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AMENITIES OF LITERATURE,
CONSISTING OF
r
SKETCHES AND CHARACTERS OF ENGLISH .*
LITERATURE.
* +-- ~~~~<!-----------------
A - r
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BY
IS A A C D IS R A E L I.
% New 3Etition, * .
EDITED BY HIS SON,
THE RIGHT HON. B. DISRAELI,
CHANCELLOR OF HER MAJESTY'S ExchEQUEB.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
WOL. I.
LONDON :
ROUTLEDGE, WARNES, AND ROUTLEDGE,
FARRINGDON STREET.
NEW YORK: 18, BEEKMAN STREET.
1859.
LONDON :
SAVILL AND EDWARDS, PRINTERs, cHANDos STREET,
COVENT. GARDEN.
i
PREFA CE.
gº-ººm-
A HISTORY of our vernacular literature has occupied my
studies for many years. It was my design not to furnish
an arid narrative of books or of authors, but following the
steps of the human mind through the wide track of Time,
to trace from their beginnings the rise, the progress, and
the decline of public opinions, and to illustrate, as the
objects presented themselves, the great incidents in our
national annals. -
In the progress of these researches many topics pre-
sented themselves, some of which, from their novelty and
curiosity, courted investigation. Literary history, in this
enlarged circuit, becomes not merely a philological history
of critical erudition, but ascends into a philosophy of books,
where their subjects, their tendency, and their immediate
or gradual influence over the people discover their actual
condition. -
Authors are the creators or the creatures of opinion;
the great form an epoch, the many reflect their age.
With them the transient becomes permanent, the sup-
pressed lies open, and they are the truest representatives
of their nation for those very passions with which they
are themselves infected. The pen of the ready-writer
transmits to us the public and the domestic story, and
thus books become the intellectual history of a people.
As authors are scattered through all the ranks of society,
among the governors and the governed, and the objects of
their pursuits are usually carried on by their own peculiar
iv Preface.
idiosyncrasy, we are deeply interested in the secret con-
nexion of the incidents of their lives with their intellectual
habits. In the development of that predisposition which
is ever working in characters of native force, all their
felicities and their failures, and the fortunes which such
men have shaped for themselves, and often for the world,
we discover what is not found in biographical dictionaries,
the history of the mind of the individual—and this con-
stitutes the psychology of genius.
In the midst of my studies I was arrested by the loss
of sight; the papers in this collection are a portion of my
projected history.
The title prefixed to this work has been adopted to con-
nect it with its brothers, the “Curiosities of Literature,”
and “Miscellanies of Literature;” but though the form
and manner bear a family resemblance, the subject has
more unity of design.
The propriety of the title, I must confess, depends on
the graciousness of my readers; the diversified literature
in which I have so long indulged is of such late origin in
this country, that the species has never obtained a name.
Blair entitles his work “Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles
Lettres ; ” and Goldsmith, in his review of the modern
literature of Europe, calls it “polite learning.” The
Italians have been more fortunate in describing this class
as la letteratura amena; and if it were required to place a
classical seal on the term, we might appeal to Pliny, who
has given it to literary pursuits in general, amoenitates
studiorum.
These volumes are not addressed to learned antiquaries,
to whose stores it is so difficult to add; I stand gratefully
indebted to their labours, for though I have sometimes
held a sickle in their harvest, I am oftener a gleaner in
their fields: these volumes are designed for those of my
Preface. V
contemporaries who, amid the diversified acquisitions of this
age in science and in art, some of which had no existence
with the public in my youth, are still susceptible of in-
quiries so intimately connected with the progress of the
human mind and of society, which should never be sepa-
rated. Whoever imagines that he may safely lay aside
all the successive efforts of the English mind, as fashions
out of date, contracts his faculties within his own day,
and can form no adequate conception of that ample inheri-
tance of the intellectual powers bequeathed to us from age
to age. To be ignorant of all antiquity is a mutilation of
the human mind; it is early associations and local circum-
stances which give a bent to the mind of a people from
their infancy, and insensibly constitute the nationality of
genius, separating the manners and feelings of neighbour-
ing nations. Even the errors or singularities of our pre-
decessors, the sagacious know, become so many accessions
to their experimental knowledge; and in whatever is ex-
cellent, the impulses of our predecessors stand connected
with our own. We but continue the chain of human sym-
pathies, whose remotest link, be it ever so backward, sup-
ports what is now around us.
There is one more remark in which I must indulge: the
author of the present work is denied the satisfaction of
reading a single line of it, yet he flatters himself that he
shall not trespass on the indulgence he claims for any
slight inadvertences. It has been confided to ONE whose
eyes unceasingly pursue the volume for him who can no
more read, and whose eager hand traces the thought ere
it vanish in the thinking; but it is only a father who can
conceive the affectionate patience of filial devotion.
CONTENTS.
THE DRUIDICAL INSTITUTION . . . . . .
BRITAIN AND THE BRITONS * * * ~ * *
THE NAME OF ENGLAND AND OF THE ENGLISH
THE ANGLO-SAXONS . . . . . . . . .
CAEDMON AND MILTON . . . . . . . .
BEOWULF ; THE HERO-LIFE . . . . . .
THE ANGLO-NORMANS . . . . . . . .
THE PAGE, THE BARON, AND THE MINSTREL .
GOTHIO ROMANCES . . . . . . . . .
ORIGIN OF THE WERNACULAR LANGUAGES OF EUROPE
ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE . . . .
WICISSITUDES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE . .
DIALECTS . . . . . . . . . . . .
MANDEVILLE ; OUR FIRST TRAVELLER . . .
CHAUCER. . . . . . . . . . . . .
GOWER . . . . . . . . . . . .
PIERS PLOUGHMAN . . . . . . . . .
ocCLEVE: THE SCHOLAR OF CHAUCER . . .
LYDgaTE; THE MONK OF BURY . . . . .
THE INVENTION OF PRINTING . . . . . .
THE FIRST ENGLISH PRINTER . . . . . .
EARLY LIBRARIES . . . . . . . . .
HENRY THE SEVENTH . . . . . . . .
FIRST SOURCES OF MODERN HISTORY . . .
ARNOLDE'S CHRONICLE . . . . . . . .
THE FIRST PRINTED CHRONICLE . . . . .
HENRY THE EIGHTH ; HIS LITERARY CHARACTER .
BOOKS OF THE PEOPLE . . . . . . . .
THE LIFFICULTIES EXPERIENCED BY A PRIMITIVE AUTHOR .
PAGH
12
24
28
37
51
59
70
81
96
III
I28
142
151
158
177
183
191
I96
203
214
221
228
234
240
243
250
256
268
viii Contents.
PAGE
SKILTON e. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 276
THE SHIP OF FOOLS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTER OF SIR THoMAS MoRE . . . . 289
THE EARL of SURREY AND SIR THOMAS Wyatt . . . . . . .303
THE SPOLIATION OF THE MONASTERIES . . . . . . . . . 316
A CRISIS AND A REACTION; ROBERT GROWLEY . . . . . . . 322
PRIMITIVE DRAMAS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
THE REFORMER BISHOP BALE ; AND THE ROMANIST JOHN HEYWOOD,
THE COURT JESTER . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
RogBR ASCHAM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
AMENITIES OF LITERATURE.
THE DRUIDICAL INSTITUTION.
ENGLAND, which has given models to Europe of the most
masterly productions in every class of learning and every
province of genius, so late as within the last three centuries
was herself destitute of a national literature. Even en-
lightened Europe itself amid the revolving ages of time is
but of yesterday.
How “that was performed in our tongue, which may be
compared or preferred, either to insolent Greece or haughty
Rome,” becomes a tale in the history of the human
mind.
In the history of an insular race and in a site so peculiar
as our own, a people whom the ocean severed from all
nations, where are we to seek for our ABORIGINEs P. A
Welsh triad, and a Welsh is presumed to be a British, has
commemorated an epoch when these mighty realms were
a region of impenetrable forests and impassable morasses,
and their sole tenants were wolves, bears, and beavers, and
wild cattle. Who were the first human beings in this
lone world P
Every people have had a fabulous age. Priests and
poets invented, and traditionists expatiated; we discover
gods who seem to have been men, or men who resemble
gods; we read in the form of prose what had once been a
poem ; imaginations so wildly constructed, and afterwards
as strangely allegorised, served as the milky food of the
children of society, quieting their vague curiosity, and
circumscribing the illimitable unknown. The earliest
epoch of society is unapproachable to human inquiry.
Greece, with all her ambiguous poetry, was called “the
* Ben Jonson.
WOL. I. B
2 Amenities of Literature.
mendacious ;” credulous Rome rested its faith on five
centuries of legends; and our Albion dates from that un-
historical period when, as our earliest historian, the Monk
of Monmouth, aiming at probability, affirms, “there were
but a few giants in the land,” and these the more melan-
choly Gildas, to familiarise us with hell itself, accompanied
by “a few devils.” Every people however long acknow-
ledged, with national pride, beings as fabulous, in those
tutelary heroes who bore their own names.
The landing of Brutus with his fugitive Trojans on
“the White Island,” and here founding a “Troynovant,”
was one of the results of the immortality of Homer,
though it came reflected through his imitator Virgil,
whose Latin in the mediaeval ages was read when Greek
was unknown. The landing of Æneas on the shores of
Italy, and the pride of the Romans in their Trojan ances-
try, as their flattering Epic sanctioned, every modern
people, in their jealousy of antiquity, eagerly adopted, and
claimed a lineal descent from some of this spurious progeny
of Priam. The idle humour of the learned flattered the
imaginations of their countrymen; and each, in his own
land, raised up a fictitious personage who was declared to
have left his name to the people. The excess of their
patriotism exposed their forgeries, while every pretended
Trojan betrayed a Gothic name. France had its Francion,
Ireland its Iberus, the Danes their Danus, and the Saxons
their Saxo. The descent of Brutus into Britain is even
tenderly touched by so late a writer as our CAMDEN ; for
while he abstains from affording us either denial or assent,
he expends his costly erudition in furnishing every refuta-
tion which had been urged against the preposterous
* The existence of these giants was long historical, and their real
origin was in the fourth verse of the fifth chapter of Genesis, which no
commentator shall ever explain. AYLET SAMMES in his “ Britannia
Antiqua Illustrata, or the Antiquities of Ancient Britain derived from
the Phoenicians,” has particularly noticed “two teeth of a certain giant,
of such a huge bigness, that two hundred such teeth as men now-a-days
have might be cut out of them.” Becanus and Camden had however
observed, that “the bones of sea-fish had been taken for giants’ bones :
—but can it be rationally supposed that men ever entombed fishes #"
triumphant in his arguinents, exclaims Aylet Sammes. The revelations
of geology had not yet been surmised, even by those who had discovered
that giants were but sea-fish. So progressive is all human knowledge.
The Druidical Institution. 3
existence of these fabulous founders of every European
people.
Such is the corruption of the earliest history, either to
gratify the idle pride of a people, or to give completeness
to inquiries extending beyond human knowledge. Even
BUCHANAN, to gratify the ancestral vanity of his country-
men, has recorded the names of three hundred fabulous
monarchs, and presents a nomenclature without an event;
and in his classical latinity we must silently drop a thou-
sand unhistorical years. Even HENRY and WHITAKER, in
the gravity of English history, sketched the manners and
the characteristics of an unchronicled generation from the
fragmentary romances of Ossian. R
Caesar imagined that the inhabitants of the interior of
Britain, a fiercer people than the dwellers on the coasts,
were an indigenous race. But the philosophy of Caesar
did not exceed that of Horace and Ovid, who conceived no
other origin of man than Mater Terra. Man indeed was
formed out of “the dust of the ground,” but the Divine
Spirit alone could have dictated the history of primeval
man in the solitude of Eden. To Caesar was not revealed
that man was an oriental creature; that a single locality
served as the cradle of the human race; and that the
generations of man were the offspring of a single pair,
when once “the whole earth was of one language and of
one speech.” “And there is no antiquity but this that
can tell any other beginning,” exclaims our honest
WERSTEGAN, exulting in his Teutonic blood, while fur-
mishing an extraordinary evidence of the retreat of Tuisco
and his Teutons from the conspiracy against the skies.*
* The miraculous event was perpetuated by the whole Teutonic
people, “while it was fresh in their memories,” as our honest Saxon
asserts; hence to this day we in our Saxon English, and our Teutonic
kinsmen and neighbours in their idiom, describe a confusion of idle
talk by the term of Babel, now written from our harsh love of super-
numerary consonants Babble ; and any such workmen of Babel are
still indicated as Babblers. — “A Restitution of Decayed Intelligence,”
138, 4to. Antwerp, 1605.
The erudite Menage offers a memorable evidence of the precarious
condition of etymology when it connects things which have no other
affinity than that which depends on sounds. See his “Dictionnaire
Etymologique, ou Origines de la Langue Françoise,” ad verbum BABIL.
Not satisfied with the usual authorities deduced from Babel, this verbal
sage appeals to us English to demonstrate the * connexion
B
4. Amenities of Literature.
The dispersion of Babel, and, consequently, the diver-
sity of languages, is the mysterious link which connects
sacred and profane history. There is but a single point
whence human nature begins—the universe has been popu-
lated by migrations. Wherever the human being is found,
he has been transplanted; however varied in structure
and, dissimilar in dialect, the first inhabitants of every
land were not born there: unlike plants and animals,
which seem coeval with the region in which they are
found, never removing from the soil they occupy. Thus
the miracle of Holy Writ solves the enigmas of philoso-
phical theories; of more than one Adam, of distinct stocks
of mankind, and of the mechanism of language—vague
conjectures, and contested opinions! which have left us
without even a conception how the human being is white,
or tawny, or sable; or how the first letters of the alphabet
are Aleph and Bét, or Alpha and Beta, or A and B |
In tracing the origin of nations later speculators have
therefore more discreetly, though not wanting in hardy
conjectures or fanciful affinities, conducted people after
people, from the mysterious fount of human existence in
the Asian region. Through countless centuries they have
followed the myriads who, propelling each other, took the
right or the left, as chance led them : vanished nations
may have received names which they themselves might
not have recognised. Kelt or Kimmerian, Scandinavian
or Goth, Phoenician or Iberian, have been hurried to
the Isles of Britain. Their tale is older, though less
“divine,” than the tale of Troy; and the difficulty re-
mains to unravel the reality of the fabulous. The learned
have rarely satisfied their consciences in arranging their
dates in the confusion of unnoted time; nor in that other
confusion of races, often mingling together under one
common appellative, have they always agreed in assigning
that ancient people who were the progenitors of the mo-
dern nation; and the aborigines have been more than once
described as “an ancient people whose name is unknown.”
between Babbling and Childishness; for thus he has shrewdly opined
“The English in this manner have Babble and Baby /*
After all the convulsion of lips at Babel, and confusion among the
etymologists, the word is Hebrew, which with a few more such are
found in many languages.
The Druidical Institution. 5
In the pride of erudition, and the irascibility of confuta-
tion, they have involved themselves in interminable discus-
sions, yet one might be seduced to adopt any hypothesis,
for more or less each bears some ambiguous evidence, or
some startling circumstance sufficient to rock the dreaming
antiquary, and to kindle the bitter blood of pedantic
patriots. The origin of the population of Europe and
the first inhabitants of our British Isles has produced
Some antiquarian romances, often ingenious and amusing,
till the romances turn out to be mere polemics, and give
us angry words amid the most quaint fancies. This theme,
still continued, becomes a cavern of antiquity, where many
waving their torches, the light has sometimes fallen on an
unperceived angle; but the scattered light has shown the
depth and the darkness.
Among those shadows of time we grasp at one certainty.
Whoever might be the first-comers to this solitary island,
when we obtain any knowledge of the inhabitants, we are
struck by their close resemblance to those tribes of savage
life whom our navigators have discovered, and who are
now found in almost a primitive state among that innu-
merable cluster of what has recently been designated the
Polynesian Isles. The aborigines of Britain took the same
modes of existence, and fell into similar customs. We dis-
cover their rude population divided into jealous tribes, in
perpetual battle with one another; they lived in what
Hobbes has called the status belli, with no notion of the
'meum and tuum ; in the same community of their women
as was found in Otaheite ;* and with the same ignorance
of property, when its representative in some form was not
* Julia, the empress of Severus, once in raillery remonstrated with
a British female against this singular custom, which annulled every
connubial tie. The British woman, whose observation had evidently
been enlarged during her visit to Rome, retorted by her disdain of the
more polished corruption of the greater nation. “We British women
greatly differ from the Roman ladies, for we follow in public the men
whom we esteem the most worthy, while the Roman women yield
themselves secretly to the vilest of men.”
Such was the noble sentiment which broke forth from a lady of
savage education—it was, however, but a savage's view of social life.
This female Briton had not felt how much remained of life which she
had not taken into her view; when the attractions of her sex had
ceased, and the season of flowers had passed, she was left without her
connubial lord amid a progeny who had no father. -
6 Amenities of Literature.
yet invented. Our aborigines resembled these races even
in their personal appearance; a Polynesian chief has been
drawn and coloured after the life, and the figure exhibits
the perfect picture of an ancient Briton, almost naked, the
body painted red; the British savage chose blue, and made
deep incisions in the flesh to insert his indelible woad.*
The fierce eye, and the bearded lip, with the long hair
scattered to the waist, exhibit the Briton as he was seen
by Caesar, and, a century afterwards, as the British
monarch Caractacus appeared before the Emperor Claudius
at Rome: his sole ornaments consisted of an iron collar,
and an iron girdle; but as his naked majesty had his skin
painted with figures of animals, however rudely, this was
probably a distinctive dress of British royalty. These
Britons lived in thick woods, herding among circular huts
of reed, as we find other tribes in this early state of
society; and submissive to the absolute dominion of a
priesthood of magicians, as we find even among the
Esquimaux; and performing sanguinary rites, similar to
those of the ancient Mexicans: we are struck with the
conviction that men in a parallel condition remain but
uniform beings.
It seems a solecism in the intellectual history of man to
discover among such a semi-barbarous people a govern-
ment of sages, who, we are assured, “invented and
taught such philosophy and other learning as were never
read of nor heard of by any men before.”f This para-
doxical incident deepens in mystery when we are to be
* This practice of Savage races may have originated in a natural
circumstance. The naked body by this slight covering is protected
from the atmosphere, from insects, and other inconveniences to which
the unclothed are exposed. But though it may not have been con-
sidered Imerely as personal finery, which seems sometimes to have been
the case, it became a refinement of barbarism when they painted their
bodies frightfully to look terrible to the enemy.
+ See Mr. Tate's twelve questions about the Druids, with Mr.
Jones's answers; a learned Welsh scholar who commented on the
ancient laws of his nation.—Toland’s “History of the Druids.”
A later Welsh scholar affirms, “beyond all doubt there has been an
era when science diffused a light among the Cymry—in a very early
period of the world.”—Owen’s “Heroic Elegies of Llywarg Hen.”
Preface, xxi.
This style is traditional and still kept up among Welsh and Irish
scholars, who seem familiar with an antiquity beyond record.
The Druidical Institution. 7
taught that the druidical institution of Britain was Py-
thagorean, or patriarchal, or Brahminical. The presumed
encyclopedic knowledge which this order possessed, and
the singular customs which they practised, have afforded
sufficient analogies and affinities to maintain the occult and
remote origin of Druidism. Nor has this notion been the
mere phantom of modern system-makers. It was a sub-
ject of inquiry among the ancients whether the Druids
had received their singular art of teaching by secret ini-
tiation, and the prohibition of all writing, with their doc-
trine of the pre-existence and transmigration of souls, from
Pythagoras; or, whether this philosopher in his universal
travels had not alighted among the Druids, and had passed
through their initiation ?” This discussion is not yet
obsolete, and it may still offer all the gust of novelty. A
Welsh antiquary, according to the spirit of Welsh anti-
quity, insists that the Druidical system of the Metempsy-
chosis was conveyed to the Brahmins of India by a former
emigration from Wales; but the reverse may have
occurred, if we trust the elaborate researches which
copiously would demonstrate that the Druids were a scion
of the oriental family. Every point of the Druidical his-
tory, from its mysterious antiquity, may terminate with
reversing the proposition. A recent writer confidently
intimated that the knowledge of Druidism must be
searched for in the Talmudical writings; but another, in
return, asserts that the Druids were older than the Jews.
Whence and when the British Druids transplanted
themselves to this lone world amid the ocean, bringing
with them all the wisdom of far antiquity, to an unci-
vilized race, is one of those events in the history of man
which no historian can write. It is evident that they
long preserved what they had brought ; since the Druids
* Toland’s “History of the Druids” in his Miscellaneous Works,
ii. 163.
+ “The Celtic Druids, or an Attempt to show that the Druids were
the Priests of Oriental Colonies, who emigrated from India.” By God-
frey Higgins, Esq., London, 1829.
This is a quarto volume abounding with recondite researches and
many fancies. It is more repulsive, by the absurd abuse of “the
Christian priests who destroyed their (the Druids') influence, and un:
nerved the arms of their gallant followers.” There are philosophical
fanatics
8 Amenities of Literature.
of Gaul were fain to resort to the 'Druids of Britain to
renovate their instruction. . *
The Druids have left no record of themselves; they
seem to have disdained an immortality separate from the
existence of their order; but the shadow of their glory is
reflected for ever in the verse of Lucan, and the prose of
Caesar. The poet imagined that if the knowledge of the
gods was known to man, it had been alone revealed to
these Priests of Britain. The narrative of the historian
is comprehensive, but, with all the philosophical cast of
his mind and the intensity of his curiosity, Caesar was not
a Druid ;* and only a Druid could have written—had he
dared 1–on DRUIDHEACHT-a sacred, unspeakable word
at which the people trembled in their veneration.
The British Druids constituted a sacred and a secret
society, religious, political, and literary. In the rude me-
chanism of society in a state of pupilage, the first ele-
ments of government, however gross, or even puerile, were
the levers to lift and to sustain the unhewn masses of the
barbaric mind. Invested with all privileges and immu-
nities, amid that transient omnipotence which man in his
first feeble condition can confer, the wild children of
society crouched together before those illusions which
superstition so easily forges; but the supernatural domi-
nion lay in the secret thoughts of the people; the ma-
rauder had not the daring to touch the open treasure as it
lay in the consecrated grove; and a single word from a
JDruid for ever withered a human being, “cut down like
grass.” The loyalty of the land was a religion of wonder
and fear, and to dispute with a Druid was a state crime.
They were a secret society, for whatever was taught
was forbidden to be written; and not only their doctrines
and their sciences were veiled in this sacred obscurity, but
* Caesar was a keen observer of the Britons. He characterizes the
Kentish men, Ec his omnibus longè sunt humanissimi,_“Of all this
people the Kentish are far the most humane.” Caesar describes the
British boats to have the keel and masts of the lightest wood, and their
bodies of wicker covered with leather ; and the hero and sage was
taught a lesson by the barbarians, for Caesar made use of these in Spain
to transport his soldiers, a circumstance which Lucan has recorded
In the size and magnitude of Britain, confiding to the exaggerated ac- º
counts of the captives, he was mistaken ; but he acknowledges, that
many things he heard of, he had not himself observed.
The Druidical Institution. 9
the laws which governed the community were also oral.
For the people, the laws, probably, were impartially admi-
nistered; for the Druids were not the people, and without
their sympathies, these judges at least sided with no
party. But if these sages, amid the conflicting interests
of the multitude, seemed placed above the vicissitudes of
humanity, their own more solitary passions were the
stronger, violently compressed within a higher sphere:
ambition, envy, and revenge, those curses of nobler minds,
often broke their dreams. The election of an Arch-Druid
was sometimes to be decided by a battle. Some have been
chronicled by a surname which indicates a criminal. No
king could act without a Druid by his side, for peace or
war were on his lips; and whenever the order made
common cause, woe to the kingdom ſº It was a terrible
hierarchy. The golden knife which pruned the mistletoe
beneath the mystic oak, immolated the human victim.
The Druids were the common fathers of the British
youth, for they were the sole educators; but the genius of
the order admitted of no inept member. For the acolyte
unendowed with the faculty of study all initiation
ceased; nature herself had refused this youth the glory of
Druidism; but he was taught the love of his country.
The Druidical lyre kindled patriotism through the land,
and the land was saved—for the Druids !
The Druidical custom of unwritten instruction was in-
geniously suggested by Cicero, as designed to prevent their
secret doctrines from being divulged to those unworthy or
ill fitted to receive them, and to strengthen the memory of
their votaries by its continued exercise; but we may sus-
pect, that this barbarous custom of this most ancient so-
dality began at a period when they themselves neither read
nor wrote, destitute of an alphabet of their own; for when
the Druids had learned from the Greeks their characters,
they adopted them in all their public and private
affairs. We learn that the Druidical sciences were con-
tained in twenty thousand verses, which were to prompt
their perpetual memory. Such traditional science could
not be very progressive; what was to be got by rote no
disciple would care to consider obsolete, and a century
* Toland’s “Hist. of the Druids,” 56.
HO Amenities of Literature.
might elapse without furnishing an additional couplet.
The Druids, like some other institutions of antiquity, by
not perpetuating their doctrines, or their secrets, in this
primeval state of theology and philosophy, by writing, have
effectually concealed their own puerile simplicity. But
the monuments of a people remain to perpetuate their
character. We may judge of the genius or state of the
Druidical arts and sciences by such objects. We are told
that the Druids were so wholly devoted to nature, that
they prohibited the use of any tool in the construction of
their rude works; all are unhewn masses, or heaps of
stones; such are their cairns and cromleches and corneddes,
and that wild architecture whose stones hang on one an-
other, still frowning on the plains of Salisbury.* A circle
of stones marked the consecrated limits of the Druidical
tribunal; and in the midst a hillock heaped up for the
occasion was the judgment-seat. Here, in the open air,
in “the eye of light and the face of the sun,” to use the
bardic style, the decrees were pronounced, and the Druids
harangued the people. Such a scene was exhibited by the
Hebrew patriarchs, from whom some imagined these
Druids descended; but whether or not the Celtic be of
this origin we must not decide by any analogous manners
or customs, because these are nearly similar, wherever we
trace a primitive race—so uniform is nature, till art, infi-
nitely various, conceals nature herself. *
* The origin of Stonehenge is as unknown as that of the Pyramids.
As it is evident that those huge masses could not have been raised and
fixed without the machinery of art, Mr. Owen, the Welsh antiquary,
infers, that this building, if such it may be called, could not have been
erected till that later period when the Druidical genius declined and
submitted to Christianity, and the Druids were taught more skilful
masonry in stone, though without mortar. It has been, however, con-
sidered, that those masses which have been ascribed to the necromancer
Merlin, or the more ancient giants, might have been the work of the
Britons themselves, who, without our knowledge of the mechanical
powers in transporting or raising ponderous bodies, it is alleged, were
men of mighty force and stature, whose co-operation might have done
what would be difficult even to our mechanical science. The lances,
helmets, and swords of these Britons show the vast size and strength
of those who wore them. The native Americans, as those in Peru,
unaided by the engines we apply to those purposes, have raised up such
vast stones in building their temples as the architect of the present
time would not perhaps hazard the attempt to remove. “Essays by a
Society at Exeter,” 114. ."
*
The Druidical Institution. 11
In the depth of antiquity, misty superstition and pris-
tine tradition gave a false magnitude to the founders of
human knowledge; and our own literary historians who
have been over-curious about “the Genesis” of their anti-
quities, have inveigled us into the mystic groves of
Druidism in all their cloudy obscurity. The “Antiquities
of the University of Oxford” open with “the Originals of
Learning in this Nation;” and our antiquary discerns the
first shadowings of the University of Oxford in “the
universal knowledge” of the Druidical institution in
“ethics, politics, civil law, divinity, and poetry.” Such
are the reveries of an antiquary.
12
BRITAIN AND THE BRITONS.
BRITAIN stood as the boundary of the universe, beyond
which all was air and water—and long it was ere the
trembling coasters were certain whether Britain was an
island or a continent, a secret probably to the dispersed
natives themselves. It was the triumphant fleet of
Agricola, nearly a century after the descent of Caesar,
which, encircling it, proclaimed to the universe that Britain
was an island. From that day Albion has lifted its white
head embraced by the restless ocean, but often betrayed
by that treacherous guardian, she became the possession
of successive races.
Nations have derived their names from some accidental
circumstance; some peculiarity marking their national
character, or descriptive of the site of their country. The
names of our island and of our islanders have exercised the
inquiries, and too often the ingenuity, of our antiquarian
etymologists. There are about half a hundred origins of
the name of Britain ; some absurd, many fanciful, all un-
certain.” Our primitive ancestors distinguished them-
selves, in pride or simplicity, as Brith and Brithon;
Brith signified stained, and Brithon, a stained man, ac-
cording to Camden.f The predilection for colouring their
bodies induced the civilized Romans to designate the
people who were driven to the Caledonian forests as Picts,
or a painted people.
* See the opening of Speed’s “Chronicle.”
+ The historian of our land in the solemnity of his high office, un-
willing that an obscure Welsh prince named Prydain should have left
his immemorable name to this glorious realm, as a Welsh triad pro-
fesses, was delighted to draw the national name out of the native
tongue, appositely descriptive of the prevalent custom. But when,
seduced by this syren of etymology, our grave Camden, to display the
passion of a painted people for colours, collects a long list of ancient
British names of polysyllabic elongation, and culls from each a single
syllable which by its sound he conceives alludes to blue, or red, or
yellow, our sage, in proving more than was requisite, has encumbered
his cause, and has thrown suspicion over the whole. The doom of the
etymologist, so often duped by affinity of sounds, seems to have been
that of our judicious Camden.
Britain and the Britons. 13
That the native term of Brith or Brithon, by its curt
harshness, would clash on the modulating ear of the
Greek voyager, or the Latin poet, seems probable, for by
them it was amplified. And thus we owe to sonorous
antiquity the name now famous as their own, for BRI-
TANNIA first appeared in their writings, bequeathed to us
by the masters of the world as their legacy of glory.
To the knowledge of the Romans the island exceeded in
magnitude all other islands; and they looked on this land
with pride and anxiety, while they dignified Britain as
the “Roman island.” The Romans even personified the
insular Genius with poetic conceptions. Britannia is re-
presented as a female seated on a rock, armed with a
spear, or leaning on a prow, while the ship beside her
attests her naval power. We may yet be susceptible of
the prophetic flattery, when we observe the Roman has
also seated her on a globe, with the symbol of military
power, and the ocean rolling under her feet.*
The tale of these ancient Britons who should have been
our ancestors is told by the philosophical historian of an-
tiquity. Under successive Roman governors they still
remained divided by native factions: “A circumstance,”
observes Tacitus, “most useful for us, among such a power-
ful people, where each combating singly, all are subdued.”
A century, as we have said, had not elapsed from the
landing of Caesar to the administration of Agricola. That
enlightened general changed the policy of former governors;
he allured the Britons from their forest retreats and reedy
roofs to partake of the pleasures of a Roman city—to
dwell in houses, to erect lofty temples, and to indulge in
dissolving baths. The barbarian who had scorned the
Roman tongue now felt the ambition of Roman eloquence;
and the painted Briton of Caesar was enveloped in the
Roman toga. Severus, in another century after Agricola,
as an extraordinary evidence of his successful government,
appealed to Britain – “Even the Britons are quiet !”
exclaimed the emperor. The tutelary genius of Rome
through four centuries preserved Britain—even from the
Britons themselves; but the Roman policy was fatal to
the national character, and when the day arrived that
* Evelyn’s ‘‘Numismata.” Pinkerton has engraven ten of these
Britannias struck by the Romans in his “Essay on Medals.”
14 - Amenities of Literature.
their protector forsook them, the Britons were left among
their ancient discords: for provincial jealousies, however
concealed by circumstances, are never suppressed; the fire
lives in its embers ready to be kindled.
The island of Britain, itself not extensive, was broken
into petty principalities: we are told that there were nearly
two hundred kinglings, the greater part of whom did not
presume to wear crowns. Sometimes they united in their
jealousies of some paramount tyrant, but they raged
among themselves; and the passion of Gildas has figured
them as “the Lioness of Devonshire” encountering a
“Lion’s Whelp” in Dorsetshire, and “the Bear-baiter,”
trembling before his regal brother, “the Great Bull-dog.”
“These kings were not appointed by God,” exclaims the
British Jeremiah ; he who wrote under the name of
Gildas. Thus the Britons formed a powerless aggregate,
and never a nation. The naked Irish haunted their
shores, covering their sea with piracy; and the Picts
rushed from their forests—giants of the North who, if
Gildas does not exaggerate, even dragged down from their
walls the amazed Britons. Such a people in their terrified
councils were to be suppliants to the valour of foreigners;
from that hour they were doomed to be chased from their
natal soil. They invited, or they encouraged, another race
to become their mercenaries or their allies. The small and
the great from other shores hastened to a new dominion.
Britain then became “a field of fortune to every adven-
turer when nothing less than kingdoms were the prize of
every fortunate commander.”
We have now the history of a people whose enemies in-
habited their ancient land: the flame and the sword cease-
lessly devouring the soil; their dominion shrinking in space,
and the people diminishing in number; victory for them
was fatal as defeat. The disasters of the Britons pursued
them through the despair of almost two centuries; it
would have been the history of a whole people ever re-
treating, yet hardly in flight, had it been written. Shall
we refuse, on the score of their disputed antiquity the
evidence of the Welsh bards P. The wild grandeur of the
melancholy poetry of those ancient Britons attests the
* Milton.
Britain and the Britons. 15
reality of their story and the depth of their emo-
tions.”
We have spun the last thread of our cobweb, and we
know not on what points it hangs, such irreconcileable
hypotheses are offered to us by our learned antiquaries,
whenever they would account for the origin or the dis-
appearance of a whole people. The mystery deepens, and
the confusion darkens amid contradictions and incredibili-
ties, when the British historian contemplates in the per-
spective the Fata Morgana of another Britain on the
opposite shores of the ancient Armorica, another Britain
in La Brétagne.
The ancient Armorica was a district extending from the
Loire to the Seine, about sixty leagues, and except on the
land side, which joined Poictou, is encircled by the ocean.
Composed of several small states, in the decline of the
Roman empire they shook off the Roman yoke, and their
independence was secured by the obscurity of their seques-
tered locality.
The tale runs that Maximus, having engaged his pro-
vincial Britons in his ambitious schemes, rewarded their
military aid by planting them in one of these Armorican
communities. To give colour to this tradition, the story
adds that this Roman general had a considerable interest
in Wales, “having married the daughter of a powerful
chieftain, whose chapel at Carnarvon is still shown.”f
* See Mr. Turner’s able “Windication of the Genuineness of the
Ancient British Bards.”
+ Warton draws his knowledge from Rowland’s “Mona Antiqua;”
Geoffry of Monmouth would have extended his inquiry. Camden,
judicious as he was, has actually bestowed the kingdom, as well as the
princess, on this Roman general; and Gibbon has sarcastically noticed
that Camden has been authority for all “his blind followers.” The
source of this sort of history lies in the volume of the “Monk of Mon-
mouth,” where Gibbon might have found the number of the numerous
army of Maximus. Rowland’s “Mona Antiqua Restaurata " is one of
the most extraordinary pieces of our British Antiquities. It is written
with the embrowned rust of our old English Antiquaries, where nothing
on a subject seems to be omitted; but our author, unlike his contem-
porary antiquaries, is sceptical even on his own acquisitions; he asserts
little and assumes nothing. One may conceive the native simplicity of
an author, who having to describe the Isle of Anglesey, opens his work
with the history of Chaos itself, to explain by the division of land and
water the origin of islands. I have heard that this learned antiquary
never travelled from his native island.
16 Amenities of Literature.
The marriage of this future Roman emperor with a Welsh
princess would serve as an embellishment to a Welsh
genealogy. This event must have occurred about the
year 384. When the Britons were driven out of their
country by faithless allies, Armorica would offer an easy
refuge for fugitives; there they found brothers already
settled, or friends willing to receive them.*
In this uncertainty of history, amid the dreams of theo-
retical antiquaries, we cannot doubt that at some time
there was a powerful colony of Britons in Armorica; they
acquired dominion as well as territory. They changed
that masterless Armorican state to which they were trans-
planted from an aristocracy into a monarchy—that govern-
ment to which they had been accustomed; they conse-
crated the strange land by the baptism of their own
national name, and to this day it is called Brétagne, or
Britain; and surely the Britons carried with them all
their home-affections, for they made the new country an
image of the old : not only had they stamped on it the
British name, but the Britons of Cornwall called a con-
siderable district by their own provincial name, known in
France as “Le Pays de Cornouaille;” and their speech
perpetuated their vernacular Celtic. At the siege of Bel-
leisle in 1756, the honest Britons of the principality
among our soldiers were amazed to find that they and the
peasants of Brittany were capable of conversing together.
This expatriation reminds us of the emotions of the first
settlers in the New World. Ancient Spain reflected her-
self in her New Spain; and our first emigrants called
their “plantations” “New England;” distributing local
names borrowed from the land of their birth—undying
memorials of their parent sourcel
This singular event in the civil annals of the ancient
Britons has given rise to a circumstance unparalleled in the
literary history of every people, for it has often involved in a
mysterious confusion a part of our literary and historical
antiquities. The Britain in France is not always discri-
minated from our own; and this double Britain at times
becomes provokingly mystifying. Two eminent anti-
* “L’Art de vérifier les Dates,” article Brétagne, is thrown into
utter confusion. It seems, however, to indicate that there were many
migrations; but all is indistinct or uncertain.
Britain and the Britons. 17
quaries, Douce and Ritson, sometimes conceived that
Bretagne meant England; a circumstance which might
upset a whole hypothesis.
In the fastnesses of Wales, on the heights of Caledonia,
and on the friendly land of Armorica, are yet tracked the
fugitive and ruined Britons. It is most generally con-
ceded that they retreated to the western coasts of Eng-
land, and that, often discomfited, they took their last
refuge in those “mountain heights” of Cambria.
Their shadowy Arthur has left an undying name in
romance, and is a nonentity in history. Whether Arthur
was a mortal commander heading some kings of Britain,
or whether religion and policy were driven to the desperate
effort for rallying their fugitives by a national name, and
“a hope deferred,” like the Sebastian of Portugal, this far.
famed chieftain could never have been a fortunate general;
he displayed his invincibility but in some obscure and
remote locality; he struck no terror among his enemies,
for they have left his name unchronicled: nor living, have
the bards distinguished his pre-eminence. “The grave of
Arthur is a mystery of the world,” exclaimed Taliessin,
the great bard of the Britons. But the mortal who
vanished in the cloud of conflict had never seen death ;
and to the last the Britons awaited for the day of their
Redeemer when Arthur should return in his immortality,
accompanied by “the Flood-King of the Deluge,” from
the Inys Avallon, the Isle of the Mystic Apple-tree, their
Eden or their Elysium. Arthur was a myth, half Christian
and half Druidical. In Armorica, as in Wales, his coming
was long expected, till “Espérance brétonne” became
proverbial for all chimerical hopes.
Thus the aborigines of this island vanished, but their
name is still attached to us. The Anglo-Saxons became
our progenitors, and the Saxon our mother-tongue. Yet
so complex and incongruous is the course of time, that we
still call ourselves Britons, and “true Britons;” and the
land we dwell in Great Britain. Nor is it less remarkable,
that the days of the Christian week commemorate the names
of seven Saxon idols.” There are improbabilities and incon-
* Werstegan has finely engraved these idols in his “Restitution,” so
delighted was this Teutonic Christian with these hideous absurdities of
his pagan ancestors, and so proud of his Saxon descent.
WOL. I. C
18 Amenities of Literature.
gruities in authentic history as hard to reconcile as any
we meet with in wild romance. -
During six centuries the Saxons and the Normans com-
bined to banish from the public mind the history of the
Britons: it was lost; it did not exist even among the
Britons in Wales. In the reign of Henry the First, an
Archdeacon of Oxford, who was that king’s justiciary,
being curious in ancient histories, opportunely brought out
of “Britain in France,” “a very ancient book in the
British tongue.” This book, which still forms the gordian
knot of the antiquary, he confided to the safe custody and
fertile genius of Geoffry, the Monk of Monmouth. It
contained a regular story of the British kings, opening
with Brute, the great grandson of Priam in this airy
generation; kings who, Geoffry “ had often wondered,
were wholly unnoticed by Gildas and Bede.” “Yet,”
adds our historian, “their deeds were celebrated by many
people in a pleasant manner, and by heart, as if they had
been written.” This remarkable sentence aptly describes
that species of national songs which the early poets have
always provided for the people, traditions which float
before history is written. Whether this very ancient
British book, almost five centuries old, was a volume of
these poetical legends, which our historian might have
arranged into that “regular history” which is furnished
by his Latin prose version, we are left without the means
of ascertaining, since it proved to be the only copy ever
found, and was never seen after the day of the translation.
The Monk of Monmouth does not arrogate to himself any
other merit than that of a faithful translator, and with
honest simplicity warns of certain additions, which, even
in a history of two thousand years contained in a small
volume, were found necessary.
We are told that the Britons who passed over into
France carried with them “their archives.” But there
were other Britons who did not fly to the sixty leagues of
Armorica; and of these the only “archives” we hear of
are those which the romancers so perpetually assure us
may be consulted at Caerleon, or some other magical resi-
dence of the visionary Arthur. The Armorican colony
must have formed but a portion of the Britons; and it
would be unreasonable to suppose, that these fugitives
Britain and the Britons. 19
could by any human means sequestrate and appropriate
for themselves the whole history of the nation, without
leaving a fragment behind. Yet nothing resembling the
Armorican originals has been traced among the Welsh.
Our Geoffry modestly congratulates his contemporary
annalists, while he warns them off the preserve where lies
his own well-stocked game. And thus he speaks:–
“The history of the kings who were the successors in
Wales of those here recorded, I leave to Karadoc of
Lancarven, as I do also the kings of the Saxons to
William of Malmesbury and Henry of Huntingdon; but
I advise them to be silent concerning the British kings,
since they have not that book written in the British
tongue which Walter, Archdeacon of Oxford, brought out
of Britain.” Well might Geoffry exult. He possessed the
sole copy ever found in both the Britains.
The British history is left to speak for itself in a great
simplicity of narrative, where even the supernatural offers
no obstacle to the faith of the historian—a history which
might fascinate a child as well as an antiquary. These
remote occurrences are substantiated by the careful dates
of a romantic chronology. Events are recorded which
happened when David reigned in Judea, and Sylvius
Latinus in Italy, and Gad, Nathan, and Asaph prophesied
in Israel. And the incidents of Lear's pathetic story
occurred when Isaiah and Hosea flourished, and Rome was
built by the two brothers. It tells of one of the British
monarchs, how the lady of his love was concealed during
seven years in a subterraneous palace. On his death, his
avengeful queen cast the mother and her daughter into
the river which still bears that daughter's name, Sabrina,
or the Severn, and was not forgotten by Drayton.
Another incident adorns a canto of Spenser; the Lear came
down to Shakspeare, as the fraternal feuds of Ferrex and
Porrex created our first tragedy by Sackville. There are
other tales which by their complexion betray their legendary
Origin.
Whatever assumed the form of history was long deemed
authentic ; and such was the authority of this romance of
Geoffry, that when Edward the First claimed the crown
of Scotland in his letter to the pope, he founded his right
on a passage in Geoffry’s book: doubtless this very passage
C 2
20 Amenities of Literature.
was held to be as veracious by the Scots themselves, only
that on this occasion they decided to fight against the
text. Four centuries after Geoffry had written, when
Henry the Seventh appointed a commission to draw up his
pedigree, they traced the royal descent from the imaginary
Brutus, and reckoning all Geoffry’s British kings in the
line—the fairies of history—made the English monarch
a descendant in the hundredth degree. We now often
hear of “the fabulous” History of Geoffry of Monmouth;
but neither his learned translator in 1718, nor the most
eminent Welsh antiquaries, attach any such notion to a
history crowded with domestic events, and with names
famous yet unknown.
After the lapse of so many centuries, the scrutinising
investigation of a thoughtful explorer in British anti-
quities has demonstrated, through a chain of recondite
circumstances, that this History of Geoffry of Monmouth,
and its immediate predecessor, the celebrated Chronicle of
the pseudo-Archbishop Turpin, were sent forth on the
same principle on which to this day we publish party
pamphlets, to influence the spirit of two great nations
opposed in interest and glory to each other; in a word,
that they were two Tales of a Tub thrown out to busy
those mighty whales, France and England.*
One great result of their successful grasp of the popular
feelings could never have been contemplated by these
grave forgers of fabulous history. The Chronicle of Arch-
bishop Turpin and the British History of Geoffry of
Monmouth became the parents of those two rival families of
romances which commemorate the deeds of the Paladins
of Charlemagne, and the Knights of Arthur, the delight
of three centuries.
The Welsh of this day possess very ancient manuscripts,
which they cherish as the remains of the ancient Britons.
These preserve the deep strains of poets composed in
triumph or in defeat, the poetry of a melancholy race.
Gray first attuned the Cymry harp to British notes, more
poetical than the poems themselves, while others have
devoted their pens to translation, unhappily not always
master of the language of their version. These manu-

* Turner’s “History of England during the Middle Ages,” iv. 326.
Britain and the Britons. 21
scripts contain also a remarkable body of fiction in the
MABINOGION, or juvenile amusements, a collection of prose
tales combining the marvellous and the imaginative. Some
are chivalric and amatory, stamped with the manners and
customs of the middle ages; others apparently of a much
higher antiquity, like all such national remains, are con-
sidered mythological; some there are not well adapted,
perhaps, to the initiation of youth. Obviously they are
nothing more than short romances; but we are solemnly
assured that the Mabinogion abound with occult mys-
teries, and that simple fiction only served to allure the
British neophyte to bardic mysticism. A learned writer,
who is apt to view old things in a new light, and whose
boldness invigorates the creeping toil of the antiquary,
reveals the esoteric doctrine—“the childhood alluded to
in their title is an early and preparatory stage of initiation;
they were calculated to inflame curiosity, to exercise
ingenuity, and lead the aspirant gradually into a state of
preparation for things which ears not long and carefully
disciplined were unfit to hear.”*
Every people have tales which do not require to be
written to be remembered, whose shortness is the salt
which preserves them through generations. Our ancestors
* “Britannia after the Romans.” The literary patriotism of Wales
has been more remarkable among humble individuals than among the
squirearchy, if we except the ardent Pennant. Mr. Owen Jones, an
honest furrier in Thames-street, kindled by the love of fatherland,
offered the Welsh public a costly present of the “Archaeology of
Wales,” containing the bardic poetry, genealogies, triads, chronicles,
&c. in their originals : the haughty descendant of the Cymry disdained
to translate for the Anglo-Saxon. To Mr. William Owen the lore of
Cambria stands deeply indebted for his persevering efforts. Under the
name of Meirion he long continued his literal versions of the Welsh
bards in the early volumes of the “Monthly Magazine;” he has fur-
nished a Cambrian biography and a dictionary.
Some years ago, a learned Welsh scholar, Dr. Owen Pughe, issued
proposals to publish the “Mabinogion,” accompanied by translations,
on the completion of a subscription list sufficient to indemnify the costs
of printing.—See Mr. Crofton Croker's interesting work on “Fairy
Legends,” vol. iii. He appealed in vain to the public, but the whole
loss remains with them. Recently a munificent lady [Lady Charlotte
Guest] has resumed the task, and has presented us in the most elegant
form with two tales such as ladies read. Since this note was written
several cheering announcements of some important works have been
put forth. [Many have since been published.]
22 Amenities of Literature.
long had heard of “Breton lays * and “British tales,”
from the days of Chaucer to those of Milton; but it was
reserved for our own day to ascertain the species, and to
possess those forgotten yet imaginative effusions of the
ancient Celtic genius. Our literary antiquaries have
discovered reposing among the Harleian manuscripts the
writings of Marie de France,” an Anglo-Norman poetess,
who in the thirteenth century versified many old Breton
lais, which, she says, “she had heard and well remembered.”
Who can assure us whether this Anglo-Norman poetess
gathered her old tales, for such she calls them, in the
French Britain or the English Britain, where she always
resided ?
It is among the Welsh we find a singular form of arti-
ficial memory which can be traced among no other people.
These are their TRIADs. Though unauthorized by the
learned in Celtic antiquities, I have sometimes fancied that
in the form we may possess a relic of druidical genius. A
triad is formed by classing together three things, neither
more nor less, but supposed to bear some affinity, though
a fourth or fifth might occur with equal claim to be
admitted into the category.f To connect three things
together apparently analogous, though in reality not so,
sufficed for the stores of knowledge of a Triadist; but to
fix on any three incidents for an historical triad discovered
a very narrow range of research; and if designed as an
artificial memory, three insulated facts, deprived of dates
or descriptions or connexion, neither settled the chro-
nology, nor enlarged the understanding. It is, however,
worthy of remark, that when the Triad is of an ethical
cast, the number three may compose an excellent aphorism;
for three things may be predicated with poignant con-
cision, when they relate to our moral qualities, or to the
intellectual faculties: in this capricious form the Triad has
often afforded an enduring principle of human conduct, or
* See Warton and Ellis. “Poésies de Marie de France” have been
published by M. de Roquefort, Paris, 1820.
+ “The translators do the triadist an injustice in rendering Tri by
*The Three’ when he has put no The at all. The number was ac-
counted fortunate, and they took a pleasure in binding up all their
ideas into little sheaves or fasciculi of three; but in so doing they did
not mean to imply that there were no more such.”—“Britannia after
the Romans.”
Britain and the Britons. 23
of critical discrimination; for our feelings are less pro-
blematical than historical events, and more permanent than
the recollection of three names.”
* As these artificial associations, like the topics invented by the
Roman rhetoricians, have been ridiculed by those who have probably
formed their notions from unskilful versions, I select a few which might
enter into the philosophy of the human mind. They denote a literature
‘far advanced in critical refinement, and appear to have been composed
from the sixth to the twelfth century.
“The three foundations of genius; the gift of God, human exertion,
and the events of life.”
“The three first requisites of genius; an eye to see nature, a heart
to feel it, and a resolution that dares follow it.”
“The three things indispensable to genius; understanding, medita-
tion, and perseverance.”
“The three things that improve genius; proper exertion, frequent
exertion, and successful exertion.”
“The three qualifications of poetry; endowment of genius, judgment
from experience, and felicity of thought.”
“The three pillars of judgment; bold design, frequent practice, and
frequent mistakes.”
“The three pillars of learning; seeing much, suffering much, and
studying much.” See Turner’s “Windication of the Ancient British
Bards.”—Owen’s “Dissertation on Bardism, prefixed to the Heroic
Elegies of Llywarg Hen.”
24
THE NAME OF ENGLAND AND OF THE
ENGLISH.
Two brothers and adventurers of an obscure Saxon tribe
raised their ensign of the White Horse on British land:
the visit was opportune, or it was expected—this remains
a state secret. Welcomed by the British monarch and
his perplexed council amid their intestine dissensions, as
friendly allies, they were renowned for their short and
crooked swords called Seaw, which had given the generic
name of Saxons to their tribe.
These descendants of Woden, for such even the petty
chieftains deemed themselves, whose trade was battle and
whose glory was pillage, showed the spiritless what men
do who know to conquer, the few against the many.
They baffled the strong and they annihilated the weak.
The Britons were grateful. The Saxons lodged in the
land till they took possession of it. The first Saxon
founded the kingdom of Kent ; twenty years after, a
second in Sussex raised the kingdom of the South-Saxons;
in another twenty years appeared the kingdom of the
West-Saxons. It was a century after the earliest arrival
that the great emigration took place. The tribe of the
Angles depopulated their native province and flocked to
the fertile island, under that foeman of the Britons whom
the bards describe as “The Flame Bearer,” and “The
Destroyer.” Every quality peculiar to the Saxons was
hateful to the Britons; even their fairness of complexion.
Taliessin terms Hengist “a white-bellied hackney,” and
his followers are described as of “hateful hue and hateful
form.” The British poet delights to paint “a Saxon
shivering and quaking, his white hair washed in blood;”
and another sings how “close upon the backs of the pale-
faced ones were the spear-points.” +
Already the name itself of Britain had disappeared
among the invaders. Our island was now called “Saxony
beyond the Sea,” or “West Saxon land;” and when the
* “Britannia after the Romans,” 62, 4to.
The Name of England and of the English. 25
expatriated Saxons had alienated themselves from the land
of their fathers, those who remained faithful to their
native hearths perhaps proudly distinguished themselves
as “the old Saxons,” for by this name they were known
by the Saxons in Britain.
Eight separate but uncertain kingdoms were raised on
the soil of Britain, and present a moveable surface of fra-
ternal wars and baffled rivals. There was one kingdom
long left kingless, for “No man dared, though never so
ambitious, to take up the sceptre which many had found
so hot; the only effectual cure of ambition that I have
read”—these are the words of Milton. Finally, to use
the quaint phrase of the Chancellor Whitelock, “the
Octarchy was brought into one.” At the end of five cen-
turies the Saxons fell prostrate before a stronger race.
But of all the accidents and the fortunes of the Saxon
dynasty, not the least surprising is that an obscure town
in the duchy of Sleswick, Anglen, is commemorated by the
transference of its name to one of the great European
nations. The Angles, or Engles, have given their denomi-
nation to the land of Britain—Engle-land is England, and
the Engles are the English.*
How it happened that the very name of Britain was
abolished, and why the Anglian was selected in preference
to the more eminent race, may offer a philosophical illus-
tration of the accidental nature of LoCAL NAMEs.
There is a tale familiar to us from youth, that Egbert,
the more powerful king of the West Saxons, was crowned
the first monarch of England, and issued a decree that
this kingdom of Britain should be called England; yet an
event so strange as to have occasioned the change of the
name of the whole country remains unauthenticated by
any of the original writers of our annals.t. No record
* It is a singular circumstance that our neighbours have preserved
the name of our country more perfectly than we have done by our
mutilated term of England, for they write it with antiquarian pre-
cision, Angle-terre—the land of the Angles. Our counties bear the
vestiges of these Saxons expelling or exterminating the native Britons,
as our pious Camden ejaculates, “by God’s wonderful providence.”
* The diligent investigator of the history of our Anglo-Saxons con-
cludes that this unauthorised tale of the coronation and the decree of
Egbert is unworthy of credence.
Camden, in his first edition, had fixed the date of the change of the
26 Amenities of Literature.
attests that Egbert in a solemn coronation assumed the
title of “King of England.” His son and successor never
claimed such a legitimate title; and even our illustrious
Alfred, subsequently, only styled himself “King of the
West Saxons.” . . . . . .
The story, however, is of ancient standing; for Matthew
of Westminster alludes to a similar if not the same inci-
dent, namely, that by “a common decree of all the Saxon
kings, it was ordained that the title of the island should
no longer be Britain, from Brute, but henceforward be
called from the English, England.” Stowe furnishes a
positive circumstance in this obscure transaction—“Egbert
caused the brazen image of Cadwaline, King of the Britons,
to be thrown down.” The decree noticed by Matthew of
Westminster, combined with the fact of pulling down the
statue of a popular British monarch, betrays the real
motive of this singular national change : whether it were
the suggestion of Egbert, or the unanimous agreement of
the assembled monarchs who were his tributary kings, it
was a stroke of deep political wisdom; it knitted the mem-
bers into one common body, under one name, abolishing,
by legislative measures, the very memory of Britain from
the land. Although, therefore, no positive evidence has
been produced, the state policy carries an internal evidence
which yields some sanction to the obscure tradition.
It is a nicer difficulty to account for the choice of the
Anglian name. It might have been preferred to distin-
guish the Saxons of Britain from the Saxons of the Con-
tinent ; or the name was adopted, being that of the far
more numerous race among these people. Four kingdoms
of the octarchy were possessed by the Angles. Thus
doubtful and obscure remains the real origin of our na-
tional name, which hitherto has hinged on a suspicious
fact.
The casual occurrence of the ENGLEs leaving their name
to this land has bestowed on our country a foreign desig-
nation; and—for the contingency was nearly occurring—
had the kingdom of Northumbria preserved its ascendancy
name as occurring in the year 810; in his second edition he corrected
it to 800. Holinshed says about 800. Speed gives a much later
date, 819. It is evident that these disagreeing dates are all hazarded
conjectures. - * * > . . . . ;
The Name of England and of the English. 27
in the octarchy, the seat of dominion had been altered.
In that case, the Lowlands of Scotland would have
formed a portion of England; York would have stood
forth as the metropolis of Britain, and London had been but
a remote mart for her port and her commerce. Another
idiom, perhaps, too, other manners, had changed the whole
face of the country. We had been Northmen, not
Southerns; our neighbourhood had not proved so trouble-
some to France. But the kingdom of Wessex prevailed,
and became the sole monarchy of England. Such loéal
contingencies have decided the character of a whole
people.*
The history of LOCAL NAMES is one of the most capri-
cious and fortuitous in the history of man; the etymo-
logist must not be implicitly trusted, for it is necessary to
be acquainted with the history of a people as much as the
history of languages, to be certain of local derivations.
We have recently been cautioned by a sojourner in the
most ancient of kingdoms,t not too confidently to rely on
etymology, or to assign too positively any reason for the
origin of LoCAL NAMEs. No etymologist could have ac-
counted for the name of our nation had he not had re-
course to our annals. Sir WALTER RALEIGH, from his
observations in the New World, has confirmed this ob-
servation by circumstances which probably remain un-
known to the present inhabitants. The actual names
given to those places in America which they still retain,
are nothing more than the blunders of the first Euro-
peans, demanding by signs and catching at words by which
neither party were intelligible to one another.;
* Mitford’s “Harmony of Language,” 429. I might have placed
this possible circumstance in the article “A History of Events which
have not happened,” in “Curiosities of Literature.”
‘f Sir GARDNER WILKINSON, in the curious volume of his recondite
discoveries in the land of the Pyramids.
f “History of the World,” 167, fol. 1666. We have also a curious
account of the ancient manner of naming persons and places among our
own nation in venerable Lambarde’s “Perambulations of Kent,” 349,
453.
28
THE ANGLO-SAXONS.
THE history and literature of England are involved in the
transactions of a people who, living in such remote times
at the highest of their fortunes, never advanced beyond a
semi-civilization. But political freedom was the hardy
and jealous offspring nursed in the forests of Germany;
there was first heard the proclamation of equal laws, and
there a people first assumed the name of Franks or Free-
men. Our language, and our laws, and our customs, ori-
ginate with our Teutonic ancestors; among them we are
to look for the trunk, if not the branches, of our national
establishments. In the rude antiquities of the Anglo-
Saxon church, our theoretical inquirers in ecclesiastical
history trace purer doctrines and a more primitive dis-
cipline; and in the shadowy Witenagemot, the moveable
elements of the British constitution: the language and
literature of England still lie under their influence, for
º people everywhere left the impression of a strong
and.
The history of the Anglo-Saxons as a people is without
a parallel in the annals of a nation. Their story during
five centuries of dominion in this land may be said to have
been unknown to generations of Englishmen; the monu-
ments of their history, the veritable records of their cus-
toms and manners, their polity, their laws, their insti-
tutions, their literature, whatever reveals the genius of a
people, lie entombed in their own contemporary manu-
scripts, and in another source which we long neglected—
in those ancient volumes of their northern brothers, who
had not been idle observers of the transactions of Eng-
land, which seems often to have been to them “the land
of promise.” The Anglo-Saxon manuscripts, those
authentic testimonies of the existence of the nation, were
long dispersed, neglected, even unintelligible, disfigured by
strange characters, and obscured by perplexing forms of
diction. The language as well as the writing had passed
away; all had fallen into desuetude; and no one suspected
The Anglo-Saxons. 39
that the history of a whole people so utterly cast into
forgetfulness could ever be written.
But the lost language and the forgotten characters
antiquity and religion seemed to have consecrated in the
eyes of the learned Archbishop MATTHEw PARKER, who
was the first to attempt their restitution by an innocent
stratagem. To his edition of Thomas Walsingham's
History in 1574, his Grace added the Life of Alfred by
this king's secretary, Asser, printed in the Saaron cha-
+acter; we are told, as “an invitation to English readers
to draw them in unawares to an acquaintance with the
handwriting of their ancestors.” “The invitation” was
somewhat awful, and whether the guests were delighted
or dismayed, let some Saxonist tell! SPELMAN, the great
legal archaeologist, was among the earliest who ventured
to search amid the Anglo-Saxon duskiness, at a time when
he knew not one who could even interpret the writing.
This great lawyer had been perplexed by many barbarous
names and terms which had become obsolete; they were
Saxon. He was driven to the study; and his “Glos-
sary” is too humble a title for that treasure of law and
antiquity, of history and of disquisition, which astonished
the learned world at home and abroad—while the unsold
copies during the life of the author checked the continua-
tion; so few was the number of students, and few they
must still be; yet the devotion of its votary was not the
less, for he had prepared the foundation of a Saxon pro-
fessorship. Spelman was the father; but he who enlarged
the inheritance of these Anglo-Saxon studies, appeared in
the learned SOMNER ; and though he lived through dis-
tracted times which loved not antiquity, the cell of the
antiquary was hallowed by the restituted lore. HICKES,
in his elaborate “Thesaurus,” displayed a literature which
had never been read, and which he himself had not yet
learned to read. These were giants; their successors were
dwarfs who could not add to their stores, and little heeded
their possessions. Few rarely succeeded in reading the
Saxon; and at that day, about the year 1700, no printer
could cast the types, which were deemed barbarous, or, as
the antiquary Rowe Mores expresses it, “unsightly to
* Bp. Nicholson's Eng. Lib.
30 Amenities of Literature.
politer eyes.” A lady—and she is not the only one who
has found pleasure in studying this ancient language of
our country—Mrs. ELSTOB, the niece of Hickes, patro-
nised by a celebrated Duchess of Portland, furnished
several versions; but the Saxon Homilies she had begun to
print, for some unknown cause, were suspended : the un-
published but printed sheets are preserved at our National
Library. These pursuits having long languished, seemed
wholly to disappear from our literature.
None of our historians from MILTON to HUME ever
referred to an original Saxon authority. They took their
representations from the writings of the monks; but the
true history of the Anglo-Saxons was not written in
Latin. It was not from monkish scribes, who recorded
public events in which the Saxons had no influence, that
the domestic history of a race dispossessed of all power
could be drawn, and far less would they record the polity
which had once constituted their lost independence. The
annalist of the monastery, flourishing under another dy-
nasty, placed in other times and amid other manners, was
estranged from any community of feeling with a people
who were then sunk into the helots of England. MILTON,
in his history of Britain, imagined that the transactions
of the Anglo-Saxon Heptarchy, or Octarchy, would be as
worthless “to chronicle as the wars of kites or crows
flocking and fighting in the air.” Thus a poet-historian
can veil by a brilliant metaphor the want of that know-
ledge which he contemns before he has acquired—this was
less pardonable in a philosopher; and when HUME ob-
served, perhaps with the eyes of Milton, that “he would
hasten through the obscure and uninteresting period of
Saxon Annals,” however cheering to his reader was the
calmness of his indolence, the philosopher, in truth, was
wholly unconscious that these “obscure and uninteresting
annals of the Anglo-Saxons” formed of themselves a com-
plete history, offering new results for his profound and
luminous speculations on the political state of man. Genius
is often obsequious to its predecessors, and we track
BURKE in the path of Hume ; and so late as in 1794, we
find our elegant antiquary, Bishop PERCY, lamenting the
scanty and defective annals of the Anglo-Saxons; naked

The Anglo-Saxons. 31
epitomes, bare of the slightest indications of the people
themselves. The history of the dwellers in our land had
hitherto yielded no traces of the customs and domestic
economy of the nation; all beyond some public events was
left in darkness and conjecture.
We find ELLIS and RITson still erring in the trackless
paths. All this national antiquity was wholly unsus-
pected by these zealous investigators. In this uncertain
condition stood the history of the Anglo-Saxons, when a
new light rose in the hemisphere, and revealed to the
English public a whole antiquity of so many centuries.
In 1805, for the first time, the story and the literature of
the Anglo-Saxons was given to the country. It was our
studious explorer, SHARON TURNER, who first opened
these untried ways in our national antiquities.*
Anglo-Saxon studies have been recently renovated, but
unexpected difficulties have started up. A language whose
syntax has not been regulated, whose dialects can never
be discriminated, and whose orthography and orthoepy
seem irrecoverable, yields faithless texts when confronted;
and treacherous must be the version if the construction
be too literal or too loose, or what happens sometimes,
ambiguous. Different anglicisers offer more than one
construction.*
It is now ascertained that the Anglo-Saxon manuscripts
are found in a most corrupt state. This fatality was
occasioned by the inattention or the unskilfulness of the
caligrapher, whose task must have required a learned pen.
* It is pleasing to record a noble instance of the enthusiasm of
learned research. “The leisure hours of sixteen years” furnished a
comprehensive history of which “two-thirds had not yet appeared.”—-
Mr. Turner's Preface.
+ A sufferer, moreover, fully assures us that some remain, which
“must baffle all conjecture ;” and another critic has judicially decreed
that, in every translation from the Anglo-Saxon that has fallen under
his notice, “there are blunders enough to satisfy the most unfriendly
critic.” “The Song of the Traveller,” in “The Exeter Book,” was
translated by CoNYBEARE ; a more accurate transcript was given by Mr.
KEMBLE in his edition of Beowulf; and now Mr. GUEST has furnished a
third, varying from both. We cannot be certain that a fourth may not
correct the three.
+ “Without exception P’ is the energetic cry of the translator of
Beowulf.
32 Amenities of Literature.
The Anglo-Saxon verse was regulated by a puerile system
of alliteration,” and the rhythm depended on accentua-
tion. Whenever the strokes, or dots, marking the accent
or the pauses are omitted, or misplaced, whole sentences
are thrown into confusion; compound words are disjoined,
and separate words are jumbled together. “Nouns have
been mistaken for verbs, and particles for nouns.”
These difficulties, arising from unskilful copyists, are
infinitely increased by the genius of the Anglo-Saxon
poets themselves. The tortuous inversion of their com-
position often leaves an ambiguous sense: their perpetual
periphrasis; their abrupt transitions; their pompous in-
flations, and their elliptical style; and not less their por-
tentous metaphorical nomenclature where a single object
must be recognised by twenty denominations, not always
appropriate, and too often clouded by the most remote
and dark analogiest—all these have perplexed the most
* The first line contains two words commencing with the same letter,
and the second line has its first word also beginning with that letter.
This difficulty seems insurmountable to a modern reader, for our
authority confesses that, “In the Saxon poetry, as it is preserved in
manuscripts, the first line often contains but one alliterating word, and,
from the negligence of the scribes, the alliteration is in many instances
entirely lost.”—Dissertation on Anglo-Saacon Poetry, Fraser's Maga-
zine, xii. 81.
+ A striking instance how long a universal error can last, arising
from one of these obscure conceits, is noticed by Mr. GRENVILLE PIGOTT
in his “Manual of Scandinavian Mythology.”
These warlike barbarians were long reproached that even their reli-
gion fomented an implacable hatred of their enemies; for in the future
state of their paradisiacal Walhalla, their deceased heroes rejoiced
at their celestial compotations, to drink owt of the skulls of their
enemies.
A passage in the death-song of Regner Lodbrog, literally translated,
is, “Soon shall we drink out of the curved trees of the head,” which
Bishop Percy translates, “Soon, in the splendid hall of Odin, we shall
drink beer out of the skulls of our enemies.” And thus also have the
Danes themselves, the Germans, and the French.
The original and extraordinary blunder lies with Olaus Wormius, the
great Danish antiquary, to whose authority poets and historians bowed
without looking further. Our grave Olaus was bewildered by this
monstrous style of the Scalds, and translated this drinking bout at
Walhalla according to his own fancy, —“Ex concavis crateribus cranio-
rum "-thus turning the “trees of the head" into a “skull,” and
the skull into a hollow cup. The Scald, however, was innocent of this
barbarous invention ; and, in his violent figures and disordered fancy,
merely alluded to the branching horns, growing as trees, from the
The Anglo-Saarons. 33
skilful judges, who have not only misinterpreted passages,
but have even failed to comprehend the very subject of
their original. This last circumstance has been remark-
ably shown in the fate of the heroic tale of BEowULF.
When it first fell to the hard lot of WANLEY, the libra-
rian of the Earl of Oxford, to describe “The Exploits of
Beowulf,” he imagined, or conjectured, that it contained
“the wars which this Dane waged against the reguli, or
petty kings of Sweden.” He probably decided on the
subject by confining his view to the opening page, where
a hero descends from his ship—but for a very different
purpose from a military expedition. Fortunately Wanley
lauded the manuscript as a “tractatus nobilissimus,” and an
“egregium exemplum” of the Anglo-Saxon poetry. Pro-
bably this manuscript remained unopened during a cen-
tury, when SHARON TURNER detected the error of Wanley,
but he himself misconceived the design of these romantic
“Exploits.” Yet this diligent historian carefully read and
analysed this heroic tale. CoNYBEARE, who had fallen
into the same erroneous conception, at length caught up a
clue in this labyrinth; and finally even a safer issue has
been found, though possibly not without some desperate
efforts, by the version of Mr. KEMBLE.
Even the learned in Saxon have not always been able
to distinguish this verse from prose; the verse unmarked
by rhyme being written continuously as prose.* A diction
turgid and obscure was apparent ; but in what consisted
the art of the poet, or the metrical system, long baffled
the most ingenious conjectures. RITSON, in his per-
plexity, described this poetry or metre as a “rhymeless
sort of poetry, a kind of bombast or insane prose, from
heads of animals—that is, the curved horns which formed their drink-
ing cups. If Olaus here, like Homer, nodded, something might be
urged for his defence; for who is bound to understand such remote, if
not absurd conceits 7 but I do not know that we could plead as fairly
for his own interpolating fancy of “drinking out of the skulls of their
€10 TºléS.
This grave blunder became universal, and a century passed away
without its being detected. It was so familiar, that Peter Pindar once
said that the booksellers, like the heroes of Walhalla, drank their wine
out of the skulls of authors.
* HICKEs and WANLEY mistook the “Ormulum,” a paraphrase of
Gospel history, as mere prose ; when in fact it is composed in long lines
of fifteen syllables without rhyme.
WOL. I. I)
34 Amenities of Literature.
which it is very difficult to be distinguished.” TYRWHIT
and ELLIs remained wholly at a loss to comprehend the
fabric of Anglo-Saxon poesy. HICKEs, in the fascination
of scholarship, had decided that it proceeded on a metri-
cal system of syllabic quantities, and surmounted all dif-
ficulties by submitting the rhythmical cadences of Gothic
poesy to the prosody of classical antiquity. This was a
literary hallucination, and a remarkable evidence of a
favourite position maintained merely by the force of
prepossession.
To what cause are we to ascribe the complex construc-
tion of the diction, and the multiplied intricacies of the
metres of the poetry of the Northmen P Bishop Percy
moticed, that the historian of the Runic poetry has
counted up among the ancient Icelandic poets one hundred
and thirty-six different metres. The Icelandic and the
Anglo-Saxon are cognate languages, being both dialects
of the ancient Gothic or Teutonic. The genius of the
Danish Scalds often displays in their Eddas * a sublime
creative power far out of the reach of the creeping and
narrow faculty of the Saxon, yet the same mechanism
regulated both ; the fixed recurrence of certain letters or
syllables which constitutes that perpetual alliteration,
which oftener than rhyme gratified the ear of barbaric
poesy, and a metaphorical phraseology or poetical vocabulary
appropriated by the bards, furnishing the adept with
phrases when he had not always ready any novel con-
ceptions. Shall we deem such arbitrary forms and such
artificial contrivances, the mere childishness of tastes, to
have been invented in the wintry years of these climates,
to amuse themselves in their stern solitudes; or rather,
may we not consider them as a mystery of the Craft, the
initiation of the Order P for by this scholarlike discipline
in multiplying difficulties the later bards separated them-
selves from those humbler minstrels who were left to their
own imartificial emotions.
* See “A Manual of Scandinavian Mythology,” by Mr. Grenville
Pigott. 1839. “The Northern Mythology” will be found here not
only skilfully arranged, but its wondrous myths and fables elucidated
by modern antiquaries. It is further illustrated by the translation of
the poem of CEhlenschläger, on “The Gods of the North ;” whose genius
has been transfused in the nervous simplicity of the present version.
The Anglo-Saarons. 35
Such prescribed formulae, and such a mechanism of
verse, must have tethered the imagination in a perpetual
circle; it was art which violated the free course of nature.
In this condition we often find even the poetry of the
Scandinavians. The famous death-song of Regner Lodbrog
seems little more than an iteration of the same ideas. An
Anglo-Saxon poem has the appearance of a collection of
short hints rather than poetical conceptions, cuiſt and
ejaculative: a paucity of objects yields but a paycity of
emotions, too vague for detail, too abrupt assion,
too poor in fancy to scatter the imagery of poesy. A The
Anglo-Saxon betrays its confined and mºnotonous genius:
we are in the first age of art, when pictures are but
monochromes of a single colour. Hence, in the whole
map of Anglo-Saxon poetry, it is difficult to discriminate
one writer from another.*
Their prose has taken a more matural character than
their verse. The writings of Alfred are a model of the
Anglo-Saxon style in its purest state; they have never
been collected, but it is said they would form three octavo
volumes; they consist chiefly of translations. \
The recent versions in literal prose by two erudite
Saxonists of two of the most remarkable Anglo-Saxon
poems, will enable an English readertoform a tolerablenotion
of the genius of this literature. CONY BEARE's poetical


* Such is the critical decision of CONYBEARE, a glorious enthusiast.
“Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry,” by John Josiah Conybeare.
1826
The late Mr. Price, the editor of Warton’s History, announced an
elaborate work on the Anglo-Saxon poetry. The verse of CoNYBEARE
and the disquisitions of PRICE would have completed this cycle of our
ancient poetry. But a fatal coincidence marked the destiny of these
eminent votaries of our poetic antiquity—both prematurely ceasing to
exist while occupied on their works. Cony BEARE has survived in his
brother, whose congenial tastes collected his remains ; PRICE, who had
long resided abroad, and there had silently stored up the whole wealth
of Northern literature, on his return home remained little known till
his valued edition of Warton announced to the literary world the acqui-
sitions they were about to receive. He has left a name behind him, but
not a work, for Price had no fraternal friend.
Since this chapter was written, Mr. Thos. Wright has published
“An Essay on the State of Literature and Learning under the Anglo-
Saxons.” It displays a comprehensive view taken by one to whose
zealous labours the lovers of our ancient literature are so deeply
indebted.
D 2
36 Amenities of Literature.
versions remained unrivalled. But if a literal version of
a primitive poetry soon ceases to be poetry, so likewise, if
the rude outlines are to be retouched, and a brilliant
colouring is to be borrowed, we are receiving Anglo-Saxon
poetry in the cadences of Milton and “the orient hues.”
of Gray.
37
CAEDMON AND MILTON.
CAEDMON, the Saxonists hail as “the Father of English
Song !”
The personal history of this bard is given in the taste
of the age. Caedmon was a herdsman who had never read
a single poem. Sitting in his “beership,” whenever the
circling harp, that “Wood of Joy!” as the Saxon glee-
men have called it, was offered to his hand, all unskilled,
the peasant, stung with shame, would hurry homewards.
Already past the middle of life, never had the peasant
dreamt that he was a sublime poet, or at least a poet
composing on sublime themes, incapable as he was even of
reading his own Saxon.
As once he lay slumbering in a stall, the apparition of a
strange man thus familiarly greeted him:-“Caedmon, sing
some song to me!” The cowherd modestly urged that he was
mute and unmusical:—“Nevertheless thou shalt sing !”
retorted the benignant apparition. “What shall I sing P”
rejoined the minstrel, who had never sung. “Sing the
origin of things l’” The peasant, amazed, found his tongue
loosened, and listened to his own voice; a voice which
was to reach posterity
He flew in the morning to the town-reeve to announce
a wonder, that he had become a poet in the course of a
single night. He recited the poem, which, however—for
we possess it—only proves that between sleeping and
waking eighteen lines of dreamy periphrasis may express
a single idea. Venerable Bede held this effusion as a pure
inspiration: the modern historian of the Anglo-Saxons
indulgently discovers three ideas: Conybeare, more critical,
acknowledges that “the eighteen lines expand the mere
proposition of ‘Let us praise God, the maker of heaven
and earth.’” But this was only the first attempt of a
great enterprise—it was a thing to be magnified for the
neighbouring monastery of Whitby, who gladly received
such a new brother.
For a poet who had never written a verse, it was only
necessary to open his vein: a poet who could not read
38 Amenities of Literature.
only required to be read to. The whole monkery came
down with the canonical books; they informed him of all
things, from “Genesis” down to “the doctrine of the
apostles.” “The good man listened,” as saith Venerable
Bede, “like a clean animal ruminating; and his song and
his verse were so winsome to hear, that his teachers wrote
them down, and learned from his mouth.” These teachers
could not have learned more than they themselves had
taught. We can only draw out of a cistern the waters
which we have poured into it. Every succeeding day,
however, swelled the Caedmonian Poem; assuredly they
wanted neither zeal nor hands—for the glory of the
monastery of Whitby
Such is a literary anecdote of the seventh century con-
veyed to us by ancient Bede. The dream of the appa-
rition’s inspiration of this unlettered monk was one more
miracle among many in honour of the monastery; and
it was to be told in the customary way, for never yet in
a holy brotherhood was found a recusant.
Even to this day we ourselves dream grotesque ad-
ventures; but in the days of monachism visions were not
merely a mere vivid and lengthened dream, a slight de-
lirium, for they usually announced something important.
A dream was a prognostic or a prelude. The garrulous
chroniclers, and saintly Bede himself, that primeval
gossiper, afford abundant evidence of such secret reve-
lations. Whenever some great act was designed, or some
awful secret was to be divulged, a dream announced it to
the world. Was a king to be converted to Christianity,
the people were enlightened by the vision which the
sovereign revealed to them; was a maiden to take the
vow of virginity, or a monastery to be built, an angelical
vision hovered, and sometimes specified the very spot.
Was a crime of blood to be divulged by some penitent
accessory, somebody had a dream, and the criminal has
stood convicted by the grave-side, which gave up the
fatal witness in his victim. In those ages of simplicity
and pious frauds, a dream was an admirable expedient by
which important events were carried on, and mystification
satisfactorily explained the incomprehensible.
The marvellous incident on which the history of Caedmon
revolves may only veil a fact which has nothing extraor-
Caedmon and Milton. 39
dinary in itself when freed from the invention which
disguises it. Legends like the present one were often
borrowed by one monastery from another, and an exact
counterpart of the dream and history of our Saxon bard,
in a similar personage and a like result, has been pointed
out as occurring in Gaul. A vernacular or popular ver-
sion of the Scriptures being required, it was supplied by a
peasant wholly ignorant of the poetic art till he had been
Žnstructed in a DREAM.”
Scriptural themes were common with the poets of the
monastery.f The present enterprise, judging from the
l • Sir Francis Palgrave's “Dissertation on Caedmon,” in the Archæo-
Oglal.
In another work this erudite antiquary explains the marvellous part
of Caedmon's history by “natural causes;” and such a principle of in-
vestigation is truly philosophical; but we must not look over imposture
in the search for “natural causes.” “Caedmon's inability to perform
his task,” observes our learned expositor, “appears to have arisen
rather from the want of musical knowledge than from his dulness, and
therefore it is quite possible that, allowing for some little exaggeration,
his poetical talents may have been suddenly developed in the manner
described.”—“Hist. of England,” i. 162. Thus the Saxon Milton rose
in one memorable night after a whole life passed without the poet once
surmising himself to be poetical; and thus, for we consent not to yield
up a single point in the narrative of “the Dream,” appeared the
patronising apparition and the exhilarating dialogue. A lingering lover
of the Mediæval genius can perceive nothing more in a circumstantial
legend than “a little exaggeration.” I seem to hear the shrill
attenuated tones of Ritson, in his usual idiomatic diction, screaming,
“It is a Lie and an Impostwre of the stinking Monks ſ”
The Wiscount de Chateaubriand is infinitely more amusing than the
plodders in the “weary ways of antiquity.” The mystical tale of the
Saxon monk is dashed into a glittering foam of enigmatical brevity.
“Caedmon révait en vers et composait des poèmes en dormant : Poésie
est Songe.” And thus dreams may be expounded by dreams —“Essai
Sur la Litétrature Anglaise,” i. 55.
+ “The Six Days of the Creation * offered a subject for an heroic
poem to Dracontius, a Spanish monk, in the fifth century, and who
was censured for neglecting to honour the seventh by a description of
the Sabbath of the Divine repose. It is preserved in “Bib. Patrum,”
vol. viii., and has been published with notes. Genesis and Exodus—
the fall of Adam—the Deluge—and the passage of the Red Sea, were
themes which invited the sacred effusions of Avitus, the Archbishop of
Vienne, who flourished in the sixth century. His writings were col-
lected by Père Sirmond. This Archbishop attacked the Arians, but
we have only fragments of these polemical pamphlets; as these were
highly orthodox, what is wanting occasioned regrets in a former day.
Other histories in Latin verse drawn from the Old Testament are recorded.
40 Amenities of Literature.
variety of its fragments from both Testaments and from
the Apocrypha, in its complete state would have formed
a chronological poem of the main incidents of the Scrip-
tures in the vernacular Saxon. This was a burden of
magnitude which no single shoulder could have steadily
carried, and probably was supported by several besides
“ the Dreamer.” Critical Saxonists, indeed, have detected
a variation in the style, and great inequalities in the work;
such discordances indicate that the paraphrase was occa-
sionally resumed by some successor, as idling monks at a
later period were often the continuators of voluminous
romances. I would class the Caedmonian poem among
the many attempts of the monachal genius to familiarize
the people with the miraculous and the religious narratives
in the Scriptures, by a paraphrase in the vernacular idiom.
The poem may be deemed as equivocal as the poet ; the
text has been impeached; interpolations and omissions are
acknowledged by the learned in Saxon lore. The poem is
said to have been written in the seventh century, and the
earliest manuscript we possess is of the tenth, suffering in
that course of time all the corruptions or variations of the
scribes, while the ruder northern dialect has been changed
into the more polished southern. If we may confide in a
learned conjecture, it may happen that Caedmon is no
name at all, but merely a word or a phrase; and thus the
entity of the Dreamer of the Monastery of Whitby may
vanish in the wind of two Chaldaic syllables lº Be this
as it may, for us the poem is an entity, whatever becomes
of the pretended Dreamer.
It has become an arduous inquiry whether MILTON has
not drawn largely from the obscurity of this monkish
Ennius P “In reading Caedmon,” says SHARON TURNER,
“we are reminded of Milton—of a ‘Paradise Lost’ in rude
miniature.” Conybeare advances, “the pride, rebellion,
* Among our ancestors all proper names were significant ; and when
they are not, we have the strongest presumptive reasons for suspecting
that the name has been borrowed from some other tongue. The piety
of many monks in their pilgrimages in the Holy Land would induce
them to acquire some knowledge of the Hebrew or even the Chaldee—
Bede read Hebrew. A scholar who has justly observed this, somewhat
cabalistically has discovered that “the initial word of Genesis in
Chaldee,” and printed in Hebraic characters TD inn, exhibits the pre-
Sumed name of the Saxon monk.
Caedmon and Milton. 4l
and punishments of Satan and his princes have a resem-
blance to Milton so remarkable that much of this portion
might be almost literally translated by a cento of lines
Jrom the great poet.”* A recent Saxonist, in noticing
“the creation of Caedmon as beautiful,” adds, “it is still
more interesting from its singular correspondence even in
eapression with “Paradise Lost.”
The ancient, as well as the modern, of these scriptural
poets has adopted a narrative which is not found in the
Scriptures. The rebellion of Satan before the creation of
man, and his precipitation with the apostate angels into a
dungeon-gulf of flame, and ice, and darkness, though an
incident familiar to us as a gospel text, remains nothing
more than a legend unhallowed by sacred writ.
Where are we, then, to seek for the origin of a notion
universal throughout Christendom P I long imagined
that this revolt in heaven had been one of the traditions
hammered in the old rabbinical forge; and in the Tal-
mudical lore there are tales of the fallen angels; but I am
assured by a learned professor in these studies, that the
Talmud contains no narrative of “the Rebellion of Satan.”
The Hebrews, in their sojourn in Babylon, had imbibed
many Chaldean fables, and some fanciful inventions. At
this obscure period did this singular episode in sacred
history steal into their popular creed P Did it issue from
that awful cradle of monstrous imaginings, of demons, of
spirits, and of terrifying deities, Persia and India? In
the Brahminical Shasters we find a rebellion of the angels
before the creation, and their precipitation from light into
darkness; their restoration by the clemency of the Creator,
however, occurs after their probationary state, during
millions of years in their metamorphoses on earth. But
this seems only the veil of an allegory designed to explain
their dark doctrine of the metempsychosis. The rebellion
of the angels, as we have been taught it, is associated with
* This sort of cento seems to have been a favourite fancy with this
masterly versifier; for of another Anglo-Saxon bard who composed on
warlike subjects, this critic says—“If the names of Patroclus and
Menelaus were substituted for Byrthnoth and Godric, some of the scenes
might be almost literally translated into a cento of lines from Homer.”
Homer's claim to originality, however, is secure from any critical colla-
tion with the old Saxon monk.
42 Amenities of Literature.
their everlasting chains and eternal fire; how the legend
became universally received may baffle inquiry.*
But the coincidence of the Caedmonian with the Mil-
tonian poem in having adopted the same peculiar subject
of the revolt of Satan and the expulsion of the angels, is
not the most remarkable one in the two works. The
same awful narrative is pursued, and we are startled at
the opening of the Pandemonium by discovering the same
scene and the same actors. When we scrutinise into
minuter parts, we are occasionally struck by some extra-
ordinary similarities.
Caedmon, to convey a notion of the ejection from heaven
to hell, tells that “the Fiend, with all his comrades, fell
from heaven above, through as long as three nights and
days.” . Milton awfully describes Satan “confounded,
though immortal,” rolling in the fiery gulf—
Nine times the Space that measures day and night
To mortal men.
Caedmon describes the Deity having cast the evil angel
into that “House of perdition, down on that new bed;
after, gave him a name that the highest (of the devils
which they had now become) should be called Satan
thenceforwards.” Milton has preserved the same notice
of the origin of the name, thus—
To whom the Arch-Enemy,
And thence in heaven called Satan—
Satan in Hebrew signifying “the Enemy,” or “the
Adversary.”
The harangue of Satan to his legions by the Saxon
monk cannot fail to remind us of the first grand scene
* Notwithstanding the information with which I was favoured, I
cannot divest myself of the notion that “the rebellion of the angels”
must be more explicitly described among the Jewish traditions than yet
appears; because we find allusions to it in two of the apostolical writ-
ings. In the epistle of Jude, ver. 6: “The angels which kept not
their first estate, but left their own habitation, He hath reserved in
everlasting chains under darkness unto the judgment of the great day.”
And in Peter, ii. 4: “God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast
them down to Hell, and delivered them unto chains of darkness to be
reserved unto judgment.” These texts have admitted of some dispute;
but it seems, however, probable that the apostles, just released from
their Jewish bondage, had not emancipated themselves from the re-
ceived Hebraical doctrines.
Caedmon and Milton. 43
in the “Paradise Lost,” however these creations of the
two poets be distinct. “The swart hell—a land void of
light, and full of flame,” is like Milton's—
yet from these flames
No light, but rather darkness visible.
The locality is not unlike, “There they have at even,
immeasurably long, each of all the fiends a renewal of
fire, with sulphur charged; but cometh ere dawn the
eastern wind frost, bitter-cold, ever fire or dart.” This
torment we find in the hell of Milton—
The bitter change
Of fierce extremes, extremes by change more fierce,
From beds of raging fire to starve in ice.
The parching air
Burns froze, and cold performs the effect of fire.*
The “Inferno” of Dante has also “its eternal darkness for
the dwellers in fierce heat and in ice.” # It is evident
that the Saxon, the Italian, and the Briton had drawn
from the same source. The Satan of Caedmon in “the
torture-house” is represented as in “the dungeon of per-
dition.” He lies in chains, his feet bound, his hands
manacled, his neck fastened by iron bonds; Satan and his
crew the monk has degraded into Saxon convicts. Milton
indeed has his
Adamantine chains and penal fire,
and
A dungeon horrible on all sides round.
But as Satan was to be the great actor, Milton was soon
compelled to find some excuse for freeing the evil spirit
from the chains which Heaven had forged, and this he
does—
Chain’d on the burning lake, nor ever thence
Had ris'm or heaved his head, but that the will
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven
Left him at large to his own dark designs,
That with reiterated crimes he might
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought
Evil to others.
The Saxon monk had not the dexterity to elude the
difficult position in which the arch-fiend was for ever fixed;
* Paradise Lost, ii. 594. + Inferno, Canto iii. 5.
44 Amenities of Literature.
he was indissolubly chained, and yet much was required
to be done. It is not, therefore, Satan himself who goes
on the subdolous design of wreaking his revenge on the
innocent pair in Paradise; for this he despatches one of
his associates, who is thus described: “Prompt in arms,
he had a crafty soul; this chief set his helmet on his
head; he many speeches knew of guileful words: wheeled
up from thence, he departed through the doors of hell.”
We are reminded of
The infernal doors, that on their hinges grate
Harsh thunder.
The emissary of Satan in Caedmon had “a strong mind,
lion-like in air, in hostile mood he dashed the fire aside with
a fiend's power.”* That demon flings aside the flames
of hell with the bravery of his sovereign, as we see in
Milton—
Forthwith upright he rears from off the pool
His mighty stature ; on each hand the flames
Driv'n backward, slope their pointing spires, and roll’d
In billows, leave in the midst a horrid vale. ‘f
Caedmon thus represents Satan :-‘Then spoke the
haughty king, who of angels erst was brightest, fairest in
heaven—beloved of his master—so beauteous was his form,
he was like to the light stars.”
Milton’s conception of the form of Satan is the same.
His form had not yet lost
All her original brightness, nor appear'd
Less than archangel ruin'd.:
And,
His countenance as the morning star that guides
The starry flock, allured them. §
Literary curiosity may be justly excited to account for
these apparent resemblances, and to learn whether simi-
larity and coincidence necessarily prove identity and
imitation; and whether, finally, Caedmon was ever known
to Milton.
The Caedmonian manuscript is as peculiar in its his-
tory as its subject. This poem, which we are told fixed
* Caedmon, p. 29. + Paradise Lost, i. 221.
† Paradise Lost, i. 592. § Paradise Lost, v. 798.
Caedmon and Milton. 45
the attention of our ancestors “from the sixth to the
twelfth century,” and the genius of whose writer was
“stamped deeply and lastingly upon the literature of our
country,” had wholly disappeared from any visible ex-
istence. . It was accidentally discovered only in a single
manuscript, the gift of Archbishop Usher to the learned
Francis JUNIUs. During thirty years of this eminent
scholar's residence in England, including his occasional
visits to Holland and Friesland, to recover, by the study
of the Friesic living dialect, the extinct Anglo-Saxon, he
devoted his protracted life to the investigation of the
origin of the Gothic dialects. A Saxon poem, consider-
able for its size and for its theme, in a genuine manuscript,
was for our northern student a most precious acquisition;
and that this solitary manuscript should not be liable to
accidents, Junius printed the original at Amsterdam in
1655, unaccompanied by any translation or by any notes.
We must now have recourse to a few dates.
Milton had fallen blind in 1654. The poet began
“Paradise Lost” about 1658; the composition occupied
three years, but the publication was delayed till 1667.
If Milton had any knowledge of Caedmon, it could only
have been in the solitary and treasured manuscript of
Junius. To have granted even the loan of the only
original the world possessed, we may surmise that Junius
would not have slept through all the nights of its ab-
sence. And if the Saxon manuscript was ever in the
hands of Milton, could our poet have read it P
We have every reason to believe that Milton did not
read Saxon. At that day who did? There were not
“ten men to save the city.” In Milton’s “History of
England,” a loose and solitary reference to the Saxon
Chronicle, then untranslated, was probably found ready at
hand; for all his Saxon annals are drawn from the Latin
monkish authorities: and in that wonderful list of one
hundred dramatic subjects which the poet had set down
for the future themes of his muse, there are many on
Saxon stories; but all the references are to Speed and
Hollinshed. The nephew of the poet has enumerated all
the languages in which Milton was conversant – “the
* Guest’s “History of English Rhythms,” ii. 23.
46 Amenities of Literature.
Hebrew, (and I think the Syriac,) the Greek, the Latin,
the Italian, the Spanish, and French.” We find no allu-
sion to any of the northern tongues, which that votary of
classical antiquity and of Ausonian melody and fancy
would deem—can we doubt it P-dissonant and barbarous.
The Northern Scalds were yet as little known as our own
Saxons. A recent discovery that Milton once was de-
sirous of reading Dutch may possibly be alleged by the
Saxonists as an approach to the study of the Saxon; but
at that time Milton was in office as “the Secretary for
Foreign Tongues,” and in a busy intercourse with the
Hollanders.”
“Secretary Milton” at that moment was probably
anxious to con the phrases of a Dutch state-paper, to
scrutinise into the temper of their style. Had Milton
ever acquired the Dutch idiom for literary purposes, to
study Wondel, the Batavian Shakspeare, f from whom some
* This curious literary information has been disclosed by RogFR
WILLIAMS, the founder of the State of Rhode Island, who was despatched
to England in 1651, to obtain the repeal of a charter granted to Mr.
Coddington. I give this remarkable passage in the words of this
Anglo-American :-‘‘It pleased the Lord to call me for some time and
with some persons to practise the Hebrew, the Greek, Latin, French
and Dutch. The secretary of the council, Mr. Milton, for my Dutch
I read him, read me many more languages. Grammar rules begin to
be esteemed a tyranny. I taught two young gentlemen, a parliament-
man's sons, as we teach our children English—by words, phrases, and
constant talk, &c.” This vague &c. stands so in the original, and
leaves his “wondrous tale half-told.” “Memoirs of Roger Williams,
the Founder of the State of Rhode Island, by James D. Knowles,
Professor of Pastoral Duties in the Newton Theological Institution,”
1834, p. 264.
I am indebted for this curious notice to the prompt kindness of my
most excellent friend ROBERT SOUTHEY ; a name long dear to the public
as it will be to posterity; an author, the accuracy of whose knowledge
does not yield to its extent.
+ Mr. SouTHEY observes, in a letter now before me, that “Won DEL’s
“Lucifer’ was published in 1654. His ‘Samson,’ the same subject as
the “Agonistes,’ 1661. His ‘Adam,’ 1664. CAEDMON, ANDREINI, and
WonDEL, each or all, may have led Milton to consider the subject of
his ‘Paradise Lost.” But Wondel is the one who is most likely to
have impressed him. Neither the Dutch nor the language were re-
garded with disrespect in those days. Wondel was the greatest writer
of that language, and the Lucifer is esteemed the best of his trage-
dies. Milton alone excepted, he was probably the greatest poet then
living.”
This critical note furnishes curious dates. Milton was blind when
Caedmon and Milton. 47
foreigners imagine our poet might have drawn his
“Lucifer,” it could not have escaped the nephew in the
enumeration of his uncle's philological acquirements.
But even to read Dutch was not to read a Saxon manu-
script, whose strange characters, uncouth abbreviations,
and difficult constructions, are only mastered by long
practice. To have known anything about the solitary
Caedmon, the poet must have been wholly indebted to
the friendly offices of its guardian; a personal intimacy
which does not appear. The improbability that this
scholar translated the manuscript phrase by phrase is
nearly as great as the supposition that the poet could
have retained ideas and expressions to be reproduced in
that epic poem, which was not commenced till several
years after.
The personal habits of Junius were somewhat peculiar;
to his last days he was unrelentingly busied in pursuits of
philology, of which he has left to the Bodleian such
monuments of his gigantic industry. Junius was such a
rigid economist of time, that every hour was allotted to
its separate work; each day was the repetition of the
former, and on a system he avoided all visitors. Such a
man could not have submitted to the reckless loss of many
a golden day, in hammering at the obscure sense of the
Saxon monk, which the critics find by his own printed
text he could not always master; nor is it more likely
that Milton himself could have sustained his poetic ex-
citement through the tedious progress of a verbal or
cursory paraphrase of Scripture history by this Gothic
bard. At that day even Junius could not have discovered
those “elastic rhythms,” which solicit the ear of a more
modern Saxon scholar in his studies of Caedmon,” but
the Lucifer was published; and there is so much of the personal feel-
ings and condition of the poet himself in his “Samson Agonistes,” that
it is probable little or no resemblance could be traced in the Hollander.
The “Adam” of Milton, and the whole “Paradise” itself, was com-
pleted in 1661. As for Caedmon, I submit the present chapter to Mr.
Southey's decision.
No great genius appears to have made such free and wise use of his
reading as Milton has done, and which has led in several instances to
an accusation of what some might term plagiarism. We are not certain
that Milton, when not yet blind, may not have read some of those
obscure modern Latin poets whom Lauder scented out.
* Guest’s “History of English Rhythms.”
48 Amenities of Literature.
which we entirely owe to the skill, and punctuation, and
accentuation of the recent editor, Mr. Thorpe.
Be it also observed, that Milton published his “Para-
dise Lost” in the lifetime of Junius, the only judge who
could have convicted the bard who had daringly proposed
to pursue
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme—
of concealing what he had silently appropriated.
There are so many probabilities against the single possi-
bility of Milton having had any knowledge of Caedmon,
that we must decide by the numerical force of our own
suggestions.
The startling similarities which have led away critical
judgments, if calmly scrutinised, may be found to be
those apparent resemblances or coincidences which poets
drawing from the same source would fall into. There
is a French mystery of “The Conception,” where the
scene is hell; Lucifer appeals to its inmates in a long
address. This Satan of “The Conception” strikingly re-
minds us of the Prince of Darkness of Milton, and
indeed has many creative touches; and had it been
written after the work of Milton, it might have seemed a
parody.*
Similarity and coincidence do not necessarily prove
identity and imitation. Nor is the singular theme of
“the Rebellion of the Angels” peculiar to either poet,
since those who never heard of the Saxon monk have con-
structed whole poems and dramas on the celestial revolt.f
We may be little interested to learn, among all the
dubious inquiries of “the origin of ‘Paradise Lost,’”
whether a vast poem, the most elaborate in its parts, and
the most perfect in its completion—a work, in the words
of the great artist—
who knows how long
Before had been contriving 2—P. L., ix. 138.
* This speech, in which Satan appeals to and characterises his Infer-
nals, may be read in Parfait's analysis of the Mystery.—Hist. du
Théâtre François, i. 79.
+ L’Angeleida of WALVASONE, the Adamo of ANDREINI, and others.
—Hayley’s Conjectures on the Origin of “Paradise Lost.” See also
Tiraboschi, and Ginguéné.
Caedmon and Milton. 49
was or could be derived from any obscure source. The
interval between excellence and mediocrity removes all
connexion; it is that between incurable impotence and
genial creation. A great poet can never be essentially
indebted even to his prototype.
If we may still be interested in watching the primitive
vigour of the self-taught, compared with the intellectual
ideal of the poetical character, we must not allow our-
selves, as might be shown in one of the critics of the Saxon
school, to mistake nature in her first poverty, bare, meagre,
squalid, for the moulded nudity of the Graces. The nature
of Ennius was no more the nature of Virgil than the nature
of Caedmon was that of Milton, for what is obvious and
familiar is the reverse of the beautiful and the sublime.
We have seen the ideal being,
Whose stature reach'd the sky, and on his crest
Sat Horror plumed—
by the Saxon monk sunk down to a Saxon convict,
“fastened by the neck, his hands manacled, and his feet
bound.”
Caedmon represents Eve, after having plucked the fruit,
hastening to Adam with the apples, L
Some in her hands she bare,
Some in her bosom lay,
Of the unblest fruit.
However natural or downright may be this specification,
it is what could not have occurred with “the bosom '' of
our naked mother of mankind, and the artistical concep-
tion eluded the difficulty of carrying these apples—
from the tree returning, in her hand
A bough of fairest fruit.—ix. 850.
In Caedmon it costs Eve a long day to persuade the
sturdy Adam, an honest Saxon, to “the dark deed;” and
her prudential argument that “it were best to obey the
pretended messenger of the Lord than risk his aversion,”
however natural, is very crafty for so young a sinner. In
Milton we find the Ideal, and before Eve speaks one may
be certain of Adam’s fall—for
in her face excuse
Came prologue, and apology too prompt,
Which with bland words at will, she thus address'd.
"WOL. I. E
50 Amenities of Literature.
A description too metaphysical for the meagre invention of
the old Saxon monkl
We dare not place “the Milton of our forefathers” by
the side of the only Milton whom the world will recognise.
We would not compare our Saxon poetry to Saxon art, for
that was too deplorable; but, to place Caedmon in a parallel
with Milton, which Plutarch might have done, for he was
not very nice in his resemblances, we might as well com-
pare the formless forms and the puerile inventions of the
rude Saxon artist, profusely exhibited in the drawings of
the original manuscript of Caedmon,” with the noble con-
ceptions and the immortal designs of the Sistine Chapel.
* These singular attempts at art may be inspected in above fifty
plates, in the Archaeologia, vol. xx. We may rejoice at their preserva-
tion, for art, even in the attempts of its children, may excite ideas
which might not else have occurred to us.
51
BEOWULF; THE HERO-LIFE.
THE Anglo-Saxon poetical narrative of “The Exploits of
Beowulf” forms a striking contrast with the chronological
paraphrase of Caedmon. Its genuine antiquity unques-
tionably renders it a singular curiosity; but it derives an
additional interest from its representation of the primitive
simplicity of a Homeric period—the infancy of customs
and manners and emotions of that Hero-life, which the
Homeric poems first painted for mankind:—that Hero-
life of which Macpherson in his Ossian caught but imper-
fect conceptions from the fragments he may have collected,
while he metamorphosed his ideal Celtic heroes into those
of the sentimental romance of another age and another
Iſa,Ce,
The northern hordes under their petty chieftains, cast
into a parallel position with those princes of Greece whose
realms were provinces, and whose people were tribes, often
resembled them in the like circumstances, the like charac-
ters, and the like manners. Such were those kinglings
who could possess themselves of a territory in a single in-
cursion, and whose younger brothers, stealing out of their
lone bays, extended their dominion as “Sea-Kings” on the
illimitable ocean.* The war-ship and the mead-hall bring
us back to that early era of society, when great men knew
only to be heroes, flattered by their bards, whose songs are
ever the echoes of their age and their patrons.
We discover these heroes, Danes or Angles, as we find
them in the Homeric period, audacious with the self-
confidence of their bodily prowess; vaunting, and talkative
of their sires and of themselves; the son ever known by
denoting the father, and the father by his marriage
alliance—that primitive mode of recognition, at a period
when, amid the perpetual conflicts of rival chieftains,
scarcely any but relations could be friends; the family bond
* See the curious delineation of the Vikings of the North, in Turner's
“Hist, of the Anglo-Saxons,” i, 456, third edition.
E 2
52 Amenities of Literature,
was a sure claim to protection. Like the Homeric heroes,
they were as unrelenting in their hatreds as indissoluble in
their partisanship; suspicious of the stranger, but welcom-
ing the guest; we find them rapacious, for plunder was
their treasure, and prodigal in their distributions of their
golden armlets and weighed silver, for their egotism was
as boundless as their violence. Yet pride and glory fer-
mented the coarse leaven of these mighty marauders, who
were even chivalric ere chivalry rose into an order. The
religion of these ages was wild as their morality; few
heroes but bore some relationship to Woden ; and even in
their rude paganised Christianity, some mythological name
cast its lustre in their genealogies. In the uncritical
chronicles of the middle ages it is not always evident
whether the mortal was not a divinity. Their mythic
legends have thrown confusion into their national annals,
often accepted by historians as authentic records.” But
if antiquaries still wander among shadows, the poet cannot
err. BEowulf may be a god or a nonentity, but the
poem which records his exploits must at least be true, true
in the manners it paints and the emotions which the poet
reveals—the emotions of his contemporaries.
* Mr. KEMBLE, the translator of BEOwu LF, has extricated himself
out of an extraordinary dilemma. The first volume, which exhibits
the Anglo-Saxon text, furnished in the preface, with an elaborate
abundance, all the historical elucidations of his unknown hero. Sub-
sequently when the second volume appeared, which contains the trans-
lation, it is preceded by “A PostScript to the Preface,’’ far more im-
portant. Here, with the graceful repentance of precipitate youth, he
moans over the past, and warns the reader of “the postscript to cut
away the preface root and branch,” for all that he had published was
delusion particularly “all that part of my preface which assigns dates
to one prince or another, I declare to be null and void ſ” The result
of all this scholar's painful researches is, that Mr. Kemble is left in
darkness with Beowulf in his hand ; an ambiguous being, whom the
legend creates with supernatural energies, and history labours to reduce
to mortal dimensions.
The fault is hardly that of our honest Anglo-Saxon, as trustful of the
Danes as his forefathers were heretofore. It is these, our old masters,
who, with Count Suhm, the voluminous annalist of Denmark, at their
head, have “treated mythic and traditional matters as ascertained
history. It is the old story of Minos, Lycurgus, or Numa, furbished
up for us in the North.” What a delightful phantasmagoria comes out
while we remain in darkness | But a Danish Niebuhr may yet illumi-
nate the whole theatre of this Pantheon.
Beowulf'; the Hero-Life. 53
BEowULF,” a chieftain of the Western Danes, was the
Achilles of the North. We first view him with his fol-
lowers landing on the shores of a Danish kingling. A
single ship with an armed company, in those predatory
days, could alarm a whole realm. The petty independent
provinces of Greece afford a parallel; for Thucydides has
marked this period in society, when plunder well fought
for was honoured as an heroic enterprise. When a vessel
touched on a strange shore, the adventurers were ques-
tioned “whether they were thieves?” a designation
which the inquirers did not intend as a term of reproach,
nor was it scorned by the valiant;f for the spoliation of
foreigners, at a time when the law of nations had no
existence, seemed no disgrace, while it carried with it
something of glory, when the chieftain's sword maintained
the swarm of his followers, or acquired for himself an
extended dominion.
Beowulf was a mailed knight, and his gilded ensign
hung like a meteor in the air, and none knew the fate it
portended. The warder of the coast, for in those days
many a warder kept “ocean-watch” on the sea-cliffs, takes
horse, and hastens to the invader; fearlessly he asks,
“Whence, and what are ye? Soonest were best to give
me answer.”
The hero had come not to seek feud, nor to provoke
insult, but with the free offering of his own life to relieve
the sovereign of the Eastern Danes, whose thanes, for
twelve years, had vainly perished, struggling with a mys-
terious being—one of the accursed progeny of Cain—a foul
* These Teutonic heroes were frequently denominated by the names
of animals, which they sometimes emulated : thus, the hero exulting
in bone and nerve was known as “the Bear;” the more insatiable, as
“the Wolf;” and “the Wild Deer” is the common appellative of a
warrior. The term “Deer” was the generic name for animal, and not
then restricted to its present particular designation.
“Rats and Mice, and such SMALL DEER,”
baffled our Shakspearean commentators, who rarely looked to the great
source of the English language—the Anglo-Saxon, and, in their per-
plexity, proposed to satisfy the modern reader by a botch of their own
—and read geer or cheer. Percy discovered in the old metrical romance
of “Sir Bevis of Southampton,” the very distich which Edgar had paro-
died.—Warton, iii. 83.
+ Thucydides, Lib. i.
54 Amenities of Literature.
and solitary creature of the morass and the marsh. In
the dead of the night this enemy of man, envious of glory
and abhorrent of pleasure, glided into the great hall of
state and revelry, raging athirst for the blocd of the brave
there reposing in slumber. The tale had spread in songs
through all Gothland. This life-devourer, who comes
veiled in a mist from the marshes, may be some mythic
being ; but though monstrous, it does little more than
play the part of the Polyphemus of antiquity and the Ogre
of modern fairyism.
In the timber-palace chambers were but small and few,
and the guests of the petty sovereign slept in the one great
hall, under whose echoing roof the Witenagemot assembled,
and the royal banquet was held; there each man had his
“bed and bolster” laid out, with his shield at his head,
and his helmet, breastplate, and spear placed on a rack
beside him—“ at all times ready for combat both in house
and field.”
This scene is truly Homeric ; and thus we find in the
early state of Greece, for the historian records this con-
tinual wearing of armour, like the barbarians, because
“their houses were unfenced, and travelling was unsafe.”
The watchman of the seas leaves not the coast, duteous
in his lonely cares; while Beowulf, with his companions,
marches onwards. They came to where the streets were
paved; an indication in that age of a regal residence. The
iron rings in their mailed coats rang as they trod in their
“terrible armour.” They reach the king's house; they
hang up their shields against the lofty wall. They seat
themselves on a bench, placing in a circle their mailed
coats, their bucklers, and their javelins. This warlike
array called forth an Ulysses, “ famed for war and
wisdom;” they parley; the thane hastens to announce
the warlike but the friendly visitor; and the hero, so famed
for valour, yet would not obtrude his person, standing
behind the thane, “for he knew the rule of ceremony.”
The prince of the East Danes joyfully exclaims, that “he
had known Beowulf when a child; he remembered the
name of his father, who married the only daughter of
Hrethel the Goth. It is said that he has the strength of
* Thucydides.
Beowulf; the Hero-Life. 55
thirty men in the grip of his hand. God only could have
sent him.”
Beowulf, he whose beautiful ship had come over “the
swan-path,” may now peacefully show himself in his war-
like array. Beowulf stood upon the dais; his “sark of
netted mail” glittered where the armourer's skill had
wrought around the war-net. Here we discover the orna-
mental artist as in the Homeric period. He found the
prince of the East Danes, “old and bald” like Priam,
seated among his earls. Our hero, whom we have observed
so decorous in “his rule of ceremony,” now launches forth
in the commendation of his own prowess.
He who had come to vanquish a fiend exulted not less
in a swimming-match in the seas, “when the waves were
boiling with the fury of winter,” during seven whole days
and nights, combating with the walruses.
The exploits of Beowulf are of a supernatural cast; and
this circumstance has bewildered his translator amid
mythic allusions, and thus the hero sinks into the incar-
nation of a Saxon idol, a protector of the human race.
It is difficult to decide whether the marvellous incidents
be mythical, or merely exaggerations of the northern
poetic faculty. We, however, learn by these, that cor-
poreal energies and an indomitable spirit were the glories
of the hero-life; and the outbreaks of their self-complacency
resulted from their own convictions, after many a fierce
trial.
Such an heroic race we deem barbarous; but what are
the nobler spirits of all times but the creatures of their
age P who, however favoured by circumstances, can only
do that which is practicable in the condition of society.
Henforth, the son of Eglaff, sate at the feet of the king;
jealousy stirred in his breast at the prowess of “the proud
seafarer.” This cynical minister of the king ridicules his
youthful exploits, and sarcastically assured the hero, that
“he has come to a worse matter now, should he dare to
pass the space of one night with the fiend.” This per-
sonage is the Thersites of our northern Homer—
With witty malice studious to defame,
Scorn all his joy, and laughter all his aim.
And like Thersites, the son of Eglaff receives a blasting
56 Amenities of Literature.
reproach:—“I tell thee, son of Eglaff, drunken with
mead, that I have greater strength upon the sea than any
other man. We two (he alludes to his competitor), when
we were but boys, with our naked swords in our hands,
where the waves were fiercest, warred with the walruses.
The whale-fish dragged me to the bottom of the sea, grim
in his gripe; the mighty sea-beast received the war-rush
through my hand. The sea became calm, so that I
beheld the ocean promontories, as the light broke from the
east. Never since have the sea-sailors been hindered of
their way; never have I heard of a harder battle by night
under the concave of heaven, nor of a man more wretched
on the ocean-streams. Of such ambushes and fervour of
swords I have not heard aught of thee, else had the fiend I
come to vanquish never accomplished such horrors against
thy prince. I boast not, therefore, son of Eglaff! but
never have Islaughtered those of my kin, for which hast
thou incurred damnation, though thy wit be good.”
In this state of imperfect civilization, we discover
already a right conception of the female character. At
the banquet the queen appears; she greeted the young
Goth, bearing in her own hand the bright sweet liquor in
the twisted mead-cup. She went among the young and
the old mindful of their races; the free-born queen then
sate beside the monarch. There was laughter of heroes.
A bard sung serene on “the origin of things,” as Iopas
sang at the court of Dido, and Demodocus at that of
Alcinous. The same bard again excites joy in the hall by
some warlike tale. Never was banquet without poet in
the Homeric times.
Here our task ends, which was not to analyse the tale
of Beowulf, but solely to exhibit the manners of a prime-
val epoch in society. The whole romance, though but
short, bears another striking feature of the mighty min-
strel of antiquity; it is far more dramatic than narrative,
for the characters discover themselves more by dialogue
than by action.
The literary history of this Anglo-Saxon metrical ro-
mance is too remarkable to be omitted. It not only cast a
new light on a disputed object in our own literary his-
tory, but awoke the patriotism of a foreign nation. Beo-
wulf had shared the fate of Caedmon, being preserved only
Beowulf; the Hero-Life. 57
in a single manuscript in the Cottonian Library, where it
escaped from the destructive fire of 1731, not, however,
without injury. In 1705, Wanley had attempted to de-
scribe it, but he did not surmount the difficulty. Our
literary antiquaries, with Ritson for their leader, stub-
bornly asserted that the Anglo-Saxons had no metrical
romance, as they opined by their scanty remains. The
learned historian of our Anglo-Saxons, in the progress of
his ceaseless pursuit, unburied this hidden treasure—which
at once refuted the prevalent notions; but this literary
curiosity was fated to excite deeper emotions among the
honest Danes.
The existing manuscript of “The Exploits of Beowulf”
is of the tenth century; but the poem was evidently
composed at a far remoter period; though, as all the per-
sonages of the romance are Danes, and all the circum-
stances are Danish, it may be conjectured, if it be an ori-
ginal Anglo-Saxon poem, that it was written when the
Danes had a settlement in some parts of Britain. At
Copenhagen the patriotism of literature is ardent. The
learned there claimed Beowulf as their own, and alleged
that the Anglo-Saxon was the version of a Danish poem ;
it became one of the most ancient monuments of the early
history of their country, and not the least precious to them
for its connexion with English affairs. The Danish anti-
quaries still amuse their imagination with the once Danish
kingdom of Northumbria, and still call us “brothers;” as
at Caen, where the whole academy still persist in dispu-
tations on the tapestry of Bayeux, and style themselves
our “masters.”
It was, therefore, a national mortification to the Danes
that it was an Englishman who had first made known
this relic ; and further, that it existed only in the library
of England. The learned THORKELIN was despatched on
a literary expedition, and a careful transcript of the manu-
script of Beowulf was brought to the learned and pa-
triotic Danes. It was finished for the press, accompanied
by a translation and a commentary, in 1807. At the siege
of Copenhagen a British bomb fell on the study of the
hapless scholar, annihilating “Beowulf,” transcript, trans-
lation, and commentary, the toil of twenty years. It
seemed to be felt, by the few whose losses by sieges never
58 Amenities of Literature.
appear in royal Gazettes, as not one of the least in that
sad day of warfare with “our brothers.” THORKELIN
was urged to restore the loss. But it was under great
disadvantages that his edition was published in 1815.
Mr. Kemble has redeemed our honour by publishing a
collated edition, afterwards corrected in a second with a
literal version. Such versions may supply the wants of
the philologist, but for the general reader they are doomed
to be read like vocabularies. Yet even thus humbled and
obscured, BEOWULF aspires to a poetic existence. He ap-
peals to nature and excites our imagination—while the
monk, CAEDMON, restricted by his faithful creed, and his
pertinacious chronology—seems to have afforded more de-
light by his piety than the other by his genius—and re-
mains renowned as “the Milton of our forefathers l’’
59
THE ANGLO-NORMLANS.
THE Anglo-Saxon dominion in England endured for more
than five centuries.
A territorial people had ceased to be roving invaders,
but stood themselves in dread of the invasions of their
own ancient brotherhood. They trembled on their own
shores at those predatory hordes who might have re-
minded them of the lost valour of their own ancestors.
But their warlike independence had passed away. And,
as a martial abbot declared of his countrymen, “they had
taken their swords from their sides and had laid them on
the altar, where they had rusted, and their edges were
now too dull for the field.” They could not even pro-
tect the soil which they had conquered, and often wanted
the courage to choose a king of their own race. Some-
times they stood ready to pay tribute to the Dane, and
sometimes suffered the throne to be occupied by a Danish
monarch. In a state of semi-civilization their rude luxury
hardly veiled their unintellectual character. Feeble sove-
reigns and a submissive people could not advance into na-
tional greatness.
When the Duke of Normandy visited his friend and
kinsman, Edward the Confessor, he beheld in England a
mimetic Normandy; Norman favourites were courtiers,
and Norman soldiers were seen in Saxon castles. Ed-
ward, long estranged from his native realm, had received
his education in Normandy; and the English court af.
fected to imitate the domestic habits of these French
neighbours—the great speaking the foreign idiom in their
houses, and writing in French their bills and accompts.f
Already there was a faction of Frenchified Saxons in the
court of the unnational English sovereign.
William the Norman surveyed an empire already half
Norman; and in the prospect, with his accustomed fore-
* Speed, 441. This was said to “the Conqueror,” and this Abbot
of St. Alban's paid dearly for the patriotism which had then become
treason.
† A circumstance which Milton has recorded.
60 Amenities of Literature.
sight, he mused on a doubtful succession. A people who
had often suffered themselves to fall the prey of their
hardier neighbour, lie open for conquest to a more intelli-
gent and polished race.
The victory of Hastings did not necessarily include the
conquest of the people, and William still condescended to
march to the throne under the shadow of a title. After a
short residence of only three months in his newly-acquired
realm, “the Conqueror” withdrew into his duchy, and
there passed a long interval of nine months. William left
many an unyielding Saxon; a spirit of resistance, however
suppressed, bound men together, and partial insurrections
seemed to be pushing on a crisis which might have re-
versed the conquest of England.*
During this mysterious and protracted visit, and appa-
rent abandonment of his new kingdom to the care of
others, was a vast scheme of dominion nursed in the
councils of Norman nobles, and strengthened by the
boundless devotion of hardy adventurers, who were all to

* Our great lawyers probably imagined that the honour of the coun-
try is implicated in the title usually accorded to William the Norman ;
SPELMAN, the great antiquary, and BLACKSTONE, the historian and the
expounder of our laws, have absolutely explained away the assumed
title of “the Conqueror’ to a mere technical feudal term of “Con-
questor, or acquirer of any estate out of the common course of in-
heritance.” The first purchaser (that is, he who brought the estate
into the family which at present owns it) was styled “the Conqueror,”
and 8wch is still the proper phrase in the law of Scotland. RITson is
indigrant at what he calls “a pitiful forensic quibble.”
But another great lawyer and lord chancellor, the sedate WHITELocKE,
positively asserts that “William only conquered Harold and his army;
for he never was, nor pretended to be, the conqueror of England,
although the 8ycophant monks of the time gave him that title.”—White-
locke’s “Hist. of England,” 33.
In a charter, granting certain lands for the church of St. Paul’s,
which Stowe has translated from the record in the Tower, William
denominates himself, “by the grace of God, King of Englishmen. ”
(Rex Anglorum), and addresses it “to all his well-beloved French and
English people, greeting.”—Stowe’s “Survey of London,” 326, Edit.
1603. Did William on any occasion declare that he was “the Con-
queror” as well as the sovereign of England ' When William
attempted to learn the Saxon language, it is obvious that he did not
desire to remind his new subjects that he ruled as Woltaire sung of his
hero,-
qui regna sur la France,
Par droit de Conquête et par droit de Naissance.
The Anglo-Normans. 61
share in the present spoliation and the future royalty P In
his prescient view did William there anticipate a conquest
of long labour and of distant days; the state, the nobles,
the ecclesiastics, the people, the land, and the language,
all to be changed P. Hume has ventured to surmise that
the mind of the Norman laboured with this gigantic
fabric of dominion. It is probable, however, that this
child of a novel policy was submitted to a more natural
gestation, and expanded as circumstances favoured its
awful growth. One night in December the King sud-
denly appeared in England, and soon unlimited confisca-
tions and royal grants apportioned the land of the Saxons
among the lords of Normandy, and even their lance-bear-
ers. It seemed as if every new-comer brought his castles
with him, so rapidly did castles cover the soil.” These
were strongholds for the tyrant foreigner, or open re-
treats for his predatory bands; stern overlookers were
they of the land
The Norman lords had courts of their own; sworn
vassals to their suzerain, but kinglings to the people.
Sometimes they beheld a Saxon lord, whose heart could
not tear itself from the lands of his race, a serf on his
own soil; but they witnessed without remorse the rights
of the sword. Norman prelates were silently substituted
* The final history of these citadels may illustrate that verse of
Goldsmith which reminds us—
“To fly from PETTY TYRANTs—to THE THRONE P”
In the short space of seventy years the owners of those castles bearded
even majesty itself; these lords, by their undue share of power, were in
perpetual revolt; till two royal persons, though opposed to each other,
Stephen and Maude, decreed for their mutual interest the demolition
of fifteen hundred and fifteen castles. They were razed by commission,
or by writs to the sheriffs; and a law was further enacted that “none
hereafter, without license, should embattle his house.” And thus was
broken this aristocracy of castles. See two dissertations on “Castles,”
by Sir RobRRTSUTTON, and by AGARD; “Curious Discourses by Eminent
Antiquaries,” i. 104 and 188.
This number of castles seems incredible; possibly many were “em-
battled houses.” My learned friend, the Rev. Joseph Hunter, an anti-
quary most versant in manuscripts, inclines to think there may be some
scriptural error of the ancient scribe, who was likely to add or to leave
out a cipher, without much comprehension of the numerals he was
transcribing without a thought, like what happened to the eleven thou-
sand virgins of St. Ursula.
62 Amenities of Literature.
for Saxon ecclesiastics, and whole companies of claimants
arrived to steal into benefices or rush into abbeys. It was
sufficient to be a foreigner and land in England, to become
a bishop or an abbot. Church and State were now indis-
solubly joined, for in the general plunder each took their
orderly rank. It was the triumph of an enlightened,
perhaps a cunning race, as the Norman has been prover-
bially commemorated, over “a rustic and almost an illi-
terate generation,” as the simplicity of our Saxon prelates,
who could not always speak French, is described by
Ordericus Vitalis, a monk who, long absent from England,
wrote in Normandy. Ingulphus, the monk of Croyland,
though partial to “the Conqueror,” however, honestly
confesses that when the English were driven from their
dignities, their successors were not always their superiors.
All who were eager to court their new lords were
brought to dissemble their native rusticity. They polled
their crowns, they cut short their flowing hair, and throw-
ing aside the loose Saxon gown, they assumed the close
vest of the more agile Norman. “Mail of iron and coats
of steel would have better become them,” cried an indig-
nant Saxon. We have seen what a martial Saxon abbot
declared to the Conqueror, while he mourned over his
pacific countrymen. This was the time when it was held
a shame among Englishmen to appear English. It be-
came proverbial to describe a Saxon who ambitioned some
distinguished rank, that “he would be a gentleman if he
could but talk French.”
Fertile in novelties as was this amazing revolution, the
most peculiar was the change of the language. The style
of power and authority was Norman; it interpreted the
laws, and it was even to torment the rising generation of
England; children learned the strange idiom by con-
struing their Latin into French, and thus, by learning
two foreign languages together, wholly unlearned their
own. Not only were they taught to speak French, but
the French character was adopted in place of their own
alphabet. It was a flagrant instance of the Conqueror's
design to annihilate the national language, that finding a
College at Oxford with an establishment founded by Alfred
to maintain divines who were “to instruct the people in
their own vulgar tongue,” William decreed that “the

The Anglo-Normans. 63
annual expense should never after be allowed out of the
Ring's exchequer.”
The Norman prince on his first arrival could have en-
tertained no scheme of changing the language, for he
attempted to acquire it. The secretary of the Conqueror
has recorded that when the monarch seemed inclined to
adopt the customs of his new subjects, which his moderate
measures at first indicated, the Norman prince had tried
his patience and his ear to babble the obdurate idiom, till
he abhorred the sound of the Saxon tongue. If because
the Conqueror could not learn the Saxon language he
decided wholly to abolish it, this would seem nothing
more than a fantastic tyranny; but in truth, the language
of the conquered is usually held in contempt by the con-
querors for other reasons besides offending the delicacy of
the ear. The Normans could not endure the Saxon’s un-
tunable consonants, as it had occurred even to the unlet-
tered Saxons themselves; for barbarians as their hordes
were when they first became the masters of Britain, they
had declared that the British tongue was utterly bar-
barous.t
But not at his bidding could the military chief for ever
silence the mother-tongue. Enough for “this stern man”
to guard the land in peace, while every single hyde of
land in England was known to him, and “put at its worth
in HIS BOOK,” as records the Saxon chronicler. The lan-
guage of a people is not to be conquered as the people
themselves. The “birth-tongue” may be imprisoned or
banished, but it cannot die—the people think in it; the
images of their thoughts, their traditional phrases, the
carol over the mead-cup, and their customs far diffused,
survived even the iron tongue of the curfew.
The Saxons themselves, who had chased the native
Britons from their land, still found that they could not
suppress the language of the fugitive people. The con-
* Speed, 440.
+ A curious fact discovered by Mr. Turner in a Cottonian manuscript
has brought this circumstance to our knowledge. In a grant of land
in Cornwall, an Anglo-Saxon king, after mentioning the Saxon name of
the place, adds, “which the inhabitants there called, barbarico nomine,
by the barbarous name of Pendyfig;” which was the British or Welsh
name.—“Windication of the Ancient British Poems,” 8.
64 Amenities of Literature.
querors gave their Anglo-Saxon denominations to the
towns and villages they built; but the hills, the forests,
and the rivers retain their old Celtic names.* Nature
and nationality will outlast the transient policy of a new
dynasty.
The novel idiom became the language of those only
with whom the court-language, whatever it be, will ever
prevail—the men who by their contiguity to the great
affect to participate in their influence. In that magic
circle of hopes and fears where royalty is the sole magi-
cian of the fortunes of men, the Conqueror perpetuated
his power by perpetuating his language. Ignorance of
the French tongue was deemed a sufficient pretext for
banishing an English bishop pertinacious in his nation-
ality, who had for a while been admitted to the royal
councils, but whose presence was no longer necessary to
the dominant party.
To the successors of the Norman William it might
appear that the English idiom was wholly obliterated
from the memories of men; not one of our monarchs and
statesmen could understand the most ordinary words in
the national tongue. When Henry the Second was in
Pembrokeshire, and was addressed in English—“Goode
olde Kynge,” the King of England inquired in French of
his esquire what was meant P Of the title of “Kynge,”
we are told that his majesty was wholly ignorant' A ludi-
crous anecdote of the chancellor of Richard the First is a
strange evidence that the English language was wholly a
foreign one for the English court. This chancellor in his
flight from Canterbury, disguised as a female hawker,
carrying under his arm a bundle of cloth, and an ell-
measure in his hand, sate by the sea-side waiting for a
vessel. The fishermen’s wives inquired the price of the
cloth; he could only answer by a burst of laughter; for
this man, born in England, and chancellor of England,
did not know a single word of English One more evi-
dence will confirm how utterly the Saxon language was
cast away. When the famous Grosteste, bishop of Lin-
coln (who would no doubt have contemned his Saxon
surname of “Great-head”), a voluminous writer, once con-

* Camden has noticed this striking circumstance in his “Britannia.”
See also Percy's Preface to Mallett's ‘‘Northern Antiquities,” xxxix.
The Anglo-Normans. 65
descended to instruct “the ignorant,” he wrote pious
books for their use in French ; the bishop making no
account of the old national language, nor of the souls of
those who spoke it.
When the fate of conquest had overthrown the national
language, and thus seemed to have bereaved us of all our
literature, it was in reality only diverging into a new
course. For three centuries the popular writers of England
composed in the French language. Gaimar, who wrote
on our Saxon history; Wace, whose chronicle is a rhymed
version of that of Geoffry of Monmouth; Benoit de
Saint Maur (or Seymour); Pierre Langtoft, who com-
posed a history of England; Hugh de Rotelande (Rut-
land), and so many others, were all English ; some were
descendants from Norman progenitors, but in every other
respect they were English. Some were of a third gene
ration.
Our Henry the Third was a prodigal patron of these
Anglo-Norman poets. This monarch awarded to a ro-
mancer, Rusticien de Pise, who has proclaimed the regal
munificence to the world, a couple of fine “chateaux,”
which I would not, however, translate as has been done
by the English term “castles.” Well might a romancer
so richly remunerated promise his royal patron to finish
“The Book of Brut,” the never-ending theme to the ear
of a British monarch who, indeed, was anxious to possess
such an authentic state-paper. Who this Rusticien de
Pise was, one cannot be certain; but he was one of a
numerous brood who, stimulated by “largesses” and fair
chateaux, delighted to celebrate the chivalry of the British
court, to them a perpetual fountain of honour and prefer-
ment. We may now smile at the Count de Tressan’s
querulous nationality, who is indignant that the writers
of the French romances of the Round Table show a
marked affectation of dwelling on everything that can
contribute to the glory of the throne and court of Eng-
land, preferring a fabulous Arthur to a true Charlemagne,
and English knights to French paladins.” When Tressan
wrote, this striking circumstance had not received its true
elucidation; the hand of these writers had only flowed
* See his Preface to the prose romance of “La Fleur des Batailles.”
TVOL. I. F
66 Amenities of Literature.
with their gratitude; these writers composed to gratify
their sovereign, or some noble patron at the English
court, for they were English natives or English subjects,
long concealed from posterity as Englishmen by writing
in French. It had then escaped the notice of our literary
antiquaries at home and abroad, that these Englishmen
could have composed in no other language. How imper-
fect is the catalogue of early English poets by Ritson'
for it is since his day that this important fact in our own
literary history has been acknowledged by the French
themselves, who at length have distinguished between
Norman and Anglo-Norman poets. M. Guizot was en-
abled by the French government to indulge his literary
patriotism by sending a skilful collector to England to
search in our libraries for Norman writings; and we are
told that none but Anglo-Norman writers have been
found—that is, Englishmen writing on English affairs,
and so English that they have not always avoided an
unguarded expression of their dislike of foreigners, and
even of Normans!
It is worthy of observation, that even those Norman
writers who came young into England soon took the
colour of the soil; and what rather surprises us, consider-
ing the fashion of the court at that period, studied the
original national language, translated our Saxon writings,
and often mingled in their French verse phrases and terms
which to this day we recognise as English. Of this we
have an interesting evidence in an Anglo-Norman poetess,
but recently known by the name of “Marie de France;”
yet had she not written this single verse accidentally—
Me nummerai par remembrance,
Marie at num, si swi de France—
we should from her subjects, and her perfect knowledge
of the vernacular idiom of the English, have placed this
Sappho of the thirteenth century among the women of
England. This poetess tells us that she had turned into
her French rhymed verse the AEsopian Fables, which one
of our kings had translated into English from the Latin.
This royal author could have been no other than Alfred,
to whom such a collection has been ascribed. We learn
from herself the occasion of her version. Her task was
The Anglo-Normans. 67
performed for a great personage who read neither Latin
nor English; it was done for “the love of the renowned
Earl William Longsword”—
Cunte Willaume,
Le plus vaillant de cest Royaume.
Who would calculate the “largesse” “Count William,”
this puissant Longsword, cast into the lap of this living
muse when she offered all this melodious wisdom; whose
beautiful simplicity a child might comprehend, but whose
moral and politic truths would throw even the Norman
Longsword into a state of rational musing P Her “Lais,”
short but wild “ Breton Tales,” which our poetess dedi-
cated to her sovereign, our Henry the Third, are evidence
that Marie could also skilfully touch the heart and amuse .
the fancy.
In her poems, Marie has translated many French terms
into pure English, and abounds with allusions to English
places and towns whose names have not changed since the
thirteenth century. Her local allusions, and her familiar
knowledge of the vernacular idiom of the English people,
prove that “Marie,” though by the accident of birth she
may be claimed by France, yet by her early and perma-
ment residence, and by the constant subjects of her
writings, her “Breton Tales,” and her “Fables” from
the English, by her habits and her sympathies, was an
Englishwoman.
At this extraordinary period when England was a foreign
kingdom, the English people found some solitary friends—
and these were the rustic monk and the itinerant minstrel,
for they were Saxons, but subjects too mean and remote for
the gripe of the Norman, occupied in rooting out their
lords to plant his own for ever in the Saxon soil.
The monks, who lived rusticated in their scattered
monasteries, sojourners in the midst of their conquered
land, often felt their Saxon blood tingle in their veins.
Not only did the filial love of their country deepen their
sympathies, but a more personal indignation rankled in
their secret bosoms at the foreign intruders, French or
Italian—the tyrannical bishop and the voluptuous abbot,
There were indeed monks, and some have been our
chroniclers, base-born, humiliated, and living in fear, who
F 2
68 Amenities of Literature.
in their leiger-books, when they alluded to their new
masters, called them “the conquerors,” noticed the year
when some “conqueror” came in, and recorded what “the
conquerors” had enacted. All these “conquerors” desig-
nated the foreigners, who were the heads of their houses.
But there were other truer Saxons. Inspired equally by
their public and their private feeling, these were the first
who, throwing aside both Latin and French, addressed
the people in the only language intelligible to them. The
patriotic monks decided that the people should be reminded
that they were Saxons, and they continued their history
in their own language.
This precious relic has come down to us—the “Saxon
Chronicle”*—but which in fact is a collection of chronicles
made by different persons. These Saxon annalists had
been eye-witnesses of the transactions they recorded, and
this singular detail of incidents as they occurred without
comment is a phenomenon in the history of mankind, like
that of the history of the Jews contained in the Old
Testament, and, like that, as its learned editor has ably
observed, “a regular and chronological panorama of a
people described in rapid succession by different writers
through many ages in their own VERNACULAR LANGUAGE.”
The mutations in the language of this ancient chronicle
are as remarkable as the fortunes of the nation in its pro-
gress from rudeness to refinement; nor less observable are
the entries in this great political register from the year
One of Christ till 1154, when it abruptly terminates. The
meagreness of the earlier recorders contrasts with the more
impressive detail of later enlarged and thoughtful minds.
When we come to William of Normandy, we have a cha-
racter of that monarch by one who knew him personally,
having lived at his court. It is not only a masterly de-
lineation, but a skilful and steady dissection. The earlier
* Miss Gurney, who has honourably been hailed as “the Elstob of
her age,” privately printed her own close version of the “Saxon
Chronicle” from the printed text, 1810. Happy lady who, when
sickness had made her its prisoner, opened the “Saxon Chronicle;”
and she learned that she might teach the learned.
The Rev. Dr. INGRAM, principal of Trinity College, Oxon, has since
published his translation, accompanied by the original, a collation of
the manuscripts, and notes critical and explanatory. 1823. 4to. A
volume not less valuable than curious.
The Anglo-Normans. 69
l
Saxon chronicler has recorded a defeat and retreat which
Caesar suffered in his first invasion, which would be diffi-
cult to discover in the Commentaries of Caesar.
The true language of the people lingered on their lips,
and it seemed to bestow a shadowy independence to a
population in bondage. The remoter the locality, the
more obdurate was the Saxon; and these indwellers were
latterly distinguished as “Uplandish” by the inhabitants
of cities. For about two centuries “the Uplandish” held
no social connexion; separated not only by distance, but
by their isolated dialects and peculiar customs, these
natives of the soil shrunk into themselves, intermarrying
and dying on the same spot; they were hardly aware that
they were without a country.
It was a great result of the Norman government in
England that it associated our insular and retired dominion
with that nobler theatre of human affairs, the Continent of
IEurope. In Normandy we trace the first footings of our
national power; the English Sovereign, now a prince of
France, ere long on the French soil vied in magnitude of
territory with his paramount Lord, the Monarch of France.
Such a permanent connexion could not fail to produce a
conformity in manners; what was passing among our
closest neighbours, rivals or associates, was reflected in the
old Saxon land which had lost its nationality.
70
THE PAGE, THE BARON, AND THE MINSTREL.
WHEN learning was solely ecclesiastical and scholastical,
there were no preceptors for mankind. The monastery
and the university were far removed from the sympathies
of daily life ; all knowledge was out of the reach of the
layman. It was then that the energies of men formed a
course of practical pursuits, a system of education of their
own. The singular institution of chivalry rose out of a
combination of circumstances where, rudeness and luxury
mingling together, the utmost refinement was found com-
patible with barbaric grandeur, and holy justice with
generous power. In lawless times they invented a single
law which included a whole code—the law of knightly
honour. L’Ordenne de Chevalerie is the morality of
knighthood, and invests the aspirant with every moral and
political virtue as every military qualification.*
Destitute of a national education, the higher orders
thus found a substitute in a conventional system of
manners. Circumstances, perhaps originally accidental,
became customs sealed with the sign of honour. In this
moral chaos order marshalled confusion, as refinement
adorned barbarism. A mighty spirit lay as it were in dis-
guise, and it broke out in the forms of imagination,
passion, and magnificence, seeking their objects or their
semblance, and if sometimes mistaken, yet still laying the
foundations of social order and national glory in Europe.
A regular course of practical pursuits was assigned to
the future noble “childe” from the day that he left the
parental roof for the baronial hall of his patron. In these
“nurseries of nobility,” as Jonson has well described such
an institution, in his first charge as varlet or page, the boy
* St. Palaye, to whom we owe the ideal of chivalry, has truly ob-
served, “Toutes les vertus recommandées par la Chevalerie tournoient
au bien public, au profit de l’Etat.” It was when the causes of its in-
stitution ceased, and nothing remained but its forms without its motive,
that altered manners could safely ridicule some noble qualities which,
though now displaced, have not always found equal substitutes. In the
advancement of society we may count some losses.
The Page, the Baron, and the Minstrel. 71
of seven years was an attendant at the baron's table, and
it was no humiliating office when the youth grew to be the
carver and the cupbearer. He played on the viol or
danced in the brawls till he was more gravely trained in
“the mysteries of woods and rivers,” the arts of the chase,
and the sciences of the swanery, and the heronry, and the
fishery; the springal cheerily sounded a blast of venery,
or the falconer with his voice caressed his attentive hawk,
which had not obeyed him had he neglected that daily
flattery.
At fourteen the varlet became an esquire, vaulting on
his fiery steed, and perfecting himself in all noble exer-
cises, nicely adroit in the science of “courtesie,” or the
etiquette of the court; and already this “servant of love”
was taught to elect La dame de ses pensées, and wore her
favour and her livery for “the love of honour, or the
honour of love,” as Sir Philip Sydney in the style of
chivalry expressed it.
At the maturity of twenty and one years the late varlet,
and now the esquire, stood forth a candidate to blazon his
shield by knighthood—the accomplished gentleman of
these Gothic days, and right learned too, if he can con
his Bible and read his romance. Enchanting mirror of all
chivalry ! if he invent songs and set them to his own
melodies. Yet will the gentle “batchelor” he dreaming
on some gallant feat of arms, or some martial achievement,
whereby “to win his spurs.” On his solemn entrance into
the church, laying his sword upon the altar, he resumed
it by the oath which for ever bound him to defend the
church and the churchmen. Thus all human affairs then
were rounded by the ecclesiastical orbit, out of which no
foot dared to stray. All began and all ended as the
romances which formed his whole course of instruction—
with the devotion which seemed to have been addressed to
man as much as to Heaven.
After the termination of the Crusades, the grand inci-
dent in the life of the BARON was a pilgrimage to the holy
city of Jerusalem; what the penitent of the Cross had
failed to conquer, it seemed a consolation to kneel at and
to weep over: a custom not obsolete so late as the reigns
of our last Henries; and still, though less publicly avowed,
the melancholy Jerusalem witnesses the Hebrew and the
72 Amenities of Literature.
Christian performing some secret vow, to grieve with a
contrition which it seems they do not feel at home.
In these peregrinations a lordly Briton might chance to
find some French or Italian knight as rash and as haughty;
it was a law in chivalry that a knight should not give
way to any man who demanded it as a right, nor decline
the single combat with any knight under the sun; a chal-
lenge could not therefore be avoided. But a pas d’armes
was not always a friendly invitation, for often under the
guise of chivalry was concealed the national hostility of
the parties.
But when no crusade nor pilgrimage in the East, nor
predatory excursion in the West, nor even the blazonry of
a tournament, which fed his eyes with a picture of battle,
summoned to put on his mail-coat, how was the vacant
Lord to wear out his monotonous days in his castle of
indolence P The domestic fool stood beside him, archly
sad, or gravely mirthful, as his master willed, with a pro-
verb or a quip ; and, with his licensed bauble, was the
most bitterly wisest man in the castle. Patron of the
costly manuscript which he could not himself read, the
romancer of his household awaited his call; the great then
had fabulators or tale-tellers, as royalty has now, by title
of their office—its readers. But this Lord was too
vigorous for repose, and the tranquillity of chess was too
trying for his brain; the chess-board was often broken
about the head of some mute dependent, or perchance on
one who returned the dagger for the board. There was
little peace for his restlessness, when, weary in his seat, his
priceless Norway hawk perched above his head.* and his
idle hounds spread over the floor, ceaselessly reminded him
of those wide and frowning forests which were continually
encroaching on the tillage of the contemned agriculturist,
offering a mimetic war, not only against the bird and
the beast, but man himself; for the lairs of the forest
concealed the deer he chased, and often the bandit who
chased the Lord—the terrible Lord of this realm of wood
and water, where, whoever would fowl a bird or strike a
* I recollect this trait in Chaucer. The Norway hawk was among
the most valuable articles of property, valued at a sum equal to £300
of the present day.—Nicholls, “History of Leicestershire,” xxxix.
The Page, the Baron, and the Minstrel. 73
buck, might have his eyes torn from their sockets, or on
the spot of his offence mount the instant gallows.”
There was a disorderly grandeur about the castellated
mansion which should have required the ukase of this
Sovereign of many leagues, surrounded by many hundreds
of his retainers; but rarely the cry of the oppressed was
allowed to disturb the Lord, while all within were exact in
their appointments, as clock-work movements which were
wound up in the government of these immense domestic
establishments. Great families had their “ household
books,” and in some the illegible hand of the lordly master
himself, when the day arrived that even barons were
incited to scriptural attempts, may yet be seen.f These
nobles, it appears, were more select in their falconer and
their chef de cuisine than in their domestic tutor, for such
there was among the retainers of the household. This
humiliated sage, indeed, in his own person was a model for
the young varlets, on whom it was his office to inculcate
that patient suppleness and profound reverence for their
Lord and their superiors, which seemed to form the single
principle of their education. At this period we find a
domestic proverb which evidently came from the buttery.
As then eight or ten tables were to be daily covered, it is
probable the chivalric epicures sometimes found their tastes
disappointed by the culinary artists; it would seem that
this put them into sudden outbreakings of ill-humour, for
the proverb records that “the minstrels are often beaten
for the faults of the cooks.”
* The Norman William punished men with loss of eyes for taking his
venery.—Selden's notes to “Drayton's Polyolbion,” Song ii.
An instant execution of two youths by the gamekeepers, at the com-
mand of their Lord, appears in an ancient romance recently published
in France.—Journal des Savans, 1838.
ºf A curious specimen of these “Household Books,” though of a
later period, is that of the Northumberland family, printed by Bishop
Percy. Many exist in manuscript, and contain particulars more valu-
able than the prices of commodities, for which they are usually valued ;
they offer striking pictures of the manners of their age. [The Wardrobe
accounts of Edward the Fourth, the Privy Purse expenses of Edward
IV. and Henry VIII., have been since published by Sir Harris Nicolas;
and those of the Princess Mary, afterwards Queen, by Sir Frederick
Madden. The judicious notes and dissertations of these editors render
them of much use in illustration of the history of each era.-E.D.]
74. Amenities of Literature.
Too much leisure, too many loungers, and the tedium
of prolonged banquets, a want of the pleasures of the
luxurious sedentary would be as urgent as in ages more
intellectual and refined; those pleasures in which we par-
ticipate though we are passive, receiving the impressions
without any exertion of our own—pleasures which make us
delighted auditors or spectators. The theatre was not yet
raised, but the listlessness of vacuity gave birth to all the
variegated artists of revelry. If they had not comedy
itself, they abounded with the comic, and without tragedy
the tragic often moved their emotions. Nor were they
even then without their scenical illusions, marvels which
came and vanished, as the Tregetour clapped his hands
enchantments which though Chaucer opined to be only
“natural magic,” all the world tremblingly enjoyed as
the work of devils; a sensation which we have totally lost
in the necromancy of our pantomimes. And thus it was
that in the illumed hall of the feudal Lord we discover a
whole dramatic company; which, however dissimilar in their
professional arts, were all enlisted under the indefinite
class of MINSTRELs; for in the domestic state of society
we are now recalling, the poetic minstrel must be separated
from those other minstrels of very different acquirements,
with whom, however, he was associated.
There were minstrels who held honourable offices in
the great households, sometimes chosen for their skill
and elocution to perform the dignified service of heralds,
and were in the secret confidence of their Lord ; these
were those favourites of the castle, whose guerdon was
Sometimes as romantic as any incident in their own
I'OYY13.I) Cé.
No festival, public or private, but there the minstrel poet
was its crowning ornament. They awakened national
themes in the presence of assembled thousands at the in-
stallation of an abbot, or the reception of a bishop.”
Often, in the Gothic hall, they resounded some lofty
“Geste,” or some old “ Breton” lay, or with some gayer
Fabliau, indulging the vein of an improvvisatore, altering
the old story when wanting a new one. Delightful rhap-
Sodists, or amusing tale-tellers, combining the poetic with
* “Warton,” i. 94.
The Page, the Baron, and the Minstrel. 75
the musical character, they displayed the influence of
the imagination over a rude and unlettered race—
— They tellen Tales
Both of WEEPYING and of GAME.
Chaucer has portrayed the rapture of a minstrel excited
by his harp, a portrait evidently after the life.
Somewhat he lisped for his wantonness
To make the English swete wpon his tonge;
And in his Harping when that he had songe,
His Eyen twinkled in his Hed aright,
As don the Sterrés in a frosty night.
The minstrel more particularly delighted “the Lewed,”
or the people, when, sitting in their fellowship, the harper
stilled their attention by some fragment of a chronicle of
their fathers and their father-land. The family harper
touched more personal sympathies; the ancestral honours
of the baron made even the vassal proud—domestic tra-
ditions and local incidents deepened their emotions—the
moralising ditty softened their mind with thought, and
every county had its legend at which the heart of the
native beat. Of this minstrelsy little was written down,
but tradition lives through a hundred echoes, and the
“reliques of ancient English poetry,” and the minstrelsy
of the Scottish Border, and some other remains, for the
greater part have been formed by so many metrical nar-
ratives and fugitive effusions.
There were periods in which the minstrels were so
highly favoured that they were more amply rewarded than
the clergy—a circumstance which induced Warton to
observe with more truth than acuteness, that “in this age,
as in more enlightened times, the people loved better to
be pleased than to be instructed.”* Such was their
fascination and their passion for “Largesse!” that they
were reproached with draining the treasury of a prince.
. It is certain that this thoughtless race have suffered from
the evil eye of the monkish chroniclers, who looked on the
minstrels as their rivals in sharing the prodigality of the
great; yet even their monkish censors relented whenever
these revellers appeared. It was a festive day among so
* “Warton,” ii. 412.
76 Amenities of Literature.
many joyless ones when the minstrel band approached the
lone monastery. Then the sweet-toned Vielle, or the
merry Rebeck, echoed in the hermit-hearts of the slum-
bering inmates; vaulters came tumbling about, jugglers
bewitched their eyes, and the grotesque Mime, who would
not be outdone by his tutored ape. Then came the stately
minstrel, with his harp borne before him by his smiling
page, usually called “The Minstrel's Boy.” One of the
brotherhood has described the strolling troop, who
Walken fer and wyde,
Her, and ther, in every syde,
In many a diverse londe.
The easy life of these ambulatory musicians, their ample
gratuities, and certain privileges which the minstrels en-
joyed both here and among our neighbours, corrupted
their manners, and induced the dissipated and the reck-
less to claim those privileges by assuming their title. A
disorderly rabble of minstrels crowded every public
assembly, and haunted the private abode. At different
periods the minstrels were banished the kingdom, in
England and in France; but their return was rarely
delayed. The people could not be made to abandon these
versatile dispensers of solace, amid their own monotonous
Cal’éS. *
At different periods minstrels appear to have been per-
sons of great wealth—a circumstance which we discover
by their votive religious acts in the spirit and custom of
those days. The Priory of St. Bartholomew in Smith-
field, in 1102, was founded by “Rahere,” the king's
minstrel, who is described as “a pleasant-witted gentle-
man,” such as we may imagine a wealthy minstrel, and
moreover “the king's,” ever to have been.” In St.
* Stowe’s “Survey by Strype,” book iii. 235. We might wish to
learn the authority of Stowe for ascribing this “pleasant wit” to
Rahere of the eleventh century | As the pen of venerable Stowe never
moved idly, our antiquary must have had some information which is
now lost. “The king's minstrel” is also a doubtful designation : was
the founder of this priory “a king of the minstrels º an office which
the French also had, Roy des Ménéstraula, a governor instituted to
keep order among all minstrels. Our Rahere, however “pleasant-
witted,” seems to have fallen into penance for his “wit,” for he became
the first prior.
The Page, the Baron, and the Minstrel, 77
Mary’s Church at Beverley, in Yorkshire, stands a noble
column covered with figures of minstrels, inscribed, “This
Pillar made the Minstrels;” and at Paris, a chapel dedi-
cated to St. Julian of the Minstrels, was erected by them,
covered with figures of minstrels bearing all the instru-
ments of music used in the middle ages, where the violin
or fiddle is minutely sculptured.*
If in these ages of romance and romancers the fair sex
were rarely approached without the devotion of idolatry,
whenever “the course of true love” altered—when the
frail spirit loved too late and should not have loved, the
punishment became more criminal than the crime; for
there was more of selfish revenge and terrific malignity
than of justice, when autocratical man became the execu-
tioner of his own decree. The domestic chronicles of
these times exhibit such harrowing incidents as those of
La Châtelaine de Vergy, where suddenly a scene of immo-
lation struck through the devoted household; or that of
“La Dame du Fayel,”f who was made to eat her lover’s
heart. And those who had not to punish, but to put to
trial, the affections of women who were in their power, had
their terrible caprices, a ferocity in their barbarous loves.
Year after year the Gothic lord failed to subdue the
immortalised patience of Griselda, and such was our
“Childe Waters,” who put to such trials of passion,
physical and mental, the maiden almost a mother. In
* Antiquités Nationales, par Millin, xli. Two plates exhibit this
Gothic chapel and the various musical instruments.
+ Both these romantic tales may be considered as authentic narra-
tives, though they have often been used by the writers of fiction. La
Châtelaine de Vergy has been sometimes confounded with Le Chátelaine
de Coucy, the lover of La Dame du Fayel. The story of the Countess
of Wergy (on which a romance of the thirteenth century is founded,
Hist. Litt. de France, xviii. 779) has been a favourite with the tale-
tellers—the Queen of Navarre, Bandello, and Belle Forest, and is
elegantly versified in the “Fabliaux, or Tales,” of Way. That of the
Dame du Fayel, one of the fathers of French literary history, old
Fauchet, extracted it from a good old chronicle dated two centuries be-
fore he wrote. The story is also found in an ancient romance of the
thirteenth century, in the Royal Library of France.—Hist. Litt. de la
France, xiv. 589; xvii. 644. The story of Childe Waters in Percy’s
Collection has all the pathetic simplicity of ancient minstrelsy, which is
more forcibly felt when we compare it with the rifaccimento by a Mrs.
Pye, in Evans's Old Ballads.
78 Amenities of Literature.
the fourteenth century, one century later than the his-
tories of the “Châtelaine” and the “ Dame,” either the
female character was sometimes utterly dissolute, or the
tyranny of husbands utterly reckless, when we find that
it was no uncommon circumstance that women were
strangled by masked assassins, or walking by the river-
side were plunged into it. This drowning of women gave
rise to a popular proverb–º It is nothing ! only a woman
being drowned.” La Fontaine, probably without being
aware of this allusion to a practice of the fourteenth
century, has preserved the proverbial phrase in his “La
Femme noyée,” beginning
Je ne suis pas de ceux qui disent ce n'est rien,
C'est une Femme qui se noye | *
The personages and the manners here imperfectly
sketched, constituted the domestic life of our chivalric
society from the twelfth century to the first civil wars of
England. In this long interval few could read; even
bishops could not always write; and the Gothic baron
pleaded the privilege of a layman for not doing the one
nor the other.
The intellectual character of the nation can only be
traced in the wandering minstrel and the haughty eccle-
siastic. The minstrel mingling with all the classes of
society reflected all their sympathies, and in reality was
one of the people themselves; but the ecclesiastic stood
apart, too sacred to be touched, while his very language
was not that either of the noble or of the people.
* Montaigne was so well acquainted with this practice, that he has
used it as a familiar illustration of the obstinacy of some women—
which I suppose the good man imagined could not be paralleled by
instances from the masculine sex; however, his language must not be
disguised by a modern version. “Celui qui forgea le conte de la femme
qui, pour aucune correction de ménaces et bastonnades, ne cessait
d’appeler son mari, Pouilleux, et qui, précipité dans l’eau, haussoit
encore, en s'étouffant, les mains et faisoit au-dessus de Sa tête signe de
tuer des poux, forgea un conte duquel en vérité tous les jours on voit
l’image expresse de l'opiniátreté des femmes.”
The punishment of our “Ducking-stool” for female brawlers possibly
originated in this medieval practice of throwing women into the river:
but this is but an innocuous baptism, while we find the obstinate wife
here, who probably spoke true enough, 8'étouffant, merely for correct-
ing the filthy lubbard, her lord and master.
The Page, the Baron, and the Minstrel. 79
A dense superstition overshadowed the land from the
time of the first crusade to the last. It may be doubtful
whether there was a single Christian in all Christendom,
for a new sort of idolatry was introduced in shrines, and
relics, and masses; holy wells, awful exorcisms, saintly
vigils, month’s minds, pilgrimages afar and penances at
home; lamp-lighting before shrines decked with golden
images, and hung with votive arms and legs of cripples
who recovered from their rheumatic ails. The enthusiasm
for the figure of the cross conferred a less pure sanctity
on that memorial of pious tribulation. Everywhere it
was placed before them. The crusader wore that sign on
his right shoulder, and when his image lay extended on
his tomb, the crossed legs were reverently contemplated.
They made the sign of the cross by the motion of their
hand, in peril or in pleasure, in sorrow and in sin, and
expected no happy issue in an adventure without fre-
quently signing themselves with the cross. The cross
was placed at the beginning and at the end of their
writings and inscriptions, and it opened and closed the
alphabet. The mystical virtues of the cross were the
incessant theme of the Monachal Orders, and it was kissed
in rapture on the venal indulgence expedited by the papal
Hierophant. As even in sacred things novelty and
fashion will perversely put in their claim, we find the
writers and sculptors varying the appearance of the cross;
its simple form H became inclosed in a circle (P, and
again varied by dots #.* . The guardian cross protected
a locality; and in England, at the origin of parishes, the
cross stood as the hallowed witness which marked the
boundaries, and which it had been sacrilege to disturb.
It was no unusual practice to place the sign at the head
of private letters, however trivial the contents, as we find
it in charters and other public documents. In one of the
Paston letters, the piety of the writer at a much later
period could not detail the ordinary occurrences of the week
without inserting the sacred letters I.H.S.; and similar
invocations are found in others.t
The material symbol of Christianity had thus been
indiscriminately adopted without conveying with it the
* Leland’s “Itinerary,” ii. 126. + Paston’s “Letters,” v. 17.
80 Amenities of Literature.
virtues of the Gospel. The Gross was a myth—the cross
was the Fetish” of an idolatrous Christianity—they
bowed before it, they knelt to it, they kissed it, they
kissed a palpable and visible deity; never was the Divinity
rendered more familiar to the gross understandings of the
vulgar; and in these ages of unchristian Christianity,
the cross was degraded even to a vulgar mark, which
conveniently served for the signature of some unlettered
baron.
* See the very curious chapter on the “Fetish Worship,” in that
very original and learned work “The Doctor,” v. 133.
81
GOTHIC ROMANCES.
A NEW species of literature arose in the progress of that
practical education which society had assumed; a litera-
ture addressed to the passions which rose out of the cir-
cumstances of the times; dedicated to war, to love, and to
religion, when the business of life seemed restricted to the
extreme indulgence of those ennobling pursuits. In too
much love, too much war, too much devotion, it was not
imagined that knights and ladies could ever err. If
sometimes the loves were utterly licentious, wondrous
tales are told of their immaculate purity; if their religion
were then darkened by the grossest superstition, their
faith was genuine, and would have endured martyrdom;
and if the chivalric valour often exulted in its ferocity and
its rapacity, its generous honour amid a lawless state of
society maintained justice in the land, by the lance which
struck the oppressor, and by the shield which covered the
helpless.
Everything had assumed a more extended form : the
pageantry of society had varied and multiplied; the ban-
quet was prolonged; the festival day was frequent ; the
ballad narrative, or the spontaneous lyric, which had
sufficed their ruder ancestors to allure attention, now de-
manded more volume and more variety; the romance with
a deeper interest was to revolve in the entangling nar-
rative of many thousand lines. There was a traditional
store, a stock of fabling in hand, heroical panegyrics, sati-
rical songs, and legendary ballads; all served as the stuff
for the looms of mightier weavers of rhyme, whose pre-
decessors had left them this inheritance. The marvellous
of Romance burst forth, and this stupendous fabric of in-
vention bewitched Europe during three centuries.
ROMANCE, from the light fabliau to the voluminous fic-
tion, has admitted, in the luxury of our knowledge and
curiosity, not only of critical investigation, but of its in-
vention, by tracing it to a single source. The origin of
Romance has been made to hinge on a theoretical history;
WOL. I. G.
82 Amenities of Literature.
and by maintaining exclusive systems, mostly fanciful and
partly true, it has been made complicate. Whether in-
vention in the form of Rom ANCE came from the oriental
tale-teller or the Scandinavian Scald, or whether the fic-
tions of Europe be the growth of the Provençal or the
Armorican soil, our learned inquirers have each told ; mor
have they failed in considerably diminishing the claims of
each particular system opposed to their own; but the
greatest error will be found in their mutual refutations.”
While each stood entrenched in an exclusive system, they
were only furnishing an integral portion of a boundless
and complicate inquiry. They scrutinised with micro-
scopic eyes into that vast fabric of invention, which the
Gothic genius may proudly oppose to the fictions of anti-
quity, and they seemed at times forgetful of the vicissi-
tudes which, at distant intervals, and by novel circum-
stances, enlarged and modified the changeful state of ro-
mantic fiction among every people.
In the attempt to retrace the Nile of Romance to a
solitary source, in the eagerness of their discoveries they
had not yet ascertained that this Nile bears many far-
divided heads, and some from which Time shall never re-
move its clouds; for who dares assign an origin to the
ancient Milesian tales, the tales and their origin being
alike lost Pf
Warton, encumbered by his theory of an Eastern
origin, opened the map to track the voyage of an Arabian
tale: he landed it at Marseilles, that port by which an-
cient Greece first held its intercourse with our Europe,
and thence the tale was sent forwards through genial
Italy, but forced to harbour in this voyage of Romance at
* Warton and Percy, Ritson and Leyden, Ellis and Turner and
Price, and recently the late Abbé de la Rue. s
+ A profound and poetic genius has thrown out a new suggestion on
the origin of these Eastern tales. “I think it not unlikely that the
‘Milesian Tales’ contained the germs of many of those now in the
‘Arabian Nights.” The Greek empire must have left deep impressions
on the Persian intellect—so also many of the Roman Catholic Legends
are taken from Apuleius. The exquisite story of Cupid and Psyche
is evidently a philosophical attempt to parry Christianity with a quasi
Platonic account of the fall and redemption of man.”—Coleridge's
“Literary Remains,” i. 180. Whatever were these “Milesian Tales,”
they amused the Grecian sages in the earliest period of their history.
Gothic Romances. 83
the distant shores of Brittany, that land of Romance and
of the ancient Briton. The result of his system startled
the literary world by his assumption, that “the British
history” of Geoffry of Monmouth entirely consists of
Arabian inventions ! the real source of the airy existence
of our British Arthur ! Bishop Percy had been nearly as
adventurous in his Gothic origin, by landing a number of
the northern bards with the army of Rollo in Nor-
mandy; an event which contributed to infuse the Scaldic
genius into the romances of chivalry, whose national hero
is Charlemagne—the tutelary genius of France and Ger-
Iſla O.W.
ºy had looked to the east, and to the north—and
wherever they looked for the origin of Romance it was
found. They had sought in a corner of the universe for
that which is universal.
ROMANCE sprang to birth in every clime, native
wherever she is found, notwithstanding that she has been
a wanderer among all lands, and as prodigal a dispenser as
she has been free in her borrowings and artful in her con-
cealments.
The art of fabling may be classed among the mimetic
arts—it is an aptitude of the universal and plastic facul-
ties of our nature; and man might not be ill defined and
charactered as “a mimetic and fabling animal.”
The earliest Romances appear in a metrical form about
the middle of the twelfth century. The first were “Es-
toires,” or pretended chronicles, like that of the Brut of
Wace; the Romances of martial achievement then pre-
dominated, those of the Knights of Arthur, and the
Paladins of Charlemagne; the adventures of love and
gallantry were of a later epoch. In the mutability of
taste an extraordinary transition occurred; after nearly
two centuries passed in rhyming, all the verse was to be
turned into prose. Whether voluminous rhymes satiate
the public ear, or novelty in the form was sought even
when they had but little choice, the writers of Romance,
a very flexible gentry, who of all other writers servilely
accommodate themselves to the public taste, with more
fluent pens loitered into a more ample page; or, as they
expressed themselves, “translatés de rime en prose,” or
“mis en beau langage.” Many of the old French me-
G 2
84 Amenities of Literature.
trical Romances, in the fourteenth century, were disguised
in this humbled form; but their “mensogne magnanime,”
to use Tasso's style, who loved them, lost nothing in
number or in hardihood. On the discovery of the typo-
graphic art, in the fifteenth century, many of these prose
Romances in manuscript received a new life by passing
through the press; and these, in their venerable “lettres
Gothiques,” are still hoarded for the solace of the curious
in fictions of genuine antiquity, and of invention in its
prime, both at home and abroad; and in a reduced form
we find them surviving among the people on the Con-
tinent. It is singular that the metrical Romances seem
never to have received the honours conferred on the
prose.*
These Romances, in their manuscript state, were che-
rished objects;f the mighty tomes, sometimes consisting
of forty or fifty thousand lines, described as those “great
books of parchment,” or “the great book of Romances,”
were usually embellished by the pen and the pencil with
every ornament that fancy could suggest ; bound in crim-
son velvet, guarded by clasps of silver, and studded with
golden roses; profuse of gorgeous illuminations, and
decorated with the most delicate miniatures, “lymned
with gold of graver's work” on an azure ground; or the
purple page setting off the silvery letters;–objects then
of perpetual attraction to the story-believing reader, and
which now charm the eye which could not as patiently
con the endless page. The fashions of the times are
exactly shown in the dresses and the domestic furniture;
as well as their instruments, military and musical.
Studies for the artist, as for the curious antiquary, we
* Ritson and Weber have elegantly printed some of the best English
metrical romances. In France they have recently enriched literature
with many of these manuscript romances. See “Gentleman's Maga-
zine,” Oct. 1839.
+ It is a curious fact, that in 1390 Sir James Douglas, of Dalkeith,
the ancestor of the Earl of Morton, apparently valued them as about
equal to the statutes of the realm ; for he bequeathed in his will to his
son, “Omnes libros meos tam Statutorum Regni Scocie quam Ro-
mancie.”—Laing’s “Early Metrical Tales,” Edinburgh, 1826.
# A collection of these romances formed into three folio tomes in
manuscript was enriched by seven hundred and forty-seven miniatures,
avec les Initiales peintes en or et couleurs. 6093, Roxburgh Cat.
Gothic Romances. 85
may view the plumage in a casque curved and falling with
peculiar grace, and a lady's robe floating in its amplitude;
and ornaments of dress arranged, which our taste might
emulate. A French amateur who possessed le Roman de
la Violette, a romance of a fabulous Count of Nevers, was
so deeply struck by its exquisite and faithful miniatures,
that he employed the best artists to copy the most inte-
resting, and placed them in his collection of the costume
and fashions of the French nation; a collection preserved
in the Royal Library of France.* If their hard outline
does not always flow into grace, their imagination worked
under the mysterious influence of the Romance through
all their devoted labour. In a group of figures we may
observe that the heads are not mechanically cast by one
mould, but the distinct character looks as if the thought-
ful artist had worked out his recollections on which he
had meditated. In some of the heads, portraits of dis-
tinguished persons have been recognised. Not less ob-
servable are the arabesques often found on the margins,
where the playful pencil has prodigally flung flowers and
fruit, imitating the bloom, or insects which look as if they
had lighted on the leaf. These margins, however, occa-
sionally exhibit arabesques of a very different character;
figures or subjects which often amused the pencil of the
monastic limners, satirical strokes aimed at their brothers
and sisters—the monks and the nuns! I have observed a
wolf, in a monk’s frock and cowl, stretching its paw to
bless a cock bending its submissive head; a cat, in the
habit of an abbess, holding a platter in its paws to a
mouse approaching to lick it, alluding to the allurements
of abbesses to draw young women into the convents; and
a sow, in a nun’s veil, mounted on stilts. A pope appears
to be thrown by devils into a cauldron, and cardinals are
roasting on spits. All these expressions of suppressed
opinion must have been executed by the monks them-
selves. These reformers before the Reformation sympa-
thised with the popular feeling against the haughty prelate
and the luxurious abbot.
The great Romance of Alexander, preserved in the
* Cat. of the Duke de la Wallière, 4507. Strutt would have done
as much for ourselves, but he worked in unrequited Solitude with all
the passion of the French amateur, but without his “best artists.”
86 Amenities of Literature.
Bodleian Library, reveals a secret of the cost of time
freely bestowed on that single and mighty tome. The
illuminator, by preserving the date when he had com-
pleted his own work compared with that of the tran-
scriber when he had finished his part, appears to have
employed nearly six years on the paintings which embel-
lish this precious volume.*
Such a metrical Romance was a gift presented to royalty,
when engrossed by the rapturous hand of the Romancer
himself; the autograph, in a presentation copy, might
count on the meed of “massy goblets” when the muni-
ficent patron found the new volume delectable to his
taste, which indeed had been anticipated by the writer.
This incident occurred to Froissart in presenting his
Romance to Richard the Second, when, in reply to his
majesty’s inquiry after the contents, the author exultingly
told that “the book treated of Amour !”
To the writers of these ancient Romances we cannot
deny a copious invention, a variegated imagination, and,
among their rambling exuberances and their grotesque
marvels, those enchanting enchantments which the Greeks
and Romans only partially and coldly raised. We may
often, too, discover that truth of human nature which is
not always supposed to lie hid in these desultory compo-
sitions. Amid their peculiar extravagances, which at least
may serve to raise an occasional smile, the strokes of
nature are abundant, and may still form the studies of the
writers of fiction, however they may hang on the impa-
tience of the writers and the readers of our duodecimos.
Ancient writers are pictorial: their very fault contributes
to produce a remarkable effect—a fulness often over-
flowing, but which at least is not a scantiness leaving the
vagueness of imperfect description. Their details are
more circumstantial, their impressions are more vivid, and
they often tell their story with the earnestness of persons
who had conversed with the actors, or had been spec-
tators of the scene. We may be wearied, as one might
be at a protracted trial by the witnesses, but we are often
* This romance was composed about the year 1200; the present
copy was made in 1338. There is also a splendid manuscript with
rich and delicate illuminations of the ancient romance of Alexander in
prose in the Brit. Mus., Bib. Reg. 15, E. 6.
Gothic Romances. 87
\
struck by an energetic reality which we sometimes miss
in their polished successors. Their copiousness, indeed, is
without selection; they wrote before they were critics,
but their truth is not the less truth because it is given
with little art.
The dilations of the metrical Romances into tomes of
prose, Warton considered as a proof of the decay of in-
vention. Was not this censure rather the feeling of a
poet for his art, than the decision of a critic P for the
more extended scenes of the Romances in prose required
a wider stage, admitted of a fuller dramatic effect in the
incidents, and a more perfect delineation of the personages
through a more sustained action. If the prose Romances
are not epics by the conventional code of the Stagyrite, at
least they are epical; and some rude Homers sleep among
these old Romancers, metrical or prosaic. A living poetic
critic, one best skilled to arbitrate, for he is without any
prepossessions in favour of our ancient writers, has honestly
acknowledged their faithfulness to nature in their touch-
ing simplicity; “nor,” he adds, “do they less afford, by
their bolder imagination, adequate subjects for the his-
torical pencil.” And he has more particularly noticed
“Le bone Florence de Rome,”—thus written by our un-
grammatical minstrels. “Classical poetry has scarcely ever
conveyed in shorter boundaries so many interesting and
complicated events as may be found in this good old
Romance.”* This indeed is so true, that we find these
romantic tales were not only recited or read, but their
subjects were worked into the tapestries which covered the
walls of their apartments. The Bible and the Romance
equally offered subjects to eyes learned in the “Estoires”
never to be forgotten.
Our master poets have drawn their waters from these
ancient fountains. SIDNEY might have been himself one
of their heroes, and was no unworthy rival of his masters:
SPENSER borrowed largely, and repaid with munificence:
MILTON in his loftiest theme looked down with admiration
on this terrestrial race,
— and what resounds
In fable or romance of Uther's son,
Begirt with British or Armoric knights.
* Campbell’s “Essay on English Poetry.”
88 Amenities of Literature.
“In “Amadis of Gaul,' " has said our true laureate, “may
be found the Zelmane of the “Arcadia, the Masque of Cupid
of the ‘Faery Queen,” and the Florizel of the “Winter's Tale.’
Sidney, Spenser, and Shakspeare imitated this book: was
ever book honoured by three such imitators P”
A great similarity is observable among these writers
of fiction, both in their incidents and the identity of
their phrases; an evidence that these inventors were often
drawing from a common source. In these ages of manu-
scripts they practised without scruple many artifices, and
might safely appropriate the happiest passages of their
anonymous brothers.t One Romance would produce many
* Our vernacular literature owes to the unremitting ardour of our
laureate recent editions of “La Morte d’Arthur,” “Palmerin of Eng-
land,” and a new translation from the Portuguese of “Amadis of Gaul.”
For readers who are not antiquaries, and who may recoil from the pro-
lixity of the ancient romances, there is a work of their species which
may amply gratify their curiosity, and it is of easy acquisition. It is
not an unskilful compilation from the romances of chivalry made by
RICHARD JoHNSON, a noted bookwright in the reign of Elizabeth; it
has passed through innumerable editions, and has at last taken its
station in the popular library of our juvenile literature. I suspect
that the style has been too often altered in the modern editions, which
has injured its raciness. It is well known as “The Renowned History
of the Seven Champions of Christendom.” The compiler has metamor-
phosed the Rowland, Oliver, Guy, Bevis, &c., into seven saints or
champions of Christendom; but “he has preserved some of the most
capital fictions of the old Arabian romance.”—Warton, iii. 63, Ed. 8vo.
It may serve as a substitute for the old black-letter romances, being a
compendium of their rich or their grotesque fancies; or, as Ritson ob-
serves with his accustomed energetical criticism, “It is a compound of
superstition, and, as it were, all the lyes in Christendom in one lye,
and is in many parts of the country believed at this day to be as true
as the gospel.”—“Dissertation, on Romance,” xxxiv.
+ One of the most celebrated romantic histories is “ the Troy-book
of Guido delle Colonne,” which has been considered as the original of
all the later tales of Troy. On the acute suggestion of Tyrwhit, Douce
ascertained that this fabulous history, by many regarded as original, is
only a Latin translation of a Norman poet,” which Guido passes off as
a history collected from Dares and other fictitious authorities, but dis-
ingenuously conceals the name of Benoit de Saint Maur, whose works
he appears to have found when he came to England. It was a prevalent
practice in the middle ages to appropriate a work by a cautious sup-
pression of any mention of the original. Tiraboschi might now be
satisfied that Guido delle Colonne was in England, which he doubted,
* Douce's “Illustrations of Shakspeare.”
Gothic Romances. 89
by variations; the same story would serve as the ground-
work of another: and the later Romancer, to set at rest
the scruples of the reader, usually found fault with his
predecessors, who, having written the same story, had not
given “the true one !” By this innocent imposture, or
this ingenious impudence, they designed to confer on their
Romance the dignity of History. The metrical Romances
pretend to translate some ancient “Cronik” which might
be consulted at Caerleon, the magical palace of the
vanished Arthur: or they give their own original Romance
as from some “Latyn auctour,” whose name is cautiously
withheld; or they practise other devices, pretending to
have drawn their work from “the Greek,” or “the
English,” and even from an “unknown language.” In
some Colophons of the prose Romances the names of real
persons are assigned as the writers;* but the same
Romance is equally ascribed to different persons, and
works are given as translations which in fact are originals.
Amid this prevailing confusion, and these contradictory
statements, we must agree with the editor of Warton,
that we cannot with any confidence name the author of
any of these prose Romances. RITSON has aptly treated
these pseudonymous translators as “men of straw.” We
may say of them all as the antiquary DoucB, in the
agony of his baffled researches after one of their favourite
authorities, a Will o' the Wisp named Lollius, exclaimed,
somewhat gravely—“Of Lollius it will become every one
to speak with diffidence.” Ariosto seems to have caught
this bantering humour of mystifying his readers in his
own Gothic Romance, gravely referring his extravagances
to “the Chronicle of the pseudo Archbishop Turpin" for
his voucher | What was with the Italian but a playful
stroke of satire on the pretended verity of Turpin himself,
may have covered a more serious design with these
ancient romance-writers. Père Menestrier ascribed these
since he now stands charged with only turning into Latin prose the
poem of a Norman, that is, an English poet at the court of our Henry
the Second.
* In the curious catalogue of these romances in the Roxburgh
Library, the cataloguer announced three or four of these pretended
authors as “names unknown to any literary historians,” and considered
the announcement a literary discovery.
90 Amenities of Literature.
productions to Heralds, who, he says, were always selected
for their talents, their knowledge and their experience;
qualifications not the most essential for romance-writing.
“According to the bad taste of those ignorant ages,” he
proceeds, “it is from them so many Romances on feats
of arms and on chivalry issued, by which they designed
to elevate their own office, and to celebrate their voyages
in different lands.” “ St. Palaye, in adopting this notion
of these Heraldical Romancers, with more knowledge of
the ancient Romancers than the good Father possessed,
has added a more numerous body, the Trouvères, who,
either in rehearsing or in composing these poetical narra-
tives, might urge a stronger claim.
When Père Menestrier imagined that it was the in-
tention of these Heralds, by these Romances, “to celebrate
their voyages in different lands,” it seems to have escaped
him that “the voyages” of these Romancers to the
visionary Caerleon, to England, or to Macedonia, were but
a geography of Fairy Land.
In the History of Literature we here discover a whole
generation of writers, who, so far from claiming the
honour of their inventions, or aspiring after the meed of
fame, have even studiedly concealed their claims, and,
with a modesty and caution difficult to comprehend,
dropped into their graves without a solitary com-
memoration.
These idling works of idlers must have been the
pleasant productions of persons of great leisure, with
some tincture of literature, and to whom, by the pecu-
liarity of their condition, fame was an absolute nullity.
Who were these writers who thus contemned fame P Who
pursued the delicate tasks of the illuminator and the
calligrapher? Who adorned Psalters with a religious
patience, and expended a whole month in contriving the
vignette of an initial letter P Who were these artists
who worked for no gain P. In those ages the ecclesiastics
were the only persons who answer to this character; and
it would only be in the silence and leisure of the monas-
tery that such imaginative genius and such refined art
could find their dwelling-place. I have sometimes thought
* Père Menestrier, “ Chevalerie Ancienne et Moderne,” chap. v.
On HERALDs.
Gothic Romances. 91
that it was Père Hardouin's conviction of all this literary
industry of the monks which led him to indulge his
extravagant conjecture, that the classical writings of
antiquity were the fabrications of this sedentary brother-
hood; and his “pseudo-Virgilius” and “pseudo-Hora-
tius” astonished the world, though they provoked its
laughter.
The Gothic mediaeval periods were ages of imagination,
when in art works of amazing magnitude were produced,
while the artists sent down no claims to posterity. We
know not who were the numerous writers of these
voluminous Romances, but, what is far more surprising,
we are nearly as unacquainted with those great and
original architects who covered our land with the palatial
monastery, the church, and the cathedral. In the religious
societies themselves the genius of the Gothic architect
was found: the bishop or the abbot planned while they
opened their treasury; and the sculptor and the workmen
were the tenants of the religious house. The devotion of
labour and of faith raised these wonders, while it placed
them beyond the unvalued glory which the world can
ive.*
9. We cannot think less than Père Hardouin that there
were no poetical and imaginative monks — Homers in
cowls, and Virgils who chanted vespers—who could com-
pose in their unoccupied day more beautiful romances than
their crude legends, or the dry annals of the Leiger book
of their abbey. Some knowledge these writers had of the
mythological, and even the Homeric and Virgilian fictions,
for they often gave duplicates of the classical fables of
antiquity. Circe was a fair sorceress, the one-eyed Poly-
phemus a dread giant, and Perseus bestrode a winged
dragon, before they were reflected in romances. But what
we discover peculiar in these works is a strange mixture of
sacred and profane matters, always treated in a manner
which scents of the cloister. Before he enters the combat,
the knight is often on his knees, invoking his patron-
saint; he proffers his vows on holy relics; while ladies
placed in the last peril, or the most delicate positions, by
their fervent repetitions of the sign of the cross, or a vow
* See Bentham’s “History and Antiquities of Ely,” 27.
92 Amenities of Literature.
to found an abbey, are as certainly saved: and for another
refined stroke of the monachal invention, the heroes often
close their career in a monastery or a hermitage. The
monkish morality which sat loosely about them was, how-
ever, rigid in its ceremonial discipline. Lancelot de Lac
leaves the bed of the guilty Genevra, the Queen of the
good king Arthur, at the ring of the matin-bell, to assist
at mass ; so scrupulous were such writers that even in
criminal levities they should not neglect all the offices of
the Church. The subject of one of these great romances
is a search after the cup which held the real blood of
Christ; and this history of the Sang-real forms a series of
romances. Who but a monk would have thought, and
even dared to have written it down, that all the circum-
stances in this romance were not only certain, but were
originally set down by the hand of Jesus himself? and
further dared to observe, that Jesus never wrote but twice
before—the Lord’s Prayer, and the sentence on the woman
taken in adultery. Such a pious, or blasphemous fraud,
was not unusual among the dark fancies of the monastic
legendaries.
Some of these Homers must have left their lengthening
Iliad, as Homer himself seems to have done, unfinished ;
tired, or tiring, for no doubt there was often a rehearsal,
“the tale half told” was resumed by some Elisha who
caught the mantle his more inspired predecessor had let
fall. It appears evident that several were the continuators
of a favourite romance; and from deficient attention or
deficient skill a fatal discrepancy has been detected in
the identical characters—the ordinary fate of those who
write after the ideas of another, with indistinct concep-
tions, or with fancies going contrary to those of the first
inventor.
These metrical romances in manuscript, and the printed
prose in their original editions, are now very costly. By
the antiquary and the poet these tomes may be often
opened. With the antiquary they have served as the
veritable registers of their ages. The French antiquaries,
and Carte in England, have often illustrated by those
ancient romances many obscure points in geography and
history. Except in the mere machinery of their fancy,
Gothic Romances. 93
these writers had no motive to pervert leading facts, for
these served to give a colour of authenticity to their
pretended history, or to fix their locality. As they had not
the erudition to display, nor were aware of the propriety
of copying, the customs and manners of the age of their
legendary hero, they have faithfully transmitted their
own; we should never have had but for this lucky absur-
dity the “Tale of Thebes” turned into a story of the
middle ages; while Alexander the Great is but the ideal
of a Norman baron in the splendour and altitude of the
conception of the writers. It was the ignorance of the
illuminators of our Latin and Saxon manuscripts of any
other country than their own which enabled STRUTT to
place before the eye a pictorial exhibition of our Anglo-
Saxon fathers. Compared with the realities of these
originals, with all their faults of tediousness, the modern
copiers of ancient times, in their mock scenes of other
ages, too often reflect in the cold moonlight of their fancy
a shadowy unsubstantial antiquity.
The influence of these fabulous achievements of uncon-
querable heroes and of self-devoted lovers over the in-
tellect and the passions of men and women, during that vast
interval of time when they formed the sole literature, was
omnipotent. In the early romances of chivalry, when
their genius was purely military, and directed to kindle a
passion for joining the crusades, we rarely find adventures
of the tender passion; but, since women cannot endure
neglect, and the female character has all the pliancy of
sympathy, and has performed her part in every age on
the theatre of society, we discover the extraordinary fact
that many ladies assumed the plumy helmet and dexterously
managed the lance. The ladies rode amid armed knights
resistless as themselves. It was subsequently, when we
find that singularly fantastic institution of “The Courts
of Love,” which delivered their “Arrets” in the style of
a most refined jurisprudence, that these beautiful compa-
nions-at-arms were satisfied to conquer the conquerors by
more legitimate seductions, and that the romances told
of little but of loves. Ariosto and Tasso are supposed
to have drawn their female warriors from the Amazonian
Penthesilea and the Camilla of Homer and Virgil; but
94. Amenities of Literature.
it would seem that the prototype of these feminine
knights these poets also found among those old romances
which they loved.
It is unquestionable that these martial romances of
chivalry inflamed the restlessness of those numerous
military adventurers who found an ample field for their
chivalry after the crusades, in our continued incursions
into France, of which country we were long a living
plague, from the reign of Edward III. to that of Henry
W., nearly a century of national tribulation. Many “a
gentyl and noble esquyer,” if perchance the English
monarch held a truce with France or Scotland, flew into
some foreign service. Sir Robert Knolles was known to
the French as “le véritable démon de la guerre;” and
Sir John Hawkwood, when there was no fighting to be
got at home, passed over into Italy, where he approved
himself to be such a prodigy of “a man-at-arms,” that
the grateful Florentines raised his statue in their cathe-
dral; this image of English valour may still be proudly
viewed. This chivalric race of romance-readers were not,
however, always of the purest “order of chivalry.” If
they were eager for enterprise, they were not less for its
more prudential results. A castle or a ransom in France,
a lordly marriage, or a domain in Italy, were the lees
that lie at the bottom of their glory.
We continued long in this mixed state of glory clouded
with barbarism; for at a time when literature and the fine
arts were on the point of breaking out into the splendour
of the pontificate of Leo the Tenth, in our own country
the great Duke of Buckingham, about 1500, held the old
romance of “The Knight of the Swan” in the highest
estimation, because the translator maintained that our
duke was lineally descended from that hero; the first peer
of the realm was proud of deriving his pedigree from a
fabulous knight in a romantic genealogy.
But all the inventions and fashions of man have their
date and their termination. For three centuries these
ancient romances, metrical or prose, had formed the read-
ing of the few who read, and entranced the circle of eager
listeners. The enchantment was on the wane; their
admirers had become somewhat sceptical of “the true
history” which had been so solemnly warranted; another
Gothic Romances. 95
taste in the more chastened writings of Roman and
Grecian lore was now on the ascendant. One last effort
was made in this decline of romantic literature, in that
tesselated compilement where the mottled pieces drawn
out of the French prose romances of chivalry were finely
squared together by no unskilful workman, in Sir THOMAS
MALORY, to the English lover of ancient romance well
known by the title of La Morte d’Arthur. This last of
these ancient romances was finished in the ninth year of
the reign of Edward IV., about 1470. CAxTon exulted
to print this epical romance; and at the same time he had
the satisfaction of reproaching the “laggard” age.
“What do ye now,” exclaimed the ancient printer, “but
go to the Bagnes, and play at dice P Leave this leave
it ! and read these noble volumes.” Volumes which not
many years after, when a new system of affairs had occur-
red to supplant this long-idolised “order of chivalry,”
ROGER ASCHAM plainly asserted only taught “open man-
slaughter and bold bawdry.” Such was the final fate of
Love and Arms
96
ORIGIN OF THE WERNACULAR LANGUAGES
OF EUROPE.
THE predominance of the Latin language, during many cen-
turies, retarded the cultivation of the vernacular dialects
of Europe. When the barbarous nations had triumphed
over ancient Rome, the language of the Latins remained
unconquered; that language had diffused itself with the
universal dominion, and, living in the minds of men,
required neither legions nor consuls to maintain its pre-
dominance.
From accident, and even from necessity, the swarming
hordes, some of whom seem to have spoken a language
which had never been written, and were a roving people
at a period prior to historical record, had adopted that
single colloquial idiom which their masters had conveyed
to them, attracted, if not by its beauty, at least by its
convenience. This vulgar Latin was not, indeed, the
Latin of the great writers of antiquity; but in its corrupt
state, freed from a complex construction, and even from
grammar, had more easily lent itself to the jargon of the
ruder people. Teutonic terms, or Celtic words with cor-
rupt latinisms, were called “the scum of ancient eloquence,
and the rust of vulgar barbarisms,” by an indignant critic
in the middle of the fifth century.* It was amid this
confusion of races, of idioms, and of customs, that from
this heterogeneous mass were hewed out those VERNACU-
LAR DIALECTs of Europe which furnished each people with
their own idiom, and which are now distinguished as the
MoDERN LANGUAGES.
In this transference and transfusion of languages, Italy
retained the sonorous termination of her paternal soil, and
Spain did not forget the majesty of the Latin accent;
lands favoured by more genial skies, and men blessed with
more flexible organs. But the Gothic and the Northern
races barbarously abbreviated or disfigured their Latin
words—to sounds so new to them they gave their own
* Sidonius Apollinaris.
Origin of the Vernacular Languages. '97.
rude inflections; there is but one organ to regulate the
delicacy of orthoepy—a musical and a tutored ear. The
Gaul,” in cutting his words down, contracted a masal
sharpness; and the Northmen, in the shock of their hard,
redundant consonants, lost the vowelly confluence.
This vulgar or corrupt Latin, mingled with this diversity
of jargons, was the vitiated mother of the sister-languages
of Europe—sisters still bearing their family likeness, of
the same homely origin, but of various fortunes, till some
attained to the beauty and affluence of their Latin line.
From the first the people themselves had dignified their
spurious generation of language as Romans, or Romance,
or Romaunt, still proud perhaps of its Roman source;
but the critical Latins themselves had distinguished it
as Rustic, to indicate a base dialect used only by those
who were far removed from the metropolis of the world.
But when these different nations had established their
separate independence, this vernacular idiom was wholly
left to the people; it was the image of their own barbaric
condition, unworthy of the studies, and inadequate to the
genius, of any writer. The universal language maintained
its pre-eminence over the particular dialect, and as the
course of human events succeeded in the overwhelming
of ancient Rome, another Rome shadowed the world.
Ecclesiastical Rome, whence the novel faith of Chris-
tianity was now to emanate, far more potent than mili-
tary Rome, perpetuated the ancient language. The
clergy, through the diversified realms of Europe, were
held together in strict conformity, and by a common bond
chained to the throne of the priesthood—one faith, one
discipline, one language
* An ingenious literary antiquary has given us a copious vocabulary,
as complete evidence of Latin words merely abbreviated by omitting
their terminations, whence originated those numerous monosyllables
which impoverish the French language. In the following instances the
Gauls only used the first syllable for the entire word, damnum—damn ,
aureum—or ; malum—mal ; nudum—nud : amicus—ami : vinum—
win , homo–hom, as anciently written ; curtus—court; sonus—son ;
bonus—bon : and thus made many others.
The nasal sound of our neighbours still prevails ; thus Gracchus
sinks into Gracque; Titus Livius is but Tite Live ; and the historian of
Alexander the Great, the dignified Quintus Curtius, is the ludicrous
Quinte Curce /–Auguis, “Du Génie de la Langue Françoise.”
WOL. I. IH
98 Amenities of Literature.
The Latin tongue, both in verse and prose, was domi-
ciliated among people of the most opposite interests, cus-
toms, and characters. The primitive fathers, the later
schoolmen, the monkish chroniclers, all alike composed in
Latin; all legal instruments, even marriage-contracts,
were drawn in Latin: and even the language of Christian
prayer was that of abolished paganism.
The idiom of their father-land—or as we have affec-
tionately called it, our “mother-tongue,” and as our
ancient translator of the “Polychronicon” energetically
terms it, “the birth-tongue”—those first human accents
which their infant ear had caught, and which from their
boyhood were associated with the most tender and joyous
recollections, every nation left to fluctuate on the lips of
the populace, rude and neglected. Whenever a writer,
proposing to inform the people on subjects which more
nearly interested them, composed in the national idiom,
it was a strong impulse only which could induce him thus
to submit to degrade his genius. One of the French
crusaders, a learned knight, was anxious that the nation
should become acquainted with the great achievements of
the deliverers of Jerusalem; it was the command of his
bishop that induced him to compose the narrative in the
vernacular idiom ; but the twelve years which he bestowed
on his chronicle were not considered by him as employed
for his glory, for he avows that the humiliating style
which he had used was the mortifying performance of a
religious penance. *
All who looked towards advancement in worldly affairs,
and were of the higher orders in society, cultivated the
language of Rome. It is owing to this circumstance,
observes a learned historian of our country, that “the
Latin language and the classical writers were preserved
by the Christian clergy from that destruction which has
entirely swept from us the language and the writings of
Phoenicia, Carthage, Babylon, and Egypt.”* We must
also recollect that the influence of the Latin language
became far more permanent when the great master-works
of antiquity were gradually unburied from their conceal-
ments. In this resurrection of taste and genius, they
* Turner’s “History of England.”
Origin of the Vernacular Languages. 99
derived their immortality from the imperishable soul of
their composition. All Europe was condemned to be
copiers, or in despair to be plagiarists.
It is well known how the admirable literatures of Greece
and Rome struck a fresh impulse into literary pursuits at
that period which has been distinguished as the restora-
tion of letters. The emigration of the fugitive Greeks
conveyed the lost treasures of their more ancient literature
to the friendly shores of Italy. Italy had then to learn
a new language, and to borrow inspiration from another
genius.
The occupation of disinterring manuscripts which had
long been buried in dungeon-darkness, was carried on with
an enthusiasm of which perhaps it would be difficult for
us at this day to form an adequate conception. Many
exhausted their fortunes in remote journeys, or in impor-
tations from the East; and the possession of a manuscript
was considered not to have been too dearly purchased by
the transfer of an estate, since only for the loan of one
the pledge was nothing less.” The discovery of an author,
perhaps heard of for the first time, was tantamount to the
acquisition of a province; and when a complete copy of
“Quintilian” was discovered, the news circulated through-
out Europe. The rapture of collation, the restoration of
a corrupt text, or the perpetual commentary, became the
ambition of a life, even after the era of printing.
This was the useful age of critical erudition. It fur-
nished the studious with honours and avocations; but they
were reserved only for themselves: it withdrew them from
the cultivation of all vernacular literature. They courted
not the popular voice when a professorial chair or a dig-
nified secretaryship offered the only profit or honour the
literary man contemplated. Accustomed to the finished
compositions of the ancients, the scholar turned away from
the rudeness of the maternal language. There was no
other public opinion than what was gathered from the
writings of the Few who wrote to the Few who read;
they transcribed as sacred what authority had long esta-
blished; their arguments were scholastic and metaphy-
sical, for they held little other communication with the
* See “Curiosities of Literature,” article Recovery of Manuscripts,
H 2
100 Amenities of Literature.
world, or among themselves, but through the restricted
medium of their writings. This state was a heritage of
ideas and of opinions, transmitted from age to age with
little addition or diminution. Authority and quotation
closed all argument, and filled vast volumes. University
responded to university, and men of genius were following
each other in the sheep-tracks of antiquity. Even to so
late a period as the days of Erasmus, every Latin word
was culled with a classical superstition; and a week of
agony was exhausted on a page finely inlaid with a
mosaic of phrases.* While this verbal generation flou-
rished, some eminent scholars were but ridiculous apes of
Cicero, and, in a cento of verses, empty echoes of Virgil.
All native vigour died away in the coldness of imitation;
and a similarity of thinking and of style deprived the
writers of that raciness which the nations of Europe
subsequently displayed when they cultivated their verna-
cular literature.
It is remarkable of those writers who had already dis-
tinguished themselves by their Latin works, that when
they began to compose in their native language, those
classical effusions on which they had confidently rested
their future celebrity sank into oblivion; and the writers
themselves ceased to be subjects either of critical inquiry
or of popular curiosity, except in that language in which
they had opened a vein of original thought, in a manner
and diction the creation of their own feelings. Here
their natural power and their freed faculties placed them
at a secure interval from their imitators. Modern writers
in Latin were doomed to find too many academical
equals; but those who were inimitable in their vernacular
idiom could dread no rival, and discovered how the pro-
ductions of the heart, rather than those of the lexicon,
were echoed to their authors in the voice of their con-
temporaries.
* ERASMUS composed a satirical dialogue between two vindictive
'Ciceronians; it is said that a duel has been occasioned by the intre-
pidity of maintaining the purity of a writer's latinity. The pedantry
of mixing Greek and Latin terms in the vernacular language is ridiculed
by RABELAIs in his encounter with the Limousin student, whom he
terrified till the youngster ended in delivering himself in plain French,
i. left º “Pindarising” all the rest of his days.-“Pantagruel,”
: ll. C. 0.
:
*:
:
:
:
:
;
:
;
Origin of the Vernacular Languages. 101
The people indeed were removed far out of the influence
of literature. The people could neither become intelligent
with the knowledge, nor sympathise with the emotions,
concealed in an idiom which had long ceased to be
spoken, and which exacted all the labour and the leisure
of the cloistered student.
This state of affairs had not occurred among the
Greeks, and hardly among the Romans, who had only
composed their immortal works in their maternal tongue.
Their arts, their sciences, and their literature were to be
acquired by the single language which they used. It was
the infelicity of their successors in dominion, to weary out
the tenderness of youth in the repulsive labours of ac-
quiring the languages of the two great nations whose
empire had for ever closed, but whose finer genius had
triumphed over their conquerors.
With the ancients, instruction did not commence until
their seventh year; and till they had reached that period
Nature was not disturbed in her mysterious workings:
the virgin intellect was not doomed to suffer the violence
of our first barren studies—that torture of learning a
language which has ceased to be spoken by the medium
of another equally unknown. Perhaps it was owing to
this favourable circumstance that, among the inferior
classes of society in the two ancient nations, their nume-
rous slaves displayed such an aptitude for literature, emi-
ment as skilful scribes, and even as original writers.
One of the earliest prose writers in our language when
style was beginning to be cultivated, has aptly described,
by a domestic but ingenious image, the effect of our youth
gathering the burdens of grammatical faggots in the Sylva
of antiquity. It is Sir THOMAS ELyot who speaks, in
“The Boke of the Governor,” printed in 1531 : “By that
time the learner cometh to the most sweet and pleasant
rendering of old authors, the sparks of fervent desire are
extinct with the burthen of grammar, like as a little fire
is even quenched with a great heap of small sticks, so
that it can never come to the principal logs, where it
should burn in a great pleasant fire.”
It was Italy, the Mother and the Nurse of Literature
(as the filial zeal of her sons has hailed her), which first
opened to the nations of Europe the possibility of each
102 Amenities of Literature.
creating a vernacular literature, reflecting the image not of
the Greeks and of the Romans, but of themselves.
Three memorable men, of the finest and most contrasted
genius, appeared in one country and at one period. With
that contempt for the language of the people in which the
learned participated, busied as they were at the restoration
of letters by their new studies and their progressive dis-
coveries, PETRARCH contemned his own Italian “Rime,”
and was even insensible to the inspiration of a mightier
genius than his own, that genius who, with a parental
affection, had adopted the orphan idiom of his father-
land; an orphan idiom, which had not yet found even a
name; for it was then uncertain what was the true lan-
guage of Italy. DANTE had at first proposed to write in
Latin; but with all his adoration of his master Virgil, he
rejected the verse of Virgil, and anticipated the wants of
future ages. A peculiar difficulty, however, occurred to
the first former of the vernacular literature of Italy. In
the state of this unsettled language—composed of frag-
ments of the latinity of a former populace, with the cor-
ruptions and novelties introduced by its new masters—
deformed by a great variety of dialects—submitted, in the
mouths of the people, to their caprices, and unstamped by
the hand of a master—it seemed hopeless to fix on an
idiom which, by its inherent nobleness, should claim the
distinguished honour of being deemed Italian. DANTE
denied this envied grace to any of the rival principalities
of his country. The poet, however, mysteriously asserted
that the true Italian “volgare” might be discovered in
every Italian city; but being common to all, it could not
be appropriated by any single one. Dante dignified the
“volgare illustre” which he had conceived in his mind, by
magnificent titles;–it was “illustrious,” it was “car-
dinal,” it was “aulic,” it was “courtly,” it was the lan-
guage of the most learned who had composed in the
vulgar idiom, whether in Sicily, in Tuscany, in Puglia,
even in Lombardy, or in the marshes of Ancona | This
fanciful description of the Italian language appeared enig-
matical to the methodical investigations of the cold and
cautious TIRABoschI. That grave critic submitted the
interior feeling of the poet to the test of facts and dates.
With more erudition than taste, he marked the mechanical

Origin of the Vernacular Languages. 103
gradations—the stages of every language, from rudeness to
refinement. The mere historical investigator could con-
ceive no other style than what his chronology had fur-
nished. But the spirit of DANTE had penetrated beyond
the palpable substances of the explorer of facts, and the
arranger of dates. DANTE, in his musings, had thrown a
mystical veil over the Italian language; but the poet pre-
sciently contemplated, amid the distraction of so many
dialects, that an Italian style would arise which at some
distant day would be deemed classical. DANTE wrote, and
DANTE was the classic of his country.
The third great master of the vernacular literature of
Italy was BoccAccro, who threw out the fertility of his
genius in the volgare of nature herself. This Shakspeare
of a hundred tales transformed himself into all the con-
ditions of society; he touched all the passions of human
beings, and penetrated into the thoughts of men ere he
delineated their manners. Even two learned Greeks ac-
knowledged that the tale-teller of Certaldo, in his varie-
gated pages, had displayed such force and diversity in his
genius, that no Greek writer could be compared with his
“volgare eloquenza.”
The Italian literature thus burst into birth and into
maturity; while it is remarkable of the other languages
of Europe, that after their first efforts they fell into de-
crepitude. Our Saxon rudeness seems to have required
more hewing and polishing to be modelled into elegance,
and more volubility to flow into harmony, than even the
genius of its earliest writers could afford. Dante, Pe-
trarch, and Boccaccio were the contemporaries of Gower,
of Chaucer, and of “the Ploughman;” they delight their
nation after the lapse of many centuries; while the critics
of the reign of Elizabeth complained that Piers Plough-
man, Chaucer, and Gower then required glossaries; and
so, at a later period, did Ronsard, Baif, and Marot in
France. In prose we had no single author till the close
of the sixteenth century who had yet constructed a style;
and in France Rabelais and Montaigne had contracted the
rust and the rudeness of antiquity, as it seemed to the re-
finement of the following generation.
It cannot be thought that the genius of the Italians
always excelled that of other countries, but the material
104 Amenities of Literature.
which those artists handled yielded more kindly to their
touch. The shell they struck gave a more melodious
sound than the rough and scrannel pipe cut from the
northern forests.
Custom and prejudice, however, predominated over the
feelings of the learned even in Italy. Their epistolary
correspondence was still carried on in Latin, and their first
dramas were in the language of ancient Rome. ANGELO
PoDITIAN appears to have been the earliest who composed
a dramatic piece, his “Orfeo,” in “stilo volgare,” and for
which he assigns a reason which might have occurred to
many of his predecessors—“ perchè degli spettatori fusse
meglio intesa,” that he might be better understood by the
audience 1
The vernacular idiom in Italy was still so little in
repute, while the prejudice in favour of the Latin was so
firmly rooted, that their youths were prohibited from read-
ing Italian books. A curious anecdote of the times which
its author has sent down to us, however, shows that their
native productions operated with a secret charm on their
sympathies; for WARCHI has told the singular circum-
stance that his father once sent him to prison, where he
was kept on bread and water, as a penance for his in-
veterate passion for reading works in the vernacular tongue.
The struggle for the establishment of a vernacular
literature was apparent about the same period in different
countries of Europe; a simultaneous movement to vindi-
cate the honour and to display the merits of their national
idiom.
JOACHIM DE BELLAY, of an illustrious literary family,
resided three years with his relative the Cardinal at
Rome; the glory of the great vernacular authors of Italy
inflamed his ardour; and in one of his poems he developes
the beauty of “composing in our native language,” by the
deeper emotions it excites in our countrymen. Subse-
quently he published his “Defense et Illustration de la
Langue Françoise,” in 1549, where eloquently and learnedly
he would persuade his nation to write in their own lan-
guage. FERREIRA, the Portuguese poet, about the same
time, with all the feelings of patriotism, resolved to give
birth to a national literature; exhorting his countrymen
to cultivate their vernacular idiom, which he purified and
Origin of the Vernacular Languages. 105
enriched. He has thus feelingly expressed this glorious
sentiment—
Eu desta gloria so’ fico contente
Que a minha terra amei, e a minha gente.
In Scotland we find Sir DAVID LYNDSAY, in 1553,
writing his great work on “The Monarchie,” in his verna-
cular idiom, although he thought it necessary to apologise,
by alleging the example of Moses, Aristotle, Plato, Virgil,
and Cicero, who had all composed their works in their own
language.
In our own country Lord BERNERs had anticipated this
general movement. In 1525, when he ventured on the
toil of his voluminous and spirited Froissart, he described
it as “translated out of Frenshe into our maternal English
tongue ;” an expression which indicates those filial yearn-
ings of literary patriotism which were now to give us a
native literature.
The predominant prejudice of writing in Latin was first
checked in Germany, France, and England by the leaders
of that great Revolution which opposed the dynasty of the
tiara. It was one of the great results of the Reformation,
that it taught the learned to address the people. The ver-
sions of the Scriptures seemed to consecrate the vernacular
idiom of every nation in Europe. Peter Waldo began to
use the vernacular language in his version, however coarse,
of the Bible for the Vaudois, those earliest Reformers of
the Church; and though the volume was suppressed and
prohibited, a modern French literary historian deduces the
taste for writing in the maternal tongue to this rude but
great attempt to attract the attention of the people. The
same incident occurred in our own annals; and it was the
English Bible of Edward the Sixth which opened the sealed
treasures of our native language to the multitude. Calvin
wrote his great work, “The Institute of the Christian
Religion,” at the same time in the Latin language and in
the French; and thus it happens that both these works
are alike original. Calvin deemed that to render, the
people intelligent their instructor should be intelligible;
and that if books are written for a great purpose, they are
only excellent in the degree that they are multiplied.
Calvin addressed not a few erudite recluses, but a whole
nation.
I06 Amenities of Literature.
It is unquestionable that the Reformation began to
diminish the veneration for the Latin language. Whether
from the love of novelty, or rather by that transition to a
new system of human affairs, the pedantry of ancient
standing was giving way to the cultivation of a national
tongue. A great revolution was fast approaching, which
would give a new direction to the studies of the scholastic
gentry, and introduce a new mode of addressing the
people. ... It was a revolution alarming those who would
have walled in public opinion by circumscribing all know-
ledge to a privileged class. A remarkable evidence of this
disposition appears in an incident which occurred to Sir
THOMAS WILSON, the author of two English treatises on
the arts of Logic and of Rhetoric. An emigrant in the
days of the Papistic Mary, he was arraigned at Rome
before the Inquisition, on the general charge of heresy, but
especially for having written his “Arts of Logic” and “ of
Rhetoric’’ in a language which, at least we may presume,
the whole conclave could not have criticised. The torture
was not only shown to him, but he tells us that “he had
felt some smart of it.” The dark inquisitors taught our
critic a new canon in his own favourite arts; and our Eng-
lish Aristarchus soon discovered how far those perfidious
arts of reasoning and of eloquence may betray the hapless
orator, when his words are listened to by malicious judges,
equally skilled in mutilating sentences, or catching at loose
words. “They brought down my great heart by telling
me plainly that my defence had put me into further peril.”
Our baffled rhetorician saw that his only safety was to
abstain from using the great instrument of his art, which
was now locked up in silence. He was left, as he expresses
himself, “without all help and without all hope, not only
of liberty, but also of life.” He escaped by a strange
incident. It would seem that in an insurrection of the
populace they set fire to the prison, and in a burst of
popular freedom, forgetful of their bigotry, or from the
spirit of vengeance on their hateful masters, they suffered
the heretics to creep out of their cells; an ebullition of
public spirit in “the worthy Romans,” which the luckless
English expounder of logic and rhetoric might well account
as “an enterprise never before attempted.” On Wilson's
return to England he was solicited to revise his admirable
Origin of the Vernacular Languages. 107
“Art of Rhetoric,” but he strenuously refused to “meddle
with it, either hot or cold.” Still smarting from the tor-
ture which his innocent progeny had occasioned, he seems
to have alleviated his martyrdom with the quaint humour
of a querulous prologue.
In these awful transitions from one state of society to
another, even the most sagacious are predisposed to dis-
cover what they secretly wish. Erasmus foresaw that a
great change was approaching ; but although he has
delivered a prediction, it seems doubtful whether he had
discerned the object aright. “I see,” he writes, “a cer-
tain golden age ready to arise, which perhaps will not be
my lot to partake of, yet I congratulate the world, and the
younger sort I congratulate, in whose minds, however,
Erasmus shall live and remain, by the remembrance of
good offices he hath done.” These “good offices” were
restricted to his ardent labours in classical literature; but
did Erasmus foresee in the change the subversion of the
papal system by which Luther had often terrified the timid
quietness of our gentle recluse, or the rise of the vernacular
literature which had yet no existence P Erasmus, indeed,
was so little sensible of this approaching change, that his
amusing Colloquies, and his Panegyric on Folly, whose
satirical humour had been so happily adapted to open the
minds of men, he confined to the lettered circles; as Sir
Thomas More did his “Utopia,” which, had it been in-
telligible to the people, might have impressed them with
some principles of political government. The Sage of
Rotterdam imagined that the great movement of the age
was to restore the classical pursuits of antiquity, and never
dreamed of that which, in opposition to the ancient, soon
obtained the distinction of “the New Learning,” as it is
expressed by Roger Ascham—the knowledge which was
adapted to the wants and condition of the people. Eras-
mus would have been startled at the truth, that the
language of antiquity would even be neglected by the
generality of writers; that every European nation would
have classics of their own ; and that the finest geniuses
would make their appeals to the people in the language of
the people.
The predilection for composing in the Roman language
long continued among the most illustrious writers both
I08 Amenities of Literature.
at home and abroad. A judicious critic in the reign of
James I., Edmund Bolton, in his “Nero Caesar,” recom-
mends that the history of England should be composed in
Latin by the classical pen of the learned Sir Henry Saville,
the editor of “Chrysostom.” It is indeed a curious cir-
cumstance that when an English play was performed at
the University of Cambridge before Queen Elizabeth, the
Vice-Chancellor was called on to remonstrate with the
ministers of Elizabeth against such a derogation of the
learning and the dignity of the University. This very
Vice-Chancellor, who had to protest against all English
comedies, had, however, himself been the writer of
“Gammer Gurton’s Needle,” which was long considered
to be the first attempt at English comedy.* This con-
duct of the University offered no encouragement to men
of learning and genius to compose in their vernacular
idiom.
The genius of WERULAM, whose prescient views often
anticipated the institutions and the discoveries of succeed-
ing times, appears never to have contemplated the future
miracles of his maternal tongue. Lord BACON did not
foresee that the English language would one day be
capable of embalming all that philosophy can discover
or poetry can invent; that his country, at length, would
possess a national literature, and exult in models of its
own. So little did Lord Bacon esteem the language of
his country, that his favourite works are composed in
Latin; and what he had written in English he was
anxious to have preserved, as he expresses himself, in
“ that universal language which may last as long as
books last.” It might have surprised Lord Bacon to
have been told that the learned in Europe would one
day study English authors to learn to think and write,
and prefer his own “Essays,” in their living pith, to the
colder transfusions of the Latin versions of his friends.
The taste of the philosophical Chancellor was probably
inferior to his invention. Our illustrious CAMDEN par-
took largely of this reigning fatuity when he wrote the
reign of Elizabeth—the history of his contemporaries, and
the “Britannia”—the history of our country, in the
* Collier's “History of Dramatic Poetry,” ii. 463.
Origin of the Vernacular Languages. 109
Latin language; as did BUCHANAN that of Scotland, and
DE THou his great history, which includes that of the
Reformation in France. All these works, addressed to
the deepest sympathies of the people, were not imparted
to them.
There was a peculiar absurdity in composing modern
history in the ancient language of a people alike foreigners
to the feelings as well as to the nature of the transactions.
The Latin had neither proper terms to describe modern
customs, nor fitting appellatives for titles and for names
and places. The fastidious delicacy of the writers of
modern latinity could not endure to vitiate their classical
purity by the Gothic names of their heroes, and of the
barbarous localities where memorable transactions had
occurred. These great authors, in their despair, actually
preferred to shed an obscurity over their whole history,
rather than to disturb the collocation of their numerous
diction. Buchanan and De Thou, by a ludicrous play on
words, translated the proper names of persons and of
places. A Scottish worthy, Wiseheart, was dignified by
Buchanan with a Greek denomination, Sophocardus ; so
that in a history of Scotland the name of a conspicuous
hero does not appear, or must be sought for in a Greek
lexicon, which, after all, may require a punster for a reader.
The history of De Thou is thus frequently unintelligible;
and two separate indexes of names and places, and the
public stations which his personages held, do not always
agree with the copy preserved in the family. The names
of the persons are latinised according to their etymology,
and all public offices are designated by those Roman ones
which bore some fancied affinity. But the modern office
was ill indicated by the ancient; the constable of France,
a military charge, differed from the magister equitum, and
the marshals of France from the tribunus equitum. His
equivocal personages are not always recognised in this
travesty of their Roman masquerade.
A remarkable instance of the gross impropriety of com-
posing an English history in Latin, and of the obstinate
prejudice of the learned, who imagined that the ancient
idiom conferred dignity on a theme wholly vernacular,
appeared when the delegates of Oxford purchased ANTHONY
WooD's elaborate work on “The History and Antiquities

Il () Amenities of Literature.
of the University of Oxford.” Our honest antiquary,
with a true vernacular feeling, had written the history of
an English university, during an uninterrupted labour of
ten years, in his artless but natural idiom. The learned
delegates opined that it was humiliating the Oxford press,
to have its history pass through it in the language of the
country; and Dr. Fell, with others, was chosen to dignify
it into Latin. What was the result of this pompous and
inane labour P The author was sorely hurt at the sight
of his fair offspring disguised in its foreign and fantastic
dress. What was clear in English, was obscure in the
circumlocution of rotund periods and affected phraseolo-
gies; the circumstantial narrative and the local descrip-
tions, so interesting to an English reader, were not only
superfluous, but repulsive to the foreigner. ANTHONY
WooD indignantly re-transcribed the whole of his English
copy, and left the fair volumes to the care of the uni-
versity itself, not without the hope which has been
realized, that his work should be delivered to posterity
stamped by its author's native genius.*
Such was the crisis, and such the difficulties and the
obstructions of that native literature in whose prosperous
state every European people now exults. Homogeneous
with their habitual associations, moulded by their customs
and manners, and everywhere stamped by the peculiar
organization of each distinct race, we see the vernacular
literature ever imbued with the qualities of the soil whence
it springs, diversified, yet ever true to nature. Had the
native genius of the great luminaries of literature not
found a vein which could reach to the humblest of their
compatriots, they who are now the creators of our ver-
macular literature had remained but pompous plagiarists
or frigid babblers, and the moderns might still have been
pacing in the trammels of a mimetic antiquity.
* We now possess this valued literary history, which none, perhaps,
but Anthony à Wood could have so fervently pursued : “The History
and Antiquities of the University of Oxford,” in five volumes, quarto.
Edited by John Gutch. It is a distinct work from the far-known
“Athenae Oxonienses.” Why did this great work, as well as some
others, come forth with a Latin title ; This absurdity was a remaining
taint of the ancient prejudice. But an English work was not the more
classical for bearing a Latin title.
Ill
ORIGIN OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
Johnson pronounced it impossible to ascertain when our
speech ceased to be Saxon and began to be English; and
although since his day English philology has extended its
boundaries, the lines of demarcation are very moveable
for the literary antiquary. At whatever point we set out,
we may find that something which preceded has been
omitted; a century may pass away and leave no precise
epoch; and transitions of words and styles, like shades
melting into each other, may elude perception. Too often
wanting sufficient data, the toil of the antiquary becomes
baffled, and the microscopic eye of the philologist pores
on empty space. The learned have their theories; but in
darkness we are doomed to grope, and in a circle we can
fix on no beginning.
The elegant researches of Ellis, the antiquarian lore of
Ritson, the simplicity of taste of Percy, the poetic fervour
of Campbell, the elaborate diligence of Sharon Turner, and
more recent names skilled in Saxon lore, have given oppo-
site hypotheses, conjectures, and refutations. “A modi-
fication of language is not in reality a change,” observes
a powerful researcher in literary history,” who is at a loss
“whether some compositions shall pass for the latest off-
spring of the mother, or the earliest fruit of the daughter's
fertility”—a shrewd suspicion which the genealogists of
words may entertain concerning the legitimate and the
illegitimate, or the pure and the corrupt.
The Saxon language had been tainted by some Latin
terms from the ecclesiastics, and some fashionable Nor-
manisms from the court of the Confessor; when the
Norman-French, fatal as the arrow which pierced Harold,
by a single blow struck down that venerable form—and
never has it arisen | And now, with all its pomp, such
as it was, it lies entombed and coffined in some scanty
manuscripts.
We indeed triumph that the language of our forefathers
* Mr. Hallam.
112 Amenities of Literature.
never did depart from the land, since it survived among
the people. What survived ? It soon ceased to be a
written tongue, for no one cared to cultivate an idiom no
longer required, and utterly contemned. After the Con-
quest, the miserable Saxons lost their “book-craft.” We
find nothing written but the continuation of a meagre
chronicle. A few pietists still lingered in occasional
homilies, and a solitary charter has been perpetuated;
but the style was already changed, and as a literary
language the Anglo-Saxon had for ever departed' It
had sunk to the people, and they treated the ancient
idiom after their fashion—the language of books served
not simple men; laying aside its inflections, and its in-
versions, and its arbitrary construction, they chose a
shorter and more direct conveyance of their thoughts,
and only kept to a language fitted to the business of daily
life. This getting free from the encumbrances of the
Anglo-Saxon we may consider formed the obscure be-
ginnings of THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. All the gradual
changes or the sudden innovations through more than
two centuries may not be perceivable by posterity; but
philologists have marked out how first the inversion was
simplified, and then the inflections dropped; how the final
E became mute, and at length was ejected; how ancient
words were changed, and Norman neologisms introduced.
As this English cleared itself of the nebulosity, the ano-
malies, and all the complex machinery of the mother
idiom, a natural style was formed, very homely, for this
vaunted Saxon now came from the mouths of the people,
and from those friends of the people, the monks, who only
wrote for their humble brother-Saxons. The English
writers who were composing in French, and the more
learned who displayed their clerkship by their Latinity,
had a standard of literature which would regulate or
advance their literary workmanship; but there was no
standard in the language of bondage: it had mixed, as
Ritson oddly describes it, “with one knows not what,” a
disorganization of words and idioms. Numerous DIALECTs
pervaded the land; the east and the west agreed as ill
together as both did with the north and the south; and
they who wrote for the people each chose the dialect of
their own shire.
Origin of the English Language. II3
The “Saxon Chronicle,” which closes with the year
1155, had been continued at progressive intervals by
different writers: this authentic document of the Anglo-
Saxon diction exhibits remarkable variations of style; and
a critical Saxonist has detected the corruptions of its
idiom, its inflections, and its orthography—in a word, that
through successive periods it had suffered a material alte-
ration in its character.”
Somewhat more than a century after the Norman inva-
sion, about 1180, Layamon made an English version of
Wace’s “Brut”—that French metrical chronicle which
the Anglo-Norman had drawn from the Latin history of
“Geoffry of Monmouth.” Here we detect an entire
changeableness of style, or rather a transformation; but
what to call it the most skilful have not agreed. George
Ellis drew a copious specimen of a writer unnoticed by
Warton; but, confounded by “its strange orthography,”
and mournfully doubtful of his own meritorious glossary,
he considered the style, “though simple and unmixed, yet
a very barbarous Saxon.” A recent critic opines that
Layamon “seems to have halted between two languages,
the written and the spoken.” Mr. Campbell imagines it
“the dawn” of our language; while some Saxonists have
branded it as semi-Saxon. It seems a language thrown
into confusion, struggling to adapt itself to a new state
of things; it has no Norman-French, it is saturated with
Saxon, but the sentences are freed from inversions.#
About the same period as Layamon's version of Wace,
we have a very original attempt of a writer, in those days
of capricious pronunciation, to convey to the reader the
orthoepy by regulating the orthography. As it is only
recently that we have obtained any correct notion of a
writing which has suffered many misconceptions from our
earlier English scholars, the history of this work becomes
a bibliographical curiosity.
An ecclesiastic paraphrased the Gospel-histories. He
* Dr. Bosworth.
+ Of this recondite writer Ellis has said, “probably Layamon never
will be printed;” but we live in an age of publication, and Layamon
is said to be actually in the press. [Since this was written, the work
has been published at the cost of the Society of Antiquaries, under the
editorial care of Sir Frederick Madden.]
WOL. I. I
114 Amenities of Literature.
was a critical writer, projecting a system to which he
strictly adhered, warning his transcribers as punctually to
observe, otherwise “they would not write the word right;"
they were therefore “to write those letters twice which
he had written so.” The system consisted in doubling
the consonant after a short vowel to regulate the pro-
nunciation. He wrote brotherr and aftterr ; is iss, and
it, ºft.*
It is evident that this critical was also a refined writer;
for it indicated some delicacy, when we find him apolo-
gising for certain additions in his version, which was
metrical, not found in the original, and merely used by
him for the convenience of filling up his metre. The first
literary historians to whose lot it fell to record this
anomalous work, among whom were HICKEs and WANLEY,
judging by appearances, in the superabundance of the
rugged consonants, deemed this refined Anglo-Saxon’s
writing as the work of an ignorant scribe, or as a rude
provincial dialect, or harsh enough to be the work of an
English Dane; its metrical form eluded all detection, as
the verses were a peculiar metre of fifteen syllables, all
jumbled together as prose: as such they gave some ex-
tracts, but it is evident that this was done with little
intelligence of their author. TYRWHIT, occupied on his
“Chaucer,” had a more percipient ear for these Anglo-
Saxon metres, and discovered that this prose was strictly
metrical; but he surely advanced no farther—he did not
discover the writer's design that “the Ennglisshe writ”
was for “Ennglisshe menn to lare”—to learn. Indeed,
Tyrwhit, who complains that Hickes in noticing this
peculiarity of spelling “has not explained the author's
reason for it,” himself so little comprehended the system
of the double consonants, that in his extract, humorously
“begging pardon” of this old and odd reformer whom the
* Dr. Bosworth, or Mr. Thorpe, has explained this attempt more
fully. “From this idea of doubling the consonant after a short vowel,
as in German, we are enabled to form some tolerably accurate notions
as to the pronunciation of our forefathers. Thus, Orm (or Ormin)
writes min and win with a single n only, and lif with a single f be-
cause the i is long, as in mine, wine, and life. On the other hand,
wherever the consonant is doubled, the vowel preceding is sharp and
short, as winn, pronounced win, not wine.”—“Origin of the Germanic
and Scandinavian Languages,” 24.
Origin of the English Language. 115
critic was not only offending, but massacring, “for not
following his injunctions,” he discards “all the superfluous
letters!” not aware that it was the intention of the
writer to preserve the Orthoepy. Even our Anglo-Saxon
historian missed the secret; for he has remarked on the
words, that they were “needlessly loaded with double
consonants.” Yet he was not wholly insensible to the
substantial qualities of the writer, for he discovered in the
diction that “the order of words is uniformly more natural,
the inflections are more unfrequent, and the phrases of
our English begin to emerge.” And, finally, our latest
authority decides that this work, so long misinterpreted,
is “the oldest, the purest, and by far the most valuable
specimen of our old English dialect that time has left
us.”%
What is “old English” is the question. The title of
this work may have perplexed the first discoverers as
much as the double consonants. The writer was an eccle-
siastic of the name of ORM, and he was so fascinated with
his own work for the purity of its diction, and the pre-
cision of its modulated sounds, that in a literary rapture
he baptized it with reference to himself; and Orm fondly
called his work the Ormulum / One hardly expected to
meet with such a Narcissus of literature in an old Anglo-
Saxon philologist of the year so far gone by, yet we now
find that Orm might fairly exult in his Ormulum!
Nearly a century after Layamon, in the same part of
England, the monk, RoRERT of GLOUCESTER, wrote his
“Chronicle,” about 1280. This honest monk painfully
indited for his brother-Saxons the whole history of
England, in the shape of Alexandrine verse in rhyme;
the diction of the verse approaches so nearly to prose,
that it must have been the colloquial idiom of the west.
The “Ingliss,” as it was called in the course of the cen-
tury between Layamon and Robert of Gloucester, betrays
a striking change; and modern philologists have given
the progressive term of “middle English” to the language
from this period to the Reformation.f Our chronicler
* Guest’s “Hist. of English Rhythms,” ii. 186.
+ During the thirteenth century, the organic change proceeded so
rapidly that there is quite as wide a difference between the language of
Layamon and that which was written at the beginning of the fourteenth
I 2
116 Amenities of Literature.
has fared ill with posterity, of whom probably he never
dreamt. Robert of Gloucester, who is entirely divested
of a poetical character, as are all rhyming chroniclers, has
had the hard hap of being criticised by two merciless
poets; and, to render his uncouthness still more repulsive,
the black-letter fanaticism of his editor has vauntingly
arrayed the monk whom he venerated in the sable Gothic,
bristling with the Saxon characters.” It has therefore
required something like a physical courage to sit down to
Robert of Gloucester. Yet in the rhymer whom Warton
has degraded, Ellis has discovered a metrical annalist
whose orations are almost eloquent, whose characters of
monarchs are energetic, and what he records of his own
age matter worthy of minute history.
Another monk, Rob ERT MANNYNG, of Brunne, or
Bourne, in Lincolnshire, who had versified PIERS LANG-
To FT’s “Chronicle,” has left a translation of the “Manuel
des Péchés,” ascribed to Bishop Grosteste, who composed
century (about the time of Robert of Gloucester), as there is between
the English language of the reign of Edward the Second and the tongue
of the present day.—See Mr. Wright’s learned “Essay on the Litera-
ture of the Anglo-Saxons,” 107.
* Hearne, in his preface, exclaims in ecstacy—“This is the first
book ever printed in this kingdom, it may be in the whole world, in the
black letter, with a mixture of the Saa.on characters, which is the very
garb that was in vogue in the author's time, that is, in the thirteenth
century.” Hearne often claims our gratitude, while his earnest simpli-
city will extort a smile. On our ancient Bibles he could not refrain
from exclaiming—“Though I have taken so much pleasure in perusing
the English Bible of the year 1541, yet ’tis nothing equal to that I
should take in turning over that of the year 1539.” His antiquarianism
kindled his piety over Cranmer's Bible.
Thomas was haunted by a chimera that whatever was obsolete
deserved to be revived. This honest spirit of antiquarianism, working
on a most undiscerning intellect, seems to have kindled into a literary
bigotry in his sateless delight of “the black-letter of our grandfathers’
days.” Hearne set this unhappy example of printing ancient writers
with all their obsolete repulsiveness in orthography and type. He was
closely followed by RITSON, and by WHITAKER in his edition of “Piers
Ploughman;” and these editors assuredly have scared away many a
neophyte in our vernacular literature. RITSON printed his “Ancient
Songs” with the Saxon characters and abbreviations, which render
them often unintelligible. This literary antiquary lived to regret this
superstitious antiquarianism. He had prepared a new edition entirely
cleared of these offences, but which unfortunately he destroyed at the
morbid close of his life.
Origin of the English Language. 117
it in politer French. In this “Manual of Sins,” or, as he
terms it, “A Handlyng of Sinne,” according to monkish
morality and the monkish devices to terrify sinners, our
recreative monk has introduced short tales, some grave,
and some he deemed facetious, which convey an idea of
domestic life and domestic language. It is not without
curiosity that we examine these, the earliest attempts at
that difficult trifle—the art of telling a short tale. Robert
de Brunne is neither a Mat Prior nor a La Fontaine,
but he is a block which might have been carved into one
or the other, and he shows that without much art a tale
may be tolerably told.* His octosyllabic verse is more
fluent than the protracted Alexandrine of his “Chronicle.”
The words fall together in natural order, and we seem to
have advanced in this rude and artless “Ingliss.” But
the most certain evidence that “the English” was en-
gaging the attention of those writers who professedly were
devoting their pens to those whom they called “ the
Commonalty,” is, that they now began to criticise; and
we find Robert de Brunne continually protesting against
“strange Ingliss.” This phrase has rather perplexed our
inquirers. “Strange Ingliss” would seem to apply to
certain novelties in diction used by the tale-reciters and
harpers, for so our monk tells us,
I wrote
In symple speeche as I couthe,
That is lightest in mamme’s mouthe.
I mad (made) nought for no disoúrs (tale-tellers),
Ne for no seggers nor harpoſirs,
Bot for the luf (love) of symple menn
That Strange Inglis cann not ken.”
It was about this time that the metrical romances,
translated from the French, spread in great number, and
introduced many exotic phrases. In the celebrated ro-
mance of “Alisaundre” we find French expressions, un-
alloyed by any attempt at Anglicising them, overflowing
the page. The phrase is, however, once applied to certain
strange metres which our monk avoided, for many “that
read English would be confounded by them.”
* Turner’s “History of England,” v. 217, will furnish the curious
reader readily with several of these specimens of the modes of thinking
and of acting of the middle ages, when monks only were the preceptors
of mankind.
II8 Amenities of Literature.
Whatever Robert de Brunne might allude to by his
“strange Ingliss,”* the same cry and the identical expres-
sions are repeated by a writer not many years afterwards
—RICHARD Roll E, called “the Hermit of Hampole.”
He produced the earliest versions of the Psalms into
Bnglish prose, with a commentary on each verse; and a
voluminous poem in ten thousand lines, entitled “The
Prikke of Conscience,” translated from the Latin for
“the unletterd men of Engelonde who can only under-
stand English.” In the prologue to this first Psalter in
Bnglish prose he says, “I seke no straunge Ynglyss, bot
lightest and communest, and wilk (such) that is most like
unto the Latyn; and thos I fine (I find) no proper Inglis
I felough (follow) the wit of the words, so that thai that
knowes noght (not) the Latyne, be (by) the Ynglys may
come to many Latyne wordys.” Here we arrive at open
corruption 1 Already a writer appears refined enough to
complain of the poverty of the language in furnishing
“proper Inglis” or synonymes for the Latin; the next
step must follow, and that would be in due time the
latinising “the Ynglys.”
A great curiosity of the genuine homeliness of our
national idiom at this time has come down to us in a
* This term of “strange Ingliss” has yet been found so obscure as to
occasion some strictures, which, like the Interpreter in the Critic, are
the most difficult to comprehend. I must refer to Monsieur Thierry's
very delightful “History of the Conquest of England,” ii. 271, for a
very refined speculation on our Robert de Brunne's unlucky obscurity.
Monsieur Thierry imagines that the “strange Ingliss” was the refined
English which had flown into Scotland, and there become the cultivated
language of the minstrels and the court, and which our hapless Saxons
on this side of the Tweed had sunk into a dialect only fitted for serfs.
This finer and more"elevated English could not be understood by a base
commonalty; this was “strange Ingliss” to them. A very interesting
event in the history of both nations had transplanted the purer English
to the Scottish court :—Malcolm, whom the usurpation of Macbeth had
driven from the Scottish throne, was expatriated in England during an
interval of near twenty years; the affection of the monarch for the
English was such, that he adopted their language, and when the royal
family of England was expelled by the Conqueror, the king received
them and the emigrant Saxons, and married the English princess. This
gave rise to that intercourse with the south of Scotland, of which the
result in our literary, if not in our civil, history is remarkable.
Certain it is that much broad Scotch is good old English, and the
noblest minstrelsy cometh “fra the North Countrie.”
Origin of the English Language. 119
manuscript in the Arundel Collection, now in our national
library. It is a volume written by a monk of St. Austin’s
at Canterbury, in the Kentish dialect, about a century
and a half after Layamon, and half a century after Robert
of Gloucester, in 1340. This honest monk, like others
of the Saxon brotherhood, was writing for his humbled
countrymen, or, as he expresses himself, with a rude Doric
simplicity,
Wor Wader and for Moder and for other Ken.
I throw into a note what I have transcribed of this
specimen of the old Saxon-English, or, as it is called,
“Semi-Saxon.”* In this specimen of the language as
spoken by the people the barbarism is native, pure in its
impurity, and unalloyed by any spurious exotic. This
English spoken in the Weald of Kent, Caxton tells us, in
his time, was “as broad and rude English as is spoken in
any place in England.” When contrasted with the dic-
tion of a northern bard, whom a singular accident re-
trieved for us,t it offers a curious picture of the English
* On the leaf appears, in the handwriting of the author, “This
Boc is Dan Michelis of Northgate y write an Englis of his ozene hand
that hatte Ayenbyte of inwyt, and is of the boc-house of Seynt Austyn's
of Cantorberi.” The writer was seventy years of age; and he tells us
that he was not—
“Blind, and dyaf, and alsuo dumb,
Of zeventy yer al not rond,
Nessette by draze to the grond,
Uor peny nor mark, ne nor pond.”
At the end the monk tells us for whom he writes—
“Nou ich wille that ye ywite hou hitt is y went
Thet this Boc is ywrite mid Engliss of Kent.
This Boc is ymade vor lewede men,
Wor Wader and vor Moder and vor other Ken,
Ham vor to berze uram alle manyere Zen *
Thet ine have inwytte ne bleue no uoul wen.
Huo ase God is his name yzed
Thet this Boc made God him yeue that bread
Of Angles of Hauene and thereto his red,
And underuongé his Zoule, huanne that is dyad.”
+ While Tyrwhit was busied on the “Canterbury Tales” his atten-
tion was excited by the old cataloguer of the Cottonian manuscripts to
a Chaucer exemplar emendate scriptum. On a spare leaf the name of
Richard Chawfer had been scrawled, which might have been that of
some former possessor. There are two fatalities which hang over the
I20 Amenities of Literature.
language, so different at precisely the same period. The
minstrel's flow of verse almost anticipates the elegance of
a writer of two centuries later.
The poems of LAURENCE MINOT consist of ten marra-
tive ballads on some of the wars of Edward the Third in
Scotland and in France. The events this bard records
show that his writings were completed in 1352. His
editor is surprised that “the great monarch whom he so
eloquently and so earnestly panegyrised was either igno-
rant of his existence or insensible of his merit.” Minot
was probably nothing more than a northern minstrel,
whose celebrity did not extend many leagues. His verses
convey to us a perfect conception of the minstrel cha-
racter, throwing out his almost extemporaneous “Lays”
on the predominant incidents of his day. All these mar-
rative poems open by soliciting the attention of the
auditors:—
LITHEs 1 and I sall tell you tyll
The bataile of Halidon Hyll.
And in another,
HERKINs how long King Edward lay,
With his men before Tournay.
The singularity of these “Lays” consists in coming
down to us in a written form, evidently with great care
and fondness, bearing their author's unknown name.
They might have appropriately been preserved in Percy's
“Reliques of English Poetry.”
Three centuries had now passed, and still the national
genius languished in the Norman bondage of the language.
But the commonalty were increasing in number and in
weight, and an indignant sense of the destitution of a
national language was not confined to the laity; it was
pen of a slumbering cataloguer—ignorance and indolence. Our present
one caught an immortal name and never travelled onwards; and, struck
by the fairness of the writing, inferred that it was a copy of Chaucer
critically accurate. It turned out to be the compositions of an unknown
poet who not willingly relinquished his claim on posterity, for he has
subscribed his name, LAURENCE MINOT. [The manuscript is marked
Galba, E, IX. ; specimens were first published from it by Tyrwhit and
Warton, and the entire series ultimately by Ritson.]
* Ritson's first edition (1795) of Minot having become very difficult
to procure, an elegant re-impression, and apparently a correct one, was
published in 1825.
Origin of the English Language. 121
attracting the attention of those who thought and who
wrote. Richard of Bury, Bishop of Durham, who put
forth the first bibliographical treatise by an Englishman,
and may be ranked among the earliest critical collectors of
a private library, in his celebrated treatise on the love of
books, the “Philo-biblion,”* breathes all the enthusiasm
of study; but while he directs our attention to the clas-
sical writers of antiquity, he stimulates his contempo-
raries to emulate them by composing new books. Although
he himself wrote in Latin, he regrets that no institution
for children in the English language existed; and he com-
plains, that our English youth “first learned the French,
and from the French the Latin.” Our youth were sent
into France to polish their nasal Norman. This writer flou-
rished about 1330, and thus ascertains, that in the begin-
ning of the reign of Edward III. no English was taught.
The “Polychronicon,” a Latin chronicle compiled by the
monk Higden, was finished somewhat later, about 1365;
and we find the complaint more bitterly renewed. “There
is no nation,” wrote this honest monk, “whose children
are compelled to leave their own language, as we have
since the Normans came into England. A gentleman's
child must speak French from the time that he is rocked
in a cradle, or plays with a child’s breche.”
The Latin Chronicle of Higden, twenty years later,
was translated into English by John de Trevisa. On
this passage the translator furnishes the important ob-
servation, that, since this was written, a revolution had
occurred through our grammar-schools: the patriotic
efforts of one Sir John Cornewaile, in teaching his pupils
to construe their Latin into English, had been generally
adopted; “so that now,” proceeds Trevisa, “the yere of
our Lorde 1385, in all the grammere scoles of Engelond,
children leaveth Frensche and construeth and lerneth in
Englische.” The innovation had startled our translator,
for, like all innovations, there was loss as well as profit,
* “Philobiblion, sive de Amore Librorum et Institutione Biblio-
thecae,” ascribed to Richard of Bury, Bishop of Durham; but Fabricius
says it was written by Robert Holcot, a learned friar, at his desire.—
Fab. “Bib. Med. AEvi,” vol. i. It is the bishop, however, who was
the collector, and always speaks in his own person. It has been recently
translated by Mr. Inglis.
122 Amenities of Literature.
when, quitting what we are accustomed to, we launch
dubiously into a new acquisition. The disuse of the
French would detriment their intercourse abroad, and, on
great occasions, at home. This was a time when Trevisa
himself, in selecting some Scriptural inscriptions for the
chapel of Berkley Castle, where he was chaplain, had
them painted on boards in Norman-French, and Latin, in
alternate lines. They are still visible. English itself was
yet too base for the service of God.
It was still a debateable question, as appears by the
prefatory dialogue between Trevisa and his patron,
Lord Berkley, whether any translation of the Chronicle
were at all necessary, Latin being the general language.
It was, however, a noble enterprise, being the first great
effort in our vernacular prose. This mighty volume is a
universal history, which, in its amplitude and miscel-
laneous character, seemed to contain all that men could
know ; and the version long enjoyed the favour of all
readers as the first historical collection in the English
language. It bears the seal of the monkish taste, being
equally pious and fabulous. It not only opens before the
days of Adam, but, like the creation, has its seven divisions;
it has monsters, however, which are not found in Genesis.
The monk is doubtful whether they came of Adam or of
Noah. They, indeed, came from the elder Pliny, to whose
puerile wonders and hasty compilation we owe the founda-
tion of our natural history.
It was about the period that Higden concluded his
labours, that Sir John Mandeville deemed it wise, having
written his Travels in Latin and French, to compose them
also in the vernacular idiom ;-a strong indication of the
rising disposition to cultivate the national tongue. The
policy of our Government now accorded with the general
disposition; and hence originated the noble decision of
Edward III., in 1362, to banish from our courts of law
the Norman-French; but so awkward seemed this great
novelty, that the statute is written in the very language
it abolishes,” and, indeed, to which our great lawyers, the
* Barrington on the Statutes.
In Blackstone’s “Commentaries,” book iii. chap. 21, we find much
curious information, and some philosophical reflections. The use of
the technical law-Latin is adroitly defended. Under Cromwell the
Origin of the English Language. I23
timid slaves of precedents, long afterwards clung in their
barbarous law-French phrases mingled with their native
English.
A mightier movement even than the royal decree in
favour of fostering the national language was a translation
of the Scriptures, by the intrepid spirit of Wickliffe.
This had been done with the pledge of his life, for that
was often in peril while he thus struck the first impulse
of that reformation which not only influenced his own
age, but one more remote. The translation of Wickliffe
was a new revelation of the Word of God in the language
of many. The streets were crowded with Lollards, as his
followers were denominated, of which, like similar odious
names attached to a rising party, the origin remains un-
certain; Lollardy was, however, a convenient term to
describe treason in the Church and the State. Wickliffe's
translation of the Old Testament still lies in numerous
manuscripts, for our cold neglect of which we have in-
curred the censure of the foreigner. The New Testament
has happily been printed.*
records were turned into English ; at the Restoration the practisers de-
clared they could not express themselves so significantly in English,
and they returned to their Latin. In 1730, a statute ordered that the
proceedings at law should be done into English, that the common people
might understand the process, &c. But after many years' experience
the people are as ignorant in matters of law as before, and suffer the
inconveniences of increasing the eacpense of all legal proceedings by
being bound by the stamp-duties to write only a stated number of
words in a sheet, and the English language, through the multitude of
its particles, is so much more verbose than the Latin, that the number
of sheets is much augmented. Two years subsequently it was necessary
to make a new act to allow all technical terms to continue Latin, which
were too ridiculous to be translated, such as nisi prius, fieri facias,
habeas corpus. This last act, in 1732, has defeated every beneficial
purpose intended by the preceding statute of 1730.
One hardly expected to find philological acumen in the dry discussion
of law-Latin, but when the three words, “secundum formam statuti,”
require Seven in English, “according to the form of the statute,” one
easily comprehends the heavy weight of the stamp-duty for writing
Bnglish. The Saxons, who made no use of particles of speech, had
more merit than we were aware of.
* By the Rev. John LEwis, 1731, fo., and republished by the Rev.
H. H. BABIR, 1810, 4to.
The censure of Fabricius deserves our notice. After mention of
Wickliffe's version of the Bible, he adds, “Mirum est Anglos eam (ver-
124 Amenities of Literature.
If we place by the side of the text of Wickliffe our
later versions, we may become familiar with that Saxon-
English which our venerable Caxton subsequently con-
sidered was “more like to Dutch than English.”
But the picturesque language of our emotions, the
creative diction of poetry, appeared in the courtly style
of Chaucer, who nobly designed to render the national
language refined and varied, while his great contemporaries,
the author of Piers Ploughman lingered in a rude dialect,
and Gower was still composing alternately in Latin and
in French.
The emancipation of the national language was subse-
quently confirmed by another monarch. A curious anec-
dote in our literary history has recently been disclosed of
Henry W. To encourage the use of the vernacular tongue,
this monarch, in a letter missive to one of the city com-
panies, declared that “the English tongue hath in modern
days begun to be honourably enlarged and adorned, and for
the better understanding of the people the common idiom
should be exercised in writing:” this was at once setting
aside the Norman-French and the Latin for the daily
business of civil life. By this record it appears that many
of the craft of brewers, to whose company this letter was
addressed, had “knowledge of writing and reading in the
IEnglish idiom, but Latin and French they by no means
understood.” We further learn that now “the LORDs
and the CoMMON's BEGAN to have their proceedings noted
down in the mother tongue ;” and this example was there-
fore to be followed by the city companies.*
At this advanced age of transition, so unsettled was the
language of ordinary affairs, that the same document
bears evidence of three different idioms. We find the
petition of an Irish chieftain, a prisoner in the Tower,

sionem) tam diu neglexisse quum vel linguæ causa ipsis in pretio esse
debeat.”—“Bib. Lat.,” v. 321.
It is provoking to be reminded of our neglected duties by a foreigner.
We might assuredly be curious to learn how the sublimity and the col-
loquial and narrative parts of this vast treasure of our ancient language
were produced under the primitive pen of Wickliffe. A fine copy of
Wickliffe's Bible was in the library of Mr. Douce, and I have heard,
with great satisfaction, that it will probably be edited by Sir Francis
Madden.
* Herbert’s “History of the City Companies.”
Origin of the English Language. 125
written in the French language, while the endorsed royal
answer is in English, and the order of the council in
Latin.* The bulletins of Henry V. to the mayor and
aldermen of London are written in English, but endorsed
in French.
As if they designed to hold out a model to their subjects
and to sanction the use of their native English, both this
prince, and his father, Henry IV., left their wills in the
national language,f at a time when the nobles employed
Latin or French for such purposes.
There has often existed a sympathy between ourselves
and our near neighbours of France, when not disturbed
by war. This great movement of establishing a national
language, and freeing themselves from the Roman bon-
dage, was tried at a later period by the French government,
who were nearly baffled in the attempt. An ordinance of
Louis XII. was issued to abolish the use of the Latin
tongue ; but such was the prejudice in favour of the
ancient language, that notwithstanding that the Latin of
the bar had degenerated into the most ludicrous barbarism,
the lawyers were unwilling to yield to the popular wish.
The use of Latin in France in all legal instruments lasted
till the succeeding reign of Francis I., who, by two
ordinances, declared that TIII FRENCH LANGUAGE should
be solely used in all public acts. It was, however, as late
as forty years after, in 1629, that at length the public
offices consented to draw their instruments in their verna-
cular language. So long has general improvement to
contend with the force of habit and the passion of pre-
possession; and such were the difficulties which the ver-
macular style of both these great empires had to overcome.
When the learned HICKES, in his patriotic fervour to
trace the legitimacy of the English from its parent lan-
guage, adjudged that “nine-tenths of our words were of
Saxon origin,” he exultingly appealed to the Lord's
Prayer, wherein there are only three words of French or
* I derive this curious fact from Mr. Tyler’s “History of Henry of
Monmouth,” ii. 245.
+ These wills are preserved in Mr. Nichols’ “Collection of Royal
Wills.”
f Le Comte de Neufchateau, “Essay on French Literature,” prefixed
to the late edition of Pascal's works.
126 Amenities of Literature.
Latin extraction. This startled TYRWHIT, then busied on
his Chaucerian glossary, and who in that labour had
before him a different aspect of our mottled English.
That was not the day when writers would maintain opi-
nions against authority. Awed by the great Saxonist, the
poetical antiquary compromised, alleging that “though
the form of our language was still Saxon, yet the matter
was in a great measure French.” His successor in Eng-
lish philology, GEORGE ELLIS, still further faltered and
arbitrated; suggesting that the great Saxonist, to com-
plete his favourite scheme, would trace some old Gaulish
French to a Teutonic origin. In tracing the formation of
the English language, we are sensible that the broad and
solid foundations lie in the Saxon, but the superstructure
has often, with a magical movement, varied in its archi-
tecture. An enamoured Saxonist has recently ventured to
assert that “English is but another term for Saxon ;” but
an ocular demonstration has been exhibited in specimens
of the modern English of our master-writers, marking by
italics all the words of Saxon derivation. By these it
appears that the translators of the Bible have happily
preserved for us the pristine simplicity of our Saxon-Eng-
lish, like the light in a cathedral through its storied and
saintly window, shedding its antique hues on hallowed
objects. But as we advance, we discover in our most
eminent writers the anglicisms diminish ; and SHARON
TURNER has observed that a fifth of the Saxon language
has ceased to be used. A recent critic” has curiously cal-
culated that the English language, now consisting of
about 38,000 words, contains 23,000, or nearly five-
eighths, Anglo-Saxon in their origin; that in our most
idiomatic writers, there is about one-tenth not Anglo-
Saxon, and in our least about one-third.’t A cry of our
* “Edinburgh Review,” Oct., 1839.
+ See “Quarterly Rev.,” lix. 34.—The critic is deeply imbued with
his delight of Saxon-English. “The first bursts in our literature (pro-
bably the noblest are meant) are in almost pure Saxon.” The critic
particularly appeals to Milton for two instances; yet surely the Greekised,
the Latinised, and even the Italianised Milton will not serve to assert
the pre-eminence of our venerable dialect. “A country congregation”
is its more certain test ; where the language of the people is the only
language required. Cobbett’s writings throughout are Saxon-English.
Coleridge considered Asgill and De Foe the most idiomatic writers.
Origin of the English Language. I27
desertion of our Saxon purity has been raised by those
who have not themselves practised it in their more ele-
vated compositions; but are we to deem that English
corrupted which recedes from its Saxon character, and
compels the daughter to lose the likeness of her mother ?
Are we to banish to perpetuity those foreigners who have
already fructified our Saxon soil P In an age of extended
literature, conversant with objects and productive of as-
sociations which never entered into the experience of our
forefathers, the ancient language of the people must
necessarily prove inadequate; a new language must start
out of new conceptions. Look into our present “exche-
quer of words;” there lies many a refined coinage struck
out of the arts and the philosophies of Europe. Every
word which genius creates, and which time shall conse-
crate, is a possession of the language which must be in-
scribed into that variable doomsday book of words—the
English Dictionary. Devotees of Thor and Woden I the
day of your idolatries has passed, and your remonstrances
are vain as your superstitions.
128
WICISSITUDES OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.
THE vicissitudes of the English language are more evident
than its origin. In the history of a language we are per-
petually reminded, by the remonstrances of the critics, of
the corruptions of its purity, the perils of innovation, and
the obtrusion of neologisms, while we find these same
critics fastidiously rejecting what they deem the anti-
quated and the obsolete; many causes are constantly ope-
rating these changes of language. The style of one age
ceases to be that of another; new modifications of
thought create new modes of expression; and as know-
ledge enlarges its sphere, and society changes its manners,
novel objects imperiously demand adequate terms.
Our language has been subjected to those dominant
events in the history of our country which have so
powerfully influenced our genius and our destiny; and,
our insular position occasioning a general intercourse with
all the Continental nations, our national idiom has been
mottled by foreign neologisms.
For more than five centuries was the Saxon language
the language of England; the awful revolution of 1066
produced novelties of all kinds, but none greater than the
entire change in our Saxon language, which, however, our
Norman masters could never eradicate from among the
people. During three centuries most of our English
writers composed in French. When Greek was first
studied in the reign of Henry the Seventh, it planted
many a hellenism in our English ; the translation of the
Scriptures in that of Edward the Sixth, while it trans-
mitted many latinisms, at the same time revived the sim-
plicity of the Saxon-English, which seemed to bear a sort
of evidence that a primitive language was most suitable
for primitive Christianity in contrast with the pompous
corruptions of Rome.
Under Elizabeth favourite phrases were insinuated into
the dialect by over-refined travellers, who spoke “minion-
Vicissitudes of the English Language. 129
like,” while the revolution of the Netherlands incor-
porated among us many a rough but vigorous inmate. In
the days of James and Charles, the long residence of the
Spanish Gondomar at our court, and the romantic pil-
grimage of love to Madrid, and the political ties which
bound the two nations, framed the style of courtesy, as
well as set the fashions.
The puritanic commonwealth under Cromwell sunk
down the language to its basest uses. Stripped to
nakedness, the jargon of the market and the shop hid
itself under the gibberish of its cant. Writers then
abounded equally illiterate and fanatical. Perhaps we owe
to these mean scribblers the scorn and pride with which
Milton constructed on the Latin model of inversions and
involutions of sentences his artificial and learned prose,
unlike the style of his contemporaries, and which was
never to be that of his successors; it was a machinery too
costly for its price, and too unwieldy for the handling of
an ordinary workman. Under the second Charles we see
the nation and the language equally gallicised, and so it
remained to the days of Anne. Suppose for a moment
that when the first Georges were appointed to the Eng-
lish throne, the Germany of that day had been the Ger-
many of the present. What would have been the result P
Instead of two torpid Germans, destitute of every sensi-
bility to literature and art, we might have seen an ac-
complished Duke of Weimar at St. James's, and a Wie-
land, a Schiller, and a Goethe at our court ; our authors
had been impressed by the German genius, in our emula-
tion and delight. Such is the simple history of the Eng-
lish language as it has been, or might have been, subjected
to our national events.
The history of the vernacular language of other Euro-
pean nations discovers the same mutability, though not
always produced by those great public incidents which
may have been peculiar to ourselves. In Spain, how-
ever, we find that the possession of that land by the Moors
has left in the Castilian language a whole dictionary of
Arabic words which now mingle with the vernacular idiom,
and for ever shall bear witness of the triumphs of their
ancient masters. But in the history of a vernacular lan-
guage it may also happen that the first writers, combining
WOL. I. EC
130 Amenities of Literature.
in a singleness of taste, may construct a particular style.
The earliest writers of France had modelled their taste by
the Greek; Jodelle, Ronsard, Du Bartas, and others,
imbued with Attic literature, Greekised the French idiom,
by their compounds, their novel terms, and their sonorous
periphrases. The Court and the ladies were adopting this
new style, and, as usual, the unskilful were diverging into
the most ridiculous affectations. But it was possible that
the French language might have acquired a concision and
vigour of which it is now destitute, for those early writers
threw out a more original force than their tame successors.
The artificial delicacy of the French critics has condemned
these attempts as barbarisms; but to have transplanted
these atticisms into the native soil, partook more of bold-
ness than of barbarism. The attempt failed, if it could
ever have succeeded, by the civil wars which soon drew off
the minds of men from the placable innovators of lan-
guage.
The French, though not an insular people, have been
subject to rapid revolutions in their language. The ancient
Gaulish-French has long been as unintelligible to a modern
Frenchman as our Saxon is to us; even those numerous
poets of France who at a later period composed in their
langue Romane, are strewed in the fields of their poesy
only as carcasses, which no miracle of antiquarian lore shall
ever resuscitate. Compare the style of one writer with
another only two centuries later, or Rabelais with Woltaire
The age of Louis XIV. effected the most rapid change in
the vernacular style, insomuch that the diction of the
writers of the preceding reign of Louis XIII. had fallen
obsolete in the short space of half a century. And yet the
chastened style of the age of Louis XIV., with its cold
imitation of classical antiquity, was to receive a higher
polish from the hand of a Pascal, a novel brilliancy from
the touch of a Montesquieu, and a more numerous prose
from the impassioned Rousseau. The age of erudition and
taste was to be succeeded by the more energetic age of
genius and philosophy. An anecdote recorded of Waugelas
may possibly be true, and is a remarkable evidence of this
perpetual mobility of style. This writer lived between
1585 and 1650, and during thirty years had been occupied,
"more suo, on a translation of Quintus Curtius. It was
Vicissitudes of the English Language. 131
during this protracted period that the French style was
passing through its rapid transitions. So many phrases
had fallen superannuated, that this martyr to the purity
of his diction was compelled to re-write the former part of
his version to modernise it with his later improved com-
position. The learned Menage lived to be old enough to
have caught alarm at this vicissitude of taste, and did not
scruple to avow that no work could last which was not
composed in Latin.
The languages of highly cultivated nations are more
subject to this innovation and variableness than the lan-
guage of a people whose native penury receives but rare
accessions. Hence the ancient and continued complaints
through all the generations of critics, from the days of
Julius Caesar and Quintilian to those in which we are now
writing.” The same hostility against novelty in words or
in style is invariably proclaimed. The captiousness of
criticism has usually referred to the style of the preceding
authors as a standard from which the prevalent style of its
contemporaries has erringly diverged. The preceptors of
genius at all times seem to have been insensible to the
matural progress of language, resisting new qualities of
style and new forms of expression; in reality, this was in-
ferring, that a perfect language exists, and that a creative
genius must be trammelled by their limited and arbitrary
systems. This prejudice of the venerable brotherhood
may, I think, be traced to its source. Every age advan-
tageously compares itself with its predecessor, for it has
made some advances, and rarely suspects that the same
triumph is reserved for its successor; but besides this
illusion in regard to the style, which, like the manners of
the time, is passing away, the veteran critic has long been
a practised master, and in the daring and dubious novelties
which time has not consecrated, he must descend to a new
pupilage; but his rigid habits are no longer flexible; and
for the matured arbiter of literature who tastes “the bit-
terness of novelty,” what remains but an invective against
the minting of new words, and the versatility of new
tastes?
The fallacy of the systematic critics arises from the
* “Curiosities of Literature,” Art. “HISTORY OF NEw WoRDs.”
K 2
132 Amenities of Literature.
principle that a modern language is stationary and stable,
like those which are emphatically called “the dead lan-
guages,” in which every deviation unsupported by authority
is legally condemned as a barbarism. But the truth is,
that every modern language has always existed in fluctua-
tion and change. The people themselves, indeed, are no
innovators; their very phrases are traditional. Popular
language can only convey the single uncompounded notions
of the people; it is the style of facts; and they are intel-
ligible to one another by the shortest means. Their
Saxon-English is nearly monosyllabic, and their phraseo-
logy curt. Hence we find that the language of the mob
in the year 1382 is precisely the natural style of the mob
of this day.” But this popular style can never be set up
as the standard of genius, which is mutable with its age,
creating faculties and embodying thoughts which do not
enter into the experience of the people, and therefore can-
not exercise their understandings.
A series of facts will illustrate our principle, that the
language of every literary people exists in a fluctuating
condition, and that its vaunted purity and its continued
stability are chimerical notions.
In this history of the vicissitudes of the English lan-
guage, we may commence with our remote ancestors the
Anglo-Saxons. When their studies and their language
received a literary character, they coveted great pomposity
in their style. They interlarded their staves with Latin
* These are political squibs thrown out by the mobocracy in the
reign of Richard the Second. They are preserved in Mr. Turner's
“History of England.” I print them in their modern Orthography.
The first specimen runs in familiar rhymes:—
“Jack the Miller asked help to turn his mill aright. He hath
ground small, small ! The King's son of Heaven he shall pay for all.
Look thy Mill go aright with the four sails, and the post stand in stead-
fastness. With Right and with Might, with Skill and with Will, let
Might help Right, and Skill go before Will, and Right before Might,
then goes our Mill aright, and if Might go before Right, and Will before
Skill, then is our Mill misadyght.”
Now we have plain, intelligible prose—
“Jack Carter prays you all that ye make a good end of that ye have
begun, and do well, and still better and better ; for at the even men
near the day. If the end be well, then is all well. Let Piers the
ploughman dwell at home, and dyght us corn. Look that Hobbe the
robber be well chastised. Stand manly together in truth, and help the
truth, and truth shall help you.”
Vicissitudes of the English Language. 133
words; and, even in the reign of the Confessor, the French
language was fashionable. “The affectation of the Anglo-
Saxon literati was evidently tending to adulterate their
language; and even if the Conquest had not taken place,
the purity of the English language would have been
speedily destroyed by the admixture of a foreign voca-
bulary.” Thus early were we perilling our purity
In 1887, John de Trevisa, translating the Latin Poly-
chronicon of Higden, tells us he avoids what he calls “the
old and ancient English.” A century afterwards, Caxton,
printing this translation of Trevisa, had to re-write it, to
change the “rude and old English, that is, to wit, certain
words which in these days be neither used nor understood.”
It might have startled Master Caxton to have suspected
that he might be to us what Trevisa was to him, as it had
equally amazed Trevisa, when he discovered archaisms
which had contracted the rust of time, to have imagined
that his fresher English were to be archaisms to his printer
in the succeeding century.
At the period at which our present vernacular literature
opened on us, Eliot, More, and Ascham maintained great
simplicity of thought and idiom ; yet even at this period,
about 1550, the language seemed in imminent danger; it
raised the tone of our primitive critics, and the terrors of
neologism took all frightful shapes to their eyes!
A refined critic of our language then was the learned Sir
JoHN CHEKE, who at this early period considered that the
English language was capable of preserving the utmost
purity of style, and he was jealously awake to its slightest
violations. A friend of his, Sir THOMAS Hoby, a courtly
translator of the “Courtier of Castiglione,” had solicited his
critical opinion. The learned Cheke, equally friendly and
critical, insinuated his abhorrence of “an unknown word,”
and apologises for his corrections, lest he should be ac-
counted “overstraight a deemer of things, by marring his
handywork.” Hoby had evidently alarmed, by some
sprinklings of Italianisms—some capriccios of “new-
fangled” words—the chaste ear of our Anglican purist.
I preserve this remarkable letter to serve as a singular
* Sir Francis Palgrave’s “Rise and Progress of the English Common
wealth ;” Proofs and Illustrations, ccxiii.
134 Amenities of Literature.
specimen of our English, unpolluted even by a Latin-
ism.*
“Our own tongue should be written clean and pure,
unmixt and unmangled with borrowing of other tongues,
wherein, if we take not heed, by time, ever borrowing and
never paying, she shall be fain to keep her house as bank-
rupt. For then doth our tongue naturally and praisably
utter her meaning, when she borroweth no counterfeitness
of other tongues to attire herself withal; but used plainly
her own, with such shift as nature, craft, experience, and
following of other excellent, doth lead her unto; and if
she want at any time (as, being imperfect, she must), yet
let her borrow with such bashfulness that it may appear,
that if either the mould of our own tongue could serve us
to fashion a word of our own, or if the old denizened words
could content and ease this need, we would not boldly
venture on unknown words. This I say, not for reproof
of you, who have scarcely and necessarily used, where
occasion seemeth, a strange word so, as it seemeth to grow
out of the matter, and not to be sought for; but for my
own defence, who might be counted overstraight a deemer
of things, if I give not this account to you, my friend, of
my marring this your handywork.”
Such was the tone even of our primitive critics the
terrors of neologism were always before their eyes. All
those accessions of the future opulence of the vernacular
language were either not foreseen or utterly proscribed,
while, at the same time, the wants and imperfections of
the language, amid all its purity or its poverty, were felt
and acknowledged. We perceive that even this stern
champion of his vernacular idiom confesses that “he may
want at time, being imperfect, and must borrow with bash-
fulness.” The cries of the critics suddenly break on us.
Another contemporary critic of not inferior authority
laments that “there seemed to be no mother-tongue.”
“The far-journeyed gentlemen” returned home not only
in love with foreign fashions, but equally fond “to powder

* This letter to the translator Hoby has been passed over by those
who collected the few letters of the learned CHEKE ; and, what seems
strange, appears only in the first edition of Hoby's translation, having
been omitted in the subsequent editions. Perhaps the translator was
Ilot enamoured of his excellent critic.
Vicissitudes of the English Language. 135
their talk with over-sea language.” There was French-
English, and English Italianated. Professional men
disfigured the language by conventional pedantries; the
finical courtier would prate “nothing but Chaucer.”
“The mystical wisemen and the poetical clerks delivered
themselves in quaint proverbs and blind allegories.” The
pedantic race, in their furious Latinisms, bristling with
polysyllabic pomposity, deemed themselves fortunate when
they could fall upon “dark words,” which our critic aptly
describes “catching an ink-horn term by the tail.” The
eloquence of the more volatile fluttered in the splendid
patches of modern languages. It seemed as if there were
to be no longer a native idiom, and the good grain was
choked up by the intruding cockle which flourished by its
side. Another contemporary critic announces that “our
English tongue was a gallimaufry or hodge-podge of all
other speeches.” ARTHUR GOLDING grieves over the dis-
jected members of the language:–
Our English tongue driven almost out of kind (nature),
Dismember'd, hack'd, maim’d, rent, and torn,
Defaced, patch'd, marr'd, and made in scorn.”
A critic who has left us “An Arte of English Poetry,”
written perhaps about 1550 or 1560, exhorting the poet
to render his language, which, however, he never could in
his own verses, “natural, pure, and the most usual of all
his country,” seemed at a loss where to fix on the standard
of style. He would look to the Court to be the modellers
of speech, but there he acknowledges that “the preachers,
the secretaries, and travellers,” were great corrupters, and
not less “our Universities, where scholars use much
peewish affectation of words out of the primitive lan-
guages.” The coarse bran of our own native English was,
however, to be sifted; but where was the genuine English
idiom to be gathered P Our fastidious critic remonstrates
against “the daily talk of northern men.” The good
southern was that “we of Middlesex or Surrey use.”
Middlesex and Surrey were then to regulate the idiom of
all British men and all our England was doomed to bar-
barism, as it varied from “the usual speech of the Court,
* Sir Thomas Wilson’s “Arte of Rhetoric,” 1553.
136 Amenities of Literature.
and that of London within sixty miles, and not much
above.” But was our English more stable within this
assigned circumference of the metropolis than any other
line of demarcation ? About 1580, CAREW informs us
that “Within these sixty years we have incorporated so
many Latin and French words as the third part of our
language consisteth in them.”
Some there were among us who, alarmed that such
ceaseless infusions were polluting the native springs of
JEnglish, would look back with veneration and fondness
on our ancient masters. Our great poet SPENSER,” then
youthful, declared that the language of CHAUCER was
the purest English; and our bard hailed, in a verse often
quoted by the critics—
Dan Chaucer, well of English undefiled.
But in this well are deposited many waters. Chaucer has
been accused of having enriched the language with the
spoils of France, blending the old Saxon with the Norman-
French and the modern Gallic of his day, for which he
has been vehemently censured by the austerity of philo-
logical antiquaries. Skinner and his followers have con-
demned Chaucer for introducing “a waggon-load of
words,” and have proclaimed that Chaucer “wrote the
language of no age;” a reproach which has been trans-
ferred to our Spenser himself, who has transplanted many
an exotic into the English soil, and re-cast many an
English word for the innocent forgery of a rhyme ! So
that two of the finest geniuses in our literature, for re-
casting the language, must lay their heads down to receive
the heavy axe of verbal pedantry.
Descending a complete century, in 1656 we are sur-
prised at discovering HEYLIN, at a period relatively
modern, reiterating the language of his ancient prede-
cessors. This latter critic published his animadversions
on the pedantic writings of HAMON L’EstEANGE, who
had opened on us a floodgate of Latinisms. Heylin
observes: “More French and Latin words have gained
. . Spenser's protest against the Innovators of Language may be seen
in his “Three Letters,” which are preserved unmutilated in Todd's
“Spenser;” they are deficient in Hughes' edition.
Vicissitudes of the English Language. 137
ground upon us since the middle of Queen Elizabeth's
reign than were admitted by our ancestors, not only since
the Norman, but the Roman conquest.” This was written
before the Restoration of Charles the Second, when we were
to be overrun by Gallicisms. This complaint did not
cease with Heylin, for it has often been renewed. Heylin
drew up in alphabetical order the uncouth and unusual
words which are to be found in Hamon L’Estrange's
“History,” and yet many of these foreigners since the
days of Heylin have become denizens. So unsettled were
the notions of our philology with regard to style, that
L’Estrange could venture in his rejoinder, which contains
sufficient vinaicre, as he writes it, a defence of these hard
words, which is entertaining. “As to those lofty words,
I declare to all the world this not uningenuous acknow-
ledgment, that having conversed with authors of the
noblest and chief remark in several languages, not only
their notions but their very words especially being of the
most elegant import, became at length so familiar with
me, as when I applied myself to this present work I found
it very difficult to renounce my former acquaintance with
them; but as they freely offered themselves, so I enter-
tained them upon these considerations. First, I was
confident that among learned men they needed no other
passe than their own extraction; and for those who were
mere English readers I saw no reason they should wonder
at them, considering that for their satisfaction I had sent
along with every foreigner his interpreter, to serve instead
of a dictionary.” Hamon L’Estrange’s “Life of Charles I.”
was certainly a piece of infelicitous pedantry, as we may
judge by this specimen.”
Even great authors glanced with a suspicious eye on
these vicissitudes of language, not without a conviction
that they themselves were personally interested in these
uncertain novelties. It would seem as if Milton, from the
new invasion of Gallic words and Gallic airiness which
broke in at the Restoration, had formed some uneasy an-
ticipations that his own learned diction and sublime form
of poetry might suffer by the transition, and that Milton
* Heylin’s “Observations on the Historie of the Reign of King
Charles.” L’Estrange's rejoinder may be found in the second edition of
his History.
138 Amenities of Literature.
himself might become as obsolete as some of his great
predecessors appeared to his age. The nephew of Milton,
in the preface to his “Theatrum Poetarum,” where the
critical touch of the great master so frequently betrays
itself, pleads for our ancient poets, who are not the less
poetical because their style is antiquated. Writing in the
reign of Charles II., in 1675, he says: “From Queen
Elizabeth's reign, the language hath not been so unpolished
as to render the poetry of that time ungrateful to such
as at this day will take the pains to examine it well. If
no poetry should please but what is calculated to every
refinement of a language, of how ill consequence this
would be for the future let him consider, and make it his
own case, who, being now in fair repute, shall, two or
three ages hence, when the language comes to be double-
refined, understand that his works are come obsolete and
thrown aside. I cannot—” he, perhaps Milton, continues
—“I cannot but look upon it as a very pleasant humour
that we should be so compliant with the French custom
as to follow set fashions, not only in garments, but in
music and poetry. For clothes, I leave them to the dis-
cretion of the modish ; breeches and doublet will not fall
under a metaphysical consideration. But in arts and
sciences, as well as in moral notions, I shall not scruple
to maintain, that what was ‘verum et bonum' once, con-
tinues to be so always. Now whether the trunk-hose
fancy of Queen Elizabeth's days, or the pantaloon genius
of ours be best, I shall not be hasty to determine.”
Would we learn the true history of a modern language,
we must not apply to the CRITICs, who only press for
conformity and appeal to precedents; but we must look
to those other more practical dealers in words, the LEx-
CoGRAPHERS, who at once reveal to us all the incomings
and outgoings of their great “exchequer of words.”
Turn over the prefaces of our elder lexicographers. Every
one of them pretends to prune away the vocabulary of his
predecessors, and to supply, in this mortality of words,
those which live on the lips of contemporaries. In the
great tome of his record of archaisms and neologisms,
the grey moss hangs about the oak, and the graft shoots
forth with fresh verdure. BARET, one of our earliest
Vicissitudes of the English Language. 139
lexicographers, in the reign of Elizabeth thus expresses
himself:—“I thought it not meete to stuffe this worke
with old obsolete words which now a daies no good writer
will use.”* Words spurned at by the lexicographer of
1580 had been consecrated by the venerable fathers of our
literature and of the Reformation, not a century past;
yet another century does not elapse when another dic-
tionary throws all into confusion. HENRY CockRAM,
whose volume has been at least twelve times reprinted,
boldly avows that “what any before me in this kind have
begun, I have not only fully finished, but thoroughly per-
fected;” and, presuming on the privilege of “an inter-
preter of hard English words,” the language is wrecked in
a stormy pedantry of Latin and Greek terms, which how-
ever indicate that new corruption of our style which some
writers and speakers, as Hamon L’Estrange, were attempt-
ing.f What a picture have we sketched of the mortality
of words, through all the fleeting stages of their decadency
from TREVISA to CAxTon, from CAXTON to BARET, from
BARET to CocKRAM, and from CockRAM to his numerous
successors |
Thus then has our language been in perpetual move-
ment, and that “purity of style,” whose presumed viola-
tion has raised such reiterated querulousness, has in reality
proved to be but a mocking phantom, fugitive or unsub-
stantial. Our English has often changed her dress, to
attract by new graces, and has spoken with more lan-
guages than one. She has even submitted to Fashion,
that most encroaching usurper of words, who sends them
no one knows how and no one knows why, banishing the
* “Alvearie, or quadruple Dictionary of Four Languages,” 1580.
+ “The English Dictionary, or an Interpreter of Hard English
Words,” by H. C., gent., 1658. The eleventh and twelfth editions are
before me. The last, edited by another person, is not so copious as the
former. In Cockram's own edition we have a first “Book” of his
“Hard Words,” followed by a second of what he calls “Vulgar
Words,” which are English. The last editor has wholly omitted the
second part. Of the first part, or the “Hard Words,” Cockram
observes that “They are the choicest words now in use, and wherewith
our language is enriched and become so copious, to which words the
common sense is annexed.” [See note on this Dictionary, with some
few specimens of its contents, in “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. iii.]
140 Amenities of Literature.
old and establishing the new ; and who has ever found
her legitimacy unquestioned when in her matured age
we recognise Fashion under the consecrated name of
CUSToM.
But let us not quit this topic of “purity of style”
without offering our sympathies for those who have suf-
fered martyrdom in their chimerical devotion. In the
days of my youth there were some who would not write
a word unwarranted by Swift or Tillotson; these were to
be held fast for pure idiomatic prose, by those who felt
insulted by the encumbering Lexiphanicisms of the pon-
derous numerosity of Johnson; and recently a return to
our Saxon words, diminutive in size, has been trumpeted
in a set oration at the University of Glasgow by a noble
personage. This taste is rife among critics of limited
studies. Charles Fox, a fine genius who turned towards
the pursuits of literature too late in life, was a severe suf-
ferer, and purified his vocabulary with a scrupulosity un-
known to any purist, so nervously apprehensive was this
great man lest he should not write English. Addison,
Bolingbroke, and Middleton were not of sufficient autho-
rity, for he would use no word which was not to be found
in Dryden. Alas! what disappointments await the few
who creep along their Saxon idiom, or who would pore on
the free gracefulness of Dryden as a dictionary of words
and phrases | Could the chimerical purity which these are
in search of be ever found, never would it lend enchant-
ment to their page, should their taste be cold or their
fancy feeble. The language of genius must be its own
reflection, and the good fortune of authors must receive
the stamp used in their own mint.
It happens with the destiny of words, as in the destiny
of empires. Men in their own days see only the begin-
nings of things, and more sensibly feel the inconvenience
of that state of transition inflicted by innovation, in its
first approaches often capricious, always empirical. These
vicissitudes of language in their end were to produce a
vernacular idiom more wealthy than our native indigence
seemed to promise. All those vehement cries of the critics
which we have brought together were but the sharp pangs
and throes of a parturient language in the natural progress
of a long-protracted birth.

Vicissitudes of the English Language. 141
A national idiom in its mighty formation, struggling
into its perfect existence, encumbered by the heavy mass
in which it lies involved, resembles the creation of the lion
of the Bard of Paradise, when
Half appear'd
The tawny Lion, PAWING TO GET FREE
HIS HINDER PARTS.
142
DIALECTS.
DIALECTs reflect the general language diversified by
localities.
A dialect is a variation in the pronunciation, and neces-
sarily in the orthography of words, or a peculiarity of
phrase or idiom, usually accompanied by a tone which
seems to be as local as the word it utters. It is a lan-
guage rarely understood out of the sphere of the popu-
lation by whom it is appropriated. A language is fixed
in a nation by a flourishing metropolis of an extensive
empire, a dialect may have existed coeval with that predo-
minant dialect which by accident has become the standard
or general language; and moreover, the contemned dialect
may occasionally preserve some remains or fragments of
the language which, apparently lost, but hence recovered,
enable us rightly to understand even the prevalent idiom.
All nations have had dialects. Greece had them, as
France and Italy have them now. Homer could have
included in a single verse four or five dialects; but though
the Doric and the Ionic were held the most classical, none
of them were barbarous, since their finest writers have
composed in these several dialects. Even some Italian
poets and comic writers have adopted a favourite dialect;
but no classical English author could have immortalised
any one of our own.
Ancient Greece, as Mitford describes, “though a narrow
country, was very much divided by mountains and politics.”
And mountains and politics, which impede the general
intercourse of men, inevitably produce dialects. Each iso-
lated state with fear or pride affected its independence, not
only by its own customs, but by its accent or its phrase.
In France the standard language was long but a dialect.
There potent nobles, each holding a separate court and
sovereignty in his own province, offered many central points
of attraction. The Counts of Foix, of Provence and of
Toulouse, and the Dukes of Guienne, of Normandy and of
Brétagne, were all munificent patrons of those who culti-

Dialects. 143
vated what they termed “ l'art du beau parler,” each in
their provincial idiom. These were all subdivisions of the
two rival dialects to which the Romane language had
given birth. But the river Loire ran between them; and
a great river has often been the boundary of a dialect:
France was thus long divided. On the south of the Loire
their speech was called the language of Oc, and on the
north the language of Oil ; names which they derived
from the different manner of the inhabitants pronouncing
the affirmative Oui. The language of the poetical Trou-
badours on the south of the Loire had not the happier
destiny of its rival, used by the Trouvères on the north.
It was this which became the standard language, while
the other remains a dialect. Here we have a remarkable
incident in the history of dialects in a great country; it
was long doubtful which was to become the national lan-
guage; and it has happened, if we may trust an enthusiast
of Languedoc, that his idiom, expressing with more vowelly
softness and naïveté the familiar emotions of love and
friendship, and gaiety and bonhomie, gave way to a harsher
idiom and a sharp nasal accent ; and all ended by the
Parisian detecting the provincials by their shibboleth, and
calling them all alike Gascons, and their taste for exaggera-
tion and rhodomontade gasconades; while the southerns,
who hold that what is called the French language is only
a perversion of their own dialect, like our former John
Bull, fling on the Parisian the old Gaulish appellative of
IFranchiman.*
The dialects of England were produced by occurrences
which have happened to no other nation. Our insular site
has laid us open to so many masters, that it was long
doubtful whether Britain would ever possess a uniform

* “Dictionnaire Languédocien-françois,” par l’Abbé de Sauvages.
“Franchiman est formé de l’Allemand, et signifie homme de France.”
The Abbé wrote in 1756, when he did not care to translate too literally;
the Frank-man meant the Free man, for the Franks called themselves
so, as “the free people.” This learned Gascon, in his zeal for the
Langue d'oc, explains, “Parla Franchiman,” means “parler avec
l'accent (bon ou mauvais) des provinces du nord du royaume * an in-
sinuation that the French accent might not be positively the better one.
The good Abbé had such a perfect conviction of the superiority of his
Languedocians, that he would have no other servants not only for their
superior integrity, but for that of their language.
144 Amenities of Literature.
language. The aboriginal Britons left some of their
words behind them in their flight, as the Romans had
done in their dominion,” and even the visiting Phoenician
may have dropped some words on our coasts. The Jutes,
the Angles, and the Saxons brought in a new language,
and, arriving from separate localities, that language came
to us diversified by dialects; and the Danes, too, joined
the northern brotherhood of pirate-kings who planted
themselves in our soil. The gradual predominance of the
West-Saxon over the petty kingdoms which subdivided
Britain first approached to the formation of a national
language. The West-Saxon was the land of Alfred, and
the royal cultivation of its dialect, supreme in purity as
the realm stood in power, rendered it the standard lan-
guage which we now call Anglo-Saxon.
“Had the Heptarchy (Octarchy) continued,” observed
Bishop Percy, “our English language would probably
have been as much distinguished for its dialects as the
Greek, or at least as that of the several independent states
of Italy.” In truth, we remained much in that condition
while a power hostile to the national character assumed
the sovereignty. So unsettled was the English language,
that a writer at the close of the fourteenth century tells
us that different parts of the island experienced a difficulty
to understand one another. A diversity of pronunciation,
as well as a diversity in the language, was so prevalent,
that the Northern, the Southern, and the Middle-land men
were unintelligible when they met ; the Middle-land un-
derstood the Northern and the Southern better than the
Northman and the Southman comprehended one another;
the English people seemed to form an assemblage of dis-
tinct races. Even to this day, a scene almost similar
might be exhibited. Should a peasant of the Yorkshire
dales, and one from the vales of Taunton, and another from
the hills of the Chiltern, meet together, they would re-
quire an interpreter to become intelligible to each other;
but in this dilemma what county could produce the Eng-
lishman so versed in provincial dialects as to assist his
three honest countrymen P
If etymology often furnishes a genealogy of words
* “Palgrave,” 174. They also received some in exchange, many
words in Caesar being British.-Hearne’s “Leland’s Itinerary,” vi.
Dialects. 145
through all their authentic descents, so likewise a map of
provincial idioms might be constructed to indicate the
localities of the dialects. There we might observe how
an expansive and lengthened river, or intervening fells and
mountains which separate two counties, can stop the
course of a dialect, so that the idiom current on one side,
when it passes the borders becomes intrusive, little re-
garded, and ere it reaches a third county has expired in
the passage. Thus the Parret, we are told, is the boun-
dary of the Somersetshire dialect; for words used east of
the Parret are only known by synonyms on the west side.
The same incident occurs in Italy, where a single river
runs through the level plain; there the Piedmontese pea-
sant from the western end meeting with a Venetian from
the eastern could hold but little colloquial intercourse
together; a Genoese would be absolutely unintelligible to
both, for, according to their proverb, “Ilanguage was the
gift of God, but the Genoese dialect was the invention of
the devil.” In those rank dialects left to run to seed in
their wild state, without any standard of literature, we
hardly recognise the national idiom ; the Italian language
sprung from one common source—its maternal Latin; but
this we might not suspect should we decide solely by its
dialects: and we may equally wonder how some of our
own could ever have been mangled and distorted out of
the fair dimensions of the language of England.
All who speak a dialect contract a particular intonation
which, almost as much as any local words, betrays their
soil; these provincial tones are listened to from the
cradle; and, as all dialects are of great antiquity, this
sounding of the voice has been bequeathed from generation
to generation.* It is sometimes a low muttering in the
throat, a thick guttural like the Welsh, or a shrill nasal
twang, or a cadence or chant ; centuries appear not to
have varied the tone more than the vocable. The Ro-
* In that very curious “Logonomia Anglica” of the learned Alexan-
der Gill—the father, for his son of the same name succeeded him as
master of St. Paul's—we have the orthoepy of our dialects given with
great exactness. This work was produced about 1619, and we find the
peculiar provincial pronunciation of the present day. A work so curious
in the history of our vernacular tongue should not have been composed
in Latin. Mr. Guest has carefully translated a judicious extract.—
“History of English Rhythms,” ii. 204.
WOL. I. L
146 Amenities of Literature.
mance of “Octavien Imperator,” which was written pos-
sibly earlier than the reign of Henry VI., is in the
Hampshire dialect nearly as it is spoken now. The speech
of a Yorkshireman is energetically described by our an-
cient Trevisa. “It is so sharpe, slytting, frotyng, and
unshape, that we sothern men maye unneth understond
that language.” As we advance in the North, the tones
of the people are described as “round and sonorous, broad
open vowels, and the richness and fulness of the diph-
thongs fill their mouths” with a firm, hardy speech.
A striking contrast is observable among those who by
their secluded position have held little intercourse with
their neighbours, and have contracted an overweening
estimation of themselves, and a provincial pride in their
customs, manners, and language. Norfolk, surrounded on
three sides by the sea, remains unaltered to this day, and
still designates as “Shiremen” all who are born out of
Norfolk, not without “some little expression of con-
tempt.” There is “a narrowness and tenuity in their
pronunciation,” such as we may fancy—for it is but a
fancy—would steal out of the lips of reserved, proudful
men, and who, as their neighbours of Suffolk run their
common talk into strange melancholy cadences, have cha-
racterised their peculiar intonation as “the Suffolk
whine !” In Derbyshire the pronunciation is broad, and
they change the G into K. The Lancashire folk speak
quick and curt, omit letters, or sound three or four words
all together; thus, I wou'didd’n, or I woudyedd'd, is a
cacophony which stands for I wish you would / When
the editor of a Devonshire dialect found that it was
aspersed as the most uncouth jargon in England, he ap-
pealed to the Lancashire.*
But such vile rustic dissonance or mere balderdash con-
cerns not our vernacular literature, though it seems that
even such agrestic rubbish may have its utility in a pro-
vincial vocabulary; for the glossary to the “Exmoor lan-
guage” was drawn up for the use of lawyers on the
* The late Dr. Walpy told me that Mr. Walker, the orthoepist, had
so intimate a knowledge of the provincial peculiarities of pronunciation,
that in a private course of reading at Oxford with twelve under-
graduates, he told each of them the respective place of their birth or
early education.
Dialects. 147
western circuit, who frequently mistook the evidence of
a rustic witness for want of an interpretation of his
words. Some ludicrous misconceptions of equivocal terms
or some ridiculous phraseology have been recorded in other
counties, among the judges and the bar at a county assize.
But it is among our provincial dialects that we discover
many beautiful archaisms, scattered remnants of our lan-
guage, which explain those obscurities of our more ancient
writers, singularities of phrase, or lingual peculiarities,
which have so often bewildered the most acute of our
commentators. After all their voluminous research and
their conjectural temerity, a villager in Devonshire or in
Suffolk, and, more than either, the remoter native of the
North Countree, with their common speech, might have
recovered the baffled commentators from their agony.
The corrections of modern editors have often been dis-
covered to be only ingenious corruptions of their own
whenever the original provincial idiom has started up.
These provincial modes of speech have often actually
preserved for us the origin of English phraseology, and
enlightened the philologist in a path unexplored. In one
of the most original and most fanciful of the dramas of
Ben Jonson, “The Sad Shepherd,” the poet designed to
appropriate a provincial dialect to the Witch Maudlin's
family. He had consulted Lacy the comedian, who was a
native of Yorkshire, respecting the northern phraseology.
Unfortunately, this drama was never finished; and the con-
sequence is, that the dialects are incorrectly given, and are
worsened by the orthography of the printer. Yet it was
from this imperfect attempt to convey some notion of our
dialects that Horne Tooke was able to elucidate one of his
grammatical discoveries, in regard to the conjunction IF,
which, from “The Sad Shepherd,” is demonstrated to be
anciently the imperative of the verb GIF, or give. Thus it
was, by apparently very rude dialects, this famous philolo-
gist was enabled to substantiate beyond doubt a significa-
tion which had occurred to no one but himself.”
A language in the progress of its refinement loses as
well as gains in the amount of words, and the good fortune
of expressive phrases. Some become equivocal by chang-
ing their signification, and some fall obsolete, one cannot
* Tooke's “Diversions of Purley,” p. “.2
L
148 Amenities of Literature.
tell why, for custom or caprice arbitrate, guided by no law,
and often with an unmusical ear. These discarded but
faithful servants, now treated as outcasts, and not even
suspected to have any habitation, are safely lodged in some
of our dialects. As the people are faithful traditionists,
repeating the words of their forefathers, and are the longest
to preserve their customs, they are the most certain anti-
quaries; and their oral knowledge and their ancient ob-
servances often elucidate many an archaeological obscurity.
Hence, two remarkable consequences have been discovered
in the history of our popular idioms; many words and
phrases used in the land of Cockney, now deemed not only
vulgar but ungrammatical, are in fact not corruptions of
the native tongue, but the remains of what was anciently
at different periods the established national dialect.* This
transmitted language descended to the humbler classes,
unimpaired and unaugmented, through a long line of an-
cestry. Again, it is often probable that the provincial
word which in its pronunciation merely reverses the order
of the letters, as now uttered, and which is only heard
from the mouths of the people, may convey the original
spoken sound, and be the genuine English. Are we quite
sure that the polishers may not often have been the cor-
rupters of our language P Nor let us be positive that the
metropolitan taste has always fixed on the most felicitous
or the most forcible of our idiomatic words or phrases,
since we may discover some lingering among our provincial
dialects which should never have been dismissed, and which
claim to be restored. When JoHNSON compiled his “Dic-
tionary,” he was not aware of the authentic antiquity of
our dialectic terms and phrases. Our literary antiquities
had not yet engaged the attention of general scholars.
Provincialisms were not deemed by the legislator of our
language legitimate words; he did not recognise their
primitive claims, nor their relative affinities, but ejected
them as vagabonds. But words are not barbarous nor
* In “Anecdotes of the English Language,” by Samuel Pegge, an
antiquary, who called himself “an old modern,” the reader will find
several curious exemplifications of the vulgar dialect, sometimes fanci-
fully, but often satisfactorily ascertained. It is amusing to detect what
we call vulgarisms composing the language of Chaucer and Shakspeare,
and even our Bibles and Liturgies.
Dialects. 149
obsolete because no longer used in our written composi-
tion, , since some of the most exquisite and picturesque,
which have ceased to enrich our writings, live in immortal
pages. After the issue of Johnson's great labour, our
national literature began to attract the studies of literary
men, who soon perceived how this neglected but existing
stock of idiomatic English in our provincialisms more
certainly explained our elder writers in verse and prose.
Amid the murmurs raised by the archaeologists, ASH
attempted to supply the palpable deficiency of Johnson;
but the matter was too abundant, and his space too con-
tracted. In vain he attempted his “Supplement;” all
the counties in England seemed to rise against the luck-
less glossarist; but notwithstanding its limited utility, his
vocabulary was often preferred for its copiousness to the
more elaborate lexicon. The spirit of inquiry was now
abroad after the “winged words;” and ingenious persons,
within these twenty years,” have produced a number of
* RAY was the first who collected “Local Words, North Cowntry
and Sowth and East Cowntry.” “The Exmoor Scolding and Courtship”
is an authentic specimen of the Eamoor Language. The words were
collected by a blind fiddler, and the dialogues were written by a clergy-
man with the fiddler's assistance, before 1725. We have a glossary of
Lancashire words and phrases, contained in the humorous works of Tim
Bobbin. Other county glossarists have appeared within the last fifteen
years :—BROCKETT's ‘‘North Country Words;” “Suffolk Words and
Phrases,” by Major MooR ; Mr. RogBR WILBRAHAM’s “Attempt at a
Glossary of Cheshire Words; Mr. JENNINGs “Dialect of the West of
England,” particularly the Somersetshire words; Mr. BRITTON on those
of Wiltshire ; and the Rev. Joseph HUNTER has given “The Hallam-
shire Glossary,” to which are appended “Words used in Halifax,” by
the Rev. John WATson, and also an addition to the “Yorkshire
Words,” by THORESBY, the Leeds antiquary.
An investigation of the origin, nature, and history of DIALECTS was
proposed by the late Dr. BouchER for a complete glossary of all the
dialects of the kingdom. But these precious stores, not only of the
vocables but of the domestic history of England—its manners, occupa-
tions, amusements, diet, dress, buildings, and other miscellaneous
topics—rich in all the affluence of the laborious readings of more years
than the siege of Troy, was but bread cast away on the waters, and was
never given to the public for want of public support. After the author's
death, two eminent editors zealously resumed the work, which was
already prepared; but the public remained so little instructed of its
value, it suddenly ceased Works of national utility should be conse-
crated as national property, and means should be always ready to avert
such a calamity to the literature of England, and to the information of
Englishmen, as was the suppression of the labours of Bough ER.
150 Amenities of Literature.
provincial glossaries; but several are still wanting, par-
ticularly those of Kent, and Sussex, and Hampshire. All
these glossaries collected together might form a provincial
lexicon marking each county. A few might be allowed
to enter into the great dictionary of the English language;
but that would not be their safest place, for they would
then lie at the mercy of successive editors, who would not
always discern a precious archaism amid the baseness and
corruption of language. The origin, the nature, and the
history of our provincial idioms have yet never been
investigated, though the subject, freed from its mere bar-
barisms, opens a diversified field to the philosopher, the
antiquary, and the philologist.
Grose, who wrote in 1785, notices the state of those
counties which were remote from the metropolis, or which
had no immediate intercourse with it before “newspapers
and stage-coaches imported seepticism, and made every
ploughman and thresher a politician and a freethinker.”
The accelerated intercourse of the people has long passed
beyond the diurnal folio and the evanescent stage-coach,
and in a century of railroads and national schools the pro-
vincial glossary will finally vanish away.
151
MANDEVILLE: OUR FIRST TRAVELLER.
MANDEVILLE was the Bruce of the fourteenth century, as
often calumniated and even ridiculed. The most ingenuous
of voyagers has been condemned as an idle fabulist; the
most cautious, as credulous to fatuity; and the volume of
a genuine writer, which has been translated into every
European language, has been formally ejected from the
collection of authentic travels. His truest vindication will
be found by comprehending him ; and to be acquainted
with his character, we must seek for him in his own age.
At a period when Europe could hardly boast of three
leisurely wayfarers stealing over the face of the universe;
when the Orient still remained but a Land of Faery, and
“the map of the world” was yet unfinished; at a time
when it required a whole life to traverse a space which
three years might now terminate, Sir John MANDEVILLE
set forth to enter unheard-of regions. Returning home,
after an absence of more than thirty years, he discovered
a “mervayle” strange as those which he loved to record—
that he was utterly forgotten by his friends!
He had returned “maugre himself,” for four-and-thirty
years had not satiated his curiosity; his noble career had
submitted to ordinary infirmities—to gout and the aching
of his limbs; these, he lamentably tells, had “defined the
end of my labour against my will, God knoweth !” The
knight in this pilgrimage of life seems to have contracted a
duty with God, that while he had breath he should pere-
grinate, and, having nothing to do at home, be honourable
in his generation by his enterprise over the whole earth.
And earnestly he prays “to all the readers and hearers of
my book,” (for “hearers” were then more numerous than
“readers,”) “to say for him a Pater-Noster with an Ave-
Maria.” He wrote for “solace in his wretched rest ;” but
the old passion, the devotion of his soul, finally triumphed
over all arthritic pangs. The globe evidently was his true
home; and thus Liege, and not London, received the bones
of an unwearied traveller, whose thoughts were ever
passing beyond the equator.
152 Amenities of Literature.
With us, to whom an excursion to “the Londe of
Promyssioun or of Behest” has sometimes arisen out of
a morning engagement—we who impelled by steam go
“whither we list,” with those billets which might serve
as letters of recommendation in the steppes of Tartary-
we may wonder how our knight, who would not win his
way by the arts of commerce, like his predecessor Marco
Polo, bore up his chivalry; for in his traversing he had
mothing to offer but his honourable sword, and probably
his medical science, which might be sometimes as perilous.
But difficulties insuperable to us could not enter into the
emotions, nor were they the accidents which impeded the
traveller, “who, on the day of St. Michael, in the year of
our Lord 1322, passed the sea, and went the way to Hieru-
salem, and to behold the mervayles of Inde.” A deep
religious emotion, an obscure indefinite curiosity, and a
courageous decision to wander wherever the step of man
could press on the globe, to tell the world “the mervayles”
it unconsciously holds within its orb, were the inspiration
of a journey which stood next in solemnity to a departure
to the world of spirits. Sir John had prepared himself,
for he was learned not only in languages, but in authentic
romance, and in romantic history; and he honestly resolved
to tell all “the mervayles” which he had seen, and those
which he had not ; and these last were not the least.
Sir John Mandeville's probity remains unimpeached;
for the accuracy of whatever he relates from his own
personal observation has been confirmed by subsequent
travellers. On his return to Europe he hastened to Rome
to submit his book to the Pope, and to “his wise council,”
and “those learned men of all nations who dwell at that
court.” The volume was critically reviewed; and his
holiness “ratified and confirmed my book in all points,”
by referring to an account in Latin: this account
was probably written by some missionary; Rubriquis had
been dispatched on an unsuccessful mission to Christianize
the great Khan of Tartary in 1230; or it was the writings
of Marco Polo, which could not be unknown at Rome. In
that day all real information was consigned to the fugitive
manuscript, partially known, and often subject to the inter-
polations and capricious alterations of its possessor, and
what sometimes occurred, to the silent plagiarisms of other
Mandeville ; our First Traveller. 153
writers—of which even Mandeville himself has been sus-
pected.
The Pope decreed that not only all that Mandeville
related was veracious, but that the Latin book which his
holiness possessed contained much more, and from whence
the Mappa Mundi had been made. Indeed Mandeville
has himself told us that he wrote only from his re-
collections as they “would come into his mind;” these
necessarily were often broken and obscure. Some “mer-
vayles” remained unrecorded, and hereafter were to be
“more plainly told;” but I fear these are lost for us.
In this “true” book we find many things very untrue,
but we may doubt whether any in that day were as posi-
tive in this opinion. The author himself designed no
imposition on his readers; he tells us what he believed ;
part of which he had seen and the rest he had heard, and
sometimes had transcribed from sources deemed by him
authentic. Who can suspect the knight of spotless
honour, and whose piety would not relinquish his Ave-
Marias for a dominion ? Having fought during two years
under the ensign of the Sultan of Egypt, and being offered
in marriage the Sultan’s daughter and a province, he
refused both, when his Christianity was to be exchanged
for Mahometanism.
This was a period when the marvellous never weakened
the authenticity of a tale. The mighty tome of Pliny,
that awful repository of all the errors of antiquity, and
other writers of equal name, detail prodigies and legends,
and so do the Fathers. Who would not have rejoiced to
transcribe Pliny or St. Austen? Who imagined that all
the delectable adventures of the romances, over which they
passed many a dreamy day, with the very names of the
personages and the very places where they occurred, were
solely chimeras of the brain P The learned Mandeville was
evidently not one of these sceptics: for he observes, that
“the trees of the sun and of the moon are well known to
have spoken to King Alisaundre, and warned him of his
death.” The unquestioned fact is in that famed romance;
and others might be referred to if we required additional
authority. I have read of these talking trees of the sun
and moon in Guarino detto il Meschino, who lived a year
among them to learn his own genealogy, and then was
154 Amenities of Literature.
graceless enough to laugh at these timber-oracles. Mande-
ville forgot not in the island of Lango, not distant from
Crete, the legend of the unfortunate “Lady of the Land.”
who remained a dragoness, because no one had the hardi-
hood to kiss her lips to disenchant her. He tells likewise
of the Faery Lady who guarded the sparrow-hawk; who:
ever ventured to assist that lady during three days and
nights, was rewarded by the boon of having whatever he
wished. A king who, not wanting anything, had the
audacity to wish to have the lady herself, was fairly warned
that he did not know what he asked, as happens to the
reckless; but, persisting in his absolute will, he incurred
the curse of perpetual war to the last of his race |
We trace such tales among the romances, with all their
circumstances; and some may have reached the listener
from the Arabian tale-teller. The monsters he describes
Mandeville never invented; these, human and animal,
he gave as some of his predecessors had done, from
Pliny, or Ælian, or Ctesias,” who have sent them down to
be engraven in the Great Nuremberg Chronicle, and
adorned in the immortal page of Shakspeare. Marco
Polo had noticed that portentous bird which could lift an
elephant by its claws; he does not tell us that he had seen
any bird of this wing, but we all know where it is to be
found—in the Arabian Tales | Sir Thomas Browne ac-
cuses Mandeville of confirming the fabulous accounts of
India by Ctesias; but, in truth, our knight does not
“confirm these refuted notions of antiquity;” he only
repeats them, with the prelude of “men seyn.” No one
was more honest than Mandeville, for when he had to
describe the locality of paradise, he fairly acknowledges
that “he cannot speak of it properly, for I was not there;
it is far beyond, but as I have heard say of wise men, it is

* CTESIAs, a physician in high repute at the Persian Court, and often
referred to by Diodorus. He has been universally condemned as a
fabulous writer, to which charge his descriptions of some animals was
liable. But a naturalist of the highest order, the famous CUVIER, has
perhaps done an act of justice to this fabricator of animals. Ctesias
reported the mythological creations which he had witnessed in hierogly-
phical representations as actual living animals. It is glorious to re-
move from the darkened name of a writer, unjustly condemned, the
obloquy of two thousand years.-‘‘Theory of the Earth,” translated by
Professor Jameson, 76.
Mandeville ; our First Traveller. 155
on the highest part of the earth, nigh to the circle of the
moon.” However, he has contrived to describe the wall,
which is not of stone, but of moss, with but a single
entrance, “closed with brennynge fyre;” and though no
mortal could enter, yet it was known that there was a
well in paradise, whence flowed the four floods that run
through the earth. “Wise men,” he tells us, said this ;
some of these “wise men” were the Rabbins; and three
centuries afterwards, the accounts of paradise, by a finer
genius than Mandeville, the illustrious Rawleigh, remained
much the same.
To explain some of those incredible incidents which
occurred to the author himself might exercise some
critical ingenuity. Mandeville's adventure in “the Valley
Berilous,” when he saw the Devil's head with eyes of
flame, great plenty of gold and silver, which he was too
frightened to touch, and, moreover, a multitude of dead
bodies, as if a battle had been fought there, might pro-
bably be resolved into some volcanic eruption, the rest
supplied by his own horrifying imagination; for he tells,
with great simplicity, “I was more devout then than
ever I was before or after, and all for the dread of fiends
that I saw in divers figures;” that is, at the shapes of
the disparted rocks. The travellers were beaten down by
tempests, winds, and thunder, which raged in this pent-
up vale. As he marks the locality, the spot may yet be
ascertained.
There was no imposition practised in all such legends;
it is we who are startled by the supernatural in a personal
narrative ; but in the fourteenth century the more wonder-
ful the tale, the more authentic it appeared, as it sunk
into the softest and richest moulds of the most germina-
ting imagination. The readers, or the hearers, were as well
prepared to believe, as the writers prompt to gather
up, their fictions. Collections of “Mirabilia Mundi,”
“Wonders,” were a fashionable title applied to any single
country, as well as to the world—to England or Ireland,
to the Holy Land or the Indies. The “Mirabilia”
might be the running title for a whole system of geo-
graphy. The age of imagination has long been un-
furnished of all its ingenious garniture, and yet we still
catch at some evanescent hour of fancy susceptible of those
156 Amenities of Literature.
ancient delights. We have lost something for which we
have no substitute. Would not the modern novelist
rejoice in the privilege of intermingling supernatural
inventions to break the level of his every-day incidents
and his trivial passions so soon forgotten ? But that
glowing day has set, leaving none of its ethereal hues in
our cold twilight. Mandeville may still be read for those
wild arabesques which so long unjustly proved fatal to his
authentic narrative. His simplicity often warrants its
truth; he assures us that Jerusalem is placed in the
middle of the earth, because when he stuck his staff in
the ground, exactly at noon, it cast no shadow ; and
having ascertained the spherical form of the globe, he
marvels how the antipodes, whose feet are right upwards
towards us, yet do not fall into the firmament When
he describes the elegant ornaments of “a vine made of
gold that goeth all about the hall, with many bunches of
grapes, some white, and the red made of rubies,” he tells
what he had seen in some divan ; but when he records
that “the Emperor hath in his chamber a pillar of gold,
in which is a ruby and carbuncle a foot long, which
lighteth all his chamber by night,” it may be questioned
whether this carbuncle be anything more than an Arabian
fancy, a tale to which he had listened. Some of his
ocular marvels have been confirmed by no questionable
authority. Mandeville's description of a magical exhi-
bition before the Khan of Tartary is a remarkable instance
of the strange optical illusions of the scenical art, and the
adroitness of the Indian jugglers—a similar scene appears
in a recent version of the autobiography of the Emperor
Akber. What seemed the spells of magic to the Euro-
peans of that age, and of which some marvellous de-
scriptions were brought to Europe by the crusaders or the
pilgrims, and embellished the romances, our exquisite
masques and our grand pantomimes have realized. Three
centuries were to elapse ere the court of England could
rival the necromancy of the court of Tartary.
Mandeville first composed his travels in the Latin
language, which he afterwards translated into French, and
lastly out of French into English, that “every man of
my nation may understand it.” We see the progressive
estimation of the languages by this curious statement
Mandeville ; our First Traveller. 157
which Mandeville has himself given. The author first
secured the existence of his work in a language familiar
to the whole European world; the French was addressed
to the politer circles of society; and the last language
the author cared about was the vernacular idiom, which,
at that time the least regarded, required all the patriotism
of the writer in this devotion of his pen.
Copies of these travels were multiplied till they almost
equalled in number those of the Scriptures; now we may
smile at the “mervayles” of the fourteenth century, and
of Mandeville, but it was the spirit of these intrepid and
credulous minds which has marched us through the
universe. To the children of imagination perhaps we owe
the circumnavigation of the globe and the universal inter-
course of nations.”
* Of modern editions of Mandeville’s “Travels in England,” that of
1725, printed by Bowyer, is a large octavo. There are numerous
manuscripts of Mandeville in existence. An edition collated might dis-
cover either omissions or interpolations. This might serve as the labour
of an amateur. Mandeville has not had the fortune of his predecessor
Marco Polo, to have met with a Marsden, learned in geographical and
literary illustration.
Long subsequently to the time that this article was written, this
edition of 1725 has been reprinted, with the advantage of a bibliogra-
phical introduction by Mr. Halliwell, and a collation of texts. [It was
published in 1839, in an octavo volume of 326 pages, with illustrative
engravings from manuscripts and printed books.]
158
CHAUCER.
IN the chronology of our poetical collectors, GowPR
takes precedence of CHAUCER unjustly, for Chaucer had
composed many of his works in the only language which
he has written before the elder claimed the honours of an
English vernacular poet, and, probably, then only emu-
lating the success of him who first set the glorious ex-
ample. Nor less in the rank of poetry must Chaucer
hold the precedence. The first true English poet is
Chaucer; and notwithstanding that therhythmical cadences
of his unequal metre are now lost for us, Chaucer is the
first modeller of the heroic couplet and other varieties of
English versification. By the felicity of his poetic
character, Chaucer was not only the parent, but the
master, of those two schools of poetry which still divide
its votaries by an idle rivalry, and which have been traced,
like our architecture, the one to a Gothic origin, and the
other to a classical model.
The personal history of CHAUCER, poetical and political,
might have been susceptible of considerable develop-
ment had the poet himself written it, for his biographers
had no life to record. Speght, one of the early editors,
in the good method of that day, having set down a
variety of heads, including all that we might wish to
know of any man, when this methodiser of common-
places came to fill up these well-planned divisions con-
cerning Chaucer, he could only disprove what was ac-
cepted, and supply only what is uncertain. The “Life of
Chaucer’ by Godwin is a theoretical life, and, as much as
relates to Chaucer himself, a single fatal fact, when all
was finished, dispersed the baseless vision.* The whole
* After Godwin had sent to press his biography of Chaucer, a deposi-
tion on the poet's age in the Herald's College detected the whole
erroneous arrangement : as the edifice so ingeniously constructed had
fallen on the aërial architect, he alleged truly that the deposition
“contradicted the received accounts of all the biographers;” in fact,
they had repeated original misstatements. The appendix, therefore, to
the history of this modern biographer stands as a perpetual witness
Chaucer. 159
rested on the unauthenticated and contradictory state-
ments of Leland, who, writing a century after the times
of Chaucer, hastily collected unsubstantial traditions,
and, what was less pardonable in Leland, fell into some
anachronisms.
This defective chronology in the life of the poet has
involved the more important subject of the chronology of
his works. Posterity may be little concerned in the dates
of his birth and his burial—his unknown parentage—his
descriptive name—and, above all, his suspicious shield,
which the heralds opined must have been blazoned out of
the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth propositions of the
first book of Euclid, from the poet’s love of geometry, or,
more obviously, from having no coat-of-arms to show of
“far more ancient antiquity.” But posterity would have
been interested in the history of the genius of Chaucer,
who having long paced in a lengthened circuit of verbal
version and servile imitation, passed through some re-
markable transitions, kindling the cold ashes of transla-
tion into the fire of invention; from cloudy allegory
breaking forth into the sunshine of the loveliest land-
scape-painting; and from the amatory romance gliding
into that vein of humour and satire which in his old age
poured forth a new creation. All this he might himself
have told, or Gower might have revealed, had the elder
bard who lauded the lays and “ditties” of the youth of
“ the Clerk of Venus” loved him as well in his old age.
But elegant literature, as distinguished from scholastic,
was then without price or reward. The few men of
genius who have written at this early period are only
known to us by their writings, and probably were more
known to their contemporaries by the station which they
may have occupied, than by that which they maintain
with posterity.
By royal patents and grants to the poet, we trace his

against its authenticity;-there are some histories to which an ap-
pendix might prove to be as fatal. In this dilemma, our bold sophist
was “absurd and uncharitable enough * to add one more conjecture
to his “Life of Chaucer,”—that “the poet, from a motive of vanity,
had been induced to state on oath that he was about forty when, in
truth, he was fifty-eight !”—Hippisley's “Chapters on Early English
Literature,” 85
160 Amenities of Literature.
early life at court, his various appointments, and his
honourable missions to Genoa and to France—we must
not add as confidently his visit to Petrarch.
Chaucer, in his political life, was bound up with the
party of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster; and, by a
congenial spirit, with the novel doctrines of his friend,
Dr. Wickliffe. The sister of his lady finally became the
third Duchess of Lancaster, and the family alliance
strengthened the political bond. How the Lancastrian
exploded in the poet, something we know, but little we
comprehend; and those who have attempted to lift the
veil have not congratulated themselves on their success.
The poet himself has not entrusted his secret to posterity,
except, as is usual with poets, by eloquent lamentations.
The exposition of a political transaction is never without
some valued results; and though deprived of names and
dates, we are not without some dim lights: the palpable
truth may not be obvious, but it may happen that we
may stumble on it.
Chaucer himself has stated, “In my youth I was drawn
in to be assenting to certain conjurations and other great
matters of ruling of citizens, and those things have been
my drawers in and eaceiters in the matters so painted and
coloured, that first to me seemed then noble and glorious
for all the people.”
Here the tale is plain, for this is the language of one
who early in life had engaged in some popular scheme,
and these early indications of the temper of the Wick-
liffite or the Lancastrian, or both, had subsequently led
to some more perilous attempts. They were, like all
reforms, something “noble and glorious for the people,”
and as sometimes happens among reformers, what at first
appeared to promise so well, ended in disappointment and
“penance in a dark prison.”
The locality of this patriotic act was the city of London.
He alludes to “free elections by great clamours of much
people, for great disease of misgovernment in the hands of
“torcentious citizens.” When the fatal day arrived that
he openly joined with a party for “the people,” against
those citizens whom he has so awfully denounced, it is
evident, though we have no means to discriminate fac-
Chaucer. I61
tions in an age of factions,” that he and his “conjurors”
discovered that “all the people” were not of one mind.
This votary or this victim of reform suddenly flings his
contempt at “the hatred of the mighty senators of Lon-
don or of its commonalty,” and closes with a painful
remembrance of “the janglings of THE SHEEPy PEOPLE /*
The style of Chaucer bears the stamp of passionate emo-
tions; words of dimension, or of poignant sarcasm. The
“torcentious citizens” is an awful bolt, and “the sheepy
people” is sufficiently picturesque.
In dismay the whole party took flight. Chaucer, in
Zealand, exhausted his means to supply the wants of his
political associates, till he himself found that even the
partnership of common misery does not always preserve
men from ingratitude. Returning home, potent perse-
cutors cast him into a dungeon. Was the Duke of Lan-
caster absent, or the Duke of Gloucester in power P Let
us observe that in all these dark events the loyalty of the
poet is never impeached, for Chaucer enjoyed without in-
terruption the favour of both his sovereigns, Edward III.
and Richard II. ; and we discover that once when dis-
missed from office, Richard allowed him to serve by
deputy, which was evidence that Chaucer had never been
dismissed by the king himself. The whole transaction,
whatever it was, was a political movement between two
factions. Chaucer indeed pleads that whatever he had
done was under the control of others, himself being but
“the servant of his sovereign.” At that period the fac-
tions in the state were more potent than the monarch.
In the convulsive administration of a youthful prince,
* It has been alleged by more than one writer, that this mysterious
affair relates to the election for the mayoralty of John of Northampton,
a Wickliffite and a Lancastrian. But Mr. Turner, whose researches are
on a more extended scale than any of his predecessors, truly observes
that—“There are other periods besides the one usually selected to
which the personal evils which Chaucer complains of are applicable.”—
“Hist. of England,” v. 296. It is as likely to have occurred when
Nicholas Brambre, a confidential partisan of government in the City,
appointed to the mayoralty by his party, caught “the Freemen” by
ambushes of armed men, and turned the Guildhall into a fortress. At
such a time “Free Elections” might have been considered by Chaucer
as something “noble and glorious for all the people.”
WOL. I. IMI
162 Amenities of Literature.
they who oppose the court are not necessarily opposing
the sovereign.
It was behind the bars of a gloomy window in the
Tower, where “every hour appeared to be a hundred
winters,” that Chaucer, recent from exile, and sore from
persecution, was reminded of a work popular in those days,
and which had been composed in a dungeon—“The Con-
solations of Philosophy,” by Boethius—and which he him-
self had formerly translated. He composed his “TESTA-
MENT OF LOVE,” substituting for the severity of an ab-
stract being the more genial inspiration of love itself.
But the fiction was a reality, and the griefs were deeper
than the fancies. In this chronicle of the heart the poet
mourns over “the delicious hours he was wont to enjoy,”
of his “richesse,” and now of his destitution—the vain
regret of his abused confidence—the treachery of all that
“summer-brood” who never approach the lost friend in
“the winter hour” of an iron solitude. The poet ener-
getically describes his condition; there he sate “witless,
thoughtful; and sightless, looking.” This work the poet
has composed in prose; but in the leisure of a prison the
diction became more poetical in thoughts and in words
than the language at that time had yet attained to, and
for those who read the black letter it still retains its im-
pressive eloquence.
But this apology which Chaucer has left of his conduct
in this political transaction has incurred a fatal censure.
“Never,” observes Mr. Campbell, “ was an obscure affair
conveyed in a more obscure apology.” His political in-
tegrity has been freely suspected. Chaucer has even been
struck by the brilliant arrow of the Wiscount de Chateau-
briand. “Courtisan, Lancastrien, Wickliffist, infidèle à
ses convictions, traitre à son parti, tantôt banni, tantôt
voyageur, tantôt en faveur, tantôt en disgrace.” No, thou
eloquent Gaull Chaucer never was out of favour, however
he may have been more than once dismissed from his
office; nor can we know whether the poet was ever “in-
fidèle à ses convictions.”
Obscure must ever remain the tale of justification in a
political transaction which terminated on the part of the
apologist by revealing “disclosures for the peace of the
kingdom,” denied by those whom they implicated, though
Chaucer. I 63
their truth was offered to be maintained by the accuser, in
the custom of the times, by single combat; and by con-
fessions which acknowledge errors of judgment, but not of
intention; and by penitence, which, if the patriot designed
what was “glorious to all the people,” he should never
have repented of.
This obscure apology conceals the agony of conflicting
emotions—indignation at ungrateful associates, and a base
desertion of ancient friends, who were plotting against
him. Whether Chaucer was desirous of burying in ob-
scurity a story of torturous details, or one too involved in
confused motives for any man to tell with the precision of
a simple statement, we know of no evidence which can
enable us to decide with any certainty on an affair which
no one pretends to understand. Chaucer might have been
the scapegoat of the sovereign, or the champion of the
people. We can rather decide on his calamity than his
conduct. Many are the causes which may dissolve the
bonds of faithless “conjurations;” and it is not always he
who abandons a party who is to be criminated by political
tergiversation.
The circumstances of Chaucer's life had combined with
his versatile powers. He had mingled with the world’s
affairs both at home and abroad: accomplished in manners,
and intimately connected with a splendid court, Chaucer
was at once the philosopher who had surveyed mankind in
their widest sphere, the poet who haunted the solitudes of
nature, and the elegant courtier whose opulent tastes are
often discovered in the graceful pomp of his descriptions.
It was no inferior combination of observation and sym-
pathy which could bring together into one company the
many-coloured conditions and professions of society, deli-
neated with pictorial force, and dramatised by poetic con-
ception, reflecting themselves in the tale which seemed
most congruous to their humours. The perfect identity
of these assembled characters, after the lapse of near five
centuries, make us familiar with the domestic habits and
modes of thinking of a most interesting period in our
country, not inspected by the narrow details of the anti-
quarian microscope, but in the broad mirror reflecting that
truth or satire which alone could have discriminated the
passions, the pursuits, and the foibles of society. Thus
M 2
164 Amenities of Literature.
the painter of nature, who caught the glow of her skies
and her earth in his landscape, was also the miniature por-
trayer of human likenesses. When Chaucer wrote, the
classics of antiquity were imperfectly known in this country
—the Grecian muse had never reached our shores; this
was, probably, favourable to the native freedom of Chaucer.
The English poet might have lost his raciness by a cold
imitation of the Latin masters; among the Italians, Dante,
Petrarch, and Boccaccio, Chaucer found only models to
emulate or to surpass. Hence the English bard indulged
that more congenial abundance of thoughts and images
which owns no other rule than the pleasure it yields in
the profusion of nature and fancy. A great poet may
not be the less Homeric because he has never read Homer.
Nature in her distinct forms lies open before this poet-
painter; his creative eye pursued her through all her
mutability, but in his details he was a close copier. In
his rural scenery there is a freshness in its luxuriance; for
his impressions were stamped by their locality. This
locality is so remarkable, that Pope had a notion, which
he said no one else had observed, that Chaucer always
described real places to compliment the owners of parti-
cular gardens and fine buildings. Let us join him in his
walks—
When that the misty vapour was agone,
And clear and fair was the morning,
The dews, like silver, shining
Upon the leaves.
The flowers sparkle in “their divers hues”—he sometimes
counts their colours—“white, blue, yellow, and red”—on
their stalks, spreading their leaves in breadth against the
sun, gold-burned. His grass is “so small, so thick, so
fresh of hue.” The poet goes by a river whose water is
“clear as beryl or crystal;” turning into “a little way
towards a park in compass round, and by a small gate.
Whoso that would freely might gone (go)
Into this Park walled with green stone.
The owner of that park, probably, was startled when he
came to “the little way,” and to “the small gate.” This
was either the park of some great personage, or possibly
Woodstock Park, where stood a stone lodge, so long known
Chaucer. 165
by the name of “Chaucer's House,” that in the days of
Elizabeth it was still described as such in the royal grant.
If poets have rarely built houses, at least their names have
consecrated many.
His
Garden upon a river in a green mead;
The gravel gold, the water pure as glass,
and “the eglantine and sycamore arbour, so thickly woven,
where the priers who stood without all day could not dis-
cover whether any one was within,” was assuredly some
particular garden. The stately grove has all the cha-
racters of its trees—the oak, the ash, and the fir—to “the
fresh hawthorn,”
Which in white motley that so swote doth smell.
In all these lovely scenes there was a delicious sense of
joyous existence; the inmates of the forest burst forth,
from “the little conies, the beasts of gentle kind,” to
“the dreadful roe and the buck,” and from their green
leaves they who “with voice of angels” entranced the
poet-musician—
So loud they sang that all the woodés rung
Like as it should shiver in pieces small,
And as methought that the Nightingale
With so great might her voice out-wrest,
Right as her heart for love would brest (burst).
So true is the accidental remark of the celebrated Charles
Fox, that “of all poets Chaucer seems to have been the
fondest of the singing of birds.” These were the peculiar
delights in the poetic habits of Chaucer, who was all
early riser, and often mused on many a rondel in gardens,
and meads, and woods, at earliest dawn. This poet's sun-
risings are the most exhilarating in our poetry.
We may doubt if the vernal scenes of Chaucer can be
partaken by his more chilly posterity. Did England in
the seasons of Chaucer flourish with a more genial May
and a more refulgent June P Or should we suspect that
the travelled poet clothed our soil with the luxuriance of
Provençal fancy, and borrowed the clear azure of Italy to
soften the British roughness even of our skies P
Tyrwhit, the able commentator of Chaucer, has thrown
166 Amenities of Literature.
out an incidental remark, which seems equally refined and
true. “Chaucer in his serious pieces often follows his
author with the servility of a mere translator; and in con-
sequence his narration is jejune and constrained (as often
appears in the “Romaunt of the Rose” and his translations
of Dante), whereas in the comic he is generally satisfied
with borrowing a slight hint of his subject, which he
varies, enlarges, and embellishes at pleasure, and gives
the whole the air and colour of an original; a sure sign
that his genius rather led him to compositions of the latter
kind.”
This remark is an instance of critical sagacity. The
creative faculty in Chaucer had not broken forth in his
translations, which evidently were his earliest writings.
The native bent of his genius, the hilarity of his temper,
betrays itself by playful strokes of raillery and concealed
satire when least expected. His fine irony may have
sometimes left his commendations, or even the objects of
his admiration, in a very ambiguous condition. The
learned editor of the second part of the “Paston Letters”
hence has been induced to infer that the spirit of
chivalry, from the reign of the third Edward, had entirely
declined, and only existed in the forms of conventional
and fashionable society, and had sunk into a mere foppery,
a system of forms and etiquettes, because Chaucer, a court-
poet, treats with irony the chivalric manners. Whether
this ingenious inference will hold with literary antiquaries,
I will not decide; but I am inclined to suspect that
Chaucer's indulgence of his taste for irony was not in the
mind of this learned editor. Our poet has stamped with
his immortal ridicule the tale told in his own person—
“The Rime of Sir Thopas,” which is considered as a
burlesque of the metrical romances. In those days there
was an inundation of these romances, as “the thirst and
hunger” of the present is accommodated with as spurious
a brood. We have our “drafty prose” as they had their
“drafty riming.” But shall we infer from this ludicrous
effusion of the great poet, that he held so light the
venerable fablers, the ancient romancers, with whose
“better parts” he had nourished his own genius P. This
is his own confession. Often in his years of grief, when
the poet wondered
Chaucer. 167
How he lived, for day ne night,
I may not sleep—
Sitting upright in my bed,
then it was that he preseribed for his “secret sorrows”
that medicine which, “drunk deeply,” makes us forget
ourselves. In those hours the poet
Bade one reach me a Boke,
A ROMANCE, and he it me took
To read, and drive the Night away;
For methought it better play
Than play either at Chess or Tables.
And assuredly Chaucer found many passages in the old
fablers not less entrancing than some of his own. Our
poet indulged this vein of playful irony on persons as well
as on things. A sly panegyric, sufficiently ambiguous for
us to accept as a refined stroke, we find on the abstruse
and interminable question of predestination; on which the
Nonne’s priest declares—
But I ne cannot boult it to the bren,
As can the holy doctor Augustín,
Or Boece, or the bishop Bradwardín.
As this bishop, afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury,
was the first who treated theology on mathematical prin-
ciples, and likewise wrote on the “Quadrature of the
Circle,” we may presume “Bishop Bradwardin” rather
perplexed the poet. Chaucer discovers his ironical man-
ner when gravely stating the different theories of dream-
II). Q-
ad — What causeth Suevenes *
On the morrow or on evens !
he playfully concludes, and modern philosophy could no
better assist the inquiry—
Whoso of these Miracles
The causes know bet ºf than I
Define he, for I certainly
Ne can them not, ne never thinke
To busie my witte for to swinke
To know why this is more than that is,
Well worthé of this thing Clerkés,
That treaten of this and of other werkés,
For I, of none opinion
Nil.
* Dreams. + Better.
168 Amenities of Literature.
It is with the same pleasantry he avoids all common-
place descriptions, by playfully suggesting his pretended
unskilfulness for the detail, or his want of learning—
Me list not of the chaf, ne of the stre,
Maken so long a tale, as of the corn.
“Man of Lawe's Tale.”
Yet humour and irony are not his only excellences,
for those who study Chaucer know that this great poet
has thoughts that dissolve in tenderness; no one has
more skilfully touched the more hidden springs of the
heart.
The Herculean labour of CHAUCER was the creation of
a new style. In this he was as fortunate as he was like-
wise unhappy. He mingled with the native rudeness of
our English words of Provençal fancy, and some of
French and of Latin growth. He banished the super-
annuated and the uncouth, and softened the churlish
nature of our hard Anglo-Saxon ; but the poet had nearly
endangered the novel diction when his artificial pedantry
assumed what he called “the ornate style” in “the
Romaunt of the Rose,” and in his “Troilus and Cressida.”
This “ ornate style” introduced sesquipedalian Latinisms,
words of immense dimensions, that could not hide their
vacuity of thought. Chaucer seems deserted by his genius
when “the ornate style” betrays his pangs and his
anxiety. As the error of a fine genius becomes the error
of many, because monstrous protuberances may be copied,
while the softened lines of beauty remain inimitable, this
“ ornate style” corrupted inferior writers, who, losing all
relish of the natural feeling and graceful simplicity of
their master, filled their verse with noise and nonsense.
This vicious style, a century afterwards, was resumed by
STEPHEN HAWEs. We have, however, a glorious evidence,
amid this struggle both with a new and with a false style,
of Chaucer's native good taste; he finally wholly aban-
doned this artificial diction; and his later productions, no
longer disfigured by such tortured phrases and such
remote words, awaken our sympathy in the familiar
language of life and passion.
TYRWHIT has ingeniously constructed a metrical
system to arrange the versification to the ear of a modern
Chaucer. I69
reader; by this contrivance he would have removed
all obstructions in the pronunciation and in the syllabic
quantities. He maintained that the lines were regular
decasyllabics. But who can read this poet for any length,
even the “Canterbury Tales” in the elaborated text of
Tyrwhit, without being reminded of its fallacy P. Even the
E final, on which our critic has laid such stress, though
often sounded, assuredly is sometimes mute. Tan Chaucer
makes at his pleasure words long or short, and dyssyllabic
or trisyllabic; and this he has himself told us—
But for the rime is light and lewde,
Yet make it somewhat agreàble,
Though some verse fail in a syllable.
Our critic was often puzzled by his own ingenuity, for
in some inveterate cases he has thrown out in despair an
observation, that “a reader who cannot perform such
operations for himself (that is, helping out the metre) had
better not trouble his head about the versification of our
ancient authors.” The verse of Chaucer seems more care-
fully regulated in his later work, “the Tales;” but it is
evident that Chaucer trusted his cadences to his ear, and
his verse is therefore usually rhythmical, and accidentally
metrical.
On a particular occasion the poet submitted to the re-
straint of equal syllables, as we discover in “The Court
of Love,” elaborately metrical, and addressed to “his
princely lady,” with the hope that she might not refuse
it “for lack of ornate speech.” It is evident, therefore,
that Chaucer had a distinct conception of the heroic or
decasyllabic verse, but he did not consider that the
mechanical construction of his verse was essential to the
free spirit of his fancy. “I am no metrician,” he once
exclaimed; he wrote
Books, songs, ditees
In RIME, or else in CADENCE.
“The House of Fame.”
This circumstance arose from the custom of the age, when
poems were recited, and not read; readers there were
none among the people, though auditors were never Want-
ing ; it was much the same among the higher orders.
Poems were usually performed in plain chant, and a verse
170 Amenities of Literature.
was musical by the modulation of the harp. There was
no typographical metre placed under the eye of the re-
citer; the melody of the poet too often depended on the
adroitness of the performer ; and the only publishers of
the popular poems of Chaucer were the harpers, who, in
stately halls on festal days, entranced their audience with
Chaucer's Tale, or his “Ballade.” His poem of “Troilus
and Cressida,” although almost as long as the Æneid, was
intended to be sung to the harp as well as read, as the
poet himself tells us, in addressing his poem—
And redde where so thou be, or elles sung.
In the most ancient manuscripts of Chaucer's works
the caesura in every line is carefully noted, to preserve the
rhythmical cadence with precision ; without this pre-
caution the harmony of such loose versification would be
lost. In the later editions, when the race of roaming
minstrels had departed, and our verse had become solely
metrical, the printers omitted this guide to the ancient
recitation. We perceive this want in the uncertain mea-
sures of Chaucer's versification; and a dexterous modula-
tion is still required to catch the recitative of Chaucer's
poems.
Are the works of our great poet to be consigned to the
literary dungeon of the antiquary’s closet P I fear that
there is more than one obstruction which intervenes be-
tween the poet's name, which will never die, and the
poet's works, which will never be read. A massive tome,
dark with the Gothic type, whose obsolete words and
difficult phrases, and, for us, uncadenced metre, are to be
conned by a glossary as obsolete as the text, to be perpe-
tually referred to, to the interruption of all poetry and all
patience, appalled even the thorough-paced antiquary,
Samuel Pegge, as appears by his honest confession.
Already a practised bibliosopher proclaims, alluding to the
edition by Tyrwhit of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales,”
“And who reads any other portion of the poet P* Yet
the “Canterbury Tales” are but the smallest portion of
Chaucer's works | But some skilful critics have perpended
and decided differently : even among the projected labours
of Johnson was an edition of Chaucer's works; and
Godwin, when diligently occupied on this great poet, with
Chaucer. 171
just severity observed that “a vulgar judgment had been
propagated by slothful and indolent persons, that the
“Canterbury Tales’ are the only part of the works of
Chaucer worthy the attention of a modern reader, and
this has contributed to the wretched state in which his
works are permitted to exist.”
Are we then no longer to linger over the visionary
emotions of the great poet in the fine portraitures of his
genius from his youthful days, when the fever of his soul,
not knowing where to seek for its true aliment, careless of
life, fed on its own sad musings, in Chaucer's “DREME,”
or, onwards in life, in the “TESTAMENT OF LOVE,” that
chronicle of the heart in a prison solitude P And are we
no longer interested in those personal traits Chaucer has so
frequently dropped of his own tastes and humours, so that
we are in fact better acquainted with Chaucer than we
are with Shakspeare P Even during his official occupa-
tions, this poet loved his studious solitary nights, and fre-
quently alludes to his passion. Must we close that
“HousE of FAME,” with whose fragments Pope reared
“The Temple P” Has all the enchantment of the moon-
light-land of chivalry and fairyism in “THE FLOURE AND
THE LEAFE” vanished P Are we no longer to listen to
“THE ComPLAINT OF THE BLACK KNIGHT,” which
touched a duchess or a queen P or the stanzas of “THE
CUCKoo AND THE NIGHTINGALE,” which musically re-
sound that musical encounter P Is the legend of pathetic
tenderness in the impassioned “TROILUs,” and “the sillie
woman who falsed Troilus,” ever to be closed P there may
we pursue the vicissitudes of love, in what the poet calls
“a little tragedy;” and we find Ovidian graces amid its
utter simplicity. There are, indeed, vicissitudes of taste
as well as of love. “Troilus and Cressida” was the fa-
vourite in the days of Henry VIII. over the “Canterbury
Tales” and “The Floure and the Leafe;” it was, too, the
model of Sidney in the court of Elizabeth ; Love tri-
umphed at court over Humour and Fancy.
It is true that the language of Chaucer has failed, but
not the writer. The marble which Chaucer sculptured
has betrayed the noble hand of the artist ; the statue was
finished; but the grey and spotty veins came forth,
clouding the lucid whiteness.
172 Amenities of Literature.
For the poet or the poetical, the difficulty of the lan-
guage may be surmounted with a reasonable portion of
every-day patience. I know, from several of my literary
contemporaries, that this, however, has not been conceded.
The more familiar I became with Chaucer, the more I
delighted in the significance of the Chaucerian words.
From some modern critics, occasionally the name of
Chaucer startles the ear. One, indeed, has recently com-
plained that “Chaucer's divine qualities are languidly ac-
knowledged by his unjust countrymen;” and Coleridge
emphatically said, “I take unceasing delight in Chaucer.
His manly cheerfulness is especially delicious in my old
age. How exquisitely tender he is "f
But the popularity of this gifted child of nature, and
this shrewd observer of mankind, is doomed to another
obstruction than that of his curious diction. The play-
fulness of his comic invention, and the freedom of his
simplicity, will no longer be allowed to atone for the
levity of some of his incidents. When Warton, to display
the genuine vein of the Chaucerian humour, imprudently
analysed the “Miller's Tale,” having reached the middle, the
critic, recollecting himself, suddenly breaks off with a curt
remark—“The sequel cannot be repeated here !” In a
recklessness of all knowledge, and in an unhappy hour, the
poet of “Don Juan” decided, while he probably would have
started from Chaucer's black-letter tome, that “Chaucer,
notwithstanding the praises bestowed on him, I think
obscene and contemptible. He owed his celebrity merely
to his antiquity.” As if the greatest of our poets had
only been celebrated in the day when Byron wrote | Yet
in all the unfettered invention and nudity of style, there
was no grossness in the temper, and less in the habits, of
the poet. He addressed his own age as his contem-
poraries were doing in France and in Italy, and from whom
he had borrowed the very two tales on which this censure
has fallen. In telling “a merrie tale,” Chaucer could not
have anticipated this charge; and, in truth, for subjects
which are obscene and disgustful he had no taste, as he
showed in his reproof of Gower for having selected two
s Autobiography of an Opium-Eater.—“Tait's Mag.” August,
35.
+ Coleridge’s “Table-Talk.”
Chaucer. 173
repulsive ones—the unnatural passions of Canace and
Apollonius Tyrius. Of these our Chaucer cries,
Of all swiche cursed stories I say, Fy!
Our poet has himself pleaded that having fixed on his
personage, he had no choice to tell any other tale than
what that individual would himself have told. Before we
immolate Chaucer on the altar of the Graces, we should
not only listen to his plea, but to his own easy remedy for
this disorder produced by his too faithful copy after
nature.
Whoso list not to hear,
Turn over the leaf, and chese another tale !
Our notions and our customs of delicacy are the result
of a change in our manners of no distant period; and,
compared with our neighbours, many are still but con-
ventional. They are so even in respect to ourselves, for,
not to go back to the golden days of Elizabeth, the lan-
guage and the manners of the court of Anne would have
startled modern decorum. The “polite conversation” of
Swift has fortunately preserved for us specimens which
we could not have imagined. Our poems, our comedies,
and our tales, so late as the days of Swift and Pope, have
allusions, and even incidents and descriptions, which we
no longer tolerate. How far our fastidiousness lies on the
surface of our lesser morals, I will not decide; but men
of genius have complained that this fastidiousness has be-
come too restrictive, by contracting the sphere of inven-
tive humour, which flashes often in such small matters as
ludicrous tales and playful levities, which must not lie on
our tables.
Chaucer long remained a favourite in the most polite
circles; Aubrey, at the close of the seventeenth century,
in his “Idea,” recommends the study of Chaucer, as the
poet in full reputation. At a later period, the days of
Dryden and Pope, our versifiers were continually reno-
vating his humour and his more elegant fictions. OGLE,
with others, attempted to modernize Chaucer; but it is as
impossible to give such a version of Chaucer as to translate
the Odes of Horace. They corrupted by their interpola-
tions, and weakened by their diffusion; Chaucer was not
discernible in the diminess of their paraphrase. The great
174 Amenities of Literature.
beauties of Chaucer spring up from the soil in which they
lie embedded; and the most skilful hand will discover that
in gathering the flower it must cease to live without its
root.
We never possessed a tolerably correct edition of this
master-poet; and the very circumstance of the continued
popularity of the poems with the many has occasioned
their present wretched condition. When works circulated
in their manuscript state, before the era of printing, the
popularity of a poet made his text the more liable to cor-
ruption. Multiplied transcripts were produced by heedless
or licentious scribes, whose careless omissions, and whose
perpetuated blunders and even interpolations can only be
credited by the collators of the manuscripts of Chaucer.
This happened with the very first printed edition by
Caxton. Our patriarchal publisher discovered that he had
printed from a very faulty manuscript, and, in that primi-
tive age of simplicity and printing, nobly suppressed the
edition which dishonoured the author, and substituted an
improved one. Doubtless GowIR, a grave and learned
poet, whose copies are remarkably elegant, has descended
to us in a purer condition than CHAUCER, for he was
rarely transcribed. Speght was the first editor who gave
a more complete edition of Chaucer, with the useful appen-
dage of a glossary, the first of its kind, and which has been
a fortunate acquisition for later glossographers. But
Speght, with the aid of Stowe, who was equally industrious,
was so deficient in critical acumen, as to have impounded
any stray on the common stamped with the initials of
Chaucer. Thus our poet has suffered all the mischances
of faithless scribes, unintelligent printers, and uncritical
editors. To make the bad worse, the last modern edition
of Chaucer, by URRY, though recommended by the white
letter, offering this bland relief to a modern reader, is a
showy volume, of which we are forbidden to read a line !
The history of this edition is an evidence how ill our
scholars, at no remote period, were qualified to decide on
the fate of a great vernacular author. Urry, the pupil of
Dean Aldrich, and the friend of Bishop Atterbury, appears
to have been one of that galaxy or confederacy of wits
called “the Wits of Christ Church.” The “Student of
Christ Church, Oxon,” offered a title and a place which
Chaucer. 175
would sanction an edition of Chaucer; one object of which
was to contribute five hundred pounds to finish Peckwater
Quadrangle. The pompous folio appeared heralded by the
queen’s licence for the exclusive sale for fourteen years.
Our editor at first seems to have been reluctant and
modest, till instigated by his great patrons to divest him-
self of all fear of the author. In his innocence conceiving
that the strokes of his own pen would silently improve an
obsolete genius, this merciless interpolator, changing words
and syllables at pleasure, has furnished a text which
Chaucer never wrote ſº If the worst edition that was
ever published contributed to finish Peckwater Quadrangle,
it is amusing to be reminded that causes are often strangely
disproportionate to their effects.
The famous portion of Chaucer's Miscellaneous Volume
has been fortunate in the editorial cares of TYRWHIT.
Tyrwhit, a scholar as well as an antiquary, was an expert
philologer; his extensive reading in the lore of our verma-
cular literature and our national antiquities promptly
supplied what could not have entered into his more classical
studies; and his sagacity seems to have decided on the
various readings of all the manuscripts, by piercing into
the core of the poet's thoughts.f
It is remarkable that some of the most lively productions
of several great writers have been the work of their maturest
* So unskilful or so incurious was Warburton in the language of our
ancient poets, that in his notes on Pope he quotes the following lines of
Chaucer—
Love wol not be constreimed by maistrie.
Whan maistrie cometh, the God of love amon
beteth his wings, and farewel, he is gon”—
from Urry's edition, in which they appear thus transformed and
corrupted :
Love will not be confined by maisterie.
When maisterie comes, the Lord of love anon
Flutters his wings, and forthwith is he gone.
[An excellent example of the superior vigour of Chaucer may be seen
in an original passage of his “Palamon and Arcite,” contrasted with
Dryden’s tamer modernization of the same, in “Curiosities of Litera-
ture,” vol. ii. p. 107.—ED.]
+ This “sagacity” has been much and justly questioned by the
more advanced students of medieval literature. Sir Harris Nicolas has
produced an excellent edition of the poet ; but the best text of the
“Canterbury Tales” has been published by Mr. Thos. Wright, from a
careful collation of the oldest manuscript.—ED.
176 Amenities of Literature.
age. Johnson surpassed all his preceding labours in his last
work, the popular Lives of the Poets. The “Canterbury
Tales” of Chaucer were the effusions of his advanced age,
and the congenial verses of Dryden were thrown out in
the luxuriance of his later days. Milton might have been
classed among the minor poets had he not lived to be old
enough to become the most sublime. Let it be a source
of consolation, if not of triumph, in a long studious life of
true genius, to know that the imagination may not decline
with the vigour of the frame which holds it; there has been
no old age for many men of genius.
We must lament that at such an early period in our
vernacular literature, we have to record that the two
fathers of our poetry, congenial spirits as they were, too
closely resembled most of their sons—in one of the most
painful infirmities of genius. I have said elsewhere that
jealousy, long supposed to be the offspring of little minds,
is not, however, confined to them. We do not possess the
secret history of the two great poets, Chaucer and Gower;
but we are told by Berthelet in his edition of Gower’s
“Confessio Amantis,” when he quotes the commendatory
lines on Gower by Chaucer, that the poets “were both ex-
cellently learned, both great friendes together.” Ancient
biographers usually fall into this vague style of eulogy,
which served their purpose rather than a more critical
research. True it is that “they were both great friends,”
but, what Berthelet has not told, they became also “both
great enemies.” We know that Chaucer has commemorated
the dignified merits of “the moral Gower,” and that
Gower has poured forth an effusion not less fervid than
elegant from the lips of Venus, who calls Chaucer “her
own clerk, who in the flower of his youth had made ditees
and songes glad which have filled the land.” Did this
little passion of poetic jealousy creep into their great souls P
Else how did it happen that Chaucer, who had once soli-
cited the correcting hand of his friend, in his latest work,
reprehended the sage and the poet, and that Gower, who
had not stinted the rich meed of his eulogy which appeared
in the first copies of his “Confessio Amantis,” erased the
immortality which he had bestowed. The justice of their
reciprocal praise neither of these rivals could efface, for
that outlives their little jealousies.
177
GOWER.
IN the church of St. Saviour in Southwark may be
viewed an ancient monument with its sculptured and
Gothic canopy; pictured on its side the three visionary
virgins, Charity, Mercy, and Pity, solicit the prayer of
the passenger for the soul of the suppliant whose image
lies extended on the tomb, with folded hands, and in his
damask habit flowing to his feet. His head reposes on
three mighty tomes, and is decked with a garland, either
of roses which proclaim his knighthood, or the wreath of
literature which would more justly distinguish the wearer,
—John GowPR, the poet,
In the life of this poet, almost the only certain incident
seems to be his sepulchral monument : and even this it
had been necessary to repair after the malignity of the
Iconoclasts; and of the three sculptured volumes which
support the poet's head, a single one only has been opened
by the world, for the tomb has perpetuated what the press
has not.
The three tomes on the tomb of Gower represent his
three great works; but what is remarkable, and shows the
unsettled state of our literature, each of these great works
is written in a different language, though equally graced
with Latin titles. The first, in French, is the “Speculum
Meditantis;” the moral reflections relieved by historical
examples. The second, in Latin verse, is “Vox Clamantis;”
this “Voice” comes not from the desert, for it is that of
the clamours of the people; a satire on all ranks, and
an exhortation to the youthful monarch to check his own
self-indulgence; it includes a chronicle of the insurrection
of the populace, or “the clowns,” as they were called
in Richard the Second’s reign. The vernacular style,
rather than Latin verse, would have more aptl
celebrated the feats of Wat Tyler, or Bet and Sim, Gibbe
and Hyke, Hudde and Judde, Jack and Tib. The
reporter had no doubt been present at the active scene.
The swarm rush on to the call of one another, in hexa-
WOL. I. N
&
178 Amenities of Literature.
meters and pentameters. The singularity of the subject,
which gives no bad picture of the hurry of a disorderly
mob, and the felicity of an old translation, induce me to
preserve a partial extract from the manuscript. Our own
age has witnessed similar scenes.
Watte vocat, cui Thome venit, neque Symme retardat,
Betteque, Gibbe simul Hyke venire jubent.
Colle furit, quem Gibbe juvat nocumenta parantes,
Cum quibus ad dampnum Wille coire vovet.
Grigge rapit, dum. Dawe strepit, comes est quibus Hobbe,
Lorkin et in medio non minor esse putat.
Hudde ferit, quos Judde terit, dum Tebbe juvatur,
Jacke domos que viros vellit, et ense necat.
Tom comes, thereat, when called by Wat, and Simon as forward
we find ;
Bet calls as quick to Gibb, and to Hyck that neither would tarry
behinde.
Gibbe, a good whelp of that litter, doth help mad Coll more
mischief to do,
And Will he doth vow, the time is come now, he'll join with their
company too.
Davie complains whiles Grigg gets the gains, and Hobb with them
doth partake ;
Lorkin aloud, in the midst of the crowd, conceiveth as deep is his
stake.
Hudde doth spoil, whom Judde doth foile, and Tebbe lends his
helping hand,
But Jack, the mad-patch, men and horses doth snatch, and kills
all at his command.
The third and greater work, and the only printed one
of Gower, is the “Confessio Amantis,” an English poem of
about thirty thousand lines; a singular miscellany of
allegory, of morality, and of tales. It is studded with
sententious maxims and proverbs, and richly diversified
with narrations, pleasant and tragic ; but the affectation of
learning,for learning in its crude state always obtrudes itself,
even in works of recreation, has compressed the Aristotelian
philosophy, to edify and surprise the readers of the poet's
fairy or romantic tales. Robert de Brunne, to illustrate
monachal morals, interspersed domestic stories; and amidst
the prevalent penury of imagination, that rhyming monk
affords the most ancient specimens of English tales in
verse: and as Gower's single printed work is of the same
species of composition, a system of ethics illustrated by
Gower. 179
tales, it has been thought that the monk who rhymed in
1300 was the true predecessor of the poet who flourished
at the close of that century, however Gower may have
purified the “rime doggrel,” and elevated the puerile
tale. The straw-roof must be raised before the cupola.
Genius in its genealogy must not blush at its remote
ancestor; the noblest knight may often go back to the
mill or the forge. If this rude moralising rhymer really
be the poetical father of Gower, then is this antiquated
monk the inventor of that narrative poetry which Chaucer,
Spenser, Dryden, and even some of our contemporaries,
have so delightfully diversified. But story-telling has
been of all periods.
There is a portion in this volume which concerns the
personal history of the poet.
This work was composed at the suggestion of Richard
the Second himself, who among other luxuries loved
Froissart's romance and Chaucer’s rhymes, and was even
willing to be taught the grave lessons which he could not
practise. As Gower one day was rowed in his boat on the
Thames, he met his “liege lord” in the royal barge, who
commanded the poet to enter, and, in a long unrestrained
conversation, desired him “to book some new thing in the
way he was used.” Probably the youthful monarch
alluded to the “Vox Clamantis,” in which the poet had
exhorted his “liege lord” to exercise every kingly
virtue, and had without reserve touched on too many
imperfections of a court-life. It was to be “a book,”
added the young monarch, “in which he himself might
often look.” The poet aspired to fix the honour which
he had received, and resolved, in his own words,

To write in such a manner-wise,
Which may be wisdom to the wise,
And play to them that list to play.
In a word, we have here the great Horatian precept by
the intuition of our earliest poet.
The political admonitions, and the keen satire on the
youthful favourites of the youthful monarch of a luxurious
court, and the relaxed morals of the higher ranks, the
clergy, and the judges, were all offered with more than the
freedom of a poet—they sound the deep tones of the patriot.
N 2
180 Amenities of Literature.
The sage had solemnly contemplated on the discontents
and clamours of the people, and presciently observed the
rising of that state-tempest, which in an instant de-
throned this magnificent and thoughtless prince,
In the course of the reign of Richard the Second it
appears that several alterations were made in the poem.
The dedicatory preface was suppressed. Berthelet, the
ancient printer of the “Confessio Amantis,” discovered that
“the prologue" had disappeared, though the same number
of lines were substituted, “cleane contrary both in
sentence and in meaning.” Gower has therefore in-
curred the reproach of a disloyal desertion of his hapless
master to court a successful usurper. One critic tells that
“he was given to change with the turns of state.”
Bishop Nicholson, with dull levity, has a fling at all poets,
for he censures Gower for “making too free with his
prince—a liberty, it seems, allowed to men of his pro-
fession ;” while Thomas Hearne, the blind bigot of passive
obedience, in editing a monkish life of Richard the Second,
would have all Gower condemned to oblivion, because “he
had treated the monarch’s memory ill, and spoke with
equal freedom of the clergy.” This vacillating conduct
of “the moral Gower,” however, need not leave any stain
on his memory. We see he had never at any time adu-
lated the youthful monarch; however his tales may have
charmed the royal ear, the verse often left behind a whole-
some bitterness. Gower had praised Henry of Lancaster
at a period when he could not have contemplated the
change of dynasty; and when it happened, the poet was
of an age far too advanced either to partake of the hopes
or the fears that wait on a new reign.
But this tale of Gower's free and honest satire on courts
and courtiers is not yet concluded. The sphere of a poet's
influence is far wider than that of his own age; and how-
ever we may now deem of this grave and ancient poet, he
still found understanding admirers so late as in the reign
of Charles the First. In the curious “Conference” which
took place when Charles the First visited the Marquess of
Worcester, at Ragland Castle, with his court, there is the
following anecdote respecting the poet Gower.
The marquess was a shrewd though whimsical man, and
a favourite of the king for his frankness and his love of
Gower. I81
the arts. His lordship entertained the royal guest with
extraordinary magnificence. Among his rare curiosities
was a sumptuous copy of Gower's volume.
Charles the First usually visited the marquess after
dinner. Once he found his lordship with the book of
John Gower lying open, which the king said he had never
before seen. “Oh!” exclaimed the marquess; “it is a
book of books 1 and if your majesty had been well versed
in it, it would have made you a king of kings.” “Why
so, my lord?” “Why, here is set down how Aristotle
brought up and instructed Alexander the Great in all the
rudiments and principles belonging to a prince.” And
under the persons of Aristotle and Alexander, the mar-
quess read the king such a lesson that all the standers-by
were amazed at his boldness.
The king asked whether he had his lesson by heart, or
spake out of the book? “Sir, if you would read my
heart, it may be that you might find it there; or if your
majesty pleased to get it by heart, I will lend you my
book.” The king accepted the offer.
Some of the new-made lords fretbed and bit their
thumbs at certain passages in the marquess's discourse;
and some protested that no man was so much for the
absolute power of a king as Aristotle. The marquess
told the king that he would indeed show him one remark-
able passage to that purpose; and turning to the place,
read—
A king can kill, a king can save;
A king can make a lord a knave;
And of a knave, a lord also.
On this several new-made lords slank out of the room,
which the king observing, told the marquess, “My lord,
at this rate you will drive away all my nobility.”
This amusing anecdote is an evidence that this ethical
poet, after two centuries and a half, was not forgotten;
his spirit was still vital, his volume still lay open on the
library table; it afforded a pungent lesson to the courtiers
of Charles the First as it had to those of Richard the
Second.
GoweR was learned, didactic, and dignified. The manu-
scripts of his works are usually noble and sumptuous
copies; more elegantly written and more richly illumi-
182 Amenities of Literature.
nated than the works of other poets. His commonplaces
and his legendary lore seem to have awed the simplicity
of the readers of two centuries, whose taste did not yet
feel that failure of the poet who narrated a fable from
Ovid with the dull prolixity of a matter-of-fact chronicler.
His fictions are rarely imaginative; yet critics, far abler
judges of his relative merits than ourselves, since they
lived within the sphere of his influence, hailed this grave
father of our poesy. Leland, the royal antiquary of Henry
the Eighth, expressed his ideas with great elegance and
sensibility, when he said of Gower that “his diligent
culture of our poesy had extirpated the ordinary herbs;
and that the soft violet and the purple narcissus were now
growing, where erst was nothing seen but the thistle and
the thorn.” There are indeed some graceful flowers in
his desert. But all criticism is usually relative to the
age, and excellence is always comparative. Gow BR
stamped with the force of ethical reasoning his smooth
rhymes; and this was a near approach to poetry itself.
If in the mind of CHAUCER we are more sensible of the
impulses of genius—those creative and fugitive touches—
his diction is more mixed and unsettled than the tranquil
elegance of Gow BR, who has often many pointed sen-
tences and a surprising neatness of phrase. A modern
reader, I think, would find the style of Gower more
easily intelligible than the higher efforts of the more in-
ventive poet.
183
PIERS PLOUGHMAN.
CoNTEMPORARY with Gower and CHAUCER lived the
singular author of “The Visions of William concerning
PIERS PLOUGHMAN ;” singular in more respects than one,
for his subject, his style, and, we may add, for the intre-
pidity and the force of his genius.
This extraordinary work is ascribed to one whose name
is merely traditional, to Robert Langland, a secular priest
of Salop; when he wrote, and where he died, are as dubious
as his text, the authenticity of which is often uncertain
from the variations in all the manuscripts. But the real
life of an author, at least for posterity, lies beyond the
grave; and no writer is nameless whose volume has de-
scended to us as one of the most memorable in our ancient
vernacular literature.
In character, in execution, and in design, “The Visions
of William of PIERs PLough MAN” are wholly separated
from the polished poems of Gower and CHAUCER; the
work bears no trace of their manner, nor of their refine-
ment, nor of their versification; and it has baffled con-
jectural criticism to assign the exact period of a compo-
sition which appears more ancient than any supposed
contemporary writings. Those who would decide of the
time in which an author wrote by his style, here are at a
loss to conceive that the splendid era of romantic chivalry,
the age of Edward the Third and his grandson, which
produced the curious learning and the easy rhymes of the
“Confessio Amantis,” and the pleasantry and the fine
discriminations of character of the “Canterbury Tales,”
could have given birth to the antiquated Saxon and rustic
pith of this genuine English bard. Either his labour was
concluded ere the writings of the court poets had tra-
velled to our obscure country priest in his seclusion in a
distant county, or else he disdained their exotic fancies,
their Latinisms, their Gallicisms, and their Italianisms,
and their trivial rhymes, that in every respect he might
remain their astonishing contrast, with no inferiority of
184 Amenities of Literature.
genius. There was no philosophical criticism in the cen-
sure of this poet by Warton, when he condemns him for
not having “availed himself of the rising and rapid im-
provements of the English language,” and censures him
for his “affectation of obsolete English.” These rising
improvements may never have reached our bard, or if they
had he might have disdained them ; for the writer of the
“Visions concerning Piers Ploughman” was strictly a
national poet ; and there was no “affectation of obsolete
English” in a poet preserving the forms of his native
idiom, and avoiding all exotic novelties in the energy of
his Anglo-Saxon genius. His uncontaminated mind re-
turned to or continued the Anglo-Saxon alliterative metre
and unrhymed verse; he trusted its cadence to the ear,
scorning the subjection of rhyme. WEBBE, a critic of
the age of Elizabeth, considered this poet as “the first
who had observed the quantity of our verse without the
curiosity of rhyme.”
It is useless to give the skeleton of a desultory and
tedious allegorical narrative. The last editor, Dr. Whita-
ker, imagined that “he for the first time had shown that
it was written after a regular and consistent design,”
notwithstanding that he himself confesses, that “the
conclusion is singularly cold and comfortless and leaves
the inquirer, after a long peregrination, still remote from
the object of his search”—a conclusion where nothing is
concluded ! The visionist might have been overtaken by
sleep among the bushes of the Malvern Hills for twenty
cantos more, without at all deranging anything which
he had said, or inconveniencing anything which he might
say. In truth, it is a heap of rhapsodies, without any
artifice of connexion or involution of plot, or any sustained
interest of one actor more than another among the
numerous ideal beings who flit along the dreamy scenes.
The true spirit of this imaginative work is more com-
prehensible than any settled design. That mysterious
or mythical personage, “Piers Ploughman,” is the re-
presentative of “the Universal Church,” says Dr. Whita-
ker; or “Christian life,” says Mr. Campbell. What he
may be is very doubtful, for we have “True Religion,” a
fair lady, who puts in surely a higher claim to represent
“the Universal Church,” or “Christian life,” than “the
Piers Ploughman. 185
Ploughman,” who has to till his half-acre and save his
idling companions from “waste” and “wane.” The most
important personage is “Mede,” or bribery, who seems to
exert an extraordinary influence over the Bench, and the
Bar, and the Church, and through every profession which
occurred to the poet.
The pearls in these waters lie not on the surface. The
visionist had deeper thoughts and more concealed feelings
than these rhapsodical phantoms. In a general survey of
society, he contemplates on the court and the clergy,
glancing through all the diversified ranks of the laity, not
sparing the people themselves, as their awful reprover.
It was a voice from the wilderness in the language of the
people. The children of want and oppression had found
their solitary advocate. The prelacy, dissolved in the
luxuriousness of papal pomp, and a barbarous aristocracy,
with their rapacious dependents, were mindless of the
morals or the happiness of those human herds, whose
heads were counted, but whose hearts they could never
call their own.
We are curious to learn, in this disordered state of the
Commonwealth, the political opinions entertained by this
sage. They are as mysterious as Piers Ploughman himself.
Passive obedience to the higher powers is inculcated
apparently rather for its prudence than its duty. This we
infer from his lively parable of “the Cat of a Court,” and
“A Route of Ratones and Small Mice.” “Grimalkin,
though sometimes apt to play the tyrant when appetite
was sharp, would often come laughing and leaping among
them. A rat, a whisker of renown, cunningly proposed to
adorn the cat with an ornament, like those which great
lords use who wear chains and collars about their necks;
it should be a tinkling bell, which, if cats would fancy the
fashion, would warn us of their approach. We might
then in security be all lords ourselves, and not be in
this misery of creeping under benches. But not a raton
of the whole rout, for the realm of France, or to win
all England, would bind the bell round the imperial neck.
A mouseling, who did not much like rats, concluded that if
they should even kill the cat, then there would come another
to crunch us and our kind; for men will not have their
meal nibbled by us mice, nor their nights disturbed by the
186 Amenities of Literature.
clattering of roystering rats. Better for us to let the cat
alone! My old father said a kitten was worse. The cat
never hurt me; when he is in good-humour, I like him
well,—and by my counsel cat nor kitten shall be grieved.
I will suffer and say nothing. The beast who now chas-
tiseth many, may be amended by misfortune. Are the
rats to be our governors ? I tell ye, we would not rule
ourselves I’” The poet adds, “What this means, ye men
who love mirth interpret for me, for I dare not ſ”
The parable seems sufficiently obvious. The ratons re-
present a haughty aristocracy, and “the small mouse” is
one of the people themselves, who in his mouse-like wisdom
preferred a single sovereign to many lords. But the poet's
own reflection, addressed to “the men of mirth,” seems
enigmatic. Is he indulging a secret laugh at the passive
obedience of the prudential mouse P
Our author's indignant spirit, indeed, is vehemently
democratic. He dared to write what many trembled to
whisper. Genius reflects the suppressed feelings of its age.
It was a stirring epoch. The spirit of inquisition had
gone forth in the person of Wickliffe; and wherever a
Wickliffe appears, as surely will there be a Piers Plough-
man. When a great precursor of novel opinions arises,
it is the men of genius in seclusion who think and write.
But our country priest, in his contemplative mood, was
not less remarkable for his prudence than for his bold free-
dom, aware that the most corrupt would be the most
vindictive. The implacable ecclesiastics, by the dread
discipline of the church, would doom the apostle of
humanity, but the apostate of his order, to perpetual
silence—by the spell of an anathema; and the haughty
noble would crush his victim by the iron arm of his own,
or of the civil power. The day had not yet arrived when
the great were to endure the freedom of reprehension.
The sage, the satirist, and the seer, for prophet he proved
to be, veiled his head in allegory; he published no other
names than those of the virtues and the vices; and to
avoid personality, he contented himself with personifi-
cation.
A voluminous allegory is the rudest and the most insup-
portable of all poetic fictions; it originates in an early
period of society—when its circles are contracted and
Piers Ploughman. I87
isolated, and the poet is more conversant with the passions
of mankind than with individuals. A genius of the
highest order alone could lead us through a single perusal
of such a poem, by the charm of vivifying details, which
enables us to forget the allegory altogether—the tedious
drama of nonentities or abstract beings. In such creative
touches the author of Piers Ploughman displays pictures of
domestic life, with the minute fidelity of a Flemish paint-
ing; so veracious is his simplicity . He is a great satirist,
touching , with caustic invective or keen irony public
abuses and private vices; but in the depth of his emotions,
and in the wildness of his imagination, he breaks forth
in the solemn tones and with the sombre majesty of
Dante.
But this rude native genius was profound as he was
Sagacious, and his philosophy terminated in prophecy. At
the era of the Reformation they were startled by the dis-
covery of an unknown writer, who, two centuries preceding
that awful change, had predicted the fate of the religious
houses from the hand of a king. The visionary seer seems
to have fallen on the principle which led Erasmus to pre-
dict that “those who were in power” would seize on the
rich shrines, because no other class of men in society could
mate with so mighty a body as the monks. Power only
could accomplish that great purpose, and hence our Vatici-
nator fixed on the highest as the most likely; and the
deep foresight of an obscure country priest, which required
two centuries to be verified, became a great moral and
political prediction.
Without, however, depreciating the sagacity of the pre-
dictor, there is reason to suspect that the same thought
was occurring to some of the great themselves. The Re-
formation of Henry the Eighth may be dated from the
reign of Richard the Second. That mighty transition
into a new order of events in our history would then have
occurred, for the stag was started, and the hunt was up.
It was an accidental and unexpected circumstance which
turned aside the impending event, which was to be future
and not immediate. Henry Bolingbroke, in the early
part of his life, seems to have entertained some free
opinions respecting the property of the church. He
seemed not unfavourable to Wickliffe's doctrines, and,
188 Amenities of Literature.
when Earl of Derby, once declared that “princes had too
little, and religious houses too much.” This unguarded
expression, which was not to be forgotten, we are told,
occasioned one of the rebellions during his reign. But
when Henry Bolingbroke usurped the throne, age and
prudence might have come together ; the monarch
balanced the dread of a turbulent aristocracy, and the
uncertain tenure of dominion to be held at their pleasure,
against the security of sheltering the throne under the
broad alliance of a potent prelacy; a potent prelacy whose
doom was fixed, though the hour had not yet struck
The monarch affixed a bloody seal to this political con-
vention by granting a statute which made the offence of
heresy capital; a crime which heretofore in law was as
unknown as it seemed impossible to designate, and de-
scribed only in figurative terms, as something very
alarming, but which any prudent heretic might easily, if
not explain, at least recant. To give it more solemnity,
the statute is delivered in Latin, and the punishment of
burning was to be inflicted “corum populo, in eminente
loco.”%
The “Visions of Piers Ploughman,” when the day which
his prescience anticipated arrived, were eagerly received;
it is said the work passed through three editions in one
year, about 1550, in the reign of the youthful monarch of
the Reformation; the readers at that early period of
printing would find many passages congenial to the popular
sentiments, and our nameless author was placed among the
founders of a new era.
The “VISIONs of PIERs PLough MAN” will always
offer studies for the poetical artist. This volume, and not
Gower's nor Chaucer's, is a well of English undefiled.
SPENSER often beheld these Visions; MILTON, in his
sublime description of the Lazar House, was surely inspired
by a reminiscence of Piers Ploughman. Even Dryden,
whom we should not suspect to be much addicted to black-
letter reading beyond his Chaucer, must have carefully
conned our Piers Ploughman; for he has borrowed one
very striking line from our poet, and possibly may have
taken others. ByRoN, though he has thrown out a crude
* Barrington’s “Observations on the more ancient Statutes.”
Piers Ploughman. I89
opinion of Chaucer, has declared that “the Ploughman”
excels our ancient poets. And I am inclined to think that
we owe to Piers Ploughman an allegorical work of the same
wild invention, from that other creative mind, the author
of the “Pilgrim’s Progress.” How can we think of the
one, without being reminded of the other ? Some distant
relationship seems to exist between the Ploughman’s
Dowell and Dobet, and Dobest, Friar Flatterer, Grace
the Portress of the magnificent Tower of Truth viewed at
a distance, and by its side the dungeon of Care, Natural
Understanding, and his lean and stern wife Study, and all
the rest of this numerous company, and the shadowy pil-
grimage of the “Immortal Dreamer” to “the Celestial
City.” Yet I would mistrust my own feeling, when so
many able critics, in their various researches after a proto-
type of that singular production, have hitherto not sug-
gested what seems to me obvious.*
Why our rustic bard selected the character of a
ploughman as the personage adapted to convey to us his
theological mysteries, we know not precisely to ascertain;
but it probably occurred as a companion fitted to the
humbler condition of the apostles themselves. Such,
however, was the power of the genius of this writer, that
his successors were content to look for no one of a higher
class to personify their solemn themes. Hence we have
“The Crede of Piers Ploughman;” “The Prayer and
* For the general reader I fear that “The Wisions of Piers Plough-
man’” must remain a sealed book. The last edition of Dr. WHITAKER,
the most magnificent and frightful volume that was ever beheld in the
black letter, was edited by one whose delicacy of taste unfitted him for
this homely task : the plain freedom of the vigorous language is some-
times castrated, with a faulty paraphrase and a slender glossary ; and
passages are slurred over with an annihilating &c. Much was expected
from this splendid edition ; the subscription price was quadrupled, and
on its publication every one would rid himself of the mutilated author.
The editor has not assisted the reader through his barbarous text
interspersed with Saxon characters and abbreviations, and the difficulties
of an obscure and elliptical phraseology in a very antiquated language.
Should ever a new edition appear, the perusal would be facilitated by
printing with the white letter. There is an excellent specimen for an
improved text and edition in “Gent. Mag.,” April, 1834. [This im-
proved text of the “Vision” and “Crede” has, since this note was
originally written, been published with notes by T. Wright, M.A.; and
has been again reprinted recently.]
I90 Amenities of Literature.
Complaint of the Ploughman;” “The Ploughman's
Tale,” inserted in Chaucer's volume; all being equally di-
rected against the vicious clergy of the day.
“The Crede of Piers Ploughman,” if not written by
the author of the “Vision,” is at least written by a
scholar who fully emulates his master; and Pope was so
deeply struck with this little poem, that he has very
carefully analysed the whole.
191
OCCLEVE: THE SCHOLAR OF CHAUCER.
WARTON passed sentence on OcCLEVE as “a cold genius,
and a feeble writer.” A literary antiquary, from a manu-
script in his possession, published six poems of Occleve;
but that selection was limited to the sole purpose of fur-
nishing the personal history of the author.” Ritson's
sharp snarl pronounced that they were of “peculiar
stupidity;” George Ellis refused to give “a specimen;”
and Mr. Hallam, with his recollection of the critical bro-
therhood, has decreed, that “the poetry of Occleve is
wretchedly bad, abounding with pedantry, and destitute
of grace or spirit.” We could hardly expect to have
heard any more of this doomed victim—this ancient man,
born in the fourteenth century, standing before us, whose
dry bones will ill bear all this shaking and cuffing.
A literary historian, who has read manuscripts with the
eagerness which others do the last novelty, more careful
than Warton, and more discriminate than Ritson, has,
with honest intrepidity, confessed that “OccLEVE has not
had his just share of reputation. His writings greatly
assisted the growth of the popularity of our infant
poetry.”f Our historian has furnished from the manu-
scripts of OCCLEVE testimonies of his assertion.
Among the six poems printed, one of considerable
length exhibits the habits of a dissipated young gentleman
in the fourteenth century.
OCCLEVE for more than twenty years was a writer in
the Privy Seal, where we find quarter days were most
irregular; and though briberies constantly flowed in, yet
* “Poems by THOMAS HocCLEVE, never before printed, selected
from a manuscript in the possession of George Mason, with a preface,
notes, and glossary,” 1796. The notes are not amiss, and the glossary
is valuable ; but the verses printed by Mason are his least interesting
productions. The poet's name is here written with an H, as it appeared
in the manuscript; but there is no need of a modern editor changing
the usual mode, because names were diversely written or spelt even in
much later times. The present writer has been called not only Occleve,
but Occliffe, as we find him in Chaucer’s works.
+ Turner's “History of England,” v. 335.
192 Amenities of Literature.
the golden shower passed over the heads of the clerks,
dropping nothing into the hands of these innocents.
Our poet, in his usual passage from his “Chestres Inn
by the Strond” to “Westminster Gate,” by land or water
—for “in the winter the way was deep,” and “the
Strand” was then what its name indicates—often was

delayed by
The outward signe of Bacchus and his lure,
That at his dore hangeth day by day,
Exciteth Folk to taste of his moistüre
So often that they cannot well say Nay !
There was another invitation for this susceptible writer
of the Privy Seal.
I dare not tell how that the fresh repair
Of Venus femel, lusty children dear,
That so goodly, so shapely were, and fair,
And so pleasánt of port and of manére.
There he loitered,
To talk of mirth, and to disport and play.
He never “pinched” the taverners, the cooks, the
boatmen, and all such gentry.
Among this many in mine audience,
Methought I was ymade a man for ever—
So tickled me that nyce reverénce,
That it me made larger of dispence;—
For Riot payeth largely ever mo;
He stinteth never till his purse be bare.
He is at length seized amid his jollities,
By force of the penniless maladie,
Ne lust” had none to Bacchus House to hie.
Fy lack of coin departeth compaignie ;
And hevé purse with Herté liberál
Quencheth the thirsty heat of Hertés drie,
Where chinchy Herté + hath thereof but small.
This “mirror of riot and excess” effected a discovery,
and it was, that all the mischiefs which he recounts came
from the high reports of himself which servants bring to
their lord. The Losengour or pleasant flatterer was too
lightly believed, and honied words made more harmful the
deceitful error. Oh! babbling flattery he spiritedly ex-
claims, author of all lyes, that causest all day thy lord to
* No desire. + Niggardly heart.
Occleve; the Scholar of Chaucer. T93
fare amiss. Such is the import of the following uncouth
VerSe:—
Many a servant unto his Lord saith
That all the world speaketh of him, Honoár,
When the contrarie of that is sooth in faith;
And lightly leeved is this Losengoër,”
His hony wordés wrapped in Erroſir,
Blindly conceived been, the more harm is.
O thou, FAVELE, of lesynges auctoſir, i.
Causest all day thy Lord to fare amiss.
The Combre worldést 'clept been Enchantoârs
In Bookes, as I have red e
OcCLEVE was a shrewd observer of his own times.
That this rhymer was even a playful painter of society we
have a remarkable evidence preserved in the volume of his
great master. “The Letter of Cupid,” in the works of
Chaucer, was the production of Occleve, and appears to
have been overlooked by his modern critics. He had ori-
ginally entitled it, “A Treatise of the Conversation of
Men and Women in the Little Island of Albion.” It is a
caustic “polite conversation;” and deemed so execrably
good, as to have excited, as our ancient critic Speght tells,
“such hatred among the gentlewomen of the Court, that
Occleve was forced to recant in that boke of his called
‘Planetas Proprius.’”$ The Letter of Cupid is thus
dated:—
Written in the lusty month of May,
In our Paléis where many a millián
Of lovers true have habitatién,
The yere of grace joyfull and jocánd,
A thousand four hundred and secónd.
* A Chaucerian word, which well deserves preservation in the
language.
+ FAvRLL, author of “Lyes.” FAVELL, the editor of Hoccleve,
explains as cajolerie, or flattery, by words given by Carpentier in his
supplement to “Du Cange.” Favel is personified by “Piers Plough-
man,” and in Skelton’s “Bouge of Court.” FAvRLE in langue Romane
is Flattery—hence Fabel, Fabling.—Roquefort's “Dictionnaire.” The
Italian FAVELLIO, parlerie, babil, caquet—Alberti's “Grand Diction-
naire”—does not wholly convey the idea of our modern Humbug, which
combines fabling and caquet.
# The encumbrances to the world. In another poem he calls death
“that Coimbre-world.” It was a favourite expression with him, taken
from Chaucer. See “Warton,” ii. 352, note.
§ A title which does not appear in the catalogue of his writings by
Ritson, in his “Bibliographia Poetica.”
"WOL. I. O
I94 * Amenities of Literature.
Imagery and imagination are not required in the school
of society. Occleve seems, however, sometimes to have
told a tale not amiss, for WILLIAM BROWN, the pastoral
bard, inserted entire a long story by old Occleve in his
“Shepherd's Pipe.” To us he remains sufficiently un-
couth. The language had not at this period acquired even
a syntax, though with all its rudeness it was neither
wanting in energy nor copiousness, from that adoption of
the French, the Provençal, and the Italian, with which
Chaucer had enriched his vein. The present writer seems
to have had some notions of the critical art, for he re-
quests the learned tutor of Prince Edward, afterwards
Edward the Fourth, to warn him, when,
Metring amiss ;
and when
He speaks unsyttingly,”
Or not by just peys ºf my sentence weigh,
And not to the order of enditing obey,
And my colours set oftā sythe awry.
We might be curious to learn, with all these notions of
the suitable, the weighty, the order of enditing, and the
colours often awry, whether these versifiers had really any
settled principles of criticism. Occleve is a vernacular
writer, bare of ornament. He has told us that he knew
little of “Latin nor French,” though often counselled by
his immortal master. His enthusiastic love thus exults:—
Thou wer’t acquainted with Chaucer —Pardie
God save his soul
The first findér of our faire langáge
There is one little circumstance more which connects
the humble name of this versifier with that of Chaucer.
His affectionate devotion to the great poet has been re-
corded by Speght in his edition of Chaucer. “Thomas
Occleve, for the love he bare to his master, caused his pic-
ture to be truly drawn in his book ‘De Regimine Prin-
cipis, dedicated to Henry the Fifth.” In this manu-
script, with “fond idolatry,” he placed the portraiture of
his master facing an invocation. From this portrait the
head on the poet's monument was taken, as well as all
our prints. It bears a faithful resemblance to the picture
* Unfittingly. + Weight ; probably from the French poids.
Occleve; the Scholar of Chaucer. I95
of Chaucer painted on board in the Bodleian Library.*
Bad Occleve, with his feelings, sent us down some memo-
rials of the poet and the man, we should have conned his
verse in better humour; but the history of genius had
not yet entered even into the minds of its most zealous
votaries.f
* It is in Royal MS. 17 D. 6. The best is in the Harleian MS. 4866.
There is also a very curious full-length preserved in a single leaf of
vellum, Sloane MS. 5141 ; which has been copied in Shaw’s “Dresses
and Decorations of the Middle Ages,” vol. i.-ED.
+ A single trait, however, has come down to us from that other
scholar of Chaucer, whom we are next to follow. Lydgate assures us,
from what he heard, that the great poet would not suffer petty criti-
cisms “to perturb his reste.” He did not like to groan over, and
“pinch at every blot,” but always “did his best.”—
My master Chaucer that founde ful many spot,
Hym lyste not gruche, nor pynch at every blot ;
Nor move himself to perturb his reste ;
I have perde tolde, but seyd alway his beste.
LYDgATE's “Troy.”
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196
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LYDGATE: THE MONK OF BURY.
LYDGATE, the monk of Bury, was also the scholar of
Chaucer: our monk had not passed a whole sequestered
life in his Benedictine monastery; he had journeyed
through France and Italy, and was familiar with the
writings of Dante, and Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and of
Alain Chartier. The delectable catalogue of his writings,
great and small, exceeds two hundred and fifty, and may
not yet be complete, for they lie scattered in their manu-
script state. A great multitude of writings, the incessant
movements of a single mind, will at first convey to us a
sense of magnitude; and in this magnitude, if we observe
the greatest possible diversity of parts, and, if we may use
the term, the flashings of the most changeable contrasts,
we must place such a universal talent among the phe-
nomena of literature.
LYDGATE composed epics, which were the lasting favou-
rites of two whole centuries—so long were classical repe-
titions of “Troy” and of “Thebes” not found irksome.*
In his graver hours he instructed the world by ethical
descants, AEsopian fables, and quaint proverbs; fixed their
wonder by saintly legends and veracious chronicles; and
disported in amorous ditties, and many a merrie tale:
translating or inventing, labour or levity, rounded the
unconscious day of the versifying monk. We descend
from the “Siege of Troy,” a romance of nearly thirty
thousand lines, which long graced the oriel window, to
the freer vein of humour of “London Lick-penny,” which
opens the street scenery of London in the fourteenth
century, and “The Prioresse and her Three Wooers,”
that exquisitely ludicrous narrative ballad for the people.f
* “The Troy Tale” was composed at the command of the King,
Henry the Fifth ; as “the Fall of Princes,” from Boccace, was at the
desire of Humphrey, the good Duke of Gloucester. He wrote regal poems
for kings, while he dispersed wisdom and merriment for their subjects.
ºf While this volume is passing through the press, “A Selection
* e e fºom; the Minor Poems of Lydgate” has been edited by Mr. Halliwell.
': ... The: versatility of Lydgate's poetical skill is advantageously shown in
* his comic satire, and his ethics drawn from a deep insight into human
9
Lydgate; the Monk of Bury. 197
Ritson, whose rabid hostility to the clerical character
was part of his constitutional malady, whether it related
to “a mendacious prelate” or “a stinking monk,” after
having expended twenty pages in the mere enumeration
of the titles of Lydgate's writings, heartlessly hints at
the “cart-loads of rubbish of a voluminous poetaster; a
prosaic and drivelling monk.” And this is greedily seized
on by the hand of the bibliographer. Percy and Ellis,
too, mention DAN LYDGATE with contempt. Critics
often find it convenient to resemble dogs, by barking one
after the other, without any other cause than the first
bark of a brother, who had only bayed the moon. It
now seemed concluded that the rhyming monk was to be
dismissed for ever. A very credible witness, however, at
last deposed that “Lydgate has been oftener abused than
read.”* And now Mr. Hallam tells us that “ GRAY, no
light authority, speaks more favourably of Lydgate than
either Warton or Ellis;” and this nervous writer, with
his accustomed correct discernment, has alleged a valid
reason why Gray excelled them in this criticism; for
“great poets have often the taste to discern, and the
candour to acknowledge, those beauties which are latent
amidst the tedious dulness of their humbler brethren.”
Warton has, however, afforded three copious chapters
on Lydgate, which are half as much as his enthusiasm
bestowed on Chaucer. A Gothic monk, composing ancient
romances, was a subject too congenial to have been ne-
glected by the historian of our poetry, and he has limned
and illuminated the feudal priest with the love of the
votary, who deemed, in his “lone-hours,”
Nor rough nor barren are the winding ways
Of hoar Antiquity, but strown with flowers.
nature. The editor suggests a new reading for the title of the ballad
of “London Lick-penny,” more suitable to the misadventures of its
hero,- “London Lack-penny,” for London could not lick a penny
from the forlorn hero who had not one to offer to it. GROSE, probably taken
by the humorous designation, has placed it among his local proverbs.
The tale of the “Prioress and her Three Wooers” is one of the hap-
piest fabliaux. Mr. Campbell transcribed “the merrie tale” for his
Specimens, when he discovered that a preceding forager had antici-
pated him in Mr. Jamieson, who has preserved it in his “Popular
Pallads,” i. 253.
* Turner's “Hist, of England,” v.
198 Amenities of Literature.
His miniature is exquisitely touched. “He was not only
the poet of his monastery, but of the world in general.
If a disguising was intended by the company of gold-
Smiths, a mask before his majesty, a may-game for the
sheriffs and aldermen of London, a mumming before the
lord-mayor, a procession of pageants for the festival of
Corpus Christi, or a carol for the coronation, Lydgate was
consulted, and gave the poetry.”*
Mr. HALLAM objects that “the attention fails in the
school-boy stories of Thebes and Troy; but it seems
probable that Lydgate would have been a better poet in
Satire upon his own times, or delineation of their manners
—themes which would have gratified US much more than
the fate of princes.”
This is relatively true—true as regards some of Us, but
not at all as respects Lydgate, nor the people of his age,
nor the king and the princes who commanded themes
congenial with their military character, and their simple
tastes, romantically charming the readers of two centuries.
If our critic, in the exercise of his energetic faculties, lives
out of the necromancy of the old Romaunt, afar from
Thebes and Troy, Thomas Warton was cradled among
the children of fancy, and in his rovings had tasted their
wild honey. The only works of Lydgate which attracted
his attention were precisely these tedious “Fate of Princes”
and “The Troy Book.”
The other modern critics—Ritson, Percy, and Ellis—
had but a slight knowledge of DANt LYDGATE. They
* I may point out the raw material which our poetical antiquary has
here worked up with such perfect effect in this picturesque enumera-
tion. Appended to Speght’s “Chaucer,” that editor furnished a very
curious list of about a hundred works by Lydgate, which were in his
own possession. Most of the singular poetical exhibitions here enume-
rated are mentioned towards the end of that list, and which Warton
has happily appropriated, and so turned a dry catalogue into a poetical
picture. [A selection of Lydgate's Poems, 44 in number, were printed
by the Percy Society in 1840.]
ºf DAN, as Ritson tells us, is a title given to the individuals of certain
religious orders, from the barbarous Latin Domnus, a variation of
Lominus, or the French Dam or Dom. Dan became a corruption of
Lon for Dominus. The title afterwards extended to persons of respect-
able condition, as vague as our complimentary esquire. It was applied
to Chaucer by Spenser, and when obsolete it became jocular; for we have
“Dan Cupid.” Prior renewed it with ludicrous gravity when telling a
Lydgate; the Monk of Bury. 199
have generally acted on the pressure of the moment, to
get up a hasty court of Pie-poudre—that fugitive tribunal
held at fairs—to determine on the case of a culprit even
before they could shake the dust off their feet. But time
calls for an arrest of hasty judgments, or brings forward
some illustrious advocate to reverse the judicial decision,
or set forth the misfortunes of the accused. Two, most
eminent in genius, stand by the side of the monk of Bury
—Col.ERIDGE and GRAY. Coleridge has left us his pro-
test in favour of Lydgate, for he deeply regrets that in
the general collection of our poets, the unpoetic editor
“had not substituted the whole of Lydgate's works from
the manuscript eactant, for the almost worthless Gower.”*
Gray alone has taken an enlarged view of the state of our
poetry and our language at this period. When that
master-spirit abandoned the history of our poetry from
his fastidious delicacy or from his learned indolence, be-
cause Warton had projected it, English literature sus-
tained an irreparable loss.f In Gray surely we have lost
a literary historian such as the world has not yet had ;
so rare is that genius who happily combines qualities
apparently incompatible. In his superior learning, his
subtle taste, his deeper thought, and his more vigorous
sense, we should have found the elements of a more philo-
sophical criticism, with a more searching and comprehen-
sive intellect, than can be awarded to our old favourite,
THOMAS WARTON. In the neglected quartos of GRAY
we discover that the poet had set earnestly to work on
the archaeology of our poetry; we also find in his works
those noble versions of the northern Scalds, and the
Welsh bards, which he designed to have introduced into
his history; thus to have impressed on us a perfect notion
of a national poetry, by poetry itself; a rare good fortune,
tale which he had from “Dan Pope.” It is still used in an honourable
sense by the Spaniards in their Don.
* “Literary Remains,” ii. 130.
+ The great poet has left two or three most precious fragments; but
these have long been buried in those ill-fated quartos, consisting chiefly
of notes on Greek and on Plato, whiáh Matthias published with extra-
ordinary pomp ; and, so he used to say, as a moniſment for himself as
well as the bard—a monument which, his' egregidus self-complacency
lived to witness, partook more of the properties of a tombstone than
the glory of a column.

200 Amenities of Literature.
which does not enliven the toil of prosaic critics or verbal
interpreters. Gray had found the manuscripts of Lydgate
at Cambridge, and has made them a vehicle for the most
beautiful disquisitions. On a passage in Lydgate, the
poet-critic developes a curious occurrence in the history
of the poetic art—namely, that proneness to minute cir-
cumstances which lengthens the strains of our elder poets,
and which the impatience of modern taste rejects as
tediousness; yet this will be found to be “the essence of
poetry and oratory.” This topic is important; and as I
can neither add nor dare to take away from this perfect
criticism, I submit to the task of transcribing what I am
sure will come to most of my readers in all its freshness
and novelty.
Our ancient poet seems to be apologising for telling
long stories, which he asserts cannot be told “in wordes
few”—
For a storye which is not plainly told,
But constreyned under wordes few
For lack of truth, wher they ben new or olde,
Men by reporte cannot the matter shewe ;
These oakés greaté be not down yhewe
First at a stroke, but by a long prácesse ;
Nor long stories a word may not expresse.
LYDGATE, in his “Fall of Princes.”
On this Gray has delivered the following observations:
—“These ‘long processes,’ indeed, suited wonderfully with
the attention and simple curiosity of the age in which
LYDGATE lived ; many a stroke have he and the best
of his contemporaries spent upon a sturdy old story, till
they had blunted their own edge and that of their
readers—at least a modern reader will find it so : but it is
a folly to judge of the understanding and patience of those
times by our own. They loved, I will not say tediousness,
but length and a train of circumstances in a narration.
The vulgar do so still: it gives an air of reality to facts;
it fixes the attention; raises and keeps in suspense their
expectation, and supplies the defects of their little and
lifeless imagination; and it keeps pace with the slow mo-
tion of their own thoughts. Tell them a story as you
would tell it to a man of wit ; it will appear to them as
an object seen in the night by a flash of lightning; but
Lydgate; the Monk of Bury. 201
when you have placed it in various lights and in various
positions, they will come at last to see and feel it as well
as others. But we need not confine ourselves to the vulgar,
and to understandings beneath our own. Circumstance
ever was and ever will be the life and the essence both of
oratory and of poetry. It has in some sort the same effect
upon every mind that it has upon that of the populace;
and I fear the quickness and delicate impatience of these
polished times in which we live are but the forerunners of
the decline of all those beautiful arts which depend upon
the imagination. Homer, the father of circumstance, has
occasion for the same apology which I am making for
Lydgate and for his predecessors.”
At the monastery of Bury we might have listened to
that Gothic monk’s “goodly tale,” or “notable proverb
of AEsopus” for the nonce; or saintly legend, or “merrie
balade;” or the story of “Thebes,” which the scholar
took up from his master Chaucer; or that from “Bochas,”
and Guido Colonna’s “Troy Book:” but too numerous
were the volumes to tell, and too voluminous was many a
volume. Verbose and diffuse, yet clear and fluent, ran his
page; too minutely copious were his descriptions, yet the
delineations seemed the more graphical; his verse, too
long or too short, halts in his measures till we fall into the
minstrel's “metring,” and lines break forth, beautiful as
any in our day. He expands the same image, and loses
all likeness in a prolix simile, for his readers were not so
impatient as ourselves. These poets suffered or enjoyed a
fatal facility of rhyming, lost for us, from the use of poly-
syllabic words from the French and the Latin accented on
the last syllable, a custom continued by the Scots; and
these provided them with too ready an abundance of poetic
terminations or rhymes, tending to make their poems volu-
minous. The art of selection is the art of an age less
florid and more fastidious, but not always more genial or
more inventive. The pruning-hook was not in use when
planters were too eager to gather the first fruits from the
trees which their own hands had put into the earth.
Alas! apologies only leave irremediable faults as they
* “Gray's Works,” by Matthias, ii. p. 60,
202 Amenities of Literature.
were ! The tediousness of Dan Lydgate remains as lan-
guid, his verse as halting, and “Thebes” and “Troy” as
desolate, as we found them
Let us, however, be reminded, that he who wholly
neglects the study of our ancient poets must submit to
the loss of knowledge which a philosopher would value;
the manners of the age, the modes of feeling, the stream
of thought, the virgin fancies, and that position which the
human character takes in distant ages—these will imbue
his memory with the genius of his country and the eternal
truth of authentic nature. No English poet should wholly
resign these masses of vernacular poetry to the lone closet
of the antiquary; he who loves the gain of labour will
excavate these quarries for their marble, for we know they
are marble, since many a noble column has been raised
from these shapeless and unhewed blocks,
203
THE INVENTION OF PRINTING.
PRINTING remained, as long as its first artificers could keep
it, a secret and occult art; and it is the only one that
ceaselessly operates all the miracles which the others had
vainly promised.
Who first thought to carve the wooden immoveable
letters on blocks P-to stamp the first sheet which ever
was imprinted P. Or who, second in invention, but first in
utility, imagined to cast the metal with fusile types, sepa-
rate from each other ?—to fix this scattered alphabet in a
form, and thus by one stroke write a thousand manuscripts,
and, with the identical letters, multiply not a single work,
but all sorts of works hereafter P Was it fortunate chance,
or deliberate meditation, or both in gradual discovery,
which produced this invention ? In truth, we can neither
detect the rude beginnings, nor hardly dare to fix on
the beginners. The Origines Typographica are, even at
this late hour, provoking a fierce controversy, not only
among those who live in the shades of their libraries, but
with honest burghers; for the glory of patriotism has con-
nected itself with the invention of an art which came to
us like a divine revelation in the history of man. But
the place, the mode, and the person—the invention and
the inventor—are the subjects of volumes | Wotaries of
Fust, of Schöffer, of Gutenberg, of Costar! A sullen
silence or a deadly feud is your only response. Ye jealous
cities of Mentz, of Strasburg, and of Haarlem, each of ye
have your armed champion at your gates ſ^
The mystical eulogist of the art of printing, who de-
* The city of Haarlem designs to erect a statue of CoSTAR [since
this was written the statue has been placed in the great square] ; thus
publicly, in the eyes of Europe, to vindicate the priority of this inventor
of typography. But a statue is not the final argument which, like the
cannon of monarchs (that w!tima ratio regum), will carry conviction on
the spot it is placed. Mentz has already erected a statue of GUTEN-
BERG. I have no doubt that, in the present state of agitation, both
these statues will have much to say to one another, as the mystical
Pasquin and Marforio of typography.
204 Amenities of Literature.
clared that “the invention came from Heaven,” was not
more at a loss to detect the origin than those who have
sought for it among the earliest printers.” Learned but
angry disputants on the origin of printing, what if the art
can boast of no single inventor, and was not the product
of a single act P Consider the varieties of its practice, the
change of wood to metal, the fixed to the moveable type;
view the complexity of its machinery; repeated attempts
must often have preceded so many inventions ere they ter-
minated in the great one. From the imperfect and con-
tradictory notices of the early essays—and of the very
earliest we may have no record—we must infer that the
art, though secret, was progressive, and that many imper-
º: beginnings were going on at the same time in different
places.
Struck by the magnitude and the magnificence of the
famous Bible of Fust, some have decided on the invention
of the art by one of its most splendid results; this, how-
ever, is not in the usual course of human affairs, nor in the
nature of things. “The Art of Printing,” observes Dr.
Cotton, in his introduction, “was brought almost to per-
fection in its infancy; so that, like Minerva, it may be
said to have sprung to life, mature, vigorous, and armed
for war.” But in the article “Moguntia, or Mentz,” this
acute researcher states that “after all that has been writ-
ten, with such angry feelings upon the long-contested
question of the origin of the Art of Printing, Mentz ap-
pears still to preserve the best-founded claim to the honour
of being the birth-place of the Typographic Art; be-
cause,” he adds, “the specimens adduced in favour of
Haarlem and Strasburg, even if we should allow their
genuineness, are confessedly of a rude and imperfect eace-
cution.” We require no other evidence of the important
* “Some Observations on the Use and Original of the noble Art and
Mystery of Printing,” by F. Burges. Norwich, 1701. This is declared
to be the first book printed at Norwich ; where it appears that the
establishment of a printing-office, so late as in 1701, encountered a
stern opposition from its sage citizens. The writer did not know that
as far back as 1570 a Dutch printer had exercised the novel art by
printing religious books for a community of Dutch emigrants who had
taken refuge at Norwich, according to the recent discovery of Dr. Cot-
ton, in his “Typographical Gazetteer”—a volume abounding with the
most vigorous researches.
The Invention of Printing. 205
fact, that the art, in its early stages, had to pass through
many transitions—from the small school-books, or Dona-
tuses, of Costar, to the splendid Bible of Fust. Had the
art been borrowed or stolen from a single source, according
to the popular tradition, the works would have borne a
more fraternal resemblance, and have evinced less infe-
riority of execution; but if several persons at the same
time were working in secrecy, each by his own method,
their differences and their inferiority would produce “the
rude and imperfect specimens.” Mr. Hallam has suf-
fered his strong emotion on the greatness of the inven-
tion to reflect itself back on the humble discoverers them-
selves; and, unusual with his searching inquiries, calls
once more on Dr. Cotton’s Minerva, but with a more
celestial panoply. “The high-minded inventors of this
great art tried, at the very outset, so bold a flight as the
printing an entire Bible. It was Minerva leaping on
earth, in her divine strength and radiant armour, ready at
the moment of her nativity to subdue and destroy her
enemies.”* The Bible called the Mazarine Bible, thus
distinguished from having been found in the Cardinal's
library, remains still a miracle of typography, not only for
its type, but for the quality of the paper and the sparkling
blackness of its ink.f. The success of the art was esta-
blished by this Bible; but the goldsmith Fust, who him-
self was no printer, was no otherwise “high-minded,”
than by the usurious prices he speculated on for this inno-
cent imposture of vending what was now a printed book
for a manuscript copy
No refined considerations of the nature and the uni-
versal consequences of their discovery seem to have insti-
gated the earliest printers; this is evident by the per-
petual jealousy and the mystifying style by which they
long attempted to hide that secret monopoly which they
had now obtained.
The first notions of printing might have reached
Europe from China. Our first block-printing seems imi-
tated from the Chinese, who print with blocks of wood
on one side of the paper, as was done in the earliest essays
* Hallam’s “Introduction to the Literature of Europe,” i. 211.
+ Twenty copies of this famous Bible exist ; one is preserved in our
Royal Library. *
206 Amenities of Literature.
of printing; and the Chinese seem also to have suggested
the use of a thick black ink. European traders might
have imported some fugitive leaves; their route has even
been indicated, from Tartary, by the way of Russia; and
from China and Japan, through the Indies and the Arabian
Gulf. The great antiquity of printing in China has been
ascertained. Du Halde and the missionary Jesuits assert
that this art was practised by the Chinese half a century
before the Christian era ! At all events, it is evident that
they exercised it many centuries before it was attempted
in Europe. The history of gunpowder would illustrate
the possibility of the same extraordinary invention occur-
ring at distinct periods. Roger Bacon indicated the ter-
rible ingredients a hundred years before the monk
Schwartz, about 1330, actually struck out the fiery explo-
sion, and had the glory of its invention. Machines to
convey to a distance the thunder and the lightning de-
scribed by their discoverers were not long after produced.
Put it would have astonished these inventors to have
learnt that guns had been used as early as the year 85
A.D., and that the fatal powder had been invented pre-
viously by the Chinese. Well might the philosophical
Langles be struck by “the singular coincidence of the
invention in Europe of the compass, of gunpowder, and of
printing, about the same period, within a century.”
These three mighty agents in human affairs have been
traced to that wary and literary nation, who, though they
prohibit all intercourse with “any barbarian eye,” might
have suffered these sublime inventions to steal away over
“their great wall.”
What has happened to the art of printing also occurred
to the sister-art of engraving on copper. Tradition had
ascribed the invention as the accidental discovery of the
goldsmith Maso Finiguerra. But the Germans insist that
they possess engravings before the days of the Italian
artist ; and it is not doubtful that several of the com-
patriots of Finiguerra were equally practising the art with
himself. Heinecken would arbitrate between the jealous
patriots; he concedes that Vasari might ascribe the in-
vention of the art in Italy to Finiguerra, yet that en-
graving might have been practised in Germany, though
unknown in Italy. Buonarotti, the great judge of all
The Invention of Printing. 207
art, was sensible that in this sort of invention every artist
makes his own discoveries. Alluding to the art of en-
graving, he says, “It would be sufficient to occasion our
astonishment, that the ancients did not discover the art of
chalcography, were it not known that DISCOVERIES of
THIS SORT generally occur ACCIDENTALLY to the me-
chanics in the exercise of their calling.” On this prin-
ciple we may confidently rest. All the early printers, like
the rivals of Finiguerra at home, and his unknown con-
currents in Germany, were proceeding with the same art,
and might urge their distinct claims.
The natural magic of concave and convex lenses, those
miracles of optical science, one of which searches Nature
when she eludes the eye, and the other approximates the
remotest star—the microscope and the telescope; who
were their inventors, and how have those inventions hap-
pened P. These instruments appeared about the same
time. The Germans ascribe the invention of the micro-
scope to a Dutchman, one Drebell; while the Neapolitan
Fontana claims the anterior invention ; but which
Viviani, the scholar of Galileo, asserts, from his own
knowledge, was presented to the King of Poland by that
father of modern philosophy long anterior to the date
fixed on by the Germans. The history of the telescope
offers a similar result. Fracastorius may have accidentally
combined two lenses; but he neither specified the form
nor the quality; and in these consisted the real discovery,
which we find in Baptista Porta, and which subsequently
was perfected by Galileo. The invention of the art of
printing seems a parallel one. It appeared in various
quarters about the same time; and in the process of suc-
cessive attempts, by intimation, by conjecture, and by ex-
periment, each artificer insensibly advanced into a more
perfect invention; till some fortunate claimant for the
discovery puts aside all preceding essayists, who, not
without some claims to the invention, leave their advo-
cates in another generation to dispute about their rights,
which are buried in oblivion, or falsified by traditional
legends.
Thus it has happened that obscure traditions envelope
* Ottley’s “Inquiry into the Early History of Engraving.” See also
note in “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. i. p. 43.
208 Amenities of Literature.
the origin of some of the most interesting inventions.
Had these ingenious discoveries been as simple and as
positive as their historians oppositely maintain, these
origins had not admitted of such interminable disputes.
We may therefore reasonably suspect that the practi.
tioners in every art which has reached to almost a perfect
state, such as that of printing, have silently borrowed
from one another; that there has often existed a secret
connexion in things, and a reciprocal observation in the
intercourse of men alike intent on the same object; that
countries have insensibly transferred a portion of their
knowledge to their neighbours; that travellers in every
era have imparted their novelties, hints however crude,
descriptions however imperfect; all such slight notices
escape the detection of an historian; nothing can reach
him but the excellence of some successful artist. In vain
rival concurrents dispute the invention; the patriotic his-
torian of the art clings to his people or his city, to fix the
inventor and the invention, and promulgates fairy tales to
authenticate the most uncertain evidence.*
The history of printing illustrates this view of its origin.
The invention has been long ascribed to GUTENBERG, yet
some have made it doubtful whether this presumed father
of the art ever succeeded in printing a book, for we are
assured that no colophon has revealed his name. We
hear of his attempts and of his disappointments, his
bickerings and his lawsuits. He seems to have been a
speculative bungler in a new-found art, which he mys-
teriously hinted was to make a man’s fortune. The
goldsmith, Fust, advanced a capital in search of the novel
alchymy—the project ends in a lawsuit, the goldsmith
* Dr. WETTER, of Mentz, has lately shown that, contrary to the
common opinion, Gutenberg himself printed long with wooden blocks :
and that, instead of the invention of moveable types having been the
result of long study, it arose out of a “sudden fancy.”
How the Doctor has authenticated “the sudden fancy,” I know not,
but the apotheosis has passed. In three successive days, in the month
of August, 1837, all Mentz congregated to worship the statue, by Thor-
*āldsen, of their ancient citizen in the square that henceforward bears
his name. A chorus of 700 voices resounded the laud of the German
printer; the flags in the regatta waved to his honour; and the festival
rejoiced the city ; and when the figure of Gutenberg was unveiled, the
artillery, the music, and the people's voices, blending together, seemed
to echo in the skies.
The Invention of Printing. 209
gains his cause, and the projector is discharged. Guten-
berg lures another simple soul, and the same golden dream
vanishes in the dreaming. These copartners, evidently
tired of an art which had not yet found an artist, a young
man, probably improving on Gutenberg's blunders, one
happy day displayed to the eyes of his master, Fust, a
proof pulled from his own press. In rapture, the master
confers on this Peter Schoeffer a share of his future for-
tunes; and to bind the apprentice by the safest ties of
consanguinity, led the swart youth, glorious with printer's
ink, to the fair hand of his young daughter. The new
partnership produced their famed Psalter of 1457; and
shortly followed their magnificent Bible.
While these events were occurring, Costa R, of Haarlem,
was plodding on with the same “noble mystery,” but only
printing on one side of a leaf, not having yet discovered
that a leaf might be contrived to contain two pages. The
partisans of Costar assert that it was proved he substi-
tuted moveable for fixed letters, which was a giant's foot-
step in this new path. A faithless servant ran off with
the secret. The history of printing abounds with such
tales. Every step in the progress of the newly-invented
art indicates its gradual accessions. The numbering of
the pages was not thought of for a considerable time; the
leaves were long only distinguished by letters or signa-
tures—a custom still preserved, though apparently super-
fluous.
There is something attractive for rational curiosity in
the earliest beginnings of every art; every slight improve-
ment, even though trivial, has its motive, and supplies
some want. On this principle the history of punctuation
enters into the history of literature. Caxton had the
merit of introducing the Roman pointing as used in Italy;
and his successor, Pynson, triumphed by domiciliating the
Roman letter. The dash, or perpendicular line, thus,
was the only punctuation they used. It was, however,
discovered that “the craft of poynting well used makes
the sentence very light.” The more elegant comma sup-
planted the long uncouth ; the colon was a refinement,
“showing that there is more to come.” But the semi-
colon was a Latin delicacy which the obtuse English
typographer resisted. So late as 1580 and 1590 treatises
WOL. I. IP
210 Amenities of Literature.
on orthography do not recognise any such innovator; the
Bible of 1592, though printed with appropriate accuracy,
is without a semicolon; but in 1633 its full rights are
established by Charles Butler’s “English Grammar.” In
this chronology of the four points of punctuation it is
evident that Shakspeare could never have used the semi-
colon—a circumstance which the profound George Chal-
mers mourns over, opining that semicolons would often
have saved the poet from his commentators.
FUST had bound his workmen to secrecy by the solem-
nity of an oath; but at the siege of Mentz that free-
masonry was lost. These early printers dispersed, some
were even bribed away. Two Germans set up their press
in the monastery of Subiaco, in the vicinity of Naples,
whose confraternity consisted of German monks. These
very printers finally retreated to Rome for that patronage
they had still to seek; and at Rome they improved the
art by adopting the Roman character. Not only the
invention of the art was progressive, but the art itself
was much more so.
We have other narratives of printers romantically spi-
rited away from the parent-presses; one of the most
extraordinary is the history of printing set up at Oxford,
ten years before the art was practised in Europe, except
at Haarlem and Mentz. Henry VI., by advice of the
Archbishop of Canterbury, despatched a confidential agent
in disguise, under the guidance of Caxton, in his trading
journeys to Flanders. The Haarlemites were so jealous
of idling strangers who had come on the same insidious
design, that foreigners had frequently been imprisoned.
The royal agent never ventured to enter the city, but
by heavy bribes in a secret intercourse with the workmen,
one dark night he smuggled a printer aboard a vessel, and
carried away Frederick Corsellis. That printer, on land-
ing in England, was attended by a guard to Oxford.
There he was constantly watched till he had revealed the
mysterious craft. The evidence of this unheard-of history
hinged on a record at Lambeth-palace authenticating the
whole narrative, and on a monument of Corsellis's art,
which any one might inspect at the Bodleian, being a
book bearing a date six years, prior to any printing by
Caxton. The record at Lambeth, however, was never
The Invention of Printing. 211
found, and never heard of, and the date of the book
might have been accidentally or designedly falsified. An
x dropped in the date of the impression would account
for the singularity of a book printed before our Caxton
had acquired the art. The tale long excited a sharp con-
troversy, when Corsellis at Oxford was considered as the
first printer in England. The possibility of the existence
of this person at Oxford, and even of the book he printed,
appears by a lively investigation of Dr. Cotton; * and I
have been assured of a circumstance which, if true, would
render the story of Corsellis probable; it is that a family
of this name may still be fºund in Oxfordshire. The
whole history has, however, by some been considered as
supposititious, standing on the single evidence of a Sir
Richard Atkyns, a servile lawyer and royalist of no great
character in the days of Charles the Second.t Grafting
his tale on the accident of the date of this book, he had
a covert design—to maintain a theory or a right that
printing was “a flower of the crown,” constituting the
sovereign the printer of England! all others being his
servants. This enormous prevention of the abuses of the
press was not deemed too extravagant for those desperate
times.
The only certainty in the history of printing, after all
the fables of its origin, is its native place. It is a German
romance enlivened by some mysterious adventures, want-
ing only the opening pages, which no one can supply..
IEven the most philosophic of bibliographers, Daunou,
utters a cry of despair, and moreover, at this late day,


* Dr. Cotton’s curious “Typographical Gazetteer,” art. Oxonia.
Of a class of the earliest printed books, having no printer's name,
he observes, “These may have been printed by Corsellis, or any one
else.”
+ Atkyns on the “Original and Growth of Printing.” This quarto
pamphlet is highly valued among collectors for Loggan's beautiful print
of Charles the Second, Archbishop Shelden, and General Monk. Dr.
Middleton refuted this ridiculous tale of an ideal printer, one Corsellis,
in his “Dissertation on the Origin of Printing in England,” first pub-
lished 1735, and which now may be seen in his works.
# The fourth day of the “Bibliographical Decameron” of Dr. Dibdin
exhibits an ample view of the pending controversies on the “Origines
Typographicae.” Every bibliographer has his favourite hero. The
reader will observe that I have none ! And yet possibly my tale may
be the truest.
P 2
212 Amenities of Literature.
seems at a loss to decide on the nature of the influence of
the art of printing ! “We live too near the epoch of the
discovery of printing to judge accurately of its influence,
and too far from it to know the circumstances which gave
birth to it.” Our sage seems to think that another cycle
of at least a thousand years must pass away ere we can
decide on the real influence of printing over the destinies
of man: this new tree of knowledge bears other fruit than
that of its own sweetness, source of good and evil, of sense
and of nonsense ! whence we pluck the windy fruitage of
opinions, crude and changeable !
How has it happened * such a plain story as that of
the art of printing should have sunk into a romance?
Solely because the monopolisers dreaded discovery. It
originated in deception, and could only flourish for their
commercial spirit in mysterious obscurity. Among the
first artisans of printing every one sought to hide his
work, and even to blind the workmen. After their opera-
tions, they cautiously unscrewed the four sides of their
forms, and threw the scattered type beneath, for, as one
craftily observed to his partner, “When the component
parts of the press are in pieces, no one will understand
what they mean.” One of the early printers of the
fifteenth century at Mutina, or Modena, professes his press
to have been in a dibus subterraneis—doubtless, if possible,
still further to darken the occult mystery. They delivered
themselves in a mystical style when they alluded to their
unnamed art, and impressed on the marvelling reader that
the volume he held in his hand was the work of some super-
natural agency. They announced that the volumes in this
newly-found art were “neither drawn, nor written with a
pen and ink, as all books before had been.” In the
“Recuyel of the Historyes of Troye,” our honest printer,
plain Caxton, caught the hyperbolical style of the dark
monopolising spirit of the confraternity. I give his words,
having first spelt them. “I have practised and learned at
my great charge, and dispense to ordain (put in order)
this said book in print after the manner and form as ye
may here see, and is not written with pen and ink as other
books be, to the end that every man may have them AT
ONCE ; for all the books of this story, thus imprinted
as ye see, were begun in one day, and also finished in
The Invention of Printing. 213
one day.” A volume of more than seven hundred folio
pages, “begun and finished in one day,” was not the less
marvellous for being impossible. But for the times was
the style | Caxton would keep up the wonder and
the mystery of an art which men did not yet comprehend;
and because a whole sheet might have been printed in one
day, and was all at once pulled off, and not line by line,
our venerable printer mystified the world. And all this
was said at a time when so slow was the process of tran-
scription, that one hundred Bibles could not be procured
under the expense of seven thousand days, or of nearly
twenty years’ labour. Honest men, too eager in their zeal,
particularly when their personal interests are at stake,
sometimes strain truth on the tenter-hooks of fiction.
The false miracle which our primeval printer professed he
had performed we seem to have realized: it is amusing to
conceive the wonderment of Caxton, were he now among
us, to view the steam working that cylindrical machine
which disperses the words of a speaker throughout the
whole nation, when the voice which uttered them is still
lingering on our ear!
214
THE FIRST ENGLISH PRINTER.
THE ambitious wars of a potent aristocracy inflicted on
this country half a century of public misery. Our fields
were a soil of blood; and maternal England long mourned
for victories she obtained over her own children—lord
against lord, brother against brother, and the son against
the father. Rival administrations alternately dispossess
each other by sanguinary conflict; a new monarch attaints
the friends of his predecessor; conspiracy rises against
conspiracy—scaffold against scaffold; the king is re-
enthroned—the king perishes in the Tower; York is
triumphant—and York is annihilated.
Few great families there were who had not immolated
their martyrs or their victims; and it frequently occurred
that the same family had fallen equally on both sides, for
it was a war of the aristocracy with the aristocracy: “Save
the commons and kill the captains,” was the general war-
cry. The distracted people were perhaps indifferent to the
varying fortunes of the parties, accustomed as they were to
behold after each battle the heads of lords and knights
raised on every bridge and gate.
During this dread interval, all things about us were
thrown back into a state of the rudest infancy; the illitera-
ture of the age approached to barbarism; the evidences of
history were destroyed; there was such a paucity of
readers, that no writers were found to commemorate con-
temporary events. Indeed, had there been any, who could
have ventured to arbitrate between such contradictory ac-
counts, where every party had to tell their own tale P
Oblivion, not history, seemed to be the consolation of those
miserable times.
It was at such an unhappy era that the new-found art
of printing was introduced into England by an English
trader, who for thirty years had passed his life in Flanders,
conversant with no other languages than were used in those
countries.
Our literature was interested in the intellectual character
The First English Printer. 215.
of our first English printer. A powerful mind might, by
the novel and mighty instrument of thought, have created
a national taste, or have sown that seed of curiosity with-
out which no knowledge can be reared. Such a genius
might have anticipated by a whole century that general
passion for sound literature which was afterwards to dis-
tinguish our country. But neither the times nor the man
were equal to such a glorious advancement.
The first printed book in the English language was not
printed in England. It is a translation of Ráoulle Fevre's
“Recuyel of the Historyes of Troye,” famed in its own
day as the most romantic history, and in ours, for the
honour of bibliography, romantically valued at the cost of
a thousand guineas. This first monument of English
printing issued from the infant press at Cologne in 1471,
where Caxton first became initiated in “the noble mystery
and craft” of printing, when printing was yet truly “a
mystery,” and Caxton himself did not import the art
which was to effect such an intellectual revolution till a
year or two afterwards, on his return home. The first
printer, it is evident, had no other conception of the
machine he was about to give the nation than as an
ingenious contrivance, or a cheap substitute for costly
manuscripts—possibly he might, in his calculating pru-
dence, even be doubtful of its success |
At the announcement of the first printed book in our
vernacular idiom, the mind involuntarily pauses: looking
on the humble origin of our bibliography, and on the
obscure commencement of the newly-found art of printing
itself, we are startled at the vast and complicated results.
The contemporaries of our first printer were not struck
by their novel and precious possession, of which they
participated in the first fruits in the circulation and multi-
plication of their volumes. The introduction of the art
into England is wholly unnoticed by the chroniclers of
the age, so unconscious they were of this new implement
of the human mind. We find Fabian, who must have
known Caxton personally—both being members of the
Mercers’ Company—passing unnoticed his friend; and
instead of any account of the printing-press, we have
only such things as “a new weathercock placed on the
cross of St. Paul’s steeple.” Hall, so copious in curious
216 Amenities of Literature.
matters, discovered no curiosity to memorialize in the
printing-press; Grafton was too heedless; and Holinshed,
the most complete of our chroniclers, seems to have had
an intention of saying something by his insertion of a
single line, noticing the name of “Caxton as the first
practiser of the art of printing; ” but he was more
seriously intent in the same paragraph to give a narrative
of “a bloody rain, the red drops falling on the sheets
which had been hanged to dry.” The history of printing
in England has been vainly sought for among English
historians; so little sensible were they to those expansive
views and elevated conceptions, which are now too com-
monplace eulogies to repeat.
By what subdolous practices among the first inventors
of this secret art Caxton obtained its mastery, we are not
told, except that he learnt the new art “at his own great
cost and expense;” and on his final return home, he was
accompanied by foreigners who lived in his house, and
after his death became his successors. Wynkyn de Worde,
Pynson, Machlinia and others, by their names betray their
German origin. We have recently discovered that we had
even a French printer who printed English books. Francis
Regnault (or Reynold, anglicised) was a Frenchman who
fell under the displeasure of the Inquisition for printing
the Bible in English. He resided in England, and had in
hand a number of primers in English and other similar
books, which at length excited the jealousy of the Company
of Booksellers in London—in the reign of Henry the
Eighth. To allay this bibliopolic storm, the affrighted
French printer, with all his stock in hand, procured
Coverdale and Grafton to intercede with Cromwell to
grant him a licence to sell what he had already printed,
engaging hereafter “to print no more in the English
tongue unless he have an Englishman that is learned to
be his corrector;” and further, he offers to cancel and
reprint any faulty leaf again.”
Caxton did not extend his views beyond those of a
mercantile printer and an indifferent translator. As a
writer, Caxton had reason to speak with humility of the
style of his vernacular versions. His patroness, the Lady
Margaret, sister to our Edward the Fourth, and Duchess
* “State Papers of Henry the Eighth,” vol. i. 589.
The First English Printer. 217
of Burgundy, after inspecting some quires of his trans-
lation of the “Recuyel of the Historyes of Troye,”
returned them, finding, as Caxton ingenuously acknow-
ledges, “ some defaut in his English which she commanded
him to amend.” Tyrwhit sarcastically observes, that the
duchess might have been a purist. As we are not told
what were these “defauts,” we cannot decide on the good
taste or the fastidiousness of the sister of Edward the
Fourth. But the duchess was not the only critic whom
Caxton had to encounter, for we learn by his preface to
his “Boke of Æneydos compiled by Virgil,” now meta-
morphosed into a barbarous French prose romance, and
the French translation translated, that there were “gentle-
men who of late have blamed me that in my translations
I had over-curious terms which could not be understood
by common people. I fain would satisfy every man.”
He apologises for his own style by alleging the unsettled
state of the English language, of which he tells us that
“the language now used varieth far from that which was
used and spoken when I was born.” An absence of thirty
years from his native land did not improve a diction which
originally had been none of the purest. We find in his
translations an abundance of pure French words, and it is
remarkable that the printer of the third edition of the
Troy history, in 1607, altered whole sentences “into
plainer English,” alleging, “the translator, William
Caxton, being, as it seemeth, no Englishman l’’
The “curious ” prices now given among the connoisseurs
of our earliest typography for their “Caxtons,” as his
Gothic works are thus honourably distinguished, have
induced some, conforming to traditional prejudice, to
appreciate by the same fanciful value “the Caxtonian
style.” But though wearenot acquainted with the “defauts”
which offended the Lady Margaret, nor with the “terms
which were not easily understood,” as alleged by “the
gentlemen,” nor with “the sentences improperly Eng-
lished,” as the later printer declared, we shall not, I
suspect, fall short of the mark if we conclude that the
style of a writer destitute of a literary education, a prolix
genius with a lax verbosity, and almost a foreigner in his
native idiom, could not attain to any skill or felicity in the
maternal tongue.
218 Amenities of Literature.
As a printer, without erudition, Caxton would naturally
accommodate himself to the tastes of his age, and it was
therefore a consequence that no great author appears
among “the Caxtons.” The most glorious issues of his
press were a Chaucer and a Gower, wherein he was simply
a printer. The rest of his works are translations of
fabulous histories, and those spurious writings of the
monkish ages ascribed by ignorant transcribers to some
ancient sage. He appears frequently to have been at a
loss what book to print, and to have accidentally chosen
the work in hand; so he tells us—“Having no work in
hand, I sitting in my study, where as lay many diverse
paunflettes and bookys, happened that to my hand came
a lytel boke in French, which late was translated out of
Latin by some noble clerk of France, which book is
named Æneydos.” And this was the origin of his puerile
romance! He exercised no discrimination in his selection
of authors, and the simplicity of our first printer far ex-
ceeded his learning. One of his greater works is “The
noble History of King Arthur and of certain of his
Knights.” Caxton, who had charmed himself and his
ignorant readers with his authentic “AEmeydos,” hesitated
to print “this history,” for there were different opinions
that “there was no such Arthur, and that all such books
as be made of him be but feigned and fables.” It would
be difficult to account for the scepticism of one who
always found the marvellous more delectable than the
natural, and who had published so many “feigned” histo-
ries—as “The veray trew History of the valiant Knight
Jason,” or the “Life of Hercules,” and all “The Mer-
veilles of Virgil’s Necromancy,” solemnly vouching for
their verity! His sudden scruples were, however, relieved,
when “a gentleman” assured our printer that “it was
great folly and blindness in the disbelievers of this true
history.”
In the early stage of civilization men want knowledge
to feel any curiosity; like children, they are only affected
through the medium of their imagination. But it is a
phenomenon in the history of the human mind, that at a
period of refinement we may approximate to one of bar-
barism. This happens when the ruling passion wholly
returns to fiction, and thus terminates in a reckless dis-
The First English Printer. 219
regard for all other studies. Whenever history, severe
and lofty, displaying men as they are, is degraded among
the revels and the masques of romance; and the slow
inductions of reasoning, and the minute discoveries of
research, and the nice affinities of analogy, are impatiently
rejected, while fiction in her exaggerated style swells every
object into a colossal size, and raises every passion into
hyperbolical violence; a distaste for knowledge, and a
coldness for truth, which must follow, are fatal to the
sanity of the intellect. And thus in the day of our refine-
ment we may be reverting to our barbarous infancy.
Caxton, mindful of his commercial interests and the
taste of his readers, left the glory of restoring the clas-
sical writers of antiquity, which he could not read, to the
learned printers of Italy.* The Orator of Cicero, the
histories of Herodotus and Polybius, the ethics of Seneca,
and the elaborate volumes of St. Austin, were some of the
rich fruits of the early typography of the German printers
who had conveyed their new art to the Neapolitan
monastery of Subiaco. Our English printer, indeed, might
have heard of their ill-fortune, when, in a petition to the
Pope, they sent forth this cry—“Our house is full of
proof-sheets, but we have nothing to eat l” The trivial
productions from Caxton's press, romantic or religious
legends, and treatises on hunting and hawking, and the
moralities of the game of chess, with Reynard the Fox,
were more amusing to the ignorant readers of his country;
but the national genius was little advanced by a succes-
sion of “merveillous workes;” nor would the crude, un-
formed tastes of the readers be matured by stimulating
their inordinate appetites. The first printing-press in
England did not serve to raise the national taste out of
its barbarous infancy. Caxton was not a genius to soar
beyond his age, but he had the industry to keep pace with
it, and with little judgment and less learning he found no
* We have Caxton's own confession in his preface to “The Book of
AEneydos,” or the AEneid of Virgil, where, in soliciting the late-created
poet-laureat in the University of Oxford, John Skelton, to oversee
his prose translation of the French translation, he notices the transla-
tions of Skelton of “The Epistles of Tully,” and the “History of Dio-
dorus Siculus,” out of Latin into English, and as “one that had read

Virgil, Ovid, Tully, and all the other noble poets and orators to me
wnknown.”
220 Amenities of Literature.
impediment in his selection of authors or his progress in
translation.
Our earliest printed works consist of these translations
of French translations; and the historian of our poetry
considered that this very circumstance, which originated
in the general illiteracy of the times, was more favourable
to our vernacular literature than would have been the
publication of Roman writers in their original language.
Had it not been for these French versions, Caxton could
not have furnished any of his own. The multiplication of
English copies multiplied English readers, and when at
length there was a generation of readers, an English press
induced many to turn authors who were only qualified to
write in their native tongue.
Wenerable shade of Caxton the award of the tribunal
of posterity is a severe decision, but an imprescriptible
law! Men who appear at certain eras of society, however
they be lauded for what they have done, are still liable to
be censured for not doing what they ought to have done.
Patriarch of the printing-press who to thy last and
dying day withdrew not thy hand from thy work, it is
hard that thou shouldst be amenable to a law which thy
faculties were not adequate to comprehend; surely thou
mayst triumph, thou simple man amid the echoes of thy
“Caxtonians” rejoicing over thy Gothic leaves—but the
historian of the human mind is not the historian of
typography.
221
EARLY LIBRARIES.
THERE probably was a time when there existed no private
libraries in the kingdom, nor any save the monastic; that
of Oxford, at the close of the thirteenth century, consisted
of “a few tracts kept in chests.” In that primeval age
of book-collecting, shelves were not yet required. Royalty
itself seems to have been destitute of a royal library. It
appears, by one of our recently published records, that
King John borrowed a volume from a rich abbey, and the
king gave a receipt to Simon his Chancellor for “the book
called Pliny,” which had been in the custody of the Abbot
and Convent of Reading. “The Romance of the History
of England,” with other volumes, have also royal receipts.
The king had either deposited these volumes for security
with the Abbot, or, what seems not improbable, had no
established collection which could be deemed a library,
and, as leisure or curiosity stimulated, commanded the
loan of a volume.
The borrowing of a volume was a serious concern in
those days, and heavy was the pledge or the bond required
for the loan. One of the regulations of the library of the
Abbey of Croyland, Ingulphus has given. It regards
“the lending of their books, as well the smaller without
pictures as the larger with pictures;” any loan is forbidden
under no less a penalty than that of excommunication,
which might possibly be a severer punishment than the
gallows.
Long after this period, our English libraries are said to
have been smaller than those on the Continent; and yet,
one century and a half subsequently to the reign of John,
the royal library of France, belonging to a monarch who
loved literature, Jean le Bon, did not exceed ten volumes.
In those days they had no idea of establishing a library;
the few volumes which each monarch collected, at great
cost, were always dispersed by gifts or bequests at their
death; nothing passed to their successor but the missals, the
heures, and the offices of their chapels. These monarchs
222 Amenities of Literature.
of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, amid the pre-
vailing ignorance of the age, had not advanced in their
comprehension of the uses of a permanent library beyond
their great predecessor of the ninth, for Charlemagne had
ordered his books to be sold after his death, and the money
given to the poor.
Yet among these early French kings there were several
who were lovers of books, and were not insensible of the
value of a studious intercourse, anxious to procure tran-
scribers and translators. A curious fact has been recorded
of St. Louis, that, during his crusade in the East, having
learned that a Saracen prince employed scribes to copy the
best writings of philosophy for the use of students, on his
return to France he adopted the same practice, and caused
the Scriptures and the works of the Fathers to be tran-
scribed from copies found in different abbeys. These
volumes were deposited in a secure apartment, to which
the learned might have access; and he himself passed
much of his time there, occupied in his favourite study,
the writings of the Fathers.”
Charles le Sage, in 1373, had a considerable library,
amounting to nine hundred volumes. He placed this col-
lection in one of the towers of the Louvre, hencedenominated
the “Tour de la Librarie,” and entrusted it to the custody
of his valet-de-chambre, Gilles Malet, constituting him his
librarian.f He was no common personage, for great as
was the care and ingenuity required, he drew up an inven-
tory with his own hand of this royal library. In that
early age of book-collecting, volumes had not always titles
to denote their subjects, or they contained several in one
* “Essai Historique sur la Bibliothèque du Roi,” par M. Le Prince.
+ This Gilles Malet, who was also the king's reader, had great
strength of character; he is thus described by Christine de Pise —
“Souverainement bien lisoit, et bien ponttoit, et entendens homs
estoit ;” “he read sovereignly well, with good punctuation, and was an
understanding man.” She has recorded a personal anecdote of him.
One day a fatal accident happened to his child, but such was the disci-
pline of official duties, that he did not interrupt his attendance on the
king at the usual hour of reading. The king having afterwards heard
of the accident which had bereaved the father of his child, observed,
“If the intrepidity of this man had not exceeded that which nature
bestows upon ordinary men, his paternal emotion would not have
allowed him to conceal his misfortune.”
Early Libraries. 223
volume,” hence they are described by their outsides, their
size, and their shape, their coverings and their clasps.
This library of Charles the Fifth shines in extreme splen-
dour, with its many-coloured silks and velvets, azure and
vermeil, green and yellow, and its cloths of silver and of
gold, each volume being distinctly described by the colour
and the material of its covering. This curious document
of the fourteenth century still exists.f
This library passed through strange vicissitudes. The
volumes in the succeeding reigns were seized on, or pur-
chased at a conqueror's price, by the Duke of Bedford,
Regent of France. Some he gave to his brother Hum-
phrey, the Duke of Gloucester, and they formed a part of
the rich collection which that prince presented to Oxford,
there finally to be destroyed by a fanatical English mob;
others of the volumes found their way back to the Louvre,
repurchased by the French at London. The glorious missal
that bears the Regent's name remains yet in this country,
the property of a wealthy individual.:
Accident has preserved a few catalogues of libraries of
noblemen in the fourteenth and fifteenth century, more
pleasant than erudite. In the fourteenth century, the
volumes consisted for the greater part of those romances
of chivalry, which so long formed the favourite reading of
the noble, the dame and the damoiselle, and all the loung-
ing damoiseaux in the baronial castle.S
The private libraries of the fifteenth century were re-
stricted to some French tomes of chivalry, or to “a merrie
tale in Boccace;” and their science advanced not beyond
“The Shepherd's Calendar,” or “The Secrets of Albert
* The reader may form some idea of the discordant arrangement of a
volume of manuscripts by the following entries :—“Un Livre qui
commence de Genesis, et aussi traite des fais Julius Cesar, appelle
Suetoine.” “Un Livre en François, en un volume, quice commence
de Genesis, et traite du fait des Romains, de la vie des SS. Peres Her-
mites, et de Merlin.”
+ “Hist. de l'Académie Royale des Inscriptions,” tome i. 421,
12mo.
# It has, within the last few years, been added to the British
Museum. —ED.
§ Dame was the lady of the knight ; the Damoiselle, the wife of an
esquire; Dameisel, or Damoiseau, was a youth of noble extraction,
but who had not yet attained to knighthood.—Rocquefort, “Glossaire
de la Langue Romane.”
224 Amenities of Literature.
the Great.” There was an intermixture of legendary lives
of saints, and apocryphal adventures of “Notre Seigneur”
in Egypt; with a volume or two of physic and surgery
and astrology.
A few catalogues of our monastic libraries still remain,
and these reflect an image of the studies of the middle
ages. We find versions of the Scriptures in English and
Latin—a Greek or Hebrew manuscript is not noted down;
a commentator, a father, and some schoolmen; and a writer
on the canon law, and the mediaeval Christian poets who
composed in Latin verse. A romance, an accidental classic,
a chronicle and legends—such are the usual contents of
these monastic catalogues. But though the subjects seem
various, the number of volumes were exceedingly few. Some
monasteries had not more than twenty books. In such
little esteem were any writings in the vernacular idiom
held, that the library of Glastonbury Abbey, probably the
most extensive in England, in 1248, possessed no more
than four books in English,” on religious topics; and in
the later days of Henry the Eighth, when Leland rum-
maged the monasteries, he did not find a greater number.
The library of the monastery of Bretton, which, owing to
its isolated site, was among the last dissolved, and which
may have enlarged its stores with the spoils of other col-
lections which the times offered, when it was dissolved in
1558, could only boast of having possessed one hundred
and fifty distinct works.f
In this primitive state of book-collecting, a singular
evidence of their bibliographical passion was sometimes
apparent in the monastic libraries. Not deeming a written
catalogue, which might not often be opened, suffi-
ciently attractive to remind them of their lettered
stores, they inscribed verses on their windows to indi-
cate the books they possessed, and over these inscrip-
tions they placed the portraits of the authors. Thus
they could not look through their windows without
being reminded of their volumes; and the very por-
traits of authors, illuminated by the light of heaven,
* Ritson’s “Dissertation on Romance and Minstrelsy,” lxxxi.
+ See an “Essay on English Monastic Libraries,” by that learned
and ingenious antiquary, the Rev. Joseph Hunter.
Early Libraries. 225
might rouse the curiosity which many a barren title would
repel.* -
#. us accustomed to reckon libraries by thousands, these
scanty catalogues will appear a sad contraction of human
knowledge. The monastic studies could not in any degree
have advanced the national character; they could only
have kept it stationary; and, excepting some scholastic
logomachies, in which the people could have no concern,
one monkish writer could hardly ever have differed from
another.
The monastic libraries have been declared to have
afforded the last asylums of literature in a barbarous era;
and the preservation of ancient literature has been ascribed
to the monks: but we must not accept a fortuitous oc-
currence as any evidence of their solicitude or their taste.
In the dull scriptorium of the monk, if the ancient
authors always obtained so secure a place, they slept in
comparative safety, for they were not often disturbed b
their first Gothic owners, who hardly ever allude to them.
If ancient literature found a refuge in the monastic esta-
blishments, the polytheistical guests were not slightly
contemned by their hosts, who cherished with a different
taste a bastardised race of the Romans. The purer
writers were not in request; for the later Latin verse-
makers being Christians, the piety of the monks proved to
be infinitely superior to their taste. Boethius was their
great classic; while Prudentius, Sedulius, and Fortunius,
carried the votes against Virgil, Horace, and even Ovid;
though Ovid was in some favour for his marvellous Ro-
mance. The polytheism of the classical poets was looked
on with horror, so literally did they construe the alle-
gorical fables of the Latin muse. Even till a later day,
when monkery itself was abolished, the same Gothic taste
lingered among us in its aversion to the classical poets of
antiquity, as the works of idolaters - -
Had we not obtained our knowledge of the great an-
cients by other circumstances than by their accidental
preservation by the monks, we should have lost a whole
* Some of these extraordinary window-catalogues of the monastic
library of St. Albans were found in the cloisters and presbytery of
that monastery, and are preserved in the “Monasticon Anglicanum.”.
"WOL. T. Q

226 Amenities of Literature.
antiquity. The vellum was considered more precious than
the genius of the author; and it has been acutely conjec-
tured that the real cause of the minor writers of antiquity
having come down to us entire, while we have to lament
for ever the lacerations of the greater, has been owing to
the scantiness of the parchment of a diminutive volume.
They coveted the more voluminous authors to erase some
immortal page of the lost decades of Livy, or the annals of
Tacitus, to inscribe on it some dull homily or saintly
legend. That the ancients were neglected by these guar-
dians appears by the dungeon-darkness from which the
Italian Poggio disinterred many of our ancient classics;
and Leland, in his literary journey to survey the monastic
libraries of England, often shook from the unknown
author a whole century of dust and cobwebs. When
libraries became one source of the pleasures of life, the
lovers of books appear to have been curious in selecting
their site for perfect seclusion and silence amid their noble
residences, and also in their contrivances to arrange their
volumes, so as to have them at instant command. One of
these Gothic libraries, in an old castle belonging to the
Percys, has been described by Leland with congenial de-
light. I shall transcribe his words, accommodating the
reader with our modern orthography.
“One thing I liked extremely in one of the towers;
that was a STUDY called PARADISE ; where was a closet in the
middle of eight squares latticed ‘abrate;’ and at the top
of every square was a desk ledged to set books on, on
coffers within them, and these seemed as joined hard to
the top of the closet ; and yet by pulling, one or all would
come down breast-high in rabbets (or grooves), and serve
for desks to lay books on.”
However clumsy this invention in “Paradise” may
seem to us, it was not more so than the custom of chain-
ing their books to the shelves, allowing a sufficient length
of chain to reach the reading-desk—a mode which long
prevailed when printing multiplied the cares of the
librarian.
All these libraries, consisting of manuscripts, were ne-
cessarily limited in their numbers; their collectors had no
choice, but gladly received what occurred to their hands;
Early Libraries. 227
it was when books were multiplied by the press, that the
minds of owners of libraries shaped them to their own
fancies, and stamped their characters on these companions
of their solitude.
We have a catalogue of the library of Mary Queen of
Scots, as delivered up to her son James the Sixth, in
1578,” very characteristic of her elegant studies; the
volumes chiefly consist of French authors and French
translations, a variety of chronicles, several romances, a few
Italian writers, Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Ariosto, and her
favourite poets, Alain Chartier, Ronsard, and Marot.
This library forms a striking contrast with that of Eliza-
beth of England, which was visited in 1598 by Hentz-
ner, the German traveller. The shelves at Whitehall dis-
played a more classical array; the collection consisted of
Greek, Latin, as well as Italian and French books.
The dearness of parchment, and the slowness of the
scribes, made manuscripts things only purchasable by
princely munificence. It was the discovery of paper from
rags, and the novel art of taking copies without penmen,
which made books mere objects of commerce, and dis-
persed the treasures of the human mind free as air, and
cheap as bread.
* Dibdin's “Bibliographical Decameron,” iii. 245.
Q 2
228
HENRY THE SEVENTH.
THERE was a state of transition in our literature, both
classical and vernacular, which deserves our notice in the
progress of the genius of the nation.
A prudent sovereign in the seventh Henry, amid fac-
tions rather joined together than cemented, gave a
semblance of repose to a turbulent land, exhausted by its
convulsions. A martial rudeness still lingered among the
great; and we discover by a curious conversation which
the learned Pace held with some of the gentry, with
whom, perhaps, he had indiscreetly remonstrated, attempt-
ing to impress on their minds the advantages of study,
that his advice was indignantly rejected. Such pursuits
seemed to them unmanly, and intolerable impediments in
the practice of those more active arts of life which alone
were worthy of one of gentle blood; their fathers had been
good knights without this idling toil of reading.
Henry the Seventh, when Earl of Richmond, during his
exile in France from 1471 to 1485, had become a reader of
French romances, an admirer of French players, and an
amateur of their peculiar architecture. After his accession
we trace these new tastes in our poetry, our drama, and in
a novel species of architecture which Bishop Fox called
Burgundian, and which is the origin of the Tudor style.*
A favourer of the histrionic art, he introduced a troop of
French players. Wary in his pleasures as in his politics,
this monarch was moderate in his patronage either of poets
or players, but he was careful to encourage both. The
queen participated in his tastes, and appears to have
bestowed particular rewards on “players,” whose per-
formances had afforded her unusual delight; and among
the curious items of her majesty’s expenditure, we find
that many of these players were foreigners—“a French
player, an Italian poet, a Spanish tumbler, a Flemish
tumbler, a Welshman for making a ryme, a maid that came
out of Spain and danced before the queen.”
* Speed’s “History,” 995.
Henry the Seventh. 229
This monarch had suffered one of those royal marriages
which are a tribute paid to the interests of the State.
Henry had yielded with repugnance to a union with Eliza-
beth the Yorkist; the sullen Lancastrian long looked on
his queen with the eyes of a factionist. Toward the latter
years of his life this repugnance seems to have passed
away, as this gentle consort largely participated in his
tastes. It was probably in their sympathy that the per-
sonal prejudices of Henry melted away. This indeed was
a triumph of the arts of imagination over the warped feel-
ings of the individual ; it marked the transition from
barbarie arms to the amenities of literature, and the
softening influence of the mimetic arts; it was the presage
of the magnificence of his successor. The nation was
benefited by these new tastes; the pacific reign made a
revolution in our court, our manners, and our literature.
We may date from this period that happy intercourse
which the learned English opened with the Continent,
and more particularly with literary Italy; our learned
travellers now appear in number. Colet, the founder of St.
Paul's School, not only passed over to Paris, but lingered
in Italy, and returned home with the enthusiasm of
classical antiquity. Grocyn, to acquire the true pronun-
ciation of the Greek, which he first taught at Oxford,
domesticated with Demetrius Chalcondyles and Angelo
Politian, at Florence. Linacre, the projector of the Col-
lege of Physicians, visited Rome and Florence. Lilly, the
grammarian, we find at Rhodes and at Rome, and the
learned Pace at Padua. We were thus early great literary
travellers; and the happier Continentalists, who rarely
move from their native homes, have often wondered at the
restless condition of those whom they have sometimes
reproached as being Insulaires; yet they may be reminded
that we have done no more than the most ancient philo-
sophers of antiquity. Our reproachers fortunately pos-
sessed the arts, and even the learning, which we were
willing by travel and costs to acquire. “The Islanders”
may have combined all the knowledge of all the world,
a freedom and enlargement of the mind, which those, how-
ever more fortunately placed, can rarely possess, who
restrict their locality and narrow their comprehension by
their own home-bound limits.
230 Amenities of Literature.
The king, delighting in poetry, fostered an English
muse in the learned rhyme of STEPHEN HAWEs, who was
admitted to his private chamber, for the pleasure which
Henry experienced in listening to poetic recitation. It was
probably the taste of his royal master which inspired this
bard’s allegorical romance of chivalry, of love, and of science.
This elaborate work is “The Pastime of Pleasure, or
the History of Graunde Amour and la bell Pucell,
containing the knowledge of the seven sciences and the
course of man’s life.” At a time when sciences had no
reality, they were constantly alluding to them; ignorance
hardily imposed its erudition; and experimental philosophy
only terminated in necromancy. The seven sciences of
the accomplished gentleman were those so well known,
comprised in the scholastic distich.
In the ideal hero “Graunde Amour,” is shadowed forth
the education of a complete gentleman of that day. From
the Tower of “Doctrine,” to the Castle of “Chivalry,”
the way lies equally open, but the progress is diversified by
many bye-paths, and a number of personified ideas or
allegorical characters. These shadowy actors lead to
shadowy places; but the abounding incidents relieve us
among this troop of passionless creatures.
This fiction blends allegory with romance, and science
with chivalry. At the early period of printing, it was
probably the first volume which called in the graver's art
to heighten the inventions of the writer, and the accom-
panying wood-cuts are an evidence of the elegant taste of
the author, although that morose critic of all poesy,
honest Anthony à Wood, sarcastically concludes that these
cuts were “to enable the reader to understand the story
better.” This once courtly volume, our sage reports, “is
now thought but worthy of a ballad-monger's stall.”
* This forlorn volume of Anthony’s “Stalls” is now a gem placed
in the caskets of black-letter. This poetic romance, by its exces-
sive rarity,+the British Museum is without a copy, has obtained
most extraordinary prices among our collectors. A copy of the first
edition at the Roxburgh sale reached 84!., which was sold at Sir
M. M. Sykes' for half the price ; later editions, for a fourth. A
copy was sold at Heber's sale for 25l. It may, however, relieve the
distress of some curious readers to be informed that it may now
be obtained at the most ordinary cost of books. Mr. SouTHEY, with
excellent judgment, has preserved the romance in his valuable volume
Henry the Seventh. 231
“The Pastime of Pleasure" was even despised by that
great book-collector, General Lord Fairfax, who, on the
copy he possessed, has left a memorandum “that it should
be changed for a better book!” The fate of books vacil-
lates with the fancies of book-lovers, and the improvements
of a later age. In the days of Fairfax, the gloom of the
civil wars annihilated their imaginations.
But the gorgeousness of this romance struck the Gothic
fancy of the historian of our poetry, magic, chivalry, and
allegory ! In the circumstantial analysis of Warton, the
reader may pursue his “course of man’s life” through
the windings of the labyrinth. It seems as if the patience
of the critic had sought a relief amid his prolonged chro-
nicle of obscure versifiers, in a production of imagination,
the only one which had appeared since Chaucer, and which,
to the contemplative poetic antiquary, showed him the
infant rudiments of the future Spenser.
This allegorical romance is imbued with Provençal
fancy, and probably emulated the “Roman de la Rose,”
which could not fail to be a favourite with the royal patron,
among those French books which he loved. Fertile in
invention, it is, however, of the old stock; fresh meads
and delicious gardens,—ladies in arbours, magical trials
of armed knights on horses of steel, which, touched by a
secret spring, could represent a tourney. We strike the
shield at the castle-gate of chivalry, and we view the
golden roof of the hall, lighted up by a carbuncle of pro-
digious size; we repose in chambers walled with silver,
and enamelling many a story. There are many noble
conceptions among the allegorical gentry. She, whom
Graunde Amour first beheld was mounted on her palfrey,
flying with the wind, encircled with tongues of fire, and
her two milkwhite greyhounds, on whose golden collars
are inscribed in diamond letters, Grace and Governance.
She is Fame, her palfrey is Pegasus, and her burning
tongues are the voice of Posterity There are some
of “Specimens of our Ancient Poets,” from the time of Chaucer; it is
to be regretted, however, that the text is not correctly printed, and
that the poem has suffered mutilation—six thousand lines seem to have
exhausted the patience of the modern typographer. [A more perfect
and accurate edition, from that printed in 1555, was published by the
Percy Society in 1845, under the editorship of Mr. Thos. Wright.]
232 Amenities of Literature.
grotesque incidents, as in other romances; a monster
wildly created, the offspring of Disdain and Strangeness—
a demon composed of the seven metals | We have also a
dwarf who has to encounter a giant with seven heads;
our subdolous David mounts on twelve steps cut in the
rock; and to the surprise of the giant, he discovered in
“the boy whom he had mocked,” his equal in stature, and
his vanquisher, notwithstanding the inconceivable roar of
his seven heads !’
Warton transcribed a few lines to show this poet's
“harmonious versification and clear expression;” but this
short specimen may convey an erroneous notion. Our
verse was yet irregular, and its modulation was accidental
rather than settled; the metrical lines of Hawes, for the
greater part, must be read rhythmically, it was a barbarism
that even later poets still retained. He also affected an
ornate diction; and Latin and French terms cast an air
of pedantry, more particularly when the euphony of his
verse is marred by closing his lines with his elongated
polysyllables; he probably imagined that the dimensions
of his words necessarily lent a grandeur to his thoughts.
With all these defects, Hawes often surpasses himself, and
we may be surprised that, in a poem composed in the court of
Henry the Seventh, about 1506, the poet should have left
us such a minutely-finished picture of female beauty as
he has given of La Pucelle; Hawes had been in Italy, and
seems with an artist's eye to have dwelt on some picture
of Raphael, in his early manner, or of his master Perugino,
in his hard but elaborate style. *
Her shining hair, so properly she dresses,
Aloft her forehead, with fayre golden tresses;
Her forehead stepe, with fayre browés ybent;
Her eyen gray; her nosé straight and fayre;
In her white cheeks, the faire bloudé it went
As among the white, the reddé to repayre;
Her mouthe right small ; her breathe sweet of ayre;
Her lippes soft and ruddy as a rose ;
No hart alive but it would him appose.
With a little pitte in her well-favoured chynne;
Her necke long, as white as any lillye,
With vaynés blewe, in which the bloude ranne in ;
Her pappés rounde, and thereto right pretye ;
Her armés slender, and of goodly bodye;
Henry the Seventh. 233
Her fingers small, and thereto right longe,
White as the milk, with blewé vaynes among ;
Her feet propér; she gartred well her hose ;
I never sawe so fayre a créatäre,
The reign of Henry the Seventh was a misty morning
of our vernacular literature, but it was the sunrise; and
though the road be rough, we discover a few names by
which we may begin to count—as we find on our way a
mile-stone, which, however rudely cut and worn out, serves
to measure our distances,
234
FIRST SOURCES OF MODERN HISTORY.
SoCIETY must have considerably advanced ere it could have
produced an historical record; and who could have fur-
nished even the semblance but the most instructed class,
in the enjoyment of uninterrupted leisure, among every
people? History therefore remained long a consecrated
thing in the hands of the priesthood, from the polytheis-
tical era of the Roman Pontiffs who registered their annals,
to the days that the history of Christian Europe became
chronicled by the monastic orders.” Had it not been for
the monks, exclaimed our learned Marsham, we should not
have had a history of England.
The monks provided those chronicles which have served
both for the ecclesiastical and civil histories of every
European people. In every abbey the most able of its
inmates, or the abbot himself, was appointed to record
every considerable transaction in the kingdom, and some-
times extended their views to foreign parts. All these
were set down in a volume reserved for this purpose; and
on the decease of every sovereign these memorials were
laid before the general chapter, to draw out a sort of
chronological history, occasionally with a random com-
ment, as the humour of the scribe prompted, or the
opinions of the whole monastery sanctioned.
Besides these meagre annals the monasteries had other
books more curious than their record of public affairs.
These were their Leiger-books, of which some have escaped
among the few reliques of the universal dissolution of the
monasteries. In these registers or diaries they entered
* Archbishop Plegmund superintended the Saxon Annals to the year
891. The first Chronicles, those of Kent or Wessex, were regularly
continued by the Archbishops of Canterbury, or by their directions, as
far as 1000, or even 1070.-‘‘The Rev. Dr. Ingram's preface to the
Saxon Chronicle.”
These were our earliest Chronicles ; the Britons possibly never
wrote any.
First Sources of Modern History. 235
all matters relating to their own monastery and its depen-
dencies. As time never pressed on the monkish secretary,
his notabilia runs on very miscellaneously. Here were
descents of families, and tenures of estates; authorities of
charters and of cartularies; curious customs of counties,
cities, and great towns. Strange accidents were not un-
common then ; and sometimes, between a miracle or a
natural phenomenon, a fugitive anecdote stole in. The
affairs of a monastery exhibited a moving picture of do-
mestic life. These religious houses, whose gate opened to
the wayfarer, and who were the distributors of useful
commodities to the neighbouring poor—for in their larger
establishments they included workmen of every class—
did not, however, maintain their munificence untainted by
mundane passions. Forged charters had often sealed their
possessions, and supposititious grants of mortuary dona-
tions silently transferred the wealth of families. These
lords of the soil, though easy landlords, still cast an “evil
eye” on the lands of their neighbour. Even rival monas-
teries have fought in meadows for the ownership; the
stratagems of war and the battle-array of two troops of
cudgelling monks might have furnished some cantos to an
epic, less comic perhaps than that of “The Rape of the
Bucket.”
In the literary simplicity of the twelfth to the four-
teenth century, while every great monastery had its histo-
rian, every chronicle derived its title from its locality;
thus, among others, were the Glastonbury, the Peter-
borough, and the Abingdon Chronicles: and when
Leland, so late as the reign of Henry the Eighth, in his
search into monastic libraries, discovered one at St.
Neot's, he was at a loss to describe it otherwise than as
“The Chronicle of St. Neot’s.” The famous Doomsday
Book was originally known as “Liber de Winton,” or
“The Winchester Book,” from its first place of custody.
The same circumstance occurred among our neighbours,
where Les grandes Chroniques de Saint Denys were so
called from having been collected or compiled by the
monks of that abbey. An abstract motion of history, or
any critical discrimination of one chronicle from another,
was not as yet familiar even to our scholars; and in the

236 Amenities of Literature.
dearth of literature the classical models of antiquity were
yet imperfectly contemplated.
It is not less curious to observe that, at a time when
the literary celebrity of the monachal scribe could hardly
pass the boundaries of the monastery, and the monk him-
self was restricted from travelling, bound by indissoluble
chains, yet this lone man, as if eager to enjoy a literary
reputation, however spurious, was not scrupulous in prac-
tising certain dishonest devices. Before the discovery of
printing, the concealment of a manuscript for the purpose
of appropriation was an artifice which, if we may decide
by some rumours, more frequently occurred than has been
detected. Plagiarism is the common sin of the monkish
chronicler, to which he was often driven by repeating a
mouldy tale a hundred times told; but his furtive pen
extended to the capital crime of felony. I shall venture
to give a pair of literary anecdotes of monkish writers.
Matthew of Paris, one of these chroniclers, is somewhat
esteemed, and Matthew of Westminster is censured, for
having copied in his “Flores Historiarum” the other
Matthew ; but we need not draw any invidious compa-
rison between the two Matthews, since Matthew the first
had himself transcribed the work of Roger the Prior
of Wendover. The famous “Polychronicon,” which long
served as a text-book for the encyclopaedic knowledge of the
fourteenth century, has two names attached to it, and one,
however false, which can never be separated from the
work, interwoven in its texture. This famed volume is
ascribed to Ranulph, or Ralph Higden of St. Werberg's
Monastery, now the Cathedral of Chester. Ralph, that
he might secure the tenure of this awful edifice of
universal history for a thousand years, most subdolously
contrived that the initial letter of every chapter, when
put together, signified that Ralph, a monk of Chester,
had compiled the work. Centuries did not contradict the
assumption; but time, that blabber of more fatal secrets
than those of authors, discovered in the same monastery
that another brother Roger had laboured for the world
their universal history in his “Polycratica Temporum.”
On examination, the truth flashed! For lo! the peccant
pen of Ralph had silently transmigrated the “Polycra-
First Sources of Modern History. 237
tica” into the “Polychronicon,” and had only laid a trap
for posterity by his treacherous acrostics!”
These universal chroniclers usually opened, ab initio,
with the Creation, dispersed at Babel reach home, and
paused at the Norman Conquest. This was their usual
first division; it was a long journey, but a beaten path.
Whatever they found written was history to them, for
they were without means of correcting their aptitude for
credence. Their anachronisms often ludicrously give the
lie to their legendary statements.
Most of these monastic writers composed in a debased
Latinity of their own, bald and barbarous, but which had
grown up with the age; their diction bears a rude sort of
simplicity. Yet though they were not artists, there were
occasions when they were inevitably graphic—when they
detail like a witness in court. These writers have been
lauded by the gratitude of antiquaries, and valued by
philosophical historians. A living historian has observed
of them, that “nothing can be more contemptible as com-
positions; nothing can be more satisfactory as authorities.”
But it is necessary that we should be reminded of the
partial knowledge and the partial passions of these sources
of our earlier modern history. Lift the cowl from the
historiographers in their cells recording those busy events
in which they never were busied, characterising those
eminent persons from whom they were far removed;
William of Malmesbury, not one of the least estimable of
these writers, confesses that he drew his knowledge from
public rumours, or what the relaters of news brought to
them.f In some respects their history sinks to the level
* We have a remarkable instance among the Italian historians of
this period. Giovanni Villani wrote about 1330; Muratori discovered
that Willani had wholly transcribed the ancient portion of his history
from an old Chronicle of Malespini, who wrote about 1230, without
any acknowledgment whatever. Doubtless Willani imagined that an
insulated manuscript, during a century's oblivion, had little chance of
ever being classed among the most ancient records of Italian history.
Malespini’s “Chronicle,” like its brothers, was stuffed with fables;
Willani was honest enough not to add to them, though not sufficiently
so not silently to appropriate the whole chronicle—the only one Dante
read.—“Tiraboschi,” v. 410, part 2nd.
+ We have an elegant modern version of this monk’s history by the
Rev. J. Sharpe.
238 Amenities of Literature.
of one of our newspapers, and is as liable to be tinged
with party feelings. The whole monastery had as limited
notions of public affairs as they had of the kingdom itself,
of which they knew but little out of their own county.
No monastic writer, as an historian, has descended to
posterity for the eminence of his genius, for the same
stamp of mind gave currency to their works. Woe to the
sovereign who would have clipt their wings then
“tongues talked and pens wrote” monkish. There was a
proverb among them, that “The giver is blessed, but he
who taketh away is accursed.” None but themselves
could appeal to Heaven, and for their crowned slaves they
were not penurious of their beatitude. They knew to
crouch as well as to thunder. They usually clung to the
reigning party; and a new party or a change of dynasty
was sure to change their chronicling pen. HALL, the
chronicler of Henry the Eighth, at the first moment when
it was allowable to speak distinctly concerning these
monkish writers, observed, “These monastical persons,
learned and unliterate, better fed than taught, took on
them to write and register in the book of fame the arts,
and doings, and politic governance of kings and princes.”
It seems not to have occurred to the chronicler of Henry
the Eighth that, had not those monks “taken on them to
write and register,” we should have had no “Book of
Fame.” It is a duty we owe to truth to penetrate into
the mysteries of monkery, but the monks will always re-
tain their right to receive their large claims on our
admiration of their labours.
There was also another class of early chroniclers through-
out Europe; men who filled the office of a sort of royal
historiographer, who accompanied the king and the army
in their progress, to note down the occurrences they
deemed most honourable or important to the nation. But
incidents written down by a monk in his cell, or by a
diarist pacing the round with majesty, would be equally
warped, by the views of the monastery in the one case, or
by a flattering subservience to the higher power in the
other.
In this manner the early history of Europe was written;
the more ancient part was stuffed with fables; and when it
might have become useful in recording passages and per-
First Sources of Modern History. 239
sons of the writer's own times, we have a one-sided tale,
wherein, while half is suppressed, the other is disguised by
flattery or by satire. Such causes are well known to have
corrupted these first origins of modern history, a history
in which the commons and the people at large had very
little concern, till the day arrived, in the progress of
society, when chronicles were written by laymen in the
vernacular idiom for their nation.
240
ARNOLDE'S CHRONICLE.
VERY early in the sixteenth century appeared a volume
which seems to have perplexed our literary historians by
its mutable and undefinable character. It is a book with-
out a title, and miscalled by the deceptive one of
“Arnolde’s Chronicle, or the Customs of London;” but
“the Customs” are not the manners of the people, but
rather “the Customs” of the Custom-House, and it in no
shape resembles, or pretends to be “a chronicle.” This
erroneous title seems to have been injudiciously annexed
to it by Hearne the antiquary, and should never have been
retained. This anomalous work, of which there are three
ancient editions, had the odd fate of all three being sent
forth without a title and without a date; and our biblio-
graphers cannot with any certainty ascertain the order or
precedence of these editions. One edition was issued from
the press of a Flemish printer at Antwerp, and possibly
may be the earliest. The first printer, whether English
or Flemish, was evidently at a loss to christen this mon-
strous miscellaneous babe, and ridiculously took up the
title and subjects of the first articles which offered them-
selves, to designate more than a hundred of the most
discrepant variety. The ancient editions appeared as
“The names of the Baylyfs, Custos, Mayres, and Sherefs
of the Cyte of London, with the Chartour and Lybartyes
of the same Cyte, &c. &c., with other dyvers matters good
and necessary for every Cytezen to understand and know ;”
—a humble title equally fallacious with the higher one of a
“Chronicle,” for it has described many objects of consider-
able curiosity, more interesting than “mayors and sheriffs,”
and even “the charter and liberties” of “the cyte.”
In conveying a notion of a jumble,” though the things
themselves are sufficiently grave, we cannot avoid a ludi-
crous association; yet this should not lessen the value of
its information.
* In Oldys’ “British Librarian” there is an accurate analysis of the
work, in which every single article is enumerated.
Arnolde’s Chronicle. 24l
A considerable portion of this medley wholly relates to
the municipal interests of the citizens of London—charters
and grants, with a vast variety of forms or models of
public and private instruments, chiefly of a commercial
description. Parish ordinances mix with Acts of Par-
liament; and when we have conned the oath of the beadle
of the ward, we are startled by Pope Nicholas’ Bull. We
have the craft of grafting trees and altering of fruits, as
well in colour as in taste, close to an oration of the mes-
senger of “the Soudan of Babylon” to the Pope in 1488.
Indeed, we have many more useful crafts, besides the
altering of the flavour of fruits, and the oration of the
Mahometan to the representative of St. Peter; for here
are culinary receipts, to keep sturgeon, to make vinegar
“shortly,” “percely to grow in an hour's space,” and to
make ypocras, straining the wine through a bag of spices
—it was nothing more than our mulled wine; and further,
are receipts to make ink, and compound gunpowder, to
make soap, and to brew beer. Whether we may derive
any fresh hints from our ancestor of the year 1500 exceeds
my judgment; but to this eager transcriber posterity owes
one of the most passionate poems in our language; for
betwixt “the composition between the merchants of Eng-
land and the town of Antwerp,” and “the reckoning to
buy wares in Flanders,” first broke into light “A Bal-
lade of the Notbrowne Mayde.” Thus, when an indis-
criminating collector is at work, one cannot foresee what
good fortune may not chance to be his lot.
Warton has truly characterised this work as “the most
heterogeneous and multifarious miscellany that ever ex-
isted;” but he seems to me to have mistaken both the
design of the collector, and the nature of the collection.
Some supposed that the collector, Richard Arnolde, intended
the volume to be an antiquarian repertory; but as the
materials were recent, that idea cannot be admitted; and
Warton censures the compiler, who, to make up a volume,
printed together whatever he could amass of notices and
papers of every sort and subject. The modern editor of
* Arnolde's Chronicle” was perplexed at the contents of
what he calls “a strange book.”
The critical decision of Warton is much too searching
for a volume in which the compiler never wrote a single
WOL. I. IR
242 Amenities of Literature.
line, and probably never entertained the remotest idea of
the printer's press. This book without a name is, in fact,
nothing more than a simple collection made by an English
merchant engaged in the Flemish trade. Nor was such a
work peculiar to this artless collector; for in a time of rare
publications, such men seemed to have formed for them-
selves a sort of library, of matters they deemed worthy of
recollection, to which they could have easy recourse.* By
the internal evidence, Arnolde was no stranger at Antwerp,
nor at Dordrecht. Antwerp was then a favourite residence
of the English merchants; there the typographic art
flourished, and the printers often printed English books;
and as this collection was printed at Antwerp by Does-
borowe, a Flemish printer, we might incline with Douce
to infer that the Flemish was the first edition; for it
seems not probable that a foreign printer would have
selected an English volume of little interest to foreigners,
to reprint ; although we can imagine that from personal
consideration, or by the accident of obtaining the manu-
script, he might have been induced to be the first publisher.
Whoever was the first printer, the collector himself seems
to have been little concerned in the publication, by the
suppression of his name, by the omission of a title, by not
prefixing a preface, nor arranging in any way this curious
medley of useful things, which he would familiarly turn to
as his occasions needed, and—if we may compare a grave
volume with the lightest—was of that class which ladies
call their “scrap-books,” and assuredly not, according to
its fallacious title, a CHRONICLE.
* A similar volume to Arnolde’s may be found in the “Harl. MSS.,”
No. 2252.
243
THE FIRST PRINTED CHRONICLE.
THE first chronicle in our vernacular prose, designed for
the English people, was the earnest labour of one of them-
selves, a citizen and alderman, and sometime sheriff of
London, Rob ERT FABYAN. Here, for the first time, the
spectacle of English affairs, accompanied by what he has
called “A Concordance of Stories,” which included sepa-
rate notices of French history contemporaneous with the
periods he records, was opened for “the unlettered who
understand no Laten.” Our chronicler, in the accus-
tomed mode, fixes the periods of history by dates from
Adam or from Brute. He opens with a superfluous
abridgment of Geoffry of Monmouth—the “Polychro-
nicon” is one of his favourite sources, but his authorities
are multifarious. His French history is a small stream
from “La Mere des Chroniques,’’and other chronicles of his
contemporary Gaguin, a royal historiographer who wan-
dered in the same taste, but who, Fabyan had the Saga-
city to discover, carefully darkened all matters unplea-
sant to Frenchmen, but never “ leaving anything out of
his book that may sound to the advancement of the
French macyon.”
It was a rare occurrence in a layman, and moreover a
merchant, to have cultivated the French and the Latin
languages. Fabyan was not a learned man, for the age of
men of learning had not yet arrived, though it was soon
to come. At that early day of our typography, when our
native annalists lay scattered in their manuscript seclu-
sion, it was no ordinary delving which struck into the
dispersed veins of the dim and dark mine of our history.
So little in that day was the critical knowledge of our
writers, that Fabyan has “quoted the same work under
different appellations,” and some of our historical writers
he seems not to have met with in his researches, for the
chronicles of Robert of Gloucester and of Peter Langtoft,
though but verse, would have contributed some freshness
to his own. In seven unequal divisions, the chronicle
R 2
244 Amenities of Literature.
closes with the days of the seventh Henry. These seven
divisions were probably more fantastical than critical; the
number was adopted to cheer the good man with “the
seven joys of the Virgin,” which he sings forth in unme-
trical metre, evidently participating in the rapturous ter-
mination of each of his own “seven joys.”
Our grave chronicler, arrayed in his civic dignities,
seems to have provoked the sensitiveness of the poetical
critic in Warton, and the caustic wit in Horace Walpole.
“No sheriff.” exclaims Walpole, “was ever less qualified
to write a history of England. He mentions the deaths
of princes and revolutions of government with the same
phlegm and brevity as he would speak of the appoint-
ment of churchwardens.”
We may suspect that our citizen and chronicler, how-
ever he might be familiar with the public acts of royalty,
had no precise notions of the principles of their govern-
ment. We cannot otherwise deem of an historical re-
corder whose political sagacity, in that famous interview
between our Edward the Fourth and Louis the Eleventh,
of which Comines has left us a lively scene, could not
penetrate further than to the fashion of the French
monarch’s dress. He tells us of “the nice and wanton dis.
guised apparel that the King Louys wore upon him at the
time of this meeting, I might make a long rehearsal, appa-
ralled more like a minstrel than a prince.” Fabyan shared
too in the hearty “John Bullism” of that day in a
mortal jealousy of the Gaul, and even of his Sainte
Ampoule. Though no man had a greater capacity of faith
for miracles and saints on English ground, yet for those
of his neighbours he had found authority that it was not
necessary for his salvation to believe them, and has ven-
tured to decide on one, that “they must be folys (fools)
who believe it.” Had the Sainte Ampoule, however,
been deposited in Westminster Abbey for our own coro-
nations, instead of the Cathedral at Rheims for a French
king, Fabyan had not doubted of the efficacy of every
drop of the holy oil.
But the dotage of FABYAN did not particularly attach
to him; and though his intellectual comprehension was
restricted to the experience of an alderman, he might have
been the little Machiavel of his wardmote—for he has
The First Printed Chronicle. 245
thrown out a shrewd observation, which no doubt we owe
to his own sagacity. In noticing the neglect of a mayor
in repairing the walls which had been begun by his pre-
decessor, he observes that this generally happens, for “one
mayor will not finish that thing which another beginneth,
for then they think, be the deed ever so good and profit-
able, that the honour thereof shall be ascribed to the
beginner, and not to the finisher, which lack of charity
and desire of vainglory causeth many good acts and deeds
to die, and grow out of mind, to the great decay of the
commonwealth of the city.” A profound observation,
which might be extended to monarchs as well as mayors.
Indulging too often the civic curiosity of “a citizen and
alderman,” FABYAN has been taunted for troubling pos-
terity. “FABYAN,” says Warton, “is equally attentive to
the succession of the mayors of London and the monarchs
of England. He seems to have thought the dinners at
Guildhall and the pageantries of the city companies more
interesting transactions than our victories in France and
our struggles for public liberty at home.”
This seems to be a random stricture. The alderman,
indeed, has carefully registered the mayors and the sheriffs
of London; and the scientific in “high and low prices”
perhaps may be grateful that our pristine chronicler has
also furnished the prices of wheat, oxen, sheep, and
poultry—but we cannot find that he has commemorated
the diversified forms these took on the solemn tables of
the Guildhall, nor can we meet with the pasteboard pomps
of city pageants, one only being recorded, on the return of
Henry the Sixth from France.
Our modern critic, composing in the spirit of our day,
alludes to “the struggle for public liberty;” but “public
liberty” must have been a very ambiguous point with the
honest citizen who had been a sad witness to the contests
of two murderous families, who had long sought their
mutual destruction, and long convulsed the whole land.
We may account for the tempered indifference, and “the
brief recitals” for which this simple citizen is reproached,
who had lived through such changeful and ensanguined
scenes, which had left their bleeding memories among the
families of his contemporaries.
The faculties of Fabyan were more level with their
246 Amenities of Literature.
objects when he had to chronicle the “tempestuous wea-
thering of thunder and lightning,” with the ominous fall
of a steeple, or “the image of our Lady” dashed down
from its roof; or when he describes the two castles in the
air, whence issued two armies, black and white, combating
in the skies till the white vanished . Such portents lasted
much later than the days of Fabyan, for honest Stowe
records what had once ushered in St. James's night, when
the lightning and thunder coming in at the south win-
dow and bursting on the north, the bells of St. Michael
were listened to with horror, ringing of themselves, while
ugly shapes were dancing on the steeple. Their natural
philosophy and their piety were long stationary, yet even
then some were critical in their remarks; for when Fabyan
recorded “flying dragons and fiery spirits in the air,” this
was corrected by omitting “the fiery spirits,” but agree-
ing to “the flying dragons.” Fabyan, however, has pre-
served more picturesque and ingenious visions in some
legends of saints or apparitions—still delightsome. These
legends formed their “Works of Fiction,” and were more
affecting than ours, for they were supernatural, and no one
doubted their verity.
Our pristine chronicler, as we have seen, has received
hard measure from the two eminent critics of the eighteenth
century, who have censured as a history that which is
none. Chronicles were written when the science of true
history had yet no existence; a chronicle then in reality is
but a part of history. Every fact dispersed in its insulated
state refuses all combination; cause and effect lie remote
and obscured from each other; disguised by their ostensible
pretexts, the true motives of actions in the great actors
of the drama of history cannot be found in the chrono-
logical chronicler. The real value of his diligence consists
in copiousness and discrimination; qualities rather adverse
to each other. FABYAN betrays the infirmities of the
early chronicler, not yet practised even in the art of simple
detail, without distinction of the importance or the in-
significance of the matters he records: his eager pen
reckoned the number without knowing to test the weight;
to him all facts appeared of equal worth, for all alike had
cost him the same toil; and thus he yields an abundance
without copiousness. In raising the curiosity which he
The First Printed Chronicle. 247
has not satisfied for us, his mighty tome shrinks into a
narrow scope, and his imperfect narratives, brief and dry,
offer only the skeletons of history. The mere antiquarian
indeed prefers the chronicle to the history; the acquisition
of a fact with him is the limit of his knowledge, and he is
apt to dream that he possesses the superstructure when he
is only at work on the foundations.
The Chronicle of FABYAN attracts our notice for a
remarkable incident attending its publication. The Chro-
nicle was finished in 1504, and remained in manuscript
during the author's life, who died in 1512. The first
edition did not appear till 1516. The cause which delayed
the printing of an important work, for such it was in that
day, has not been disclosed; yet perhaps we might have
been interested to have learned whether this protracted
publication arose out of neglect difficult to comprehend, or
from the printer, reluctant to risk the cost, or from any
impediment from a higher quarter.
Be this as it may, we possess the writer's genuine
work, for the printer, Pynson, was faithful to his author.
The rarity of this first edition Bale, on a loose rumour
which no other literary historian has sanctioned, ascribes to
its suppression by Cardinal Wolsey, who is represented in
his fury to have condemned the volume to a public ignition,
which no one appears to have witnessed, for its “dangerous
exposition of the revenues of the clergy,” which is not
found in the volume. FABYAN truly was ter Catholicus;
he was of the old religion, dying in the odour of sanctity,
and was spared the trial of the new. The alderman’s
voluminous will is now for us at least as curious as any-
thing in his chronicle.* We here behold the play of the
whole machinery of superstition, when men imagined that
they secured the repose of their souls by feeing priests
and bribing saints by countless masses. This funereal rite
was then called “the month’s mind,” and which, at least
for that short period, prolonged the memory of the de-
parted. For this lugubrious performance were provided
ponderous torches for the bearers, tapers for shrines, and
huge candlesticks to be kept lighted at the altar. Three
* We are indebted to the zealous research of Sir Henry Ellis for the
disinterment of this document as well as for the collations which
appear in his edition.
248 Amenities of Literature.
trenthalls—that is, thirty masses thrice told—were to be
chorused by the Grey Friars; six priest swere to perform
the high mass, chant the requiem, and recite the De Pro-
jundis and the Dirige ; and for nine years, on his mor-
tuary day, he charges his “tenement in Cornhill” to pay
for an Obite / But not only friars and priests were to pray
or to sing for the repose of the soul of Alderman Fabyan, all
comers were invited to kneel around the tomb; and at
times children were to be called in, who if they could not
read a De Profundis from the Psalter, the innocents were
to cry forth a Pater-Noster or an Ave / There was a
purveyance of ribs of beef and mutton and ale, “stock-
fish, if Lent,” and other recommendations for “the comers
to the Dirige at night.” The Alderman, however, seems
to have planned a kind of economy in his “month’s mind,”
for not only was the repose of his soul in question, but
also “the souls of all above written ‘’—and these were a
bead-roll of all the branches of Fabyan's family.
The Chronicle of FABYAN was not long given to the
world when it encountered the doom of a system at its
termination, just before the beginnings of a coming one;
that fatal period of a change in human affairs and human
opinions, usually described as a state of transition. But
in this particular instance, the change occurred preceded
by no transitional approach; for within the small circuit
of thirty years it seemed as if the events of whole
centuries had been more miraculously compressed, than
any in those “lives of the saints” whose legendary lore,
provided the saints were English, Master FABYAN had
loved to perpend. It was Henry the Eighth who turned
all the sense of our chronicler into nonsense, all his honest
faith into lying absurdities, all his exhortations to maintain
“religious houses” into treasonable matters.
Successive, editors of the editions of 1533, 43, and
55, surpassed each other in watchfulness, to rid themselves
of the old song. Never was author so mutilated in parts,
nor so wholly changed from himself; and when, as it
sometimes happened, neither purgation nor castration
availed the reforming critics, the author's sides bore their
marginal flagellations. The corrections or alterations
were, however, dexterously performed, for the texture of
the work betrayed no trace of the rents. The omission

The First Printed Chronicle. 249
of a phrase saved a whole sentence, and the change of an
adjective or two set right a whole character. It is true
they swept away all his delightful legends, without
sparing his woful metres of “the seven joys of the
Blessed Virgin,” and his appreciation of some favourite
relics. They disbanded all the saints, or treated them as
they did “the holy virgin Edith,” of whom Fabyan has
recorded that “many virtues be rehearsed,” which they
delicately reduced to verses. His Holiness the Pope is
simply “the Bishop of Rome; ” and on one memorable
occasion—the Papal interdiction of John—this “Bishop’”
is designated in the margin by the reformer as “that
monstrous and wicked Beast.” The narrative of Becket
cost our compurgators, as it has many others, much
shifting, and more omissions. In the tale of the hardy
and ambitious Archbishop murdered by knightly assassins,
Fabyan said, “They martyred the blessed Archbishop; ”
our corrector of the press simply reads, “They slew the
traitorous Bishop.” The omissions and the commissions
in the Chronicle of FABYAN are often amusing and always
instructive ; but these could not have been detected but
by a severe collation, which has been happily performed.
When the antiquary Brand discovered that FABYAN had
been “modernized '' in later editions, his observation would
seem to have extended no further than to the style: but the
style of FABYAN is simple and clear even to modern
readers: modernized truly it was, not however for phrases,
but for notions—not for statements, but for omissions—
not for words, but for things.
250
HENRY THE EIGHTH; HIS LITERARY
CHARACTER.
PEACE and policy had diffused a halcyon calmness over
the land, and the people now discerned the approach of
another era. Henry the Eighth, who appears with such
opposite countenances in the great gallery of history, gave
the country more glorious promises of an accomplished
sovereign than England had yet witnessed; and however
he may appear differently before the calm eye of posterity,
the passions of his own times secured his popularity even
to his latter days. Youthful, with all its vigorous and
generous temper, and not inferior in the majesty of his
intellect any more than in that of his person—learned in
his closet, yet enterprising in action—this sovereign im-
pressed his own commanding character on the nation.
Such a monarch gave wings to their genius. Long pent
up in their unhappy island, they soon indulged in a
visionary dominion in France, and in rapid victories in
Scotland; insular England once more aspired to be ad-
mitted into the great European family of states; and
Henry was the arbiter of Francis of France, and of
Charles of Germany. The awakened spirit of the English
people unconsciously was preparatory to the day which
yet no one dreamed of. The minds of men were opening
to wider views; and he who sate on the throne was one
who would not be the last man in the kingdom to be
mindless of its progress.
This lettered monarch himself professed authorship, and
a sceptre was his pen. When he sent forth a volume
which all Europe was to read, and was graced by a new
title which all Europe was to own, who dared to contro-
vert the crowned controversialist, or impugn the validity
of that airy title P. His majesty alone was allowed to
confute himself.” Trained from his early days in scho-
* The manuscript of Henry the Eighth reposes in the Vatican, wit-
nessed by his own hand in this inscription —“Anglorum Rex,
Henry the Eighth ; his Literary Character. 251
lastic divinity, for he was designed to be an archbishop,
the volume, however aided by others, was the native
growth of his own mind. The king's taste for this learn-
ing was studiously flattered by the great cardinal, who
gently recommended to his restless master a perusal of the
nineteen folios of Thomas Aquinas, possibly with the hope
of fixing the royal fly in the repose of the cobwebs of the
schoolmen. Such, indeed, were his habits of study, that
he could interest himself in compiling a national Latin
grammar, when the schools succeeded to the dissolved
monasteries. The grammar was issued as an act of par-
liament; no other but the royal grammar was to be
thumbed without incurring the peril of a premunire.*
It is to be regretted that we are supplied with but few
literary anecdotes of this literary monarch. Some we may
incidentally glean, and some may be deduced from infe-
rence. The age was not yet far enough advanced in civi-
lization to enjoy that inquisitive leisure which leaves its
memorials for a distant posterity in the court tattle of a
Suetonius, or the secret history of a Procopius. It has,
however, been recorded that certain acts of parliament and
proclamations were corrected by the royal pen, and par-
ticularly the first draught of the act which empowered
the king to erect bishoprics was written by his own hand;
and he was the active editor of those monarchical pam-
phlets, as they may be classed, on religious topics, which
were frequently required during his reign.
This learned monarch was unquestionably the first
patron of our vernacular literature; he indulged in a lite-
rary intercourse with our earliest writers, and evinced a
keen curiosity on any novelty in the infant productions of
the English press. On frequent occasions he took a per-
sonal interest in the success, and even in the concoction,
of literary productions. He fully entered into the noble
designs of Sir Thomas Elyot to create a vernacular style,
Henricus Leoni X. ‘mittit hoc opus et fidei testem et amicitiae.’”—I
found this inscription in one of the notes of Selden to the “Polyolbion”
of Drayton.
* The famous Grammar of Lilly was the work of a learned associa-
tion, in which it appears that both the king and the cardinal had the
honour to co-operate. Sir Thomas Elyot has designated Henry “as
the chief author.”—Preface to “The Castle of Health.”
252 Amenities of Literature.
and critically discussed with him the propriety of the use
of new words, “apt for the purpose.” And on one occa-
sion, when Sir Thomas Elyot projected our first Latin
dictionary, the king, in the presence of the courtiers, com-
mended the design, and offered the author not only his
royal counsel, but a supply of such books as the royal
library possessed.
The king was not offended, as were some of the cour-
tiers, with the freedom displayed by Elyot in some of his
ethical works. Elyot tells us—“His grace not only took
it in the better part, but with princely words, full of
majesty, commended my diligence, simplicity, and courage,
in that I spared no estate in the rebuking of vice.” The
king, at the same time that he protected Elyot from his
petty critics, rewarded the early efforts of another ver-
nacular author, who had dedicated to him his first work
in English prose, by a pension, which enabled the young
student, Roger Ascham, to set off on his travels. A
remarkable instance of Henry’s quick attention to the
novelties of our literature appears by his critical conversa-
tion with the antiquary, Thynne, who had presented to
him his new edition of Chaucer. His Majesty soon dis-
covered the novelty of “The Pilgrim's Tale,” a bitter
satire on the pride and state of the clergy, which at the
time was ascribed to Chaucer. The king pointing it out
to the learned editor, observed, in these very words—
“William Thynne ! I doubt this will not be allowed, for
I suspect the bishops will call thee in question for it.”
The editor submitted, “If your grace be not offended, I
hope to be protected by you.” The king “bade him go!
and fear not l” It is evident that his majesty was “not
offended” at a severe satire on the clergy. But even
Henry the Eighth could not always change at will his
political position—the minister in power may find means
to counteract even the absolute king. A great stir was
made in Wolsey’s parliament; it was even proposed that
the works of Chaucer should be wholly suppressed—some
good-humoured sprite rose in favour of the only poet in
the nation, observing that all the world knew that Dan
Chaucer had never written anything more than fables |
The authority of Wolsey so far prevailed that “The Pil-
grim's Tale” was suppressed, and it seems that the
Henry the Eighth ; his Literary Character. 253
haughty prelate would willingly have suppressed the
editor in his own person. THYNNE was an intimate
acquaintance of SKELTON, whose caustic rhymes of
“Colin Clout” had been concocted at his country-house.
THYNNE, in this perilous adventure of publishing “The
Pilgrim's Tale,” was saved from the talons of the car-
dinal, for this monarch's royal word was at all times
sacred with him.
A literary anecdote of this monarch has been recently
disclosed, which at least attests his ardour for information.
When Henry wanted time, if not patience, to read a new
work, he put copies into the hands of two opposite cha-
racters, and from the reports of these rival reviewers the
king ventured to deduce his own results. This method
of judging a work without meditating on it, was a new
royal cut in the road of literature, to which we of late
have been accustomed; but it seemed with Henry rather
to have increased the vacillations of his opinions, than
steadied the firmness of his decisions.
The court of Henry displayed a brilliant circle of literary
noblemen, distinguished for their translations, and some
by their songs and sonnets. Parker, Lord Morley, was a
favourite for his numerous versions, some of which he
dedicated to the king; the witty Wyat, who always sus-
tained the anagram of his name, was a familiar companion;
nor could Henry be insensible to the elegant effusions of
Surrey, unless his political feelings indisposed his admira-
tion. It was at the king's command that Lord Berners
translated the “Chronicles of Froissart,” and the volume
is adorned by the royal arms. Sternhold, the memorable
psalm-enditer, was a groom of the chamber, and a personal
favourite with his master; and Henry appointed the illus-
trious Leland to search for and to preserve the antiquities
of England, and invested him with the honourable title of
“The King's Antiquary.”
Scholars, too, stood around the royal table; and the
company at the palace excelled that of any academy, as
Erasmus has told us. Learning patronised by a despot
became a fashionable accomplishment, and the model for
the court was in the royal family themselves. It is from
this period that we may date that race of learned ladies
which continued through the long reign of our maiden
254 Amenities of Literature.
queen. Yet, before the accession of Henry the Eighth,
half a century had not elapsed when female literature was
at so low an ebb that Sir Thomas More noticed as an
extraordinary circumstance that Jane Shore could read
and write. When Erasmus visited the English court,
he curiously observed that “The course of human affairs
was changed; the monks, famed in time passed for learn-
ing, are become ignorant, and womEN LOVE BOOKS.”
Erasmus had witnessed at the court of Henry the Eighth
the Princess Mary and Elizabeth, both of whom held an
epistolary correspondence in Latin; the daughter of Sir
Anthony Cook, and Lady Jane Grey, versed in Greek;
and the Queen Catherine Parr, his fervent admirer for his
paraphrase on the four gospels. Erasmus had frequented
the house of the More's, which he describes as a perfect
musarum domicilium. The venerable Nicholas Udall, a
contemporary, has also left us a picture of that day. “It
is now a common thing to see young virgins so nouzeld
(nursed) and trained in the study of letters, that they
willingly set all other vain pastimes at nought—reading
and writing, and with most earnest study, both early and
late.” The pliable nobility of Henry the Eighth easily
took the bend of the royal family, and among their
daughters, doubtless, there were more learned women than
are chronicled in Ballard’s “Memoirs.” Lady Jane Grey
meditating on Plato was not so uncommon an incident as
it appears to us in the insulated anecdote. The learning
of that day must not be held as the pedantry of a later,
for it was laying the foundations of every knowledge in
the soil of England.
The king's more elegant tastes diffused themselves
among the finer arts at a time when they were yet
strangers in this land; his father's travelled taste had
received a tincture of these arts when abroad, in Henry
the Eighth they burst into existence with a more robust
aptitude. He eagerly invited foreign artists to his court;
but the patronage of an English monarch was not yet
appreciated by some of the finest geniuses of Italy; we
lay yet too far out of their observation and sympathies;
and it is recorded of one of the Italian artists, a fiery
spirit, who had visited England, that he designated us as
quelle bestie Inglesi. Raphael and Titian could not be
Henry the Eighth ; his Literary Character. 255
lured from their studios and their blue skies; but, fortu-
nately, a northern genius, whose name is as immortal as
their own, was domiciliated by the liberal monarch, the
friend of Erasmus and of More—Hans Holbein.
Among the musicians of Henry we find French, Ita-
lians, and Germans; he was himself a musician, and com-
posed several pieces which I believe are still retained in
the service of the Royal Chapel.” He had a taste for the
gorgeous or grotesque amusements of the Continent,
combining them with a display of the fine arts in their
scenical effects. One memorable night of the Epiphany,
the court was startled by a new glory, where the king
and his companions appeared in a scene which the cour-
tiers had never before witnessed. “It was a mask after
the manner of Italy, a thing not seen afore in England,”
saith the chronicler of Henry's court-days. Once, to
amaze a foreign embassy, and on a sudden to raise up a
banqueting-house, the monarch set to work the right
magicians; an architect, and a poet, and his master of the
revels, were months inventing and labouring. The regal
banqueting-house was adorned by the arts of picture and
music, of sculpture and architecture; all was full of illu-
sion and reality; the house itself was a pageant to exhibit
a pageant. The magnificent prince was himself so
pleased, that he anxiously stopped his visitors at the
points of sight most favourable to catch the illusion of
the perspective. A monarch of such fine tastes and gor-
geous fancies would create the artists who are the true
inventors.
* Sir John Hawkins’ “History of Music,” vol. ii.
256
BOOKS OF THE PEOPLE.
THE people of Europe, who had no other knowledge of
languages than their own uncultivated dialects, seem to
have possessed what, if we may so dignify it, we would
call a fugitive literature of their own. It is obvious that
the people could not be ignorant of the important trans-
actions in their own land; transactions in which their
fathers had been the spectators or the actors, the sons
would perpetuate by their traditions; the names of their
heroes had not died with them on the battle-field. Nor
would the villain's subjection to the feudal lord spoil the
merriment of the land, nor dull the quip of natural face-
tiousness.
Before the people had national books they had national
songs. Even at a period so obscure as the days of Charle-
magne there were “most ancient songs, in which the acts
and wars of the old kings were sung.” These songs
which, the secretary of Charlemagne has informed us,
were sedulously collected by the command of that great
monarch, are described by the secretary, according to his
classical taste, as barbara et antiquissima carmina ; “bar-
barous,” because they were composed in the rude verna-
cular language; yet such was their lasting energy that
they were, even in the eighth century, held to be “most
ancient,” so long had they dwelt in the minds, of the
people! The enlightened emperor had more largely com-
prehended their results in the vernacular idiom, on the
genius of the nation, than had the more learned and diplo-
matic secretary. It was an ingenious conjecture, that,
possibly, even these ancient songs may in some shape have
come down to us in the elder northern and Teutonic ro-
mances, and the Danish, the Swedish, the Scottish, and
the English popular ballads. The kindling narrative, and
the fiery exploits which entranced the imagination of
Charlemagne, mutilated or disguised, may have framed the
incidents of a romance, or been gathered up in the
snatches of old wives’ tales, and, finally, may have even
lingered in the nursery.
Books of the People. 257
Our miserable populace had poets for themselves, whose
looser carols were the joy of the streets or the fields.
Unfortunately we only learn that they had such artless
effusions, for these songs have perished on the lips of the
singers. The monks were too dull or too cunning to
chronicle the outpourings of a people whom they de-
spised, and which assuredly would have often girded them
to the quick. A humorous satire of this kind has stolen
down to us in that exquisite piece of drollery and gro-
tesque invention, “The Land of Cokaigne.” They had
historical ballads which were rehearsed to all listeners;
and it was from these “old ballads, popular through suc-
ceeding times,” that William of Malmesbury tells us that
“he learned more than from books written expressly for
the information of posterity,” though he will not answer
for their precise truth. They had also political ballads. A
memorable one, free as a lampoon, made by one of the ad-
herents of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, in the
fugitive day of his victory in 1264, occasioned a statute
against “slanderous reports or tales to cause discord be-
twixt king and people,” a spirit which by no means was
put down by that enactment.f This was a ballad sung to
the people, as appears by the opening line,—
Sitteth all stille, and harkeneth to me !
This ballad strikingly contrasts with another of un-
nerving dejection, after the irreparable defeat of the party,
and the death of the Earl of Leicester, which, it is re-
markable, is written in French, having been probably ad-
dressed solely to that discomfited nobility who would
sympathise with the lament.
The people, or the inferior classes of society, who de-
spised the courtly French then in vogue, formed such a
multitude, that it was for them that Rob ERT of GLOU-
CESTER wrote his Chronicle, and that Rob ERT of BRUNNE
* Mr. Ellis has preserved it entire, with notes which make it intelli-
gible to any modern reader.
+ Percy’s “Reliques of Ancient English Poetry,” ii. 1.-‘‘The
liberty of abusing their kings and princes at pleasure, assumed by the
good people of this realm, is a privilege of very long standing.”
# The Political Songs of England have been recently given by Mr.
Thomas Wright, to whom our literature owes many deep obligations.
[In the series of volumes published by the Camden Society.
WOL. I. S
258 Amenities of Literature.
translated the Chronicle of Peter Langtoft, and a volume
of recreative tales from the French. The people even then
were eager readers, or, more properly, auditors; and this
further appears in the naïveté of our rhymer's prologue to
this Chronicle. The monk tells us, that this story of
England which he now shows in English, is not intended
for the learned, but the illiterate ; not for the clerk, but
the layman;
Not for the lerid, but the lewed;”
and he describes the class, “they who take solace and
mirth when they sit together in fellowship,” and deem it
“wisdom for to witten” (to know)
The state of the land, and haf it written.
The Hermit of Hampole expressly wrote his theolo-
gical poems for the people, for those who could understand
only English.
At a period when we glean nothing from any literature
of the people, we find that it had a positive existence; for
two chronicles and a collection of tales and theological
poems were furnished for them in their native idiom, by
writers who unquestionably sought for celebrity. The
people, too, had what in every age has been their peculiar
property, all the fragmentary wisdom of antiquity in
those “Few words to the Wise,” so daily useful, or so
apt in the contingencies of human life; proverbs and
AEsopian fables, delightedly transmitted from father to
son. The memories of the people were stored with short
narratives; for a startling tale was not easily forgotten.
They had songs of trades, appropriated to the different
avocations of labourers. These were a solace to the soli-
tary task-worker, or threw a cheering impulse when many
were employed together. Such HALL aptly describes as
Sung to the wheel, and sung unto the payle.*
* Lewed Mr. Campbell interprets low, which is not quite correct.
Hearne explains the term as signifying “the laity, laymen, and the
illiterate.”—The layman was always considered to be illiterate, by the
devices of the monks.
+ It is to be regretted that Mr. JAMIESON, in his “Popular Ballads,”
was unavoidably prevented enlarging this class of his songs. He has
given the carols of the Boatmen, the Corn-grinders, and the Dairy-
J *
Books of the People. 259
These songs are found among the people of every coun-
try; and these effusions were the true poetry of the
heart, which kept alive their social feelings. The people
had even the greater works brought down for them to a
diminutive size; the lays of minstrelsy were usually frag-
ments of the metrical chronicles, or a disjointed tale from
some romance;* such as the popular Fabliaux, which form
the amusing collection of Le Grand.
These proverbs and these fables, these songs and these
tales, all these were a library without books, till the day
arrived when the people had books of their own, open to
their comprehension, and responding to their sympathies.
That this traditional literature was handed down from
generation to generation appears from the circumstance,
that hardly had the printing-press been in use when a
multitude of “the people's books” spread through Europe
their rude instruction or their national humour. They
were even rendered more attractive by the expressive
woodcuts which palpably appealed to a sense which re-
quired no “cunning” to comprehend. Their piety and
their terror were long excited by that variety of Satan and
his devils, which were exhibited to their appalled imagi-
nations—the mouth of hell gaping wide, and the crowd of
the damned driven in by the flaming pitchforks. “The
Calendar of Shepherds,” originally a translation from the
French, was a popular handbook, and rich were its con-
tents—a perpetual almanac, the saints' days, with the
signs of the zodiac, a receptacle of domestic receipts, all
the wisdom of proverbs, and all the mysteries of astro-
logy, divinity, politics, and geography, mingled in verse
and prose. It was the encyclopædia for the poor man, and
even for some of his betters.
The courtly favourites of a former age descended from
the oriel window to the cottage-lattice; perpetuated in
our “chap-books,” sold on the stalls of fairs, and mixed
with the wares of “the chapman,” they became the
women.—Jamieson’s “Popular Ballads,” ii. 352. [See also “Curiosi-
ties of Literature,” vol. ii., p. 142, for an article on Songs of Trades, or
Songs of the People. A volume of “Songs of the English Peasantry” was
published by the Percy Society; and several others are given with the
tunes in Chappell's “Popular Music of the Olden Time.”]
* Hearne’s “Preface to Peter Langtoft's Chronicle,” xxxvii.
S 2
260 Amenities of Literature.
books of the people. “The Gestes” of Guy of Warwick
and Sir Bevis of Hampton, and other fabulous heroes of
chivalry, have been recognised in their humble disguise of
the “Tom Thumb,” and “Tom Hickathrift,” and “Jack
the Giant-Killer” of the people.
In France their “bibliothèque bleue,” books now in the
shape of pamphlets, deriving their name from the colour
of their wrappers, preserves the remains of the fugitive
literature of the people; and in Italy to this day several
of the old romances of chivalry are cut down to a single
paul’s purchase, and delight the humble buyers.” Guerin
Meschino, of native origin, still retains his popularity. In
Germany some patriotic antiquaries have delighted to col-
lect this household literature of the illiterate. The Ger-
mans, who, more than any other nation, seem to have
cherished the hallowed feelings of the homestead, have a
term to designate this class of literature; they call these
volumes Volksbücher, or “the people's books.”
There existed a more intimate intercourse between the
vernacular writers of Germany and our own than appears
yet to have been investigated. “The Merry Jests of
Howleglas,” most delectable to the people from their
grossness and their humour, is of German origin; and it
has been recently discovered that “The History of Friar
Rush,” which perplexed the researches of Ritson, is a
literal prose version of a German poem, printed in 1587.%.
“Reynard the Fox”—a most amusing Æsopian history—
an exquisite satire on the vices of the clergy, the devices
of courtiers, and not sparing majesty itself—an intelligible
manual of profound Machiavelism, displaying the trickery
of circumventing and supplanting, and parrying off oppo-
nents by sleights of wit—was translated by Caxton from
the Dutch.j.
This political fiction has been traced in several lan-
* The curious researches of a French antiquary in this class of
literature are given in the two octavo volumes entitled “Histoire des
Livres Populaires, ou de la Littérature du Colportage,” (Paris, 1854,)
by M. Chas. Nisard, who was appointed to the task by a Royal Com-
mission.—ED.
+ “Foreign Quarterly Review,” vol. 18. [It is reprinted in the first
volume of Thoms’ “Early English Prose Romances.”]
f It has been frequently reprinted, and recently in Germany, as a
livre de l'uare, illustrated with admirable designs by Kaulbach.--ED.
Books of the People. 261
guages to an earlier period than the thirteenth century.
The learned Germans hold it to be a complete picture of
the feudal manners; and Heineccius, one of the most able
jurists, declares that it has often assisted him in clearing
up the jurisprudence of Germany, and that for the genius
of the writer the volume deserves to be ranked with the
classics of antiquity. The writer probably had good rea-
sons for concealing his name, but his intimacy with a Court-
life is apparent. He has dexterously described the wiles
of Reynard, whose cunning overreached his opponents;
his wit, his learning, his humour, and knowledge of man-
kind, are of no ordinary degree; and this favourite satire
contributed, no less than the works of Erasmus, of
Rabelais, and of Boccaccio, to pave the way for the Re-
formation. It was among the earliest productions of the
press in Germany and in England, and became so popular
here that on the old altar-piece of Canterbury cathedral
are several paintings taken from this pungent satire. The
modern Italian poet, CASTI, seems to have borrowed the
plan of his famous political satire “Gl’Animali Parlanti”
from Reynard the Fox.
The Germans have occasionally borrowed from us, as
we also from the Italian jest-books, many of our “tales
and quick answers;” the facetiae of Poggius and Do-
menichi, and others, have been a fertile source of our
OWI).
All tales have wings, whether they come from the east
or the north, and they soon become denizens wherever
they alight. Thus it has happened that the tale which
charmed the wandering Arab in his tent, or cheered the
Northern peasant by his winter-fire, alike held on its
journey toward England and Scotland. Dr. Leyden was
surprised when he first perused the fabliaux of “The
Poor Scholar,” “The Three Thieves,” and “The Sexton
of Cluni,” to recognise the popular stories which he had
often heard in infancy. He was then young in the poetical
studies of the antiquary, or he would not have been at a
loss to know whether the Scots drew their tales from the
French, or the French from their Scottish intercourse; or
whether they originated with the Celtic, or the Scandi-
navian, or sometimes even with the Orientalists.
The genealogy of many a tale, as well as the humours
262 Amenities of Literature.
of native jesters, from the days of Henry the Eighth to
those of Joe Miller, who, as somebody has observed, now,
too, begins to be ancient, may be traced not only to
France, to Spain, and to Italy, but to Greece and Rome,
and at length to Persia and to India. Our most familiar
stories have afforded instances. The tale of “Whittington
and his Cat,” supposed to be indigenous to our country,
was first narrated by Arlotto, in his “Novella delle Gatte,”
in his “Facetie,” which were printed soon after his death,
in 1483; the tale is told of a merchant of Genoa. We
must, however, recollect that Arlotto had been a visitor at
the Court of England. The other puss, though without
her boots, may be seen in Straparola's “Piacevoli Notti.”
The familiar little Hunchback of the “Arabian Nights”
has been a universal favourite ; it may be found every-
where; in “The Seven Wise Masters,” in the “Gesta
Romanorum,” and in Le Grand’s “Fabliaux.” The
popular tale of Llywellyn's greyhound, whose grave we
still visit at Bethgelert, Sir William Jones discovered in
Persian tradition, and it has given rise to a proverb, “As
repentant as the man who killed his greyhound.” In
“Les Maximes des Orientaux” of Galland, we find several
of our popular tales.
“Bluebeard,” “Red-riding Hood,” and “Cinderella,”
are tales told alike in the nurseries of England and
France, Germany and Denmark; and the domestic warn-
ing to the Lady Bird, the chant of our earliest day, is
sung by the nurse of Germany.* All nations seem alike
concerned in this copartnership of tale-telling; borrowing,
adulterating, clipping, and even receiving back the iden-
tical coin which had circulated wherever it was found.
Douce, one of whose favourite pursuits was tracing the
origin and ramification of tales, to my knowledge could
have afforded a large volume of this genealogy of ro-
mance; but that volume probably reposes for the regale
of the next century, that literary antiquary being deterred
by caustic reviewers from the publication of his useful
researches.
The people, however, did not advance much in intel-
* Weber. “Brit. ‘Bib.,” vol. iv.–The German song of the Lady-
bird is beautifully versified in the preface to “German Popular Stories,”
by the late Edgar Taylor. -
Books of the People. 263
ligence, even after the discovery of printing, for new
works, which should have been designed for popular pur-
poses, were still locked up in a language which none
spoke and only the scholar read; and this, notwithstand-
ing a noble example had been set by the Italians to the
other nations of Europe. In the early days of our
printing, the vernacular productions of the press were
thrown out to amuse the children of society, fashioned as
their toys. We have an abundance of poetical and prose
facetiae, all of which were solely adapted to the popular
taste, and some of the writers of which were eminent
persons. Few but have heard of “The Merry Tales of
the Madmen of Gotham,” and of “Scogin's Jests, full of
witty mirth and pleasant shifts.” These facetious works
are said to be “gathered” by Andrew Borde,” a physician
and humorist of a very original cast of mind, and who pro-
fessedly wrote for “the Commonwealth,” that is, the
people, many other works on graver topics, not less sea-
soned with drolleries. He was the first who composed
medical treatises in the vernacular idiom. His “ Breviarie
of Health” is a medical dictionary, and held to be a
“jewel” in his time, as Fuller records. In this alpha-
betical list of all diseases, his philosophy reaches to the
diseases of the mind, whose cure he combines with that
of the body, the medicine and the satire often pleasantly
illustrating each other. From the “Dietarie of Health”
* A calamity to which wits r- incident is that of having their names
prefixed to collections to give them currency. I do not know whether
this has not happened to our author. “The Merry Tales of the Mad-
men of Gotham” are no doubt of great antiquity; they are characterised
by a peculiar simplicity of silliness. “Scogin's Jests,” of the sixty
which we have, a very few tradition may have preserved, but they
must have received in the course of time the addition of pointless jests,
tales marred in the telling, and some things neither jest nor tale ; and
it is remarkable that these are always accompanied by an inane moralisa-
tion, while the more tolerable appear to be preserved in their original
condition. Some future researcher may be so fortunate as to compare
them with the first editions if they exist.
John Scogin was a gentleman of good descent, who was invited to
court by Edward the Fourth for the pleasantry of his wit ; he was a
caustic Democritus, and gave rise to a proverbial phrase, “What says
Scogin P’ If he usually said two-thirds of what is ascribed to him in
this volume, he had never given rise to a proverb. “The Merry Tales
of the Madmen of Gotham ” have been recently reprinted by Mr.
Halliwell.
264 Amenities of Literature.
the modern apostles of regimen might expand their own
revelations; it contains many curious matters, not only
on diet, but on the whole system of domestic economy,
even to the building of a house, regulating a family, and
choosing a good air to dwell in, &c. Another of his books,
“The Introduction of Knowledge,” is a miscellany of
great curiosity, describing the languages and manners of
different countries; in it are specimens of the Cornish,
Welsh, Irish, and Scotch languages, as also of the Turkish
and Egyptian, and others, and the value of their coins.
The apt yet concise discrimination of the national cha-
racter of every people is true to the hour we are writing.
The writings of Borde incidentally preserve curious
notices of the domestic life and of the customs and arts
of that period. Whitaker, in his history of Whalley, has
referred to his directions for the construction of great
houses, in illustration of our domestic architecture. In
all his little books much there is which the antiquary and
the philosopher would not willingly pass by.
Andrew Borde was one of those eccentric geniuses who
live in their own sphere, moving on principles which do
not guide the routine of society. He was a Carthusian
friar; his hair-shirt, however, could never mortify his un-
varying facetiousness; but if he ever rambled in his wits,
he was a wider rambler,even beyond the boundaries of Chris-
tendom, “a thousand or two and more myles;” an extra-
ordinary feat in his day. He took his degree at Mont-
pelier, was incorporated at Oxford, and admitted into the
College of Physicians in London, and was among the
physicians of Henry the Eighth. His facetious genius
could not conceal the real learning and the practical know-
ledge which he derived from personal observation. Borde
has received hard measure from our literary historians.
This ingenious scholar has been branded by Warton as a
mad physician. To close the story of one who was all his
days so facetious, we find that this Momus of philosophers
died in the Fleet. This was the fate of a great humorist,
neither wanting in learning or genius.
It is said that such was his love of “the common-
wealth,” that he sometimes addressed them from an open
stage, in a sort of gratuitous lecture, as some amateurs of
our own days have delighted to deliver; and from whence
Books of the People. 265
has been handed down to us the term of “MERRy-
ANDREw.”
In the limited circles which then divided society, the
taste for humour was very low. We had not yet reached
to the witty humours of Shakspeare and Jonson. Sir
Thomas More’s “Long Story,” in endless stanzas, which
Johnson has strangely placed among the specimens of the
English language, was held as a tale of “infinite conceit,”
assuredly by the great author himself, who seems to have
communicated this sort of taste to one of his family.
Rastall, the learned printer, brother-in-law of More, and
farther, the grave abbreviator of the statutes in English,
issued from his press in 1525, “The Widow Edith’s
Twelve Merrie Gestys.” She was a tricking widow, re-
nowned for her “ lying, weeping, and laughing,” an ancient
mumper, who had triumphed over the whole state spiritual,
and the temporality: travelling from town to town in the
full practice of dupery and wheedling, to the admiration of
her numerous victims. The arts of cheatery were long
held to be facetious ; most of the “Merrie Jests” consist
of stultifying fools, or are sharping tricks, practised on the
simple children of dupery. There is a stock of this base
coinage. This taste for dupery was carried down to a
much later period; for the “Merrie conceited jests of
George Peele,” and of Tarleton, are chiefly tricks of
sharpers.
“The Hye Way to the Spyttel Hous,” or as we should
say, “the road to ruin,” exposes the mysteries and craft of
the venerable brotherhood of mendicancy and imposture ;
their ingenious artifices to attract the eye, and their secret
orgies concealed by midnight; all that flourishes now in St.
Giles's, flourished then in the Barbican. Not long after
we have the first vocabulary of cant language of “The
Fratefnitye of Vacabondes :” whose honorary titles can-
not be yet placed in Burke's Extinct Peerage.
There were attacks on the fair sex in those days which
were parried by their eulogies. We seem to have been
early engaged in that battle of the sexes, where the per-
fections or the imperfections of the female character offered
themes for a libel or a panegyric. From the days of
Boccaccio, the Italians have usually paid their tribute to
“illustrious women,” notwithstanding the free insinuations
266 Amenities of Literature.
of some malicious novelists; that people preceded in the
refinement of social life the tramontani. England and
France, in their ruder circle of society, contracted a
cynicism which appears in a variety of invectives and
apologies for the beautiful sex.
One of the most popular attacks of this sort was “The
School-house of Women,” a severe satire, published anony-
mously. One of the heaviest charges is their bitter
sarcasm on the new dresses of their friends. The author,
one Edward Gosynhyll, charmed, no doubt, by his success-
ful onset, and proud in his victory, threw off the mask;
mending his ambidextrous pen for “The Praise of all
Women,” called “Mulierum Pean,” he acknowledged
himself to be the writer of “The School-house.” Pro-
bably he thought he might now do so with impunity, as
he was making the amende honorable. Whether this saved
the trembling Orpheus from the rage of the Bacchantes,
our scanty literary history tells not ; but his defence is
not considered as the least able among several elicited by
his own attack. º
“The Wife lapped in Morels’ Skins, or the Taming of
a Shrew,” was the favourite tale of the Petruchios of
those days, where a haughty dame is softened into a
degrading obedience by the brutal command of her mate;
a tale which some antiquaries still chuckle over, who have
not been so venturous as this hero.*
All these books, written for the people, were at length
consumed by the hands of their multitudinous readers;
we learn, indeed, in Anthony à Wood's time, that some
had descended to the stalls; but at the present day some
* Several of these pieces are preserved in Mr. Utterson’s “Select
Pieces of Early Popular Poetry.” This attack on women proved not a
theme less fertile among our neighbours; how briskly the skirmish
was carried on the notice of a single writer will show :—“Alphabet de
l’Imperfection et Malice des Femmes, par J. Olivier, licencier aux loix,
et en droit-canon,” 1617; three editions of which appeared in the
course of two years. This blow was repelled by “Defense des Femmes
contre l’Alphabet de leur pretendue Malice,” by Vigoureux, 1617;
the first author rejoined with a “Réponse aux Impertinences de
l’Aposté Capitaine Vigoureux,” by Olivier, 1617. The fire was kept
up by an ally of Olivier, in “Réplique à l’Anti-Malice du Sieur
Vigoureux,” by De la Bruyere, 1617. At a period earlier than
this conflict, the French had, as well as ourselves, many works on the
subject.
Books of the People. 267
of these rare fugitive pieces may be unique. This sort of
pamphlet, Burton, the anatomist of melancholy, was de-
lighted to heap together: and the collection formed by
such a keen relish of popular humours, he actually
bequeathed to the Bodleian Library, where, if they are
kept together, they would answer the design of the donor;
otherwise, such domestic records of the humours and
manners of the age, diffused, among the general mass,
would bear only the value of their rarity,
268
THE DIFFICULTIES EXPERIENCED BY A
PRIMITIVE AUTHOR.
SIR THoMAs ELYoT is the first English prose writer
who avowedly attempted to cultivate the language of his
country. We track the prints of the first weak footsteps
in this new path; and we detect the aberrations of a mind
intent on a great popular design, but still vague and un-
certain, often opposed by contemporaries, yet cheered by
the little world of his readers.
ELYOT for us had been little more than a name, as have
been many retired students, from the negligence of con-
temporaries, had he not been one of those interesting
authors who have let us into the history of their own
minds, and either prospectively have delighted to contem-
plate on their future enterprises, or retrospectively have
exulted in their past labours.
This amiable scholar had been introduced at Court early
in life; his “great friend and crony was Sir Thomas
More;” so plain Anthony à Wood indicates the familiar
intercourse of two great men. Elyot was a favourite with
Henry the Eighth, and employed on various embassies,
particularly on the eonfidential one to Rome to negotiate
the divorce of Queen Katherine. To his public employ-
ments he alludes in his first work, “The Governor,” which
“he had gathered as well of the sayings of most noble
authors, Greek and Latin, as by his own experience, he
being continually trained in some daily affairs of the public
weal from his childhood.”
A passion for literature seems to have prevailed over
the ambition of active life, and on his return from his last
embassy he decided to write books “in our vulgar
tongue,” on a great variety of topics, to instruct his
countrymen. The diversity of his reading, and an un-
wearied pen, happily qualified, in this early age of the lite-
rature of a nation, a student who was impatient to diffuse
that knowledge which he felt he only effectually possessed
in the degree, and in the space, which he communicated it.
His first elaborate work is entitled, “The Boke of the Go-
vernor, devised by Sir Thomas Elyot,” 1531,–a work once
Difficulties Eaperienced by a Primitive Author. 269
so popular, that it passed through seven or eight editions,
and is still valued by the collectors of our ancient literature.
“The Governor” is one of those treatises which, at an
early period of civilization, when general education is im-
perfect, becomes useful to mould the manners and to
inculcate the morals which should distinguish the courtier
and the statesman. Elyot takes his future “Governor”
in the arms of his nurse, and places the ideal being amid
all the scenes which may exercise the virtues, or the
studies which he developes. The work is dedicated to
Henry the Eighth. The design, the imaginary personage,
the author and the patron, are equally dignified. The
style is grave; and it would not be candid in a modern
critic to observe that, in the progress of time, the good
sense has become too obvious, and the perpetual illus-
trations from ancient history too familiar. The erudi-
tion in philology of that day has become a schoolboy's
learning. They had then no other volumes to recur to of
any authority, but what the ancients had left.
Elyot had a notion that, for the last thousand years,
the world had deteriorated, and that the human mind had
not expanded through the course of ages. When he com-
pared the writers of this long series of centuries, the
babbling, though the subtle, schoolmen, who had chained
us down to their artificial forms, with the great authors
of antiquity, there seemed an appearance of truth in his
decision. Christianity had not yet exhibited to modern
Europe the refined moralities of Seneca, and the curious
knowledge of Plutarch, in the homilies of Saints and
Fathers; nor had its histories of man, confined to our
monkish annalists, emulated the narrative charms of Livy,
nor the grandeur of Tacitus. Of the poets of antiquity,
Elyot declared that the English language, at the time he
wrote, could convey nothing equivalent, wanting even
words to express the delicacies, “the turns,” and the
euphony of the Latin verse.
A curious evidence of the jejune state of the public
mind at this period appears in this volume. Here a
learned and grave writer solemnly sets forth several
chapters on “that honest pastime of dancing,” in which
he discovers a series of modern allegories. The various
figures and reciprocal movements between man and woman,
#
270 Amenities of Literature.
“holding each other by the hand,” indicate the order,
concord, prudence, and other virtues so necessary for the
common weal. The singles and reprinses exhibit the
virtue of circumspection, which excites the writer to a pane-
gyric of the father of the reigning sovereign. These ethics
of the dance contain some curious notices, and masters in
the art might hence have embellished their treatises on
the philosophy of dance; for “in its wonderful figures,
which the Greeks do call idea, are comprehended so many
virtues and noble qualities.” It is amusing to observe
how men willingly become the dupes of their fancies, by
affecting to discover motives and analogies, the most un-
connected imaginable with the objects themselves. Long
after our polished statesman wrote, the Puritan excommu-
nicated the sinful dancer, and detected in the graceful evo-
lutions of “the honour,” the “brawl,” and the “single,”
with all their moral movements, the artifices of Satan,
and the perdition of the souls of two partners, dancing
too well. It was the mode of that age thus to moralise,
or allegorise, on the common acts of life, and to sanction
their idlest amusements by some religious motive. At
this period, in France, we find a famous Veneur, Gaston
Phebus, opening his treatise on “hunting” in the spirit
that Elyot had opened to us the mysteries of dancing.
“By hunting, we escape from the seven mortal sins, and
therefore, the more we hunt, the salvation of our souls
will be the more secure. Every good hunter in this world
will have joyance, glee, and solace, (joyeuseté, liesse, et
deduit,) and secure himself a place in Paradise, not perhaps
in the midst, but in the suburbs, because he has shunned
idleness, the root of all evil.”
“The Boke of the Governor” must now be condemned
to the solitary imprisonment of the antiquary's cell, who
will pick up many curious circumstances relative to the
manners of the age—always an amusing subject of specu-
lation, when we contemplate on the gradations of social
life. I suspect the world owed “The Governor” to a book
more famous than itself—the Cortegiano of Castiglione,
which appeared two years before the first edition of this
work of Elyot, and to whose excellence Elyot could have
been no stranger in his embassies to his holiness, and to
the emperor. But of “The Governor,” and “The Corte-
Difficulties Eaſperienced by a Primitive Author. 271
giano,” what can we now say, but that three centuries are
fatal to the immortality of volumes, which, in the infancy
of literature, seemed to have flattered themselves with a
perpetuity of fame.
It was, however, a generous design, in an age of Latin,
to attempt to delight our countrymen by “the vulgar
tongue;” but these “first fruits,” as he calls them, gave
their author a taste of the bitterness of “that tree of
knowledge.”
In a subsequent work, “Of the Knowledge which
maketh a Wise Man,” Elyot has recorded how he had
laid himself open to “the vulgar.” In the circle of a
Court there was equal peril in moralising, which was
deemed to be a rebuke, as in applying fusty stories, which
were considered as nothing less than disguised person-
alities. “The Boke” was not thankfully received. The
persifleurs, those butterflies who carry waspish stings,
accounted Sir Thomas to be"of no little presumption, that
“in noting other men's vices he should correct magnificat.”
This odd neologism of “magnificat” was a mystical coin-
age, which circulated among these aristocratic exclusives
who, as Elyot describes them, “like a galled horse abiding
no plaisters, be always knapping and kicking at such ex-
amples and sentences as they do feel sharp, or do bite
them.” The chapters on “The Diversity of Flatterers,”
and similar subjects, had made many “a galled jade
wince;” and in applying the salve, he got a kick for the
cure. They wondered why the knight wrote at all! “Other
much wiser men, and better learned than he, do forbear to
write anything.” They inscribed modern names to his
ancient portraits, The worried author exclaims—“There
be Gnathos in Spain as well as in Greece; Pasquils in
England as well as in Rome, &c. If men will seek for
them in England which I set in other places, I cannot let
(hinder) them.” But in another work—“Image of Go-
vernance,” 1540—when he detailed “the monstrous living
of the Emperor Heliogabalus,” and contrasted that gross
epicurean with Severus, such a bold and open execration
of the vices of a luxurious Court could not avoid being
obvious to the royal sensualist and his companions, how-
ever the character and the tale were removed to a bygone age.
In this early attempt to cultivate “the vulgar tongue,”
272 Amenities of Literature.
some cavilled at his strange terms. It is a striking in-
stance of the simplicity of the critics at that early period
of our language, that our author formally explains the word
maturity—“a Latin word, which I am constrained to
usurp, lacking a name in English, and which, though it
be strange and dark, yet may be understood as other
words late comen out of Italy and France, and made
denizens among us.” Augustus Caesar, it seems, had fre-
quently in his mouth this word matura—do maturely
as “if he should have said, Do neither too much nor too
little—too swiftly nor too slowly.” Elyot would confine
the figurative Latin term to a metaphysical designation of
the acts of men in their most perfect state, “reserving,”
as he says, “the word ripeness to fruit and other things,
separate from affairs, as we have now in usage.” Elyot
exults in having augmented the English language by the
introduction of this Latin term, now made English for
the first time ! It has flourished as well as this other,
“the redolent savours of sweet herbs and flowers.” But
his ear was not always musical, and some of his neologisms
are less graceful—“an alective,” to wit; “fatigate,” to
fatigue; “ostent,” to show, and to “sufficate some dis-
putation.” Such were the first weak steps of the fathers
of our language, who, however, culled for us many a flower
among their cockle.
But a murmur more prejudicial arose than the idle
cavil of new and hard words; for some asserted that “the
Doke seemed to be overlong.” Our primeval author con-
sidered that “knowledge of wisdom cannot be shortly de-
clared.” Elyot had not yet attained, by sufficient prac-
tice in authorship, the secret, that the volume which he
had so much pleasure in writing could be over tedious in
reading. “For those,” he observes sarcastically, “who
be well willing, it is soon learned—in good faith sooner
than primero or gleek.” The nation must have then con-
sisted of young readers, when a diminutive volume in
twelves was deemed to be “overlong.” In this apology
for his writings, he threw out an undaunted declaration of
his resolution to proceed with future volumes.—“If the
readers of my works, by the noble example of our most
dear sovereign lord, do justly and lovingly interpret my
labours, I, during the residue of my life, will now and
Difficulties Eaſperienced by a Primitive Author. 273
then set forth such fruits of my study, profitable, as I
trust, unto this my country, leaving malicious readers with
their incurable fury.” Such was the innocent criticism
of our earliest writer—his pen was hardly tipped with
gall.
As all subjects were equally seductive to the artless
pen of a primitive author, who had yet no rivals to
encounter in public, Elyot turned his useful studies to
a topic very opposite to that of political ethics. He put
forth “The Castle of Health,” a medical treatise, which
passed through nearly as many honourable editions as
“The Governor.” It did not, however, abate the number,
though it changed the character of his cavillers, who were
now the whole corporate body of the physicians!
The author has told his amusing story in the preface
to a third edition, in 1541.
“Why should I be grieved with reproaches wherewith
some of my country do recompense me for my labours,
taken without hope of temporal reward, only for the
fervent affection which I have ever borne toward the
public weal of my country P. “A worthy matter!’ saith
one; ‘Sir Thomas Elyot has become a physician, and
writeth on physic, which beseemeth not a knight; he
might have been much better occupied.’ Truly, if they
will call him a physician who is studious of the weal of his
country, let men so name me.”
But there was no shame in studying this science, or
setting forth any book, being—
“Thereto provoked by the noble example of my noble
master King Henry VIII. ; for his Highness hath not
disdained to be the chief author of an introduction to
grammar for the children of his subjects.
“If physicians be angry that I have written physic in
English, let them remember that Greeks wrote in Greek,
the Romans in Latin, and Avicenna in Arabic, which were
their own proper and maternal tongues. These were
paymims and Jews, but in this part of charity they far
surmounted us Christians.”
Several years after, when our author reverted to his
“Castle of Health,” the Castle was brightened by the
beams of public favour. Its author now exulted that “It
shall long preserve men, be some physicians never so
WOL. I. T
274 Amenities of Literature.
angry.” The work had not been intended to depreciate
medical professors, but “for their commodity, by instruct-
ing the sick, and observing a good order in diet, pre-
venting the great causes of sickness, or by which they
could the sooner be cured.” Our philosopher had at-
tempted to draw aside that mystifying veil with which
some affected to envelope the arcana of medicine, as if they
were desirous “ of writing in cypher that none but them-
selves could read.” Our author had anticipated that
revolution in medical science which afterwards, at a distant
period, has been productive of some of the ablest treatises
in the vernacular languages of Europe.
The patriotic studies of Elyot did not terminate in
these ethical and popular volumes, for he had taxed his
daily diligence for his country’s weal. This appeared in
“The Dictionary of Sir Thomas Elyot, 1535,” a folio,
which laid the foundation of our future lexicons, “de-
claring Latin by English,” as Elyot describes his own
labour.
Elyot had suffered some disappointments as a courtier
in the days of Wolsey, who lavished the royal favours on
churchmen. In a letter to Lord Cromwell, he describes
himself with a very narrow income, supporting his estab-
lishment, “equal to any knight in the country where I
dwell who have much more to live on ;” but a new office,
involving considerable expense in its maintenance, to which
he had been just appointed, he declares would be his ruin,
having already discharged “five honest and tall person-
ages.”—“I wot not by what malice of fortune I am con-
strained to be in that office, whereunto is, as it were,
appendent loss of money and good name, all sharpness
and diligence in justice now-a-days being everywhere
odious.” And this was at a time when “I trusted to live
quietly, and by little and little to repay my creditors,
and to reconcile myself to mine old studies.”
This letter conveys a favourable impression of the real
character of this learned man; but Elyot had conde-
scended abjectly to join with the herd in the general
scramble for the monastic lands; and if he feigned poverty,
the degradation is not less. There are cruel epochs in a
great revolution; moments of trial which too often ex-
hibit the lofty philosopher shrinking into one of the
Difficulties Eaperienced by a Primitive Author. 275
people. It is probable that he succeeded in his petition,
for I find his name among the commissioners appointed to
make a general inquiry after lands belonging to the Church,
as also to the colleges of the universities, in 1534.
But in this day of weakness Elyot sunk far lower than
petitioning for suppressed lands. Elyot was suspected of
inclining to Popery, and being adverse to the new order
of affairs. His former close intimacy with Sir Thomas
More contributed to this suspicion, and now, it is sad to
relate, he renounces this ancient and honourable friendship !
Peter denied his Master. “I beseech your good lordship
now to lay apart the remembrance of the amity betwixt
me and Sir Thomas More, which was but usque ad aras,
as is the proverb, considering that I was never so much
addicted unto him as I was unto truth and fidelity towards
my sovereign lord.” Was the influence of such illustrious
friendships to be confined to chimney-corners ? Had
Elyot not listened to the wisdom, and revered the immu-
table fortitude, of “his great friend and crony ?”—he, the
stern moralist, who, in his “Governor,” had written a
remarkable chapter on “the constancy of friends,” and
had illustrated that passion by the romantic tale of Titus
and Gesippus, where the personal trials of both parties
far exceed those of the Damon and Pythias of antiquity,
and are so eloquently developed and so exquisitely narrated
by the great Italian novelist.
The literary history of Sir THOMAs ELYoT exhibits the
difficulties experienced by a primitive author in the earliest
attempts to open a new path to the cultivation of a
vernacular literature; and it seems to have required all
the magnanimity of our author to sustain his superiority
among his own circle, by disdaining their petulant criticism,
and by the honest confidence he gathered as he proceeded,
in the successive editions of his writings.
T 2
276
SKELTON.
AT a period when satire had not yet assumed any legiti-
mate form, a singular genius appeared in Skelton. His
satire is peculiar, but it is stamped by vigorous originality.
The fertility of his conceptions in his satirical or his
humorous vein is thrown out in a style created by himself.
The Skeltonical short verse, contracted into five or six,
and even four syllables, is wild and airy. In the quick-
returning rhymes, the playfulness of the diction, and the
pungency of new words, usually ludicrous, often expressive,
and sometimes felicitous, there is a stirring spirit which
will be best felt in an audible reading. The velocity of
his verse has a carol of its own. The chimes ring in the
ear, and the thoughts are flung about like coruscations.
But the magic of the poet is confined to his spell; at his
first step out of it he falls to the earth never to recover
himself. Skelton is a great creator only when he writes
what baffles imitation, for it is his fate, when touching
more solemn strains, to betray no quality of a poet—inert
in imagination and naked in diction. Whenever his muse
plunges into the long measure of heroic verse, she is
drowned in no Heliconian stream. Skelton seems himself
aware of his miserable fate, and repeatedly, with great
truth, if not with some modesty, complains of
Mine homely rudeness and dryness.
But when he returns to his own manner and his own
rhyme, when he riots in the wantonness of his prodigal
genius, irresistible and daring, the poet was not unconscious
of his faculty; and truly he tells,
Though my rime be ragged,
Tattered and jagged,
Rudely rain-beaten,
Rusty, moth-eaten,
If ye take well therewith,
It hath in it some pith.
Whether Skelton really adopted the measures of the
old tavern-minstrelsy used by harpers, who gave “a fit
Skelton. 277
2
of mirth for a groat,” or “carols for Christmas,” or
“lascivious poems for bride-ales,” as Puttenham, the arch-
critic of Elizabeth's reign, supposes; or whether in
Skelton’s introduction of alternate Latin lines among his
verses he caught the Macaronic caprice of the Italians, as
Warton suggests; the Skeltonical style remains his own
undisputed possession. He is a poet who has left his name
to his own verse—a verse, airy but pungent, so admirably
adapted for the popular ear that it has been frequently
copied,” and has led some eminent critics into singular
misconceptions. The minstrel tune of the Skeltonical
rhyme is easily caught, but the invention of style and
“the pith ” mock these imitators. The facility of doggrel
merely of itself could not have yielded the exuberance of
his humour and the mordacity of his satire.
This singular writer has suffered the mischance of being
too original for some of his critics; they looked on the
surface, and did not always suspect the depths they glided
over: the legitimate taste of others has revolted against
the mixture of the ludicrous and the invective. A taste
for humour is a rarer faculty than most persons imagine;
where it is not indigenous, no art of man can plant it.
There is no substitute for such a volatile existence, and
where even it exists in a limited degree, we cannot enlarge
its capacity for reception. A great master of humour, who
* George Ellis, although an elegant critic, could not relish “the
Skeltonical minstrelsy.” In an extract from a manuscript poem
ascribed to Skelton, “The Image of Hypocrisy,” and truly Skeltonical
in every sense, he condemned it as “a piece of obscure and unintel-
ligible ribaldry;” and so, no doubt, it has been accepted. But the
truth is, the morsel is of exquisite poignancy, pointed at Sir Thomas
More's controversial writings, to which the allusions in every line might
be pointed out. As these works were written after the death of Skelton,
the merit entirely remains with this fortunate imitator.
In the public rejoicings at the defeat of the Armada, in 1589, a
ludicrous bard poured forth his patriotic effusions in what he called
“A Skeltonical Salutation, or Condign Gratulation,” of the Spaniard,
who, he says, -
In a bravado,
Spent many a crusado.
In a reprint of the poem of “Elynoure Rummynge,” in 1624, which
may be found in the “Harl. Miscellany,” vol. i., there is a poem pre-
fixed which ridicules the lovers of tobacco; this anachronism betrays
the imitator. At the close there are some verses from the Ghost of
Skelton ; but we believe it is a real ghost.
278 Amenities of Literature.
observed from his experience, has solemnly told us that
“it is not in the power of every one to taste humour,
however he may wish it—it is the gift of God; and a true
feeler always brings half the entertainment along with
him.”%
Puttenham was the first critic who prized Skelton
cheaply; the artificial and courtly critic of Elizabeth's
reign could not rightly estimate such a wild and irregular
genius. The critic's fastidious ear listens to nothing but
the jar of rude rhymes, while the courtier's delicacy
shrinks from the nerve of appalling satire. “Such,” says
this critic, “are the rhymes of Skelton, usurping the name
of a Poet Laureat, being indeed but a rude rayling rhimer,
and all his doings ridiculous—pleasing only the popular
ear.” This affected critic never suspected “the pith” of
“the ridiculous;” the grotesque humour covering the
dread invective which shook a Wolsey under his canopy.
Another Elizabethan critic, the obsequious Meres, re-
echoes the dictum. These opinions perhaps prejudiced
the historian of our poetry, who seems to have appreciated
them as the echoes of the poet's contemporaries. Yet
we know how highly his contemporaries prized him, not-
withstanding the host whom he provoked. One poetical
brothert distinguishes him as “the Inventive Skelton,”
and we find the following full-length portrait of him by
another:—f

A poet for his art,
Whose judgment sure was high,
And had great practise of the pen,
His works they will not lie;
His termes to taunts did leane,
His talk was as he wrate,
Full quick of wit, right sharpe of wordes,
And skilful of the state;
* $º * * *
And to the hateful minde,
That did disdaine his doings still,
A scorner of his kinde.
When Dr. Johnson observed that “Skelton cannot be
said to have attained great elegance of language,” he tried
Skelton by a test of criticism at which Skelton would have
* Sterne, + Henry Bradshaw. “Warton,” iii. 13.
+ Thomas Churchyard.
Skelton. 279
laughed, and “jangled and wrangled.” Warton has also
censured him for adopting “the familiar phraseology of
the common people.” The learned editor of Johnson's
“Dictionary” corrects both our critics. “If Skelton did
not attain great elegance of language, he however pos-
sessed great knowledge of it. From his works may be
drawn an abundance of terms which were then in use among
the vulgar as well as the learned, and which no other
writer of his time so obviously (and often so wittily)
illustrated. Skelton seems to have been fully aware of
the condition of our vernacular idiom when he wrote, for
he has thus described it :—
Our natural tongue is rude,
And hard to be enneude
With polished termes lusty;
Our language is so rusty,
So cankered, and so full
Of frowards, and so dull,
That if I would apply
To write ordinately,
I wot not where to find
Terms to serve my mind.
It was obviously his design to be as great a creator of
words as he was of ideas. Many of his mintage would
have given strength to our idiom. Caxton, as a contem-
porary, is some authority that Skelton improved the
language.
Let not the reader imagine that Skelton was only “a
rude rayling rhimer.” Skelton was the tutor of Henry
the Eighth; and one who knew him well describes him
3.S.–
Seldom out of prince’s grace.
Erasmus distinguished him “as the light and ornament
of British letters;” and one, he addresses the royal pupil,
“who can not only excite your studies, but complete
them.” Warton attests his classical attainments—“Had
not his propensity to the ridiculous induced him to fol-
low the whimsies of Walter Mapes, Skelton would have
appeared among the first writers of Latin poetry in
England.” Skelton chose to be himself; and this is
what the generality of his critics have not taken in their
VI eV.
Skelton was an ecclesiastic who was evidently among
280 Amenities of Literature.
those who had adopted the principles of reformation be-
fore the Reformation. With equal levity and scorn he
struck at the friars from his pulpit or in his ballad, he
ridiculed the Romish ritual, and he took unto himself that
wife who was to be called a concubine. To the same
feelings we may also ascribe the declamatory invective
against Cardinal Wolsey, from whose terrible arm he flew
into the sanctuary of Westminster, where he remained
protected by Abbot Islip until his death, which took
place in 1529, but a few short months before the fall of
Wolsey. It is supposed that the king did not wholly
dislike the levelling of the greatness of his overgrown
minister; and it is remarkable that one of the charges
subsequently brought by the council in 1529 against
Wolsey—his imperious carriage at the council-board—is
precisely one of the accusations of our poet, only divested
of rhyme; whence perhaps we may infer that Skelton was
an organ of the rising party.
“Why Come you not to Court P”—that daring state-
picture of an omnipotent minister—and “The Boke of
Colin Clout,” where the poet pretends only to relate
what the people talk about the luxurious clergy, and
seems to be half the reformer, are the most original satires
in the language. In the days when Skelton wrote these
satires there appeared a poem known by the title of
“Reade me and be not Wrothe,” a voluminous invective
against the Cardinal and the Romish superstitions, which
has been ascribed by some to Skelton. The writer was
WILLIAM ROY, a friar; the genius, though not the zeal,
of ROY and SKELTON are far apart—as far as the buoy-
ancy of racy originality is removed from the downright
earnestness of grave mediocrity. Roy had been the
learned assistant of Tyndale in the first edition of the
translation of the New Testament, and it was the public
conflagration at London of that whole edition which
aroused his indignant spirit. The satire, which had been
printed abroad, was diligently suppressed by an emissary
of the Cardinal purchasing up all the copies; and few
were saved from the ravage;* the author, however,
escaped out of the country.
* After the death of the Cardinal it was reprinted, in 1546; but
the satire was weakened, being transferred from Wolsey and wholly
Skelton. 281
In “The Crown of Lawrell” Skelton has himself fur-
nished a catalogue of his numerous writings, the greater
number of which have not come down to us. Literary
productions were at that day printed on loose sheets, or
in small pamphlets, which the winds seem to have scat-
tered. We learn there of his graver labours. He com-
posed the “Speculum Principis” for his royal pupil—
To bear in hand, therein to read,
and he translated Diodorus Siculus—
Six volumes engrossed, it doth contain.
To have composed a manual for the education of a prince,
and to have persevered through a laborious version, are
sufficient evidence that the learned Skelton had his stu-
dious days as well as his hours of caustic jocularity. He
appears to have written various pieces for the court enter-
tainment; but for us exists only an account of the inter-
lude of the “Nigramansir,” in the pages of Warton, and
a single copy of the goodly interlude of “Magnificence,”*
in the Garrick collection. If we accept his abstract per-
sonations merely as the names, and not the qualities of
the dramatic personages, “Magnificence” approaches to
the true vein of comedy.
Skelton was, however, probably more gratified by his
own Skeltonical style, moulding it with the wantonness
of power on whatever theme, comic or serious. In a poem
remarkable for its elegant playfulness, a very graceful
maiden, whose loveliness the poet has touched with the
most vivid colouring, grieving over the fate of her sparrow
from its feline foe, chants a dirige, a paternoster, and an
Ave Maria for its soul, and the souls of all sparrows. In
this discursive poem, which glides from object to object, in
the vast abundance of fancy, a general mourning of all the
birds in the air, and many allusions to the old romances,
“Philip Sparrow,” for its elegance, may be placed by the
laid on the clergy. The very rare first edition is reprinted in the
“Harleian Miscellany,” by Parke, vol. ix. Tyndale has reproached
his colleague with being somewhat artful and mutable in his friendships;
but the wandering man proved the constancy of his principles, for as a
heretic he perished at the stake in Portugal.
* It has passed through a reprint by the Roxburgh Club.
282 Amenities of Literature.
side of Lesbia's Bird, and, for its playfulness, by the Wert
Wert of Gresset.
But Skelton was never more vivid than in his Ale-wife,
and all
The mad mummyng
Of Elynour Rummyng, —
a piece which has been more frequently reprinted than any
of his works. It remains a morsel of poignant relish for
the antiquary, still enamoured of the portrait of this
grisly dame of Leatherhead, where her name and her do-
micile still exist. Such is the immortality a poet can
bestow.* “The Tunnyng of Elynoure Rummyng” is a
remarkable production of THE GROTESQUE, or the low
burlesque; the humour as low as you please, but as strong
as you can imagine. Cleland is reported, in Spence's
Anecdotes of Pope, to have said, that this “Tunnyng of
Elynoure Rummyng” was taken from a poem of Lorenzo
de' Medici. There is indeed a jocose satire by that noble
bard, entitled “I Beoni,” the Topers; an elegant piece of
playful humour, where the characters are a company of
thirsty souls hastening out of the gates of Florence to a
treat of excellent wine. It was printed by the Giunti, in
1568, f and therefore this burlesque piece could never have
been known to Skelton. The manners of our Alewife and
her gossips are purely English, and their contrivances to
obtain their potations such as the village of Leatherhead
would afford.
The latest edition of Skelton was published in the days
of Pope, which occasioned some strictures in conversation
from the great poet. The laureated poet of Henry the
Eighth is styled “beastly;” probably Pope alluded to
this minute portrait of “Elymoure Rummynge” and her
crowd of customers. Beastliness should have been a
delicate subject for censure from Pope. But surely Pope
* A noble amateur laid on the shrine of this antiquated beauty 201.
to possess her rare portrait ; and, on the republication of this portrait,
Steevens wrote some sarcastic verses on the print-collectors in the
“European Mag.” 1794; they show this famous commentator to have
been a polished wit, though he pronounced the Sonnets of Shak-
speare unreadable. These verses have been reprinted in “Dibdin's
Bibliomania.”
+ Roscoe’s “Lorenzo de' Medici,” i. 290.
Skelton. 283
had never read Skelton; for could that great poet have
passed by the playful graces of “Philip Sparrow” only to
remember the broad gossips of “Elymoure Rummyng P”
The amazing contrast of these two poems is the most
certain evidence of the extent of the genius of the poet ;
he who with copious fondness dwelt on a picture which
rivals the gracefulness of Albano, could with equal com-
pleteness give us the drunken gossipers of an Ostade. It
is true that in the one we are more than delighted, and in
the other we are more than disgusted; but in the impar-
tiality of philosophical criticism, we must award that
none but the most original genius could produce both. It
is this which entitles our bard to be styled the “ Inven-
tive Skelton.”
But are personal satires and libels of the day deserving
the attention of posterity ? I answer, that for posterity
there are no satires nor libels. We are concerned only
with human nature. When the satirical is placed by the
side of the historical character, they reflect a mutual
light. We become more intimately acquainted with the
great Cardinal, by laying together the satire of the men-
dacious Skelton with the domestic eulogy of the gentle
Cavendish. The interest which posterity takes is diffe-
rent from that of contemporaries; our vision is more
complete; they witnessed the beginnings, but we behold
the ends. We are no longer deceived by hyperbolical ex-
aggeration, or inflamed by unsparing invective; the ideal
personage of the satirist is compared with the real one of
the historian, and we touch only delicate truths. What
Wolsey was we know, but how he was known to his own
times, and to the people, we can only gather from the
private satirist; corrected by the passionless arbiter of
another age, the satirist becomes the useful historian of
the man.
The extraordinary combination in the genius of Skelton
was that of two most opposite and potent faculties—the
hyperbolical ludicrous masking the invective. He acts the
character of a buffoon ; he talks the language of drollery;
he even mints a coinage of his own, to deepen the colours
of his extravagance—and all this was for the people !
But his hand conceals a poniard; his rapid gestures only
strike the deeper into his victim, and we find that the
284 Amenities of Literature.
Tragedy of the State has been acted while we were only
lookers-on before a stage erected for the popular gaze.*
* The first collection of some of the works of Skelton was made by
Thomas Marshe, in 1568. Another edition, by an unknown editor,
was in 1736 ; the text of which is, as Gifford justly observed, execrable.
Many of his writings still remain in their manuscript state—see
Harleian MSS., 367, 2252 ; and many printed ones have not been
collected. There is no task in our literature so desperately difficult as
that of offering a correct text of this anomalous poet ; but we may hope
to receive it from the diligent labours of Mr. Dyce, so long promised ;
it would form one of the richest volumes of the Camden publications.
[Since this note was written, the poetical works of Skelton have been
published by the Rev. A. Dyce, (2 vols, 8vo, T. Rodd, 1843,) with an
abundance of elucidatory notes and bibliographical information ; so that
this difficult task has been performed with great success; and the
volumes are among the most valuable of the many works of that con-
scientious editor.]
285
THE SHIP OF FOOLS.
THE Stultifera Navis, or Ship of Fools, composed in verse
by Sebastian Brandt, a learned German civilian, is a gene-
ral satire on society. It has been translated into verse, or
turned into prose, in almost every European language;
and no work of such dimensions has been made so familiar
to general readers.
There are works whose design displays the most strik-
ing originality; but, alas ! there are so many infelicitous
modes of execution To freight a ship with fools, col-
lected from all the classes and professions of society, would
have been a creative idea in the brain of Lucian, or an-
other pilgrimage for the personages of Chaucer; and na-
tural or grotesque incidents would have started from the
invention of Rabelais. These men of genius would have
sportively navigated their “Ship,” and not have driven
aboard fool after fool, an undistinguishable shoal, by the
mere brutal force of the pen, only to sermonise with a
tedious homily or a tritical declamation. Erasmus play-
fully threw out a small sparkling volume on folly, which
we still open; Brandt furnishes a massive tome, with
fools huddled together; and while we lose our own, we
are astonished at his patience.
The severity of this decision, we own, is that of a critic
of the nineteenth century on an author of the sixteenth.
It is amusing to observe the perplexities of an eminent
French critic, Monsieur Guizot, in his endeavour to decide
on the “Stultifera Navis.” A critic of his school could
not rightly comprehend how it happened that so dull a
book had been a popular one, multiplied by editions in all
the languages of Europe. “It is,” says M. Guizot, “a
collection of extravagant or of gross plaisanteries—which
may have been poignant at their time, but which at this
day have no other merit than that of having had great
success three hundred years ago.” The salt of plaisan-
teries cannot be damped by three centuries, provided they
286 Amenities of Literature.
were such ; but our author is by no means facetious : he
is much too downright; the tone is invariably condem-
natory or exhortative; and the Proverbs, the Psalms, and
Jeremiah, are more frequently appealed to than Cicero,
Horace, and Ovid, who occasionally show their heads in
his margin.
We must look somewhat deeper would we learn why a
book which now tries our patience was not undeserving
of those multiplied editions which have ascertained its
popularity.
At the period when this volume appeared, we in the
north were far removed from the urbanity and the elevated
ethics of lettered Italy. Brandt took this general view
of society at the time when the illustrious Castiglione was
an ambassador to our Henry the Seventh, and was medi-
tating to model the manners of his countrymen by his
Libro dell' Cortigiano; and La Casa, by his Galateo, was
founding a code of minute politeness. But neither France,
nor Germany, nor England, had yet greatly advanced in
the civil intercourse of life, and could not appreciate such
exility of elegance, and such sublimated refinement. With
us, the staple of our moral philosophy was of a homespun
but firm texture, and had in it more of yarn than of silk.
Men had little to read; they were not weary of that
eternal iteration of admonition on whatever was most
painful or most despicable in their conduct; their ideas
were uncertain, and their minds remained to be developed;
nothing was trite or trivial. In his wide survey of human
life, the author addressed the mundane fools of his age in
the manner level to their comprehension; the ethical
character of the volume was such, that the Abbot Trithe-
mus designated it as a divine book; and in this volume,
which read like a homily, while every man beheld the
reflection of his own habits and thoughts, he chuckled
over the sayings and doings of his neighbours. If any one
quipped the profession of another, the sufferer had only to
turn the leaf to find ample revenge; and these were the
causes of the uninterrupted popularity of this ethical work.
“The Ship of Fools” is, indeed, cumbrous, rude, and
inartificial, and was not constructed on the principles which
regulate our fast-sailing vessels; yet it may be prized for
something more than its curiosity. It is an ancient satire,
The Ship of Fools. 287
of that age of simplicity which must precede an age of
refinement.
If man in society changes his manners, he cannot vary
his species; man remains nothing but man ; for, however
disguised by new modes of acting, the same principles of
our actions are always at work. The same follies and the
same vices in their result actuate the human being in all
ages; and he who turns over the volume of the learned
civilian of Germany will find detailed those great moral
effects in life which, if the modern moralist may invest
with more dignity, he could not have discovered with more
truth. We have outgrown his counsels, but we never shall
elude the vexatious consequences of his experience; and
many a chapter in the “Ship of Fools” will point many
an argument ad hominum, and awaken in the secret hours
of our reminiscences the pang of contrite sorrows, or tingle
our cheek with a blush for our weaknesses. The truths of
human nature are ever echoing in our breasts.
“The Ship of Fools,” by Alexander Barclay—a volume of
renown among literary antiquaries, and of rarity and price—
is at once a translation and an original. In octave stanza,
flowing in the ballad measure, Barclay has a natural con-
struction of style still retaining a vernacular vigour.
He is noticed by Warton for having contributed his share
in the improvement of English phraseology; and, indeed,
we are often surprised to discover many felicities of our
native idiom ; and the work, though it should be repulsive
to some for its black-letter, is perfectly intelligible to a
modern reader. The verse being prosaic, preserves its
colloquial ease, though with more gravity than suits
sportive subjects; we sometimes feel the tediousness of the
good sense of the Priest of St. Mary Ottery.
The edition of 1570 of the “Ship of Fooles” contains
other productions of Barclay. In his “Eclogues,”f our
good priest, who did not write, as he says, “for the laud
of man,” indulged his ethical and theological vein in pas-
* The woodcuts in this edition are wretched; though in part they are
copied from the fine specimens of the art which embellish the Latin
version of Locherus.
+ One of these, a “Dialogue between a Citizen and Uplandishman,”
has been reprinted by the Percy Society, under the editorship of Mr.
Fairholt, who has given a digest of the other Eclogues in a Preface.—ED.
288 Amenities of Literature.
toral poetry; and the interlocutors are citizens disputing
with men of the country, and poets with their patrons.
To have converted shepherds into scholastic disputants or
town-satirists was an unnatural change; but this whim-
sical taste had been introduced by Petrarch and Mantuan ;
and the first eclogues in the English language, which
Warton tells us are those of Barclay, took this strange
form—an incongruity our Spenser had not the skill to
avoid, and for which Milton has been censured. The less
fortunate anomalies of genius are often perpetuated by the
inconsiderate imitation of those who should be most
sensible of their deformity.
In the eclogues of Barclay, the country is ever repre-
sented in an impoverished, depressed state ; and the
splendour of the city, and the luxurious indulgence of the
citizen and the courtier, offer a singular contrast to the
extreme misery of the agriculturist. We may infer that
the country had been deplorably ravaged or neglected in
the civil wars, which, half a century afterwards, was to be
covered by the fat beeves of the graziers of Elizabeth.
289
THE PSYCHOLOGICAL CHARACTER OF
SIR. THOMAS MORE.
IF the art of biography be the development of “the ruling
passion,” it is in strong characters that we must seek for
the single feature. Learned and meditative as was Sir
THOMAS MoRE, a jesting humour, a philosophical jocun-
dity, indulged on important as well as on ordinary
occasions, served his wise purpose. He seems to have
taken refuge from the follies of other men by retreating to
the pleasantry of his own. Grave men censured him for
the absence of all gravity; and some imagined that the
singularity of his facetious disposition, which sometimes
seemed even ludicrous, was carried on to affectation. It
was certainly inherent, it was a constitutional temper—it
twined itself in his fibres,--it betrayed itself on his coun-
tenance. We detect it from the comic vein of his boyhood
when among the players; we pursue it through the nume-
rous transactions of his life; and we leave him at its last
solemn close, when life and death were within a second of
each other, uttering three jests upon the scaffold. Even
when he seemed to have quitted the world, and had laid
his head on the block, he bade the executioner stay his
hand till he had removed his beard, observing, “that that
had never committed any treason.”
This mirthful mind had, indeed, settled on his features.
ERASMUs, who has furnished us with an enamelled por-
trait of MoRE, among its minuter touches reluctantly
confessed that “the countenance of Sir Thomas More was
a transcript of his mind, inclining to an habitual smile ;”
and he adds, “ingenuously to confess the truth, that face
is formed for the expression of mirth rather than of gravity
or dignity.” But, lest he should derange the gravity of
the German to whom he was writing, Erasmus cautiously
qualifies the disparaging delineation—“though as far as
possible removed from folly or buffoonery.” MoRE, how-
ever, would assume a solemn countenance when on the
point of throwing out some facetious stroke. He has so
"WOL. I. TJ

290 Amenities of Literature.
described himself when an interlocutor in one of his dia-
logues addresses him—“You use to look so sadly when
you mean merrily, that many times men doubt whether
1you speak in sport when you mean good earnest.”
The unaffected playfulness of the mind; the smile whose
sweetness allayed the causticity of the tongue; the ting-
ling pleasantry when pointed at persons; the pungent
raillery which corrected opinions without scorn or con-
tumely; and the art of promptly amusing the mind of
another by stealing it away from a present object—
appeared not only in his conversations, but was carried
into his writings.
The grave and sullen pages of the polemical labours of
MoRE, whose writings chiefly turn on the controversies
of the Romanists and the Reformers, are perhaps the only
controversial ones which exhibit in the marginal notes,
frequently repeated, “a merrie tale.” “A merry tale
cometh never amiss to me,” said MoRE truly of himself.
He has offered an apology for introducing this anomalous
style into these controversial works. He conceived that,
as a layman, it better became him “to tell his mind merrily
than more solemnly to preach.” Jests, he acknowledges, are
but sauce; and “it were but an absurd banquet indeed in
which there were few dishes of meat and much variety of
sauces; but that is but an unpleasant one where there
were no sauce at all.”
The massive folio of Sir THOMAS MoRE’s “English
Works”f remains a monument of our language at a
period of its pristine vigour. Viewed in active as well
as in contemplative life, at the bar or on the bench, as
ambassador or chancellor, and not to less advantage where,
“a good distance from his house at Chelsea, he builded
the new building, wherein was a chapel, a library, and a
gallery,” the character, the events, and the writings of
this illustrious man may ever interest us.
These works were the fertile produce of “those spare
hours for writing, stolen from his meat and sleep.” We
are told that “by using much writing, towards his latter
* “Sir Thomas More's Workes,” 127.
+ “The Workes of Sir Thomas More in the English Tongue, 1557,
fo.,” a venerable folio of nearly 1500 pages in double columns, is closely
printed in black-letter.
Psychological Character of Sir Thomas More. 291
end he complained of the ache of his breast.” He has
himself acknowledged that “those delicate dainty folk,
the evangelical brethren (so More calls our early re-
formers), think my works too long, for everything that is,
they think too long.” More alludes to the rising dispo-
sition in men for curtailing all forms and other ceremonial
acts, especially in the church service.
MoRE, however skilful as a Latin scholar, to promulgate
his opinions aimed at popularity, and cultivated our ver-
nacular idiom, till the English language seems to have
enlarged the compass of its expression under the free and
copious vein of the writer. It is only by the infelicity of
the subjects which constitute the greater portion of this
mighty volume, that its author has missed the immorr
tality which his genius had else secured. e'
MoRE has been fortunate in the zeal of his biographers;
but we are conscious, that had there been a Xenophon or
a Boswell among them, they could have told us much
more. The conversations of Sir THOMAS MoRE were
racy. His was that rare gift of nature, perfect presence
of mind, deprived of which the fullest is but slow and late.
His conversancy with public affairs, combined with a close
observation of familiar life, ever afforded him a striking
aptitude of illustration; but the levity of his wit, and the
luxuriance of his humour, could not hide the deep sense
which at all times gave weight to his thoughts, and deci-ſ
sion to his acts. Of all these we are furnished with ample
evidence.
Domestic affection in all its naïve simplicity dictated
the artless record of Roper, the companion of More, for
sixteen years, and the husband of his adored daughter
Margaret.* The pride of ancestry in the pages of his
great-grandson, the ascetic Cresacre More, could not
borrow the charm of that work whence he derived his
enlarged narrative.† More than one beadsman, the
* Roper’s “Life of Sir Thomas More,” which had been suppressed
through the reign of Elizabeth, only first appeared in 1626, at Paris,
when a Roman Catholic princess in the person of Henrietta, the queen
of Charles the First, had ascended the throne of England ; it was re-
published in 1729. There is also an elegant modern reprint by Mr.
Singer.
º The Life by his great-grandson was printed in 1627, and repub-
lished in 1726. This biography is the one usually referred to. Though
U 2
292 Amenities of Literature.
votaries of their martyr, have consecrated his memory
even with their legendary faith;* while recent and more
philosophical writers have expatiated on the wide theme,
and have repeated the story of this great Chancellor of
England.t
“The child here waiting at table, whomever shall live
to see it, will prove a marvellous man.” It was thus that
the early patron of More, Cardinal Morton, sagaciously
contemplated @ the precocity of More's boyhood. His
prompt natural humour broke out at the Christmas revels,
when the boy, suddenly slipping in among the players,
acted an extempore part of his own invention. Yet this
jocund humour, which never was to quit him to his last
awful minute, at times indulged a solemnity of thought,
as remarkable in a youth of eighteen. In the taste of
that day, he invented an allegorical pageant. These
pageants consisted of paintings on rolls of cloth, with in-
scriptions in verse, descriptive of the scenical objects.
They formed a series of the occupations of childhood,
manhood, the indolent liver, “a child again,” and old age,
thin and hoar, wise and discreet. The last scenes exhibited
more original conceptions. The image of DEATH, where
under his “misshapen feet” lay the sage old man ; then
came “the Lady FAME,” boasting that she had survived
death, and would preserve the old man's name “by the
voice of the people.” But FAME was followed by TIME,
“the lord of every hour, the great destroyer both of sea
and land,” deriding simple “Fame;” for “who shall boast
an eternal name before me P’’ Yet was there a more potent
destroyer than TIME; Time itself was mortal! and the
eighth pageant revealed the triumph of ETERNITY. The
with a more lucid arrangement, and a fuller narrative, than Roper’s
Life, the writer inherited little of the family genius, except the bigotry
of his great ancestor.
* Tres Thomas. The three Thomases are, Aquinas, a Becket, and
More—by Dr. Thomas Stapleton. Another Life by J. H. is an abridg-
ment, 1662. These writers, Romanists, as well as the great-grandson,
have interspersed in their narrative more than one of those fabulous in-
cidents and pious frauds, visions, and miracles, which have been the
opprobrium of Catholic biographers.
+ Macdiarmid, in his “Lives of British Statesmen,” has chiefly
considered the political character of this Lord-Chancellor. Others have
written lives merely as accompaniments to the editions of some of his
works.
Psychological Character of Sir Thomas More. 293
last exhibited the poet himself, meditating in his chair—
he “who had fed their eyes with these fictions and these
figures.” The allegory of Fame, Time, and Eternity, is a
sublime creation of ideal personifications. The concep-
tion of these pageants reminds one of the allegorical
“Trionfi” of Petrarch; but they are not borrowed from
the Italian poet. They were, indeed, in the taste of the
age, and such pageants were exhibited in the streets; but
the present gorgeous invention, as well as the verses, were
the fancies of the youthful More.
MORE in his youth was a true poet; but in his active
life he soon deserted these shadows of the imagination.
A modern critic has regretted, that, notwithstanding
the zeal of his biographers, we would gladly have been
better acquainted with MoRE's political life, his parlia-
mentary speeches, his judicial decrees, and his history as
an ambassador and a courtier.
There is not, however, wanting the most striking
evidence of MoRE's admirable independence in all these
characters. I fix on his parliamentary life.
As a burgess under Henry the Seventh, he effectually
opposed a royal demand for money. When the king
heard that “a beardless boy had disappointed all his
purpose,” the malice of royalty was wreaked on the de-
voted head of the judge his father, in a causeless quarrel
and a heavy fine. When MoRE was chosen the Speaker
of the Commons, he addressed Henry the Eighth on the
important subject of freedom of debate. There is a re-
markable passage on the heat of discussion, and the diver-
sity of men's faculties, which displays a nice discrimination
in human nature. “Among so many wise men, neither is
every one wise alike; nor among so many alike well-
witted, every man alike well-spoken; and it often hap-
peneth, that likewise as much folly is uttered with painted
polished speeches, so many boisterous and rude in lan-
guage see deep, indeed, and give right substantial counsel.
And since also in matters of great importance the mind
is so often occupied in the matter, that a man rather
studies what to say than how, by reason whereof the
wisest man and best-spoken in a whole country fortuneth,
while his mind is fervent in the matter, somewhat to speak
in such wise as he would afterward wish to have been
294 Amenities of Literature.
uttered otherwise; and yet no worse will had he when he
spake it, than he had when he would gladly change it.”
Once the potent cardinal, irritated at the free language
of the Commons, to awe the House, came down in person,
amid the blazonry of all the insignia of his multiform state.
To check his arrogance, it was debated whether the mi-
nister should be only admitted with a few lords. MORE
suggested, that as Wolsey had lately taxed the lightness
of their tongues, “it would not be amiss to receive him in
all his pomp, with his (silver) pillars, emblems of his
ecclesiastical power, as a pillar of the church, his maces,
his pole-axes, his crosses, his hat, and his great seal too,
to the intent that if he find the like fault with us here-
after, we may the more boldly lay the blame on those his
grace brings with him.” The cardinal made a solemn
oration; and when he ceased, behold the whole House was
struck by one unbroken and dead silence | The minister
addressed several personally—each man was a mute: dis-
covering that he could not carry his point by his presence,
he seemed to recollect that the custom of the House was
to speak by the mouth of their Speaker, and WolsFY
turned to him. MoRE, in all humility, explained the
cause of the universal silence, by the amazement of the
House at the presence of so noble a personage; “besides,
that it was not agreeable to the liberty of the House to
offer answers—that he himself could return no answer
except every one of the members could put into his head
their several wits.” The minister abruptly rose and de-
parted re infectá. Shortly after, Wolsey in his gallery
at Whitehall told MoRE, “Would to God you had been
at Rome, Mr. More, when I made you Speaker!” “So
would I too !” replied MoRE; and then immediately ex-
claimed, “I like this gallery much better than your
gallery at Hampton Court;” and thus, talking of pictures,
he broke off “the cardinal's displeasant talk.”
This was a customary artifice with MORE. He with-
drew the mind from disturbing thoughts by some sudden
exclamation, or broke out into some facetious sally, which
gave a new turn to the conversation. Of many, to give a
single instance. On the day he resigned the chancellor-
ship, he went after service to his wife's pew ; there bowing,
in the manner and with the very words the Lord Chan-

Psychological Character of Sir Thomas More. 295
cellor’s servant was accustomed to announce to her, that
“My lord was gone !” she laughed at the idling mockery;
but when assured, in sober sadness, that “My lord was
gone!” this good sort of lady, with her silly exclamation
of “Tillie vallieſ Tillie vallieſ will you sit and make gos-
lings in the ashes P” broke out into one of those domestic
explosions to which she was very liable. The resigned
chancellor, now resigned in more than one sense, to allay
the storm he had raised, desired his daughters to observe
whether they could not see some fault in their mother's
dress. They could discover none. “Don’t you perceive
that your mother's nose stands somewhat awry?” Thus
by a stroke of merriment, he dissipated the tedious remon-
strances and perplexing inquiries which a graver man could
not have eluded.
At the most solemn moments of his life he was still
disposed to indulge his humour. When in the Tower,
denied pen and ink, he wrote a letter to his beloved
Margaret, and tells her that “This letter is written with
a coal; but that to express his love a peck of coals would
not suffice.”
His political sagacity equalled the quickness of his wit
or the flow of his humour. He knew to rate at their real
value the favours of such a sovereign as Henry VIII.
The king suddenly came to dine at his house at Chelsea,
and while walking in the garden, threw his arm about the
neck of the chancellor. Roper, his son-in-law, congratu-
lated More on this affectionate familiarity of royalty.
More observed, “Son, the king favours me as (much as)
any subject within the realm; howbeit I have no cause to
be proud thereof, for if my head would win him a castle
in France, it should not fail to go!”
MoRE seems to have descried the speck of the Refor-
mation, while others could not view even the gathering
cloud in the political horizon. He and Roper were con-
versing on their “Catholic prince, their learned clergy,
their sound nobility, their obedient subjects, and finally
that no heretic dare show his face.” More went even be-
yond Roper in his commendation; but he proceeded, “And
yet, son Roper, I pray God that some of us, as high as we
seem to sit upon the mountains, treading heretics under
our feet like ants, live not the day that we would gladly
296 Amenities of Literature.
be at league and composition with them, to let them
have their churches quietly to themselves, so that they
would be contented to let us have ours quietly to our-
selves.” Roper, somewhat amazed, alleged his reasons for
not seeing any cause which could produce such conse-
quences. The zeal of the juvenile Catholic broke out into
“a fume,” which More perceiving, with his accustomed
and gentle artifice exclaimed merrily, “Well, son Roper,
it shall not be so it shall not be so !”
No one was more sensible than MoRE that to gain over
the populace it is necessary to descend to them. But
when raillery passed into railing, and sarcasm sunk into
scurrility, in these unhappy polemical effusions, our critics
Jhave bitterly censured the intolerance and bigotry of Sir
THOMAS MoRE. All this, however, lies on the surface.
The antagonists of MoRE were not less free, nor more re-
fined. MoRE wrote at a cruel crisis; both the subjects he
streated on, and the times he wrote in, and the distorted
imedium through which he viewed the new race as the
'subverters of government, and the eager despoilers of the
ecclesiastical lands, were quite sufficient to pervert the
intellect of a sage of that day, and throw even the most
genial humour into a state of exacerbation.
Our sympathies are no longer to be awakened by the
worship of images and relics—prayers to saints—the state
of souls in purgatory—and the unwearied blessedness of
pilgrimages—nor even by the subtle inquiry, Whether the
church were before the gospel, or the gospel before the
church 2–or by the burning of Tyndale's Testament, and
“ the confutation of the new church of Frere Barnes:” all
these direful follies, which cost Sir Thomas More many a
sleepless night, and bound many a harmless heretic to the
stake, have passed away, only, alas ! to be succeeded by
other follies as insane, which shall in their turn meet the
same fate. Those works of MORE are a voluminous
labyrinth ; but whoever winds its dark passages shall
gather many curious notices of the writer's own age, and
many exquisite “merrie tales,” delectable to the antiquary,
and not to be contemned in the history of the human
mind.
The impending Reformation was hastened by a famous
invective in the form of “The Supplication of Beggars.”
Psychological Character of Sir Thomas More. 297
Its flagrant argument lay in its arithmetic. It calculated all
the possessions of the clergy, who though but “the four-
hundredth part of the nation, yet held half of the revenues.”
MoRE replied to “The Supplication of the Beggars” by
“The Supplications of the Souls in Purgatory.” These
he represented in terror at the sacrilegious annihilation of
the masses said for their repose; and this with the
Romanist was probably no weak argument in that day.
MoRE more reasonably ridicules the extravagance of the
estimates. Such accounts, got up in haste and designed
for a particular purpose, are necessarily inaccurate; but the
inaccuracy of a statement does not at all injure the drift of
the argument, should that be based on truth. -**
With MoRE “the heretics” were but ordinary rebels, k
as appears by the style of his narrative. “A rabble of
heretics at Abingdon did not intend to lose any more
labour by putting up bills (petitions) to Parliament, but
to make an open insurrection and subvert all the realm, to
kill the clergy, and sell priests' heads as good and cheap as
sheep's heads—three for a penny, buy who would ! But
God saved the church and the realm. Yet after this was
there one John Goose roasted at Tower-hill, and thereupon
Some other John Goose began to make some gaggling
awhile, but it availed him not. And now we have this
gosling with his ‘Supplication of Beggars.’ He maketh
his bill in the name of the beggars. The bill is couched
as full of lies as the beggar swarmeth full of lice. We
neither will nor shall need to make much business about
this matter; we trust much better in the goodness of
good men.”
The marriage of the clergy was no doubt at first abused
by some. MoRE describes one Richard Mayfield, late a
monk and a priest, and, it may be added, a martyr, for he
was burned. Of this man he says, “His holy life well
declares his heresies, when being both a priest and a monk
he went about two wives, one in Brabant, another in Eng-
land. What he meant I cannot make you sure, whether
he would be sure of the one if tºother should happen to
refuse him, or that he would have them both, the one here,
the other there; or else both in one place, the one because ſ
he was priest, the other because he was monk.” /
* Works, fo. 346.
298 Amenities of Literature.
Such is the ludicrous ribaldry which runs through the
polemical works of Sir THOMAS MoRE: the opposite party
set no better example, and none worse than the redoubtable
Simon Fish, the writer of the “Supplication of Beggars.”
Oldmixon expresses his astonishment that “the famous
Sir Thomas More was so hurried by his zeal that he forgot
he was a gentleman, and treated Mr. Fish with the
y language of a monk.”
N Writers who decide on other men and on other times by
the spirit of their own, try human affairs by a false
standard. MoRE was at heart a monk. He wore a
prickly hair-shirt to mortify the flesh; he scourged him-
self with the knotted cord; he practised the penance; and
he appeals to miraculous relics as the evidences of his
faith ! I give his own words in alluding to the Sudarium,
that napkin sent to king Abgarus, on which Jesus im-
pressed the image of his own face: “And it hath been by
like miracle in the thin corruptible cloth kept and pre-
served these 1500 years fresh and well preserved, to the
inward comforts, spiritual rejoicing, and great increase of
fervour in the hearts of good Christian people.” To this
he joins another similar miraculous relic, “the evangelist
Luke's portrait of our blessed Lady, his mother.”
Such were considered as the evidences of the true faith
of the Romanists; but MoRE with his relics was then
dealing in a damaged commodity. Lord Herbert has
noticed the great fall of the price of relics at the dissolu-
tion of the monasteries: some which had been left in
pawn no one cared to redeem.
“The History of King Richard the Third,” which first
appeared in a correct state in this folio, has given rise to
“historic doubts” which led to some paradoxes. The per-
sonal monster whom MoRE and SHAKSPEARE exhibited
has vanished, but the deformity of the revolting parricide
was surely revealed in the bones of the infant nephews.
This, the earliest history in our vernacular literature, may
still be read with delight. As a composition the critical
justice of Lord Orford may be cited. “Its author was
then in the vigour of his fancy, and fresh from the study
of the Greek and Roman historians, whose manner he has
* “Works of Sir Thomas More,” 113, col. 2.
Psychological Character of Sir Thomas More. 299
imitated.” The details in this history of a prince of the
house of York, though they may be tinged with the gall
of the Lancastrian Cardinal Morton, descend to us with
the weight of contemporary authority. It is supposed
that MoRE may have derived much of the materials of
his history from his early patron, but the charms which
still may retain us are the natural yet dramatic dialogue—
the picturesque touches—and a style, at times, whose
beauty three centuries have not wrinkled—and the emo-
tions which such vital pages leave in the reader's mind.*
The “Utop|A’’ of Sir THOMAS MoRE, which being
composed in Latin is not included in this great volume of
his “Workes,” may be read by the English reader in its
contemporary spirited translation,t and more intelligibly
in Bishop Burnet's version. The title of his own coinage
has become even proverbial; and from its classical Latinity
it was better known among foreigners even in Burnet's
day than at home. (This combination of philosophy,
politics, and fiction, though borrowed from the ideal re-
public of Plato, is worthy of an experienced statesman and
a philosopher who at that moment was writing not only
above his age, but, as it afterwards appeared, above him-£
self. It has served as the model of that novel class of
literature—political romances. But though the “Utopia”
is altogether imaginary, it displays no graces of the imagi-
nation in an ingeniously constructed fable. It is the dream
of a good citizen, and, like a dream, the scenes scattereº
and unconnected are broken into by chimerical forms and
impracticable achievements. In times of political em-
piricism it may be long meditated, and the “Utopia” may
yet pass through a million of editions before that new era
of the perfectibility of the human animal, the millennium of
political theorists, which it would seem to have anticipated.
2.
* Mr. Singer has furnished us with a correct reprint of this history.
More’s “Life of Richard the Third ” had been given by our chroniclers
from copies mutilated or altered. A work whose merits arise from the
beauty of its composition admits of neither.
+ The old translation, “by Raphe Robinson, 1551,” has been repub-
lished by Dr. Dibdin, accompanied by copious annotations. Almost
everything relating to the family, the life, and the works of the author
may be found in “the biographical and literary introduction.” It is
the first specimen of an edition where the diligence of the editor has not
been wasted on trivial researches or nugatory commentaries.
300 Amenities of Literature.
This famous work was written at no immature period
of life, for MoRE was then thirty-six years of age. The
author had clear notions of the imperfections of govern-
ments, but he was not as successful in proposing remedies
for the disorders he had detected. (A community where
all the property belongs to the government, and to which
every man contributes by his labour, that he may have his
own wants supplied; a domestic society which very much
resembles a great public school, and converts a citizen,
through all the gradations of his existence, from form to
form ; and where every man, like an automatical machine,
must be fixed in his proper place,—supposes a society of
passionless beings which social life has never shown, and
surely never can. , The art of carrying on war without
combating, by the wiliness of stratagems; or procuring a
peace by offering a reward for the assassination of the
leaders of the enemy, with whom rather than with the
people all wars originate; the injunction to the incurable
of suicide; the paucity of laws which enabled every man
to plead his own cause ; the utmost freedom granted to
religious sects, where every man who contested the reli-
gion of another was sent into exile, or condemned to
bondage; the contempt of the precious metal, which was
here used but as toys for children, or as ſetters for slaves;
—such fanciful notions, running counter to the experience
of history, or to the advantages of civilised society, in-
duced some to suspect the whole to be but the incoherent
dreams of an idling philosopher, thrown down at random
without much consideration. It is sobriety indulging an
inebriation, and good sense wandering in a delirium.
Burnet, in his translation, cautiously reminds his readers
that he must in nowise be made responsible for the matter
of the work which “he ventured” to translate. Others
have conceived “the Utopia” dangerous for those specu-
lators in politics who might imagine the author to have
been serious. MoRE himself has adjudged the book “no
better worthy than to lye always in his own island, or
else to be consecrated to Vulcan.”
But assuredly many of the extraordinary principles in-
culcated in “the Utopia” were not so lightly held by its
illustrious author. The sincerity of his notions may be
traced in his own simple habits, his opinions in conversa-
Psychological Character of Sir Thomas More. 301
tion, and the tenor of his invariable life. His contempt
of outward forms and personal honours, his voluntary
poverty, his fearlessness of death—all these afford ample
evidence that the singularity of the man himself was as
remarkable as the work he produced. The virtues he had
expatiated on, he had contemplated in his own breast.
This singular, but great man, was a sage whose wisdom
lay concealed in his pleasantry; a politician without am-2
bition; a lord chancellor who entered into office poor, and
left it not richer. When his house was to be searched for
treasure, which circumstance had alarmed his friends, well
did that smile become him when he observed that “it
would be only a sport to his family,” and he pleasantly
added, “lest they should find out my wife's gay girdle
and her gold beads.” When the clergy, in convention,
had voted a donation amounting to no inconsiderable for-
tune, “not for services to be performed, but for those
which he had chosen to do,” More rejected the gift with ,
this noble confession—“I am both over-proud, and over-
slothful also, to be hired for money to take half the labour j
and business in writing that I have taken since I began.”
And when accused by Tyndale and others for being “the
proctor of the clergy,” and richly fed, how forcible was
his expression “He had written his controversial works
only that God might give him thanks.”
It happened, however, that his after-conduct in life, in re-
gard to that religious toleration which he had wisely main-
tained in his ideal society, was as opposite as night to noon.
Could he then have ever been earnest in his “Utopia P”
—he who exults over the burning of a heretic, who “could
not agree that before the day of doom there were either
any saint in heaven or soul in purgatory, or in hell
either,” for which horrible heresy he was delivered at last
into the secular hands, and “burned as there was never |
*Hºº. This harmless and hap-
less metaphysical theologian did not disagree with More
on the existence of saints, of souls, nor of hell. The
heretic conceived—and could he change by volition the
ideas which seemed to him just 2–that no reward or
punishment could be inflicted before the final judgment.


* “Sir Thomas More's Workes,” 348.
302 Amenities of Literature.
A conversation of five minutes might have settled the
difference, for they only varied about the precise time !
In that great revolution which was just opening in his
latter days, MoRE seems sometimes to have mistaken
theology for politics. A strange and mysterious change,
such as the history of man can hardly parallel, occurred in
the mind of MoRE, by what insensible gradations is a
secret which must lie in his grave.
This great man laid his head on the block to seal his
conscience with his blood. Protestants have lamented
this act as his weakness, the Romanists decreed a martyr-
dom. In a sudden change of system in the affairs of a
nation, when even justice may assume the appearance of
violence, the most enlightened minds, standing amidst
their ancient opinions and their cherished prejudices sub-
verted, display how the principle of integrity predo-
minates over that of self-preservation.
303
THE EARL OF SURREY AND SIR. THOMAS
WYATT.
Not many years intervened between the uncouth gor-
geousness of HAWEs, the homely sense of BARCLAY, the
anomalous genius of SKELTON, and the pure poetry of
Henry Howard the EARL of SURREY. In the poems of
SURREY, and his friend, Sir Thomas Wyatt,” the elder, the
age of taste, if not of genius, opens on us. Dryden and
Pope sometimes seem to appear two centuries before their
date. There is no chronology in the productions of real
genius; for, whenever a great master appears, he advances
his art to a period which labour, without creation, toils
for centuries to reach.
The great reformer of our poetry, he who first from his
own mind, without a model, displayed its permanent
principles, was the poetic Earl of Surrey. There was in-
spiration in his system, and he freed his genius from the
barbaric taste or the undisturbed dulness which had pre-
vailed since the days of Chaucer. His ear was musical,
and he formed a metrical structure with the melodies of
our varied versification, rejecting the rude rhythmical
rhyme which had hitherto prevailed in our poetry. He
created a poetic diction, and graceful involutions; a finer
selection of words, and a delicacy of expression, were now
substituted for vague diffusion, and homeliness of phrases
and feeble rhymes, or, on the other hand, for that vitiated
style of crude pedantic Latinisms, such as “purpūre,
aureate, pulchritide, celatüre, facinde,” and so many
others, laborious nothings | filling the verse with noise.
The contemplative and tender SURREY charms by opening
some picturesque scene or dwelling on some impressive
incident. He had discerned the error of those inartificial
* “The Works of the Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt,” by
Dr. Nott, form an important accession to our national literature. If
we cannot always agree with the conclusions of our literary antiquary,
we must value the variety of his researches, not less profound than
extensive.
!
|
|
304 Amenities of Literature.
writers, whose minute puerility, in their sterile abundance,
detailed till nothing was remembered, and described, till
nothing was perceptible. Hitherto, our poets had nar-
rowed their powers by moulding their conceptions by
temporary tastes, the manners and modes of thinking of
their day; but their remoteness, which may delight the
antiquary, diminishes their interest with the poetical
reader. SURREY struck into that secret path which leads
to general nature, guided by his art: his tenderness and
his thoughtful musings find an echo in our bosoms, and
are as fresh with us as they were in the court of Windsor
three centuries past.
These rare qualities in a poet at such a period would
of themselves form an era in our literature; but SURREY
also extended their limits; the disciple of Chaucer was
also the pupil of Petrarch, and the Earl of SURREY com-
posed the first sonnets in the English language, with the
amatory tenderness and the condensed style of its legi-
timate structure. Dr. Nott further claims the honour
for Surrey of the invention of heroic blank verse; Surrey's
version of Virgil being unrhymed.
When Warton suggested that Surrey borrowed the
idea of blank verse from Trissino’s “Italia Liberata,” he
seems to have been misled by the inaccurate date of 1528,
which he affixed to the publication of that epic. Trissino's
epic did not appear till 1547,” and Surrey perished in the
January of that year. It was indeed long a common
opinion that Trissino invented the versi sciolti, or blank
verse, though Quadrio confesses that such had been used
by preceding poets, whose names he has recorded. The
mellifluence and flexibility of the vowelly language were
favourable to unrhymed verse; while the poverty of the
poetic diction, and the unmusical verse of France, could
never venture to show itself without the glitter of rhyme.
The heroic blank verse, however, was an after-thought of
Surrey : he first composed his unrhymed verse in the lon
Alexandrine, had afterwards felicitously changed it for the
decasyllabic verse, but did not live to correct the whole of
his version. Surrey could not therefore have designed the
* “Tiraboschi,” vol. vii.-Haym’s “Bibliotheca Italiani.” When
Conybeare communicated the same information to Dr. Bliss, it must
have been derived from Warton.
The Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt. 305
pauses and the cadences of blank verse in his first choice,
nor will they be found in his last. Nor can it be con-
ceded that blank verse was wholly unknown among us.
Webbe, a critic long after, in the reign of Elizabeth, con-
siders the author of Pierce Ploughman as “the first
whom he had met with who observed the quantity of our
verse, without the curiosity of rhyme.”
Dr. Nott, with editorial ardour, considers that the
unfinished model of Surrey was the prototype of all
subsequent blank verse, and was also the origin of its
introduction into dramatic composition. A sweeping con-
clusion when we consider the artificial structure of our
blank verse from the days of Milton, who, not without
truth, asserted that “he first gave the example of ancient
liberty recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome
and modern bondage of rhyming.” This indeed has been
denied to Milton by those who look to dates, and have
no ear; and are apt to imagine that rhymeless lines, mere
couplets, with ten well-counted syllables in each, must
necessarily form blank verse." Dr. Nott, in quoting the
eulogy of Ascham on this noble effort of Surrey “to bring
our national poetry to perfection,” has omitted to add
what followed, namely, the censure of Surrey for not
having rejected our heroic verse altogether, and substituted
the hexameter of Virgil, in English verse. It is therefore
quite evident that Ascham had formed no conception of
blank verse, no more than had Surrey, such as it was to
be formed by the ear of Milton, and by some of his
successors. All beginnings are obscure; something is
borrowed from the past, and something is invented for
the future, till it is vain to fix the gradations of inven-
tion which terminate in what at length becomes univer-
sally adopted.
Could the life, or what we have of late called the
psychological history, of this poetic Earl of SURREY be
now written, it would assuredly open a vivid display of
fine genius, high passions, and romantic enthusiasm. Little
is known, save a few public events; but the print of the
footsteps shows their dimension. We trace the excellence,
while we know but little of the person.
The youth of SURREY, and his life, hardly passed
beyond that period, betrayed the buoyancy of a spirit
WOL. I. X.
306 Amenities of Literature.
vehement and quick, but rarely under guidance. Reckless
truth, in all its openness and its sternness, was his habit,
and glory was his passion ; but in this restlessness of
generous feelings his anger too easily blazed forth. He
was haughty among his peers, and he did not even scorn
to chastise an inferior. We are not surprised at dis-
covering that one of so unreserved a temper should in that
jealous reign more than once have suffered confinement.
But the youthful hero who pursued to justice a relative
and a court favourite, for a blow, by which that relative
had outraged Surrey’s faithful companion—he who would
eat flesh in Lent—he who issued one night to break the
windows of the citizens, to remind them that they were a
sinful race, however that might have been instigated by
zeal for “the new religion’—all such things betrayed his
enthusiastic daring, but his deeds, to become splendid,
depended on their direction. The lofty notions he attached
to his descent; his proud shield quartering the arms of
the Confessor, which the duke, his father, dared not show
to a jealous monarch; his feats of arms at the barriers,
and his military conduct in his campaigns,
Who saw Kelsal blaze,
Landrecy burnt, and battered Boulogne render;
At Montreuil's gate hopeless of a recure (recovery),
there, where that twin-spirit, his beloved associate, Clere,
to save his wounded friend, had freely yielded his own
life; his magnificence as a courtier, the companion of the
princely Richmond; all “the joy and feast with a king's
son;” his own record of the brilliant days, and the
soothing fancies of “proud Windsor:” “its large open
courts;” “the gravelled ground for the foaming horse;”
“the palm-play;” “the stately seats and dances;” “the
secret groves,” and “the wild forest, with cry of hounds;”
and more than all, the mysterious passion for “the fair
Geraldine,” cover the misty shade of Surrey with a cloud
of glory, which, while it veils the man from our sight,
seems to enlarge the object we gaze on.
We see this youth, he who first taught the English
Muse accents she had never before tried, hurried from his
literary seclusion to be immolated on the scaffold, by the
arts of a remorseless rival, of him whose pride at last sent
The Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt. 307
him to the block, and who signed the death-warrant of
his own brother! It was at a moment when the dying
monarch, as the breath was fleeting from his lips, once in
his life was voiceless to condemn a state victim, that
Somerset took up the stamp which Henry used, to affix
it to the death-warrant of SURREY. Victim of his own
domestic circle ! The father disunited with the son, from
fear or jealousy; the mother separated from the father,
to the last vowing unforgiving vengeance; a sister dis-
natured of all kin, hastening to be the voluntary accuser
of her father and her brother | These domestic hatreds
were the evil spirits which raged in the house of the
Howards, and hurried on the fate of the accomplished, the
poetic, the hapless Earl of Surrey.
A tale of such grandeur and such woe passed away un-
heeded even by a slight record, so inexpert were the few
writers of those days, and probably so perilous was their
curiosity. The pretended trial of Surrey, who being no
lord of parliament, was tried by a timorous jury at Guild-
hall, seems to have been studiously suppressed, and the
last solemn act of his life, “the leaving it,” is alike con-
cealed. Even in the registers of public events by our
chroniclers, they unanimously pass º Ila, Iſle
and the miserable death—to spare the 'monarch's or the
victim’s honour.
The poems of SURREY were often read, as their mul-
tiplied editions show ; but of the noble poet and his
Geraldine, tradition had not sent down even an imperfect
tale. In this uncertainty, the world was disposed to
listen to any romantic story of such genius and love and
chivalry.
The secret history of SURREY was at length revealed,
and the gravity of its discloser vouched for its authen-
ticity. Who would doubt the testimony of plain Anthony
à Wood P
SURREY is represented hastening on a chivalric expe-
dition to Italy; at Florence he challenges the universe,
that his Geraldine was the peerless of the beautiful. . In
his travels, Cornelius Agrippa exhibited to Surrey, in a
magical mirror, his fair mistress as she was occupied at the
moment of inspection. He beheld her sick, weeping in
bed, reading his poems, in all the grief of absence. This

X 2
308 Amenities of Literature.
incident set spurs to his horse. At Florence he hastened
to view the chamber which had witnessed the birth of so
much beauty. At the court he affixed his challenge, and
maintained this emprise in tilt and tourney. The Duke
of Florence, flattered that a Florentine lady should be
renowned by the prowess of an English nobleman, invited
Surrey to a residence at his court. But our Amadis more
nobly purposed to hold on his career through all the
courts of Italy, shivering the lances of whoever would
enter the lists, whether “Christian, Jew, or Saracen.”
Suddenly the Quixotism ends, by this paragon of chivalry
being recalled home by the royal command.
This Italian adventure seemed congenial with the
romantic mystery in which the poet had involved the
progress of his passion for his poetic mistress. He had
himself let us into some secrets. Geraldine came from
“Tuscany;” Florence was her ancient seat, her sire was
an earl, her dame of “princes’ blood,” “yet she was
fostered by milk of an Irish breast;” and from her tender
years in Britain “she tasted costly food with a king's
child.” The amatorial poet even designates the spots
hallowed by his passion; he first saw her at Hunsdon,
Windsor chased him from her sight, and at Hampton Court
“first wished her for mine !”
These hints and these localities were sufficient to irritate
the vague curiosity of Surrey’s readers, and more particu-
larly of our critical researchers, of whom Horace Walpole
first ventured to explain the inexplicable. With singular
good fortune, and from slight grounds, Walpole conjec-
tured that Geraldine was no Italian dame, but Lady
Elizabeth Fitzgerald, one of the daughters of the Earl
of Kildare; the family were often called the Geraldines.
The Italian descent from the Geraldi was made out by a
spurious genealogy. The challenge and the tournament
no one doubted. But some harder knots were to be
untied; and our theoretical historian, unfurnished by facts
and dates, it has been recently shown, discovered some
things which never existed.
But every writer followed in the track. Warton com-
pliments the sagacity of Walpole, and embroiders the
narrative. The historian of our poetry not only details
The Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt. 309
the incident of the magical mirror, but adds that “the
imagination of Surrey was heated anew by this interesting
spectacle /’” He therefore had no doubt of the reality;
and, indeed, to confirm the whole adventure of the roman-
tic chivalry, he refers the curious to a finely sculptured
shield which is still preserved by the Dukes of Norfolk.
The Italian adventures of Surrey, and all that Walpole
had erroneously suggested, are fully accepted, and our
critic observes—“Surrey's life throws so much light on
the character and the subjects of his poetry, that it is
almost impossible to consider the one without exhibiting
the few anecdotes of the other.” But the critical sagacity
of Warton did not wholly desert him through all the cir-
cumstantial narrative, for suddenly his pen pauses, and he
exclaims on these travels of Surrey, that “they have the
air of a romance 1”
And it was a romance 1 and it served for history many
a year !” This tale of literary delusion may teach all
future investigators into obscure points of history to probe
them by dates.
It was long after the days of Walpole and Warton, and
even of George Ellis, that it was discovered that these
travels into Italy by Surrey had been transferred literally
from an “Historical Romance.” A great wit, in Eliza-
beth's reign, Tom Nash, sent forth in “the Life of Jack
Wilton, an unfortunate traveller,” this whole legend of
Surrey. The entire fiction of Nash annihilates itself by
its extraordinary anachronisms.
In what respect Nash designed to palm the imposture
of his “Historical Romance” on the world, may be left
to be explained by some “Jack Wiltons” of our own.
He says “all that in this phantastical treatise I can pro-
mise is some reasonable conveyance of history, and variety
of mirth.” Must we trust to their conscience for “the
reasonable conveyance P”
We now trace the whole progress of this literary delusion.
* And, strange to add, it is still history ! Mr. Godwin, in “The
Lives of Necromancers,” details every part of this apocryphal tale !
And the Edinburgh reviewer very philosophically, not doubtful of its
verity, accounts for all its supernatural magic, and clearly explains the
inexplicable !
310 Amenities of Literature.
On Surrey's ideal passion, and on this passage miscon-
ceived—
From Tuscan came my lady's worthy race;
Fair Florence was sometime her ancient seat—
the romancer inferred that Geraldine must be a fair Flo-
rentine; Surrey had alluded to the fanciful genealogy of
the Geralds from the Geraldi. On this single hint the
romancer sends him on his aérial journey in this business
of love and chivalry.
This romance, of which it is said only three copies are
known, was published in 1594. Four years after, DRAY-
TON, looking about for subjects for his Ovidian epistles,
eagerly seized on a legend so favourable for poetry, and
Geraldine and Surrey supplied two amatory epistles.
Anthony à Wood, finding himself without materials to
frame a life of the poetic Surrey, had recourse to “the
famous poet,” as he calls Drayton, whom he could quote;
for Drayton was a consecrated bard for the antiquary,
since Selden had commented on his great topographical
poem. But honest Anthony on this occasion was not
honest enough. He did not tell the world that he had
fallen on the romance itself, Drayton's sole authority.
Literally and silently, our antiquary transcribed the fuller
passages from a volume he was ashamed to notice, disin-
genuously dropping certain incidents which would not
have honoured the memory of Surrey. Thus the “phan-
tastical” history for ever blots the authentic tomes of the
grave Athena Oronienses. A single moment of scrutiny
would have detected the whole fabricated narrative; but
there is a charm in romance which bewitched our luckless
Anthony.
Thus it happened that the romancer, on a misconcep-
tion, constructs an imaginary fabric; the poet Drayton
builds on the romancer; the sober antiquary on both ;
then the commentators stand upon the antiquary. Never
was a house of cards of so many stories. The foundation,
Surrey’s poetic passion, may be as fictitious as the rest;
for the visionary Geraldine, viewed in Agrippa's magic
mirror was hardly a more mysterious shadow.
Not one of these writers was informed of what recent
researches have demonstrated. They knew not that this
The Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt. 311
Earl of Surrey in boyhood was betrothed to his lady, also
a child—one of the customs to preserve wealth or power
"in great families of that day. These historians were un-
furnished with any dates to guide them, and never sus-
pected that when Surrey is made to set off on his travels
in Italy, after a Donna Giraldi who had no existence, he
was the father of two sons, and “the fair Geraldine” was
only seven years of age that Surrey's first love broke out
when she was nine ; that he declared his passion when she
was about thirteen ; and finally, that Geraldine, having
attained to the womanly discretion of fifteen, dismissed
the accomplished Earl of Surrey, with whom she never
could be united, to accept the hand of old Sir Anthony
Brown, aged sixty. Lady Brown disturbs the illusion of
Geraldine, in the modest triumph of sixteen over sixty.
Dr. Nott is in trepidation for the domestic morality of
the noble poet; yet some of these amatory sonnets may
have been addressed to his betrothed. He has perplexed
himself by a formal protest against the perils of Platonic
love, but apologises for his hero in the manners of the
age. It appears that not only the mistress of Petrarch,
but those of Bayard the chevalier “sans reproche,” and
Sir Philip Sidney, were married women, with as crystal-
line reputations as their lovers. Nor should we omit the
great friend of Surrey, Sir Thomas Wyatt, who was a
staid married man, notwithstanding his romantic passion
for Anne Bullen. The courtly imitators of Petrarch had
made love fashionable. It is evident that Surrey found
nothing so absorbing in his passion, whatever it might
be; for whenever called into public employment he ceased
to be Petrarch—which Petrarch never could, and possibly
for a want of occupation. A small quantity of passion,
dexterously meted out, may be ample to inspire an ama-
torial poet. Neither Surrey nor Petrarch, accomplished
lovers and poets, with all their mistress’ coquetry and
cruelty, broke their hearts in the tenderness of their ideas,
or were consumed by “the perpetual fires” of their ima-
gination.
We have now traced the literary delusion which long
veiled the personal history of the Earl of Surrey, and
which has duped so many ingenious commentators. The
tale affords an additional evidence of that “confusion
312 Amenities of Literature.
worse confounded” by truth and fiction, where the names
are real, and the incidents fictitious; a fatality which
must always accompany “Historical Romances.” The
same mischance occurred to “The Cavalier” of DE FOE,
often published under different titles, suitable to the de-
signs of the editors, and which tale has been repeatedly
mistaken for an authentic history written at the time.
|Under the assumed designation by “a Shropshire Gentle-
man,” whole passages have been transferred from the
Romance into the authentic history of Nichols's Leices-
tershire—just as Anthony à Wood had felicitously suc-
ceeded in his historical authority of Tom Nash’s “Life
of Jack Wilton.”
In the story of SURREY and WYATT, one circumstance
is too precious to be passed over. WYATT commenced as
a writer nearly ten years before Surrey, and his earlier
poetic compositions are formed in the old rhythmical
school. His manuscripts, which still exist, bear his own
strong marks in every line to regulate their casura; for
our ancient poets, to satisfy the ear, were forced to depend
on such artificial contrivances. It was in the strict inter-
course of their literary friendship that the elder bard sur-
rendered up the ancient barbarism, and by the revelation
of his younger friend, studied an art which he had not
himself discovered. Wyatt is an abundant writer; but he
has wrought his later versification with great variety,
though he has not always smoothed his workmanship
with his nail. For many years Wyatt had smothered his
native talent, by translation from Spanish and Italian
poets, and in his rusty rhythmical measures. He lived to
feel the truth of nature, and to practise happier art. Of
his amatory poems, many are graceful, most ingenious.
The immortal one to his “Lute,” the usual musical instru-
ment of the lover or the poet, as the guitar in Spain, com-
posed with as much happiness as care, is the universal
theme of every critic of English poetry.
His defrauded or romantic passion for Anne Bullen often
lends to his effusions a deep mysterious interest, when we
recollect that the poet alludes to a rival who must have
made him tremble as he wrote.
Who list to hunt” I know where is an hind
But as for me, alas ! I may no more,
The Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt. 313
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore;
I am of them that furthest come behind.
Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I may spend his time in vain;
Graven with diamonds, in letters plain,
There is written, her fair neck round about—
“Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am,
And wild to hold, though I seem tame,”
We perceive Wyatt's keen perception of character in
the last verse, admirably expressive of the playfulness and
levity of the thoughtless but susceptible Anne Bullen,
which never left her when in the Tower or on the scaffold.
The poems of WYATT accompanied the unhappy queen
in her imprisonment; and it was Wyatt's sister who
received her prayer-book with her last smile, for the
block before her could not disturb the tenderness of her
affections.
WYATT is an ethical poet, more pregnant with reflection
than imagination; he was intimately conversant with the
world; and it is to be regretted that our poet has only left
three satires, the first Horatian Epistles we possess. These
are replete with the urbanity and delicate irony of the
Roman, but what was then still unexampled, flowing with
the fulness and freedom of the versification of Dryden.
Wyatt had much salt, but no gall.
WYATT excelled SURREY in his practical knowledge of
mankind; he had been a sojourner in politic Madrid, and
had been employed on active embassies. Surrey could
only give the history of his own emotions, affections, and
habits; he is the more interesting poet for us; but we
admire a great man in Wyatt, one whose perception was
not less subtile and acute, because it spread on a far wider
surface of life.
WIAT, for so he wrote his name, was a great wit ; as,
according to the taste of his day, his anagram fully main-
tained. We are told that he was a nice observer of times,
persons, and circumstances, knowing when to speak, and
we may add, how to speak. That happened to Wyatt
which can be recorded probably of no other wit: three
prompt strokes of pleasantry thrown out by him produced
three great revolutions—the fall of Wolsey, the seizure of
the monastic lands, and the emancipation of England from
the papal supremacy. The Wyatts, besides their connexion
314 Amenities of Literature.
with Anne Bullen, had all along been hostile to the great
Cardinal. One day Wyatt entering the king's closet,
found his majesty much disturbed, and displeased with the
minister. Ever quick to his purpose, Wyatt, who always
told a story well, now, to put his majesty into good humour,
and to keep the Cardinal down in as bad a one, furnished
a ludicrous tale of “the curs baiting a butcher's dog.”
The application was obvious to the butcher's son of
Ipswich, and we are told, for the subject but not the tale
itself has been indicated, that the whole plan of getting
rid of a falling minister was laid down by this address of
the wit. It was with the same dexterity, when Wyatt
found the king in a passion on the delay of his divorce,
that, with a statesmanlike sympathy, appealing to the
presumed tendency of the royal conscience, he exclaimed,
“Lord! that a man cannot repent him of his sin but by
the pope's leave!” The hint was dropped; the egg of the
Reformation was laid, and soon it was hatched ' When
Henry the Eighth paused at the blow levelled at the whole
ponderous machinery of the papal clergy, dreading from
such wealth and power a revolution, besides the ungra-
ciousness of the intolerable transfer of all abbey lands to
the royal domains, Wyatt had his repartee for his counsel :
—“Butter the rooks’ nests ſ”—that is, divide all these
houses and lands with the nobility and gentry.
Wyatt should have been the minister of Henry ; we
should then have learned if a great wit, where wit was
ever relished, could have saved himself under a monarch
who dashed down a Wolsey.
Surrey and Wyatt, though often engaged, the one as a
statesman, the other as a general, found their most de-
lightful avocation in the intercourse of their studies. Their
minds seemed cast in the same mould. They mutually
confided their last compositions, and sometimes chose the
same subject in the amicable wrestlings of their genius.
It was a community of studies and a community of skill;
the thoughts of the one flowed into the thoughts of the
other, and we frequently discover the verse from one in
the poem of the other. Wyatt was the more fortunate
man, for he did not live to see himself die in the partner
of his fame perishing on a scaffold, and he has received a
poet's immortality from that friend's noble epitaph. In
The Earl of Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt. 315
his epitaph, Surrey dwells on every part of the person of
his late companion; he expatiates on the excellences of the
head, the face, the hand, the tongue, the eye, and the
heart—but these are not fanciful conceits; the solemnity
of his thoughts and his deep emotions tell their truth.
Wyatt's was
A head, where Wisdoin’s mysteries did frame,
Whose hammers beat still in that lively brain,
As on a stithy,” where some work of fame
Was daily wrought.
* The smith's forge.
316
THE SPOLIATION OF THE MONASTERIES.
INCIDENTs of such an overwhelming nature in political
history as are those of the Reformation can have no
sudden origin. They are but the consequences of some-
thing which has preceded. In our country the suppression
of the monasteries and the abbeys had been long prepared;
it was not, and it could not have been, the temporary pas-
sions, nor the absolute will, of an arbitrary monarch, which
by a word could have annihilated an awful power, had not
the royal edict been but the echo of many voices. It was
attacking but an aged power dissolving in its own cor-
ruption, which, blind with pride, looked with complacency
on its own unnatural greatness, its political anasarca. Its
opulence was an object it could not conceal from its enviers,
and its paramount eminence was too heavy a yoke for its
rising rivals. This power, in the language of the times,
had “covered the land with an Egyptian darkness,” and
when appeared the “Godly and learned king,” as the
eighth Henry was called, he was saluted as “a Moses who
delivered them from the bondage of Pharaoh.” It is not
therefore strange that the act which at a single blow anni-
hilated the monastic orders and their “lands and tene-
ments,” was hailed as the most patriotic which had been
ever passed by an English sovereign. It made even a
tyrannous and jealous monarch, who cut off more heads of
men and women than any other on record, popular and
extolled even in his latter days.
Henry the Eighth had paused at the blow he was about
to level. The plunder was too monstrous even for the
hand of an arbitrary monarch. Its division among the
nobility and gentry was an expedient which removed the
odium from royalty, and invested it with that munificence
which dazzled the pride of Henry. In the vast harvest,
the king refused the lion's share, looking for his safer por-
tion in the secure loyalty of the new possessors to whom
he transferred this vast and novel wealth.
As the scheme was managed, therefore, it was a com-
The Spoliation of the Monasteries. 317
promise or co-partnership of the king and his courtiers.
The lands now lie the open prey of the hardy claimant or
the sly intriguer; crowds of suppliants wearied the crown
to participate in that national spoliation. Every one has-
tened to urge some former service, or some present neces-
sity, as a colourable plea for obtaining a grant of some of
the suppressed lands. A strange custom was then intro-
duced, that of “begging for an estate.” Kneeling to the
king, and specifying some particular lands, was found a
convenient method to acquire them; and these royal
favours were sometimes capriciously and even ludicrously
bestowed. Fuller has a pleasant tale concerning one
Master Champernoun. One day, observing two or three
gentlemen waiting at a door through which the king was
to pass, he was inquisitive to learn their suit, which they
refused to tell. On the king's appearance, they threw
themselves on their knees, and Champernoun was prompt
in joining them, with an implicit faith, says Fuller, that
courtiers never ask anything hurtful to themselves. They
were begging for an estate. The king granted their
petition. On this Champernoun claimed his share of the
largesse; they remonstrated that he had never come to
beg with them; he appealed to the king, and his brother
beggars were fain to allot him the considerable priory of
St. Germains, which he sold to the ancestor of the present
possessor, the Earl of St. Germains.
The king was prodigal in his grants; for the more he
multiplied the receivers of his bounties, the more nume-
rous would be the stanch defenders of their new posses-
sions:* gratitude was the least of their merits. He
counted on their resolution and their courage. The bait
was relishing, and there were some, when land-grants be-
* A fear of the restitution of these abbey-lands to their former uses
appears to have prevailed long after their alienation. So late as in the
reign of James the First, the founder of Dulwich College, in a dispute
respecting the land, observes hypothetically—“If the State should
be at any time pleased to returne all abbey lands to their former use,
I must lose Dulwich, for which I have paid now 5000l.” At a later
revolution, when the bishops’ lands were seized on by the parlia-
mentarians, many obtained those lands at easy rates, or at no rate at
all; the greater part reverted, but, if I am not misinformed, there are
still descendants of some of these parliamentarians who hold estates
without title-deeds.
318 Amenities of Literature.
came more scarce, whose woracity of reformation attempted
to snatch at the lands of the universities, which had cer-
tainly gone had not Henry's love of literature protected
their trembling colleges. We have his majesty’s own
words, in replying to the suggestion of some hungry
courtier:—“Ha! sirrah! I perceive the abbey-lands have
fleshed you, and set your teeth on edge, to ask also those
colleges. We pulled down sin by defacing the monas-
teries; but you desire to throw down all goodness by sub-
version of colleges. I tell you, sir, that I judge no land
in England better bestowed than on our universities,
which shall maintain our realm when we be dead and
rotten. Follow no more this vein; but content yourselves
with what you have already, or else seek homest means
whereby to increase your worldhoods.”
Lord Cromwell was the chief minister through whose
mediation these novel royal grants of houses and lands
were distributed. There was evidently no chance of atten-
tion from his lordship without the most open and explicit
offers of the grossest bribery. The Chancellor Audley, in
bargaining with Lord Cromwell for the abbey of St.
Osyth, for “some present trouble in this suit,” one day
sent twenty pounds, with “my poor hearty good will,
during my life.” Perhaps the bribe, though only placed
to account, had not its full weight, as the chancellor does
not appear, in the present instance, to have possessed him-
self of this abbey, though, afterwards, with the spoils of
two rich monasteries, he built the most magnificent mansion
in England, by which he perpetuated his own name in the
once-famed Audley-End. Sir Thomas Elyot, in soliciting
his lordship's mediation with the king to reward him with
“some convenient portion of the suppressed lands,” found
it advisable to offer a conditional promise ! “Whatsoever
portion of land that I shall attain by the king's grace, I
promise to give to your lordship the first year's fruits,
with my assured and faithful heart and service.” All
were offering their hearts and the rest of their lives to
Ilord Cromwell.
As for the regal dispenser himself, so stupendous was
his portion that it became necessary to found a court
never heard of before—“The Court of Augmentation,”
an expressive designation, indicating its plenary character,
The Spoliation of the Monasteries. 319
with its chancellor and its treasurer, and a long routine
of officers, and none too many, “that the king might be
justly dealt with,” says Cowell, “the interpreter,” “for
all the manors and parks, the colleges and chantries, and
the religious houses which the king did not sell or give
away;” that is, the selected prey which the royal eagle
grasped in his own talons.
We are accustomed to trace the Reformation to Henry
the Eighth ; but in verity small are the claims of this
sovereign on posterity, for through all the multiplied
ramifications of superstition, nothing under him was re-
formed. The other great event of the Reformation—the
assumption of the spiritual supremacy—accorded with the
national independence from a foreign jurisdiction. The
policy was English ; but it originated in the private pas-
sions of the monarch. Assuredly, had the tiara deigned
to nod to the regal solicitor, then had “the Defender of
the Faith” only given to the world another edition of his
book against Luther.
In the last years of his reign, Henry vacillated in his
uncertain reform. Sometimes leaning on one party and
sometimes on another; he had lost the vigour of his
better days. In his last parliament, though not without
some difficulty, both from Protestant and Papist, they
had voted for “the augmentation” of the royal revenue,
their grant of the chantries. These chantries were the
last wrecks of the monastic lands. A single church had
often several chantries attached to it. Chantries were en-
dowments of estates by the sinners of that age for the
benefit of having eternal masses sung for their departed
souls. Henry on this occasion, in his last speech, strongly
animadverts on the national disunion; and among his
thanks mingles his menaces “to unite them in a more un-
acceptable way” than the tenderness with which at that
moment he addressed them, for their concessions to his
“Court of Augmentation.”
It is also evident, by this able and extraordinary speech,
that Henry would gladly have revoked his gift to the
people of “the Word of God in their mother-tongue,” as
his majesty expresses himself.” He had, indeed, already
* See an abstract from one of his Proclamations in “Curiosities of
Literature,” vol. iii. p. 373.−ED.
320 Amenities of Literature.
in part withdrawn the freedom he had granted by re-
stricting it to a few persons, and only to be used on parti-
cular occasions. His majesty proceeds—“You lay too
much stress on your own expositions and fantastical opi-
mions. In such sublime matters you may easily mistake.
This permission of reading the Bible is only designed for
private information, not to furnish you with reprimanding
phrases and expressions of reproach against priests and
preachers. I am extremely sorry to find with how little
reverence the Word of God is mentioned; how people
squabble about the sense; how it is turned into wretched
rhyme, sung and jingled in every alehouse and tavern.”
This part of the king's speech was pointed at the general
readers of the Scriptures; but his majesty did not discover
any happier union among the clergy themselves, whom he
roundly rates:—“I am every day informed that you of
the clergy are declaiming against each other in the pulpit;
and here your charity and discretion are quite lost in
vehemence and satire. Some are too stiff in their old
mumpsimus, and others too busy and curious in their new
sumpsimus.* Thus the pulpits are, as it were, batteries
against each other; the noise is hostile and ruinous.
How can we expect the poor people should live friendly
with their neighbours when they have such unhappy
precedents of discord and dissension in those that teach
them P”
Henry the Eighth rejected the Pope, but surely he
died a Romanist. His unwieldy huge form was lifted up
from his death-bed that he might prostrate himself, and,
in the writer's language, who, however, was a papist,
“bury himself in the earth,” to testify his reverence for
“the real presence,” when it was brought before him.
His will, which, though it was put aside, was not the less
the king's will, attested his last supplications to “the
Virgin Mary, and all her holy company of Heaven.” And
he endowed an altar at Windsor, “to be honourably kept
up with all things necessary for a daily mass, there to be
read perpetually while the world shall endure.” At the
same time Henry endowed the poor knights of Windsor,
* This alludes to the well-known story of the old priest, who having
blunderingly used mumpsimus for 8wmpsimus, would never be put right,
alleging that “he hated all novelties.”
The Spoliation of the Monasteries. 321
upon condition that they should repeat their eternal
masses for his soul. His magnificence was proportionate
to his sins; but his perpetual masses, and the world, did
not endure together.
With this fact before us, it is not therefore strange that
foreign historians should have declared that our Henry
the Eighth never designed a Reformation, that he altered
nothing; and had only raised a schism which those who
contest the papal sovereignty in their civil affairs, as the
Gallican Church affected to do, would incline more to
approve than to censure.
This monarch has been lauded as a patriot king for the
suppression of the monasteries and the national emancipa-
tion from the tiara—but patriotism has often covered the
most egotistical motives.

WOL. I. Y
322
A CRISIS AND A REACTION.
ROBERT CROWLEY.
THERE is a state of transition in society which we usually
call a crisis. A crisis is the most active moment of con-
flicting principles; the novel must extirpate the ancient,
the ancient must eject the novel; the one looks to be con-
tinued and the other to be settled; it is a painful state of
obstinate resistance, like that of two wrestlers when neither
can cast down the other. *
Fortunate are the people who have only to pass through
a single crisis. But in the wrath of Providence there may
be reserved another connecting crisis in the chain of human
events, and this we term a reaction, usually accompanied
by a retaliation; then comes the hoarded vengeance and
the day of retribution on which issues no amnesty. In
physics, action and reaction are equal; the reciprocation of
any impulse not being greater than the impulse itself.
Nature in her operations thus preserves an equilibrium ;
but the human hatreds and the partial interests which
man has contrived for his own misery, can only find that
equilibrium when he submits to a toleration. But a
toleration is a partition of power, and predominance is the
vitality of a party. The Catholic vengeance of Mary in its
reaction was out of all proportion greater than the Protes-
tant docility of Edward. Our nation has been more sub-
ject to this crisis and this reaction than perhaps any other.
The reign of Charles the First was a crisis, that of Charles
the Second a reaction; that of James the Second brought
on a crisis, and the revolution of 1688 was the consequen-
tial reaction. But never have the people suffered more
than during the three reigns of Edward the Sixth, Mary,
and Elizabeth ; a terrible intolerance disorganized the
whole community: the conflict of old and of new creeds;
of reciprocal persecutions, and alternate triumphs; of ab-
jurations and recantations; of supple compliers and rabid
polemics; and of pugilistic contests of the ejected with the
ejectors—rapid scenes at once tragic and ludicrous.
A Crisis and a Reaction—Robert Crowley. 323
Henry the Eighth died in 1547, and the accession of
Elizabeth was in 1558. In this short period of eleven
years we were governed by two sovereigns, whose reigns,
happily for the English people, were the shortest in our
annals.
A new era was opening under the dominion of Henry,
for he was a monarch of enlarged views. But the intel-
lectual character of England in its vernacular literature
was retarded by the events which occurred in the reigns
of the two successors of this sovereign. The nation
indeed suffered no longer from the civil wars of the rival
Roses ; but another war now shook the empire with as
merciless a rivalry—it was a universal conflict of opinions
and dogmas. The governing powers themselves combated
each other; and whether in opposing the Reformer to the
Romanist, or in restoring “the papelin' to root out “the
gospeller,” in these two mutable reigns, they neutralised
or distracted the unhappy people; and while both main-
tained that they were proffering “the true religion,”
religion itself seemed to have lost its eternal truth.
Edward with an infirm hand established, what from her
short reign Mary, with her barbarous energy, could only
imperfectly cast down.
Edward the Sixth, a boy-king, and a puppet-prince,
invested with supreme power, acted without any volition
of his own. We are prepossessed in his favour by his
laborious diary. It is, however, remarkable that no soli-
tary entry made in that book of life, no chance effusion,
disturbs the uninterrupted equanimity. Whether the
young king signs for the decapitation of his two uncles,
or jots down the burning of Joan of Kent, an Arian, and
another of a Dutchman, a Socinian, or records how a live
goose suspended had its head sliced off by those who run
at the ring, they seem equally to be matters of course,
and by him were only distinguished by their respective
dates. A nation’s hope has always been the flattering
painter of every youthful prince who dies immaturely;
in the royal youth is lamented the irreparable loss of the
future great monarch. But his father had been the most
glorious youthful prince who ever adorned a throne;
and it would be hard to decide, by the heartless chronicle
of Edward, whether such an imperturbable spirit would

Y 2
324 Amenities of Literature.
have closed his life as a Nero or a Titus. This unhappy
young prince must have felt the utter misery of his
condition, for his was that curse of power, when in its
exercise power itself becomes powerless, while its hands
must be directed by another's. Had the reign of Edward
the Sixth been prolonged, we should have had a polemical
monarch, if we may judge by a collection of texts of
Scripture, in proof of the doctrine of justification by faith,
which exists in his own handwriting, written in French,
and dedicated to his uncle.*
This was a calamitous period for the nation; we derive
little consolation when we discover that not more than
three centuries ago our ancestors were a semi-barbarous
race? We seem to be consulting the annals of some
Asiatic dynasty, when we see a royal nephew tranquilly
affixing his signature to the death-warrants of his uncles;
imprisonment or exile would have been too tender for these
state victims; we see one brother attainted by another,
and the scaffold finally receiving both ; and a Queen of
England, in the captivity of the Romish superstition,
hailing with a benediction her own autos da fé. What
we should have gained had the accomplished prince lived,
we cannot conjecture; but what the nation were spared
by the death of the melancholy Mary, is not doubtful.
Edward and Mary were opposite bigots; and both alike
presumed that they were appointed to the work of
sanctity; but every reform which requires to be carried
on by coercion will long appear ambiguous to the better-
tempered. The bigotry as well as the puerile taste of the
prince appeared when he composed a comedy or interlude
against The Whore of Babylon, and the The False Gods ;
but the brawls of polemics, at least, are more tolerable than
torture and the sacrifice of fire.
It was one of the first evils of the Reformation, that
the people were ill prepared to receive their emancipation.
All sense of subordination rapidly disappeared in society;
even the spell of devotion was dissolved; and the people
seemed to consider that, having rid themselves of one
spurious mode of religion, there was no longer any religion
in the world. “Thus for religion ye keep no religion,”
* It will be found in the additional manuscripts at the British
Museum.
A Crisis and a Reaction—Robert Crowley. 325
wrote the learned Cheke, in once addressing an armed
multitude, who cruelly would not tolerate the Christianity
of their neighbours.
An immature reformation is accompanied by certain
unavoidable inconveniences. Its first steps are incompre-
hensible to the thoughtless, and too vague for the con-
siderate, doing what it should not do, and leaving undone
what it ought to do, comprehending too much, and
omitting many things. A revolutionary reform breaks
out with an ebullition of popular feelings; but in escaping
from one tyranny, men do not necessarily enter into
freedom. The reformer, in abandoning what is known,
looks to an uncertain and distant futurity; the anti-
reformer appeals to precedent, and clings to what is
real—his good is positive, and his evil is not concealed.
In the removal of some long-standing evils in civil society,
some portion of good goes with them; for many of these
served as expedients to supply certain wants, and there-
fore relatively were or may be beneficial. Even our
old prejudices, when scrutinised, often will be found to
have struck their roots in the common welfare. The
complicate interests of civil society were at first a web
woven by strong hands, so that much of the antiquated
may retain its soundness, while the gloss of the new may
set off but a loose and flimsy texture. These are some of
the difficulties of an age of innovation, which may wisely
check without stopping the velocity of its movements.
The only unerring reformer who partakes not of human
infirmities, neither deceived by illusions, nor overcome by
prejudices, and whose only wisdom is experience, must
be that silent and unceasing worker of the destinies of
man—Time !
At the period now before us, the crisis and the reaction
were alike remarkable. The people who witnessed in four
successive reigns four different systems of religion, mu-
table with the times, amidst their incertitude were in fact
taught a religious scepticism. One of the great innova-
tions in divine service was that of preaching from the
pulpit, instead of reading set homilies or other prescribed
lessons, by which the Romanists had reduced their whole
devotion to a mumbled ritual and a mechanical ser-
vice—formularies and forms which ceased to operate
326 Amenities of Literature.
on the heart, and carried on a religion that was not
religious.
The introduction of preaching appears to have been fol-
lowed by an unhappy effect. Latimer, in the rude sim-
plicity of his style, complains of some that went to
church for the benefit of being “lulled into a nap.”
There was a still greater grievance in this novel custom of
preaching; for from the pulpits the turbulent were rousing
the passions of the people, by declaiming against what
some termed “the abuses which ought to be put away;”
while others, persevering in their old doctrine, were
alarming their auditors, for the loss of what had been put
away. Pulpit thundered against pulpit ; for it was not
only the reformer, but the anti-reformer, who were the
preachers. The fact was, that by an avaricious policy,
“the court of augmentation,” which had to pension the
monks of the suppressed houses, filled up the vacant
benefices as fast as they occurred, by appointing these
annuitants, to curtail the pension-list. The enemy was
thus settled in the camp of the reformers. This spirit of
division was caught by the rude stage of that day in their
comedies or interludes. This inundation of popular cla-
mour was only to be stayed by coercion—by proclama-
tions and orders in council. The Council of State issued
their orders, or rather their instructions, how the
preachers were to preach, and that none but the licensed
should be permitted to ascend into the pulpit. Even
Latimer himself was discountenanced for his apostolical
freedoms, by inveighing against the gentry, who sent
their sons to college, instead of educating them at home
for the church. Academical degrees were abrogated as
anti-Christian; Greek was heresy; and all human learning
was to be vain and useless to “the gospellers.” As the
preachers were to be licensed, it came to the turn of the
players and the printers not to enact or print their inter-
ludes, without a special licence from the privy council;
and at length the interludes were actually inhibited for
“containing matter relating to sedition;” and this pro-
clamation more particularly specifies those that “play in
English.” The Romanists had their interludes as well as
the Reformers. Bishop Percy once observed that the ex-
cellence of the drama, as every wise man would have it, is


A Crisis and a Reaction—Robert Crowley. 327
to form a supplement to the pulpit, this literally occurred
in the present instance; but the pulpit was itself as dis-
orderly, to use the words of the proclamation, “as any
light and fantastical head could list to invent and devise.”
Our most skilful delver into dramatic history, amidst his
curious masses of disinterments, has brought up this pro-
clamation. We must connect the state of these rude
players with these rude preachers; the interludes were
nothing more than reflections from the sermons; player
and preacher were the same. By connecting these toge-
ther, we form a juster notion of their purpose than we
find in the isolated fact. There was now sedition in reli-
gion as well as in politics.
The prevalent fervour scattered its sparks through all
the ranks of society, and the thoughts of all were con-
centrated on the sole object of “the new religion.” The
Reformation was the great political topic in the court of
Edward the Sixth ; discussions in theology were no
longer confined to colleges or to the clergy. Our poets,
ever creatures of their age, reflecting its temper, and who
best tell its story, confined their genius to ballads and in-
terludes, making rough sport for loungers and for the
common people; or, in their quieter moods, were devoted
to metrical versions from the Scriptures. In a history of
Our Vernacular literature, the introduction of a versified
psalter and of psalm-singing forms an incident; as the
passion for psalmody itself is a portion of the history of
the Reformation. “This infectious frenzy of sacred
song,” as Thomas Warton describes what he condemns as
puritanic, we adopted from the practice of Calvin, who
had introduced psalm-singing into the Geneva discipline,
but really had himself borrowed it from the popularity of
the first psalms in French metre, by Clement Marot.
This natural and fine genius, as a commutation for an
irregular life—and he had been imprisoned for eating flesh
in Lent—was persuaded by the learned Vatable, the
Hebrew Professor, to perform this signal act of penance.
The gay novelty charmed the court, and was equally de-
lightful to the people; every one chose the psalm which
expressed his own personal feelings or described his own
condition, adapted to some favourite air for the instrument
or the voice. At the time it could have been little sus-
328 Amenities of Literature.
pected that while Calvin was stripping the religious ser-
vice of its pageantry, and denuding it even of its decent
ceremonies, he would have condescended to anything so
human as a tune and a chorus; yet the austere reformer of
Geneva showed no deficient knowledge of human nature,
when he contrived to make men sing in concert, or carol
in the streets, and shorten their work by a song cheerful
or sad ; for psalms there are for joy or for affliction, effu-
sions for all hours, suitable to all ranks.”
Another incident in which our vernacular literature was
remotely connected, was the calling in of the ancient
Rituals, Missals, and other books of the Latin service, and
establishing the book of Common Prayer in the common
language. But the people at large seemed reluctant to
alter their antiquated customs, which habit had long en-
deared to them. While they had listened to an unintelli-
gible Mass, they had, from their childhood, contracted a
spirit of devotion. Their fathers had bowed to the Mass
as a holy office from time immemorial; and from their
childhood they had attached to it those emotions of holi-
ness which were not the less so by their erroneous asso-
ciation of ideas. When their religion became a mere Act
of Parliament, and their prayers were in plain English,
all appeared an affair of yesterday. The church service
seemed no longer venerable, the new priesthood no longer
apostolical ; and the giddy populace protested against the
common dues exacted by their neighbour the curate, for
their marriages and baptisms and funerals. They forsook
their churches, and even refused to pay tithes.
It is in revolutionary periods that we find men adapted
for these rare occasions; who, had they not lived amid the
commotions around them, had probably not emerged out
of the sphere of their neighbours. Such minds quickly
sympathise with popular grievances and popular clamours,
and obtain their reformation, often at the sacrifice of their
individual interest, as if the cause were their appointed
vocation. They are advocates who plead, imbued even by
all the prejudices of their clients; they are organs re-
sounding the fulness of the passions around them : a cha-
racter of this order is the true representative of the mul-
* See an article on Psalms in vol. ii. of “Curiosities of Literature.”—ED.
A Crisis and a Reaction—Robert Crowley. 329
titude; and we listen to all their cries in the single voice
of such a man.
And such a man was RoberT CROWLEY, a universal
reformer through Church and State; whose unwearied
industry run the pace of his zeal; whose declarations
were as open as his designs were definite; and whose re-
solved spirit pursued its object in every variable form
which his imagination could invent, and which incessant
toil never found irksome.
Crowley had been a student at Magdalen College at
Oxford, and obtained a fellowship. At the close of the
reign of Henry the Eighth, Crowley appears to have
sojourned in “the great city;” and in that of Edward
the Sixth, we must not be surprised to discover the Fellow
of Magdalen established as a printer and bookseller, and
moreover combining the elevated characters of poet and
preacher. How it happened that a man of letters, and
not undistinguished by his genius, adopted a mechanical
profession, we may account for from the exigencies of the
time. Possibly Crowley's fellowship was what Swift
once called “a beggarly ſettleship.” In the hurried reform
of the day, “the universal good” was attended by “a
great partial evil.” In the dissolution of the abbeys and
priories they had also demolished those useful exhibitions
proceeding from them, by which poor students were
maintained at the universities. Many, thus deprived of
the means of existence at college, were compelled to for-
sake their Alma-Mater and seek another course of life. It
was probably this incident which had thrown this learned
man among the people. How Crowley contrived to fulfil
his fourfold office of printer, bookseller, poet, and
preacher, with eminent success, the scanty notices of his
life disappoint our curiosity. We would gladly enter into
the recesses of this man’s arduous life. Did he partition
the hours of his day ? What habits harmonised such
clashing pursuits P Was he a sage whose wisdom none of
his followers have gathered P Was the shop of the stu-
dious man haunted by learned customers ? When we
think of the printer's press and the bookseller's counter,
we are disposed to inquire, Where mused the poet, and
where stood the preacher ?
Crowley is the author of many controversial pieces, and
330 Amenities of Literature.
some satirical poems reflecting the manners and the
passions of his day, all which enjoyed repeated editions.
But he was not less a favourite sermoniser. He touched
a tremulous chord in the hearts of the people, and his
opinions found an echo in their breasts. The pulpit and
the press, perhaps, had been his voluntary choice, to print
out what he had spoken ere it perished, or offer a supple-
ment to a sermon in some awful tome of theology and
reform. His Pulpit and his Press —“those two prolific
Sources of faction,” exclaimed Thomas Warton.
As a printer and book-vendor, Crowley is distinguished
by that curiosity of research which led him to be the first
publisher of “The Visions of Piers Ploughman,” which
had hitherto slept in the dust of its manuscript state.
Warton restricts the merit of his discovery merely to the
fervour of a controversialist eager to propagate his own
opinions; and truly the bold spirit of reform, and the
Satirical strokes on the ecclesiastics of the times of Edward
the Third, in that remarkable and unknown author, were
in unison with a Reformer in the age of Reformation. It
must be confessed that the historian of our poetry
cherished some collegiate prejudices, and that his native
good humour is liable to change when his pen scourges a
puritan and a predestinarian, as was Robert Crowley. But
Warton wrote when he imagined that the suppressed
absurdities of Popery required no longer any strong satire
from a Calvinist ; and as Crowley, too, lived to hold many
dignities in the reign of Elizabeth, Crowley appeared to
Warton to be the member of “a Church whose doctrines
and polity his undiscerning zeal had a tendency to de-
stroy.” Strype has only ventured to describe Crowley as
“an earnest professor of religion.” The meek curate of
Low-Leyton could not rise to the magisterial indignation
of one of the “heads of houses,” one who, at least, ought
to have been, and who, I understand, probably missed the
honour and the profit by his own ingenuous carelessness.
One of the most striking productions of this earnest
Reformer, for its freedom, was his address to the assembled
Parliament. The title is expressive—“An Information
and Petition against the Oppressors of the Commoners of
this Realm. Compiled and imprinted for this only pur-
pose, that among them that have to do in the Parliament,
A Crisis and a Reaction—Robert Crowley. 331
some godly-minded men may hereat take occasion to speak
more in the matter than the author was able to write.”
Crowley too modestly alludes to any deficiencies of his
own; his “information” is ample, and doubtless conveyed
to the ear of those “who had to do in the Parliament,”
what must have startled the oldest senator.
Who are “the oppressors of the poor commoners?”
All the orders in society the clergy—the laity—and,
above all, “the Possessioners!”
This term, “the Possessioners,” was a popular circu-
lating coinage struck in the Mint of our reformer—and
probably included much more than meets our ear. Every
land-owner, every proprietor, was a “Possessioner.”
Whether in an orderly primitive commonwealth there
should be any “Possessioners,” might be a debateable
point in a parliament composed of “the poor Commons”
themselves, with our Robin for their speaker. But
however this might be, “the Possessioners of this
realm,” as he calls them, “could only be reformed by
God working in their hearts, as he did in the primitive
church, when the Possessioners were contented and very
willing to sell their possessions, and give the price thereof
to be common to all the faithful believers.” This seems
perfectly intelligible, but our reformer judged it required
Some explanation—as thus:–“ He would not have any to
take him as though he went about to make all things com-
mon.” Doubtless, there were some propagators of this
new revelation of a primitive Christian community, and as
little doubt that Robin himself was one ; for he adds, “If
the Possessioners know how they ought to bestow their
possessions,” and he had already instructed them, in that
case “he doubted not it should not need to have all things
made common.” Such was the logic of this primitive
radical reformer. A bland compromise, and a sturdy
menace . This “grievance” of the “Possessioners” might
be reformed, till poverty itself became a test of patriotism.
They had yet to learn that to impoverish the rich is not
to enrich the poor.
At that day they were bewildered in their notions of
property, and their standards of value; they had neither
discovered the sources nor the progress of the wealth of a
nation. They murmured at importation, for which they
3.
332 Amenities of Literature.
seemed to pay the penalties, and looked on exportation as a
conveyance of the national property to the foreigner.
They fixed the prices at which all consumable articles
were to be sold; the farmer's garner was inspected ; the
landlords who became graziers were denounced ; forestallers
and regraters haunted the privy councils of the king; the
markets were never better supplied; and the people won-
dered why every article was dearer. About this time the
prices of all commodities, both in France and England, had
gradually risen. The enterprise of commerce was probably
working on larger capitals. As expenses increased, the
landlords held that they were entitled to higher rents.
In Crowley’s denunciations, “God’s plague” is invoked
against all “lease-mongers, pilling and polling the poor
commoner.” The Parliament of Henry the Eighth had
legalized the interest of money at ten per cent. ; Robin
would have this “sinful act” repealed: loans should be
gratuitous by the admonition in Luke, “Do ye lend, look-
ing for no gain thereof.” In this manner he applies the
text against usury. They seemed to have no notion that
he who bought ever intended to sell. This rude political
economist proposed that all property should be kept sta-
tionary. No one should have a better portion than he
was born to. Where then was to be found the portion of
“the poor commoner” not born to any ? or him whose
loss of fortune was to be repaired by industry and enter-
prise P. Prices advanced ; double rents' double tithes |
Our radical preacher attacks his brother ecclesiastics.
“We can neither come into the world, nor remain in it,
nor go out of it, but they must have a fleece | Let it be
lawful to perform all their ministries by ourselves; we can
lay an honest man in his grave without a set of carrion-
crows scenting their prey.” The splendour of the ancient
landed aristocracy and the prodigal luxury of the eccle-
siastics more forcibly struck their minds than those silent
arts of enlarged traffic which were perpetuating the wealth
of the nation, and producing its concomitant evils.
While the people were thus agitated, divided, and dis-
tracted, the same state of disorder was shaking the more
intelligent classes of society. Our mutable governments
during four successive reigns gave rise to incidents which
had not occurred in the annals of any other people. With
A Crisis and a Reaction—Robert Crowley, 333
the higher orders it was not only a conflict of the old and
the new religions; public disputations were frequent, creeds
were yet to be drawn from school-divinity, the artificial
logic of syllogisms and metaphysical disputations held
before mixed audiences, where the appellant, when his
memory or his acumen failed him, was disconcerted by the
respondent ; but when the secular arm was called in,
alternately as each faction predominated, and the lives and
properties of men were to be the result of these opinions,
then men knew not what to think, nor how to act. What
had served as argument and axiom within a few years, a
state proclamation condemned as false and erroneous. A
dereliction of principle spread as the general infection of
the times, and in despair many became utterly indifferent
to the event of affairs to which they could apply no other
remedy than to fall in with the new course, whatever that
might be.
The history of the universities exhibits this mutable
picture of the nation. There were learned doctors who,
under Henry the Eighth, abjured their papacy—under
IEdward vacillated, not knowing which side to lean on—
under Mary recanted—and under Elizabeth again abjured.
Many an apostate on both sides seemed converted into
zealous penitents; persecutors of the friends with whom
they had consorted, and deniers of the very opinions
which they had so earnestly propagated. The facility
with which some illustrious names are recorded to have
given way to the pressure of events seems almost in-
credible; but, for the honour of human nature, on either
side there were some who were neither so tractable nor
so infirm.
The heads of houses stood for antiquity, with all its
sacred rust of time; they looked on reform with a sus-
picious eye, while every man in his place marked his
eager ejector on the watch. Under Edward the Sixth,
Dr. Richard Smith, a potent scholastic, stood forth the
stern advocate of the ancient order of things. However,
to preserve his professorship, this doctor recanted of “his
popish errors;” shortly afterwards he declared that it
was no recantation, but a retractation signifying nothing:
to make the doctor somewhat more intelligible, and a
rumour spreading that “Dr. Smith was treading in his
334 Amenities of Literature.
old steps,” he was again enforced to read his recantation,
with an acknowledgment that “his distinction was frivo-
lous, both terms signifying the same thing.” He did not
recant the professorship till Cranmer invited Peter Martyr
from Germany to the chair of the disguised Romanist.
The political Jesuit attended even the lectures of his
obtrusive rival, took notes with a fair countenance, till
suddenly burst the latent explosion. An armed party
menaced the life of Peter Martyr, and a theological chal-
lenge was sent from the late professor to hold a disputa-
tion on “the real presence.” Peter Martyr protested
against the barbarous and ambiguous terms of the scho-
lastic logic, and would only consent to explain the mystery
of the sacrament by the terms of carnaliter and corpora-
liter; for the Scriptures, in describing the Supper, men-
tion the flesh and the body, not the matter and substance.
He would, however, indulge them to accept the terms of
zealiter and substantialiter.
There was “a great hubbub” at Oxford on this most
eventful issue. The popish party and the reformers were
alike hurried and busied; books and arguments were
heaped together; the meanest citizen took his stand.
The reforming visitors of Edward arrived; all met, all
but Dr. Smith, who had flown to Scotland, on his way to
Louvain. However, he had left his able deputies, who
were deep in the lore in which it appears Peter Martyr
required frequent aid to get on. Both the adverse parties
triumphed; that is usual in these logomachies; but the
Romanists account for the success of the Reformed by the
circumstance that their judges were Reformers.
Such abstruse subjects connected with religious associa-
tions, and maintained or refuted by the triumph or the
levity of some haughty polemic, produced the most irreve-
rent feelings among the vulgar. As the Reformation was
then to be predominant, the common talk of the populace
was diversified by rhymes and ballads; and it was held, at
least by the wits, that there was “no real presence,” since
Dr. Smith had not dared to show himself. The papistical
sacrament was familiarly called “Jack in the Box,”
“Worm’s meat,” and other ludicrous terms, one of which
has descended to us in the term which jugglers use of
hocus pocus. This familiar phrase, Anthony Wood in-
A Crisis and a Reaction—Robert Crowley. 335
forms us, originated in derision of the words, “Hoc est
corpus,” slovenly pronounced by the mumbling priest in
delivering the emblem as a reality. As opprobrious words
with the populace indicate their furious acts, scandalous
scenes soon followed. The censers were snatched from
the hands of the officiating priests; mass-books were flung
at their heads; all red-lettered and illuminated volumes
were chopped in pieces by hatchets: nor was this done
always by the populace, but by students, who in their
youth and their reform knew of no better means to testify
their new loyalty to the visitors of Edward. One of the
more ludicrous scenes among so many shameful ones, was
a funereal exhibition of the schoolmen. Peter Lombard,
“the master of sentences,” accompanied by Duns Scotus
and Thomas Aquinas, carried on biers, were tumbled into
bonfires |
Five years after these memorable scenes, the same drama
was to be repeated, performed by a different company of
actors. Religion assumed a new face; that which had
hardly been established was blasted by the name of heresy.
All who had flourished under Edward were now called
in question. The ancient tenants now ejected the new-
comers, and affronted them by the same means they had
themselves been affronted. No one at first knew how
affairs were to turn out; some still clung to the reform;
others were reverting to the old system. There were in
fact for some time two religions at once in the university.
The Common Prayer-book in English was, however, but
faintly read, while the Mass was loudly chanted. Jewel's
letter to the Queen was cautiously worded. This zealous
reformer, in an unhappy moment, had yielded to his fears,
and subscribed a recantation, which he soon after abjured
before a Protestant congregation in Germany. When
Peter Martyr heard the little bell ring to Mass, he sighed,
and said, “that bell would destroy all the sound doctrine
in the college.” Gardiner gave him a safe-conduct home-
wards, which saved Peter Martyr from the insolent triumph
of his rival, the scholastic Dr. Smith, and the Spanish friars
with whom Mary supplied his place.
But the Marians also burned books, as likewise men
The funeral of the schoolmen carried on their biers was
too recent to be forgotten; and in return, all Bibles in
336 Amenities of Literature.
English, and all the commentators on the Bible in the
vernacular idiom, and which, we are told, “ for their num-
ber seemed almost infinite,” were thrown together in the
market-place; and the lighted pyre proclaimed to Oxford
the ominous flames of superstition, which consumed, not
long after, opposite to Baliol College, the great unfortu-
nate victims of reformation. There Latimer and Ridley
bowed their spirits in the fires, while Cranmer, from the
top of the Bocardo, witnessed the immolation, praying to
God to strengthen them, and felt in anticipation his own
coming fate. Then followed expulsions and emigrations.
We have a long list of names. Five years afterwards,
such was the rapid change of scenery, these fugitives
returned to re-possess themselves of their seats, and were
again and finally the ejectors under Elizabeth.
The history of this mutable period is remarkably shown
in the singular incident of Catherine, the wife of Peter
Martyr, and St. Frideswide.
Peter Martyr, when celibacy was the indispensable vir-
tue of an ecclesiastic, brought his wife into his college, and
also his bawling children. This spirit of reform was an
abhorrence to the conscience and the quiet of the monks.
A brothel, a prostitute, and a race of bastards, formed,
according to the old inmates, the residence of the family
of the reformer. The wife of Martyr died, and was in-
terred near the relics of St. Frideswide. In the Marian
days, it was resolved that the departed female should be
condemned for heresy, and, since the corpse lay not distant
from “that religious virgin, St. Frideswide,” it should be
disinterred; and the Dean of Christ Church had the
remains of Martyr's wife dug up and buried in the dung-
hill of his stable. Five years after, when Elizabeth
reigned, the fate of the disturbed bones of the wife of
Martyr was recollected, and, by command, with patience
and ingenuity, the sub-dean collected from the dunghill
the bones which time had disjointed, and placed them in
a coffin in the cathedral till they should be reburied with
greater solemnity. A search was at the same time made
by the sub-dean for the bones of St. Frideswide, which
were not found where they had reposed for centuries.
They had been hidden by some relic-adoring Catholic, to
save them from the profane hands of the triumphant
A Crisis and a Reaction—Robert Crowley. 337
heretics of Edward the Sixth. In the obscurest part of
the church, after much seeking, two silken bags were dis-
covered, which had carefully preserved the relics of St.
Frideswide. The sub-dean, who seems to have been at
once a Romanist and a Reformer, considered that these
bones of Peter Martyr's wife and the female saint should
receive equal honours. He put them in the same coffin,
and they were re-interred together. This incident pro-
voked some scoffs from the witless, and some grave com-
ments from those who stood more in awe of the corpse of
the saint than of the sinner. Thus they were buried and
coupled together; and a scholar, whether a divine or a
philosoper his ambiguous style will not assure us, inscribed
this epitaph:—
IIic jacet Religio cum Superstitione.
Did the profound writer insinuate a wish that in one
grave should lie mingled together Religion with Super-
stition ? or that they are still as inseparable as the bones
of the wife of Peter Martyr with the bones of St.
Frideswide P Or did he mean nothing more than the idle
antithesis of a scholar's pen P
At this uncertain crisis of the alliance between Church
and State, the history of our English Bible exhibits a
singular picture of the Church, which, from courting the
favour of the great, gradually grew into its own strength,
and rested on its own independence. We perceive it first
attracting the royal eye, and afterwards securing the pa-
tronage of ministers. This phenomenon is observable in
the Bible commanded to be printed by Edward the Sixth.
There we view his majesty’s portrait printed and illu-
mined in red. Under Elizabeth, in the same Bible, omit-
ting only the Papistic fish-days, we are surprised by the
two portraits of the Earl of Leicester, placed before the
Book of Joshua, and Cecil Lord Burleigh, adorning the
Psalms. This is the first edition of the Bishops' Bible.
But subsequently, in 1574, we discover that the portraits
of the royal favourites are both withdrawn, and a map of
the Holy Land substituted, while the arms of Archbishop
Parker seem to have been let into the vacancy which Lord
Burleigh erst so gloriously occupied. The map of the
Holy Land unquestionably is more appropriate than the
WOL. I. Z.
338 Amenities of Literature.
portraits of the two statesmen; but the arms of the
archbishop introduced into the Scriptures indicate a more
egotistic spirit in the good prelate than, perhaps, becomes
the saintly humility of the pastor. The whole is an ex-
hibition of that worldliness which in its first weakness is
uncertain of the favour of the higher powers, but which
cannot conceal its triumph in its full-grown strength; the
great ecclesiastic, no longer collecting portraits of minis-
ters, stamps his own arms on the sacred volume, to ratify
his own power!
339
PRIMITIVE DRAMAS.
SCRIPTURAL dramas, composed by the ecclesiastics, fur-
nished the nations of Europe with the only drama they
possessed during many centuries. Voltaire ingeniously
suggested, that GREGORY of Nazianzen, to wean the
Christians of Constantinople from the dramas of Greece
and Rome, composed sacred dramas; The Passion of
Christ afforded one of the deepest interest. This remark-
able transition might have occurred to this father of the
Church, from the circumstance that the ancient Greek
tragedy had originally formed a religious spectacle; and
the choruses were turned into Christian hymns. Warton
considered this fact as a new discovery in the obscure
annals of the earliest drama.* The temples of the idols
were for ever to be closed, for true religion and triumph-
ant faith could show the miraculous Being who, blending
the celestial with the human nature, was no longer the
empty fable of the poet. The gross simplicity of the in-
ventors, and the undisturbed faith of the people, perceived
nothing profane in the representation of an awful mystery
by a familiar play. Christian or Pagan, the populace re-
mains the same, and must be amused ; the invention of
scriptural plays would keep alive their religious faith, and
sacred dramas would be a happy substitute for those of
which they were denied evermore to be spectators.
This attempt to christianise the drama did not produce
an immediate effect ; but the Roman dramatic art could
not fail to degenerate with the Roman empire; and the
actors themselves were but the descendants of the mimi, a
race of infamous buffoons, objects of the horror and the
excommunication of the primitive fathers.f
* Warton’s “Hist. of Eng. Poetry,” iii. 195, 8vo edition ; but it
has been suggested that, as Saint Gregory composed more poetically,
this earliest sacred drama was the production of a later writer,
another Gregory, bishop of Antioch, A.D. 572. The dramatist, how-
ever, was an ecclesiastic, and that point only is important on the
present occasion.
ºf TERTULLIAN, CHRYSOSTOM, LACTANTIUS, CYPRIAN, and others,
have vehemently declaimed against theatres and actors. It is doubt-
Z 2
340 Amenities of Literature.
In the obscurity of the medieval period, the origin of
these sacred dramas in Europe is lost. They are only in-
cidentally noticed by those who had yet no notions of the
drama. But though in England their remains are found
at a much earlier period than in any other country, this
seems to have been a mere accident from the utter neglect,
or rather ignorance, of other nations of the origin of their
own early drama; for these scriptural plays, judging by
those which we possess, seem struck in the same mint,
and are worked out of a common stock, and their appear-
ance we can hardly doubt was coeval. Monks were the
writers or inventors, and a general communication was
kept up with Rome throughout every European realm.
The subjects and the personages of these biblical dramas
are treated with the same inartificial arrangement, and
when translated it would be difficult to distinguish be-
tween a French, a Flemish, or an English mystery; and
in their progressive state, branching out into three distinct
classes, they passed in all countries through the same
mutations.
It has been conjectured that they were first introduced
into Italy, from its intercourse with the metropolis of the
Greek Empire; but when we have recourse to its literary
recorder, we gather nothing but ambiguity. Tiraboschi is
dubious whether the early Italian mysteries exhibited in
the year 1264 were anything more than a dumb show, or
the processional display of a religious pageant. Decided,
on system, not to approve of such familiar exhibitions of
sacred themes, the Jesuit has cautiously noticed two
companies who evidently had performed a mystery, or
miracle-play. In that piece there is a direction that “An
angel and the virgin sing ;” but our learned Jesuit will
not venture even to surmise that “the virgin and the
less the invectives of the Fathers which have been the true origin of
the puritanic denouncement against “stage-plays” and “play-goers.”
The Fathers furnished ample quotations for PRYNNE in his “Histrio-
mastix.” It is, however, curious to observe that at a later day, in the
thirteenth century, the great schoolman, Thomas Aquinas, greatly
relaxed the prohibitions; confessing that amusement is necessary to the
happiness of man, he allows the decent exercise of the histrionic art.
See a curious tract, “The Stage Condemned,” which contains a collec-
tion of the opinions of the Fathers, 1698. Riccoboni, “Sur les
Théâtres,” does not fail to appeal to the great schoolman.
Primitive Dramas. 341
angel” acted their parts, but merely chanted a poem.*
The literary antiquary Signorelli inclines to fix the uncer-
tain date of the first sacred drama so late as in 1445.f. In
France these early scriptural exhibitions were so little
comprehended, that Le Grand D'Aussy, in his pretension
that his nation possessed the drama in the thirteenth cen-
tury, derives the origin of their mysteries from such pieces
as the three fabliaux which he has given, as the earliest
dramas. So little conversant in his day—not a distant
one—were the French antiquaries with a subject which
has of late become familiar to their tastes. We learn no-
thing positive of their “Mysteries” till their “Confraerie
de la Passion” was incorporated in 1402.
The earliest of these representations necessarily would
be in Latin,S and performed in monasteries by the eccle-
siastics themselves, on festival days; in this state, how
could they have been designed for the people? Aware of
this difficulty, and convinced that these holy plays were
in their origin intended for popular instruction and re-
creation, it has been conjectured that the Latin mystery
was accompanied by a pantomimic show, for the benefit of
the people; but an impatient concourse could be little
affected by the action of the performers, almost as incom-
prehensible as the language was unintelligible. The
people, a great animal only to be fondled in one way, as
usual, worked out their own wants; they taught learned
clerks the only method by which they were to be amused,
by having the same thing after their own fashion, and to be
* “Tiraboschi,” iv.
tº These dramas subsequently formed no uncommon spectacle in the
streets of Italy, whence some Italian critics have fancied that the
Gothic poem of Dante—his Hell, his Purgatory, and his Paradise
—was an idea caught from the threefold stage of a mystery which
often fixed his musings in the streets of his own Florence. As late as
in the year 1739, a mystery of The Damned Soul, acted by living
personages, was still exhibited by a company of strollers in Turin ;
we have the amusing particulars in a letter by Spence.—Spence's
“Anecdotes,” 397. They have sunk to the humble state of puppet-
shows, and are still exhibited at Carnival time at Venice and else-
where.
# See the note and this extraordinary blunder in Fabliaua, ii. 152.
§ Mr. Wright has published a curious collection of Latin mysteries
of the twelfth century. [For a detailed notice of other printed collec-
tions see note to “Curiosities of Literature,” vol. i. p. 352.—ED.]
342 Amenities of Literature.
comprehended in their own language; and the day at last
arrived when even the people themselves would be actors.
In the obscurity of the medieval period, the literary anti-
quary has often to feel his way in the darkness, till among
uncertain things he fancies that he grasps the palpable.
We are not furnished with precise dates, but some natural
circumstances may account for the introduction of the mys-
teries in the vernacular idiom. About the eighth century,
merchants carried on their trades in the great fairs, and to
attract the people together, jugglers, minstrels, and buffoons
were well paid, and the populace flocked. Such a multi-
tudinous concourse appears to have created alarm among
their great lords; and the ecclesiastics in vain proscribed
these licentious revelries. It would be nothing more than
a stroke of their accustomed policy if we imagine that,
seeing the people were eager after such public entertain-
ments, the monks should take them into their own hands;
and offering a far more imposing exhibition than even the
tricks of jugglers, combining piety with merriment, at
once awe and delight the people by their scriptural his-
tories and the legends of saints, in the language common
to them all, thus enticing them from profane mummeries.
It was a revolution in the history of the people, who,
without education, seemed to grow learned in the mysteries
and to be witnesses of miracles |
This account is not incongruous with another probably
not less true, and which indeed has been received as indis-
putable among the more ancient literary historians of
France, and is well known by the verses of Boileau in
his “Art of Poetry.” Palmers and Pilgrims—the one
returning from the East, bearing in their caps the hallowed
palm-branch of Palestine, and the other from some distant
shrine, their chaplets and cloaks covered with the many-
coloured scallops—taking their stand in thoroughfares, and
leaning on their staffs, while their pendent relics and
images attracted the gazer, would win an audience from
among the people. These venerable itinerants or semi-
saints recited their sacred narratives in verse or even in
prose; they had sojourned amid “the holy places,” which
they described; they had their adventures to tell, serious
or comic ; and that many of these have entered into the
great body of RomANCE, and were caught up by the
Primitive Dramas. 343
Trouveres, we can easily imagine. These strollers excited
the piety and contributed to the amusement of their simple
auditors, who, in the course of time, occasionally provided
for these actors a stage on a green in the vicinage of their
town; thus an audience of burghers and clowns, and no
critics, was first formed. The ecclesiastics adopted per-
formances so certain of popular attraction, and became the
sole authors of these inartificial dramas, as they were of
romances and chronicles. They had but one object, and
knew to treat it only in one way. They imagined that
they were instructing the people by initiating them into
scriptural history, the only history then known, and by
keeping the sources of popular recreation in their own
hands, they looked for their success in the degree they
excited their terror or their piety, and not less their ribald
merriment; and for the people the profane drollery and
the familiar dialogue were as consistent with their feelings
as the articles of their creed, for which they would have
died, as well as laughed at.
These primeval dramas are not inconsiderable objects in
the philosophy of literary history. In England,” and pro-
bably throughout Europe, they long kept their standing;
they linger in Italy, and still possess devout Spain. Not
long since at Seville they had their mysteries adapted to
the seasons—the Crucifixion for Good Friday, and the
Nativity for Christmas, and the Creation whenever they
chose ; and a recent editor of the plays of Cervantes
assuresus, that these Autos Sacramentales still form a source
* Perhaps the very last remains of such rude dramatic exhibitions
are yet to be traced in our counties—about Christmas-tide, or rather
old Christmas, whose decrepit age is personified. In Lancashire and
Yorkshire, and also in Dorsetshire, families are visited by “the great
Emperor of the Turks” and St. George of England, or by the lion-
hearted Richard. After a fierce onset, ringing their tin swords, the
Saracens groan and drop. The Leech appears holding his phial ; from
some drops the dead survive their fate, and rise for the hospitable
supper. The dialogue, however, has not been so traditional as the
exhibition. The curious portion of these ancient exhibitions is...there:
fore, totally lost in the substitutions of the rude rustics. The Wassail
Songs, or the Christmas Carols, have come down with fewer losses than
these ancient “Tales of the Crusaders;” for the language of emotion,
and the notice of old picturesque customs, cling to the memory, and
endure with their localities. But for these we must travel far from the
land of the Cockneys.
344 Amenities of Literature.
of amusement and edification to the pilgrims at the Shrine
of St. Jago de Compostella, which it seems still receives
such visitors.”
These scriptural plays were known in England before
1119; they formed public performances in the metropolis
in 1180. They were then confined to the monasteries,
and when the audience required the space, they were exhi-
bited in churches, and sometimes even in cemeteries. So
true it is that the first theatres were churches and the
first actors churchmen. Some reprobated the sight of the
priestly character, or the “fols clers,” “mad clerks,” in
their grotesque disguisings; if they were sanctioned by one
pope, they were condemned by another. The clergy, except
on some rare occasion, when exhibiting before royalty or
nobility,t were at length not reluctant to yield their places
to a new race of performers. In the metropolis they never
lost their control over these representations, for they con-
signed them to the care of their inferior brethren, the
parish clerks; but in provincial towns it was not long ere
the people themselves discovered that they, with some
little assistance from the neighbouring monasteries, were
competent to take them into their own hands. The
honest members of guilds or corporations, of mechanics
and tradesmen, formed themselves into brotherhoods of
actors, ambitious of displaying their mimetic faculty to
their townsfolk. The play had now become the people's
play, and the scale of the representation widened at every
point; it was to be acted in an open plain, and it was to
extend sometimes through eight days. Such was the
concourse of spectators, and indeed the performers were
* Bouterwek.
+ The clergy long continued to assist at these exhibitions, if they
did not always act in them. In 1417, an English Mystery was ex-
hibited before the Emperor Sigismund, at the Council of Constance, on
the usual subject of the Nativity. The English Bishops had it
rehearsed several days, that the actors might be perfect before their
imperial audience. We are not told in what language their English
Mystery was recited ; but we are furnished with a curious fact, that
“the Germans consider this play as the first introduction of that sort
of dramatic performance in their country.”—“Henry of Monmouth,”
by the Rev. J. E. Tyler, ii. 61.
# The Spanish nation, unchangeable in their customs, have retained
the last remains of the ancient Mysteries in the divisions of their
dramas, called “Jornadas.”
Primitive Dramas. 345
themselves a crowd. All were anxious to show themselves
in some part, and such a play might require nearly a hun-
dred personages. In a miracle-play, the whole life of a
saint, from the cradle to martyrdom, was displayed in the
same piece; the youth, the middle-age, and the caducity
of the eminent personage required to be enacted by three
different actors, so that there were the first, the second,
and the third Jacob, to emulate one another, and provoke
bickerings; townsfolk when acting, it appears, being
querulously jealous. Something of scenical illusion was
contrived, and what in the style of the green-room is
termed “properties”* was attempted, by the description
we find in the directions to the actors, and by the mis-
chances which occurred to the unpractised performers by
their clumsy machinery. Their mode of representation
was so much alike, that the same sort of ludicrous acci-
dents have come down to us relative to our native mys-
teries, as occurred in those of France. Bishop Percy
has quoted a malicious trick played by the Flemish Owl-
glass, the buffoon of the times, among his neighbours in
one of these mysteries;f a Judas had nearly hanged him-
self, and the cross had nearly realised a crucifixion.
Among these unlucky attempts they gilded over the face
to represent the Eternal Father; the honest burgher,
nearly suffocated, never appeared again; and the next
day it was announced that for the future the Deity should
lie “covered by a cloud.” A scaffold was built up of
three or more divisions for “the stage-play:” Paradise
opened at the top, the world moved in the centre, and
the yawning throat of an immeasurable dragon, as the
devils run in and out, showed the bottomless pit; and
whenever the protruding wings of that infernal monster
approached, “and fanned” the near spectators, the terror
was real.
These mysteries abound with a licentiousness to which
* “A sheep-skin for Jews, wigs for the Apostles, and vizards for
Devils,” appear in the churchwardens' accounts at Tewkesbury, 1578,
“for the players' geers.”—“Hist. of Dramatic Poetry,” ii. 140. The
same diligent inquirer has also discovered the theatrical term “pro-
perties,” in allusion to the furniture of the stage, and which is so used
by Shakspeare, employed in its present sense in an ancient morality.—
Ib. ii. 129.
t “Reliques of Ancient Poetry,” i. 129.
346 Amenities of Literature.
the rude simplicity of the age was innocently insensible;
a ludicrous turn is often given to the solemn incidents of
holy writ; and the legend of a saint opened an unbounded
Scope to their mother-wit. The usual remark of the
people when they had been pleased with a performance
was, “To-day the mystery was very fine and devout ; and
the devils played most pleasantly.”* The devils were the
buffoons, and compliment one another with the most
atrocious titles. The spectators, who shed tears at the
torturous crucifixion, would listen with delight to the
volume of reciprocal abuse voided by Satan and the
Satanic, whose very names, at any other time or place,
would have paralysed the intellect. This strange mixture
of religious and ludicrous emotions attests that the authors
and the spectators were in the childhood of society, satis-
fied that they were good Christians. Such were the
earliest attempts of our dramatic representations; but
men must tread with naked feet before they put on the
sock and buskin.
Several of these annual exhibitions in provincial towns
have descended to us, as those of the Chester Whitsun-
plays, and others in great towns. Originally, doubtless,
written in Latin, they soon submitted to the Norman
rule, vigilant to practise every means to diffuse the French
language; but in this state they could not deeply delight
the great body of the Saxon people.f The monk, Ralph
Higden, under the influence of that national spirit which
* “Dictionnaire de l'Académie Française.”—The proverbial phrase
is accompanied by a very superfluous remark—“Ce mot a passé d'usage
avec les moeurs de ces temps anciens.” See also “Dict. de Trevoux,”
art. Mystère.
+ That the translation of the “Chester Plays” was made from the
French, and not from the Latin, as Warton supposed, is ingeniously
elucidated by Mr. Collier. In the English translation, some of the
original French passages have been preserved.—“Annals of the Stage,”
ii. 129
When Warton found that these plays were translated into English,
he concluded that they were from the Latin. He totally forgot that
the French was long the prevalent language of England. And this im-
portant circumstance, too often overlooked by preceding inquirers, has
thrown much confusion in our literary history.
The best account we have of Ralph Higden may be found in the first
volume of Lardner's Cyclopædia on “The Early History of the English
Stage,” a work of some original research, at page 193.
Primitive Dramas. 347
had been evinced by some former native monks, directed
his efforts to the relief of his countrymen. Thrice he
journeyed to Rome to obtain the permission of his holiness
to translate these holy plays into the vernacular English
for the people.* Three journeys to Rome indicate some
difficulty about the propriety of this mode of edifying the
populace, of which indeed there were conflicting opinions.
But the time was favourable; the youthful monarch on the
throne, our third Edward, was beginning to encourage the
use of the vernacular idiom, and in 1338, Higden put
forth mysteries in the native tongue, and thus accom-
plished what, in the great volume of the Polychronicon,
he has so energetically exhorted should be done, for the
maintenance of what he termed “the birth-tongue.”
The day could not fail to arrive in the gradations of the
public intellect, even such as it then was, that society
would feel the want of something more directly operating
on their sympathies, or their daily experience, than the
unvaried scriptural tale. Mysteries however devout, by
such familiar repetition, would lose something of their
awfulness, as miracle-plays would satiate their tastes, as
they became deficient in the freshness of invention. The
first approaches of this change in their feelings are ob-
servable in the later miracle-plays, where, as a novel
attraction to the old plays, abstract personations are par-
tially introduced ; but this novelty was to be carried much
higher, and to include a whole set of new dramatic person-
ages. A more intellectual faculty was now exercised in
the plan of the MoRALITY, or moral play.f This was no
inconsiderable advancement in the progress of society; it
was deepening the recesses of the human understanding,
awakening and separating the passions; it was one of those
attempts which appear in the infancy of imagination, con-
sisting not of human beings, but of their shadowy reflec-
tions, in the personification of their passions,—in a word,
* The earliest and rudest known miracle-play in English has been
published by Mr. Halliwell—The Harrowing of Hell. It was written
in the reign of Edward the Second, and is a curious instance of the
childhood of the drama.
+ The reign of Henry the Sixth may be fixed upon as the epoch of a
new species of dramatic representation, known by the name of a moral.
—Collier, i. 23.
348 Amenities of Literature.
it was allegory ! To relieve the gravity of this ethical
play, which was in some danger of calling on the audience
for deeper attention than their amusement could afford,
the morality not only retained their old favourite, the
Devil, but introduced a more natural buffoon in the Vice,
who performed the part of the domestic fool of our ances-
tors, or the clown of our pantomime.
These unsubstantial personages of allegory—these appa-
ritions of human nature—were to assume a more bodily
shape, when not only the passions, but the individual
characters whom they agitated, were exhibited in every-
day life, not however yet venturing into a wide field of
society, but peeping from a corner, it was nothing more
than a single act, satirical and comic, in a dialogue sus-
tained by three or four professional characters of the
times. It was called the INTERLUDE, or “a play between,”
to zest by its pleasantry the intervals of a luxurious, and
sometimes a wearisome, banquet. The most dramatic
interludes were the invention of John HEywooD, the
jester of Henry the Eighth. The Scottish Bard, Douglas,
the Bishop of Dunkeld, alludes to these interludes, in his
“Paleys of Honour.”
Grete was the preis the feast royál to sene,
At ease they eat, with INTERLUDEs between.”
* The reader may gratify his curiosity, and derive considerable
amusement, from the skilful analysis of primitive dramas, both manu-
Script and printed, which Mr. Col. LIER has drawn up with true
dramatic taste. There are also copious specimens in a curious article
on Heywood in the volume on “The English Drama” of Lardner's
Cyclopaedia,-the labour of a learned antiquary. [One of Heywood’s
Interludes was printed by the Percy Society from his MS. in the
British Museum, under the editorial care of Mr. Fairholt; who prefixed
an analysis with copious extracts from his other Interludes.] The pro-
gress of the drama was similar both in France and England, yet our
vivacious neighbours seem to have invented a peculiar burlesque piece
of their own, under the title of Sotties, and whose chief personage takes
the quality of Prince des Sots ; and La Mère Sotte, who is represented
with her infant Sots. These pieces still retained their devout character,
with an intermixture of profane and burlesque scenes, highly relished
by the populace. “Ils le nommérent par un quolibet vulgaire, Jeua,
de Pois pilez, et ce fut selon toutes les apparences à cause de mélange
du Sacré et du profane qui régnait dans cessortes de jeux.” The cant
phrase which the people coined for this odd mixture of sacred and farci-
cal subjects, of Mashed Peas, may lose its humour with us, but we
Primitive Dramas. 349
Such was the march of events, the steppings which were
conducting the national genius to the verge of tragedy
and comedy; a vast interval of time and labour separates
the writers of these primitive plays from the fathers of
dramatic art; yet however ludicrous to us the simplicity
of the age, often these singular productions betray shrewd
humour and natural emotions. To condemn them as bar-
barous and absurd would be forming a very inadequate
notion of the influence of these earliest of our European
dramas on their contemporaries. An enlightened lover of
the arts has said, perhaps with great truth, that Raphael
never received from his age such flattering applause, and
excited such universal approbation, as did Cimabué, the
rude father of his art. The first essays strike more deeply
than even the masterpieces of a subsequent age after all its
successful labour; for its more finished excellence depends
partly on reflection, as well as on sensation.
The mystery and the morality lingered among us; but
in the improved taste and literature of the court of Henry
the Eighth, the facetious INTERLUDE, while it was face-
tious, won the royal smile. The successive agitations of
the age, however, could not fail to reflect its tempers in
these public exhibitions. In the reforming government of
Edward the Sixth, the miracle-plays were looked on as
Romish spectacles, and were fast sinking into neglect,
when the clergy of the papistic queen retrograded into
this whole fabulous mythology; adepts not only in the
craft of miracles, but desirous, by these shows or “plays
of miracles,” to revive the taste in the imaginations of
the people. The public authorities patronised what re-
cently they had laughed at or had scorned. On Corpus
Christi day, the Lord Mayor and the Privy Council were
spectators of The Passion of Christ, always an affecting
drama; and it was again represented before this select
find by Bayle, art. “D’Assoucy,” that they were collected and printed
under this title, and fetched high prices among collectors. These
Sotties were acted by a brotherhood calling themselves Enfans sans
Soucy.—Parfait, “Hist. du Théâtre Français,” i. 52. One of their
chief composers was PIERRE GRINGoIRE, of whose rare Sotties I have
several reprints by the learned Abbé Caron. Gringoire invented and
performed his Sotties, in ridicule of the Pope, on a scaffold or stage, to
charm his royal master, Louis the Twelfth, in 1511 ; for an ample list
of his gay satires see “Biog. Universelle,” art. “Gringoire.”
350 Amenities of Literature.
audience: and on St. Olave's day, the truly “miracle-
play” of that legendary saint was enacted in the church
dedicated to the saint.*
The history of the INTERLUDE more particularly marks
an epoch, for it enters into our political history. Mys-
teries and moralities were purely religious or ethical
themes, but the comic interludes took a more adventurous
course; and their writers, accommodating themselves to
the fashions of the day, were the organs of the prevalent
factions then dividing the unquiet realm.
From the earliest moment of the projected reformation
or emancipation from the Papal dominion by Henry, we
discover the players of interludes at their insidious work;
but affairs were floating in that uncertain state when the
new had by no means displaced the old. In 1527, Henry
the Eighth was greatly diverted at an interlude where
the heretic Luther and his wife were brought on the
stage, and the Reformers were ridiculed. The king in
the Creed and the ceremonies remained a Romanist ; and
in 1533, a proclamation inhibits “the playing of enter-
ludes concerning doctrines now in question and contro-
versy.”: “The Defender of the Faith” was still irreso-
lute to defend or to attack. In 1543, an act of parlia-
ment was passed for the control of dramatic representa-
tions; and at this later date, this reforming monarch
decreed, that “no person should play in interludes any
matter contrary to the doctrines of the Church of
Rome!” Chronology in history is not only useful to date
events, but to date the passions of sovereigns. It was
absolutely necessary for Edward the Sixth on his ascension
immediately to repeal this express act of parliament of his
father; $ and then the emancipated interluders now,
openly, with grave logic or laughing ridicule, struck at all
“the Roman superstitions.” Hence we had Catholic and
Brotestant dramas. The Romanists had made very free
strictures on Cromwell, Cranmer, and their followers; and
on the side of the reformed we have no deficiency of op-
pugners of the Romish Church. Under Henry the
* Strype’s “Mem. of Eccles. Hist.,” iii. 379.
+ “Annals of the Stage,” i. 107.
+ Warton’s “Hist. of Eng. Poetry,” iii. 428, 8vo.
§ Rastell’s “Collection of Statutes,” fo. 32—d.
Primitive Dramas. 351
Eighth, we have the sacred drama of Every-man, a single
personage, by whom the writer not unaptly personifies
human nature. This drama came from the Romanists to
recall the auditors back to the forsaken ceremonies and
shaken creed of their fathers. Under Edward the Sixth,
we have Lusty Juventus, whom Satan and his old son
Hypocrisy, with an extraordinary nomenclature of “holy
things,” would inveigle back to that seductive harlot,
“Abominable Living,” which the Reformer imagined was
the favourite Dulcinea of “the false priests.” On the
accession of Mary, this queen hastened a proclamation
against the interludes of the Reformers. The term used
in the proclamation looks like an ironical allusion to a
word which now had long been bandied on the lips of the
populace. It specifies to be for “the reformation of busy
meddlers in matters of religion.” A strict watch was
kept on the players, some of whom suffered for enacting a
reformed interlude. Such plays seem to have been patro-
mised in domestic secrecy. The interference of the Star
Chamber was called forth in 1556 for the total suppression
of dramatic entertainments. In many places some ma-
gistrates had slackened their pursuit after “players,” and
reluctantly obeyed the public authorities. The first act of
Elizabeth resembled in its character those of her brother
Edward and her sister Mary, however opposite were the
systems of their governments. The queen put a sudden
stop to the enacting of all interludes which opposed the
progress of the Reformation; there seemed to be no ob-
jection to any of a different cast ; but Elizabeth lived to
be an auditor of more passionate dramas than these theo-
logical logomachies performed on the stage, where the
dull poet had sometimes quoted chapter and verse in
Genesis or St. Matthew.
It is not generally known that, while these Catholic
and Protestant dramas were opposed to each other in
England, at the same period the Huguenots in France had
also entertained the derisory muse of the more comic in-
terludes. There was, however, this difference in the for-
tunes of the writers; as in France the government had
never reformed nor changed their position, there could
* Both these ancient dramas are reprinted in Hawkins’ “Origin of
the English Drama.” Many such dramas remain in manuscript.
352 Amenities of Literature.
have been no period which admitted of the public repre-
sentation of these satirical dramas. In their dramatic
history, it was long considered that the subjects of these
Hugonistic dramas were too tender to bear the handling;
and the brothers Parfait, in their copious “History of the
French Theatre,” only afford a slight indication of “the
turbulent Calvinists,” who had spread “pieces of danger-
ous heresy and fanaticism against the Pope, the cardinals,
and the bishops; works which could not be noticed
without profaning the page!”—and therefore they refrain
from giving even their titles! It is in this spirit, and with
such apologies, that historians have often castrated their
own history. The existence of these dramas might have
escaped our knowledge, had not the more enlightened
judgment of the Duke de la Vallière supplied what the
more stubborn Romanists had suppressed. This lover of
literature has favoured the curious with the interesting
analysis of two rare French Protestant plays, Le Mar-
chand Converti, in 1558; and Le Pape Malade et tirant à
sa Fin, in 1561. Allowing largely for the gross invec-
tives of the Calvinist—“les impiétés”—they display an
original comic invention, and sparkle with the most lively
sallies.* It is remarkable that Le Marchand Converti, at
such an early period of modern literature, is a regular
comedy of five acts, introduced by a prologue in verse;
odes are interspersed, and each act concludes with a
chorus, whom the author calls “the company.” The
classical form of this unacted play, instinct with the spirit
of the new reform, betrays the work of a learned hand.
* “Bibliothèque du Théâtre Français,” iii. 263, ascribed to the
Duke de la Vallière. He has preserved many passages exquisitely
humorous. He felt awkwardly in performing his duty to his readers,
after what his predecessors, Messieurs Parfait, had declared ;-and, to
calm the terrors of les personnes scrupuleuses, it is amusing to observe
his plea, or his apology, for noticing these admirable antipapistic
satires:– “They are outrageous and abound with impieties; but they
are extremely well written for their time, and truly comic. I considered
that I could not avoid giving these extracts, were it only to show to
what lengths the first pretended reformers carried their unreasonable
violence against the holy Father, and the court of Rome.” The apology
for their transcription, if not more ingenuous, is at least more ingenious
than the apology for their suppression.
353
THE REFORMER BISHOP BALE; AND THE
ROMANIST JOHN HEYWOOD, THE
COURT JESTER.
BALE, Bishop of Ossory, and JoHN HEYwooD, the court
jester, were contemporaries, and both equally shared in
the mutable fortunes of the satiric dramas of their times;
but they themselves were the antipodes of each other:
the earnest Protestant BALE, the gravest reformer, and
the inflexible Catholic HEY wood, noted for “his mad
merry wit,” form one of those remarkable disparities
which the history of literature sometimes offers.
BALE was originally educated in a monastery; he
found an early patron, and professed the principles of the
Reformation; and, like Luther, sealed his emancipation
from Catholic celibacy by a wife, whom he tenderly
describes as “his faithful Dorothea.” It was a great
thing for a monk to be mated with such constancy at a
time when women were usually to be described as shrews,
or worse. From the day of marriage the malice of
persecution haunted the hapless heretic; such personal
hatreds could not fail of being mutual. He seems to
have too hastily anticipated the Reformation under Henry
the Eighth, for though that monarch had freed himself
from “the bishop of Rome,” he had by no means put
aside the doctrines, and Bale, who had already begun a
series of two-and-twenty reforming interludes in his “ma-
ternal idiom,” found it advisable to leave a kingdom but
half reformed. He paused not, however, till he had
written a whole library against “the Papelins,” the last
production always seemed the most envenomed. On the
death of Henry he unexpectedly appeared before Edward
the Sixth, who imagined that he had died. Bale had the
misfortune to be promoted to the Irish bishopric of Ossory
—to plant Protestantism in a land of Papistry ! Frus-
trated in his unceasing fervour, Bale escaped from martyr-
dom by hiding himself in Dublin. The death of Edward
relieved our Protestant bishop from this sad dilemma;
WOL. I. A. A.
354; Amenities of Literature.
for on the accession of Mary he flew into Switzerland.
There he indulged his anti-papistical vein; the press sent
forth a brood, among which might have been some of
better growth, for he laboured on our British biography
and literature; but as there were yet but few Protestants
to record, it flowed, and sometimes overflowed, against
all the friends of the Papacy; Pits, who subsequently
resumed the task, a sullen and fierce Papist, in revenge
omitted in the line of our illustrious Britons, Wickliffe
and every Wickliffite. Such were the beginnings of our
literary history. On the accession of Elizabeth, his
country received back its exile; but Bale refused to be
reinstated in his Irish see, and sunk into a quiet pre-
bendary of Canterbury. Fuller has called our good bishop
“Bilious Bale.” Some conceive that this bishop has
suffered ill-treatment merely for having thrown out some
remarkable, or abominable, invectives. Proselytes, how-
ever sincere in their new convictions and their old hatreds,
both operating at once, colour their style as some do their
faces, till by long use the heightened tint seems faint, and
they go on deepening it, and thus at last the natural
countenance is lost in the artificial mass.
If Bale were no poet, in the singular dramas we have,
he at least displays a fluent invention; he tells plainly
what is meant, which we like to learn ; and I do not
know whether it be owing to his generally indifferent
verse that we sometimes are struck by an idiomatic
phrase, and a richness of rhymes peculiar to himself,
which sustain our attention.*
Of JoHN HEYwooD, the favourite jester of Henry the
Eighth and his daughter Mary, and the intimate of Sir
Thomas More, whose congenial humour may have mingled
with his own, more table-talk and promptness at reply
have been handed down to us than of any writer of the
times. His quips, and quirks, and quibbles are of his
* One of these interludes has been recently published by the Camden
Society, under the skilful editorship of Mr. Collier, from a manuscript
corrected by Bale himself in the Devonshire collection—it is entitled
“Kynge Johan,” [and founded on events in his reign, made subservient
to the ultra-protestantism of Bale.] Others have been printed in the
“Harleian Collection,” vol. i. ; and in Dodsley’s “Old English
Drama.”
Bishop Bale; John Heywood. 355
age, but his copious pleasantry still enlivens; these
smoothed the brow of Henry, and relaxed the rigid
muscles of the melancholy Mary. He had the entrée at
all times to the privy-chamber, and often to administer a
strong dose of himself, which her majesty's physicians
would prescribe. He is distinguished as Heywood the epi-
grammatist; a title fairly won by the man who has left
six centuries of epigrams, collected and adjusted as many
English proverbs in his verse, besides the quaint conceits
of “crossing of proverbs.” Of these six hundred epi-
grams it is possible not a single one is epigrammatic : we
have never had a Martial. Even when it became a fashion
to write books of epigrams half a century subsequently,
they usually closed in a miserable quibble, a dull apoph-
thegm, or at the best, like those of Sir John Harrington,
in a plain story rhymed. Wit, in our sense of the term,
was long unpractised, and the modern epigram was not
yet discovered.
Heywood, who had flourished under Henry, on the
change in the reign of Edward, clung to the ancient
customs. He was a Romanist, but had he not recovered
in some degree from the cecity of superstition, he had
not so keenly exposed, as he has done, some vulgar impos-
tures. It happened, however, that some unlucky jest,
trenching on treason, flew from the lips of the unguarded
jester; it would have hanged some—but pleasant verses
promptly addressed to the young sovereign saved him at
the pinch,--however, he gathered from “the council”
that this was no jesting-time, and he left the country in
the day that Bale was returning from his emigration
under King Henry. On Mary’s accession, Bale again
retired, and Heywood suddenly appeared at court. Asked
by the queen “What wind blew him there P” “Two
specially; the one to see your majesty!” he replied. “We
thank you for that,” said the queen, “but I pray
you what is the other ?” “That your grace might
see me!” There was shrewdness in this pleasantry,
to bespeak the favour of his royal patroness. Four short
years did not elapse ere Elizabeth opened her long reign,
* That is, proverbs with humorous answers to them. See the
“Bibliographical and Critical Catalogue,” by Mr. Payne Collier, of
Lord Francis Egerton’s “Library of Early English Literature,” p. 2.
A. A 2
356 Amenities of Literature.
and then the merry Romanist for ever bid farewell to his
native land, while Bale finally sat beside his English
hearth. These were very moveable and removeable times,
and no one was certain how long he should remain in his
new locality.
The genius of HEYWooD created “The Merrie In-
terlude;” unlike BALE, as in all things, he never opened
the Bible for a stage-play, but approaching Comedy, he
became the painter of manners, and the chronicler of
domestic life. Warton certainly has hastily and contra-
dictorily censured Heywood, without a right compre-
hension of his peculiar subjects; yet he admired at least
one of Heywood’s writings, in which, being anonymous,
he did not recognise the victim of his vague statements.
Warton and his followers have obscured a true genius for
exuberant humour, keen irony, and exquisite ridicule,
such as Rabelais and Swift would not have disdained, and
have not always surpassed. One of his interludes is
accessible for those who can revel in a novel scene of
comic invention. This interlude is “The Four P's ; the
Palmer, the Pardoner, the Potieary, and the Pedler.”
Each flouts the other, and thus display their professional
knaveries.*
The ludicrous strokes of this piece could never have
come from a bigot to the ancient superstition, however
attached to the ancient creed. We cannot tell how far
the jester may have been influenced by a proclamation of
28th of Henry the Eighth, to protect “the poor innocent
people from those light persons called pardoners by colour
of their indulgences,” &c. He has curiously exhibited
to us all the trumpery regalia of papistry; as he also
exposed “The Friery" in another interlude which has all
the appearance of a merry tale from Boccaccio.
So plays the jocund spirit of Heywood the Jester, in
his minstrel-verse and pristine idiom ; but we have now
to tell another tale. Heywood is the author of a pon-
derous volume, and an interminable “parable” of “The
Spider and the Fly.” It is said to have occupied the
thoughts of the writer during twenty years. This un-
lucky “heir of his invention” is dressed out with a pro-
* Dodsley's “Old Plays,” vol. i.
Bishop Bale; John Heywood. 357
fusion of a hundred woodcuts—then rare and precious
things—among which starts up the full-length of the
author more than once. Warton impatiently never reached
the conclusion, where the author has confided to us the
secret of his incomprehensible intention. There Warton
would have found that “we must understand that the
spiders represent the Protestants, and the flies the
Catholics; that the maid with the broom sweeping away
the cobwebs (to the annoyance of their weavers) is Mary
armed with the civil power, executing the commands of
her Master (Christ), and her mistress (Mother Church).”
We see at once all the embarrassments and barrenness of
this wearying and perplexed fancy. Warton contents
himself with what he calls “a sensible criticism,” taken
from Harrison, a Protestant minister, and one of the
partners of Holinshed’s Chronicle; it is as mordacious as
a periodical criticism. “Neither he who made this book,
nor any who reads it, can reach unto the meaning.”
Warton, to confirm “the sensible criticism,” alleges as a
proof of its unpopularity, that it was never reprinted;
but it was published in 1556, and Mary died in 1558.
A vindication of “the maid with the broom” might be
equally unwelcome to “spiders and flies.”
How it happened that the court jester who has sent
forth such volumes of mirth could have kept for years
hammering at a dull and dense poem, is a literary problem
which perhaps admits of a solution. We may ascribe this
aberration of genius to the author's position in society.
Heywood was a Romanist from principle; that he was no
bigot, his free satires on vulgar superstitions attest. But
the jester at times was a thoughtful philosopher. One of
his interludes is The Play of the Weather, where the ways
of Providence are vindicated in the distribution of the
seasons. But “mad, merry Heywood” was the compa-
nion of many friends–Papists and Protestants—at court
and in all the world over. His creed was almost whole in
broken times, perhaps agreeing a little with the Protes-
tant, and then reverting to the Romanist. In this un-
balanced condition, mingling the burlesque with the
solemn, unwilling to excommunicate his friend the Pro-
testant “spider,” and intent to windicate the Romanist
“fly;” often he laid aside, and often resumed, his confused
358 Amenities of Literature.
emotions. It might require dates to settle the precise allu-
sions; what he wrote under Henry and Edward would be
of another colour than under the Marian rule. His gaiety
and his gravity offuscate one another; and the readers of
his longsome fiction, or his dark parallel, were puzzled,
even among his contemporaries, to know in what sense
to receive them. Sympathising with “the fly,” and not un-
courteous to “the spider,” our author has shown the danger
of combining the burlesque with the serious; and thus it
happened that the most facetious genius could occupy
twenty years in compounding, by fits and starts, a dull
poem which neither party pretended rightly to under-
stand.
359
ROGER ASCHAM.
IT would, perhaps, have surprised RogFR AscHAM, the
scholar of a learned age, and a Greek professor, that the
history of English literature might open with his name;
for in his English writings he had formed no premeditated
work, designed for posterity as well as his own times. The
subjects he has written on were solely suggested by the
occasion, and incurred the slight of the cavillers of his
day, who had not yet learned that humble titles may
conceal performances which exceed their promise, and
that trifles cease to be trivial in the workmanship of
genius.
An apology for a favourite recreation, that of archery,
for his indulgence in which his enemies, and sometimes
his friends, reproached the truant of academic Greek;
an account of the affairs of Germany while employed as
secretary to the English embassy; and the posthumous
treatise of “The Schoolmaster,” originating in an acci-
dental conversation at table, constitute the whole of the
claims of Ascham to the rank of an English classic——a
degree much higher than was attained by the learning
of Sir Thomas Elyot, and the genius of Sir Thomas More.
The mind of Ascham was stored with all the wealth of
ancient literature the nation possessed. Ascham was
proud, when alluding to his master the learned Cheke,
and to his royal pupil Queen Elizabeth, of having been
the pupil of the greatest scholar, and the preceptor to the
greatest pupil in England; but we have rather to admire
the intrepidity of his genius, which induced him to avow
the noble design of setting an example of composing in
our vernacular idiom. He tells us in his “Toxophilus,”
“I write this English matter in the English language for
Englishmen.” He introduced an easy and natural style
in English prose, instead of the pedantry of the unformed
taste of his day; and adopted, as he tells us, the counsel
of Aristotle, “to speak as the common people do, to think
as wise men do.”
360 Amenities of Literature.
The study of Greek was the reigning pursuit in the
days of Ascham. At the dispersion of the Greeks on the
loss of Constantinople, the learned emigrants brought
with them into Europe their great originals; and the
subsequent discovery of printing spread their editions.
The study of Greek, on its first appearance in Europe,
alarmed the Latin Church, and was long deemed a dan-
gerous and heretical innovation. The cultivation of this
language was, however, carried on with enthusiasm, and
a controversy was kindled, even in this country, respecting
the ancient pronunciation. A passion for Hellenistic lore
pervaded the higher classes of society. There are fashions
in the literary world as sudden and as capricious as those
of another kind; and which, when they have rolled away,
excite a smile, although possibly we have only adopted
another of fresher novelty. The Greek mania raged.
Ascham informs us that his royal pupil Elizabeth under-
stood Greek better than the canons of Windsor; and,
doubtless, while the queen was translating Isocrates, the
ladies in waiting were parsing. Lady Jane Grey studying
Plato was hardly an uncommon accident; but the touch-
ing detail which she gave to Ascham of her domestic
persecution, on trivial forms of domestic life, which had
induced her to fly for refuge to her Greek, has thrown a
deep interest on that well-known incident. All educated
persons then studied Greek; when Ascham was secretary
to our ambassador at the Court of Charles the Fifth, five
days in the week were occupied by the ambassador reading
with the secretary the Greek tragedians, commenting on
Herodotus, and reciting the Orations of Demosthenes.
But this rage was too capricious to last, and too useless to
be profitable; for neither the national taste nor the
Hönglish language derived any permanent advantage from
this exclusive devotion to Greek, and the fashion became
lost in other studies.
It was a bold decision in a collegiate professor, who
looked for his fame from his lectures on Greek, to venture
on modelling his native idiom, with a purity and simpli-
city to which it was yet strange. Ascham, indeed, was
fain to apologise for having written in English, and offered
the king, Henry the Eighth, to make a Greek or a Latin
version of his “Toxophilus,” if his grace chose. “To have
Roger Ascham. 361
written in another tongue had been both more profitable
for my study, and also more honest [honourable] for my
name; yet I can think my labour well bestowed, if, with
a little hindrance of my profit and name, may come any
furtherance to the pleasure or commodity of the gentlemen
and yeomen of England. As for the Latin and Greek
tongue, everything is so excellently done in them that
none can do better; in the English tongue, contrary,
everything in a manner so meanly, both for the matter and
handling, that no man can do worse.”
Such were the first difficulties which the fathers of our
native literature had to overcome. Sir Thomas Elyot
endured the sneer of the cavillers, for his attempt to inlay
our unpolished English with Latin terms; and Roger
Ascham, we see, found it necessary to apologise for at all
adopting the national idiom. Since that day neologisms
have fertilised the barrenness of our Saxon, and the finest
geniuses in Europe have abandoned the language of Cicero,
to transfuse its grace into an idiom whose penury was
deemed too rude for the pen of the scholar. Ascham fol-
lowed his happier genius, and his name has created an
epoch in the literature of England.
A residence of three years in Germany in the station of
confidential secretary of our ambassador to the Emperor
Charles the Fifth, placed him in a more extensive field of
observation, and brought him in contact with some of the
most remarkable men of his times. It is much to be re-
gretted, that the diary he kept has never been recovered.
That Ascham was inquisitive, and, moreover, a profound
observer at an interesting crisis in modern history, and
that he held a constant intercourse with great characters,
and obtained much secret history both of persons and
of transactions, fully appears in his admirable “Report of
the Affairs and State of Germany, and the Emperor
Charles' Court.” This “Report ’’ was but a chance com-
munication to a friend, though it is composed with great
care. Ascham has developed with a firm and masterly
hand the complicated intrigues of the various powers,
when Charles the Fifth seemed to give laws to Germany
and Italy. This emperor was in peace with all the world
in 1550, and in less than two years after, he was compelled
to fly from Germany, surrounded by secret enemies.
362 Amenities of Literature.
Ascham has traced the discontents of the minor courts of
Italian dukes, and German princes, who gradually deserted
the haughty autocrat—an event which finally led to the
emperor's resignation. It is a moral tale of princes openly
countenancing quietness, and “privily brewing debate”—
a deep catastrophe for the study of the political student.
Ascham has explained the double game of the court of
Rome, under the ambitious and restless Julius the Third,
who, playing the emperor against the French monarch,
and the French monarch against the emperor, worked him-
self into that intricate net of general misery, spun out of
his own crafty ambidexterity. This precious fragment of
Secret history might have offered new views and many
strokes of character to the modern historian, Robertson,
who seems never to have discovered this authentic docu-
ment; yet it lay at hand. So little even in Robertson's
day did English literature, in its obscurer sources, enter
into the pursuits of our greatest writers.
Ascham's first work was the “Toxophilus, the Schole,
or Partitions of Shootinge.” At this time fire-arms were
so little known, that the term “shooting” was solely
confined to the bow, then the redoubtable weapon of our
hardy countrymen. In this well-known treatise on
archery, he did what several literary characters have so
well done, apologised for his amusement in a manner that
evinced the scholar had not forgotten himself in the archer.
It affords some consolation to authors, who often suffer
from neglect, to observe the triumph of an excellent book.
Its first appearance procured him a pension from Henry
the Eighth, which enabled him to set off on his travels.
Subsequently, in the reign of Mary, when that eventful
change happened in religion and in politics, adverse to
Ascham, our author was cast into despair, and hastened to
hide himself in safe obscurity. It was then that this ex-
cellent book, and a better at that time did not exist in
the language, once more recommended its author; for
Gardiner, the papal bishop of Winchester, detected no
heresy in the volume, and by his means, the Lords of the
Council approving of it, the author was fully reinstated in
royal favour. Thus Ascham twice owed his good fortune
to his good book.
“The Schoolmaster,” with its humble title, “to teach
Roger Ascham, 363
children to understand, write, and speak the Latin tongue,”
conveys an erroneous notion of the delight, or the know-
ledge which may be drawn from this treatise, notwith-
standing that the work remains incomplete, for there are
references to parts which do not appear in the work itself.
“The Scholemaster” is a classical production in English,
which may be placed by the side of its great Latin rivals,
the Orations of Cicero, and the Institutes of Quintilian. It
is enlivened by interesting details. The first idea of the
work was started in a real conversation at table, among
some eminent personages, on occasion of the flight of some
scholars from Eton College, driven away by the iron rod
of the master. “Was the schoolhouse to be a house of
bondage and fear, or a house of play and pleasure ?”
During the progress of the work the author lost his
patron, and incurred other disappointments; he has con-
signed all his variable emotions to his volume. The
accidental interview with Lady Jane Grey : his readings
with Queen Elizabeth in their daily intercourse with the
fine writers of antiquity, and their recreations at the regal
game of chess—for such was the seduction of Attic learn-
ing, that the queen on the throne felt a happiness in again
becoming the pupil of her old master; these, and similar
incidents, present those individual touches of the writer,
which give such a reality to an author's feelings.”
It is to be regretted that Ascham held but an indolent
pen. Yet it were hard to censure the man for a cold
neglect of his fame, who seems equally to have neglected
his fortune. Ascham has written little; and all he left
his family was “this little book” (the Schoolmaster), and
which he bequeathed to them, as the right way to good
* There were five editions of “The Scholemaster” within twenty
years of its first publication, of which that of 1573 is the most correct
and rare.—Dr. Walpy's “Cat.” It is curious, in tracking the progress
of an author's fame, to suspect that Ascham may owe his, in modern
days, to the title of this work; for it was a learned schoolmaster who
revived the name of Ascham by publishing an edition of “The School-
master” in 1711, with notes, which was reprinted in 1743. His
entire works were collected in 1761, by James Bennett, also a school-
master, with a life by Dr. Johnson. There has been a more recent
edition, in 1815. “The Toxophilus,” the Manual of Archery, has
been often reprinted since the taste for that amusement has revived
among uS.
364 Amenities of Literature.
learning, “which, if they follow, they shall very well come
to sufficiency of living.” This was an age when the
ingenious clung to a patron; the widow and the son of
Ascham found the benefits of this testamentary recom-
mendation. It must, however, be confessed to have been
but a capricious legacy, for no administrator might have
been found to “the will.” The age of patronage was
never that of independence to an author.
Johnson, in his admirable “Life of Ascham,” observed,
that “his disposition was kind and social; he delighted in
the pleasure of conversation, and was probably not much
inclined to business.” It is certain that he preferred old
books to pounds sterling, for once he requested to com-
mute a part of his pension for a copy of the “Decem
Rhetores Graeci,” which he could not purchase at Cam-
bridge. His frequent allusions in his letters when abroad
to “Mine Hostess Barnes,” who kept a tavern at Cam-
bridge in the reign of Edward the Sixth, with tender
reminiscences of her “fat capons,” and “the good--
fellowship ’’ there; and further, his sympathy at the deep
potation, when standing hard by the emperor at his table,
he tells us, “the emperor drank the best I ever saw, he
had his head in the glass five times as long as any of us,
and never drank less than a good quart at once of Rhenish
wine,” and his determination of providing “every year a
little vessel of Rhenish ’’ for his cronies: and still further,
his haunting the cockpit, and sometimes trusting fortune
by her dice, notwithstanding that he describes “dicing ”
as “the green pathway of hell;” all these traits mark the
boon companion loving his leisure and his lounge.
When engaged in public life, a collegiate fellowship
appeared to him to offer supreme felicity. He writes
thus, “Ascham to his friends: who is able to maintain
his life at Cambridge, knows not what a felicity he hath.”
Such was the conviction of one who had long lived in
courts.
But when we consider that Ascham was Latin secretary
to Edward the Sixth, to Mary, and to Elizabeth, and inti-
mately acquainted with the transactions of these cabinets,
with the sovereigns, and the ministers; and during three
years held a personal intercourse with the highest foreign
court ;-we must regret, if we do not censure, the
Roger Ascham. 365
man who, possessing these rare advantages, with a vigor-
ous intellect, and a felicitous genius, has left the world in
silence. Assuredly, in Ascham, we have lost an English
Comines, who would have rivalled our few memoir-writers,
who, though with pens more industrious, had not eyes
more observant, nor heads more penetrating, than this
secretary of three sovereigns.
There is, however, reason to conclude, that he himself
was not insensible to these higher claims which his station
might have urged on his genius and his diligence. Every
night during his residence abroad, which was of no short
period, he was occupied by filling his Diary, which has not,
in any shape, come down to us. He has also himself told,
that he had written a book on “The Cockpit,” one of the
recreations of “a courtly gentleman.” We cannot imagine
that such writings, by the hand of Ascham, would be
destroyed by his family, who knew how to value them. A
modern critic, indeed, considers it fortunate for Ascham's
credit, that this work on “The Cockpit ’’ has escaped from
publication. The criticism is fallacious, for if an apology
for cockfighting be odious, the author's reputation is
equally hurt by the announcement as by the performance.
But the truth is, that such barbarous sports, like the bear-N
baiting of England and the bull-fights of Spain, have had
their advocates. Queen Elizabeth had appointed Ascham
her bear-keeper; and he was writing in his character when
disclosing the mysteries of the cockpit. But the genius
of our author was always superior to his subject ; and this
was a treatise wherein he designed to describe “all kinds
of pastimes joined with labour used in open place, and in
the day-light.” The curious antiquary, at least, must
regret the loss of Ascham’s “Cockpit.”
Ascham lived in the ferment of the Reformation :
zealously attached to the new faith under Edward the
Sixth and Elizabeth, how did he preserve himself during
the intermediate reign, when he partook of the favours of
the papistical sovereign P. His master and friend, the
learned Sir John Cheke, had only left for himself the
choice of a recantation, or a warrant for execution; but of
Ascham's good fortune, nothing is known but its mystery.
The novel religion had, however, early heated the passions,
and narrowed the judgment, of Ascham. He wrote at a
366 Amenities of Literature,
period when the Romanist and the Protestant reciprocally
blackened each other. Ascham not only abhorred all
Italians as papists, but all ltalian books as papistical. He
invokes the interposition of the civil magistrate against
Petrarch and Boccaccio, whose volumes were then selling
in every shop. Baretti strikes at his manes with his
stiletto-pen, in an animated passage;” and Warton is in-
dignant at his denunciation of our ancient romances, of
which the historian of our poetry says, “he has written in
the spirit of an early Calvinistic preacher, rather than as a
sensible critic and a polite scholar”—he who, in his sober
senses, was eminently both.
We may lament that the first steps in every revolution
are taken in darkness, and that the reaction of opinions
and prejudices is itself accompanied by errors and pre-
judices of its own. The bigotry of the new faith was not
inferior to the old. The reforming Archbishop Grindal
substituted the dull and barbarous Palingenius, Sedulius,
and Prudentius, for the great classical authors of antiquity.
The Reformation opened with fanaticism ; and men were
reformers before they were philosophers. Had Ascham, a
learned scholar, and a man of fine genius, been blessed
with the prescient eye of philosophy, he had perceived
that there was not more papistry in the solemn “Trionfi ’’
of Petrarch, and not less “honest pastime ’’ in a “merrie
tale” of Boccaccio, than in cock-fighting and dicing; and
that with these works the imagination of the public was
gradually stepping out of a supernatural world of folio
legends, into a world of true nature, which led to that un-
rivalled era which immortalised the closing century.
We must recollect that the bigotry of the Reformation,
or that which afterwards assumed the form of puritanism,
in their absurd notion of the nature of idolatry attached
to every picture and every statue on sacred subjects, even-
tually banished the fine arts from England for a long cen-
tury, and retarded their progress even to our own days. A
curious dialogue has been preserved by Strype, whose in-
terlocutors are Queen Elizabeth and a Dean. The Dean
having obtained some of those fine German paintings,
those book-miniatures which are of the most exquisite
* Baretti’s “Account of the Manners of Italy,” ii. 137—the most
curious work of this Anglo-Italian.
Roger Ascham. 367
finish, placed them in her majesty's prayer-book. For
this the queen proscribed the dean, as she did those beau-
tiful illuminations, as “Romish and idolatrous;” and with
a Gothic barbarism, strange in a person with her Attic
taste, commanded the clergy “to wash all pictures out of
their walls.” To this circumstance the painter Barry
ascribes the backward state of the fine arts, which so long
made us a by-word among the nations of Europe, and even
induced the critical historian of the arts, Winkelman, to
imagine that the climate of England presented an eternal
obstruction to the progress of art itself; it was too long
supposed that no Englishman could ever aspire to be an
artist of genius. The same principle which urged Ascham
to denounce all Italian books, instigated his royal pupil
“to wash out all pictures;” and even so late as the reign
of George the Third, when the artists of England made a
noble offer, gratuitously to decorate our churches with
productions of their own composition, the Bishop of
London forbade the glorious attempt to redeem English
art from the anathema of foreign critics.
Ascham, whose constitutional delicacy often impeded
his studies, died prematurely. The parsimonious queen
emphatically rated his value by declaring, that she would
rather have lost ten thousand pounds—no part of which,
during his life, the careless yet not the neglected Ascham
ever shared.
Roger Ascham was truly what Pope has described Gay
to have been, “in wit a man, simplicity a child;” and he
has developed his own character in his letters. Latin and
English, they are among the earliest specimens of that
domestic and literary correspondence in which the writer
paints himself without reserve, with all the warm touches
of a free pencil, gay sallies of the moment, or sorrows of
the hour, confiding to the bosom of a friend the secrets of
his heart and his condition ; such as we have found in the
letters of Gray and of Shenstone.
The works of Ascham, which are collected in a single
volume, remain for the gratification of those who preserve
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