B 9 54.I 2 6 I tA 1..... - " c THE CARISBROOKE LIBRARY IV. THE FIFTH TTOLUAME OF THIS LIBRARY, THE ENGLISH PROSE WORKS OF JOHN MILTON, IWill be Published on tlie 25/ti of Sepi/ember 1889. THE CARISBROOKE LIBRARY. THE UNIVERSAL LIBRARY, now completed in sixty-three cheap shilling volumes, has included English versions of the " Iliad," of all extant plays of the Greek tragedians, and of some plays of Aristophanes, of Sanskrit fables, and of Virgil's "AEneid." It has followed the course of time with English versions of the most famous works of Dante, Boccaccio, Machiavelli, Rabelais, Cervantes, Moliere, as recast by English dramatists, of Goethe's " Faust " and of Schiller's Poems. It has given currency also to a series of the works of English writers, representative, as far as limits would allow, of our own literature, from Richard of Bury's " Philobiblon" to Sheridan's Plays and Emerson's Essays. In the sequence of publication variety was aimed at, but in the choice of books to be republished there was always the unity of purpose that now allows the volumes to be arranged in historical order, illustrating some of the chief epochs of European literature, and especially of English literature, in the long course of time. THE CARISBROOKE LIBRARY, now begun, will continue the work of its predecessor, with some changes of form and method. It will include books for which the volumes of the former series did not allow sufficient room. Sometimes in the " Universal Library " a large book-Hobbes's "Leviathan," for example-was packed into small type. In the " Carisbrooke Library" there will be no small type. iv THE CARISBROOKE LIBRARY. The volumes will be larger; each of about four hundred and fifty pages. They will be handsome library volumes, printed with clear type upon good paper, at the price of half-a-crown, and they will be published in alternate months. In the "Universal Library" the editor's introduction to each volume was restricted to four pages, and there was no annotation. In the "Carisbrooke Library," with larger leisure and a two months' interval between the volumes, it will be possible for the editor to give more help towards the enjoyment of each book. There will be fuller introductions, and there will be notes. In the " Carisbrooke Library," as in the predecessor of which it is an extension, there will be order in disorder. Variety will be still aimed at in sequence of the volumes, while the choice of books to be issued will be still guided by the desire to bring home to Englishmen, without unfair exclusion of any form of earnest thought, as far as may be, some living knowledge of their literature along its whole extent, and of its relations with the wisdom and the wit of the surrounding world. HENRY MORLEY. THE CARISBROOKE LIBRARY. I. WRITINGS OF JONATHAN SWIFT. II. GOWER'S "CONFESSIO AMANTIS" [TALES OF THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS]. III. EARLIER LIFE AND WORKS OF DANIEL DEFOE. IV. EARLY PROSE ROMANCES. V. (In September) THE ENGLISH PROSE WORKS OF JOHN MILTON. EARLY PROSE ROMANCES. saianutbe Pgwesi BALLANTYNE, HANSON AND CO. EDINBURGH AND LONDON EARLY PROSE ROMANCES REYNARD THE FOX FRIAR BACON ROBERT THE DEVIL GUY OF WARWICK VIRGILIUS HISTORY OF HAMLET FRIAR RUSH EDITED BY HENRY MORLEY, LL.D. LONDON GEORGE ROUTLEDGE AND SONS BROADWAY, LUDGATE HILL GLASGOW, MANCHESTER, AND NEW YORK 1889 co 0 -(N~2 Q~) co CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION ELEVEN OF THE HUNDRED MERRY TALES THE HISTORY OF REYNARD THE FOX. ROBERT THE DEUYLL... VIRGILIUS... THE HISTORY OF HAMLET. THE FAMOUS HISTORIE OF FRYER BACON. THE HISTORY OF GUY EARL OF WARWICK THE HISTORY OF FRIAR RUSH. MORE OF THE HUNDRED MERRY TALES PAGES *, * II.. 31. ~ 41.. 167.. 207. 237 285 329 ~.. 409, a 441 INTRODUCTION. - 4 THIS volume contains seven old stories. The first of them is the old Beast Epic of "Reynard the Fox," in Caxton's translation from the Flemish. Jacob Grimm believed that these fables of beasts applied, with a strong national feeling, to corruption growing among strong men who wronged the poor and used religion only as a cloak for violence and fraud, were from their origin Teutonic. Like fables elsewhere could in great measure be accounted for by the like suggestion of natural resemblance between beasts and men. But it has been observed that the earliest known use of such fabling by a German writer is in Fredegar's Chronicle, quoted under the year 612 as a " ruslica fabula" of the Lion, the Fox, and the Stag, which distinctly follows JEsop, and undergoes change afterwards from the fancy of narrators. The story also of the remedy suggested by the Fox to the sick Lion (see in this volume a chapter of Caxton's "Reynart ") comes from,Esop. It was developed in the eighth century in a Latin poem ascribed to the Lombard Paulus Diaconus, who may have had it at the court of Charlemagne as matter already familiar among the Franks. Either from Byzantium or through contact with Rome, such fables could readily have passed into the hearing or the reading of Teutonic monks, who cared about God and the people, steeped the fables in minds active for reform, and developed them, as the Teutonic races developed also the Arthurian myths, into forms inseparable from their nationality. 12 INTRODUCTION. The sick Lion reappears in the tenth century in the oldest poem elaborated as a Beast Epic, the " Ecbasis cujusdam Captivi." Its author belonged to the monastery of St. Evre, at Toul. Strict reforms among the brethren, in the year 936, caused his Ecbasishis going out. He was brought back, and as a sign of his regeneration wrote the poem, in which he figured himself "per tropologiam " as a calf, who, having gone out from safety, became captive to the wolf. The "Ecbasis" has already incidents that become further developed in the myth of "Reynart." The next stage of growth is marked by the Latin poem "Ysengrimvus," which was first named "Reinardus Vulpes." It was written about the year II48 by a Flemish priest, Nivardus of Ghent. Here we have the names that afterwards entered so completely into the speech of Europe that the old French word for a fox, Goupil, was replaced by Renard, Reinaert. Reynard or Reginhard means absolutely hard, a hardened evil-doer whom there is no turning from his way. It is altogether out of this old story that the Fox has come by that name. Isegrim, the Wolfs name, is also Flemish-Isengrin meaning the iron helm. The bear they named Bruno, Bruin, for the colour of his coat. The earliest French version of this national satire is lost. There are traces of it'to be found in the later " Roman de Renard" which confirm the belief that it was known to and used by the Alsatian Heinrich der Glichezare (the name means simulator), who about the year xI80 wrote the first "Reinart" in German. He first called it "Isengrine's N7ot:" — Nu vernemet seltsarniu dine und vremdiu maere der der Glichesaere inkiinde git, si sint gewaerlich Er ist geheizen Heinrich, der hAt diu buoch zesamene geleit von Isengrines arbeit. The poem was afterwards entitled "Reinhart uhs." There remain two MSS. of it, one at Heidelberg, the other in the Bishop's Library at Kalocsa, in Hungary. Its vigorous author was one of INTRODUCTION. 13 the poets who lived of old by voice as well as pen, themselves reciting what they wrote. From a French poem on the same subject, written in the beginning of the thirteenth century by a priest, Pierre de St. Cloud, came the Flemish poem of " Reinhart," by Willem, at the beginning of the thirteenth century. This was continued by another poet of less mark about the year 1380. A prose commentary on this appeared in I480, and a Low German translation of it was printed and published at Liibeck in I498. In the earliest form of the story, in the tenth century, the Fox triumphed. Willem's "Reinaert" ended with the exile of the Fox from court. It was the continuer of Willem in I380 who brought the Fox back, and told of his judicial combat with Isegrim, and showed hypocrisy again triumphant. Willem's Low German poem of " Reinaert" was followed by a prose " Hystorie van Regnaert die Vos," printed at Gouda, in Holland, by Gerard Leeu, in 1479. Caxton's translation was made from the Low German, and retains many Teutonic words in their Dutch form, which was also the form most nearly allied to English. Caxton's long residence at Bruges made the language as familiar to him as his own, and sometimes his English includes a word from the other side of the boundary between English and Dutch. The first edition of Caxton's translation was finished at Westminster in June I48I. There was a second edition in I489, of which the only known copy is in the Pepys Library at Cambridge. Caxton's translation is, as the reader will find, free, vigorous, and lively; but, as printed by himself, it is not only without breaks of paragraph, but there is a punctuation in which the end of one sentence is now and then detached from its own connection and joined to the beginning of another, and in various ways the pleasant features of the story are seen dimly sometimes as through a veil. I have, therefore, corrected 'absolute mistakes, and broken the story into paragraphs that mark the briskness of its dialogue and of its homely wit. Old words and grammatical forms have been left, but I have preferred to print familiar words that remain I4 INTRODL)UCTION. N to us in modern English in the spelling that now brings their sense most quickly to the reader's mind. An exact transcript of Caxton's "History of Reynard the Fox" is easily to be had. It was published in i88o by Professor Arber, of Mason's College, Birmingham, in his "English Scholar's Library," and can be received from him through the post for eighteenpence. This old story, said Thomas Carlyle, "comes before us with a character such as can belong only to very few-that of being a true world's Book, which, through centuries, was everywhere at home, the spirit of which diffused itself into all languages and all minds. The quaint Aisopic. figures have painted themselves in innumerable heads; that rough, deep-lying humour has been the laughter of many generations." "Reynard the Fox" was German in its origin; " Robert the Devil," French. In each tale there was the medieval popular sense of cruel oppression by the strong. In " Reinaert," as first written, fraud and cruelty were banished with the Fox out of the Lion's court; but the old continuer of the story brought them back, and left them, as they were in the world, or as they seemed to be, triumphant over earthly opposition. In " Robert the Devil" force of cruelty was exaggerated to the utmost, for the purpose of insisting on the higher spiritual force that was alone able to triumph over it, and for the purpose of teaching that no sinner, however great, can be beyond the reach of rescue by a true repentance. The legend of "Robert the Devil" was developed first in France out of elements that are to be found in the early tales of widely separated peoples. From France the developed story spread into Spain. It scarcely passed into Italy. In Germany it never was acclimatised, though adopted into modern German romance literature. In the Netherlands the romance of "Robrecht den Duyvel" was forbidden by the Bishop of Antwerp on the IIth of April I621. The oldest known version of the story of "Robert the Devil" was one in Latin prose by Etienne de Bourbon, a Dominican Friar who died soon after the middle of the thirteenth century. INTRODUCTION. I5 It was part of a work that he left unfinished, a collection of historical anecdotes, legends, and apologues, and is there given as a story which he had heard from two of his brethren, and from one who said that he had read it. The story must, therefore, have been contained, earlier than the year 250, in some monastic writing which is now unknown. The tale is given by Etienne de Bourbon as a religious history to enforce the manifold use of penitence. " De mullifplici ulilitate penitencie. Penifentia vincif et sipterat hostes, et a cass eta miseria eleval." To the thirteenth century belongs also the first version of the tale in French, as a romance in octosyllabic rhyming couplets. Of this there are two MSS. at Paris in the National Library, one of the thirteenth century, and one of the fourteenth. The earlier of these was edited in I837, in an edition limited to 130 copies, by G. S. Trebutien. There is also a thirteenth-century prose version of the tale in French prefixed to the old "Croniques de Normandie." The writer of this, whom Littre believes to have lived at the close of the century, also refers to written authority for what he tells, "'selon ce quil mest apparezu par aucunes escrijtnres." The two oldest printed copies of the " Croniques de Normandie," with the prefixed tale of "Robert the Devil," differing much in arrangement, both appeared at Rouen in the same year, 1487. In I496 the story first appeared, printed at Lyon, as a distinct prose tale, "The Terrible and Marvellous Life of Robert the Devil who was named afterwards the Man of God." It was followed, as it has since often been followed, by " The Romance of Richard, son of Robert the Devil, who was Duke of Normandy." This prose life-differing in some main features from that prefixed to the "Chronicles of Normandy "-was reprinted at Paris in 1497, and has from that time to this been frequently reprinted. It is the accepted French prose version of the tale. The accepted verse form was that of a "Dit de Robert le Deable," which exists in three MSS. at Paris, and was a recasting in the fourteenth century of preceding versions. The Dit is in strophes I6 INTRODUCTION. of four alexandrines, rhymed together, and it alters the old close of the story. Between the romance and the Dit there was produced also a dramatic version, " Mirace de Nostre Dame de Robert-le-Diable." This was first edited and printed at Rouen in 1836, with Introduction by C. Deville, Paulin Paris, and others. Reference has also been made to an unpublished metrical version of the legend made in the sixteenth century by Jacques de la Hogue. From the French prose book the story was first translated into English for the edition twice printed, without date, by Wynkyn de Worde, Caxton's most energetic assistant and successor, who printed as many as four hundred and ten books, and was the introducer of Roman type into England. Wynkyn de Worde's version-that which is here given-of the " Lyfe of Robert the Devyll" was printed by William J. Thoms in 1827 in "Ancient English Fictions, a Collection of Early Prose Romances," of which there was a second enlarged edition published in I858, in three volumes, as "Early English Prose Romances." Except "Reynard the Fox," the "Historie of Hamlet," and "Guy of Warwick," the stories in this volume have been chosen from the collection made by that acute and genial student of the past. In the earliest known form of the tale of "Robert the Devil" there is no place named as the scene of it, and we are not told that the wicked man who was to repent was, as a child, called Devil by his playfellows. Normandy first appears as his home in the metrical romance, with Rome for the scene of the penance. There are variations in the matter of the tale as it is found in Etienne de Bourbon, in the romance, in the Dit, in the Chronique, and in the first French prose version of the "Life of Robert the Devil" as a distinct book for the use of the people. The prose story in the Chronique gives five or six more incidents of Robert's evil-doing, and omits only the blinding of his father's messengers. It says nothing of his wonderful birth and the discovery of it from his mother. It ascribes Robert's conversion to the teaching of a holy man, a hermit who took INTRODUCTION. I7 charge of him when he was wounded. There is no war with the Saracens at the end of this version of the tale; no marriage with the Emperor's daughter. The romance, like the separate prose life of I496, which is in general accord with the romance and the Dit, brought the fierce impulse to repentance out of the storm of Robert's own nature. This puts more force into the hero's character, more life into the passion of the tale. The romance and the prose life of I496 tell of the war with the Saracens and the love of the Emperor's daughter; but in the romance Robert refuses marriage, and passes the rest of his life as a holy anchorite. In the popular prose life his refusal to marry is overcome by the express command of God. Robert marries the Emperor's daughter, succeeds his father in Normandy, and passes the rest of his life as a just and religious ruler of his people. It is not to be supposed that there was any historical foundation for the legend. Robert the Devil has been identified with the Norman Robert I. the Magnificent, who died in I035; also with Robert II., Courte-Heuse, son of William the Conqueror, who died in I 134. Le Hericher has found him in the Norman Rollo. Trebutien says that there is nothing to hinder us from believing that he was, not Duke but Dux, son of an Aubert who in the eighth century ruled over the future Normandy. There is nothing to hinder us from so believing, because faith is free; and there is nothing that will help to such belief. It is a Church legend shaped from popular ideas to enforce the efficacy of repentance. It was told first of a nameless person in an unnamed place; it was then furnished with name and place to give it more solidity, and made emphatic by exaggerations of the pictures that set forth on one side the greatness of the sin, and on the other side showed the completeness of the penance and the pardon. The sinner's violence is that of a devil. In his repentance he abases himself below humanity. This is shown vividly by his putting away the use of speech and of intellect; he takes on himself the actions of a fool, and does not sit at the same table with his fellow-men, but eats and sleeps with the dogs. Full B I8 INTRODUCTION. pardon comes of full repentance, tested by long resistance of temptation to reveal the secret of his self-abasement. This volume contains also two tales of conjurors, Virgilius and Friar Bacon. The story of Virgilius is chiefly of Italian origin. From early days among his countrymen, Vergil was half a god. Silius Italicus, Pliny tells us, kept Vergil's birthday by a religious visit to his monument in Naples as to a temple. Martial counted the Ides of October as sacred to Vergil, "Octobres Afro consecravit Idus;," and Statius also made a temple of the tomb"Maroneique sedens in margine templi Sumo animum." A vague sense of divine greatness in Vergil led to the use of his works as an oracle. By opening his book at random and letting the eye fall on a passage, there was to be found in that passage an oracular solution for any difficulty. This use of the sortes Virgiliance was familiar to the Emperor Hadrian, and is not yet dead. No other books have been so used except Homer and the Bible; but there were few readers of Homer in the Middle Ages, among followers of the Western Church. Then came centoni of Vergilian verse, in which lines and phrases were rearranged to make Vergilian poems upon subjects not treated by Vergil. The most famous of these, made by the Emperor Valentinian with aid of Ausonius, is a nuptial cento, in which the pure Vergil was made to speak immodestly. '. The Christians found in Vergil's fourth eclogue-PolZio-a prophecy of Christ. Pope afterwards, following that idea, mixed up in his " Messiah" Vergil's Pollio with the prophecies of Isaiah. This prophecy of the birth of a child with whom there should come a new and happy age of justice, love, and peace, was fastened upon by the Christians as early as the fourth century. To Lactantius the prophecy was of Christ's second coming. The description of magical charms in the eighth ecloguePharmaceutria-and the visit to the unknown world in the sixth INTRODUCTION. 19 book of the 'Eneid, contributed, no doubt, to the growth of the idea that Vergil was a great magician; but there is no definite speaking of him in that character before the twelfth century. At the close of the thirteenth century, when the genius of Dante first breathed the spirit of the artist into modern literature, Dante's great master was Vergil, greatest of the poets known to him, and gifted beyond all men with the poet's insight, which is clearest use of human wisdom. In the popular literature of the thirteenth century there was in French verse by a monk of Hauteseille, in Lorraine, a variation on "The Seven Sages " called " Dolopathos." Dolopathos was an imagined king of Sicily who lived in the time of Augustus, and sent his son Lucinianus to be taught at Rome by Vergil. Before the son returned to Sicily his mother had died and his father married again. Vergil saw in the stars great danger threatening him, and Lucinianus was bidden to keep strict silence until Vergil himself told him to speak. The stepmother caused the son to be condemned to death by his father. The day of execution was delayed by story-telling until the seventh day, when Vergil came and bade his pupil speak. In consequence of what he told, the stepmother was burnt alive. Among the people of Naples, apt at story-telling, in the twelfth century, tales of Vergil the magician began to multiply. Naples had been a favourite place of residence with the poet, and after his death at Brundusium, B.c. 19, his remains were taken to Naples and entombed by the Via Puteolana, on the road from Naples to Puteoli. Conrad of Querfurt, in a letter from Italy, dated 1194, describing his travels, tells of Naples provided by Vergil with a palladium in the form of a small model of the city enclosed in a bottle with a narrow neck; also of a magical bronze horse, and a bronze fly that kept flies out of the city, and other wonders that we find woven into the tale of Vergil the Enchanter. Gervase of Tilbury, about eighteen )ears later, in his " Otia Imtferialia," tells more such tales, and there are more references to Vergil's magic in Alexander Neckham's book "De Nazitiris Rerun." The people of Naples adopted Vergil as the protecting genius of 20 INTRODUCTION. the city, and some of their tales were clearly based on legends and traditions from the East. Vergil's releasing of the Devil recalls the tale of the Fisherman and Genie in the " Arabian Nights." Apollonius Tyaneus also was said to have made a bronze fly that kept flies out of Byzantium. Professor Domenico Comparetti, in his two volumes published at Leghorn in 1872-" Virgilio nel Medio Evo "-gives many interesting details of the growth of the tradition, and finds in many of the tales of Vergil a popular association of ideas with objects familiar to the people of Naples. When the palladium had been transformed from a model of Naples to an egg, the old castle built in 1154 changed its name in the fourteenth century from Castello di mare to Castel dell' uovo. In the statutes of a religious house it is described as Castellum ovi incantati. Meanwhile the tales spread over Italy and beyond Italy, from lip to lip through the story-tellers, and became more and more familiar in books. But there have been no manuscripts found of the French story-book, " Les Faits Merveilleux de Vigille," which come down to us in rare printed copies of the earlier part of the sixteenth century. It was translated into English, into Dutch, and into German; there is also at Copenhagen a MS. translation of it into Icelandic through the Dutch. The English translation is that given in this volume, as printed, with woodcuts, in Gothic letter, at Antwerp, without date, by John Doesborcke. " This boke treatethe of the lyfe of Virgilius and of his death, and many maravyles, that he dyd in his lyfe tyme by witchcraft and nigromansy, thorough the help of the devylls of hell." From the one known copy Utterson reproduced in I812 an edition of sixty copies, from one of which it was reprinted in 1828 by W. J. Thoms in the collection already named, of which a translation into German, with additional matter by R. O. Spazier, was published at Brunswick in I830. " The Historie of Hamlet," that next follows, is from a book printed by Richard Bradocke for Thomas Pavier in I608, of which there is only one known copy. Nash's " Epistle," prefixed to Greene's " Menaphon," published in I589, refers to a play of INTRODUCTION. 21 "Hamlet" then existing, which was earlier than Shakespeare's. This may have been founded upon the tale as told in the " Hisolires T73agiques" of Belleforest, together with tales from the Italian of Bandello, whose novels Belleforest and his fellow-translator, Boiastuau, adopted. If it was taken from the English book, which is translated from Belleforest, then the first edition of the English translation was of earlier date than I589. The tale of "Hamlet" first appears in the third book of the Danish history of Saxo Grammaticus. And who was he? He was a Danish historian, of noble family, who lived in the latter half of the twelfth century, and died soon after the year 1203. He began life as a monastic writer, who for his Latinity was called "Gramtmaticus." Upon the suggestion of his patron, Absalon, Archbishop of Lund, he wrote a history of Danish kings and heroes, which, till the tenth century, is legendary. The historian delighted in the legends of the people, and reported them with evident fidelity. This gives especial interest to ten books of his Danish history; in the remaining six he is more simply historian. A translation of Saxo Grammaticus into Danish is a popular book among the Danes. A translation of it into English will some day, I hope, become current in England. I know where there is a translation of it to be had, which should be made accessible to many readers. In Saxo's third book we are told how, when Ririk Slyngebond, towards the close of the seventh century, was king of Denmark, Gervendill was chief in Jutland. After the death of Gervendill, his two sons, Horvendill and Fengo, succeeded him. Horvendill won to himself glory as a vikingr, that stirred envy in Koller, king of Norway. Koller hunted the seas for Horvendill, and at last met him, and was killed by him on an island in the spring-time, and fought with him the kind of island-duel known as " Holmgang." Horvendill's rich gifts from his booty won the favour of his king, Rorik; so he married R6rik's daughter, Gerutha, and became by her the father of Amleth- Hamlet. All this prosperity of Horvendill stirred envy in his brother Fengo. Fengo fell on Horvendill with open force, slew him, succeeded to his rule, and reigned tyrannically. 22 INTRODUCTION. He also beguiled tlHe minid of his brother's wife, tertilia, ahd married her. Amleth, her sont, then simulated madness. It is to be hoted also that AZiloda signified a foolish perso. He soiled hiiiself by daily lying in the ashes. He cut little sticks to points and hardened themi in fire, and imade men laugh by saying that he got them ready to avenge his father. Shrewd minds and guilty minds suspected him. They sought to make him betray himself to a fair woman in a wood, and to certain youths, but a foster-brother took care that he should not be beguiled. Amleth understood the devices, and when offered a horse, mounted with his face looking hindward and took the tail for a bridle. His answers bf feighed insanity wvere always witty. When he was told that the sand by the seashore was meal, he said, "Yes, ground bJy the storms and the white-crested waves." In the younger Edda there is a fragment of verse which gives Amiodi's Mill as one of the poetical names for the sea. In other ways Amileth contrived so to tell truth as to seei a fool. But Fengo saw the Underlying wit, and as he could not hmake away iith him in Denmark for fear of King R6rik, sent him to England with companions who carried lines which Amleth searched for, found, ahd altered so that they asked for the killing of their bearers, and that Ariileth should be iarriid to the king of England's daughter. So the tale goes on, very much as 8we have it in the English prose history. There was no place iii Danish history for a real Hamlet. His adventures were those of a fable current among the people, which iowed its permanence to the fact that Saxo thought it worth recording. It seems to have been a tradition of Jutland, for in Saxo's time Amleth's grave was said to be south of the town of iald, in the district of Randers. The story of "Hamlet" passed from Saxo into the Danish Chronicle rhymed by a monk, Niel Of Soro, about the year I480, and first printed at Copehhagen in I495. Fengo is there said to hAve been slain in his own house at Viborg in Jutland. B3lielforest took his story from the Latin of Saxo, with rhetorical and moral elaborations, and some variation. Thus in the tale as it was told by Saxo, the spy who was to oveihear Hamlet's dis INTRODUCTION.:!3 course with his mother was hidden under the straw that in old times was strewn upon the floor. Amleth went about crowing like a cock, and stabbed when his feet came upon somebody concealed under the straw. Belleforest, unaccustomed to such carpeting of royal chambers, translated the word s/rawmelnehnzi into tapestry; for Belleforest was a fro/ee of Margaret of Navarre, familiar with the houses of French nobles in a time of growing luxury. He died in i583, aged fifty-three. Margaret of Navarre began her care for him when he was seven years old, and had just lost his father. He was educated by her and bred for the bar, but turned poet and man of letters. Outliving his better days, he wrote much prose of any kind that would earn bread, and among other works the collection of tales which included that showing, " Avec quelle ruse Amleth, qui depuis ftut roy de Dannemarck, vengea la mort de son p'ere Horvendille, occis par Fengon son frere, et autre occurrence de son histoire." The English version of Hamlet is followed in this volume by the old story of Friar Bacon; the Franciscan friar whose clear study of Nature gave him fame as a magician in the stories of the people. The real Roger Bacon, born in 1214, was in his cradle in Somersetshire when the Barons obtained from King John his signature to Magna Charta. He belonged to a rich family, sought knowledge from childhood, and avoided the strife of the day. He studied at Oxford and Paris, and the death of his father may have placed his share of the paternal estate in his hands. He spared no cost for instructors and transcribers, books and experiments; mastered not only Latin thoroughly, but also Hebrew and Greek, which not more than five men in England then understood grammatically, although there were more who could loosely read and speak those tongues. He was made Doctor in Paris, and had the degree confirmed in his own University of Oxford. Then he withdrew entirely from the civil strife that was arising, and joined the house of the Franciscans in Oxford, having spent all his time in the world and two thousand pounds of money in the search for knowledge. Roger 24 INTRODUCTION. Bacon's family committed itself to the king's side in the civil war which Henry's III.'s greed, his corruption of justice, and violation of the defined rights of his subjects, brought upon him. The success of the Barons ruined Bacon's family, and sent his mother, brothers, and whole kindred into exile. Meanwhile the philosopher, as one of the Oxford Franciscans, had come under Grosseteste's care, and joined an Order which prided itself on the checks put by it on the vanity of learning. But, in spite of their self-denials, the Franciscans, at Oxford and elsewhere, included many learned men, who, by the daily habit of their minds, were impelled to give to scholarship a wholesome practical direction. They were already beginning to supply the men who raised the character of teaching at the University of Oxford till it rivalled that of Paris. Friar Bacon was among the earliest of these teachers; so was Friar Bungay, who lives with him in popular tradition. Roger Bacon saw how the clergy were entangled in subtleties of a logic far parted from all natural laws out of which it sprang. He believed that the use of all his knowledge, if he could but make free use of it, would be to show how strength and peace were to be given to the Church. And then the Pope, who had been told of his rare acquirements and his philosophic mind, bade Roger Bacon, disregarding any rule of his Order to the contrary, write for him what was in his mind. Within his mind were the first principles of a true and fruitful philosophy. But to commit to parchment all that he had been pining to say would cost him sixty pounds in materials, transcribers, necessary references, and experiments. He was a Franciscan, vowed to poverty, and the Pope had sent no money with the command to write. Bacon's exiled mother and brothers had spent all they were worth upon their ransoms. Poor friends furnished the necessary money, some of them by pawning goods, upon the understanding that their loans would be made known to his Holiness. There was a difficulty between the philosopher and his immediate superiors, because the Pope's command was private, and only a relief to Bacon's private conscience. His immediate rulers had received no orders to relax the discipline which deprived Franciscans of the luxury of INTRODUCTION. 25 pen and ink. But obstacles were overcome, and then Roger Bacon produced within a year and a half, I268-69, his " Opus Majus" (Greater Work), which now forms a large closely-printed folio; his " Opus Minus " (Lesser Work), which was sent after the " Opus Majus" to Pope Clement, to recapitulate its arguments and strengthen some of its parts; and his " Opus Tcrtiam" (Third Work), which followed as a summary and introduction to the whole, enriched with further novelty, and prefaced with a detail of the difficulties against which its author had contended-details necessary to be given, because, he said, that he might obey the Pope's command the friar had pawned to poor men the credit of the Holy See. These books, produced by Roger Bacon at the close of Henry III's reign, and when he was himself fiftythree years old, rejected nearly all that was profitless, and fastened upon all that there was with life and power of growth in the knowledge of his time. They set out with a principle in which Bacon the Friar first laid the foundations of the philosophy of Bacon the Chancellor of later time. He said that there were four grounds of human ignorance: trust in inadequate authority; the force of custom; the opinion of the inexperienced crowd; and the hiding of one's own ignorance with the parading of a superficial wisdom. Roger Bacon advocated the free honest questioning of Nature; and where books were requisite authorities, warned men against the errors that arose from reading them in bad translations. He would have had all true students endeavour to read the original text of the Bible and of Aristotle. He dwelt on the importance of a study of mathematics, adding a particular consideration of optics, and ending with the study of Nature by experiment, which, he said, is at the root of all other sciences, and a basis of religion. Roger Bacon lived into the reign of Edward I., and died in the year 1292. Friar Bacon's optics appear in that chapter of the popular tale which tells how he took a town by use of a great burning-glass, focussing a chief building in the middle of it, and when he had so set it on fire, and drawn off to it the defenders on the walls, giving the sign for an attack upon the walls. The Brazen Head was an old friend with the 26 INTRODUCTION. popular story-teller. William of Malmesbury, who died about II42, says that Pope Sylvester the Second had one. Gower, in the third book of his "Confessio Amantis," tells the story of Grosteste, who was Roger Bacon's teacher. " For of the grete clerk Grostest I rede how busy that he was Upon the clergie and heved of bras To forge, and make it for to telle Of suche thinges as befelle. And seven yeres besinesse He laide, but for the lachesse Of half a minute of an houre Fro firste he began laboure He lost all that he hadde do." Albertus Magnus is said to have made a brazen mati, who answered questions truly, but grew to be so loquacious that the master's pupil, Thomas Aquinas, whose studies were disturbed by the incessant talking, about the yef I240, broke his head to silence him. The Friar Bungay who was joined with Roger Bacon in popular fiction was another learned Franciscan, Thomas (called also John) of Bungay in Suffolk. He is said to have taught both at Oxford and Cambridge, and to have been buried at Northampton. The prose " History of Friar Bacon" here given may probably have been first published before Robert Greene's play of the "Honorable History of Frier Bacon and Frier Bongay, as it was plaied by her Majesties servants," and printed in I594. But there were frequent slightly differing editions of the popular prose Look upon which the play was founded. Willialm J. Thoms, in his preface to " The Tale of Friar Bacon," illustrates the popular taste for conjuring-matches, of which Friar B1ungay's contest with Vandermast is an example, by a citation, through Flgel's "History of Court Fools," from a "History of Bohemia," by Dubtavius. This tells us that when Charles IV. married the Bavarian Princess Sophia, the bride's father brought INTRODUCTION. 27 into Prague, as an agreeable addition to the wedding festival, a waggon-load of magicians. Two of the chief of them were selected to contend together. One was the great Bohemian sorcerer Zytho, who, after desperate trials of skill, at last opened his mouth from ear to ear, seized his opponent, the Bavarian master Gouin, and crammed him down his throat, head, shoulders, body, legs, but stopped at his boots, which he spat out as not eatable because they had not been cleaned. He then disgorged his rival safe and sound. The reader who is gifted with a proper medieval spirit should have no difficulty in swallowing both these conjurors, with Friar Bacon, Friar Bungay, Vergil, and as many more. The next story in our collection is a comic specimen of popular heroics, a tall copy of the widely popular tale of " Guy of Warwick." Its writer towered above common men with eloquence raised high upon the stilts of blank verse that was printed like to prose. Prose has its music, but is always bad when it so runs into successive lines of metre that the artifice is obvious. Such artifice of manner weakens faith in the sincerity of what is said. As a metrical romance, " Guy of Warwick " is as old as the thirteenth century, and has been doubtfully ascribed to a Franciscan friar, Walter of Exeter. The story of Guy is laid in days before the Norman conquest, and associated with the days of King Athelstane and the battle of Brunanburh. Guy is said to have been the son of Siward, Baron of Wallingford, to have married Felice, only daughter of the Saxon warrior Rohand, to have lived as a hermit after overcoming Colbrond the Dane, and to have died in the year 929. The ronance sprang from the life of the twelfth century. In the prose form here given its medixeval spirit is not wholly lost under the fine rhetoric of clothes with which its body is overlaid. The earliest edition of the romance in French prose was printed at Paris in 1525. The earliest edition in English prose was printed by William Copland, who died before I570. 28 INTRODUCTION. The old Danish tale of " Friar Rush," a satire on the monks, is found in Low German verse of the end of the fifteenth or beginning of the sixteenth century. It was printed also in High German verse at Strasburg in I515. It was printed again at Niirnberg soon after the middle of the sixteenth century, and again at Magdeburg in 1587. Both in the Low German and the High German versions the Devil Russche or Rausch was received as cook in a Danish monastery to the north of the Lake of Esrom, where there is now, by its wooded shore, a village of that name, about eleven miles from Elsineur, in Seeland. Pontoppidan, in his " Theatrum Danice," says that before the Monastery of Esserum was made into a dwelling-house, Brother Rush's effigy was to be seen there, with an epitaph in lines each beginning with Latin words and ending with Danish. They showed also for a long time in the same monastery Brother Rush's cauldron and gridiron. There is a Danish poem on the subject, and also this popular tradition, translated by W. J. Thom from Thiele's " Danske Folksagn." "BROTHER RUSH. "It is related that when the Devil once upon a time saw how piously and virtuously the Monks lived in the Monastery of Esrom, he took upon himself the shape of a man, and went to the gate and knocked at it, for to be let in, saying that his name was Rush. Then he gave himself out that he was a Cook's-boy, and was received as such by the Abbot But when he was once by himself with the Master Cook, he set himself up against him, and got himself therefore punishment. At this he was sore displeased; and as he had previously a cauldron with water over the fire, and he now perceived that it boiled, he took with all his might the Master Cook, and placing him head downwards in it, began thereupon to run about and to cry, lamenting the misfortune as if it had happened to his master in cooking. Thus he cheated in this manner with falsehood all the brothers in the cloister, that they thought him altogether free, and he was now appointed by them the Master Cook. But it was what he had INTRODUCTION. 29 strived after, in order that he might afterwards deprave them altogether; for now he cooked the meat so unctuously and lickerishly, that the monks neglected fasts and prayers, and gave themselves to feasting. Nay, it is said also that he brought women into the Monastery, and came thereby much in the Abbot's favour, so that he at last caused him to become a Brother, because he well desired constantly to have such a cook at haind. From that time strife and malice prevailed so severely in the Monastery that it had surely come in the power of the Evil One, if none of the Brethren had repented in time. For instance, once Brother Rush was in the wood, and having there seen a beautiful fat cow, he slew it, and took himself one quarter with him to the M\1onastery, but hung up the rest on a tree in the forest. Then presently came by the countryman who owned the cow; and when he perceived how the three quarters hung in the tree, he hid himself in the other trees to watch until the thief fetched away the remainder. Then he saw, as he sat there, how the Devils had their sport in the forest, and heard much talking about Rush, how he 'Would invite the Abbot and Monks to the banquet with him in Hell. This caused the countryman great alarm, and the next day he went to the Abbot and related to him all that he had seen and heard in the forest. "W When the Abbot heard this he caused all the monks to come to him in the church, and they began there to pray and to sing, so that Rush, as he could not abide the like, was desirous to sneak away. But the Abbot grasped him by the cloak and exorcised him into a red horse, and gave him into the power of Hell. For many years after these events they showed in the Monastery of Esrom Rush's Iron Cauldron and Gridiron." Friar Rush comes, in fact, from the land of the Pucks. His legend abounds in touches common to the old Northern conceptions of a tricksy and malicious spirit, deepened afterwards in meaning by association with such satire on the earthly life of monks as we have in the old " Land of Cockayne." 30 INTRODUCTION. So ends the list of the good things in this hamper of romance, which is filled up, by way of packing-straw, with some of the "Hundred Merry Tales." He said "that I had my good wit out of the 'Hundred Merry Tales,'" said Beatrice of Benedict. Only two copies of this once popular book are known, and they were both printed by John Rastell. One of them was partly recovered in i815 by the Rev. J. J. Conybeare, in leaves, from more than one copy of it that had been used in making the pasteboard found binding another book. It was reprinted at once after its discqvery, by Mr. S. W. Singer, in an edition of two hundred and fifty copies, and reprinted again in I864 by Mr. W. Carew Hazlitt, in the first of the three series of his pleasant collection of "Shakespeare Jest Books." In i866 Dr. Herman Oesterley published another edition of "A Hundred Merry Tales," from the other known copy, which is dated i526, and is in the Royal Library of the University of G6ttingen, for which it was bought in 1768 at an auction in Liineburg. The tales here used as packing-straw are taken fromn Dr. Herman Oesterley's edition of the complete book. H.CARIS1R E 89 CARIISROO1XE, tdy 1889. ELEVEN OF THE HUNDRED MERRY TALES. — H — Of himt that fayd thtat a wionids lontg was lightl ft met of degefliz. A CERTAYN artificer in lond6 there was which was fore fyk that coud not well dygefi hys mete/ to wh6 a phyfyc6 cam to gyue hym councell & feyd yt he mull vfe to ete metis yt be light of dygeflyon as filall byrdys/ as fparous or fwallous & efpecyall yt byrd yt ys callyd a wagtale whofe flefie ys merueloufe lyght of dygeftyo becaufe that byrd ys euer mouyng & ftyryng. The fik man heryng the pheficion feyd fo anfweryd hym & feyd/ Syr yf that be the caufe yt thofe birdys be lyght of dygeftyon/ Than I know a mete mych lyghter of dygeftion tha other fparow fwallow or wagtayle/ & that ys my wyuys tog for it is neuer in reft but euer mouying & ftyrryng. ~ By thys tale ye may lerne a good generall rule of phefyk. Of ihe woman thatfolowy)d herfourth hzflIandys herce & wvept. A WOMAN ther was whych had had.iiii. huibades. It fortunyd alfo that this fourth hufband died & was brought to chirch vppon ye bere/ who this womi folowyd & made gret mone & wext very fory. In fo mych that her neybours thought flie wold fowne & dy for forow/ wherfor one of her goflfps cam to her & fpake to her in her ere &c bad her for goddes fake to comfort her felf & refrayne that lamentacon or ellys it wold hurt her gretly &S pauenture put her in ieoperdy of her lyfe. To wh6 this woma afweryd & fayd/ 32 THE HUNDRED MERRY TALES. I wys good gofyp I haue gret caufe to morne if ye knew all/ for I haue byryed.iii. hufbandys befyde thys man/ but I was neuer i the cafe yt I am now/ for there was not one of the but whe that I folowid the corfe to chyrch yet I was fure alway of an other hufbad before that ye corfe cam out of my houfe/ & now I am fure of no nother huiband & therfore ye may be fure I haue gret caufe to be fad and heuy. ~T By thys tale ye may fe that the olde puerbe ys trew that yt is as gret pyte to fe a woman wepe as a gofe to go barefote. Of the woman that fayd her wooer came to late. A NOTHER woman there was that knelyd at yC mas of requie whyle the corfe of her hufbande lay on the bere in the chyrch. To whom a yonge man came to fpeke wyth her in her ere as thoughe hyt had bene for fomr matre concernyng the funerallys/ howe be yt he fpake of no fuch matter but only wowyd her that he myghte be her hufbande/ to whome fhe anfweryde & fayde thus/ Syr by my trouthe I am fory that ye come fo late/ for I am fped all redy/ For I was made fure yefter day to a nother man. T By thys tale ye may perceyue that women ofte tymes be wyfe and lothe to lofe any tyme. Of the horfman ofyrelond thatprayd Oconer to hang vp the frere. ONE callyd Oconer an yrifh lorde toke an horfeman pryfoner that was one of hys gret enmys/ whiche for any requeft or yntrety yt ye horfman made gaue iugement that he flhulde inc6tynet be hagyd/ & made a frere to fhryue hym and bad hym make hym redy to dye. Thys frere yt fhroue hym examyned hym of dyuers fynes & afkyd hym amog othere whyche were the grettyfte fynnys that euer he dyde/ thys horfeman anfweryd & fayde one of the grettyft adys that euer I dyde whyche I now moft repent is that when I toke Oconer the lafte weke in a churche and ther I myght haue brennyd hym church and all & becaufe I had confcyence EARLY PROSE ROMANCES. 33 & pyte of brennyng of the church I taryed ye tyme fo long ye oconer efcaped/ & that fame deferring of brennyng of the church & fo long taryeng of that tyme is one of the wordt adys yt euer I dyd wherof I mofte repente/ Thys frere perceyuyng hym in that mynd fayd pece man in the name of god & change yt mynde & dye in charite or els thou fhalt neuer come in heuen/ nay quod the hors man I wyll neuer change yt mynde what fo euer fhall come to my foule/ thys frere pceyuyng hym thys flyll to contynew hys mide ca to oconer & feyd fyr in ye name of god haue fome pyte vpp6 thys mannys fowle & let hym not dye now tyll he be in a better mynde/ For yf he dye now he ys fo far out of charyte yt vtterly hys foule fhalle be dampnyd/ and fhewyd hym what mynde he was in & all the hole matter as ys before fhewyd. Thys horfman heryng ye frere thys intrete for hym fayd to oconer thys/ Oconer thou feeyft well by thys mannys reporte yt yf I dye now I am out of charyte & not redy to go to heuen & fo it ys yt I am now out of charyte in dede/ but thou feeft well yt this frere ys a good man he is now well dyfpofyd & in charyte/ and he is redy to go to heuen & fo am not I/ therfore I pray the hang vp thys frere whyle that he hys redy to go to heuyn and lette me tary tyl a nother tyme yt I may be i charyte and redy & mete to go to heuyn. This Oconer heryng this mad anfwere of hym fparyd the man & forgaue hym hys lyfe at that feafon. ~T By thys ye may fe that he that is in daunger of his enmye yt hath no pyte/ he can do no better than Ihew to hym the vttermofte of hys malycyous mynde whych that he beryth toward hym. Of the Ireft that fayd noiher corpus meus nor corpum mevwn. 'HE archdekyn of Effex yt had bene long in audoryte in a tyme of vyfytacion when all the preeftys apperyd before hym callyd afyde.iii. of ye yog preftys whych were accufyd yt they coud not well fay theyr deuyne feruyce/ & afkyd of the whe they fayd mas whether they fayd corpus meus or corpu meil. The furft preeft fayd yt he fayd corpus meus. The fec6d fayd yt he fayd corpi meii. And the he afkyd of the thyrd how he fayd/ whych C 34 THE HUNDRED MERRY TALES, anfweryd & fayd thus/ fyr becaufe it is fo gret a dout & dyuers men be in dyuers opynyons/ therfore becaufe I wold be fure I wold not offend who I come to ye place I leue it clene out & fay nothyng therfore/ wherfore he then openly rebukyd them all thre. But dyuers that were prefent thought more defaut in hym becaufe he hym felfe before tyme had admyttyd them to be preellys. ~ By thys tale ye may fe that one ought to take hede how he rebukyth an other left it torne moft to hys owne rebuke. Of the.ii. frerys wherof the one louyd not the ele bed nor the other the tayle. Two frerys fat at a gentylmans tabyll whych had before hym 6 a faftyng day an ele & cut the hed of the ele & layd it vpp6 one of ye Freres trechars/ but the Frere becaufe he wold haue had of ye myddyll part of the ele fayd to the gentylman he louyd no ele heddes/ this gentylman alib cut the tayle of ye ele & leyd it on the other Freres trechar/ he lykewyfe becaufe he wold haue had of the myddyll pte of ye ele fayd he louyd no ele taylys. Thys gentylma perceyuyng that: gaue the tayle to the Frere yt fayd he louyd not the hed/ & gaue the hed to hym that fayd he louyd not ye tayle. And as for the myddell part of the ele he ete part him felf & part he gaue to other folke at ye table/ wherfore thefe freres for anger wold ete neuer a moffell/ & fo they for all theyr craft & fubtylte were not onely deceyued of ye beft moffel of yc ele/ but therof had no part at al. ~ By this ye fe that they that couet the befl part fomtyme therfore lofe the meane part and all. Of the welchma that j/lroue hym for brekyng h/is faft on the fry day. A WELCHMAN dwellynge in a wylde place of walys came to hys curate in the tyme of lent & was c6feffed. & when his confeffyon was in maner at the end the curate afked him whether he had any other thyng to say yt greuyd his cofcyece/ whych fore EARLY PROSE ROMANCES. 35 abafshyd anfweryd no word a gret whyle/ at laft by exortacion of hys gooftly fader he fayd yt there was one thyng in his mynd that gretly gretyd his c6fciece which he was afhamed to vtter/ for it was fo greuous yt he trowid god wold neuer forgyue hym/ to whom the curate afweryd & iayd yt goddys mercy was aboue alli" & bad hym not dyfpayre in the mercy of god/ For what fo euer it was yf he were repentaiite yt god wold forgyue him/ And fo by long exortacion at the lafl he Ihewyd it & feyd thus/ Syr it happenyd onis that as my wyfe was making a chefe vppon a fryday I wold haue fayed whether it had ben falt or frelh and toke a lytyll of the whey in my hand & put it in my mouth & or I was ware part of it went downe my throte agaynft my wyll &