UNIVERSITY OF CA RIVERSIDE, LIBRARY 
 
 3 1210 01710 4454 
 
 HOOL LIBRARY. 
 
 W Lectures on Literature p 
 
 by Richard Malcolm Johnston
 
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 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 RIVERSIDE
 
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 Catholic Summer and Winter School Library 
 
 NOW READY: 
 
 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 by Richard Malcolm Johnston. 
 
 PREHISTORIC AMERICANS. 
 
 by the Marquis De Nadaillac, 
 Member of the French Academy. 
 P^RT I. " The Mound Builders." 
 PART II. " The Cliff Dwellers." 
 
 SCIENTIFIC THEORY AND CATHOLIC DOCTRINE. 
 
 by Rev. J. A. Zahm, C. S. C. 
 
 SUMMER SCHOOL ESSAYS 
 VOLUME I. 
 
 " Buddhism and Christianity," by Mgr. De Harlez. 
 
 "Christian Science and Faith Cure," by Dr. T. P. Hart. 
 
 " Growth of Reading Circles," by Rev. T. McMillan, C.S. P. 
 
 " Reading Circle Work," by Rev. W. J. Dalton. 
 
 " Church Music." by Rev. R. Fuhr, O. S. F. 
 
 " Catholic Literary Societies," by Miss K. E. Conway. 
 
 " Historical Criticism," by Rev. C. De Smedt, S. J. 
 
 SUMMER SCHOOL ESSAYS. 
 
 VOLUME II. 
 " The Spanish Inquisition," by Rev. J. F. Nugent. 
 " Savonarola," by Conde B. Pallen, Ph. D. 
 " Joan of Arc," by J. W. Wilstach. 
 " Magna Charta," by Prof. J. G. Ewing. 
 " Missionary Explorers of the Northwest," 
 
 by Judge W. L. Kelly 
 
 CHRISTIAN ETHICS. 
 
 by Rev. J. J. Conway, S. J. 
 
 SOCIAL PROBLEMS. 
 
 by Rev. Morgan M. Sheedy. 
 
 Cloth, Price Per Volume, Fifty Cents.
 
 CATHOLIC SUMMER AND WINTER SCHOOL LIBPARV 
 
 LECTURES 
 
 ON 
 
 LITERATURE 
 
 ENGLISH, 
 FRENCH AND SPANISH 
 
 BY 
 RICHARD MALCOLM JOHNSTON 
 
 AKRON, O. 
 
 D. H. McBRIDE & CO. 
 
 1897
 
 ?N3l 
 
 3L& 
 
 Copyright. 1897 
 
 BY 
 
 D. H. McBRIDE & CO.
 
 TO 
 MY WIFE 
 
 FRANCES MANSFIELD 
 
 FROM 
 
 YOUNGEST MANHOOD TO FAR ADVANCED AGE 
 
 MY CONSTANT COMRADE 
 
 AND COUNSELOR 
 
 Obiit Ftbruarii XXIV., MDCCCXCVII./\y
 
 PREFACE 
 
 ^TThese Lectures, read at the Convent 
 ^^^ of Notre Dame and the Peabodv 
 Institute of Baltimore before classes 
 of advanced students, were, and this 
 collection is, intended mainly for those 
 who have leisure for cursory, rather 
 than prolonged and critical study of 
 the matters herein discussed. 
 
 R. M. J.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 English Literature 7 
 
 French Literature 117 
 
 Spanish Literature 201
 
 English Literature.
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE 
 
 Ancient, Mediaeval and Early English. 
 
 Drama:— Nicholas Udall: " Ralph Royster Doy- 
 ster;" John Still: "Gammer Gurton's Nee- 
 dle;" Sackville: " Gorboduc." 
 
 /£THE drama was originally of reli- 
 ^-'^ gious institution. When the heroic 
 ages had passed, and peace had afforded 
 opportunities for improvement upon the 
 lyrical and epic forms of poetry, then 
 arose the dramatic in which, instead of 
 mere narration, the principal characters 
 were brought upon the stage, and made 
 to represent in their own persons the 
 great actions of their lives. The only 
 proper subjects of tragedy, which is 
 the oldest form of dramatic poetry, 
 were incidents of an unhappy nature, 
 which had occurred in the careers of 
 great men who had been unfortunate; 
 
 (9)
 
 10 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 and not so much for their own crimes 
 as in obedience to the decrees of fate. 
 The heroes of ancient drama were 
 men of many virtues and of great rev- 
 erence for the gods. For instance, the 
 " CEdipus" of Sophocles was exposed 
 to death in his infancy in order to pre- 
 vent the fulfillment of the prophecy 
 that he must one day be the slayer of 
 his father. The accomplishment of the 
 prophecy was without guilt upon his 
 part, but yet was followed by remorse 
 and other misfortunes that were nat- 
 ural. His career was made by the poet 
 to inculcate a great religious truth, — 
 that the decrees of fate are inevitable. 
 The drama was enacted upon occa- 
 sions of public worship. Its enactment 
 was preluded l>v solemn sacrifices, and 
 prayers were made for the blessing of 
 the gods. The places where the scenes 
 were enacted were usually in the open 
 air and in places which either com- 
 manded the view of a temple, or some 
 grand object of nature, which might 
 assist in lifting the mind of the spec- 
 tators in harmony with the solemn serv- 
 ice of this religious ceremony. One
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. \{ 
 
 of the most imposing scenes that could 
 be witnessed was this regnacting in 
 these sacred places the events which 
 taught the mutability of human for- 
 tunes and the value of constant piety. 
 
 The father of Greek tragedy, JEs- 
 chvlus. had for his only aim the incul- 
 cation of moral duties. He was a most 
 earnest preacher. He taught k - rever- 
 ence for the gods, respect for the sanc- 
 tity of an oath and of the conjugal tie. 
 inflexible justice, moderation in pros- 
 perity, patience under suffering, de- 
 voted love to country, generous hospi- 
 tality ;" and he taught that no amount 
 of suffering could dispense with the ob- 
 ligation to perform every duty to God 
 and to men. Accompanying the action 
 of the principal characters was a cho- 
 rus, whose business it was to make the 
 proper reflections upon that action. As 
 this chorus was ever in the play, it 
 must follow that there never could be 
 any change of scene or of place. 
 
 Therefore, the ancient drama had 
 what was called the three unities — of 
 time, place, and action; that is, one set 
 of actions that transpired at one place,
 
 12 LECTURES OX LITERATURE. 
 
 and during the lapse of two or three 
 hours, was represented. There was no 
 variety, and could be none, on account 
 of the continued presence of the chorus. 
 If the same person had performed other 
 actions and suffered other pains on dif- 
 ferent occasions, and in different places, 
 another play must be written to repre- 
 sent them. Thus we have the "Prome- 
 theus Bound " of ^Eschylus, and the 
 " Prometheus Unbound." Then we 
 have two plays of the CEdipus of Sopho- 
 cles, the " CEdipus Tyrannus," and the 
 " CEdipus Coloneus." Such was the 
 origin of Greek tragedy. 
 
 In the hands of the great masters 
 of Athens it had a powerful influence 
 upon the thousands who attended its 
 exhibitions, in stimulating them to all 
 their obligations, especially the worship 
 of the gods. The long continuance of 
 peace, and the growth of follies and 
 vices which increased civilization brings 
 along with riches and luxury, after- 
 wards introduced the comedy, which 
 bore no higher relation to tragedy than 
 the modern burlesque opera bears to 
 the legitimate.
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 13 
 
 The pleasure that mankind derives 
 from tragedy is very peculiar and very 
 interesting. It is not from the suffering 
 which we witness, although we shed 
 tears at the sight, but it is because we 
 then see manhood in its highest aspect, 
 when it is struggling with misfortune, 
 and in these struggles perfecting its 
 being. Tragedy, therefore, teaches us 
 what our holy religion teaches us also — 
 that suffering is a great blessing. The 
 man who never suffers never becomes a 
 man in the highest sense. 
 
 Let us pass from this ancient drama 
 to that of the Middle Ages, or, as we may 
 term it, the Christian Drama. The in- 
 fluence which the establishment of Chris- 
 tianity on the ruins of Paganism exerted 
 upon the general literature was felt 
 especially by the drama which more 
 than any other kind represented the old 
 religious ideas. Yet theatrical represen- 
 tations were too abundant sources of 
 entertainment for the people to be 
 entirely deprived of them. For the lack 
 of an equivalent they would attend the 
 exhibitions of the old tragedies, and 
 would weep like their forefathers wept
 
 14 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 at the misfortunes of the great men in 
 Grecian story. 
 
 Towards the middle of the fourth 
 century, Gregory, surnamed Nazian- 
 zenus, came to the Archiepiscopal throne 
 of Constantinople, a city which then 
 held much of the last remains of Gre- 
 cian letters and ideas. With Greek 
 literature he was thoroughly acquainted. 
 He had been educated severally in the 
 schools of Caesarea in Cappadocia, Cae- 
 sarea Philippi, Alexandria, and, lastly, 
 Athens. Besides being a great preacher, 
 he was a poet. Knowing full well the 
 religious tendencies of the heathen 
 drama, and desirous to substitute such 
 entertainments as would harmonize with 
 Christianity, he first banished from the 
 stage the old tragedies and substituted 
 those which tended to inculcate Chris- 
 tian principles. As the ancient tragedies 
 had for their subjects the sufferings of 
 the heathen heroes and demi-sfods, so 
 his took for theirs the sufferings of 
 Christ and the ancient saints and mar- 
 tyrs. There is yet extant one of these 
 tragedies called "The Passion of 
 Christ." Following the requisition of
 
 ENG L IS H L I TEH ATI 'E'E. \ 5 
 
 the old tragedies, which had their chorus, 
 he substituted Christian hymns, likewise 
 of his own composition. 
 
 These Christian plays obtained gen- 
 erally among the Christians of the East. 
 It was many centuries before they 
 found their way amongst the western 
 nations of Europe. When the Latin lan- 
 guage became that of the Church, they 
 began to be produced in Latin, and 
 though they were known in Italy, and 
 much later in Germany and France, it 
 was not until the beginning of the 
 fifteenth century that the English be- 
 came much acquainted with them. 
 Their first knowledge appears to have 
 been acquired at the Council of Con- 
 stance which sat from 1414 to 1418. 
 
 The English bishops were highly en- 
 tertained by these plays which, during 
 the intervals of the sittings of the Coun- 
 cil, were exhibited by the ecclesiastics 
 of the East. They were called '-Mir- 
 acle Plays," and were not only com- 
 posed by the ecclesiastics, but acted by 
 them entirely. A layman would no 
 more have dared to appear in them, 
 than he would have undertaken to
 
 It5 LECTURES OS LITERATURE. 
 
 preach the Gospel or administer the 
 holy sacraments. Following- the ex- 
 ample of their Eastern brethren, the 
 English ecclesiastics began to introduce 
 them into England. As elsewhere, 
 they were purely religious and per- 
 formed nowhere except in the churches 
 and monasteries. 
 
 But all peoples must have some 
 sport, however firmly set in their reli- 
 gious opinions. On the occasions of 
 great concourses of men, especially at 
 the great fairs held in the Middle 
 Ages, men would go in crowds to see 
 the jugglers and other mountebanks. 
 Then it was that, to counterbalance 
 these shows, the ecclesiastics began to 
 introduce into their plays the sportive 
 element. The funny character in their 
 plays was the Devil. He always wore 
 a long tail, and the ancient saints used 
 to worry that and his other members 
 in many ways, when the Devil would 
 roar with pain and the audience would 
 roar with delight. 
 
 These Miracle Plavs after some time 
 took on the allegorical form which they 
 had borrowed from the French. In-
 
 ENGLrsir LITERATURE. 17 
 
 stead of persons in Bible history they 
 represented abstract qualities. In these 
 the sportive character was called the 
 Vice. Yet the Devil was so interesting, 
 and there was such satisfaction in wit- 
 nessing any discomfiture that could 
 come to him, that even in these allegori- 
 cal plays he was often brought in with 
 the Vice, and the audience had two 
 clowns instead of one. Their tricks 
 played upon each other constituted the 
 laughing part of these dramas. They 
 took the name of " Mysteries," and 
 were still enacted in the churches. 
 
 Afterwards, and because the univer- 
 sities were upon religious foundations, 
 they began to be enacted in them. We 
 have an allusion to this habit in 
 Shakespeare's "Hamlet." In them 
 events of Bible history were represented 
 with exact circumstantiality, the monks 
 not feeling at liberty to vaiy them, 
 Many grossnesses must therefore occur 
 in them. They at last became so ob- 
 jectionable that, in the reign of Henry 
 VIII., Bishop Bonner prohibited them 
 being represented in the churches. 
 Still, the chorister boys in St. Paul's 
 
 L.L.— 2
 
 18 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 continued to act them in that Cathe- 
 dral, especially at the feast of the Boy 
 Bishop on St. Nicholas' Day. 
 
 Such was the ancient English " Sacred 
 Comedy." The habit of producing it 
 on Sunday continued long, and as late 
 even as the reign of Charles I. these 
 Christian boys of St. Paul's acted upon 
 Sundays. 
 
 What a blessing are tears ! Tears, 
 at once the witness and the reliever of 
 the burden, both of sorrow and of 
 pleasure. It is natural to a healthy 
 man, healthy in body and mind, to shed 
 tears, not only for his own griefs, not 
 only in sympathy with those of others, 
 but in the midst of the excesses of his 
 own joys or in mirthful contemplation 
 of those absurd conjunctures in his own 
 and others' fortunes which he recognizes 
 as incapable of producing harmful re- 
 sults. The subtle influences in the 
 human heart which call forth these 
 emanations for consoling the one and 
 subduing the excesses of the other in 
 these apparently so widely different 
 conditions are yet closely blended to- 
 gether in the great depths of our being.
 
 ENGLISH LITER A TUBE. 19 
 
 So it is that weeping is sometimes fol- 
 lowed by smiling, and laughter by 
 sighing. 
 
 He therefore who undertakes to rep- 
 resent. this human life, if he be a true 
 artist, will study both these elements 
 in man's being with equal care and 
 fidelity. Among the ancient dramatists, 
 if such indeed were the gift, it cer- 
 tainly was not the habit to employ it. 
 Greek tragedy must necessarily be 
 wholly serious. Originating in reli- 
 gion, designed to inculcate fear of the 
 gods, especially of fate, it had no place 
 for scenes except the solemn, the aw- 
 ful, and the terrific. Its achievements 
 were indescribably great, and they 
 stimulated to the practice of highest 
 virtues. 
 
 Greek comedy had also, in its first 
 intentions, elements of the religious. 
 It is curious indeed to consider how 
 some of the ancient dramatic scenes in 
 honor of Bacchus should have been 
 induced by religious motives. Yet 
 comedy in the main among the refined 
 Greeks seemed to have had for its 
 object to make a contrast — and a
 
 20 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 pleasing contrast — with the painful 
 solemnities of tragedy. 
 
 Socrates used to maintain that a 
 good writer of tragedies ought also to 
 be able to write comedies ; and in an 
 argument with Aristophanes, the latter 
 was convinced that the wise man was 
 right in his opinions. For " all oppo- 
 sites," was the argument, " can be fully 
 understood only by and through each 
 other. Consequently, we can know 
 what is serious only by knowing also 
 what is laughable and ludicrous." 
 
 But it was reserved for time long 
 after to fully eliminate this idea, and 
 represent the serious and the sportive 
 in their sequence in common life. 
 
 We should remember that the Greek 
 drama dealt not with common life. 
 Neither tragedy nor comedy. Tragedy 
 dealt with the demi-gods and legend- 
 ary heroes and heroines, with CEdipus 
 and Orestes, with Alcestis and Medea. 
 So Greek comedy, for want of real 
 heroes, dealt with prominent names in 
 political life who would fain be re- 
 garded as heroes, but who were not ; 
 and these were exhibited in contrast with
 
 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. 21 
 
 the truly great of a better age. Greek 
 comedy therefore was satire. It had 
 the keenest wit ; but it was devoid of 
 humor which is the chiefest element in 
 the comic muse. Many a roaring laugh 
 was raised over the merciless scourg- 
 ings of petty politicians by Aristoph- 
 anes, but it was a laugh of contempt 
 and anger which was harm instead of 
 benefit to the laugher. That healthy 
 English mind in that healthy English 
 body, so fond of English beef and Eng- 
 lish ale, must have some substantial 
 human sport such as was to come from 
 everyday life and character, leaving 
 out the contemplation of the per- 
 sonage whom it required so great a 
 stretch of the imagination to disasso- 
 ciate from the thoughts not only seri- 
 ous but terrific. It certainly was 
 natural to expect that the first modifi- 
 cations of the sacred comedy would be 
 made within the circle of existing dra- 
 matic writers — that is, the ecclesiastics. 
 So here we have the new departure 
 inaugurated by Nicholas Uclall, head 
 master successively of Eton and West- 
 minster Schools, and Canon of Windsor.
 
 22 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 They were good times when the boys 
 and ushers went nutting in Windsor 
 forest, and as good almost when in 
 those long winter nights that left, over 
 and above sleeping and study hours, 
 abundance of time for other things, 
 they used to enact the Latin comedies 
 which the head master had composed. 
 Here we find the beginnings of modern 
 comedy writing in England; for these 
 Latin plays designed for the entertain- 
 ment of school boys, in recess from 
 studies, were neither after the order of 
 the Mysteries and Moralities nor were 
 they merely imitations of the ancient 
 classic comedies! It was but a step 
 further, as Mr. Silas Wegg would say, 
 to " drop into " English. 
 
 In "Ralph Royster Doyster" we be- 
 gin to see the development of the idea 
 of representing both the serious and the 
 sportive, and the setting off each by the 
 other as they are set off in actual life. 
 In this play, of course, the sportive 
 must and does largely prevail; but 
 there are many passages of serious dia- 
 logue, and these dispose the mind to 
 enjoy with greater zest the comic.
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 23 
 
 Matthew Merrigreke is all the more en- 
 tertaininor because of the seriousness in 
 other characters. The play, so to call 
 it, has been considered of much value 
 in addition to its praise of being the 
 first English comedy, for the acquaint- 
 ance it imparts with London society 
 three hundred years ago. A good 
 move this on the part of the clergy, 
 who were the monopolists in literary, 
 especially dramatic humor, to allow a 
 bit of fun outside of the churches, and 
 at least for this purpose, supplant the 
 Devil, and substitute honest English 
 jokers. There is much spirit in the 
 scene wherein the three working girls, 
 Madge Mumblecrust, spinner, Tibet 
 Talkative, seamstress, and Arnot Sly- 
 face, knitter, while at their tasks, are 
 joined by Ralph Royster Doyster, and 
 after some disputing, the dialogue con- 
 tinues thus : 
 
 Arnot— Let all those matters pass, and we three 
 sing a song. 
 So shall we pleasantly both the time be- 
 guile now. 
 And eke dispatch all our work, ere we can 
 tell how. 
 Tibet — I shrew them that say nay, and that shall 
 not he I.
 
 24 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 Madge — And I am well content. 
 Tibi /—Sing on, then, by and by. 
 [All.] Pipe, merry Arnot ; 
 Trilla, Trllla, Trillarie. 
 
 Work Tibet, work Arnot, work Margerie ; 
 
 Let us see who will win the victory. 
 
 Pipe, merry Arnot ; 
 Trilla, Trilla, Trillarie. 
 What Tibet, what Arnot, what Margerie ; 
 Ye sleep, but we do not, that shall wo try ; 
 Your fingers be dumb, our work will not be 
 
 Pipe, merry Arnot ; 
 
 Trilla, Trilla, Trillarie. 
 Now Tibet, now Arnot, now Margerie, 
 Now whippet apace for the Mysterie; 
 But it will not be, our mouth is so dry. 
 Pipe, merry Arnot ; 
 
 Trilla, Trilla, Trillarie. 
 When Tibet, when Arnot, when Margerie? 
 I will not — I cannot — no more can I ; 
 Then give we all over, and there let it die. 
 
 Not long afterwards another church- 
 man, yet higher in dignity and office, 
 appeared. Twenty years ago we had a 
 head master and a canon; now we are 
 to have a Doctor of Divinity and a 
 Bishop. John Still, Lady Margaret's 
 Professor of Divinity, Prebend of West- 
 minster, Master of St. John's and Trin- 
 ity Colleges at Cambridge, Archdeacon 
 of Sudbury and Bishop of Bath and 
 Wells, once fell into a humorous vein, 
 and for a preacher showed an enormous 
 familiarity with the lowly in English
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 25 
 
 society; and as hearty an appreciation 
 of their drolleries as any who ever 
 aspired to wear a gown, much less the 
 lawn sleeves and the mitre. 
 
 " Gammer Gurton's Needle " is in- 
 deed thoroughly English, its humor is of 
 the English kind, broad, hearty, and un- 
 restrained. The author understood well 
 the fun to be gotten from the absurd 
 exaggerations that persons in lower 
 classes make of insignificant matters. 
 It was a great time in the village when 
 it was ascertained that Gammer Gurton's 
 needle was not to be found. Gammer 
 Gurton's needle gone! clean gone! ! 
 Perhaps it was lost. Lost! The idea! 
 As well suppose the King had lost the 
 crown jewels. No losing in the case; 
 and the question is — who stole it? She 
 will not suspect her servants Hodge, 
 Tyb, and Cocke, nor Doctor Rat, nor 
 Diccon. Now the gossip, Dame Chat, 
 has been much about the house of late; 
 and it was no difficult thing to observe 
 that she envied in her heart the posses- 
 sion of that needle. The unsuspecting 
 owner had often exhibited it with par- 
 donable pride, and in blind confidence.
 
 26 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 In her grief and anger for the loss, she 
 was led through Uiccon the Bedlam to 
 suspect Dame Chat of the theft. These 
 two things taken together, this sequence 
 of startling events, the loss of the nee- 
 dle, that loss magnified into a theft, and 
 the theft charged upon Dame Chat, up- 
 set that little village. Business was 
 suspended, all took sides and joined in 
 the hunt. What it all would have gotten 
 to no human foresight could have deter- 
 mined, had not an unguarded movement 
 of Hodge solved the mystery. Yes, it 
 was not Dame Chat, it was Hodge, in 
 whose breeches, while Gammer was 
 mending them, the needle had been left. 
 In an awkward motion of the lad, the 
 missing needle stuck into his flesh, and 
 he had to roar at its discovery. 
 
 If the boys at Eton enjoyed the en- 
 acting of " Ralph Royster Doyster," 
 how must the bigger boys of Christ's 
 College at Cambridge, where it was 
 first presented, have applauded " Gam- 
 mer Gurton's Needle"? How much 
 better for such purpose this than the 
 " Birds" of Aristophanes, the " Captive" 
 of Plautus, or the " Andrea " of Teren-
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 27 
 
 tius; not to have to pick out the fun, 
 what little there was, from beneath 
 Latin and Greek roots and radicals, 
 but hear it pouring forth, in homely 
 vernacular form, in scenes of everyday 
 home life ; or than the Mysteries and 
 Moralities, whose humor was partly 
 fanciful, and drawn forth, strangely 
 enough, from the most serious of all 
 human concerns. Many scenes, indeed, 
 are grossly indelicate ; but delicacy 
 was not a part of society then in any 
 single one of its conditions. But there 
 are others that are decidedly above 
 buffoonery. The famous " Chanson a, 
 Boire " was greatly admired, and was 
 regarded as very far the best that had 
 yet appeared in English: 
 
 "I cannot eat but little moat." etc. 
 
 It is very interesting to study the 
 development of the British drama from 
 these rude originals, and how it was 
 made to depend, not upon the talents 
 and tastes of the dramatist, but upon 
 the likings and dislikings of those who 
 went to the theatres. Almost contem- 
 porary with our first comedy appeared 
 our first tragedy, the " Gorboduc " of
 
 28 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 Sackville. A noble effort this to re- 
 produce the tragic muse of Greece. 
 But the English playgoers were wont 
 to sleep at this stately solemn narra- 
 tive of the misfortunes of the great. 
 Not that they had neither eyes nor 
 tears for tragic events, or were without 
 pity for those who had been in great 
 estate : 
 
 " Of hem that stode in grete prosperite, 
 And be fallen out of her high degree," 
 
 but they insisted upon seeing the 
 blood and hearing the thunder ; they 
 preferred being present at the combat 
 to hearing it described. The counsel 
 of Horace to the Pisos would have been 
 wasted upon that broad -hearted and 
 not refined English public. He who 
 had wondered how the Romans of 
 the foretime had admired the rudeness 
 of Plautus, and was shocked at the 
 bare idea of Medea murdering, " cor- 
 am populis" her own and the chil- 
 dren of Jason, would never have been 
 seen, had he lived at that time, in 
 the pit of the Globe or Blackfriars; 
 for that public demanded the rep- 
 resentation before their eyes of the
 
 ENGLISH LITER A TUB E. 29 
 
 scenes of blood ; and then, when that 
 was over, to turn from them to scenes 
 of fun and frolic. If Progne were to 
 be changed into a bird, and Cadmus 
 into a snake, they insisted upon seeing 
 how the thing was done, then they 
 were ready to listen to Plautine jokes, 
 and as these were broader their shouts 
 were louder and heartier. 
 
 " An action," says Mr. Hallam, 
 " passing visibly on the stage, instead 
 of a frigid narrative, a copious inter- 
 mixture of comic buffoonery with the 
 gravest story, were requisites with 
 which no English audience would dis- 
 pense." The wits coming after, who 
 sought fame or livelihood, must con- 
 form henceforth to these demands. 
 Fond as it was to shed the tears of 
 pity, it was needful to that audience to 
 wipe them away in time, and give an 
 outlet to those of hilarity. These two 
 great wants of the human heart, so 
 nearly connected, so necessi ry to each 
 other, these English audiences were 
 the first to assert in that alternate se- 
 quence in which they prevail in daily 
 life.
 
 II. 
 
 Interludes :— John Hetwood : " The Four P's ; 
 "The Fair Maid of the Exchange." John Lyi.y: 
 "Euphues;" "Mother Bornbie;" "Endymion;" 
 " Sappho and Phaon ; " " Midas: " "Alexander and 
 Campaspe." 
 
 Before considering the English 
 drama, such as it speedily became after 
 the appearance of these rude essays, 
 mention should be made of the " Inter- 
 lude " which came into being about the 
 time of the passing of the Moralities, 
 designed to fill the interstices of elab- 
 orate festivities at court. The beginner 
 of these was John Heywood, a native of 
 London, for some time a student at 
 Pembroke College, who was afterwards 
 employed as a manager in court cere- 
 monials. Despite a service which now 
 seems rather trivial, even if entirely re- 
 spectable, he was a man of considerable 
 ability and courageous integrity. A 
 
 (30)
 
 ENGLISH LITER A TUBE. 31 
 
 staunch Catholic, he without hesitation 
 put aside the temptation to give up his 
 faith at the death of Mary Tudor, and 
 went into exile, dying at Mechlin in 
 1565. Some of his productions are 
 " The Merrie Plays between John, the 
 husband, Tyb, his wife, and Sir John, 
 the priest; " the " Play of the Weather;" 
 and the "Four P's." Of these the best 
 known is the last, which, although not a 
 drama in its just sense, is an exceed- 
 ingly interesting dialogue. 
 
 The four P's are the Pedlar, the 
 Pardoner, the Palmer, and the Poticary. 
 An animated controversy goes on for 
 some time between the Pardoner and the 
 Palmer in the midst of which the Poti- 
 cary appears upon the scene and thinks 
 it worth while to vaunt his own vocation 
 as a curer of bodies along with the claims 
 of the disputants as curers of souls. 
 Presently the Pedlar joins the company, 
 and, after showing his wares, listens to 
 the dispute of the other three, and at 
 last undertakes to settle things by a 
 proposal which to him seems reasonable. 
 This was that every one of the three 
 should tell a lie, a feat to which he.
 
 32 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 from much experience, was fully ade- 
 quate, and he would decide as to which 
 was the biggest. Said he: 
 
 " Now have I found one mastery 
 That ye can do indifferently, 
 And is neither selling nor buying 
 But even on very lying. 
 And all ye three can lie as well 
 As can the falsest devil in hell, 
 And though afore, ye heard me grudge 
 In greater matters, to he your judge, 
 Yet in lying I can some skill 
 And if I shall be judge, I will ; 
 And which of you telle th most marvel, 
 And most unlikest to be true, 
 Shall most prevail, whatever ensue." 
 
 The proposal is accepted and the Par- 
 doner and the Poticary each tells what 
 must have been admitted to be lies of 
 good size; but the Palmer after some 
 commenting upon the rescue of a woman 
 from the lower pit in the Pardoner's 
 effort, spoke as follows: 
 
 " And this I would ye should understand, 
 I have seen women five hundred thousand. 
 And oft with them have long time tarried; 
 Yet in all places where I have been, 
 Of all the women that I have seen, 
 I never saw or knew in my conscience, 
 Any woman out of patience." 
 
 A lie so palpable, so vast, even the 
 other conspiritors admitted to be far 
 beyond their several conceptions and
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 33 
 
 they did not appeal from the judgment 
 of the umpire. 
 
 From the lyrical poems of Heywood I 
 quote the following : 
 
 THE FAIR MAID OF THE EXCHANGE. 
 
 Go, pretty birds; 
 Ye little birds that sit and sing 
 Amidst the shady valleys, 
 And see how Phillis sweetly walks 
 Within her garden alleys: 
 Go, pretty birds, about her bower, 
 Sing pretty birds, she may not lower; 
 Ah me! methinks I see her frown. 
 i*e pretty wantons, warble. 
 
 Go, tell her through your chirping bills, 
 
 As you by me are bidden, 
 
 To her is only known my love, 
 
 Which from the world is hidden. 
 
 Go, pretty birds, and tell her so: 
 
 For still methinks I see her frown. 
 
 Ye pretty wantons, warble. 
 
 Go, tune your voices' harmony, 
 And sing I am her lover; 
 Strain loud and sweet that every note 
 With sweet content may move her. 
 And she that hath the sweetest voice, 
 Tell her I will not change my choice, 
 Yet still, methinks I see her frown. 
 Ye pretty wantons, warble. 
 
 Oh fly! make haste! see, see, she falls 
 Into a pretty slumber, 
 Sing round about her rosy bed, 
 That waking she may wonder; 
 Say to her, 'tis your lover true; 
 That sendeth love to you, to you; 
 And when you hear her kind reply, 
 Return with pleasant warblings. 
 L.L.— 3
 
 34 LECTURES ON LITER A TURE. 
 
 Shortly after Heywood appeared John 
 Lyly, who, an Oxford Master of Arts, 
 for some years was the leader among 
 English wits. His first work was 
 " Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit," and 
 its quick successor, " Euphues in Eng- 
 land," a collection of essays, tales, etc., 
 upon character, social conduct, religion, 
 philosophy, and other subjects. These 
 are connected with a slender story of 
 Euphues, a youth of Athens, who, com- 
 ing to the city of Naples, formed an 
 acquaintance with a youth, Philantus, 
 and Eubulus, an old man. It is curious 
 to recall how immensely popular these 
 books were, and how extensive was 
 their influence upon English speech. 
 Euphuism ran through several years, 
 giving tone to very much of English 
 prose writings. Its turgid language 
 and affected conceits are frequently to 
 be noted even in the writings of Shake- 
 speare 
 
 The author is mentioned in this con- 
 nection because of his dramas. His 
 most earnest ambition was to be made 
 Master of the Revels at the court of 
 Elizabeth, and though he never sue-
 
 ENGLISH LITER A TURE. 35 
 
 ceeded he long continued writing 
 dramas and masques, ever hoping for 
 promotion. Most of his plays were on 
 classical fables and traditions, nearly 
 all being intended to personify in one 
 form or another the glorious queen. 
 Below these is " Mother Bombie," an 
 attempt to bring together for the pur- 
 poses of contrast the different manners 
 of common speech among the higher 
 and lower classes. As we would sus- 
 pect from the author of " Euphues," the 
 former was too high and the latter too 
 low. The others are far superior. In 
 " Endymion," is told the story of that 
 youth's desertion of Tellus, the maid to 
 whom he was contracted, for the god- 
 dess Cynthia, who, although not insen- 
 sible to his passion, yet is too far ex- 
 alted above him to respond fully to it. 
 This was a compliment to the queen, 
 who, although occasionally indulging 
 tender emotions for one of her number- 
 less lovers, never entertains the idea of 
 lifting them to her level. In " Sappho 
 and Phaon " is another love between 
 high and low, with a like ending. 
 Phaon, the young fisherman, had such
 
 36 LECTURES OX LITERATURE. 
 
 marvelous beauty as to attract Sappho, 
 the Virgin Queen of Sicily. In this 
 there is much of the delicacy afterwards 
 appearing in several of Shakespeare's 
 comedies. This is observed in the fol- 
 lowing colloquy occurring on the occa- 
 sion of the lover carrying some herbs to 
 soothe the queen into sleep : 
 
 Sappho— What herbs have you brought, Phaon i 
 
 Phaon— Such as will make you sleep, madam, 
 though they cannot make me slumber. 
 
 Sappho— Why, how can you cure me when you 
 cannot remedy yourself ? 
 
 Phao7i—Yes, madam, the causes are contrary. 
 For it is only a dryness in your brains that keepeth 
 you from rest. But — 
 
 Sappho— But what? 
 
 Phaon— Nothing — but mine is not so. 
 
 Sappho — Nay, then I despair of help, if our dis- 
 ease be not all one. 
 
 Phaon — I would our diseases were all one. 
 
 Sapj>ho — It goes hard with the patient when the 
 physician is desperate. 
 
 Phaon — Yet, Medea made the ever waking drag- 
 on to snort, when she, poor soul, could not wink. 
 
 Sappho — Medea was in love and nothing could 
 cause her rest but Jason. 
 
 Phaon — Indeed I know of no herb to make lovers 
 sleep, but heartsease; which, because it groweth 
 high, I cannot reach for. 
 
 Sappho— For whom ? 
 
 Phaon— For such as love. 
 
 Sapjyho— It stoopeth very low, and I can never 
 stoop to it, that — 
 
 Phaon— That what? 
 
 Sappho— That I may gather it; but why do you 
 sigh so, Phaon V 
 
 Phaon— It is mine use, madam.
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 37 
 
 Sappho— It will do you harm, and me, too, for I 
 never hear one sigh, but I must sigh also. 
 
 Phaon— It were best then that your ladyship 
 give me leave to be gone ; for I can but sigh. 
 
 Sappho— Nay, stay, for now I begin to sigh, I 
 shall not leave though you be gone. But what do 
 you think best for your sighing, to take it away 1 
 
 Phaon — Yew, madam. 
 
 Sappho — Me ? 
 
 Phaon — No, madam ; yew of the tree. 
 
 Sappho— Then will I love yew the better. And 
 indeed, it would make me sleep, too; therefore all 
 other simples set aside. I will simply use only yew. 
 
 Phaon — Do, madam, for I think nothing in the 
 world so good as yew. 
 
 Sappho— Farewell, for this time. 
 
 The assumption of the name Sap- 
 pho was wholly arbitrary, and also of 
 Phaon the lover of the unhappy Sap- 
 pho of Lesbos. 
 
 " Midas " is founded upon the mis- 
 fortunes of a prince of that name in 
 Phrygia. It ought to have seemed 
 that he had had enough already of 
 caution against too great familiarity 
 with the gods. Having once enter- 
 tained Bacchus when brought to him 
 in a time of misfortune, and asked as 
 a reward that whatever he touched 
 might become gold, he was horrified 
 to find that even his food became thus 
 transformed. Being about to famish, 
 and imploring the god to take back
 
 38 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 the gift, he was ordered to wash in the 
 waters of the Pactolus, and hence the 
 sands of that famous river were turned 
 into gold. But Midas after this had 
 the temerity to say that Pan was a 
 better musician than Apollo. For 
 this insult, Apollo gave him the ears 
 of an ass as the most suitable punish- 
 ment for his ignorance and impudence. 
 Midas used every possible precaution 
 in order to conceal the disgrace from 
 his subjects. But one of his servants 
 happened one day to see his ears. 
 Finding it impossible to refrain from 
 speaking of the case, and yet dreading 
 the resentment of his king if it should 
 be published, he made a hole in the 
 ground and whispered the secret with- 
 in it, and then he covered the hole 
 with dirt again. But scandal will not 
 stay even in the ground. Whoever 
 is acquainted with any scandalous 
 thinof which he does not wish to be 
 generally known, cannot, it seems, safely 
 tell it even to a hole in the ground. 
 It came to pass afterwards, that some 
 reeds grew upon the place where the 
 servant had buried his secret ; and
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 39 
 
 when they were agitated by the wind 
 they whispered, " Midas has the ears 
 of an ass." 
 
 " Alexander and Campaspe " is an- 
 other very entertaining drama upon 
 classical subjects. The subject of this 
 is the passion of Apelles for Cam- 
 paspe, one of the many loves of Alex- 
 ander the Great. Apelles, of Cos, 
 the most celebrated of all the portrait 
 painters of Greece, who was alone al- 
 lowed by Alexander to paint him, was 
 required by the king to paint a por- 
 trait of Campaspe. Such was the mar- 
 velous beauty of this woman that the 
 painter fell in love with her while he 
 was making her portrait. Campaspe, 
 it seems, preferred to reign supreme 
 and alone in the heart of Apelles 
 than occupy a subordinate and not very 
 respectable place in that of Alexander. 
 The king is made acquainted with the 
 fact of their mutual love, and allows 
 them to marry. Campaspe must have 
 been exceedingly beautiful, for she 
 is said to have been the original of 
 the celebrated picture of the Venus 
 Anadyomene.
 
 40 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 The beginning of the courtship be- 
 tween the artist and his subject is 
 told in words showing much art. Be- 
 fore commencing with his work he 
 conducts her around his studio show- 
 ing her the leading pieces upon the 
 walls. Before one Campaspe, pausing, 
 asks: 
 
 Campaspe— Whose counterfeit is this, Apelles? 
 
 Apelles— This is Venus, the goddess of love. 
 
 Campaspe— What? Be there also loving goddes- 
 ses? 
 
 Aprlles— This is she that hath power to com- 
 mand the very affections of the heart. 
 
 Campaspe — How is she hired — by prayers, by 
 sacrifice or bribes? 
 
 Apelles— By prayer, sacrifice and bribes. 
 
 Campaspe — What prayer? 
 
 Apelles — Vows irrevocable. 
 
 Campaspe— What sacrifice? 
 
 Apelles — Hearts ever sighing, never dissem- 
 bling. 
 
 Campaspe— What bribes? 
 
 Apelles— Roses and kisses ; but were you never 
 in love? 
 
 Campaspe— No, nor love in me. 
 
 Apelles— Then have you injured many. 
 
 Campaspe— How so? 
 
 Apelles— Because you have been loved of many. 
 
 Campaspe— Flattered perchance of some. 
 
 Apelles— It is not possible that a face so fair and 
 a wit so sharp, both without comparison, should 
 not be apt to love. 
 
 Campaspe— If you begin to tie up your tongue 
 with cunning, I pray you dip your pencil in colors 
 and fall to that you must do, not to that you 
 would do.
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 41 
 
 I give the songs of the two gods; de- 
 cision upon which wrought such unex- 
 pected punishment on the umpire: 
 
 APOLLO. 
 
 A SONG OF DAPHNE TO THE LUTE. 
 
 My Daphne's hair is twisted gold, 
 
 Bright stars apiece her eyes doe hold. 
 
 My Daphne's brow enthrones the graces, 
 
 My Daphne's beauty staines all faces. 
 
 On Daphne's cheeks grow rose and cherry, 
 
 On Daphne's lip a sweeter berry, 
 
 Daphne's snowy hand but touched does melt 
 
 And then no heavenlier warmth is felt. 
 
 My Daphne's voice tunes all the spheres, 
 
 My Daphne's musick charmes all ears, 
 
 Fond am I thus to sing her prayse 
 
 These glories now are turned to bays. 
 
 SYRINX. 
 THE SONG OF PAN. 
 
 Pan's Syrinx was a girl indeed, 
 Though now shee's turned into a reed, 
 From that deare reed Pan's pipe does come, 
 A pipe that strikes Apollo dumbe; 
 Nor flute, nor lute, nor gitterne can 
 So chant it as the pipe of Pan ; 
 Cross-gathered swains, and dearie girles, 
 With faces smug and round as pearles, 
 When Pan's shrill pipe begins to play, 
 With dancing weare out night and day. 
 The bag-pipes drone his humlays by, 
 When Pan sounds up his minstrelsie. 
 
 Lyly was one of the many who depend 
 on princes' favors, of all support the 
 most miserable and followed by most
 
 42 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 sickening disappointments. The last of 
 numerous appeals to the court of Eliz- 
 abeth has, among others, these words: 
 
 "Thirteen years your Majesty's serv- 
 ant, but yet nothing! Seventy friends 
 that though they say they will be sure, 
 I find them sure to be slow! A thousand 
 hopes, but all nothing! A hundred 
 pounds, but yet nothing! Thus casting 
 up the inventory of my friends, hopes, 
 promises and times, the summa totalis 
 amounteth to just nothing. . . . The 
 last and the least, that, if I be born to 
 have nothing, I may have a probation 
 to pay nothing; which suit is like his, 
 that, having followed the court ten 
 years, for recompense of his services, 
 committed a robbery, and took it out in 
 a pardon." 
 
 The misery in the case of such a man 
 could hardly have been put more strik- 
 ingly.
 
 III. 
 
 George Peele: " CEnone's Complaint." Rob- 
 ert Greene: List of His Works, "Samela." 
 Thomas Nash: "Pierce Penniless;" "Isle of 
 Dogs ; " " The Tragedy of Dido ; " " Summer's Last 
 Will and Testament." John Ford: "The Lover's 
 Melancholy ; " " The Broken Heart ; " Love's 
 Sacrifice;" " Perkin Warbeck." 
 
 The men who succeeded Lyly, 
 although well born and scholarly, made 
 careers not to be envied by the most 
 lowly in that generation. It was a gen- 
 eration wherein coarseness ruled even in 
 highest places. Of the early English, 
 Taine speaks as of a "den of lions." 
 Not so very many centuries back of Eliz- 
 abeth English parents sold their sons 
 and daughters into slavery. The ap- 
 pearance of some of these Angli in the 
 mart of Rome suggested to the great 
 Gregory the sending of a missionary to 
 the island whence came captives of such 
 beauty that the Pope called them An- 
 geli. 
 
 To Queen Elizabeth the wits of 
 the time paid compliments of absurd 
 
 (43)
 
 44 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 exaltation which she accepted and then 
 let them starve. Even yet it seems 
 strange that such a woman could have 
 been so glorified by such as knelt in 
 abject servility at her feet. 
 
 Some of these wits I must mention 
 before the greater names that succeeded 
 them: 
 
 First stands George Peele, a native 
 of Devonshire, a student of (then Broad- 
 gates Hall, now) Pembroke College, 
 Oxford, where he took the Master's 
 degree in 1579. Of his many plays 
 only five were preserved. He and his 
 set did not seek places at court, but 
 chose the haunts of theatres, taverns and 
 the society of such as frequented them, 
 whose manners and habits it would not 
 be very easy to exaggerate. Of that 
 set he ranks, in the opinion of critics, 
 next to Marlowe. A specimen of his 
 lyrical pieces is given from the "Ar- 
 raignment of Paris," entitled: 
 
 CENONE'S COMPLAINT. 
 
 Melpomene, the muse of tragic songs, 
 With mournful tunes, in stole of dismal hue 
 Assist a silly nymph to wail her woe, 
 And leave thy lusty company behind.
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 45 
 
 Thou luckless wreath ! becomes not me to wear 
 The poplar tree, for triumph of my love; 
 Then is my joy, my pride of love is left, 
 Be thou unclothed of thy lovely greene. 
 
 And in thy leaves my fortunes written be, 
 And then some gentle wind let blow abroad. 
 That all the world may see how false of love 
 False Paris hath to his CEnone been. 
 
 All readers will recognize CEnone 
 as the nymph who was deserted by 
 Paris after his summons to decide the 
 contest among the goddesses regarding 
 Discord's golden apple. 
 
 Following Peele is Robert Greene, 
 who was born at Norwich, and took 
 his Master's degree at St. John's Col- 
 lege, Cambridge, in 1583. After trav- 
 eling for some time on the Continent, 
 he settled in London, became a wit, 
 married, became father of a child and 
 then left his wife, assigning as the 
 reason that she had undertaken the 
 vain task of winning him from his 
 profligate habits. Later in life he wrote 
 at some length a paper confessing many 
 of his bad actions to this lady and to 
 others who had befriended or endeavored 
 to befriend him. He had many alter- 
 ations of fortune during the irregular
 
 46 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 life led in the company of low asso- 
 ciates. In a paper called "The Re- 
 pentance of Robert Greene," he recites 
 with circumstantiality some of the 
 enormities committed by him and un- 
 dertook to give, for what it was worth, 
 to his companions, Peele, Lodge, Nash, 
 and others, some monitory counsel. 
 There is something touching in the 
 appeal made, when upon his dying 
 bed, to his wife, whom for years he 
 had not met, not for pardon of him- 
 self, but for indemnification of the poor 
 shoemaker's wife, who had tended him 
 in her house in his last sickness, for 
 the expenses to which she had been 
 subjected on his behalf. It was said, 
 with perhaps little foundation, that he 
 was a relative of Shakespeare, and that 
 it was through his influence that the 
 latter came from Stratford to seek his 
 fortune in London. 
 
 A great number of Greene's works, 
 like those of Peele, perished in the 
 great fire of London. Here is a list of 
 a portion: "Orlando Furioso ; " "A 
 Looking Glass for London and Eng- 
 land ;" " Friar Bacon and Friar Bun-
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 47 
 
 gay ;" " Alphonsus, king of Arragon;" 
 " James the Fourth ;" " George a 
 Greene, the Pinner of Wakefield;" 
 "Ballad of the Jolly Pinner of Wake- 
 field, with Robin Hood, Scarlet and 
 John, etc." His novels, such as Do- 
 rastus and Fawnia," are poor speci- 
 mens, after the style of Euphues. 
 
 At his death the poor woman who had 
 rendered his last service, placed upon 
 his head a wreath of bays, and had him 
 buried with decency according to her 
 means. 
 
 The beautiful short poem which 
 herein follows indicates what mi«fht 
 have been done by this gifted and 
 cultured man had he not been led 
 into the tortuous ways of dissipation, 
 and earnestly cultivated the genius 
 with which he had been born : 
 
 SAMELA. 
 
 Like to Diana in her summer weed, 
 
 Girt with a crimson robe of brightest dye, 
 
 Goes fair Samela. 
 Whiter than be the flocks that straggling feed, 
 When, washed by Arethusa, faint they lie, 
 
 Is fair Samela. 
 As fair Aurora in her morning grey, 
 Decked with the ruddy glisten of her love, 
 
 Is fair Samela. 
 Like lovely Thetis on a calmed day,
 
 48 LECTURES ON LITER A TURE. 
 
 Whence her brightness Neptune's fancy move, 
 
 Shines fair Samela. 
 Her tresses gold, her eyes like glassy streams, 
 Her teeth are pearl, the breasts are ivory, 
 
 Of fair Samela. 
 Her cheeks, like rose and lily, yield forth 
 
 gleams, 
 Her brows, bright arches framed of ebony; 
 
 Thus fair Samela. 
 Passeth fair Venus in her bravest hue; 
 And Juno in the shew of majesty, 
 
 For she's Samela. 
 Pallas in wit, all three, if you will view, 
 For beauty, wit, and matchless dignity, 
 
 Yield to Samela. 
 
 Of this set was Thomas Nash, native 
 of Suffolk and graduate of St. John's 
 College. Like the foregoing, he led a 
 life of debauchery which occasionally, 
 like Greene's, had reliefs of penitence 
 and honest short-lived endeavors to 
 amend. A born satirist, with a temper 
 irascible and combative, he was not 
 one to feel the sweet influences which 
 humor, that is always generous and 
 compassionate, delights to exert. He 
 was an almost perfect master of invec- 
 tive, which, at the instigation of the 
 bishops, Whitgift and Bancroft, he 
 employed in the once famous Martin 
 Mar-Prelate Controversy. His papers 
 on this line got for him the titles of
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 49 
 
 " Gallant Juvenal," and " English 
 Aretino. It was a friendly act to de- 
 fend the memory of his friend Greene 
 from the attacks of Gabriel Harvey, 
 the Cambridge scholar. The papers of 
 these combatants became at last so 
 coarsely abusive that the Archbishop of 
 Canterbury interposed with an order 
 for the ending of the controversy and 
 the destruction of all the pamphlets 
 that had been put forth by them. 
 
 Like his companions, he was often 
 driven into extremities from the want 
 of necessary things. In a period of 
 special need he wrote " Pierce Penni- 
 less ; his Supplications to the Devil," in 
 which in most pathetic terms are ex- 
 posed some of the sufferings to which 
 authors were subjected. 
 
 His reputation as a dramatist is 
 founded upon three plays. The first, 
 "The Isle of Dogs," is a satire so bit- 
 ing that, regarded as purely political, 
 it caused his arrest and several months ' 
 imprisonment. Another is " The Trag- 
 edy of Dido, Queene of Carthage," the 
 best part of which, however, has been 
 supposed to be the work s>f Marlowe. 
 
 L.L.— 4
 
 50 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 The other is " A Pleasant Coniedye," 
 called " Summer's Last Will and Testa- 
 ment," a comedy with little or no 
 plot for entertainment of the court. 
 The name was taken from Will Sum- 
 mer, the Fool of Henry VIII. It opens 
 with a fling at Euphuism, which had 
 fallen into decay as rapidly as it had 
 arisen. The principal events of the 
 past year are reviewed ; and all ends 
 with ascriptions of praise for every 
 good thing to the most powerful, most 
 august, most beautiful, most gracious 
 Queen Elizabeth. The following lyric 
 is from " Summer's Last Will and Tes- 
 tament :" 
 
 SPRING. 
 
 Spring, the sweet Spring, is the year's pleasant 
 
 king. 
 Then blooms each thing, then maids dance in a 
 
 ring. 
 Cold doth not sting, the pretty birds do sing: 
 Cuckoo, jug, jug, pu we, to witta woo. 
 
 The palm and May make country houses gay, 
 Lambs frisk and play, the shepherds pipe all day, 
 And we hear aye birds tune this merry lay : 
 Cuckoo, jug, jug, pu, we, to witta woo. 
 
 The fields breathe sweet, the daisies kiss our feet, 
 Young lovers meet, old wives a sunning sit, 
 In every street these tunes our ears do greet: 
 Cuckoo, jug, jug, pu, we, to witta woo. 
 Spring, the sweet spring.
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 51 
 
 A brief space must be given to John 
 Ford, who, while keeping mainly to his 
 vocation of lawyer of the Middle Temple, 
 gave to the muses somewhat of his time 
 when out of the engrossments of busi- 
 ness. Some of his plays are " The 
 Lover's Melancholy; " " The Sun's Dar- 
 ling; " "The Broken Heart;" "Love's 
 Sacrifice;" and " Perkin Warbeck." 
 Critics have differed widely in their 
 judgment of Ford. But all admit that 
 he lacked humor, that essential of comic 
 drama. Hallam, in his " Introduction to 
 the Literature of Europe," says of him: 
 " Love, and love in quiet or sorrow, is 
 almost exclusively the emotion he por- 
 trays. No heroic passion, no sober 
 dignity, will be found in his tragedies. 
 But he connects his story well and with- 
 out confusion; his scenes are often highly 
 wrought and effective; his characters, 
 with no striking novelty, are well sup- 
 ported; he is seldom extravagant or re- 
 gardless of probability." The following 
 lyric is from " The Broken Heart." 
 
 BEAUTY BEYOND THE REACH OF ART. 
 Can you paint a thought? or number 
 Every fancy in a slumber? 
 Can you count soft minutes roving
 
 52 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 From a dial's point by moving? 
 Can you grasp a sigh ? or lastly, 
 Rob a virgin's honor chastely 1 
 No, oh no! yet you may 
 Sooner do both that and this, 
 This and that and never miss. 
 Than by any praise display 
 Beauty's beauty; such a glory. 
 As beyond all fate, all story. 
 All arms, all arts. 
 All loves, all hearts, 
 Greater than those, or they, 
 Do, shall, and must obey.
 
 IV. 
 
 Christopher Marlowe : " The Passionate 
 Shepherd;" " Tambourlaine:" "Dr. Faustus;" 
 " The Jew of Malta;" " Edward II." 
 
 Among the pals of the poor prof- 
 ligates just mentioned was one who 
 was born for far greater things, whose 
 actions done during an extremely 
 brief and unhappy career indicate what 
 were expected at the time of his pre- 
 mature end. Far above Lyly, and indeed 
 above all the other dramatists before 
 Shakespeare, and contemporary with him, 
 was Christopher Marlowe. Of humble 
 birth in the town of Canterbury, he was 
 helped to a good education at Cambridge, 
 where he took his second degree in 1587. 
 Before this he had written the Tragedy 
 of " Tambourlaine the Great," and it 
 had been acted upon the stage. 
 
 The boldness with which Marlowe left 
 the old rules of the drama and broke 
 forth into new, introducing blank verse, 
 
 (53)
 
 54 I El 'TUBES ON L1TERA TURK. 
 
 and treating classical themes after 
 romantic turns, was at once and abun- 
 dantly successful. He has been styled 
 the father of the British drama. Had he 
 lived it is not easy to say to what splen- 
 did heights he would not have attained. 
 The paraphrase on the old legend of Hero 
 and Leander, and others on Ovid and 
 . Lucan, showed genius near to the high- 
 est; so did that Shepherd's song, which 
 together with the reply of the Shepherd- 
 ess by Sir Walter Raleigh, are two of 
 the best known and most admired among 
 poems of their class. 
 
 THE PASSIONATE SHEPHERD TO HIS LOVE. 
 
 Come with me and be my love, 
 And we will all the pleasures prove 
 That valleys, groves, and hills and fields, 
 Woods or steepy mountain yields. 
 
 And we will sit upon the rocks, 
 Seeing the shepherds feed their flocks 
 By shallow rivers, to whose falls 
 Melodious birds sing madrigals. 
 
 And I will make thee beds of roses, 
 And a thousand fragrant posies; 
 A cap of flowers and a kirtle 
 Embroidered all with leaves of myrtle; 
 
 A gown made of the finest wool, 
 Which from our pretty lambs we pull; 
 Fair-lined slippers for the. cold, 
 With buckles of the purest gold ;
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 55 
 
 A belt of .straw and ivy buds, 
 With coral clasps and amber studs; 
 And if these pleasures may thee move, 
 Come live with me, and be my love. 
 
 The shepherd swains shall dance and sing, 
 For thy delight, each May morning; 
 If these delights thy mind may move, 
 Then live with me, and be my love. 
 
 I quote one passage from Tambour- 
 laine on Beauty, which shows how ex- 
 quisitely sensitive was the mind of this 
 wayward youth on that great theme of 
 the poet. It is taken from a soliloquy 
 of Tambourlaine while thinking of his 
 absent love, Xenocrate : 
 
 "'What is beauty,' sayeth my sufferings then? 
 If all the pens that ever poets held, 
 Had fed the feeling of their masters' thoughts, 
 And every sweetness that inspired their hearts, 
 Their minds and muses on admired themes; 
 If all the heavenly quintessence they still 
 From their immortal flowers of poesy, 
 Wherein, as in a mirror we perceive 
 The highest reaches of a human wit; 
 If these had made one poem's period 
 And all combined in beauty's worthiness, 
 Yet should there hover in their restless heads 
 One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the least, 
 Which into words no virtue can digest." 
 
 Many of Marlowe's writings were 
 lost. Those that have been preserved 
 are of several kinds, in all of which he 
 was excellent. But his greatest talent
 
 56 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 was for tragedy. We notice the three 
 leading: " Doctor Faustus," the " Jew 
 of Malta," and "Edward II." The 
 ideas on which the tragedy of "Faus- 
 tus" is founded are to be met with 
 in the literature of all ages. The 
 oldest type of this character that 
 we are acquainted with is Job. It 
 is the idea of a man who has for 
 a certain season been given up to 
 the control of evil. That takes differ- 
 ent forms among different writers. In 
 Job we have a good man surrendered 
 for a limited time to the control of Sa- 
 tan, without any misconduct of his own, 
 but merely for the sake of being 
 tempted. In other cases, a daring man 
 is made to covenant with the Devil for 
 unlimited power and knowledge, and 
 opportunities for pleasure, for which he 
 is to give his soul in exchange. This is 
 the case in the Faustus of Marlowe. 
 
 In " Faustus " the ambition of the 
 leading character of the play was for 
 knowledge. One of the superstitions 
 of the Middle Ages was that there were 
 certain occult sciences which were to 
 be known onlv by those who had made
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 57 
 
 acquaintance with supernatural agen- 
 cies. These were all considered to be 
 evil ; and thus while men feared those 
 who had attained to such familiarity, 
 at the same time they regarded them 
 as destined to be wholly lost to hap- 
 piness in the next world. Such a 
 character as Faustus was well suited to 
 the daring intellect of such a man as 
 Marlowe, and he has drawn him well. 
 There are passages of very great 
 power and a few of much beauty in 
 this play. The final catastrophe when 
 the season of his greatness is over, 
 and the devils come at the appointed 
 time to remove him from the earth, is 
 truly terrific. 
 
 The following is a striking passage, 
 being an address to the ghost of 
 Helen, which, summoned by Mephis- 
 topheles, appeared before him: 
 
 " Was this the face that launched a thousand ships 
 And burned the topless towers of Ilium? 
 Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss! 
 I will be Paris, and for love of thee, 
 Instead of Troy shall Wittenburg be sacked; 
 And I will combat with weak Menelaus, 
 And wear thy colors on my plumed crest: 
 
 " Yea, I will wound Achilles in the heel, 
 And then return to Helen for a kiss.
 
 58 LECTURES OX LITERATURE. 
 
 Oh, thou art fairer than the evening air, 
 Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars; 
 Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter 
 When he appeared to hapless Semele; 
 More lovely than the monarch of the sky, 
 In wanton Arethusa's azured arms." 
 
 The "Jew of Malta" is fully equal 
 to " Doctor Faustus." It is a striking 
 illustration of the prejudice and the 
 hatred in which the Israelites had been 
 held for centuries by the Christian 
 world. Barabas is the greatest of the 
 millionaires of Malta, and no man could 
 love money more eagerly, or talk of it 
 with a greater zest. The pride of 
 wealth is well expressed in the follow- 
 ing soliloquy after receiving the re- 
 turns of sales in the far East of his 
 Spanish wines and oils of Greece: 
 
 "Fie! what a trouble 'tis to count this trash! 
 Well fare the Arabians who so richly pay 
 The things they traffic for with wedge of gold, 
 Whereof a man may easily in a day 
 Tell that which may maintain him all his life. 
 The needy groom that never fingered groat. 
 Would make a miracle of thus much coin; 
 But he whose steel-barred coffers are crammed 
 
 full. 
 And he who all his lifetime hath been tired 
 Wearying his fingers' ends with telling it, 
 Would in his age be loth to labour so; 
 And for a pound to sweat himself to death. 
 Give me the merchants of the Indian mines 
 That trade in metals of the purest mould;
 
 ENG I. tSH LITER A TURE 59 
 
 The wealthy Moor that, in the eastern rocks, 
 
 Without control can pick his riches up, 
 
 And in his house heap pearls like pebble stones 
 
 Receive them free, and sell them by the weight: 
 
 Bags of fiery opals, sapphires, amethysts, 
 
 Jacinths, hard topaz grass-green emeralds, 
 
 Beauteous rubies, sparkling diamonds, 
 
 And seld-seen costly stones of so great price; 
 
 As one of them indifferently rated, 
 
 And of a carat of this quantity 
 
 May serve in peril of calamity 
 
 To ransom great kings from captivity. 
 
 This is the ware wherein consists my wealth; 
 
 And thus, methinks, should men of judgment 
 
 frame, 
 This means of traffic from the vulgar trade 
 And, as their wealth increaseth, so inclose 
 Infinite riches in a little room." 
 
 While he is enjoying such thoughts, 
 and the power which they impart to in- 
 flict suffering upon the Christians, Malta 
 is invaded by the Turks under Selim 
 Calymath, and the Jews are required to 
 contribute half their wealth to the na- 
 tional defense. In addition to this, 
 under pretense that the calamity of war 
 has been sent because of their too great 
 toleration of the unbelieving race, the 
 house of Barabas is seized and con- 
 verted into a nunnery. In this house 
 is concealed immense treasures of which 
 the authorities have never known. In 
 his anguish Barabas thinks of a plan
 
 60 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 to save this portion. He has a young 
 daughter, very beautiful, Abigail, whom 
 he persuades to become a nun. She is 
 thus enabled to save this portion of his 
 treasures. But in this time Don Ma- 
 thias, one of the Lords, and Ludovic, the 
 Governor's son, have fallen in love with 
 this daughter, who is described as: 
 
 " A fair young maid, scarce fourteen years of age, 
 The sweetest flower in Cytherea's field, 
 Cropt down the pleasures of this fruitful earth 
 And strangely metamorphosed to a nun." 
 
 Upon the return of prosperity, Abi- 
 gail quits the convent, and falls in love 
 herself with Don Mathias. Barabas 
 manages to bring about a duel between 
 Don Mathias and Ludovic, in which 
 both are killed. Then Abigail becomes 
 converted in good faith to Christianity, 
 and again takes the veil. This event 
 causes as great grief as was felt upon 
 the loss of his treasures. He curses his 
 daughter, and having poisoned her with 
 all the inmates of the convent, he is 
 himself at last brought to merited pun- 
 ishment. He dies unrelenting and 
 with horrible curses upon his lips. 
 
 The passage is very fine in which
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 61 
 
 Barabas is described as going to the 
 nunnery at night and receiving the 
 jewels which Abigail throws from her 
 window: 
 
 "Thus, like the sad pressaging raven, that tolls 
 The sick man's passport in her hollow beak, 
 And in the shadow of the silent night 
 Doth shake contagion from her sable wings ; 
 Vexed and tormented runs poor Barabas 
 With fatal curses towards these Christians. 
 The uncertain pleasures of quick-footed time 
 Have ta'en their flight, and left me in despair; 
 And of my former riches rests no more 
 But bare remembrance, like a soldier's scar 
 That has no further comfort for his main. 
 O, thou that with a fiery pillar led'st 
 The sons of Israel through the dismal shades. 
 Light Abraham's offspring, and direct the hand 
 Of Abigail this night, or let the day 
 Turn to eternal darkness after this; 
 No sleep can fasten on my watchful eyes, 
 Nor quiet enter my distempered thoughts 
 Till I have answer of my Abigail, 
 Now I remember those old women's words, 
 Who, in my youth, would tell me winter's tales, 
 And speak of spirits and ghosts that hide by night 
 About the place where treasure hath been hid; 
 And now methinks that I am one of those; 
 For, whilst I live, here lives my soul's sole hope, 
 And when I die, here shall my spirit walk." 
 
 But the greatest of Marlowe's trag- 
 edies is " Edward II." This play is 
 founded upon the history of that mon- 
 arch, and is one of the greatest of all 
 the historical plays. Edward began his
 
 62 LECT USES ON L I TES ATURE. 
 
 career in the midst of the most favora- 
 ble circumstances. His heroic father, 
 Edward First, had drawn to himself and 
 his family the love of a united people; 
 and Wales, that had given birth to the 
 young prince at time-honored Caernar- 
 von, had given in its allegiance. Ed- 
 ward had married the beautiful Isabella 
 of France, and thus secured the pros- 
 pect of a long career of glory and hap- 
 piness. But he had not inherited the 
 great qualities of his father. With the 
 strange weakness which has so often 
 visited kings, he attached himself to 
 worthless favorites, Piers Gaveston and 
 the Spencers. Treating with neglect 
 his queen, he finally lost her love, and 
 in an hour, evil for all, she gave her- 
 self to Mortimer. Then followed the 
 tragic things of this unhappy reign, the 
 sacrifice of Gaveston, and the Spencers ; 
 the dethronement of the king ; his mur- 
 der by the instigation of his queen and 
 her lover ; and then the retribution to 
 them both at the hands of the young 
 Edward the Third. 
 
 The tracing of all this terrible history 
 is done in a way which is worthy of
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 63 
 
 the great days of Grecian tragedy. A 
 mighty king surrounded by all the cir- 
 cumstances which make royalty so much 
 an object of desire to men, being led 
 along those high paths which are so 
 dangerous to travel; and failing to 
 choose the best things, and then gradu- 
 ally descending into ruin and despair; 
 all these things are handled by one who 
 shows that he is a master of his art. 
 Gaveston, though wholly destitute of 
 any qualifications of statesmanship, yet 
 was of a gentle family and courtly man- 
 ners. No favorite ever knew better bow 
 to manage a weak master; and to pre- 
 serve his influence over him. We shall 
 see that he understood human na- 
 ture and that he had learned how to 
 employ it for all the purposes with which 
 thoroughly selfish courtiers learn it. 
 Gaveston had returned from France. 
 The king, we know, had to go over there 
 not only to espouse Isabella, to whom 
 he had long been engaged, but for the 
 purpose of paying the accustomed hom- 
 age to the king of France for the Duchy 
 of Guienne, which, though a French 
 province, belonged to the English
 
 64 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 crown, Gaveston is vain and insolent in 
 the consciousness of power. See how 
 he proposes to entertain the king: 
 
 " I must have wanton poets, pleasant wits, 
 Musicians that with touching of a string 
 May draw the pliant king which way I please, 
 Music and poetry is his delight; 
 Therefore, I'll have Italian masks by night, 
 Sweet speeches, comedies, and pleasing shows ; 
 And in the day, when he shall walk abroad, 
 Like sylvan nymphs pages shall be clad ; 
 My men like satyrs grazing on the lawns, 
 Shall with their goat-feet dance the antic lay. 
 Sometime a lovely boy in Dian's shape, 
 With hair that gilds the water as it glides, 
 Coronets of pearl above his naked arms, 
 And in his sportive hands an olive-tree, 
 To hide those parts which men delight to see, 
 Shall bathe him in a spring; and there hard by 
 One like Action, peeping through the grove, 
 Shall by the angry goddess be transformed, 
 And running in the likeness of a hart 
 By yelling hounds pulled down, and seem to die :— 
 Such things as these best please his majesty." 
 
 Whoever will read this play carefully 
 will gather a very accurate knowledge of 
 the history of that interesting reign. The 
 drawing of the characters of Mortimer 
 and the queen is most admirable. The 
 shame and grief of Isabella when she 
 discovers that with no fault of her own 
 she has lost the love of her husband, are 
 well described. So are the courage of 
 Mortimer, his disgust for the puerility
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 65 
 
 of a crowned king, both in the senseless 
 love of a brainless favorite and in his 
 neglect of such a queen, and then his 
 ambition for the regency during the 
 minority of the young heir apparent. 
 It is highly entertaining how pity on 
 his part and gratitude on hers gradually 
 grow into love ; and then how a love so un- 
 lawful leads to crimes, and renders them 
 cruel and remorseless and savage. That 
 was a most artful stroke of policy which, 
 after Gaveston was exiled, caused him 
 to be recalled in order that he might be 
 murdered. All know the story of his 
 execution by the great Warwick, a name 
 destined to become famous in the put- 
 ting down and raising up of kings. But 
 when he is executed, the kino- felt a 
 sense of wrong which made it appear 
 for awhile that he was going to assert 
 the manhood which he ought to have 
 inherited from such an ancestry. Thus 
 he speaks of Warwick and Mortimer: 
 
 " By earth, the common mother of us all, 
 By heaven, and all the moving orbs thereof, 
 By this right hand and by my father's sword 
 And all the honours 'longing to the crown, 
 I will have heads and lives for him as many 
 As I have manors, castles, towns and towers! 
 Treacherous Warwick ! Traitorous Mortimer I 
 L.L.— 5
 
 66 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 If I be England's king, in lakes of gore 
 
 Your headless trunks, your bodies will I trail, 
 
 That you may drink your fill, and quaff in blood 
 
 And stain my royal standard with the same; 
 
 That so my bloody colors may suggest 
 
 Remembrance of revenge immortally 
 
 On your accursed traitorous progeny. 
 
 You villians that have slain my Gaveston." 
 
 Rousing from his pusillanimity he 
 prevails against his enemies for awhile, 
 and Mortimer and Isabella take ref- 
 uge in France. But they return with 
 a new army and defeat him. Let us 
 see how he bewails his lot among the 
 monks with whom he has sought a 
 sanctuary, and who he fears will be- 
 tray him: 
 
 " Father, thy face should harbor no deceit, 
 Oh, hadst thou ever been a king, thy heart 
 Buried deeply with sense of my distress, 
 Could not but take compassion on my state; 
 Stately and proud in riches and in train, 
 Whilom I was powerful and full of pomp 
 But what is he whom rule and empery 
 Have not in life and death made miserable? 
 Come Spencer; come Baldock, come sit down by 
 
 me; 
 Make trial now of that philosophy 
 That in our famous nurseries of arts 
 Thou suck'st from Plato and from Aristotle. 
 Father, this life contemplative in heaven; 
 Oh! that I might this life in quiet lead!" 
 
 The history of the world affords no 
 instance of a greater fall ; or greater
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. (tf 
 
 suffering of a king than in the case 
 of Edward the Second. The very 
 consciousness of guilt in Mortimer and 
 and the queen lead them to invent 
 the most exquisite pains of body and 
 mind for him to undergo. With won- 
 derful tenacity he, whose guilty soul 
 dreads the eternal world, clings to 
 life in the deep mud and water of 
 the dungeon of Killingsworth Castle, 
 where he has been imprisoned. The 
 horrors of that imprisonment have been 
 described in a manner that no man 
 has ever surpassed, and, as for the 
 relation of the end of the miserable 
 king, Charles Lamb said with truth 
 that in horror it has no equal. 
 
 Such were some of the things done 
 by this young man when at twenty- 
 nine years of age his career came to 
 its tragic end. One night in Deptford, 
 a suburb of London, while engaged 
 at a drinking place in strife with a 
 rival for the love of a low woman, he 
 was stabbed with his own knife which 
 his opponent, seizing his hand, turned 
 against him. 
 
 Rude and wretched as were lives of
 
 68 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 such men they were made so more by 
 accidental conditions than individual 
 native depravity. History has not yet 
 told a full true tale of the times of 
 her whom some styled Great Eliza 
 and others Good Queen Bess. With 
 gifts and culture that ought to have 
 made her a model for society to be 
 guided by, her manners were oftimes 
 as ooarse as her tyranny was auda- 
 cious. She not only cursed and swore, 
 but cuffed the heads of noble men 
 and women, and, basest of all indiarni- 
 ties this, spat in their faces. She 
 loved poetry and poets and was often 
 tempted, even as she repeatedly 
 promised to reward them at least for the 
 laudations they bestowed upon her. 
 Expectations allowed and afterwards 
 disappointed broke the hearts of Spen- 
 cer and Lyly, and others, while many, 
 hopeless and defiant, were driven to 
 lead disorderly lives and be easily over- 
 taken of death. 
 
 Then that English public in the 
 defeat and persecution of the religious 
 faith of their forefathers, while devis- 
 ing others of many sorts, partly from
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 69 
 
 ignorance, partly from fanaticism, part- 
 ly from envy, and much also by a 
 hypocrisy suddenly and strangely born, 
 turned against these naturally gentle 
 spirits that from all time had mainly 
 constituted the teaching element in 
 states, and without remorse or pity saw 
 them humbled, cast out, living in want 
 and falling into early graves.
 
 V. 
 
 Ben Jonson: "Every Man in His Humour;" 
 "Cynthia's Revels;" Sejanus;" "Catiline;''' 
 " Volpone; " " The Alchemist ;"" The Staple of 
 News; " " The Devil Is an Ass; " " The Sad Shep- 
 herd." 
 
 It is surely a disadvantage in one 
 respect to live coternporary with a 
 genius that towers undisputably over 
 all others. This was one which gave 
 to him, whom we are now to consider, 
 much pain in his own day, and possibly 
 served somewhat to hamper efforts 
 which, but for Shakespeare, whom he 
 regarded his principal rival, might have 
 had more brilliant results. Ben Jonson 
 was born in Westminster in 1574, ten 
 years after Shakespeare. His father had 
 been a poor clergyman, and the family 
 hud come from Scotland. The father 
 died, it seems, before Ben was born, 
 and his mother, being without the 
 means of supporting her family, mar- 
 ried within a year after the birth of her 
 
 CO)
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 71 
 
 son, a bricklayer. The boy went to a 
 private school near St. Martin's in the 
 Fields and afterwards, by the liberality 
 of a friend whose name we do not know, 
 was sent to Westminster school, and 
 later procured a place in Cambridge. 
 But he remained there only for a short 
 period. It is supposed that the ex- 
 treme poverty of his parents needed 
 him for business. But he had been a 
 devoted student while at Westminster 
 school, and under the learned Camden, 
 who was one of the masters of that in- 
 stitution, had acquired a vast amount of 
 learning for one so young. Being put 
 by his stepfather to his own business, 
 be soon became disgusted with it ; and, 
 Gliding no other means of escape, ran 
 away and joined the army, a portion of 
 which was then engaged in the Low 
 Countries. A brave and gallant soldier 
 he made indeed ; and was full of ambi- 
 tion for promotion. But in the English 
 army, as nowhere else, it is exceedingly 
 difficult to rise without connections or 
 strong recommendations, or with such 
 extraordinary military talent as would 
 render one's rise unavoidable. After
 
 72 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 one campaign he quit the occupation of 
 a soldier and returned to London. The 
 vocations of young men as poor as Jon- 
 son was then are seldom undertaken 
 by choice. Circumstances determine 
 them, and it is to these circumstances, 
 which often seemed truly accidental, 
 that we are to ascribe some of the 
 greatest things that have been done in 
 the world. This poor young man, hav- 
 ing thus tried two vocations, one of 
 which disgusted him and the other could 
 bring him no hope of promotion, deter- 
 mined at length to go upon the stage. 
 To young men without family connec- 
 tions and without pecuniary means and 
 therefore with the thought of having 
 nothing or not much to lose, there is 
 something very tempting in the idea of 
 going upon the stage. The display of 
 what is to be seen there, the footlights, 
 the array of pleasant faces, the appear- 
 ance of mirth, and freedom from care ; 
 all these lead many there at least for a 
 time, and when they have once gotten 
 there it is seldom that they come away. 
 Jonson would have gone to anything 
 honorable, except brick-laying, that
 
 EN6 LTSH LITER. IT//,'/. 73 
 
 would have wrought him a living. A 
 new impulse had been given to the 
 theatre by the company at Blackfriars, 
 with Shakespeare at the head of the 
 main parts of the business. So he went 
 upon the stage. He does not seem to 
 have done anything in this new sphere 
 worthy to be mentioned, except two 
 things which are not naturally associ- 
 ated with it. The first of these is that 
 having gotten into a quarrel with a 
 brother actor, a duel ensued in 
 which he killed his adversary, and was 
 for some time imprisoned. Quite as 
 serious a thing as this, he fell in love 
 with a girl as poor as himself, and be- 
 fore either of them could take the time 
 to reflect upon the absurdity of such a 
 thing, they married. If he had not 
 been a poor actor he might never have 
 become an author. But now having to 
 support a wife, and children afterwards, 
 and seeing the success of Shakespeare 
 in that line, and being a man of far 
 superior education to him, he began to 
 write as much for bread as for fame. 
 
 No doubt Shakespeare contributed in 
 giving this determination to his course.
 
 74 LECTURES ON LITERA TURE. 
 
 He did assist in bringing out his first 
 play, " Every Man in His Humour." This 
 took its name from a work which had 
 but lately appeared in England, and 
 created much interest. It was a trans- 
 lation of a work called " Examen de In- 
 genios " in Spanish, whose object it was 
 to maintain that men's characters and 
 dispositions, and consequently most of 
 their actions, depended upon the hu- 
 mours in their systems, the moist, the 
 dry, the hot and the cold. It was from 
 a sort of fancy to ridicule the current 
 belief in that system that Jonson 
 brought out his first play and gave to it 
 the name of " Every Man in His Hu- 
 mour." He was then twenty-two years 
 old and had a wife and two children. 
 Fortunately for him his wife was one of 
 the domestic kind, and having always 
 lived on a little, could make a little, 
 now that she had two children, go a 
 good way farther. If he had allowed 
 her the complete control of his pecuni- 
 ary matters possibly it would have been 
 well for both, but he was a poor manager 
 and a willful man, and it was often 
 whispered outside the family that she
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 75 
 
 was something' of a shrew. This com- 
 edy succeeded very finely, and he set 
 out at once upon a full career of author- 
 ship. 
 
 And now let us consider the effect upon 
 him of much education in books. It 
 was fortunate that at this era, when there 
 was much needed a dramatic literature 
 suited to modern civilization, the genius 
 that was to be the father of it had not 
 been educated in the schools, and there- 
 fore trammeled by precedents. Shakes- 
 peare being thus unrestrained was the 
 more able to strike out in the bold paths 
 which he made. Now Jonson fell into 
 this error which Shakespeare was thus 
 able to avoid. His education at school 
 and at the University, and his studies 
 afterwards, had made him a pedant; and 
 the rivalry which he felt for Shakespeare 
 helped to make him more of a pedant. 
 Shakespeare's irregular dramas he never 
 could endure, and he believed that the 
 only reason why Shakespeare had written 
 them was because, not having been edu- 
 cated like himself, he did not know any 
 better. These old rules of dramatic com- 
 position, he believed, ought never to be
 
 76 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 altered; they were the very perfection of 
 art. For the romantic drama he not only 
 had no fancy, but he hated it. But he 
 succeeded in this first drama, and 
 although his success gave no pain to 
 Shakespeare, yet it did give pain and 
 offense to the other contemporary 
 dramatists, Marston, Lodge, etc., who 
 could not endure that so young a man 
 should out-strip them in the race for 
 popular fame. The result was a series 
 of endless disputes and literary quarrels 
 which endured for many years. But 
 Jonson was quite superior to all of these. 
 Only Shakespeare was ahead of him. 
 And how this occurred he was never 
 able to understand, nor become recon- 
 ciled to it. He would be constantly 
 asking himself, and often other persons, 
 how such a man as Shakespeare who 
 knew little Latin and less Greek, and 
 who paid almost no attention to Sopho- 
 cles and Aristophanes and Menander 
 and Terence, could find such favor. In- 
 stead of following the laws of these 
 great writers, or at least endeavoring to 
 do so as far as was possible, he wrote 
 along as if they were not in the slightest
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 77 
 
 degree in his way. He not only mingled 
 the incidents of several days in the 
 same play, but those of several weeks 
 and months, and even, as in the Winter's 
 Tale, of several years. And then he 
 even introduced the sportive into his 
 tragedies, a thing that was wholly incon- 
 sistent with all precedent. He and 
 Shakespeare used often to argue these 
 questions at the club. This was at the 
 Mermaid Tavern. It was called the 
 Apollo. The " Mermaid " on Friday 
 Street was a famous place for good eat- 
 ing. The members were himself, Shakes- 
 peare, Cotton, Carew, Donne, Beau- 
 mont, Fletcher, and others. 
 
 Thomas Fuller, in his book called 
 " The Worthies of England/' tells us 
 that in this tavern Jonson and Shakes- 
 peare used to have many " wit combats," 
 as he terms them. 
 
 " Many " he says, " were the wit com- 
 bats between him and Ben Jonson, 
 which two I behold like a Spanish great 
 galleon, and an English man-of-war. 
 Master Jonson, like the former, was 
 built far higher in learning, solid, but 
 slow in performance, while the English 
 man-of-war, lesser in bulk, but lighter
 
 78 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack 
 about and take advantage of all winds 
 by the quickness of his wit and inven- 
 tion." 
 
 This was the burden of these discus- 
 sions. We know that the attacks came 
 from Jonson, and that he warred upon 
 the innovations which Shakespeare made 
 upon what he considered sacred. It was 
 this very rivalry doubtless which made 
 Jonson, who had a very combative spirit, 
 disposed, as the contest grew, to adhere 
 more closely to classical forms. 
 
 Yet there never was any actual hos- 
 tility between him and Shakespeare 
 such as there w as betwee n him and the 
 lesser dramsr1|ms.^^^J^iT^Shakespeare 
 himself wn§) incapable ofO enVy, and 
 indeed mu6t;h^\^|el^h^^^£t(4 be too 
 great toVtand in oiaad of envying any 
 other pers^ij^jrJ^isDiD,- ^m^uie other 
 hand, from the very peculiar bent of 
 his mind and the nature of his edu- 
 cation, honestly considered himself su- 
 perior to Shakespeare, and in these " wit 
 combats," as Fuller calls them, tried 
 to recall him from his wanderings, 
 and fix him in the true road to great-
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 79 
 
 ness. The two were personally friendly. 
 William Rowe says that their acquaint- 
 ance began with the first introduction 
 of " Every Man in His Humour. " 
 Jonson handed it in to one of the 
 players to be read, and he, having 
 turned it over carelessly, was about to 
 throw it aside, when Shakespeare hap- 
 pening to see it, read it, and rec- 
 ommended the author to the public. 
 The presentation of this comedy was 
 received with great popularity. When 
 such a piece of good fortune happens 
 to a man like Jonson, who has been 
 needing it not only for the gratifica- 
 tion of his self-esteem, but for bread, 
 he is apt to -esleem it too highly. 
 Heretofore, he had-been upon friendly 
 terms with* .M&'r^toA aiid . Dekker, and 
 their likes,, Toge.th.er they had been 
 struggling along that jveary road, and 
 had sympathized with one another 
 in the midst of the difficulties of au- 
 thorship. But now this splendid suc- 
 cess made the young author treat his 
 old companions with supercilliousness, 
 and even disdain. Pedantic, highly 
 irascible, he must make enemies of old
 
 80 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 friends ; and although he and they 
 did some things in common afterwards, 
 they were never fully reconciled. 
 
 " Every Man in His Humour " was 
 followed by " Every Man Out of His 
 Humour." There might be something 
 in the name, and but a slight change 
 was made in that of the next " child of 
 his invention." This also was success- 
 ful; but not quite so much so as 
 the first. In this second comedy Jon- 
 son followed too closely upon the 
 Latin and Greek comedies, which we 
 remember to have been more satirical 
 than humorous. It represents the mean- 
 ness of the world rather than its par- 
 donable foibles, and tends instead of 
 exciting our laughter, to provoke our 
 contempt and even our hatred. Jon- 
 son's reputation had become so great 
 that the queen had made known her in- 
 tention to be present at the first ap- 
 pearance of the play. In acknowledg- 
 ment of this condescension he appended 
 an epigram which, for gross flattery, 
 can scarcely find its equal. This was 
 in 1599. Shakespeare afterwards per- 
 formed his third piece, " Cynthia's Rev-
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 81 
 
 els," far inferior to the others. The 
 best play was the " Poetaster." By 
 this time he had been converted to the 
 classical drama fully and in this he 
 made a personal satire upon his ene- 
 mies. Marston and Dekker are the 
 characters intended in this drama under 
 the names of Crispinus and Demetrius. 
 He also satirized the soldiers and the 
 lawyers to such a degree that he very 
 narrowly escaped prosecution. Finding 
 himself liable to such serious difficulties 
 in comedy, and that his powers in that 
 line, so far as he could judge by the 
 public estimate, did not improve, he 
 formally announced to the world that 
 his next appearance should be in trag- 
 edy. In 1603 appeared his first real 
 tragedy. This was " Sejanus." This 
 subject was well chosen. Sejanus, the 
 ambitious minister of Tiberius, who 
 rose so high and then suddenly fell so 
 low, was a fitting subject for tragedy 
 upon the old models. This is indeed a 
 very great production. The author was 
 fully acquainted with all the history of 
 that fearful reign, and in a masterly 
 way represented the striking scenes. 
 
 L.L.— 6
 
 82 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 The play was first brought out at the 
 Globe theatre, and Shakespeare took a 
 part in it. This was in 1603 ; and this 
 is the last time in which we know cer- 
 tainly that Shakespeare ever appeared 
 as an actor. The piece succeeded fully. 
 It has its own share of the majesty of 
 the ancient drama, and in the portrayal 
 of characters it is excellent. But in 
 this last respect he had but to follow 
 history. 
 
 And this is the principal objection 
 not only to this but also to his only 
 other tragedy, " Catiline, " that he too 
 closely follows history. They are ver- 
 sifications and dramatizations of Sallust 
 and Tacitus. The speeches that are 
 given are almost the speeches as they 
 are written by these historians. Jon- 
 son had genius enough to rise far 
 higher than he did, if his learning, and 
 the pedantry which it created, had not 
 narrowed his judgment. His very van- 
 ity and his irascible temper but made 
 him the more obdurate and persistent 
 in this devotion to a system which was 
 obsolete, but which he thought to re- 
 store, and had no doubt that he would
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 83 
 
 be able to do so. A vain man never 
 gives up the belief that as everybody 
 else is wrong, so he will be able after 
 due time to convince them of their 
 error and reclaim them. We can well 
 imagine the different tempers with 
 which he and Shakespeare would dis- 
 cuss these questions at the " Mermaid." 
 How infinitely superior Jonson thought 
 the " Sejanus " was to " Julius Caesar," 
 for instance, or what a poor speech 
 that of Mark Anthony over the dead 
 body of Caesar, to Caesar's speech in 
 behalf of Catiline, which the author, as 
 it were, had translated from the in- 
 comparable Sallust ! Shakespeare, car- 
 ing nothing for the criticisms so as his 
 plays continued to be well received 
 by the public, would doubtless keep in 
 good humor, although possibly, when 
 Jonson would grow too personal in 
 talking about the unities and the cho- 
 rus, he might request him to go to 
 Guinea or some such place, and carry 
 his chorus and unities along with him. 
 Finally, the principal defect of these 
 tragedies is that they are wanting in 
 pathos without which tragedy, however
 
 84 LECTURES ON LITERATURE 
 
 exalted in style and however success- 
 ful in the delineation of character, is 
 insufficient to produce the great objects 
 for which it was originated — - sympa- 
 thy with misfortune. In reading Jon- 
 son's tragedies, we are filled with 
 admiration for his fine descriptions, 
 his noble language, and even for his 
 successful delineations of character ; 
 but we never feel like shedding tears, 
 which are the highest compensation 
 and the sweetest pleasure that we ever 
 receive from the perusal in this form 
 of the crimes and sorrows of man- 
 kind. 
 
 Jonson wrote only these two trag- 
 edies. But he probably spent as much 
 time upon these as Shakespeare spent 
 upon any half dozen of his. Thinking 
 that he must be perfectly acquainted 
 with every circumstance, little and great, 
 in the actions he was to represent, he 
 elaborated and studied with an amount 
 of patience and work which would 
 have been sufficient for a full history 
 of them in all their particulars. 
 
 After this Jonson devoted himself 
 in the intervals of his leisure again to
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 85 
 
 comedy. Three of these appeared in 
 succession : " Volpone ; " " The Silent 
 Woman ; " and the " Alchemist," all 
 having very high merit. " Volpone " 
 and the "Alchemist" are allowed to be 
 his best. The scenes of " Volpone " are 
 laid in France. The leading character 
 is Volpone a powerful noble, rich, sel- 
 fish and fond of pleasures, but most 
 fond of those that are forbidden. To this 
 Volpone is attached one of the most 
 cunning and unprincipled of knaves 
 named Mosca, whose business it is to 
 minister to his master's appetites. Vol- 
 pone is a bachelor, and his most subtle 
 trick to increase his influence and his 
 wealth is the prevalence of the notion 
 that he is a great invalid, and, as he is 
 expected to die soon, through Mosca 
 he disseminates the idea that he intends 
 to bequeath his estate to those who are 
 the most liberal in bestowing presents 
 upon him while he lives. Whoever has 
 read much of the classical dramas will 
 see at once the resemblance between 
 this comedy and them, the miser being 
 a favorite character. Speaking to Mosca, 
 Volpone says:
 
 ;6 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 Good morning to the day ; and next my gold ! 
 
 Open the shrine that I may see my saint, 
 
 Hail the world's soul and mine! more glad 
 
 than is 
 .The teeming earth to see the longed-for sun 
 Peep through the horns of the celestial Ram ; 
 Am I to view thy splendor darkening his, 
 That, lying here, amongst my other hoards, 
 Should like a flame by night, or like the day 
 Struck out of chaos, when all darkness fled 
 Into the centre. O thou son of Sol, 
 But brighter than thy father, let me kiss 
 With adoration thee, and every relic 
 Of sacred treasure in this blessed room. 
 Well did wise poets by thy glorious name, 
 Title that age which thou would have the best, 
 Thou being the best of things and far transcend- 
 ing 
 All style of joy in children, parents, friends, 
 Or any other waking dream on earth: 
 Thy looks when they to Venus did ascribe, 
 They should have given her twenty thousand 
 
 Cupids ; 
 Such are thy beauties and our loves! Dear Saint, 
 Riches, the dumb god, that givest all men 
 
 tongues, 
 Thou canst do naught, and yet maketh men do 
 
 all things; 
 The price of souls, even hell, with thee to boot, 
 Is made worth heaven. Thou art virtue, fame, 
 Honour, and all things else. Who can get thee, 
 He shall be noble, valiant, honest, wise- 
 Yet I glory 
 More in the cunning purchase of my wealth, 
 Than in the glad possession, since I gain 
 No common way ; I use no trade, no venture ; 
 I wound no earth with ploughshares, fat no 
 
 beasts, 
 To feed the shambles; have no mills for iron, 
 Oil, corn, or men to grind them into powder. 
 I blow no subtle glass, expose no ships 
 To threatenings of the furrow-faced sea, 
 I turn no moneys in the public bank, 
 Nor usure private."
 
 y;.\ i } I. Isii L I TER ATI i: i . 8? 
 
 There is very much more of this sort 
 wherein the author has drawn perhaps 
 the most cunning, ruthless scoundrel to 
 be found in all poetic literature. A man 
 need go no further in order to find 
 human nature iri its worst and most con- 
 temptible aspect than in " Volpone." 
 
 The " Alchemist " is another powerful 
 production. In that also we have an- 
 other batch of precious rascals. The 
 leading rogues are Subtle, the conjuror; 
 and Face, his co-partner, who is a butler, 
 but in the disguise of a captain. The 
 principal dupes are Dapper, a lawyer's 
 clerk addicted to gambling, and Sir 
 Epicure Mammon, a poor fool who is in 
 search of the philosopher's stone and the 
 elixir of youth. This visionary idea of 
 the philosopher's stone was quite com- 
 mon even among educated men a little 
 before this period, and the object of 
 this drama was to bring it into ridicule. 
 True to his principles to study all the 
 learning that was to be had upon what- 
 ever subject he wrote about, Jonson, 
 before writing this play, made himself 
 acquainted with the entire theory of 
 the philosopher's stone, and even
 
 88 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 learned the whole of the jargon of 
 alchemy. 
 
 I said that he wrote these little plays 
 in the intervals of business, for he 
 was made poet laureate to King James 
 I., and as such he had to prepare and 
 superintend the masques and other pag- 
 eants of the court. To give one in- 
 stance of the meanness of this, the 
 meanest of kings, Marston and Chap- 
 man had written a comedy called 
 "Eastward Hoe!" and Jonson was 
 thought, though he afterwards denied 
 it, to have assisted in this drama. In it 
 there was an allusion to the Scotch, in 
 which they were somewhat ridiculed. 
 The king, having heard of the piece, 
 imprisoned both Marston and Chap- 
 man. Jonson, however, voluntarily 
 accompanied them to prison in or- 
 der to share their punishment, and 
 it was probably through his par- 
 ticipation and his interest that they 
 were enlarged. He was well paid by 
 King James, who, in this respect, was 
 more liberal than Elizabeth. On the 
 death of the king he lost his position, 
 and as he had saved nothing of the
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. g9 
 
 earnings of years, he was very poor. 
 Add to this the fact that he was old, 
 and that his faculties of mind and body 
 had become impaired by lingering too 
 long at the wine of the " Mermaid." He 
 had now to write again for bread; but the 
 youthful vigor was gone, and his come- 
 dies henceforth were failures. " The Sta- 
 ple of News," " the Devil Is an Ass," 
 " The New Sun," " The Magnetic Lady," 
 "The Tale of a Tub," are all quite 
 inferior to the average of his earlier 
 dramas. It is melancholy to know how 
 the brave-hearted old man thus strug- 
 gled and struggled in vain with poverty 
 and the infirmities of age. He deserves 
 praise in that he was brave and faithful 
 to the principles in which he believed. 
 The votary of the muse of olden times, 
 he kept her shrine as well as he could 
 in the days of a new and adverse wor- 
 ship, and was true to her to the last. In 
 his delineation of individual character, 
 he was preeminently great. His com- 
 edies have been justly called the " Com- 
 edies of Character." He represented 
 contemporary manners and characters. 
 In this he was superior to Shakespeare ;
 
 90 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 but Shakespeare was his superior even 
 in this phase of the same idea, that he 
 represented the things appertaining to 
 men and women that are unusual, and 
 that belong to them of all times and all 
 countries. The genial humor, the all- 
 sidedness of Shakespeare he never had, 
 and the peculiarity of his mind was 
 such that he never could have obtained 
 them, because according to his educa- 
 tion and his ideas they were of no 
 value, so variant were they from old 
 modes which his deep learning and his 
 deeper prejudices prevented him from 
 finding to be obsolete. 
 
 One of the most beautiful produc- 
 tions in poetry is the last thing that he 
 wrote. This is "The Sad Shepherd." 
 The aged, broken, disappointed poet 
 seemed to have mustered the scattered 
 and broken pieces of his genius for this 
 last work. 
 
 The minor works of Jonson have 
 many beauties and other excellencies. 
 These are found in his lyrics, epi- 
 grams, etc. The ode to Celia, be- 
 ginning " Drink to me only with thine 
 eyes," patterned after some of the love
 
 ENGLISH LITER A TV RE. %\ 
 
 letters of Philostratos, has not been sur- 
 passed in favor by any in that or subse- 
 quent periods. All lovers of music are 
 familiar with it, and all singers have 
 sought, and most of them have failed, 
 to render it fitly in song.
 
 VI. 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher: "Philaster;" "The 
 Maid's Tragedy ; " Philip Massinger : " The Rene- 
 gado ;" " The Fatal Dowry ;" " The City Madam ;" 
 "A New Way to Pay Old Debts;" "The Virgin 
 Martyr." 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher: a part- 
 nership in literature. To us this seems 
 strange. It is curious that two men 
 should thus have been united in the 
 productions which come exclusively 
 from the exertions of that invisible and 
 subtle thing, the human imagination. 
 How are two of these agencies, espe- 
 cially in the field of pure fancy, to 
 compare their separate thoughts and 
 images and combine them into one har- 
 monious picture? Yet this partnership 
 was not very strange in that day. 
 "Eastward Hoe!" was the joint pro- 
 duction of Marston and Dekker with 
 some little investment in it by Ben 
 Jonson. Such connections were very 
 common in individual plays. That of 
 
 (92)
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 93 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher and their ex- 
 traordinary abilities served to make 
 them more distinguished than the rest 
 in this particular. It was one founded, 
 however, as much upon mutual regard 
 as upon the other reasons for which 
 such relations are sometimes established. 
 The most of such connections were 
 purely of a business character. The poor- 
 est and most unhappy men that have 
 lived in this world probably have been 
 those who were authors by profession, 
 and of these, with a few exceptions, 
 dramatic authors have been the poor- 
 est and most unhappy. The men who 
 wrote dramas in the times which we 
 are considering wrote for bread. The 
 fellow feeling of poverty and misery, 
 and the hope of being able to accom- 
 plish more by combining forces than 
 exerting them separately, would often 
 draw together two, and sometimes three, 
 into a partnership which might be lim- 
 ited to one or three plays, and the 
 proceeds of their sales divided like the 
 profits of any other business. This last 
 motive, however, it is probable, had 
 nothing 1 or not much to do with the
 
 94 L E( TUBES OX LITER A TUBE. 
 
 union of Beaumont and Fletcher, at 
 least with the former, who, it was said, 
 inherited an estate sufficient to sup- 
 port him. 
 
 The difference in the dates of the 
 births of these two friends is usually 
 set down as ten years, though one of 
 their biographers, Dyce, fixes it at five. 
 But the date usually assigned to 
 Fletcher is 1576 and to Beaumont 
 1586. It is certain, however, that the 
 younger man died ten years before 
 the elder. Therefore most of the 
 works which appear over their joint 
 names were written by Fletcher. 
 
 John Fletcher was the son of Doctor 
 Richard Fletcher, afterwards Bishop of 
 London. The most notorious thing 
 recorded of his father, who was as time- 
 serving a prelate as lived in that age, 
 was his importunate attempt in the 
 morning of the execution of Mary 
 Queen of Scots, to convert her to the 
 Protestant Church. His reward for this 
 insult, heartless under the circumstances, 
 was his elevation by Elizabeth to the 
 see of Bristol. 
 
 Francis Beaumont was the son of one
 
 ENGLISH LITERA TURE. 95 
 
 of the judges of the Court of Common 
 Pleas. Both were educated at Cam- 
 bridge. Fletcher had written two plays, 
 "The Woman Hater" and " Thierj," 
 before he and Beaumont formed that 
 connection which continued during 
 their joint lives. Beaumont had been 
 intended for his father's profession, and 
 was for awhile a student of the Inner 
 Temple. But an intimacy sprang up 
 between him and Fletcher and never 
 was a closer between two men. They 
 occupied the same room, wore each 
 other's clothes and slept together until 
 Beaumont's marriage. Even this fact 
 did not interfere with their literary 
 partnership. 
 
 After the accession of Beaumont to 
 literature, they in good time produced 
 their first play, " Philaster, or Love Lies 
 Bleeding." The preceding works of 
 Fletcher had been unsuccessful, and it 
 is thought that Beaumont had written 
 some plays which were equally so. But 
 the appearance of " Philaster " showed 
 that the new firm, whatever they may 
 have been individually, were destined, 
 when joined, to make a brilliant career.
 
 96 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 Contemporary with the British drama, 
 that in Spain had begun its rise, and, 
 next to the British, was destined to be 
 the richest in Europe. That of -the 
 other European countries had not re- 
 covered from the bonds of the ancient 
 classical rules. Shakespeare in Eng- 
 land, and Calderon and Lope de Vega 
 in Spain, had first and contemporane- 
 ously broken these bonds and started 
 the romantic drama, on the basis suited 
 in each to the civilizations of their sev- 
 eral countries. Beaumont and Fletcher 
 had studied the Spanish drama. Being 
 both men of education, they had each 
 become well acquainted with those 
 new ideas which Calderon and Lope 
 de Vega had introduced into the litera- 
 ture of Spain. These were to represent 
 everyday life. This drama was called 
 " Capa y Espada" (the drama of the 
 Cap and Sword). 
 
 There is a peculiar tinge of romance 
 in the literature of Spain, which was 
 imparted by the Saracens, who, for a 
 long time, occupied the southern part of 
 it, and who, at that time, were the most 
 cultivated people in Europe. No peo-
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE, 97 
 
 pie are as fond of adventure, surpris- 
 ing denouements, and intrigue, as the 
 Spaniards. Beaumont and Fletcher im- 
 ported these ideas into the British drama. 
 There is comparatively little of in- 
 trigue in the comedies of Shakespeare. 
 One can usually foresee, soon after the 
 opening, how they are to end. Many 
 of them are purely fanciful. In those 
 where there is an invention, even this 
 gives place to the author's main object, 
 the creation of distinct and individual 
 characters. Ben Jonson also, as we 
 have seen, wrote comedies of character, 
 but there is little of intrigue in them. On 
 the other hand, those of Beaumont and 
 Fletcher are comedies of intrigue. Not 
 purely so, for, liko Jonson, being both 
 well educated men, they were fond of 
 the classical, and in their works are evi- 
 dences of a disposition to observe the 
 unities. With Beaumont Jonson was 
 very intimate, and he condescended 
 sometimes to consult him in arranging 
 his plots. Thus both Beaumont and 
 Fletcher used to describe in smooth 
 phrase whatever was exalted, and es- 
 pecially whatever was tender and
 
 98 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 pathetic. But the distinctive quality of 
 their dramas is the pleasure that arises 
 from the conduct of subtle intrigues 
 and the leading of them to an unex- 
 pected development. 
 
 It was a singular freak of fortune 
 that the plays of these two very young 
 men, who were not so sorely in need, 
 should have had a better run than those 
 of their contemporaries, whose daily 
 bread depended upon the success of 
 theirs. But pleasure-seeking people 
 like to see cheerfulness in those who 
 undertake to minister to their enjoy- 
 ment. And indeed few things must be 
 so difficult as for a man to make merri- 
 ment, when the consciousness is ever 
 about him that if he fail, he and those 
 he loves best must be hungry and cold. 
 In reading Beaumont and Fletcher one 
 can see the evidences of a sense of 
 leisure and security. Their pleasant 
 scenes are arranged with all the order 
 and nicety which a cheerful spirit em- 
 ploys in planning an entertainment 
 which he foresees is going to please all 
 who are to be invited. These plays, 
 therefore, became soon the favorites of
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 99 
 
 the stag;e, on which they were far more 
 popular for a time, than Shakespeare's. 
 There was another reason for this 
 popularity, not very complimentary to 
 the morals or the tastes of our ances- 
 tors. That was the frequent indecen- 
 cies which they carried. Two reasons 
 may be given for the immoral employ- 
 ment of these indecencies. First : The 
 bad examples of the Spanish drama. 
 Suspicions and infidelities in Spanish 
 life, represented so to nature in the 
 dramas of that language, were too 
 tempting to such men to be resisted by 
 them. But a more convincing reason 
 was this : The sentiment of Puritanism, 
 as it was derisively called, had been grow- 
 ing with wondrous rapidity in England. 
 The more the Puritans were divided 
 among themselves, the more separate and 
 numerous and strong and hostile they be- 
 came to the adherents of the Established 
 Church. Their hostility was evinced in 
 nothing more than in the admonitions 
 that were given to the theatres. Such 
 a hostility had its natural effect upon 
 both. The more the Puritans inveighed 
 against the immoralities of the stage,
 
 100 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 the more indecent the stage must be- 
 come. The best jests that could be 
 made against the enemies of the stage 
 were those which made the subject- 
 matters of their complaint the more 
 pertinent and offensive. This was the 
 beginning of that long career of cant 
 and hypocrisy on one side, and ribaldry 
 and infidelity on the other, in which 
 true piety seemed destined to perish. 
 
 I said that the first joint produc- 
 tion of these poets was " Philaster." 
 This ranks among the best. The scenes 
 are laid in Sicily. The heroine is 
 Arethusa. We know at once from this 
 name that the poets are familiar with 
 ancient mythology, and that they have 
 followed the nymph of Diana in her 
 flight from Alpheus, the river god in 
 Elis, and across the Sicilian Sea. 
 Arethusa is the daughter of the king 
 of Sicily, who is in love with and is 
 loved bv Philaster, a native prince and 
 the rightful heir to the throne. But 
 her father has destined her for a Span- 
 ish prince, Pharamond. Delicacy is a 
 fine thing in woman, and generally 
 speaking it does not look well for her
 
 English literature. \q\ 
 
 to avow her love until she is asked. 
 But circumstances alter cases. When 
 a fine young lover is devoted to a 
 young woman, who knows without 
 doubt that he would gladly marry her 
 if he could, but is restrained from at- 
 tempting it because he feels certain 
 that he could not, she might even, out 
 of compassion for him, tell him to try 
 it. But Arethusa was a princess, and 
 Philaster was without power, although 
 well beloved by the people. King's 
 daughters must be allowed greater 
 privileges than other women ; and if 
 they are not they will take them. So 
 this princess, not like her namesake, 
 who was averse to matrimony, sends 
 for Philaster and this is the conversa- 
 tion which they hold : 
 
 Philaster — Madam, your messenger 
 
 Made me believe you wished to speak with me. 
 
 Arethusa — 'Tis true, Philaster; but the words are 
 Such I have to say, and do so ill beseem 
 The mouth of woman, that I wish them said, 
 Ajid yet am loath to speak them. Have you 
 Known that I have aught detracted from your 
 
 worth? 
 Have I in person wrong'd you? or have set 
 My baser instruments to throw disgrace 
 Upon your virtues? 
 
 Philaster— Newer, Madam, you?
 
 102 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 Arethusa — Why, then, should you, in such a public 
 place, 
 Injure a princess, and a scandal lay 
 Upon my fortunes, fam'd to be so great. 
 Calling a great part of my dowry in question? 
 
 Philaster— Madam, this truth which I shall speak 
 will be 
 Foolish ; but for your fair and virtuous self, 
 I could afford myself to have no right 
 To anything you wished. 
 
 Arethusa — Philaster know 
 
 I must enjoy these kingdoms. 
 
 pli ilaster — Madam, both? 
 
 Arethusa — Both, or I die; by fate I die, Philaster, 
 If I not calmly may enjoy them both. 
 
 Philaster— 1 would do much to save that noble life : 
 Yet would be loath to have posterity 
 Find in our stories, that Philaster gave 
 His right unto a sceptre and a crown 
 To save a lady's longing. 
 
 Arethusa — Nay then, hear: 
 
 I must and will have them, and more — 
 
 Philaster— What more? 
 
 Arethusa— Or lose that little life the gods prepar'd 
 To trouble this poor piece of earth withal. 
 
 Philaster — Madam, what more? 
 
 Arethusa — Turn then away thy face. 
 
 Philaster — No. 
 
 Arethusa — Do. 
 
 Philaster— I can endure it. Turn away my face! 
 I never yet saw enemy that look'd 
 So dreadfully, but that I thought myself 
 As great a basilisk as he ; or spake 
 So horribly, but that I thought my tongue 
 Bore thunder underneath, as much as his; 
 Nor beast that I could turn from : Shall I then 
 Begin to fear sweet sounds? a lady's voice, 
 Whom I do love? Say, you would have my life ; 
 Why, I will give it you ; for 'tis of me 
 A thing so loath'd, and unto you that ask 
 Of so poor use, that I shall make no price: 
 If you entreat, I will unmov'dly hear.
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 103 
 
 A rt thusa — Yet, for my sake, a little bend thy looks. 
 Philaster — I do. 
 
 Arethusa — Then know, I must have them and thee 
 Philaster — And me? 
 
 Arethusa — Thy love; without which all the land 
 Discovered yet will serve me for no use 
 But to be buried in. 
 
 Philaster — Is't possible? 
 
 An thusa — With it, it were too little to bestow 
 On thee. Now, though thy breath do strike me 
 
 dead, 
 (Which, know, it may), I have unwript my 
 breast. 
 
 Philaster — Madam, you are too full of noble 
 thoughts 
 To lay a train for this contemned life 
 Which you may have for asking: to suspect 
 Were base, where I deserve no ill. Love you! 
 By all my hopes I do, above my life! 
 But how this passion should proceed from you 
 So violently, would amaze a man 
 That would be jealous. 
 
 Arethusa — Another soul into my body shot 
 
 Could not have fill'd me with more strength and 
 
 spirit 
 Than this thy breath. But spend not hasty time. 
 In seeking how I came thus; 'tis the gods, 
 The gods, that make me so ; and, sure, our love 
 Will be the nobler and the better blest, 
 In that the secret justice of the gods 
 Is mingled with it. Let us leave and kiss ; 
 Lest some unwelcome guest should fall betwixt 
 
 us, 
 And we should part without it. 
 
 Bellario is a girl in boy's apparel, which 
 
 she has assumed in order to be near 
 
 Philaster, whom she loves. There is an 
 
 amount of plot and numerous escapes and 
 
 astonishing developments in this play 
 
 which would satisfy all those most fond of 
 
 such thing's. Philaster and Arethusa suc- 
 
 ceed at last in their love, and Bellario is
 
 104 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 very well satisfied with being their serv- 
 ant. Bellario became a most popular and 
 famous character. She is the prototype 
 of that class of females whom we meet 
 throughout our subsequent dramatic 
 literature, who, loving beyond their 
 hopes, put on boy's clothes, and follow 
 their lovers into all sorts of places and 
 through all sorts of adventures. They 
 are always unfortunate in their loves, 
 and distinguished for the most unselfish 
 
 o 
 
 cooperation with their lover's efforts to 
 marry somebody else. 
 
 These men continued to write together 
 for ten years until 1616, when Beaumont 
 died. In this time Beaumont wrote two 
 plays separately and Fletcher four, and 
 they jointly wrote twenty-four. After 
 Beaumont's death Fletcher wrote, in the 
 ten years he survived his friend, twenty 
 alone and ten in connection with other 
 dramatists. 
 
 Among their joint productions one of 
 the most celebrated is " The Maid's Trag- 
 edy." Aspasia is the heroine. These 
 men doubtless had read Thucydides, and 
 knew of the weakness of the great Peri- 
 cles for the fair Saurian woman, Asmsia.
 
 ENG L IS II LITERATI *R E. \ 05 
 
 The noble Amintor is betrothed to As- 
 pasia, but he, for the sake of political 
 promotion, abandons her for Evadne, 
 the sister of the general Melantius. The 
 pictures made of Aspasia's grief are very 
 touching. In the following she counsels 
 her maids, Olympias and Antiphila: 
 
 Aspasia — " Did you ne'er love, wenches? Speak 
 Olympias: 
 Thou hast an easy temper, fit for stamp. 
 
 Olympias — Never. 
 
 Aspasia — Nor you, Antiphila ? 
 
 Antiphila — Not I. 
 
 Aspasia — Then, my good girls, be more than 
 women, wise; 
 At least be more than I was; and be sure 
 You credit anything the light gives light to, 
 Before a man. Rather believe the sea 
 Weeps for the ruined merchant, when he roars: 
 Rather, the wind courts but the fragrant sails, 
 When the strong cordage cracks ; rather the sun 
 Comes but to kiss the fruit in wealthy autumn. 
 When all falls blasted. If you needs must love, 
 (Forced by ill fate) take to your maiden bosoms 
 Two dead-cold aspics, and of them make lovers : 
 They cannot falter, nor forswear. One kiss 
 Makes a long peace for all. But man — 
 
 Come, lets be sad, my girls. 
 That down-cast of thine eye, Olympias, 
 Shows a fine sorrow. Mark, Antiphila, 
 Just such another was the nymph (Enone 
 When Paris brought home Helen. Now a tear; 
 And then thou art a piece expressing fully 
 The Carthage queen, when from a cold sea-rock 
 Full with her sorrow, she tied fast her eyes 
 To the fair Trojan ships, and, having lost them, 
 Just as thine eyes do, down stole a tear."
 
 106 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 They were two highly gifted men. 
 Birth and other accidents had given to 
 them acquaintance with the habits and 
 the witty and meaningless thrusts and 
 repartees of courtiers not possessed 
 even by Shakespeare. Then they knew 
 of the better things in courtiers, their 
 sincere loves and sore disappointments. 
 It is curious how pathetic they can be 
 at times; how tender and delicate; and 
 then how soon they fall into indecen- 
 cies, even obscenities. It seems a pity 
 that they were such time-servers. The 
 divine right of kings is shown to be one 
 of their worships. The scene in the 
 " Maid's Tragedy," where Amintor, hav- 
 ing led Evadne into the bridal cham- 
 ber, finds that she is the king's para- 
 mour, and himself chosen by him to be 
 known abroad as the ostensible father 
 of her offspring, is the very incarnation 
 of intensest grief. Yet, his submission 
 when he finds that it is the king who 
 has wronged him makes a case of pas- 
 sive obedience too gross to be credited 
 of one who has in his being even the 
 smallest element of manhood. 
 
 These men only dallied with the
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 107 
 
 emotions which they were well capable 
 of portraying in their best, legitimate 
 exercise, and preferred to trifle with, 
 instead of treating with reverence, the 
 things by which good men are enno- 
 bled. They held the stage until the 
 time came when the necessity of clean- 
 ing it was apparent to all eyes, and 
 then they were relegated to the silence 
 to which long ago they should have 
 been consigned. 
 
 o 
 
 The last to be considered in this 
 series is Philip Massinger, who, except 
 in the matter of poverty and suffering, 
 was unlike any of the preceding. His is 
 one of the saddest among the many sad 
 lives of poets. His father for many 
 years was an employee in the family of 
 Pembroke, at whose seat, Wilton, the 
 son spent the years of his childhood, 
 and, as it was conjectured by some, 
 acted as page to the countess, and 
 had for his god-father, Sir Philip Sid- 
 ney. Entered at St. Alban's Hall, Ox- 
 ford, in 1602, in 1606 he suddenly left 
 without a degree. It was said that this 
 was owing to the fact of his becoming 
 a convert to the Catholic faith. His
 
 108 LECTURES ON LITERA TVRE. 
 
 father had died not long before, and so 
 had the old earl. His son and successor, 
 William Herbert (the " W. H." to 
 whom Shakespeare's sonnets were dedi- 
 cated), although a generous, even mu- 
 nificent patron, could not brook such 
 conduct, and the youth was left to his 
 own resources. Such a change in faith 
 during that period was as if the convert 
 was dead, or, what was worse, become 
 leprous. 
 
 Little is known of Massinger thence- 
 forth. He seems to have lived, as much 
 as possible, apart from such as Peele and 
 Greene, and Marlowe, by whose excesses, 
 and especially whose impiety, his sensi- 
 tive, serious, religious nature wasshocked 
 beyond endurance. These he had to 
 meet sometimes, even frequently, for 
 the purpose of conference upon their 
 joint productions. For, although not as 
 extensive as that between Beaumont and 
 Fletcher, connections were among these 
 others. It seemed to be necessary for 
 them to have much to do in common in 
 order to help and be helped in a work 
 of all others most inadequately paid for. 
 
 The price for a play then amounted
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 109 
 
 to a little over twenty dollars, often not 
 as much, and when we consider how 
 many of these must have been rejected, 
 we can form an idea of how precarious 
 must have been the lives of playwrights, 
 and how the fellow feeling of neglect 
 and want served to bring them together 
 in cooperative endeavors. Few things 
 could be more pathetic than the follow- 
 ing appeal by Massinger and some of 
 his humble friends to Hinchlow, a stage 
 manager, which will tend to show how 
 miserable and poor were professional 
 authors generally: 
 
 " To our most loving friend, Mr. 
 Philip Hinchlow, Esquire, these: 
 
 Mr. Hinchlow: — You understand our 
 unfortunate extremitie, and I do not 
 thinke you so void of Christianitie, but 
 that you would throw so much money 
 into the Thames as wee request now of 
 you, rather than endanger so many in- 
 nocent lives. You know there is £ X 
 more at least to be received of you for 
 the play. We desire you to lend us 
 £5 of that; which shall be allowed to 
 you, without which we cannot be bayled, 
 nor I play any more till this be dis- 
 patched. It will lose you £ XX ere the 
 end of next week, besides the hindrance
 
 HO LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 of the next new play. Pray? sir, our 
 cases with humanity, and now give us 
 cause to acknowledge you our true friend 
 in time of neede. Wee have entreated 
 Mr. Davison to deliver this note as well 
 to witness your love as our promises, 
 and always acknowledgment to be ever, 
 Your most thankful and loving 
 friends 
 
 (Nat Field). 
 " The money shall be abated out of 
 the money remaynes for the play of Mr. 
 Fletcher and ours." Signed by Robert 
 Du Borne; and the following by Mas- 
 singer: — "I have ever found you a true 
 lovinof friend to mee, and in soe small a 
 suite, it being honest, I hope you will 
 not fail us. Philip Massinger." 
 
 The most of the earlier works of 
 Massinger were lost, and in a very cu- 
 rious way. These works, together with 
 forty other plays of different authors, 
 were placed in the care of Warburton, 
 the herald, to keep. He turned them 
 over to his cook, and the latter, in or- 
 der to save her master the expense of 
 buying paper with which to cover the 
 pies that were daily baked for dinner, 
 employed these manuscripts for that 
 purpose. When Warburton called for
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. \\\ 
 
 them, they were found to have been 
 baked with the pies and used to stop 
 the holes in the kitchen windows. The 
 following were among those lost in 
 this way: "Minerva's Sacrifice, or the 
 Forced Lady ;" " The Noble Choice, 
 or the Orator ;" " The Wandering Lov- 
 ers, or The Painter ;" " Philerezo and 
 Hippolita ; " "Antonio and Vallia ; " 
 " The Tyrant ;" and " Fast and Wel- 
 come." In connection with Fletcher 
 he wrote many others. The earliest of 
 those that have been preserved is the 
 " Virgin Martyr," a tragedy. The 
 scenes are laid in Caesarea and founded 
 upon the persecutions of the Chris- 
 tians in the reign of the Emperor Dio- 
 cletian. Then comes the " Old Law," 
 to which Middleton and Rowley con- 
 tributed. Then the " Unnatural Com- 
 bat," then "The Bondman." Of the 
 remaining plays, and indeed of all his 
 productions, the most famous are: "The 
 Renegado ;" " The Fatal Dowry ;" "The 
 City Madam," and " A New Way to 
 Pay Old Debts." Of all these the one 
 that has been acted much the most fre- 
 quently, and upon the whole has been
 
 112 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 the favorite with those who visit the 
 theatre, is the last. The character of 
 Sir Giles Overreach was made famous 
 by Keane, the actor, and has ever 
 since been greatly admired when rep- 
 resented by a man of abilities. In 
 it Edwin Booth did some of his best 
 work. 
 
 Massinger stands very nearly on a 
 level with that second rank of drama- 
 tists after Shakespeare. Of all these 
 he was the most serious. The eternal 
 struggle with poverty, and even with 
 hunger, weighed down a spirit that was 
 naturally serious. His tragedies are quite 
 superior to his comedies. In pathos he 
 is far superior to Jonson, and in the ar- 
 rangement of his plots he is often equal 
 to Beaumont and Fletcher. In his com- 
 edies it is easy to see the difficulty 
 with which he who was so unhappy 
 could create scenes and words for 
 others' merriment. No writer for the 
 stage was ever more unfitted for the 
 obscenities which comedy then, in or- 
 der to be fully successful, seemed to 
 need. The merriment which he created 
 came from a mind and heart that could
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. 113 
 
 have no participancy in it. But he 
 must make the merriment or die in 
 jail or perish in a garret, and he there- 
 fore dashed off his comedies with a 
 coarseness of language which we know 
 must have disgusted him as much as 
 they disgust us. In spite of their 
 being comedies, there is a vein of se- 
 riousness running through them all, 
 which has led to their being called by 
 the name of tragi-comedies. 
 
 There are few things which the lit- 
 erary public have more regretted than 
 the destruction of Massinger's early 
 dramas. At the period of the appear- 
 ance of "The Virgin Martyr," he was 
 nearly forty years old. His plays were 
 quite numerous and in those twenty 
 years of a man's best time, and espe- 
 cially in the ten years from thirty to forty, 
 the greatest efforts of his genius must 
 have been exerted. If we could have 
 those works restored, it is very probable 
 that the judgment of the world would 
 no longer hesitate whether to assign him 
 to the place next above Beaumont and 
 Fletcher and Jonson or next below 
 them. 
 
 L.L.-8
 
 114 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 Of all the early dramatists, Massin- 
 ger's allusion to religious subjects are 
 the least to be censured. Coarse and 
 obscene indeed he is sometimes, but 
 never profane. The wars with the Puri- 
 tans made the stage a place where 
 pious men could less and less resort. 
 But Massinger, who was the most 
 serious of all the play writers, abstained 
 from that worst form of incivility — ■ 
 sacrilege. 
 
 He remained poor always. He died 
 in 1640. We know almost nothing 
 about his connections with other persons. 
 He seems to have been without family, 
 without friends, and eve n without 
 acquaintances beyortJfJ^^s^alWiircle of 
 the comedians^-^^^oboay wjis^pregent at 
 his death. He-we'nt-t"6 becl/efte nidht and 
 
 Z v f i 
 
 was found pt£re dead »the.next 
 He was Uuru3tK in Sf. Mar^r Overy's 
 Church. The sexton •rrpfcde this entry 
 " March 20, l^^WW, buried, Philip 
 Massinger — A Stranger." As there 
 was nobody to close his eyes when he 
 died, so there were none to weep when 
 he was buried. The poor comedians 
 went along to help in that last business;
 
 ENGLISH LITERATURE. H5 
 
 but they had their own sorrows, and 
 some of them thought, probably, that 
 Massinger, now lying so quiet under the 
 little church, might be better off than 
 themselves. 
 
 Massinger, as a playwright, has always 
 been regarded among the highest. He 
 was particularly happy in introductions 
 that served to engage interested atten- 
 tion from the playgoers. If he had not 
 felt himself constrained to conform to 
 popular tastes he would have accom- 
 plished much greater things. This kept 
 him from the profound study of human 
 nature and accurate portrayal of it, of 
 which he was abundantly capable. Great 
 passions he did hot delineate as well as 
 minor. The grave and the dignified 
 he expressed as "well as the best. 
 His Camiola in "-The Maid of Honor" 
 is one of the finest* impersonations 
 ever conceived. That is a perfect 
 scene wherein, appearing before the 
 bad king she is expected to kneel, she 
 says: 
 
 " With your leave, I must not kneel, Sir, 
 While I reply to this : but thus rise up 
 In my defense, and tell you, as a man, 
 (Since when you are unjust, the deity
 
 116 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 Which you may challenge as a king, parts from 
 
 you), 
 'Twas never read in holy writ or moral, 
 That subjects on their loyalty were obliged 
 To love their sovereign's vices." 
 
 Of all the dramatists in his time he 
 was the cleanest in character, manners, 
 and words ; and for that he lived apart 
 from them and died friendless and 
 alone. 
 
 Note.— The Ober Ammergau Passion Play, in its 
 revival from time to time, is the last remnant of 
 the Miracle Plays.
 
 French Literature. 
 
 (117)
 
 TRENCH LITERATURE 
 
 «•« 
 i. 
 
 The Revival in France. 
 
 HE south of France being settled 
 by the Visigoths, the mildest of the 
 northern barbarians, and from its geo- 
 graphical position and its climate being 
 less used to exciting themes, had its 
 earliest literary development in the 
 songs of the tender passion. While the 
 poets of Spain sang of wars and adven- 
 tures with the Moors, and celebrated the 
 heroes of the battlefields, the trou- 
 badours sang of fair ladies. 
 
 The gaiety of this early French lit- 
 erature has never entirely passed away, 
 and the Frenchman of to-day is still a 
 genuine descendant of that race, ever 
 distinguished as the most polite and 
 impressionable of modern peoples. 
 
 In these present studies of French 
 literature, T propose to begin at a com- 
 
 (119)
 
 120 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 paratively late period, when the founding 
 of the French Academy under Richelieu 
 established at Paris the center of the 
 literature of all Europe ; with a pre- 
 liminary notice, however, of one writer, 
 anterior to this period, who in one spe- 
 cies of writing was a leader and fore- 
 runner to all Europe. 
 
 This was Montaigne, the father of the 
 Essayists. This singular son of a sin- 
 gular father probably little foresaw the 
 fame which he was to acquire. His 
 father had him taught Latin in his child- 
 hood, exclusive of any other tongue, so 
 that Latin became his vernacular, and 
 he had afterwards to learn French as a 
 foreign language. First he became an 
 advocate; but the tumultuous times of 
 the League coming on in the reign of 
 Henry III., being a man of peaceful 
 disposition he retired from all active pur- 
 suits to his estate, and the time he had 
 left from travel was devoted to that 
 desultory sort of writing to which he 
 gave, what was intended to be considered 
 a modest title, the name of " Essai." 
 
 Essai, as you are aware, means an 
 attempt, a partial consideration of a sub-
 
 FREXCH LITERATURE. 121 
 
 ject which deserves more extended dis- 
 cussion, either from abler hands or from 
 the same in more enlarged opportunities. 
 The term has gradually been adopted 
 as applicable to short disquisitions upon 
 all varieties of subjects, whether of 
 morals, politics, literature, art or com- 
 mon life. 
 
 The very first attempts in this line are 
 amongst the most interesting and spicy 
 that are to be found in any language. 
 This Frenchman, in the retirement of 
 his chateau, when the rest of his country- 
 men were in the turmoil of those terrible 
 and continuous civil dissensions, during 
 a period of many years, recorded the re- 
 sults of his desultory observations, read- 
 ings and reflections, in a style so piquant 
 that they have become long celebrated 
 throughout the world. His essays con- 
 tain an immense amount of historical 
 and political information with most in- 
 teresting, but at the same time, most 
 rambling speculations. 
 
 What makes them more interesting 
 than they might be otherwise is the ac- 
 quaintance they give us with the author 
 himself. Montaigne seems actually to
 
 122 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 have thought aloud, especially when 
 thinking about himself. It is evident 
 of all interesting personages to Mon- 
 taigne, the most so was Montaigne. 
 His garrulousness of himself, even of 
 his whims and infirmities, are a source 
 of continual entertainment to the 
 reader. His vanity is not in the slight- 
 est degree offensive, because of the en- 
 tire simplicity with which it is exhib- 
 ited and its perfect harmlessness. In 
 this respect he is as pardonable as a 
 mother who is proud of her first-born 
 baby. 
 
 Montaigne is one of the writers of 
 France whom a Frenchman of any 
 amount of education would be ashamed 
 to acknowledge not having read. It is 
 probable that no author of modern 
 times has been so universally read by 
 his own countrymen, a fact that con- 
 tinues until now, notwithstanding that 
 three centuries have elapsed since his 
 day. Though neither profound nor 
 very erudite, neither a satirist nor a 
 great humorist, he has been among his 
 own countrymen the most popular au- 
 thor that has lived in France, tlnd, in
 
 FRENCH LITER A TURE. 123 
 
 this respect, his match is not to be found 
 outside of it. 
 
 The revival of literature was prop- 
 erly so called as its first efforts were 
 directed to revive Greek and Roman 
 ideas and forms, a revival which in 
 France has deviated from its original 
 workings less widely than in any other 
 country in Europe. France has ever 
 since been chiefest in what is known 
 as classical instead of romantic litera- 
 ture. 
 
 A series of poets, respectable, and 
 some with a degree of eminence, came 
 on, beginning with what is known as 
 the P16iade consisting of Ronsard, Dau- 
 rat, Du Bellay, Belleau, Jodelle, Bai'f 
 and Izard. 
 
 It was in the following style that 
 Ronsard, the leader of this new band, 
 spoke of the need of a change in the 
 national literature : 
 
 " Oh how I long to see these springs 
 wither ; to chastise these small youths ; 
 to beat these attempts to dry up these 
 fountains. How I wish these forlorn 
 ones ; these humble expectants ; these 
 exiles from bliss ; these slaves ; these 
 obstructionists were packed back again
 
 124 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 to the Round Table! Leave all these 
 old French poems to the floral Games of 
 Toulouse, — such as rondeaus, ballads, 
 royal songs, lays, and other such 
 spicy things, which corrupt the taste 
 of our language and are of no other 
 value than to bear witness to our 
 ignorance. Be assured, my readers, 
 that he will be the genuine poet, 
 whom I look for in our language, 
 who shall make me indignant, shall 
 sooth and rejoice me, shall cause me to 
 grieve, to love, to hate, to wonder, to 
 be astounded ; in short, who shall hold 
 the bridle of my affections, turning me 
 to this side or that at his pleasure." 
 
 Here we see what a change has come 
 from the time when these gentle poets 
 of Provence were the masters of song. 
 The new enthusiasm was destined to 
 make a magnificent career. But it has 
 been a strange career, and it has been 
 less great than it would have been, but 
 for a sort of despotism in France, polit- 
 ical and literary, which, while it has 
 accomplished great things in some re- 
 spects, served to hamper literary and 
 especially poetic genius, by requiring 
 it to follow too closely this first imita- 
 tion of the classics.
 
 FRENCH LITER A TV RE. 125 
 
 Classicism has forever since the times 
 of the Pleiacle been the distinguishing 
 characteristic of French literature, espe- 
 cially dramatic, and though many men 
 of genius have endeavored to free 
 themselves from this despotism and set 
 out upon a new and independent career, 
 such efforts have been discouraged, and 
 the French drama of to-day is yet, to 
 some degree, an imitation of that of 
 Terence, Plautus and Seneca, who were 
 themselves imitators of the Greek dram- 
 atists. 
 
 Let us briefly consider the history of 
 this literary dynasty which made Paris 
 so entirely the capital of France — the 
 capital more absorbingly so than any 
 city has become in any other country. 
 It began in circumstances peculiarly in- 
 teresting, in that they show what benign 
 influence in a most corrupt society may 
 be exerted by even one gifted, high-spir- 
 ited and pure-minded woman. 
 
 The court of France had been cor- 
 rupted by those three woman, Catherine 
 de Medici, Marie de Medici and Mar- 
 guerite de Valois, to a degree that is 
 now appalling and almost incredible to
 
 126 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 read about. During the reign of Henry 
 IV., Louis XIII., and part of that of 
 Louis XIV., this world, except probably 
 during some of the times of the Roman 
 Empire, has never seen as much contrast 
 between the lawlessness and luxurious- 
 ness of the great, and the squalor, pov- 
 erty and misery of the lowly — a con- 
 trast that culminated in the war of the 
 Fronde, in which the common people, 
 driven to madness by their wrongs and 
 sufferings, rose against the government 
 and produced that chaos which resulted 
 .in a state of literature like that of pol- 
 itics. 
 
 In this state of things Catherine de 
 Vivonne, a young lady of Italy, was 
 married to the Marquis de Rambouillet. 
 Disgusted with the manners and the 
 morals of the court, this beautiful, noble- 
 minded woman, while yet young, not far 
 beyond twenty years of age, retired to 
 her husband's private house, and there 
 for many years received and entertained 
 the best and purest literary talent among 
 the men and women of Paris. As these re- 
 unions increased she had built a splendid 
 mansion, destined forever afterwards to
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. 127 
 
 be celebrated as the Hotel de Rambou- 
 illet. The leading literary genius of 
 literature then was Malherbe, and, as the 
 favorite of the Marquise, he led in that 
 encouragement to letters which was to 
 exert so signal an influence. At this 
 Hotel all literary men were received, 
 whatever might be their social position, 
 unless their manners were such as to 
 shock that delicacy which among the 
 best aristocracy was the perfection of 
 good breeding. 
 
 The impulse given to literature, under 
 the auspices of this remarkable woman, 
 was incalculably great and lasting. It 
 was only in her old age when her crown 
 descended to her daughter, the Marquise 
 de Montausier, that an artificiality and 
 an affectation found their way among 
 them which induced the epithet of " pre- 
 cieuse," and drew upon them a ridicule 
 that was fatal. 
 
 Julie, the daughter and successor 
 of Catherine de Vivonne, inherited 
 all the virtue but not the judgment 
 and the taste of her mother. It had 
 been better probably for Mademoi- 
 selle if she had married the Marquis
 
 128 LECTURES ON LITER A TUBE. 
 
 sooner. He had been a long and 
 faithful lover, but Julie delighted more 
 and more in the homage which she 
 received from men and women as the 
 heir apparent to the Kingdom of the 
 Rambouillet. Under her rule the ro- 
 mancers were the favorites. Of these 
 the chief was Mademoiselle Scuderi. 
 She it was who became the head and 
 leader of that school of romanticists in 
 France, which refined the art of love, 
 and the rules of manners and senti- 
 ments, to a degree that their fall must 
 come in time when the public taste 
 should become educated sufficiently to 
 discover and grow tired of their extrav- 
 agances. Clelie, the last and most 
 notable of Scuderi's novels, was pro- 
 duced in the year of the death of the 
 Marquise de Rambouillet. 
 
 The faithful Montausier courted and 
 courted, year after year, years after 
 years, but Julie put him off and put 
 him off. He had gotten almost every 
 poet in France to write verses in her 
 praise, which he had gathered into an 
 album and called Guirland de, Julie. 
 Yet it was not until four years after
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. 129 
 
 the completion and presentation of this 
 Guirland that she at last yielded to 
 his entreaties and became the Mar- 
 quise de Montausier, and then she was 
 thirty-eight years old. 
 
 The Precieuse soon afterwards lost 
 their prestige and the dynasty of let- 
 ters passed into stronger hands. But 
 the example of the Marquise de Ram- 
 bouillet had this effect among others 
 — it established for woman in France an 
 influence in literature that remains to 
 this day, and of a kind and impor- 
 tance that are known nowhere else. 
 
 Among the women who were of this 
 coterie, I mention especially Madame 
 de Sevigne, who, though less courted in 
 her day than Mademoiselle Scuderi, has 
 become far more celebrated since, es- 
 pecially as being the most entertain- 
 ing letter writer, not only of her 
 country, but of all countries; not only 
 of her generation, but of all genera- 
 tions. 
 
 It is curious to think how few of the 
 letters — the private, friendly, gossipy 
 correspondence — of men of letters are 
 interesting. This faculty seems the 
 
 L.L.— 9
 
 130 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 very rarest. After Madame de Se- 
 vigne in France, and Charles Lamb 
 in England, the way is long to find 
 the next whose letters have a charm 
 that it is a cordial pleasure to yield to. 
 
 Of the habituees of the H6tel de Ram- 
 bouillet, was a young man of illustrious 
 family, who, although he was but two 
 and twenty years of age, was already a 
 bishop, and destined soon for the car- 
 dinalate and for a greater career than 
 any man, not a monarch, has made in 
 modern times. This was the Bishop of 
 Lutjon, afterwards Cardinal Richelieu. 
 It would be interesting to consider the 
 political career of this most remarkable 
 man, who, under Louis XIII. , subdued 
 the enemies of the crown of France at 
 home and abroad, and consolidated its 
 government in time for the subsequent 
 great achievements of le Grande Mon- 
 arque, Louis XIV. But I must speak 
 only of his connection with the literary 
 movement of his time and the direction 
 which his genius gave to it. 
 
 With all the ambition that has been 
 ascribed to Cardinal Richelieu, it is be- 
 lieved that the literary element was the
 
 FRENCH L I TERA T URE. 131 
 
 chief. He had sat, when a young man, 
 at the feet of Madame Rambouillet, 
 and listened with delight to the wit, 
 the poetry and the prose of the gifted 
 men and women who were accustomed 
 to assemble there. Partaking of the 
 ambition which these reunions inspired, 
 he wrote, besides some religious pam- 
 phlets, a tragi-comedy which he named 
 "Mirame." 
 
 When he rose to power and had 
 erected that splendid palace named by 
 him the Palais Cardinale, but after- 
 wards known as the Palais Royale, 
 which is so full of historic interest, he 
 added to it a theatre for the produc- 
 tion of his drama. It must succeed — 
 for it was the work of the greatest min- 
 ister in Europe, presented to a select 
 audience of friends and dependents in 
 his own residence, which rivaled that 
 of the greatest monarchs of the earth. 
 The applause was so great that the 
 author was transported with delight, 
 leaned out of his box in order to give 
 to'the delighted audience a good view 
 of himself, and felt that he had been 
 born for as great a work in literature as
 
 132 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 in politics and religion. The cares of 
 state would not allow further author- 
 ship at his hands, but he could assume, 
 and he did assume, its direction in the 
 hands of others, and established that 
 regime, partly for good and partly for 
 evil, by which the literary endeavors of 
 the French have ever since been for the 
 most part controlled. 
 
 Among the thoughts that had been 
 struck out from the discussions of the 
 Hotel de Rambouillet was that of found- 
 ing some great central authority in mat- 
 ters of literary taste, especially regarding 
 the proper development of the French 
 language. A thought of this sort had, 
 as early as 1570, been in the mind of 
 Ba'if, a disciple of the school of which 
 Ronsard was the head. This idea was 
 the establishment of a club for the study 
 and proper development of French 
 grammar and orthography. But, in the 
 political convulsions of those and suc- 
 ceeding times, nothing or little was done 
 in this direction. 
 
 Reopened in times of quiet in the 
 minds of men like Rivault, Valentin, 
 Conrart, and others, the all-absorbing
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. 133 
 
 mind of Richelieu seized upon it; and 
 in 1634 he established the Academy of 
 France, at once the proudest, most 
 authoritative, and most able literary 
 corporation that was ever instituted. 
 The avowed object of the institution 
 of the Academy was the perfecting of 
 the French language; and the making 
 of it the Court language of the world. 
 It is curious to consider what endless 
 labors, what minute painstakings, were 
 employed upon such a work. 
 
 It was nearly half a century before 
 the publication of the dictionary, for 
 which a committee and an editor were 
 early appointed. The vast length of 
 time consumed in this work, on that of 
 a purely philological nature, provoked 
 many a ridiculous jest from those who 
 sought reputation outside of the Acad- 
 emy, as the following: 
 
 " Six months they've been engaged on F, 
 O, that my fate would guaranty 
 That I should keep alive till G." 
 
 The establishment of such an institu- 
 tion as the Academy must necessarily 
 exert a commanding influence upon the 
 national literature. At the most splen-
 
 134 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 did capital in Europe, where courtly 
 manners and courtly sentiments under 
 that magnificient minister were risen to 
 the highest possible height, the develop- 
 ment it gave to the French language, 
 naturally rich in polite expressions, must 
 soon place it at the head of the living 
 languages of the world. Under this in- 
 fluence it did become, and has continued 
 to be, the diplomatic language of Eu- 
 rope and America. 
 
 The times were now favorable for 
 great literary achievements. Richelieu 
 had established the French monarchy 
 upon a basis that was to endure for two 
 centuries; he had established the French 
 Academy that was to be for all time 
 the arbiter of literary excellence. The 
 works of literary men heretofore had 
 been in great part desultory, owing 
 mostly to the uncertainties of the re- 
 sults of successive political struggles. 
 The unbecoming 1 levities that charac- 
 terized the Mysteries and Moralities, 
 the Sacred Comedy, as they were some- 
 times called, had been prohibited rep- 
 resentation. A national drama had 
 been started both in Spain and in Eng-
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. 135 
 
 land, which, though widely different 
 in one and the other, was eminently 
 national and suited to the different 
 characteristics of the two nations. 
 
 It was evidently a misfortune for the 
 French drama, a misfortune from which 
 it never recovered, that its rise was con- 
 temporary with the establishment of 
 the French Academy, whose strange 
 and persistent adherence to classical 
 rules obstructed that freedom which 
 was so essential to the growth of this, 
 the most important, department of a 
 nation's literature. 
 
 At the time of the establishment of 
 that celebrated institution a very great 
 man was then living, who, though less 
 than thirty years of age, had already 
 exhibited the possession of intellectual 
 powers which if encouraged, or if not 
 hindered, were equal to the very great- 
 est achievements. He was not a Pari- 
 sian and of that circle who met at stated 
 times in the splendid salons of the Mar- 
 quise de Rambouillet. He was from 
 Rouen in the North Country, the cen- 
 tral place of the ancient trouveres, as 
 the poets of that region were called, in
 
 136 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 contradistinction to the troubadours of 
 the South. Like the great dramatists 
 of Spain, Pierre Corneille was religious 
 in the tone of his being, and his first 
 literary works were of a religious char- 
 acter. He never took orders, like Lope 
 de Vega and Calderon, but the serious 
 tone remained with him always. His 
 first works were translations in verse of 
 the "Office of the Holy Virgin" and 
 the "Imitation of Christ" of Thomas a 
 Kempis. 
 
 A curious accident that was which 
 made Corneille a dramatist. He had 
 fallen in love with a young lady to 
 whom he introduced a friend in order to 
 aid him in his suit. That friend pleaded 
 the cause as well as he could ; but 
 the lady one day hinted to him that 
 if he were to speak in his own be- 
 half, should he be so inclined, his 
 words might be put to better purpose 
 and obtain more satisfactory results. 
 Upon this hint he substituted his own 
 for the name of his friend, and his suit 
 prevailed. Fortunately for his own 
 peace Corneille made a joke instead of a 
 serious matter of the affair, and the more
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. 137 
 
 easily because in another young woman 
 he soon found what compensated .him 
 for the loss of the first. Her name 
 was Mademoiselle Milet. The rejected 
 suitor wrote his first drama on the oc- 
 casion, and, in honor of the gay young 
 female, slightly transposing her name, 
 called it "Melite." The facility with 
 which this was produced led him to 
 other works, partly serious, partly sport- 
 ive, until the year 1636, when he was 
 just thirty years old. Then he pro- 
 duced his tragedy of " The Cid." 
 
 This is one of the greatest achieve- 
 ments of human genius. In full sym- 
 pathy with that ardent admiration which 
 the Spanish, and indeed all Christian 
 people, felt for the great Campeador, 
 who had so often defeated the Moors, 
 the common enemy of Spain and Chris- 
 tendom, he selected him for his hero ; 
 and, following the dictates of his own 
 genius, presented him in those attitudes 
 which to such a man were seen to be 
 the best for the highest purposes of 
 tragedy. It seemed as if a great ca- 
 reer was before this young dramatist 
 from the North. Indeed there was, still
 
 138 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 it was less than it might have been, 
 and could have been, but for the tram- 
 mels that were placed upon his muse. 
 When we place " The Cid " of Corneille 
 by the side of the " Mirame " of Riche- 
 lieu, the distance is great between 
 them in the elements which appeal to 
 the serious, ardent emotions of our 
 hearts, that genuine pathos which is 
 the best characteristic of the tragedy. 
 But there was a greater distance be- 
 tween them in another respect, which 
 then and ever afterwards in France has 
 been considered superior, namely, in 
 relative conformity to the standard of 
 the Greeks — a standard which in all 
 ages in that country has never been 
 departed from. In this respect the 
 " Mirame " was the superior. It had been 
 made to conform evenly with those 
 models which a different people with 
 a different religion and a different civ- 
 ilization had made, but which had be- 
 come adopted in France in defiance of 
 all those demands which were made 
 by the conditions of modern peoples. 
 The necessity of following this stand- 
 ard, to a man, who, like Shakespeare,
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. 139 
 
 was not one to be guided by any 
 special school, hindered Corneille from 
 being what he was born capable to 
 be — almost, if not fully, equal to 
 him. 
 
 It was in vain that the nobles of 
 France, and the gentlemen, and the cit- 
 izens came in crowds to see this great 
 drama, and burned with passion at the 
 recital of the brave deeds of the mighty 
 Cid. "The Cid" lacked the unities of 
 the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides 
 and Seneca, and therefore the critics of 
 Paris, at the instance of Richelieu and 
 the Academy, condemned it. The very 
 passion that this drama displayed was 
 one of the matters that was objected to 
 by the Academy. Richelieu had asked 
 of them their criticism, and that request 
 was properly understood to mean an 
 order for condemnation. What was 
 required of a tragedy, according to 
 their views, was a stateliness, a dignified 
 grief in misfortune, such as had been 
 felt by the demigods and heroes of the 
 ancient drama, as they silently and 
 composedly yielded at length before 
 the decrees of fate. These curious
 
 \40 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 words occur in the sentence pronounced 
 by the Academy : 
 
 " A piece is only good when it gives 
 a reasonable contentment, that is, when 
 it satisfies the learned as well as the 
 people. We ought to inquire, not 
 whether " The Cid " has pleased, but 
 whether it ought to have pleased." 
 
 Now what did Corneille do after 
 the publication of his sentence? We 
 should have thought that he would 
 have appealed to the people, who at 
 last are the rightful arbiters of the 
 drama, and who, everywhere, except in 
 France, are its real arbiters. For after 
 this sentence they continued to applaud 
 as before. But he did no such thing. 
 Before those great tribunals, the court 
 and the Academy, even the great Cor- 
 neille did not undertake to stand with 
 defiance. He went to work and pro- 
 duced a series of dramas on the mode) 
 prescribed by the court and the Acad- 
 emy, the first of which, " The Horaces" 
 whether in revenge or in subserviency, 
 it is not known, he dedicated to Car- 
 dinal Richelieu. These tragedies are 
 the more to be admired because they 
 show what may be done by a man of
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. 141 
 
 /ofty genius who feels himself bound, in 
 conformity to irresistibly powerful influ- 
 ences, to gauge his work by a double 
 standard — the parts of which are hostile 
 between themselves. 
 
 Among them ."China "-has been re- 
 garded as the most successful in that 
 difficult endeavor. It is a play which 
 though observing the rules of the clas- 
 sic drama, yet teems in many scenes 
 with true pathos and dramatic incident 
 which are the offspring of modern, in 
 contradistinction to ancient, living. 
 One of the most remarkable characters 
 in all dramatic literature is the ^Emilia 
 of "Cinna." The Emperor Augustus had 
 murdered her father, but his favorite, 
 whom he loved and confided in so much 
 as to desire to divide with him the Em- 
 pire, was her lover, Cinna. The con- 
 flict in this noble young woman's mind 
 between her love for Cinna and her de- 
 sire to be revenged on the Emperor is 
 managed with distinguished ability. 
 There are passages in this drama that are 
 equal to the best in any dramatic poet. 
 
 Yet this enforced compliance with 
 rules which he could not fail to know
 
 142 LECTURES ON LITER A TURE. 
 
 as exacting and wrong certainly ham- 
 pered his genius, and to some degree 
 cooled that poetic passion which was 
 his by nature, and which is so necessary 
 for the highest success. In taking his 
 heroes and heroines from Grecian and 
 Roman story, he could not but impart to 
 them that too stately carriage which is 
 never consistent with true pathos. In 
 his hands the Roman remains, not quite 
 but almost, a Roman still, an inevitable 
 consequence to the dramatist, who, in- 
 stead of addressing the men and women 
 of his own generation, imagines himself 
 addressing those of two thousand years 
 ago. 
 
 The man who stood and who yet stands 
 at the head of the classic, the principal 
 school of French literature, is Boileau. 
 If the age of Louis XIV. may properly 
 be called the Augustan age of French 
 literature, Boileau with even greater 
 fitness may be said to -be, as he has of- 
 ten been styled, the Horace of that age. 
 With powers thought to be sufficient for 
 the production of a great epic, Boileau 
 chose rather to be a Horace than a Virgil. 
 
 His perfect education, his thorough
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. 143 
 
 command of the French language, his 
 eminently critical mind, led him to be a 
 corrector of the faults of others' works 
 rather than a producer of great mas- 
 terpieces of his own. His first produc- 
 tion was his satires ; and then his 
 epistles. With a freak of genius like 
 that which actuated Pope in "The Rape 
 of the Lock," he produced his mock 
 heroic epic of " Lutrin," founded on the 
 disputes of the monks of Chartreux. 
 
 His satires fall below those of Hor- 
 ace ; but his epistles have been asserted 
 to be the best of their kind in the liter- 
 ature of all ages. It was as a critic 
 that Boileau was most highly esteemed. 
 In this respect he was without a rival 
 in his day, occupying the same relative 
 position in France that Dr. Johnson did 
 in England a century later. He was 
 not only powerful like Johnson, but he 
 was honest like him. Although a cour- 
 tier he was never a sycophant ; and 
 many anecdotes are told of the manly 
 independence which, during a long 
 service, he maintained at the court of 
 the most willful and despotic monarch 
 that ever sat upon the throne of France,
 
 II. 
 
 The Age of Louis XIV. 
 
 In one respect, at least, the age of 
 Louis XIV. was fitly called the Au- 
 gustan age of French Literature. It 
 took its name from that great mon- 
 arch in whose person were united all 
 the powers of the empire for every pur- 
 pose, domestic and foreign. In the Ro- 
 man Empire whoever would be notable 
 or prosperous must repair to Rome and 
 solicit patronage from the great and 
 only source of power. Wherever there 
 was a man of talent, whether in Gaul or 
 Hispania, whether in Greece or Illyria, 
 whether in Scythia or Thracia, that man 
 came to Rome and laid his aims and his 
 ambition at the feet of the Emperor 
 Augustus Cagsar, and thus the age, 
 abounding as it did in eminent names, 
 names grown eminent under the pat- 
 ronage of that potentate, was styled 
 the Augustan. 
 
 So it was, preeminently, during the 
 
 (H4)
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. 145 
 
 period of Louis XIV., the longest reign- 
 ing, the most prosperous, the most mag- 
 nificent that Europe has ever seen. For 
 seventy-two years that man was king of 
 the French. The feudal and popular 
 strifes had been settled by Richelieu 
 and Mazarin before he came upon the 
 throne. He came, too, when the liter- 
 ary renaissance of the French people 
 had gotten fairly under way. The 
 Academy was fully established, the 
 French language was rising under its 
 influence to become the most polished 
 and courtly of human tongues, and the 
 reunions at the Hotel de Rambouillet 
 and the Saturday receptions of Made- 
 moiselle Scuderi had served already to 
 concentrate at Paris the greater portion 
 of the literary talent of the country. 
 Never was there a young monarch so 
 gifted by nature and manners to take 
 the lead of a people under such condi- 
 tions. The graces of his person, his 
 royal demeanor, his boundless conde- 
 scension and munificence, made him at 
 once the idol of his people; and the 
 brilliant success of his foreign wars en- 
 abled him to preserve his popularity to 
 L.L.— 10
 
 146 LECTl 'RES ON L I TERA T URE. 
 
 the very last. Yet he was the most ar- 
 bitrary, the most lofty-minded monarch 
 that ever sat upon the French throne. 
 His policy was early foreshadowed, 
 when, on an occasion while his minis- 
 ters were speaking of the State, he cut 
 them short with the words, " The State, 
 it is I." 
 
 It was on this idea that he constituted 
 the State, that the power, the govern- 
 ment, the genius, the glory of France 
 were concentrated in himself, which 
 controlled him ever afterwards, and 
 made his government the most purely 
 personal that any country in Europe has 
 ever had. Already Paris had become 
 more avowedly a capital than London, 
 or Vienna, or Madrid. Such had been 
 the policy of the controlling spirits of 
 the last two reigns. 
 
 Under Louis XIV. Paris became 
 everything for France. The residence 
 of the grand monarch ! every idea that 
 was great or of any importance must 
 originate there, or repair there for de- 
 velopment and successful operation ; 
 every man of genius, of whatever kind, 
 must not only visit the capital, but there
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. 147 
 
 he must abide, and draw the supplies 
 for prosecuting his work from that one 
 grand inexhaustible, source — the king. 
 
 The books are numberless that tell 
 of the splendor of the Court of Louis 
 XIV.: its boundless expensiveness; its 
 contrast with the life of the common 
 people, both in the country and in the 
 towns. The great wonder, in reading 
 of these things now, is how long this 
 contrast was allowed to endure, and 
 how unresistingly a brave people could 
 tolerate poverty, oppression, and exac- 
 tion in order to sustain these splendors 
 of a monarch and his favorites. But of 
 this condition we are not to speak, ex- 
 cept as to its influence upon the litera- 
 ture of the nation. It is marvelous how 
 that literature did develop, and how it 
 was directed by that monarch and his 
 court. 
 
 In the time of the Caesars the men 
 of letters conceived their thoughts in 
 Rome. There they put them upon pa- 
 per, or if elsewhere, it was, as in the 
 case of poor Ovid, because of their 
 banishment, wherein they longed to be 
 recalled to the capital. The themes
 
 148 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 for Virgil and Horace were the sover- 
 eign himself, or his ancestors, fables 
 among the demigods ; and of Seneca 
 they were the heroes of Grecian story, 
 all of royal and some of heavenly de- 
 scent. The things they celebrated in 
 verse were such as were meant to re- 
 mind their imperial master of what it 
 was, how grand! how felicitous! to be 
 the monarch of a great people. The 
 works which they created were master- 
 pieces of genius ; they were destined to 
 endure for all time ; they represented 
 to perfection the height of the civiliza- 
 tion of the times in which they were 
 produced ; and when, in the overthrow 
 of that civilization, they were neglected 
 and cast aside, the literature of the new 
 civilization seemed as if it never could 
 begin until these works were brought 
 forth again and the love and admira- 
 tion for them revived. 
 
 Now, in France this revival was com- 
 paratively late. In Spain and in Italy 
 it had taken place long before ; and 
 those nations, in time exchanging the 
 ancient models for those of romantic 
 historic, had made a splendid career,
 
 FRENCH L ITER. I TUR E. 149 
 
 which, however, endured only for a few 
 generations. Spanish and Italian liter- 
 ature were in their decline when the 
 French first began on its full career. 
 Germany had no national literature ; 
 and the English were forming their 
 own on its own isolated, irregular 
 methods. And in this we can perceive 
 some of the reasons of that direction to 
 French literature given first by Ron- 
 sard and his brethren of the Pleiade, 
 led along by Richelieu, and finally as- 
 sumed and concentrated in the court of 
 Louis XIV. 
 
 The men who controlled the opinions 
 of France, believed that the decline of 
 the literature of Italy and Spain was to 
 be attributed to that romantic spirit 
 which had led these nations to abandon 
 Greek and Roman forms, and, taking 
 the heroes of modern Europe, celebrate 
 their achievements after the fashion of 
 the first Christian lyric poets, even as 
 ancient tragedy had risen out of the 
 lyrical pieces of the first rude minstrels 
 of Greece. They believed that for a 
 modern literature to be great, and to 
 continue great, it must resume these
 
 150 LECTURES <>N LITERATURE. 
 
 ancient models which seemed to be per- 
 fect, and the only perfect ones. These 
 opinions, besides the examples of Spain 
 and Italy, had other foundations in that 
 arbitrary policy which, during several 
 reigns, had been forming the govern- 
 ment of France upon the model of that 
 of the Caesars, under which all the 
 great works of literary genius were de- 
 voted to celebratinof the deeds of those 
 with whose fortunes only the great of 
 earth were in sympathy. 
 
 To the people of France, the com- 
 mon people, it was interesting to attend 
 upon representations of the deeds of 
 the brave Christian warrior, who had 
 done so much for Spain in her long 
 mighty struggles with the Moors ; but 
 to that court at Paris, the Cid was not 
 a man to be thought about in compari- 
 son with the great kings of Greek and 
 Roman story ; and so, when Corneille's 
 first and greatest tragedy appeared, the 
 Academy, at the instigation of the Car- 
 dinal minister, inquired not whether it 
 had pleased — for it had pleased, the 
 people wept and shouted at the exploits 
 of the great captain — but if it ought
 
 FRENCH LITER A 77 r RE. 151 
 
 to have pleased. And they decided 
 that it ought not ; and for the remain- 
 der of his life, as we have seen, Cor- 
 neille, so far as possible, was made to 
 conform to the exactions of those who 
 controlled the public opinions uf 
 France. 
 
 It was thus that began in France 
 that classicism, as it has always been 
 called, which, in the drama, especially, 
 at least the serious drama, has always 
 prevailed ; and which has rendered 
 French dramatic literature, in spite of 
 the greatness of some of the men who 
 have cultivated it, less national and less 
 considerable than that of any European 
 nation. 
 
 RACINE. 
 
 The tragic poet, who was more fully 
 than Corneille the production of the 
 classicism enjoined by the court of 
 France, was Racine. His was a nature 
 religious like that of Corneille, but 
 more refined and tender. Nearly ex- 
 actly contemporary with the king, and 
 held to the court through his friend the 
 powerful Boileau, his muse early sought
 
 152 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 out the great names in classic history 
 and fable. His first, celebrated in the 
 " Thebai'de," were the unhappy sons of 
 GEdipus, long ago immortalized by the 
 pen of Sophocles. Then came his 
 "Alexandre," with Porus, the giant 
 King of India ; then " Andromaque," 
 wife of the great Hector; then "Britah- 
 nicus," telling of the rivalry between 
 this great Roman and the Emperor 
 Nero for the love of Junia; then "Bere- 
 nice;" then "Baiazet;" then " Mithri- 
 date;" then "Iphigenie;"then "Phedre," 
 the miserable wife of Theseus. Later 
 in life his mind turned more to religious 
 
 o 
 
 thoughts, and he wished to become a 
 monk of the Order of the Carthusians. 
 Diverted from this purpose, he chose 
 for his themes the actions of Scripture 
 characters, and produced his " Esther 
 and Athalie." 
 
 Like Corneille, Racine was qualified 
 by nature for the greatest heights of 
 tragedy, if his genius, like Shake- 
 speare's, could have been unfettered. 
 But the very names of his dramas show, 
 in obedience to the ruling- ideas of his 
 time, that he considered the utmost sue-
 
 FRENCH L IT ERA T URE. 1 53 
 
 cess possible to modern dramatic effort 
 was an approximation to the works of 
 the great ancients. Yet, when a man 
 of genius essays to work, no matter 
 after what model, he will accomplish 
 great things, and that genius will assert 
 itself after its own individual and inde- 
 pendent bent in spite of the trammels 
 that would hold it in an ordered way. 
 We have seen in Corneille how passion, 
 genuine, natural and irregular, would 
 sometimes burst forth into utterance 
 that would almost put to the blush the 
 solemn dignity of the ancient drama. 
 So Racine, though professing to follow 
 at one time the great dramatists and at 
 another Corneille, would bring out the 
 tenderness of his own nature, that drew 
 tears of sympathy which the pitiful feel 
 for distress in all conditions of life. 
 
 In such a condition of things, with a 
 great writer, it was but natural that his 
 female characters should surpass the 
 male. A good woman, gentle, sensi- 
 tive, pure-minded, in any state of so- 
 ciety is the type of her class every- 
 where. There may be several kinds of 
 heroes. A hero in the early days of
 
 154 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 Thebes, or of Mycenae, was not the 
 same with a hero of Spain or modern 
 Italy. But a good woman, such as the 
 noble wife of Hector, may illustrate one 
 age as well as another. The male char- 
 acters of Racine, though bearing such 
 names as CEdipus and Pyrrhus, and 
 Theseus and Polynices, were at last the 
 courtiers of that palace* of Versailles, 
 towering far above whom was the 
 Grande Monarque, whose unapproach- 
 able greatness must forever keep theirs 
 in subordination. But his women were 
 the types of excellent womanhood, which 
 in all society is everywhere the same. 
 A fair example of Racine's female 
 characters is Andromaque. All are 
 familiar with the history of this woman, 
 who, in the palmy days of Troy, was 
 the wife of Hector, the eldest and 
 bravest of the sons of Priam, and the 
 mother of his only son, Astyanax. At 
 the fall of the ancient city the young 
 widow fell into the hands of Pyrrhus, 
 the bastard son of Achilles, who had 
 slain her husband. The conqueror fell 
 in love with his captive, though he was 
 espoused to Hermione, daughter of
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. 155 
 
 Menelaus and Helen. It is most touch- 
 ing to witness the struggles in the mind 
 of this woman between the respect for 
 the dead and her sense of duty to the 
 living. Andromaque, daughter of Ee- 
 tion of Cilicia, had been noted for her 
 affection for her husband. It was told 
 of her that she used to feed his horses 
 with her own hand. The most tender 
 and touching episode in the Iliad is 
 that parting scene between the husband 
 and his wife when he went forth to meet 
 the great Achilles, who was destined to 
 slay him and drag his body around the 
 walls of the city. Pyrrhus offered on 
 the one hand the rebuilding of Troy 
 and the placing of Astyanax, her's and 
 Hector's son, upon the throne ; on the 
 other hand the destruction of the last 
 remnant of the Trojan race. What will 
 this relict of a brave man, and the 
 mother of an only son, do in such an 
 emergency? For the sake of her son. 
 too young to feel the dishonor and the 
 resentment, looking far forward to his 
 forgiveness when he shall be restored 
 to the throne of his ancestors, and be 
 thinking of her in the shades below, her
 
 156 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 love for her offspring triumphs over her 
 honor for her departed husband, and 
 she gives up herself, everything, to the 
 base conqueror. In accordance with 
 the usages of the classic drama, which 
 required the preservation of the unities 
 of time and place, the heroines (like 
 the heroes) must have their confidential 
 friends with whom they converse in the 
 intervals of the action of the play. In 
 the conversations between Andromaque 
 and her confidante, there is a most 
 touching delicacy. This is to be seen 
 in the instructions which she gives as to 
 how this friend is to speak with her son 
 when she — his mother — is no more. 
 The boy's mind, as it grows from child- 
 hood forward, is to be kept full of the 
 images of his great father. " Tell him," 
 she says, in effect, " of what manner of 
 man his father was, when Troy stood, 
 and he was her main bulwark. Tell 
 him how the kings and mighty men 
 both of Asia and of Europe trembled 
 at mention of the name of Hector." 
 These last commands are ended with 
 those few words wrung from a mother's 
 heart which could not withhold their
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. 157 
 
 utterance, " And sometimes speak to 
 him of his mother, also." 
 
 It was this tenderness in the heart of 
 Racine, which made him of all the 
 dramatists, the most successful in the 
 delineation of the sentiment of love, 
 especially of love in woman, where it 
 pours itself forth, fresh and pure, with- 
 out the worldly ambitions which con- 
 trol this passion in the hearts of men. 
 He had all the warmth and the enthu- 
 siasm of a modern chevalier ; and, in 
 spite of the rules to which his muse was 
 subjected, succeeded in creating many 
 scenes in which the heart was allowed 
 to pour itself forth in that irregular 
 tide of feeling which is natural, in all 
 conditions of society, to those who feel 
 in the profoundest depths of their being. 
 
 It was the tragic drama that was es- 
 pecially hampered by the constraints of 
 classicism. There is in the nature of 
 sportiveness a sort of independence of 
 all regular rules, which will assert it- 
 self, and whose assertion is necessarily 
 uncontrollable. A man may refrain 
 from weeping, at least from exhibiting 
 the outward signs of weeping, and
 
 158 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 often the deepest and always the most 
 dignified grief is that which is endured 
 in silence and confined within the heart 
 of the sufferer. Such was the tone of 
 the griefs in the classic drama, depar- 
 tures from which, by modern tragic 
 poets, were so discouraged by the judg- 
 ment of the controlling critics of France. 
 
 But mirth is not subject to such con- 
 trol. Whoever feels like laughing 
 must laugh in spite both of the inhibi- 
 tions of others and even his own re- 
 solves. Indeed, laughter is the more 
 genuine and irrepressible when such in- 
 hibitions and restraints are placed be- 
 fore its expression. How true it is that 
 often a trifling occurrence, which, in or- 
 dinary circumstances, would scarcely 
 move a smile, yet, when it happens in 
 conjunction with serious things, and we 
 feel that mirthfulness is improper, leads 
 us to overleap the restraint and break 
 out into shouts of laughter. 
 
 In the midst of a society surrounding 
 such a court as that of Louis XIV., the 
 comic drama must rise speedily, and to 
 its highest height. The same hin- 
 drances, in kind though not in degree,
 
 FRENCH LITER A Tl '1: E. \ 59 
 
 were in France as in Spain, when the 
 people began to desire some other fun 
 besides that uncertain sort that was 
 afforded by the religious plays. 
 
 MOLlfeRE. 
 
 The modern French comic drama 
 had struggled along, and mostly in the 
 provinces. 
 
 For many years a young man fol- 
 lowed in the train of a strolling com- 
 pany. He had been all over France, 
 and became acquainted with the many 
 lighter phases of French character. 
 Before then he had learned all about 
 Paris, his native city, where his father 
 being the tapissier (upholsterer) to the 
 royal household, he had opportunies of 
 seeing the ridiculous in its largest ex- 
 hibitions. From an actor he became a 
 dramatist. His first drama, "L'fitourdi," 
 had carried Lyons by storm ; and the 
 next year, 16-"4, his " Le Depit Amou- 
 reux," had a similar success in Langue- 
 doc. By this time he made bold to 
 come to Paris where was a young king, 
 gay, wilful, already preparing in his 
 heart to place himself above the consti-
 
 160 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 tuted authorities of the Church. It 
 was a bold stroke young Moliere made 
 for the applause of the capital, but it 
 was well studied, aimed with matchless 
 precision, and its fall was most trium- 
 phant. 
 
 I spoke in my last lecture of the 
 Hotel de Rambouillet, and the decline 
 underwent by the standard established 
 there at the Saturday receptions of 
 Madamoiselle Scuderi. By this time 
 the controlling tone of Parisian culti- 
 vated society had passed to the court, 
 and yet the wits of both sexes who 
 assembled at the salons of this lady 
 clung to the sentimentalities of D'Urfee 
 and his set. Moliere opened his theatre 
 in Paris with his "Precieuses Ridicules," 
 in which these sentimentalists were 
 exposed to such ridicule that they were 
 scattered and hushed forever. In one 
 night Moliere rose into universal favor. 
 
 Close upon " Precieuses Ridicules " 
 followed " Le Cocu Imaginaire, " 
 L'ficole de Maris," " Les Facheux," 
 Le Malade Imaginaire," "Le Medecin 
 Malgre Lui, " Le Bourgeois Gentil- 
 homme " and " Tartuffe." In "Tar-
 
 FRENCH L 1 TERA TUR E. ] Q 1 
 
 tuffe," which is considered his most 
 powerful drama, he painted the hypo- 
 crite in colors that are the most striking 
 that this character has ever appeared 
 withal. The popularity of these dramas, 
 the boundless fun which they produced, 
 and sometimes the approach they made 
 to profanation of sacred things, so 
 alarmed the Church that they succeeded 
 in obtaining an order for the suspension 
 of the " Theatre Illustre," as Moliere 's 
 was called; but in one way and another 
 the order was avoided by the conniv- 
 ance of the monarch, and in writing 
 plays and in acting the leading parts 
 himself, Moliere spent the remainder 
 of his life, actually dying while pre- 
 senting his last play " Argon." 
 
 The plays of Moliere were exactly of 
 the kind suited to that society and to 
 the French. Even these fun-making 
 works must partake to some degree of 
 the formal ideas of the times derived 
 from classic models. In the midst of the 
 fun which comes from healthy laughter, 
 there was the laugh of derision and 
 contempt which comes from the sight 
 of meanness and villainy, and the shout 
 L.L.— 11
 
 162 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 of triumph at their exposure and pun- 
 ishment. 
 
 In Moliere's last years there was 
 that to impart to his life a bitterness 
 which of all others is perhaps of the 
 keenest suffering. At forty years of 
 age he married a pretty young actress 
 of seventeen, whose coquetries rendered 
 his existence miserable. There is in 
 this life scarcely to be found a condi- 
 tion less to be envied than that of a 
 man thus mated, whose efforts to appear 
 younger than he is for the purpose of 
 holding an impossible love subject him 
 to constant failure and unending ridi- 
 cule. Partly from this cause, partly 
 from the conditions of that society, his 
 plays, though very great, lack that 
 genial, healthy humor which belongs to 
 English comedy, which a man may en- 
 joy without one drop of the bitterness 
 that comes either from hate or from 
 comtempt. 
 
 LAFONTAINE. 
 
 Next to Montaigne, Lafontaine is 
 probably the writer that is most read by 
 Frenchmen. Contemporary with Mo-
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. 1(53 
 
 Here, he was too good naturecl and too 
 indolent to be hurt by the latter's supe- 
 rior success as a dramatist. I mention 
 him along with Moliere, because incom- 
 parably lower than he as a comic dram- 
 atist, he was before any of the remain- 
 der in his time. Of his dramas, only 
 one, " The Enchanted Cup," was ever 
 able to hold a considerable place either 
 upon the stage or in the minds of read- 
 ers. The great fame of Lafontaine 
 is founded partly on his Tales, but 
 mostly on his Fables. The former have 
 long ceased to be read with the avidity 
 which they first inspired, because the 
 purer state of modern society has be- 
 come offended by their indecency. 
 
 Lafontaine was the very weakest 
 character of his generation. He de- 
 serted his wife and child simply be- 
 cause he could not endure the trouble 
 of taking care of anybody, even him- 
 self. A niece of Cardinal Mazarin, who 
 had been banished for a season from 
 court to the Chateau Thierry, which 
 was under his charge, took him with 
 her on her return to Paris, introduced 
 him at court, and for the rest of his life
 
 164 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 one and another of the wealthy took 
 care of him. 
 
 It was a singular attitude which 
 Lafontaine ever maintained in that 
 splendid society. He was the butt of 
 universal ridicule. His talk, whether 
 of books, of politics, or ordinary mat- 
 ters, was the very incarnation of ab- 
 surdity. Of principles, or opinions of 
 any sort, he had none. He praised 
 whatever was powerful, whatever was 
 fashionable, and he maintained that 
 whoever did not do the same was a 
 fool. He laughed immoderately some- 
 times at the most serious things, really 
 believing them to be funny. Rabelais 
 was the great buffoon of France and 
 of the world. One day Lafontaine 
 seriously asked, in a circle of distin- 
 guished persons, which they considered 
 the greater humorist — Rabelais or St. 
 Augustine. He hung onto first one 
 then another of the court, until the last, 
 Madame de la Sabliere, who had him 
 when he was extremely old, concluding 
 to diminish her establishment, wrote 
 thus to a friend: "I have dismissed all 
 my people, except my dog, my cat,
 
 FRENCH LITER A Ti 7.7'. 105 
 
 and Lafontaine." When she died, an 
 acquaintance hearing the news, and 
 starting to repair to the house in order 
 to fetch the old man away, met him in 
 the street crying like a child. " I was 
 on my way to you," said he. 
 
 But when this unpracticable creature 
 took up his pen then it was that he 
 charmed as no other man of his day, and 
 but one of any other time could charm. 
 Without accuracy, and without reason- 
 able sequence in thinking, with little 
 inventive power, and with most careless 
 observation, he wrote with a piquancy 
 that infatuated all readers. His gift in 
 the felicitous expression of his native 
 language was unequaled. The inter- 
 mingling of the pathetic and the hum- 
 orous is more harmonious than in the 
 style of any writer of the world; so is 
 that of the wise and the simple. Of all 
 story tellers, at least of stories short 
 and of little import, he was the most in- 
 teresting. His fables, his greatest work, 
 in which he playfully satirized the weak- 
 nesses he was witness to, and which dis- 
 played himself in that gay court, so 
 illustrative are they of the things of
 
 1 1 ,i ! LECTURES ON LITER A TURE. 
 
 ^ which they were the types, have been 
 styled the true, the only epic poem of 
 France. 
 
 BOSSUET, BOURDALOUE, MASSILLON. 
 
 France has undoubtedly produced a 
 larger number of great orators than any 
 other country. It is but reasonable that 
 these should have first appeared within 
 the bosom of the church. For, besides 
 the superior grandness of those themes 
 on which a preacher had to discourse, 
 all other eloquence, outside of that of 
 the pulpit, has never been able to ac- 
 complish much except in a state that is 
 free. 
 
 Pericles, Demosthenes, Cicero, An- 
 thony, Hortensius, Cotta, lived in the free 
 agfes of Greece and Rome. When lib- 
 erty was overturned, and the speech of 
 the orator had to be gauged by the rod 
 of arbitrary power, eloquence left the 
 world to return no more until the restor- 
 ation of the liberty under whose aus- 
 pices it was born. History and tradi- 
 tion tell us of several great orators 
 who rose in the Church when it became 
 delivered from persecution. But soon
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. 167 
 
 after this event the civilization of Eu- 
 rope hastened in its dissolution, the lan- 
 guages of Greece and Rome ceased to 
 be the spoken languages of the world; 
 and eloquence, even with the free, must 
 wait for the establishment of other 
 tongues. 
 
 Under Louis XIV. none but a 
 Churchman could be an orator, for the 
 great questions of politics were not set- 
 tled by discussion, but according to 
 the will of the monarch. Even in the 
 Church, eloquence could not rise until 
 the French language could take on that 
 development which has made it, of all 
 modern tongues, perhaps the most suit- 
 ed for oratorical expression. Of that 
 long list of eloquent divines for which 
 that age was distinguished, Bossuet, 
 Bourdaloue and Massillon are the most 
 distinguished. The first was a Secular, 
 the second a Jesuit, the third a Brother 
 of the Oratory founded by St. Philip Neri. 
 
 The praise of exquisite reasoning, 
 conjoined with a diction that was per- 
 fect in its finish, belongs to Bourdaloue, 
 as well as the greatest reputation for 
 genuine humble piety.
 
 168 '■ El 'TVRES ON L 11 ERA Tl 1. 1 . 
 
 Massillon was greatest in portraying 
 the terrors of living without God in the 
 world and going unprepared to meet 
 His judgment. 
 
 Bossuet was the great combatant for 
 rightful authority, first the rightful au- 
 thority of the King of Kings, and after- 
 wards, and in too near succession, that 
 of the King of France. In genius, in 
 lofty commanding power of words, he 
 was the greatest of this great trio. 
 But for one infirmity he would perhaps 
 be considered universally, as he has 
 been by many, the greatest pulpit ora- 
 tor of all ages. Devout, ardent, full of 
 faith in Christianity and the authority 
 of the Church, if he had lived under a 
 monarch less despotic, or been a braver 
 man, there was no height possible to 
 human endeavor that he might not have 
 reached. But he loved his King, he 
 loved more than a subject, and one 
 sprung as he was from the bourgeoisie, 
 that exertion of despotic power which 
 claimed to have over France a control 
 similar to that which the Almighty had 
 over the Universe. The infirmity led 
 him if not to flatter his sovereign, at
 
 //'.'.' v, n LITERATURE. 1(J9 
 
 least to excuse, or not to oppose many 
 of his actions, which were destined to 
 inflict mournful injuries both upon the 
 Church and upon France. Not that he 
 ever yielded entirely to this despotism; 
 and it was but another evidence of the 
 splendor of his talents that he could so 
 write, and especially so speak, as to be 
 the admired of all parties. He had 
 learned in youth all the requirements of 
 a courtier, being when only seventeen 
 years of age one of the favorites in the 
 Blue Room of the Marquise de Ram- 
 bouillet, and he profited by this early 
 education. He was the court preacher, 
 and certainly never man knew so well 
 how to preach before a powerful mon- 
 arch, and no man, statesman or preach- 
 er, ever knew better than he how to 
 coast along that dangerous line between 
 such a servile subservience as would 
 stunt genius, and especially the attain- 
 ment of great oratorical renown, and the 
 independence of spirit that must endan- 
 ger the favor of such a monarch as 
 Louis XIV. — at once the greatest, the 
 most powerful and the most imperious 
 in all modern times. If Bossuet had
 
 170 LECTURES OX LITERATURE. 
 
 been a braver priest, and if his courage 
 had not been molested, there is no cal- 
 culating the blessings he might have 
 been to the Church of whose principles 
 he was a representative. 
 
 Louis XIV. was a Catholic, but such 
 was the enormity of his pride, that he 
 could not endure that it should be said 
 that the head of the Church was higher 
 than the head of France. Hence arose 
 that Gallican Church, which, though 
 never daring to avow hostility to the 
 See of Rome, yet for two hundred years 
 was to that See a cause of trouble and 
 anxiety. Like all other errors it must 
 pass away in time. 
 
 Bossuet was a very great man. 
 There is no saying now if he could have 
 hindered the rise of Gallicanism. It is 
 most probable that he could not, and 
 that he knew he could not. If so, then 
 it is probable that he considered how 
 injurious it would be to the Church, if 
 an open hostility to the ambitious claims 
 of the reigning monarch should de- 
 prive his country and his generation of 
 the service that his magnificent gifts 
 could render in those fields that were
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. \"J\ 
 
 yet left" for their exertion. There is no 
 doubt, that, great preacher as he was, 
 devout Catholic as he was, he loved the 
 splendors of that splendid court; he 
 loved the numerous suite, the costly in- 
 signia which the monarch, munificent 
 as he was proud, allowed to the favor- 
 ite bishop of his dominions. Then, 
 such was the adroitness of that mon- 
 arch, that his own claims were not put 
 forth in such guise as to painfully 
 shock the common Catholic sentiment 
 of France. Bossuet therefore believed, 
 or he acted as if he believed, that he 
 could be true both to the King - of 
 
 o 
 
 France and the Pope of Rome, and that 
 he could most usefully employ his great 
 talents in combating the enemies of 
 both. 
 
 A work that has taken, destined for 
 all time, its place among the standard 
 works of theological controversy, is 
 " Les Varietes " a work which shows 
 that he was not less gifted with the 
 pen than with the tongue. 
 
 Another shadow upon the fame of 
 Bossuet was cast by his treatment of 
 one of the very best and loveliest men
 
 172 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 that ever lived, who was about thirty 
 years his junior, but whose rapid rise 
 made him a rival to the great preacher, 
 both in the nation and at the court, 
 This was Fenelon. A native of the 
 province of Perigord, educated at the 
 Du Plessis College in Paris, having re- 
 ceived holy orders at the Seminary of 
 St. Sulpice, made superintendent of an 
 institution for the reception of female 
 converts, his first work was on the " Ed- 
 ucation of Girls, " a work which, though 
 written by a very young man, has ever 
 since been regarded as one of the best 
 standards created at any time on that 
 theme. Unfortunate as it was for his 
 own peace of mind, it was fortunate for 
 the rest of the world that he was se- 
 lected by the monarch as tutor of his 
 grandson and heir apparent to the 
 crown — the young Duke of Burgundy. 
 Herein was the most beautiful relation- 
 ship that ever obtained between teacher 
 and pupil. Perhaps never was under- 
 taken such a task by one more fitted 
 for its duties and more faithful in their 
 discharge, and perhaps never was a 
 pupil more susceptible to the benign
 
 FRENi II LITEBA TV RE. ] 73 
 
 influences of so great a teacher. The 
 teacher, while imparting to his pupil 
 the knowledge of general things neces- 
 sary to be learned by all youths in 
 schools, led this boy with the promise 
 of a great kingdom into the study of 
 the great exemplars good and bad of 
 all times. He pointed out to him the 
 benignant careers of the former, and 
 made him remark in those of the latter 
 the misery that comes from evil deeds, 
 not only upon the sufferers, but the in- 
 flictors. He led that young, docile 
 mind to consider how glorious may be 
 the rule of a prince who labors continu- 
 ally for the weal of his people; and how 
 empty is the glory that attains that ex- 
 alted estate, when this first great duty is 
 neglected. 
 
 Between the two an affectionate 
 friendship grew, destined, in spite of 
 future inhibitions to their society, to con- 
 tinue until the untimely death of this 
 young prince in whom there was so 
 much of promise for France. In his 
 hours of leisure from the daily lessons 
 to his charge, he wrote, all in the aid of 
 the office he had in hand, his " Fables,"
 
 174 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 his " Dialogues of the Dead, " his " His- 
 tory of the Ancient Philosophers, " the 
 " Life of Charlemagne, " and began that 
 more famous than these, his " Telemach- 
 us." In return for the signal services 
 he had rendered, he was made, in 1695, 
 Archbishop of Carnbray. 
 
 Soon thereafter began those contro- 
 versies on the subject of Quietism, the 
 advanced party in which, under the lead 
 of Molinos was carried to such extremes 
 that the other party, led by Madame 
 Guyon, was not able to secure the re- 
 spect that was really due to persons who 
 were known to be — many of them — 
 among the most devout members of the 
 Catholic Church. In compassion for 
 Madame Guyon, against whom a perse- 
 cution was begun — a compassion that 
 became more pronounced when she sub- 
 mitted without complaint to the con- 
 demnation of her opinions by the 
 commission appointed for their consid- 
 eration, Bossuet submitted to Fenelon a 
 work which, when the controversy was 
 supposed to be settled, he had written; 
 and asked his endorsement. This work 
 was entitled "States of Prayer." Fene-
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. 175 
 
 Ion refused to give it; and wrote a work 
 which he named " Maxims of the Saints 
 in the Interior Life." This manuscript 
 was surreptitiously published, after 
 having been stolen from the author's 
 study. 
 
 It is sad even now to contemplate the 
 hostility that was engendered between 
 these great prelates, in which the older, 
 backed by the influence of the court, 
 warred with an acrimony of whose re- 
 lenting there has ever been a doubt. 
 Some of the maxims were condemned 
 at Rome, and the younger antagonist 
 quickly bowed before the judgment of 
 the Holy See, recanted everything that 
 had been condemned, and gave to his 
 recantation as much notoriety as was 
 possible. 
 
 Yet such beautiful submission was 
 not enough for that court. The " Tele- 
 machus " had been published in the 
 while, this also surreptitiously. The 
 flatterers of the king persuaded him 
 that this and the other works written 
 for the instruction of the young Duke of 
 Burgundy had been written in covert 
 hostility to his dynasty.
 
 176 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 Was Bossuet among these flatterers? 
 We cannot say with certainty. Some 
 maintain that he was at their head. 
 The great monarch believed, or pre- 
 tended to believe, that he himself was 
 intended in the character of Sesostris; 
 that his minister Louvois was meant in 
 that of Proteselaos; that Eucharis was 
 intended to represent Mademoiselle de 
 Fontanges, one of his female favorites; 
 and Calypso, her who stood at the head 
 of this fond list, Madame de Montespan. 
 
 " Put not your trust in princes," said 
 the wise man. Henceforth Fenelon 
 was confined within the limits of his 
 Archdiocese. There were some who 
 said that Bossuet, touched by the hum- 
 ble submission of his rival to Rome, 
 and the friendlessness to which he had 
 been reduced, strove at last to restore 
 to him the favor of the king without 
 success. Even the young Duke of 
 Burgundy was refused the sight of his 
 beloved preceptor. But he loved him 
 none the less until his death, which was 
 soon after followed by that of him 
 whose precepts had imparted to his 
 youth the principles that made his
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. 177 
 
 young manhood such a promise to the 
 people of France. 
 
 It was a beautiful life; its remainder 
 was spent in the best works to which a 
 priest of God may devote himself. 
 Not many of Fenelon's sermons were 
 preserved. These, however, rank among 1 
 the very highest in pulpit eloquence. 
 L.L.— 12
 
 III. 
 
 Diderot, Voltaire and Rousseau. 
 
 The age of Louis XIV. was eminent- 
 ly prolific in men of genius. The 
 establishment of the French Acad- 
 emy, the congregation of minds of all 
 varieties of p-ifts around a court which 
 liberally encouraged their development, 
 especially where, as was mostly the 
 case, they were devoted to the exalta- 
 tion of the reigning sovereign, opened a 
 vast field for intellectual endeavor. In 
 the pride of his power that sovereign 
 had sought and in some degree succeed- 
 ed in humbling the Church to which 
 France had always been faithful, and 
 establishing one of which he himself 
 was the head. To these endeavors all 
 the talent of the nation, if it expected 
 encouragement, or even if it only aimed 
 to avoid neglect or persecution, must 
 contribute. We have seen how even 
 the eloquent and devout Bossuet was 
 made to play a part in this adulation. 
 (178)
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE, J 79 
 
 This long reign of seventy-two years, 
 the wasting wars, the boundless expen- 
 siveness of the court, its bad morals for 
 which there was a fatal example in the 
 habits of the monarch, the distress and 
 poverty among the common people, all 
 these things produced a state of society 
 on which religion exerted a continually 
 weakening influence. When the aged 
 king died at last, there was not one of 
 his descendants alive except a child, his 
 great-grandson. Then the Regency 
 fell into the hands of the Duke of 
 Orleans; and society degenerated yet 
 further to a degree that a pure mind 
 shudders to read of its revolting abomi- 
 nations. 
 
 In the midst of such a state of things 
 there began to arise a spirit of free 
 thinking in the minds of a numerous 
 body of men of varying intellectual 
 capacities. Yet among them were a 
 few names who in this latter respect 
 towered far above the rest of their 
 countrymen. The spirit of independ- 
 ence at first made serious endeavors 
 with such men as Descartes and Bayle, 
 whose interior lives were comparatively
 
 180 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 pure, and especially in the latter, yet 
 influenced by religious fears if not by 
 other religious considerations. 
 
 In the process of its development it 
 fell under the control of such men as 
 Diderot, D 'Alembert, Voltaire and 
 Rousseau, and from first one and then 
 another position of advancement cul- 
 minated into a degree of lawlessness the 
 equal of which has never been known 
 in the history of mankind. 
 
 The leader of this set, especially in 
 that enterprise from which their gen- 
 uine name was obtained, was Diderot. 
 He had been intended for the Church, 
 but very early left his studies in that di- 
 rection for mathematics, philosophy and 
 sociology. For the purpose of giving 
 wider dissemination to his views, and of 
 obtaining more organized cooperation 
 from his familiars, he began the prepa- 
 ration of that work destined to become 
 forever famous and to impart its name 
 to its contributors — the " Encyclopedic 
 des Arts , des Sciences , et des Me- 
 tiers." 
 
 The preliminary discourse of this 
 vast work was written by D'Alembert
 
 FREXCIT LITERATURE. 181 
 
 whose Christian name, because he could 
 obtain no other by rightful authority, 
 was Jean Le Ronde, which was given 
 to him because at his birth he was left 
 exposed, by his mother, at the door of 
 the church of that name in Paris. 
 These two men were wonderfully gifted 
 for the work they had in hand. The 
 mind of D'Alembert, outside of his so- 
 cial and religious inquiries, was di- 
 rected mostly towards the physical 
 sciences, and his investigations have 
 made him deservedly illustrious in this 
 department of inquiry. 
 
 Diderot, in the intervals when he 
 would rest from his main work, amused 
 himself with writing novels and petty 
 comedies in which religion and social 
 decency were treated with disrespect, 
 derision and hostility. In addition to 
 these a good part of his time was oc- 
 cupied in correspondence with Voltaire 
 and Grimm, and others of that class 
 which show a state of society in France 
 that was scarcely if any better than that 
 of the worst condition of the Roman 
 Empire. 
 
 The Encyclopedia, begun in 1751,
 
 182 LECTURES OH LITERATURE. 
 
 was finally completed in 1769, occupy- 
 ing a period of eighteen years. The 
 editors and the leading contributors 
 were destined thereafter to be known 
 as Encyclopedists, and their influence 
 in small part for good, but mostly for 
 evil, was vast and most prolonged. 
 In that department which was purely 
 evil two names are far more famous than 
 those of Diderot and D'Alembert. 
 
 These are Voltaire and Rousseau. 
 Curious indeed and eventful were the 
 careers of these two men, the most 
 prominent and noxious outgrowth of 
 the society of the eighteenth century. 
 
 An incident or two in the youth of 
 Voltaire illustrates to some degree the 
 immense distance between the higher 
 and lower ranks of society, which con- 
 tributed to form his subsequent career 
 of rebellion against authority of every 
 kind. A satirical writing on the reign 
 of Louis XIV. appeared shortly after 
 his death, and Voltaire, wrongly sus- 
 pected as the author, was imprisoned 
 for a year in the Bastille. On another 
 occasion, when, in a company of wits, he 
 gave to a man of quality a retort which
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. 183 
 
 drew upon him laughter, the man of 
 quality had him flogged in the streets 
 of Paris by his footman. Bent upon 
 revenge, Voltaire took some lessons in 
 fencing and afterwards challenged his 
 enemy. Then he was again thrown 
 into the Bastille for another six months, 
 and released on condition that he would 
 leave the country. 
 
 Such was a sample of that grinding 
 oppression to which the common people 
 of France were subjected during the 
 regency of the Duke of Orleans in the 
 minority of Louis XV. In such a state 
 of things it might be imagined what 
 one from among these common people 
 would do, when, without religious 
 faith, without moral obligation, but 
 with a revengeful, malignant and other- 
 wise evil heart, with invincible audac- 
 ity, with a perfect command of a lan- 
 guage — for some purposes the most 
 perfect of existing tongues — with the 
 highest capacity both to think and to 
 work with rapidity and without cessa- 
 tion, he could have a fair field and 
 length of time. 
 
 He lived to be eighty-four years old,
 
 184 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 and the ninety volumes that he left are 
 the results of that powerful, rapid, 
 ceaseless work. They comprise the 
 only epic poem in the French language, 
 tragedies, comedies, odes, satires, histo- 
 ries, essays, letters, every form of com- 
 position for which pen and paper were 
 ever employed, the most of which were 
 meant to pull down and to destroy 
 whatever existed that was good and 
 precious, either in fact or in the hearts 
 of mankind, and to exalt his own single, 
 selfish self above all beings except that 
 only One whom he acknowledged be- 
 yond humanity, God. In this last one 
 respect he differed from Diderot, the 
 founder of the Encyclopedists. He 
 was an atheist. Voltaire did believe in 
 a God. But he believed only that at 
 first God made the world and set it go- 
 ing, and then retired to let it take care 
 of itself with the use of whatever in- 
 stincts and opportunities it had been 
 provided withal. These instincts and 
 opportunities which fell to his lot, he 
 employed with a freedom which it is 
 wonderful to contemplate. Disregarding 
 the laws which the better part of so-
 
 FRENCH LITER A Tl 'RE. Ig5 
 
 ciety believed God to have made for the 
 government of mankind, and the indi- 
 vidual conduct of its members, keeping 
 himself within, and just within, the pale 
 of human laws, he worked day and 
 night, in season, and out of season, for 
 the advancement of his own ends, which 
 he seemed to regard as hostile to the 
 ends of all the rest of mankind. 
 
 He worked and he made money, not 
 so much by his books, as by trade and 
 lotteries, and other chance speculations. 
 He satirized and sneered at all that was 
 considered good and sacred ; he scoffed 
 at the Church and at Christianity; he 
 laughed at the obligations of mar- 
 riage; and then when death came to 
 him, the approach so terrified him 
 that he became a maniac, and his last 
 struggles were so terrific that they 
 horrified and appalled those who were 
 witnesses to them. It seemed, indeed, 
 as if the furies told of in fable had 
 been let loose upon him when age 
 and imbecility had subdued his power y 
 for wrongdoing and left only remorse 
 and the dread of retribution. 
 
 The life of Voltaire is a curious one
 
 186 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 to study, both as to its representations 
 of an age not long past and of the 
 exhibition it affords of the lengths to 
 which a most gifted intellect will go, 
 when it is entirely broken off from the 
 bonds of religion and any principle of 
 morality and honor. For neither the 
 greatest nor the smallest of his in- 
 firmities was his want of veracity. A 
 falsehood with Voltaire, if it could serve 
 his purposes, was as much prized as the 
 truth. When he first essayed to get 
 into the Academy, although he had 
 spoken and written much against 
 Christianity, he did not hesitate to d-eny 
 both, and when at last, through the 
 influence of Madame de Pompadour, he 
 succeeded on his second application, he 
 returned to his old ways only with 
 increased bitterness. His moral char- 
 acter was the very incarnation of 
 unlicensed profligate evil. In his terror 
 at the last it did indeed seem as if he 
 would have availed himself of the 
 refuse of reliffion, but his furious mad- 
 ness cut him off from that opportunity. 
 In the study of German literature we 
 read about the strange infatuation,
 
 FRENCH LITERA TURF.. 187 
 
 amounting to subserviency, paid by the 
 people of that nation in that period to 
 the French. A part of this was owing 
 to Voltaire who resided for some years 
 at the court of Frederick, afterwards 
 surnamed the Great. This portion of 
 the life of the great Frenchman was 
 extremely interesting in itself, going as 
 did his career through all the shades of 
 relationship from the very height of 
 cordial favoritism down to the extremes 
 of hostility and disgust. Parts of this 
 are laughable, or would be except for 
 the contempt which it inspires. This 
 last-mentioned feeling has never been 
 created in such abundance by any 
 human being who ever lived as by Vol- 
 taire. But his influence upon German 
 literary genius was powerful, and it 
 was pernicious. It was the chief glory 
 of Lessing that he destroyed it and that 
 he did so effectually. 
 
 Retiring from Berlin, and feeling not 
 fully secure in his native country which 
 he had virtually abandoned, and whose 
 best possessions he had vilified, he set- 
 tled, though then sixty-four years old, 
 in a country place near Geneva, where,
 
 188 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 as restless and as ambitious and as pas- 
 sionate as ever before, he continued to 
 work until the last. 
 
 In those eighty-four years of life 
 vouchsafed to this man, his work was as 
 various as it was extensive, in science, 
 art and philosophy, as well as in litera- 
 ture. The world now seldom ever no- 
 tices those philosophical works in which 
 he avowedly sought to overthrow Chris- 
 tianity, and his works on history, science 
 and art, though praised in their day, 
 have been overshadowed by the greater 
 things that have been produced since. 
 He is now of interest to the student of 
 literature, mainly for his dramas, espe- 
 cially his tragic. dramas, in which, with 
 all his varied accomplishments of other 
 sorts he ranks along with Corneille and 
 Racine. 
 
 If Voltaire had been a better man 
 he would far outrank both these men 
 to whom he was superior in genius. 
 Whilst he was in England he had 
 studied well Shakespeare, who was to- 
 tally unknown to the French, and whom 
 they at first considered both a madman 
 and a barbarian ; but from Shakespeare
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. 189 
 
 he got much of the idea of that deeper 
 delineation of passion which the rules of 
 the stately tragic drama excluded. 
 
 The following observations from 
 Schlegel's lectures, are apposite to this 
 discussion : 
 
 " French tragedy from the time of 
 Richelieu developed itself under the 
 favor and protection of the court, and 
 even its scene had, as already observed, 
 the appearance of an ante -chamber. In 
 such an atmosphere, the spectators might 
 impress the poet with the idea that 
 courtesy is one of the original and 
 essential ingredients of human nature. 
 
 But in tragedy men are either 
 matched with men in fearful strife, or 
 set in close strug-p-le with misfortune. 
 We can therefore exact from them only 
 an ideal dignity, far from the nice ob- 
 servance of social punctilios, they are 
 absolved by their situation. So long as 
 they possess sufficient presence of mind 
 not to violate them, so long as they do 
 not appear completely overpowered by 
 their grief and mental agony, the deep- 
 est emotion is not yet reached. The 
 poet may be allowed to take that care 
 for his persons which Caesar, after his 
 death-blow, had for himself , and make 
 them fall with decorum. He must not 
 exhibit human nature in all its repulsive
 
 190 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 nakedness. The most heartrending and 
 dreadful pictures must still be invested 
 with beauty and imbued with a dignity 
 higher than the common reality. This 
 miracle is effected by poetry ; it has its 
 indescribable sighs, its immediate ac- 
 cents of the deepest agony, in which 
 there still runs a something - melodious. 
 It is only a certain full-dress and formal 
 beauty which is incompatible with the 
 greatest truth of expression. Yet it is 
 exactly this beauty that is demanded in 
 the style of a French tragedy. " 
 
 Voltaire labored assiduously to bring 
 the French theatre into a more reasona- 
 ble condition in this respect, and, so far 
 as the important matter of external 
 arrangement was concerned, he suc- 
 ceeded. This was the abolishment of 
 the boxes on either side of the stage in 
 which persons of quality used to sit, 
 whose continued chatterings greatly in- 
 convenienced the actors on the narrow 
 space allowed for their representations. 
 
 His first efforts in the line of the 
 Greeks, were " CEdipe," " Merope " 
 and "Oreste." Descending from the 
 Greeks to the Romans, he had his 
 •• Brutus,'" his " Morte de Caesar," his 
 '• Triumvirat."
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. \\\\ 
 
 But his greatest works were those in 
 which, discarding the forms of the an- 
 cients, here stored to the stage that mod- 
 ern hero of chivalry, which since the 
 time of the Cid had been banished from it. 
 
 Splendid, indeed, are the tragedies of 
 " Zaire, " " Alzire, " " Mahomet, " " Sern- 
 iramis " and " Tancrede. " In " Zaire " 
 the passions of love and jealousy are 
 portrayed in a manner unknown and 
 unimagined by the greatest of the 
 Greeks, and they are only such as can 
 be felt by woman as she has become 
 since Christianity and chivalry have ex- 
 alted her to her proper scale in the be- 
 ing of society. 
 
 In " Alzire " the poet made a picture 
 almost perfect of the struggles of the 
 heroine Alzire. On one side there was 
 the love of her country (Peru), its an- 
 cient, though less cultured, manners, 
 and her first lover there, and what 
 seemed higher obligations in the new 
 sphere to which she was raised. In 
 reading this great drama, one cannot 
 but feel genuine sympathy as in a case 
 of real perplexity befalling the young, 
 the beautiful, and the innocent.
 
 192 LECTURES ON LITERATI' UK. 
 
 In " Mahomet, " horrible as is the 
 plot and violative as it is of history and 
 the personal character of the prophet, 
 yet the passion is such as comports 
 with the loftiest demands of tragedy. 
 
 It is a mark of the wonderful tal- 
 ent of this man that in these two 
 dramas (" Zaire " and " Alzire ") with his 
 own sentiments towards Christianity, he 
 should so well have understood what it 
 could induce a true believer to feel and 
 what to speak. It was as if for the 
 time being he had parted from his infi- 
 delity, and in that interval felt all that 
 fervor which for so many ages has sus- 
 tained and strengthened and animated 
 the sufferers upon the earth. 
 
 But even here the intellectual insin- 
 cerity of Voltaire was evident often. 
 Witness the anecdote of his instructions 
 to a certain actress who was preparing 
 for a part in one of his tragedies. In 
 answer to some of his suggestions, she 
 said, '• Were I to play in this manner, 
 sir, they would say the devil was in 
 me." " Very right," answered Voltaire, 
 " an actress ought to have the devil in 
 her." This shows that at least his own
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. 193 
 
 intellect, not to mention his moral sen- 
 sibility, was below the high standard in 
 tragic feeling, in which the truly great 
 who suffer are not subdued by suffer- 
 ing into expressions inconsistent with 
 manly dignity and womanly delicacy. 
 Voltaire's immense powers, his wit, 
 his satire, his art in reasoning, his per- 
 fect command of words for every form 
 of writing, gave to his principles the 
 most pernicious influence. The follow- 
 ing words of Victor Hugo are emi- 
 nently discriminating : 
 
 " Voltaire leaves us a monument more 
 astonishing by its extent than imposing 
 by its grandeur. It is not an edifice of 
 the august order. It is no palace for 
 kings, it is no hospital for the poor. It 
 is a bazaar elegant and vast, easily 
 moved through, irregular, displaying 
 untold riches flungon mud-heaps, offer- 
 ing to every interest, to every vanity, 
 to every passion, the very thing that 
 suits it best, dazzling to the eye, but 
 rank to the nostril, presenting impuri- 
 ties as pleasures, alive with merchants, 
 tramps, idlers, but seldom showing a 
 priest, or a poor workingman. Here 
 are splendid galleries, thronged inces- 
 santly with wonder-lost crowds; there 
 
 L.L.— 13
 
 194 LECTURES ON LITERA TURK. 
 
 are dark caverns which nobody boasts 
 of ever having visited. Under those 
 sumptuous arcades you can find count- 
 less masterpieces of art and taste, glit- 
 tering with gold and diamonds, but for 
 the bronze statue, with the severe and 
 classic forms of antiquity, you may look 
 *n vain. Decorations for your parlors, 
 and boudoirs, you will find in abund- 
 ance, but no ornaments for your sanc- 
 tuary, for your oratory. And woe to 
 the weak man who has nothing but a 
 soul to lose, if he exposes it to the se- 
 ductions of this magnificent abode, of 
 this monstrous temple in which every- 
 thing is thought of except truth, and 
 everything worshipped except God. " 
 
 When one thinks of those daring 
 
 o 
 
 apostles of evil in the eighteenth century, 
 with the horror that is inevitable, there 
 is mingled in the case of one of 
 them, a commiseration, which is some- 
 thing of a relief, that comes from the 
 indulgence of compassion. Bad as he 
 was, worthless in conduct and in prin- 
 ciples, he was not a defiant scoffer and 
 •hater of virtue and religion. He was 
 not an atheist, nor a deist. 
 
 A low-born Swiss, he had no oppor- 
 tunities for battling against the poor
 
 Ft; KM II L I TEK, 1 77 'RE. 195 
 
 condition to which he was born. His 
 evil, selfish, idle nature, led him to neg- 
 lect his work, to steal for his living; 
 and his strongest attachments were for 
 those low like himself ; but Rousseau, 
 in the midst of his worthlessness and 
 his vices, had some undefined belief in 
 religion, and some fear of that terrible 
 punishment which might befall him in 
 another state of existence. This indefi- 
 nite belief and this fear were not suffi- 
 cient to restrain his evil practices with 
 himself, or with his pen, but they lead 
 us to imagine that under more favorable 
 circumstances his career might have 
 been less intensely hurtful to himself 
 and to society. 
 
 To read the early life of Rousseau is 
 somewhat like reading the life of any 
 tramping thief, who has obtained a pre- 
 carious living by wandering about from 
 place to place, begging what he could 
 not steal, and stealing what he could 
 not beg. The children born of him 
 and Therese, who was yet lower than 
 himself, were sent to the foundlinof- 
 hospital. When at last the kind of 
 talent that he possessed was exhibited,
 
 196 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 he found temporary shelter with first 
 one then another person in France, Eng- 
 land and Switzerland, until death came 
 and put an end to his earthly career. 
 
 After his death there was published 
 his celebrated " Confessions. " He had 
 boasted that no human being had ever 
 written such a record of his own doings. 
 In this he was correct. The history of 
 mankind gives no instance wherein a 
 man with such plainness of speech told 
 the world he left behind him of a career 
 in which the grossness of evil is the 
 ever recurring and almost perpetual 
 theme. The audacity with which this 
 was done almost approached the sub- 
 lime. Rousseau declared that when the 
 judgment day should come he would 
 appear before the great Judge of 
 Heaven and Earth, with his book in his 
 hand, and say that was what he should 
 have to offer in his own defense — his 
 confessions of all or a considerable por- 
 tion of the sins and atrocities that he 
 had committed. 
 
 But what was the secret of the influ- 
 ence of such a man without education, 
 and without principles? First, it was
 
 FRENCH LITERATURE. 197 
 
 the absolute rottenness of the state of 
 society. We do not know, we cannot 
 fully realize, how corrupt was that age 
 of Louis XIV. in France. Not only 
 religion, but honor, seemed to have lost 
 their bearings. Not only men but wo- 
 men had grown to regard an obligation 
 as something which it was both un- 
 manly and unwomanly to keep. Bien- 
 sdances, as they were called, were worth 
 infinitely more than religion and honor. 
 That society would have been, or pre- 
 tended to be, shocked by a young 
 lady's slightest indiscretion; but when 
 once she was married then there was a 
 higher law which was to govern con- 
 jugal conduct, and it required more 
 strength than fell to the lot of most to 
 resist the ridicule which followed upon 
 the faithful discharge of conjugal obli- 
 gations. 
 
 Now, Rousseau saw all the hollowness 
 of such a state of society. If he had 
 been a good man, hating this state as 
 he did, there is no calculating the good 
 he might have done. But he was a 
 savage by nature, and he had gotten to 
 believe that the savage state was better
 
 198 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 for mankind than that in which the 
 people of France were then living. 
 Though not gifted like Voltaire with an 
 elaborate education, Rousseau knew 
 better how to talk and how to write 
 in presenting to the people the ideas 
 of that ideal society in which every- 
 body did as he pleased, and where there 
 was no such thing as relationship be- 
 tween governor and governed, superior 
 and inferior. 
 
 The great works of Rousseau, his 
 " Contrat Social, " his " Nouvelle He- 
 loi'se " and his " iWile" are founded on 
 this idea of unlicensed freedom. A law 
 of any sort was a thing hateful in his 
 eyes, and he made it hateful to a very 
 large portion of the people of his gen- 
 eration. There was much that was sin- 
 cere in his hostility to the pedantry and 
 the affectation and the sneering of Vol- 
 taire and his set. There was much of 
 genuine feeling in Rousseau, in opposi- 
 tion to this artificiality of the upper so- 
 ciety of France. 
 
 Rousseau undertook to lead in a 
 great movement to bring back the days 
 of simple-heartedness. This school be-
 
 FR F.X< 'II L I TERA TURE. 199 
 
 came a sentimental one, but it was of a 
 nature that had neither genuine manli- 
 ness, nor genuine . femininity. It was 
 an indolent longing for ease and free- 
 dom, and unlicensed liberties of all 
 sorts. In the times of the Trouveres 
 and the Troubadours, there was abund- 
 ance of sentiment; but it went along 
 with courage in men and virtue in WO- 
 men, and a sacred regard to God, and 
 truth in both. 
 
 A critic, speaking of Rousseau's in- 
 fluence on German literature of this 
 time, thus talks : 
 
 " An evil conscience has always much 
 to do with sentimentality. It is the 
 more or less clear consciousness of 
 self-produced unmanliness. Rousseau 
 — the weak, unstable Rousseau — now 
 rising to the heights of sublimity, and 
 now sinking to vulgarity, at one time 
 flattering his own weaknesses, at an- 
 other despising himself again — is a 
 personification of the whole species. It 
 is the unchivalrous character of modern 
 times ; it is man disguised in petticoats 
 as a punishment for his cowardice ; it is 
 the temporary reversal of the sexual 
 poles — a transferring of feminine tim- 
 idity, feminine weakness of character,
 
 200 LECTURES ON LTTERA TURE. 
 
 feminine longings, feminine frivolity, 
 feminine vanity and love of finery, 
 feminine excitability, and preeminently 
 of the feminine luxury of tears to the 
 once, vigorous, steadfast, proud, calm 
 and cold man." 
 
 Rousseau — poor, vagabond Rousseau 
 — subsisted always on the charities of 
 others. All his life he was under the 
 thrall of the low, vulgar Therese, with 
 whom later in life he took the marriage 
 bonds which he had taught to be the 
 most useless and oppressive of all. 
 Long before his death he was consumed 
 by the evil passions which he had 
 indulged. They distorted his features, 
 making of him another man whom 
 few persons recognized, and earlier than 
 Voltaire, and for a longer duration, he 
 was a maniac. 
 
 In the midst of the insupportable 
 sufferings of France from the baleful 
 influences of its men of letters, her cry 
 and that of all Europe was shrieked for 
 deliverance. Then came the Revolu- 
 tion, that vast, angry, resistless, con- 
 flagration in which much of good was 
 consumed by the abounding evil that 
 had absorbed it.
 
 Spanish Literature. 
 
 (201)
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE 
 
 Spanish Ballad Poetry, 
 i^|NE of the most interesting themes 
 ^=^ for the study of those who are fond 
 to contemplate the history of mankind, 
 especially in ages long gone by, is the 
 career of the Arab race. To Ishmael, 
 the son of the bondwoman, the proph- 
 ecy came that his hand should be 
 against the hand of other men, and the 
 hand of other men against his. It is a 
 melancholy story which tells of how the 
 free woman, the lawful wife of the Pa- 
 triarch, jealous for the claims of her 
 own offspring, cast out the unhappy 
 Hagar, with her son. in whose veins was 
 the commingled blood of the Hebrew 
 and the Egyptian. Expecting to die 
 in their exile, they were comforted by 
 the Almighty. The boy grew to be a 
 mighty archer, his mother obtained for 
 him a wife from his kindred of Egypt, 
 
 (203) '
 
 204 LECTURES OX LITERA TURE. 
 
 and he dwelt in the wilderness of Paran. 
 A mighty nation sprang from this origi- 
 nal. Ever keeping up their character- 
 istic of hostility to the favored of man- 
 kind, their wars and their conquests are 
 the most thrilling that history has re- 
 corded. 
 
 When the learning of the Greeks and 
 Romans left its native places, it found 
 among the Arabs almost its only reposi- 
 tories. It is one of the most singular 
 facts that to that nation, now in its de- 
 cay, lind yet occupying the deserts in the 
 East, Europe is indebted for its first re- 
 vival of this ancient civilization. Hav- 
 ing taken possession of the northern 
 portions of Africa, under the name of 
 Moors, they extended their conquests 
 across the Mediterranean and founded 
 an empire rivaling that of Bagdad, at 
 Cordova, in Spain. 
 
 This occupation of the peninsula 
 continued for eight hundred years. The 
 invaders came into Europe a people ad- 
 vanced in arts and arms, bringing the 
 lore, not only of the Greeks and the Ro- 
 mans, but that, more fervid and thrill- 
 ing, of the distant East. The religion
 
 SPA NISH LITER ATUR E . 205 
 
 they brought was that strange faith 
 founded by the camel-driver of Mecca, 
 which, after twelve centuries, is still 
 the faith of tens of millions of human 
 beings. They found a people uncul- 
 tured, unused to great wars, simple, un- 
 exceptionably Christian, but brave, pa- 
 triotic, and devotedly attached to their 
 country. They got nothing without re- 
 sistance, but by perseverance they ob- 
 tained, in time, all of that romantic 
 country, except the extreme northwest, 
 where the brave Pelayo, protected by 
 the mountain barriers, maintained for 
 himself and his followers the only inde- 
 pendence of native Spaniards, and saved 
 the national identity of his people. 
 
 But a whole nation could not thus 
 follow its last armies and subsist 
 amongst the fastnesses of the mountains, 
 or on the limited territories of Biscay 
 and the Asturias. The great body of 
 the people must remain in their native 
 places, submit to the conquerors and 
 obtain from them whatever indulgence 
 it might suit their whims to allow in the 
 development of their own separate exis- 
 tence.
 
 206 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 A milder policy characterized this 
 Mahommedan rule in the "West than 
 that which had followed its advance in 
 the East. Except that a double tribute 
 was exacted from the Spaniards, and 
 they were required to pay taxes for 
 their church property, they were 
 treated with leniency, allowed the free 
 exercise of their religious faith, and 
 encouraged in all endeavors for their 
 own well-being. Under such a rule 
 from a vastly more cultivated people, 
 the native inhabitants must necessarily 
 have been assimilated to the foreigners. 
 In the lapse of time they came into the 
 adoption of many of the oriental habits, 
 both intellectual and physical. Span- 
 iards attended upon Moorish princes 
 and chieftains, fought in their wars, 
 learned their literature, and adopted 
 much both of their ways of living and 
 their language. 
 
 Among these Moors of Spain there 
 was an exalted culture, not only of the 
 understanding but of manners. Brave 
 
 o 
 
 and warlike they were, yet gentle and 
 courteous and generous. Being such 
 they engrafted their civilization more
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 207 
 
 easily upon the people. In time those 
 Spaniards who dwelt in their midst 
 were called bv the name of Mozarabes, 
 and were distinguishable from the Moors 
 themselves in almost no respect except 
 their adherence to the faith of Chris- 
 tianity. 
 
 The most despotic acts of the conquer- 
 ors were those in which they required 
 their own language to be taught to 
 their Christian subjects, and to be used 
 by them. But these acts were sub- 
 mitted to. In process of time the 
 language of the natives was well-nigh 
 lost. Christian Bishops had to trans- 
 late the Scriptures into the Arabic 
 language, and in the archives of the 
 cathedral of Toledo, the Archiepiscopal 
 city of Spain, are yet to be seen ecclesi- 
 astical documents in this foreign tongue. 
 
 All historians speak of the splendor 
 of this Moorish empire in Spain. It 
 seemed to be destined to prevail, not 
 only in that country but over all Eu- 
 rope. But with that band who retreated 
 beyond the Northwestern mountains, 
 and preserved their separate existence. 
 the love of country anc 1 their religion
 
 208 LECTURES ON LITERA TURE. 
 
 grew side by side with the hatred of 
 the conquerors of their brethren of the 
 South ; and during those eight hundred 
 years of occupation there was not ab- 
 sent for one hour, from the hearts of the 
 Spanish people, the wish and the reso- 
 lution to drive the invaders back into 
 Africa and repossess the land of their 
 ancestors. How many a battle was 
 fought, how many a knightly deed was 
 enacted during these centuries of con- 
 flict! 
 
 From the Moors the Spaniards had 
 learned the art of singing the exploits 
 of their brave and the charms of their 
 women. Besides, in this border war- 
 fare between two peoples distinguished 
 for the beauty of their daughters and 
 the knightliness of their sons, there 
 were loves necessarily springing up be- 
 tween Spanish knight and Moorish lady, 
 Moorish knight and Spanish lady, all 
 the more ardent because of resistance 
 and of danger. These were to be sung 
 or narrated in lofty-toned Chronicles in 
 a language varying through many a 
 change, according as the separate exis- 
 tences of different bodies of the Spanish
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 209 
 
 people multiplied those changes, until 
 the establishment of the solidarity of 
 the whole. 
 
 When, after the lapse of ages, the 
 patriots from the North had gotten into 
 the South, their countrymen had long 
 lost the tongue of their ancestors, and 
 in all respects, except religion and pa- 
 triotism, had been converted into Moors. 
 Yet there was no one controlling lan- 
 guage even among those Spainards who 
 had lived separate from the Moors. Of 
 the four dialects, Castilian, Galician, 
 Catalonian, Valencian, the Castilian be- 
 came, through political influences, the 
 leading one; but all these, with the dia- 
 lect of the South, which had adopted 
 that of the Moors, were made to unite 
 (only with Castilian preponderance) to 
 form the language, which, in accord 
 with the eventual establishment of na- 
 tionality, was called Spanish. 
 
 The retreat of the Moor was as tardy 
 as his advance had been rapid. It was 
 not until three centuries after the con- 
 quest of Spain that we hear of one 
 great captain, and one great conquest. 
 
 The greatest name that has come out 
 
 L.L.-14
 
 210 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 of the confused annals of the eleventh 
 century is that of Rodrigo Diaz de 
 Bivar, commonly called the Great Cap- 
 tain, sometimes the Campeador, but 
 oftener the Cid. This mighty warrior 
 had founded for his sovereign, Fer- 
 dinand I., the empire of Castile at 
 Burgos. In his many years of heroic 
 warfare he drove the enemies of his 
 country south and southeastward, and 
 his last action was the rescue of Valen- 
 cia far down upon the Mediterranean. 
 The first literary productions of Spain 
 were in honor of the Cid, his exile, his 
 return, his various exploits. I say his 
 exile, for the Spaniards, like other 
 nations, have at times treated their 
 great heroes with ingratitude, and, like 
 Coriolanus with the Volscians, he had 
 to join himself sometimes with the 
 enemies of his country with whom he 
 had found a home and welcome protec- 
 tion. The songs and the chronicles in 
 honor of the Cid were mighty influences 
 in continuing and keeping fervent the 
 religious and patriotic fire of the 
 people. 
 
 Fortunately for the purposes of
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 211 
 
 Spanish literature there came to the 
 throne of Castile a series of monarchs 
 beginning with some who were emi- 
 nently qualified to lead in the career of 
 civilization. Deeply religious, gifted 
 with that stately grace which seems 
 peculiar to Spain, they encouraged their 
 people in all arts useful to the establish- 
 ment of nationality and the devel- 
 opment of their being. Alphonso X. 
 had the Holy Scriptures translated into 
 the Castilian tongue, and this was more 
 than three hundred years before the 
 birth of Martin Luther. Alphonso XI., 
 in the midst of a busy and stormy reign, 
 was not only a poet himself, but he 
 gave encouragement to literature, by 
 making progress in it the condition to 
 favor and offices. 
 
 Not only kings and ministers of state 
 were poets, but dignitaries in the 
 Church, and priests, secular and regular, 
 and occasionally nuns, devoted much of 
 their time to the cultivation of letters. 
 For of all Christian people, the Span- 
 iards have been the most unchangeably 
 religious. I do not say the most devout, 
 but they have been most undeviatingly
 
 212 LECTURES OX LITERATURE. 
 
 attached to their faith, and the most 
 docile to the teachings of the Church. 
 Of that long list of writers in the 
 Spanish language, the most eminent, 
 have, for the greater part, belonged to 
 the clerical profession, and the sweetest 
 poetry of Spain, the serious and the gay, 
 has emanated from the parsonage and 
 the cloister. 
 
 Earliest among those reverend poets 
 whose works are of interest is Gonzalo 
 de Berceo, a secular priest. Of his 
 numerous works that which has been 
 most admired is the " Miracles of the 
 Virgin." I give a translation of the 
 opening passage : 
 
 •' My friends and faithful vassals of Almighty 
 
 God above, 
 If ye listen to my words in a spirit to improve, 
 A tale ye shall hear of piety and love 
 Which afterwards yourselves shall heartily ap- 
 prove. 
 
 "I, a Master in Divinity, Gonzalo Berceo hight, 
 Once wandering as a pilgrim, found a meadow 
 
 richly dight • 
 Green and peopled full of flowers, of flowers 
 
 fair and bright. 
 A place where a weary man would rest him 
 
 with delight. 
 
 "And the flowers I beheld all looked and smelt 
 
 so sweet. 
 That the senses and the soul they seemed alike 
 
 to greet,
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 213 
 
 While on every side ran fountains through all 
 
 this glad retreat, 
 Which in winter kindly warmth supplied, yet 
 
 tempered summer's heat. 
 
 "And of rich and goodly trees, there grew a 
 
 boundless maze, 
 Granada's apples bright, and figs of golden rays. 
 And many other . fruits beyond my skill to 
 
 praise ; 
 But none that turneth sour, and none that e'er 
 
 decays. 
 
 " The freshness of that meadow, the sweetness 
 
 of its flowers. 
 The dewy shadows of the trees, that feel like 
 
 cooling showers. 
 Renewed within my frame its worn and wasted 
 
 powers ; 
 I deem the very odors would have nourished 
 
 me for hours." 
 
 This was written a hundred years be- 
 fore the birth of Chaucer, and, in spite 
 of the insufficiency of the translation, 
 there is to be seen somewhat of the same 
 freshness to be found in the works of 
 the latter. The peculiar circumstances 
 of Spanish life gave an earlier and 
 stronger impulse to romantic literature 
 than had been produced in other na- 
 tions, and imparted a character almost 
 unique. 
 
 The controlling ideas of the Span- 
 iards were their religion and their coun- 
 
 o 
 
 try. Their prose, therefore, must par-
 
 214 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 take to a great degree of poetry. The 
 historical romance in verse, and the 
 chivalrio romance in prose, went hand 
 in hand in recording and singing the ex- 
 ploits of their countrymen? 
 
 A work which exerted a wonderful 
 influence upon the development of that 
 literature was the " Amadis de Gaul, " 
 written by Lobeiras, a Portugese, for 
 the cause of Portugal was common with 
 the rest of the peninsula in the struggle 
 with the Moors. A cumbrous book to 
 be read now, and not Very interesting, 
 is the history of the love of Amadis and 
 Oriana, the "Child of the Sea; " but it 
 stimulated that religious, patriotic peo- 
 ple wonderfully, both in the perform- 
 ance of heroio deeds and in recording 
 those of others. 
 
 Such is the abundance of this early 
 poetry in Spain, so numerous were the 
 poets, all of whom were warriors or 
 priests that we should have supposed 
 that a larger number of the names of 
 these gifted authors, and a larger num- 
 ber of their works would have been pre- 
 served. But in the ever confused 
 condition of the different dialects, in
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 215 
 
 the absence of the knowledge and op- 
 portunities of cultivating the art of 
 writing", notwithstanding 1 the vast num 
 ber that have come down to us, the 
 greater part were lost, and there is many 
 a beautiful soul -stirring ballad, the 
 name of whose author has not descended 
 to us. Indeed, like those of the minne- 
 singer of Germany, these songs, many 
 of them, were not written until years 
 after they were composed and their 
 authors were dead. The songs had 
 lived in the hearts and upon the tongues 
 of the people, and were written down 
 in peaceful times when the great work 
 of Spanish endeavor was completed, and 
 after the singer had long been dead. 
 
 The earliest form of this literature 
 was the ballad, and this form has occu- 
 pied ever since in Spanish literature a 
 more prominent part than a similar form 
 has occupied in any other European lit- 
 erature, not even excepting Germany. 
 They took that form of eight syllabled 
 asonants, as they were called (in which 
 the rhyme was in the last vowel instead of 
 the last syllable), which is easy to write. 
 Sometimes they were broken into
 
 216 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 stanzas of four lines and thence called 
 redonclillas or roundelays. The sweet- 
 ness of this form of writing, and the 
 ease with which it was produced, caused 
 it to be often introduced into the 
 Chronicles in which purported to be 
 recorded faithfully the actions of con- 
 temporary times. 
 
 It has always been deeply regretted 
 that so much of this early literature has 
 been lost, especially the ballads. For 
 some of those which have descended to 
 us are of exceeding beauty. In this 
 neighborhood of two knightly peoples 
 there must have been, as I have before 
 said, many passages of romantic adven- 
 tures growing out of the loves of the 
 individual Moors and Spaniards. For 
 the men of both races were as brave 
 as the women were beautiful. How 
 various are these ballads, from the war 
 song to the song of the lover! How 
 various these among themselves accord- 
 ing as they tell of triumph or disaster, 
 successful or unhappy love! As the 
 Moors slowly withdraw towards the 
 South, a melancholy interest attaches to 
 their decline, and compassionate things
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 217 
 
 are said in music which it is touching to 
 hear. 
 
 The following is an instance wherein 
 is told how a Spaniard effected an en- 
 trance into the house of a Moor, where 
 alone was a beautiful Moorish maiden: 
 
 " I was a Moorish maid Morayma. 
 I was that maiden dark and fair. 
 A Christian came, he seemed in sorrow, 
 Full of falsehood came he there. 
 Moorish he spoke— he spoke it well — 
 ' Open the door, thou Moorish maid, 
 So shalt thou he by Allah blessed, 
 So shall I save my forfeit head. ' 
 'But how can I, alone and weak, 
 Unbar and know not who is there? ' 
 'But I'm the Moor, the Moor Mazote, 
 The brother of thy mother dear. 
 A Christian fell beneath my hand; 
 The Alcalde comes, he comes apace, 
 And if thou open not the door. 
 I perish here before thy face.' 
 'I rose in haste, I rose in fear, 
 I seized my cloak. I missed my vest, 
 And rushing to the fatal door. 
 I threw it wide at his behest. ' "* 
 
 Of these ancient ballads the number 
 collected and published in the " Can- 
 cionero de Romances " and the " Libro 
 de Romances " is largely over a thou- 
 sand. Their subjects are fictions of 
 chivalry, especially Charlemagne and 
 his peers, some on Spanish history and 
 
 *Ticknor's " History of Spanish Literature," vol. 
 1, p. 110.
 
 218 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 traditions, some founded on Moorish 
 adventures and the rest on private life. 
 Far in advance of the romances of 
 Arthur and his knights were the first 
 ballads of Spanish chivalry, of which the 
 Cid was the theme, and Charlemagne 
 and his peers came in, but not for the 
 sort of song with which his praises had 
 been sunn - in France, for that monarch 
 had allied himself with the Moors, and 
 many a song of triumph rose from his 
 defeat. The disaster that Charlemagne's 
 army under Roland suffered at Ronces- 
 valles* grave existence to some of the 
 most striking ballads. In " Lady Alda's 
 Dream " is to be seen that knightly ten- 
 derness for the suffering of beauty, 
 which a victorious hero can thoroughly 
 feel in the midst of triumph. Of all 
 the old ballads of Spain the following 
 is probably best known to English 
 readers: 
 
 "In Paris Lady Alda sits, Sir Roland's destined 
 
 bride. 
 With her three hundred maidens, to tend her, at 
 
 her side; 
 Alike their robes and sandals all. and the braid 
 
 that binds their hair, 
 
 *Ticknor's " History of Spanish Literature."
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 219 
 
 And alike their meals In their lady's hall the 
 whole three hundred share. 
 
 "Around her in her chair of state, they all their 
 
 places hold, 
 A hundred weave the web of silk, as a hundred 
 
 spin the gold, 
 And a hundred touch their gentle lutes to soothe 
 
 that lady's pain, 
 As she thinks of him that's far away with the host 
 
 of Charlemagne. 
 
 " Lulled by the sound she sleeps, but soon she 
 wakens with a scream, 
 
 And, as her maidens gather round, she thus re- 
 counts her dream : 
 
 ' I sat upon a desert shore, and from the mountain 
 high, 
 
 Right toward me, I seemed to see a gentle falcon 
 fly; 
 
 But close behind an eagle swooped, and struck 
 that falcon down, 
 
 And with talons and beak he rent the bird as he 
 cowered beneath my gown. ' 
 
 " The chief of her maidens smiled and said, ' To me 
 
 it doth not seem 
 That the Lady Alda reads aright the boding of her 
 
 dream. 
 Thou art the falcon, and thy knight is the eagle in 
 
 his pride, 
 And he comes in triumph from the war and 
 
 pounces on his bride. ' 
 The maidens laughed, but Alda sighed, and 
 
 gravely shook her head. 
 'Full rich,' quote she, 'shall thy guerdon be, if 
 
 thou the truth hast said. ' 
 ' Tis morn; her letters stained with blood, the 
 
 truth too plainly tell, 
 How, in the chase of Ronceval, Sir Roland fought 
 
 and fell.
 
 220 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 The most numerous and the best 
 among these ancient ballads are those 
 that relate to the heroes of Spain, from 
 the Moorish conquest to their expulsion, 
 the most illustrious of whom is Bernardo 
 del Carpio, the son by secret marriage 
 of Count de Saldado and a sister of 
 Alphonso The Chaste. Next are those 
 in honor of Fernan Gonzales, who in the 
 tenth century recovered Castile yet 
 another time from the Moors, and 
 became its first Sovereign Count. 
 After these follow those on the Seven 
 Lords of Lara. 
 
 In these last-mentioned ballads there 
 is a mine of inexhaustible beauty. In 
 all Spanish history there is probably no 
 portion so full of romantic interest as 
 that which is celebrated in these ballads 
 of the Seven Lords of Lara. There is 
 a double interest in them grown out 
 of the intermingling of Spanish and 
 Moorish feeling and action. The base 
 Velasquez betrayed the seven sons of 
 his brother to the Moors, who murdered 
 them and had their father imprisoned 
 in a Moorish castle. But here the 
 brave Lara was seen and loved by a
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 221 
 
 Moorish lady of exalted rank, who, unit- 
 ing her fortunes with his, bore him a 
 son. This son, half Spaniard, half 
 Moor, became the celebrated Mecdama, 
 who, espousing the cause of his father 
 and his murdered brethren, executed 
 terrible revenge upon his and their 
 kinsman. 
 
 Yet it was the Cid who was the most 
 frequent object of the song of these 
 early poets. Some of these are of 
 exquisite beauty. The Cid had been 
 married almost in boyhood to the 
 daughter (Ximena) of his father's 
 enemy, in order to settle the deadly 
 feud between the two families. He did 
 not know it at the time, but he was 
 loved, and perhaps could have married 
 Urraca, the daughter of Ferdinand the 
 Great who had assisted in the ceremon- 
 ies of his knighting. Years afterwards 
 when, on the death of the King, wars 
 have sprung up among his children, and 
 the Cid has taken part with Sancho 
 against Urraca, Queen of Zarnora, she, 
 while standing upon one of the towers, 
 thus taunts him with the loss of the 
 felicity which he might have obtained:
 
 222 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 " Away, away, proud Roderic, 
 Castilian proud, away ! 
 Bethink thee of that olden time, 
 That happy, honored day, 
 When at Janus' holy shrine 
 Thy knighthood first was won 
 When Ferdinand, my royal sire, 
 Confessed thee for a son. 
 He gave thee, then, thy knightly arms, 
 My mother gave thy steed; 
 Thy spurs were buckled by these hands, 
 That thou no grace mightst need. 
 And had not chance forbid the vow, 
 I thought with thee to wed; 
 But Count Lozano's daughter fair 
 Thy happy bride was led. 
 With her came wealth, and ample store, 
 But power was mine, and state ; 
 Broad lands are good, and have their grace, 
 But he that reigns is great. 
 Thy wife is well, thy match was wise ; 
 Yet, Roderic, at thy side 
 A vassal's daughter sits by thee, 
 And not a royal bride." 
 
 But there are many others of these 
 old ballads, besides those of chivalry, 
 and of history and the wars with the 
 Moors. These are on scenes in private 
 life, unconnected with wars or other 
 stirring adventures. In this respect the 
 Spanish literature is the very richest 
 and most interesting in all the litera- 
 ture of Europe. Rich as is the border- 
 land of Scotland and England in the 
 ballad, far more so as well as more 
 varied is Spain.
 
 SPANISH LITERA TURE. 228 
 
 There -is especially one trait in these 
 ballads which is to be found nowhere 
 else. The satirical and the playful and 
 the picturesque in the ballad are not to 
 be seen except in that of Spain. Lofty, 
 soul-stirring as are some, full of tender- 
 ness, compassion, and soft melancholy 
 as are others; yet that versatile people, 
 so prone to poetic thoughts on all sub- 
 jects on which the human heart could 
 ponder and obtain consolation and en- 
 tertainment, could find sport in those 
 comic miscarriages which, with serious 
 things, make up the sum of human exis- 
 tence. This playful mischievousness is 
 in no ballad literature except that of 
 Spain, and there is among it much that is 
 charming. Instance the one beginning: 
 
 " Her sister, Miquela 
 Once chid little Jane. " * 
 
 In this old ballad literature there is 
 to be found much of poetry after the 
 style of the troubadours of Provence. 
 In this lovely region extending from 
 Italy on the Mediterranean shore to 
 Spain, the Visigoths, the mildest of the 
 northern barbarian races, had settled, 
 
 *Ticknor's " History of Spanish Literature." vol. 
 1, p. 136.
 
 224 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 and a poetry sweet and gentle like the 
 region had sprung up. From long time 
 proximity had made kindred the poetry 
 on either side of the Pyrenees, and the 
 Spaniards of the Northeast, unlike their 
 hardier countrymen of the Northwest, 
 cultivated to a considerable degree this 
 literature, which in the hands of the 
 troubadours was mostly devoted to love. 
 
 This literature received, however, a 
 far-increased attention when the crown 
 of Provence passed, in the twelfth cen- 
 tury, by the marriage of its heir, to Ray- 
 mond Berenger, the Count of Barcelona; 
 and further, by a similar acquisition 
 from the Count of Barcelona of the 
 kingdom of Arragon; and yet further 
 by the exile of the troubadours who al- 
 most as a body belonged to the heresy 
 of the Albigenses. 
 
 The literature of the troubadours 
 belongs, however, more particularly to 
 that of France. I have mentioned it in 
 this connection for the sake of its influ- 
 ence in the formation of the manners and 
 language of that portion of Spain which, 
 from geographical and political condi- 
 tions, was most subjected to its influence.
 
 SPA NISH LITER A TV RE. 225 
 
 When the different provinces became 
 eventually united, and Spanish nation- 
 ality was firmly established, this lighter 
 poetry, like the dialects of the Cata- 
 lonians, Valencians and Galicians gave 
 way before the march of that Castilian 
 which had grown up vigorous and in- 
 dependent beyond the Northwestern 
 mountains. 
 
 As this ballad literature descends, it 
 changes its tone in accord with the 
 waning power of the Moors. When 
 their possessions were limited to Gran- 
 ada, their last stronghold there, in that 
 picturesque region, with the ever- 
 increasing assurance of their eventual 
 entire expulsion, the Spanish ballad, in 
 the North so warlike, subsided from 
 that lofty tone and told more of the 
 affairs of the heart, of games and tour- 
 naments. 
 
 It is admitted on all sides that the 
 ballad literature of Spain is at once 
 more varied and more national than 
 that of any other nation. I conclude 
 this lecture with the following from 
 Ticknor's " History of Spanish Litera- 
 ture: " 
 
 L.L.— 15
 
 226 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 "But, besides what the Spanish bal- 
 lads possess different from the popular 
 poetry of the rest of Europe, they ex- 
 hibit, as no others exhibit it, the nation- 
 ality which is the truest element of such 
 poetry everywhere. They seem, indeed, 
 as we read them, to be often little more 
 than the great traits of the old Spanish 
 character, brought out by the force of 
 poetical enthusiasm, so that, if their 
 nationality were taken away from them, 
 they would cease to exist. This in its 
 turn has preserved them down to the 
 present day, and will continue to pre- 
 serve them hereafter. 
 
 " The great Castilian heroes, such as 
 the Cid, Bernardo del Carpio and Pe- 
 layo, are even now an essential portion 
 of the faith and poetry of the common 
 people of Spain, and are still in some 
 degree honored as they were honored in 
 the age of the Great Captain, or farther 
 back in that of Saint Ferdinand. 
 
 " The stories of Guarinos and the De- 
 feat of Roncesvalles are still sung by 
 the wayfaring muleteers as they were 
 when Don Quixote heard them in his 
 journeyings to Toboso, and the show- 
 men still rehearse the adventures of 
 Gayferos and Melisenora in the streets 
 of Seville as they did at the solitary inn 
 of Montesinos when he encountered 
 them there.
 
 SPANISH I ITER I TV RE. 227 
 
 " In short, the ancient Spanish ballads 
 are so truly national in their spirit that 
 they became at once identified with the 
 popular character that had produced 
 thorn; and that same character will go 
 onward, we doubt not, till the Spanish 
 people shall cease to have a separate 
 and independent existence. "
 
 II. 
 
 Cervantes, Mendoza and Aleman. 
 
 For seven hundred years the greatest 
 expenditures of Spanish endeavors had 
 been made in the cause of religion and 
 patriotism. The literature of the gifted 
 among them had been devoted on the 
 one hand to magnify the most blessed 
 of the Saints in that happy Calendar 
 with the Mother of God at its head, and 
 the exaltation of those who had dared 
 the furthest, and borne the most con- 
 spicuous part, in the wars both upon 
 their religion and their country. 
 
 Spain has long ceased to be numbered 
 amongst the Great Powers of Europe. 
 Yet there is due to the history of that 
 romantic country a respect of its kind 
 to which none in modern Europe is en- 
 titled. Not one of these has been so 
 beset by foreign invasions, nor has any 
 one so persistently and successfully re- 
 sisted them. 
 
 During these seven centuries the 
 
 (228)
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 229 
 
 faith of the Spanish nation remained 
 the same, as well as the desire and the 
 determination to establish Spanish inde- 
 pendence. In these centuries of trial 
 it must needs be that literature must be 
 for a long time mainly poetic, and be 
 made to celebrate chiefly the saintly in 
 religious and the heroic in knightly 
 endeavors. 
 
 It is not within my purpose to notice 
 the numberless religious legends, except 
 so far as they are sung in that unique 
 literature, in this respect more inter- 
 esting the older it is, nor to discuss 
 whether or not their numbers and their 
 nature may have given a benign or an 
 injurious impulse to the religious being 
 of the nation. We are rather now to 
 consider one result of so protracted a 
 period of general and individual excite- 
 ment. 
 
 The publication of the romance of 
 "Amadis de Gaul " yet further intensi- 
 fied the love for the heroic which for 
 centuries had been the principal charac- 
 teristic of the Spaniards. Then in the 
 daily life of the nation and of individuals, 
 there were frequent occurrences, so
 
 230 LECTURES OX LITERATURE. 
 
 similar to those even the most mar- 
 velous in this romance that it was not 
 surprising that these should come to be 
 regarded by many as of real existence. 
 
 Out of this belief and the exuberance 
 of fondness for the heroic, there grew 
 up the habit of knight-errantry, which 
 led many a knight, for the want of ade- 
 quate exercise to his valor at home, to 
 wander about in search of adventures. 
 The most intense earthly joy among 
 such was that which arose from combat. 
 These knights espoused the cause of 
 weakness, innocence and the oppressed 
 of every kind. In the lapse of time 
 such indiscriminate and unlicensed war- 
 fare must become extravagant and 
 injurious to the development of reason- 
 able nationality. 
 
 Such was the case in Spain at the 
 coming of a man, who, in some respects, 
 is one of the most remarkable in the his- 
 tory of letters. The mighty struggle 
 with the Moors had ended after the union 
 of the crowns of Arragon and Castile, 
 bv the marriage of Ferdinand and Isa- 
 bella, and the consolidation into one 
 of the whole political power of Spain.
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 231 
 
 Near the capital of the nation in 15-47, 
 fifty years after the expulsion of the 
 Moors, was born Miguel de Cervantes 
 Saavedra. 
 
 The youth of this extraordinary man, 
 after his course of education at the uni- 
 versities of Alcala, and Salamanca, was 
 spent partly in that splendid capital of 
 Madrid, where he became a devotee to 
 the theatre and the practice of writing 
 pastorals and dramas, and partly in 
 travels in foreign countries. Enlisting 
 as a soldier in war, he was present at the 
 celebrated battle of Lepanto, in which, 
 under Don John of Austria, Europe was 
 miraculously delivered from the inva- 
 sion of the Turkish power, then so pow- 
 erful and so dreaded by all Christian 
 peoples. Here he lost his left hand, a 
 loss of which to his dying day he never 
 ceased to be proud. Afterwards he was 
 taken prisoner by the Moors in Africa, 
 and was kept in captivity for eight 
 years. Returning to his native place 
 poor and destitute of powerful friends, 
 he thought to resume the pursuits of 
 his earlier manhood and gain subsist- 
 ence and fame by devoting himself to
 
 232 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 writing for the stage which, with the ad- 
 vent of peace, had become the centre of 
 literary endeavors in the nation. His 
 efforts in this line will be briefly consid- 
 ered in the next lecture when I come to 
 speak of the Spanish drama. 
 
 We have seen in our studies of 
 English literature how the superiority 
 of the poetry of Lord Byron, so pain- 
 fully discouraging to the prestige of 
 Sir Walter Scott, drove him into that 
 other field — prose romance — in which 
 he was destined to win his greatest 
 fame. So it was with Cervantes. The 
 drama of Spain fell under the sway of 
 that wonderful priest, Lope de Vega, 
 and Cervantes, unable to contend, 
 especially with those odds against him 
 which I will mention hereafter, was 
 forced to withdraw like Scott into the 
 sphere of prose. Mankind will never 
 cease to be thankful for this necessity. 
 
 Whatever of bitterness or even con- 
 tempt there may have been in the heart 
 of this man in the contemplation of a 
 state of society which put before him a 
 man to whom he felt himself superior, 
 we cannot measure now. He would
 
 SPA NISH I ITER A TURK. 233 
 
 have exalted, had it been possible, the 
 Spanish poetic literature, especially the 
 Spanish drama, from that condition 
 which has ever made it controlled by 
 the tastes of the populace of Spain. 
 Unable to do this he went with all his 
 might against another condition of that 
 literature, and in this endeavor he ac- 
 complished a success unexampled in the 
 history of letters. 
 
 The universal fondness for the 
 " Amadis de Gaul," and other heroic 
 romances, recollections of the number- 
 less heroic actions of their ancestors 
 during the centuries against the Moors, 
 had produced a state of society which 
 to the serious mind of Cervantes was 
 most injurious, and which he felt should 
 be checked. He was sufficiently prac- 
 tical to know that this could not be 
 done otherwise than indirectly. 
 
 It would have been worth almost a 
 man's life, at least his personal security, 
 to make a direct attack upon this favor- 
 ite work, with its kindred, and the 
 habits of thought they had created. 
 For the nation at large in their simplic- 
 ity' accepted as mainly true the actions
 
 234 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 therein recorded. Therefore he chost 
 for his purposes two imaginary repre 
 sentatives of contemporary Spanish char- 
 acter and manners. 
 
 One of these, Don Quixote, was a 
 brave, generous, high-spirited, noble- 
 minded knight, whose refined and ex- 
 alted nature was so overwrought by 
 contemplation of the glorious actions in 
 the ancient days of heroism, as to have 
 lost to a degree the balance of a mind 
 naturally strong and gifted, and been 
 impressed with a desire, in spite of the 
 prevalence of peace, to restore that 
 state of society, and even at length to 
 imagine that it had already returned. 
 Now, a knight must have his esquire. 
 An esquire himself was but a knight in 
 embryo, a youth being trained in the 
 use of the sword, in the study of the 
 achievements of knighthood, growing 
 constantly in the hope of living to add 
 his own to that glorious record. But it 
 would have seemed incredible, and 
 would otherwise have been impractica- 
 ble, that two insane persons from the 
 same rank in life should have gone out 
 upon such enterprises. It was a most
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 235 
 
 felicitous thought, therefore, when San- 
 cho Panza was selected for this role — 
 Sancho Panza, a " compound of gross- 
 ness and simplicity/' whose understand- 
 ing was too dull to comprehend the 
 absurd folly of the aspirations of the 
 knight, and whose selfishness led him 
 to confide in the prospects of reward 
 which seemed so flattering. 
 
 It was thus that was conceived that 
 greatest of the romances, "Don Quixote." 
 The mad knight on his poor steed, the 
 dull squire on his ass, Dapple, these are 
 they who sally forth to reenact the 
 lofty deeds of the heroes of olden times, 
 to fight with giants and rescue cap- 
 tives. In this career there is a series of 
 dramatic actions, so numerous, so mani- 
 fold, that it is simply a wonder that the 
 mind of one man could have invented 
 them all. Beyond all praise is that per- 
 fect art with which these two characters 
 are contrasted and yet made to har- 
 monize and cooperate. 
 
 Unlimitedly absurd as are many and 
 many an action of the knight, ridiculous 
 and inconvenient and painful as are 
 sometimes the results of his foolish
 
 236 LECTURES OX LITER A TURE. 
 
 endeavors, yet on the dull, gross, selfish 
 understanding of his follower he ob- 
 tained and preserved an influence which 
 imparts an interest to their society 
 always intense and always natural. The 
 knight takes the wind-mill to be a giant. 
 Sancho Panza has not the slightest 
 doubt but that his master is mistaken, 
 yet after the disastrous encounter he is 
 as ready as before to follow. In " Sancho 
 Panza " there was no more of sentiment 
 than there was in " Dapple." It was well 
 there was not, for then the contrast, 
 which makes up the success of the book, 
 would be destroyed. Neither was there 
 much more of character than there was 
 in " Dapple." Of all liars he was the chief 
 among mortals, but this served to set 
 off better the delicate sense of veracity 
 which was so beautiful to contemplate 
 in his master. 
 
 Yet the understanding of Sancho was 
 too limited for him to understand the 
 absurdity of the lives the two were lead- 
 ing. The half and half views he con- 
 tinually takes of things, partly coming 
 obstinately to his own conclusions and 
 partly yielding to those of his master,
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 237 
 
 are the. very perfection of comedy. 
 Witness the assent he gives to the gen- 
 eral conclusions of " Don Quixote/' that 
 what had passed on a certain occasion 
 was all enchantment, doggedly except- 
 ing from this general judgment himself 
 being tossed in a blanket. No enchant- 
 ment there ! 
 
 Now, of all characters who are liable 
 to be deceived, those are among the 
 most so who are liars themselves, es- 
 pecially when to this lack of veracity is 
 added a gross selfishness. Around the 
 innocent and truthful of this world there 
 is often a wall which, though not seen 
 by the eye, is a defense against evil and 
 danger. Though virtue is sometimes 
 betrayed, yet it is its own best defender 
 in the long run, while falsehood and 
 grossness inflict upon themselves their 
 own punishment. It was thus with 
 Sancho Panza, whose selfishness and 
 mendacity made him more the dupe of 
 the extravagances which turned the 
 mind of his master. Numberless and 
 ever varying as were the delusions 
 which befell these adventurers, it is 
 wonderful that the mind should never
 
 238 LECTURES OS LITERATURE. 
 
 tire in considering them. That was 
 a happy thought of the author to in- 
 tersperse his story with so many epi- 
 sodes. Beyond comparison interest- 
 ing and beautiful are some of these 
 episodes which although they do not 
 claim to be so intended yet, with only 
 two or three exceptions, contribute to 
 the maintaining of the plot. Among 
 these episodes are many pastorals in 
 which sort of literature Spain abounds 
 more than any other country. 
 
 That country, the loveliest upon earth, 
 most romantic in its alternations of 
 mountains and valleys, its climate ever 
 inviting to outdoor existence, and its 
 separation from the rest of Europe, 
 seemed the proper home, when its wars 
 were over, for the sweet tranquillity of 
 the pastoral. Cervantes had written, 
 when quite a young man, two pastorals, 
 the " Filena " and the " Galatea," in 
 obedience to the demand of his country- 
 men for that sort of literature. But his 
 mind was too large to be content to de- 
 vote itself to that department, which, 
 narrow though it is, is correspondingly 
 one of the most difficult.
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 239 
 
 Portugal was the favorite home of the 
 pastoral, and it happened that in a Por- 
 tuguese port the young Spaniard had a 
 rival for the affections of the lady he 
 loved best. He fought the stranger 
 with the latter's weapon and vanquished 
 him, for, on the appearance of the first 
 part of "Galatea," the lady gave in to 
 his suit and became his wife ; and that 
 conquest prevented the completion of 
 the work. 
 
 But this talent so early developed 
 was availed of in his great work, and 
 many an idyl of marvelous beauty oc- 
 curs in the history of Don Quixote. 
 
 Now, what was the object of Cervantes 
 in this work? Some critics, with un- 
 common subtlety of understanding and 
 fondness for speculation, have attributed 
 it to that singular combination of the 
 serious and the sportive in a great 
 genius, which spontaneously, and with 
 definiteness of purpose, sets out to 
 illustrate these two phases of human 
 existence in the alternate sequences in 
 which they occur in the world, just as a 
 philosopher would discuss the various 
 cnaracteristics of the human understand-
 
 240 LECTURES OA LITERATURE. 
 
 ing. But Cervantes was not without a 
 purpose, and a lofty, patriotic, humane 
 purpose. He had seen his countrymen 
 given up to an extravagant admiration 
 for the books of chivalry to a degree 
 as to hinder the development of a 
 national taste that was absolutely essen- 
 tial for the production of a sound 
 national literature. It was his purpose, 
 and so he avowed, to assist and if 
 possible to destroy this fondness, by 
 exhibiting the utter absurdity of the 
 chief events narrated in these romances. 
 He seized upon these adventures, took 
 them from all sane and sensible persons, 
 and handed them over to a crazy knight 
 and a dull peasant and sent them all 
 over Spain to exhibit these adventures 
 in their ridiculousness and nakedness. 
 Never since the world began was a set 
 purpose so thoroughly accomplished. 
 
 When " Don Quixote " appeared, men 
 of all conditions, even those heretofore 
 most familiar with chivalric romances 
 and most fond of them, wondered that 
 they had not seen for themselves the end- 
 less absurdities of that of which they had 
 been so continued admirers; and thus,
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 241 
 
 instantaneously and with one blow, a 
 single man overthrew a great system, 
 and overthrew it finally and forever. 
 
 And now we are come to the consid- 
 eration of another species of literature 
 which originated in Spain under pecu- 
 liar circumstances, and which, though 
 writers in other tongues, have cultivated 
 it, is yet preeminently Spanish. It was 
 named El Gusto Picaresco, or the style 
 of Rogues. 
 
 Long wars, indeed wars of all kinds, 
 while they sometimes develop great vir- 
 tues which lead to the establishment of 
 great principles, yet give rise to many 
 vices. 
 
 It is long before a nation that has 
 been at war can settle down fairly to 
 the pursuits of peace. Indeed, entirj 
 peace did not come to Spain with the 
 expulsion of the Moor. In subsequent 
 alliances with Italy, the vast enterprises 
 of Charles V. made the Spanish nation 
 continue to be a nation of warriors; and 
 the pursuit of arms, except by the hum- 
 blest in Spanish society, came long to 
 be considered the only one that was 
 entirely becoming to a Spaniard. 
 
 L.L.— 16
 
 242 LECTURES ON LITER A TURE. 
 
 In such a state of society the number 
 of idlers is always great; soldiers dis- 
 gusted with warfare, returned home, 
 yet unfit for other employments; and 
 others whose living was made by their 
 wits, and whose wits, being their only 
 capital, became in process of time most 
 wonderfully productive. 
 
 The Spanish people considered them- 
 selves, and justly then, the greatest of 
 earth. Under Charles V. they dreamed 
 of a Spanish empire to become great as 
 that of the Caesars. Added to these 
 conditions, the discovery and realiza- 
 tion of the enormous riches of the New 
 World made the obtaining of subsist- 
 ence so easy in that favored country 
 that the ordinary labors of a people, in 
 agriculture, mechanics and trade, were 
 left only to the sober minded, the 
 industrious and thoroughly upright, 
 while thousands of others spent their 
 time in idleness, or in that sort of work, 
 of its kind often most laborious, in get- 
 ting a living without honest work, and 
 often especially for the enjoyment of 
 the satisfaction which such a means of 
 livelihood imparted.
 
 SPA XISH LITER. ! TUBE. 243 
 
 In these times not more full of brave 
 soldiers were the armies of Spain in dis- 
 tant fields than were her towns at home 
 of rogues and vagabonds. The central 
 resort of these was Seville, then the 
 capital of Charles, where dwelt the 
 princely merchants who owned that 
 vast continent of riches beyond the At- 
 lantic. So large a body of citizens, 
 exerting so great an influence upon so- 
 ciety, must be celebrated in that litera- 
 ture which, turning from ancient themes, 
 was beginning to represent modern and 
 contemporary life. 
 
 Cervantes in his ••Novelas Exemplares" 
 (Moral Tales), especially in the "Gitan- 
 illa " (Little Gipsy), and his " Riconete y 
 Cortadillo," employed himself for a time 
 in this kind of work; but afterwards his 
 nobler and more serious nature led him 
 to other endeavors. 
 
 The man who may be said to have 
 led in this strange literature was Men- 
 doza, tholigh the one most distin- 
 guished in it was Mateo Aleman, of 
 Seville. Mendoza was a statesman and 
 noble of the very highest rank; and 
 to public affairs his life was mainly
 
 244 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 diverted. It is said that while a youth 
 at the university he wrote that cele- 
 brated novel " Lazarillo de Tormes," the 
 first of its kind. 
 
 " It is the autobiography of a boy, little 
 Lazarus, born in a mill on the banks of 
 the Tormes, near Salamanca, and sent 
 out by his base and brutal mother as 
 the leader of a blind beggar, the lowest 
 place in the social condition, perhaps, 
 that could be found in Spain. But, 
 such as it is, Lazarillo makes the best, or 
 the worst, of it. With an inexhaustible 
 fund of good humor and great quick- 
 ness of parts, he learns at once the cun- 
 ning and profligacy that qualify him to 
 rise to still greater frauds, and a yet 
 wider range of adventures and crimes 
 in the service successively of a priest, a 
 gentleman starving on his own pride, 
 a prior, a seller of indulgences, a chap- 
 lain and an alguazil, until at last, from 
 the most disgraceful motives, he settles 
 down as a married man; and then the 
 story terminates without reaching any 
 proper conclusion, and without intimat- 
 ing that any is to follow. Its object is 
 — under the character of a servant.
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 245 
 
 with an acuteness that is never at fault, 
 and with so small a stock of honesty 
 and truth, that neither of theun stand in 
 the way of his success — to give a pun- 
 gent satire upon all classes of society, 
 whose condition Lazarillo well compre- 
 hends because he sees them in undress 
 and behind the scenes."* 
 
 Powerful as was the impression made 
 by this work upon the public, it was 
 much less so than the work of Aleman, 
 which followed it. This was entitled 
 " Guzman de Alfarache." In the hero 
 of this play there ran the blood of both 
 the Spaniard and the Italian, for, within 
 the last few years, ideas and manners 
 from Italy had been imported and en- 
 grafted upon the society and the litera- 
 ture of Spain. This Guzman was the 
 son, or supposed himself to be the son, of 
 a disreputable merchant of Genoa, who 
 had settled in Seville. He ran away 
 from home in boyhood and entered upon 
 a career of scoundrelism, the like of 
 which is to be found nowhere else. 
 
 The popularity which followed the 
 publication of this work was next, if not 
 
 ■ ricknor'ss " ilis. Span. Lit.," vol. I., p. 471.
 
 2 tG LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 equal, to that of Don Quixote. The 
 abundance of such characters in the 
 country, the amount of fraud and trick- 
 ery that were common in all employ- 
 ments, rendered the thrilling narrative 
 of " Guzman de Alfarache " the common 
 talk of all classes of society, and suc- 
 cessors and imitators appeared in abun- 
 dance during a period of many years, 
 such as Perez, Espime, Yanez y Rivera, 
 and Quevedo, until finally, in the hands 
 of the last mentioned, a man more ^fty 
 minded than his predecessors in this 
 field, these writings began to be inter- 
 mingled with romantic tales and ballads, 
 showing that the public appetite for 
 such as the scenes of the " Lazarillo " 
 and " Guzman " was satiated. 
 
 But the influence of this literature 
 extended far and wide on its first ap- 
 pearance. The "Guzman " was trans- 
 lated into the several languages of 
 Europe, and novels with rascally 
 adventurers for heroes in all countries 
 had their historians and their thousands 
 to read their recorded achievements. 
 In this imitation France has the honor 
 to have been the most successful of alL
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 2\1 
 
 The '•< Gil Bias " of Le Sage is indeed 
 a wonderful work of this kind. But 
 the Frenchman had to take his hero 
 from Spain, as if the Spanish picaro 
 was the only genuine of his class and 
 nowhere except in Spanish society could 
 the record of such exploits be credited. 
 
 With the exception of "Gil Bias,'' 
 the success in imitation of this remark- 
 able species of novel has not been signal. 
 We have in English, " Jonathan Wild," 
 " Jack Sheppard " and " Paul Clifford," 
 and we should be thankful that they are 
 no better imitations, or rather that there 
 are no worse incitements to the cultiva- 
 tion of bad tastes and unsound morality.
 
 The Spanish Drama. 
 
 The rise of the modern drama began 
 earliest in the South of Europe where 
 Roman civilization held wider and 
 more enduring sway. There was a rude, 
 dramatic literature in Spain at the time 
 of its occupation by the Moors, which 
 was a poor imitation of the ancient 
 classical, and which, being contrary to 
 the tastes of the conquerors, soon passed 
 away. 
 
 In Spain as in other European coun- 
 tries, the religious plays, " Mysteries " 
 and " Moralities, " as they were called, 
 were more numerous and of longer con- 
 tinuance because of that state of publio 
 opinion and civil society which gave to 
 the Church a control, almost absolute, 
 over the literary talent of the country. 
 
 The famous Inquisition of Spain, so 
 much talked and written about, so little 
 understood, watched the literary prog- 
 ress of that country with careful and 
 critical eyes. It seems strange indeed 
 
 (248)
 
 SPA XTSII LITER A T I WE. 249 
 
 how much of the efforts in that progress 
 was tolerated by a tribunal so powerful 
 and so exacting. But the Church was as 
 wise as it was authoritative. Looking 
 upon that people of so many dialects and 
 provincial nationalities, now being con- 
 solidated into one after many centuries 
 of conflicts in which they had been ever 
 faithful to her, bringing with them out of 
 these conflicts a restlessness inevitable 
 to such conditions, an indulgence was 
 given which now seems to us strange, 
 but which was meant to preserve in 
 times of peace the same loyalty which 
 they had displayed in the times of war. 
 The whole of the religious drama of 
 the Middle Ages of Europe would be 
 unaccountable to us unless we under- 
 stood the manners of the times. The 
 Sacred Comedy, which was made to take 
 the place of the Roman, was a most 
 curious intermingling of the comic with 
 the sacred. But it had its day and our 
 ancestors had their laughs at the 
 miscarriages of the devil and of vice, 
 along with their tears at the recitals of 
 the sufferings of the ancient saints, and 
 thus began that intermingling of the seri-
 
 250 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 ous and the sportive which was especially 
 to distinguish the modern from the clas- 
 sical drama. 
 
 The modern Spanish drama is older 
 than the English by a century and, like 
 the English, it was first comic in its char- 
 acter. The " Couplets of Mingo Revul- 
 go " have the honor of being the first of 
 Spanish drama, and has been attributed 
 to Rodrigo Cota, of Toledo. It was 
 in verse, as most of the Spanish dramatic 
 literature is, and is as coarse as "Gam- 
 mer Gurton's Needle." 
 
 Such was its grossness and the bold- 
 ness of its satire that the authorship was 
 not avowed, but the resemblance be- 
 tween his first and the next has caused 
 this to be assigned to the same. The 
 second, a dialogue between love and an 
 old man, makes a yet further progress 
 towards dramatic development. 
 
 These dramas, however, have much of 
 the character of the pastoral in which, 
 as I have said before, the national liter- 
 ature is abundant. Many years before 
 this, indeed, there had begun the habit 
 of reciting in public these pastorals, 
 though probably they were not written
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 251 
 
 for the purpose of public representa- 
 tion. 
 
 In the second play of Cota there is 
 considerable amount of sprightly dia- 
 logue, and of a kind more poetical than 
 in the first English comedies. Its 
 theme is the absurdity of an old man 
 who had been a hermit for a length of 
 time suddenly turning back to the 
 world and becoming 1 a lover. We can 
 imagine what fun could be made out of 
 such a case. 
 
 The drama which has become most 
 famous of these earlj works is the 
 " Celestina, " originally called "The 
 Tragi-Comedy of Calisto and Melibea," 
 written jointly by Cota and Rojas, of 
 Montalvan. It is in prose and con- 
 sists of twenty-one acts, but was 
 never acted upon the stage and was 
 never designed to be. The literary ex- 
 cellence of this dramatized romance, as 
 it has been called, appearing so early — 
 a century before Shakespeare — has been 
 the subject of the highest encomium. 
 Talent of a high order is exhibited 
 throughout, as well in the portraiture of 
 the bad as of the good characters. But
 
 252 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 it would be difficult to find in any of 
 the early literature of any country a 
 work in which there is so much of inde- 
 cency, not only in the thought, but in 
 the language; and there is not to be 
 found in any language a work in which 
 the doings of knaves and varlets of 
 both sexes are described in lansfuagfe 
 so choice. Yet the authors claimed 
 to have had a high and even a 
 holy purpose, which was first to ex- 
 pose vice in its most attractive at- 
 titudes, and then to point to its most 
 condign punishment. And the pun- 
 ishment is as terrific as the conduct 
 of the actors has been vicious and se- 
 ductive. Even the heroine Meliboca, 
 once so innocent, but finally ruined 
 by such acts as it seemed impossible 
 to resist, is driven at last to suicide by 
 lusting herself headlong from a lofty 
 tower. 
 
 The story of " Calisto and Meliboca " 
 was read by all classes with avidity, and 
 it formed the staple for dramatic writing 
 in Spain for many a year and with a 
 long list of mediocre dramatists. 
 
 The founder of the Spanish secular
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 253 
 
 theatre was Juan de la Enzina, who was 
 born in 1468. He was a priest. 
 Among his pieces the one called "A 
 Vision of the Temple of Fame " and 
 "The Glories of Castile " have been 
 much commended. They are a sort of 
 sacred comedies, though the " Esquire 
 that turns Shepherd " and " The Shep- 
 herds that turn Courtiers " are of com- 
 mon life. 
 
 The next most prominent name to 
 Enzina is Gil Vicente, a Portuguese. 
 
 As dramatic representations these early- 
 productions were exceedingly incon- 
 gruous. It is interesting in reading 
 them to observe the gradual but slow 
 metamorphose of the religious plays into 
 those of ordinary human actions and 
 interests; to see the modern ideas that 
 get into the heads of the ancient illus- 
 trious Bible characters. 
 
 The following is from the " Auto of 
 the Sibyl Cassandra " by Vicente. 
 Cassanova is a beautiful shepherdess 
 who has vowed herself to single life. 
 Solomon, even with the help of her three 
 aunts, the Cumaean, Persian and Eryth- 
 rean sibyls and her three uncles, Moses,
 
 254 LECTURE* ON LITERATURE. 
 
 Abraham and Isaiah, fails to change her 
 purpose. Let us try to imagine, while 
 such a suit is going on, the maid to sing 
 this vaudeville : 
 
 " They say 'tis time, * Go, marry, go,' 
 But I'll no husband ; not I, no ; 
 For I would live all carelessly, 
 Amidst these hills a maiden free, 
 And never ask, nor anxious he 
 Of wedded weal or woe. 
 Yet still they say, ' Go, marry, go,' 
 But I'll no husband, not I, no. 
 
 " So mother think not I shall wed, 
 And through a tiresome life be led; 
 Or use in folly's ways instead. 
 What grace the heavens bestow. 
 Yet still they say, ' Go, marry, go,' 
 But I'll no husband; not I, no. 
 
 " The man has not been born, I ween, 
 Who, as my husband, shall be seen; 
 And since what frequent tricks have been 
 Undoubtedly I know, 
 In vain they say, ' Go, marry, go,* 
 For I'll no husband , not I, no." 
 
 The Spanish drama was something of 
 an institution for a considerable time be- 
 fore it became a popular, or, as I should 
 rather say, a secular one. Dramatic rep- 
 resentations had been for ages in the 
 hands of the Church, which regarded 
 with jealousy their being devoted to 
 other than religious purposes. Efforts
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 255 
 
 in that .line under Naharro, a popular 
 poet, were repressed and public action 
 of plays was for a long time restricted 
 to those which were purely religious. 
 The main exceptions to this rule were 
 the dramatic pageants, which, from time 
 to time, were held in honor of the reign- 
 ing sovereign. The great popular heart 
 hid not been struck until the coming of 
 I. ope de Rueda in the middle of the 
 sixteenth century. In his hands the 
 drama began to assume a form approx- 
 imately what it has since become. His 
 four comedies " Los Enganos, " " La 
 Medora, " " La Eufemia, " and " Arme- 
 lina, " contain the first evidences of 
 plot, which was destined to characterize 
 Spanish dramatic literature above all 
 other. " Los Enganos" is very like 
 " Twelfth Night " of Shakespeare, who, 
 it is probable, borrowed from the Span- 
 ish poet. 
 
 But there had been, as we have seen, 
 an early fondness for the pastoral in 
 Spain, and pastorals were the first pieces 
 that were represented publicly outside 
 of those which were intended to be re- 
 ligious, or in honor of the monarch.
 
 256 LECTURES ON LITER A TURE. 
 
 In these plays of Rueda we begin to 
 see something of the kind of humor 
 that about this time was beginning 
 with the new comedy in England. 
 Rueda, himself, was a noted player as 
 well as playwright. His performances 
 were in a courtyard, and nothing could 
 have been poorer than the appointments 
 of the stage, all of which, it is said, 
 could be carried in a bag. They were, 
 as Cervantes related, " four white shep- 
 herds' jackets turned up with leather, 
 gilt and stamped; four beards and false 
 sets of hanging locks; and four shep- 
 herds' crooks, more or less." In these 
 plays the fools or simples were espe- 
 cially important personages, a character, 
 which, as the drama developed, grew 
 into the famous Gracioso. 
 
 Rueda had many followers as Juan 
 de Timoneda, Alonzo de la Vega, Juan 
 de Malara, Cueva and Romero. But 
 little advancement had been made until 
 the coming of the great Cervantes. Cer- 
 vantes when a boy had often attended 
 the rude exhibitions of Lope de Rueda 
 in the streets of Madrid, and the first 
 efforts of his genius were devoted to
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 257 
 
 writing for the stage. At least twenty 
 of such dramas were composed by him, 
 which were favorably received by the 
 public. Among these the most famous is 
 the tragedy of " Numantia," based on the 
 siege of that ancient Spanish town, and 
 its horrible suffering from the Roman 
 army under Scipio. The scenes in this 
 tragedy, which describe private and 
 domestic affliction, are tragic in the 
 highest degree. Especially so are the 
 scenes between a mother and her child, 
 and of Moranoro and his affianced Lira, 
 when, though wasted by hunger, she 
 yet indulges in the greater grief of the 
 general desolation of the city and the 
 prospective ruin of her people. 
 
 Cervantes hoped to exalt the drama 
 of his country. Fortunately for man- 
 kind he did not thoroughly understand 
 that condition of things which made the 
 Spanish drama dependent upon the ca- 
 prices of the public and subject to the 
 control of the Church. He was a man 
 that knew not how to yield his judg- 
 ment to tribunals, in his opinion, less 
 competent than himself to decide, and 
 so he retired before one more practical 
 
 L.L.-17
 
 258 LECTURES OX LITERATURE. 
 
 than himself, and instead of more 
 dramas, gave the world his Don Quixote. 
 That more practical man who thus 
 took the field from him was Lope de 
 Vega, a wonderful genius. When five 
 years old Lope de Vega was composing 
 verses, and, as he was too young to 
 have learned to write, he would have 
 older children to write down his lines, 
 paying them by giving half his break- 
 fast. A soldier at fifteen, an ardent 
 lover at seventeen, twice married, once 
 an exile in the expedition of the ill- 
 fated Armada, he finally became a 
 priest of the Church; and this priest be- 
 came the author of a list of dramas, 
 whose vast numbers have never ceased 
 to be the wonderment of mankind, 
 The last days of his life were spent in 
 his cell, the walls of which were spat- 
 tered with his blood which had been 
 spilled by his own penitential infliction, 
 His funeral was the grandest and most 
 
 o 
 
 imposing that was ever bestowed upon 
 any man of letters. 
 
 It is difficult to understand how a 
 priest could have been just such a lit- 
 erary man as Lope. For during all the
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 259 
 
 years in which his time was given regu- 
 larly to offices of devotion and charity, 
 he was in full fashion as a poet, and the 
 favorite, as he yet remains, after three 
 hundred years, of the theatre-going peo- 
 ple of his country. The beginning of 
 his fame and his popularity was laid in 
 his religious poem of " San Isidro, the 
 Ploughman," the favorite saint of Spain. 
 Many other poems, mostly of this class, 
 were written by him. 
 
 In his " Shepherds of Bethlehem," a 
 long pastoral in prose and verse, occur 
 some pieces of exquisite beauty as the 
 following, sung in a palm grove by the 
 Madonna to her Child: 
 
 " Holy Angels and blest, 
 
 Through these palms as ye sweep, 
 Hold their branches at rest; 
 For my babe is asleep. 
 
 ' And ye Bethlehem palm trees 
 
 As stormy winds rush 
 In tempest and fury, 
 
 Your angry noise hush. 
 Move gently, move gently, 
 
 Restrain your wild sweep; 
 Hold your branches at rest; 
 
 My babe is asleep. 
 
 " My babe all divine, 
 
 With earth's sorrows oppressed, 
 Seeks in slumber an instant 
 His grievings to rest;
 
 260 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 He slumbers, he slumbers, 
 
 Oh, hush, then, and keep 
 Your branches all still ; 
 
 My babe is asleep. 
 
 " Cold blasts wheel about him, 
 
 A vigorous storm, 
 And ye see how in vain, 
 
 I would shelter his form. 
 Holy angels and blest, 
 
 As above me ye sweep, 
 Hold these branches at rest; 
 
 My babe is asleep." 
 
 The works of Lope, even before he 
 became mainly devoted to the drama, 
 were enormous. But, following in the 
 wake of Bascan and Garcilaso, who had 
 imported Italian ideas, he accomplished 
 nothing that was destined to become 
 national. He began his career as a 
 dramatist, with the old, long-continued 
 foundations of the pastorals and 
 moralities, whose religious character 
 drew toleration from the Church, 
 without which the drama could make 
 no progress. His success was imme- 
 diate and complete. Some idea may be 
 had of the enormous work he did, when 
 we are informed, that, besides his othei 
 poetry, he wrote nearly two thousand 
 dramas. 
 
 Lope saw the rock that had wrecked
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 261 
 
 Cervantes as a dramatist, and he 
 avoided it. " He took the theatre in 
 the state in which he found it, and 
 instead of attempting to adapt it to any 
 special theory, or to any existing mod- 
 els, whether ancient or recent, made it 
 his great object to satisfy the popular 
 audiences of his age," and he succeeded 
 in establishing the national theatre upon 
 a basis which remains to the present 
 day. Never has there been a state of 
 society in which these tastes of the pub- 
 lic were more various, and the world 
 has never seen a man who so thoroughly 
 understood and so entirely satisfied 
 them. There were priests and nobles, 
 artisans, ploughmen, honest men and 
 knaves, all of whom it was necessary 
 for a dramatist to please. 
 
 Concerning the diversity of his 
 dramas, Ticknor thus speaks: "There 
 seems no end to them, whether we 
 regard their subjects running from the 
 deepest tragedy to the broadest farce, 
 and from the most solemn mysteries of 
 religion down to the lowest frolics of 
 common life; or their style, which 
 embraces every change of tone and
 
 262 LECTURES OX LITERATURE. 
 
 measure known to the poetical language 
 of the country. And all these different 
 masses of Lope's drama, it should be 
 further noted, ran insensibly into each 
 other — the sacred and the secular, the 
 tragic and the comic, the heroic action 
 and that from vulgar life, — until some- 
 times it seems as if there were neither 
 separate form nor distinctive attribute 
 to any of them." 
 
 Of the various kinds of dramas, hero- 
 ical, religious and common life, his great- 
 est success was in those called comedies 
 " De Capa y Espada " or dramas " Of the 
 Cloak and Sword," named in honor of the 
 genteel class of Spaniards, who wore these 
 habitually. The ruling spirit of these 
 dramas was gallantry, with intrigue al- 
 ways involved, and generally an under- 
 plot of the inferior characters. Of these 
 the name of their number is legion. 
 
 His versatile genius adapted itself to 
 all wants. His dramas of common life, 
 with characters taken from the vulgar 
 and illiterate, had in them all that this 
 class could desire. His heroic dramas 
 delighted all those most gifted and most 
 
 *Tickuor's " His. Span. Lit.," vol. II., p. 205.
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 263 
 
 fond of the recitals of ancient Spanish 
 heroism, and his religious plays made 
 him the delight of those of his own rank 
 and profession, especially the "Autos da 
 Sacramentales, " which were performed 
 in the streets on occasions of the gor- 
 geous ceremonies of the Corpus Christi. 
 
 Of the hundreds of these dramas, 
 multitudes were written in the space of 
 twenty-four hours, and very many in 
 that of three or four hours. Never was 
 there a mind so fertile and rapid in the 
 devising of plots and counterplots and 
 underplots. To these everything was 
 sacrificed. As for the drawing of char- 
 acter, Lope knew that the audience to 
 whom he was to appeal cared nothing 
 for this. It would be vain to look 
 through all of his characters for one 
 that stands out in bold relief like those 
 of Shakespeare. The character was of 
 little importance, what was wanted was 
 the intrigue; and it is simply marvelous 
 with what rapidity and variety he could 
 work upon this. 
 
 Beaumont and Fletcher were the first 
 to introduce into England the comedy 
 of intrigue. Lope de Vega and the
 
 0(54 LECTURES <>S LITERATI HE. 
 
 Spanish stage were the sources from 
 which they were supplied. The ruling 
 idea was to keep the denouement of a 
 drama like a novel unforeseen to the last, 
 at whatever cost to character, probabil- 
 ity or historic fact. Lope gave this ad- 
 vice to other playwrights: "Keep the 
 explanation of the story 'doubtful till 
 the last scene, for, as soon as the public 
 know how it will end, they turn their 
 faces to the door and their backs to the 
 stage. " 
 
 The exactions upon a playwright in 
 such a condition of society were exor- 
 bitant. A play was merely a drama- 
 tized novel, which, when it had been 
 once read, was thought about no longer, 
 but must give place to another. The 
 great dramatist was found equal tc all 
 emergencies. To-night he would have 
 a drama either for the gentility of the 
 common people, with an abundance of 
 plot and counterplot, and for to-morrow 
 night, besides attending to his offices as 
 priest, he would have another with new 
 characters and other plots. The drama 
 of last night would be laid aside until it 
 was forgotten, and these greedy play-
 
 SPANISH LITERATVKi:. 265 
 
 goers would be looking out for another 
 for the night ensuing this; and they 
 would not be disappointed. It is not 
 surprising, therefore, that of the vast 
 number of the dramas written by Lope, 
 less than a fourth should ever have been 
 published. Created for the entertain- 
 ment of each a single evening, they per- 
 ished with their first using, and were 
 brought forth again only when time had 
 obliterated the memory of their plots. 
 
 Many a struggle had the theatre with 
 the Church, for there was much gross- 
 ness even in some of the comedies of 
 Lope the priest, but the theatre pre- 
 vailed in time under such compromises 
 as seemed fair both to the Church and 
 the world. These compromises included 
 a reasonable number of religious plays, 
 the acting of one upon Sundays and 
 holidays, and the occasional closing of 
 the theatres in respect to mournful 
 events in the Church and the State. 
 
 The last to hold up the Spanish 
 drama, then the richest in Europe, was 
 Calderon. It is pleasant to recall the 
 love and admiration felt for each other 
 by these two great poets of Spain —
 
 266 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 Lope de Vega and Don Pedro Calderon. 
 The difference in conditions made no 
 alteration. The former wrote for bread; 
 poor and without friends, except among 
 his own class, and the admirers of a 
 genius which they had no means to re- 
 ward except with enthusiastic praise. 
 The other was well born and a favorite 
 most of his life at court. Yet the older 
 and humbler was proud of the younger, 
 and delighted in the promise of his early 
 youth. And the younger repaid his 
 generous praise and encouragement 
 with everlasting gratitude. He also 
 was a priest, and, but for the death of 
 Philip IV., he would have risen to great 
 place in the hierarchy. More devout 
 than his predecessor, the serious pre- 
 dominates in his dramatic writings, al- 
 
 thouo-h he was not without much of the 
 
 o 
 
 humor that made Lope the most beloved 
 of all his countrymen. 
 
 Calderon lived when the glory of his 
 country, lately at its greatest height, 
 was beginning, unnoticed by him and 
 the rest of the Spanish nation, to decay. 
 Conquest and expulsion of the Moors, 
 discovery of America, vast achievements
 
 SPA NISH L 1 7 Ki;. 1 777.' E. 267 
 
 in many wars, hud made Spain chiefest 
 among European powers. Calderon 
 was fired with enthusiasm for what 
 Spain had done for civilization, for 
 Christianity. He gloried in his country 
 and in his religion. The latter, he cele- 
 brated in many a drama, which ranks 
 second only to the best, second only to 
 his predecessor, in amount of work done 
 with his pen. These cover a multitude 
 of themes. He had produced " The 
 Fairy Lady," " The Physician of his 
 own Honor," " It is Better than it 
 Was," " Life Is a Dream," and others, 
 when Lope, delighted with his promise, 
 foretold its glorious fulfillment. 
 
 While he loved most the heroes of 
 his native country, yet he celebrated 
 many of foreign lands and of ancient 
 and mediaeval times. Notable among 
 these are: "The Daughter of the Air," 
 on the legend of Semiramis; " Jealousy 
 the Greatest Monster," on the story of 
 Herod and Mariamme; "Love Survives 
 Life," on the rising of the Moriscoes 
 in the Alpujarras. Of his comedies, 
 some of the best known are " The 
 Fairy Lady," " The Gaoler of Himself,"
 
 268 LECTURES ON LITERATURE. 
 
 " The Loud Secret," " The Scarf and 
 the Flower," in which are a grace and a 
 beauty unsurpassed. His favorites 
 were the Autos, all founded on scrip- 
 tural subjects. One of the greatest of 
 these is " The Locks of Absalom." 
 There are many sublime and most 
 pathetic scenes in this. The tragic 
 muse has never produced a scene more 
 thrilling than in that wherein, at the 
 instigation of Absalom, his brother 
 Amnon is assassinated. In all these 
 Autos stress is laid upon the beauty 
 and felicity of innocence and the misery 
 and punishment of guilt, above all 
 glorifying the blessedness of the Holy 
 Eucharist. 
 
 His variously fertile genius was as 
 successful in Greek mythology, as in 
 Perseus and Andromeda, seeing in these 
 myths, dark as they are, prophecies of 
 the coming of Christianity. " Theseus 
 in the Labyrinth, " " Ulysses and 
 Circe. '' and the like, are all prophecies. 
 So, in the Old Testament, as in " The 
 Brazen Serpent, " " Gideon's Fleece," 
 " The Sheaves of Ruth, " and many, 
 many others.
 
 SPANISH LITERATURE. 269 
 
 In Cakleron culminated that great 
 Spanish drama, the richest in Europe, 
 and, with the exception of the English, 
 the greatest of all time. Like the Eng- 
 lish it was native to the soil. It was ro- 
 mantic and original, not like the French 
 and Italian, classical and imitative. 
 Never were both patriotism and religion 
 more loyally and ably represented than 
 by this poet, who had the happiness to 
 live in the most glorious period of his 
 country's renown, and then to depart 
 before its close.
 
 
 KJH 

 
 
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