rougher
controversialists. A small joke broke no bones and
burnt no flesh.
The old enemies of reform were again active against
Marot. Francis was again listening to those who coun-
selled violent repression of the heretics. In 1540,
when the parliament of Aix condemned the Vaudois
of Provence to general destruction, Guillaume du Bellay
interposed with the king, and stayed the execution of the
order. But the fervour of orthodox zeal gained influ-
ence between that time and the spring of 1545, when,
by the king's order, the royal lieutenant of Provence
carried fire and sword among the unhappy people
whose crime was that they sought to worship God with
simple purity of heart. When solitary fugitives were
caught, who implored the executioners to be content
with their goods, and spare their lives, "I will send
you," said the lieutenant-general, "to dwell in hell
with devils, you, your wives, and your children; so
that no memorial of you shall be left." Five thousand
of them were slain. Twenty-two of their villages were
burnt. Seven hundred men were sent to the galleys.
These people were in religious accord with the then
60
CLEMENT MAROT.
unpersecuted Vaudois of Piedmont, among whom
Clement Marot went to die, and had died only a few
months before the massacre.
While the bitterness was rising to this height,
Etienne Dolet, representing the free energy of Lyons,
worked at his press, and in 1542 he was the first printer
of Marot's L'Enfer. In the same year Dolet was
seized for printing heretical books, and imprisoned at
Paris in the Conciergerie, where he lay bound for
fifteen months. When he came out, he went back to
Lyons, and published a poem, in the manner of his friend
Marot, which he called the Second Enfer. While Dolet
was in prison, Francis abandoned Marot to the wrath
of the Sorbonne. He fled from it to Geneva, towards
the close of the year 1543.
At Geneva Marot's version of thirty Psalms,¹ en-
larged by the addition of twenty more, was published
with a preface by Calvin, and adopted there among the
formularies provided for the worship of the people in
their mother tongue. Calvin's preface argues against
Latin services, justifies the services of his own church,
and the custom of singing as a part of them, and
recommends the use of these French versions of the
Psalms of David, sung not to light and worldly tunes
but in association with the grave strains that befit a
1 The thirty Psalms first translated by Marot were, i.—xv., xviii.,
xix., xxii.—xxv., xxxii., xxxiii., xxxvi.—xxxviii., xliii., xlv., xlvi.
and 1. Those added afterwards were, li., lxxii., lxxix., lxxxvi., xci.
ci., ciii., civ., cvii., cx., cxiii., cxiv., cxv., cxviii., cxxviii., cxxx.
cxxxvii., cxxxviii. and cxliii., with the Commandments adapted to
song, and the Nunc Dimittis.
AT GENEVA.
61
place of worship. The popularity of Marot's version of
the Psalms had caused ten thousand copies to be sold
soon after their publication. Music was written for them
by Guillaume Franc, and afterwards printed with them,
and for generations afterwards shepherds praised the
great Pan in his temples as they had been taught by
Robinet. The collection, completed by Beza, was used
as the Psalter of the French Protestant Church.
But the music of Calvin's church was not such as
Marot could dance to. Following the fancy of his
Balladin, he would not look upon Calvin himself as a
good dancer. From 1539 to 1564, the year of his
death, Calvin was pope in Geneva. His religion was
earnest and true, but combative and theological, and
his theology, as well as his own personal opinion about
nearly everything in life, had to be duly accepted by
his followers. To the mind of Clement Marot, religion
had another aspect. It was not combative, not theo-
logical. It sought to escape from all din of dissension,!
and to reconcile a full enjoyment of the natural de-
lights of life with simple love of God and labour
against all that wars against, not this or that dogma of
the schools, but the pure spirit of the Gospel. His
religion was fed by a study of the life of Christ; his
dogmas were those two on which our Lord himself has
said hang all the Law and the Prophets. The lively,
genial poet, who with heart and soul sought to serve God
but did not call himself holy, and who occupied openly
a middle ground between the combatants on either
side, was not at home under the rule of Calvin.
62
CLEMENT MAROT.
Theodore Beza, in his History of the French Reformed
Churches, spoke afterwards quite honestly and truly
the voice of the church of Calvin on this subject.
Clement Marot," he says, " after his return from Italy
to the Court, was very much hated by the Sorbonne for
translating very happily thirty Psalms of David into
the French tongue, which are dedicated to the king,
who thought them worthy to be printed. But he was
forced to make his escape, and retreated to Geneva
where he translated twenty more of them. He had
always been bred up in a very bad school, and could
not live in subjection to the reformation of the Gospel,
and therefore he went and spent the rest of his days in
Piedmont, which was then in the possession of the king,
where he lived in some security, under the favour of the
governor." Beza is quite right. Marot had sought a
reformation in the spirit of the church, and an abate-
ment of its fleshly corruptions; but he could not live
in subjection to a reformation of the Gospel.
When Marot left France, the war had broken out
again between Francis and Charles. He had gone to
Geneva not before the autumn of 1543, and he was in
Piedmont, when, on the 14th of April, 1544, the Count
d'Enghien gained a great victory over the imperialists
at Cerisolles. Marot (even about whose place of refuge
in Piedmont this war was thundering) sent ten lines of
compliment and good wishes to his victorious country-
man. It was also from Piedmont, where he had gone to
die, that he wrote to a friend the last of his metrical
letters. "Look," he said, "at the sovereign virtue of
1 A un sien amy.
1
REFUGE IN PIEDMONT.
63
the Muses, who have given us true love for one another,
and opened frankly to each other our closed hearts.
Would God that we might live together far from
tumults and the short pleasure of courts !" Then
follows, in line after line, mention of the names of
friends; and he has seven times fifteen more, he says.
"All in man perishes except the good things of the
mind. I have lost all that I had-means, friends in
my own country-all that could be taken from me; but
over plain and mountain my mind follows and is my
companion; no power could exile me from the Muse.
While Yes and No are said, the world will read me.
You also, who have tasted Helicon, write; and know
that death has a shroud only for the body."
Thus the last thought of his last letter answers to the
motto upon all his writings, that there is no death for
the true utterance of a true mind: La Mort ny Mord.
The Vaudois were under persecution by Charles III.
Duke of Savoy, when Francis invaded Piedmont. The
invasion stopped the persecution. While Francis held
Piedmont as conquered ground he did not venture to
extend to the Vaudois there the oppression suffered by
their friends in France. It would be, he felt, bad policy
to weaken his hold on conquered land by giving reason
for rebellion among its people. Thus for twenty
years of the French occupancy, from 1536 to 1556, the
reformed church in Piedmont had rest, and prospered.
By 1556 the increasing congregations had ventured,
indeed, openly to build churches for themselves.
They had no such public churches in 1544, when
64
CLEMENT MAROT.
Marot took refuge among them. But they industriously
circulated among themselves a translation of the Scrip-
tures; teachers were many, and their form of teaching
answered to that of Marot's sermon on the Good and
Bad Pastor. The exiled poet, not yet fifty years old, had
the best reason, therefore, for his choice of a last refuge
in Piedmont. His old court relations gave him also
friends in the Marshal de Bouttières and M. d'Anne-
baud, who there exercised the king's authority.
In the valleys of Piedmont the grey head of the poet
could be bowed among shepherd worshippers, whose
faith was simple, and who learnt their duty from the
Sermon on the Mount. There, in the last days of
his sickness and exile, the grey head was uplifted
to sing with them, as he had taught them to sing, the
praise of the great Father of All.
And so Clement Marot himself passed as a strain of
music from among the jar of treasons, stratagems, and
spoils. In the autumn of the year 1544 he died. War
and persecution were about him still; some men killing
their neighbours for the sake of earth, some for the
sake of heaven. He was cast out of France. There
remained to him, only, as he said, his Muse which yet
lives and his faith in Divine Mercy:
LA MORT NY MORD.
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
THERE is an old folio, known to all who have visited
the fountain-heads of medical literature, and dear to
bookworms for its woodcut illustrations, which in their
own time were ascribed to Titian. It is the 'Corporis
Humani Fabrica' of Andreas Vesalius. The first page
is adorned with a large and spirited woodcut, in which a
young man, wearing professor's robes, is to be seen stand-
ing at the table of a lecture theatre, and pointing out
from a robust subject that lies before him the inner
secrets of the human body. The tiers of benches that
surround the lecture table are crowded with grave
doctors, who are leaning forward, struggling to see, and
even climbing upon railings, from which they look down
with faces that present a striking group, expressive of
much wonder, interest, and curiosity, mixed with a little
awe. And yet they look upon a spectacle which is pre-
sented in our day as a matter-of-course to thousands of
young men during the winter session at the hospitals.
•
The woodcut at once leads us to suppose that we
have to deal, in the book to which it is prefixed, with
the man who was the first to force his way into a path
obstructed by a heavy barricade of prejudice. If we
turn over a leaf, we find his portrait in another sketch,
VOL. II.
F
66
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
rough, bold, and masterly. It portrays. spirit and flesh
of a young man who has the marks of a hardworking
brain upon his forehead, and of a firm will upon his
face. He looks like a man born to do work for the
world, and not unwilling at the same time to take ease
in it. He evidently can enjoy as well as think, and
will, and do. His beard is very trim, his senses look
acute, his rather handsome features express much refine-
ment, aptness also for a look of scorn. He shows like
a chief in intellect, a gracious king over some region
of knowledge, who possesses all he could inherit, and
knows how to conquer more; a good companion to
kindred minds when recognized among them as a
leader. So we judge from the noble portrait of the
young professor in his robes, Andrew Vesalius, aged,
as we are told by the inscription on the border, twenty-
eight; a man who at that age had already become the
Luther of Anatomy.
We meet only occasionally with born poets and
musicians. Vesalius had a native genius of a rarer
kind-he was a born dissecter. From the inspection of
rats, moles, dogs, cats, monkeys, his mind rose, impa-
tient of restraint, to a desire for a more exact know-
ledge than they or Galen gave of the anatomy of man.
But in his day, to be dissatisfied with Galen was to be
a heretic in medicine; and to touch with a scalpel the
dead "image of God" was reckoned impious in theo-
logy. There was no doubt left upon that latter point,
for, in the lifetime of Vesalius, Charles V. had brought
the question formally before a consultation of divines
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
67
at Salamanca. For purposes of ambition, living men
might be blown asunder, at the cannon's mouth, cut up
with sword and axe, or probed into with military lances.
For the purposes of science, dead men were not to
receive & wound.
Three weasels formed the family arms of Andreas,
whose name was properly Wesalius, his forefathers
having at one time belonged to Wesel, where they
formed a portion of the noble Wittag family.
The
immediate progenitors of Andreas for several genera-
tions had been eminent for medical attainments. Peter
Wesalius was a famous physician. John, the son of
Peter, another thriving doctor, was physician to Mary
of Burgundy, the first wife of Maximilian I. John,
growing old, retired from business; not, however, until
he had introduced Everard, his son, to his distinguished
mistress and to all his profitable practice. Everard
kept up the reputation of the family, wrote Commen-
taries on the books of Rhases, and upon the Aphorisms
of Hippocrates. The son of Everard, and the father of
Andreas, enjoyed another reputation of the same kind;
he was apothecary to the Emperor. The family mind.
was touched by this hereditary transmission through
five generations of the same pursuit. When Andreas
and his brother Francisco were destined to follow the
two separate professions of Medicine and Law, their
father found it very difficult to keep Francisco steady
to his course of jurisprudence. Sending him out to
study law his father found to be like throwing a ball
against a blank wall, he came regularly back upon his
F 2
68
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
hand. When afterwards Francisco saw his famous
brother very much attacked by Galenists, and indis-
posed to pay attention to them, there was nothing
nearer to the heart of the young lawyer than a desire
to fight his battle for him. The veins of the family, in
fact, ran medicine. Andreas, when he was not fifteen
years old, attended plague cases and practised surgery.
He was born on the last day of December, in the
year 1514. His father, the apothecary, being attached
to the service of Margaret, governor of the Netherlands,
aunt of the Emperor Charles V., Andreas Vesalius was
born at Brussels. He was sent as a boy to study at
Louvain, where he made very rapid progress in all
branches of knowledge taught to him. He manifested
a great taste for science, and spent all his leisure upon
practical research into the mechanism of the lower
animals. He became very proficient in the scholarship
of the day, so that in his great work, written before he
had allowed his skill to rust, the Latin style is singu-
larly pure. Jean Riolan, who took pains afterwards to
show that Vesalius was but a shallow fellow, and that
his knowledge of anatomy in particular was not much
more than skin-deep, protested that he must have found
some good scholar to write the Latin of his books. At
the same time, however, that he might smite with a
two-edged scalpel, the discerning critic blamed the
sentences of Vesalius for their length and his style for
its obscurity. His scalpel was blunt, for his own style
was very clumsy. The good Latin written by Vesalius
while he was comparatively fresh from his studies at
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
69
Louvain, became corrupted by disuse. That Vesalius
mastered not only Latin but Greek also, accurately, at
Louvain, may be inferred from the fact that he wrote
Greek annotations to the works of Galen. It is more
certainly proved by the confidence with which the
great Venetian printer, Aldinus Junta, in after years
made application to Vesalius alone for a corrected text
of Galen, and for castigation of a Latin rendering of
Galen's works. The application was in part only
responded to.
Greek and Latin were sources of pleasure to the
young anatomist, only because they enabled him to
read medical books. Then also, as he soon discovered
the corruptness of translations generally, he was not
content to study the Arabians by aid of their inter-
preters, but betook himself to a scholar learned in
Arabic and Hebrew, Lazarus Hebræus de Frigeis.
With that teacher he read Avicenna in the original
Arabic, and afterwards was able to write for himself a
paraphrase of the ten books of Rhases to the Emir
Almansor.
From Louvain the youth was sent to Paris, where he
studied physic under a most eminent physician, Jacobus
Sylvius, otherwise Jacques de la Boë. Sylvius found
his new pupil disagreeably acute. It was the practice
of that illustrious professor to read to his class Galen
'On the Use of Parts.' He began fairly, and when he
had reached the middle of the first book, at the point
where the anatomy commences, he said, "Gentlemen,
we now come to a part too difficult for the comprehen-
70
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
sion of beginners. Were I to go through it with you,
we should only be bewildering each other." To save
trouble, therefore, the professor took a flying leap over
all intervening matter, and descended plump on the
fifth book over which he cantered easily to the tenth
section. From the rest of the work he made selections,
to the consideration of which he either gave a single
lecture, or to which he devoted five or six lessons at
most. This course of professional study was illustrated
sometimes with the dissection of some portion of a
dog, prepared for the purpose by a surgeon under the
professor's eye. This always was thrown away on the
third day, when it became unpleasant to smell.
Sylvius believed, like his brethren, that the anatomy
of all flesh was contained in Galen. If he found any-
thing in his dog that puzzled him, the fault lay with
the animal; the dog was wrong. Often the learned man
-more used to turn over leaves of books than strips of
muscle-blundered about his little preparation, vainly
searching for some blood vessel or tendon that he meant
to show. At the third of his practical demonstrations
witnessed by Andreas, the teacher was so much sur-
prised at the confused construction of the animal before
him that he called upon the newcomer, whose passion
for dissecting was well known, to help him through
his difficulty. The professor's patience was tried farther
by the fact that Andreas Vesalius, by the intensity of
his own enthusiasm, infected his companions with a
pitiless zeal after correct details of anatomy. When-
ever Sylvius, unable to find some vein or nerve, excused
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
71
its non-appearance and passed glibly on, he made work
for his pupils. They slipped down when he was gone,
hunted the dog through for the missing part, dissected
it out for their master with great neatness, and tri-
umphantly called his attention to it on his next
appearance.
The influence of a commanding mind and of a strong
enthusiasm was exercised over his associates in a yet
more striking way by the ambitious student. He caused
some of the young men to share his own impatience at
the dog-anatomy to which they were confined. Pleasure-
loving youths, moved by his impulse, were to be found
with him haunting at ghostly hours the Cemetery of the
Innocents. Once, when he went with a fellow-pupil to
the Montfaucon, where the bodies of executed criminals
were deposited and bones were plentiful, they found
themselves attacked by a pack of fierce dogs. Masters
of the situation, they would by no means let'a bone be
touched, and there ensued so hard a battle with them
that Vesalius believed the dogs were at last going to
get their turn as dissecters, and had agreed upon him
for their first subject.
Another of the teachers under whom Andreas studied
in Paris was a man of great renown, Gauthier of Ander-
nach, or, to speak learnedly, Guintherius.
He was
physician in ordinary to King Francis I. Guintherius,
before he went to Paris, had been Greek professor at
Louvain. At Paris he occasionally ventured so far as
to dissect human bodies. I run over three years to
state here that in his 'Institutiones Anatomicæ,' pub-
72
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
lished in 1536, Guinther took occasion to specify
Andreas Wesalius (the classic V had not at that time
been adopted in the name) as a youth of great promise,
Vesalius then being twenty-one years old. Again, after
three more years had elapsed, in publishing a new
edition of his 'Institutiones,' Guinther stated that he
had been indebted largely to the helping hand of
Andreas Vesalius, a youth most diligent in the study
of anatomy. The youth was then already himself
beginning work upon a book that was to produce a
revolution in the science.
At about the age of nineteen, however, the pupilage of
Andreas at Paris, under Sylvius and Guinther, had been
broken off by the French wars. He retired then to his
alma mater at Louvain. Here, continuing his studies,
he for the first time openly demonstrated from the
human subject, offering to the scholars of Louvain an
unaccustomed spectacle. He had himself in Paris only
twice been present at a demonstration of the kind.
During his sojourn at Louvain, it happened one day
that Vesalius walked with his friend Reiner (Gemma
Frisius) outside the gates. Reiner, called Frisian from
his birthplace, became Professor of Medicine at Louvain,
and distinguished for his skill in mathematics. As a
physician he was in request at the court of Charles V.,
but wearied of court practice and gave it up. He was
noted for his short stature, and six years older than his
comrade in this country walk; Vesalius twenty and he
twenty-six. By accident their ramble brought them to
the Tyburn of Louvain, the spot on which it was usual
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
73
not only to execute criminals, but also to expose their
bodies. It was a place of human bones, and of men's
corpses in all stages of corruption. To such a spot the
friends came very naturally, led to it no doubt by a
familiar path, for where else was there a retired nook
to be found of which the scenery was more com-
pletely in accordance with the taste of an anatomist?
Vesalius loved nature with the ardour of true genius,
but he was a man who could have boiled his kettle with
more pleasure in the valley of Jehoshaphat than in the
vale of Tempè. Why should he not? Is the thigh-
bone that propped up a lord of the creation less to be
honoured than a primrose-stalk? Or is the cup that has
contained the brain and wit of man to be regarded with
less tender reverence than buttercups and pumpkins?
Vesalius and Gemma Frisius, whose humour it was
to admire nature in the mechanism of the human body,
looked at the dead men with learned eyes. The
botanist a-field looks out for specimens to carry home,
so the anatomist Vesalius looked keenly about him, for
in such a place the obvious question was, could he make
any addition to his hortus siccus of odd joints and bones.
Now there had been executed on that spot a noted
robber, who, since he deserved more than ordinary
hanging, had been chained to the top of a high stake
and roasted alive. He had been roasted by a slow
fire made of straw, that was kept burning at some dis-
tance below his feet. In that way there had been a
dish cooked for the fowls of heaven, which was regarded
by them as a special dainty. The sweet flesh of the
74
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
delicately roasted thief they had preferred to any other;
his bones, therefore, had been elaborately picked, and
there was left suspended on the stake a skeleton dis-
sected out, and cleaned by many beaks with rare
precision. The dazzling skeleton, complete and clean,
was lifted up on high before the eyes of the anatomist,
who had been striving hitherto to piece together such
a thing out of the bones of many people, gathered as
occasion offered. This was a flower to be plucked from
its tall stem.
Mounting upon the shoulders of his friend, and aided
by him from below, young Andreas ascended the
charred stake, and tore away whatever bones he found
accessible, breaking the ligaments which tied the legs
and arms to the main trunk. The trunk itself was
bound by iron chains so firmly to the stake, that it
was left there hanging. With stolen bones under their
clothes, the two young men returned into Louvain.
But in the evening Vesalius went out alone to take
another walk, did not return in haste, and suffered the
town gates to close against him. He had resolved to
spend the night a-field under the stars; while honest
men were sleeping in their beds, he meant to share
the vigil of the thieves. There was the trunk of the
skeleton yet to be had. At midnight none would dare
to brave the spectacle of fleshly horrors, to say nothing
of such ghostly accidents as might befal them among
corpses of the wicked, under rain, moon, stars, or
flitting night clouds. Certain, therefore, that no man
would come to witness his offence, Vesalius at midnight
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
75
again climbed the tree to gather its remaining blossom.
By main force he deliberately wrested the whole set of
bones out of the grasp of the great iron fetters, and
then having removed his treasure to a secret spot,
he buried it. In the morning he returned home empty-
handed. At leisure then, and carefully, he smuggled
through the gates, day after day, bone after bone. But
when the perfect skeleton was set up in his own house
he did not scruple to display it openly, and to demon-
strate from it, giving out that it had been brought by
him to Louvain from Paris. The act of plunder was,
however, too bold to escape attention. Vesalius after-
wards was banished from Louvain for this offence.
He
In the next year, 1535, Andreas, having completed
his twentieth year, served as a surgeon in the army of
the Emperor Charles V., during the French war.
was then earning a salary, and finding subjects for
dissection on the battle-field. Soon afterwards he went
to Italy, making his head-quarters apparently at
Venice, and displaying his zeal and ability as an
anatomist, by demonstrating publicly under the shadow
of the most famous universities. Andreas Vesalius at
once excited the attention of the learned men of Italy,
as a remarkable youth of twenty-one or two, who could
name, with his eyes blindfolded, any, even the smallest
human bone put into his hand, who was versed deeply
in comparative anatomy, and had more accurate and
practical knowledge of the structure of the human
frame than any grey-beard of the time had dared to
master. He was a youth who had turned all the
76
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
ardour and passion of his age into the service of that
one mysterious pursuit at which his neighbours shud-
dered and admired; a youth who was at the same time
an able scholar, and who could declaim his knowledge
in sound Latin from the lecture-table. The intensity
of his zeal, and his own habit of mastery won for him
in Italy so prompt a recognition of his genius, that he
was only twenty-two years old when he was offered (in
1537) a professorship at Padua, created for him. It
was the first purely anatomical professorship, and in
accepting it Vesalius became the first Professor of
Anatomy who taught the science, and received a salary
for so doing from the funds of any university.
A good deal of morbid curiosity, a corrupt taste for
witnessing dissections of the human body as a novel
spectacle, no doubt increased the number of the new
professor's hearers. He was doing a bold thing, his
lectures were a striking innovation on the tameness of
conventional routine, and his fame grew with propor-
tionate rapidity. He continued to hold his professor-
ship at Padua during seven years, but he was at the
same time professor in two other universities. He was
sought by the academies for the same reason that
causes an attractive performer to be sought at the
same time by rival managers. Wherever he appeared,
the theatre would fill. When already appointed at
Padua, he was endowed with a professorship also at
Bologna, in which town he put together and compared
the skeletons of a man and of a monkey. Being thus
doubly a professor, he accepted also the urgent invi-
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
77
tation of Cosmo, Duke of Florence, who desired that
he should take office as Professor of Anatomy at Pisa.
Cosmo secured his man not only by offering a salary
of six hundred crowns for a short course of demon-
strations, but also by commanding that the authorities.
should furnish him with a free supply of bodies, whether
from the cemetery or the scaffold. In each university
the services of the professor were confined to a short
course of demonstrations, so that his duties were com-
plete when he had spent during the winter a few weeks
at each of the three towns in succession. Then he
returned to Venice.
At Venice, Andreas Vesalius studied indefatigably,
at the same time that he practised physic. He not
only solicited the bodies of condemned criminals, but
also begged of magistrates that they would sentence such
men to the modes of death that he from time to time
suggested, in order that he might obtain physiological
knowledge from his post-mortem inspections. He was
not afraid also to beg that executions might be delayed
when he was well supplied with subjects, so that there
might be material for him to work upon at a more
leisure time. Furthermore, he watched-and incited
his pupils to watch-all the symptoms in men dying
of a fatal malady, and it was usual with him and them
to note where, after death, such men were buried. For
their bodies night visits were paid to the churchyard,
either by Vesalius or by some of his pupils, and a diligent
search was then made for the accurate determination of
the cause of death. Many a corpse was in this way.
78
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
secretly conveyed by Andreas to his own chamber, and
concealed in his own bed.
At Padua and Bologna, where there was no bold Cosmo
to back the teacher, no public means were ventured
upon for the supply of the new lecture-table. It was
supplied without trouble to Vesalius by the enthusiasm of
the students, who became resurrectionists on his behalf.
Thus it happened that on one occasion his class was
edified by the emotion of a portly Petrarch under a
monk's hood, who had sought in the excitement of
anatomy a refuge from his grief for the recent death
of a too well-known Laura. He sat down thinking of
his old acquaintance with a sigh-
"Mai non fu' in parte, ove si chiar vedessi
Quel, che veder vorrei, poi ch'io nol vidi,”-
and started with a shout that betrayed all his secret
when he saw her stretched out on the demonstrator's
table. She had been disinterred by the students as a
friendless person-one who in life had not regarded her
own flesh as sacred, and whose body, therefore, might
be lectured from without risk of exciting any active
outcry against desecration of the dead. Vesalius, who
hated monks as false pretenders and obstructors of
sound knowledge, enjoyed greatly this dilemma.
During the first three years of office as professor,
Andreas did not depart, or wish to depart, from the
approved rule of study. He praised the works of Galen
in good faith, and made use of the anatomical writings
of that ancient author as the text-book upon which he
founded all his demonstrations. With practical expe-
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
79
:
rience, however, the conviction grew, not only that
the anatomy of Galen was extremely incomplete, but
that it was often wrong. He had marked down upon
the margins of his text-book as he detected them.
many discrepancies between the text of Galen and the
human body. These variations he found, as he went
on, were constant. Then, dissecting lower animals,
and monkeys more especially, he made comparison
between their parts and corresponding parts in man,
until he became convinced that Galen very rarely
wrote from actual inspection of the human subject;
that he had been a great anatomist, but that his teach-
ing was based on a belief that the structure of a monkey
was a direct copy of the structure of a man. Galen
had not ventured often to defy superstition, and defile
himself by too close contact with the dead of his own
race. This fact being ascertained with certainty,
Vesalius took more than usual pains to note every dis-
crepancy between the text of Galen and the actual
parts which it endeavoured to describe. The list of
these variations-annotations upon Galen-formed in a
short time a volume of considerable thickness.
Having thus seen reason to distrust the foundations
upon which the whole structure of medical science was,
in his time, built, Vesalius at the age of twenty-five
resolved to reconstruct more durably the science of
anatomy. He perceived only one way in which this
could be done: he would dissect minutely through the
human body, and write down all that he found there,
carefully and accurately, in a well-digested book. He
¡
80
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
would collate upon each point the evidence obtained
under the scalpel with the writings of the authorities
who occupied the schools before him, would retain their
nomenclature and repeat their truths, but rectify their
almost countless errors. To this bold enterprise, after
his genins had once admitted the idea, Vesalius was
further impelled by the encouragement of his friends,
and chiefly by the incitements of a colleague in the
University of Padua, Mark Antony Genua, and of
the patrician, Wolfgang Herwort. So it happened
that, at the age of twenty-five, Andreas Vesalius, already
a famous teacher, began to write, from actual scrutiny,
his text-book of The Fabric of the Human Body.' He
at the same time practised medicine, and expressed
loudly and often his regret that the art of healing and
the science of anatomy were followed as two separate
pursuits. He declared a correct knowledge of anatomy
to be essential both to the physician and the surgeon,
and he taught the science in his writings with a con-
stant reference to medicine and surgery, bitterly ridi-
culing those practitioners who got their knowledge of
disease out of a study of syrups.
It is possible to tell in a few paragraphs all that is
known to have been done before the time of Vesalius
for the promotion of the study of true human anatomy.
In very ancient times it is proved that there was no
lack of dissectors, those of the Alexandrian school
used the knife freely on the human subject. Hero-
philus is said to have cut up and examined three
hundred bodies without reckoning his vivisections. Of
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
81
the anatomy of the ancients, however, nothing has
been transmitted except what has come down to us in
the extant works of Galen. Galen, it has been shown,
dissected lower animals and monkeys-rarely man.
When contact with a corpse made expiations and ablu-
tions necessary, it was not an easy thing to be an accu-
rate anatomist. After the death of Galen that chief
still continued to hold sway for centuries over the world
of medicine. The Arabians put implicit faith in him,
and copied all his errors, adding many of their own.
In the middle ages practical anatomy when it at-
tempted any inspection of "the Divine image" was
regarded as impiety; nevertheless, a first step in a
right direction was made by Mondino, about the year
1315. Mondino, professor of medicine at Bologna,
between the years 1315-18, exhibited the public dis-
section of three bodies, and by so doing was the cause
of a great scandal. Alarmed by an edict of Pope Boni-
face VII. he gave up his dangerous experiment, but he
had published a work 'On Anatomy,' containing much
original matter, which was adopted by the learned
world, and prescribed to be read in all academies.
For three centuries this work continued to be in
force as an authority. In the time of Vesalius, Mon-
dino was read commonly as a supplement to the ana-
tomy contained in Galen, and if any anatomist had new
facts to record, he edited Mondino, and attached to
the text of that author his own experience in the form
of commentary. In the year 1520, Mondino had in
that way been supplied with notes by Alessandro
VOL. II.
G
82
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
Achillini, and edited by his poet-brother Philothes,
at Bologna; and in 1521 the book of Mondino was
again amply illustrated by Jacques Berenger, the
best of the precursors of Vesalius. Mondino wrote
succinctly, treating of parts in their natural order, but
his information was not only succinct, but also meagre;
his style being obscure and barbarous, often incompre-
hensible, his-errors many. His errors were so many
that Matteo Corti-who spoke before Vesalius had
shaken the old paramount authority-said of Mon-
dino "all that is right in him is Galen's, but his own
matter is always wrong." Achillini was pronounced
jejune; Berenger diffuse, but really good. Jacques
Berenger introduced also into his edition, for the
first time, pictures, by which the eye was enabled to
comprehend the details given in the letter-press. The
pictures were rude, nineteen in number, increased in
another publication, two years afterwards, to twenty-
two. These plates deserve to be remembered by ana-
tomists as the first efforts that were made to facilitate
their studies by depicting as well as describing the
human frame. In 1534, Albert Durer depicted the
symmetry of the human body in four books, but rather
as an artist than as an anatomist. The greatest painters,
protected by Julius II. and Leo X., had been allowed
to study practically just so much anatomy as was re-
quired for the perfection of their art. Drawings from
nature of the superficial muscles had been made by
Leonardo da Vinci, Raffaelle, and Michael Angelo.
Representations of the anatomy of deep-seated parts
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
83
immediately preceding the publication of the plates
issued by Vesalius, were edited in 1540 by Walter Her-
mann Ryff; and a more valuable set, in which the
brain is well depicted with its parts figured and named,
was published by Balthasar Becker. None of these
works were at all calculated to disturb the supremacy
of Galen, or to create any revolution in anatomy. But
they were indications of the ripeness of the field for
work like that to which Vesalius devoted himself with
the whole fresh zeal of youth and all the vigour of his
genius.
The income derived by Andreas from three profes-
sorships, and from his practice among the Venetians,
perhaps also the prosperous worldly condition of his
family, enabled him to spend money freely in the
prosecution of his literary work. He took pains to
secure, not only for his description of parts, but also for
the representations of them to be published in his book,
the utmost possible fidelity and beauty. It cost him
not a little to tempt able artists from their studies of
the beautiful to sit and paint, day after day, from a
dissected corpse. Grudging no cost, he succeeded so
well as to obtain for his book anatomical plates not
only incomparably better than any that had been pre-
viously published, but more excellent as works of art
than very many that have appeared since his day.
The chief artist engaged with him in this labour was
Johann Stephan von Calcar, native of Calcar, in the
duchy of Cleves. That artist studied during his best
years in Italy, admiring chiefly the works of Raffaelle
G 2.
84
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
and Titian. He was one of the most able of Titian's
pupils, and so accurately seized his master's style and
manner, that many works from the hands of Calcar,
portraits especially, have been attributed to Titian.
Rubens kept, until his death, a Nativity by Calcar, that
was remarkable for its effects of light; and Calcar is
well known to many in our own day as the painter of
the portraits which accompany Vasari's Lives; Calcar,
then, was the chief artist engaged upon the anatomical
figures published by Vesalius, and so it happened that
those figures were in their own time often attributed to
Titian.
While Andreas was steadily at work upon his book,
author and artists (another artist was Nicholas Stoop)
making simultaneous progress, the first few plates were
sent to the professor's father, who, it may be remembered,
was apothecary to the Emperor. By him they were shown
to Charles V., also to many of his most distinguished
courtiers, and in this way the praise of the young ana
tomist first came to be spoken from imperial lips. In the
year 1539, at the age of twenty-five, Vesalius issued to
the public a few completed plates as an experiment.
Being successful in Italy, they were largely pirated by
German publishers, and many bad copies of these plates
are therefore extant. The Opus Magnum was again
to be preceded by another herald, an epitome of its six
books with illustrations of the choicest kind. In this
epitome the matter was arranged and the plates were
chosen with a direct intent to supply that kind of
information wanted commonly by surgeons. The chief
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
85
}
care of the book was to describe and depict accurately
those parts which are most frequently exposed to
wounds, dislocations, tumours, and such ills of the flesh.
It was to serve also as an index to the greater work.
Although the epitome was finished first, and dedicated
in due form to Philip, son and heir of the great Em-
peror, the actual publication of it was delayed until
some months after the appearance of the full and per-
fect work, the Corporis Humani Fabrica,' first pub-
lished at Basle, in the year 1543, its author being at
that time twenty-eight years old.
With the famous treatise of Vesalius upon the Fabric
of the Human Body' begins the history of anatomy as
it is now studied. In that book the plates are through-
out to the letter-press what the real subject is to the
lecture of the demonstrator, and the references to the
pictures are minute, distinct, and accurate. The
groundwork of true human anatomy is laid, throughout
the book, with an exactness never before approached.
The work is strictly anatomical, but it includes many
important references to the allied subjects of physio-
logy and surgery. The descriptions of parts are given
in well-polished Latin, with the clearness of a man who
is quite master of his subject, and, as he goes on, the
author makes a merciless comparison between the struc-
ture that is really found in man and the description of
it found in Galen. He shows, finally, by cumulative
proof, that Galen taught from a knowledge, not of men,
but of brutes. Because, in showing this, Vesalius proved
errors not only of Galen, but of the whole mass of his
86
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
,
12
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brethren,-who had gone to Galen only for their informa-
tion, and whom he would compel to sit at his own feet
for better knowledge,-he knew well that he was pro-
voking all the brotherhood to war. He therefore made
his onslaught upon error in a fighting mood.
Old men were not willing to tolerate dictation from
a boy of twenty-eight. Professors and physicians who
maintained a reputation for wisdom in their universities
and in the world by propping it upon an intimate
acquaintance with the works of Galen were not dis-
posed to let their prop be struck away; they held to
it tenaciously. Sylvius at Paris was especially indig-
nant at the scientific heresies of his late pupil; he
attacked his book with violence. Vesalius, therefore,
wrote to his old master a letter full of friendly feeling
and respect, inquiring wherein he had been guilty of
error. Sylvius replied to this that he liked his old
pupil very well, and would be glad to call him friend,
but he could do so only on condition that he would
show proper respect to Galen. If he failed in that, he
was to expect no quarter either from Sylvius or any
pupils of his school.
Soon after the publication of his work in 1543, the
name of Andreas Vesalius had become widely known
at Court as that of a man gifted with preternatural
skill in the art of healing. In the year 1516 Andreas
went from Venice, then his home, in company with
the Venetian ambassador, to Regensburg, where he
was to exercise his skill upon the Emperor, and from
that date he was ranked among the Emperor's physi-
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
87
cians. On his way to Regensburg, he stopped for a
short time at Basle, and there gave a few demonstra-
tions from a skeleton prepared by himself, which, upon
leaving, he presented to the University. The skeleton
was hung up in the lecture-hall with an inscription
under it commemorating the event, and it is still one
of the curiosities of Basle.
From the Emperor, Vesalius was sent in the same
year to attend one of his nobles. Afterwards at Ratis-
bon he wrote and published (still in 1546) one of his
works, a long letter to Joachim Roelants, on the use of
China-root (one of the sarsaparillas). In that work,
while he professed to treat of the medicine by which the
Emperor's health had been restored, he entered largely
into a vindication of his teaching against all assailants,
and a fresh exposition of the fact that Galen had dis-
sected brutes alone. The letter, of which the greater part
was devoted to the business of self-assertion, contains
much autobiographic matter, and is the source from
which many of the preceding details have been drawn.
Returning then to Italy-his age being thirty-two—
Andreas again taught and dissected publicy at Bologna,
Padua, and Pisa. His object was to battle against
opposition from the orthodox. With few exceptions all
the young men—all the next generation of physicians
-declared themselves enthusiastically to be of the
party of Vesalius. The old scholars and practitioners
declared that innovator to be a mere infidel in anatomy,
teaching a mass of errors. Vesalius, to put down these
people, wrote always on the day before each of his
88
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
demonstrations a public notice that it would take place,
and that all men who decried his errors were invited to
attend to make their own dissections from his subject,
and confound him openly. Not a man ventured to
accept the challenge, and in this way the opposition
to Vesalius on the part of his immediate neighbours was
held very much in check.
But from the old-fashioned teachers of the young in
other towns-especially from Sylvius in Paris--the
outcry against the heretic who had endeavoured to
shake faith in the word of Galen was incessant. In the
year 1551 Sylvius broke out in print; his wrath was a
long madness, and in his published lucubration the
display of it runs to an excess that is pitiable. He
accuses his old pupil, whom, by way of a dull, rude joke,
he everywhere calls Vesanus, as a monster of ignorance,
arrogance, and ingratitude-a man who poisoned Europe
by the breath of his impiety, and who clouded knowledge
by the infinitude of all his blunders. The animosity of
Sylvius had become bitterly personal, and he even went
so far as to accuse Andreas to the Emperor, and to seek
an ally in one of the imperial physicians, Cornelius
Barsdrop, whom he endeavoured to bribe, not with
money but with bones, namely, the skeleton of a child.
All this hatred was not spent in vain. Sylvius was
called upon, as a credible witness, to substantiate his
charges, by exhibiting the errors of Vesalius from his
own dissection of the subject. He was unable to do so.
The human body was perverse, and followed the descrip-
tions of the heretic; but so completely was belief in
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
89
Galen the religion of the old physicians, that Sylvius
next declared the men of his own time to be constructed
somewhat differently from the men who had lived so
many centuries before. The ancients, at any rate, it
was quite certain that Galen had dissected and described
infallibly. Rather let him believe that God's work
had been altered than that Galen had confounded men
with monkeys.
The outcry raised against him by so many grave
authorities did, in effect, create in many minds a vague
dread of Vesalius and his writings. They fell into bad
odour at Court; he performed wonderful cures, but
when so much testimony went to show that the young
man's writing was arrogant and impious, it was felt that
it must be wrong to countenance his books. When,
therefore, for the sake of his reputed skill as a prac-
titioner of medicine, Vesalius was called to reside per-
manently at Madrid, the summons was attended with
so many circumstances showing the success of those
who clamoured at his writings, that in a fit of proud
indignation he spent one unlucky hour in burning all
his manuscripts. Thus he destroyed a huge volume of
annotations upon Galen; a whole book of Medical
Formulæ; many original notes upon drugs; the copy
of Galen from which he lectured, covered with marginal
notes of new observations that had occurred to him while
demonstrating; and the paraphrase of the books of
Rhases, in which the knowledge of the Arabians was
collated with that of the Greeks and others.
produce of the labour of many years was thus destroyed
The
90
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
in a short fit of passion. While the ashes of his manu-
scripts were yet before him, Andreas repented of his
deed.
He lived no more for science. As a Court Physician
at Madrid it was of no use for Vesalius to teach anatomy
to the church from bodies robbed out of the conse-
crated ground. He lived upon his reputation, and
indulged in all the ease compatible with the stiff life of
a Spanish courtier. There was a second (augmented)
edition of his Fabric of the Human Body,' published
at Basle in 1555; but it was left for scholars and phy-
sicians to fight out among themselves the question of
its merits. Vesalius was dead to controversy and to
study, but alive to gain and pleasure.
<
The reputation he enjoyed as a physician was un-
bounded. One instance of his wonderful sagacity is an
instructive example of the growth of knowledge among
men of the lancet. There is now scarcely one hospital
pupil in his third year who would not be ashamed to
fail in the diagnosis of an aneurismal tumour. Such a
tumour on a patient-a big and wonderful tumour on
the loins-puzzled two famous imperial physicians,
Adolf Oceone and Achilles Piriminus. Vesalius being
called into consultation, sai!: "There is a blood-vessel
dilated; that tumour is full of blood." They were sur-
prised at so strange an opinion; but the man died, the
tumour was opened, blood was actually found in it, and
all were in a rapture of astonishment.
Another case was of a more startling kind, though
not so creditable to the wit of the physician. In 1548
}
"
}
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
91
Maximilian d'Egmont, Count of Buren, a favourite
general, was ill at Brussels. He had a disease of the
heart, and Vesalius being called in not only said that
he would die, but undertook also to predict the day and
hour of death. In those days of astrology and super-
stition the habit of desiring and of hazarding predictions
was extremely common. Vesalius had seldom risked
his reputation by the use of them; but this one (as I
hope he did not feel that it would do) brought its own
fulfilment. The dread anticipation occupied the Count's
mind. On the appointed day he called his relatives and
friends together to a feast, distributed gifts, declared
his last wishes, took formal leave of all, waited with
strong suppressed emotion for the appointed hour of
death, and at the hour predicted actually died.
After the abdication of Charles V., Vesalius remained
attached to the Court of Philip II. Don Carlos, Philip's
son, in chasing a girl of the palace who fled from him,
fell down a flight of stairs and so received a very severe
blow on his head. There was great swelling and the
Prince lay hopelessly insensible until Vesalius, fetched
from a distance, cut into the scalp and relieved his
patient promptly.
Brother physicians, however, said even at Court that
Vesalius understood only superficial injuries, and could
not cure internal disease. Vesalius replied easily that
the world outside the profession had a different opinion,
and that he had no reason to envy any doctor in the
world the income he could make out of his skill. When
Henry II. of France was lying mortally sick of his lance-
92
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
wound, it was Vesalius whom Philip of Spain sent to
save him from the clutch of death. But it was a long
way from Madrid, and death was travelling much faster
than the doctor.
The controversy concerning the infallibility of Galen
was, in the meantime, raging with considerable violence.
Renatus Henerus, a young man studying at Paris under
Sylvius, felt annoyed at the incessant outcry against
Vesalius with which that professor was continually
worrying his classes. He heard also that many sound
and mature men disapproved of what, to his fresh heart,
appeared very much like the bitterness of bigotry.
Fuchs at Tübingen, Massa at Venice, and Rondolet at
Montpellier, first-rate authorities, taught already without
scruple many things that contradicted Galen. Henerus,
finding this to be the case, determined on his own part
to speak out on behalf of the too-much abused reformer.
He published, therefore, at Venice, in 1554, an apology
for Vesalius, in which he spoke of Sylvius always with
the respect due from a pupil to his teacher, and declared
that he had never seen the man whose reputation he
defended. Among other attacks upon the great anato-
mist was one published in 1562 by Francisco Puteo
of Vercelli; but at that time Vesalius had shaken off
a little of his lethargy, being apparently impressed with
the belief that his fame was not secure. There ap-
peared, therefore, a sharp reply to Puteo from a writer
calling himself Gabriel Cuneus. That writer Jerome
Cardan, his contemporary and friend, with the best
opportunities of knowing the truth, identifies with
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
93
Andreas Vesalius himself. Internal evidence corrobo-
rates the statement of Cardan.
The fears of Vesalius concerning his good fame in
the world of science had been excited in the year 1561,
by the appearance of the 'Anatomical Observations' of
Falloppio. Giovanni Bonacci, whose pseudonym was
Gabriel Falloppio, had been one of his pupils, and having
mastered all the knowledge of his chief, had continued,
with great skill and industry, to push forward the know-
ledge of anatomy. While the scalpel of Vesalius was
rusting, Falloppio was making new researches; and when,
in the year 1561, he published the results of his labours,
after thirteen years of public teaching in Ferrara, and
after having presided for eight years over an anatomical
school, he was, of course, able to enlarge the borders of
the science. With a temper that more suited the tone
of feeling in a courtier than in a scholar, Vesalius
regarded the advanced knowledge of his pupil as an
infringement of his rights. Though he had been twenty
years away from work as an anatomist, and had at that
time in Madrid no opportunity of testing the discoveries
of Falloppio by actual dissection, he wrote hastily an
angry, wrong-headed reply, an 'Examination of the
Observations of Falloppio,' in which he decried the
friend who made improvements on himself, as he had
been himself decried for his improvements upon Galen.
The manuscript of this work, finished at the end of
December, in the year 1561, Andreas committed to the
care of Paolo Tiepolo, of Venice, orator to the King
of Spain, who was to give it to Falloppio. War, how-
94
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
ever, so far obstructed travelling, that the orator did
not reach Padua until after the death of Falloppio; he
then very wisely retained and kept to himself all
knowledge of the MS. Vesalius soon afterwards, on his
way to Jerusalem, took possession of his work and
caused it to be published without more delay. It ap-
peared, therefore, at Venice in the year 1564.
The journey to Jerusalem, on which Vesalius set out
from Madrid when in the full noon of his prosperity, is
thus accounted for in a letter from Hubert Languet,
Sir Philip Sidney's old Huguenot friend, to Caspar
Teucher:-" Vesalius, believing a young Spanish noble-
man, whom he had attended, to be dead, obtained from
his parents leave to open him, for the sake of inquiring
into the real cause of his illness, which he had not
rightly comprehended. This was granted; but he had
no sooner made a cut into the body than he perceived
symptoms of life, and, opening the breast, saw the heart
beat. The parents coming afterwards to know of this,
were not satisfied with prosecuting him for murder, but
accused him of impiety to the Inquisition, in the hope
that he would be punished with greater rigour by the
judges of that tribunal than by those of the common
law. But the King of Spain interfered and saved him,
on condition, however, that by way of atonement he
should make a pilgrimage to the Holy Land."
Boerhaave and Albinus, in the notice of Vesalius
prefixed to their edition of his works, observe that the
heart cannot well beat with life after so much dissection
of the human frame as is necessary to expose it to the
CH
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
95
eye. It has been known, however, for centuries, that
the irritability of muscles continues after death, differing
in different parts, and may be excited mechanically by
slight stimulus. The ventricles of the heart lose the
contractile power within fifty minutes after death; but
in the auricles it remains for hours-longer, indeed,
than in any other muscle. Such facts had been observed
even by Galen, who, perceiving that in the right auricle
the power of contracting under stimulus remained
longer than in any other portion of the body, described
that part as the ultimum moriens-the last to die. In-
voluntary contraction of this kind may have helped in
the ruin of Vesalius, or perhaps the priests, who had
long watched their opportunity, took care to make the
most of a mechanical gurgling in the body, or a chance
movement occasioned by some shaking of the table,
and contrived at last so to fix with a fatal weight the
accusation of impiety upon the bold man who had so
long set them at defiance.
Quitting Madrid for Venice, Andreas set out upon
the next stage of his journey, from Venice to Cyprus, in
company with Giacomo Malatesta di Rimini, General of
the Venetian army. From Cyprus he went on to Jeru-
salem, and was returning, not to Madrid, but to the
labours of his youth as a Professor at Padua, being
invited by the Venetian Senate to occupy the Chair of
Physic in that University, vacant by the death of Fal-
loppio, when he was shipwrecked in the neighbourhood
of Zante. Cast ashore upon that island, there he perished
miserably, of hunger and grief, on the 15th of October
96
ANDREAS VESALIUS.
of the year 1564, before he had quite reached the age
of fifty. His body was found some days afterwards, in
a miserable hut, by a travelling goldsmith, who recog-
nised in its starved outlines the features of the renowned
Andreas Vesalius.
At the goldsmith's cost, therefore, the shipwrecked
man was buried among strangers. After his death a
great work on surgery appeared, in seven books, signed
with his name, and commonly included among his
writings. There is reason, however, to believe that his
name was stolen to give value to the book, which was
compiled and published by a Venetian, Prosper Boga-
rucci, a literary crow, who fed himself upon the dead
man's reputation.
CONRAD GESNER.
WHAT I shall relate here of the life of Conrad Gesner,
of Zurich, will be drawn chiefly from a memoir pub-
lished very soon after his death, and written by a brother
student and companion, Josiah Simler. The memoir is
simple and unaffected: it contains no syllable of pane-
gyric, but leaves the facts of Gesner's life to speak in´
their own language to the hearts of scholars. It is
dedicated to Caspar Wolff and George Kellner; two other
friends of Gesner, one of whom, Wolff, succeeded to the
naturalist's books and papers. Josiah Simler, in the
dedication, speaks with true Swiss simplicity, and with a
graceful tenderness as well, about his little record of
their old companion : "It seemed to me that I owed
this duty to a most dear friend, whom while he lived I
greatly loved and sought, and by whom I felt my love
to be returned."
Conrad Gesner, born at Zurich in the year 1516, was
the son of a worker in hides. His father's Christian
name was Ursus, and his mother's Barbara; but they
were in name only barbarous or bearish. They were
poor, for they had many children; but they lived
honestly, and behaved as members of a civilised Swiss
town. Conrad was sent by them, while very young,
VOL. II.
H
98
CONRAD GESNER.
to the town school, where he studied the rudiments of
Greek and Latin, under very competent teachers,
namely, Thomas Plattner, who removed afterwards to
Basle, Theodore Buchman, Oswald Geishäuser, and
Peter Rauchfuss. Buchman expounded Scripture in
Zurich; Geishäuser afterwards had charge of the church
in Basle; Rauchfuss excelled in Greek, and became.
Greek Professor in the then very celebrated school of
Strasburg.
Gesner, even from the tenderest years of his child-
hood, showed a studious character, and a great power of
retaining knowledge. His father was too poor to pay
on his account for more than the first years of wholesome
necessary education. Happily, a teacher in the college,
John Jacob Ammian, Professor of Latin and Oratory,
saw in Conrad so much promise for the future, that he
took the young scholar into his house and instructed
him gratuitously for three years, believing, with a noble
patriotism, that whatever labour he might spend upon
the boy would be repaid in a few years to Zurich.
Conrad Gesner thus became enabled to attend, not only
the lectures of Ammian upon Latin and oratory, but
also those of the Professor of Greek, Rodolf Collin, a
peasant's son, who was interpreting Plutarch. While
the youth was in this way fully occupied, and had
delivered up his whole mind to dialectics, oratory, and
Greek, civil war had broken out, and his father, the
leather-seller, being among those who went out to fight,
was not among those who came home again. He was
killed in the battle of Zug, in the year 1531.
CONRAD GESNER.
99
Conrad was then fifteen years old, and lay in his
mother's house seriously ill. On his recovery it became
necessary that he should not remain a burden on the
widow, for she had other children to support, with
means that had become more contracted since her hus-
band's death. The student-son went, therefore, to Stras-
burg, and attached himself for some months to the
service of a celebrated Lutheran, Wolfgang Fabricius
Capito. Possibly his old master, Rauchfuss, had helped
him to this situation, in which he enlarged his oppor-
tunities of study, and acquired a fair knowledge of
Hebrew—a language of which he already had picked
up the rudiments at home.
Meanwhile, the generous John Jacob Ammian and
his other learned friends in Zurich had not forgotten
the young Conrad Gesner. After a brief stay in Stras-
burg, Conrad returned to his native town, to be sent
out, with a stipend, by the scholastic senate of Zurich,
on an educational mission into France. Johann Fricius
went with him-a fellow-student, bound to him in those
days by parity of disposition and community of study,
who through manhood remained afterwards one of his
warmest friends. They went to Bourges, where Gesner,
then only sixteen years old, acted for twelve months as
a teacher, communicating what he knew to others, and
in all spare time reading for himself, incessantly, Latin
and Greek, to perfect his acquaintance with those lan-
guages. Having spent a year in this way, Conrad went
to Paris, being attracted thither by the University. In
Paris he found many famous men, and listened to much
100
CONRAD GESNER.
teaching; but he was accustomed to say afterwards that
he learned little at Paris, for want of counsel in the
regulation of his studies. Gesner stands pre-eminent
among all scholars as a wonderful economist of time.
It is doubtful whether in his whole life, from the first
school-days to the moment of death, he suffered as many
hours and minutes as would make, when summed up,
one day to be wasted. And even though his industry
was so incessant, it would still be manifestly impossible
that he could have left behind, after a short life, such
works as now remain to us, unless he had not only
worked incessantly, but understood most thoroughly the
art of working at all times in the right way. This art,
in the warm days of his youth, Gesner had not acquired.
At Paris, he used to say, he had no regularity in study.
He revelled luxuriously (he was seventeen years old)
among the Greeks and Latins, equally ready to delight
in poets, orators, historians, physicians, or philologists.
In his youthful audacity he thought that his mind had
capacity to hold them all, and this habit of gluttonous
reading weakened his mind, he said, by leading him
into the vice of skipping. He read over his books, not
through them. Readers of-to-day will not judge sternly
this one blot upon the early life of Conrad Gesner.
The industry of Gesner, however, was not confined
wholly to the world of books; even in those days his
hours of travel and of out-door exercise were periods of
active study. There was a pure-hearted Swiss pastor,
Johann Fricius by name, who devoted all his leisure to
botanical pursuits; this pastor, who was Conrad's uncle,
Miou
CONRAD GESNER.
101
conceived early a great affection for his clever nephew,
and had delighted to take the child with him among
the mountains, on plant-gathering excursions. Then
he would expound as he could to his apt scholar the
mysteries of nature, and watch the glow of the boy's
pleasure in them. The impression made on Gesner's
fresh heart by association with the herb-loving pastor,
Fricius, strengthened with time; and herborising never
ceased throughout his after life to be the scholar's chief
delight. On the way to Bourges, therefore, at Bourges,
on the way from Bourges to Paris, around Paris, and
along the homeward road, Gesner diligently spent his
out-door time in the collection of every plant new to
his eyes, and in comparing what he found, whenever it
was possible, with the descriptions of plants given by
Dioscorides and other ancient authors. I wish to believe
that Johann Fricius, who was young Gesner's companion
and bosom friend in that journey through part of France,
and afterwards in the whole journey through life, who
was bound to him by similarity of tastes, and at whose
side Conrad afterwards was buried by his fellow-citizens,
must have been a son of the good pastor, Johann Fricius.
It is very natural to think that in the dwelling of the
pastor, or while trotting about him upon the mountains,
Gesner and Fricius acquired those common tastes by
which they were to the last united.
From Paris Gesner returned to Strasburg, in which
town he had made friends from whom he hoped to get
increase of knowledge. Being summoned back to Zurich
by the scholastic senate, in whose service he was engaged,
102
CONRAD GESNER.
the youth, who was not then quite twenty years old,
earned his stipend as a teacher in the school wherein
he had himself received the rudiments of classical in-
struction. At this period, says Josiah Simler, evidently
concerned about what he thought a very weak point in
the young scholar's character-nescio quo consilio, uxorem
tempestivius duxit. One of the prevailing features in
the life of Conrad Gesner, scarcely second to his mar-
vellous assiduity in study, was his gentleness of heart,
his spirit of kindly courtesy, the suavity of temper for
which men of letters ought to be, but are not at all
times, distinguished. He was always apt at loving, and
though he was at no time guilty of any worldly folly or
excess, he did not cumber his mind much with worldly
wisdom. Therefore Gesner married a true-hearted girl
when he was not quite twenty years of age, and had no
wealth beyond the stipend of assistant-teacher and the
available resources of a very well-filled head.
In school, the young husband taught to the boys rudi-
ments of Greek and Latin grammar. At home he
worked at the books of the physicians. Still he prose-
cuted his researches in the fields, allying botany readily
enough to a course of medical reading, since in that
day plants were studied chiefly with reference to any
use that they might have as remedies. Gesner proposed
to himself the attainment of the dignity of a physician,
which if it did not-in Zurich, at any rate-obtain for
him much money as a healer of disease, would give him
standing in the learned world, and enable him to rise,
from the stool of a teacher of rudiments, to the chair of
CONRAD GESNER.
103
a professor in his native town. Still receiving from the
scholastic senate the same stipend paid to him at home,
Gesner was sent to Basle, where he continued his study
of medicine, and was assiduous in labour for a perfect.
acquirement of the Greek language, in which the best
medical learning of the ancients-whose science the
moderns followed carefully in Gesner's days-was
written.
Designing at the same time to increase and strengthen
his familiarity with Greek, and to provide, if possible,
increased means in support of the little home he had
erected, Gesner at this period of his life undertook to
revise and enlarge a Greek and Latin lexicon which had
been already issued, very badly done, by persons who
did not put their names upon the title page. Over this
task the young student took much pains, and he de-
livered to the printer not only the old lexicon, with its
mistakes corrected, but a large body of additions drawn
from the Greek Thesaurus of Guarini, otherwise
Varinus, of Favera near Camerino. The printer, how-
ever, without Gesner's knowledge, used only a small
part of those additions, reserving, probably, the rest to
give increased attraction to another issue. Soon after-
wards, by the printer's death, whatever plan he had was
superseded; but Gesner's papers, over which the student
had spent many days of toil, could never be recovered.
Afterwards Gesner was employed three or four times by
Henry Peter, bookseller, of Basle, in the further amend-
ment and increase of this dictionary, with the addition of
authorities from his own reading.
104
CONRAD GESNER.
When he had spent about a year at Basle, and
become exceedingly well versed in Greek, the senate of
Berne having founded a new university at Lausanne,
and offered liberal stipends for professors, Gesner ob-
tained a professorship, and went to Lausanne. There
he remained for three years as professor of Greek,
and acquired the warm friendship of Peter Viret, and
Beatus Comes, minister of the church, of Himbert, the
professor of Hebrew, and Johann Rebitt, who succeeded
Gesner in his chair. The friendship of these men
abided with him to the end of his career. Being
thoroughly familiar with the subject of his public
teaching, Gesner required to spend no time in prepara-
tion for his duties in the university, he had therefore
a good deal of leisure during those three years at
Lausanne, which he was entitled to fill up with his
own pursuits. He studied medicine still, and as he had
edited lexicons while getting up his Greek, so now he
issued a few medical books, which were in part original,
in part epitomes and compilations, and in part trans-
lations from the Greek physicians. Pursuing still,
while at Lausanne, his botanical studies, he published
also a ‘Catalogue of Plants,' in the alphabetical order
of their Latin names; their names in Greek, German,
and French being in each case added. In the com-
pilation of this Catalogue, he followed Jean de la
Ruelle, Leonard Fuchs, and Jerome Böck (Hieronymus
Tragus); not, however, without occasionally differing
from their statements, or adding new observations that
belonged entirely to himself. During the same period,
CONRAD GESNER.
105
Gesner published also a short History of Plants.' In
this history, the descriptions of plants were drawn from
Dioscorides, the omissions of Dioscorides being supplied
from Theophrastus, Pliny, or more modern Greeks;
the properties were added in paragraphs condensed
from Paulus Ægineta, Galen, or Ælian. During this
period of study at Lausanne, Gesner also published a
book on the 'Preparation and Selection of Simple
Medicaments.' During the same period he published
also a compendium of Galen's book upon the compo-
sition of medicaments, arranged according to genera,
and according to the parts of the body upon which
their healing virtue operated, beginning at the head
and ending at the heel, with a collection of precepts.
He issued during these three years other books also,
containing the essence of his voluminous readings
among Greek physicians, and also some fruits of his
study of Greek for its own sake-volumes becoming
his position as a Greek professor, such as an 'Essay on
the Wanderings of Ulysses,' and what Homer meant to
represent by them. As Gesner in the course of a short
life issued seventy-two works from the press, besides
leaving at his death eighteen that were unfinished but
in progress, it is obviously impossible to give in a few
pages even a brief account of all his writings. In this
notice of his life it must suffice, therefore, to name
occasionally a few minor works, by way of indicating
the direction taken by his industry, and to attempt a
description only of the most important products of his
labour.
106
CONRAD GESNER.
After three years spent at Lausanne, publicly as a
professor of Greek, privately as a student of medicine,
Conrad Gesner went-botanizing, of course, by the way
—to Montpellier, of which place the medical school was
famous throughout France. His design in going to
Montpellier was to obtain admission as a resident for
some months in the house of any distinguished phy-
sician, for he believed that by watching the domestic
life and daily practice of such a man, by familiar speech
with him, and in the daily intercourse of friendship, he
might perfect his knowledge in a short time, more
thoroughly than by attendance at the public lectures.
Public teaching demonstrated, for the most part, only
those doctrines of the ancients which Gesner in his own
house had already mastered. At Montpellier, however,
he found none of the more eminent physicians able to
receive him as a house pupil; he therefore stayed but a
short time in attendance on the lectures of the cele-
brated men through whom Montpellier was famous, and
then returned to Switzerland, prepared to take his
medical degree. At Basle, having heard the teaching
of the principal physicians, being instructed chiefly by
Albane Thorer and Sebastian Singeler, he held the
usual disputations, was formally admitted to the dignity
of doctor, and withdrew to settle in his native town.
He was then twenty-five years old.
The first half of Gesner's life was then completed, for
he died before he reached the age of fifty. He had
spent twenty-five years in the incessant toil of prepara-
tion for a worthy place among his fellow-townsmen; he
CONRAD GESNER.
107
then settled in Zurich, and began amply to fulfil the
expectations of his old friend Ammian, and of the scho-
lastic senate of the town. In a very short time he
received the appointment of Professor of Philosophy,
which he retained until his death, when his friends
Caspar Wolff and George Kellner succeeded him. At
the same time he practised medicine, and published
from time to time the fruits, as will be seen presently,
of an almost incredible amount of study. During the
twenty-four years of his mature life in Zurich, Gesner's
wife was always his companion. He had no children of
his own, but in his later years a sister with her children
became dependent upon his ungrudging aid, and pro-
bably formed part of his domestic circle.
Conrad Gesner had a very great pleasure in the
study of languages; he not only understood many, and
read the books of many nations, but he studied lan-
guage for its own sake, and, as usual, testified the
thoroughness of his investigations by the books to
which they led. Already, at the age of twenty-five, he
was acquainted intimately with half-a-dozen tongues,
Hebrew, Greek, Latin, German, Italian, and French,
and he had been only three years settled in Zurich
when he published his first great work, the Universal
Dictionary,' a piece of bibliography which it is very
hard to believe the work of a man only twenty-nine
years old. It is an alphabetical catalogue-wonderfully
full — of authors famous or obscure, ancient or mo-
dern, with a statement of what they had written and
the argument of their books, drawn in very many cases
108
CONRAD GESNER.
from the prefaces inserted in the books themselves.
This Dictionary was first published in the year 1545.
Three years afterwards it was followed by a companion
volume, entitled 'Nineteen Books of the Pandects.' It
contains the matter of the Dictionary grouped into
subjects. Thus, one book contains an alphabetical
catalogue of existing works on grammar and philo-
logy, another contains the bibliography of dialectics,
rhetoric, astrology, geography, or jurisprudence, and so
forth.
The twentieth book, containing authors who had
written upon medicine, was omitted as imperfect;
but in the following year the twenty-first book of the
Pandects was issued separately, containing the writers
upon Christian theology. As an index to authors who
wrote before the year 1545, Gesner's 'Universal Dic-
tionary' and 'Pandects' remain to this day very
valuable.
These volumes were the result of immense study,
though it will presently be seen that they were trifles
in comparison with the whole body of Gesner's work.
During the toil of labours as a naturalist in the study
and the field, Gesner continued to amuse himself with
philological researches, and in order to complete our
view of his industry in this direction, I may mention
here the publication, in the year 1555, when he was
thirty-nine years old, of his 'Mithridates,' on different
languages, ancient and modern. To German, his own
language, he devoted more especial study. When, in
his publications as a naturalist, he described birds,
CONRAD GESNER.
109
beasts, or fishes hitherto unknown, or known only to
the learned by the names of science, he invented names
for them adapted to the genius of his mother tongue,
and so endeavoured to enable all his countrymen to
talk familiarly about them. If all scientific men who
have lived since his day had followed his example, it
would not be so difficult as it now is to diffuse a taste
for science. But what ordinary man will dare to seek
an exact knowledge of science when there is an army of
barbarous terms defending every approach to it. How-
ever much a man may love plants, will he study them
minutely when they are to be wedged into his memory
under such names as escholzia, krynitskia, gleditschia ?
Gesner, then, so far as his own study went, endeavoured
to give to every object in nature, that was not already
supplied with one, a household name in his own lan-
guage. He also published a list of German proper
names that had been made out and sent to him by some
curious friend, appending his own annotations and dis-
cussions on their etymology; and he was still busily
studying German etymologies (among a great number
of other things) when death bade him put his books
aside. Greek Gesner worked at as the language in
which all the best materials of study were contained.
For this reason it was among languages, next to Ger-
man, the subject of his most assiduous attention, and
he became little less familiar with it than with the
tongue in which his wife addressed him. He studied
with an intense thoroughness not only the Greek phy-
sicians and philosophers, but also the grammarians,
110
CONRAD GESNER.
theologians, orators, and poets. Whenever in his read-
ing he encountered a new fact, either adding to his
knowledge in philosophy or illustrating in some apt
way a nice point in the structure of the language, it
was retained in his mind, and always afterwards was to
be found when wanted. Enough has been already said
to make it obvious that Gesner was aided in his studies
by an extraordinary memory. The student, it should
be said, not only read Greek but wrote Greek, his
lightest relaxation was the composition of Greek idyls,
and he would write Greek letters to a learned friend,
breaking occasionally out of prose into facile iambics.
He translated Greek authors, emended the text of
Aristotle, Theophrastus, Dioscorides, Oppian, and others.
He also spoke fluently in Greek, which had become a
second mother tongue to him, and in that language
expounded Greek philosophy occasionally to the more
advanced students of his class.
Gesner studied in all branches of the philosophy
known to his own time, but chiefly physics, as the
branch most nearly allied to medicine. Physics and
ethics were the subjects of his professorial teaching
during the twenty-four years of his mature life at
Zurich. Sometimes he taught directly from the Nico-
machean ethics and the physics of Aristotle, but more
frequently he suited his prelections to the capacity of
younger hearers, and made use in his class of the com-
pendiums of Melanchthon (not to say Schwartzerde),
Schegke, Wildenberg, Sebastian Fuchs, and others.
The natural objects in the study of which Gesner felt
CONRAD GESNER.
111
the greatest interest were plants, animals, and metals;
these he regarded as objects offering more distinct
ground for inquiry than such intangible matters as
meteors, &c., and he believed also that from a study of
these, useful knowledge could more readily be drawn
for the advantage of medicine and the arts of life. In
studying these subjects with a direct reference to their
practical importance, it was Gesner's determination to
collect, and if possible discover, facts, but not to theo-
rise. By far the greatest of his literary works was the
"History of Animals,' and he undertook to devote his
chief labour rather to animals than to plants, because of
plants many had written; and on metals, a work had
been published in his own time by George Bauer: con-
cerning animals, however, little had been said.
Gesner's History of Animals' was commenced very
soon after his final settlement in Zurich, and the first
book was published in the year 1549, Gesner then being
thirty-three years old. For the preparation of this
history Gesner undertook a course of reading in all
previous authors who had touched upon his subject in
any way, compared them, and selected whatever he
thought best from Greeks, Latins, and barbarians, an-
cients and moderns, writers famous and obscure. He
undertook also what journeys he could afford in search
of animals and plants. He visited some parts of Italy,
and spent a month in Venice, for the purpose of ex-
amining and sketching fishes of the Mediterranean.
He visited also various parts of Germany, and was about
to descend the Rhine to the ocean, still for the purpose
112
CONRAD GESNER.
of procuring and studying different kinds of fish, when
war broke out over Germany, and, obedient to the
entreaty of his friends, he returned to Zurich. These
were holiday excursions, and it rarely happened that
he failed to make a yearly tour among the Alps of
Switzerland in prosecution of his never-intermitted
search after new species of plants.
He was too poor, however, to spend much money in
travel, while he was, at the same time, bound to Zurich
during a great part of the year by his professorship. It
was his practice, therefore, to obtain compensation for
the limited range spread before his own eyes by a full
use of the eyes of other men who were at home—or
who had travelled-in far countries. He established
friendships with some among the learned in all parts of
Europe; from such correspondents he received pictures
of foreign animals, their local names, and other details.
His house was open to all strangers, and the information
published by contemporary writers-as, for example,
that furnished by Bellon and Rondolet on water animals
was freely used, with full acknowledgment of every
intellectual obligation. No man of letters ever was
more generous in recognition of the claims of others,
more liberal in praise of fellow-labourers, more cour-
teous in dissent from their opinions. In his 'History
of Animals' every man from whom he received help,
whether in private correspondence or through public
writing, has been named; and Gesner's liberality of
spirit was rewarded by the full respect of the best men
among the learned of his time. Bellon and Rondolet,
CONRAD GESNER.
113
while rivalling each other, both honoured and helped
Conrad Gesner.
6
The History of Animals' was planned in six books,
of which four were completed. They treat-the first of
viviparous and the second of oviparous quadrupeds, the
third of birds, the fourth of fishes and aquatile animals.
The fifth book was to have contained the history of
serpents, and the sixth the history of insects. Copious
materials and a large number of pictures had been col-
lected for use under each of these heads, but they had
not been arranged, nor had the writing of either volume
been commenced when Gesner died. Each of the four
published books is a considerable folio, containing a
dense mass of print on every page. On a cursory in-
spection of the volumes, we observe, first, the very
carefully drawn pictures, in which errors of the wood-
cutter, where they occur, are conscientiously pointed
out, and among which it now and then occurs, as in the
case of the giraffe, that a second and better sketch of
some depicted animal having been procured from a
trustworthy correspondent, it has been inserted in a
later sheet as a correction. Every animal known to
authors being included in the plan of Gesner's history,
one cannot fail to be struck by the appearance, in a
history of animals, of pictures of the Sphinx, of a ridi-
culously ugly "American monster," with a human face,
of the unicorn, and of some other curiosities. They are,
however, not gravely introduced as animals that have
been seen, but as animals that have been described in
fable or elsewhere, the precise authority for them being
VOL. II.
I
114
CONRAD GESNER.
at all times stated, not, of course, without a degree of
occasional credulity that was reasonable faith to a
scholar in the sixteenth century. It is also evident,
at a first glance, that in this History of Animals' each
separate animal is treated with a thoroughness of detail
not common, or, indeed, likely often to be useful in our
own day. Many of the single articles, reprinted in
modern type, would stand by themselves as works in
one volume or more. The single article upon the horse
would fill, I believe, two rather thick octavo volumes.
There is one quadruped, Gesner himself says, of which
his account is drawn from 250 authors.
When we look more closely into the work, we find
that the animals in each volume are arranged mainly
in alphabetical order. Now and then, as in the case
of some animals allied to the ox, in defiance of the
alphabet, animals very much of the same kind have
been described in association with each other; but, on
the whole, the principle of arrangement is that of a
dictionary. Upon this subject Gesner modestly and
wisely said that he belonged rather to the gramma-
rians than to the philosophers, of whom the number
was extremely small; that, in the then existing state
of knowledge, he could not undertake to make an accu-
rate arrangement of the animal world, that he had
sipmly endeavoured to bring together, in the same
work, all that was known in his time concerning every
animal, and so to produce a book of reference which
would be most useful to future students if he arranged
his subjects alphabetically. In volumes containing
CONRAD GESNER.
115
figures of animals, published separately, as companions
to the 'History' (in which also figures were contained),
the pictures were, however, classed according to the
ideas held in Gesner's time concerning genera and
species.
In setting down the information he collected, Gesner
divided the description of each animal into eight parts,
headed by the first eight letters of the alphabet. Under
letter A he wrote the name given to the animal by
different nations, that is to say, its name, where it
had any, in Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldee, Persian,
Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, German, Eng-
lish, and Flemish. When there was none already
existing, he invented a vernacular name, or a suitable
word for the naming of the animal in Greek or Latin.
Under letter B, Gesner, in the next place, detailed in
what region the animal was found, and what difference
occurred in the appearance of the same animal, or what
difference of species there might be corresponding
to the difference between the countries it inhabited.
Under the same head Gesner described the animal
with very great minuteness, always proceeding from
the whole to its simple parts, and then to the com-
pound parts. Thus having described the body gene-
rally, its size, shape, colour, &c., he would proceed to
a description of the skin, hair, blood, fat, bones, veins,
nerves, &c., those being regarded as the simple parts ;
from them he would pass on to a detailed description of
the eyes, ears, nose, head, horns, brain, liver, heart,
&c., &c., down to feet and nails, which were made up
I 2
116
CONRAD GESNER.
of the simple and entitled compound parts. Included
in this description of the parts of animals was an ex-
planation of those "points" which should determine
choice in the case of all animals that had been made
in any way subservient to the use of man.
The next division of the information given on the
subject of each animal, marked always by the letter
C, detailed the natural actions of its body, its voice,
senses, food, drink, sleep, dreams, excrements, and se-
cretions, movements, as running, flying, swimming, &c.,
&c. Under this division were grouped all the signs of
health; and rules for the preservation of health were
collected in the case of all animals that had been used
by man. Under the same letter was described all that
related to the subject of reproduction, from the first
desire of the parents on to the final rearing of their
young. All that was known of the diseases which
each animal was subject to, formed then the last clause
of information under letter C, the history of each
disease being narrated with the treatment proper for
it. Under the letter D, Gesner then described the
affections, habits, and instincts of each animal, so far
as they had been observed. He described, also, the
behaviour of an animal towards others of its own kind,
towards its young, towards man; its likes and dislikes,
its tastes or distastes in relation with other animals, or
with inanimate objects. Under the next letter, exami-
nation was made of the use of the animal to man, ex-
cept in the two important characters of food and medi-
cine. This division included an account of the methods
CONRAD GESNER,
117
of hunting some animals, or taming others, an expla-
nation of the way in which any tame animal should be
cared for and fed, with regulations for the preservation
of its health. In this division were included also all
matters concerning shepherds, flocks, herds, folds, sta-
bles, and so forth. With the account of horses was
connected information upon the subject of carriages ;
with the account of oxen were connected details on
the subject of the plough, and so forth; whatever
contrivances or departments of industry were connected
intimately with the domestic use of any animal received
full notice in Gesner's History under the letter E.
The same division included, of course, an account of
the use of animals in spectacles and games, and did
not omit to record whatever could be told about their
market price. The uses of animals to man, as described
by Gesner, have not, of course, been fully summed up
in the preceding abstract; many animals, for example.
afford prognostics of the weather. When the uses of
the whole animal had been fully described, there often
remained much to add about the value of its parts, and
the mode of using them, as skins for clothing, dung for
manure, &c. The two main uses of animals, in the
opinion of Gesner's time, their conversion into food or
medicine, were discussed separately in the two next
divisions of each subject. The pharmacopoeia contains
in our time not many medicines of animal origin, and
those, like spermaceti and cod-liver oil, not very potent.
Three hundred years ago, however, many parts of
animals were used medicinally by the doctors. Under
118
CONRAD GESNER.
the letter F, therefore, Gesner considered the use of
any animal as food, by whom eaten, and whether the
whole was eaten, or part, and if part, what parts. He
considered its use, firstly as plain food for a healthy
man, and secondly, as diet for the sick. Then, to make
that division of the subject quite complete, he discussed
in each case the details of cookery, and the condiments
with which the meat ought to be eaten. Then under
letter G, the remedial uses of the animal were dwelt
upon, and a collection was made of all that had
been written on the use as medicine,-1, of the whole
animal; and 2, of any of its parts, taking first those
parts which were simple, next those which were com-
pound. In classing the different applications made of
any animal or part of an animal to the diseases of
man, where they had been made in more than one
disease, the diseases also were named and dwelt upon
in a fixed order. First, those affecting the whole
system general maladies were considered, then
maladies affecting parts, the parts being invariably
taken in succession from above downwards, beginning
at the head and ending at the heel. Many supersti-
tious remedial uses have been made of animals, or of
their parts; these Gesner did not omit-he wilfully
omitted nothing-from his History. Having discussed
fully the remedial uses of an animal itself, Gesner closed
this seventh division by a history of remedies for bites
or other wounds inflicted by it, giving first the general
treatment of such injuries, and afterwards a detail of the
single remedies that had at any time been recommended.
—
CONRAD GESNER.
119
The last divisions of the plan upon which Gesner
proposed to describe every known member of the aui-
mated world, involved often the writing for one animal.
of a treatise that would make an independent book.
This division, under the letter H, discussed the creature
philologically and grammatically. It contained the
less used Latin and Greek names for it, those em-
ployed by the poets now and then, or confined to
dialects; also the feigned names or nicknames given
to it, and their etymologies. It discussed then gram-
matically the proper names of the animal in different
languages, and passed on to the epithets that had
been attached to them, firstly in Latin, secondly in
Greek. Allied philosophically with this subject of
epithets were the considerations which followed the
metaphorical use of the animal's name, and of the
derivative words formed from it in Greek and Latin.
Information followed on the paintings, sculptures, casts,
or other images made from the animal, and upon the
stones, plants, or other animals deriving their own
names from it, with the reason of each derivation of
that kind. Gesner considered next the proper names
of men, regions, towns, rivers, &c., which either had
been drawn from, or accidentally resembled that of
the animal whose history he was relating. In the last
part of this final division the most indefatigable of
scholars gave a resumé of the social history of each
creature, of the fables with which it was connected,
divinations, prodigies, portents, monsters, its connection
with religious ceremonies, its burial, perhaps, in Egypt,
120
CONRAD GESNER.
or its sacrifice in Greece. He detailed the proverbs to
which each creature had given rise, taking them chiefly
from Erasmus; some being revised, and others added
from the vulgar tongues or Scripture. He closed with
a compilation of similitudes, emblems, and apologues.
This is the plan upon which Gesner laboured at that
work which is the chief monument of his transcendent
industry. Not every animal, of course, had obtained
so much attention in the world as to provide matter
for full treatment under every one of the eight heads,
but by the plan just given the history of each was
examined, and before Gesner died he had published
four of the six folios which were to bring together into
one place all that had been said worthy of recollection
about every animal then known, whether considered
as an independent creature, or in any one of its relations
to society. These four volumes contain the complete
history, up to the middle of the sixteenth century, of
birds, beasts, and fishes.
C
I ought not to cease speaking of this massive work
without dedicating a few words to the memory of
Christopher Froschover, publisher of Zurich, who sus-
tained the whole cost and risk of publication. The
four folios of Gesner's History of Animals,' with the
additional volumes of figures, contain a mass of typo-
graphy, and a multitude of wood-cuts from drawings
sketched from nature, that would be regarded as the
basis of a most serious enterprise by the wealthiest of
publishers in the most populous metropolis of our own
day. Christopher Froschover, of Zurich, did not flinch.
CONRAD GESNER.
121
His emblem, punning on his name of Frog-over—a
boy over a frog, and frogs over a palm-tree-is stamped
upon the title-page of every book published by Gesner
while at Zurich. When Gesner was dead, and old
Christopher, his publisher, was dead, there was a
young Christopher, who succeeded to the business, and
mourned his father's loss through his trade emblem,
by removing the old boy from the frog's back, and
retaining the frog without a rider, in the foreground,
while in the background there was the usual colony
upon the palm-tree.
It has been said that Gesner's study of Nature was
confined to tangible things, animals, metals, plants.
He devoted himself chiefly to the publication of a
history of animals, for reasons that have been already
mentioned. On metals and gems he published a small
book, compiled from an immense mass of materials; and,
since he did not live in the vicinity of mines, he used
great zeal in the questioning of strangers, and in bene-
fiting by the observation of his correspondents who had
better opportunities of practical research. The study of
plants, however, remained always his favourite pursuit.
Among the mountains about Lucerne, on the banks of
the Rhine, at Basle, in France, in sundry parts of Italy
and about Venice, when he dwelt a month there studying
fishes, in yearly trips also among the Swiss Alps, he had
been always an unwearied plant collector. He had read
all that was written upon botany-had at his tongue's
end all the information that was to be found in Dios-
corides, Theophrastus, and Pliny among the ancients,
122
CONRAD GESNER.
or in Ruellius, Fuchs, Tragus, and other moderns. Of
every plant that he found for the first time he made a
careful drawing, and caused it, if possible, to grow in his
own little garden-which became a true botanic garden
in the town of Zurich; or if it would not thrive there,
he preserved a specimen of it carefully dried. He in-
vestigated constantly the properties of plants, studied
their qualities and temperament by eating portions of
them to test personally their effect upon the system,
or by sitting down to his study with their stems, leaves,
and flowers bound to his person, that he might observe
any effect they could produce upon the skin. He sought
aid from the knowledge of other men, not only in
books, but in the world around him; questioning not
the learned only, but conversing with the common
people; learning from old crones and from rustics
common names of plants, and popular traditions of
their virtues; rejecting nothing scornfully, but exam-
ining all that he heard, and endeavouring to trace
even the muddy waters of superstition to their whole-
some source. The plants that he collected he com-
pared with the descriptions found in ancient authors;
and with each plant before him he collated the accounts
of Pliny, Theophrastus, and Dioscorides, discovering
blunders of compilation made by Pliny, and correcting
in each author many faulty passages. His ardent in-
terest in botany being well known among all learned
men, and the courteous scholar being everywhere
respected by his fellow-labourers, from Italy, France,
Germany and England there were arriving constantly
}
CONRAD GESNER.
123
at Gesner's house in Zurich, seeds and plants, both dry
and fresh, as new material for study. The produce of
all this zeal, and of the out-door industry of thirty years,
was a collection of more than 500 plants undescribed
by the ancients. He was arranging his acquired know-
ledge for the purpose of publishing the results of what
had been, above all others, his labour of love since
childhood up to the last day of his life. Many figures
were already cut in wood that were to have been used
on the pages of the book which Gesner did not live
to write. The preparation of these figures had gone on
under the close superintendence of the naturalist, whose
face was often bent over his artist's shoulder, watchful
to prevent the play of fancy that might introduce picto-
rial effect at the expense of truth. He would not leave
to the discretion of the artist so much as a fibre in the
venation of his leaves, or a line upon the petal of a
flower, but enforced by constant scrutiny and exhor-
tation scrupulous fidelity to Nature.
So far the story of the life of Conrad Gesner presents
to our imaginations the picture of a scholar whose
intense devotion to his studies might excuse in him
some little neglect of what are now and then called
the distractions that belong to daily life. Gesner,
however, was not more a scholar than a gentleman. In
the town and in the household he performed every duty
with a genial promptitude. In Zurich he was honoured
by all people, not as the learned man who had won
European fame, and earned the title of the German
Pliny, but as the kind, upright citizen. His practice
124
CONRAD GESNER.
as a physician was not very profitable; for it was at
that time the custom among the Swiss-a custom whole-
some for the time-to dread the doctor. When the
doctor might, perhaps, order powder of rubies, to the
despair of his poor patients, when patients suffering
under the thirst of fever were forbidden to taste any
liquid, and when doctors, with the best intentions, cer-
tainly killed more patients than they cured, the Swiss
showed their good mother-wit by keeping physic from
their doors as long as possible. The practice, therefore,
of Conrad Gesner as the chief physician of Zurich, was
insignificant, interfering not at all with his vocation as
Professor of Philosophy, and very little with his private
studies. Such cases, however, as he had, he treated
with peculiar discretion; among his works there is a
sanitary book' on the Preservation of Health,' in which,
as in his 'History of Animals,' he showed a due sense
of the importance of a more exact study of Hygiène,
and of a branch of it, I may observe, little regarded in
this country-cookery.
Gesner, a Swiss and a scholar, living in the days of
the Reformation, examined carefully the records of the
Christian faith; he studied zealously the ancient fathers,
and read the Scriptures carefully. He had a great
affection for the Book of Psalms, which he read com-
monly in Hebrew. He was not bigoted, but lived in
friendly correspondence with men of all creeds and
nations, always, however, bold and earnest in support
of his own views of Christian truth. He reasoned with
his friends among the Unitarian heretics in Poland.
CONRAD GESNER.
125
While at home he did not hold himself to be too learned
or too busy to attend at church, not only on the sacred
days, but twice a week also on working days, when the
minister, Bullinger, to whose congregation he belonged,
assembled those who would attend. If he knew before-
hand that Bullinger was about on any day to give an ex-
position of some part of the Old Testament, Gesner would
take his Hebrew Bible with him to the church, and follow
the preacher in it with the intellect of a philosopher
and the simplicity of those past days when, as a child,
he reverenced the Scriptures as he heard them from the
lips of the herb-loving pastor, Fricius. The same spirit
of piety had induced Gesner to take especial care that
in his History of Animals' every allusion made to an
animal in holy writ should be expounded to the best of
his ability.
The scholar of Zurich was a Christian and a gentle-
man. He shrank from giving pain, was simple in his
mind and manners, free from ostentation, modest, rigidly
truthful. Never idle, he had no leisure to acquire a
taste for luxury, nor was there perceptible in his out-
ward character a trace of lust. He belonged to a strict
school of reformers; his speech was pure, and he ab-
horred either the hearing or the reading of obscenity.
He reproved it when spoken in his presence; he issued
Martial in a new edition, with all impure passages
expunged. He lamented greatly that in his days men
had reformed their opinions so much more completely
than their lives; and he held frequent consultations
with grave theologians on the means that might be
126
CONRAD GESNER.
taken to improve the discipline of the reformed church,
and get better deeds as well as better doctrines from
the people.
The scholar, Conrad Gesner, lived in the exercise of
never-failing courtesies towards all who had relations
with him. He cultivated the friendship of the good
and learned, and he grudged no labour to his friends.
He assisted in the revision of proof-sheets for them,
suggesting from the vast stores of his knowledge any
emendations or additions that seemed advantageous.
He provided authorities, wrote prefaces, edited post-
humous works; he helped young students by supply-
ing them with Greek exemplars that they might earn
credit by editing; he was indefatigable in his zeal to
push on to success any hard-working struggler in whose
merit he had faith. To the junior physicians of the
town he was a guide, not a rival; he let slip no oppor-
tunity, when they met in consultation or in other ways
he was able, by generous and well-timed words, to
strengthen their good fame. He acknowledged every
favour he received; his writings contain not one sen-
tence of detraction, but a thousand sentences displaying
cordial recognition of all merit that he found in his
contemporaries.
Who that was good and learned in those days was not
the friend of Conrad Gesner? The scholar's doors were
always hospitably open. He desired to compensate for
his own inability to travel by hearing the discourse of
men from all parts of the world. He did not count the
time spent in society as lost, because he did not waste
CONRAD GESNER.
127
his social hours in trivial conversation; he talked that
he might learn. When a man came to him from a
foreign country, that man was for the time his book,
and while he fulfilled all his duties as a host, he was
continuing his studies. Rarely a day passed in which
Gesner was not visited by some one desirous either to
see the famous naturalist and scholar, or to study some-
thing that he had upon his premises. As Gesner's
garden had grown into a very well-supplied botanic
garden, so his whole house had become a museum,
although one room in it had especially been dedicated
under that name to the arrangement of his dried plants,
his metals and fossils, his large collection of the stuffed
bodies of strange animals, and his pictures of natural
objects. These treasures had accumulated rapidly by
the donations of his learned visitors, and contributions
sent to him from the warm friends that he had made in
many corners of the world. Gesner had little gold:
his treasure was his knowledge; and he gave that with
unusual generosity. He was ready to explain to any
people whatever they desired to understand through
him, and glad to give away his duplicates to those who
could appreciate such gifts. If any rare secret came to
his knowledge, if a profitable hint in medicine was
suddenly discovered in the course of his wide circle of
reading, he never attempted to retain it and employ it
to his own exclusive gain. If it was professional, it was
at once communicated to his brethren in the town-if
literary, it was sent to any friend who could make best
and promptest use of it. Many thousands of men have
128
CONRAD GESNER.
1
had more genius than Conrad Gesner, but never one
man, perhaps, has had more completely the true noble
spirit of a man of letters.
In the year preceding the death of Gesner, plague
increased in Zurich, and among those whom it removed
was his old master, Buchman; there died also in that
year Gesner's bosom friend, Johann Fricius, who had
been his companion of old time in France. Gesner
dreamed one night that he was bitten by a serpent, and
in the morning told his wife that he regarded the
dream as a presage of his death. The serpent, he said,
was the plague. From that time he considered, though
he was not yet forty-nine years old, and in possession
of his usual health, which never had been robust, that
his course of life was drawing to a close. His letters
to his friends from that time frequently dwelt upon
this solemn presentiment, never with pain, though he
believed that his most cherished work was to be left
unfinished; he expressed no regret, no dread. It is in
one of Gesner's letters, written during this last year of
his life,—a letter to Zuinger,—that a passage occurs in
which we read how real had been the progress made
by him in botany. Had he lived to write the work for
which he had prepared himself by more than thirty years
of observation, he would have achieved for himself, in the
most distinct manner, a fame which we can now ascribe
to him only upon the evidence of a few words in a
letter. He appears to have been the first who made
that great step towards a scientific botany-the distin-
guishing of genera by a study of the fructification.
CONRAD GESNER.
129
“Tell me,” he writes to Zuinger, "whether your plants
have fruit and flower as well as stalk and leaves, for
these are of much greater consequence. By these
three marks, flower, fruit, and seed,-I find that saxi-
fraga and consolida regalis are related to aconite."
On the 9th of December, in the year 1565, a plague-
spot appeared on Gesner's left side, over his heart.
There was no symptom of plague except the too-familiar
monition of this carbuncle. The scholar, however,
assured that in a few days he must quit the world in
which he had been labouring so steadily, remembered
that he had yet work to do, and tranquilly employed
his last hours in the careful settlement of his affairs. He
had not at first the usual headache, fever, or other dis-
tressing symptoms of the plague; he did not, therefore,
retire to bed, but called his friends about him, and pro-
ceeded to adjust the distribution of his little property
in such a way as would ensure the best attainable pro-
vision after his death for those who hitherto had been
maintained by him, his wife, his only surviving sister,
and his sister's children. His library he sold to his
friend, Caspar Wolff, at a fair price, and then having
bequeathed a fixed sum to his wife and another fixed
sum to his nephews, he left to his sister the remainder
of his worldly goods. He then arranged whatever
papers he thought necessary to the easy settlement
after his death of all money questions, writing notes
and full instructions for the information and assistance
of the two women who were soon to lose his protection,
VOL. II.
K
130
CONRAD GESNER.
and despatching letters to those friends by whose advice
or help their trouble would be lightened.
When he had carefully discharged this duty, Gesner
closeted himself in his library with Caspar Wolff, who
undertook to be his literary executor. Wolff was to
inherit all the papers of his friend and teacher, and
with him Gesner went through them all, arranged them,
drew up a bibliographical inventory of his published
works and of his unfinished writings. Above all, he
assiduously laboured to make clear the design for his
unwritten history of plants. The first plague-spot ap-
peared on Gesner's breast upon the 9th of December,
and he died on the 13th; but within that interval he
found time not only to set his house in order, but to
discuss with Caspar Wolff, and to note down for his
more certain information the botanical discoveries of
which Wolff had undertaken to complete the publica-
tion. When he had done all this, and written farewells
to the dearest of his absent friends, though the physi-
cians who had care of him did not despair of his reco-
very from an attack so mild in its approaches, Gesner
talked of the new world that lay before him with the
ministers of Zurich. On the day before his death, after
he had been for a long time closeted with the minister,
Henry Bullinger, in conversation on domestic matters
which he had commended to the care of that warm
household friend, he delivered, in the spirit of an early
reformer, the confession of his faith.
At night, not feeling that he was upon the point of
CONRAD GESNER.
131
death, but watchfully solicitous for the comfort of his
friends, he warned his wife away to rest, and would
allow no one to sit up with him except a single nurse.
Being left alone with her, he remained long awake upon
his bed, praying with fervour, and then fell asleep.
In the stillness of the night, he awoke suddenly, and
felt that death was struggling with him. He called his
wife, and desired to be carried into his museum; he
had caused a bed to be made there on the preceding
day; he would die among his plants and all the works
of God that he had gathered there together. Sup-
ported in his wife's arms, on the bed in his museum,
Gesner died that night, in the act of gentle prayer.
2...
UMM
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
6
SAVINIEN CYRANO DE BERGERAC, from whom Molière
did not scruple to steal written goods, to whose wit
Fontenelle perhaps owed something when he wrote his
'Mondes,' Voltaire something when he wrote his Micro-
megas,' Swift something when he wrote his Gulliver,'
Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac was born in the year
1620, the son of a gentleman at Bergerac in Perigord.
The priest of his parish, a good man named Kostgänger,
kept a school for young children, and to that Cyrano
was first sent. One of his playmates there, whose name
was Le Bret, remained attached to him throughout life,
and published his works after his death, prefacing them
with a sketch of his career, which is the main source
from which modern accounts of the life of Bergerac
have to be drawn up.
At school, under the care of Father Kostgänger, Cyrano
was a most impatient pupil. He despised the teaching
bold. and quick of wit to
of his master, for he was too
endure patiently the littleness of studies which in those
days were considered both the root and fruit of know-
ledge. Logic was chopped finer than smoke. Children
were taught to argue in Bocardo, and Felapton, puzzled
with Barbara, Celarent, Darapti, Baroco, Baralipton.
Maou
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
133
Father Kostgänger taught like his neighbours, and over
him, as over another monk, might have been raised after
his death the epitaph-
"Hic jacet magister noster,
Qui disputavit bis aut ter,
In Barbara et Celarent,
Ita ut omnes admirarent,
In Fapesmo et Frisesimorum;
Orate pro animas eorum."
Which in a horribly bad translation might stand
thus:
"Here our logical master lies,
Who disputed twice or thrice
In Baralipton and Darapti,
To the wonder of all who on him clapt eyc,
In Fapesmo and Frisesimorum;
Pray for the souls of all the quorum.”
This barbarous logic was employed most commonly
on useless sophisms, such as that ancient one called
The Liar,' over which it is said that Philetus puzzled
himself to death:-If you say of yourself, "I lie,” and
in so saying tell the truth, you lie. If you say, "I lie,”
and in so doing tell a lie, you tell the truth.
Aristotle held this case to be a great perplexity.
Bergerac held all such cases in contempt. As a school-
boy he made Father Kostgänger the object of his first
disgust at pedants and low people who prefer the little
to the great; at men who will work for months and for
years upon the smell of an apple, to decide whether it
be form or accident.
And there was more than the logic that a boy of
spirit might resent in such education as was thought
134
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
best at the beginning of the seventeenth century. A
servile following of the ideas of Greek and Latin writers
provoked Bergerac's contempt. O, imitatores, servum
pecus! was his feeling throughout life. A Peter in
such times could call himself Pomponius and spend
his earnings upon the purchase of ground in the Cam-
pagna, that he might there worship Romulus and
Remus, and as a Roman keep the feast of the found-
ation of the city. A worshipper of Aristotle could re-
fuse to look through Galileo's telescope, lest he might
irreverently perceive stars which had not been seen
by the Greek sage. A Claude Belurger could learn
Homer by heart, carry his verses always on his person,
and repeat them to himself in the church instead of
prayers; finally throwing away his life upon a journey
to the plains of Troy. A Jesuit, Caspar Knitel, could
teach that the seven words of the first line in the
Æneid, Ille ego qui quondam gracili modulatus avenâ,
were so many arguments in proof of the necessity of
practising the virtue of humility. Lawyers pushed
cases home with classical comparisons, clinching them
habitually with Horace's Mutato nomine de te fabula
narratur. But when a fable could be got that required
no mutation of the name, when Tibullus, for example,
could be quoted literally against some poor girl who
really had been called Neæra by her godfathers and
godmothers, the argument was held to be complete. One
advocate, terrible by his skill in finding "homonyms
of this kind, could not be faced on his own ground until
he had stumbled once and made himself ridiculous.
""
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
135
This he did at the close of a powerful and ingenious
speech against one M. Meauder, whose name he had
read in his instructions as Meander, and upon whose
tortuous ways, as well as upon all points that belonged
to his geography and history, the lawyer had dilated
with superb effect, until the terrified object of his
denunciation suddenly cleared his character by shout-
ing, "Sir, my name is Meauder, not Meander!" The
whole argument before the court fell into ruin. Against
all this intellectual slavery to a past time, Bergerac
even as a boy rebelled.
Preference of the little to the great was in other
respects at that period the vice of learning and of lite-
rature. Men discussed carefully whether it was always
requisite for u to follow q, and in the middle of the
century Thomas Gataker settled the question for his
part by enforcing a separation between the couple that
had so long lived faithfully together, and printing books
full of such spelling as qi, qæ, qod. There was a re-
spect entertained towards lipogrammatic books, treatises
in all the words of which some one letter never
occurred. There was a taste in poetry—if it may be
said to concern poetry at all-for acrostics and retro-
grade verses, which were equally sensible whether read
forwards or backwards, and in each case scanned
correctly. For example, here are a couple of such
verses:
'Prospicimus modo quod durabunt tempore longo
Fœdera, nec nobis pax cito diffugiet ;"
which when inverted read as follows:-
136
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
"Diffugiet cito pax nobis, nec fœdera longo
Tempore durabunt, quod modo prospicimus."
How miserably time was wasted over littleness like
this! Throughout the provinces of France also literary
taste was infected by a love of anagrams; old and
young worked at them. The father Pierre de St. Louis,
author of the Magdalenaide,' became a Carmelite
monk upon discovering that his lay name Ludovicus
Bartelemi yielded the anagram Carmelo se devovet-
"he devotes himself to Carmel."
6
Impatient of the kind of knowledge that he got from
Father Kostgänger in Perigord, Cyrano expressed freely
his wish for a much larger field of study. He was
therefore sent to Paris. Still in his first youth, full of
strength and life, and long restrained desire for the
complete enjoyment of his faculties, he was furnished
with money by his father, and trusted alone among the
dangers of the capital. He sought knowledge, and he
sought excitement. He was soon engaged in a wild
course of dissipation, made a party to incessant duels,
and displayed such strength and courage that at the
age of nineteen he was known commonly in Paris by
the name of the Intrepid. Knowledge he sought from
Jacques Rohault, whose friend he remained through
life, and in whose classes he had Molière for fellow-
pupil. Molière afterwards excused his unscrupulous
adoption of the published thoughts of Bergerac by
saying, that when they were pupils together they used
to suggest humorous fancies to each other, and that Ber-
gerac afterwards made use of his ideas so freely that he
•
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
137
only reclaimed his own in pillaging the whims he had
suggested. No doubt there was some ground, but, I
am very sure, not much, for this apology. Bergerac
had wit of his own that was only too luxuriant, and there
were few things which it was more natural in him to
scorn than robbery of other people's brains. His whole
life was a protest against it. He forswore obedience
to all the ancients, threw stones into the temple of
Aristotle, and in the consciousness of his own strength,
claimed freedom from all literary bondage. He him-
self suffered much from petty larceny, and this scrap
from a letter full of humorous complaint against a
literary thief, does not look like the writing of a man
who would dish up for the public scraps filched from
the waste heap even of Molière.
"He speaks" (writes Bergerac of this purloiner of other
men's ideas) "as much as all books, and all books seem
to have spoken only to produce him. He never opens
his mouth except to commit larceny, and is so born to
theft, that when he is silent it is only to rob the dumb.
The ancients are Pagans, and the Pagans being now
our enemies, he takes their property as right of war.
His papers are cemeteries, in which are entombed the
living and the dead. If, on the Day of Judgment,
every man takes his own, the partition of his writings
will give rise to the last quarrel among men. He
claims that inasmuch as the twenty-four letters are as
much his property as ours, he has the same right that
we have to arrange them as he pleases. Aristotle
being dead, other men live upon his lands, and why
138
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
斧
​not also on his books? If this gentleman's manu-
scripts were on fire, by throwing water over them
I should be saving my own property. We are friends.
His works were my whole thought; and whenever I
set myself to imagine anything, I think only of what
he most probably will write."
It is not, indeed, quite true that the possession of
wit is a proof of inability to borrow it from others. If
that were so, Molière, whose genius far transcended
Bergerac's, would never have taken thoughts from his
old friend. But Molière, servant of the court and
public, was required to write incessantly, so that,
without lacking humour, he might easily find it worth
while to appear sometimes in the market as a borrower.
Bergerac wrote only for his own amusement, and has
left behind him no more than a single comedy, a single
tragedy, a single tale, and a few letters.
His behaviour when he first joined the society of
Paris, as an ungoverned youth with money in his
pocket, it has already been said was scandalous. His
friend Le Bret, fearing lest want of occupation and
position might in a few years destroy the prospects of a
life, persuaded him to become his own companion in
arms. Le Bret was in M. Carbon Castel-jaloux's
company of the King's Body Guards, and Bergerac,
upon his friend's recommendation, also entered it as a
cadet. A position of this kind then implied real
military service, and to a man so stout of heart and
limb as young Cyrano, whom his Gascon friends called
the Demon of Courage, and all Paris the Intrepid,
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
139
it involved a great deal of fighting that was of a much
less creditable kind. Duels used to be called affairs of
honour, which, even now in France, no soldier has dared
to decline. Duellists then chose seconds not to stand
by, but to be positive assistants in the combat. Brave
soldiers were thus called upon incessantly to draw
swords in the quarrels of their friends, and Bergerac,
who was no churl, found his great physical power the
occasion to him of frequent danger. Every man who
had a duelling appointment looked for a strong-handed
and intrepid second. If any friend or chance acquain-
tance, therefore, was engaged to fight a duel, he made
a point at once of asking the favour of M. Savinien
Cyrano de Bergerac's assistance. Le Bret declares
that, although he at one time had duelling appoint-
ments for almost every day in the year, and kept them
all, Bergerac never once engaged in combat on account
of any quarrel of his own.
He had a fine face, with a commanding nose upon it,
and I have seen it written of him that he resented any
comment on its size, and fought not a few duels to
maintain a due respect for it among his neighbours.
There is no ground at all for this assertion. If his
portrait may be trusted, the nose was such a one as
many men who want a sign of power on their faces
would be glad enough to own; Bergerac took it as a
gift of nature in good part, and retaliated against any
irreverent commentators by showing how the inha-
bitants of the moon destroy at birth all small-nosed
infants, having no hope for their future. In his own
140
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
quarrels he was prompt enough to point a joke against
any antagonist, but he was not the man to point a
sword. Companions, too, who were so eager to have
him as a combatant on their own side, must have held
his prowess in enough respect to cause them to avoid
making him their antagonist in private battle. For
Cyrano himself it was more than enough to be every
man's second. In a letter to his most familiar friend,
he speaks of the ugly scrawls which he was constantly
receiving from men used to the perpetual handling of
the sword, and says-
"Though I look like a man bursting with health, I
have been sick for the last three weeks, during which
my philosophy has been at the mercy of gladiators. I
have been incessantly a victim to the tierce and quarte.
(We cannot translate the pun, since we may not call
sword thrusts tertians and quartians.) I should have
lost all knowledge of paper if it had not been the
material on which challenges are scrawled. . . . I
think it would be necessary for God to perform some
miracle, as great as the wish of Caligula, to bring my
battles to an end. If the whole human race were set
up with a single head, and of all the living there re-
mained but one, there would be still a duel left for me
to fight. Truly you were quite wrong the other day in
calling me the first of men, for I protest, that for
a month past, I have been second to everybody.”
The joke is much neater in French :-Je suis le
second de tout le monde.
By the references to his philosophy, that was at the
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
141
mercy of gladiators, and to his having nearly lost all
knowledge of paper, we are reminded that Cyrano was
already acquiring philosophical ideas, and seeking
happiness in literary occupation. He studied with
great relish the writings of Descartes, who was then
living, and in full possession of his fame. Descartes
had in youth become a soldier for the sake of travel;
he was once, like Bergerac, a student among fighting
men, and not the less a fighting man himself. The
first principle in the philosophy of Descartes, namely,
that no old dictum was to tyrannize over an argument,
but that everything asserted must be proved and
proved afresh, precisely suited Bergerac's ideas, for, as
we have seen, he hated blind subjection to authority.
Himself disposed to swear by nobody-Nullius addictus
jurare in verba magistri was the familiar line Le Bret
quoted to that effect in the description of his character.
Cyrano used to declare that one literary man fed on
the knowledge of another, and that he for his part
only read books to detect their larcenies, and pull off
their stolen clothes. Were he a judge, he said, he
would deal more severely with a literary thief than
with a highway robber, glory being more precious than
dress, horse, or even gold. If he found anything new
in a book, whatever might be its faults, he never blamed
it. Thus the nature of the starting point taken by
Descartes, and his own taste for philosophical inquiries,
sufficed to place Cyrano in the foremost rank of the
admirers of that famous thinker.
Not only to philosophy, but also to poetry, was the
142
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
attention of the young soldier directed. Even while
in the camp on active service he found many hours
that he could devote to reading and to writing. Le
Bret says that he has seen him surrounded by the
uproar of the guardroom and the swearing of his fellow-
troopers, writing an elegy as quietly as if he were in
a cabinet alone with not a murmur near. Like all
young poets-like all youths who have the ink fever
and are to turn out literary men, he began with heroic
verse, and in due time broke out with a five act
tragedy. This is an eruption of a regular and whole-
some kind—a sort of measles, in fact-which rarely
fails to show itself among young members of the
literary family. There are some men who, as children,
have never had the measles, as there are some authors
who have never written tragedies. But in any such
case the disorder may yet break out even in old age,
and then perhaps be very troublesome. In the case of
Bergerac it appeared comparatively late, but was got
over in a very favourable manner.
He was fond of the stage, and there is a story of
his youthful licence which shows, not only how much
he could presume upon his personal strength and
daring, but with how weak a hand the law restrained
young bloods from outrages against their fellow-subjects.
Bergerac for some reason conceived wrath against the
comedian Monfleury-probably he had been displeased
with some of his performances-and he sentenced him
to a month's banishment from the stage. Shortly after-
wards Monfleury undertook to enact some part, and
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
143
Bergerac, who was in the pit, rose when he appeared,
and called to him—“ Off, sir, off! if you don't wish to
be pounded!" Monfleury made his exit, and abided by
his sentence. He was a fat man. "The rascal," said
Bergerac; "because he is so big round that you can't
thrash the whole of him in a day, he gives himself airs
of defiance!"
How redoubtable a young man Bergerac was, is
shown by a story of him told and credited in his own.
day; given also by Le Bret, who names half-a-dozen
men of note, then living, able to testify to its truth;
though he himself was afraid to confess that he believed
the whole of it. Near the ditch of the gate of Nesle,
a friend of Bergerac's was fallen upon suddenly by a
band of a hundred men armed and disguised. Ber-
gerac flew to the rescue, and by his single aid put the
entire band to rout, killing two of the assassins, and
wounding six. I do not think the tale very incredible.
Rogues, cowardly enough to fall by the hundred on a
man with his mouth shut, are of course cowards enough
to fly by the hundred from a man who shows his
teeth.
•
Against the king's enemies also M. de Bergerac was
called upon to display his prowess, and he earned what
were called honourable scars. At the siege of Mousson
a musket-ball passed through his body; and at the
siege of Arras, in 1640, he was pierced in the neck.
From these wounds he suffered much. By repeated
invitation from his comrades to engage in duelling,
his life was constantly imperilled. He had literary
144
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
ambition, and no wish to die. Brave as he was, there
was but little hope for him of promotion in the army,
because he had no patron; and even if he had had
one, his free humour would have caused him to disdain
those services of overstrained civility by which he could
have retained his favour. He for these reasons gave
up the profession of arms, and devoted himself wholly
to study.
It was then that the Marshal de Gassion offered to
attach him to his person, but Cyrano shrank from what
was to his mind a mere offer of bondage. His friends,
however, took great pains to make it clear to him that
he could never hope to achieve any success as a man of
letters, if he had not the support of some grandee who
would maintain his cause. It was to oblige his friends,
therefore, that Bergerac, before publishing anything,
sought a patron at court; and in 1653, when he was
thirty-three years old, attached himself to the Duc
d'Arpaion, to whom in the succeeding year he ascribed
the first works that he printed - his tragedy, his
comedy, and a few letters.
His life then was already near its close. Madame
de Neuvillette, a pious and charitable woman, and a
relation of his through the Berangers, had in a measure
created him anew, and taught him to regard all criminal
excess with horror. The libertine was in his eyes a
monster. He became moderate in his eating, and for-
swore ragouts. He avoided wine, which he compared—
oh, ye teetotallers!—to arsenic, saying that everything
was to be feared of that poison, in whatever form of
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
145
C
He
preparation it might be presented. He entertained no
feeling but one of the highest respect for women.
took pains to avoid selfishness in the disposal of his
property. All the while he remained a wit and a
philosopher, studying Descartes and revelling in an
extravagance of satire. By the time he had quite
purified his life and character, the populace was fairly
brought to the conviction that Cyrano was an atheist.
His independence of opinion had no doubt offended
many priests, and he had taken no pains to secure to
himself the defence of patrons. His tragedy, The
Death of Agrippina,' being on the story of Sejanus,
represented that conspirator as a contemner of the
gods. This is quite true to fact. Ben Jonson had done
the same. "What excellent fools," cries the Sejanus.
of Ben Jonson, "religion makes of men." Whenever the
Sejanus of Bergerac said anything to that effect, the pit,
which after the run of a few nights had learnt its cue,
exclaimed, "Ah, the atheist!" "Let us strike!"
said Bergerac's Sejanus of an evil omen, "Frappons!
Voilà l'hostie!" A tumult arose in the pit-after some
nights, be it remembered-and there were shouts of
'Ah, the sinner! Ah, the atheist! Hear how he
speaks about the Holy Sacrament!"
66
This kind of persecution Bergerac bore with the
quietness of a philosopher. He rejected utterly all
vain tradition, whether it came to him from priest or
pedant. The crime of his religion was, that he allowed
no superstition to combine with it. As for his tragedy,
he had no reason to be ashamed of that. He was
VOL. II.
L
>
146
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
I
ashamed of nothing but the sins of his youth; and
because they were his one sorrow, he used to apply to
himself in those his latter years the language of
Tibullus:
"Jam juvenem vides instet cum serior ætas
Mærentem stultos præteriisse dies."
The clamour of the ignorant did not deprive him
of all friends, for of the multitude that had surrounded
him, many remained true to him till death; and some
-chief among whom was Le Bret—were faithful to
his memory and mindful of his credit after he was
gone. Bergerac died of a long illness, caused by a
blow on the head, accidentally inflicted by himself. On
his deathbed he observed that his court patron, the
Duke d'Arpaion, in whose house indeed the fatal
accident had happened, had deserted him. He died
in 1655, when he was only thirty-five years old.
6
His Voyages to the Sun and Moon' were left behind
him fit for publication, as well as a half-satirical, half-
philosophical treatise, called 'The History of a Spark,'
which some thief stole out of his sick chamber. The
faithful Le Bret took charge of his friend's reputation,
published next year the 'Voyage to the Moon,' and in
1661 the 'Voyage to the Sun,' finally collecting M.
Bergerac's works into two volumes, in fulfilment of the
trust committed to him by his friend, "to show,” as he
said, that M. de Bergerac is not one of your common
dead; that he remains with us, not to behave like an
ugly ghost and frighten honest men, but to cheer us
as he did when living, and to prove himself as full of
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
147
jollity as ever." What kind of cheer his works afford
I will endeavour now to show.
Bergerac's tragedy, 'La Mort d'Agrippine,' is upon
the story of Sejanus, and is very regular in form. It
preserves the unities of place and time, having its
action in the palace of Tiberius, and its events spread
over not more than four-and-twenty hours. It is a
tragedy containing four principal persons; and accord-
ing to the old French custom, which saves trouble in
the development of character by giving to a hero or a
heroine a confidential cipher, to each of Bergerac's
four figures there is appended such a cipher, for the
increase of its value. The characters then are
Tiberius, with his confidant; Sejanus, with his con-
fidant; Agrippina, widow of Germanicus, with her
confidante; and Livilla (Ben Jonson's Livia), sister of
Germanicus, with her confidante.
The story has of course the same historical founda-
tion, but by no means the same dramatic development
as the earlier Sejanus of Ben Jonson. Bergerac's plot
s well developed, begets striking situations, maintains
the interest in a most orthodox way, is written with
vigour and originality-nevertheless, the play is far
from satisfactory. Its leading character is not Sejanus,
but Agrippina; and Bergerac's conception of Agrip-
pina, meant to be great, is mean. That is the radical
defect which abases the whole value of the tragedy,
She first appears full of a sublime grief for her hus-
band's fate; the widow of a hero uttering heroic things
and proposing a stern offering to the manes of the
L 2
148
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
dead Germanicus. But her vengeance consists only in
trickery. She allows Sejanus to believe that he may
aspire to share a throne with her, cheats him with words
of double meaning, and so lures him to destruction.
In doing this she excites the jealousy of her sister-in-
law, Livilla, who for love of Sejanus has sinned much.
Livilla, who is in the secret of all plots, is at last urged,
in a frenzy of wrath, to become traitress. By opening
the eyes of Tiberius, she precipitates a catastrophe
which crushes both her paramour and Agrippina with a
single blow. Agrippina had taken thought on her own
account. She had deluded Sejanus, and had hoped to
cheat Tiberius by falsehood and hypocrisy. When,
therefore, she dies bravely at last, we do not care. We
say, "By all means let her die, for she has not been
behaving as a Roman matron should." Against the
hypocrisy of Agrippina even the crimes of Livilla show
to advantage. Hers is a real love, a womanly mad-
ness. With all her crimes upon her head, we like her
when upon her madness despair follows, when the ruin.
of Sejanus makes her careless of herself, and she replies
with a high spirit to the marvel of Tiberius at her own
complicity in the designs she has betrayed:
"TIBERIUS. Even my son's wife in the plot against me!
LIVILLA. Yes, even I, son's wife and brother's child,
Against thee raised the dagger—against thee,
My uncle and my father; in one crime
A hundred crimes would have created this
A sin without a name. Thy favourite,
Thy niece, thy cousin, and thy daughter, I,
Bound to thyself by all the ties of blood,
Triumphed in bringing all thy kindred on
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
1.19
To do the murder with a single hand.
My stroke of vengeance was to have profaned
All the degrees of blood relationship-
Killed thee in spite of nature as of law.
All who are of thy blood in my revolt
Were to have published how a tyrant finds
In his own house, though but a daughter's there,
His executioner.
My husband I have murdered. A worse deed
I would have done to be no more the wife
Of any son of thine. His wife I was
That in my children I might dominate
Over thy race, and at my will pour out
The blood constrained to filter through my flesh."
At least this lady is plain spoken, and we like her
for it. Lying is infinitely worse than murder in a hero
or a heroine of tragedy. Altogether Livilla is the most
sincere person in the play. Sejanus cheats her, pre-
tends that he is not indisposed to sacrifice Agrippina
for the satisfaction of her jealousy. Directly after-
wards he pooh-poohs Terentius, his confidant, who,
wondering at such acquiescence, exclaims, upon his
idea of sacrificing Agrippina to Livilla, that, “The
victim will be nobler than the god." Sejanus explains
that he hates Livilla. Poor wicked Livilla! we are
bound to pity her, by all the laws of art. The feature
in the character of Sejanus which has been best ex-
pressed by Bergerac is that proud contempt of the gods
which was a part of him. "Rome," says Terentius to
him,
"Rome, as thou knowest, is monarchical,
Not long enduring aristocracy.
The Roman eagle finds it hard to mount
Carrying more than one man on her wings.
Respect and fear the thunder of the gods!
150
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
SEJANUS.
It never strikes the earth in winter time.
I have six months at least to mock the gods in,
After which I will make my peace with heaven.
TERENTIUS. These gods will overturn all your designs.
SEJANUS. A little incense lifts them up again.
TERENTIUS. Whoso fears them-
SEJANUS.
Fears nothing. Bugaboos,
Fancies that we adore we know not why,
Floaters upon the blood of beasts that we strike dead,
Gods that we make, and not gods that make us,
Phantom supporters of our firm estate.
Go, go, Terentius. Who fears them, fears nothing.
TERENTIUS. But did they not exist, this mundane sphere-
SEJANUS. Did they exist, could I unscathed stand here?
So again, when Sejanus has a cruel death before
him, Agrippina, seeing the bold front he offers to it,
says:
"You're proof against so sad a spectacle.
SEJANUS. It is but death, which moves me not at all.
AGRIPPINA. And this uncertainty of all beyond?
SEJANUS. Could I be wretched, ceasing to exist?
An hour after my death the vanished soul
Is what it was an hour before my birth.”
Presently afterwards he adds, in the same strain,—
+
"Why with regret say farewell to the day,
That we cannot regret when gone away.
By no death-stroke is good or evil brought,—
For while we live, we live; dead, we are nought."
It was in these passages, by which Bergerac repre-
sented the Roman conspirator as soldat philosophe,
that the French public, led by its priests, saw infidelity.
They belong, as it need scarcely be said, properly to
the person by whom they are spoken. Ben Jonson
had to put in the mouth of the same character senti-
ments of precisely the same import. One passage of
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
151
this kind I have already quoted. In another place the
Sejanus of Ben Jonson asks of some interlocutor, does
he
"think the gods, like flies,
Are to be taken with the steam of flesh,
Or blood diffused about their altars-think
Their power as cheap as I esteem it small?"
He scorns, in another dialogue, "Thy juggling mys-
tery, religion.” He swears in the hour of peril
"By you that fools call gods,
When I do fear again, let me be struck
With forked fire and unpitied die.
Who fears is worthy of calamity."
Bergerac's tragedy consisted of well-pointed lines
in the rhymed heroic metre proper to such works in
France. His comedy, 'Le Pedant Joué,' was written
in prose, and is remarkable as being the earliest speci-
men of prose comedy in French literature. Molière,
afterwards wrote many, and adopted also another inno-
vation which was in the first instance introduced by
Bergerac-namely, the production upon the stage of a
peasant speaking in his own patois.
'Le Pedant Joué’-Puzzling a Pedant-reminds us
by its title of Cyrano's detestation of all pedantry.
Just as Lesage, disgusted in youth by the villany of
the farmers of revenue, made them the theme of his
first comedy, and held them up to scorn in Turcaret,
so Bergerac, vexed in his youth by pedants, held up
one of the class to ridicule in his first comedy as Mon-
sieur Granger, and exposed him in effigy to a remorse-
less persecution. Pedantry never dies, but the form of
152
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
it which insulted the understanding of Bergerac is now
so obsolete that, in speaking of this comedy, I shall
not take the trouble to reproduce any of Monsieur
Granger's puerilities of logic and affected modes of
speech. He takes an early opportunity in conversa-
tion with a braggart Norman captain of breaking out
into some of those idle rhymes to which I have al-
ready referred, and inflicts on the captain seventy or
eighty lines, all ending in "if." Of Captain Chateau-
fort, the Norman Bobadil, a sketch will, I think, be
amusing, and I shall dwell chiefly on his character in
speaking of Cyrano's comedy. His unrestrained ex-
travagance of boasting now and then steps from the
ridiculous to the sublime.
He appears in the first scene with Monsieur Granger,
the pedant, as one of three suitors for his daughter's
hand. As becomes a candidate for the vacant son-
in-lawship, he gives an account of his family and
character. Nature and art, he says, quarrelled over
the creation of him; he therefore created himself a
long time ago, when the Gods of Olympus were in
a weakened and divided state. He ate some of them,
and imbibed into his own person their qualities.
Possibly, Bergerac really had then in his mind the
doctrine of his countrymen concerning the divine
wafer in the sacrament. If so, the satire was too far-
fetched to be perceived. Presently afterwards Cha-
teaufort claims Diana for his mother. She said to
his mighty father, "You are an Alexander, I am an
Amazon; let us produce a plus-quam Mars, useful to
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
153
the human race, who, after carrying death to the four
quarters of the globe, shall found a kingdom on which
the sun never sets." The satire there was obvious
enough. To Granger's doubts as to his fortune, he
replies, “I will make of America and China a court-
yard to your house;" but the pedant, who becomes
angry at the captain's impudence, begins to promise
him, primo, a demonstration, item, an addition of thrash-
ing, hinc, a fracture of arms, illinc, a subtraction of
legs, then such a multiplication of blows, thumps,
kicks, &c., &c., &c., that afterwards the eye of a sphinx
could not find wherewith to make further division of
his miserable atoms. Finally, however, Granger en-
gages the captain to commence hostilities against La
Tremblaye, another of the suitors. For, as he reflects.
to himself, he has but one daughter, and is offered
three sons-in-law; one of them says that he is brave,
but Monsieur Granger knows the contrary; another
says that he is rich, but Monsieur Granger cannot
tell; another says that he has gentle blood, but Mon-
sieur Granger only knows that he has a very hungry
stomach.
It next appears that the pedant is himself in love,
and that his own son is his rival. He proposes to get
his son out of the way by sending him to Venice;
but the son is obstinate, and will not go. An amusing
scene between father and son follows, in which the son
is denounced as mad whenever he expresses his resolve
to stop at home, and flattered as a model of discretion
whenever he is terrified into a consent to go abroad.
154
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
The youth's purpose and the father's mood vary to-
gether. In the next place, however, we discover that
the young man is aided by the wit of one of those
roguish serving-men who are well known to all readers
of comedy. This genius, named Corbinelli, advises his
master to set out as if for Venice, and himself pre-
sently returns to the pedant with shocking news of his
son's capture by Turkish pirates on their way by water to
St. Cloud. They went on board the Turkish galley when
they had scarcely left the coast, and the young man
was immediately made a prisoner. Monsieur Granger
is cajoled out of money for his ransom. Nothing could
be more extravagant, and nothing merrier, than this
whole scene, which is one of those taken by Molière
and introduced into the 'Fourberies de Scapin.' In
that place it has become famous, and through that
channel the pedant's frequently recurring expostula-
tion-Que diable allais tu faire dans cette galere-has
passed into a proverb. Que diable aller faire aussi
dans la galère d'un Turc? D'un Turc! Que diable
allais tu faire dans cette galère? The only revenge
taken by the old man on Corbinelli, who affects a dread
lest the Turks should devour him when he goes back
with the money, is to assure him that, being Mussul-
mans, they don't eat pigs. The old man's purse is, of
course, taken into the hostile camp, which is the house
of the lady to whose hand he and his son aspire.
But the unlucky pedant is exposed to a great many
more perplexities. The three suitors for his daughter
vex him sadly. Upon the suitor who claims to be rich,
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
155
and who is a peasant with a peasant's tongue and fist,
the Captain Chateaufort falls by mischance, and very
soon the peasant's staff falls on the captain's shoulders.
"I have fought in my life," brags the captain, while
his back still aches, "I have fought seventy thousand
combats, and always killed my adversary, without
leaving him time for confession. I am heart all over,
you can wound me nowhere without killing me."
(Thump goes the stick again, and thump, thump,
thump. I give not the words, but the substance of the
captain's running comment). "I cannot tell, young
man, why it is that I feel drawn towards you with so
much affection. Either you are my own son, or you
exercise a charm over my mind because you have a
devil. If you be my son, Heaven forbid that I should
slay you; if you be a demoniac, you are not answer-
able for your actions. Heaven forbid that I should call
you to account." (Thump, thump.) "For my wrath,
young man, is terrible. It is a national calamity. I
have waved my hat, and sunk fleets with the wind of
it. Do you desire to know how many I have killed?
Set down a 9, and put as many grains of sand after
it as all deserts and seas contain, turn them to noughts,
and there you have the number of my slain." (Thump,
thump, thump, thump, thump.) "I cannot tell how it
is, but I am resolved now to be beaten. But I find
it difficult, let me tell you, to restrain my rage. I
must take care to put a guard upon myself. I will
procure two constables to walk with me, and see that
I am not again beaten, lest, being struck, my wrath
156
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
be awakened and a disaster happen; for when I am
angry it is hard to tell what I may do. I am a man
to blow the sun out like a candle."
The peasant with the ready hand has next an inter-
view with the pedant, who at first pays great deference
to him on account of the extent of real and personal
estate which he claims to possess. The countryman
is honest in his self-assertion; but as it finally becomes
apparent, through much obfuscation and bewilderment,
caused by his anything but pedantic mode of speech,
that his estimate of wealth is rather different to that
common among inhabitants of towns, Monsieur Granger
sends him away unceremoniously without his dinner.
The pedant then takes thought on behalf of his own
courtship, and sends his man, Paquier, who is as simple
as the son's man is sharp, to Genevote; that is the
name of the young lady who has at her feet both son
and father. Paquier is to take a loving message, of
which the purport is to appoint an interview, and he
is especially charged, in discoursing about his master,
to speak as of a lover, and talk only about fire, and
flames, and cinders. The man does his bidding very
literally. Genevote affects great tenderness towards
Monsieur Granger; Paquier represents him as a man
half-roasted and grimy through constant sitting with
his nose over the fire. Genevote speaks of the pedant
fondly; Paquier takes pains to bring her discourse to
the right topic, and asks after her winter stock of
fagots; for his master, he assures her, will want plenty
of fire. The confusion, and with it the fun of the scene,
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
157
heightens. Paquier has stuck to his point, but is be-
ginning to fail for want of matter, when he remembers
suddenly the fire of St. Elmo. The lady asks questions
about the gentleman, which Paquier sets aside, because
it suddenly occurs to him to ask about the forthcoming
St. John's fires, and whether Mademoiselle Genevote
will take part in the festivities connected with them.
She abides by M. Granger for her topic, bids the man
go and say she burns for him. Paquier brightens up;
she has come to the point at last, and on he goes with
spirit: "Yes, and as I have heard master say, there are
three fires in the world, madame; the first central, the
second vital, the third elemental. The first fire has three
subsidiary fires, differing only by accidents-the fire of
collision, the fire of attraction, and the fire of position."
Paquier, who is resolved to be a good friend to his
master, next hauls into discourse a wild fire that he
had seen once dancing on the moor. At his wits'-end,
he is reduced to wishing Genevote St. Anthony's fire,
and then cries to himself in despair, where the devil
can another fire be found? After a little beating of
his brains, he returns to the charge with, Feu votre
père et feu votre mère, avaient-ils fort aimé feu leurs
parens? and more in the same vein.
Monsieur Granger, however, understands that he is
to have an interview with Genevote, and has it. The
lady worries him much, and tells him-with many a
ha, ha, ha, and hi, hi, hi—of the tricks that have been
played upon him. Here again Molière has found the
scene good, and annexed the greater part of it, which
f
158
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
stands almost unaltered, except as regards the names
of the speakers, as the third scene of the third act of
the 'Fourberies de Scapin.' The scene ends, accord-
ing to Bergerac, with a mischief-meaning assignation.
Genevote is sister to La Tremblaye, the gentle swain
to Granger's daughter. While the pedant is abroad
haunting the doors of Genevote, La Tremblaye is to
run off with Mademoiselle Granger, and marry her.
So ends the third act of the comedy.
Corbi-
"What
The scene of the next act is before the lady's window,
in the road, at night. The pedant is there playing
Romeo, and his man Paquier is there, with a ladder,
to assist his love. A great deal of burlesque panto-
mime work is contrived with the ladder, master and
man being fooled in the dark by Corbinelli.
nelli is then seen approaching the house door.
is that?" says the pedant. "Look yonder!" says
Paquier. ""Tis your soul; you gave it yesterday to
Mademoiselle Genevote. Not being yours, it has left
you." Speak!" Granger cries; "who art thou?"
Corbinelli answers, in a mighty speech, that he is
the great devil Vauvert, who has done this, who has
done that, who has done the other thing, reciting an
enormous catalogue of horrid exploits. "This devil,"
Paquier observes, when he has finished speaking,
“hasn't lived with his hands in his pockets.” “What
do you augur from this?" asks his master. "I augur,"
says Paquier, "it's a she devil, it is so full of talk.”
66
La Tremblaye, as if alarmed by the noise outside,
enters then against M. Granger, crying "Thieves!"
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
159
1
""
and Chateaufort makes his appearance; but is unable
to assist the father of his mistress in this great extre-
mity, or use his sword, "made of a leg of the scissors
of Atropos," because he submits to be taken prisoner
by La Tremblaye, at the request of the universe.
Then enters Manon, the pedant's daughter, professing
that from her own chamber she has heard the cries
that told her of her father's danger. "Ah! M. de la
Tremblaye," she cries, "spare my father, and accept
me as his ransom. I was waiting for him in the col-
lege, when I heard the disturbance in the street.'
"But," says M. Granger, "I am not to be tricked in
that way, mademoiselle. You shall not marry this
man, I forbid it." “Ah! Monsieur de la Tremblaye,"
Manon weeps; "my poor dear father, I see by your
eyes that you are going to kill him." In this manner
Granger is at last brought to consent that La Trem-
blaye shall have his daughter, upon condition of his
own marriage with Genevote, La Tremblaye's sister.
Chateaufort then contrives to provoke a few more
blows, and as they fall he counts them. He gets
twelve. “Ah, twelve!” he says,
66 now that is fortu-
nate; I was under a vow to bear as far as twelve, if
you had struck me a thirteenth time I should have
been constrained to kill you." Instantly he receives
the thirteenth blow in the shape of a kick that floors
"Well!" he says, "I was just going to lie
him..
down."
Monsieur Granger having arranged, as he thinks,
a speedy marriage with Genevote, becomes a little
160
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
anxious on the subject of his son and rival. He there-
fore bribes Corbinelli to keep him effectually out of
the way by making him drunk at a cabaret, and main-
taining him in that state until his father's wedding
shall be over. Upon this foundation a new scheme is
built by Corbinelli for the advantage of the lovers.
His master is to feign death. Corbinelli will go in
despair to Granger, saying that he had performed his
bidding only too well, for that his young master had,
alas! met with his death in a drunken quarrel. Gene-
vote is then to be in distress, and reveal to the pedant
that she had once made a vow to the young man to
marry him alive or dead. All bar to the old man's
hopes being removed, at least she might entreat the
melancholy satisfaction of having fulfilled her vow to
his son by going through a form of marriage with his
corpse. Granger would consent easily to so conscien-
tious a desire; Genevote would be married to the body
of her lover, which would then get up and be thankful.
Paquier, coming to the bottom of this scheme, reveals
it to the pedant, and so the fourth act ends.
In the last act Corbinelli comes to the pedant with
his story, bringing, as we should say, coals to New-
castle-as M. Granger tells him, "shells to the pil-
grim." The old man exults, and the young people
are in a sad perplexity. Corbinelli constructs then a
new battery and opens fire. Everybody becomes com-
plaisant. Monsieur Granger is in the right, and of
course he must marry Genevote, and there shall be
festivities, there must be fun in the house, and they
+-
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
161
will act a play. By all means a play. Arrangements
are then made for private theatricals, which are so
contrived as to be an amusing satire on the public
stage, and the performers generally of Bergerac's time.
Captain Chateaufort and the other dramatis personæ
apply at the door for admission as spectators. The
captain contributes nothing. 'I give enough," he
tells Paquier, who is constituted porter for the occa-
sion, "I give enough in taking away nothing. I do
immense good when I do no harm." Author of the
piece, as well as stage-manager and prompter, is Corbi-
nelli. M. Granger has an easy part assigned to him.
It is to sit in a chair, and take care not to speak
a word. He represents a cruel father. Genevote is a
fair lady, and the pedant's son makes love to her.
Granger finds his path by no means easy. He needs
perpetual reminding that a comedy is not the business
of life; that everything done in a play is make-believe.
In a little time he has become very much impressed
with the fact that he is engaged in private theatricals,
that he puts out the players by his blunders, and spoils
the amusement of his friends. He is ashamed of the
frequent admonitions of the prompter, and when a man
is introduced dressed as a notary, and the distressed
lovers sign a document, which Corbinelli says must
be supposed to be their marriage contract, and it is
brought to Granger in his chair, and as he is told that
it is in his part, as the father who proves generous
at bottom, to countersign the supposed document, he
writes his name where he is told to write it. Very
VOL. II.
M
. 162
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
:
soon afterwards he discovers that the notary is a real
notary, the contract a real contract, and that his son
has, with his own assent, been marrying Genevote
before his face. That is the last trick played upon the
pedant, and with it the comedy of Le Pedant Joué'
ends.
From this very brief outline it may, perhaps, be
seen that Bergerac's comedy does not lack vigour and
vivacity. It exactly hit the manners of his day, was
full of bustle and good fun, which must have provoked
incessant laughter. The military braggart of those
times, depicted by so many dramatists, is now a cha-
racter entirely obsolete, and college pedantry now
furnishes less manifest material for ridicule. Affecta-
tions of speech run in a new channel; we have out-
grown the years when it was the conceit and pedantry
of lovers to discourse to their mistresses of flames and
cinders. In his own time, Bergerac's satire was well
pointed and well aimed; his wit was genuine, and
still has its effect; the exuberance of life in him still
can enliven those who read his works. The plot of
the Pedant Joué' is extravagant, and so are many
of its scenes; but if the extravagance was mirthful,
it was accounted no demerit on the stage for which
he wrote. From wandering farce actors, who played
the pieces of Monchrétien or Balthazar Baro, pur-
chased of their authors at ten crowns a-piece, the
Comic Muse of France had only then commenced her
· appeal to better tastes. It was not till about the year
1630 that Pierre Corneille produced comedies in verse
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
163
which were "legitimate" productions, if not very good.
Bergerac's comedy was the first that appeared in prose.
It is the oldest play in its department of French
drama, and what Boileau calls the burlesque audace
of Bergerac is scarcely more manifest in that than in
some of the maturest works of Molière. What is there
in the Pedant Joué' more absurd (or more amusing)
than the conversion of M. Jourdain into a Mamamouchi,
or the very last scene Molière enacted, the admission
of Argan to the Faculty of Physic? Let this also be
remembered: Molière and Bergerac were both born
in the same year, 1620. Bergerac died at the age of
thirty-five. Had Molière died at the same time, Ber-
gerac would have survived as the greater man of the
two, for Molière had then written only two verse
comedies of no great merit, 'L'Etourdi' and 'Le Dépit
Amoureux.' Far better than either is that third work
by Bergerac, 'The Account of a Voyage to the Moon,'
which is said to have influenced Swift in the writing
of his 'Gulliver,' and by which the wits of other men.
of note seem to have been stimulated. Appended to
it was a second 'History of Travels in the Sun,' by
the same author, and both were, after a short time (in
1687), translated into English by A. Lovell, Master of
Arts.
Though itself aiding in the production of other
works of a like kind, I think it pretty certain that
Bergerac's Journey to the Moon' never would have
been made if Lucian had never visited the empire of
Endymion, and fought on his side with hippogriphs
M 2
164
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
against Phaeton and his Nephelocentaurs. Had Lucian
not woven an extravagant tissue of impossibilities to
ridicule the tales of travels told by Ctesias of Cnidos,
and the account given of the Great Sea by Iambulus,
Bergerac's pleasant satire probably would never have
appeared. But the extravagance of Bergerac meant
more than a burlesque on the extravagant. His work
was what Lucian's is not, and Swift's is-a compre-
hensive satire on the men and manners of his time.
Herein lies its chief merit and interest. It is interesting
also for the large admixture of serious philosophy, in
the shape of sound astronomical information and much
reasoning drawn from Descartes, which it seems to
have been Cyrano's wish to popularise by introducing
it in an amusing way among amusing matter. The
satire, too, in its most extravagant flights has often
so wise a thoughtfulness to nerve its wing, that the
reader of the book, however much he may be made to
laugh, soon feels it to be anything but a trifler by
whom he is addressed. A short notice of this book
must end the account of Bergerac.
Designing, if possible, to reach the sun by encasing
himself in bottles of dew, and rising as the dew was
drawn up by the sunbeams, Cyrano tried the experi-
ment, but through the bursting of some of his bottles.
and other accidents, he came to earth again. He fell,
however, at a great distance from home, in New France
or Canada. Hurt by his fall, he was nursed at the
governor's house, and had talk with the governor on
many things, and among others on the doctrine of the
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
165
earth's movement. The governor cited to him the
opinion of a learned father, who believed that the earth
moves, but not for the reason given by Copernicus;
but-I quote Lovell's translation when I quote at all—
“because hell fire being shut up in the centre of the
earth, the damned, who make a great bustle to avoid
its flames, scramble up to the vault as far as they can
from them, and so make the earth to turn, as a turnspit
makes the wheel go round when he runs about." Ber-
gerac, it should be said, was not afraid of mother
church, for, said he, "there can be no harm in offending
the Pope, he is so full of indulgences."
Not forgetful of his desire to mount, Bergerac made
a flying machine in Canada, and started with it, but
soon fell to the ground, and was sorely bruised. His
bruises were anointed with marrow, and he tried his
machine again one night, aiding its ascent by jets
of fireworks fastened about its circumference. The
machine again proved unfortunate, but when it fell
Bergerac was surprised to find that he continued rising.
The reason of this was that the moon was then on the
wane, and it is usual for her when in that quarter to
suck up the marrow of animals. Bergerac, therefore,
being covered with marrow, rose.
quarters of the way were completed, he ceased rising,
and began to fall, but he still fell towards the moon,
by whose mass, it being smaller than the earth, he had
not before been acted upon so as to feel the full force
of its centre. He first saw in the moon a mortal, who
explained how he had risen by the use of a magnetic
When about three-
166
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
bowl. Presently he was found by the natives, who are
men walking on all fours, and taken by them into their
chief town.
"Then (he says) when the people saw that I was so
little (for most of them are twelve cubits long), and
that I walked only upon two legs, they could not
believe me to be a man; for they were of opinion that
nature having given to men as well as beasts two legs
and two arms, they should make use of both of them
alike. And, indeed, reflecting upon that since, that
situation of body did not seem to me altogether ex-
travagant, when I called to mind, that whilst children
are still under the nurture of nature they go upon all
four, and that they rise not on their two legs but by
the care of their nurses, who set them on little running
chairs, and fasten straps to them, to hinder them from
falling on all four, as the only posture that the shape of
our body naturally inclines to rest in. They said then,
as I had it interpreted to me since, that I was infallibly
the female of the queen's little animal; and therefore,
as such, or somewhat else, I was carried straight to the
town-house, where I observed by the muttering and
gestures both of the people and magistrates, that they
were consulting what sort of a thing I could be.”
In this situation Bergerac had many experiences,
and one visitor, from whom he learnt much, proved
to be no less a personage than the dæmon of Socrates,
who gave him a satirical sketch of his own history;
and as to his living in the moon, added, "that which
makes me to continue here is because the men are
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
1
167
1
great lovers of truth; have no pedants among them;
that the philosophers are never persuaded but by
reason, and that the authority of a doctor, or of a
great number, is not preferred before the opinion of
a thresher in a barn, if he has right on his side. In
short, none are reckoned madmen in this country but
sophisters and orators." Having escaped from his
showman by aid of the friendly dæmon, Bergerac saw
more at large what life was in the moon. Among
other things he found that it was inhabited by a spiritual
people, living much, not upon gross flesh, but upon the
steams arising from cooked food. This is the only idea
directly taken from the account of Lucian. "The men
in the moon," Lucian wrote, "kindle a fire, and then
broil frogs upon the coals, which in that country fly in
vast numbers in the air, and when they are broiled
enough, they sit about a table, and licking the smoke
or steam that comes from them, they think they dine
like princes. And this is the food that nourishes them."
Bergerac, asking for more solid fare, was taken early
the next morning to the innkeeper's garden, where the
larks were fired at, and fell ready roasted. For those
people know how to mingle with their powder and shot
a composition that kills, plucks, roasts, and seasons the
fowls all at once. When the time came for departure,
Bergerac's guide, who was the dæmon in the body of
a man of the moon, paid their scot in verse, the money
of the country. For their supper, bed, and breakfast,
the charge was three couplets, equal to six verses.
They might live well, the dæmon explained, since a
168
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
week's pampering of their appetites would not cost
a sonnet, and he had four about him, besides two
epigrams, two odes, and an eclogue.
"Would to God,' said I (Bergerac goes on), 'would
to God,' said I, 'it were so in our world; for I know a
good many honest poets there, who are ready to starve,
and who might live plentifully if that money would
pass in payment.' I farther asked him, 'If those
verses would always serve if one transcribed them.'
He made answer, 'No,' and so went on-‘When an
author has composed any, he carries them to the mint,
where the sworn poets of the kingdom sit in court.
There these versifying officers assay the pieces, and
if they be judged sterling, they are rated not according
to their coin-that's to say, that a sonnet is not always
good as a sonnet-but according to the intrinsic value
of the piece. So that, if any one starve he must be a
blockhead, for men of wit make always good cheer.'"
Being soon afterwards captured and associated with
the queen's little animal, of which he had heard so
much, Bergerac found the creature to be a Spaniard,
who had by some means reached the moon, and who
was kept as a curiosity, together with the queen's birds
and an ape in a Spanish dress. The two prisoners were
able to converse in the Latin language upon questions
of philosophy; and as it became apparent that they
were not mates, a question arose among the learned
men of the moon as to what these little creatures were.
Either they were wild men or they were birds. The
latter theory being made probable by their hopping on
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
169
two legs, while there was much to urge against the
other notion, Bergerac was put by himself into a cage,
and the queen's bird-keeper came daily to teach him to
whistle.
In time he learned more than whistling, he acquired
the language of the moon. In learning it he was aided
by a queen's chambermaid, who used to visit his cage
much, and whose pet bird especially he was. As soon
as he could talk there was fresh marvelling; and he
showed much wit, and won so greatly upon visitors,
as to make it necessary that an edict should be issued,
letting all people know that what he said was not done
through reason, but, let it be done never so wittily,
through instinct alone. Nevertheless doubts arose, and
a convention of the learned was assembled to decide
whether the strange bird was indeed a reasonable being.
He was brought before the court, and being questioned
on philosophy, held closely to his Aristotle. He was
declared to be a kind of ostrich, which is a very stupid
bird, and sent back to his cage. The friendly dæmon
always visited him there, and told him many things.
For example, he was told that in case of war arising
between two states in the moon, care is taken for the
even matching of the troops on either side, in order
that those who are physically strong may not oppress
the weak, but that the contest may be one of spirit and
of valour only. They also in time of war decide the
fate of empires often by the conferences of learned,
witty, and judicious men, holding one victory by force
of argument to be worth three by force of arms.
170
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
Another investigation of Bergerac's case being de-
manded, he was re-examined, but as he abided by his
old philosophy and his old account of himself, it was
again held that he was a bird, perhaps a parrot. But if
he was an accountable creature, as he wished to be
considered, he was liable to heavy penalties, and to
these he was indeed afterwards condemned; for, on his
continual assertion that he came from a world which
was their moon, and that their world was his moon,
it was resolved that he who thus taught heretically
that the moon was a world and the world a moon,
should be reputed a man, and condemned to punish-
ment or retractation, "because of the scandal that the
novelty of that opinion might give to weak brethren."
He was saved only by the interposition of the dæmon.
Soon afterwards Bergerac was taken to sup in com-
pany with some philosophers, with whom he conversed
at large, and among whom he observed the great respect
and deference paid by the old to the young. In justifi-
cation of this custom, an admirable ex parte case is
made out against the claim of old men to superiority of
wisdom. Bergerac knew that it would give offence,
but he said, they who are old have once been young,
"therefore by repeating these things I have obliged all
men, and only disobliged but half." He saw an old
man quit the supper table (it was a supper of steams
sent up from the kitchen), and found that he retired to
sup apart, being opposed to the wanton cruelty of
vegetable diet. He was one who considered it less
sinful to massacre a man than to cut and kill a cabbage,
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
171
because one day the man will live again, but the
cabbage has no other life to hope for. By putting
to death a cabbage you annihilate it; by killing a man,
you only make him change his habitation.
The dæmon of Socrates then said to Bergerac :-
"Knowing that in your world the government of
health is too much neglected, I will tell you something
of the care we here take of our lives. In all houses
there is a physiognomist entertained by the public,
who in some manner resembles your physicians, save
that he prescribes only to the healthful; and judges
of the different manner how we are to be treated, only
according to the proper figure and symmetry of our
members; by the features of the face, the complexion,
the softness of the skin, the agility of the body, the
sound of the voice, and the colour, strength, and
hardness of the hair. Did you not just now mind a
man of a pretty low stature who eyed you? He was
the physiognomist of the house; assure yourself that
according as he has observed your constitution, he hath
diversified the exhalations of your supper. Mark the
quilt on which you lie, how distant it is from our
couches. Without doubt he judged your constitution
to be far different from ours, since he feared that the
odour which escapes from these little pipkins that stand
under our noses might reach you, or that yours might
steam to us. At night the flowers upon which you sleep
will be, no doubt, chosen with like circumspection."
Another of Bergerac's ideas concerning wholesome-
ness arises out of his surprise, one day when out for a
172
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
walk, at hearing of some malefactor condemned to die
in his bed, and then be put into a hole in the earth,
followed by a hundred and fifty men in black, mocking
his remains with a burlesque of sorrow. This surprised
the stranger, who had been accustomed to believe no
end more desirable. In the moon, he was told, the
dead bodies are all burnt, except only those of male-
factors, which are doomed to be crawled over by
worms, and left to the discretion of toads, which feed
on their cheeks. This happens after they have been
ignominiously laid in a pit, and had a pike's depth
of earth thrown over their mouths. But," said Ber-
gerac, "we call that honourable burial." "Honour-
able," cried they of the moon ;-"the plague clothed in
the body of a man!"
Presently follows this account of the last days of an
inhabitant of the moon, who is mortally sick:-
"Every one embraces him, and when it comes to his
turn whom he loves best, having kissed him, affec-
tionately leaning upon his bosom, and joining mouth to
mouth, with his right hand he sheathes a dagger in his
heart. The loving friend parts not his lips from his
friend's lips till he finds him expired; and then pulling
out the steel, and putting his mouth close to the wound,
he sucks his blood, till a second succeeds him, then a
third, fourth, and so on all the company."
They then fill the house with enjoyment, and during
three or four days, whilst they are tasting the pleasures
of love, they feed on nothing but the flesh of the
deceased.
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
173
I interrupted this discourse (continues Bergerac),
saying to him that told me all, that this manner of
acting much resembled the ways of some people of our
world, and so pursued my walk, which was so long,
that when I came back, dinner had been ready two
hours."
He was asked by his hosts, on being so late, why he
had not ascertained how the time was going. He had
endeavoured to do so, he replied, and had inquired the
time of a vast number of people, but they did no more
than hold up their heads and show their teeth at him.
He was informed then that his question had in each
case been answered, for that by turning his face up to
the sun, any person in the moon could convert his well-
proportioned nose into the gnomon of a sun-dial, and
that to such a dial the teeth served as a convenient row
of figures. Bergerac had only in each case to observe
upon which tooth the shadow of the nose fell, to get a
perfect answer to his question.
At this time Bergerac entertained serious thoughts of
a return to earth, by help of his friendly dæmon, from
whom he received, as parting gifts, two books-one
of them containing the Histories of the Sun and of a
Spark; the purpose of the other was to prove that
everything is true, that black is white, that nothing
is something, and that what is is not, without the use
of any captious or sophistical argument. These books
were executed after the manner usual in the moon,
so as to address themselves to the ears, not to the eyes.
Each was composed of cunningly contrived machinery,
174
CYRANO DE BERGERAC.
1
with springs and wheels, so that whoever desired to
be informed by it had only to wind it up, and turn the
hand to whatever chapter he might wish to read.
Their books being made in this way, children in the
moon can read as soon as they can speak, and the
machinery is so small, and enclosed in cases so elegant
-one in diamond, another in pearl—that a traveller
may hang books to his ears as pendants, and so he who
runs may read.
In good time the adventurous traveller did safely
return to earth. At first, as he came down, he could
distinguish the two continents, Europe and Africa;
then he observed a volcano, and perceived a strong
odour of brimstone; then he fell into the midst of
briers on the side of a hill, where he was seen presently
by shepherds who spoke Italian. Little heed was paid
to him by these people, but he was barked at violently
by their dogs, and until he had aired his clothes he
excited a great barking of dogs wherever he appeared;
for those animals, being used to bay the moon, smelt
that he came thence.
COLLEGE WORK.
[Introductory Lecture for the Session 1867–1868, in the Faculty
of Arts, University College, London.]
TO-DAY, in the Faculty of Arts and Laws, we enter upon
the thirty-ninth year of the work of this College. The
first stone of the building in which we meet was laid on
the 30th of April, 1827. Its first Session was opened
in October, 1828. The first name mentioned in a report
to the proprietors before the first opening of classes was
that of a Professor from whose energy the College still
draws strength, and who is also the main pillar of the
associated school, Professor Key. Our origin is not,
through distance, so dimly to be seen that a friendly
enthusiast can imagine of us—as has been imagined in
the Black Book of Cambridge, and in an Assertio Anti-
quitatis' of the University of Oxford, for those great
centres of learning-that we came into existence not
very long after the siege of Troy. King Alfred never
did anything for us beyond providing matter for discus-
sion in a History or Anglo-Saxon Class. We owe most
to one of the Henries-Henry, Lord Brougham—who,
had he laboured at the work of the fourteenth century
as steadfastly and as successfully as he has laboured on
behalf of the nineteenth, might have been celebrated
176
COLLEGE WORK.
by Friar John Capgrave in his 'Book of the Illustrious
Henries;' but, missing that obscurity of honour, sur-
vives every dispute as to his rank among the foremost
leaders of two generations, lives to see the ripening of
harvests he has sown, and, in years of trial energetic
among those who bound this College firmly to the life
of our own time, is at this day its noble President.*
The College is so young, that there are still active in
its daily work, as members of its Council or of its staff
of teachers, some-like Lord Belper, Lord Romilly, and
Mr. Grote, Professors Key and Grant and Malden-by
whom, in its first days, the character-the life—of the
new institution was maintained against much ill report;
who made it what it has been, strong in itself, elsewhere
also a begetter of strength, and who see in our own
present prosperity and that of other Colleges, and of a
great London University, and of yet other Colleges and
yet another University in Ireland, sprung from us, the
fruits of the field in which they ploughed when mist
was thick and the wind chill. Abating nothing of just
reverence for older institutions which have been guides
of the past-and in which most sure we are that the
life of the present is too strong to be bound hopelessly
in trammels of tradition-may we not ask, is there a
place of education with a past more honourable, a future
more hopeful, than the College of which we, teachers
and students, have, during this new Session, to maintain
the honour and advance the hope?
That is a common trust in which the student who
* Lord Brougham died May 9, 1868.
COLLEGE WORK.
177
first joins us to-day has as distinct a part to fulfil as the
teacher who has laboured here since first the walls were
raised. Each has his work to do in the College, and
will do it best if he can enter heartily into the spirit of
the place. And what is that?
When, in old times, the clergy, or a studious few
among them, were the only lettered class, collegiate
teaching began, naturally, in connexion with abbeys and
churches. Alcuin, Charlemagne's tutor, and the tutor
of his empire, was taught in the monastery school founded
at York by Archbishop Egbert. He tells, in his poem.
on the Archbishops and holy men of York, how he there
studied Grammar, Rhetoric, Law, Poetry, Astronomy,
Physics, and Interpretation of the Scriptures. Just
eleven hundred years ago Alcuin became the head of
that school, and custodian of the Library-the best in
England-from which he drew the knowledge he poured
out by word of mouth among his students. Books then
were too scarce and costly to be scattered freely among
learners, and oral teaching - lecturing - must have
formed a considerable part of Alcuin's system. That
even foreigners came to learn at York, from Alcuin, we
may infer from the fact that one such student's name is
left on record, that of Liudger, a noble Frieslander, who
lived to be canonised as a saint, and so found a bio-
grapher. We also see, in his extant letters, how Alcuin
maintained, after he had been called to the Court of
Charlemagne, a lively interest in some of the old stu-
dents who had been under his care. Three of them-
Wizo, Fredegis, and Sigelf-he took with him as assist-
VOL. II.
N
&
178
COLLEGE WORK.
ants in his task of spreading knowledge through the
new Empire that was remodelling the form and cha-
racter of Europe. Charlemagne, taking this Yorkshire-
man for guide, made him virtually his Minister of Public
Instruction, and backed with despotic power every act
of his for the establishment of well-disciplined schools
throughout the land. Necessarily, because of the con-
dition of society, the schools were entrusted to the
clergy, who included within their body the small let-
tered class. But, besides the cathedral schools, there
were some—perhaps three only-specially distinguished
as Public Schools, which may have been under imme-
diate direction of the State, and the chief school was a
secular one, within Charlemagne's own palace, esta-
blished for the good of himself, his sons and daughters,
and his sister Gisla. From this Palatine School of
Charlemagne tradition derives the existence in his
capital of the earliest University.
The history of the University of Paris is obscure and
doubtful for many generations after Charlemagne; but
it is certain that the Faculty of Arts was the most
ancient part of it, and that its Chancellor was always
the Chancellor of the Church of St. Geneviève. I turn
now to a safe guide over this doubtful ground. In days
when the question of granting a charter to this College
of ours was hotly debated, and some disputants appeared
hardly to know what a University or College really was,
an 'Essay on the Origin of Universities' was published
by Professor Malden, which is still referred to as the
most reliable sketch of its subject. Indeed, it is the
COLLEGE WORK.
179
1
acknowledged basis of the article on Colleges in the
latest Encyclopædia. In that essay it is admitted to be
"possible that the Faculty of Arts may have grown out
of a school attached to the Church of St. Geneviève
according to the ordinances of Charlemagne; but this
bare possibility is all the proof that can be shown on
behalf of the foundation of the Paris University by the
great Emperor of the West." Its true life dates from
the twelfth century; and it is in an ordinance of Inno-
cent III., dated 1215, that we have first evidence of its
being called a University. An extant deed, dated six
years afterwards, adopts the style, "We, the University
of the Masters and Scholars of Paris." In later times
the name of University came to be restricted to edu-
cational bodies which had the power of granting degrees.
At first it was not restricted even to places of education,
and certainly was not applied to them, because they
taught the universal round of learning. "In the lan-
guage of the civil law," says Professor Malden, “all
corporations were called Universitates, as forming one
whole out of many individuals. In the German juris-
consults Universitas is the word for a corporate town.
In Italy it was applied to the incorporated trades in the
cities. In ecclesiastical language the term was some-
times applied to a number of churches united under the
superintendence of one Archdeacon. In a Papal rescript
of the year 688, it is used of the body of Canons of the
Church of Pisa. By applying the term, therefore, to
the teachers and learners of the school of Paris, Inno-
cent III. recognised them as forming a connected and
N 2
180
COLLEGE WORK.
organised body, and not merely as an assemblage of
individuals." The name of University is first found
applied to Oxford in a public instrument of the year
1201, fourteen years earlier than the Papal ordinance
just mentioned; and it is first found applied to Cam-
bridge in a document of the year 1223. Practically,
then, the application of the name dates in each case
from the same period, the beginning of the thirteenth
century.
It was in the thirteenth century that the first Colleges
were founded-the earliest of them in connexion with
the University of Paris. It was the custom there to
cultivate in each College a single study, or small group
of studies-as Theology in the Sorbonne, or Latin,
Greek, and Hebrew, in the Collegium Trilingue, founded
by Francis I. early in the sixteenth century. With us,
Colleges were founded at Oxford and Cambridge, not
as separate schools, but as places of lodging for the
students. These were gradually endowed by the bene-
ficent with means for relieving the poor student of some
part of his expenses, and furnished with provisions of
discipline to ensure some sort of domestic superinten-
dence. University College, Oxford, and Balliol College,
which had Wiclif in the number of its masters, were
founded before the end of the reign of Henry III.;
Merton College in the reign of Edward I. Before the
foundation of Oriel, in the reign of Edward II., these
three were the only Colleges, that is to say, the only
lodging places for students in which there was endow-
ment for the pecuniary benefit of their members. But
COLLEGE WORK.
181
it is said that there were then three hundred Halls, or
Inns, in which students lived at their own expense, under
supervision of some tutor, or principal, responsible for
their good conduct. Such inns had often irreverent
names invented for them by their student-lodgers—as
Ape Hall, Physic Hall, Pill Hall, Beef Hall, Pittance
Hall. The oldest of the Cambridge Colleges is St.
Peter's, founded in the reign of Edward II. King's
Hall and St. Michael's, of the same reign, were, with
Merton Hall, afterwards swallowed up in the great foun-
dation of Trinity College. Clare Hall-of existing
foundations next in antiquity to Peterhouse
founded in the first year of Edward III., in 1326.
was
The teachers who drew students from all parts into
these Colleges and Halls were not wiser than Alcuin.
Logical subtleties had multiplied and diverged, but the
general curriculum of the schools remained almost
what it had been six hundred years before. Alcuin,
too, had classed all subjects of teaching in the seven
steps of the Trivium and the Quadrivium. Grammar,
Rhetoric, and Logic were the Trivium of Ethics; Arith-
metic, Geometry, Music (cultivated for its importance
in religious services), and Astronomy, were the Quad-
rivium of Physics; and these were the steps up to
Theology. Grammar meant, indeed, the use of lan-
guage; but the languages of modern Europe were un-
settled and uncultivated, and in the republic of the
educated men scattered about Europe there could only
be exchange of thought in Latin. Knowledge of that
language alone opened to them the learning of the past
182
COLLEGE WORK.
and of their present. A few theologians studied Hebrew
or Chaldee; but at the close of the fifteenth and be-
ginning of the sixteenth century study of Hebrew was
so exceptional that his Hebrew scholarship brought
Reuchlin into trouble; for in Cologne, at any rate, blind
persecution of the Jews included a hot zeal against their
language. The study of Greek, diffused from the teach-
ing of Greek refugees after the capture of Constantinople
by the Turks in 1453, was admitted so reluctantly and
slowly that in the time of the Reformation a common
cry of the churchmen who stood upon the old ways was,
beware of Greek, lest you be made a heretic. Thus,
for century after century, Grammar, or Language, in the
Trivium, meant only Latin. When it meant more, it
meant also Hebrew and Greek, as in Francis the First's
Trilingual College. What more it means now, in foun-
dations over careful of tradition, is Greek but not
Hebrew, and certainly not any language that contains
the thoughts of our own day.
Whether a certain tradition, given in the continuation
of Ingulph ascribed to Peter of Blois, be true, is of no
consequence; the book is not so old as it pretends to
be, but it is old enough to give a true representation of
the form and matter of medieval teaching at the Uni-
versities, and it gives this notion of University teaching
in an account of the origin of the University of Cam-
bridge, which it dates 1109:-
(6
Joffred, abbot of Croyland, sent over to his manor
of Cottenham, nigh Cambridge, Gislebert, his fellow
monk and Professor of Divinity, with three other monks,
COLLEGE WORK.
183
who, following him into England, being thoroughly
furnished with Philosophical Theorems and other primi-
tive sciences, repaired daily to Cambridge, and having
hired a certain public barn, made open profession of
their sciences, and in short space of time drew together
a great company of scholars.
But in the second year after their coming, the
number of their scholars grew so great, as well from out
of the whole country as the town, that the biggest house
and barn that was, or any church whatsoever, sufficed
not to contain them: whereupon, sorting themselves
apart in several places, and taking the University of
Orleans for their pattern, early in the morning Monk
Odo, a singular grammarian and satirical poet, read
grammar unto boys and those of the younger sort as-
signed unto him, according to the doctrine of Priscian,
and Remigius upon him. At one of the clock, Terricus,
a most witty and subtle sophister, taught the elder sort
of young men Aristotle's Logic, after the Introduc-
tions of Porphyry and the Comments of Averroes.
At three of the clock, Monk William read a lecture in
Tully's Rhetoric and Quintilian's Flores: but the great
Master Gislebert, upon every Sunday and Holyday,
preached God's word unto the people. And thus, out
of this little fountain which grew to be a great river,
we see how the city of God has become enriched, and
all England made fruitful by means of very many
Masters and Doctors proceeding out of Cambridge, in
manner of the holy Paradise," &c.
It is very much to the honour of Terricus that in
184
COLLEGE WORK.
this Academic Paradise he knew in 1109 what com-
ments would be made on Aristotle by Averroes, who
was not born until about the middle of that century.
Of the Scottish Universities,-more like those of the
continent, and keeping pace with the requirements of
the day, St. Andrew's dates from 1411, Glasgow from
1450, Aberdeen from 1494, Edinburgh, 1582, after the
establishment of the High School in 1578. Dublin
obtained its University in 1591, but London, the great
centre of the nation's energies, was without a Univer-
sity until this College, founded as the University of
London, gladly transferred that name to an institution,
flesh of its own flesh, whose sole function it now is
to confer degrees on all who can deserve them, without
distinction of creed or college; degrees that can be
acquired only by a steady course of well-directed intel-
lectual exertion, and for that reason stand first in
honour among evidences of the possession of such thews
of knowledge as examiners can test. The founders of
this place in which we meet to-day could not foretel
the measure of their success. Had it been less than it
was, here might have been, as in Dublin and in Edin-
burgh, a single place uniting the two functions of the
College and the University. But the success exceeded
expectation. Competing Colleges arose to multiply the
number of our fellow-labourers, and to adapt our work,
as no one institution could by itself possibly adapt it,
to the great diversity of minds unlike in tendency or
training but alike sincere. So in literature, there was a
little epoch made by the first production of the 'Edin-
COLLEGE WORK.
185
6
6
C
burgh Review.' It came of the same spirit which
produced this College, and had indeed our President
among its founders. The Edinburgh' brought the
"Quarterly' into existence; and then followed other
Quarterlies, each representing a distinct shade of reli-
gious or political opinion. The gain was general when
diverse minds thus carried through every section of
society that higher tone of intellectual criticism, of
which the founders of the Edinburgh Review' devised
the plan, and set a prosperous example. As the 'Edin-
burgh' in 1802 was followed by the Quarterly' in
1808, and afterwards by others; so University College in
1828 was followed by King's College in 1830, and after-
wards by others. And as the days of unfriendly rivalry
between those two great periodicals have passed away
long since, with the narrow feuds which, among thought-
ful men, no longer embitter our political discussions;
so also between these two great London Colleges there
is now the right understanding that each has its own
place in the same field of work, and that for the suc-
cessful issue of their common labours each has an
interest in the prosperity and honour of the other. In
an account of 'Social Life in Former Days,' gathered
by Captain Dunbar out of his family records, we read
of a Sir Robert Gordon, of Gordonstoune, who had a
feud with his neighbour Dunbar of Newton. Their
lands lay east and west of a strip of barren sand. When-
ever the wind blew from the east, Sir Robert ploughed
the sand that it might damage the Newton lands; and
whenever the wind blew from the west, Dunbar of
186
COLLEGE WORK.
Newton ploughed the sand that it might damage the
lands of Gordonstoune. Both estates were impaired.
If those disputants had abided each by the right use
of his ploughs and horses on his own domain, and had
joined strength also to reclaim into fertility the barren
strip between them, they would not only have been
better neighbours, but they would have been more
prosperous men. We may very safely take this up as
a parable against all waste of energy in petty jealousies.
Here we have none. Elsewhere, also, there is an end.
of the old notion that honest differences of opinion
shut out fellow-workers from respect for one another.
At one of its soirées of last session this College wel-
comed cordially the Principal, the Chaplain, and five
or six of the Professors of King's College among the
guests who honoured it by the acceptance of its invi-
tations. We claim fellowship, then, with all places of
education that have been produced since 1828 by the
movement which was here initiated. If any of them
are based upon a more exclusive principle than that
which to us here is as the breath of life, still it is well.
In doing so they meet requirements of some sections
of the great community which, at present, we might be
unable to reach. Enough that we are all seeking to
diffuse as widely as we can the truest education we can
give.
In the year 1835, when Sir Robert Peel was Minister,
the House of Commons addressed the Crown praying
that a Charter of Incorporation, with power to confer
degrees, which had been actually framed by the Law
COLLEGE WORK.
187
Officers of the Crown in the year 1831, might be granted
to this College, then called the London University.
Soon after the formation of the next administration,
that under Lord Melbourne, communications took place
between the council of the College and the Govern-
ment, which ended in the acceptance of a Collegiate
Charter only. Thus, since the beginning of 1837, the
name of this institution has been University College,
London. And in the charter of the London University,
granted together with that of University College, the
Government adopted most distinctly and explicitly the
principle for which our founders had contended. That
document contained a declaration, common before in
the writings of Liberal Reformers, but never until then
embodied in a royal charter, that the King "deems it
to be the duty of his royal office to hold forth to all
classes and denominations of his faithful subjects,
without any distinction whatsoever, an encourage-
ment for pursuing a regular and liberal course of
education."
That, then, was one fruit of the College work. The
Queen's Colleges in Ireland were opened in 1849, and
the Queen's University was created in 1850, upon
liberal principles, by charter from the Crown. This was
followed, in 1852, by a Brief of Pius IX., giving his
apostolical approval to the establishment of a Catholic
University in Ireland. Taking no part in the contro-
versies that arise during such movement, from the first
and for all time to come, it is for this College to show
by its work, and its work only, what is that liberal
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course of education in which men of all classes and
denominations may take part together, and how best
to uphold the just purpose of its founders. We are of
the same mind now that was expressed in their first
prospectus, when they hoped, they said, that they were
"about to lay the foundations of an institution well
adapted to communicate liberal instruction to succes-
sive generations of those who were then excluded from
it, and likely neither to retain the machinery of studies.
superseded by time, nor to neglect any new science
brought into view by the progress of reason;
" of such
magnitude also as to provide "the illustration and orna-
ment which every part of knowledge derives from the
neighbourhood of every other."
In Paris and Bologna and elsewhere abroad, as in
some of our Scottish Universities, there arose of old
a division of the students into nations. They were
rather provinces than nations. Paris had the French,
Picard, and Norman; the only really distinct nation-
ality being the German, called afterwards the English.
So at Glasgow the nations are Clydesdale, Tiviotdale,
Albany, and Rothesay. It used to be found that
students from the same part of the country agreed
together better than those between whom the little
local patriotisms and diversities of dialect came into
conflict. Here, too, we have our nations; but they
are not divided. Every quarter of the globe has fur-
nished students to this College; and no student has
ever felt that creed or race has shut him out from full
participation in its work, and cordial relations with his
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189
fellow workers, whether those who teach, or those who
learn. If this good end be attainable only by leaving
undisturbed, and reverently trusting to home care,
those views of the Divine nature which are in each
household accounted sacred, we think that in so doing
we take the surest way to keep unblemished in each
heart its own true spirit of religion. Well for us, that
we meet on the broad common ground of human know-
ledge, and learn to seek truth, which is part of God,
with mutual forbearance and unflinching candour.
Knowing how difficult it has been for the ancient
Universities, richly as they are endowed, to burst cords
of tradition which confine their energies, must we not
take it for a sign of the energy, not of the impotence,
that we are enabled to know this so well? Many of
their own members attack the narrowness with which
the Colleges, now more than the Universities, blockade
the way of study with dogmatic irreligious tests.
Within the last two or three weeks, at the meeting of
the British Association, there has been discussion of
their waste of educational power. It was led and
invited by an eminent professor in the University of
Oxford. At the meeting in Belfast of the Social
Science Congress, University Reform was a main topic.
The Education Committee came, indeed, to a formal
resolution that the council of that association be re-
quested to "consider what steps, if any, it can take
to promote the adaptation of the Universities to the
present requirements of education by the improve-
ment of their government, of the modes and subjects of
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instruction in them, of the employment of their reve-
nues, and of the conditions of admission." A Blue
Book just published disseminates the evidence taken
before a Select Committee upon Mr. Ewart's Bill for
the Extension of University Education. The chief
design of the bill was to open the old Universities to
students lodging in their towns outside the walls of
the Colleges. But the discussion of this was insepar-
able from nearly all the more important questions of
education and discipline; and, in the evidence received,
the strongest arguments for reform are found coming
from members of those Universities who are most
warmly devoted to their interests.
Our function, the function of a College, is to
teach; while that of a University is to test, and stamp
with certain letters, its own graduated marks, the
ascertained results of teaching. In evidence upon the
relation between College and University at Oxford and
Cambridge, we are told, with some particular detail,
how far the Colleges have been enriched by ancient
gifts for support and encouragement of students. Thus,
at Oxford, it is calculated that the scholarships and
exhibitions are worth about 80,0007. a year; of which
7007. or 8007. belong to the University, and 79,0007.
to the Colleges. The fellowships and headships of
Colleges are worth another 140,0007. a year. The
ecclesiastical benefices attached to the Colleges are
estimated to be worth 200,0007. a year. So that here
is in Oxford alone an income of half a million a year,
with education, by no means gratuitous, of about 1400
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191
undergraduates. Each college has also a fixed charge
of about 607. a session for tuition, chamber rent, food,
and attendance, and the usual cost of a student to his
family varies from 1507. to 3007. for the twenty-four
weeks of the session.
Beyond the student's fees little is paid out of the
half million a year of revenue for the teaching of
the 1400. In this place alone, in College and school,
we are teaching more than 800,* and hope, in good time,
to be teaching 1400. We have been able also to send
men from the class-rooms into the world with a fixed
relish for intellectual work and practical resolve to do
some good by it, although we have no 500,000l. a year,
and have not even 1000l. a year, of endowments to be
spent chiefly upon the reward of school-boy learning.
The money of the ancient Colleges is still maintained
as a perquisite of the Church, and, for the most part,
distributed in excessive rewards for careful study,
limited to about three subjects. It is argued that
more of it should be spent upon the actual machinery of
education. This is said to be so hampered by tradition,
and so ill arranged, that the Master of St. John's
College, Cambridge, told the Select Committee upon
Mr. Ewart's Bill, how, in his College, about 100, and
about 150 in Trinity, stay up during the vacation, be-
cause they find that they learn most when there is no
teaching going on. Mr. Newman, of Balliol, said, also,
that tutors interrupt the men in term time, and that
more work is done during the vacation.
*Last Session (1868-9) the number was 1087.
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COLLEGE WORK.
We have here, of course, but a point or two seen
from one side of a large subject. Again, also, let us
recal to mind that these are points to which attention
is now being drawn by faithful members and friends of
the two Universities which take so great a place in
the present as well as the past intellectual history of
England; which trained also, let us remember here,
the greater number of the men who made, and who
are still helping to make, the work of this College
what it is.
And what is it? A round of work in which no
study is first and none is last. That is, for each comer
the chief study which serves best to fit him for the
future duties of his life.
Let us glance over the syllabus of our work for the
session now begun. Languages stand first, the Grammar
of the Trivium, the first step to knowledge, as our
forefathers said rightly. The first condition of know-
ledge is, of course, the use of speech. To the exact
attainment of much knowledge, it is essential that
speech should be used and interpreted with scholarly
tact and precision.
Much exactitude is secured in the sciences by fur-
nishing each with a language of its own in technical
terms, each representing one thing only, and the sense
of each clouded by no indefinite varieties or loose-
ness of popular usage. This necessary aid to exact study
of the sciences is derived almost wholly from the Latin
and Greek languages. To the man of science, there-
fore, a knowledge of these languages is necessary, if he
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193
would use the terms of his own art with swift percep-
tion of their sense, and skilfully invent what new terms
his own labour for the advance of knowledge may
perhaps make requisite.
Of a few sciences the whole history is recent, but
there is hardly one that will not now and then incite
its faithful follower to some research into the know-
ledge of the past, while most of them have old historical
foundations. But the whole body of the knowledge of
Europe from its first civilization to the end of the
sixteenth century lies written in Latin, the old common
language of the learned. Only the study of Latin will
give access to it.
If the practical value of this power of interpreting
and rightly coining words from the Latin and Greek,
and of this access to all that was written in Latin, be
great to the student of science; to the student of lite-
rature, or the man of letters, the worth of Latin is yet
greater. For a large part of the mind of Europe
during more than sixteen hundred years is locked up
in it, and accessible only to him who is able to read
Latin.
To precision in the use of our own language, a clear
and delicate perception of the sense of words is neces-
sary. Ignorant of Latin we can make only a blind use
of the words of Latin origin which take part in the
composition of our language. Ignorant of the best
Latin literature we must be content with hearsay know-
ledge of its influence upon the minds of men in later
times, and miss also important aid to the exact ex-
VOL. II.
0
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pression of our thoughts in our own language. Good
English is, indeed, to be homely, idiomatic, Saxon.
It is the part of a cultivated Englishman in speaking
or writing, to hold by an old rule, as Roger Ascham,
almost our first writer of good English prose, has
quoted it, “He that will write well in any tongue, must
follow this counsel of Aristotle, to speak as the common
people do, to think as wise men do, as so should every
man understand him, and the judgment of wise men
allow him.” The educated English writer cannot, I
think, be too homely in his use of native words and
idioms, but he is not to use them weakly or inaccu-
rately. The best written English, Saxon in idiom and
vocabulary, is to a certain extent, Latin in style. The
imitation is not servile; and in some respects our lan-
guage is more flexible, and capable of more precision
than the Latin; but we have much to learn from the
exquisite neatness and harmony with which writers
like Cicero, Virgil, and Horace packed their thoughts
into the aptest form, and gave to unaffected use of the
most simple words a force or beauty that will make
them last until the end of time. Dryden, who, in his
prose writing, was of all men of his time the most
Saxon, who read Chaucer, and relished our old ballads,
said, in the dedication of his 'Troilus and Cressida,'
that he was often uncertain whether what he wrote was
idiom of the tongue or the false grammar and nonsense
prevalent in common speech and writing, and had no
other way to clear his doubts but by translating his
English into Latin. The difference, of course, is great
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195
between the long limp bolsters of words forming sen-
tences of what is commonly called Latin English,
and an idiomatic Saxon English perfected in its use
by study of the art of the best Latin writers, who
formed clear musical sentences exactly fitted to their
thought with simple words. It promises, then, some
help to English, and much help to Latin scholarship,
that our Latin classes during this new session will be
chiefly occupied, from term to term, with a full study
of Cicero.
I have said so much of Latin as an essential part of
such a course of education as that which we are to-day
re-opening, because it is fit that we should distinguish
clearly between a just recognition of its use and a
traditional worship of it, as a study that was most im-
portant in the middle ages, to the more or less complete
exclusion of a dozen others which are necessary now.
A boy who, after a few years of education, will leave
school and enter into the business of the world, is
cheated of his rights if he be shut out from the infor-
mation he most needs, in order that he may learn im-
perfectly a dead language, for which he will have little
use in after life, and of which he will probably remember
only the pain it cost him to get that of which he has
never missed the loss. In such cases, nay always,
where one must be taken and the other left, a living
language will be of more value than a dead one. It is
very questionable, also, whether obedience to tradition
is not causing many parents to ruin the intellectual
digestion of their children with surfeits of Latin gram-
0 2
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mar, when they hunger and thirst for a far different
kind of food. “We do amiss,” said Milton of this early
forcing of young minds awry, "to spend seven or eight
years merely in scraping together so much miserable
Greek and Latin, as might be learnt otherwise easily
and delightfully in one year." Early forcing has many
an advocate. The strongest case I know in its favour
is that of Fortunio Liceti, prematurely born one day
in the year 1577, when he was no bigger than the
palm of a hand. His father, being a learned physician,
put him along with a thermometer in an Egyptian egg-
hatching machine, and by judicious forcing worked
him up into a man, who lived to the age of eighty,
and wrote eighty erudite books, all upon different sub-
jects, by not one of which the world was benefited.
But such questions, however we may deal with them,
do not concern us here. The student of this College
comes to us always of an age to learn; and by his
coming indicates that he has leisure or need for that
liberal course of education in which Latin has the dis-
tinct practical value I have been attempting to define.
You know how much that has been said of Latin
will apply also to Greek. Greek has, indeed, fewer
workaday uses, but it has had more part in the higher
education of the human race. The Latins themselves.
drew strength from it, and literary skill. Through
generation after generation, even when known only as
filtered through the Arabians, Aristotle was the science
of the world. When the Greek refugees turned tutors,
and gave Italy and Europe knowledge of their tongue,
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197
Plato fastened upon the minds of men; his writings
blended with and fed the spiritual aspirations of the
day, and he had his part in the reformation. Within
this century the soul of a school-boy poet was lit on the
way of song by Homer, read only in a translation, but
even so causing him to feel
"Like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes,
He stared at the Pacific-and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise-
Silent, upon a peak in Darien."
While you have Greek to study you are not without
another world to conquer and possess. What is it in
Greek that drew our Milton to Eschylus and caused
him to base his noblest strain of prose on an oration of
Isocrates? If you would know what it is, fasten on
Greek with might, and strive to master it, and do not
lose your hold on it when it is conquered. Conquer it,
as the Romans did, that it may have its nobler conquest
over you. A smattering of Greek has a few practical
uses. If we can only look up words in a lexicon, and
know the force of a few prepositions, we can get at the
meaning of Greek technical words, make out what
element of Greek there is in modern language, and
guess what a tailor or a pickle-merchant means by the
name he has given to a pair of trousers or a sauce.
But if you go farther, do not stop, if you can help it,
till noblest utterances of the past come to your hearts
and minds out of the Greek texts as living speech
of men, not as dead lessons. And, thereafter, do not
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stay for a long time together out of the company of
friends who are worth keeping, and who will have been
hard to win. Every study rusts and perishes with long
disuse. Latin, to a considerable extent, may be said
to be able to take care of itself. A man who retains
anything of the habits of a student, will have frequent
inevitable use for it. But in the press of daily work,
Homer, and Sophocles, and Plato, are too apt to be left
on the shelf, and after a time they become dumb books,
or we are to them as deaf people who understand only
by snatches. A power has gone from us that life is too
short and too busy to permit us to recover. Lay, then,
the foundations of your knowledge of Greek deeply
and firmly while you may; complete the structure of
it in your student life; and then take a repairing lease
of it for the term of your natural lives, enter into
possession of it, treat it as one of the noblest castles.
on your intellectual estate, and do not let it crumble
into ruin.
Before there was Greek, or Latin, there was Sanscrit,
the next study on our list, the language of all others
most talked about and argued from by men who could
not read a line of it, perhaps could not even distinguish
between Sanscrit and Arabic upon a written page. In
studying Greek, Latin, English, or any of the allied
languages, we learn this or that about Sanscrit analo-
gies, believe, or do not believe, or receive with modified
belief, a theory connecting nearly all the languages
we study as so many members of an Indo-European
family with Sanscrit for a common ancestor.
We are
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199
all obliged to hear, and occasionally say something,
about Sanscrit; but few of us feel bound to know any-
thing of it. We say that we have not time now for
the study, and will put it off to a convenient season.
Of late years students of Sanscrit, especially in Ger-
many, have been setting up a revolution in mythology,
invading all the grammars that are grammars, and
carrying everything before them; perhaps because they
are in the right; perhaps because there is almost
nobody competent to say that they are wrong. Shall
we deliver ourselves up blind captives to these men, or
shall we learn to use our own eyes, and to follow with
intelligence the course of their inquiries? Some second-
hand knowledge about Sanscrit no student is now
able to dispense with, and our round of College work
would be imperfect if it did not give those who have
use for it full opportunity of adding a real knowledge
of Sanscrit to their other preparations for the part they
are to take in life.
To many it is a necessity, to more it is a natural
desire, to acquire the knowledge of another ancient
tongue, that through which the sublime strains of Isaiah
passed into the minds of men, and the sweet singer of
Israel taught many nations to hymn praise of God.
The study of Hebrew is made important in our day to
many by the wide discussion of critical questions which
involve a reference to Hebrew texts. The questions of
theology we do not touch; but careful study of the
Hebrew language by those who desire to read in it,
forms a long recognised part of the College work.
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i
Next on our list are Arabic and Persian. How bright
a part was played by the Arabians in mediæval history,
how much of European song and science flowed from
sources in the Arabic, we all know well. But Arabic
and Persian are not only old languages with literatures
and historical connections full of interest, they are
living tongues of peoples with whom we are in frequent
friendly contact. Sir Samuel Baker stopped a year to
study Arabic upon his road towards the sources of the
Nile. Central and Northern Africa have strong-too
strong-attraction for some Englishmen; of Arabia
and Syria the attraction is yet stronger. To some of
the large number of Englishmen, upon whose ability
depends the right maintenance of our great Indian
empire, Arabic and Persian are studies that will have
a special value.
To many languages and dialects of India, derived
from Sanscrit, Sanscrit is a key; but they are to be learnt
as living tongues by Englishmen, who will hereafter
live among the people speaking them. Marathi, Hin-
doostani, and Hindi, Bengali, Gujrathi, and that chief
language of the Deccan, which is said not to be derived
from Sanscrit, Telugu, will be, for students with careers
in India before them, not the least practical and neces-
sary sections of the work done in this College.
Here is already a wide interpretation of the old term
Grammar in the Trivium; but we have yet to add
to it the next four subjects of study which lie nearer
home. If we do not study English, we simply elect
not to be joint possessors of the intellectual inherit-
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201
ance bequeathed us by our forefathers, not to take the
right way of entering into the life and soul of our own
people. We seek no strength and dignity from the
cherishing of its best memories as we sit, familiar
children of the house, beside the hearth of our great
national home. We refuse to understand the might
and beauty of the language that we speak; refuse some-
times to acquire even the power of expressing our own
thoughts in our own language clearly and accurately
upon paper, while we struggle, perhaps vainly, for a
useless knack of doing crochet work with Latin quanti-
ties. In due relation to all other parts of training, Latin
versification has, I believe, its use. But an English
gentleman will easily be pardoned—and thanked, should
he be asked to be thanked-for not writing verse in
any language, if the gods have not made him poetical.
But the day is at hand when it will be required of him
to speak or write the simple prose of his own language
as well as he can; to make it, to the utmost of his
ability, a perfect instrument for the expression of
his thoughts. The day is at hand, too, when an English-
man will rank it among first duties in his education
to learn that which he must learn before, in its whole
length and breadth, the literature of his country lives
for him, and he is as one in a city of the gods with
liberty to feast in all its mansions. The writers of our
own day interest us easily, because we are ourselves
part of the life of their time, understand every allusion
to a current topic, and share, perhaps, the ephemeral
taste that decides the form of composition. It is by
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study alone that an Englishman can so far breathe the
air of the past that he may walk over the fields with
Chaucer really singing by his side, or out of the stir
of town bring home with him, not merely a book
labelled Herrick's Works, but Robert Herrick himself,
who came to him from out of a crowd of duller people
at a bookstall.
Man
While we thus draw to ourselves vigour from the
best minds of our forefathers, we shall not fail to
perceive how, in the life of the past, as of the present,
no power is self-produced and self-contained.
influences man, and nation nation. This is so true
that during one great period of our literature it is
essential to the full intercourse with our own writers
that we should pay all the attention we can to the
literature of Italy; at another period the study of our
own writers forces us into a study also of the literature
of France; at a later period we find it necessary to
know something of German literature. Thus the
study only of English literature, apart from all other
motives, would impel us to seek what knowledge we
are able to get of the languages and literatures of
France, Italy, and Germany. But of those languages
each has a right to be studied for its own sake, as a
way of access to new realms of thought. They have
also, like the right command of English, their own
living, practical, commercial use. For the student, it
is enough if he can read them; to the man of action,
it is money's worth that he should be able to speak
and write at least one of them rightly and readily. I
COLLEGE WORK.
203
need not dwell upon the obvious advantage possessed
by the working man, from the diplomatist down to the
humblest merchant's clerk, when he can converse freely
in their own language with Frenchmen, Italians, or
Germans, and write foreign letters accurately in the
language of the men whom he addresses. Such studies
form also a part of our Trivium.
There is no need to dwell especially upon the
importance of a good knowledge of French. In all
colleges and schools where it is taught the state of the
classes shows how thoroughly it is appreciated now in
England. With the study of French let us unite such
study of the mind of France in its literature as shall
deepen our knowledge of Frenchmen, and give new
guarantees for that most happy sense of common
interests and common aspirations by which the peoples
of England and France are becoming year by year more
closely bound.
As requisite a study among educated Englishmen as
French in the days of Victoria was Italian in the days
of Elizabeth.
Perhaps because it has been slighted in examination
systems, by which students are, to a certain extent, forced
in their choice of subjects; perhaps from other causes;
it has happened for some years past that while, in this
and other colleges, Italian is fully recognised and fitly
provided for as an important branch of study, the
Italian classes in those colleges which have them suffer
everywhere an undue neglect. It may be that when
the newborn nation, master of both head and limbs, sits
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crowned in Rome, and, understanding that wealth and
revenues can come only of commercial energy, is again
lusty with trade in Florence, Venice, and Genoa, our
merchants will find use for converse in Italian. But,
in the mean time, is it no part of a liberal education to
learn how we may draw near to the head waters of the
intellect of modern Europe? In the pages of those
three patriarchs of modern literature, Dante, Petrarch,
and Boccaccio, we may yet study large questions of
that future upon which they set the mark of their own
minds. Is it no part of the desire of an educated
Englishman to share the delight of Spenser in Tasso
and in Ariosto's "famous Tuscan pen"? The part of
our own literature most rich in its abounding life and
power, is brimful of enjoyment of that branch of Italy
which, in the revival of the nations, was the first to
blossom, and bear fruit, and scatter seed abroad. We
worship the name of Dante, buy his thoughts in transla-
tion upon translation; but will go no nearer to him.
We will read descriptions, or see pictures, of the grand
cathedral to which its last translator likened Dante's
masterpiece, but we will not ourselves enter there from
day to day, and leave our burden at this minster gate.
We care not if
"The love from Petrarch's urn
Yet amid yon hills doth burn,
A quenchless lamp"
from which, in other lands, a thousand tapers have
been kindled. For us the lamp is out, if we may judge
by the small heed paid in these days to Italian studies;
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205
except it be in the opera book of 'Rigoletto' or 'Il
Trovatore.'
The language and literature of Germany stand next
in the account of college work, and suffer no neglect.
Fashion approves the study. The best period of
German literature, instead of being, like that of Italian,
the remotest, is, of all neighbouring literatures, the one
nearest in date to our own time, and most in harmony
with modern English thought. The German, too, is
studious, and provides us, in many a domain of thought,
with more exhaustive text-books, notes, and commen-
taries than our own country produces. There is, indeed,
hardly a branch of knowledge in which the student who
cannot read German does not lose some valuable help.
Here ends, for the present, our reading for the nine-
teenth century of the word Grammar in the mediæval
Trivium; and we sum up the highest results of all
these studies, in so far as they are purely grammatical,
with those researches into Comparative Grammar which
every other year quicken some of our most advanced
students to philosophical inquiry.
Side by side with this study of the speech and thought
of men extends the study of the laws of Nature, infinite
investigation of the harmony and fitness of the works of
God. Of many of these studies the grammar is in the
science which investigates the properties of numbers
and space, and to the teaching of Pure and Applied
Mathematics the large place is here given that it must
needs occupy wherever art and science have a home.
In lectures and by laboratory training the processes of
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Nature are investigated; physics and chemistry are
distinct studies; to many necessary, to all useful.
Structure and properties of the texture of the human
body and the apparent processes of life; varieties of
form and structure, and consequent modifications of the
functions in all classes of animals; the life of plants;
the structure of the earth, are subjects of study amply
recognised by students and by teachers as essential
parts-for many the parts most essential-in a modern
round of college work. Then there is full provision
also for the special studies of the architect and civil
engineer, who play so large a part in the great history
of British enterprise. There is history itself. There
is that special study of the wealth of nations, which has
owed its best development to men akin in spirit to the
founders of this college. And there is study of
the wealth of individual man in his own mind, the
instrument by which he is enabled to pass, by inheri-
tance or conquest of his own, into enjoyment of that
share of knowledge which his years and opportunities
permit him to possess. Beyond all these are the
law classes. Once it was part of the education of an
English gentleman, who might become a justice of the
peace or legislator, to complete his education in an
Inn of Court, where he might learn something of the
laws he would be called on to administer or alter.
That honest custom has gone out, but the return to it
is easy here, where our round of study includes classes
of jurisprudence and of English law. The list is long,
yet it has not included the wide range of study to
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207
which yesterday Dr. Graily Hewitt welcomed our
students of the Faculty of Medicine. So many are
the forms of work from which-to quote a couplet
more apt than musical we trust that not a few
students of ours will pass into the world,
"All various in their tastes and studious toils,
But each adorn'd with Learning's splendid spoils."
Now we have seen what this College came into the
world to do; and I have shown you a skeleton of
the work before us. You yourselves, old students and
new students, must help us again this year to add to
the skeleton its brain and heart, its flesh and blood.
Be knit with it all, so that it shall live and stir in every
part. The University of London, in the fourth of the
charters by which it has been enabled, with increasing
weight, to keep its place in the expanding system of
which it is now the centre, made what I believe to be
a grave mistake when it offered its degrees with equal
freedom to all students who passed its examinations,
whether they had or had not received college training.
We cannot fail to see the beneficence of the purpose;
but the license indiscriminately given hurt more than
it helped. True it is that there may often be a solitary
scholar, usually an adult, so placed in life that he
cannot generously be required to go to college before
taking a degree to which his attainments give him a
just claim, and by help of which he might attain less
painfully his proper status in the world. To all such
men a great liberal University should have discretionary
power to hold out its helpful hand. But every such
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COLLEGE WORK.
case should be dealt with distinctly upon its merits, as
exception to the wholesome rule. At present, I fear,
many are misled into reliance upon private study.
Thus, at a second B.A. examination, in which 104
candidates presented themselves, fifty came from
affiliated colleges, eleven from other colleges and
schools, and forty-three were private students. Of
those from the colleges one-third were rejected; of
those from the schools one-half; of those who had
relied on private study, nearly three-fourths of the
whole. Had college-training been the rule, and exemp-
tion granted only upon special grounds, many of these
hermits, turned collegians, would have been saved a
bitter disappointment, some of them perhaps a lasting
injury. They would have known more; and they
would have had advantages which count in life, though
they do not count in examination papers.
I mean nothing so small and worthless as those
influential acquaintanceships for which some persons
here and there think it desirable to send a son to
college. What I mean includes thorough contempt
for that; a hearty, wholesome, and unselfish inter-
course of young minds, active in search after knowledge
for its own sake; measuring strength one with another;
taking their falls without anger, and their triumphs
without boast. The private student fails often where,
in the examination room, he is not found to fail, and
fails in examinations, too, for want of vigorous partici-
pation in all this. He does not know where he is
strong, and where his powers are below the standard of
COLLEGE WORK.
209
the men who should be, but are not, his comrades.
Little comes to his ears of the incessant questioning
and eager arguing by which intellects in rapid growth
take needful exercise. The bodily antics of child-
hood are not more natural and necessary to the de-
velopment of the young body, than to the straight and
strong growth of the mind is that brisk spirit of in-
quisitive argument in youth, of which old people,
whose intellectual limbs are set, sometimes become.
impatient. Work, then, argue: there is no lack of
material, opinions are various as men, or would be so
if all thought for themselves. Inquire fearlessly; con-
vince doubts, never strangle them.
See in your
teachers here men who are students too, searching for
truth, and watchful against tyranny of lifeless forms.
"I hate," said Milton, "an instructor who comes to me
under the wardship of an overseeing fist." We teach
as fellow students whom time has advanced a little
farther than you on the road of knowledge, and we tell
you by what landmarks we have ourselves been guided.
In a little while we turn aside to our last rest, and are
but memories to you who travel on and take part in
the later and the better knowledge of the world.
It is often said that boys should go to public schools
to see how bad the world is, and learn to be on their
guard in after life against the wickedness of men.
That is a calumny on boys and men. But it does
happen sometimes that among boys in a great school
the reverence for truth is lost, and then much else
goes with it. Here we believe in boys; and have in
VOL. II.
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the school 400 witnesses to justify our faith. In
colleges-especially a London college, wherein a large
number of the students can return home after every
day's labour into the shelter of that family life which
"Leaves the disencumbered spirit free
To reassume a staid simplicity,”—
the spirit of the place is absolutely the reverse of that
imagined by the true believers in the wickedness of
men. But why should I tell you what you know so
well?
Only to say this. That excellent spirit, in accord
with the true spirit of the College, which not only
makes all our work pleasant, but makes also the act of
meeting for work to be in itself pleasant and whole-
some, grows with the growing sense of fellowship. We
must do, therefore, all that we can to bring us trust-
fully and freely into contact with each other. In the
way of this there stand at present some mechanical
impediments. We have outgrown our space. The
great generosity already shown by those old friends of
the College who happen to know the difficulty, gives
us hope that when it is more widely known their liberal
example will be followed, and a new wing will very
soon be added to this building.* Then we shall have
more lecture-rooms, and more ability than we now have
to provide opportunities of intercourse outside the
class-room. Meanwhile let us improve what oppor-
tunities we have; they are not few, though fewer
* This has partly been done, and the College now includes a
spacious Students' Common Room.
COLLEGE WORK.
211
}
than we wish. Our discipline is no dull set of forms.
There is all that is due to yourselves, and nothing
more. Without order and attention in the class-rooms
none of you could prosper in your work. Plato says
that "a boy is the most ferocious of animals." The
ferocious animal which he resembles is, I think, the
domestic kitten. When, at his first passage out of
boyhood, the young student suddenly enjoys the
freedom of that trust which a College puts in his own
powers of self-restraint, he is likely to be sometimes
so ferocious as to play when he should work.
even that occurs but seldom. Would it ever occur
if it could be remembered always that this personal
indulgence is only to be had at the expense of others
whose work it disturbs? After a year's contact with
the College work it does, as far as I know, become a
point of honour with all students to deal fairly by
their comrades and themselves in this respect.
Yet
But, outside the lecture-rooms, encourage, I again
say, playful and earnest intercourse one with another.
Each following his own tastes and needs, put life into
your Debating Society, your Literary and Philosophical
Society, your Gymnastic Club, or whatever else is
honest and of good report, that brings you cordially
together. Put your hearts into the work of the classes;
do not go to them for rote knowledge, or value infor-
mation in proportion to its power of enabling you
to pass examinations. Work for examinations; but,
above all, work for the fruit you hope to gather in your
after lives. Fasten upon each study for its own sake;
P 2
212
COLLEGE WORK.
find
your way into the soul of it. Seek opportunities
of questioning your teachers upon every point that
suggests to you a doubt or difficulty. It is a reward
to them for their own work to see that they excite
such questioning. Leave nothing half learnt behind
you, as you travel on through any study. If you do,
you may be like the general who starves all his force
because he has left some point behind him where he
can be cut off from his base of operations. Be, as
students, absolutely fearless in admitting ignorance.
The wisest man on earth may easily be ignorant of
something that a child could tell him. One honest
"I don't know" wins more than a hundred wise looks
masking discreet silences. It is a life's labour to know
all that is known in a single science. They do not
know what knowledge is who are ashamed to own the
want of any part of it.
One counsel more, and that is all. Work healthily.
Nobody, I believe, was ever killed by brainwork; but
both men and youths have died, because they joined to
their brainwork an attempt to live under impossible
conditions. Do not overtask a sickly frame; a healthy
one will be the better for hard work, done rationally.
But it is not rational to go back to the blunder of the
Neoplatonists, who took the body for a clog upon the
mind, and sought by physical privations to lighten it as
much as possible. For a few days, in case of need, a
healthy body will bear without risk many privations ;
and there are times, few and far between, when an eager
student may deny himself some hours of sleep. But
COLLEGE WORK.
213
the men work best, last longest, and do most in their
lives, who steadily and wholesomely and with a cheerful
mind work on from day to day, preserving health by
due regard to the necessities of food and exercise and
sleep.
In bidding you all welcome, then, to the new session
of work that we are to share together, my last counsel
-not mine only, but that of all your teachers here, of
whose warm welcome I am but the mouthpiece,—is
that you should set to work at once: not trusting to
excess of labour when a time draws near for testing
your attainments. Nothing is to be gained by that
later strain upon your energies, equal in durability,
or even in extent, to the knowledge acquired and
digested day by day. Our session is now opened, and
to-morrow, genially and steadily, without strain and
without flinching, let every Student resolve to himself
that the College Work begins.
ENGLISH FOR ENGLISHWOMEN.
[Part of a Lecture introductory to the course of English Literature
given in 1869, upon the first establishment in London of the
"Ladies' Educational Association."]
THERE once lived in a city rectory two fellow-students.
The elder of them, William Elstob, orphan son of a
merchant of Newcastle-on-Tyne, had been sent by his
guardian to Eton, thence to Cambridge. He inherited
consumption, and was for that reason removed to Oxford
when the Cambridge air appeared to disagree with him.
The younger student was Elizabeth Elstob, his sister.
She was the first woman who studied English at its
sources; "and I think she will be the last," said Samuel
Pegge. The Association which invites us to the work
we now begin is not of Mr. Pegge's opinion.
Elizabeth Elstob studied English that she might
become the comrade of her brother. Father and
mother dead, they two were all to one another. When
he left Cambridge for Oxford, and pursued his studies
there with failing health, she, a girl of sixteen or seven-
teen, went to him, made a home for him, nursed him.
She learnt what he learnt, worked with him and for him.
Thenceforth, until she stood, a solitary, helpless woman
at his grave, one roof covered them both; she joined
ENGLISH FOR ENGLISHWOMEN.
215
herself to all his studies, and became, in truth, the better
They were both linguists; she, for
in eight languages, and most of all
Thus she had taken her own way
scholar of the two.
her part, was skilled
skilled in her own.
in life despite the prejudices of the uncle who was
guardian to her brother and herself. This gentleman,
when she was left motherless, at eight years old, had
endeavoured to direct her education upon the profound
social principle that one tongue is more than enough
for any woman. Elizabeth, who was ten years younger
than her brother, came with him to London when he
was appointed to his city rectory, that of St. Swithin
and St. Mary Bothaw. She sympathized with his
speculations on the intimate connexion between law
and divinity; for by those speculations he was har-
monizing with his life as a divine his labour of love on
a full edition of our Saxon laws. When William Elstob
edited the Anglo-Saxon Homily upon the birthday of
Saint Gregory, it was his sister who wrote the accom-
panying translation. Then it was agreed that while
he edited Anglo-Saxon laws, in the service of time-
honoured rights, she should produce an edition of
Ælfric's Anglo-Saxon Homilies, in the service of time-
honoured religion. Was this true sister,-whose age
was but thirty when her brother died,-blue stocking
or ministering angel? Certainly she was qualified, by
knowledge, to make a sunshine in the shady place of
the frail-bodied rector's study looking out upon a city
lane.
After her brother's death, in 1714, Miss Elstob-or
216
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Mrs. Elstob, for in those days it was only during girl-
hood that a lady was called Miss-Mrs. Elstob was very
poor. A friend once asked her to write for him a little
account of herself and her brother. What she wrote
for that friend is now among the MSS. in the Bodleian
Library. Of her brother she said "he was of so sweet
a temper that hardly anything could make him show
his resentment, but when anything was said or done to
the prejudice of religion or the disadvantage of his
country." In the tenderness of her memory, she re-
corded simply, that "his generosity was his greatest
fault." The little patrimony left to the two orphans
was exhausted when he died. For the love of letters
George Smalridge, who in that year became Bishop of
Bristol, was prompt to supply Mrs. Elstob's needs.
Chief Justice Parker became, at the same time, chief
promoter of the publication of her Anglo-Saxon Gram-
mar. This was published the next year after her
brother's death. It was written for a lady who had
undertaken to be taught by her, but had found no time
to fulfil her promise. The types for this grammar were
cut at the expense of Chief Justice Parker, who was
delicately complimentary in decorations which he
caused to be engraved for the first page. At the
page-head is a little plate, showing the entrance of the
Graces on the domain of the Wise, and placed under it
in the initial letter,-within the round of the G to the
word Grammar is a carefully engraved miniature of a
fair, resolute, and true young face. That is the face of
Elizabeth Elstob, about thirty-one years old, and still
ENGLISH FOR ENGLISHWOMEN.
217
so far resolute and true that she will not remain de-
pendent on the purses of her friends, but has flown into
the country to set up a very little school at Evesham in
Worcestershire. The school scarcely found her bread,
and at last ceased to do that. She had then only a small
pension of twenty guineas a-year from the private purse
of Queen Caroline. After years of lonely struggle, the
woman who knew more than any girl then wished to
learn of her, at last was received as governess in the
family of the Dowager Duchess of Portland. There
she was spared labour and sorrow during the remaining
seventeen years of a life that reached beyond the limit
of threescore and ten.
(
These lectures, the slight beginning of an effort to
assist the study of their own language and literature by
English women who live here in London, at the head-
quarters of English thought, cannot be more fairly
begun than with a kind memory of Elizabeth Elstob,
who, one hundred and fifty years ago, sounded on the
way we are now going, when the way for her was dim
and perilous. The motto for her English - Saxon
Grammar ' might serve also for the motto to this course
of ours.
It had been part of a letter to herself from a
Right Reverend Prelate, and it is this:-"Our Earthly
Possessions are truly enough called a Patrimony, as
derived to us by the Industry of our Fathers; but the
Language that we speak is our Mother Tongue, and
who so proper to play the critics in this as the
Females ?"
<
De Quincey, in his Essay on Style,' dwells upon what
218
ENGLISH FOR ENGLISHWOMEN.
He says,
he calls "the purity of female English."
"Would you desire at this day to read our noble lan-
guage in its native beauty, picturesque from idiomatic
propriety, racy in its phraseology, delicate yet sinewy
in its composition, steal the mail-bag, and break open
all the letters in female handwriting." How far this is
true you are more able than I to judge, since you can
get the requisite experience without robbing a mail.
But I believe there is the same truth in it which
caused, in the days of Henry IV. of France and for
some time afterwards, French scholars and grammarians
to seek the fellowship, and even follow the lead, of
Frenchwomen in the endeavour to refine and fix their
language. Those leaders at last went astray, for they
knew little, and were critics formed rather by good
instinct and bad fashion than by study. But, whether
or not spoilt by fashion, the women of a country are,
and must always be, the guardians and transmitters of
its language. Sons of those Northern seamen, who
married the women of the land and made the strength
of Normandy, received the language of their mothers.
After a few generations not only the language, but the
very whereabouts of the old home of their fathers was
forgotten. Only the land and language of their
mothers was to the sons their land, their language. In
the untaught women of that vigorous race the great
forces of nature worked only as they have worked and
will work in every race and age. As one poetess
sang for another, who had lost both of her sons in
battle :-
ENGLISH FOR ENGLISHWOMEN.
219
"What art's for a woman! To hold on her knees
Both darlings; to feel all their arms round her throat,
Cling, strangle a little; to sew by degrees
And 'broider the longclothes and neat little coat;
To dream and to doat.
To teach them. . . . It stings there! I made them indeed
Speak plain the word country. taught them, no doubt,
That a country's a thing men should die for at need.
I prated of liberty, rights, and about
The tyrant cast out.
And when their eyes flashed . . . . O my beautiful eyes .
I exulted; nay, let them go forth at the wheels
Of the guns, and denied not.
When one sits quite alone!
But then the surprise
Then one weeps, then one kneels!
God, how the house feels!"
Yet still our mothers, wives, and sisters, suffer as they
may through us, bid us go forth at the wheels of the
guns to every true battle of life, and whatever the sur-
face pattern or the deeper folly of a few, that is the
Woman of the Period, of this and of all periods, of this
and of all lands.
The work begun to-day, with a well-grounded hope,
is only one of many results of a course of change begun
before the close of the last century. We trust it will
stand firm, because its root is deep. To draw an illus-
tration from the subject of the present course, a glance
at one fact in our literature will show very distinctly
what I mean. For century after century, until of late,
the roll of English writers showed only a faint repre-
sentation of the genius of women. In the time of
Charles II., there were indeed "the divine Astræa" and
"the matchless Orinda;" but Astræa-Mrs. Aphra
Behn-was a divinity of bad clay, and in literature
220
ENGLISH FOR ENGLISH WOMEN.
womanhood was represented only by Orinda. This was
Mrs. Katherine Philips, an estimable lady, married at
the age of sixteen, and dead of small-pox at the age of
thirty-three. She lived much with her husband in
Wales, away from the corruption of the Court, and
earned the praise she had from Cowley. By witness of
good men and of the tenor of her verse, some lines
of her own, expressing her ideal of an English girl,
may stand for a piece of unconscious self-portraiture:—
"A beauty, not to Art in debt,
Rather agreeable than great;
An eye, wherein at once do meet
The beams of kindness and of wit;
An undissembled Innocence,
Apt not to give, nor take offence;
A conversation, at once free
From passion and from subtlety;
A face that's modest yet serene,
A sober and yet lively mien;
The virtue which does her adorn,
By honour guarded, not by scorn ;
With such wise lowliness indu'd
As never can be mean or rude;
Whose equal mind does always move,
Neither a foe nor slave to love;
And whose Religion's strong and plain,
Not superstitious nor profane.”
Hard things are said of the women of the period of
Charles II., for whom 'Paradise Lost' was a new poem
of their day. Levity came, no doubt, to Court and
was conspicuous. But we shall find that whatever their
politics, the characters of Englishmen and English-
women remained even then essentially what they had
always been. But then, and before then, and after then,
ENGLISH FOR ENGLISHWOMEN.
221
our countrywomen spoke but seldom for themselves
until the days were near to which we now belong. The
rapid change then became marvellous. We have had
Charlotte Smith and Fanny Burney, Hannah More,
Hannah Cowley, Mrs. Inchbald, Joanna Baillie, Sophia
Lee and her sister, Jane Porter and her sister, Mrs.
Barbauld, Mrs. Radcliffe, Mrs. Opie, Maria Edgeworth,
Lucy Aikin, Mary Brunton, Mrs. Somerville (with her
firm grasp of science), Mrs. Shelley, Mrs. Browning (first
among the poetesses), Jane Austen, Charlotte Bronté and
her sisters, Mrs. Gaskell and the authoress of Adam Bede,
Miss Martineau, Florence Nightingale, Miss Carpenter,
Mrs. Gatty, Mrs. Howitt and Mrs. S. C. Hall, Mrs.
Everett Green, Miss Sewell, Mrs. Linton, Mrs. Craik,
Mrs. Sartoris, Miss Thackeray, Miss Isa Craig, Miss
Ingelow, Mrs. Webster, Miss Rossetti, and twice as
many more who could be named if it were necessary to
extend the catalogue. This is no insignificant result of
chance, but a great and growing characteristic of our
literature during the last hundred years. It shows that
the progress of society for some generations past has
not been limited to the advancement of the men.
Each sex retains and developes its own character; and
the higher education sought by women will only main-
tain and strengthen their true natural relation to
the happiness of home. It is not knowledge, but the
sham of knowledge that makes what is called a
stocking."
“blue
This name of terror is a good name for those whom
it fits, because it implies one of the familiar signs of
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ENGLISH FOR ENGLISHWOMEN.
imperfect training,-obtrusiveness, or affectation of mere
outward peculiarity. The original blue stockings were
Mrs. Vesey, Mrs. Montagu, Mrs. Thrale (afterwards
Mrs. Piozzi), and friends of theirs, who plagued society
with would-be intellectual routs, pale copies from the
French of Madame du Deffand, Mlle. de l'Espinasse,
Madame de Tencin, Madame de la Popelinière, and the
good bourgeoise Madame Geoffrin, with whom died out
in 1777 the fashion among French ladies for setting up
what were called bureaux d'esprit. During the later
years of this French fashion Mrs. Vesey and Mrs.
Montagu distinguished themselves by an endeavour to
transplant it into England. There are two versions of
the origin of the name given to the ladies who affected
wit in these assemblies. One is, that about 1768 Mr.
Stillingfleet-botanist and small poet, grandson of the
more famous bishop of that name-excused himself
from attendance at one of Mrs. Vesey's parties at Bath,
because he had no proper costume. She replied, "Pooh,
pooh! come in your blue stockings." He did so, and
justified himself by repeating aloud this form of his
invitation as he entered the assembly. For which rea-
son Mrs. Vesey's routs came to be called jestingly
"blue-stocking parties." The other version is, that at
one of the first of these parties given by Mrs. Montagu,
Madame de Polignac came in blue-silk stockings, then
the last new Parisian fashion, newer, indeed, than the
fashion for bureaux d'esprit. All the ladies of Mrs.
Montagu's coterie followed this fancy. The conse-
quence was that a gentleman, who had been at one of
ENGLISH FOR ENGLISHWOMEN.
223
her soirées, wrote to a friend that the ladies made a
charming intellectual society, who had one rule, "they
wear blue stockings as a distinction." Now, in man or
woman, thorough study is the death of all these petty
affectations.
Mrs. Montagu did indeed print something about
Shakespeare. Mrs. Piozzi did know enough of Milton,
to jump at the meaning of her friend Miss Streatfield's
maid, clever at an errand, who stepped over the way to
beg she would oblige missis with "milk and asparagus
lost." Bits of knowledge were sought by these ladies,
as barbarians seek bits of coloured glass for outward
ornament. Their healthy natural vivacity was sickened
by the strain to appear clever. To this group belonged,
in fact, Anna Matilda, Laura, Julia, and the rest of the
tribe who swung the incense of their petty affectations
about that "celestial bard," as they called him, Mr.
Merry, who could "through space with rapid comets
glow." They were the Della Cruscans by whom young
Gifford was roused to launch his Baviad against "the
eulogies that wait each modish strain."
No; vanities like these are no fruits of the higher
education of man or of woman. True knowledge is
their only sure destroyer. We daily see with how much
arrogance the ignorant man reasons, because he is dead
to the unbounded realms of thought outside the den in
which his mind is shut. The more we know, the wider
is our sense of the unknown. We climb and climb, and
when, with our best climbing, we have reached the
topmost bound of a life's knowledge can feel only like
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ENGLISH FOR ENGLISHWOMEN.
stout Cortez, when another ocean lay before him, as he
stood "silent upon a peak in Darien." Have we not
known how simple and how unostentatious are the life
and conversation of a Faraday? True culture seems
to create in men some of the qualities wherein the
grace of womanhood consists:
"Patient of contradiction as a child,
Affable, humble, diffident and mild,
Such was Sir Isaac, and such Boyle and Locke;
Your blund'rer is as sturdy as a rock."
Much knowledge is not the first necessity of life. A
certain scholar in the fifteenth century was so desirous
to be perfect in his Greek that he travelled to Con-
stantinople for a Greek wife. And he got his wish, for
the lady proved a termagant, and made him only too
familiar with all the hard words in her language. That
story has been told in jest against learning in women ;
but I suppose that a woman also has to look for some-
thing above and beyond knowledge of Greek in the
man who is to be her companion for life. That some-
thing above and beyond itself, in man or woman, it
is the tendency of true, living knowledge-knowledge
become wisdom-to produce.
Nor need we be discouraged by the thought that,
labour as we may, we never shall advance so far upon
the road of knowledge as the Newtons and the Lockes,
who leave their names to be for ever cherished by their
country. The question that concerns us most is,
whether we are on the road at all. Between the
foremost ground yet reached by any one, and the
ENGLISH FOR ENGLISHWOMEN.
225
path of a true study,
remote place of his humblest followers, the interval is
very small compared with the vast spaces to be tra-
versed. The right way can give the same delight to
all, whatever part of it they see. Only let us be careful
that we do walk in the pleasant
and are not led aside into the wilderness of dead men's
bones, where there is no foliage but that of a few
stunted text-books, and Mrs. Mangnall is the Sphinx.
Most of us have spent some time of our lives in a desert
of that kind, for advance is slow towards an improved
sense of the purpose of school-training. In after-life
the way to a higher education is not difficult for men.
to find. Our higher schools, our universities and col-
leges, and our societies for special cultivation of each
form of study, these, with a daily unrestricted inter-
course, have made the ways of knowledge easy for a
man; and it is now, I think, well understood that some
of these helps are of a kind which ought no longer to
be denied to women. An educated woman is not now
regarded as a prodigy. As Miss Edgeworth said, at the
end of the last century, when the common average of
education was much lower than in the present day,
“A woman may now possess a considerable stock of
information without being gazed upon as a miracle
of learning; and there is not much danger of her being
vain of accomplishments which cease to be astonishing."
No Englishman, she observed, is startled at sight of a
lady riding on a side-saddle; but when an English-
woman rode on a side-saddle through an Italian city,
where the sight was unusual, the people all turned out
VOL. II.
•
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226
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to gaze at her, some with astonishment, and some with.
pity. "Ah!" they said, "Poverina, Poverina! She
has only one leg!" What we have now to do is to
every good and becoming effort
to make the higher education of an Englishwoman
customary.
support and extend
Therefore we welcome very heartily the scheme now
ripening for the establishment near Cambridge of a
well-appointed Ladies' College, and rejoice in the suc-
cess of the Ladies' Colleges in Harley Street and Bed-
ford Square, which have for some years past done in-
valuable service, and which will become more and more
useful as the years run on and attention is more and
more directed to the need which has to-day brought us
together. If we did not believe that whatever work
may be done by our Ladies' Educational Association,
in true fellowship with every kindred effort, wherever
or whatever it may be, will strengthen instead of weak-
ening the hands of all who labour in a like direction,
this Association would not have been formed. But
there is much work to be done, and need of many la-
bourers. The immediate cause of the establishment of
this Association was the good example set in Edin-
burgh and some northern towns. Not apathy, but an
obvious difference in the conditions under which work
of the same kind could be done in London, and not
least the question how far it was being done already by
the excellent Ladies' Colleges to which I have referred,
delayed the following of that example. When, however,
it became evident that there were in London many
ENGLISH FOR ENGLISHWOMEN.
227
ladies no more willing than thoughtful men are to
allow, at any time of life, the arrest and decay of know-
ledge, and who do wish for such living help as we desire
to give, there was a plain duty before us. We might
have waited altogether till next year, in order that
then work might be begun upon a large scheme, well
matured; but we have preferred to act on the old pro-
verb, and not put off till to-morrow that which we can
do to-day. We begin at once, therefore, with only two
courses of lectures, and those short ones. But we do
mean substantial work; and if we find what we expect
to find, a few more years may show that these two.
courses are but the small beginning of what the pro-
moters of these lectures wait only encouragement to
mould into "a system of advanced education for women
going beyond anything that has been yet thought of in
London."
It only remains for me now, before we begin work,
to tell you what is the plan of this particular course for
the present session. It would be impossible in twenty
lectures to give an account of English literature, naming
all the writers and labelling them with characters. If
it were possible, it would be useless. Knowledge so
given is really worse than none; far better no staff
than a reed. A course even of the best kind of Eng-
lish study, if it lasted for ten years, could only be sug-
gestive, not exhaustive. The best teaching can serve
no higher end than to show students how to teach
themselves. Her own language, and all that is noble
and pure in it, is, as Elizabeth Elstob said, the most.
Q 2
228
ENGLISH FOR ENGLISHWOMEN.
natural study for an Englishwoman: she is the natural
maintainer of the honour of the mother tongue. If
English girls at school were fairly trained in their own
language and its literature, they would be readers for
life, drawing grace and strength to their minds from
communion with the best intellects of England, which
has in all times been busy to find and maintain the
right, and which has shown through different forms of
creed a religious earnestness that must bring it, in its
whole truth and beauty, when once understood, very
near to the heart of a good woman. To lay a firm
foundation for self-education throughout life, is, so far
as English literature is concerned, to give life a new
pleasure in a study that is in fact one of the healthiest
of recreations.
GABRIEL HARVEY.
WHEN, in 1579, their old comrade at Pembroke Hall,
Edward Kirke, prefixed to Spenser's first venture in
verse, 'The Shepheardes' Calender,' a letter to Gabriel
Harvey, as its unnamed author's "special friend and
fellow-poet," he only told in prose what is shown by the
Calender itself, where Harvey is enshrined as Spenser's
Hobbinol. The difference is great between this Hob-
binol as we may see him if we care to look for his true
features, and the figure which stands for him in ency-
clopædias, in text-books, and in that lively account of
the paper war between Harvey and Nash which most
of us have read with natural enjoyment in Isaac
D'Israeli's ´ Calamities of Authors.' Hardly a definite
fact has been stated, real or imaginary, which has not
had a turn given to it unfavourable to the good name
of this much misrepresented scholar. A vague con-
cession that “the friend of Spenser and Sidney could
hardly have been contemptible," is all that we have
given us in the 'Calamities of Authors' to qualify the
finding of a portrait in the mere caricature produced
by an unscrupulous wit, who had more genius but less
worth than his antagonist, and who amused himself and
the town with the extravagant exaggeration of what
230
GABRIEL HARVEY.
he took to be the weaknesses of his opponent's charac-
ter. Yet there is not one-actually not one-sharp
point in the indictment against Gabriel Harvey which
does not break at a touch when we look from the bur-
lesque upon him to the man himself. He did not
become a great man, or what he called a "megalander ;”
we may, if we will, class him with what is fossil or
extinct in literature-its megatherium or dodo. But in
his day he worked hard, aspired nobly, and left witness
to his labour and his aspiration. Perhaps we do not
care, for his own sake, to read the evidence, but set
him aside as one of the small matters, if any there be,
in which it is not worth while to be just. Then let him
have the advantage of being not merely Gabriel Harvey,
although to him that was something, but also Spenser's
Hobbinol, which to us is more. He was, during some
important years of Spenser's life, the poet's "long-
approved and singular good friend" and counsellor.
The counsel was outgrown, but not the friendship. To
our credence as well as Harvey's, Spenser has left what
he once called "the eternal memory of our everlasting
friendship, the inviolable memory of our unspotted
friendship, the sacred memory of our vowed friend-
ship;" and it is a little due perhaps to Spenser that we
should ascertain how much credit is due to the com-
mentators who would have us think that he wrote in
this way to a conceited pedant seven years older than
himself.
Gabriel Harvey was the eldest of four sons of a rope-
maker at Saffron Walden, a prosperous man who, when
GABRIEL HARVEY.
231
his boys were young, filled the chief offices of his native
town, and spent his money freely on their education.
Three of the boys were sent to the neighbouring Univer-
sity of Cambridge, and they all three became noticeable
men. The son of whom nothing is known may have suc-
ceeded to his father's business. Of the three who took
to scholarship, Gabriel became, while yet a young man,
in or not long before the year 1576, a lecturer on
Rhetoric at Cambridge, with Cicero for his guide, and
large attendance at his lectures. The year usually
given as the probable date of Gabriel Harvey's birth is
1545; and then, as the date of his death is known, it
has to be added that he reached the age of ninety. It
does not inevitably follow that because Gabriel Harvey
was at Cambridge before Spenser, and had ceased to be
an undergraduate when his friend first came to college,
he was-as the young would count years-a much
older man; although the presumption would be fair if
there were not evidence to the contrary. But then the
fact seems to have been overlooked that there is rather
good evidence to the contrary. Harvey's Introductory
Lecture upon meeting his class at Cambridge, in the
year 1577, was published as his 'Ciceronianus,' dedicated
to William Lewin, who, in a letter prefixed to it, gives
his own opinion upon the most eminent masters of
eloquence, and speaks of his friend Harvey as adhuc
adolescentem; which he would hardly have done if
Harvey had been thirty-two years old. No doubt the
range of a man's years comprehended under that term
might have been taken by a Roman as from seventeen
232
GABRIEL HARVEY.
}
•
to thirty; Cicero called himself adolescens at the time
of his consulship when his age was forty-four, but he
speaks elsewhere of five-and-twenty as the term of
adolescence, and that certainly answers so well to our
own usage, that Harvey could scarcely have been
spoken of as adhuc adolescentem when he was thirty-
two years old. It is more probable that his age did.
not exceed five or six-and-twenty, and that he had
begun the public teaching of rhetoric in his university
in the preceding year. For in the next year, 1578, his
two first lectures were published as his Rhetor,' and
we find that, in referring modestly to the full attend-
ance before him, while valuable teachers such as Byng
and Dodington, whom he named with reverence, were
lecturing to empty benches, he said that he ascribed
the fulness of his class in the preceding year to students'
love of novelty, but warned them that there was no
more of that—“Harvey is old now, and leaves novelty
to new professors." As the introductory lecture of the
preceding year was upon the occasion of his again
meeting his class, we may assume that he had begun
to teach in 1576, when he was-adhuc adolescens
twenty-five years old, or a year younger. The known
age of his brother John was thirteen or fourteen, and
Richard could not have been very much older, for he
also, when he went to Cambridge in 1575, as a pen-
sioner of Pembroke Hall, found in his brother Gabriel
a guide and tutor. There was at least one sister in the
family, and there might have been several intermediate
in age between Gabriel and Richard. At any rate,
f
GABRIEL HARVEY.
233
here is good reason for believing that Gabriel Harvey,
instead of being a pedantic scholar seven and more
years older than his friends Spenser and Sidney, a man
who could give himself some airs of seniority in social
intercourse with them, was a familiar friend, with no
more difference of age than is consistent, in free fellow-
ship of youth, with equal sharing of enthusiasm and
exchange of thought. Spenser and Harvey at Cam-
bridge were both of the same college, Pembroke Hall;
and Spenser was in his last year, taking his degree of
M.A., when Harvey began, if he had not sooner begun,
lecturing on Rhetoric. As for Philip Sidney, Oxford
was his university, and although he is commonly said
to have gone for a few months to Cambridge at the age
of fifteen or sixteen, there is no evidence that he did
so. If we would know how the strong friendship be-
tween Harvey and Sidney first arose, we must under-
stand more than we do of the relations between Harvey
and Sidney's uncle Leicester, whom Gabriel, in his
'Gratulationes Waldenses' incidentally, and also spe-
cially in the inscription of that part of it which is dedi-
cated to him, distinguished as "his Lord;" and who,
in July, 1578, when Queen Elizabeth paid her visit to
Audley End, was about to send him into France and
Italy.
C
In Harvey's Walden Gratulations,' written to com-
memorate the visit of her Majesty to Audley End, the
great house of his native town of Saffron Walden, two
significant scraps of dialogue are left upon record.
An impetuous member of the University of Cambridge,
234
GABRIEL HARVEY.
there present by its representatives to pay honour to
Queen Bess, stepped out of the ranks and knelt to her.
The over-zealous gentleman was, let us say, about six-
and-twenty years old, tall, keen of feature, swarthy, and
black-haired. "Who is this man?" the Queen asked
in her blunt way. "Who is this? Is it Leicester's
man that we were speaking of?" And when told that
it was, she said, "I'll not deny you my hand, Harvey."
In a short Latin verse exercise appended to the first
of the four books of his 'Gratulations' upon the Queen's
coming to Walden and Audley End, Gabriel Harvey
gives that piece of dialogue. He adds another set of
verses on another saying of the Queen's upon the same
occasion. "Tell me,” she said of him to Leicester, "is
it settled that you send this man to Italy and France ?"
"It is," said he. "That's well," she replied; "for
already he has an Italian face, and the look of a man;
I should hardly have taken him to be an Englishman.”
In his lines upon this theme, we have Gabriel's own
witness to the dusky hue, which scoffing Nash com-
pared to rancid bacon. Harvey's service of Leicester,
here so distinctly indicated, may have led to the esta-
blishment of that warm friendship for Leicester's
nephew Sidney, which breathes out of another poem in
the Walden Gratulations.' It certainly enabled Har-
vey the more safely to counsel his friend Spenser, gone
northward, to leave "those hils where harbrough nis to
see,” and resort to the dales with their rich shepherds
and fruitful flocks. It may have been not as a poet
only that Harvey sent Spenser to Leicester, though
GABRIEL HARVEY.
235
!
enough for Sidney that he was a poet of his own age
who thought with him on the great religious questions
of the day. The fact that it was Gabriel Harvey who
sent Spenser to London, seems to connect this reference
in 1578 to Leicester's purpose of sending Harvey abroad
with the affectionate Latin hexameters addressed to his
friend Harvey in October, 1579, by Edmund Spenser,
then on the point of travelling into France; "dis-
patched by my lord, I go thither," Spenser said, in the
postscript dated from Leicester House, " as sent by him,
and maintained (most what) of him; and there am to
employ my time, my mind, to his honour's service."
Through those two scraps of the Queen's talk recorded
in the 'Walden Gratulations,' we come perhaps a little
nearer to the prose version of Hobbinol's advice that
Colin should resort to the rich shepherds of the dales.
On the occasion of the Queen's coming to Audley
End, Dr. Howland, the Vice-Chancellor of the Uni-
versity, had notified to Lord Burleigh that he and the
heads of colleges would there wait on her Majesty, and
have ready some disputants on two moral questions
-one, Whether Clemency or Severity be more praise-
worthy in a prince; the other, of Fortune and Fate ;;
also that they would present a book, which was, in
fact, a Greek Testament, bound in red velvet and gold.
Burleigh chose the debate on clemency and severity,
and accepted the offer of the book, upon condition that
it was not to be scented with spike, which her Majesty
could not abide. There must be also some gloves and
a few verses for Leicester, the Earl of Oxford, and Sir
236
GABRIEL HARVEY.
Christopher Hatton; Burleigh himself wanted none.
The University duly appeared by dignitaries in their
gowns and hoods; the Queen arrived, hot and faint,
from her journey, in July weather, and went indoors;
but after due refreshments the debate took place, and
lasted for three hours. Mr. Fleming, of King's Col-
lege, argued for clemency; Byng, Master of Clare Hall,
concluded; Harvey, of Pembroke, Palmer, of John's,
and Hawkings, of Peterhouse, opposed; Fletcher, of
King's College, was moderator; but the Lord Trea-
surer, as Chancellor of the University, took on himself
to interfere, and cut short all repetitions or long dis-
courses by way of confutation with the dictum, "Loquor
ut Cancellarius, disputa dialecticè." There is, in the
library of the British Museum an old copy of Quin-
tilian, which once belonged to Gabriel Harvey, and
has wide margins liberally besprinkled, in some places
crammed, with notes in his firm and elegant hand-
writing. On the blank space at the end we find
him fortifying himself for this conflict, using Quin-
tilian as a whetstone to his wit, and labelling re-
ferences to sections on extempore speech, memory,
pronunciation, audacity, and courage, and against all
manner of diffidence and despair as-"My notes against
my disputation at Audley End, in the Court, before
my Lord Treasurer, my Lord of Leicester, and in the
Queen's hearing." He writes under this a sound re-
flection, founded on the popularity among Italians of the
artificial style of Aretino: "Unico Aretino-in Italian,
singular for rare and hyperbolical amplifications. He
GABRIEL HARVEY.
237
is a simple orator that cannot mount as high as the
quality or quantity of his matter requireth. Vain and
fantastical amplifications argue an idle brain. But
when the very majesty and dignity of the matter itself
will indeed bear out a stately and haughty style, there
is no such trial of a gallant discourser and right orator.
Always an especial regard to be had of decorum, as
well for orators and all manner of parleys as in other
actions." Is this the thought which animates fantastic
pedantry? The notes here quoted are at the end of
the book, before the fly-leaf, which is covered with
citations from many authors, made, apparently, in
view of the same occasion, and therefore before July,
1578. The rest of the notes, which are part Latin, part
English, and the incessant light underlining of words
as the whole book was read carefully, pen in hand,
belong chiefly to the following year; for in a closing
memorandum Harvey sets down that he had read the
book through again from the beginning, in September,
1579, and compared it with Cicero ad Brutum and
Ramus, meaning, no doubt, Ramus's 'Brutinæ Quæs-
tiones.' The notes often illustrate pleasantly their
writer's character, and give his estimate of the repu-
tations of contemporary scholars. It is interesting,
for example, to find him noting as "tria vividissima
Britannorum ingenia," Chaucer, Sir Thomas More, and
Bishop Jewell; to which he adds, as the next triad,
"tres florentissimas indoles," Heywood, Sidney, and
Spenser. Qui quærit illustriorum Anglorum ingenia,
inveniet obscuriora," from which censure he excepts,
66
238
GABRIEL HARVEY.
he says, a very few, and first of them Sir Thomas
Smith, Ascham, Wilson, Digges, Blundeville, Hakluyt,
"mea corcula "-my favourites.
But how little of à dry pedant young Gabriel
Harvey was, we can learn without reference to MS.
if we will only look into his three published lectures,
delivered, as the custom was, in Latin. In his introduc-
tory lecture, upon returning to the University in 1577,
he says, after the fashion of wit in his day, that during .
the vacation he had been breakfasting on Tully, dining
on Cæsar, and supping on Virgil. He will not say with
which viand he took nectar, with which wine, and with
which beer, but will speak of the talk of the guests,
which is the sweetest seasoning of banquets. He then
characterises the style of different writers. A friend
had said that it would be less wonderful that Duffield
should leave his philosophy than Harvey the elo-
quence he loves and exalts supra mundum, supra
modum. Philosophers, says Harvey, are not always
prophets; and he proceeds at once emphatically to
recant much that he had taught in the preceding year.
He had followed those Italians Bembo, Sadolet,
Nizolius-who exalted above all things the Ciceronian
style, and had detested men who were not absolute
Cicero-worshippers, as Erasmus, More, and Budé. He
had abused Politian and Pico della Mirandola. He cites
his own old Ciceronian formulas for the beginnings of
speeches and letters, speaks of the delight he had in
big Roman capitals, as IVP. O. M. "I produce," he
said, "my folly to make you wiser.
I worshipped
GABRIEL HARVEY.
239
.
6
Ciceronianus.'
It had
M. T. as the god of Latinity, and would rather have
been a Ciceronian than a saint." But he had since
fallen upon Jean Sambuc's Ciceronianus.'
made him think, and sent him to the study of the old
masters of Latinity. From that he had gone to the
'Ciceronianus' of Peter Ramus, and to that of Pro-
fessor Freig, of Basle, and to a preface by Sturmius,
of Strasburg, and he had learned now to look at the
ground and roots of Ciceronian eloquence; to relish
the independent thought in Pico, and Erasmus, and
Politian; to look for the whole man in a writer as the
source of style, and, still exalting Cicero, to attend
first to the life and power of the man, and not to the
mere surface polish of his language. Let every man,
he says, learn to be, not a Roman, but a Frenchman,
German, Briton, or Italian. That certainly is not the
lecture of a pedant rigid in the forms to which he
had been bred. And the manliness of scholarship grew
upon Harvey. In one of the MS. notes made by him
three years later on the margin of his Quintilian, a
sentence of the text suggests to him that Mr. Ascham,
"in his fine discourse of Imitation, is somewhat too
precise and scrupulous for Tully only, on all points;
we having such excellent and dainty choice in the
Latin tongue, worthy to be regarded and resembled
in fitting place," and then he cites, with a differently
defining adjective to each, nearly a score of authors.
On another page he notes that a man without Greek is
half learned; as Ascham said in joke of Mr. Haddon,
1
240
GABRIEL HARVEY.
though he loved him dearly, that he fluttered on one
wing.
Thus Gabriel Harvey won honour to himself at
Cambridge while he was training his two younger
brothers, Richard and John. Richard was a lively
pupil, ready to turn Latin verse on any subject, and
warmly attached to his brother. He had Gabriel's
fervid spirit without his discretion. He passed through
a course of medicine and philosophy to study for the
Church, and held a vicarage at the time when his
brother John, who had obtained a physician's degree
from his University, died-twenty-nine years old—at
Lynn, in Norfolk, where he had been establishing
himself in practice. Dr. John Harvey was a quiet,
studious man, who wrote little books indicating healthy
tastes and calm judgment. But the Rev. Richard was
restless and impulsive. He plunged into the Marprelate
controversy; he played prophet; he attacked the wits
of the town as "piperly players and makebates;" and
it was he who brought the wits down on himself, and
provoked them, in the reckless fashion of the time, to
scoff at all his family.
Then Gabriel's resentment of an insult diverted the
enemy's fire, and it was he who had to bear the whole
brunt of the battle. He had at that time left Cam-
bridge; and having in 1585 obtained grace for a de-
gree of D.C.L. at Oxford, was practising in London
as an advocate in the Prerogative Court.
Gabriel Harvey was a man of quick parts and high
GABRIEL HARVEY.
241
character―ardent, impressible, with a keen interest in
intellectual pursuits, and a critical appreciation not
exceptional, but modified and bounded by the notions.
of his time and by the studies of the University. He
stood for an influential class, and fairly represented
it. We have always been told to believe, on the au-
thority of Thomas Nash, that he was ashamed of his
father, the rope-maker; and encyclopædists have it
that he ostentatiously claimed kindred with Sir Thomas
Smith, another Saffron Walden man, who had been,
with Cheke, joint chief of the Greeks at Cambridge,
and who died a Secretary of State in 1577. But his
writings, and those of his brothers, show that Gabriel
Harvey was warmly and openly attached to his family
and to his native town. Evidently not in boast of
worldly position, but as the most natural reply to a
libel on the old man's character, in the course of
the Nash controversy, Harvey made known that his
father, twenty years before, held the chief offices in
his town, and that he had spent a thousand pounds
upon the education of his sons.
These were the public
evidences of his father's worth.
that Harvey showed eagerness to claim Sir Thomas
Smith as one of his relations. The reverse is true.
He avoided the boast. As a Cambridge scholar and
Saffron Walden man who had a reputation for his
Latin verse, Gabriel Harvey followed an old custom
in producing 'Smithus, vel Musarum Lacrymæ,' upon
the death of a scholar who was one of the chief glories
of his University, who also was of Saffron Walden,
VOL. II.
Again, it is not true
R
242
GABRIEL HARVEY.
and to whom, he says, he had looked up as his model
of life, studies, and character. It seems that there
was a family connexion: for in one of his later letters
Harvey speaks very incidentally of Sir Thomas Smith's
son as cousin. But in this series of laments, or "Tears
of the Muses," they are the Muses who speak for them-
selves in their own character, and some of them exalt
the scholar they mourn by naming him as of their
kindred. When speaking in his own person, at the
opening and close of his work, to Walter Mildmay and
to Sir John Wood, Smith's nephew and late secretary,
Harvey is far from claiming, as it seems he could
have claimed, a family connexion with the man whose
memory deserved his honour.
6
Again, it has been said, in the pleasant book, The
Calamities of Authors,' that Gabriel Harvey's vanity
caused him to publish a collection of panegyrics upon
himself. Where is it? Can it be that the title of the
four books of the Gratulations of Walden,' a collection.
of laudatory Latin epigrams and poems upon Queen
Elizabeth, Leicester, Burleigh, and three other per-
sonages of the Court-the third of them, and dearest of
all, Harvey's friend, Philip Sidney—can it be that this
volume, produced in honour of the Queen's visit to
Walden and Audley End, has been mistaken for a set
of panegyrics on its editor? Or is such a description
given to the nine pages of verses on the Harvey and
Nash quarrel attached to the 229 pages of Pierce's
Supererogation'? This is the sort of attention and
justice clever men get from posterity when they have
GABRIEL HARVEY.
243
once been well covered with abuse from which it is
nobody's particular business to defend them, and when
they have not achieved in their lives anything great
enough to draw on them the general attention of their
countrymen in after times.
On the authority of Nash, Gabriel Harvey and his
brothers John and Richard have been confounded in
one common charge of a ridiculous addiction to astrology.
Thoughtful men of their time believed in the influences
of the stars, and our language attests the old strength
and prevalence of such convictions. But of these
Harveys, as before said, Richard alone was an enthu-
siastic student of astronomy; and it was against him
and his Astrological Discourse upon the great and
notable Conjunction of the two Inferior Planets, Saturn
and Jupiter, on the 28th of April, 1583,' that Nash, in
a passage of 'Pierce Penniless, his Supplication to the
Devil,' levelled his abusive wit. Richard's unlucky
astrological prediction was addressed at its close-
"From my father's house in Walden . . . to my very
good and most loving brother, Master Gabriel Harvey,
at his chamber in Trinity Hall." Gabriel then held a
fellowship of Trinity. That Gabriel Harvey, had he
been at Walden, would have discouraged, as he had
before discouraged, his younger brother's astrological
enthusiasm, is evident from the opening of this treatise:
"Good brother, I have in some part done my endeavour
to satisfy your late request, wherein you advertise me
either not so much to addict myself to the study and
contemplation of judicial astrology, or else by some
R 2
244
GABRIEL HARVEY.
sensible and evident demonstration to make certain and
infallible proof what general good I can do my country
thereby, or what special fruit I can reap thereof myself."
John Harvey, the other brother, published in 1588 ‘A
Discoursive Problem concerning Prophecies; how far
they are to be valued or credited, according to the surest
Rules and Directions in Divinity, Philosophy, and other
Learning;' but this was written for the purpose of con-
futing and condemning superstitious faith in traditions
and pretended prophecies, and it especially undertook
to examine and reject an old prophecy of terrible things
which were to happen in 1588, though admitting that
this year might see the prologue to serious events of
which the five acts and the epilogue would in due time
probably follow. One of Gabriel Harvey's letters,
printed without his knowledge and against his wish,
was set forth as containing "a short and sharp judgment
on earthquakes." As the set of letters to which this
belongs is known through Haslewood's reprint in 1815
of Ancient Critical Essays,' and Haslewood left out the
earthquake letter because the matter of it was foreign
to his purpose, the world has assumed pretty generally,
from its title only, that here Gabriel displayed his addic-
tion to astrology. But the letter exactly accords with
the spirit in which he had sought to abate Richard's
astrological enthusiasm. It reports to Spenser talk of
the night before over an earthquake of which the shock
had just been felt—the earthquake of 1580, which set
in motion the pens of Arthur Golding, Thomas Church-
yard, and many others—and Harvey repeats the argu-
6
GABRIEL HARVEY.
245
6
ment he had then held, that earthquakes proceed from
natural causes, and that although doubtless it is in the
power of God miraculously to produce them, it is not
the business of man to treat them superstitiously. He
speaks with supreme contempt of the crop of pamphlets
and prophecies that the recent earthquake shock was
likely to produce. In the same letter Harvey reported
Cambridge news with a sharpness of censure which, when
these private letters were printed without his knowledge,
by an injudicious friend, made it his duty to apologise
to the Cambridge authorities. In the course of the
Nash quarrel, when a distorted version of this is cast
up against him, he admits that he was then unduly
irritated because he had failed in his application for the
office of Orator to the University.
That he was unduly irritated in the Nash quarrel is
quite as true. Gabriel had just laid his brother John,
the young physician, in the grave, when a gross attack
on the whole family, provoked by his brother Richard,
came into his hands. It consisted only of a few lines,
which were afterwards expunged from the satire, Greene's
Quip for an Upstart Courtier,' in the text of which
they had been interpolated. The copies which contained
it were destroyed, and we do not know what the scoffs
were which caused Gabriel to come to town, determined
to proceed by law against the libeller. He found Greene
dying miserably, and his judgment was so far overpowered
by his anger, that he allowed himself to be urged into a
written expression of it after Greene was dead. Yet
there are earnest and generous thoughts blended with
246
GABRIEL HARVEY.
!
the words of wrath, and there is a pathetic strain of
earnestness in the whole letter which contains Gabriel's
reference to his dead brother, and record of his latest
words to him: “Oh, brother, Christ is the best physician,
and my only physician. Farewell, Galen-farewell
human arts. There is nothing divine upon earth except
the soul aspiring towards heaven.”
C
I do not justify the temper of the Harvey and Nash
quarrel, but I do protest against any continuance of the
belief that students are reading literary history when
they find in Isaac D'Israeli's Calamities of Authors'
this quarrel made the basis of a misrepresentation of
all facts in the life of a man whom Sidney and Spenser
honoured as their friend-a misrepresentation which
extends even to so trifling a detail as the suggestion
that "it became necessary to dry up the floodgates of
these rival ink-horns by an order of the Archbishop
of Canterbury. The order is a remarkable fragment of
our literary history, and is thus expressed: That all
Nashe's bookes and Dr. Harvey's bookes be taken where-
soever they may be found, and that none of the said
bookes be ever printed hereafter."" It is, indeed, a re-
markable fragment, for it is quoted with omission of the
fact that this was not a condemnation special to Harvey
and Nash, but part of a general excommunication of
books by which, in the year 1599, Whitgift and Ban-
croft made themselves ridiculous. They ordered the
burning of Marston's 'Pygmalion,' of Marlowe's Ovid
and of his Satires, of Hall's Satires, of the Epigrams of
Davies and others, of the Caltha Poetarum, besides
GABRIEL HARVEY.
247
Nash's and Harvey's books; and decreed that no satires
or epigrams should be printed for the future. Indeed,
says Warton, in that year "the Hall of the Stationers
underwent as great a purgation as was carried on in Don
Quixote's library." Had the 'Calamities of Authors'
been then in existence, probably that learned and enter-
taining book would also have gone to the fire, and one
author, at least, would have been spared the additional
calamity of being known to the world, less by what he
said than by what Isaac D'Israeli said of him.
INFLUENCE OF THE CELT ON ENGLISH
LITERATURE.
[Afternoon Lecture, Dublin, April, 1867.]
WHEN the Arab "dwelt beneath the shadow of his
lance, and cooked his food upon the ashes of the towns
he conquered," he was, as he is now, a man of unmixed
race. Among the pure races Baron Larrey argued that
none was so perfect. The Arab, said the Baron, has
more convolutions to his brain, brain made of better-
that is, firmer-stuff, senses more exquisitely acute,
heart and arteries more perfect, than any other man.
But what has he now to show for all his perfectness?
A thousand years ago he was playing a brilliant bat in
the political cricket-field, but in the midst of his
wonderful running his wind failed him, and he was
bowled out. It seems to be the weak point in all
unmixed breeds of men that in the long run of life
they may leave all behind them for a little time and
then fall to the rear. Thus the pure Spaniards who
are still in South America, and have for centuries been
keeping their blue blood clear of the liquor in the
veins of other men, are feeble as their neighbours the
Indians, who boast also of unmixed race. But somebody
has written a whole book to show how the Mestijos
INFLUENCE OF THE CELT, &c.
249
born of intermarriage between Spaniards and Indians
are so vigorous and enterprising, that these are the men
who are to found and to maintain a South American
republic of the future. And is there not a reason why
such things should be? It may be part of the great
plan to which our lives belong, that in large national
relations, as in little personal affairs, we are strong by
fellowship; and the race that shall go strongly forward
and endure until the end must claim and admit com-
munity of blood with other races. There is penalty
upon seclusion. We must work on till we have learnt
all to work together. To compare great things with
lesser things, how many a Royal line has become feebler
for the want of free range in its marriages. If King
Cophetua did wed the beggar maid, his descendant may
have had to thank him for a better wit than falls
usually by nature to the lot of Princes. Now as between
the Anglo-Saxon and the Celt we do not know which is
the beggar maid and which Cophetua, but we do know
that we as a people are strong, not because we are
Teutonic, not because we are Celtic, but because we
are both. As a power in the world the Anglo-Saxon
would long since have proved a failure but for inter-
marriage with the Celt, and at this day within these
kingdoms the elements of strength are least evident in
those counties where the population-here too mobile,
there too stolid—is most purely Celtic or most purely
Saxon. Hesiod's praise in his Georgics of the "healthful
may be applied to those who boast themselves
of perfect, unmixed race:
mean
""
250
INFLUENCE OF THE CELT
“O fools, that all things into judgment call,
Yet know not how much half is more than all!"
Influence of the Celt on English Literature proceeds
not from example set by one people and followed by
another, but in the way of nature, by establishment of
blood relationship, and the transmission of modified
and blended character to a succeeding generation.
Evidence of this will be clearer if we look for it not so
much in ultimate results as in the first processes which
led to them.
The pure Gael-now represented by the Irish and
Scotch Celts-was, at his best, an artist, with a sense of
literature, active and bold imagination, joy in bright
colour, skill in music, touches of a keen sense of honour
in most savage times, and in religion fervent and self-
sacrificing zeal. In the Cymry-now represented by
the Celts of Wales-there was the same artist nature,
but by natural difference, partly, no doubt, because
their first known poets learnt in suffering what they
taught in song, the oldest Cymric music comes to us
not like the music of the Irish harp, in throbbings of a
pleasant tunefulness, but as a wail that beats again,
again, and again some iterated burden on the ear.
Such was the Celt. Each point in this description
can be justified on evidence of which the weakest has
this to be said for it, that it has satisfied the critical
sagacity of that thoroughly accomplished and by no
means credulous Irish scholar, the late Professor Eugene
O'Curry.
The sense of literature was shown in the earliest
ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
251
times by the support of a distinct literary class among
the Celts who first possessed the country. In Erin,
the first head-quarters of song and story, even in the
third century there was the poet with his staff of office,
a square tablet staff, on the four sides of which he cut
his verse; and there were degrees in literature. There
was the Ollamh, or perfect Doctor, who could recite
accurately seven fifties of historic tales; and there were
others, down to the Driseg who could tell but twenty.
As we travel down from the remotest time of which
there can be doubtful record, we find the profession
of historian to be a recognised calling, transmitted
in one family from generation to generation, and these
later professors of history still bore the name of Ollamhs.
So it was in the MacFirbis family, of which came
Duald MacFirbis, calling himself Dudley Firbisse,
a master of Irish record, who was the last of the
Ollamhs, and who, when an old man of fourscore, was
killed by a young bully not two hundred years ago.
The young man was flirting with a barmaid who bade
him be quiet, or the old man in the next room would
see him. Upon that he drew his knife, rushed into the
next room, and stabbed MacFirbis to the heart. So
died the last of the Ollamhs. It was, he said, the
hereditary occupation of his family that they wrote
books of history, annals, poetry, and kept a school of
history. Under the year 1279 the 'Annals of the Four
Masters' record the death of a MacFirbis, "chief
historian" of the O'Dowda's country. It was a Mac-
Firbis who, before 1416, wrote the Book of Lecan, now
252
INFLUENCE OF THE CELT
in the possession of the Royal Irish Academy, and part
of the Yellow Book of Lecan, of which a large frag-
ment is in the library of Trinity College, Dublin.
Of the active and bold fancy that accompanied this
Celtic sense of literature as an art, and of the Celt's
delight in bright colour, almost any one of the old
Gaelic poems will bear witness. The delight in colour
is less manifest in the first poems of the Cymry. For
them the one colour was that of blood; they are of the
sixth century, and sing of men who died in the vain
fight against the spreading power of the Anglo-Saxons.
Even among the Gaels, in echoes that still reach us of
that body of third and fourth century poetry which has
for its central incident the battle of Gabhra wherein
Fionn's famous clan was crushed by the united forces of
all other clans of Erin, except their allies the men
of Munster, we miss much of the lavish suggestion of
bright colour that belongs to the old Gaelic poetry and
history. For an example of that colouring, here, from the
Tain' Bo, is part of an old picture of a march of Gaelic
Celts seen from a hill by a MacRoth who is describing
them. "Some are with red cloaks; others with light blue
cloaks; others with deep blue cloaks; others with green,
or gray, or white, or yellow cloaks, bright and fluttering
about them. There is a young red-freckled lad, with a
crimson cloak in their midst; a golden brooch in that
cloak at his breast," and so forth. Even the ghost of a
Celt, if it dropped the substance, retained all the
colouring of life, and would come up out of the ground
gay as a tulip. When the exact artistic shaping and
ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
253
1
wording of that history of the cattle plunder had been
lost, a deputation sent by the chief poet was on its way
to Italy in search of the right form of the narrative,
because it was said to have been carried thither by
a learned man. On the way the deputation rested at
the cromlech of the poet Fergus McRoigh, where the
ghost of the poet kindly came up and saved the travellers
all further trouble by dictating to them the right form
of the tale. The ghost is described. It had brown
hair, and wore a collared gold-ribbed shirt, a green
mantle, a gold-hilted sword, and sandals of bronze.
There is in one of these old poems a description of a
lady's bower, its main roof thatched in stripes of brown
and crimson, and its portico with wings of blue and
yellow birds. The whole description is alight with
colours of the rainbow. If the Cymry had a dragon in
a fable, he was red; a Saxon dragon was more likely to
be white. The vivacity of Celtic fancy is shown also
by an outpouring of bold metaphor and effective simile.
“Each shoulder covered with his painted shield,
Swift as the war-horse, there the hero marched.
Noise in the mount of slaughter, noise and fire;
The darting lances were as gleams of sun.
There the glad raven fed. They went not free
While he, as in his course the eagle strikes
The morning dews aside, so scattered them,
And like a whelming billow struck their front.
They, the bards tell, are brave men who to slaves
Reveal no counsel. Spears in warrior hands
Were wasting men, and ere the swan-white steeds
Trampled the grave of him whose word had been
So masterly, his blood washed all his arms:
Buddvan was such, son of Bleedvann the Bold."
254
INFLUENCE OF THE CELT
Here in a mere average stanza, containing one of the
ninety celebrations of the chiefs who fell in fight with
the Angles at Gododin, we have abundant illustration of
the play of the Celt's fancy. Buddvan, with the many-
coloured shield, is fleet as a war-horse; the flight of
spears is as the darting of sunbeams; the hero scatters
his foes as an eagle strikes the dewdrops from his path;
he whelms them as a wave; his horse is swan-white ;
when his blood is shed it washes all his armour. This
audacity of genius, which is the father of invention in
the useful as in the liberal arts, this intellectual oxygen
is, no doubt, absent from the genius of the Anglo-
Saxon. In that one verse of the 'Gododin' are more
similes than in the six thousand and odd lines (English
measure) of the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf.
Playing upon musical instruments was the only
industry with which in 1187 Gerald of Wales, who had
been to Ireland as secretary to Prince John, credited
the Irish. In that he said "they are incomparably
more skilful than any other nation I have ever seen.
For their modulation on these instruments, unlike that
of the Britons" (the Cymry of Wales), "to which I am
accustomed, is not slow and harsh, but lively and rapid,
while the harmony is both sweet and gay." After more
minute description he adds that "both Scotland and
Wales strive to rival Ireland in the art of Music."
Ireland used only two instruments—the harp and tabor,
Wales the harp, the pipe, and the crowd, which was a
sort of fiddle.
Mr. Fergusson, when preparing the ground for his
ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
255
6
admirable History of Architecture' by a survey of the
characteristics of different races in their relation to his
art, says that "the true glory of the Celt in Europe is
his artistic eminence. It is perhaps not too much
to assert that without his intervention we should not
have possessed in modern times a church worthy of
admiration, or a picture or a statue we could look at
without shame." That is said generally of the Celt in
Europe, and my purpose now is to show that in these
kingdoms, without help from the Celt, there could have
been no Shakespeare in our literature.
Two higher characters associated with the Celt's
artistic temperament have yet to be illustrated, his
sense of honour in most savage times, and in religion
fervent and self-sacrificing zeal. Of the sense of
honour there is odd illustration in one of the oldest
histories which tell of the first appearance of the
Gaels in Erin. They landed at the mouth of the
Slaney, in Wexford, unobserved by the Tuatha de
Danaan who then occupied the country, marched on
Tara, and then called upon the three kings of the
island to surrender. The kings answered that this was
not fair. They were taken by surprise. So they pro-
posed to the invaders that they should go back, re-
embark, retire nine waves, and then, if they could
make good their landing, they should have the country.
The Milesians agreed that this was fair, and did try
back. Another notion, which occurs in the 'Tain Bo'
and elsewhere, was that if one man should come out
against an army, or hold a pass against an army, the
256
INFLUENCE OF THE CELT
army must halt and fight him one against one till
he was beaten, or till, if he could, he had destroyed the
whole host in a series of single combats. We are not
bound to believe such things were ever done; enough
for us that there is the temper of the people indicated
by the character of its inventions. And they are
inventions which belong to savage times when, says
another of these old tales, the Ulster men mixed the
brains of their slain enemies with lime and played with
the hard balls they made of them. Such a brainstone
is said to have gone through the skull of Conchobar,
who lived afterwards seven years with two brains in his
head, always sitting very still, because it would be
death to him to shake himself.
The self-sacrificing zeal that entered into the religion
of the Celts bore fruit, we shall find, in the first
Christianizing of the Anglo-Saxons. But of the Celt
in his old days of savage artist life, when he was a
pagan gentleman in the rough, singing and fighting,
may we not say as it is said in the Homeric hymn
of Hermes, when he strung the first chords of his lyre
over the shell, that
"God in him did sing.
His play was likewise an unspeakable thing,
Yet, but as an extemporal assay
Of what show it would make, being the first way
It tried his hand; or a tumultous noise
Such as, at feasts, the first-flower'd spirits of boys
Pour out in mutual contumelies still."
Mutual contumelies no doubt enlivened the early
intercourse between Gael and Gael, Cymry and Cymry,
Teuton and Teuton. When, in the oldest of our
ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
257
Anglo-Saxon poems, Beowulf in the course of argu-
ment over the dinner-table twits another gentleman
with having murdered his own brothers, and says that
he shall pay for it in Hell, the home thrust of the
disputant is not resented. Indeed we are told that
the host was glad to hear this sort of conversation,
because it gave him confidence in the spirit of a guest
who had come over the sea to fight a monster for him.
Among Celts the contumelies between Gael and Cymry
must have been the liveliest.
The Gaels were the first comers. Before their migra-
tions hither, their headquarters on the continent seem
to have been in Spain, and the adjacent part of Gaul
distinguished by Cæsar as Aquitanian. They crossed
not only to Ireland but also to the west of England.
From Erin they passed by the peninsula of Kintyre
and the stepping-stones of Islay and the Western Isles
to the main land of the Scotch highlands, whose old
name of Alban, allied to Alp, became the Albion of
later times. From the west of England and from the
north of Scotland these Gaels, as they spread and
divided the possession of the lands, peopled the north
of England. In his life of Agricola, written about the
year 98, Tacitus says that our Silures and Brigantes,
that is to say, our people of Wales and our people of
Lancashire, Yorkshire, Westmoreland, Cumberland,
and Northumberland, in his time resembled the people
of Spain more than the other Gaels in language and
aspect. The Irish Gaels in the south-eastern corner of
Ireland, between Waterford and Wexford, were espe-
VOL. II.
S
258
INFLUENCE OF THE CELT
cially described as Brigantes, and it is geographically a
fair supposition that the land assigned to them between
the Slaney and the Suir was the part of Ireland to
which those Gaels crossed who were forced out of Wales
by the encroachments of the Cymry.
For that the Cymric Celts, who crossed from Gaul and
spread from their landing-places in the south of Eng-
land, did press westward upon the Gael, is shown by the
surviving of the Gaelic word for water, uisge, which is
not Cymric at all, in the names of the rivers Exe, Esk,
Usk; by the tradition of the common people in North
Wales that the original inhabitants were Irish, so that
their cromlechs are sometimes called Irish cots, and the
foxes and polecats are said to be descended from the
Irish dogs and cats. It is shown also by the fact that
twenty times in North Wales the name of Gwyddel (for
Gaedhel or Gael) is attached to places so situated that
they might have been last strongholds in which settle-
ments of Gaels remained, after their main body had
been cast out by the Cymry. All the sites are in
mountain-passes, morasses, or other places that could
easily be held against assault. One in Cardigan, Cefn
y Gwyddel, not far from the sea, has near it a farmhouse
which is still called Lletty 'r Cymro, the Quarters of
the Cymry. Even at Holyhead they waited and walled
themselves against the pressure by which they had
steadily been driven westward to the sea; if we may
infer so much from the old name of that place, Cerrig
y Gwyddel, stones of the Gael. But all the Gaels
were not expelled, and some differences in physiognomy
ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
259
and dialect between the present inhabitants of North
and South Wales have been ascribed to the different
degrees in which the Cymry were modified by inter-
marriage, in those early times, with the Gaelic branch
of the great Celtic stock of what is called the Indo-
European family.
Then came the pressure of men of the Gothic stock,
predominating element in the construction of a modern
Englishman. They came to us from all the coasts in-
habited by Belg or Frisian, Saxon or Scandinavian.
These, when they crossed the sea, would strike naturally
upon the eastern and the southern coast of England.
Cæsar distinguished between Belgic, Celtic, and
Aquitanian Gaul. The people of these three divisions
differed, he said, "in language, customs, and laws."
His Aquitanians, of whom Strabo says that "in language
and appearance they resembled Spaniards rather than
the other Gauls," were Gaels. The other Celts were
Cymry, who probably spread over the whole of central
and northern France before considerable numbers of
them, who had lived opposite our south-eastern shores,
upon the coast of France east of the Seine, were dis-
placed and forced across the channel by the conquests
of a Germanic people. These were the Belga. It is
common to contradict Cæsar upon this point, and say
that the Belga too were Celts. But Cæsar relates
explicitly that they were mostly descended from Ger-
mans who in ancient time had crossed the Rhine and
passed over the modern Belgium to occupy the coasts of
Gaul east of the Seine, on which they settled because
s 2
260
INFLUENCE OF THE CELT
they were fertile, and from which they expelled the
previous inhabitants. Large numbers of the Cymry,
so expelled, would cross the water, and thus form in
England that new Celtic migration before which the
Gaels receded, and by which they were in part forced
westward till they crossed to their near kindred in
Ireland. The Cymry pressed upon the Gael because
they were themselves pressed, even upon the soil of
England, by the Belgæ. For the Belgæ, finding that
here, too, the coasts were fertile, established themselves
strongly in a district of Britain which at last spread from
the Hampshire coast to the shore of the Bristol channel.
They did not call themselves Belgæ; but, in the lan-
guage of the Cymry, Belg means a Ravager. The
people of Sussex and Surrey were called Regni, and
here also it may be significant that, in the language of
the Cymry, Rhegn means accursed. Cæsar notes that
in language, customs, form of houses, names of towns,
the South Britons agreed with the opposite Gauls;
that Divitiacus, king of the most powerful tribe of the
Belgæ in Gaul, had rule also in Britain; and that there
was a king in Kent who had a name, which he calls
Cingetorix, identical with that of a king on the Moselle.
Why should we deny Cæsar's authority when he de-
scribes people of whom he saw much, and ascribes
to them differences which he thoroughly knew how
to distinguish?
I accept Cæsar's authority, then, for the two reasons,
1, that he is entitled to belief, and 2, that his statement
accounts for and agrees with what we find. It places
ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
261
the first entrance of the Teutonic, or, as it is conven-
tionally called, the Anglo-Saxon element, into the south
of England centuries before Hengist and Horsa, cen-
turies perhaps before his own invasion. At the same
time we have in the north of England, extending into
Lancashire and Yorkshire, a Celtic population con-
sisting of Cymry, who, as there is good reason to believe,
absorbed into their body a considerable number of the
Gaels. It is the beginning of the casting of two
different types of the English mind. In the south are
men like the Hampshire farmer who cures bacon, or the
field labourer, dull, honest, and ill-paid,
"Whose only claim is this,
With labour stiff and stark,
By lawful turn his living to earn
Between the light and dark;
His daily bread and nightly bed,
His bacon and drop of beer-
But all from the hand that holds the land,
And none from the overseer."
In the north is the keen-witted inventor among the
spindles, the factory hand who has been found reading
Newton's 'Principia' at his loom, the Edwin Waugh,
best of a score of north-country working men who, in
penny broadsides of rare merit, uttered the poetry of
the patient sufferers in Lancashire during the cotton
famine. Thomas Hood sang for the southern labourers;
they of the north, in days even of sorest need, can utter
their own music and tell us,
"That, as pleasure's sometimes a misfortin,
An' trouble sometimes a good thing,-
Though we liv'n o'th floor, same as layrocks,
We'n go up, like layrocks, to sing."
262
INFLUENCE OF THE CELT
Cumberland, some think, retains evidence in its name
that it has been Cymry land; others derive its name
from Irish Gaelic, in which cumar means a confluence
or valley, and cumurach a region abounding in hills
and valleys. They connect the name with that of the
Cummeragh mountains in Kerry, which are among the
highest and wildest in Ireland. There is a parish of
Cummer in Connaught, a Cummertrees in Dumfries
on the Solway Firth, and a Cummersdale in Cumber-
land. In Cumberland there is the word Cymry itself
in Cumrew, a parish on the fell-side six miles north of
Kirk Oswald.
To the Solway Firth and to this hill country of the
north of England we now look.
It is the year 570, or thereabout. The mixed people
of the opposite Germanic coasts, Frisian, Saxon, Dane,
who blended to form English, or, as the schools say,
Anglo-Saxons, have been for generations crossing the
North Sea and the English Channel to settle upon
the eastern and the southern skirts of England. They
have been driving their way inland with plough and
sword. On six occasions these migrations have been
in such force that the venerable Bede put them on
record as so many memorable invasions, from the first
in 449, of men under Hengist and Horsa who founded
the kingdom of Kent, to the last in 547, under Ida.
This was the pouring in upon the eastern coast, from
the Firth of Forth to the Humber, of those people
whom we may as well begin to call by the conven-
tional name of Anglo-Saxons. I say the conventional
ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
263
name because it was no national name of theirs. They
called themselves the Englisc folc, and the lan-
guage formed after their settlement by fusion of their
dialects they called the Englisc speech. The compound
word Anglo-Saxon appeared for the first time, as a
distinction between English and continental Saxons, in
Asser's 'Life of Alfred,' when the bright days of what
is called the Anglo-Saxon power were all ended, and
our history was drifting in the direction of the Norman
Conquest. It has since been used, and I use it here,
only as a convenient name for the mixed Teutons, with
here and there a dash of Scandinavian, who became in
Britain the dominating power, and of whom we are
asking how it was that they had their genius brightened
by admixture with the Celts. In the Teutonic mixture
Frisians predominated. A glance on the map at the
coast line opposite England shows us that it could not
well be otherwise, and the language called Anglo-Saxon,
spoken nowhere on the continent, but the result here.
of a fusion of dialects, in its vocabulary and inflexions
more strongly resembles the old Frisian than any other.
It is much nearer to old Frisian than to old Saxon. In
short, the closest affinity to the Anglo-Saxon type among
the nations of the continent is to be found, not in a
German, but in a Dutchman.
Now the Dutch are an earnest and religious people,
home-loving traders, brave men, who have shown what
stand they can make in the battle against civil and
religious despotism. But the human mind is incapable
of conceiving a Dutch Shakespeare. When modern
264
INFLUENCE OF THE CELT
literature was opening its first blossoms, the Dutch
showed their strength as a people by giving birth in
the twelfth century to the famous beast epic of Reinaert,
-Reineke Fuchs, Reynard the Fox,-grand for the
simple boldness with which it confronted vices of nobles
and corruptions of the clergy with the satire of a
sensible and duty-loving people. In the thirteenth
century their Jacques van Maerlant-who is called the
Father of the Flemish Poets-wrote for his people an
encyclopædia in verse, 'Flowers of Nature,' in sixteen
books, as of Men,' ' of Quadrupeds,' ' of Birds,' ' of the
Marvels of the Sea,' and so forth; also, the Historical
Mirror,' in thirty-one books, telling the history of the
world from the creation to the thirteenth century; and
a 'Rymbibel,' or Bible in verse, for which he had to
justify himself before the Pope. We must not make
the absurd attempt to give in a parenthesis a history of
Flemish literature, but as this literature was at the be-
ginning so it has remained; and of like character was
the literature of the Anglo-Saxons. It was religious,
popular, encyclopædic, strong in the sentiment of duty
and desire to be of use. Anglo-Saxon of the Anglo-
Saxons is in our own day a Society for the Diffusion of
Useful Knowledge, or the design of a publication like
´All the Year Round,' or 'Chambers's Journal.' What
have those two pieces of modern Anglo-Saxon to do
with the sketch of an incident in the year 570? Two
saintly modern deacons are in Raffaelle's picture of
the Transfiguration, and their use is said to have been
that a good monk could feel he was himself one of their
ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
265
company, and so through them was helped to think
himself into the picture.
It is the year 570, or thereabout. Ida's Angles,—or
Anglo-Saxons,-have strengthened the hold of kinsmen
who preceded them upon the coasts of Durham and
Northumberland, or Deira and Bernicia, which is the
Latin form of the Cymric Deivyr and Bryneich. They
have extended their conquest inland, pushing upon the
Cymry, and they have fastened upon Ododin, clearly
the land of the men whose name the Romans Latinized
as Otadini. These occupied the whole region imme-
diately behind the coast line of Northumberland,
Durham, and the North Riding of Yorkshire. The
Cymry are in arms. They demand back a portion of
the land of the Ododin. The conquerors hold what
they have won, and from a chief of the Cymry,
Mynyddawg, Lord of Eiddin,-that is to say, a chief
whose lands are on the river Eden, which flows through
Westmoreland and Cumberland into the Solway Firth
-the call to arms goes forth among surrounding tribes.
From Wigton, Kirkcudbright, and Ayr, across the
Solway Firth and up the Eden, come three chiefs, with
five battalions of 500 men each; three come from about
Dumbarton on the shores of Clyde. The Lord of Eden
has raised three levies each of 300 warriors; and so
these come up the Eden or march through Strathclyde,
the confederate Cymric tribes of the west coast, from
the Firth of Clyde to the Firth of Solway, to their
gathering place among the fells of Westmoreland,
between Howgill and Stainmoor, about the head waters
266
INFLUENCE OF THE CELT
1
of the Eden. Thence they are to march down in all
their force for a death struggle with the invaders, who
are pressing on them from the eastern shore. The
Swale and the Eden rise in the same hills, the Eden
flowing to the westward, the Swale to the eastern sea.
Down Swaledale the host of the Cymry march to
Ododin, or Gododin, as the name is also spelt in the
fine fragment of the lament of the bard Aneurin for
all the chiefs that fell. I tell the story from the
poem. Its geography is of my own making out, but
fits so well with every detail, that I dare take it for
granted, in spite of a common opinion that the Lord of
Eiddin was a Lord of Edinburgh. The Cymry march
through Swaledale for some five-and-twenty miles,
when they reach Catterick, the Cattraeth of the poem,
where, as at Cattraeth, there is a confluence of rivers.
Catterick is five miles to the south-east of Richmond
in Yorkshire. At Catterick are still to be seen ancient
burial mounds, and apart from an old camp of the
Romans which is there also, the village graveyard stands
within an ancient camp of unknown origin. This was
the camp raised by the Confederate Cymry, when at
Cattraeth they met the Anglo-Saxon force that had
advanced to meet them in the year when, as Aneurin
"The heroes who marched to Cattraeth were
renowned, wine and mead out of golden goblets was
their drink; that year to them was one of high
solemnity, three hundred and sixty-three chieftains
wearing the golden twisted chain; of those who
hurried forth after too much of revelling but three
sang,
ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
267
escaped by valour from the pit of burial, the two war
dogs of Aeron, and Cynon the dauntless, and myself,
from the spilling of blood, the reward of my pure song."
That is the literal translation of the passage in the
'Gododin,' which was thus translated by Gray as a
fragment from the Welsh:
"To Cattraeth's vale in glittering row
Twice two hundred warriors go;
Every warrior's manly neck
Chains of regal honour deck,
Wreathed in many a golden link:
From the golden cup they drink
Nectar that the bees produce,
Or the grape's ecstatic juice.
Flush'd with mirth and hope they burn:
But none from Cattraeth's vale return,
Save Aeron brave, and Conan strong
(Bursting through the bloody throng),
And I, the meanest of them all,
That live to weep, and sing their fall."
The Cymry fought to the death for six days. They
disdained alike flight and submission. The poem of
the 'Gododin' is a wail for chief after chief, and thus
with a sigh ends what remains to us of the lament,
"And Morien lifted up again his ancient lance, and
roaring stretched out death towards the warriors, the
Gwyddyl and the Prydyn; whilst towards the lovely,
slender, blood-stained body of Gwen, sighed Gwenabwy
the only son of Gwen." Then, after telling how the
corpse was carried from the battlefield under an un-
furled banner, the poet adds: "He who meddles with
the mane of a wolf, without a club in his hand, will
have it gorgeously emblazoned on his robe. Fain
268
INFLUENCE OF THE CELT
6
would I sing Would that Morien had not died.' I
sigh for Gwenabwy the son of Gwen.”
Here, then, is literature showing us how, in history
as in chemistry, the joining of two elements which are
to form some valuable compound produces at first heat,
fumes, and a fierce effervescence. Aneurin has de-
scribed some of the first consequences of an addition
of three or four volumes of Anglo-Saxon to one volume
of Celt but, happily for us, the resulting formula
represents the most durable and serviceable compound
that has yet been produced in the chemistry of
nations.
The blending of the Celt and Anglo-Saxon had
begun in the north even in those days of the great
battle at Cattraeth; for some passages in the 'Gododin'
indicate that Celts of the eastern coast, men of Deivyr
and Bryneich, had remained there and become incor-
porated with the new possessors of the soil. There
never was repulse of the whole body of the Cymry into
Wales. Bede, writing a hundred and fifty years after
the battle of Cattraeth, speaks of the Britons of
Northumberland as being in his day partly free and
partly subject to the Angles. In the hill country, to
which the Anglo-Saxon did not care to follow with his
plough, and in the fens, were independent Celts. The
bagpipe is a Celtic instrument of torture, and the
Celts seem to have cheered with it the bitterns in
the fen country. "The drone of a Lancashire bagpipe"
is one of Falstaff's similes for melancholy. In the
west of England so far were the Celts from having
ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
269
been entirely driven into Wales, that in King Alfred's
time, three centuries after the last of the Anglo-Saxon
settlements had made its hold on the land good, a line
from north to south, dividing England into equal parts,
had on the west side of it a country in which Celts
abounded. They were the chief occupants of the five
south-western counties. In Athelstane's time Britons
and Saxons divided equal rule in Exeter. Neither in
the west nor in the north of England were the Celts
enslaved. Wales they had to themselves, and there
they cherished the tradition of their nationality. But
where they lived among the Anglo-Saxons they accepted,
when outnumbered, the established rule, or if in equal
force divided rule, and lived in either case as fellow-
citizens with their Teutonic neighbours. It has been
said that all the Celtic words in English are such as
would be taken from a people in a state of slavery.
The statement was based on a small list of about two
dozen words, and tested by a fuller list is shown to be
most absolutely wrong. Why, even our word "happy "
is Cymric. Did we get our word for happiness from
slaves? The quantity of Celtic in our standard
English, and still more in our provincial dialects, is
much larger than has been, until recently, supposed.
The best vigour of English literature during the whole
Anglo-Saxon time before the Conquest was in the north
of England. Our classic ground was within Durham and
Northumberland and the North Riding of Yorkshire, the
region of the struggle ended at Cattraeth. William's
terrible wasting of Northumbria, four years after the
270
INFLUENCE OF THE CELT
Conquest, was one of several depressing influences on
the North; and for the next couple of centuries it is the
West of England that becomes the classic ground.
Meanwhile the fusion of the elements of English
strength goes on. The court and capital happen to be
in the part of England that most needs the vivifying
influence; to the court and capital all diverse elements.
of strength are attracted; combinations are manifold,
fusion is intimate, and wits are sharpened by attrition
with each other. So at last the whole lump becomes
leavened.
The earliest English literature, that which is called
Anglo-Saxon, begins with a Pagan epic or heroic poem,
'Beowulf,' of Teutonic-Scandinavian mould, and of a
date not earlier than the sixth century, or later than
the eighth. Its principal scenes are in a chief's mead-
hall, which must have been very like the old Icelandic
hall of which Dr. Dasent gives a plan in his translation
of the story of Burnt Njal. Other scenes are, by a bot-
tomless pool; a rocky waveworn coast, before a dragon's
cave; and the building on a hilltop of the hero's funeral
barrow, when, as the last lines of the poem say, "round
about his mound rode his hearth sharers, who sang that
he was of kings, of men, the mildest, kindest, to his
people sweetest and the readiest in search of praise."
The monkish copyist has clumsily interpolated a few
Christian sentiments, but this is an old Pagan song of
brave deeds done only for gold and gifts, of right to
the strong, and, for religion, iron destiny. "What is
to be," the poet says, "goes ever as it must;" and
ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
271
again, "the Must Be often helps an undoomed man,
when he is brave." If this poem was brought over the
sea, its scenes were laid on the coast of the island which
contains the Danish capital, and on the opposite point
of the coast of Sweden. If the tale is of England as Mr.
Haigh of Newcastle has shown some reason for supposing,
its scene may be laid chiefly in the neighbourhood of
Hartlepool, upon the coast of Durham, and the hero
Beowulf may have sailed to Hart, near Hartlepool, from
Covehithe, Suffolk. In either case it represents the
Anglo-Saxon of the north of England before the Celts
converted him to Christianity. The Church of the Irish
Celts, as represented at Iona, was unquestionably the
centre of the missionary work among the Anglo-Saxons
of Northumbria. The next great poem, the first
Christian poem in our language, and, if 'Beowulf' was
brought from the continent, the starting point of English
literature, came from a man of the North Riding of
Yorkshire. By misinterpretation of a sentence in Bede,
it has been usual to call him a herdsman. He seems
really to have been, about the year 670 or 680, a small
farmer of ground held under the abbey of Whitby,
which was then a chief centre of missionary work, pre-
sided over by the Abbess Hilda. He was a very true,
even a great poet, and he was persuaded to abandon
his lay occupation, enter the monastery, and join the
clergy in their labour. It was to be his part of the
work to paraphrase in popular verse, for recital in
churches, or song on the highways, the vital portions of
the Scripture story. That story was dictated to him
272
INFLUENCE OF THE CELT
by scholars who had been trained in the Celtic school,.
and followed usages of the Eastern not of the Western
Church. They knew and read the Chaldee scriptures,
and as he began his work with the song of Genesis, the
name they gave to this lay-brother in the monastery
was the Chaldee name of the book of Genesis, derived
from its first words, "In the beginning," that being, in
the Chaldee, Cadmon. Thus under a monk's hood
the true name of this noble poet has been lost. In the
practical purpose of his work Cadmon was Anglo-
Saxon. It has for its first note-the first note of
unquestionably English song-the sentence, "For us
it is very right that we praise with our words, love in
minds, the Keeper of the Heavens, Glory King of Hosts.
He is the source of power, the head of all his great
creation, Lord Almighty." This deep religious feeling
is henceforth the soul of Anglo-Saxon literature. The
forms of Cadmon's poem, are, like the language, clearly
Anglo-Saxon; he sings of the battle in which Lot
was taken prisoner, exactly after the manner of the
battle songs that pleased the heathen chiefs and their
hearth sharers. His verse is as free from similes as
that of other Anglo-Saxons; but whence came his
vivid power of realization, the singular vivacity with
which he represents in simple words grand thoughts
or pictures present to the poet's eye? After Lot had
been taken prisoner, says Cædmon, "then a warrior
hastily went journeying, one, a leaving of the weapons,
who had been saved in battle, to seek Abram." The
poem opens, like Milton's 'Paradise Lost,' with the fall
7€
ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
273
of the rebellious angels, and thus, one thousand years
before Milton, Cadmon represented Satan :-
"God's angel erst, he had shone white in heaven,
Till his soul urged, and most of all its Pride,
That of the Lord of Hosts he should no more
Bend to the Word. About his heart his soul
Tumultuously heaved; hot pains of wrath
Without him.
.
Then said he, Most unlike this narrow place
To that which once we knew, high in heaven's realm,
Which my Lord gave me, though therein no more
For the Almighty we hold royalties.
Yet right hath he not done in striking us
Down to the fiery bottom of hot hell,
Banished from heaven's kingdom with decree
That he will set in it the race of Man.
Worst of my sorrows this, that, wrought of earth,
Adam shall sit in bliss on my strong throne,
While we these pangs endure, this grief in hell.
Woe, Woe! had I the power of my hands,
And for a season, for one winter's space,
Might be without; then with this Host I—
But iron binds me round; this coil of chains
Rides me; I rule no more; close bonds of hell
Hem me, their prisoner.'
The music of the poet's own verse, in which is a
rhythm varied with the thought, is lost, of course, from
this rough metrical form of a literal translation into
modern English. But the thought speaks for itself,
apart from all charm in the manner of expression. The
Anglo-Saxon poet never runs into hyperbole.
realizes, but he has a high sense of God in the world,
which gives dignity to his action, and real elevation to
his thoughts. Cadmon's picture of Satan in Hell has
a sustained grandeur derived wholly from literal repre-
VOL. II.
T
He
274
INFLUENCE OF THE CELT
sentation of that which is in his mind. In the frag-
ment quoted, and throughout the poem, there is power
derived partly from the very absence of hyperbole.
The image itself is great, it fills the poet's mind, and his
art truly reproduces it.
This people's poet, who so grandly opens English
literature, was surely one of those Yorkshiremen of the
North Riding, who, mainly Anglo-Saxon, had in their
veins a dash of vivifying Celtic blood. There is no
other Anglo-Saxon poet who comes near to him. The
rest are as religious, as practical in their purpose of
diffusing knowledge, but they cannot speak pictures as
he does. The copyist of the one fragment that remains
to us, misled one day, perhaps, when sleepy after dinner,
by the apparent connection of the last line he had
written with the first line of some other verse that lay
beside him, imported a cold, weak poem by another
hand upon another subject—a piece beginning with the
flood, and ending with the sacrifice of Isaac-into the
midst of Cædmon's glowing narrative of the passage
of the Red Sea by the Israelites. And no editor of
the poem has diverted his own attention from points
of grammar and language so far as to observe an inter-
polation which, as to its literature, is like a leaf of
Mr. Tupper bound up in a Milton. Yet the transcriber's
blunder is pleasant for the sudden sense of refresh-
ment one feels after an interlude of commonplace, at
passing suddenly from the interpolation of the words
-"the land of Canaan, thy people, father of noble
children, of folk most excellent," to the Red Sea again
ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
275
""
with Cadmon's, "The folk was affrighted, the flood
dreads seized on their sad souls; ocean wailed with
death, the mountain heights were with blood besteamed,
the sea foamed gore, crying was in the waves, the water
full of weapons, a death-mist rose. We are told then
how "bursting ocean whooped in bloody storm,” and
"corpses rolled," and "the guardian of the flood struck
the unsheltering wave with an ancient faulchion, so
that in the swoon of death those armies slept."
There is, let me repeat, nothing equal to this para-
phrase in Anglo-Saxon literature. Cadmon was a great
poet, and the first fruit probably of Celtic influence upon
our literature. The rest until the Conquest, is more
evidently Anglo-Saxon. Pure Anglo-Saxon was the
beautiful life of Bede at Jarrow, faithful monk, devout
theologian, exact, impartial historian, diligent diffuser
of instruction, whose works were an encyclopædia of
all that was accounted useful knowledge in his time.
Alcuin of York, who became Charlemagne's Minister
of Public Instruction, was practical and literal, as well
as learned. So we may go down the roll until we
reach King Alfred, faithful king and diligent promoter
of instruction. There is not an original thought in
his works, but they all are a carrying out of the sound
belief that it was his royal duty to revive the decay-
ing knowledge of his country. Of the three men who
have just been named, King Alfred was the model of
a patron to an Anglo-Saxon society for the diffusion
of useful knowledge; Alcuin the model of a chairman
T 2
276
INFLUENCE OF THE CELT
for all its committees; and Bede the model of an editor
for all its works.
Only two daring original thinkers England yielded
in the days before the Conquest, and they both were
Celts. One was the establisher of those opinions which
disturbed the early Church under the name of the Pela-
gian heresy. The name of the heretic, one of the Cymry,
was Morgan, originally Morgant, which is Cymric for
sea brink, and was given to one born by the seashore.
This was translated into Pelagius. He said that Adam
was mortal, that the rest of mankind was not being
punished for his sin; that infants are not born wicked;
that by our own effort we must overcome temptations;
and with a dozen such assertions scandalised the ortho-
dox. The other independent thinker was a philosopher
of mark, who followed Alcuin as an Anglo-Saxon scholar
in foremost repute at the French Court. His name of
John Scotus Erigena will indicate his Celtic relation-
ships. His great philosophical work on 'the Division
of Nature' caused him also to be accused of heresy.
His wit played freely, even about his patron Charles
the Bald. His Majesty, calling across the dinner-table
to John Scotus, asked him what separates a Scot from
a Sot? Scotus replied, "the table." Another day the
King, seeing the philosopher, who was a little man,
between two fat monks, sent him a dish containing two
small fishes and one large one, bidding him divide them
equally between himself and his two neighbours. He
gave to each of his fat neighbours a little fish and took
the big one to himself. "That is not fairly divided,"
ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
277
said the King. "O yes, it is. There," pointing in turn
to the monks and fishes, "is a big one and a little one.
And here," only now he pointed to the fish first, "is a
big one and a little one." Erigena has been called
Irishman, Welshman, and Ayrshire man; at any rate
he was a Celt.
It is not needful to say much about the Celtic influence
which came in with the Normans. The Northmen-
the same who in England were called Danes-went to
France as mixed crews of the same material out of
which Anglo-Saxons had been made; but no doubt with
the elements in different proportion, more Scandinavian
and less Frisian. Their power was not established in
France by Rollo till King Alfred's time, less than two
hundred years before their conquest of England. The
French called the Northmen English, and the only
remaining fragment of the speech of Rollo might well
pass for that. When he was asked to kiss the king's
foot for the territory granted him, he is said to have
replied, "Ne si by Got!" and the Norman who gave
the kiss by proxy, refusing to stoop, hoisted the sacred
toe so high that he turned over his Majesty upon his
back. The land occupied by these Teutonic and Scan-
dinavian people was the part of France which had in
Cæsar's time been held by the Belgæ, also Teuton. No
doubt there had, since then, been fusion with the Celts,
and the children of these Normans received from their
mothers more or less mixture of Celtic blood. The
language of all Gaul had been Latinised; and in the
fifth and sixth centuries there was fresh mixture of
278
INFLUENCE OF THE CELT
races, while diversities of dialect and language were
established, as the Teutonic races of Herulians, Goths,
Lombards, and Franks successively overran the west of
Europe. They came in hordes, bringing their women
with them; and it is inferred by Savigny, from com-
parison of social laws, that in northern France the
Franks settled numerously, and expelled large numbers
of the natives. In southern France the Visigoths
settled in the fifth century, and had their capital in
Toulouse, while over northern Gaul Attila passed as a
scourge, and the confederation of Teutonic tribes, known
as the Franks, who gave its name of France to the
whole country, made their way in by advance to the
Somme through conquered Belgium. Thus, in the land
now called Normandy, we had first, in Cæsar's time,
Belgæ in possession, Teutons who had expelled the old
Cymric inhabitants. Admit that they proceeded to
blend with the Celts about them; then came, with their
wives and children, the Teutonic Franks, who turned
out many of their predecessors, and so entered into pos-
session. Admit, again, a period of Celtic admixture;
then came the Teutonic and Scandinavian Northmen,
who married the women of the land, adopted its lan-
guage, and established a Normandy from which, in less
than two centuries, they crossed over-not as a nation
bodily, but as an army-establishing a court and govern-
ment, and setting enriched men in castles, where they
became centres of influence to the surrounding popula-
tions. It is easy to see how the Conquest should affect
our language as it did, and how it might bring in some
ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
279
Celtic words embedded in what French was current
enough to become blended with English. They came,
a Scandinavian and part Teutonic people, brightened
by infusion of some Celtic blood, apt enough surely to
assimilate with a people Teutonic and part Scandinavian,
which had partly undergone, and was still undergoing,
a like process of admixture with the Celt.
(
That this is so, and that the chief influence of Celt
on Anglo-Saxon is still the direct one caused by union
of native races, we may see clearly in the Celtic influence
upon our literature after the Conquest, and before the
fusion had become too perfect to enable us to separate
the elements. The bright bold thought was all in the
West Country, where Celts and Anglo-Saxons lived
together. It was a Welshman, Geoffrey of Monmouth,
afterwards made Bishop of St. Asaph, who boldly con-
ceived the notion of grafting a bud of poetry upon the
old stock of monastic chronicle. His fabulous History
of British Kings,' put forth with the sly gravity of a
Defoe, scandalised all the sober and laborious chroniclers
of fact, fed all who had fancies, and became a fountain
of bright song. Hence first flowed the King Arthur
legends, that have run on in unbroken current to our
laureate's 'Idylls of the King.' They called the mock-
historian Geoffrey Arthur. They said, mockingly, that
he had made the little finger of his Arthur stouter than
the back of Alexander the Great. They said, “That
fabler with his fables shall be straightway spat out by
us all." A man who knew when any one spoke falsely
because he saw the devil, as it were, leaping and exulting
280
INFLUENCE OF THE CELT
on the tongue of the liar, found that when he was him-
self oppressed by evil spirits, the Gospel of St. John laid
on his chest caused them to fly away; but if he took up
the 'History of the Britons,' by Geoffrey Arthur, “they
instantly re-appeared in greater numbers, and remained
a longer time than usual on his body and on the book.”
Yet that history, copied, read, talked of, containing the
first sketch of our first English tragedy, 'Ferrex and
Porrex,' the story of Shakespeare's 'King Lear,' the
story of Milton's 'virgin daughter of Locrine,' was
turned into Anglo-Norman verse by Gaimar, and again
broadened into the larger song by Wace, a man of
Jersey; again, yet more enriched, doubled in length and
with some exquisite additions, it appeared as an English
poem-and that, too, was by a West of England man, the
good priest Layamon, who was priest of a parish on the
Severn, near Bewdley, in Worcestershire.
To draw one illustration more from the Arthur ro-
mances, which in France formed a large body of tales
in prose and verse, it was an Englishman of the West
Country, Walter Map, born on the Marches of Wales-
one who called the Welsh his countrymen, England
66
our mother,"-by whom a soul was put into the sub-
stance of those legends. It was he, the man of brightest
genius in our literature before Chaucer, wit and poet of
the Court of Henry II., who connected the rude half-
poetic tales of love and fighting with the mystic legend
of the Graal, invented the ideally pure knight Sir
Galahad, sent the knights of the Round Table in quest
of the holy Graal-or dish used at the Last Supper and
ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
281
before his burial to receive the blood of the crucified
Lord—which none but pure eyes could see; placed at
the Round Table the Seat Perilous, upon which none
but a pure knight could be safe; and who blended
his more spiritual additions with the rest by inditing
also in the older style his romance of Lancelot.
Thus satisfying the clergy and his own conscience, he
pleased the scholar, filled chasms in the popular tales,
reconciled contradictions, and gave in modern literature
to the cycle of Arthurian Romance an active immor-
tality. The same wit, who was also an archdeacon,
amused the Court of Henry the Second by circulating
unacknowledged verses in the name of a Bishop Golias,
an episcopal Falstaff glorying in all those unspiritual
enjoyments which men desiring the true welfare of the
Church condemned and satirised. Many believed that
there was really such a bishop who produced these
Latin poems. Bishop Golias passed into a byword.
The wit and whim of the poems, and of all else that
Map wrote, flashes with earnestness. The satire some-
times is profoundly stern, as in those lines which some
reader of sound without sense has set to music as a
drinking song, and which have therefore earned for
Walter Map the title of the jovial archdeacon. It is a
piece out of the Confession of Golias.' In wrath and
bitterness of mind, in candour of despair, Golias, in this
paper, is making a confession. He admits the lust by
which he yet defiantly abides. He remembers the tavern
he has never scorned, nor ever will scorn; then it is
that he says, in those lines beginning "Meum est pro-
282
INFLUENCE OF THE CELT
positum in tabernâ mori," "What I set before me is to
die in a tavern; let there be wine put to my mouth
when I am dying, that the choirs of the angels, when
they come, may say, 'The grace of God be on this
bibber!'" With a jovial feeling, truly, such words were
put in the mouth of Golias by a wit who had in him the
spirit of a church reformer! Distinctly, then, during
the time when it is possible to draw a line between the
English who are not, and those who are, influenced by
admixture with the Celts, we find this: from the West
Country, on the side of the line where Celts had been
most freely blended with the Anglo-Saxon, comes all
that is most original in English literature. On the
eastern side are steady, earnest, plodding, pious com-
pilers, chroniclers, and rhymers. On the western side
the Celtic influence produced boldness in speculation
among theologians and philosophers; made poetry flow
out of chronicle as water out of the dry rock; produced
in Walter Map a spiritual wit, in whom we find many
of the best qualities of a true English poet.
Two other men of great genius lived in the times.
before the more complete fusion of elements in the
capital. They are, Roger Bacon and the author of
that wonderful poem called 'The Vision of Piers Plow-
man.' If either of these had been born far east of our
middle line, there would have been doubt thrown on
the opinion based upon the facts here brought together.
But Roger Bacon was completely a West countryman.
He was born in Somersetshire, one of the counties that
had even been named in King Alfred's will as belonging
ON ENGLISH LITERATURE.
283
to the Celtic population. Of the author of The Vision
of Piers Plowman' it is always inferred from the opening
lines of the poem that he was at home by the Welsh
border, somewhere near the Malvern hills.
We have seen, then, what were the characteristics of
the Celt; how the Celts, Gael and Cymry, spread over
England; how the Teutonic races, or the Anglo-Saxons,
pressed upon them; what conflict there was before a re-
adjustment; and how, in the North and West of Eng-
land, the Celts remained partly in mass and partly
scattered as fellow-citizens through the Teutonic popu-
lation. We have seen also that precisely where the
honest, earnest, practical, God-fearing Anglo-Saxon mass
'was leavened with the artistic feeling of the Celt, there
it was, and only there, that the best energy of a true
literature appeared in England, before the establishment
of a dominating centre of thought among men gathered
from all districts to the capital. We have seen enough,
perhaps, of our literature in the making, to enable us
to say that without help of the Celts the Anglo-Saxons
could not have produced a Shakespeare. By brother-
hood of races we are strong, with thought more vigorous,
with wit more keen, with peace more sure.
"Whatever was created needs
To be sustained and fed."
No race of men, not even the most perfect, is self-
sustaining. It would be good if we could mate our
Hampshire flaxen-headed ploughboys with the peasant
girls of Limerick and Kerry. We cannot establish a
284
INFLUENCE OF THE CELT, &c.
society for doing that; but we can remember-thank-
fully for the past, hopefully for the future-the inter-
dependence of the Anglo-Saxon and the Celtic races,
and act on our knowledge that an Anglo-Saxon and a
Celt, grasped hand in hand, means England great in
genius and power.
"LEVAVI OCULOS.”
Human knowledge is but lisping of the holy name of God;
Is not Wisdom found, but finding where the feet of Wisdom trod.
How glorious the myriad of upward-looking eyes
From every race throughout the world all tending to the skies!
Has man no God, so mighty is this universal prayer,
Has man no home beyond the stars, it can create one there.
Yet God there is, and God is Friend, is Father to us all:
On each eye that looketh upward will the light of Heaven fall.
In cathedral, mosque or temple, in the closet or the field,
Heart to God that hath been opened ever hath by God been healed;
Hath felt the breath of whisperings which set the soul at rest;
Faint murmur floating down to it from mansions of the blest;
Trouble of bliss; a prompting and a longing after aid; ·
Unutterable consciousness of God; a Knowledge made
Immediate, which urges man before the very Throne
Of God to fall,—yea, on His Breast,—contented there alone.
AN OLD STUDENT OF ENGLISH.
1
WHEN due attention has been paid to his father, this
will be the story of the life of Francis Junius (to the
world not scholarly, Dujon) the younger. He was a
model student of English in the time of Milton.
Junius the elder was a man of mark, who died of the
plague in 1602. His son, Francis the younger, was
then eleven years old, and his own age was fifty-seven.
The elder Junius acquired his renown as a theologian
of the Reformed Church. He was born at Bourges,
and he also was the son of a good scholar, who was
of the king's counsel in Bourges, and in favour with
Francis I., although a Huguenot.
The father of
Francis the elder taught his son at home, with the
help of tutors. Those tutors grossly mismanaged
the education of a timid boy, who was too modest to
make any complaint of their behaviour to him. Too
shy for a Court life, unfit for active business in the
world, he was urged to become a thorough scholar. He
was moved often to tears by his father's acute prophecy
of the miseries of civil war that would afflict his
country. Already, when studying in Lyons, he nar-
rowly escaped from a popular tumult in which many
Huguenots were massacred. When he was sent after-
286
AN OLD STUDENT OF ENGLISH.
wards to Geneva, the religious war broke out; communi-
cations with home were cut off, and he would have starved
if he had not been succoured by a poor tailor, also from
Bourges, who once had received succour from the house
of the Dujons. Yet, that he might not be a burden
upon his helper's poverty, the hungry student abstained
during four months from all food except just so much
every evening as would keep body and soul together.
After seven months of the civil war there was a truce,
and Dujon then was able to receive money from home.
Meanwhile he had determined to give up his life to the
study of theology. His father opposed this, and called
him back to Bourges. While they were arguing by
letter, the father was officially sent to inquire as to a
popular massacre of Huguenots within their place of
worship at Issoudun. There the rabble broke into his
lodgings, murdered him, and threw his body out of
window. The son then was resolved never again to
enter France. He earned his living at Geneva by
giving private lessons in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew.
His health had suffered much by privation of food in
the seven months of poverty, and suffered still by the
continual privation of rest to which he unwisely con-
demned himself, believing that he could advance the
faster and the farther in his studies by a sacrifice of
strength. But he ascribed his weakness to the air of the
place, and when the French congregation of the Re-
formed Church at Antwerp sent to Geneva for a
minister, he took upon himself that office, and jour-
neyed to the Netherlands. There he became active in
AN OLD STUDENT OF ENGLISH.
287
the great religious contest with the force of Spain, in
political counsel as well as in preaching. As a French-
man he was especially obnoxious to the regency, and
Margaret of Parma made several attempts to seize him.
Thus he was at last driven to Heidelberg, where he was
well received, and ministered in the neighbouring
church at Schönau. How he paid a long visit to his
mother; how the shy scholar was compelled to follow a
campaign with the Prince of Orange, and would have
been driven to join another, bitterly against his will, if
a beneficent dog had not crippled him opportunely
with a sharp bite in the leg; how he was joined with
Tremellius in the execution of the Latin translation of
the Old Testament published at Frankfort in 1579;
how, after more personal experience of the confusion of
the times, he became Professor at Heidelberg (where
his son, Francis Junius the younger, first saw light);
how he was further tumbled about a world of strife,
sent in the train of a duke to Henri IV., returned to
Heidelberg, presently was in Holland on his way to the
court of Henri IV., but, staying in Holland, there
attained the climax of his fame as a professor of theo-
logy in Leyden, before his death by the plague in 1602,
it is enough thus to suggest. But let us not forget that
as a theologian he was one of the most tolerant of his
time, and by no means claimed an exclusive right to
the love of God for any one communion. It is quite
in the course of nature that a very shy man whom the
roughness of the times tossed to and fro more than he
liked, found courage and time to court and marry four
288
AN OLD STUDENT OF ENGLISH.
times over.
The wife who became mother to the
younger Francis was a Dutchwoman of good Antwerp
family, which also produced at least one scholar of
repute. One of his daughters became wife to the
learned Gerard Voss. But Dame Study was the only
wife of his son Francis.
Francis Junius the younger, by parentage French, by
birth German, by education Dutch, and English by
election, was seventeen years older than Milton, whom
he survived; Milton dying in 1674, but Junius in
1677. His childhood and youth were spent at Leyden,
where he studied mathematics with a view to a post in
the army of Prince Maurice of Orange. The twelve
years' truce with Spain, settled in 1609, unsettled the
plans of the young scholar; his age then was eighteen.
He turned for a time to theology, and piously devoted
himself to the collecting and publishing of his father's
theological works. Then he was in France till the
year 1620, when he came, aged thirty-one, to England.
Here he made many friends, felt much at home, and
obtained the office of librarian to the Earl of Arundel.
This was Thomas Howard, only son of that Philip
who by the attainder and execution of his father,
Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, lost his dukedom,
and was known as Earl of Arundel, because he held
Arundel Castle by descent from his mother. Philip
Howard-being a Roman Catholic-died in the Tower.
His father, the Duke of Norfolk, and his grandfather,
Surrey, the famous poet, had died on the scaffold.
Philip of Arundel scarcely saw the infant son born
AN OLD STUDENT OF ENGLISH.
289
during his imprisonment, who was but three years old
when the death of his father left him to the care of
a good mother. As he also had lost rank by his
father's attainder, he was simply called Lord Mal-
travers during the rest of Elizabeth's reign. His
mother guarded him, her only son, jealously, fearing
to let him go abroad, or be much seen at home. Robert
Devereux, Earl of Essex, who was kind to the boy,
called him the Winter Pear, and said that he would be
a great and wise man if he lived. In the first year
of
James I. he was restored to the forfeited dignities
of Earl of Arundel and Earl of Surrey, and to such
baronies as the Duke of Norfolk, his grandfather, had
lost by his attainder. Then the Winter Pear turned
mellow. The young earl married a great beiress
honours were added to him; he travelled into Italy
and, cultivating his great relish for the arts, became a
famous patron of Sculpture, Painting, and Architecture.
In 1620 the King of France sent to London as his
ambassador the Marquis de Cadenet, a marshal of
France, with a suite of about sixty persons of distinc-
tion. It is possible that Junius, who came to England
in this year, came in the train of the Marquis de
Cadenet. King James entrusted to the Earl of Arun-
del chief care of the reception of the Marquis. Next
year the Earl of Arundel was one of the three com-
missioners for holding the Seal taken from Lord Bacon;
and he was also made Earl-Marshal for life, with a
pension of 2000l. a-year. It was then that, in his
quality of patron of Arts and Letters, the Earl of
VOL. II.
U
290
AN OLD STUDENT OF ENGLISH.
Arundel-remembered as friend of Sir Robert Cotton,
Spelman, Camden, Selden, and other students of the
past-gave Junius, who was recommended to him by
Lancelot Andrewes, and Laud, then Dean of Glouces-
ter, that leisure and ease for study which he enjoyed
for thirty years in England as the Earl's librarian. It
was the same Arundel who sat as High Steward at the
trial of Strafford. He was in 1644 so far restored to
his grandfather's honours, that he was created Earl of
Norfolk. But he was not then resident in England;
he had left this country in February, 1642, and was
chiefly in Holland and Italy until his death in Octo-
ber, 1646. This nobleman, wealthy and most munifi-
cent, scholarly, and somewhat austere, the most liberal
patron of his age; who had agents in Italy and Greece
to furnish his collections with the treasures of the past,
strengthening pride in his Arundel Marbles and his
noble picture gallery; good husband and indulgent
father; Protestant of a Catholic race, who felt, keenly
as the Dujons had felt, the curse of religious bigotry;
this was the Earl of Arundel who made England the
home of Francis Junius the younger.
The darling pursuit of Junius was a study of the
earliest forms of English and the languages allied to it.
But the librarian to the Earl of Arundel, living among
treasures of art, could not remain untouched by the
generous enthusiasm of his patron. The first fruit of
his new life was, therefore, a substantial work in three
books, dedicated in 1636 to Charles I., and heavily
loaded with citations, De Pictura Veterum.' His
AN OLD STUDENT OF ENGLISH.
291
patron possessed, or was ready to get at any cost, what-
ever book threw light upon the state of Art among the
Ancients; Junius, therefore, exhausted every accessible
source of information upon the Origin (subject of
his First Book), Progress (his Book II.), and (Book III.)
Consummation of the ancient Art of Picturing. By
such labour-in itself most pleasant-he repaid the
favours he received, and earned a right to work as he
pleased at Anglo-Saxon, Moso-Gothic, and the like.
Ussher was one of his friends. Anglo-Saxon books were
then in request among scholars who preserved some-
thing of the old notion of Reformers at the breaking
up of monasteries, that if one could read the primitive
divinity in such works as the Homilies of Ælfric, that
would help to restore the church to its earlier and less
corrupted form. An Anglo-Saxon MS. poem, found by
Ussher in the course of his book-huntings, he gave to
his friend Junius; it was the unique copy of Cadmon's
Paraphrase. Junius brought to his studies a thorough
knowledge of Dutch, his mother-tongue, as well as of
German and English. He had acquired also more or less
mastery of the ancient languages both of the South and
North of Europe, had worked at the old Gothic remains,
at Icelandic and Old Frisian. He believed that the
diversity of languages in modern Europe is to be ana-
lysed and explained only by a thorough study of those
dialects of the North which blended, now one with
another, now with Latin; for they were, he said, Goths,
Vandals, Franks, Burgundians, Almains, who brought
their ways of speech into the Roman Empire. Let the
U 2
292
AN OLD STUDENT OF ENGLISH.
thorough student of language begin then, argued Junius,
with the study of the remains of those old writers who
were of the Northern kindred.
When he had lived thirty years in England, seen the
Civil Wars, and the establishing of the Commonwealth,
Dujon's relatives in Holland urged his return to them.
He did return in 1650; but hearing that there were
villages in Western Frisia where the people spoke a
dialect differing little from Old Frisian and unintelli-
gible to their neighbours, he resolved to study by the
light that this would give him. Travelling off, there-
fore, to pay a visit to those villagers, he stayed with
them two years. In 1655 he published, at Amsterdam,
his observations on a Paraphrase of the Book of Can-
ticles by Willeram, a learned Frankish abbot who lived
in the eleventh century, and who made his paraphrase
upon Solomon's Songs in Latin hexameter and Frankish
prose. This piece of old Frankish had been published
at Leyden in 1598 by Paul Merula. Junius was the
first man who commented upon its language, using for
text a MS. which happens not to have been a very good
one.
In the same year, 1655, he printed, for the first time,
the most valuable of all extant pieces of Anglo-Saxon
literature, Cadmon's Paraphrase.' This is not merely
a monument of ancient language, but a work of genius,
in which we learn that the main outline of Milton's
Satan had been roughly sketched a thousand years be-
fore the time of Milton by the first great Christian poet
of this country, or of Europe. The MS., of which no
AN OLD STUDENT OF ENGLISH.
293
other copy has been found, had been, as before said,
one of the findings of James Ussher, who gave it to
Junius. It was lent also to William Somner while he
was at work upon his Saxon Dictionary. Milton, who
had a scholar's interest in literature, was thoroughly
versed in Bede, made familiar with Bede's story of
Cadmon by preparations for the writing of his early
History of England, and there is clear evidence that
Junius cultivated his acquaintance. When, after the
publication of Milton's 'Defence of the People of Eng-
land,' men were asking one another, "Who is this John
Milton?" Isaac Voss at last wrote (in July 1651) from
the court of Queen Christina to his friend Nicolas Hein-
sius that he had found out all about him from his uncle
Francis Junius, "who intimately cultivates his acquaint-
ance." This letter is at page 618 of the third volume of
Burmann's 'Sylloges.' It is, therefore, impossible that
Milton should not have been told by Junius of the dis-
covery of part of Cadmon's poem, which dealt with his
own chosen topic of the Fall of Man, or that he should
have felt no interest in the actual publication of it as one
of the new books of his day, and sought no means to
obtain knowledge of its contents. But if Milton had
some such knowledge, 'Paradise Lost' is only the grander
for the sense we have that our own old poet has a shrine
in it beside Homer and Virgil, Sophocles and Apollo-
dorus, and that in him Milton felt there was a life yet.
nearer than Homer's to his own. In and before 1648,
Milton was at work upon Bede, who tells the story of
Cadmon. For some time before 1655 the discovery
294
AN OLD STUDENT OF ENGLISH.
6
of the poem was known to English scholars; in 1655
Junius printed and published it. Paradise Lost' is
said by Aubrey to have been begun in 1658. It was
sold to Samuel Simmons, for 57. down and possibilities,
in April, 1667, twelve years after Cadmon had been
printed.
Junius's next service was by the discovery of the
famous silver codex, a fragment of the Moso-Gothic
Gospels of Ulphilas. Ulphilas, born early in the fourth
century among the Goths in Dacia, became their bishop
and their friend. Through his intercession with the Em-
peror Valens, he obtained for his people, oppressed by the
Huns, a settlement in Mosia, now Servia and Bulgaria.
Into Moesia, about the year 367, they swarmed over the
Danube, and became the Mosogoths, into whose lan-
guage their friend Ulphilas translated the New Testa-
ment. Of that most ancient piece of Gothic writing
there remains a precious fragment in one MS., splendid
with gold initials and silver letters of its text, pro-
duced probably by Italians at the close of the fifth
century or the beginning of the sixth. It is now chief
treasure in the Royal Library of Upsala. This MS.
Junius discovered and studied. A beautiful fac-simile
was made of it, and with a glossary which Junius con-
structed from it, it was published at Dordrecht in 1665,
with Gothic types, which had been cast at the expense
of Junius.
Three years before his death our scholar returned to
England for the purpose of examining some of the
Anglo-Saxon MSS. in the Cotton Library, and other
AN OLD STUDENT OF ENGLISH.
295
collections. He lived during two years at Oxford in
high honour among the learned there; but the last
year of his life he spent at Windsor with his nephew,
Isaac Voss, who had taught Greek to Christina of
Sweden, had been honoured by Louis XIV., received
courteously by Charles II., and was then D.C.L. of
Oxford, and Canon of Windsor, with apartments in the
Castle. Junius left his MSS. to the University of
Oxford, which erected to his memory a monument at
Windsor, and keeps a portrait of him, painted by Van-
dyck. An engraving of it by Vertue is prefixed to one
of Junius's posthumous works, his 'Etymologicon An-
glicanum,' first published in 1743, by Edward Lye, in
folio, a book full of amusement and instruction for the
curious student of English. The portrait shows the
cheerful face of a man who liked his work, and throve
upon it. Thoughtfulness and good temper are so
blended in expression, that it is difficult to say which
seems to predominate. Dujon's work agreed with him,
but it was hard work. He died placidly at the age of
eighty-six, beloved of many friends.
Yet he had toiled steadily on through life, and even
as an old man of more than eighty, worked thirteen or
fourteen hours a day. His secret partly was, that he
stole nothing from the dues of nature, but annexed to
his own uses the barren wastes of life. He had sound
natural health, and he gave seven hours to sleep, being
in bed by nine o'clock, and up in the morning at four,
in all seasons. Then his work was for many years upon
a great Gothic Glossary in Five Languages, extending
296
AN OLD STUDENT OF ENGLISH.
•
to nine volumes, which Bishop Fell afterwards caused
to be transcribed for the press. He would work jovially
at this till dinner-time, one o'clock. After a temperate
dinner, he gave an hour to exercise, sometimes indulg-
ing himself with a run, or in bad weather giving himself
up and down drill on the stairs. At three o'clock he
went to his books again, and stuck to them till eight,
then supped and went to bed. By nine o'clock he was
always asleep; at four, again awake and up. Yet he
was no recluse; every student who sought help, every
friend who sought fellowship, was welcome. Even
when he was an old man, with some natural right to be
peevish, he was still as in his younger days cordial and
cheery, sending the visitor out from his study with a
smiling sense of the good stories he had just been hear-
ing, and of the simple unstrained geniality of the old
gentleman, who, in the mean time, had turned himself
back to a calm relish of his Five-Language Gothic
Glossary. Junius quickened his enjoyment of work by
thorough recognition of the fact, that however closely
he stuck to his books, and avoided all empty inventions
for the shovelling away of time, flesh and blood had as
much claim on him as parchment. So he worked like
a recluse; harder than most of the healthy men who
are supposed to be killing themselves; saw only the best
side of the world, and lived and died surrounded not by
a gnat-swarm of acquaintances, but by a brotherhood of
friends.
(297)
THE OPENING OF CÆDMON'S PARAPHRASE.
Translated into Modern English.
I.
Most right it is that we praise with our words,
Love in our minds, the Warden of the Skies,
Glorious King of all the hosts of men,
He speeds the strong, and is the Head of all
His high Creation, the Almighty Lord.
None formed Him, no first was nor last shall be
Of the eternal Ruler, but His sway
Is everlasting over thrones in heaven.
With powers on high, soothfast and steadfast, He
Ruled the wide home of heaven's bosom spread
By God's might for the guardians of souls,
The Sons of Glory. Hosts of angels shone,
Glad with their Maker; bright their bliss and rich
The fruitage of their lives; their glory sure,
They served and praised their King, with joy gave praise
To Him, their Life-Lord, in whose aiding care
They judged themselves most blessed. Sin unknown,
Offence unformed, still with their Parent Lord
They lived in peace, raising aloft in heaven
Right and truth only, ere the Angel Chief
Through Pride divided them and led astray.
Their own well being they would bear no more,
But cast themselves out of the love of God.
Great in Presumption against the Most High
They would divide the radiant throng far spread,
The resting-place of glory. Even there
Pain came to them, Envy and Pride began
There first to weave ill counsel and to stir
The minds of angels. Then, athirst for strife,
298
OPENING OF CÆDMON'S PARAPHRASE.
He said that northward he would own in Heaven
A home and a high Throne. Then God was wroth,
And for the host He had made glorious,
For those pledge breakers, our souls' guardians,
The Lord, made anguish a reward, a home
In banishment, hell groans, hard pain, and bade
That torture-house abide their joyless fall.
When with eternal night and sulphur pains,
Fulness of fire, dread cold, reek and red flames
He knew it filled, then through that hopeless home
He bade the woful horror to increase.
Banded in blameful counsel against God,
Their wrath had wrath for wages.
In fierce mood
They said they would, and might with ease, possess
The kingdom. Him that lying hope betrayed,
After the Lord of Might, high King of Heaven,
Highest, upraised his hand against that host.
False and devoid of counsel they might not
Share strength against their Maker. He in wrath
Clave their bold mood, bowed utterly their boast,
Struck from the sinful scathers kingdom, power,
Glory and gladness; from the opposers took
His joy, his peace, their bright supremacy,
And, with sure march, by His own might poured down
Avenging anger on His enemies.
Stern in displeasure, with consuming wrath,
By hostile grasp he crushed them in His arms
Ireful He from their home, their glory seats
Banished His foes; and that proud angel tribe,
Malicious host of spirits bowed with care,
He, the Creator, Lord of all Might, sent
Far journeying, with bruised pride and broken threat,
Strength bent, and beauty blotted. They exiled.
Were bound on their swart ways. Loud laugh no more
Was theirs, but in hell pain they wailed accurst,
Knowing sore sorrow and the sulphur throes,
OPENING OF CADMON'S PARAPHRASE.
299
Roofed in with darkness, the full recompense
Of those advancing battle against God.
II.
But after as before was peace in Heaven,
Fair rule of love; dear unto all, the Lord
Of Lords, the King of Hosts to all His own,
And glories of the good who possessed joy
In heaven, the Almighty Father still increased.*
Then peace was among dwellers in the sky,
Blaming and lawless malice were gone out,
And angels feared no more, since plotting foes
Who cast off heaven were bereft of light.
Their glory seats behind them in God's realm,
Enlarged with gifts, stood happy, bright with bloom,
But ownerless since the cursed spirits went
Wretched to exile within bars of hell.
Then thought within His mind the Lord of Hosts
How He again might fix within His rule
The great creation, thrones of heavenly light
High in the heavens for a better band,
Since the proud scathers had relinquished them.
The holy God, therefore, in His great might
Willed that there should be set beneath heaven's span
Earth, firmament, wide waves, created world,
Replacing foes cast headlong from their home.
* Several words that mean Lord, but imply different sources or
aspects of dominion, are used by the Anglo-Saxon poets, and they are
not used indifferently by Cadmon, but chosen always with a poet's
care. Thus the three words used here, ' Frea,' 'Theoden,' and 'Drihten,'
imply in the Lord successively freedom from all rule higher than his
own, headship of a people, and headship answering the type of father
in a household. There is the same regard to aptitude in use by the
Anglo-Saxon poets of other words, which we sometimes mistake for
synonyms, for example, those which express the idea of the sea from
different points of thought. In modern English these distinctions can
be expressed only by added words.
300
OPENING OF CEDMON'S PARAPHRASE.
Here yet was naught save darkness of the cave,
The broad abyss whereon the stedfast king
Looked with his eyes and saw that space of gloom,
Saw the dark cloud lower in lasting night,
Was deep and dim, vain, useless, strange to God,
Black under heaven, wan, waste, till through His word
The King of Glory had created life.
Here first the Eternal Father, guard of all,
Of heaven and earth, raised up the firmament,
The Almighty Lord set firm by His strong power
This roomy land; grass greened not yet the plain,
Ocean far-spread hid the wan ways in gloom.
Then was the Spirit gloriously bright
Of Heaven's Keeper borne over the deep
Swiftly. The Life-giver, the Angel's Lord,
Over the ample ground bade come forth Light.
Quickly the High King's bidding was obeyed,
Over the waste there shone light's holy ray.
Then parted He, Lord of triumphant might,
Shadow from shining, darkness from the light.
Light, by the Word of God, was first named day.
[The story of Creation is continued until God's return to
Heaven, after instruction and counsel to Adam and Eve.
Then Cadmon proceeds]:-
IV.
The Almighty had disposed ten Angel tribes,
The Holy Father, by His strength of hand,
That they whom He well trusted should serve Him
And work His will. For that the holy God
Gave intellect, and shaped them with His hands.
In happiness He placed them, and to one
He added prevalence and might of thought,
Sway over much, next highest to Himself
In Heaven's realm. Him He had wrought so bright.
That pure as starlight was in heaven the form
OPENING OF CEDMON'S PARAPHRASE. 301
Which God the Lord of Hosts had given him.
Praise to the Lord his work, and cherishing
Of heavenly joy, and thankfulness to God
For his share of that gift of light, which then
Had long been his. But he perverted it,
Against Heaven's highest Lord he lifted war,
Against the Most High in His sanctuary.
Dear was he to our Lord, but was not hid
From Him that in his Angel pride arose.
He raised himself against his Maker, sought
Speech full of hate and bold presuming boast.
Refused God suit, said that his own form beamed
With radiance of light, shone bright of hue,
And in his mind he found not service due
To the Lord God, for to himself he seemed
In force and skill greater than all God's host.
Much spake the Angel of Presumption, thought
Through his own craft to make a stronger throne
Higher in Heaven. His mind urged him, he said,
That north and south he should begin to work,
Found buildings; said he questioned whether he
Would serve God. Wherefore, he said, shall I toil?
No need have I of master. I can work
With my own hands great marvels, and have power
To build a throne more worthy of a God,
Higher in heaven. Why shall I for His smile
Serve Him, bend to Him thus in vassalage?
I may be God as He.
Stand by me, strong supporters, firm in strife.
Hard-mooded heroes, famous warriors,
Have chosen me for chief; one may take thought
With such for counsel, and with such secure
Large following. My friends in earnest they,
Faithful in all the shaping of their minds;
I am their master, and may rule this realm.
Therefore it seems not right that I should cringe
302
OPENING OF CEDMON'S PARAPHRASE.
To God for any good, and I will be
No more His servant.
When the Almighty heard
With how great pride His angel raised himself
Against his Lord, foolishly spake high words.
Against the Supreme Father, he that deed
Must expiate, and in the work of strife
Receive his portion, take for punishment
Utmost perdition. So doth every man
Who sets himself in battle against God,
In sinful strife against the Lord Most High.
Then was the Mighty wroth, Heaven's highest Lord
Cast him from his high seat, for he had brought
His Master's hate on him. His favour lost,
The Good was angered against him, and he
Must therefore seek the depth of Hell's fierce pains,
Because he strove against Heaven's highest Lord;
Who shook him from His favour, cast him down
To the deep dales of Hell, where he became
Devil. The fiend with all his comrades fell
From Heaven, angels, for three nights and days,
From Heaven to Hell, where the Lord changed them all
To Devils, because they His Deed and Word
Refused to worship. Therefore in worse light
Under the Earth beneath, Almighty God
Had placed them triumphless in the swart Hell.
There evening, immeasurably long,
Brings to each fiend renewal of the fire;
Then comes, at dawn, the east wind keen with frost;
Its dart, or fire continual, torment sharp,
The punishment wrought for them, they must bear.
Their world was changed, and those first times filled
Hell
With the Deniers. Still the Angels held,
They who fulfilled God's pleasure, Heaven's heights;
Those others, hostile, who such strife had raised
OPENING OF CEDMON'S PARAPHRASE. 303
Against their Lord, lay in the fire, bear pangs,
Fierce burning heat in midst of Hell, broad flames,
Fire and therewith also the bitter reek
Of smoke and darkness; for they paid no heed
To service of their God; their wantonness
Of Angel's pride deceived them, who refused
To worship the Almighty Word. Their pain
Was great, then were they fallen to the depth
Of fire in the hot hell for their loose thought
And pride unmeasured, sought another land
That was without light and was full of flame,
Terror immense of fire. Then the fiends felt
That they unnumbered pains had in return,
Through might of God, for their great violence,
But most for pride. Then spoke the haughty king,
Once brightest among Angels, in the heavens.
Whitest, and to his Master dear, beloved
Of God until they lightly went astray,
And for that madness the Almighty God
Was wroth with him and into ruin cast
Him down to his new bed, and shaped him then
A name, said that the highest should be called
Satan thenceforth, and o'er Hell's swart abyss
Bade him have rule and avoid strife with God.
Satan discoursed, he who henceforth ruled Hell
Spake sorrowing.
God's Angel erst, he had shone white in Heaven,
Till his soul urged, and most of all its Pride,
That of the Lord of Hosts he should no more
Bend to the Word. About his heart his soul
Tumultuously heaved, hot pains of wrath
Without him.
Then said he, Most unlike this narrow place
To that which once we knew, high in Heaven's realm,
Which my Lord gave me, though therein no more
For the Almighty we hold royalties.
304
OPENING OF CÆDMON'S PARAPHRASE.
Yet right hath He not done in striking us
Down to the fiery bottom of hot Hell,
Banished from Heaven's kingdom, with decree
That He will set in it the race of Man.
Worst of my sorrows this, that, wrought of Earth,
Adam shall sit in bliss on my strong throne,
Whilst we these pangs endure, this grief in Hell.
Woe! Woe! had I the power of my hands,
And for a season, for one winter's space,
Might be without; then with this Host I-
But iron binds me round; this coil of chains
Rides me;
I rule no more; close bonds of Hell
Hem me their prisoner. Above, below,
Here is vast fire, and never have I seen
More loathly landscape; never fade the flames,
Hot over Hell. Rings clasp me, smooth hard bands
Mar motion, stay my wandering, feet bound,
Hands fastened, and the ways of these Hell gates
Accurst, so that I cannot free my limbs
Great lattice bars, hard iron hammered hot,
Lie round me, wherewith God hath bound me down
Fast by the neck. So know I that He knew
My mind, and that the Lord of Hosts perceived
That if between us two by Adam came
Evil towards that royalty of Heaven,
I having power of my hands-
But now we suffer throes in Hell, gloom, heat,
Grim, bottomless; us God Himself hath swept
Into these mists of darkness, wherefore sin
Can He not lay against us that we planned
Evil against Him in the land. Of light
He hath shorn us, cast us into utmost pain.
May we not then plan vengeance, pay Him back
With any hurt, since shorn by Him of light.
Now He hath set the bounds of a mid earth
Where after His own image He hath wrought
OPENING OF CEDMON'S PARAPHRASE. 305
Man, by whom He will people once again
Heaven's kingdom with pure souls. Therefore intent
Must be our thought that, if we ever may,
On Adam and his offspring we may wreak
Revenge and, if we can devise a way,
Pervert his will. I trust no more the light
Which he thinks long to enjoy with angel power.
Bliss we obtain no more, nor can attain
. To weaken God's strong will; but let us now
Turn from the race of Man that heavenly realm
Which may no more be ours, contrive that they
Forfeit His favour, undo what His Word
Ordained: then wroth of mind He from His grace
Will cast them, then shall they too seek this Hell
And these grim depths. Then may we for ourselves
Have them in this strong durance, sons of men,
For servants. Of the warfare let us now
Begin to take thought. If of old I gave
To any thane, while we in that good realm
Sat happy and had power of our thrones,
Gifts of a Prince, then at no dearer time
Could he reward my gift if any now
Among my followers would be my friend,
That he might pass forth upward from these bounds,
Had power with him that, winged, he might fly,
Borne on the clouds, to where stand Adam and Eve
Wrought on Earth's kingdom, girt with happiness,
While we are cast down into this deep dale.
Now these are worthier to the Lord, may own
The blessing rightly ours in Heaven's realm,
This the design apportioned to mankind.
Sore is my mind and rue is in my thought
That ever henceforth they should possess Heaven ;
If ever any of you in any way
May turn them from the teaching of God's Word
They shall be evil to Him, and if they
VOL. II.
X
306
OPENING OF CEDMONS PARAPHRASE.
Break His commandment, then will He be wroth
Against them, then will be withdrawn from them
Their happiness, and punishment prepared,
Some grievous share of harm. Think all of this,
How to deceive them. In these fetters then
I can take rest, if they that kingdom lose.
He who shall do this hath prompt recompense
Henceforth for ever of what may be won
Of gain within these fires. I let him sit
Beside myself.
[An incomplete sentence is then followed by a gap in the
MS.; which goes on]:-
Then God's antagonist arrayed himself
Swift in rich arms. He had a guileful mind.
The hero set the helmet on his head
And bound it fast, fixed it with clasps. He knew
Many a speech deceitful, turned him thence,
Hardy of mind, departed through Hell's doors,
Striking the flames in two with a fiend's power,
Would secretly deceive with wicked deed
Men, the Lord's subjects, that misled, forlorn,
To God they became evil. So he fared,
Through his fiend's power, till on Earth he found
Adam, God's handiwork, with him his wife,
The fairest woman.
( 307 )
INDEX.
A,
ACHILLINI, ALESSANDRO, ii. 81,
82.
Adolescence Clementine, i. 82,
278-286; ii. 52, 53.
Adrian VI., Pope, i. 146, 147,
150.
Adventurers in Camp, i. 126.
Advocate of Women, Jean Ma-
rot's, i. 79.
Agnadello, Battle of, i. 73-75.
Akakia, Doctor, i. 291, 292.
Alabre, Captain, i. 54.
Albigeois, i. 10.
Albret, d', Alain, i. 27, 28, 120.
Henry, King of Na-
varre, i. 119-122, 211, 212,
238.
Jeanne, i. 237.
Alençon, the Duke of, i. 111,
124-127, 153.
Allegorical Poetry, i. 48, 57, 60,
61, 66, 67, 103-105, 208-210.
Alviano, Bartolomeo d', i. 71, 74.
Amboise, George d', Cardinal, i.
41-45.
Ammian, John Jacob, ii. 98.
Anabaptists, the, i. 167.
Anagrams, ii. 136.
Anatomy, first study of, ii. 65-
96; first Professor of, ii. 76.
Ancients, idolatry of the, ii. 134.
Andrelinus, Faustus, i. 37.
Anglosaxon, study of, ii. 291-
293.
Anglosaxons, ii. 263-266.
Animals, Gesner's History of, ii.
111-120.
Anne of Brittany, i. 27-39, 45-
49, 69, 91.
Army, a standing, established, i.
41.
Arundel, Thomas Howard, Earl
of, ii. 288-290.
Attigny, the Camp of, i. 125-
127.
Augsburg, Confession of, i. 296.
B.
BACON in Lent, i. 171-174,
Balade, form of a, i. 175-177.
Balance of Power, i. 41, 42, 187.
Balladin, Marot's, ii. 40-44.
Basle, Vesalius at, ii. 87; Gesner
at, ii. 103.
Bayard, the Chevalier, i. 125.
Bazoche, the, i. 92-94, 135, 136.
Beda, Noel, i. 224, 283, 300, 302,
303, 304, 307, 310, 314.
Belgæ, ii. 259, 260.
Bellay, du, Guillaume and Jean,
i. 159, 293, 301, 307, 308; ii.
33, 59.
Belurger, Claude, ii. 134.
Beowulf, ii. 270.
Berenger, Jacques, ii. 82.
Bergerac, Cyrano de, ii. 132-174.
Beroald, Philip, i. 281.
Berquin, Louis de, i. 244, 248.
1
x 2
308
INDEX.
!
Beza, Theodore, ii. 62.
Bible in French, i. 167, 299.
Blasons, ii. 14.
Blois, the Chateau of, i. 38.
Bluestockings, ii. 222, 223.
Boe, Jacques de la, ii. 69-71, 86.
Bogarucci, Prosper, ii. 96.
Bonacci, Giovanni, ii. 93, 94.
Bonnemere, ii. 52.
Bonnivet, Admiral, i. 149.
Bouchar, Doctor, i. 161, 168, 169,
175.
Boulle, Guillaume, ii. 52.
Bourbon, the Constable, i. 124,
148, 149, 217,
Braillon, Doctor, i. 292.
Brantôme, i. 109, 110.
Briçonnet, Bishop of Meaux, i.
113.
Brittany, Anne of, i. 27-39, 45-
49.
Brodeaux, Victor, ii. 45, 47.
Brother Lubin, i. 107, 108.
Bucer, i. 311.
Buchman, Theodore, ii. 98, 128.
CADURCUM, i. 5.
C.
Cædmon, ii. 271-276, 293, 294;
translation from, 297-306.
Cahors en Quercy, i. 1-23, 228.
Calcar, Johann Stephan von, ii.
83.
Calvin, i. 243, 255, 293, 309; ii.
60, 61.
Cambray, League of, i. 64-66;
peace of, i. 238, 271, 298.
Cambridge, University of, ii. 182-
184, 235, 236; colleges, ii.
191.
Capito, Wolfgano Fabricius, ii.
99.
Cardaillac, Bishop Guillaume de,
i. 11-15.
Carlos, Don, Vesalius and, ii. 91.
Cato Christianus, Dolet's, ii. 55.
Celt, Influence of the, on English
Literature, ii. 248-284.
Cerisolles, Battle of, ii. 62.
Cessac, i. 24, 25.
Channey, Jeau de, ii. 52.
Chants Royaux, i. 139, 140, 281.
Chappuy, Claude, ii. 45, 48.
Charles V., Emperor, i. 99, 100,
113-115, 117, 122, 128, 144-
153, 155, 157, 158, 183, 236-
238, 296, 297; ii. 14-16, 20,
21, 32, 35-37, 39, 50, 51, 56.
Charles VIII. of France, i. 36,
47, 97, 101, 102, 116, 152.
Chartres, Marot prisoner at, i.
187, 189.
Châtelet, the, i. 83, 93; Marot
prisoner in, 187-204, 313.
Chelius, Ulric, i. 311, 312.
Chevauchées, i. 20.
China root, ii. 87.
Ciceronianus, Gabriel Harvey's,
ii. 231, 232, 239.
Classical style, i. 62.
Claude of France, i. 36, 47, 97,
101, 102, 116, 152.
Clemency, Seneca on, i. 293..
Clement, Saint, i. 24, 25.
Clement VII., Pope, i. 150, 160,
161, 183, 185-187, 294, 297,
306, 307; ii. 15.
College of France, i. 255; ii. 181.
College Work, ii. 175-213.
Collin, Rudolf, ii. 98.
Commune, an old French, i. 1-13.
Complaint of a Christian Shep-
herd Boy, ii. 7-14.
Concordat between Francis I. and
Leo X., i. 98.
Condemnade, i. 59.
Confession of Augsburg, i. 296.
Consuls of Cahors, i. 12.
Contreblasons, ii. 14.
Coq-à-l'Asne Letters, i. 282-286;
ii. 14, 15, 35-37.
Coq Nicolas, i. 309.
INDEX.
309
Crétin, Guillaume, i. 138-143,
158, 280.
Customs of Cahors, i. 16, 17.
Cymry, ii. 258.
D.
DANCING, Marot on, ii. 40-44.
Danès, Pierre, i. 255, 310.
Dauphin, Marot on birth of the,
i. 101; sent to Spain, 181;
returned, 251; Marot's letter
to, ii. 33-35; epitaph on, 37,
38.
David of Italy, 37.
Descartes, ii. 141.
Deschamps, Eustache, i. 171-
174.
Despourveu, Le, i. 103-105.
Deuse, Jacques, i. 18, 19.
Dictionary, Gesner's, ii. 107, 108.
Doctrinal of Princesses, Jean
Marot's, i. 77, 78.
Dolet, Etienne, ii. 52-55, 60.
Doria, Andrea, i. 237, 238.
Doullon, Nicholas, i. 236, 239.
Drama, early, in France, i. 134-
138.
Duelling, ii. 138-140.
Dufour, Antoine, i. 37.
Duprat, Antoine, Chancellor, i.
149, 182, 216, 222-228, 245,
303.
Durer, Albert, ii. 82.
E.
Enfants sans Souci, i. 94, 134,
135.
Enfer, Marot's, i. 190-204.
English for Englishwomen, ii.
214-228.
Envoy l', origin of, i. 177.
Epigrams, Marot's, i. 291, 292.
Equivocal Verses, i. 141-143,
226.
Erasmus, i. 112.
F.
FABER STAPULENSIS, i. 162, 167,
168, 179, 182, 244; ii. 33,
note.
Falloppio, ii. 93, 94.
Farel, Guillaume, i. 313, 314.
Ferdinand of Spain, i. 64-66.
Ferrara, Hercules d'Este, Duke
of, i. 217; ii. 17-19.
Field of the Cloth of Gold, i.
116-118.
Fontaine, Charles, ii. 45, 47.
Fools, the Prince of, i. 93, 135.
Formalism, i. 87, 88.
Francis I., King of France, i. 35,
47, 98-102, 111, 113, 136, 147,
155, 157, 158, 159, 178-184,
217, 219, 230, 237-239, 241,
242, 247, 248, 272, 292-295,
306-315; ii. 2, 3, 20, 21, 35-
37, 39, 49-51, 53, 54, 56, 57.
Fricius, Johann, ii. 99, 128.
Fripelippes, ii. 45.
Frisius, Gemma, ii. 72-74.
Froschover, Christopher, ii. 120,
121.
ECLOGUE, Marot's, on Louise of Fugitive Love, Lucian's, i. 232.
Savoy, i. 257-272.
Editions of Marot's Works, ii.
52, 53.
Egmont, Maximilian, ii. 91.
Eleonore, Queen, i. 238, 251, 252.
Elstub, William and Elizabeth,
ii. 214-216.
G.
GAELS, ii. 257.
Galen, ii. 69, 70, 78, 79.
Galiot du Pré, i. 206.
310
INDEX.
Geneva, Marot exile in, ii. 60, 61.
Genoa and France, i. 40, 49-61,
79.
Gesner, Conrad, ii. 97-131.
Gododin, ii. 265-268.
Good Shepherd, Marot's, i. 287-
291.
Gothic Glossary of Junius, ii.
295, 296.
Grammar, ii. 181, 182.
Gringoire, Pierre, i. 136, 137.
Guillard, Louis, Bishop of Chart-
res, i. 205, 206.
Guintherus, ii. 71.
H.
HAINAULT, the French Army in,
i. 125-133, 148.
Harvey, Gabriel, ii. 229-247;
Richard, 243, 245; John, 244.
Hebrew, study of, i. 256.
Henry II. of France, ii. 91, 92.
Henry VIII. of England, i. 114-
119, 146, 158, 294, 295, 303,
304.
Heptameron of Marguerite of
Navarre, i. 273, 275.
Heresy, i. 160-180, 187, 236,
239, 245, 347, 294, 301-316;
ii. 59, 60, 63, 64; in Anatomy,
ii. 65-96.
Heroet, Antoine, ii. 45, 47.
Holy League, the, i. 184-187.
Homonyms, ii. 135.
Horse, Sieur Vuyart's, i. 253,
254.
I.
INVASIONS of France, i. 150, 151;
ii. 35-37.
Isabeau, Marot's, i. 174-178.
J.
•
JAMES V. of Scotland, ii. 49.
Jamet, Lyon, i, 170, 171, 314.
Jeanne d'Albret, i. 237.
Jodelle, Etienne, i. 134.
Judgment of Minos, i. 106, 281.
Julius II., Pope, i. 41-45, 47, 58,
64-66, 77, 79, 96, 121, 136.
Junius Francis, ii. 284-296.
Juste, François, ii. 53.
K.
KOSTGÄNGER, FATHER, ii. 132,
133.
L.
LANGUET, HUBERT, ii. 94.
Lascaris, ii. 255.
Lausanne University, ii. 104.
Lavigne, André de, i. 37.
Lecoq, Curé, i. 292.
Lefevre, Jacques, i. 162, 167,
168, 179, 182, 244; ii. 33,
note.
Lenglet du Fresnoy, i. 171-173,
note; 237, note.
Leo X., Pope, i. 98, 111, 112,
115, 145.
Levavi Oculos, ii. 284.
Livre d'Heures of Anne of Brit-
tany, i. 38.
Logic, ii. 132, 133.
Lombard usurers, i. 12, 14.
Lorraine, Antoine Duke of, i.
252, 254.
Louis XII., King of France, i.
32-36, 39, 41, 44-47, 54-57,
60, 63-66, 93, 135.
Louise of Savoy, i. 45, 101, 111,
113, 148, 149, 159, 180, 256;
Marot's Elegy on, 257-272.
Louvain University, ii. 68, 69,
72.
Lubin, Brother, i. 107, 108.
Lucian's Fugitive Love, i. 232.
Luna, Marot's, i. 215.
Luther, i. 111, 112, 162-164,
295; ii. 4, 41.
Lyons, Marot at, ii. 38, 51, 52.
1
INDEX.
311
M.
MAC FIRBIS, ii. 251, 252.
Machiavel, i. 43
Madrid, Treaty of, i. 180, 184,
230; Vesalius at, ii. 89-95.
Maguelonne, Letter of, i. 106.
Maire, Jean le, i. 95, 96.
Map, Walter, ii. 280-282.
Marguerite of Alençon, i. 102-
106, 109-113, 117, 123, 153,
159, 160, 178, 180, 183. Mar-
ries King of Navarre, 211,
212, 231, 237, 242, 245, 256,
262, 272-275, 292, 298, 300,
308, 309; ii. 48, 49.
Marignano, battle of, i. 98.
Marot, Clement—
1496? birth, i. 1, 23.
parentage, 3, 24-26.
education, 80-82, 87,
89.
page to M. de Villeroi,
91, 92.
Bazochian, 93, 94.
1515 ? to the wars, 97.
1518. Valet in household of
Marguerite of Alençon,
109.
1521. In the army of the
1
Duke
124-134.
d'Alençon,
writings, 137, 138, 152,
155.
1523. Death of his Father,
151, 80.
1524. At Battle of Pavia,
153.
imprisoned, 153.
courtship, 155, 156.
1525? Marriage, 157.
1525. imprisoned in the Châ-
telet for heresy, 168,
174, 187.
writings, 168-178.
1526. removed as prisoner to
Chartres, 187.
Marot-continued.
edits Roman de la
Rose,' writes 'L'En-
fer,' 190-204.
released from prison,
213, 207.
1527. Roman de la Rose'
published, 207-210.
writings, 220, 228.
Valet to the King,
224, 225.
again imprisoned, 228.
released, 229, 30.
1528. Seeking enrolment on
the King's house-
hold list, 215, 216,
224-232.
writings, 231-235.
withdraws from Paris,
248, 249.
1529. return to Paris, 249.
writings, 249-254.
1531. Sickness, 256, 257,
276.
Elegy on Louise of
Savoy, 257-272.
recovery from sickness,
291.
1532. publishes works of his
father, 278.
'Clementine
Adolescence,' 278-
286.
edits works of Villon,
293.
1534. Exile to Ferrara, 314;
ii. 1, 6, 14.
1535. goods confiscated, and
condemned to the
stake, i. 315.
personal appearance, ii.
2.
exile at Ferrara, ii. 1,
14.
writings, 2-14.
1536. Exile at Venice, 19,
20.
312
INDEX.
Marot-continued.
writings, 21-37.
return to France, 37,
38.
writings, 40-44.
1537. at Court again, 44.
1538. writings, 50.
"Works' printed by
Etienne Dolet, 52.
editions of his works,
52, 53.
translates some of the
Psalms, 55-58.
1543. exile at Geneva, 60-62.
1544. exile in Piedmont, 62-
64.
death, 64.
Marot, Jean, i. 3, 24-26, 38, 39,
47-81, 85, 86, 151, 180.
Michel, 315, 316.
Martyrdoms, i. 236, 239, 245,
247, 294, 311, 314; ii. 59.
Maximilian, Emperor, 27, 28,
44-47, 58, 63-66, 100.
Medici, Catherine de', i. 307,
309.
Melancthon, i. 311.
Mellin de St. Gelais, ii. 45, 46.
Mere Sotte, i. 136, 137.
Meschinot, Jean, i. 37.
Milan and France, i. 40, 56, 70,
80, 98, 149, 152.
Milton and Cædmon, i. 292-294.
Minfant, i. 131, 134.
Miracle Plays, i. 134; ii. 47.
Mirror of a Sinful Soul, i. 281,
308, 309.
Molinet, Jean, i. 207.
Mondino, ii. 81.
Monfleury, comedian, ii. 142.
Montfauçon, i. 219-222; ii. 71.
Montmorenci, Anne de, i. 231,
232; ii. 35-37.
};
Montpellier, University, i. 159
ii. 106.
Moon, Bergerac's Voyage to the,
ii. 146, 163-174.
Morin, Lieut.-Criminal of the
Châtelet, i. 205, 196-198, 204,
310, 314; ii. 4-6.
Mort d'Agrippine, Bergerac's,
ii. 147-151.
Motto, Marot's, ii. 64.
Münzer, Thomas, i. 166, 167.
N.
NAPLES and France, i. 39.
Navarre, Henry d'Albret, King
of, i. 119-122, 211, 212, 238.
See also Marguerite.
Nash, Thomas, ii. 243-246.
0.
ORLEANS, Henry Duke of, 181,
251; married to Catherine de'
Medici, 307, 309.
Oxford, University and Colleges,
ii. 190.
P.
PAIX DES DAMES, i. 238, 271,
298.
Palais, law clerks of the, i. 93,
94.
Pan, God of Shepherds, ii. 7-14.
Pan and Robin, 21-32.
Papillon, ii. 48.
Paradise Lost and Cædmon, ii.
292-294.
Paris under Louis XII., i. 89,
90. University, i. 87-91. Par-
liament of, i. 160, 161, 179,
180, 239, 245, 246, 303, 309.
Parrots, i. 95, 266.
Passion, Confrères de la, i. 134.
Paul III., Pope, ii. 15, 39.
Pavia, battle of, i. 153.
Pavillon, Seigneur du, i. 315.
Peasants' War, i. 162-167.
INDEX.
313
Pedant Joué, Bergerac's, ii. 151-
162.
Perréal, Jean, i. 37.
Petigliano, i. 71, 74, 77.
Petit, Jean, i. 207.
Philips, Katherine, ii. 220.
Piedmont, Marot's exile in, ii.
62-64.
Placards, Farel's, i. 313, 314.
Plagiarism, ii. 137, 138.
Plague, i. 128; in Zurich, ii.
128, 129.
Pothon, Seigneur, i. 102.
Prince of Fools, the, i. 93, 135.
Psalms translated by Marot, ii.
55-59.
Q.
QUADRIVIUM, ii. 181.
Quercy, i. 5-9, 13, 17-22.
Queste de Ferme Amour, i. 91,
92.
Quintilian, Gabriel Harvey's, ii.
236-238.
Quip for an Upstart Courtier, ii.
245.
R.
RABAIS DU CAQUET, le, ii. 45.
Rabelais, i. 86, 159, 283, 301;
ii. 46, 47.
Rauchfuss, Peter, ii. 98.
Reiner, ii. 72, 74.
Renée of France, i. 78, 217, 218;
ii. 1, 2, 17-19.
Rhadamanthus of the Châtelet,
i. 196-198, 204, 205, 310; ii.
4-6.
Rich in Poverty, &c., Marot's,
ii. 40.
Riolan, Jean, ii. 68.
Rivolta, sack of, i. 71, 72.
Robin and Pan, Marot's Eclogue
of, ii. 21-32.
Roffet, Pierre, i. 259; ii. 31,
note, 52.
Rondeau, form of a, i. 52.
Ronsard, i. 110.
Roussel, Gerard, i. 298, 299, 311;
ii. 33, note.
Ryff, Walter Hermann, ii. 83.
S.
SAGON, François, ii. 44-48.
Saint-Gelais, Mellin de, ii. 45,
46.
Saluces, Marques of, ii. 32.
Saubonne, Michelle de, i. 27, 78,
218; ii. 17-19.
Scève, Maurice, ii. 47.
Sedition, Luther against, i. 162,
163; of Noel Beda, i. 305,
306.
Sejanus, Bergerac's, ii. 145.
Semblançay, Seigneur de, i. 219-
222.
Sermon on the Good Shepherd,
Marot's, i. 287-291.
Serre, Jean, farce-actor, i. 137-
138.
Simler, Josiah, ii. 97.
Simony personified, ii. 40-44.
Sleidan, Jean, i. 166.
Smith, Sir Thomas. ii. 241, 242.
Sorbonne, the, i. 90, 239, 245,
255, 256, 300-308, 312; ii.
3, 58, 59, 180.
Sottise, i. 135.
Soubise, Madame de, i. 27, 78,
218; ii. 17-19.
Spenser and Marot, i. 257, 258,
260, 261, 267-270; ii. 7, 21-
32.
Steels, Jean, ii. 52.
Stoop, Nicholas, ii. 84.
Study, ii. 295, 296.
Sun, Bergerac's Voyage to the,
ii. 146, 163.
Sylvius, Jacobus, ii. 69-71, 86.
314
INDEX.
T.
TEMPLE OF CUPID, i. 106, 281;
ii. 51.
Tiepolo, Paolo, ii. 93.
Tory, Geoffroy, i. 279.
Toulouse, Counts of, i. 7, 9, 10.
Trilingual College, i. 255; ii
181.
Trivium, ii. 181.
Tunis, capture of, ii. 15.
U.
Venice and France, i. 31, 40-47,
58, 63-76, 184; Vesalius at,
ii. 77.
Vers Équivoques, i. 141-143,
226.
Vesalius, Andreas, ii. 65-96.
Villeroi, Seigneur de, i. 91, 92;
ii. 51.
Villon, François, i. 55, 82-85.
Virgin's Image desecrated, i.
246, 247.
Voss, Gerard, ii. 288.
Voyage de Gènes, Jean Marot's,
i. 49-61.
de Venise, Jean Marot's,
i. 66-76.
UNIVERSITY of Aberdeen and
St. Andrew's, ii. 184; Bo-
logna, ii. 76, 78, 81; Cam-
bridge, ii. 182-184; Glasgow, Vuyart, Pierre, i. 253, 254, 292.
184-188; Ireland, 187; Lau-
sanne, ii. 104; London, ii.
176, 184-187; Louvain,
ii. 68, 69, 72; Montpellier,
i. 159, ii. 106; Oxford, ii.
190; Padua, ii. 76, 78; Paris,
i. 87-91, ii. 69, 71, 86, 99,
100, 178-180, 188; Venice,
ii. 95.
· V.
VALET, Marot as, to Marguerite
of Alençon, i. 109; to Francis
I., i. 215, 216, 224-232.
Varinus of Favera, ii. 103.
Vatable, François, i. 255, 310.
Vaudois, i. 9-10; ii. 59, 60, 63,
64.
W.
WALDEN Gratulations, Gabriel
Harvey's, ii. 233-235.
Wolff, Caspar, ii. 129, 130.
Wolsey, Cardinal, i. 128, 132.
Works of Marot, editions of the,
ii. 52, 53.
Z.
ZANTE, shipwreck of Vesalius at,
ii. 95, 96.
Zuinglius, i. 169, 170.
Zurich, Conrad Gesner at, ii. 97,
99, 107-129.
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