LIFORNIA LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY OF LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY OF Qj/vlO LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY RSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA /TD II - OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA RSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA ase HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE. BY H. A. TAINE, D.C.L. TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY H. VAN LAUN, One of the Masters at the Edinburgh Academy. COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME. NEW YORK: JOHN WURTELE LOVELL, No. 24 BOND STREET. PREFACE TO THE NEW EDITION. THIS edition of TAINE'S HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE has been carefully revised and compared with the original. All the quotations have been collated and verified anew, and no trouble has been spared to make it as accurate as possible For the favorable reception this translation has met with from the press and the public, I feel much inflebtsd. , ',' ', ; ' ' * ' A : : ': % : *'.'- : : :.:"''? VAN /*. r ::.-*;*./*::. fc : /. \ THE ACADEMY, EDINBURGH, May 31, 1873, H*N*Y MORSE STEPHEN* CONTENTS. INTRODUCTION. PACK. Historical documents serve only as a clue to reconstruct the visible individual 17 The outer man is only a clue to study the inner, invisible man 19 The state and the actions of the inner and invisible man have their causes in certain general ways of thought and feeling 20 Chief causes of thoughts and feelings. Their historical effects 22 The three primordial forces I. Race 23 II. Surroundings 24 III. Epoch 25 Historv is a mechanical and psychological problem. Within certain limits man can foretell 26 Production of the results of a primordial cause. Common elements. Composition of groups. Law of mutual dependence. Law of proportional influences 27 Law of formation of a group. Examples and indications 29 General problem and future of history. Psychological method. Value of literature. Purpose in writing tlus book 30 BOOK I.- THE SOURCE. CHAPTER I. ty Siaxan*. I. Their original country Soil, sea, sky, climate Their new country A moist land and a thankless soil Influence of climate on character 33 II. Their bodily structure Food Manners Uncultivated instincts, German and Eng- lish 35 III. Noble instincts in Germany The individual The family The state Religion The Edda Tragi-heroic conception of the world and of mankind 38 IV. Noble instincts in England Warrior -and chieftain Husband and wife The poem of Beowulf Barbarian society and the barbarian hero 42 V. Pagan poems Kind and force of sentiments Bent of mind and speech Force of impression ; harshness of expression 45 VI. Christian poems Wherein the Saxons are predisposed to Christianity How converted Their view of Christianity Hymns of Csedmon Funeral hymn Poem of Judith Paraphrase of the Bible 47 VII. Why Latin culture took no hold on the Saxons Reasons drawn from the Saxon conquest Bede, Alcuin, Alfred Translations Chronicles Compilations Impotence of Latin writers Reasons drawn from the Saxon character Adhelm Alcuin Latin verse Poetic dialogues Bad taste of the Latin writers.... 51 VIII. Contrast of German and Latin races Character of the Saxon race Its endurance under the Norman conquest 55 515143 CONTENTS. CHAPTER II. PACK. I. Formation and character of Feudalism .......................................... 56 II. The Norman invasion ; character of the Normans Contrast with the Saxons The Normans are French How they became so Their taste and architecture Their spirit of inquiry and their literature Chivalry and amusements Their tactics and their success ............................................. 56 III. Bent of the French genius Two principal characteristics; clear and consecutive ideas Psychological form of French genius Prosaic histories ; lack of color and passion, ease and discursiveness Natural logic and clearness, soberness, grace and delicacy, refinement and cynicism Order and charm The nature of the beauty and of the ideas which the French have introduced . 60 IV. The Normans in England Their position and their tyranny They implant their literature and language They forget the same Learn English by degrees Gradually English becomes gallicised ..................................... 04 V. They translate French works into English Opinion of Sir John Mandeville Layamon, Robert of Gloucester, Robert de Brunne They imitate in English the French literature Moral manuals, chansons, fabliaux, Gestes Brightness, frivolity, and futility of this French literature Barbarity and ignorance of the feudal civilization Geste of Richard Cceur de Lion, and voyages of Sir John Mandeville Poorness of the literature introduced and implanted in England Why it has not endured on the Continent or in England ............ 67 VI. The Saxons in England Endurance of the Saxon nation, and formation of the English constitution Endurance of the Saxon character, and formation of the Engl ish character .......................................................... 73 VII-IX. Comparison of the ideal hero in France and England Fabliaux of Reynard, and ballads of Robin Hood How the Saxon character makes way for and supports political liberty Comparison of the condition of the Commons in France and England Theory of the English constitution, by Sir John Fortescue How the Saxon constitution makes way for and supports political liberty Situation of the Church, and precursors of the Reformation in Eng- land Piers Plowman and Wycliffe How the Saxon character and the situ- ation of the Norman Church made way for religious reform Incompleteness and importance of the national literature Why it has not endured ......... 75 CHAPTER III. I. Chaucer His education His political and social life Wherein his talent was serviceable He paints the second feudal society ---- ._ ............ .^ .......... 85 II. How the midd'e age degenerated Decline of the serious element in manners, books, and works of art Need of excitement Analogies of architecture and literature .................................................................. 85 III. Wherein Chaucer belongs to the middle age Romantic and ornamental poems Le Roman de la Rose Troilns and Cressida Canterbury Tales Order of description and events The House of Fame Fantastic dreams and visions Love poems Troilus and Cressida Exaggerated development of love in the middle age Why the mind took this path Mystic love The Flower and the Leaf Sensual love Troilus and Cressida ................. 86 IV. Wherein Chaucer is French Satirical and jovial poems Canterbury Tales The Wife of Bath and marriage The mendicant friar and religion Buffoonery, waggery, and coarseness in the middle age ................... ./. .......... $J V. Wherein Chaucer was English and original Idea of character and individual Van Eyck and Chaucer contemporary Prologue to Canterbury Tales Portraits of the franklin, monk, miller, citizen, knight, squire, prioress, the good clerk-^ Connection of events and characters General idea Importance of the same Chaucer a precursor of the Reformation He halts by the way Tediousness and Childishness Causes of this feebleness His prose, and scholastic notion How he is isolated in his age ................... ...................... - . 96 VI. Connection of philosophy and poetry How general notions failed under the scholastic philosophy Why poetry failed Comparison of civilization and decadence in the middle age, and in Spain Extinction of the English literature Translators Rhyming chroniclers Didactic poets Compilers of moralities Gower Occleve Lydgate Analogy of taste in costumes, buildings, and literature Sad notion of fate, and human misery Hawes Barclay Skelton Elements of the Reformation and ci the Renaissance ...................... iea CONTENTS. BOOK II. THE RENAISSANCE. CHAPTER I. i. MANNERS OF THE TIME. PAGE. I. Idea \rhich men had formed of the world, since the dissolution of the old society How and why human inventiveness reappears The form of the spirit of the Renaissance The representation of objects is imitative, characteristic, and complete ........... ................................................. 107 II Why the ideal changes Improvement of the state of man in Europe In England Peace Industry Commerce Pasturage Agriculture Growth of public wealth Buildings and furniture The palace, meals and habits Court pageantries Celebrations under Elizabeth Masques under James 1 .......... 108 III. Manners of the people Pageants Theatres Village feasts Pagan development. 112 IV. Models The ancients Translation and study of classical authors Sympathy for the manners and mythology of the ancients The moderns Taste for Italian writings and ideas Poetry and painting in Italy were pagan The ideal is the strong and happy man, limited by the present life ........................... 113 2. POETRY. I. The English Renaissance is the Renaissance of the Saxon genius ................ 116 II. The forerunners The Earl of Surrey His feudal and chivalrous life His English individual character His serious and melancholy poems His conception of inward love ................................................................ 1 16 III. His style His masters, Petrach and Virgil His progress, power, precocious perfection Birth of art Weaknesses, imitation, research Art incomplete. . . . 118 IV. Growth and completion of art Euphiies and fashion Style and spirit of the Re- naissance Copiousness and irregularity How manners, style, and spirit 'corres- pond Sir Philip Sydney His education, life, character His learning, gravity, generosity, forcible expression The A readies. Exaggeration and mannerism of sentiments and style Defence of Poesie Eloquence and energy His sonnets Wherein the body and the passions of the Renaissance differ from those of the moderns Sensual love Mystical love .................................. 120 V. Pastoral poetry The great number of poets Spirit and force of the poetry State of mind which produces it Love of the country Reappearance of the ancient gods Enthusiasm for beauty Picture of ingenuous and happy love Shak- speare, Jonson, Fletcher, Drayton, Marlowe, Warner, Breton, Lodge, Greene How the transformation of the people transforms art ........................ 126 VI. Ideal poetry Spenser His life His character His platonism His Hymns of love and beauty Copiousness of his imagination How far it was suited for the epic Wherein it was allied tc the "faerie" His tentatives Shepherd's Calendar His short poems His masterpiece The faerie Queene His epic is allegorical and yet life-like It embraces Christian chivalry and the Pagan Olympus How it combines these ................................. , ......... 131 VII. The Faerie Queene Impossible events How they appear natural Belphcebe and Chrysogone Fairy and gigantic pictures and landscapes Why they must be so The cave of Mammon, and the gardens of Acrasia How Spenser composes Wherein the art of the Renaissance is complete .... ........................ 135 3. PROSE. 1 Limit of the poetry Changes in society and manners How the return to nature becomes an appeal to the senses Corresponding changes in poetry How agree- ablenesss replaces energy How prettiness replaces the beautiful Refinements Carew, Suckling, Herrick Affectation Quarles, Herbert, Babington, Donne, Cowley Begininng of the classic style, and drawing-room life ........ 143 How poetry passed into prose Connection of science and art In Italy In England How the triumph of nature develops the exercise of the natural reason Scholars, historians, speakers, compilers, politicians, antiquaries, philoso- phers, theologians The abundance of talent, and the rarity ol fine works Superfluousness, punctiliousness, and pedantry of the style Originality, preci- sion, energy, and richness of the style How, unlike the classical writers, they represent the individual, not the idea ...................................... 147 III. Robert Burton His life and character Vastness and confusion of his acquirements His subject, the Anatomy of Melancholy Scholastic divisions Medley of moral and medical science .................................................. 149 IV. Sir Thomas Browne His talent His imagination is that of a North-man II. 6 CONTENTS. PACK. Hydrtotaphiti, Religio Medici His ideas, curiosity, and doubts belong to the age of the Renaissance Pseudodoxia Effects of this activity and this direction of the public mind ................ ....................................... 151 V Francis Bacon His talent His originality Concentration and brightness of his style Comparisons and aphorisms The Essays His style not argumentative, but intuitive His practical good sense Turning-point of his rhilosophy The object of science is the amelioration of the condition of man New Atlantis The idea is in accordance with the state of affairs and the spirit of the times It completes the Renaissance It introduces a new method The Organum Where Bacon stopped Limits of the spirit of the age How the conception of the world, which had been poetic, became mechanical How the Renaissance ended in the establishment of positive science ................................ 153 CHAPTER II. I. The public The stage ........................................................ 158 II. Manners of the sixteenth century Violent and complete expansion of nature,... 160 III* English manners Expansion of the energetic and gloomy character .............. 163 IV. The poets General harmony between the character of a poet and that of his age Nash, Decker, Kyd, Peele, Lodge, Greene Their condition and life Mar- lowe His life His works Tamburlaine The Jew of Malta Edward II.FaustusH\s conception of man ....................................... 166 V* Formation of this drama The" process and character of this art Imitative sympathy, which depicts by expressive examples Contrast of classical and Germanic art Psychological construction and proper sphere of these two arts. 173 VI* Male characters Furious passions Tragical events Exaggerated characters The Duke of Milan by Massinger Ford's A nnabella Webster's Duchess of Malfi and Vittoria Corombona Female characters Germainic idea of love and marriage Euphrasia, Bianca, Arethusa, Ordella, Aspasia Amoret, in Beaumont and Fletcher Penthea in Ford Agreement of the moral and physical type .............................................................. 176 CHAPTER III. I. The masters of the school, in the school and in their age Jonson His mood Character Education First efforts Struggles Poverty Sickness Death. 186 II. Learning Classical tastes Didactic characters Good management of his plots Freedom and precision of his style Vigor of his will and passion ........... 188 III. Dramas Catiline and Sejanus How he was able to depict the personages and the passions of the Roman decadence ............................. .......... igj IV. Comedies His reformation and theory of the theatre Satirical comedies Volpone Why these comedies are serious and warlike How they depict the passions of the Renaissance His farces The Silent Woman Why these comedies are energetic and rude How they conform with the tastes of the Renaissance ............................................................ 194 V Limits of his talent Wherein he is inferior to Moliere Want of higher philosophy and comic gayety His imagination and fancy The Staple of News and Cynthia 1 's Revels How he treats the comedy of society, and lyrical comedy His smaller poems His masques Theatrical and picturesque manners of the court The 3ad Shepherd How Jonson remains a poet to his death ...... 200 VI. General idea of Shakspeare The fundamental idea in Shakspeare Conditions of human reason Shakspeare's master faculty Conditions of exact represen- tation ................................................................... 203 CHAPTER IV. I, Life and character of Shakspeare Family Youth Marriage He becomes an actor A donis Sonnets Loves Humor Conversation Melancholy The constitution of the productive and sympathetic character Prudence Fortune Retirement ................. ... ....... . ............ ..................... 204 II. Style Images Excesses Incongruities Copiousness Difference between the creative and analytic conception ........................................... an CONTENTS. 7 PACK. III. Manners Familiar intercourse Violent bearing Harsh language Conversation and action Agreement of manners and style . 2 14 IV. The dramatis personce All of the same family Brutes and idiots Caliban, Ajax, Cloten, Polonius, the Nurse How the mechanical imagination can precede or survive reason . / 217 V. Men of wit Difference between the wit of reasoners and of artists Mercutio, Beatrice, Rosalind, Benedict, the clowns Falstaff 22f VI. Women Desdemona, Virginia, Juliet, Miranda, Imogen, Cordelia, Ophelia, Volumnia How Shakspeare represents love Why he bases virtue on instinct or passion *,""," V 223 VII. Villains I ago, Richard III. How excessive lusts and tne lack of conscience are the natural province of the impassioned imagination 224 VIII. Principal characters Excess and disease of the imagination Lear, Othello, Cleo- patra, Coriolanus, Macbeth, Hamlet Comparison of Shakspeare's psychol- ogy with that of the French tragic authors : 2*J IX. Fancy Agreement of imagination with observation in Shakspeare Interesting nature 'of sentimental and romantic comedy A s you like it Idea of exist- ence Midsummer Nights Dream Idea, of love Harmony of all parts of the work Harmony between the artist and his work 232 CHAPTER V. of the conscience Renewal of heart Suppression of ceremonies Transfer- ^ mation of the clergy III. Reforrr ' cle convulsions me translation 01 tne DIUIC ixuw ui^i.wai v..v,..o ..- ~ ...... sentiments are in accordance with contemporary manners and with the English character The Prayer Book Moral and manly feeling of the prayers and church service Preaching Latimer His education Character Familiar and UllUICll SCI Vl^C 1 icav.lllll, j-.a.iiii>-. . . persuasive eloquence Death The martyrs under Mary England thencel< Protestant ... : ' * * * ' '," ' ' .'. '."' IV. The Anglicans Close connection between religion and society How the religious sentiment penetrates literature How the sentiment of the beautiful subsists in religion Hooker His breadth of mind and the ^ ness T f _h ls jgJSllSi;! V. The VI. Bunyan H.~ , _ r .--. 7 f England 27> CHAPTER VI. I. General idea of his mind and character Family Education Studies Travels ^ II. Effect's a concentrated 'and "solitary character Austerity Inexperience Marriage Children Domestic Troubles ;-. III. Combative energy Polemic against the bishops Against the king Enthusia and sternness Theories on government, church, and education btoi n and virtue Old age, occupations, person IV. Milton's residence in London and the country General appearance " V. Milton as a prose-writer Changes during three centuries in countenances ideas-Heaviness of his logic- The Doctrine and Discipline of Dn'orce- Heavy Humor Animadversions upon the Remonstrant s Defence^ ness oi discussion-^/,^ '^'it"^*^'**^ since fioi hrgiveTpoeTry a moral tone Profane poems- PtnserosoCotnusLycidas Religious poems Paradise Lost^ CONTENTS. PAGE, of a genuine epic They are not to be met with in the age or i: the poet Com- parison of Adam and Eve with an English family Comparison of God and the angels to a monarch's court The rest of the poem Comparison between the sentiments of Satan and the republican passions Lyrical and moral character of the scenery Loftiness and sense of the moral ideas Situation of the poet and the poem between two ages Composition of his genius and his work ...... 193 BOOK III. THE CLASSIC AGE. CHAPTER I. i. THE ROISTERERS. I. The excesses of Puritanism How they induce excesses of sensuality ............. 309 II. Picture of these manners by a stranger The Memoir es de Grammont Difference of debauchery in France and England ...................................... 311 IlJ Butler's Hudibras Platitude of his comic style, and harshness of his rancorous style ............... ............................................... ----- ... 313 IV. Baseness, cruelty, brutality, debauchery, of the court Rochester, his life, poems, style, morals .............................................................. 314 V. Philosophy consonant with these manners Hobbes, his spirit and his style His curtailments and his discoveries His mathematical method In how much he resembles Descartes His morality, esthetics, politics, logic, psychology, metaphysics Spirit and aim of his philosophy ............................... 318 VI. The theatre Alteration in taste, and in the public Audiences before and after the Restoration ....................................................... ..... 321 VII. Dryden Disparity of his comedies Unskilfulness of his indecencies How he translates Moliere's A mphitryon ...... .................................... 322 VIII \\fycherley Life Character Melancholy, greed, immodesty Love in a Wood, Cormtry Wife, Dancing Master Licentious pictures, and repugnant details His energy and realism Parts of Olivia and Manly in his Plain Dealer Certain words of Milton's Paradise Lost 324 THE WORLDLINGS. I. Appearance of the worldly life in Europe Its conditions and causes How it was established in England Etiquette, amusements, conversations, manners, and talents of the drawing-room 329 II. Dawn of the classic spirit in Europe Its origin Its nature Difference of conver- sation under Elizabeth and Charles II 331 III. Sir William Temple His life, character, spirit, and style 332 IV. Writers of fashion Their correct language and gallant bearing Sir Charles Sed- ley, the Earl of Dorset, Edmund Waller His opinions and style Wherein consists his polish Wherein he is not sufficiently polished Culture of style Lack of poetry Character of monarchical and classic style 335 V. Sir John Denham His poem of Cooper's Hill Oratorical swell of his verse English seriousness of his moral preoccupations How people of fashion and literary men followed then the fashions of France 339 VI. The comic-authors Comparison of this theatre with that of Moliere Arrange- ment of ideas in Moliere General ideas in Moliere How in Moliere the odious is_concealed, while the truth is depicted How in Moliere the honest man is still the man of the world How the respectable man of Moliere is a French type 340 VII. Action Complication of intrigues Frivolity of purpose Crudeness of the charac- ters Crossness of manners Wherein consists the talent of Wycherley, Con- greve, Vanbrugh, and Farquhar Kind of characters they are able to produce. 344 VIII. Natural characters Sir John Brute, the husband ; Squire Sullen Sir Tunbelly, the father Miss Hoyden, the young lady Squire Humphry, the young gentleman Idea of nature according to this theatre 346 IX. Artificial characters Women of the world Miss Prue, Lady Wishfort^ Lady Pliant, Mrs. Millamant Men of the world Mirabftt-\&t& of socity ac- cording to this theatre Why this culture and this literature have not produced durable works Wherein they are opposed to the English character Transfor- mation of taste and manners 34& X. The continuation of comedy Sheridan Life Talent The School for Scandal How comedy degenerates and is extinguished Causes of the decay of the theatre in Europe and in England 35? CONTENTS. g CHAPTER II. jlrgbm PAGB. I. Dryden's beginnings Close of the poetic age Cause of literary decline and regen- eration ........................................................ .......... 359 II. Family Education Studies Reading Habits Position Character Audience Friendships Quarrels Harmony of his life and talent. . . ................. 360 III. The theatres re-opened and transformed The new public and the new taste Dra- matic theories of Dryden His judgment of the old English theatre His judg- ment of the new French theatre Composite works Incongruities of his drama Tyrannic Love Crossness of his characters The Indian Emperor A ureng- zebe, A Imanzor ......................................................... 361 IV. Style of his drama Rhymed verse Flowery diction Pedantic tirades Want of agreement between the classical .style and romantic events How Dryden bor- rows and mars the inventions of Shakspeare and Milton Why this drama fell to the ground ............................................................. 367 V. Merits of this drama Characters of Antony and Don Sebastian Otway Life Works .................................. ................................ 370 VI. Dryden as a writer Kind, scope, and limits of his mind Clumsiness in flattery and obscenity Heaviness in dissertation and discussion Vigor and funda- mental uprightness ..... . ..................... . . ......................... 375 VII. How literature in England is occupied with politics and religion Political poems of Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel, The Medal Religious poems, Religio Laid, The Hind and the Panther Bitterness and virulence of these poems Mac Flecknoe ....................... .............................. 378 VIII. Rise of the art of writing Difference between the stamp of mind of the artistic and classic ages Dryden's manner of writing Sustained and oratorical diction.. 381 IX. Lack of general ideas in this age and this stamp of mind Dryden's translations- Adaptations Imitations Tales and letters Faults Merits Gravity of his character, brilliancy of his inspiration, fits and starts of poetic eloquence A lexander 1 s Feast, a song in honor of St. Cecilia's Day ..................... 382 X. Dryden's latter days Wretchedness Poverty Wherein his work is incomplete Death .................................. . ...... .......................... 386 CHAPTER III. I. The moral revolution of the seventeenth century It advances side by side with the political revolution ..................... ............................... 386 II. Brutality of the people Gin Riots Corruption of the great Political manners Treachery under William III. and Anne Venality under Walpole and Bute Private manners The roisterers The atheists Chesterfied's Letters His polish and morality Gay's Beggars' Opera His elegance and satire ........ 387 III. Principles of civilization in France and ^England Conversation in France; how it ends in a revolution Moral sense in England ; how it ends in a reformation, 391 IV. Religion Visible signs Its profound sentiment Religion popular Lifelike Arians Methodists ...................................................... 394 V. The pulpit Mediocrity and efficacy of preaching Tillotson His heaviness and solidity Barrow His abundance and minuteness South His harshness and energy Comparison of French and English preachers ...................... 397 VI. Theology Comparison of the French and English apologetics Sherlock, Stil " Price, Hutcheson VII. The Constitution Sentiment of right Locke's Essay on Government Theory of personal right accepted Maintained by temperament, pride, and interest Theory of personal right applied Put in practice by elections, the press, the tribunals \ 45 VIII. Parliamentary eloquence Its energy and harshness Lord Chatham Junius Fox Sheridan Pitt Burke . 48 IX. Issue of the century's labors Economic and moral transformation Comparison of Reynolds' and Lely's portraits Contrary doctrines and tendencies in France and England Revolutionists and Conservatives Judgment of Burke and the English people on the French revolution 4*3 CONTENTS. CHAPTER IV. PACK. I Addison and Swift in their epoch Wherein they are alike and unlil e 416 II. The man Education and culture Latin verses Voyage in France and Italy Letter from. Italy to Lord HaLfax Remarks on Italy Dialogues on Medals Campaign Gentleness and kindness Success and happiness 417 III. Gravity and rationality Solid studies and exact observation His knowledge of men and business habits Nobility of his character and conduct Elevation of his morality and religion How his life and character have contributed to the pleasantness and usefulness of his writings 420 IV. The moralist His essays are all moral Against gross, sensual, or worldly life This morality is practical, and yet commonplace and desultory How it relies on reason and calculation How it has for its end satisfaction in this world and happiness in the other Speculative meanness of his religious conception Practical excellence of his religious conception 421 V. The literary man Harmony of morality and elegance The style that suits men of the world Merits of this style Inconveniences Addison as a critic His judgment of Paradise Lost Agreement of his art and criticism Limits of clas- sical criticism and art What is lacking in the eloquence of Addison, of the Englishman and of the moralist 426 VI. Grave pleasantry Humor Serious and fertile imagination Sir Roger de Cover ley The religious and the poetical sentiment Vision of Mir za How the Germanic element subsists under Latin culture 429 CHAPTER V. I. Swift's de*but Character Pride Sensitiveness His life in Sir William Tem- ple's house At Lord Berkeley's Political life Influence Failure Private life Lovemaking Despair and insanity 434 II. His wit His power, and its limits Prosaic and positive mind Holding a posi- tion between vulgarity and genius Why destructive. 439 III. The pamphleteer How literature now concerns itself with politics Difference of parties and pamphlets in France and England Conditions of the literary pamph- let Of the effective pamphlet Special and practical pamphlets The Ex- amine* The Drapier^s Letters A Short Character of Thomas Earl of Wharton A n A rgument against A bolishing Christianity Political invective Personal defamation Incisive common sense Grave irony 441 IV. The poet Comparison of Swift and Voltaire Gravity and harshness of his jests Bickerstaff Coarseness of his galantry Cadenus and Vanessa His prosaic and realistic poetry The Grand Question Debated Energy and sadness of his shorter poems Verses on his own Death His excesses 445 V. The narrator and philosopher A Tale of a Tub H's opinion on religion, science, philosophy and reason How he maligns human intelligence Gulliver 9 ^ Travels His opinion on society, government, rank, and professions How he maligns human nature Last pamphlets Composition of his character and genius 450 CHAPTER VI. f% Jfofottsta. I. Characteristic of the English novel How it differs from others 456 IL De Foe His life Energy, devotion, his share in politics Spirit Difference of old and modern realists Works Career Aim Robinson Crusoe How this character is English Inner enthusiasm Obstinate will Patience in work Methodical common sense Religious emotions Final piety 457 III. Circumstances which gave rise to the novels of the eighteenth century All these novels are moral fictions and studies of character Connection of the essay and the novel Two principal notions in morality How they produce two kinds of novels 461 IV. Richardson Condition and character Connection of his perspicacity and his rigor Talent, minuteness, combinations Pamela Her mood Principles The English wife Clarissa Harlowe The Harlowe family Despotic and unsocia- ble characteristics in England Lovelace Haughty and militant characteristics in England Clarissa Her energy, coolness, logic Her pedantry and scruple* CONTENTS, H PAGB. Sir Charles Grandison Incongruities of automatic and edifying heroes Richardson as a preacher Prolixity, prudery, emphasis 463 V. Fielding Mood, character, and life Joseph Andrews His conception of nature Tom Jones Character of the squire Fielding's heroes Amelia Faults in her conception 469 VI. Smollett Roderick Random Peregrine Pickle Comparison of Smollett and Le Sage Conception of life Harshness of his heroes Coarseness of his pictures Standing out of his characters Humphrey Clinker 47^ VII. Sterne Excessive study of human particularities Sterne's character Eccentricity Sensibility Obscenity Why he depicts the diseases and degeneracies of human nature 476 VIII. Goldsmith Purification of the novel Picture of citizen life, upright happiness, Protestant virtue The Vicar of IVakefield The English clergyman 47$ IX. Samuel Johnson His authority Person Manners Life Doctrines His opin- ion about Voltaire and Rousseau Style Works 480 X. Hogarth Moral and realistic painting Contrast of English temperament and morality How morality has disciplined temperament 484 CHAPTER VII. I. Rule and realm of the classical spirit Its characters, works, scope, and limits- How it is centred in Pope . 486 [I. Pope Education Precocity Beginnings Pastoral peoms Essay on Criticism Personal appearance Mode of life Character Mediocrity of his passions and ideas Largeness of his vanity and talent Independent fortune and assiduous labor 487 III. Epist'e of Eloisato Abelard What the passions become in artificial poetry The Rafie of the Lock Society and the language of society in France and England Wherein Pope's badinage is painful and displeasing The DunciadGb- scenity and vulgarities W T herein the English imagination and drawing-room wit are irreconcilable. 49C IV. Descriptive talent Oratorical talent Didactic poems Why these poems are the final work of the classical spirit The Essay on Man His deism and optimism Value of his conceptions How they are connected with the dominant style How they are deformed in Pope's hands Methods and perfection of his style Excellence of his portraits Why they are superior Translation of the Iliad Change of taste during the past century 495 V. Incongruity of the English mind and the classical decorum Prior Gay Ancient pastoral impossible in northern climates Conception of the country natural in England Thomson 499 VI. Discredit of the drawing-room Appearance of the man of feeling Why the return to nature took place earlier in England than in France Sterne Richardson Mackenzie Macpherson Gray, Akenside, Beattie, Collins, Young, Shenstone Persistence of the classical form Domination of the period Johnson The historical school Robertson, Gibbon, Hume Their talent and their limits Beginning of the modern age 501 BOOK IV. MODERN LIFE. CHAPTER I. f bm mtfr |)r0krx:tx0tt8. I* Changes in society Rise of democracy The French Revolution Desire of getting on Changes in the human mind New notion of causes German philos- ophy Craving for the beyond Sf II. Robert Burns His country Family Youth Wretchedness His yearnings and efforts Invectives against society and church The Jolly Beggars Attack* on conventional cant His idea of natural life Of moral life Talent Spontaneity Style Innovations Success Affectations Studied letters and academic verse Farmer's life Employment in the Excise Disgust Excesses Death 510 III. Conservative rule in England At first the Revolution affects the style only Cowper Sickly refinement Despair Madness Retiiement The Task Modern idea of poetry Of style ... 519 IV. The Romantic school Its pretensions Its tentatives The two ideas of modern literature History enters into literature Lamb, Coleridge, Southey, Moore 12 CONTENTS. PAG* Faults of this school Why it succeeded less in England than elsewhere Sir Walter Scott Education Antiquarian studies Aristocratic t stes Life Poems Novels Incompleteness of his historical imitations Excellence of his national pictures His interiors Amiable raillery Moral aim Place in modern civilization Development of the novel in England Realism and uprightness Wherein this school is cockneyfied and English 523 V Philosophy enters into literature Wordsworth Character Condition Life Painting of the moral life in the vulgar life Introduction of the colorless style and psychological divisions Faults of this kind of literature Loftiness of Wordsworth's sonnets The Excursion Austere beauty of this Protestant poetry Shelley Imprudences Theories Fancy Pantheism Ideal charac- ters Life-like scenery General tendency of the new literature Gradual introduction of continental ideas 531 CHAPTER II. I. The Man Family Impassioned character Precocious loves Life of excess Combative character Revolt against opinion English Bards and Scotch Reviewers Bravado and rashness Marriage Extravagance of adverse opinion Departure Political life in Italy Sorrows and violence 538 II. The poet Reasons for writing Manner of writing How his poetry is personal Classical taste How this gift served him Childe Harold The hero The scenery The style 543 III. His short poems Oratorical manner Melodramatic effects Truth of his descrip- tions of scenery Sincerity of sentiments Pictures of sad and extreme emotions Dominant idea of death and despair Mazeppa, The Prisoner of Chilian^ The Siege of Corinth^ The Corsair, Lara Analogy of this conception with the Edda and Shakspeare Darkness 546 IV. Manfred Comparison of Manfred and Faust Conception of legend and life in Goethe Symbolical and philosophical character of Faust Wherein Byron is inferior to Goethe Wherein he is superior Conception of character and action in Byron Dramatic character of his poem Contrast between the uni- versal and the personal poet 551 V. Scandal in England Constraint and hypocrisy of manners How and by what law moral conceptions vary Life and morals of the south Beppo Don Juan Transformation of Byron's talent and style Picture of sensuous beauty and happinesss Haidde How he combats British cant Human hypocrisy His idea of man Of woman Donna Julia The shipwreck The capture of Ismail Naturalness and variety of his style Excess and wearing out of his poetic vein His drama Departure for Greece, and death 556 VI. Position of Byron in his age Disease of the age Divine conceptions of happiness and life The conception of such happiness by literature By the sciences Future stability of reason Modern conception of nature 563 CHAPTER III. ' alto i I. The past The Saxon invasion How it established the race and dete mined the character The Norman Conquest How it modified the character and estab- lished the Constitution j6| II. The Renaissance How it manifested the national mind The Reformation How it fixed the ideal The Restoration How it imported classical culture and mis- led the national mind The Revolution How it developed classical culture and restored the national mind 566 III. The modern age How European ideas widened the national mould 568 I. The present Concordances of observation and history Sky Soil Products Man 569 II. Commerce Industry 573 III. Agriculture 576 IV. Society Family Arts Philosophy Religion 578 V. What forces have produced the present civilization, and are working out the future civilization 58 CONTENTS. 13 BOOK V. MODERN AUTHORS. PACK. INTRODUCTORY NOTB 583 CHAPTER I. L Jlklum i. THE AUTHOR. I. Connection of the different elements of each talent Importance of the imaginative faculty .-584 II. Lucidity and intensity of imagination in Dickens Boldness and vehemence of his fancy How with him inanimate objects are personified and impassioned Wherein his conception is akin to intuition How he describes idiots and mad- men 585 III. The objects to which he directs his enthusiasm His trivialities and minuteness Wherein he resembles the painters of his country Wherein he differs from George Sand Miss Ruth and Genevieve A journey in a coach 589 IV. Vehemence of the emotions which this kind of imagination must produce His pathos Stephen, the factory hand His humor Why he attains to buffoonery and caricature Recklessness and nervous exaggeration of his gayety 591 2. THE PUBLIC. I. English novels are compelled to be moral Wherein this constraint modifies the idea of love Comparison of love in George Sand and Dickens Pictures of the young girl and the wife Wherein this constraint qualifies the idea of passion Comparison of passions in Balzac and Dickens Inconvenience of this foregone conclusion How comic or odious masks are substituted for natural characters Comparison of Pecksniff 'and Tartuffe Why unity of action is absent in Dickens 594 3. THE CHARACTERS. I. Two classes of characters Natural and instinctive characters Artificial and posi- tive characters Preference of Dickens for the first Aversion against the second 597 II. The hypocrite Mr. Pecksniff Wherein he is English Comparison of Pecksniff and Tarttijfe The positive man Mr. Gradgrind The proud man Mr. Dom- bey Wherein these characters are English 598 III. Children Wanting in French literature Little Joas and David Copperfield Men of the lower orders 601 IV. The ideal man according to Dickens Wherein this conception corresponds to a public need Opposition of culture and nature in England Reassertion of sen- sitiveness and instinct oppressed by conventionalism and rule Success of Dickens 6oa CHAPTER II. f \t $fohl tonimtueb-. f Jjatkerag. I. Abundance and excellence of novels of manners in England Superiority of Dickens and Thackeray Comparison between them 603 i. THE SATIRIST. II. The satirist His moral intentions His moral dissertations 603 III. Comparison of raillery in France and England Difference of the two tempera- ments, tastes, and minds t 606 IV. Superiority of Thackeray in bitter and serious satire Serious irony Literary snobs Miss Blanche A mory Serious caricature Miss Hoggarty 607 V. Solidity and precision of this satirical conception Resemblance of Thackeray and Swift The duties of an ambassador 6n VI. Misanthropy of Thackeray Silliness of his heroines Silliness of love Inbred vice of human generosities and exaltations 612 VII. His levelling tendencies A want of characters and society in England Aversions and preferences The snob and the aristocrat Portraits of the king, the great court noble, the county gentleman, the town gentleman Advantages of this aristocratic institution Exaggeration of the satire 613 14 CONTENTS. 2. THB ARTIST. PAGE. VIII. The artist Idea of pure art Wherein satire injures art Whereir it diminishes the interest Wherein it falsifies the characters Comparison cf Thackeray and Balzac Valerie Marneffe and Rebecca Sharp .............................. 618 IX. Attainment of pure art Portrait of Henry Esmond Historical talent of Thack- eray Conception of ideal man ............................................ 6za X. Literature is a definition of man The definition according to Thackeray Wherein it differs from the truth ..................................................... 625 CHAPTER III. (Kritkigm mtfr fSbi0rg. Ulacaalag. I. The vocation and position of Macaulay in England .................. . ........... 627 II. His Essays Agreeable character and utility of the style Opinions Philosophy. Wherein it is English and practical His Essay on Bacon The true object, according to him, of the sciences Comparison of Bacon with the ancients.. 627 III. His criticism Moral prejudices Comparison of criticism in France and England Why he is religious Connection of religion and Liberalism in England Macaulay' s Liberalism Essay on Church and State ....................... 629 IV. His passion for political liberty How he is the orator and historian of the Whig party Essays on the Revolution and the Striarts ........................... 63 1 V. His talent Taste for demonstration Taste for development Oratorical character of his mind Wherein he differs from classic orators His estimation for par- ticular facts, experiment on the senses, personal reminiscences Importance of decisive phenomena in every branch of knowledge Essays on Warren Has- tings and Clive ........................................................... 633 VI. English marks of his talent Rudeness Humor Poetry ....... ................ 63 7 VII. His work Harmony of his talent, opinion, and work Universality, unity, interest of his history Picture of the Highlands James If. in Ireland The Act of Toleration The Massacre of Glencoe Traces of amplification and rhetoric. 640 VIII. Comparison of Macaulay with French historians Wherein he is classical Wherein he is English Intermediate position of his mind between the Latin and the Germanic mind .......................................................... 647 CHAPTER IV. i. STYLE AND MIND. ECCENTRIC AND IMPORTANT POSITION OF CARLYLE IN ENGLAND. I. His strangenesses, obscurities, violence Fancy and enthusiasm Crudeness and buffooneries .............................................................. 648 II. Humor Wherein it consists It is Germanic Grotesque and tragic pictures Dandies and Poor Slaves The Pigs' Catechism Extreme tension of his mind and nerves ....... .................................................... 650 III. Barriers which hold and direct him Perception of the real and of the sublime ---- 654 IV. His passion for exact and demonstrated fact His search after extinguished feel- ings Vehemence of his emotion and sympathy Intensity of belief and vision Past and Present Cromwell's Letters and Speeches Historical mysticism Grandeur and sadness of his visions How he represents the world after his own mind ................................ ................................. 654 V. Every object is a group, and every employment of human thought is the reproduc- tion of a group Two principal modes of reproducing it, and two principal modes of mind Classification Intuition Inconvenience of the second process It is obscure, hazardous, destitute of proofs It tends to affectation and ex- aggerationHardness and presumption which it provokes Advantages of this kind of mind Alone capable of reproducing the object Most favorable to original invention The use made of it by Carlyle . ......................... 656 2. VOCATION. INTRODUCTION OF GERMAN IDEAS IN EUROPE AND ENGLAND GERMAN STUDIES OF CARLYLE. I. Appearance of original forms of mind How they act and result Artistic genius of the Renaissance Oratorical genius of the classic age Philosophical genius of the modern age Probable analogy of the three ages ..................... 5j8 CONTENTS. !ij PAGE. II. Wherein consists the modern and German form of mind How the aptitude for universal ideas has renewed the science of language, mythology, aesthetics, nistory, exegesis, theology, and metaphysics How the metaphysical bent has transformed poetry 65$ III. Capital idea derived thence Conception of essential and complimentary parts New conception of nature and man 66 IV. Inconvenience of this aptitude Gratuitous hypothesis and vague abstraction Transient discredit of German speculations 660 V How each nation may reforge them Ancient examples: Spain in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries The Puritans and Jansenists in the seventeenth century France in the eighteenth century By what roads these ideas may enter France Positivism Criticism 661 VI. By what roads these ideas may enter England Exact and positive mind Im- passioned and poetic inspiration Road followed by Carlyle 66r 3. PHILOSOPHY, MORALITY, AND CRITICISM. HIS METHOD IS MORAL, NOT SCIENTIFIC WHEREIN HE RESEMBLES THK PURITANS SARTOR RESARTUS. I. Sensible things are but appearances Divine and mysterious character of existence His metaphysics 663 II. How we may form into one another, positive, poetic, spiritualistic, and mystical ideas How in Carlyle German metaphysics are altered into English Puri- tanism 664 III. Moral character of this mysticism Conception of duty Conception of God.. .. 665 IV. Conception of Christianity Genuine and conventional Christianity Other re- ligions Limit and scope of doctrine 665 V. Criticism What weight it gives to writers What class of writers it exalts What class of writers it depreciates His aesthetics His judgment of Voltaire 667 VI. Future of Criticism Wherein it is contrary to the prejudices of the age and of its vocation Taste has but a relative authority 668 4. CONCEPTION OF HISTORY. I. Supreme importance of great men They are revealers They must be venerated.. 669 II. Connection between this and the German conception Wherein Carlyle is imitative Wherein he is original Scope of his conception 669 III. How genuine history is that of heroic sentiments Genuine historians are artists and psychologists 670 IV. His history of Cromwell Why it is only composed of texts connected by a commentary Its novelty and worth How we should consider Cromwell and the Puritans Importance of Puritanism in modern civilization Carlyle admires it unreservedly 671 V. His history of the French Revolution Severity of his judgment Wherein he has sight of the truth, and wherein he is unjust 672 VI. His judgment of modern England Against the taste for comfort and the lukewarm- ness of convictions Gloomy forebodings for the future of modern democracy Against the authority of votes Monarchical theory 673 VII. Criticism of these theories Dangers of enthusiam Comparison of Carlyle and Macaulay . 674 CHAPTER V, f InI0s0pks- ^tnart pill I. Philosophy in England Organization of positive science Lack of general ideas 675 II. Why metaphysics are wanting Authority of religion . ....... 675 III. Indications and splendor of free thought New exegesis Stuart Mill His works His order of mind To what school of philosophers he belongs Value of higher speculation in human civilization 676 i. EXPERIENCE. I. Object of logic Wherein it is distinguished from psychology and metaphysics 677 II. What is a judgment? What do we know of the external and inner worlds ? The whole object of science is to add or connect facts 678 III. The system based on this view of the nature of our knowledge 680 i6 CONTENTS. PAGE. IV. Theory of definitions Its importance Refutation of the old theory There are no definitions of things, but of names only 680 V. Theory of proof Ordinary theory Its refutation What is the really funda- mental part of a syllogism ? , 682 VI. Theory of axioms Ordinary theory Its refutation Axioms are only truths of experience of a certain class 683 VII. Theory of induction The cause of a fact is only its invariable antecedent Experience alone proves the stability of the laws of nature What is a law? By what methods are laws discovered ? The methods of agreement, of dif- ferences, of residues, of concomitant variations 685 VIII. Examples and applications Theory of dew 688 IX. Deduction Its province and method 690 X. Comparison of the methods of induction and deduction Ancient employment of the first Modern use of the second Sciences requiring the first Sciences requiring the second Positive character of Mill's work His predecessors. . . . 690 XI. Limits of our knowledge It is not certain that all events happen according to laws Chance in nature 691 2. ABSTRACTION. I. Agreement of this philosophy with the English mind Alliance of the positive and religious spirits By what faculty we arrive at the knowledge of causation. ... 694 II. There are no substances or forces, but only facts and laws Abstraction Its nature Its part in science 694 III. Theory of definitions They explain the abstract generating elements of things 695 IV. Theory of proof The basis of proof in syllogism is an abstract law 696 V. Theory of axioms Axioms are relations between abstract truths They may be reduced to the axiom of identity 697 VI. Theory of induction Its methods are of elimination or abstraction 698 VII. The two great operations of the mind, experience and abstraction The two great manifestations of things, sensible facts and abstract laws Why we ought to pass from the first to the second Meaning and extent of the axiom of causa- tion 698 VIII. It is possible to arrive at the knowledge of first elements Error of German meta- physicians They have neglected the element of chance, and of local perturba- tions What might be known by philosophizing ant Idea and limits of meta- physics^ Its state in the three thinking nations 699 IX. A morning in Oxford 701 CHAPTER VI. |P oxirg* fentgsoit* I. Talent and work First attempts Wherein he was opposed to preceding poets- Wherein he carried on their spirit 702 II. First period Female characters Delicacy and refinement of sentiment and style Variety of his emotions and of his subjects Literary curiosity and poetic dilettantism The Dying' Swan The L otos-Eaters 702 III. Second period Popularity, good fortune, and life Permanent sensibility and virgin freshness of the poetic temperament Wherein he is at one with nature Locksley //ned!, /eft- trenched in his customs, with'h'is Vbicfc and features, his gestures and his dress, distinct and complete as he from whom we have just parted in the street. Let us endeavor, then, to annihilate as far as possible this great interval of time, which prevents us from seeing man with our eyes, with the eyes of our head. What have we under the fair glazed pages of a modern poem ? A modern poet, who has studied and travelled, a man like Alfred de Musset, Victor Hugo, Lamartine, or Heine, in a black coat and gloves, welcomed by the ladies, and making every evening his fifty bows and his score of bon- mots in society, reading the papers in the morning, lodging as a rule on a second floor; not over gay, because he has nerves, and especially because, in this dense democracy where we choke one another, the discredit of the dig- nities of office has exaggerated his pre- tensions while increasing his impor- tance, and because the keenness of his feelings in general disposes him some- what to believe himself a deity. This is what we take note of under modern Meditations or Sonnets. Even so, under a tragedy of the seventeenth cen- tury we have a poet, like Racine for in- stance, elegant, staid, a courtier, a fine talker, with a majestic wig and rib- boned shoes, at heart a royalist and a Christian, who says, " God has been so gracious to me, that in whatever company I find myself I never have occasion to blush for the gospel or the king ; " * clever at entertaining the prince, and rendering for him into good French the " old French of Amyot ; " very respectful to the great, always " knowing his place ; " as assiduous and reserved at Marly as at Versailles, ami dst the regular pleasures of polished and ornate nature, amidst the saluta- tions, gi aces, airs, and fopperies of the braided lords, who rose early in the morning to obtain the promise of being a] /pointed to some office in case of the death of the present holder, and amongst charming ladies who count * Mary Wollstonecraft, in her Historical and Moral View of the French Revolution, p. 25, says, in quoting this passage, " What could be expected from the courtier who could write in these terms to Madame de Main tenon. TR. tfteir genealogies on their fingers in 'order to obtain the right of sitting down in the presence of tl e King or Queen. On that head consult St. Si- mon and the engravings of Perelle, as for the present age you have consulted Balzac and the water-colors of Eugene Lami. Similarly, when we read a Greek tragedy, our first care should be to realize to ourselves the Greeks, that is, the men who live half naked, in the gymnasia, or in the public squares, under a glowing sky, face to face with the most beautiful and the most noble landscapes, bent on making their bodies lithe and strong, on conversing, discussing, voting, carrying on patri- otic piracies, nevertheless lazy and tem- perate, with three urns for their furni- ture, two anchovies in a jar of oil for their food, waited on by slaves, so as to give them leisure to cultivate their understanding and exercise their limbs, with no desire beyond that of having the most beautiful town, the most beautiful processions, the most beauti- ful ideas, the most beautiful men. On this subject, a statue such as the Me- leager or the Theseus of the Parthenon, or still more, the sight of the Mediter- ranean, blue and lustrous as a silken tunic, and the islands that stud it with their massive marble outlines : add to these twenty select phrases from Plato and Aristophanes, and they will teach you much more than a multitude of dissertations and commentaries. And so again, in order to understand an Indian Purana, begin by imagining to yourself the father of a family, who, " having seen a son on his son's knees," retires, according to the law, into soli- tude, with an axe and a pitcher under a banyan tree, by the brook-side, talks no more, adds fast to fast, dwells naked between four fires, and under that ter- rible sun, which devours and renews without end all things living ; who, for weeks at a time, fixes his imagination first upon the feet of Brahma, next upon his knee, next upon his thigh, next upon his navel, and so on, until, beneath the strain of this intense medi- tation, hallucinations begin to appear, until all the forms of existence, mingled and transformed the one with the other, quaver before a sight dazzled and gid- dy, until the motionless man, catching INTRODUCTION. in his breath, with fixed gaze, beholds the universe vanishing like a smoke in the universal void of Being into which he hopes to be absorbed. To this end a voyage to India would be the best instructor ; or for want of better, the accounts of travellers, books of ge- ography, botany, ethnology, will serve their turn. In each case the search must be the same. Language, legisla- tion, creeds, are only abstract things : the complete thing is the man who acts, the man corporeal and visible, who eats, walks, rights, labors. Leave aside the theory and the mechanism of con- stitutions, religions and their systems, and try to see men in their workshops, in their offices, in their fields, with their sky and soil, their houses, their dress, cultivations, meals, as you do when, landing in England or Italy, you look at faces and motions, roads and inns, a citizen taking his walk, a workman drinking. Our great care should be to supply as much as possible the want of present, personal, direct, and sen- sible observation which we can no longer practise ; for it is the only means of knowing men. Let us make the past present : in order to judge of a thing, it must be before us ; there is no experience in respect of what is ab- sent. Doubtless this reconstruction is always incomplete ; it can produce only incomplete judgments ; but that we cannot help. It is better to have an imperfect knowledge than none at all ; and there is no other means of ac- quainting ourselves approximately with the events of other days, than to see ap- i proximately the men of other days. This is the first step in history ; it was made in Europe at the revival of imagination, toward the close of the last century, by Lessing and Walter Scott ; a little later in France, by Chateaubriand, Augustin Thierry, M ichelet, and others. And now for the second step. II. When you consider with your eyes the visible man, what do you look for ? The man invisible. The words which enter your ears, the gestures, the mo- tions of his head, the clothes he wears, visible acts and deeds of every kind, are expressions merely ; somewhat is revealed beneath them, and that is a soul. An inner man is concealed be- neath the outer man ; the second does but reveal the first. You look at his house, furniture, dress ; and that in order to discover in them the marks of his habits and tastes, the degree of his refinement or rusticity, his extravagance or his economy, his stupidity or his acuteness. You listen to his conver- sation, and you note the inflexions of his voice, the changes in his attitudes ; ami that in order to judge of his vivacity, his self-forgetfulness or his gayety, his energy or his constraint. You consider his writings, his artistic productions, his business transactions or political ventures ; and that in order to measure the scope and limits of his intelligence, his inventiveness, his coolness, to find out the order, the character, the general force of his ideas, the mode in which he thinks and resolves. All these ex- ternals are but avenues converging to- wards a centre ; you enter them simply in order to reach that centre ; and that centre is the genuine man, I mean that mass of faculties and feelings which are the inner man. We have reached a new world, which is infinite, because every action which we see involves an infinite association of reasonings, emo- tions, sensations new and old, which have served to bring it to light, and which, like great rocks deep-seated in the ground, find in it their end and their level. This underworld is a new subject-matter, proper to the historian. If his critical education is sufficient, he can lay bare, under every detail of architecture, every stroke in a picture, every phrase in a writing, the special sensation whence detail, stroke, or phrase had issue ; he is present at the drama which was enacted in the soul of artist or writer; the choice of a word, the brevity or length of a sen- tence, the nature of a metaphor, the accent of a verse, the development of an argument every thing is a symbol to him ; while his eyes read the text, his soul and mind pursue the continu- ous development and the everchanging succession of the emotions and con- ceptions out of which the text has sprung : in short, he works out its psy- , chology. If you would observe this operation, consider the originator and 20 INTRODUCTION. model of all grand contemporary cul- ture, Goethe, who, before writing Iphi- genia, employed day after day in mak- ing drawings of the most finished stat- ues, and who at last, his eyes filled with the noble forms of ancient scenery, his mind penetrated by the harmonious loveliness of antique life, succeeded in reproducing so exactly in himself the habits and peculiarities of the Greek imagination, that he gives us almost the twin sister of the Antigone of Sopho- cles, and the goddesses of Phidias. This precise and proved interpretation of past sensations has given to history, in our days, a second birth; hardly any thing of the sort was known to the preceding century. They thought men of every race and century were all but identical ; the Greek, the barbarian, the Hindoo, the man of the Renais- sance, and the man of the eighteenth century, as if they had been turned out of a common mould ; and all in con- formity to a certain abstract concep- tion, which served for the whole human race. They knew man, but not men; they had not penetrated to the soul ; they had not seen the infinite diversity and marvellous complexity of souls ; they did not know that the moral con- stitution of a people or an age is as particular and distinct as the physical structure of a family of plants or an order of animals. Now-a-days, history, like zoology, has found its anatomy; and whatever the branch of history to which you devote yourself, philology, linguistic lore, mythology, it is by these means you must strive to produce new fruit. Amid so many writers who, since the time of Herder, Ottfried Miiller, and Goethe, have continued and still im- prove this great method, let the read- er consider only two historians and two works, Carlyle's Cromwell, and Sainte - Beuve's Port-Royal : he will see with what fairness, exactness, depth :f insight, a man may discover a soul beneath its actions and its works ; how behind the old general, in place of a vulgar hypocritical schemer, we re- cover a man troubled with the obscure reveries of a melancholic imagination, but with practical instincts and facul- ties, English to the core, strange and incomprehensible to one who lias not , studied the climate and the race ; how, with about a hundred meagre letters and a score of mutilated speeches, we may follow him from his farm and team, to the general's tent and to the Protector's throne, in his transmutation and development, in his pricks of con- science and his political sagacity, until the machinery of his mind and actions becomes visible, and the inner tragedy, ever changing and renewed, which ex- ercised this great, darkling soul, passes, like one of Shakspeare's, through 'he soul of the looker-on. He 'wiil see 'in the other case) how, behind the squab- bles of the monastery, or the contuma- cies of nuns, he may find a great prov- ince of human psychology ; how about fifty characters, that had been buried under the uniformity of a circumspect narrative, reappear in the light of day, each with its own specialty and its countless diversities ; how, beneath theological disquisitions and monoto- nous sermons, we can unearth the beat- ings of living hearts, the convulsions and apathies of monastic life, the un- foreseen reassertions and wavy tur- moil of nature, the inroads of sur- rounding worldliness, the intermittent victories of grace, with such a variety of lights and shades, that the most ex- haustive description and the most elas- tic style can hardly gather the inex- haustible harvest, which the critic has caused to spring up on this abandoned field. And so it is throughout. Ger- many, with its genius so pliant, so com- prehensive, so apt for transformation, so well calculated to reproduce the most remote and anomalous conditions of human thought ; England, with its intellect so precise, so well calculated to grapple closely with moral questions, to render them exact by figures, weights and measures, geography, statistics, by quotation and by common sense ; France, with her Parisian culture, with her drawing-room manners, with her untiring analysis of characters and actions, her irony so ready to hit upon a weakness, her finesse so practised in the discrimination of shades of thought ; all have worked the same soil, and we begin to understand that there is no region of history where it is not imperative to till this deep level, if we would see a serviceable harvest rise between the furrows. INTRO D UCTION. This is the second step ; we are in a fair way to its completion. It is the fit work of the contemporary critic. No one has done it so justly and grand- ly as Sainte-Beuve : in this respect we are all his pupils; his r..'-rhod has revolutionized, in our days, in books, and even in newspapers, every kind of literary, of philosophical and religious criticism. From it we must set out in order to begin the further develop- ment. I have more than once endea- vored to indicate this development ; the:e is here, in my mind, a new path open to history, and I will try to de- scribe it more in detail. III. When you have observed and noted in man one, two, three, then a multi- tude of sensations, does this suffice, or does youTTchowledge appear com- plete ? Is Psychology only a series of observations ? No ; here as else- where we must search out the causes after we have collected the facts. No matter if the facts be physical or mor- al, they all have their causes ;* there is a cause for ambition, for courage, for truth, as there is for digestion, for mus- cular movement, for animal heat. Vice and virtue are products, like vitriol and sugar ; and every complex phenom- enon arises from other more simple phenomena on which it hangs. Let us then seek the simple phenomena for moral qualities, as we seek them for physical qualities ; and let us take the first fact that presents itself : for ex- ample, religious music, that of a Pro- testant Church. There is an inner cause which has turned the spirit of the faithful toward these grave and monotonous melodies, a cause broader than its effect ; I mean the general idea of the true, external worship which man owes to God. It is this which has modelled the architecture of Protestant places of worship, thrown down the statues, removed the pictures, destroved the ornaments, curtailed the ceremonies, shut up the worshippers in high pews which prevent them from seeing any thing, and regulated the thousand details of decoration, posture, and general externals. This again comes from another more general cause, the idea of human conduct in all its comprehensiveness, internal and external, prayers, actions, duties of every kind which man owes to God ; it is this which has enthroned the doc- trine of grace, lowered the status 01 the clergy, transformed the sacraments, suppressed various practices, and changed religion from a discipline to a morality. This second idea in its turn depends upon a third still more general, that of moral perfection, such as is met with in the perfect God, the unerring judge, the stern watcher of souls, before whom every soul is sin- ful, worthy of punishment, incapable of virtue or salvation, except by the pow- er of conscience which He calls forth, and the renewal of heart which He produces. That is the master idea, which consists in erecting duty into an absolute king of human life^ and in prostrating all ideal models before a moral model. Here we track the root of man ; for to explain this conception it is necessary to consider the race it- ' self, the German and Northman, the structure of his character and mind, his general processes of thought and feeling, the sluggishness and coldness of sensation which prevent his falling easily and headlong under the sway of pleasure, the bluntness of his taste, the irregularity and revolutions of his con- ception, which arrest in him the birth of fair dispositions and harmonious forms, the disdain of appearances, the desire for truth, the attachment to bare and abstract ideas, which develop in him conscience, at the expense of all else. There the search is at an end ; we have arrived at a primitive disposi- tion ; at a feature peculiar to all the sensations, and to all the conceptions of a century or a race, at a particular- ity inseparable from all the motions of his intellect and his heart. Here lie the grand causes, for they are the uni- versal and permanent causes, present at every moment and in every case, everywhere and always acting, inde- structible, and finally infallibly supreme, since the accidents which thwart them, being limited and partial, end by yield- ing to the dull and incessant repetition of their efforts ; in such a manner that the general structure of things, and the grand features of events, are their 22 INTRODUCTION. work ; and religions, philosophies, poetries, industries, the framework of society and of families, are in fact only the imprints stamped by their seal. IV. There is, then, a system in human sentiments and ideas : and this system has for its motive power certain gener- al tiaits, certain characteristics of the inteJect and the heart common to men of <>ne race, age, or country. As in mineralogy the crystals, however di- verse, spring from certain simple phys- ical forms, so in history, civilizations, however diverse, are derived from cer- tain simple spiritual forms. The one are explained by a primitive geometri- cal element, as the others are by a primitive psychological element. In order to master the classification of mineralogical systems, we must first consider a regular and general solid, its sides and angles, and observe in this the numberless transformations of which it is capable. So, if you would realize the system of historical varie- ties, consider first a human soul gen- erally, with its two or three fundamen- tal faculties, and in this compendium you will perceive the principal forms which it can present. After all, this kind of ideal picture, geometrical as well as psychological, is not very com- plex, and we speedily see the limits of the outline in which civilizations, like crystals, are constrained to exist. What is really the mental structure of man ? Images or representations of things, which float within him, exist for a time, are effaced, and return again, after he has been looking upon a tree, an animal, any visible object. This is the subject-matter, the development where- of is double, either speculative or prac- tical, according as the representations resolve themselves into a general con- ception or an active resolution. Here vie have the whole of man in an abridgment ; and in this limited circle human diversities meet, sometimes in the womb of the primordial matter, sometimes in the twofold primordial development. However minute in their elements, they are enormous in the aggregate, and the least alteration in the factors produces vast alteration in the results. According as the rep- resentation is clear and as it were punched out or confused and faintly defined, according as it embraces a great or small number of the charac- teristics of the object, according as it is violent and accompanied by im- pulses, or quiet and surrounded by calm, all the operations and processes of the human machine are transformed. So, again, according as the ulterior de- velopment of the representation varies, the whole human development varie-. If the general conception in which it results is a mere dry notation (in Chinese fashion), language becomes a sort of algebra, religion and poetry dwindle, philosophy is reduced to a kind of moral and practical common sense, science to a collection of utilita- rian formulas, classifications, mnemon- ics, and the whole intellect takes a positive bent. If, on the contrary, the general representation in which the conception results is a poetical and figurative creation, a living symbol, as among the Aryan races, 'language becomes a sort of delicately-shaded and colored epic poem, in which every word is a person, poetry and religion assume a magnificent and inexhaustible grandeur, metaphysics are widely and subtly developed, without regard to positive applications ; the whole in- tellect, in spite of the inevitable devia- tions and shortcomings of its effort, is smitten with the beautiful and the sublime, and conceives an ideal capa- ble by its nobleness and its harmony of rallying round it the tenderness and enthusiasm of the human race. If, again, the general conception in which the representation results is poetical but not graduated ; if man arrives at it not by an uninterrupted gradation, but by a quick intuition ; if the original operation is not a regular development, but a violent explosion, then, as with the Semitic races, metaphysics are absent, religion conceives God only as a king solitary and devouring, science cannot grow, the intellect is too rigid and unbending to reproduce the delicate operations of nature, poetry can give birth only to vehement and grandiose exclamations, language can not unfold the web of argument and of eloquence, man is reduced to a lyric en INTRO D UCTION. thusiasm, an unchecked passion, a fanatical ar.d limited action. In this interval between the particular repre- sentation and the universal conception are found the germs of the greatest human differences. Some races, as the classical, pass from the first to the second by a graduated scale of ideas, regularly arranged, and general by degrees ; others, as the Germanic, traverse the same ground by leaps, without uniformity, after vague and prolonged groping. Some, like the Romans and English, halt at the first steps ; others, like the Hindoos and Germans, mount to the last. If, again, after considering the passage from the representation to the idea, we consider that from the representation to the res- olution, we find elementary differences of the like importance and the like order, according as the impression is / sharp, as in southern climates, or dull, as in northern ; according as it results in instant action, as among barbarians, or slowly, as in civilized nations ; as it is capable or not of growth, inequality, persistence, and relations. The whole network of human passions, the chances of peace and public security, the sources of labor and action, spring from hence. Such is the case with all primordial , differences: their issues embrace an entire civilization ; and we may com- pare them to those algebraical formu- las which, in a narrow limit, contain in advance the whole curve of which they form the law. Not that this law is always developed to its issue ; there are perturbing forces ; but when it is so, it is not that the law was false, but that it was not single. New elements become mingled with the old ; great forces from without counteract the primitive. The race emigrates, like the Aryan, and the change of climate has altered in its case the whole econo- my, intelligence, and organization of society. The people has been con- quered, like the Saxon nation, and a new political structure has imposed on it customs, capacities, and inclinations which it had not. The nation has in- stalled itself in the midst of a conquer- ed people, downtrodden and threat- ening, like the ancient Spartans ; and the necessity of living like troops in the field has violently distorted in an unique direction the whole moral and social constitution. In each case the mechanism of human history is the same. We continually find, as the original mainspring, some very general disposition of mind and soul, innate " and appended by nature to the race, or acquired and produced by some circum- stance acting upon the race. These mainsprings, once admitted, produce their effect gradually: I mean that after some centuries they bring the nation into a new condition, religious, literary, social, economic ; a new condition which, combined with their renewed effort, produces another con- dition, sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, and so forth ; so that we may regard the whole progress of each distinct civilization as the effect of a perma- nent force which, at every stage, varies its operation by modifying the circum- stances of its action. V. Three different sources contribute to produce this elementary moral state- race, surroundings, and epoch. What we call the race are the innate and hereditary dispositions which man brings with him into the world, and which, as a rule, are united with the marked differences in the temperament and structure of the body. They vary with various peoples. There is a nat- ural variety of men, as of oxen and horses, some brave and intelligent, some timid and dependent, some capable of superior conceptions and creations, some reduced to rudimentary ideas and inventions, some more specially fitted to special works, and gifted more richly with particular instincts, as we meet with species of dogs better favored than others, these for coursing, those for fighting, those for hunting, these again for house dogs or shepherds' dogs. We have here a distinct force, so dis tinct, that amidst the vast deviations which the other two motive forces pro- duce in him, one can recognize it still ; and a race, like the old Aryans, scat- tered from the Ganges as far as the Hebrides, settled in every clime, and every stage of civilization, transformed by thirty centuries of revolutions, never- INTRODUCTION. theless manifests in its languages, re- ligions, literatures, philosophies, the community of blood and of intellect which to this day binds its offshoots together. Different as they are, their parentage is not obliterated ; barbarism, culture and grafting, differences of sky and soil, fortunes good and bad, have labored in vain : the great marks of the original model have remained, and we find again the two or three princi- pal lineaments of the primitive stamp underneath the secondary imprints which time has laid upon them. There is nothing astonishing in this extraordi- nary tenacity. Although the vastness of the distance lets us but half per- ceive and by a doubtful light the origin of species,* the events of history sufficiently illumine the events anterior to history, to explain the almost im- movable steadfastness of the primordial marks. When we meet with them, fif- teen, twenty, thirty centuries before our era, in an Aryan, an Egyptian, a Chinese, they represent the work of a great many ages, perhaps of several myriads of centuries. For as soon as an animal begins to exist, it has to rec- oncile itself with its surroundings ; it breathes and renews itself, is differ- ently affected according to the varia- tions in air, food, temperature. Dif- ferent climate and situation bring it various needs, and consequently a different course of activity ; and this, again, a different set of habits ; and still again, a different set of aptitudes and instincts. Man, forced to accom- modate himself to circumstances, con- tracts a temperament and a character corresponding to them ; and his char- acter, like his temperament, is so much more stable, as the external impression is made upon him by more numerous lepetitions, and is transmitted to his progeny by a more ancient descent. So that at any moment we may consider the character of a people as an abridg- ment of all its preceding actions and sensations ; that is, as a quantity and as a weight, not infinite,! since every thing in nature is finite, but dispropor- tioned to the rest,and almost impossible * Darwin, The Origin of Species. Prosper Lucas, de PHertdite. t Spinoza, Ethics, Part iv. axiom. to lift, since every moment of an almost infinite past has contributed to increase it, and because, in order to raise the scale, one must place in the opposite scale a still greater number of actions and sensations. Such is the first and richest source of these master-faculties from which historical events. take their rise ; and one sees at the outset, that if it be powerful, it is because this is no simple spring, but a kind of lake, a deep reservoir wherein other springs have, for a multitude of centuries, dis charged their several streams. Having thus outlined the interior structure of a race, we must consider the surroundings in which it exists. For man is not alone in the world ; na- ture surrounds him, and his fellow-men surround him ; accidental and secon- dary tendencies overlay his primitive tendencies, and physical or social cir- cumstances disturb or confirm the character committed to their charge. Sometimes the climate has had its effect. Though we can follow but obscurely the Aryan peoples from their common fatherland to their final settle- ments, we can yet assert that the pro- found differences which are manifest between the German races on the one side, and the Greek and Latin on the other, arise for the most part from the difference between the countries in which they are settled : some in cold moist lands, deep in rugged marshy forests or on the shores of a wild ocean, beset by melancholy or violent sensa- tions, prone to drunkenness and glut- tony, bent on a fighting, blood-spilling life ; others, again, within the loveliest landscapes, on a bright and pleasant sea-coast, enticed to navigation and commerce, exempt from gross cravings of the stomach, inclined from the be- ginning to social ways, to a settled organization of the state, to feelings and dispositions such as develop the art of oratory, the talent for enjoyment, the inventions of science, letters, arts. Sometimes the state policy has been at work, as in the two Italian civilizations : the first wholly turned to action, con- quest, government, legislation, on ac- count of the original site of its city of refuge, its border-land emporium, its armed aristocracy, who, by importing and drilling strangers and conquered, INTRODUCTION. 2 5 created two hostile armies, having no escape from its internal discords and its greedy instincts but in systematic warfare ; the other, shut out from uni- .ty and any great political ambition by the stability of its municipal character, the cosmopolitan position of its pope, and the military intervention of neigh be ri.ig nations, directed by the whole Lent of its magnificent and harmonious genius towards the worship of pleasure and beauty. Sometimes the social conditions have impressed their mark, as eighteen centuries ago by Chris- tianity, and twenty-five centuries ago by Buddhism, when around the Medi- terranean, as well as in Hindostan, the extreme results of Aryan conquest and civilization induced intolerable op- pression, the subjugation of the indi- vidual, utter despair, the thought that the world was cursed, with the devel- opment of metaphysics and myth, so that man in this dungeon of misery, feeling his heart softened, begot the idea of abnegation, charity, tender love, gentleness, humility, brotherly love there, in a notion of universal nothingness, here under the Father- hood of God. Look around you upon the regulating instincts and faculties implanted in a race in short, the mood of intelligence in which it thinks and acts at the present time : you will dis- cover most often the work of some one of these prolonged situations, these surrounding circumstances, per- sistent and gigantic pressures, brought to bear upon an aggregate of men who, singly and together, from generation to generation, are continually moulded and modelled by their action ; in Spain, a crusade against the Mussul- mans which lasted eight centuries, pro- tracted even beyond and until the ex- haustion of the nation by the expul- sion of the Moors, the spoliation of the Jews, the establishment of the Inquisi- tion, the Catholic wars; in England, a political establishment of eight centu- ries, which keeps a man erect and re- spectful, in independence and obedi- ence, and accustoms him to strive unitedly, under the authority of the law ; in France, a Latin organizatipn, which, imposed first upon docile bar- barians, then shattered in the universal crash, was reformed from within under a lurking conspiracy of the national instinct, was developed under heredi- tary kings, ends in a sort of levelling republic, centralized, J administrative, under dynasties exposed to revolution. These are the most efficacious of the visible causes which mould the primi- tive man: they are to nations what education, career, condition, abode, are to individuals ; and they seem to com- prehend everything, since they com- prehend all external powers which mould human matter, and by which the external acts on the internal. There is yet a third rank of causes ; for, with the forces within and .with- out, there is the work which they have already produced together, and this work itself contributes to produce that which follows. Beside the permanent impulse and the given surroundings, there is the acquired momentum. When the national TnratrteT~anet"stn> rounding circumstances operate, it is not upon a tabula rasa, but on a ground on which marks are already impressed. According as one takes the ground at one moment or another, the imprint is different ; and this is the cause that the total effect is different. Consider, for instance, two epochs of a literature or art, French tragedy under Cor- neille and under Voltaire, the Greek drama under ^schylus and under Euripides, Italian painting under da Vinci and under Guido. Truly, at either of these two extreme points the general idea has not changed ; it is always the same human type which is its subject of representation or paint- ing ; the mould of verse, the structure of the drama, the form of body has en- dured. But among several differences there is this, that the one artist is the precurspj, the other the successor ; the first has no model, the second has ; (he first sees objects face to face, the sec- ond sees them through the first ; that many great branches of art are lost, many details are perfected, that sim- plicity and grandeur of impressior. have diminished, pleasing and refined forms have increased, in short, that the first work has influenced the sec- ond. Thus it is with a people as with a plant ; the same sap, under the same temperature, and in the same soil, pro- 2 26 INTRODUCTION. duces, at different steps of its progres- sive development, different formations, buds, flowers, fruits, seed-vessels, in such a manner that the one which fol- lows must always be preceded by the former, and must spring up from its death. And if now you consider no longer a brief epoch, as our own time, "hut one of those wide intervals which embrace one or more centuries, like the middle ages, or our last classic age, the conclusion will be similar. A cer- tain dominant idea has had sway ; men, for two, fof "fiver hundred years, have taken to themselves a certain ideal model of man : in the middle ages, the knight and the monk ; in our classic age, the courtier, the man who speaks well. This creative and universal idea is displayed over the whole field of ac- tion and thought ; and after covering the world with its involuntarily syste- matic works, it has faded, it has died away, and lo, a new idea springs up, destined to a like domination, and as manifold creations. And here remem- ber that the second depends in part upon the first, and that the first, uniting its effect with those of national genius and surrounding circumstances,imposes on each new creation its bent and direc- tion. The great historical currents are formed after this law the long domi- nations of one intellectual pattern, or a master idea, such as the period of spontaneous creations called the Re- naissance, or the period of oratorical models called the Classical Age, or the series of mystical systems called the Alexandrian and Christian eras, or the series of mythological efflorescences which we meet with in the infancy of the German, people, of the Indian and the Greek. Here as elsewhere we have but a mechanical problem ; the total effect is a result, depending en- tirely on the magnitude and direction of the producing causes. The only difference which separates these moral problems from physical ones is, that the magnitude and direction cannot be valued or computed in the first as in the second. If a need or a faculty is a quantity, capable of degrees, like a pressure or a weight, this quantity is not measurable like the pressure or the weight. We cannot define it in an ex- act or approximative formula ; we can- not have more, or give more, in respect of it, than a literary impression; we are limited to marking and quoting the salient points by which it is manifested, and which indicate approximately and roughly the part of the scale which is its position. But though the means of notation are not the same in the moral and physical sciences, yet as in both the matter is the same, equally made up of forces, magnitudes, and direc- tions, we may say that in both the ^nal result is produced after the same method. It is great or small, as tH- fundamental forces are great or small and act more or less exactly in the same sense, according as the distinct effects of race, circumstance, and epoch combine to add the one to the other, or to annul one another. Thus are explained the long impotences and the brilliant triumphs which make their ap- pearance irregularly and without visible cause in the life of a people ; they are caused by internal concords or contra- rieties. There was such a concord when in the seventeenth century the sociable character and the conversa- tional aptitude, innate in France, en- countered the drawing-room manners and the epoch of oratorical analysis ; when in the nineteenth century the pro- found and pliant genius of Germany encountered the age of philosophical systems and of cosmopolitan criticism There was such a contrariety when in the seventeenth century the harsh and lonely English genius tried blunderingly to adopt a new-born politeness ; when in the sixteenth century the lucid and prosaic French spirit tried vainly to bring forth a living poetry. That hid- den concord of creative forces produced the finished urbanity and the noble and regular literature under Louis XIV. and Bossuet, the grand metaphysics and broad critical sympathy of Hegel and Goethe. That hidden contrariety of creative forces produced the imper feet literature, the scandalous comedy, the abortive drama under Dryden and Wycherley, the feeble Greek importa- tions, the groping elaborate efforts, the scant half-graces under Ronsard anc^ the Pleiad. So much we can say with confidence, that the unknown creations towards which the current of the cen- turies conducts us, will be raised up INTRODUCTION. 27 and regulated altogether by the three primordial forces; that if these forces could be measured and computed, we might deduce from them as from a formula the characteristics of future civilization ; and that if, in spite of the evident crudeness of our notations, and the fundamental inexactness of our measures, we try now to form some ;idea of our general destiny, it is upon ian examination of these forces that we imust base our prophecy. For in enumerating them, we traverse the complete circle of the agencies; and ehind lonely.' Then spake Herborg, Queen * Thorpe, The Edda of Scemund, Third lay of Sigurd Fafnicide t str. 62-64, p. 83. CHAP. L] THE SAXONS. of Hunland : ' Crueller tale have I to tell of my seven sons, down in the Southlands, and the eight man, my mate, felled in the death- mead. Father and mother, and four brothers on the wide sea the winds and death played with ; the billows beat on the bulwark boards. Alone must I sing o'er them, alone must I array them, alone must my hands deal with their departing , and all this was in one sea- son's wearing, and none was left for love or solace. Then was I bound a prey of the battle when that same season wore to its ending ; as a tiring may must I bind the shoon of the duke's high dame, every day at dawning. From her jealous hate gat I heavy mocking, cruel lashes she laid upon me.' " * All was in vain ; no word could draw tears from those dry eyes. They were obliged to lay the bloody corpse be- fore her, ere her tears would come. Then tears flowed through the pillow ; as " the geese withal that were in the home-field, the fair fowls the may owned, fell a-screaming." She would have died, like Sigrun, on the corpse of him whom alone she had loved, if they had not deprived her of memory by a magic potion. Thus affected, she departs in order to marry Atli, king of the Huns; and yet she goes against her will, with gloomy forebod- ings ; for murder begets murder ; and her brothers, the murderers of Sigurd, having been drawn to Atli's court, fall in their turn into a snare like that which they had themselves laid. Then Gunnar was bound, and they tried to make him deliver up the treasure. He answers with a barbarian's laugh : " ' Hogni's heart in my hand shall lie, cut bloody from the breast of the valiant chief, the king's son, with a dull-edged knife.' They the heart cut out from Hialli's breast ; on a dish, bleeding, laid it, and it to Gunnar bare. Then said Gunnar, lord of men: 'Here have I the heart of the timid Hialli, unlike the heart of the bold Hb'gni ; for much it trembles as in the aish it lies ; it trembles more by half while in his breast it lay." Hogni laughed when to his heart they cut the living crest-crasher ; no la- ment uttered he. All bleeding on a dish they laid it, and it to Gunnar bare. Calmly said Gunnar, the warrior Niflung : ' Here have I the heart of the bold Hogni, unlike the heart of the timid Hialli ; for it little trembles as in the dish it lies : it trembled less while in his breast it lay. So far shalt thou, Atli! be from the eyes of men as thou wilt from the treasures be. In my power alone is all the hidden Ni- flung's gold, now that Hogni lives not. Ever * Magnusson and Morris, Story of the Vol~ rungs and NibehwgS) Lamentation of Gud- run, rx 118 et passim. was I wavering while we both lived ; now am I so no longer, as I alone survive.' " * It was the last insult of the self-confident man, who values neither his own life nor that of another, so that he can satiate his vengeance. They cast him into the serpent's den, and there he died, striking his harp with his foot. But the inextinguishable flame of ven- geance passed from his heart to that of his sister. Corpse after corpse fall on each other ; a mighty fury hurls them open-eyed to death. She killed the children she had by Atli, and one day on his return from the carnage, gave him their hearts to eat, served in honey, and laughed coldly as she told him on what he had fed. "Uproar was on the benches, portentous the cry of men, noise beneath the costly hangings. The children of the Huns wept; all wept save Gudrun, who never wept or for her bear-fierce brothers, or for her dear sons, young, simple."! Judge from this heap of ruin and carnage to what excess' the will is strung. There were men amongst them, Berserkirs, who in battle seized with a sort of madness, showed a sudden and superhuman strength, and ceased to feel their wounds. This is the conception of a hero as engendered by this race in its infancy. Is it not strange to see them place their happi- ness in battle, their beauty in death ? Is there any people, Hindoo, Persian, Greek, or Gallic, which has formed so tragic a conception of life ? Is there any which has peopled its infantine mind with such gloomy dreams? Is there any which has so entirely banished from its dreams the sweetness of en- joyment, and the softness of pleasure ? Endeavors, tenacious and mournful en- deavors, an ecstasy of endeavors such was their chosen condition. Carlyle said well, that in the sombre obstinacy of an English laborer still survives the tacit rage of the Scandinavian warrior. Strife for strife's sake such is their pleasure. With what sadness, madness, destruction, such a disposi- * Thorpe, The Edda of Samund, Lay oj Itli, str. 21-27, P- IJ 7- t ibid. str. 38, p. 119. % This word signifies men who fovight without a breastplate, perhaps in shirts only : Scottice "Baresarks/' TR. THE SOURCE. [BOOK I, tion breaks its bonds, we shall see in Shakespeare and Byron ; with what vigor and purpose it can limit and em- ploy itself when possessed by moral ideas, we shall see in the case of the Puritans. IV. They have established themselves in England ; and however disordered the society which binds them together, it is founded, as in Germany, on generous sentiment. War is at every door, I am aware, but warlike virtues are within every house ; courage chiefly, then fidelity. Under the brute there is a free man, and a man of spirit. There is no man amongst them who, at his own risk,* will not make alliance, go forth to fight, undertake adventures. There is no group of free men amongst them, who, in their Witenagemote, is not forever concluding alliances one with another. Every clan, in its own district, forms a league of which all the members, " brothers of the sword," defend each other, and demand re- venge for the spilling of blood, at the price of their own. Every chief in his hall reckons that he has friends, not mercenaries, in the faithful ones who drink his beer, and who, having re- ceived as marks of his esteem and confidence, bracelets, swords, and suits of armor, will cast themselves between him and danger on the day of baltle.t Independence and boldness rage amongst this young nation with violence and excess ; but these are of themselves noble things ; and no less noble are the sentiments which serve them for discipline, to wit, affection- ate devotion, and respect for plighted faith. These appear in their laws, and break forth in their poetry. Amongst them greatness of heart gives matter for imagination. Their characters are not selfish and shifty, like those of Homer. They are brave hearts, simple and strong, faithful to their relatives, to their master in arms, firm and stead- fast to enemies and friends, abounding in courage, and ready for sacrifice. " Old as I am," says one, " I will not * See the Life of Sweyn, of Hereward, etc., even up to the time of the Conquest. + Beowulf, passim. Death of J3yrhtnoth. budge hence. I mean to die by my lord's side, near this man I have loved so much. He kept his word, the word he had given to his chief, to the distrib- utor of gifts, promising him that they should return to the town, safe and sound to their homes, or that they would fall both together, in the thick of the carnage, covered with wounds. He lies by his master's side, like a faithful servant." Though awkward in speech, their old poets find touch- ing words when they have to paint these manly friendships. We cannot without emotion hear them relate ho^ the old "king embraced the best ot his thanes, and put his arms about his neck, how the tears flowed down the cheeks of the greyhaired chief. . . . The valiant man was so dear to him. He could not stop the flood which mounted from his breast. In his heart, deep in the chords of his soul, he sighed in secret after the beloved man." Few as are the songs which remain to us, they return to this subject again and again. The wanderer in a reverie dreams about his lord : * It seems to him in his spirit as if he kisses and embraces him, and lays head and hands upon his knees, as oft before in the olden time, when he rejoiced in his gifts. Then he wakes a man with- out friends. He sees before him the desert tracks, the sea-birds dipping in the waves, stretching wide their wings, the frost and the snow, mingled with falling hail. Then his heart's wounds press more heavily. Then the exile says : "In blithe habits full oft we, too, agreed that nought else should divide us except death alone ; at length this is changed, and as if it had never been is now our friendship. To endure enmi- ties man orders me to dwell in the bowers of the forest, under the oak-tree in this earthy cave. Cold is this earth-dwelling : I am quite wearied out. Dim are the dells, high up are the mountains, a bitter city of twigs, with briars overgrown, a joyless abode. . . . My friends are in the earth ; those loved in life, the tomb holds them. The grave is guarding, while I above alone am going. Under the oak-tree, beyond this earth-cave, there I must tit the long summer-day." Amid their perilous mode of life, and the perpetual appeal to arms, there * The Wanderer, the Exile's Song, Codex Exoniensis, published by Thorpe. CHAP. I.] THE SAXONS. 43 exists no sentiment more warm than friendship, nor any virtue stronger loy- alty. Thus supported by powerful affec- tion and trysted word, society is kept wholesome. Marriage is like the state. We find women associating with the men, at their feasts, sober and re- spected.* She speaks, and they listen to her ; no need for concealing or en- sluving her, in order to restrain or retain her. She is a person, and not a thing. The law demands her con- sent to marriage, surrounds her with guarantees, accords her protection. She can inherit, possess, bequeath, ap- ptar in courts of justice, in county assemblies, in the great congress of the elders. Frequently the name of the queen and of several other ladies is inscribed in the proceedings of the Witenagemote. Law and tradition maintain her integrity, as if she were a man, and side by side with men. Her affections captivate her, as if she were a man, and side by side with men. In Alfred t there is a portrait of the wife, which for purity and elevation equals ah that we can devise with our modern refinements. " Thy wife now lives for thee for thee alone. She has enough of all kind of wealth for this present life, but she scorns them all for thy sake alone. She has forsaken them all, because she had not tiiee with them. Thy absence makes her think that all she possesses is naught. Thus, for love of thee, she is wasted away, and lies near death for tears and grief." Already, in the legends of the Edda, we have seen the maiden Sigrun at the tomb of Helgi, " as glad as the voracious hawks of Odin, when they nf slaughter know, of warm prey," desiring to sleep still in the arms of death, and die at last on his giave. Nothing here like the love we find in rr.e primitive poetry of France, Prov- ence, Spain, and Greece. There is an absence of gayety, of delight ; outside of marriage it is only a ferocious ap- petite, an outbreak of the instinct of the beast. It appears nowhere with its charm and its smile; there is no love song in this ancient poetry. The * Turner, Hist. Angl. Sax. iii. 63, t Alfred borrows his portrait from Boethius, but almost entirely rewrites it. reason is, that with them love is not an amusement and a pleasure, but a promise and a devotion. All is grave, even sombre, in civil relations as well as in conjugal society. As in Germany, amid the sadness of a melancholic temperament and the savagery of a barbarous life, the most tragic human faculties, the deep power of love and the grand power of will, are the only ones that sway and act. This is why the hero, as in Ger- many, is truly heroic. Let us speak of him at length ; we pcssess one of their poems, that of Beowulf, almost entire. Here are the stories, which the thanes, seated on their stools, by the light of their torches, listened to as they drank the ale of their king ; we can glean thence their manners and sentiments, as in the Iliad and the Odyssey those of the Greeks. Beowulf is a hero, a knight-errant before the days of chivalry, as the leaders of the German bands were feudal chiefs be- fore the institution of feudalism.* He has " rowed upon the sea, his naked sword hard in his hand, amidst the fierce waves and coldest of storms, and the rage of winter hurtled over the waves of the deep." The sea-monsters, "the many-colored foes, drew him to the bottom of the sea, and held him fast in their gripe." But he reached " the wretches with his point and with his war-bill." " The mighty sea-beast received the war-rush through his hands," and he slew nine Nicors (sea- monsters). And now behold him, as he comes across the waves to succor the old King Hrothgar, who with his vassals sits afflicted in his great mead- hall, high and curved with pinnacles. For " a grim stranger, Grendel, a mighty haunter of the marshes," had entered his hall during the night, seized thirty of the thanes who were asleep, and returned in his war-craft with their carcasses ; for twelve years the dread- ful ogre, the beastly and greedy crea- ture, father of Orks and Jotuns, de- voured men and emptied the best of * Kemble thinks that the origin of this poem is very ancient, perhaps contemporary with the invasion of the Angles and Saxons, but that the version we possess is later than the seventh century. Kemble' s Beowulf, text and transla- tion, 1833. The characters are Danish. 44 THE SOURCE [BOOK I. houses. Beowulf, the great warrior, offers to grapple with the fiend, and foe to foe contend for life, without the bearing of either sword or ample shield, for he has " learned also that the wretch for his cursed hide recketh not of weapons," asking only that if death takes him, they will bear forth his bloody corpse and bury it ; mark his fen-dwelling, and send to Hygelac, his chief, the best of war-shrouds that guards his breast. He is lying in the hall, " trusting in his proud strength ; and when the mists of night arose, lo, Grendel comes, tears open the door," seized a sleeping war- rior: " he tore him -unawares, he bit his body, he drank the blood from the veins, he swallowed him with continual tearings." But Beowulf seized him in turn, and " raised himself upon his elbow." " The lordly hall thundered, the ale was spilled . . . both were enraged ; savage and strong warders ; the house resounded ; then was it a great wonder that the wine-hall with- stood the beasts of war, that it fell not upon the earth, the fair palace ; but it was thus fast. . . . The noise arose, new enough ; a fearful terror fell on the North Danes, on each of those who from the wall heard the outcry, God's denier sing_ his dreadful lay, his song of defeat, lament his wound.* . . . The foul wretch awaited the mortal wound ; a mighty gash was evident upon his shoulder ; the sinews sprung asunder, the junctures of the bones burst ; success in war was given to Beowulf. Thence must Grendel fly sick unto death, among the refuges of the fens, to seek his joy- less dwelling. He all the better knew that the end of his life, the number of his days was gone by."t For he had left on the ground, " hand, arm, and shoulder ;" and " in the lake or Nicors, where he was driven, the rough wave was boiling with blood, the foul spring of waves all mingled, hot with poison ; the dye, discolored with death, bubbled with warlike gore." There remained a female monster, his mother, who like him " was doomed to inhabit the terror of waters, the cold streams," who came by night, and amidst drawn swords tore and devoured another man, ^Eschere, the king's best friend. A lamentation arose in the palace, and Beowulf offered himself again. They went to the den, a hidden * Kemble's Beowulf, xi. p. 32. t Ibid. xii. p. 34. land, the refuge of the wolf, near the windy promontories, where a mountain stream rusheth downwards under the darkness of the hills, a flood beneath the earth ; the wood fast by its roots overshadoweth the water ; there may one by night behold a marvel, fire upon the flood : the stepper over the heath, when wearied out by the hounds, sooner will give up his soul, his life upon the brink, than plunge therein to hide his head. Strange dragons and serpents swam there ; " from time to time the horn sang a dirge, a terrible song." Beowulf plunged into the wave, de- scended, passed monsters who tore his coat of mail, to the ogress, the hateful manslayer, who, seizing him in her grasp, bore him off to her dwelling. A pale gleam shone brightly, and there, face to face, the good champion per- ceived " the she-wolf of the abyss, the mighty sea- woman ; he gave the war-onset with his battle- bill ; he held not back the swing of the sword, so that on her head the nng-mail sang aloud a greedy war-song. . . . The beam of war would not bite. Then caught the prince of the War- Geats Grendel's mother by the shoulder . . . twisted the homicide, so that she bent upon the the floor. . . . She drew her knife broad, brown-edged (and tried to pierce), the twisted breast-net which protected his life. . . . Then saw he among the weapons a bill fortunate in victory, an old gigantic sword, doughty of edge, ready for use, the work of giants. He seized the belted hilt ; the warrior of the Scyldings, fierce and savage whirled the ring-mail ; de- spairing of life, he struck furiously, so that it frappled hard with her about her neck ; it roke the bone-rings, the bill passed through all the doomed body ; she sank upon the floor ; the sword was bloody, the man rejoiced in his deed ; the beam shone, light stood within, even as from heaven mildly shines the lamp of the firmament." * Then he saw Grendel dead in a corner of the hall ; and four of his companions, having with difficulty raised the mon- strous head, bore it by the hair to the palace of the king. That was his first labor; and the rest of his life was similar. When he had reigned fifty years on earth, a dragon, who had been robbed of his treasure, came from the hill and burn- ed men and houses " with waves of fire." " Then did the refuge of earls command to make for him a variegated shield, all of iron : he knew well enough * Beowulf, xxii. xxiii. p. 62 et passim. :HAP. I.] THE SAXONS. 45 that a shield of wood could not help him, lindenwood opposed to fire. . The prince of rings was then too proud to seek the wide flier with a troop, with a large company ; he feared not for himself that battle, nor did he make any account of the dragon's war, his laboriousness and valor." And yet he was sad, and went unwillingly, for he was "fated to abide the end." Then "he was ware of a cavern, a mound under the earth, nigh to the sea wave, the clashing of waters, which cave was full within of embossed orna- ments and wires. . . . Then the king, hard in war sat upon the promontory, whilst he, the prince of the Geats, bade farewell to his household comrades. . . I, the old guardian of my people, seek a feud/' He " let words proceed from his breast," the dragon came, vomiting fire ; the blade bit not his body, and the king " suffered painfully, involved in fire." His comrades had " turned to the wood, to save their lives," all save Wiglaf, who " went through the fatal smoke," knowing well " that it was not the old custom " to abandon relation and prince, " that he alone . . . shall suffer distress, shall sink in battle." " The worm came furious, the foul insidious stranger, va- riegated with waves of fire, . . . hot and warlike fierce, he clutched the whole neck with bitter banes ; he was bloodied with life-gore, the blood boil- ed in waves."* They, with their swords, carved the worm in the midst. Yet the wound of the king became burning and swelled ; " he soon dis- covered that poison boiled in his breast within, and sat by the wall upon a stone ; " " he looked upon the work of giants, how the eternal cavern held within stone arches fast upon pillars." Then he said " I have held this people fifty years ; there was not any king of my neighbors, who dared to greet me with warriors, to oppress me with terror. ... I held mine own well, I sought not treacherous malice, nor swore unjustly many oaths ; on account of all this, I, sick with mortal wounds, may have joy. . . . Now do thou go immediately to behold the hoard under the hoary stone, my dear Wiglaf. . . . Now, I have purchased with my death a hoard of treas- ures ; it will be yet < A Ivantage at the need of the people. ... I give thanks . . . that I * Beowulf* xxxiii.-xxxvi. p. 94 et passim. might before my dying day obtain such for my peoples . . . longer may I not here be."* This is thorough and real generosity, not exaggerated and pretended, as it will be later on in the romantic imagi- nations of babbling clerics, mere com- posers of adventure. Fiction as yet is not far removed from fact : the man breathes manifest beneath the hero. Rude as the poetry is, its hero is grand ; he is so, simply by his deeds'. Faithful, first to his prince, then to his people, he went alone, in a strange land, to venture himself for the delivery of his fellow-men ; he forgets himself in death, while thinking only that it profits others, " Each one of us," he says in one place, " must abide the end of his present life." Let, therefore, each do justice, if he can, before his death. Compare with him the monsters whom he destroys, the last traditions of the ancient wars against inferior races, and of the primitive religion ; think of his life of danger, nights upon the waves, man grappling with the brute creation ; man's indomitable will crushing the breasts of beasts ; man's powerful muscles which, when exerted, tear the flesh of the monsters : you will see reappear through the mist of legends, and under the light of poetry, the val- iant men who, amid the madness of war and the raging of their own mood, be- gan to settle a people and to found a state. V. One poem nearly whole and two or three fragments are all that remain of this lay-poetry of England. The rest of the pagan current, German and bar- barian, was arrested or overwhelmed, first by the influx of the Christian re- ligion, then by the conquest of the Norman-French. But what remain* more than suffices to show the strange and powerful poetic genius of the race, and to exhibit beforehand the flower in the bud. If there has ever been anywhere a deep and serious poetic sentiment, it is here. They do not speak, they sing, * Beowulf^ xxxvii. xxxviii. p. no et passim. I have throughout always used the very words of Kembie's translation. TR. 46 THE SOURCE. [BOOK i or rather they shout. Each little verse is an acclamation, which breaks forth like a growl ; their strong breasts heave with a groan of anger or enthusiasm, and a vehement or indistinct phrase or expression rises suddenly, almost in spite of them, to their lips. There is no art, no natural talent, for describing singly and in order the different parts of an object or an event. The fifty rays of light which every phenomenon emits in succession to a regular and well-directed intellect, come to them at once in a glowing and confused mass, disabling them by their force and con- vergence. Listen to their genuine war- chants, unchecked and violent, as be- came their terrible voices. To this day, at this distance of time, separated as they are by manners, speech, ten centuries, we seem to hear them still : "The army goes forth: the birds sing, the cricket chirps, the war-weapons sound, the lance clangs against the shield. Now shineth the moon, wandering under the sky. Now arise deeds of woe, which the enmity of this people prepares to do. . . . Then in the court came the tumult of war-carnage. They seized with their hands the hollow wood of the shield. They smote through the bones of the head. The roofs of the castle resounded, until Garulf fell in battle, the first of earth-dwelling men, son of Guthlaf. Aorund him lay many brave men dying. The raven whirled about, dark and sombre, like a willow leaf. There was a sparkling of blades, as if all Finsburg were on fire. Never have I heard of a more worthy battle in war." * This is the song on Athelstan's vic- tory at Brunanburh : " Here Athelstan king, of earls the lord, the giver of the bracelets of the nobles, and his brother also, Edmund the agtheling, the Elder a lasting glory won by slaughter in battle, with the edges of swords, at Brunanburh. The wall of shields they cleaved, they hewed the noble banners : with the rest of the family, the chil- dren of Edward. . . . Pursuing, they destroyed the Scottish people and the ship-fleet. . . . The field was colored with the warrior's blood! After that the sun on high, . . . the greatest star! glided over the earth, God's candle bright! till the noble creature hastened to her setting. There lay soldiers many with darts struck down, Northern men over their shields shot. So were the Scots ; weary of ruddy battle. . . . The screamers of war they left be- * Conybeare's Illustrations of A nglo-Saxon Poetry, 1826, Battle of Finsborough^ p. 175. The complete collection of Anglo-Saxon poetry has been published by M. Grein. hind ; the raven to enjoy, the dismal kite, and the black raven with horned beak, and the hoarse toad ; the eagle, afterwards to feast on the white flesh ; the greedy battle-hawk, and the grey beast, the wolf in the wood." * Here all is imagery. In their im- passioned minds events are not baid, with the dry propriety of an exact de- scription ; each fits in with its pomp of sound, shape, coloring ; it is almost a vision which is raised, complete, with its accompanying emotions, joy, fury, excitement. In their speech, arrows are " the serpents of Hel, shot from bows of horn ; " ships are " great sea- steeds," the sea is " a chalice of waves," the helmet is " the castle of the head : " they need an extraordinary speech to express their vehement sensations, so that after a time, in Iceland, where this kind of poetry was carried on to excess, the earlier inspiration failed, art replaced nature, the Skalds were reduced to a distorted and obscure jargon. But whatever be the imagery, here as in Iceland, though unique, it is too feeble. The poets have not satis- fied their inner emotion if it is only ex- pressed by a single word. Time after time they return to and repeat their idea. " The sun on high, the great star, God's brilliant candle, the noble creature ! " Four times successively they employ the same thought, and each time under a new aspect. All its different aspects rise simultaneously before the barbarian's eyes, and each word was like a fit of the semi-hallucina- tion which possessed him. Verily, in such a condition, the regularity of speech and of ideas is disturbed at every turn. The succession of thought in the visionary is not the same as in a reasoning mind. One color induces another; from sound he passes to sound ; his imagination is like a diorama of unexplained pictures. His phrases recur and change : he emits the word that comes to his lips without hesita- tion ; he leaps over wide intervals from idea to idea. The more his mind is transported, the quicker and wider the intervals traversed. With one spring he visits the poles of his horizon, and touches in one moment objects which seemed to have the world between * Turner, Hist, of Anglo-Sax ens ^ iii. boo*, 9, ch. i. p. 245. CHAP. I.] THE SAXONS. 47 them. His ideas are entangled with- out order; without notice, abruptly, the poet will return to the idea he has quitted, and insert it in the thought to which he is giving expression. It is impossible to translate these incon- gruous ideas, which quite disconcert our modern style. At times they are unintelligible.* Articles, particles, every thing capable of illuminating thought, of marking the connection of terms, of producing regularity of ideas, all rational and logical artifices, are neglected.t Passion bellows forth like a great shapeless beast ; and that is all. It rises and starts in little abrupt lines ; it is the acme of barbarism. Homer's happy poetry is copiously developed, in full narrative, with rich and extend- ed imagery. All the details of a com- plete picture are not too much for him ; he loves to look at things, he lingers over them, rejoices in their beauty, dresses them in splendid words ; he is like the Greek girls, who thought themselves ugly if they did not bedeck arms and shoulders with all the gold coins from their purse, and all the treasures from their caskets ; his long verses flow by with their cadences, and spread out like a purple robe under an Ionian sun. Here the clumsy-fingered poet crowds and clashes his ideas in a narrow measure ; if measure there be, he barely observes it ; all his ornament is three words beginning with the same letter. His chief care is to abridge, to imprison thought in a kind of muti- lated cry.J The force of the internal impression, which, not knowing how to unfold itself, becomes condensed and doubled by accumulation ; the harsh- ness of the outward expression, which, subservient to the energy and shocks of the inner sentiment, seeks only to * The cleverest Anglo-Saxon scholars, Tur- ner, Conybeare, Thorpe, recognize this diffi- culty. t Turner, iii. 231, et passim. The transla- tions in French, however literal, do injustice to the text ; that language is too clear, too logical. No Frenchman can understand this extraordi- nary phase of intellect, except by taking a dic- tionary, and deciphering some pages of Anglo- Saxon for a fortnight. J Turner remarks that the same idea ex- pressed by King Alfred, in prose and then in verse, takes in the first case seven words, in the second five. History of the Anglo-Saxons, iii. ass* exhibit it intact and original, in spite of and at the expense of all order and beauty, such are the characteristics of their poetry, and these also will be the characteristics of the poetry which is to follow. VI. A race so constituted was predisposed to Christianity, by its gloom, its aver- sion to sensual and reckless living, its inclination for the serious and sublime. When their sedentary habits had recon- ciled their souls to a long period of ease, and weakened the fury which fed their sanguinary religion, they readily inclined to a new faith. The vague adoration of the great powers of nature, which eternally fight for mutual de- struction, and, when destroyed, rise up again to the combat, had long since disappeared in the dim distance. So- ciety, on its formation, introduced the idea of peace and the need for justice, and the war-gods faded from the minds of men, with the passions which had created them. A century and a half after the invasion by the Saxons,* Roman missionaries, bearing a silver cross with a picture of Christ, came in procession chanting a litany. Present- ly the high priest of the Northumbrians declared in presence of the nobles that the old gods were powerless, and con- fessed that formerly " he knew nothing of that which he adored ; " and he among the first, lance in hand, assisted to demolish their temple. Then a chief rose in the assembly, and said : "You remember, it may be, O king, that which sometimes happens in winter when you are seated at table with your earls and thanes. Your fire is lighted, and your hall warmed, and without is rain and snow and storm. Then comes a swallow flying across the hall ; he enters by one door, and leaves by another. The brief moment while he is within is pleasant to him ; he feels not rain nor cheerless winter weather ; but the moment is brief the bird flies away in the twinkling of an eye, and he passes from winter to winter. Such, methinks, is the life of man on earth, compared with the uncertain time beyond. It appears for awhile ; but what is the time which comes after the time which was before ? We know not. If, then, this new doctrine may teach us somewhat of greater certainty, it were well that we should regard it." * 596-625. Aug. Thierry, i. 81 ; Bede, xii. a 48 THE SOURCE. [BOOK I. This restlessness, this feeling of the infinite and dark beyond, this sober, melancholy eloquence, were the har- bingers of spiritual life.* We find nothing like it amongst the nations of the south, naturally pagan, and preoc- cupied with the present life. These utter barbarians embrace Christianity straightway, through sheer force of mood and clime. To no purpose are they brutal, heavy, shackled by infan- tine superstitions, capable, like King Canute, of buying for a hundred golden talents the arm of Augustine. They possess the idea of God. This grand God of the Bible, omnipotent and unique, who disappears almost entirely in the middle ages,t obscured by His court and His family, endures amongst them in spite of absurd or grotesque legends. They do not blot Him out under pious romances, by the elevation of the saints, or under feminine caress- es, to benefit the infant Jesus and the Virgin. Their grandeur and their seventy raise them to His high level ; they are not tempted, like artistic and talkative nations, to replace religion by a fair and agreeable narrative. More than any race in Europe, they approach, by the simplicity and energy of their conceptions, the old Hebraic spirit. Enthusiasm is their natural condition; and their new Deity fills them with admiration, as their ancient deities inspired them with fury. They have hymns, genuine odes, which are but a concrete of exclamations. They have no development ; they are in- capable of restraining or explaining their passion ; it bursts forth, in rap- tures, at the vision of the Almighty. The heart alone speaks here a strong, barbarous heart. Caedmon, their old poet,J says Bede, was a more ignorant man than the others, who knew no poetry ; so that in the hall, when they handed him the harp, he was obliged to withdraw, being unable to sing like his companions. Once, keeping night- watch over the stable, he fell asleep. A stranger appeared to him, and asked him to sing something, and these words * Jouffroy, Problem of Human Destiny. t Michelet, preface to La Renaissance ', Diclron, Histoire de Dieu. t About 630. See Codex Exoniensis, Thorpe. came into his head : " Now we ought to praise the Lord of heaven, the power of the Creator, and His skill, the deeds of the Father of glory ; how He, being eternal God, is the author of all mar- vels ; who, almighty guardian of the human race, created first for the sons of men the heavens as the roof of their dwelling, and then the earth/' Re- membering this when he woke,* he came to the town, and they brought him before the learned men, before the abbess Hilda, who, when they had heard him, thought that he had received a gift from heaven, and made him a monk, in the abbey. There he spent his life listening to portions of Holy Writ, which were explained to him in Saxon, " ruminating over them like a pure animal, turned them into most sweet verse." Thus is true poetry born. These men pray with all the emotion of a new soul' ; they kneel ; they adore ; the less they know the more they think. Some one has said that the first and most sincere hymn is this one word O ! Theirs were hardly longer ; they only repeated time after time some deep passionate word, with monotonous vehemence. " In heaven art Thou, our aid and succor, resplen- dent with happiness ! All things bow before thee, before the glory of Thy Spirit. With one voice they call upon Christ ; they all cry : Holy, holy art thou, King of the angels of heaven, our Lord ! and Thy judgments are just and great : they reign forever and in all places, in the multitude of Thy works." We are reminded of the songs of the servants of Odin, ton- sured now, and clad in the garments of monks. Their poetry is the same ; they think of God, as of Odin, in a string of short, accumulated, passion- ate images, like a succession of light- ning-flashes ; the Christian hymns are a sequel to the pagan. One of them, Adhelm, stood on a bridge leading to the town where he lived, and repeated warlike and profane odes as well as religious poetry, in order to attract and instruct the men of his time. He could do it without changing his key. In one of them, a funeral song, Death speaks. It was one of the last Sax- on compositions, containing a terrible * Bede, iv. 24. CHAP. I.] THE SAXONS. 49 Christianity, which seems at the same time to have sprung from the black- est depths of the Edda. The brief metre sounds abruptly, with measured stroke, like the passing bell. It is as if we hear the dull resounding responses which roll through the church, while the rain beats on the dim glass, and the broken clouds sail mournfully in the sky; and our eyes, glued to the pale face of a dead man, feel before- hand the horror of the damp grave into which the living are about to cast him. " For thee was a house built ere thou wert born ; for thee was a mould shapen ere thou of thy mother earnest. Its height is not deter- mined, nor its depth measured ; nor is it closed up (however long it may be) until I thee bring where thou shalt remain ; until I shall measure thee and the sod of the earth. Thy house is not highly built ; it is unhigh and low. When thou art in it, the heel-ways are low, the side- ways unhigh. The roof is built thy breast full nigh ; so thou shalt in earth dwell full cold, dim, and dark. Doorless is that house, and dark it is within. There thou art fast detained, and Death holds the key. Loathly is that earth-house, and grim to dwell in. There thou shalt dwell, and worms shall share thee. Thus thou art laid, and leavest thy friends. Thou hast no friend that will come to thee, who will ever inquire how that house liketh thee, who shall ever open for thee the door., and seek thee, for soon thou becomest loathly and hate- ful to look upon." * Has Jeremy Taylor a more gloomy picture ? The two religious poetries, Christian and pagan, are so like, that one might mingle their incongruities, images, and legends. In Beowulf, alto- gether pagan, the Deity appears as Odin, more mighty and serene, and differs from the other only as a peace- ful Bretwalda t differs from an adven- turous and heroic bandit-chief. The Scandinavian monsters, Jotuns, ene- mies of the ^Esir,J have not vanished ; but they descend from Cain, and the giants drowned by the flood. Their n. vv hell is nearly the ancient Nastrand,|| * Conybeare's Illustrations, p. 271. t Bretwalda was a species of war-king, or temporary and elective chief of all the Saxons. % The /Esir (sing. As) are the gods of the Scandinavian nations, of whom Odin was the chief. TR. Kemble, i. i. xii. In this chapter he has collected many features which show the en- durance of the ancient mythology. II Nastrand is the strand or shore of the dead.-TR. " a dwelling deadly cold, full of blood} eagles and pale adders;" and the dreadful last day of judgment, when all will crumble into dust, and make way for a purer world, resembles the final destruction of Edda, that " twi- light of the gods," which will end in a victorious regeneration, an everlasting joy " under a fairer sun." By this natural conformity they were able to make their religious poems indeed poems. Power in spir- itual productions arises only from the sincerity of personal and original sen- timent. If they can relate religious tragedies, it is because their soul was tragic, and in a degree biblical. They introduce into their verses, like the old prophets of Israel, their fierce vehe- mence, their murderous hatreds, their fanaticism, all the shudderings of their flesh and blood. One of them, whose poem is mutilated, has related the his- tory of Judith with what inspiration we shall see. It needed a barbarian to display in such strong light excesses, tumult, murder, vengeance and combat. "Then was Holof ernes exhilarated with wine ; in the halls of his guests he laughed and shouted, he roared and dinned. Then might the children of men afar off hear how the stern one stormed and clamored, animated and elated with wine. He admonished amply that they should bear it well to those sitting on the bench. So was the wicked one over all the day, the lord and his men, drunk with wine, the stern dispenser of wealth ; till that they swimming lay over drunk, all his nobility, as they were death-slain." * The night having arrived, he com- mands them to bring into his tent " the illustrious virgin ; " then, going in to visit her, he falls drunk on his bed. The moment was come for " the maid of the Creator, the holy woman." " She took the heathen man fast by his h?ir ; she drew him by his limbs towards her disgrace- fully ; and the mischief-ful odious man at her pleasure laid : so as the wretch she might the easiest well command. She with the twisted locks struck the hateful enemy, meditating hate, with the red sword, till she had haif cut off his neck ; so that he lay in a swoon, drunk and mortally wounded. He was not then dead, not entirely lifeless. She struck then earnest, the woman illustrious in strength, another time the heathen hound, till that his head rolled Forth upon the floor. The foul one lay without a coffer ; backward his spirit turned under the * Turner, Hist, of A nglo-SaxonS) iii. book 9, ch. 3, p. 271. 3 THE SOURCE. [BOOK I abyss, and there was plunged below, with sul- phur fastened ; forever afterwards wounded by worms. Bound in torments, hard imprisoned, in hell he burns. After his course he need not hope, with darkness overwhelmed, that he may escape from that mansion of worms ; but there he shall remain ; ever and ever, without end, henceforth in that cavern-house, void of the joys of hope." * Has any one ever heard a sterner accent of satisfied hate ? When Clo- vis listened to the Passion play, he cried, " Why was I not there with my Franks ! " So here the old warrior in stinct swelled into flame over the He brew wars. As soon as Judith re- turned, " Men under helms (went out) from the holy city at the dawn itself. They dinned shields ; men roared loudly. At this rejoiced the lank wolf in the wood, and the wan raven, the fowl greedy of slaughter, both from the west, that the sons of men for them should have thought to prepare their fill on corpses. And to them flew in their paths the active deyourer, the eagle, hoary in his feathers. The willowed kite, with his horned beak, sang the song of Hilda. The noble warriors proceeded, they in mail, to the battle, furnished with shields, with swelling banners. . . . They then speedily let fly forth showers of arrows, the serpents of Hilda, from their horn bows; the spears on the ground hard stormed. Loud raged the plunderers of battle ; they sent their darts into the throng of the chiefs. . . . They that awhile before the re- E roach of the foreigners, the taunts of the eathen endured." t Amongst all these unknown poets } there is one whose name we know, Caedmon, perhaps the old Caedmon who wrote the first hymn ; like him, at all events, who, paraphrasing the Bible with a barbarian's vigor and sublimity, has shown the grandeur and fury of the sentiment with which the men of these times entered into their new religion. He also sings when he speaks; when he mentions the ark, it is with a profusion of poetic names, " the floating house, the greatest of floating chambers, the wooden for- tress, the moving roof, the cavern the great sea-chest," and many more. Every time he thinks of it, he sees it with his mind, like a quick luminous vision, and each time under a new aspect, now undulating on the muddy * Turner, Hist, of Anglo- Saxons y iii. book 9, ch. 3, p. 272. t Id. p. 274. t Grein, Bibliothek der A ngeheechsischen waves, between two ridges of foam, now casting over the water its enor- mous shadow, black and high like a castle, " now enclosing in its cavernous sides " the endless swarm of caged beasts. Like the others, he wrestles with god in his heart ; triumphs like a warrior over destruction and victory ; and in relating the death of Pharaoh, can hardly speak from anger, or see because the blood mounts to his eyes : " The folk was affrighted, the flood-dres^ seized on their sad souls ; ocean wailed with death, the mountain heights were with blood besteamed, the sea foamed gore, crying was in the waves, the water full of weapons, a death- mist rose ; the Egyptians were turned back ; trembling they fled, they felt fear ; would that host gladly find their homes ; their vaunt grew sadder : against them, as a cloud, rose the fell rolling of the waves ; there came not any of that host to home, but from behind inclosed them fate with the wave. Where ways ere lay sea raged. Their might was merged, the streams stood, the storm rose high to heaven ; the loudest army-cry the hostile uttered ; the air above was thickened with dying voices. . . . Ocean raged, drew itself up on high, the storms rose, the corpses rolled." * Is the song of the Exodus more abrupt, more vehement, or more savage ? These men can speak of the creation like the Bible, because they speak of destruction like the Bible, They have only to look into their own hearts, in order to discover an emo- tion sufficiently strong to raise their souls to the height of their Creator. This emotion existed already in their pagan legends ; and Caedmon, in order to recount the origin of things, has only to turn to the ancient dreams, such as have been preserved in the prophecies of the Edda. lf There had not here as yet, save cavern- shade, aught been ; but this wide abyss stood deep and dim, strange to its Lord, idle and use- less ; on which looked with his eyes the Kine firm of mind, and beheld those places void ol joys ; saw the dark cloud lower in eternal night, swart under heaven, dark and waste, until this worldly creation through the word existed of the Glory-King. . . . The earth as yet was not green with grass ; ocean cover' d, swart in eter- nal night, far and wide the dusky ways." t In this manner will Milton hereafter speak, the descendant of the Hebrew * Thorpe, C(zdmon> 1832, xlvii. p. 206. t Thorpe, Ccedmon^ ii. p. 7. A likeness ex- ists between this song and corresponding por tions of the Edda. CHAP. I.] THE SAXONS. seers, last of the Scandinavian seers, but assisted in the development of his thought by all the resources of Latin culture and civilization. And yet he will add nothing to the prim- itive sentiment. Religious instinct is not acquired ; it belongs to the blood, and is inherited with it. So it is with other instincts ; pride in the first place, indomitable self-conscious energy, which sets man in opposition to all domi- nation, and inures him against all pain. Milton's Satan exists already in Casdmon's, as the picture exists in the sketch ; because both have their model in the race ; and Caedmon found his originals in the northern warriors, as Milton did in the Puritans : " Why shall I for his favor serve, bend to him in such vassalage? I may be a god as he. Stand by me, strong associates, who will not fail me in the strife. Heroes stern of mood, they have chosen me for chief, renowned war- riors ! with such may one devise counsel, with such capture his adherents ; they are my zeal- ous friends, faithful in their thoughts ; I may be their chieftain, sway in this realm ; thus to me it seemeth not right that I in aught need cringe to God for any good J I will no longer be his vassal."* He is overcome : shall he be sub- dued? He is cast into the place " where torment they suffer, burning heat intense, in midst of hell, fire and broad flames : so also the bitter seeks smoke and darkness ; " will he repent ? At first he is astonished, he despairs ; but it is a hero's despair. "This narrow place is most unlike that other that we ere knew,t high in heaven's kingdom, which my master bestow'd on me. . . . Oh, had I power of my hands, and might one season be without, be one winter's space, then with this host I But around me lie iron bonds, presseth this cord of chain : I am powerless ! me have so hard the claps of hell, so firmly grasped ! Here is a vast fire above and under- neath, never did I see a loathlier landskip ; the flame abateth not, hot over hell. Me hath the clasping of these rings, this hard-polish'd band, impeded in my course, debarr'd me from my way ; my feet are bound, my hands manacled, - . , so that with aught I cannot from these jmb-Donds escape." J A s there is nothing to be done against God, it is His new creature, man, whom he must attack. To him who has lost * Thorpe, Ceedmon, iv. p. 18. t This is Milton's opening also. (See Para- dise Lost, Book i. verse 242, etc.) One would think that he must have had some knowledge of Caedmon from the translation of Junius. $ Thorpe, Ccedmon^ iv. p. 23. every thing, vengeance is left ; and if the conquered can enjoy this, he will find himself happy ; " he will sleep softly, even under his chains." VII. Here the foreign culture ceased. Be- yond Christianity it could not graft up- on this barbarous stock any fruitful or living branch. All the circumstances which elsewhere mellowed the wild s' p failed here. The Saxons found Britain abandoned by the Romans they had not yielded, like their brothers on the Continent, to the ascendency of a superior civilization ; they had not be- come mingled with the inhabitants of the land ; they had always treated them like enemies or slaves, pursuing like wolves those who escaped to the moun- tains of the west, treating like beasts of burden those whom they had conquer- ed with the land. While the Germans of Gaul, Italy, and Spain became Ro- mans, the Saxons retained their lan- guage, their genius and manners, and created in Britain a Germany out- side of Germany. A hundred and fifty years after the Saxon invasion, the in- troduction of Christianity and the dawn of security attained by a society inclin- ing to peace, gave birth to a kind of literature ; and we meet with the vener- able Bede, and later on, Alcuin, John Scotus Erigena, and some others, com- mentators, translators, teachers of bar- barians, who tried not to originate but to compile, to pick out and explain from the great Greek and Latin ency- clopaedia something which might suit the men of their time. But the wars with the Danes came and crushed this humble plant, which, if left to itself, would have come to nothing.* When Alfred t the Deliverer became king, " there were very few ecclesiastics," he says, " on this side of the Humber, who could understand in English their own Latin prayers, or translate any Latin writing into English. On the other side * They themselves feel their impotence and decrepitude. Bede, dividing the history of the world into six periods, says that the fifth, which stretches from the return out of Babylon to the birth of Christ, is the senile period ; the sixth is the present, estas decrepita^ totius morte seeculi consummanda. t Died in 901 ; Aclhelm died 709, Bede died 735, Alcuin lived under Charlemagne, Erigena under Charles the Bald (843-877). THE SOURCE. [BOOK I of the Humber I think there were scarce any ; there were so few that, in truth, I cannot remember a single man south of the Thames, when I took the kingdom, who was capable of it." He tried, like Charlemagne, to instruct his people, and turned into Saxon for their use several works, above all some moral books, as the de Consolatione of Boethius ; but this very translation bears witness to the barbarism of his audience. He adapts the text in order to bring it down to their intelligence ; Uie pretty verses of Boethius, some- " Quondam fun era conjugis Vates Threicius gemens, Postquam flebilibus modis Silvas currere, mobiles, Amnes stare coegerat, Junxitque intrepidum latus Sasvis cerva leonibus, Nee visum timuit lepus Jam cantu placidum canem ; Cum flagrantipr intima Fervor pectoris ureret, Nee qui cuncta subegerant Muicereut dominum modi J Immites superos querens, Infernas adiit domos. Illic Wanda sonantibus Chordis carmina temperans, Quidquid praecipuis Deae Matris fontibus hauserat, Quod luctus dabat impotens, Quod luctum geminans amor, Deflet Tartara commovens, Et dulci veniam prece Umbrarum dominos rogat. Stupet tergeminus novo Captus carmine janitor ; 8uae sontes agitant metu Itrices scelerum Deae Jam mcestae lacrymis madent. Non Ixionium caput Velox praecipitat rota, Et longa site perditus Spernit flumina Tantalus. Vultur dum satur est modis Non traxit Tityi jecur. Tandem, vincimur, arbiter Umbrarum miserans ait. Donemus comitem viro, Emptam carmine conjugem. Sed iex dona coerceat, Nee, dum Tartara liquerit, Fas sit lumina fiectere. Quis legem det amantibus ! Major lex fit amor sibi. Heu ! noctis prppe terminos ^rpheus Eurydicem suam Vidit, periidit, occidit. Vos haec tabula respicit, Quicunque in superum diem Menti'm ducere quaeritis. Nam qui tartareum in specus Victus lumina flexerit, Quidquid praecipuum trahit Perdit, dum videt inferos." Book in. Metre 12. what pretentious, labored, elegant, crowded with classical allusions of a refined and compact style worthy of Seneca, become an artless, long drawn out and yet desultory prose, like a nurse's fairy tale, explaining every thing, recommencing and breaking off its phrases, making ten turns about a single detail ; so low was it necessary to stoop to the level of this new intelli- gence, which had never thought or known any thing. Here follows the latin of Boethius, so affected, so pretty, with the English translation affixed : " It happened formerly that there was a harper in the country called Thrace, which was in Greece. The. harper was inconceivably good. His name was Orpheus. He had a very excellent wife, called Eurydice. Then began men to say concerning the harper, that he could harp so that the wood moved and the stones stirred themselves at the sound, and wild beasts would run thereto, and stand as if they were tame ; so still, that though men or hounds pursued them, they shunned them not. Then said they, that the harper's wife should die, and her soul should be led to hell. Then should the harper become so sorrowful that he could not remain among the men, but fre- quented the wood, and sat on the mountains, both day and night, weeping and harping, so that the woods shook, and the rivers stood still, and no hart shunned any lion, nor hare any hound ; nor did cattle know any hatred, or any fear of others, for the pleasure of the sound. Then it seemed to the harper that nothing in this world pleased him. Then thought he that he would seek the gods of hell, and endeavor to allure them with his harp, and pray that they would give him back his wife. When he 'came thither, then should there come towards him the dog of hell, whose name was Cerberus, he should have three heads, and began to wag his tail, and play with him for his harping. Then was there also a very horrible gatekeeper, whose name should be Charon. He had also three heads, and he was very old. Then began the harper to beseech him that he would pro- tect him while he was there, and bring him thence again safe. Then did he promise that to him, because he was desirous of the unac- customed sound. Then went he farther until he met the fierce goddesses, whom the common people call Parcas, of whom they say, that they know no respect for any man, but punish every man according to his deeds ; and of whom they say, that they co'.itrol every man's fortune. Then began he to implore their mercy. Then began they to weep with him. Then went he farther, and all the inhabitants of hell ran to- wards him, and led him to their king : and all began to speak with him, and to pray that which he prayed. And the restless wheel which Ixion, the king of the Lapithse, was bound to for his guilt, that stood still for his harping. And Tantalus the king, w'to in this world was in> moderately greedy, and whom that same vice of greediness followed there, he became quiet. And the vulture should cease, so that he tor* CHAP. I.] THE SAXONS. 53 not the liver of Tityus the king, which before therewith tormented him. And all the punish- ments of the inhabitants of hell were suspended, whilst he harped before the king. When he long and long had harped, then spoke the king of the inhabitants of hell, and said, Let us give the man his wife, for he has earned her by his harping. He then commanded him that he should well observe that he never looked back- wards after he departed thence ; and said, if he looked backwards, that he should lose the woman. But men can with great difficulty, if at all, restrain love! Wellaway! What! Orpheus then led his wife with him till he came to the boundary of light and darkness. Then went his wife after him. When he came forth into the light, then looked he behind his back towards the woman. Then was she immediately lost to him. This fable teaches every man who desires to fly the darkness of hell, and to come to the light of the true good, that he look not about him to his old vices, so that he practice them again as fully as he did before. For whosoever with full will turns his mind to the vices which he had before forsaken, and practices them, and they then fully please him, and he never thinks of forsaking them ; then loses he all his former good unless he again amend it." * A man speaks thus when he wishes to impress upon the mind of his hear- ers an idea which is not clear to them. Boethius had for his audience senators, men of culture, who understood as well as we the slightest mythological allu- sion. Alfred is obliged to take them up and develop them, like a father or a master, who draws his little boy be- tween his knees, and relates to him names, qualities, crimes and their punishments, which the Latin only hints at. But the ignorance is such that the teacher himself needs correc- tion. He takes the Parcae for the Erinyes, and gives Charon three heads like Cerberus. There is no adorn- ment in his version ; no delicacy as in the original. Alfred has hard work to niake himself understood. What, for instance, becomes of the noble Platonic moral, the apt interpretation after the style of lamblichus and Porphyry ? It is altogether dulled. He has to call every thing by its name, and turn the eyes of his people to tangible and vis- ible things. It is a sermon suited to his audience of Thanes ; the Danes whom he had converted by the sword needed a clear moral. If he had trans- lated for them exactly the last words of Boethius, they would have opened wide their big stupid eyes and fallen asleep. For the whole talent of an unculti- vated mind lies in the force and one- ness of its sensations. Beyond that it is powerless. The art of thinking and reasoning lies above it. These men lost all genius when they lost theh fever-heat. They lisped awkwardly and heavily dry chronicles, a sort of histor- ical almanacs. You might think them peasants, who, returning from tru i toil, came and scribbled with chalk or. a smoky table the date of a year oi scarcity, the price of corn, the changes in the weather, a death. Even so, side by side with the meagre Bible chron- icles, which set down the successions of kings, and of Jewish massacres, are exhibited the exaltation of the psalms and the transports of prophecy. The same lyric poet can be alternately a brute and a genius, because his genius comes and goes like a disease, and in- stead of having it he simply is ruled by it. "A. D. 6ir. This year Cynegils succeeded to the government in Wessex, and held it one- and-thirty winters. Cynegils was the son of Ceol, Ceol of Cutha, Cutha of Cynric. "614. This year Cynegils and Cnichelm fought at Bampton, and slew two thousand and forty-six of the Welsh. "678. This year appeared the comet-star in August, and shone every morning during three months like a sunbeam. Bishop Wilfrid being driven from his bishopric by King Everth, two bishops were consecrated in his stead. " 901. This year died Alfred, the son of Ethelwulf, six nights before the mass of All Saints. He was king over all the English na- tion, except that part that was under the power of the Danes. He held the government one year and a half less than thirty winters ; and then Edward his son took to the government. "902. This year there was the great fight at the Holme, between the men of Kent and the Danes. " 1077. This year were reconciled the King of the Franks, and William, King of England. But it continued only a little while. This y ;ar was London burned, one night before the As- sumption of St. Mary, so terribly as it never was before since it was built." * It is thus the poor monks speak, with monotonous dryness, who after Alfred's time gather up and take note of great visible events ; sparsely scat- tered we find a few moral reflections, a passionate emotion, nothing more. In * Fox's Alfred" 1 * Boethius t chap. 35, 6, * All these extracts are taken from Ingram'a 1864. Saxon Chronicle^ 1823. 54 THE SOURCE. [BOOK I the tenth century we see King Edgar give a manor to a bishop, on condition that he will put into Saxon the monas- tic regulation written in Latin by Saint Benedict. Alfred himself was almost the last man of culture ; he, like Charlemagne, became so only by dint of determination and patience. In vain the great spirits of this age endeavor to link themselves to the relics of the fine, ancient civilization, and to raise themselves above the chaotic and mud- dy ignorance in which the others flounder. They rise almost alone, and on their death the rest sink again into the mire. It is the human beast that remains master ; the mind cannot find a place amidst the outbursts and the desires of the flesh, gluttony and brute force. Even in the little circle where he moves, his labor comes to nought. The model which he proposed to himself oppresses and enchains him in a cramping imitation ; he aspires but to be a good copyist ; he produces a gathering of centos which he calls Latin verses ; he applies himself to the discovery of expressions, sanctioned by good models ; he succeeds only in elaborating an emphatic, spoiled Latin, bristling with incongruities. In place of ideas, the most profound amongst them serve up the defunct doctrines of defunct authors. They compile relig- ious manuals and philosophical man- uals from the Fathers. Erigena, the most learned, goes to the extent of re- producing the old complicated dreams of Alexandrian metaphysics. How far these speculations and reminiscences soar above the barbarous crowd which howls and bustles in the depths below, no words can express. There was a certain king of Kent in the seventh cen- tury who could not write. Imagine bachelors of theology discussing before an audience of wagoners, not Parisian wagoners, but such as survive in Auvergne or in the Vosges. Among ,!iese clerks, who think like studious scholars in accordance with their favor- ite authors, and are doubly separated from the world as scholars and monks, Alfred alone, by his position as a lay- man and a practical man, descends in his Saxon translations and his Saxon verses to th-5 common level ; and we have seen that his effort, like that of Charlemagne, was fruitless. There was an impassable wall between the old learned literature and the present chaotic barbarism. Incapable, yet compelled, to fit into the ancient mould, they gave it a twist. Unable to repro- duce ideas, they reproduced a metre. They tried to eclipse their rivals in versification by the refinement of their composition, and the prestige of a dif- ficulty overcome. So, in our own col- leges, the good scholars imitate the clever divisions and symmetry cf Claudian rather than the ease ani variety of Virgil. They put their feet in irons, and showed their smartness by running in shackles ; they weighted themselves with rules of modern rhyme and rules of ancient metre ; they added the necessity of beginning each verse with the same letter that began the last. A few, like Adhelm, wrote square acrostics, in which the first line, re- peated at the end, was found also to the left and right of the piece. Thus made up of the first and last letters of each verse, it forms a border to the whole piece, and the morsel of verse is like a piece of tapestry. Strange liter- ary tricks, which changed the poet into an artisan. They bear witness to the difficulties which then impeded culture and nature, and spoiled at once the Latin form and the Saxon genius. Beyond this barrier, which drew an impassable line between civilization and barbarism, there was another, no less impassable, between the Latin and Saxon genius. The strong Geiman imagination, in which glowing and ob- scure visions suddenly meet and abrupt- ly overflow, was in contrast with the reasoning spirit, in which ideas gather and are developed only in a regular order ; so that if the barbarian, in his classical attempts, retained any part of his primitive instincts, he succeeded only in producing a grotesque and frightful monster. One of them, this very Adhelm, a relative of King Ina, who sang on the town-bridge profane and sacred hymns alternately, too much imbued with Saxon poesy, simply to imitate the antique models, adorned his Latin prose and verse with all the " English magnificence." * You might compare him to a barbarian who seizes * William of Malmesbury's expression. CHAP. I.] THE SAXONS. 55 a flute from the skilled hands of a player of Augustus' court, in order to blow on it with inflated lungs, as if it were the bellowing horn of an aurochs. The sober speech of the Roman ora- tors and senators becomes in his hands full of exaggerated and incoherent images ; he violently connects words, uniting them in a sudden and extrava- gan^ manner ; he heaps up his colors, and utters extraordinary and unintelligi- ble nonsense, like that of the later Sk lids ; in short, he is a latinized Ska'd, dragging into his new tongue the ornaments of Scandinavian poetry, such as alliteration, by dint of which he congregates in one of his epistles fifteen consecutive words, all beginning with the same letter, and in order to make up his fifteen, he introduces a barbar- ous Graecism amongst the Latin words.* Amongst the others, the writers of legends, you will meet many times with deformation of Latin, distorted by the outburst of a too vivid imagination ; it breaks out even in their scholastic and scientific writing. Here is part of a dialogue between Alcuin and prince Pepin, a son of Charlemagne, and he uses like formulas the little poetic and bold phrases which abound in the na- tional poetry. " What is winter ? the banishment of summer. What is spring? the painter of the earth. What is the year ? the world's chariot. What is the sun ? the splendor of the world, the beauty of heaven, the grace of nature, the honor of day, the distribu- tor of the hours. What is the sea ? the path of audacity, the boundary of the earth, the receptacle of the rivers, the fountain of showers." More, he ends his instructions with enigmas, in the spirit of the Skalds, such as we still find in the old manuscripts with the barbarian songs. It was the last feature of the national genius, which, when it labors to understand a matter, neglects dry, clear, consecutive deduc- tion, : employ grotesque, remote, oft- repeated imagery, and replaces analysis by intuition. * Primitus (pantorum procerum praetorumque pio potissimumpaternoque praesertim privilegio) panegyricum poemataque passim prosatori sub polo promulgates, stridula vocum symphonia ac melodias cantile, naeque carmine modulaturi hymnizemus. VIII. Such was this race, the last born of the sister races, which, in the decay of the other two, the Latin and the Greek, brings to the world a new civilization, with a new character and genius. In ferior to these in many respects, it sur- passes them in not a few. Amidst the woods and mire and snows under a sad, inclement sky, gross instincts have gained the day during this long bar- barism. The German has not acquired gay humor, unreserved facility, the feel- ing for harmonious beauty ; his great phlegmatic body continues savage and stiff, greedy and brutal ; his rude and unpliable mind is still inclined to sav- agery, and restive under culture. Dull and congealed, his ideas cannot expand with facility and freedom, with a natural sequence and an instinctive regularity. But this spirit, void of the sentiment of the beautiful, is all the more apt for the sentiment of the true. The deep and incisive impression which he re- ceives from contact with objects, and which as yet he can only express by a cry, will afterwards liberate him from the Latin rhetoric, and will vent itself on things rather than on words. More- over, under the constraint of climate and solitude, by the habit of resistance and effort, his ideal is changed. Manly and moral instincts have gained the empire over him ; and amongst them the need of independence, the disposi- tion for serious and strict manners, the inclination for devotion and veneration, the worship of heroism. Here are the foundations and the elements of a civil- ization, slower but sounder, less care- ful of what is agreeable and elegant, more based on justice and truth.* Hitherto at least the race is intact intact in its primitive coarseness ; the Roman cultivation could neither de- velop nor deform it. If Christianity took root, it was owing to natural affinities, but it produced no change in the native genius. Now approaches a new r conquest, which is to bring this time men, as well as ideas. The Saxons, meanwhile, after the wont of German * In Iceland, the country of the fiercest sea- kings, crimes are unknown ; prisons have been turned to other uses J fines are the only punish- ment* THE SOURCE. [BOOK I races, vigorous and fertile, have with- in the past six centuries multiplied enormously. They were now about two millions, and the Norman army numbered sixty thousand.* In vain these Normans become transformed, gallicized ; by their origin, and sub- stantially in themselves they are still the relatives of those whom they con- quered. In vain they imported their manners and their poesy, and intro- duced into the language a third part of its words ; this language continues al- together German in element and in substance.f Though the grammar changed, it changed integrally, by an internal action, in the same sense as its continental cognates. At the end of three hundred years the conquerors themselves were conquered ; their speech became English ; and owing to frequent intermarriage, the English blood ended by gaining the predomi- nance over the Norman blood in their veins. The race finally remains Saxon. If the old poetic genius disappears af- ter the Conquest, it is as a river disap- pears, and flows for a while under- ground. In five centuries it will emerge once more.J CHAPTER II. ftjj* IjjiQicmmw. I. A CKNTJRY and a half had passed on the Continent since, amid the universal decay and dissolution, a new society Had been formed, and new men had risen up. Brave men had at length made a stand against the Norsemen * Following Doomsday Book, Mr. Turner reckons at three hundred thousand the heads of families mentioned. If each family consisted ot five persons, that would make one million five hundred thousand people. He adds five hun- dred thousand for the four northern counties, for London and several large towns, for the monks and provincial clergy not enumerated. . . . We must accept these figures with caution. .Still they agree with those of Mackintosh, George Cialmers, and several others. Many facts show that the Saxon population was very numerous, and quite out of proportion to the Norman population. t Warton, History of English Poetry, 1840, 3 vols. preface. \ Ibid. and the robbers. They had planted their feet in the soil, and the moving chaos of the general subsidence had become fixed by the effort of their great hearts and of their arms. At the mouths of the rivers, in the defiles of the mountains, on the margin of the waste borders, at all perilous passes, they had built their forts, each for him- self, each on his own land, each with his faithful band ; and they had lived like a scattered but watchful army, en- camped and confederate in their cas- tles 7 sword in hand, in front of the enemy. Beneath this discipline a for- midable people had been formed, fierce hearts in strong bodies,* intoler- ant of restraint, longing for violent deeds, born for constant warfare be- cause steeped in permanent warfare, heroes and robbers, who, as an escape from their solitude, plunged into ad- ventures, and went, that they might conquer a country or win Paradise, to Sicily, to Portugal, to Spain, to Livo- nia, to Palestine, to England. II. On the 27 th of September, 1066, at the mouth of the Somme, there was a great sight to be seen : four hundred large sailing vessels, more than a thou- sand transports, and sixty thousand men, were on the point of embarking.f The sun shone splendidly after long rain ; trumpets sounded, the cries of this armed multitude rose to heaven ; as far as the eye could see, on the shore, in the wide-spreading river, on the sea which opens out thence broad and shining, masts and sails extended * See, amidst other delineations of their manners, the first accounts of the first Crusade* Godfrey clove a Saracen down to his waist. In Palestine, a widow was compelled, up to the age of sixty, to marry again, because no fial could remain without a defender. A Spanish leader said to his exhausted soldiers after a battle, " You are too weary and too much wounded, but come and fight with me against this other band ; the fresh wounds which we shall receive will make us forget those which we have." At this time, says the General Chronicle of Spain, kings, counts, and nobles, and all the knights, that they might be ever ready, kept their horses in the chamber where they slept with their wives. t For difference in numbers of the fleet and men, see Freeman, Hist, of the Norm. Conq.^ 3 vols. 1867, iii. 381, 387 TR. CHAP. II.] THE NORMANS. 57 like a forest; the enormous fleet set out wafted by the south wind.* The people which it carried were said to have come from Norway, and they might have been taken for kinsmen of the Saxons, with whom they were to fight ; but there were with them a multitude* of adventurers, crowding fr )m all quarters, far and near, from north and south, from Maine and An- !ou, from Poitou and Brittany, from Ile-de-France and Flanders, from Aquitaine and Burgundy ; t and, in short, the expedition itself was French. How comes it that having kept its name, it had changed its nature ? and what series of renovations had made a Latin out of a German people ? The reason is that this people, when they came to Neustria, were neither a na- tional body, nor a pure race. They were but a band ; and as such, marrying the women of the country, they intro- duced foreign blood into their children. They were a Scandinavian band, but swelled by all the bold knaves and all the wretched desperadoes who wan- dered about the conquered country : \ and as such they received foreign blood into their veins. Moreover, if the no- madic band was mixed, the settled band was much more so ; and peace by its transfusions, like war by its re- cruits, had changed the character of the primitive blood. When Rollo, having divided the land amongst his followers, hung the thieves and their abettors, people from every country gathered to him. Security, good stern justice, were so rare, that they were enough to re-people a land. He in- vited strangers, say the old writers, " and made one people out of so many folk of different natures." This as- * For all the details, see Anglo-Norman Chronicles, iii. 4, as quoted by Aug. Thierry. I have myself seen the locality and the country. t Of three columns of attack at Hastings, two we,.e composed of auxiliaries. Moreover, the chroniclers are not at fault upon this critical point ; they agree in stating that England was conquered by Frenchmen. t It was a Rouen fisherman, a soldier of Rollo, who killed the Duke of France at the mouth of the Eure. Hastings, the famous sea- king, was a laborer's son from the neighbor- hood of Troyes. " In the tenth century," says Stendhal, " a Bian wished for two things : ist, not to be slain ; 2d, to have a good leather coat." See Fonte- nelle's Chronicle. semblage of barbarians, refugees, rob- bers, immigrants, spoke Romance or French so quickly, that the second Duke, wishing to have his son taught Danish, had to send him to Bayeux, where it was still spoken. The great masses always form the race in the end, and generally the genius and lan- guage. Thus this people, so trans- formed, quickly became polished ; the composite race showed itself of a ready genius, far more wary than the Saxons across the Channel, closely resembling their neighbors of Picardy, Champagne and Ile-de-France. " The Saxons," says an old writer,* " vied with each other in their drinking feats, and wasted their income by day and night in feast- ing, whilst they lived in wretched hovels ; the French and Normans, on the other hand, living inexpensively in their fine large houses, were besides refined in their food and studiously careful in their dress." The former, still weighted by the German phlegm, were gluttons and drunkards, now and then aroused by poetical enthusiasm ; the latter, made sprightlier by their transplantation and their alloy, felt the cravings of the mind already making themselves manifest. " You might see amongst them churches in every village and monasteries in the cities, towering on high, and built in a style unknown before," first in Normandy, and later in England.f Taste had come to them at once that is, the desire to please the eye, and to express a thought by outward representation, which was quite a new idea : the circular arch was raised on one or on a cluster of col- umns ; elegant mouldings were placed about the windows ; the rose window made its appearance, simple yet, like the flower which gives it its name "rose des buissons ;" and the Norman style unfolded itself, original yet pro- portioned between the Gothic, whose richness it foreshadowed, and the Ro- mance, whose solidity it recalled. With taste, just as natural and just as quickly, was developed the spirit of inquiry. Nations are like children; * William of Malmesbury. t Churches in London, Sarum, Norwich, Durham, Chichester, Peterborough, Rochester, Hereford, Gloucester, Oxford, etc. William of Malmesbury. THE SOURCE. [BOOK I. with some the tongue is readily loos- ened, and they comprehend at once ; with others it is loosened with difficulty and they are slow of comprehension. The men we are here speaking of had educated themselves nimbly, as French- men do. They were the first in France who unravelled the language, regula- ting it and writing it so well, that to this day we understand their codes and their poems. In a century and a half they were so far cultivated as to find the Saxons " unlettered and rude." * That was the excuse they made for banishing them from the abbeys and all valuable ecclesiastical offices. And, in fact, this excuse was rational, for they instinctively hated gross stupidity. Between the Conquest and the death of King John, they established five hundred and fifty-seven schools in England. Henry Beauclerk, son of the Conqueror, was trained in the sciences ; so were Henry II. and his three sons : Richard, the eldest of these, was a poet. Lanfranc, first Norman Archbishop of Canterbury, a subtle logician, ably argued the Real Pres- ence ; Anselm, his successor, the first thinker of the age, thought he had dis- covered a new proof of the existence of God, and tried to make religion philosophical by adopting as his maxim, "Ciede ut mtelligas." The notion was doubtless grand, especially in the eleventh century ; and they could not have gone more promptly to work. Of course the science I speak of was but scholastic, and these terrible folios slay more understandings than they confirm. But people must begin as they can; and syllogism, even in Latin, even in theology, is yet an exercise of the mind and a proof of the understanding. Among the continental priests who settled in England, one established a library ; another, founder of a school, made the scholars perform the play of Saint Catherine; a third wrote in pol- ished Latin, " epigrams as pointed as those of Martial." Such were the rec- reations of an intelligent race, eager for Ideas, of ready and flexible genius, wnose clear thought was not clouded, like that of the Saxon brain, by drunken hallucinations, and the vapors of a greedy and well-filled stomach. They * Ordericus vita/is. loved conversations, tales of adventure. Side by side with their Latin chron- iclers, Henry of Huntingdon, William of Malmesbury, thoughtful men already, who could not only relate, but criticize here and there, were rhyming chron- icles in the vulgar tongue, as those of Geoffrey Gaimar, Benoit de Sainte- Maure, Robert Wace. Do not im- agine that their verse-writers were sterile of words or lacking in details. They were talkers, tale-tellers, speakers above all, ready of tongue, and never stinted in speech. Not singers by any means ; they^ speak this is their strong point, in their poems as in their chronicles. They were the earliest who wrote the Song of Roland ; upon this they accumulated a multitude of songs concerning Charlemagne and his peers, concerning Arthur and Merlin, the Greeks and Romans, King Horn, Guy of Warwick, every prince and every people. Their minstrels (trouvtres], like their knights, draw in abundance from Welsh, Franks, and Latins, and descend upon East and West, in the wide field of adventure. They addressed themselves to a spirit of inquiry, as the Saxons to enthusiasm, and dilute in their long, clear, and flowing narratives the lively colors of German and Breton traditions ; bat* ties, surprises, single combats, embas- sies, speeches, processions, ceremonies, huntings, a variety of amusing events, employ their ready and wandering im- aginations. At first, in the Song of Ro- land> it is still kept in check ; it walks with long strides, but only walks. Presently its wings have grown ; inci- dents are multiplied; giants and mon- sters abound, the natural disappears, the song of the jongleur grows a poem under the hands of the trouvere ; he would speak, like Nestor of old, five, even six years running, and not grow tired or stop. Forty thousand verses are not too much to satisfy their gab- ble ; a facile mind, copious, inquisitive, descriptive, such is the genius of the race. The Gauls, their fathers, used to delay travellers on the road to make them tell their stories, and boasted; like these, " of fighting well and talk ing with ease." With chivalric poetry, they are not wanting in chivalry ; principally, it may CHAP. 11.J THE NORMANS. 59 be, because they are strong, and a strong man loves to prove his strength by knocking down his neighbors ; but also from a desire of fame, and as a point of honor. By this one word honor the whole spirit of warfare is changed. Saxon poets painted war as a murderous fury, as a blind madness which shook flesh and blood, and awakened the instincts of the beast of prey ; Norman poets describe it as a tourney. The new passion which they introduce is that of vanity and gal- lantry ; Guy of Warwick dismounts all the knights in Europe, in order to deserve the hand of the prude and scornful Felice. The tourney itself is but a ceremony, somewhat brutal, I admit, since it turns upon the breaking of arms and limbs, but yet brilliant and French. To show skill and courage, display the magnificence of dress and armor, be applauded by and please the ladies, such feelings indicate men of greater sociality, more under the in- fluence of public opinion, less the slaves of their own passions, void both of lyric inspiration and savage enthu- siasm, gifted by a different genius, because inclined to other pleasures. Such were the men who at this moment were disembarking in Eng- land to introduce their new manners and a new spirit, French at bottom, in mind and speech, though with special and provincial features ; of all the most matter-of-fact, with an eye to the main chance, calculating, having the nerve and the dash of our own soldiers, but with the tricks and precautions of lawyers ; heroic undertakers of profit- able enterprises ; having gone to Sicily and Naples, and ready to travel .- Constantinople or Antioch, so it be to take a country or bring back money ; subtle politicians, accustomed in Sicily to hire themselves to the highest bid- der, and capable of doing a stroke of business in the heat of the Crusade, like Bohemond, who, before Antioch, spec- ulated on the dearth of his Christian allies, and would only open the town to them under condition of their keep- ing it for himself ; methodical and persevering conquerors, expert in ad- ministration, and fond of scribbling on paper, like tnis very William, who was able to organize such an expedi- tion, and such an army, and kept a written roll of the same, and who pro- ceeded to register the whole of Eng- land in his Domesday Book. Sixteen days after the disembarkation, the con- trast between the two nations was manifested at Hastings by its visible effects. The Saxons " ate and drank the whole night. You might have seen them struggling much, and leaping and singing," with shouts of laughter and noisy joy.* In the morning they packed behind their palisades the dense masses of their heavy infantry, and with battle-axe hung round their neck awaited the attack. The wary Nor- mans weighed the chances of heaven and hell, and tried to enlist God upon their side. Robert Wace, their his- torian and compatriot, is no more troubled by poetical imagination than they were by warlike inspiration ; and on the eve of the battle his mind is as prosaic and clear as theirs, t The same spirit showed itself in the battle, They were for the most part bowmen and horsemen, well-skilled, nimble, and clever. Taillefer, the jongleur, who asked for the honor of striking the first blow, went singing, like a true French volunteer, performing tricks all the while. \ Having arrived before the * Robert Wace, Roman du Rou. t Ibid. Et li Normanz et li Franceiz Tote nuit firent oreisons, Et furent en aflicions. De lor pechie's confez se firent As proveires les regehirent, Et qui n'en out proveires prez, A son veizin se fist confez, Pour co ke samedi esteit Ke la bataille estre debveit. Unt Normanz a pramis e vo, Si com li cler 1'orent loe, Ke a ce jor mez s'il veskeient, Char ni saunc ne mangereient Giffrei, eveske de Constances, A plusors joint lor penitances. Cli recut h confessions Et dona li beneicons>, $ Robert Wace, Roman du Rou " Taillefer ki moult bien cantout Sur un roussin qui tot alout Devant li dus alout cantant De Kalermaine e de Roiant, E d'Oliver et des vassals Ki moururent a Roncevals. Quant ils orent chevalchie' tant K'as Engleis vindrent aprismant. "Sires! dist Taillefer, mercil Je vos ai languement servi. 6o THE SOURCE. [BOOK I. English, he cast his lance three times in the air, then his sword, and caught them again by the handle ; and Har- old's clumsy foot-soldiers, who only knew how to cleave coats of mail by blows from their battle-axes, " were astonished, saying to one another that it was magic." As for William, amongst a score of prudent and cun- ning actions, he performed two well- calculated ones, which, in this sore embarrassment, brought him safe out of his difficulties. He ordered his archers to shoot into the air ; the ar- rows wounded many of the Saxons in the face, and one of them pierced Har- old in the eye. After this he simulated flight ; the Saxons, intoxicated with joy and wrath, quitted their entrenchments, and exposed themselves to the lances of his horsemen. During the remain- der of the contest they only make a stand by small companies, fight with fury, and end by being slaughtered. The strong, mettlesome, brutal race threw themselves on the enemy like a savage bull ; the dexterous Norman hunters wounded them adroitly, knock- ed them down, and placed them under the yoke. III. What then is this French race, which by arms and letters make such a splen- did entrance upon the world, and is so manifestly destined to rule, that in the East, for example, their name of Franks will be given to all the nations of the West ? Wherein consists this new spirit, this precocious pioneer, this key of all middle-age civilization ? There is in every mind of the kind a fundamental activity which, when in- Tut mon servise me debvez, Hui, si vos plaist, me le rendez For tout guerredun vos requier, Et si vos vpil forment preier, Otreiez-mei, ke jo n'i faille, Li primier colp de la bataille." Et li dus re'pont : " Je 1'otrei." Et Taillefer point a desrei ; Devant toz li altres se mist, Ja Englez feri, si 1'ocist. De sos le pis, parmie la pance, Li fist passer ultre la lance, A terre estendu 1'abati. Poiz trait I'espe'e altre fe*ri. Poiz a crie* : " Venez, venez ! Ke fetes-vos ? Fe*rez, ferez ! " Done 1'unt Englez avirone*. Al secund colp k'il ou done. cessantly repeated, moulds its plan, and gives it its direction ; in town or country, cultivated or not, in its infancy and its age, it spends its existence and employs its energy in conceiving an event or an object. This is its original and perpetual process ; and whether it change its region, return, advance, prolong, or alter its course, its whole motion is but a series of consecutive steps ; so that the least alteration in the size, quickness, or precision of its primitive stride transforms and regu- lates the whole course, as in a tree the structure of the first shoot determines the whole foliage, and governs the whole growth.* When the French- man conceives an event or an object, he conceives quickly and distinctly ; there is no internal disturbance, no previous fermentation of confused and violent ideas, which, becoming con- centrated and elaborated, end in a noisy outbreak. The movement of his intelligence is nimble and prompt like that of his limbs ; at once and without effort he seizes upon his idea. But he seizes that alone ; he leaves on one side all the long entangling offshoots whereby it is entwined and twisted amongst its neighboring ideas ; he does not embarrass himself with nor think of them ; he detaches, plucks, touches but slightly, and that is all. He is deprived, or if you prefer it, he is exempt from those sudden half-vis- ions which disturb a man, and open up to him instantaneously vast deeps and far perspectives. Images are excited by internal commotion ; he, not being so moved, imagines not. He is only moved superficially; he is without large sympathy ; he does not perceive an object as it is, complex and combined, but in parts, with a discursive and superficial knowledge. That is why no race in Europe is less poetical, Let us look at their epics ; none are more prosaic. They are not wanting in number : The Song of Roland, Garin le Loherain, Ogier le Danois^i Bertht anx grands Pieds. There is a library of them. Though their manners are heroic and their spirit fresh, though * The idea of types is applicable throughout all physical and moral nature. t Danois is a contraction of le d 1 A rdennois from the Ardennes. TR. CHAP. II.J THE NORMANS. 61 they have originality, and deal with grand events, yet, spite of this, the narrative is as dull as that of the bab- bling Norman chroniclers. Doubtless when Homer relates he is as clear as they are, and he develops as they do : but his magnificent titles of rosy-fin- gered Morn, the wide-bosomed Air, the divine and nourishing Earth, the earth- shaking Ocean, come in every instant and expand their purple bloom over the speeches and battles, and the grand abounding similes which interrupt the narrative tell of a people more inclined to enjoy beauty than to proceed straight to fact. But here we have facts, always facts, nothing but facts ; the Frenchman wants to know if the hero will kill the traitor, the lover wed the maiden ; he must not be de- layed by poetry or painting. He ad- vances nimbly to the end of the story, not lingering for dreams of the heart or wealth of landscape. There is no splendor, no color, in his narrative ; his style in quite bare, and without figures ; you may read ten thousand verses in these old poems without meeting one. Shall we open the most ancient, the most original, the most eloquent, at the most moving point, the Song of Roland, when Roland is dying ? The narrator is moved, and yet his language remains the same, smooth, accentless, so penetrated by the prosaic spirit, and so void of the poetic ! He gives an abstract of mo- tives, a summary of events, a series of causes for grief, a series of causes for consolation.* Nothing more. These * Genin, Chanson de Roland: Co sent Rollans que la mort le trespent, Devers la teste sur le quer li descent ; Desuz un pin i est alet curant, Sur 1'herbe verte si est culchet adenz ; Desuz lui met I'espe'e et 1'olifan ; Turnat sa teste vers la paiene gent, Pour go 1'at fait que il voelt veirement Que Carles diet e trestute sa gent, Li gentilz quens, qu'il fut mort cunquerant. Cleimet sa culpe, e menut e suvent, Purges peccl ez en puroffrid lo guant. Li quens P.ollans se jut desuz un pin, Envers Espagne en ad turnet sun vis, De plusurs choses a remembrer le prist. De tantes terres cume li bers cunquist, De duke France, des humes de sun lign, De Carlemagne sun seignor ki 1'nurrit. Ne poet muer n'en plurt et ne susprit. Mais lui meisme ne volt mettre en ubli. Cleimet sa culpe, si priet Dieu mercit : " Veire paterne, ki unques ne mentis, men regard the circumstance or the action by itself, and adhere to this view. Their idea remains exact, clear, and simple, and does not raise up a similar image to be confused with the first, to color or transform itself. It remains dry ; they conceive the divis- ions of the object one by one, without ever collecting them, as the Saxons would, in an abrupt impassioned, glow- ing semi-vision. Nothing is more on- posed to their genius than the genuine songs and profound hymns, such as the English monks were singing be- neath the low vaults of their churches. They would be disconcerted by the un- evenness and obscurity of such lan- guage. They are not capable of such an access of enthusiasm and such ex- cess of emotion. They never cry out, they speak, or rather they converse, and that at moments when the soul, overwhelmed by its trouble might be expected to cease thinking and feeling. Thus Amis, in a mystery-play, being leprous, calmly requires his friend Amille to slay his two sons, in order that their blood may heal him of his leprosy ; and Amille replies still more calmly,* If ever they try to sing, even in heaven, "a roundelay high and clear," they will produce little rhymed arguments, as dull as the dullest talk. Seint Lazaron de mort resurrexis, Et Daniel des lions guaresis, Guaris de mei 1'arome de tuz perilz, Pur les pecchez que en ma vie fis." Sun destre guant a Deu en puroffrit. Seint Gabriel de sa main Pad pris Desur sun bras teneit le chef enclin, Juntes ses mains est alet a sa fin. Deus i tramist sun angle cherubin, Et seint Michel qu'on cleimet del^ pe"ri Ensemble ad els seint Gabriel i vint. L-'anme del cunte portent en pareis. * Mon tres-chier ami de*bonnaire, Vous m'avez une chose ditte Qtii n'est pas a faire petite Mais que 1'on doit moult resongtuer Et nonpourquant, sanz eslongnier Puisque garison autrement Ne povez avoir vraiement, Pour vostre amour les occiray, Et le sang vous apporteray. Vraiz Diex, moult est excellente, Et de grant charite* plaine, Vostre bonte" souveraine. Car vostre grace presente, A toute personne humaine, Vraix Diex, moult est excellente, Puisqu'elle a cuer et entente, Et que a ce desir I'amaine Que de vous servir se paine. 62 THE SOURCE. BOOK I. Pursue this literature to its conclu- sion ; regard it, like that of the Skalds, at the time of its decadence, when its vices, being exaggerated, display, like those of the Skalds, only still more strongly the kind of mind which pro- duced it. The Skalds fall off into non- sense ; it loses itself into babble and platitude. The Saxon could not mas- ter his craving for exaltation ; the Frenchman could not restrain the volu- bility of his tongue. He is too diffuse and too clear ; the Saxon is too obscure and brief. The one was excessively agitated and carried away ; the other explains and develops without meas- ure. From the twelfth century the Gestes spun out degenerate into rhap- sodies and psalmodies of thirty or forty thousand verses. Theology enters into them; poetry becomes an intermin- able, intolerable litany, where the ideas, expounded, developed, and re- peated ad infinitum, without one out- burst of emotion or one touch of origin- ality, flow like a clear and insipid stream, and send off their reader, by dint of their monotonous rhymes, into a comfortable slumber. What a de- plorable abundance of distinct and facile ideas ! We meet with it again in the seventeenth century, in the liter- ary gossip which took place at the feet of men of distinction ; it is the fault and the talent of the race. With this involuntary art of perceiving, and isolating instantaneously and clearly each part of every object, people can speak, even for speaking's sake, and forever. Such is the primitive process ; how will it be continued ? Here appears a new trait in the French genius, the most valuable of all. It is necessary to comprehension that the second idea shall be contiguous to the first ; other- wise that genius is thrown out of its course and arrested; it cannot pro- teed by irregular bounds ; it must walk step by step, on a straight road ; order is innate in it ; without study, and in the first place, it disjoints and decom- poses the object or event, however complicated and entangled it may be, and sets the parts one by one in suc- cession to each other, according to their natural connection. True, it is still in a state of barbarism ; yet its intelligence is a reasoning faculty, which spreads, though unwittingly. Nothing is more clear than the style of the old PYench narratives and of the earliest poems : we do not perceive that we are following a narrator, so easy is the gait, so even the road he opens to us, so smoothly and gradually every idea glides into the next; and this is why he narrates so well. The chroniclers Villehardouin, Joinville, Froissart, the fathers of prose, have an ease and clearness approached by none, and beyond all, a charm, a grace, which they had not to go out of their way to find. Grace is a national pos- session in France, and springs from the native delicacy which has a horror of incongruities ; the instinct oi French- men avoids violent shocks in works of taste as well as in works of argument ; they desire that their sentiments and ideas shall harmonize, and not clash. Throughout they have this measured spirit, exquisitely refined.* They take care, on a sad subject, not to push emotion to its limits ; they avoid big words. Think how Joinville relates in six lines the death of the poor sick priest who wished to finish celebrating the mass, and " never more did sing, and died." Open a mystery-play, Theophilus, or that of the Queen of Hun- gary, for instance : when they are go- ing to burn her and her child, she says two short lines about " this gentle dew which is so pure an innocent," nothing more. Take a fabliau, even a drama- tic one : when the penitent knight, who has undertaken to fill a barrel with his tears, dies in the hermit's company, he asks from him only one last gift : " Do but embrace me, and then I'll die in the arms of my friend." Could a more touching sentiment be expressed in more sober language ? We must say of their poetry what is said of certain pictures : This is made out of nothing. Is there in the world any thing more delicately graceful than the verses of Guillaume de Lorris ? Allegory clothes his ideas so as to dim their too great brightness ; ideal fig- ures, half transparent, float about the lover, luminous, yet in a cloud, and lead him amidst all the gentle and deli- * See H. Taine, La Fontaine and his Fables P- i5- THE NORMANS. cate-hued ideas to the rose, whose " sweet odor embalms all the plain." This refinement goes so far, that in Thibaut of Champagne and in Charles of Orleans it turns to affectation and insipidity. In them all impressions grow more slender ; the perfume is so weak, that one often fails to catch it ; on their knees before their lady they whisper their waggeries and conceits ; they love politely and wittily; they arrange ingeniously in a bouquet their "painted words," all the flowers of " fresh and beautiful language ; " they know how to mark fleeting ideas in their flight, soft melancholy, vague reverie ; they are as elegant as talka- tive, and as charming as the most amiable abbes of the eighteenth cen- tury. This lightness of touch is prop- er to the race, and appears as plainly under the armor and amid the massa- cres of the middle ages as amid the courtesies and the musk-scented, wad- ded coats of the last court. You will find it in their coloring as in their sen- timents. They are not struck by the magnificence of nature, they see only her pretty side ; they paint the beauty of a woman by a single feature, which is only polite, saying, " She is more gracious than the rose in May." They do not experience the terrible emotion, ecstasy, sudden oppression of heart which is displayed in the poetry of neighboring nations ; they say discreet- ly, ** She began to smile, which vastly became her." They add, when they are in a descriptive humor, " that she had a sweet and perfumed breath," and a body " white as new-fallen snow on a branch." They do not aspire higher ; beauty pleases, but does not transport them. . They enjoy agreeable emotions, but are not fitted for deep sensations. The full rejuvenescence of being, the warm air of spring which renews and penetrates all existence, suggests but a pleasing couplet ; they remark in passing, " Now is winter gone, the hawthorn blossoms, the rose expands," and so pass on about their business. It is a light gladsomeness, soon gone, like that which an April landscape affords. For an instant the author glances at the mist of the streams rising about the willow trees, the pleasant vapor which imprisons the brightness of the morning; then, humming a burden of a song, he re- turns to his narrative. He seeks amusement, and herein lies his power. In life, as in literature, it is pleasure he aims at, not sensual pleasure or emotion. He is lively, not voluptu- ous ; dainty, not a glutton. He takes love for a pastime, not for an intoxica- tion. It is a pretty fruit which he plucks, tastes, and leaves. And we must remark yet further, that the best of the fruit in his eyes is the fact of its being forbidden. He says to himself that he is duping a husband, that " he deceives a cruel woman, and thinks he ought to obtain a pope's indulgence for the deed."* He wishes to be merry it is the state he prefers, the end and aim of his life ; and especially to laugh at other people. The short verse of his fabliaux gambols and leaps like a schoolboy released from school, over all things respected or respecta- ble ; criticizing the church, women, the great, the monks. Scoffers, banterers, our fathers have abundance both of ex- pression and matter ; and the matter comes to them so naturally, that with- out culture, and surrounded by coarse ness, they are as delicate in their rail- lery as the most refined. They touch upon ridicule lightly, they mock with- out emphasis, as it were innocently; their style is so harmonious, that at first sight we make a mistake, and do not see any harm in it. They seem art- less ; they look so very demure ; only a word shows the imperceptible smile : it is the ass, for example, which they call the high priest, by reason of his padded cassock and his serious air, and who gravely begins " to play the organ." At the close of the history, the delicate sense of comicality has touched you, though you cannot say how. They do not call things by their names, especially in love matters ; they let you guess it ; they assume that you are as sharp and know- ing as themselves. t A man might discriminate, embellish at times, per- haps refine upon them, but their first traits are incomparable. When the * La Fontaine, C antes, Richard Mimdolo* t Parler lui veut d'une besogne Oi crois que peu conquerr^rois Si la besogne vous nommois. 6 4 THE SOURCE. [BOOK L fox approaches the raven to steal the cheese, he begins as a hypocrite, piously and cautiously, and as one of the family. He calls the raven his " good father Don Rohart, who sings so well ; " he praises his voice, " so sweet and fine." You would be the best singer in the world if you kept clear of nuts." Reynard is a rogue, an artist in the way of invention, not a mere glutton ; he loves roguery for its own sake ; he rejoices in his superior- ity, and draws out his mockery. When Tibert, the cat, by his counsel hung himself at the bell rope, wishing to ring it, he uses irony, enjoys and relishes it, pretends to wax impatient with the poor fool whom he has caught, calls him proud, complains because the other does not answer, and because he wishes to rise to the clouds and visit the saints. And from beginning to end this long epic of Reynard the Fox is the same ; the raillery never ceases, and never fails to be agreeable. Rey- nard has so much wit, that he is par- doned for every thing. The necessity for laughter is national so indigenous to the French, that a stranger cannot understand, and is shocked by it. This pleasure does not resemble physical joy in any respect, which is to be de- spised for its grossness ; on the con- trary, it sharpens the intelligence, and brings to light many a delicate or tick- lish idea. The fabliaux are full of truths about men, and still more about women, about people of low rank, and still more about those of high rank ; it is a method of philosophizing by stealth and boldly, in spite of conven- tionalism, and in opposition to the powers that be. This taste has noth- ing in common either with open satire, which is offensive because it is cruel ; on the contrary, it provokes good hu- mor. We soon see that the jester is not ill-disposed, that he does not wish to wound ; if he stings, it is as a bee, without venom ; an instant later he is not 1 hinking of it ; if need be, he will take himself as an object of his pleas- antry ; all he wishes is to keep up in himself and in us sparkling and pleas- ing ideas. Do we not see here in ad- vance an abstract of the whole French literature, the incapacity for great poetry, the sudden and durable perfec- tion of prose, the excellence of all the moods of conversation and eloquence, the reign and tyranny of taste and method, the art and theory of develop- ment and arrangement, the gift of being measured, clear, amusing, and piquant r We have taught Europe how ideas fall into order, and which ideas are agreeable ; and this is what our French- men of the eleventh century are about to teach their Saxons during five or six centuries, first with the lance, next with the stick, next with the birch. IV. Consider, then, this Frenchman or Norman, this man from Anjou or Maine, who in his well-knit coat of mail, with sword and lance, came to seek his fortune in England. He took the manor of some slain Saxon, and settled himself in it with his soldiers and comrades, gave them land, houses, the right of levying taxes, on condition of their fighting under him and for him, as men-at-arms, marshals, stand- ard-bearers ; it was a league in case of danger. In fact, they were in a hostile and conquered country, and they have to maintain themselves. Each one hastened to build for himself a place of refuge, castle or fortress,* well for- tified, of solid stone, with narrow win- dows, strengthened with battlements, garrisoned by soldiers, pierced with loopholes. Then these men went to Salisbury, to the number of sixty thou- sand, all holders of land, having at least enough to maintain a man with horse or arms. There, placing their hands in William's, they promised him fealty and assistance ; and the king's edict declared that they must be all united and bound together like bro- thers in arms, to defend and succor each other. They are an armed colony, stationary, like the Spartans amongst the Helots ; and they make laws ac- cordingly. When a Frenchman is found dead in any district, the inhabi- tants are to give up the murderer, or failing to do so, they must pay forty- seven marks as a fine ; if the de'ad man is English, it rests with the people of the place to prove it by the oath of four near relatives of the deceased. * At King Stephen's death there were in castles. CHAP. II.] THE NORMANS. They are to beware of killing a stag, boar, or fawn ; for an offence againsi the forest-la "/s they wniiose their eyes They have nothing of all their prop erty assured to them except as alms, or on condition of paying tribute, or by taking the oath of allegiance. Here a free Saxon proprietor is made a body-slave on his own estate.* Here a noble and rich Saxon lady feels on her shoulder the weight of the hand of a Norman valet, who is become by force her husband or her lover. There were Sax "MS of one sol, or of two sols, ac- corumg to the sum which they gained for their masters; they sold them, hired them, worked them on joint ac- count, like an ox or an ass. One Norman abbot has his Saxon prede- cessors dug up, and their bones thrown without the gates. Another keeps men-at-arms, who bring his recalcitrant monks to reason by blows of their swords. Imagine, if you can, the pride of these new lords, conquerors, stran- gers, masters, nourished by habits of violent activity, and by the savagery, ignorance, and passions of feudal life. " They thought they might do whatso- ever they pleased," say the old chron- iclers. " They shed blood indiscrimi- nately, snatched the morse] of bread from the mouth of the wretched, and seized upon all the money, the goods, the land."f Thus " all the folk in the low country were at great pains to seem humble before Ivo Taille-bois, and only to address him with one knee on the ground; but although they made a point of paying him every honor, and giving him all and more than all which they owed him in the way of rent and service, he harassed, tormented, tor- tured, imprisoned them, set his dogs upon their cattle, . . . broke the legs and backbones of their beasts of bur- den, . . . and sent men to attack their servants on the road with sticks and swords." \ The Normans would not and could not borrow any idea or cus- tom from such boors ; they despised * A. Thierry, Histoire de la Conq-uZte de VAnglcterre, ii. t William of Malmesbury. A. Thierry, ii. *o, 122-203. \ A. Thierry. " In the year 652," says Warton, i. 3, "it was the common practice of the Anglo-Saxons to send their youth to the monasteries of France them as coarse ar d stupid. They stood amongst them, as the Spaniards amongst the Americans in the sixteenth century, superior in force and culture, more versed in letters, more expert in the arts of luxury. They preserved their manners and their speech. Eng- land, to all outward appearance the court of the king, the castles of the nobles, the palaces of Vie bishops, the houses of the wealth} was French; and the Scandinavian people, of whom sixty years ago the Saxon kings used to have poems sung to them, though that the nation had forgotten its lan- guage, and treated it in their laws as though it were no longer their sister. It was a French literature, then, which was at this time domiciled across the channel,* and the conquerors tried to make it purely French, purged from all Saxon alloy. They made such a point of this, that the nobles in the reign of Henry II. sent their sons to France, to preserve them from bar- barisms. *' For two hundred years," says Higden,t " children in scole, agenst the usage and manir of all other nations beeth compelled for to leve tiire own langage, and for to construe hir lessons and hire thynges in Frensche." The statutes of the universities obliged ;he students to converse either in French or Latin. " Gentilmen chil- dren beeth taught to speke Frensche "rom the tyme that they bith rokked in lire cradell ; and uplondissche men will ikne himself to gentylmen, and fondeth with greet besynesse for to speke Frensche." Of course the poetry is French. The Norman brought his minstrel with him ; there was Taillefer, he jongleur, who sang the Song of Roland at the battle of Hastings ; there was Adeline, ihejong/euse, who received an estate in the partition which fol- owed the Conquest. The Norman who ridiculed the Saxon kings, who dug up the Saxon saints, and cast them without the walls of the church, loved one but French ideas and verses. It was into French verse that Robert Wace rendered the legendary history or education ; and not only the language but he manners of the French were esteemed the iost polite accomplishments." * Warton. i. 5. t Trevisa's translation of the Polycronycon, 56 THE SOURCE. [BOOK I of the England which was conquered, and the actual history of the Nor- mandy in which he continued to live. Enter one of the abbeys where the minstrels come to sing, "where the clerks after dinner and supper read poems, the chronicles of kingdoms, the wonders of the world," * you will only find Latin or French verses, Latin or French prose. What becomes of English? Obscure, despised, we hear it no more, except in the mouths of degraded franklins, outlaws of the forest, swineherds, peasants, the low- est orders. It is no longer, or scarcely written ; gradually we find in the Saxon chronicle that the idiom alters, is ex- tinguished ; the chronicle itself ceases within a century after the Conquest.t The people who have leisure or secur- ity enough to read or write are French ; for them authors devise and compose ; literature always adapts itself to the taste of those who can appreciate and pay for it. Even the English \ en- deavor to write in French : thus Robert Grostete, in his allegorical poem on Christ ; Peter Langtoft, in his Chronicle of England, and in his Life of Thomas a Becket ; Hugh de Rotheland, in his poem of Hippomedon ; John Hoveden, and many qthers. Several write the first half of the verse in English, and the second in French ; a strange sign of the ascendency which is moulding and oppressing them. Even in the fif- teenth century, many of these poor folk are employed in this task ; French is the language of the court, from it arose all poetry and elegance ; he is but a clodhopper who is inapt at that style. They apply themselves to it as our old scholars did to Latin verses ; they are gallicized as those were latinized, by constraint, with a sort of fear, knowing well that they are but schoolboys and provincials. Gower, one of their best | oets, at the end of his French works, * Statutes of foundation of New College, Oxford. In the abbey of Glastonbury, in 1247 : Liber de excidio Troja, gesta Ricardi regis, gesta Alexandri Magni, etc. In the abbey of Peterborough: Amys et Antelion, Sir Tris- tam, Giiy de Bourgogne, gesta Otuclis. les proprieties de Merlin, te Charlemagne de Tur- / >z, la destruction de Troie, etc- Warton, widem. t In 1154. ^ \ Warton, i. 72-78. In 1400. Warton, ii. 248. Gower died in 1408 ; his French ballads belong to the end of the fourteenth century. excuses himself humb y for not having " de Fran9ais la faconde. Pardonnez moi," he says, " que de ce je forsvoie ; je suis Anglais." And yet, after all, neither the race nor the tongue has perished. It is necessary that the Norman should learn English, in order to command his tenants ; his Saxon wife speaks it to him, and his sons receive it from the lips of their nurse ; the contagion is strong, for he is obliged to send them to France, to preserve them from the jargon which on his domain threatens to overwhelm and spoil them. From generation to generation the contagion spreads ; they breathe it in the air, with the foresters in the chase, the farmers in the field, the sailors on the ships : for these coarse people, shut in by their animal existence, are not the kind to learn a foreign language ; by the simple weight of their dulnessthey impose their idiom on their conquerors, at all events such words as pertain to living things. Scholarly speech, the language of law, abstract and philo- sophical expressions, in short, all words depending on reflection and cul- ture may be French, since there is nothing to prevent it. This is just what happens ; these kind of ideas and this kind of speech are not understood by the commonalty, who, not being able to touch them, cannot change them. This produces a French, a colonial French, doubtless perverted, pronounced with closed mouth, with a contortion of the organs of speech, " after the school of Stratford-atte- Bow ; " yet it is still French. On the other hand, as regards the speech em- ployed about common actions and visible objects, it is the people, the Saxons, who fix it ; these living words are too firmly rooted in his experience to allow of being parted with, and thus the whole substance of the language comes from him. Here, then, we have the Norman who, slowly and constrain- edly, speaks and understands English, a deformed, gallicized English, yet English, in sap and root ; but he has taken his time about it, for it has re- quired two centuries. It was only under Henry III. that the new tongue is complete, with the new constitution ; and that, after the like fashion, by al- CHAP. II.] THE NORMANS. liance and intermixture ; the burgesses come to take their seats in Parliament with the nobles, at the same time that Saxon words settle down in the lan- guage side by side with French words. V. So was modern English formed, by compromise, and the necessity of being understood. But we can well imagine that these nobles, even while speaking the rising dialect, have their hearts full of French tastes and ideas ; France re- mains the home of their mind, and the literature which now begins, is but translation. Translators, copyists, im- itators there is nothing else. Eng- land is a distant province, which is to IVance what the United States were, thirty years ago, to Europe : she ex- ports her wool, and imports her ideas. Open the Voyage and Travaile of Sir John Maundeznlle,* the oldest prose- writer, the Villehardouin of the coun- try : his book is but the translation of a translation.! He writes first in Latin, the language of scholars ; then in French, the language of society ; finally, he reflects, and discovers that the barons, his compatriots, by governing the Saxon churls, have ceased to speak their own Norman, and that the rest of the nation never knew it ; he translates his manuscript into English, and, in addition, takes care to make it plain, feeling that he speaks to less expanded understandings. He says in French : " II advint une fois que Mahomet allait dans une chapelle oil il y avait un saint ermite. II entra en la chapelle oil * He wrote in 1356, and died in 1372. t " And for als moche as it is longe time passcu mat ther was no generalle Passage ne Vyage over the See, and many Men desiren for to here speke of the holy Lond, and han there- of gret Solace and Comfort, I, John Maunde- V) lie, Knyght, alle be it I be not worthi, that was born in Englond, in the town of Seynt-Al- bones, passed the See in the Zeer of our Lord fesu-Crist 1322, in the Day of Seynt Michelle, and hidreto have been longe tyme over the See, a. .d have 52711 and gon thorghe manye dyverse londes, and many Provynces, and Kingdomes, and lies. " And zee shulle undirstonde that I have put this Boke out of Latyn into Frensche, and translated it azen out of Frensche, into Eng- lyssche, that every Man of my Nacioun may undirstonde it." Sir John Maundeville 1 s Voyage and J^ravaile, ed. Halliwell, 1866, prologue, p. 4. il y avait une petite huisserie et basse, et etait bien petite lu chapelle ; et alors devint la porte si grande qu'il semblait que ce fut la porte d'un palais." He stops, corrects himself, wishes to explain himself better for his readers across the Channel, and says in Eng- lish : " And at the Desertes of Arabye, he wente into a Chapelle where a Eremyte duelte. And whan he entred in to the Chapelle that was but a lytille and a low thing, and had but a lytill Dore and a low, than the Entree began to wexe so gret and so large, and s "> highe, as though it had ben of a gret Mynstre, or the Zate of a Paleys." * You perceive that he amplifies, and thinks himself bound to clinch and drive in three or four times in succes- sion the same idea, in order to get it into an English brain ; his thought is drawn out, dulled, spoiled in the pro- cess. Like every copy, the new litera- ture is mediocre, and repeats what it imitates, with fewer merits and greater faults. Let us see, then, what our Norman baron gets translated for him; first, the chronicles of Geoffrey Gaimar and Robert Wace, which consist of the fabulous history of England continued up to their day, a dull-rhymed rhap- sody, turned into English in a rhapsody no less dull. The first Englishman who attempts it is Layamon,t a monk of Ernely, still fettered in the old idiom, * Sir John- Maundeville' s Voyage and Travaile, ed. Halliwell, 1866, xii. p. 139. It is confessed that the original on which Wace depended for his ancient History of Englana is the Latin compilation of Geoffrey of Mon- mouth. t Extract from the account of the proceed- ings at Arthur's coronation given by Layamon, in his translation of Wace, executed about n8cr fair burning, An i cloves that be sweet smelling. F 'inkincense and olibanum, Tl At when ye 4eep the taste may come ; And if ve no rest can take, All night minstrels for you shall wake." * THE NORMANS. 7 l * Warton, i. 176, spelling modernized. Amid such fancies and splendors the poets delight and lose themselves and the wolf, like the embroideries of their canvas, bears the mark of this love of decoration. They weave it out of adventures, of extraordinary and surprising events. Now it is the life of King Horn, who, tiirown into a boat when a lad, is wrecked upon the coast of England, and, becoming * knight, reconquers the kingdom of his father. Now it is the history of Sir Guy, who rescues enchanted knights, cuts down the giant Colbrand, chal- lenges and kills the Sultan in his tent. It is not for me to recount these poems, which are not English, but only translations; still, here as in France, there are many of them ; they fill the imagination of the young society, and they grow in exaggeration, until, fall- ing to the lowest depth of insipidity and improbability, they are buried for- ever by Cervantes. What would peo- ple say of a society which had no literature but the opera with its un- realities? Yet it was a literature of this kind which formed the intellectual food of the middle ages. People then did not ask for truth, but entertain- ment, and that vehement and hollow, full of glare and startling events. They asked for impossible voyages, extravagant challenges, a racket of contests, a confusion of magnificence and entanglement of chances. For in- trospective history they had no liking, cared nothing for the adventures of the heart, devoted their attention to the outside. They remained children to the last, with eyes glued to a series of exaggerated and colored images, and, for lack of thinking, did not per- ceive that they had learnt nothing. What was there beneath this fanci- ful dream? Brutal and evil human passions, unchained at first by religious fury, then delivered up to their own devices, and, beneath a show of exter- nal courtesy, as vile as ever. Look at the popular king, Richard Coeur de Lion, and reckon up his butcheries and murders : " King Richard," says a poem, " is the best king ever mentioned in song." * I have no objection ; buf * Warton, i. 123 : " In Fraunce these rhymes were wroht, Every Eugljshe ne knew it not." THE SOURCE. [BOOK I if he has the heart of a lion, he has also that brute's appetite. One day, under the walls of Acre, being con- valescent, he had a great desire for some pork. There was no pork. They killed a young Saracen, fresh and ten- der, cooked and salted him, and the king ate him and found him very good ; whereupon he desired to see the head of the pig. The cook brought it in trembling- The king falls a laughing, an 1 says the army has nothing to fear fro ai famine, having provisions ready at hand. He takes the town, and presently Saladin's ambassadors come to sue for pardon for the prisoners. Richard has thirty of the most noble beheaded, and bids his cook boil the heads, and serve one to each ambas- sador, with a ticket bearing the name and family of the dead man. Mean- while, in their presence, he eats his own with a relish, bids them tell Sala- din how the Christians make war, and ask him if it is true that they fear him. Then he orders the sixty thousand prisoners to be led into the plain : " They were led into the place full even. There they heard angels of heaven ; They said : " Seigneures, tuez, tuez ! Spares hem nought, and beheadeth these!" King Richard heard the angels' voice. And thanked God and the holy cross. Thereupon they behead them all. When he took a town, it was his wont to murder every one, even children and women. Such was the devotion of the middle ages, not only in roman- ces, as here, but in history. At the taking of Jerusalem the whole popula- tion, seventy thousand persons, were massacred. Thus even in chivalrous stories the fierce and unbridled instincts of the bloodthirsty brute break out. The authentic narratives show it. Henry It. irritated at a page, attempted to tear out his eyes.* John Lackland let twenty-three hostages die in prison of hunger. Edward II. caused at one time twenty-eight nobles to be hanged and disembowelled, and was himself put to death by the insei tion of a red-hot iron into his bowels. Look in Froissart for the debaucheries and murders in France as well as in England, of the Hundred Years' War, and then for * See Lingard's History^ u. 55, note 4. TR. the slaughters of the Wars of the Roses. In both countries feudal inde- pendence ended in civil war, and the middle age founders under its vices. Chivalrous courtesy, which cloaked the native ferocity, disappears like some hangings suddenly consumed by the breaking out of a fire ; at that time in England they killed nobles in pref erence, and prisoners too, even ct I dren, with insults, in cold Lloud. What, then, did man learn in this civil- ization and by this literature ? How was he humanized ? What precepts of justice, habits of reflection, store of true judgments, did this culture inter- pose between his desires and his ac- tions, in order to moderate his passion ? He dreamed, he imagined a sort of elegant ceremonial in order the better to address lords and ladies ; he dis- covered the gallant code of little Jehan de Saintre. But where is the true education ? Wherein has Froissart profited by all his vast experience? He was a fine specimen of a babbling child ; what they called his poesy, the poesie neuve, is only a refined gab- ble, a senile puerility. Some rheto- ricians, like Christine de Pisan, try to round their periods after an ancient model ; but all their literature amounts to nothing. No one can think. Sir John Maundeville, who travelled all over the world a hundred and fifty years after Villehardouin, is as con- tracted in his ideas as Villehardouin himself. Extraordinary legends and fables, every sort of credulity and igno- rance, abound in his book. When he wishes to explain why Palestine has passed into the hands of various pos- sessors instead of continuing under one government, he says that it is because God would not that it should continue longer in the hands of traitors and sin- ners, whether Christians or others. He has seen at Jerusalem, on the steps of the temple, the footmarks of the ass which our Lord rode on Palm Sunday. He describes the Ethiopians as a peo- ple who have only one foot, but so large that they can make use of it as a parasol. He instances one island " where be people as big as gyants, of 28 feet long, and have no cloathing but beasts' skins;" then another island, " where there are many evil and foul CHAP. II.] THE NORMANS. 73 women, but have precious stones in their eyes, and have such force that if they behold any man with wrath, they slay him with beholding, as the basilisk doth." The good man relates ; that is all : doubt and common sense scarcely exist in the world he lives in. He has neither judgment nor reflection ; he piles facts one on top of another, with no further connection; his book is simply a mirror which reproduces rec- ollections of his eyes and ears. " And all those who will say a Pater and an Ave Maria in my behalf, I give them an interest and a share in all the holy pilgrimages I ever made in my life." That is his farewell, and accords with all the rest. Neither public morality nor public knowledge has gained any thing from these three centuries of cul- ture. This French culture, copied in vain throughout Europe, has but super- ficially adorned mankind, and the var- nish with which it decked them, is already tarnished everywhere or scales off. It was worse in England, where the thing was more superficial and the application worse than in France, where foreign hands laid it on, and where it could only half cover the Saxon crust, where that crust was worn away and rough. That is the reason why, during three centuries, through- out the whole first feudal age, the literature of the Normans in England, made up of imitations, translations, and clumsy copies, ends in nothing. VI. Meantime, what has become of the conquered people ? Has the old stock, on which the brilliant continental flow- ers were grafted, engendered no literary shoot of its own ? Did it continue barren during all this time under the Norman axe, which stripped it of all its buds ? It grew very feebly, but it grew nevertheless. The subjugated race is not a dismembered nation, dis- located, uprooted, sluggish, like the populations of the Continent, which, after the long Roman oppression, were given up to the unrestrained invasion of barbarians ; it increased, remained fixed in its own soil, full of sap : its members were not displaced; it was simply lopped in order to receive on its crown a cluster of foreign branches. True, it had suffered, but at last the wound closed, the saps mingled. Even the hard, stiff ligatures with which the Conqueror bound it, henceforth con- tributed to its fixity and vigor. The land was mapped out ; every title veri- fied, defined in writing;* every r'ght or tenure valued ; every man registered as to his locality, and also his condi- tion, duties, descent, and resources, so that the whole nation was enveloped in a network of which not a mesh would break. Its future development had to be within these limits. Its con- stitution was settled, and in this positive and stringent enclosure men were com- pelled to unfold themselves and to act. Solidarity and strife ; these were the two effects of the great and orderly establishment which shaped and held together, on one side the aristocracy of the conquerors, on the other the conquered people ; even as in Rome the systematic fusing of conquered peoples into the plebs, and the con- strained organization of the patricians in contrast -with the plebs, enrolled the private individuals in two orders, whose opposition and union formed the state. Thus, here as in Rome, the national character was moulded and completed by the habit of corporate action, the respect for written law, political and practical aptitude, the development of combative and patient energy. It was the Domesday Book which, binding this young society in a rigid discipline, made of the Saxon the Englishman of our own day. Gradually and slowly, amidst the gloomy complainings of the chroni- clers, we find the new man fashioned by action, like a child who cries be- cause steel stays, though they improve his figure, give him pain. However reduced and downtrodden the Saxons were, they did not all sink inta the populace. Some,t almost in every * Domesday Book. Froude's Hist, of En^' land, 1858, i. 13 : " Through all these arrange- ments a single aim is visible, that every man in England should have his definite place and def- inite duty assigned to him, and that no human being should be at liberty to lead at his own pleasure an unaccountable existence. The dis- cipline o an army was transferred to the details of social life." t Domesday Book, " tenants-in-chief." % 4 74 THE SOURCE. [BOOK I. county, remained lords of their estates, on the condition of doing homage for them to the king. Many became vas- sals of Norman barons, and remained proprietors on this condition. A greater number became socagers, that is, free proprietors, burdened with a tax, but possessed of the right of alien- ating their property; and the Saxon villeins found patrons in these, as the plebs formerly did in the Italian nobles who were transplanted to Rome. The patronage of the Saxons who preserved their integral position was effective, for they were not isolated : marriages from the first united the two races, as it had the patricians and plebeians of Rome ; * a Norman brother-in-law to a Saxon, defended himself in defend- ing him. In those turbulent times, and in an armed community, relatives and allies were obliged to stand shoul- der to shoulder in order to keep their ground. After all, it was necessary for the new-comers to consider their subjects, for these subjects had the heart and courage of men : the Sax- ons, like the plebeians at Rome, re- membered their native rank and their original independence. We can rec- ognize it in the complaints and indig- nation of the chroniclers, in the growl- ing and menaces of popular revolt, in the long bitterness with which they continually recalled their ancient liber- ty, in the favor with which they cher- ished the daring and rebellion of out- laws. There were Saxon families at the end of the twelfth century, who had bound themselves by a perpetual vow, to wear long beards from father to son in memory of the national custom and of the old country. Such men, even though fallen to the condition of soca- gers, even sunk into villeins, had a suffer neck than the wretched colonists of the Continent, trodden down and * According to Ailred (temp. Hen. II.), " a king, many bishops and abbots, many great carls and noble knights descended both from English and Norman blood, constituted a sup- port tc the one and an honor to the other." " At p.esent," says another author of the same period, " as the English and Normans dwell together, and have constantly intermarried, the two nations are so completely mingled together, that at least as regards freemen, one can scarce- ly distinguish who is Norman and who English. . . . The villeins attached to the soil," he says again, " are alone of pure Saxon blood." moulded by four centuries of Roman taxation. By their feelings as well as by their condition, they were the broken remains, but also the living elements, of a free people. They did not suffer the extremities of oppres- sion. They constituted the body of the nation, the laborious, courageous body which supplied its energy. Tb* great barons felt that they must rely upon them in their resistance to the king. Very soon, in stipulating for themselves, they stipulated for all freemen,* even for merchants and vil- leins. Thereafter " No merchant shall be dispossessed of his merchandise, no villein of the instruments of his labor no freeman, merchant, or villein shah be taxed unreasonably for a small crime ; no freeman shall be arrested, or imprisoned, or disseized of his land, or outlawed, or destroyed in any man- ner, but by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land." Thus protected they raise themselves and act. In each county there was a court, where all freeholders, small or great, came to deliberate about the municipal affairs, administer justice, and appoint tax-assessors. The red- bearded Saxon, with his clear com- plexion and great white teeth, came and sate by the Norman's side ; these were franklins like the one whom Chau- cer describes : " A Frankelein was in this compagnie ; White was his berd, as is the dayesie. Of his complexion he was sangum ? Wei loved he by the morwe a sop in win. To liven in delit was ever his wone, For he was Epicures owen sone, That held opinion that plein delit Was veraily felicite parfite. An housholder, and that a grete was he, Seint Julian he was in his contree. His brede, his ale, was alway after on ; A better envyned man was no wher non. Withouten bake mete never was his hous* Of fish and flesh, and that so plenteous, It snewed in his hous of mete and drinke^ Of all deintees that men coud of thinke ; After the sondry sesons of the yere, So changed he his mete and his soupere. Ful many a fat partrich had he in mewe, And many a breme, and many a luce in stewo* Wo was his coke but if his sauce were Poinant and sharpe, and redy all his gere His table, dormant in his halle alway Stode redy covered alle the longe day. At sessions ther was he lord and sire. Ful often time he was knight of the shire. * Magna Charta, 1215. CHAP. II.] THE NORMANS. 75 An anelace and a gipciere all of silk, Heng at his girdle, white as morwe milk. A shereve hadde he ben, and a contour. Was no wher swiche a worthy vavasour." * With him occasionally in the as- sembly, oftenest among the audience, were the yeomen, farmers, foresters, tradesmen, his fellow-countrymen, mus- cular and resolute men, not slow in fhe defence of their property, and in supporting him who would take their cause in hand, with voice, fist, and weapons. Is it likely that the discon- tent of such men, to whom the follow- ing description applies, could be over- looked ? " The Miller was a stout carl for the nones, Ful bigge he was of braun and eke of bones ; That proved wel, for over all ther he came, At wrastling he wold bere away the ram. He was short shuldered brode, a thikke gnarre, Ther n'as no dore, that he n'olde heve of barre, Or breke it at a renning with his hede. His berd as any sowe or fox was rede, And therto brode, as though it were a spade. Upon the cop right of his nose he hade A wert, and thereon stode a tufte of heres, Rede as the bristles of a sowes eres: His nose-thiries blacke were and wide. A swerd and bokeler bare he by his side. His mouth as wide was as a forneis, He was a jangler and a goliardeis, And that was most of sinne, and harlotries. Wel coude he stelen corne and tollen thries. And yet he had a thomb of gold parde. A white cote and a blew hode wered he. A baggepipe wel coude he blowe and soune, And therwithall he brought us out of toune."t Those are the athletic forms, the square build, the jolly John Bulls of the period, such as we yet find them, nourished by meat and porter, sus- tained by bodily exercise and boxing. These are the men we must keep be- fore us, if we will understand how political liberty has been established in this country. Gradually they find Ihe simple knights, their colleagues in the county court, too poor to be pres- ent with the great barons at the royal assemblies, coalescing with them. They become united by community of interests, by similarity of manners, by nearness of condition ; they take them for their representatives, they * Chaucer's Works, ed. Sir H. Nicholas, 6 yols., 1845, Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, ii. p. ii, / 333' t Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, ii. p. 17, /. 547- elect them * They have now entered upon public life, and the advent of a new reinforcement gives them a per- petual standing in their changed posi- tion. The towns laid waste by the Con- quest are gradually repeopled. They obtain or exact charters ; the towns- men buy themselves out of the arbi- trary taxes that were imposed on them ; they get possession of the land on which their houses are built ; they unite then* selves under mayors and aldermen. Each town now within the meshes of the great feudal net, is a power. The Earl of Leicester, rebelling against the king, summons two burgesses from each town to Parliament,! to authorize and support him. From that time the conquered race, both in country and town, rose to political life. If they were taxed, it was with their consent ; they paid nothing which they did not agree to. Early in the fourteenth cen- tury their united deputies composed the House of Commons ; and already at the close of the preceding century, the Archbishop of Canterbury, speak- ing in the name of the king, said to the pope, "It is the custom of the kingdom of England, that in all affairs relating to the state of this kingdom, the advice of all who are interested in them should be taken." VII. If they have acquired liberties, it is because they have obtained them by force ; circumstances have assisted, but character has done more. The protec- tion of the great barons and the alliance of the plain knights have strengthened them ; but it was by their native rough- ness and energy that they maintained their independence. Look at the con- trast they offer at this moment to their neighbors. What occupies the mind of the French people ? The fabliaux, the naughty tricks of Reynard, the art of deceiving Master Isengrin, of stealing his wife, of cheating him out of his din- ner, of getting him beaten by a third party without danger to one's self ; in short, the triumph of poverty and clever- ness over power united to folly. The * From 1214, and also in 1225 and 1254. Guizot, Origin of the Representative System in England, pp. 297-299. t In 1264. 76 THE SOURCE. popular hero is already the artful ple- beian, chaffing, light-hearted, who later on, will ripen into Panurge and Figaro, not apt to withstand you to your face, too sharp to care for great victories and habits of strife, inclined by the nimbleness of his wit to dodge round an obstacle ; if he but touch a man with the tip of his finger, that man tumbles into the trap. But here we have other customs : it is Robin Hood, a valiant outlaw, living free and bold in the green forest, waging frank and open war against sheriff and law.* If ever a man was popular in his country, it was he. " It is he," says an old his- torian, " whom the common people love so dearly to celebrate in games and comedies, and whose history, sung by fiddlers, interests them more than any other/' In the sixteenth century he still had his commemoration day, observed by all the people in the small towns and in the country. Bishop Latimer, making his pastoral tour," an- nounced one day that he would preach in a certain place. On the morrow, proceeding to the church, he found the doors closed, and waited more than an hour before they brought him the key. At last a man came and said to him, " Syr, thys ys a busye day with us ; we cannot heare you : it is Robyn Hoodes Daye. The parishe are gone abrode to gather for Robyn Hoode. ... I was fayne there to geve place to Robyn Hoode." t The bishop was obliged to divest himself of his ecclesiastical gar- ments and proceed on his journey, leaving his place to archers dressed in green, who played on a rustic stage the parts of Robin Hood, Little John, and their band. In fact, he was the nation- al hero. Saxon in the first place, and waging war against the men of law, against bishops and archbishops, whose sway was so heavy ; generous, more- over, giving to a poor ruined knight clothes, horse, and money to buy back tne land he had pledged to a rapacious abbot ; compassionate too, and kind to the poor, enjoining his men not to injure yeomen and laborers ; but above all rash, bold, proud, who would go and * Aug. Thierry, iv. 56. Ritson's Robin Hood % 1832. t Latimer's Sermons^ ed. Arber, 6th Sermon, 1869, p. 173. [BOOK 1 draw his bow before the sheriff's eyes and to his face; ready with blows whether to give or take. He slew fourteen out of fifteen foresters who came to arrest him ; he slays the sher- iff, the judge, the town gatekeeper ; he is ready to slay as many more as like to come ; and all this joyously, jovially, like an honest fellow who eats well, has a hard skin, lives in the open air, and revels in animal life. ' In somer when the shawes be sheyne, And leves be large and long, Hit is fulle mery in feyre foreste To here the foulys song." That is how many ballads begin ; and the fine weather, which makes the stags and oxen butt with their horns, inspires them with the thought of exchanging blows with sword or stick. Robin dreamed that two yeomen were thrash- ing him, and he wants to go and find them, angrily repelling Little John, who offers to go first : " Ah John, by me thou settest noe store, And that I farley finde : How offt send I my men before, And tarry myselfe behinde ? " It is no cunnin a knave to ken, An a man but heare him speake ; And it were not for bursting of my bo we, John, I thy head wold breake." *. . . He goes alone, and meets the robust yoeman, Guy of Gisborne : " He that had neyther beene kythe nor kin, Might have seen a full fayre fight, To see how together these yeomen went With blades both browne and bright, " To see how these yeomen together they fought Two howres of a summer's day ; Yett neither Robin Hood nor sir Guy Them fettled to flye away." t You see Guy the yeoman is as brave as Robin Hood ; he came to seek him in the wood, and drew the bow almost as well as he. This old popular poetiy is not the praise of a single bandit, but of an entire class, the yeomanry. " God haffe mersey on Robin Hodys solle, and saffe all god yemanry." That is how many ballads end. The brave yeoman, inured to blows, a good archer, clever at sword and stick, is the favor ite. There were also redoubtable, * Ritson, Robin Hood Ballads, i. iv. v. 41-48, t Ibid. v. 145-152. CHAP. IL] THE NORMANS. armed townsfolk, accustomed to make use of their arms. Here they are at work : " ' O that were a shame,' said jolly Robin, ' We being three, and thou but one,' The pinder * leapt back then thirty good foot, 'Twas thirty good foot and one. " He leaned his back fast unto a thorn, And his foot against a stone, And there he fought a long summer's day, A summer's day so long. ' Till that their swords on their broad bucklers Were broke fast into their hands, "t Often even Robin does not get the ad- vantage : ** * I pass not for length,' bold Arthur reply* d, ' My staff is of oke so free ; Eight foot and a half, it will knock down a calf, And I hope it will knock down thee.' 1 Then Robin could no longer forbear, He gave him such a knock, Quickly and soon the blood came down Before it was ten a clock. ' Then Arthur he soon recovered himself, And gave him such a knock on the crown, That from everv side of bold Robin Hood's head The blood came trickling down. Then Robin raged like a wild boar, As soon as he saw his own blood : Then Bland was in hast, he laid on so fast, As though he had been cleaving of wood. 5 And about and about and about they went, Like two wild bores in a chase, Striving to aim each other to maim, Leg, arm, or any other place. 1 And knock for knock they lustily dealt, Which held for two hours and more, Till all the wood rang at every bang, They ply'd their work so sore. ' Hold thy hand, hold thy hand,' said Robin Hood, And let thy quarrel fall ; For here we may thrash our bones all to mesh, And get no coyn at all. * And in the forrest of merry Sherwood, Hereafter thou shalt be free.' ' God a mercy for nought, my freedom I bought, I may thank my staff, and not thee.' " * A pinder's task was to pin the sheep in the fold, cattle in the pen-fold or pound (Richard- son).-T R . t Ritson, ii. 3, v. 17-26. t Ibid. 6, v 58-89. " Who are you, then ? " says Robin : ;< ' I am a tanner,' bold Arthur reply'd, ' In Nottingham long 1 have wrought ; And if thou'lt come there, I vow and sweaf I will tan thy hide for nought.' " God a mercy, good fellow,' said jolly Robin, ' Since thou art so kind and free ; And if thou wilt tan my hide for nought I will do as much for thee.' " * With these generous offers, they em- brace ; a free exchange of honest blows always prepares the way for friendship. It was so Robin Hood tried Littls John, whom he loved all his life after Little John was seven feet high, and being on a bridge, would not give way. Honest Robin could not use his bow against him, but went and cut a stick seven feet long ; and they agreed ami- cably to fight on the bridge until one should fall into the water. They fall to so merrily that " their bones ring." In the end Robin falls, and he feels only the more respect for Little John. Another time, having a sword with him, he was thrashed by a tinker who had only a stick. Full of admiration, he ives him a hundred pounds. Again ie was thrashed by a potter, who re- fused him toll ; then by a shepherd. They fight to wile away time. Even nowadays boxers give each other a friendly grip before setting to ; they knock one another about in this country honorably, without malice, fury, or shame. Broken teeth, black eyes, smashed ribs, do not call for murderous vengeance : it would seem that the bones are more solid and the nerves less sensitive in England than else- where. Blows once exchanged, they take each other by the hand, and dance together on the green grass ; " Then Robin took them both by the hands, And danc'd round about the oke tree. * For three merry men, and three merry men, And three merry men we be.' " Moreover, these people, in each parish, practised the bow every Sunday, and were the best archers in the world ; from the close of the fourteenth cen- tury the general emancipation of the villeins multiplied their number great- ly, and you can now understand how, amidst all the operations and changes of the great central powers, the liberty * Ibid. v. 94-101. 78 THE SOURCE. of the subject survived. After all, the only permanent and unalterable guar- antee, in every country and under every constitution, is this unspoken declara- tion in the heart of the mass of the people, which is well understood on all sides : " If any man touches my prop- erty, enters my house, obstructs or molests me, let him beware. I have patience, but I have also strong arms, good comrades, a good blade, and, on occasion, a firm resolve, happen what may, to plunge my blade up to its hilt in his throat." VII. Thus thought Sir John Fortescue, Chancellor of England under Henry VI., exiled in France during the Wars of the Roses, one of the oldest prose- writers, and the first who weighed and explained the constitution of his country.* He says : " It is cowardise and lack of hartes and corage that kepeth the Frenchmen from rys- yng, and not povertye ; t which corage no Frenche man hath like to the English man. It hath ben often seen in Englond that iij or iv .faefes, for povertie, hath sett upon vij or viij '.rue men, and robbyd themal. But it hath not ten seen in Fraunce, that vij or viij thefes have ben hardy to robbe iij or iv true men. Wherfor it is right seld that Frenchmen be hangyd for robberye, for that they have no hertys to do so terryble an acte. There be therfor mo men hangyd in Englond, in a yere, for robberye and manslaughter, than ther be hangid in Fraunce for such cause of crime in vij yers." % This throws a startling and terrible light on the violent condition of this armed community, where sudden attacks are an every-day matter, and every one, rich and poor, lives with his hand on his sword. There were great bands of male- factors under Edward I., who infested * Th Difference between an Absolute and Limited Monarchy A learned Commenda- tion of the Politic Laws of England (Latin). I frequently quote from the second work, which is more full and complete. t The courage which finds utterance here is coarse ; the English instincts ar^e combative "d independen :. The French race, and the tjrauls generally are perhaps the most reckless of life of any. % The Diffet >nce, etc., sd ed. 1724, ch. xiii. p. 98. There are nowadays in France 42 highway robberies as against 738 in England. In 1843, there were in England four times as many accusations of crimes and offences as in France, having regard to the number of inhabi- tants (Moreau de Jonncs). [BOOK I the country, and fot ght with these who came to seize their. The inhabitants of the towns were obliged to gather together with those of the neighboring towns, with hue and cry, to pursue and capture them. Under Edward III. there were barons who rode about with armed escorts and archers, seiz- ing the manors, carrying off ladies and girls of high degree, mutilatm", killing, extorting ransoms from people in their own houses, as if they were ii. an enemy's land, and sometimes com- ing before the judges at the sessions in such guise and in so great force that the judges were afraid and dared not administer justice.* Read the letters of the Paston family, under Henry VI. and Edward IV., and you will see how private war was at every door, how it was necessary for a man to provide himself with men and arms, to be on the alert for defence of his property, to be self-reliant, to depend on his own strength and courage. It is this excess of vigor and readiness to fight which, after their victories in France, set them against one another in England, in the butcheries of the Wars of the Roses. The strangers who saw them were astonished at their bodily strength and courage, at the great pieces of beef " which fed their muscles, at their military habits, their fierce obstinacy, as of savage beasts." t They are like their bulldogs, an un- tamable race, who in their mad cour- age " cast themselves with shut eyes into the den of a Russian bear, and get their head broken like a rotten apple." This strange condition of a militant community, so full of danger, and requiring so much effort, does n t make them afraid. King Edward having given orders to send disturbers of the peace to prison without lega 1 proceedings, and not to liberate them on bail or otherwise, the Commons declared the order "horribly vex- atious ; " resist it, refuse to be too rnuch protected. Less peace, but more inde- pendence. They maintain the guar- antees of the subject at the expense of * Statute of Winchester, 1285 ; Ordinance of 1378. t Benvenuto Cellini, quoted by Froude, i. 20, Hist, of England. Shakspeare. Henry V. : conversation of French lords before the battle of Agincourt. CHAP. II.] THE NORMANS, 79 public security, and prefer turbulent liberty to arbitrary order. Better suffer marauders whom they could fight, than magistrates under whom they would have to bend. This proud and persistent notion gives rise to, and fashions Fortescue's whole work : " Ther be two kynds of kyngdomys, of the which that one ys a lordship callid in Latyne D jniinium regale, and that other is callid Do- mlnium politicum e regale." The first is established in France, and the sec jnd in England. ** And they dyversen in that the first may rule his people by such lawys as he makyth hymself, and therefor, he may set upon them talys, ard other impositions, such as he wyl hymstji, witnout their assent. The secund may not rule hys people by other laws than such as they assenten unto ; and therfor he may set upon them non impositions without their own assent." * In a state like this, the will of the people is the prime element of life. Sir John Fortescue says further : "A king of England cannot at his pleasure make any alterations in the laws of the land, for the nature of his government is not only regal, but political." " In the body politic, the first thing which lives and moves is the intention of the people, having in it the blood, that is, the prudential care and provision for the public good, which it transmits and communicates to the head, as to the principal part, and to all the rest of the members of the said body politic, whereby it subsists and is invigorated. The law under which the people is incorporated may be com- pared to the nerves or sinews of the body nat- ural. . . . And as the bones and all the other members of the body preserve their functions and discharge their several offices by the nerves, so do the members of the community by the law. And as the head of the body natural can- not change its nerves or sinews, cannot deny to the several parts their proper energy, their due proportion and aliment of blood, neither can a king who is the head of the body politic change the laws thereof, nor take from the people what is theirs by right, against their consents. . . . For ae is appointed to protect his subjects in thei" lives, properties, and laws, for this very end and purpose he has the delegation of power from the people." Here we have all the ideas of Locke in the fifteenth century; so powerful is practice to suggest theory ! so quickly does man discover, in the enjoyment of liberty, the nature of liberty ! Fortescue goes fur .her; he contrasts, step by gtep, the Roman law, that inheritance * The Difference, etc., p. i. of all Latin peoples, with the English law, that heritage of all Teutonic peoples : one the work of absolute princes, and tending altogether to the sacrifice of the individual ; the other the work of the common will, tending altogether to protect the person. He contrasts the maxims of the imperial jurisconsuls, who accord " force of lavF to all which is determined by the prince," with the statutes of England, which " are not enacted by the sole will of the prince, . . . but with the concurrent consent of the whole king- dom, by their representatives in Par- liament, . . . more than three hundred select persons." He contrasts the arbitrary nomination of imperial offices with the election of the sheriff, and says : "There is in every county a certain officer, called the king's sheriff, who, amongst othei duties of his office, executes within his county all mandates and judgments of the king's courts of justice : he is an annual officer ; and it is not lawful for him, after the expiration of his year, to continue to act in his said office, neither shall he be taken in again to execute the said office within two years thence next ensuing. The manner of his election is thus: Every year, on the morrow of All-Souls, there meet in the King's Court of Exchequer all the king's counsellors, as well lords spiritual and temporal, as all other the king's justices, all the barons 01 the Exchequer, the Master of the Rolls, and certain other officers, when all of them, by common consent, nominate three of every coun- ty knights or esquires, persons of distinction, and such as they esteem fittest qualified to bear the office of sheriff of that county for the year ensuing. The king only makes choice of one out of the three so nominated and returned, who, in virtue of the king's letters patent, is constituted High Sheriff of that county." He contrasts the Roman procedure, which is satisfied with two witnesses to condemn a man, with the jury, the three permitted challenges, the admi- rable guarantees of justice with which the uprightness, number, repute, and condition of the juries surround the sentence. About the juries he says : " Twelve good and true men being sworn, as in the manner above related, legally qualified, that is, having, over and besides their move- ables, possessions in land sufficient, as was said, wherewith to maintain their rank and station ; neither inspected by, nor at variance with either of the parties ; all of the neighbor- hood ; there shall be read to them, in English, by the Court, the record and nature of the plea." * * The original of this very famous treatise, de Laudibus Legum Angliee^ was written in 8o THE SOURCE. [BOOK L Thus prDtected, the English commons cannoJ be other than flourishing. Con- sider, on the other hand, he says to the young prince whom he is instructing, the condition of the commons in France. By their taxes, tax on salt, on wine, billeting of soldiers, they are reduced to great misery. You have seen them on your travels. . . . " The same Commons be so impoverishid and distroyyd, that they may unneth lyve. Th;iy drink water, thay eate apples, with bred right brown made of rye. They eate no fleshe, but if it be selden, a litill larde, or of the en- trails or heds of bests sclayne for the nobles and merchants of the land. They weryn no wollyn, but if it be a pore cote under their uttermost garment, made of grete canvass, and cal it a frok. Their hosyn be of like canvas, and passen not their knee, wherfor they be gartrid and their thyghs bare. Their Vvifs and children gone bare fote. . . . For sum of them, that was wonte to pay to his lord for his tenement which he hyrith by the year a scute payth now to the kyng, over that scute, fyve skuts. Wher thrugh they be artyd by necessite so to watch, labour and grub in the ground for their sustenance, that their nature is much wasted, and the kynd of them brought to nowght. Thay gone crokyd and ar feeble, not able to fight nor to defend the realm; nor they have wepon. nor monye to buy them wepon withal. . . . This is the frute first of hyre Jus regale. . . . But blessed be God, this land ys rulid under a better lawe, and therfor the people therof be not in such penurye, nor ther- by hurt in their persons, but they be wealthie and have all things necessarie to the sustenance of nature. Wherefore they be myghty and able to resyste the adversaries of the realms that do or will do them wrong. Loo, this is the frut of Jus politicum et regale, under which we lyve.' 1 * " Everye inhabiter of the realme of England useth and enjoyeth at his pleasure all the f ruites that his land or cattel beareth, with al the profits and commodities which by his owne tra- vayle, or by the labour of others, hae gaineth ; not hindered by the iniurie or wrong 1 deteine- ment of anye man, but that hee shall bee al- lowed a reasonable recompence.f Hereby it commeth to passe that the men of that lande are riche, havyng aboundaunce of golde and sil- ver, and other thinges necessaire for the main- ienaunce of man's life. They drinke no water, unless it be so, that some for devotion, and up- pon a. I.CO.IG of penaunce, doe abstaine from Latin between 1464 and 1470, first published in 1537, and translated into English in 1775 by Francis Gregor. I have taken these extracts from the magnificent edition of Sir John For- tesque's works published in 1869 for private distribution, and edited by Thomas Fortescue, Lprd Clermont. Some of the pieces quoted, left in the old spelling, are taken from an older edition, translated by P obert Mulcaster in I56/. TR. * Of an AbsoMg and Limited Monarchy, 3d ed., 1724, ch. iii. p. 15. t Commines bears the same testimony. other drinks. They eate plen ifully of all kindes of fleshe and fishe. They v/eare fine woollen cloth in all their apparel ; they have also aboundaunce of b:d-coveringes in their houses, and of all other woollen stuffe. They have greate store of all hustlementes and imple- mentes of householde, they are plentifully fur- nished with al instruments of husbandry, a 1 "* all other things that are requisite to the accom- plishment of a quiet and wealthy lyfe, according to their estates and degrees. Neither are they sued in the lawe, but onely before ordinary judges, where by the lawes of the lande are justly intreated. Neither are they arrested or impleaded for their moveables or possessions, or arraigned of any offence, bee it never so great and outragious, but after the lawes of the land, and before the iudges aforesaid." * All this arises from the constitution of the country and the distribution of the land. Whilst in other countries we find only a population of paupers, with here and there a few lords, Eng- land is covered and filled with owners of lands and fields ; so that " therein so small a thorpe cannot bee founde, wherein dwelleth not a knight, an esquire, or suche a housholder as is there commonly called a franklayne, en- ryched with greate possessions. And also other freeholders, and many yeo- men able for their livelodes to make a jurye in fourme afore-mentioned. For there bee in that lande divers yeomen, which are able to dispend by the yeare above a hundred poundes." t Harri- son says : \ " This sort of people, have more estimation than labourers and the common sort of artificers, and these commonhe live wealthilie, keepe good houses, and travell to get riches. They * De Laudibus, etc., ch. xxxvi. t " The might of the realme most stondyth upon archers which be not rich men." Com- pare Hallam, ii. 482. All this takes us back as far as the Conquest, and farther. " It is reason- able to suppose that the greater part of those who appear to have possessed small freeholds or parcels of manors were no other thtm the original nation. ... A respectable class of free socagers, having in general full right of a"?en ating their lands, and holding them probab.y at a small certain rent fron. the lord of the manor frequently occurs in the Domesday Book." At all events, there were in Domesday Book Sax- ons "perfectly exempt from villenage." This class is mentioned with respect in the treatises of Glanvil and Bracton. As for the villeins, they were quickly liberated in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, either by their own energies or by becoming copyholders. The Wars of the Roses still further raised the commons ; orders were frequently issued, previous to a battle, to slay the nobles and spare the commoners. t Description of England, 275. CHAP. II.l THE NORMANS. 8l are for the most part farmers to gentlemen," and keep servants of their own. " These were they that in times past made all France afraid. And albeit they be not called master, as gentle- men are, or sir, as to knights apperteineth, but onelie John and Thcmas, etc., yet have they beene found to have done verie good service ; and the kings of England, in foughten battels, were wont to remaine among them (who were their footmen) as the French kings did among their horssemen : the prince thereby showing where his chiefe strength did consist. Such men, says Fortescue, might form a legal jury, and vote, resist, be asso- ciated, do every thing wherein a free government consists : for they were numerous in every district ; they were not down-trodden like the timid peas- ants of France ; they had their honor and that of their family to maintain ; "they be well provided with arms; they remember that they have won bat- tles in France." * Such is the class, still obscure, but more rich and power- ful every century, which, founded by the down-trodden Saxon aristocracy, and sustained by the surviving Saxon character, ended, under the lead of the * The following is a portrait of a yeoman, by Latimer, in the first sermon preached before Edward VI., 8th March 1549 : " My father was a yeoman, and had no lands of his own ; only he had a farm of $ or .4 by year at the utter- most, and hereupon he tilled so much as kept half-a-dozen men. He had walk for a hundred sheep, and my mother milked thirty kine. He was able, and did find the king a harness, with himself and his horse ; while he came to the Jlace that he should receive the king's wages. can remember that I buckled his harness when he went unto Blackheath field. He kept me to school, or else I had not been able to have preached before the King's Majesty now. He married my sisters with ^5 or 20 nobles a-piece, so that he brought them up in godliness and fear of God ; he kept hospitality for his poor neighbors, and some alms he gave to the poor ; and all this did he of the said farm. Where he that now hath it payeth 16 by the year, or more, and is not able to do any thing for his prince, for himself, nor for his children, or give a cup of drink to the poor." This is from the sixth sermon, preached be- fore the young king, i2th April 1549 : "In my time my poor father was as diligent to teach me to shoot as to learn (me) any other thing ; and so, I think, other men did their children. He taught me how to draw, how to lay my body in my bow, and not to draw with strength of arms, as other nations do, but with strength of the body. I had my bows bought me according to my age and strength ; as I increased in them, so my bows were made bigger and bigger ; for men shall never shoot well except they be brought up in it. It is a goodly art, a whole- some kind of exercise, and much commended in physic." inferior Norman nobility, and under the patronage of the superior Norman nobility, in establishing and settling a free constitution, and a nation worthy of liberty. IX. When, as here, men are endowed with a serious character, have a reso- lute spirit, and possess independent habits, they deal with their conscience as with their daily business, and end by laying hands on church as well as state. Already for a long time the ex- actions of the Roman See had pro- voked the resistance of the people,* and the higher clergy became unpopu- lar. Men complained that the best livings were given by the Pope to non- resident strangers ; that some Italian, unknown in England, possessed fifty or sixty benefices in England ; that English money poured into Rome; and that the clergy, being judged only by clergy, gave themselves up to their vices, and abused their state of immu- nity. In the first years of Henry III.'s reign there were nearly a hundred murders committed by priests then alive. At the beginning of the four- teenth century the ecclesiastical rev- enue was twelve times greater than the civil; about half the soil was in the hands of the clergy. At the end of the century the commons declared that the taxes paid to the church were five times greater than the taxes paid to the crown ; and some years afterwards,! considering that the wealth of the clergy only served to keep them in idleness and luxury, they proposed to confiscate it for the public benefit. Already the idea of the Reformation had forced itself upon them. They remembered how in the ballads Robin Hood ordered his folk to spare the yeomen, laborers, even knights, if they are good fellows, but never to let abbots or bishops escape. The pre- lates were grievously oppressing the people by means of their privileges, * In 1246, 1376. Thierry, iii. 79. t 1404-1409. The commons declared that with these revenues the king would be able to maintain 15 earls, 1500 knights, 6200 squires, and 100 hospitals: each earl receiving annually 300 marks ; each knight 100 marks, and the produce of four ploughed lands ; each squire 40 marks, and the produce of two ploughed lands, 4* 82 THE SOURCE. [BOOK I ecclesiastical courts, and tithes ; when suddenly, amid the pleasant banter or the monotonous babble of the Norman versifiers, we hear the indignant voice of a Saxon, a man of the people and a victim of oppression, thundering against them. It is the vision of Piers Ploughman, written, it is supposed, by a secular priest of Oxford.* Doubtless the traces of French taste are perceptible. It could not be otherwise : the people from below can never quite prevent themselves from imitating the people above ; and the most unshackled pop- ular poets, Burns and Beranger, too often preserve an academic style. So here a fashionable machinery, the alle- gory of the Roman de la Rose, is pressed into service. We have Do- well, Covetousness, Avarice, Simona, Conscience, and a whole world of talk- ing abstractions. But, in spite of these vain foreign phantoms, the body of the poem is national, and true to life. The old language reappears in part ; the old metre altogether, no more rhymes, but barbarous alliterations ; no more jesting, but a harsh gravity, a sustained invective, a grand and sombre imagi- nation, heavy Latin texts, hammered down as by a Protestant hand. Piers Ploughman went to sleep on the Mal- vern hills, and there had a wonderful dream : * Thanne gan I meten a marveillous swevene, That I was in a wildcrnesse wiste I nevere where ; And as I biheeld into the eest, an heigh to the sonne, I seigh a tour on a toft, trieliche y-maked, A deep dale bynethe a dongeon thereinne With depe diches and derke and dredf ulle of sighte. A fair feeld ful of folk fond I ther bitwene, Of alle manere of men, the meene and the riche, Werchynge and wandrynge as the world asketh. Some putten hem to the plough, pleiden ful .clde, In settyr^e and sowynge swonken ful harde, And wonnen that wastours with glotonye dystruyeth." t A gloomy picture of the world, like the frightful dreams which occur so often in Albert Durer and Luther. The first reformers were persuaded that the * About 1362. t Piers Ploughr-ian's Vision and Creed, ed. T. Wright, 1856, i, p. 2, /. 21-44. earth was given over to evil ; that the devil had on i his empire and his officers ; that Antichrist, seated on the throne of Rome, displayed ecclesias* tical pomps to seduce souls and cast them into the fire of hell. So here Antichrist, with raised banner, enters a convent ; bells are rung ; monks in solemn procession go to meet him, and receive with congratulations their lord and father.* With seven great giants, the seven deadly sins, he be- sieges Conscience ; and the assault is led by Idleness, who brings with her an army of more than a thousand prelates : for vices reign, more hateful from being in holy places, and em- ployed in the church of God in the devil's service : " Ac now is Religion a rydere a romere aboute, A ledere of love-dayes and a lond-buggere, A prikere on a palfrey fro manere to ma- nere. . . . And but if his knave knele that shal his coppe brynge, He loureth on hym, and asketh hym who taughte hym curteisie." t But this sacrilegious show has its day, and God puts His hand on men in order to warn them. By order of Conscience, Nature sends forth a host of plagues and diseases from the planets : " Kynde Conscience tho herde, and cam out of the planetes, And sente forth his forreyours feveres and fluxes, Coughes and cardiacles, crampes and tooth- aches, Reumes and radegundes, and roynous scabbes, Biles and bocches, and brennynge agues, Frenesies and foule yveles, forageres of kynde. . . . There was 'Harrow! and Help! Here cometh Kynde ! With Deeth that is dredful to undo us alle !* The lord that lyved after lust tho aloud cryde. . . . Deeth cam dryvynge after, and al k o dusta passhcJ Kynges and knyghtes, kaysers anc pcpes, Manye a lovely lady and lemmans o knyghtes, Swowned and swelted for sorwe of his dyntes."$ * The Archdeacon of Richmond, on his tour in 12 16, came to the priory of Bridlington with ninety-seven horses, twenty one dogs, andthrea falcons. t Piers Ploughman's Vision, i. p. 191, /. 217-6228. $ Ibid., ii. Last book, p. 4301 /. 14,084-14,135* CHAP. II.] THE NORMANS. Here is a crowd of miseries, like those which Milton has described in his vision of human life ; tragic pictures and emotions, such as the reformers delight to dwell upon. There is a like speech delivered by John Knox, before ;he fair ladies of Mary Stuart, which tears the veil from the human corpse just as coarsely, in order to exhibit its shame. The conception of the world, proper to the people of the north, all sad and moral, shows itself already. They are never comfortable in their country ; they have to strive continual- ly against cold or rain. They cannot live there carelessly, lying under a lovely sky, in a sultry and clear atmos- phere, their eyes filled with the noble beauty and happy serenity of the land. They must work to live ; be attentive, exact, keep their houses wind and water tight, trudge doggedly through the mud behind their plough, light their lamps in their shops during the day. Their climate imposes endless inconvenience, and exacts endless en- durance. Hense arise melancholy and the idea of duty. Man naturally thinks of life as of a battle, oftener of black death which closes this deadly show, and leads so many plumed and disor- derly processions to the silence and the eternity of the grave. All this visible world is vain ; there is nothing true but human virtue, the courageous energy with which man attains to self- command, the generous energy with which he employs himself in the ser- vice of others. On this view, then, his eyes are fixed ; they pierce through worldly gauds, neglect sensual joys, to attain this. By such inner thoughts and feelings the ideal model is dis- placed ; a new source of action springs U p the idea of righteousness. What sets them against ecclesiastical pomp and insolence, is neither the envy of the poor and low, nor the anger of the oppressed, nor a revolutionary desire to experimentalize abstract truth, but conscience. They tremble lest they should not work out their salvation if they continue in a corrupt church ; they fear the menaces of God, and dare not embark on the great journey with unsafe guides. " What is righteous- ness ? " asked Luther anxiously, " and how shall I obtain it?" With like anxiety Piers Ploughman goes to seek Do-well, and asks each one to show him where he shall find him, ** With us," say the friars. " Contra quath ich, Septies in die cadit jtistus, and ho so syngeth certys doth nat wel ; " so he betakes himself to " study and writing," like Luther ; the clerks at table speak much of God and of the Trinity, " and taken Bernarde to witnesse, and putteth forth presomp- cions i . . ac the earful mai crie and quaken atte gate, bothe a fyngred and a furst, and for defaute spille ys non so hende to have hym yn. Clerkus and knyghtes carpen of God ofte, and haveth hym muche in hure mouthe, ac mene men in herte ; '"' and heart, inner faith, living virtue, are what constitute true religion. This is what these dull Saxons had begun to discover. The Teutonic conscience, and English good sense too, had been aroused, as well as individual energy, the resolution to judge and to decide alone, by and for one's self. "Christ is our hede that sitteth on hie, Heddis ne ought we have no mo," says a poem, attributed to Chaucer, ancl which, with others, claims independence for Christian consciences.* " We ben his membres bothe also, Father he taught us call him all, Maisters to call forbad he tho ; Al maisters ben wickid and fals." No other mediator between man and God. In vain the doctors state that they have authority for their words ; there is a word of greater authority, to wit, God's. We hear it in the four- teenth century, this grand " word of God." It quitted the learned schools, the dead languages, the dusty shelves on which the clergy suffered it to sleep, covered with a confusion of commenta- tors and Fathers.! Wiclif appeared * Piers Plow man's Crede ; the Plowman' 's Tale, first printed in 1550. There were three editions in one year, it was so manifestly Pro- testant. t Knighton, about 1400, wrote thus of Wiclif : " Transtuiit de Latino in anglicam linguam, non angelicam. Unde per ipsum fit vulgare, et magis apertum laicis et mulieribus legere scientibus quam solet esse clericis admodum litteratis, et bene inteiligentibus. _ Et sic evan- gel tea margerita spargitur et a porcis conculcatur . . . (ita)ut laicis commune aeternum quod ante fuerat clericis et ecclesiae doctoribus talenturt supernum." THE SOURCE. [BOOK I. and translated it like Luther, and in a spirit similar to Luther's. " Cristen men and wymmen, olde and yonge, shulden studie fast in the Newe Testa- ment, for it is of ful autorite, and opyn to undirstonding of simple men, as to the poyntis that be moost nedeful to salvacioun." * Religion must be secu- lar, in order to escape firom the hands < the clergy, who monopolize it; each must hear a id read for himself the word of God: he will then be sure that it has not been corrupted ; he will feel it better, and more, he will under- stand it better ; for " ech place of holy writ, both opyn and derk, techith mekenes and charite ; and therfore he that kepith mekenes and charite hath the trewe undirstondyng and perfectioun of al holi writ. . . . Therfore no simple man of wit be aferd unmesurabli to studie in the text of holy writ . . . and no clerk be provide of the yerrey un- dirstondying of holy writ, forwhi undirstonding of hooly writ with outen charite that kepith Goddis heestis, makith a man depper dampned . . . and pride and covetise of clerkis is cause of her blindees and eresie, and priveth them fro verrey undirstondyng of holy writ." f These are the memorable words that began to circulate in the markets and in the schools. They read the translated Bible, and commented on it; they judged the existing Church after it. What judgments these seri- ous and untainted minds passed upon it, with what readiness they pushed on to the true religion of their race, we may see from their petition to Parlia- ment.J One hundred and thirty years before Luther, they said that the pope was not established by Christ, that pilgrimages and image-worship were akin to idolatry, that external rites are of no importance, that priests ought not to possess temporal wealth, that the doctrine of transubstantiation made . ^cople idolatrous, that priests have not the power of absolving from sin. In proof of all this they brought for- ward texts of Scripture. Fancy these brave spirits, simple and strong souls, who began to read at night in their shops, by candle-light; for they were shopkeepers tailors, skinners, and bakers who, with some men of letters, began to read, and the n to believe, and * Wiclif's Bible, ed. Forshall and Madden, 1850, pi eface to Oxford edition, p. 2. * Ibid. \ In 1395. finally got themselves burned.* What a sight for the fifteenth century, anJl what a promise ! It seems as though, with liberty of action, liberty of mind begins to appear ; that these common folk will think and speak ; that under the conventional literature, imitated from France, a new literature is dawn- ing ; and that England, genuine Eng- land, half-mute since the Conquest, will at last find a voice. She had not yet found it. King and peers ally themselves to the Church, pass terrible statutes, destroy books, burn heretics alive, often with refine- ment of torture, one in a barrel, an- other hung by an iron chain round his waist. The temporal wealth of the clergy had been attacked, and there- with the whole English constitution ; and the great establishment above crushed out with its whole weight the revolutionists from below. Darkly, in silence, while the nobles were destroy- ing each other in the War of the Roses, the commons went on working and living, separating themselves from the established Church, maintaining their liberties, amassing wealth, but not go- ing further, t Like a vast rock which underlies the soil, yet crops up here and there at distant intervals, they barely show themselves. No great poetical or religious work displays them to the light. They sang; but their ballads, first ignored, then trans- formed, reach us only in a late edition. They prayed ; but beyond one or two indifferent poems, their incomplete and repressed doctrine bore no fruit. We may well see from the verse, tone, and drift of their ballads, that they are capable of the finest poetic originality, \ * 1401, William Sawtre, the first Lollard burned alive. t Commines, v. ch. 19 and 20 : " In my opin- ion, of all kingdoms of the world of which I have any knowledge, where the public weal is bast observed, and least violence is exercised on the people, and where no buildings are over thrown or demolished in war, England is the best ; and the ruin and misfortune falls on them who wage the war. . . . The kingdom of England has this advantage beyond other nations, that the people and the country are not destroyed or burnt, nor the buildings de- molished ; and ill-fortune falls on men of war, and especially on the nobles." t See the ballads of Chevy Chase, The Nut- Brown Maid, etc. Many of them are admi- rable little dramas. CHAP. III.] THE NEW TONGUE. but their poetry is in the hands of yeomen and harpers. We perceive, by the precocity and energy of their re- ligious protests, that they are capable of the most severe and impassioned creeds ; but their faith remains hidden in the shop-parlors of a few obscure sectaries. Neither their faith nor their poetry has been able to attain its end or issue. The Renaissance and the Reformation, those two national out- breaks, are still far off ; and the litera- ture of the period retains to the end, like the highest ranks of English so- ciety, almost the perfect stamp of its French origin and its foreign models. CHAPTER III. I. AMID so many barren endeavors, throughout the long impotence of Nor- man literature, which was content to copy, and of Saxon literature, which bore no fruit, a definite language was nevertheless formed, and there was room for a great writer. Geoffrey Chau- cer appeared, a man of mark, inventive though a disciple, original though a translator, who by his genius, education, and life, was enabled to know and to depict a whole world, but above all to satisfy the chivalric world and the splendid courts which shone upon the heights.* He belonged to it, though learned and versed in all branches of scholastic knowledge ; and he took such a share in it, that his life from be- ginning to end was that of a man of the world, and a man of action. We find him by turns in King Edward's army, in the kng's train, husband of a maid of honor to the queen, a pensioner, a placeholder, a member of Parliament, a knight, founder of a family which ivas hereafter to become allied to royalty. Moreover, he was in the king's council brother-in-law of John of Gaunt, employed mo~e than once in open embassies or secret missions at Florence, Genoa, Milan, Flanders, com- * Born between 1328 and 1345, died in 1400. missioner in France for the marriage of the Prince of Wales, high up and low down on the political ladder, dis- graced, restored to place. This ex- perience of business, travel, war, and the court, was not like a book-educa- tion. He was at the court of Edward III., the most splendid in Europe, amidst tourneys, grand receptions, mag- nificent displays ; he took part in the pomps of France and Milan ; conversed with Petrarch, perhaps with Boccaccio and Froissart ; was actor in, and spec- tator of, the finest and most tragical of dramas. In these few words, what ceremonies and cavalcades are implied I what processions in armor, what caparisoned horses, bedizened ladies 1 what display of gallant and lordly manners ! what a varied and brilliant world, well suited to occupy the mind and eyes of a poet I Like Froissart, and better than he, Chaucer could depict the castles of the nobles, their conversations, their talk of love, and any thing else that concerned them, and please them by his portraiture. II. Two notions raised the middle age above the chaos of barbarism : one religious, which had fashioned the gigantic cathedrals, and swept the masses from their native soil to hurl them upon the Holy Land ; the other secular, which had built feudal fort- resses, and set the man of courage erect and armed, within his own domain : the one had produced the adventurous hero, the other the mys- tical monk ; the one, to wit, the belief in God, the other the belief in self. Both, running to excess, had degener- ated by the violence of their own strength: the cne had exalted inde- pendence into rebellion, the other had turned piety into enthusiasm : the first made man unfit for civil life, the second drew him back from natural life : the one, sanctioning disorder, dissolved society ; the other, enthroning infatua- tion, perverted intelligence. Chivalry had need to be repressed because it issued in brigandage ; devotion re- strained because it induced slavery. Turbulent feudalism grew feeble, like oppressive theocracy; and the two 86 THE SOURCE. [BOOK I great master passions, deprived of their sap and lopped of their stem, gave place by their weakness to the monot- ony of habit and the taste for world- liness, which shot forth in their stead and flourished under their name. Gradually, the serious element de- clined, in books as in manners, in works of art as in books. Architecture, instead of being the handmaid of faith, became the slave of phantasy. It was exag- gerated, became too ornamental, sac- rificing general effect to detail, shot up its steeples to unreasonable heights, decorated its churches with canopies, pinnacles, trefoiled gables, open-work galleries. " Its whole aim was con- tinually to climb higher, to clothe the sacred edifice with a gaudy bedizen- ment, as if it were a bride on her wed- ing morning." * Before this marvel- lous lacework, what emotion could one feel but a pleased astonishment ? What becomes of Christian sentiment before such scenic ornamentations ? In like manner literature sets itself to play. In the eighteenth century, the second age of absolute monarchy, we saw on one side finials and floriated cupolas, on the other pretty vers de society courtly and sprightly tales, taking the place of severe'beauty-lines and noble writings. Even so in the four- teenth century, the second age of feudal- ism, they had on one side the stone fret- work and slender efflorescence of aerial forms, and on the other finical verses and diverting stories, taking the place of the old grand architecture and the old simple literature. It is no longer the overflowing of a true sentiment which produces them, but the craving for excite- ment. Consider Chaucer, his subjects, and how he selects them. He goes tat and wide to discover them, to Italy, France, to the popular legends, the ancient classics. His readers need diversity, and his business is to " provide fine tales : " it was in those days the poet's business.! The lords at tajle have finished dinner, the min- strels come and sing, the brightness of the torches falls on the velvet and ermine, on the fantastic figures, the motley, the elaborate embroidery of * Renan, De ?Art au Moyen Age. t See Frpissart, his life with the Count of Foix and with King Richard II. their long garments ; then the poet arrives, presents his manuscript, "richly illuminated, bound in crimson violet, embellished with silver clasps and bosses, roses of gold : " they ajk him what his subject is, and he an- swers " Love." III. In fact, it is the most agreeable sub- ject, fittest to make the evening hours pass sweetly, amid the goblets filled with spiced wine and the burnirg per- fumes. Chaucer translated firs: that great storehouse of gallantry, the Roman de la Rose. There is no pleas- anter entertainment. It is about a rose which the lover wished to pluck : the pictures of the May months, the groves, the flowery earth, the green hedgerows, abound and display their bloom. Then come portraits of the smiling ladies, Richesse, Fraunchise, Gaiety, and by way of contrast, the sad characters, Daunger and Travail, all fully and minutely described, with de- tail of features, clothing, attitude ; they walk about, as on a piece of tapestry, amid landscapes, dances, castles, among allegorical groups, in lively sparkling colors, displayed, contrasted, ever re- newed and varied so as to entertain the sight. For an evil has arisen, unknown to serious ages ennui: novelty and brilliancy followed by novelty and bril- liancy are necessary to withstand it ; and Chaucer, like Boccaccio and Froissart, enters into the struggle with all his heart. He borrows from Boc- caccio his history of Palamon and Arcite, from Lollius his history of Troilus and Cressida, and rearranges them. How the two young Theban knights, Arcite and Palamon, both fall in love with the beautiful Emily, and how Arcite, victorious in tourney, falls and dies, bequeathing Emily to his rival ; how the fine Trojan knight Troilus wins the favor of Cressida, and how Cressida abandons him for Diomedes these are still tales in verse, tales of love. A little tedious they may be ; all the writings of this age, French or imitated from French, are born of too prodigal minds ; but how they glide along 1 A winding stream, which flows smoothly on level sand, and sparkles now and again in the CHAP. III.] THE NEW TONGUE. sun, is the only image we can com- pare it to. The characters speak too .nuch, but then they speak so well 1 Even when they dispute, we like to listen, their anger and offences are so wholly based on a happy over- flow of unbroken converse. Remember Froissart, how slaughters, assassina- tions, plagues, the butcheries of the Jacquerie, the whole chaos of human misery ; disappears in his fine ceaseless humor, so that the furious and grin- ning figures seem but ornaments and choice embroideries to relieve the skein of shaded and colored silk which forms the groundwork of his narra- tive ! but in particular, a multitude of descriptions spread their gilding over all. Chaucer leads you among arms, palaces, temples, and halts before each beautiful thing. Here : *' The statue of Venus glorious for to see Was naked fleting in the large see, And fro the navel doun all covered was With wawe.s grene, and bright as any glas. A citole in hire right hand hadde she, And on hire hed, ful semely for to see, A rose gerlond fressh, and wel smelling, Above hire hed hire doves fleckering." * Further on, the temple of Mars : '* First on the wall was peinted a forest, In which ther wonneth neyther man ne best, With knotty knarry barrein trees old Of stubbes sharpe and hidous to behold ; In which ther ran a romble and a swough, As though a storme shuld bresten every bough : And dounward from an hill under a bent, Ther stood the temple of Mars armipotent, Wrought all of burned stele, of which th' entree Was longe and streite, and gastly for to see. And therout came a rage and swiche a vise, That it 'made all the gates for to rise. The northern light in at the dore shone, For window on the wall ne was ther none, Thurgh which men mighten any light dis- cerne. The dore was all of athamant eterne, Yclenched overthwart and endelong With yren tough, and for to make it strong, Every piler the temple to sustene Was tonne-gret, of yren bright and shene." f Everywhere on the wall were represen- tations oi slaughter ; and in the sanctu- ary " The statue of Mars upon a carte stood Armed, and loked grim as Y 2 were wood, . . . A wolf ther stood beforne him at h : s fete With eyen red, and of a man he e f And thanked be ye, lorde for that I love This is the right life that I am inne, To flemen all maner vice and sinne : This doeth me so to vertue for to entende That daie by daie I in my will amende. And who that saieth that for to lovs is vice, He either is envious, or right nice, Or is unmightie for his shreudnesse To loven. . . . But I with all mine herte and all my might, As I have saied, woll love unto my last, My owne dere herte,and all mine owne knight, In whiche mine herte growen is so fast, And his in me, that it shall ev*r lt." * But misfortune comes. Her father Calchas demands her back, and the Trojans decide that they will give her up in exchange for prisoners. At this news she swoons, and Troilus is about to slay himself. Their love at this time seems imperishable ; it sports with death, because it constitutes the whole of life. Beyond that better and deli- cious life which it created, it seems there can be no other : " But as God would, of swough she abraide, And gan to sighe, and Troilus she cride, And he answerde : ' Lady mine, Creseide, Live ye yet ? ' and let his swerde doun glide ' Ye herte mine, that thanked be Cupide,' (Quod she), and therewithal she sore sight, And he began to glade her as he might. Took her in armes two and kist her oft, And her to glad, he did al his entent, For which her gost, that flikered aie a loft, Into her wofull herte ayen it went : But at the last, as that her eye glent Aside, anon she gan his sworde aspie, As it lay bare, and gan for feare crie. And asked him why had he it out draw, And Troilus anon the cause her told, And how himself therwith he wold have slain. For which Creseide upon him gan behold, And gan him in her armes faste fold, And said : ' O mercy God, lo which a deds 1 Alas, how nigh we weren bothe dede! " t At last they are separated, with what vows and what tears ! and Troilus, alone in his chamber, murmurs : " ' Where is mine owne lady lefe and dere ? Where is her white brest, where is it, where Where been her armes, and her eyen clere That yesterday this time with me were ? f . . Nor there nas houre in al the day or night, Whan he was ther as no man might him here. * Ibid. vol. iv. bk. 2, p. 292. t Ibid, vol . v. bk. 4, p. 97. CHAP. III.] THE NEW TONGUE. That he ne sayd : ' O lovesome lady bright, How have ye "faren sins that ye were there ? Welcome y wis mine owne lady dere ! ' . . . Fro thence-forth he rideth up and doune, And every thing came him to remembraunce, As he rode forth by the places of the toune, In which he whilom had all his pleasaunce: Lo, yonder saw I mine owne lady datmce, And in that temple with her eien clere, Me caught first my right lady dere. And yonder have I herde full lustely My dere herte laugh, and yonder play Saw her ones eke ful blisfully, And yonder ones to me gan she say, ' Now, good sweete, love well I pray. And yonde so goodly gan she me behold, That to the death mine herte is to her hold. And at the corner in the yonder house Herde I mine alderlevest lady dere, So womanly, with voice melodiouse, Singen so wel, so goodly, and so clere, That in my soule yet me thinketh I here The blissful sowne, and in that yonder place, My lady first me toke unto her grace.' " * None has since found more true and tender words. These are the charm- ing " poetic branches " which flourish- ed amid gross ignorance and pompous parades. Human intelligence in the middle age had blossomed on that side where it perceived the light. But mere narrative does not suffice to express his felicity and fancy ; the poet must go where " shoures sweet of rain descended soft." " And every plaine was clothed faire With new greene, and maketh small floures To springen here and there in field and in mede, So very good and wholsome be the shoures, That it renueth that was old and dede, In winter time ; and out of every sede Springeth the hearbe, so that every wight Of this season wexeth glad and light. . . . In which (grove) were okes great, streight as a line, Under the which the grasse so fresh of hew Was newly sprong, and an eight foot or nine Every tree well fro his fellow grew." He must forget himself in the vague 'elicity of the country, and, like Dante, > lose himself in ideal light and allegory. ^ The dreams of love, to continue true, ' r." If you find the particulars free, he says, it is not my fault ; " so writen clerks in hir bokes old," and " I mote, aftir min auctour, telle ..." Not only is he gay, but he jests throughout the whole tale. He sees clearly through the tricks of feminine modesty ; he la:ighs at it archly, knowing full well what is behind ; he seems to be saying, finger on lip : " Hush ! let the grand words roll on, you will be edified pres- ently." We are, in fact, edified ; so is he, and in the nick of time he goes away, carrying the light : " For ought I can aspies, this light nor I ne serven here of nought." " Troilus," says un- cle Pandarus, "if ye be wise, sweven- eth not now, lest more folke arise." Troilus takes care not to swoon ; and Cressida at last, being alone with him, speaks wittily and with prudent deli- cacy; there is here an exceeding charm, no coarseness. Their happi- ness covers all, even voluptuousness, with a profusion and perfume of its heavenly roses. At most a slight spice of archness flavors it : " and gode thrift he had full oft." Troilus holds his mistress in his arms : " with worse hap God let us never mete." The poet is almost as well pleased as they : for him, as for the men of his time, the sovereign good is love, not damped, but satisfied ; they ended even by thinking such love a merit. The ladies declared in their judgments, that when people love, they can refuse nothing to the beloved. Love has become law ; it is inscribed in a code ; they combine it \vfth religion ; and there is a sacra- ment of love, in which the birds in their anthems sing matins.* Chaucer curses with all his heart the covetous wretches, the business men, who treat it as a madness : ** As wou d God, tho wretches that despise Service of love had eares al so long As had Mida, ful of covetise, . . . To teachen hem, that thf-y been in the vice * The Court of Love* about 1353, et seq. See also the Testament of Love. And lovers not, although they hold hern nice, . . . God yeve hem mkchauice, And every lover in his trouth avaunce." * He clearly lacks severity, so rare in southern literature. The Italians in the middle age made a virtue of joy ; and you perceive that the world of chivalry, as conceived by the French, expanded morality so as to confound it with pleasure. IV. There are other characteristics still more gay. The true Gallic literature crops up ; obscene tales, practical jokes on one's neighbor, not shrouded in the Ciceronian style of Boccaccio, but re- lated lightly by a man in good humor ; t above all, active roguery, the trick of laughing at your neighbor's expense. Chaucer displays it better than Rute- beuf, and sometimes better than La Fontaine. He does not knock his men down ; he pricks them as he pass- es, not from deep hatred or indigna- tion, but through sheer nimbleness of disposition, and quick sense of the ridic- ulous ; he throws his gibes at them by handfuls. His man of law is more a man of business than of the world : " No wher so besy a man as he ther n'as, And yet he semed besier than he was." $ His three burgesses : " Everich, for the wisdom that he can Was shapelich for to ben an alderman. For catel hadden they ynpugh and rent, And eke hir wives wolde it wel assent." Of the mendicant Friar he says : " His wallet lay beforne him in his lappe, Bret-ful of pardon come from Rome al hote." || The mockery here comes from the heart, in the French manner, without effort, calculation, or vehemence. It is so pleasant and so natural to banter one's neighbor ! Sometimes the lively vein becomes so copious, that it fur- nishes an entire comedy, indelicate cer- tainly, but so free and life-like. Here is the portrait of the wife of Bath, who has buried five husbands ; * Troilus and Cressida, vol. v. iii. pp. 44, 45. t The story of the pear-tree (Merchant a Tale), and of the cradle (Reeve's Tale), for in- stance, in the Canterbury Tales. J Canterbury Tales, prologue^ p. 10, / 323. Ibid. p. 12, /. 373. || Ibid, p. a i, /. 688. 94 THE SOURCE. [BOOK I " Bold was hire face, and fayre and rede of hew, She was a worthy woman all hire live ; Housbondes at the chirche dore had she had five, Withouten other compagnie in youthe. . . . In all the parish wif ne was ther non, That to the off ring before hire shulde gon, And if ther did, certain so wroth was she, That she was out of alle charitee." * What a tongue she has ! Impertinent, full of vanity, bold, chattering, un- bridled, she silences everybody, and he Ids forth for an hour before coming to her tale. We hear her grating, high-pitched, loud, clear voice, where- with she deafened her husbands. She continually harps upon the same ideas, repeats her reasons, piles them up and confounds them, like a stubborn mule who runs along shaking and ringing his bells, so that the stunned listeners remain open-mouthed, wondering that a single tongue can spin out so many words. The subject was worth the trouble. She proves that she did well to marry five husbands, and she proves it clearly, like a woman who knew it, because she had tried it : " God bad us for to wex and multiplie ; That gentil text can I wel understand ; Eke wel I wot, he sayd, that min husbond Shuld leve fader and moder, and take to me ; But of no noumbre mention made he, Of bigamie or of octogamie ; Why shuld men than speke of it viianie ? LO here the wise king dan Solomon, I trow he hadde wives mo than on, (As wolde God it leful were to me To be refreshed half so oft as he,) Which a gift of God had he for alle his wives? . . . Blessed be God that I have wedded five. Welcome the sixthe whan that ever he shall. . . . He (Christ) spake to hem that wold live par- fitly, And lordings (by your leve), that am nat I J I wol bestow the flour of all myn age In th' actes and the fruit of mariage. . An husbond wol I have, I wol not lette, Which shal be both my dettour and my thrall, m And have his tribulation withall Upon his flesh, while that I am his wif." t Here Chaucer has the freedom of Moliere, and we possess it no longer. His good wife justifies marriage in terms just as technical as Sganarelle. It behoves us to turn the pages quickly, and follow in the lump only this Odys- * Canterbury Tales, ii. prologue, p. 14, /. 460- t Ibid. ii. Wife of Bath's Prologue, p. 168, ,. 5610-5739. sey of marriages. The experienced wife, who has journeyed through life with five husbands, knows the art of taming them, and related how she per- secuted them with jealousy, suspicion,, grumbling, quarrels, blows given and received ; how the husband, check- mated by the continuity of the tempest, stooped at last, accepted the halter, and turned the domestic mill like a conjugal and resigned ass : " For as an hors, I coude bite and whine ; I coude plain, and I was in the gilt. . . . I plained first, so was our werre ystint. They were ful glad to excusen hem ful blrve Of thing, the which they never agilt hir live. . . . I swore that all my walking out by night Was for to espien wenches that he dight. . . For though the pope had sitten hem beside, I wold not spare hem at hir owen bord. . . But certainly I made folk swiche chere, That in his owen grese I made him frie For anger, and for veray jalousie. By God, in erth I was his purgatorie, For which I hope his soule be in glorie." * She saw the fifth first at the burial of the fourth : " And Jankin oure clerk was on of tho: As helpe me God, whan that I saw him go Aftir the here, me thought he had a paire Of legges and of feet, so clene and faire. That all my herte I yave unto his hold. He was, I trow, a twenty winter old, And I was fourty, if I shal say soth. . . . As helpe me God, I was a lusty on, And faire, and riche, andyonge, and wellbe- gon." t " Yonge," what a word ! Was human delusion ever more happily painted ? How life-like is all, and how easy the tone. It is the satire of marriage. You will find it twenty times in Chau- cer. Nothing more is wanted to ex- haust the two subjects of French mockery, than to unite with the satire of marriage the satire of religion. We find it here ; and Rabelais is not more bitter. The monk \v ^om Chaucer paints is a hypocrite, a oily fellow, who knows good inns and jovial hosts better than the poor and the hospitals : " A Frere there was, a wanton and a mery . Ful wel beloved, and familier was he With frankeleins over all in his contree, And eke with worthy wimmen of the toun. Full swetely herde he confession, And pleasant was his absolution. * Ibid. ii. p. 179, /. 5968-6072. t Ibid. Wife of Bath's Prologue, p. 185, 6177-6188. CHAP. Ill] THE NEW TONGUE. 95 He was an esy man to give penance, Ther as he wiste to han a good pitance : For unto a poure ordre for to give Is signe that a man is wel yshrive. . . . And knew wel the tavernes in every toui, And every hosteler and gay tapstere, Better than a lazar and a beggere. . . It is not honest, it may not avance, As for to delen with no swich pouraille, But all with riche and sellers of vitaille. . . . For many a man so hard is of his herte, He may notwepe, although him sore smerte. Therfore in stede of weping and praieres, Men mote give silver to the poure freres." * This lively irony had an exponent be- fore in Jean de Meung. But Chaucer pushes it further, and gives it life and motion. His monk begs from house to house, holding out his wallet : " In every hous he gan to pore and prie, And begged mele and chese, or elles corn. . . ' Yeve us a bushel whete, or malt, or reye, A Goddes kichel, or a trippe of chese, Or elles what vou list, we may not chese J A Goddes halfpeny, or a masse peny ; Or yeve us of your braun, if ye have any, A dagon of your blanket, leve dame. Our suster dere (lo here I write your name).' . . . And whan that he was out at dore, anon, He planed away the names everich on." t He has kept for the end of his circuit, Thomas, one of his most liberal clients. He finds him in bed, and ill ; here is excellent fruit to suck and squeeze : " ' God wot, quod he, ' laboured have I ful sore, And specially for thy salvation, Have I sayd many a precious orison. . . . I have this day ben at your chirche at messe . . . And ther I saw our dame, a, wher is she ?' "J The dame enters : " This frere ariseth up ful curtisly, And hire embraceth in his armes narwe, And kisseth hire swete and chirketh as a sparwe." ... Then, in his sweetest and most caress- ing voice, he compliments her, and says: * Thanked be God that you yaf soule and lif, Yet saw I not this day so f aire a wif In all the chirche, God so save me.' " || Have we not here already Tartuffe and Elmire ? But the monk is with a * Canterbury Tales, prologue, ii. p. 7, /. 208, tt Passim, * Ibid. The Sompnoures Tale, ii. p. 220, / 7319-7340. t Ibid* p. 221, /. 73%. Ibid. p. 22 r, /. 7384. II Ibid. ii. The Sompnoures Tale, p. 222, /. 7389. farmer, and can go to work more quick ly.and directly. When the compli- ments ended, he thinks of the sub- stance, and asks the lady to let him talk alone with Thomas. He must inquire after the state of his soul : ' * I wol with Thomas speke a litel throw : Thise curates ben so negligent and slow To gropen tendrely a conscience. . . . Now, dame,' quod he, ' jeo vous die san9 doute, Have I nat of a capon but the liver, And of your white bred nat but a shiver, And after that a rested pigges hed (But I ne wolde for me fcf beest were ded\ Than had I with you homlj suffisance. I am a man of litel sustenance, My spirit hath his fostring in the Bible. My body is ay so redy and penible To waken, that my stomak is destroied.' " * Poor man, he raises his hands to heav- en, and ends with a sigh. The wife tells him her child died a fortnight before. Straightway he man- ufactures a miracle ; could he earn his money in any better way ? He had a revelation of this death in the " dor- tour " of the convent ; he saw the child carried to paradise ; he rose with his brothers, " with many a tere trilling on our cheke," and they sang a Te Deum : " ' For, sire and dame, trusteth me right wel, Our orisons ben more effectuel, And more we seen of Cristes secree thinges Than borel folk, although that they be kinges. We live in poverte, and in abstinence, And borel folk in richesse and dispence* . * Lazer and Dives liveden diversely, And divers guerdon hadden they thei by.' " t Presently he spurts out a whole ser- mon, in a loathsome style, and with an interest which is plain enough. The sick man wearied,replies that he has al- ready given half his fortune to all kinds of monks, and yet he continually suf- fers. Listen to the grieved exclama- tion, the true indignation of the mendi- cant monk, who sees himself threaten- ed by the competition of a brother of the cloth to share his client, his reve- nue, his booty, his food-supplies : " The frere answered : ' O Thomas, dost *hou so? What nedeth you diverse freres to seche ? What nedeth him that hath a parfit leche, To sechen other leches in the toun ? * Ibid. p. 222, /. 7397-7429- t Ibid. ii. The Sompnoures Tale, p. 223, 7450-7460. 96 THE SOURCE. [BOOK I Your inconstance is your confusion. Hold ye than me, or elles our covent, To pray for you ben insufficient ? . Thomas, that jape n' is not worth a mite, Your maladie is for we han to lite.' " * Recognize the great orator; he em- ploys even the grand style to keep the supplies from being cut off : " * A, yeve that covent half a quarter otes ; And yeve that covent four and twenty grotes ; And yeve that frere a peny, and let him go : Nay, nay, Thomas, it may no thing be so. What is a ferthing worth parted on twelve Lo, eche thing that is oned in himself Is more strong, than whan it is yscatered . . Thou woldest han our labour al for nought.' " t Then he begins again his sermon in a louder tone, shouting at each word, quoting examples from Seneca and the classics, a terrible fluency, a trick of his trade, which, diligently applied, must draw money from the patient. He asks for gold, " to make our clois- tre," " . . . ' And yet, God wot, uneth the funda- ment Parf ourmed is, ne of our pavement N' is not a tile yet within our wones ; By God, we owen fourty pound for stones. Now help Thomas, for him that harwed helle, For elles mote we oure bokes selle, And if ye lacke oure predication, Than goth this world all to destruction. For who so fro this world wold us bereve. So God me save, Thomas, by your leve, He wold bereve out of this world the sonne.' " t In the end, Thomas in a rage promises him a gift, tells him to put his hand in the bed and take it, and sends him away duped, mocked, and covered with filth. We have descended now to popular farce : when amusement must be had at any price, it is sought, as here, in broad jokes, even in filthiness. We can see how these two coarse and vig- orous plants have blossomed in the dung of the middle age. Planted by the sly fellows of Champagne and Ile- de-France, watered by the trouveres, they were destined fully to expand, speckled and ruddy, in the large hands of Rabelais. Meanwhile Chaucer plucks his nosegay from it. Deceived * Canterbury Tales, ii. The SompnoTires Tale, p. 226, /. 7536-7544. t Ibid. p. 226, /. 7545-7553- t Ibid. p. 230, /. 7685-7695. husbands, mishaps in inns, accidents in bed, cuffs, kicks, and robberies, these suffice to raise a loud laugh. Side by side with noble pictures of chivalry, he gives us a train of Flemish grotesque figures, carpenters, joiners, triars, sum- moners ; blows abound, fists descend on fleshy backs : many nudities are shown ; they swindle one another out of their corn, their wives ; they pitch one another out of a window ; they brawl and quarrel. A bruise, a piece of open filthiness, passes in such society for a sign of wit. The summoner, being rallied by the friar, gives him tit for tat : " ' This Frere bosteth that he knoweth helle, And, God it wot, that is but lite! wonder, Freres and fendes ben but litel asonder, For parde, ye han often time herd telle How that a Frere ravished was to helle In spirit ones by a visioun, And as an angel lad him up and doun, To shewen him the peines that ther were, . And unto Sathanas he lad him doun. (And now hath Sathanas,' saith he, ' a tayl Broder than of a Carrike is the sayl.) Hold up thy tayl, thou Sathanas, quod he, ....... and let the Frere see Wher is the nest of Freres in this place. And er than half a furlong way of space, Right so as bees out swarmen of an hive, Out of the devils . . . ther gonnen to drive. A twenty thousand Freres on a route, And thurgbout hell they swarmed al aboute. And com agen, as fast as they may gon.' " * Such were the coarse buffooneries of the popular imagination. V. It is high time to return to Chaucer himself. Beyond the two notable characteristics which settle his place in his age and school of poetry, there are others which take him out of his age and school. If he was romantic and gay like the rest, it was after a fashion of his own. He observes characters, notes their differences, studies the coherence of their parts, endeavors to describe living individ- ualities, a thing unheard of in his time, but which the renovators in the sixteenth century, and first among them Shakspeare, will do afterwards. Is it already the English positive common sense and aptitude for seeing the in- side of things which begin to appear ? A new spirit, almost manly, pierces through, in literature as in painting, * Ibid. Prologue, p. 217, /. 7254-7279. CHAP. III.] THE NEW TONGUE, 97 with Chaucer as with Van Eyck, with both at the same time ; no longer the childish imitation of chivalrous life * or monastic devotion, but the grave spirit of inquiry and craving for deep truths, whereby art becomes complete. For the first time, in Chaucer as in Van Eyck, the character described stands out in relief ; its parts are connected ; it is no longer an unsub- stantial phantom. You may guess its past and foretell its future action. Its externals manifest the personal and incommunicable details of its inner nature, and the infinite complexity of its economy and motion. To this day, after four centuries, that character is individualized, and typical : it remains distinct in our memory, like the crea- tions of Shakspeare and Rubens. We observe this growth in the very act. Not only does Chaucer, like Boccaccio, bind his tales into a single history ; but in addition and this is wanting in Boccaccio he begins with the portrait of all his narrators, knight, summoner, man of law, monk, bailiff or reeve, host, about thirty distinct figures, of every sex, condition, age, each painted with his disposition, face, costume, turns of speech, little significant ac- tions, habits, antecedents, each main- tained in his character by his talk and subsequent actions, so that we can dis- cern here, sooner than in any other na- tion, the germ of the domestic novel as we write it to-day. Think of the portraits of the franklin, the miller, the mendi- cant friar, and wife of Bath. There are pler.ty of others which show the broad brutalities, the coarse tricks, and the pleasantries of vulgar life, as well as the gross and plentiful feastings of sen- sual life. Here and there honest old swashbucklers, who double their fists and tuck up their sleeves ; or contented beadles, who, when they have drunk, tfil 1 speak nothing but Latin. But by the side of these there are some choice characters ; the knight, who went on a crusade to Granada and Prussia, brave and courteous : " And though that he was worthy he was wise, And of his port as meke as is a mayde. * See in The Canterbury Tales the Rhyme of Sir Topas, a parody on the chivalric his- tories. "Each character there seems a precur- sor of Cervantes. He never yet no vilanie ne sayde In alle his lif, unto no manere \yight, He was a veray parfit gentil knight." * " With him, ther was his sone, a yonge Squier. A lover, and a lusty bacheler, With lockes crull as they were laide in presse Of twenty yere of age he was I gesse. Of his stature he was of even lengthe> And wonderly deliver, and grete of strei.gthe. And he hadde be somtime in chevachie, In Flaundres, in Artois, and in Picardie, And borne him wel, as of so litel space, In hope to stonden in his ladies grace. Embrouded was he, as it were a mede Alle ful of fresshe floures, white and rede. Singing he was, or floyting alle the day, He was as fresshe, as is the moneth of May. Short was his goune, with sieves long and wide. Wel coude he sitte on hors, and fayre ride. He coude songes make, and wel endite, Juste and eke dance, and wel pourtraie and write. So hote he loved, that by nightertale He slep no more than doth the nightingale. Curteis he was, lowly and servisable, And carf befor his fader at the table." t There is also a poor and learned clerk of Oxford ; and finer still, and more worthy of a modern hand, the Prioress, " Madame Eglantine," who as a nun, a maiden, a great lady, is ceremonious, and shows signs of exquisite taste. Would a better be found nowadays in a German chapter, amid the most modest and lively bevy of sentimental and literary canonesses ? " Ther was also a Nonne, a Prioresse, That of hire smiling was ful simple and coy Hire gretest othe n'as but by Seint Eloy ; And she was cleped Madame Eglantine. Ful wel she sange the service devine, Entuned in hire nose ful swetely ; And Frenche she spake ful fayre and fetisly After the scole of Stratford-atte-bowe, For Frenche of Paris, was to hire unknewe. At mete was she wel ytaughte withalle ; She lette no morsel from hire lippes falle, Ne wette hire fingres in hire sauce depe. Wel coude she carie a morsel, and wel kcpe, Thatte no drope ne fell upon hire brest. In curtesie Was sette ful moche hire lest. Hire over lippe wiped she so clene, That in hire cuppe was no ferthing sene Of grese, whan she dronken hadde hire draught, Ful semely after hire mete she raught. And sikerly she was of grete disport And ful plesant, and amiable of port, And peined hire to contrefeten chere Of court, and ben estatelich of manere, And to ben holden digne of reverence." t * Prologue to Canterbury Tales, ii. p. 3, /. 68-72. f Ibid. 79-100. $ Ibid> p. 4, /. 118-141 5 THE SOURCE. [BOOK L Are you offended by these provincial affectations ? Not at all ; it is delight- ful to behold these nice and pretty wavs, these little affectations, the wag- gery and prudery, the half-worldly half- monastic smile. We inhale a delicate feminine perfume, preserved and grown old under the stomacher : " But for to speken of hire conscience, She was so charitable and so pitous, She wolde wepe if that she saw a mous Caughte in a trappe, if it were ded or bledde. Of smale houndes hadde she, that she fedde With rosted flesh, and milk, and wastel brede. But sore wept she if on of hem were dede, Or if men smote it with a yerde smert : Ai;d all was conscience and tendre herte." * Many elderly ladies throw themselves into such affections as these, for lack of others. Elderly ! what an objection- able word have I employed ! She was not elderly : ** Ful semely hire wimple ypinched was, Hire nose tretis ; hire even grey as glas ; Hire mouth ful smale, and thereto soft and red; But sikerly she hadde a fayre forehed. It was almost a spanne brode I trowe ; For hardily she was not undergrowe. Ful fetise was hire cloke, as I was ware. Of small corall aboute hire arm she bare A pair of bedes, gauded al with grene ; And thereon heng a broche of gold ful shene, On whiche was first ywritten a crouned A, And after, Amor vincit omnia" t A pretty ambiguous device, suitable either for gallantry or devotion ; the lady was both of the world and the cloister : of the world, you may see it in her dress ; of the cloister, you gather it from " another Nonne also with hire hadde she, that was hire chapelleine, and Preestes thre ; " from the Ave Maria which she sings, the long edifying stories which she relates. She is like a fresh, sweet, and ruddy cherry, made to ripen in the sun, but which, preserved in an ecclesiastical jar, has become candied and insipid in the syrup. Such is the power of reflection which begins to dawn, such the high art. Chaucer studies here rather than aims at amusement ; he ceases to gossip, and thinks ; instead of surrendering himself to the facility of flowing im- provisation, he plans. Each tale is * Prologue to Canterbury Talesy ii. p. 5, /. 142-? so. t Ibid. /. 151-162 suited to the teller : the young squire relates a fantastic and Oriental history ; the tipsy miller a loose and comical story ; the honest clerk the touching legend of Griselda. All these tales are bound together, and that much better than by Boccaccia, by little veritable incidents, which spring from the characters of the personages, and such as we light upon in our travels. The horsemen ride on in good humor in the sunshine, in the open country ; they converse. The miller has drunk too much ale, and will speak, " and for no man forbere." The cook goes to sleep on his beast, and they play prac- tical jokes on him. The monk and the summoner get up a dispute about their respective lines of business. The host restores peace, makes them speak or be silent, like a man who has long presided in the inn parlor, and who has often had to check brawlers. They pass judgment on the stories they lis- ten to : declaring that there are ftw Griseldas in the world ; laughing at the misadventures of the tricked car- penter ; drawing a lesson from the moral tale. The poem is no longer, as in the contemporary literature, a mere procession, but a painting in which the contrasts are arranged, the attitudes chosen, the general effect calculated, so that it becomes life and motion ; we forget ourselves at the sight, as in the case of every life-like work ; and we long to get on horseback on a fine sunny morning, and canter along green meadows with the pilgrims to the shrine of the good saint of Canter- bury. Weigh the value of the words "general effect." According as we plan it or not, we enter on our matu- rity or infancy? The whole future lies in these two words. Savages or half savages, warriors of the Heptarchy or knights of the middle age ; up to this period, no one had reached to this point. They had strong emotions, tender at times, and each expressed them according to the original gift of his race, some by short cries, others by continuous babble. But they did not command or guide their impressions ; they sang or conversed by impulse, at random, according to the bent of their disposition, leaving their ideas to pre- CHAP. III.] THE NEW TONGUE. 99 sent themselves as they might, and when they hit upon order, it was igno- rantly and involuntarily. Here for the first time appears a superiority of intellect, which at the instant of conception suddenly halts, rises above itself, passes judgment, and says to itself, "This phrase tells the same thing as the last remove it; these two ideas are disjointed connect them ; this description is feeble re- consider it." When a man can speak thus he has an idea, not learned in the schools, but personal and practical, of the human mind, its process and needs, and of things also, their composition and combinations ; he has a style, that is, he is capable of making every thing understood and seen by the human mind. He can extract from every object, landscape, situation, character, the special and significant marks, so as to group and arrange them, in order to compose an artificial work which surpasses the natural work in its purity and completeness. He is capable, as Chaucer was, of seeking out in the old common forest of the middle ages, stories and legends, to replant them in his own soil, and make them send out new shoots. He has the right and the power, as Chaucer had, of copying and translating, because by dint of retouch- ing he impresses on his translations and copies his original mark ; he re- creates what he imitates ; because through or by the side of worn-out fancies and monotonous stories, he can display, as Chaucer did, the charming ideas of an amiable and elastic mind, the thirty master-forms of the four- teenth century, the splendid freshness of the verdurous landscape and spring- time of England. He is not far from conceiving an idea of truth and life. He is on the brink of independent thought and fertile discovery. This was Chaucer's position. At the dis- tance of a century and a half, he has affinity with the poets of Elizabeth * by his gallery of pictures, and with the ^ * Tennyson, in his Dream of Fair Women, sings : " Dan Chaucer, the first warbler, whose sweet breath Preluded those melodious bursts, that fill The spacious times of great Elizabeth With sounds that echo still."- TR. reformers of the sixteenth century by his portrait of the good parson. Affinity merely. He advanced a few steps beyond the threshold of his art, but he paused at the end of the vestibule. He half opens the great door of the temple, but does not take his seat there ; at most, he sat down in it only at intervals. In Arctic and Palamon, in Troihis and Cressicta, *:-e sketches sentiments, but does not create characters ; he easily and naturally traces the winding course of events and conversations, but does not mark the precise outline of a striking figure. If occasionally, as in the description 01 the temple cf Mars, after the Thf.ka.id of Statins, feeling at his back the glow- ing breeze of poetry, he draws* out his feet, clogged with the mud of the mid- dle age, and at a .bound stands upon the poetic plain on which Statius imitated Virgil and equalled Lucan, he, at other times, again falls back into the childish gossip of the trouveres, or the dull gabble of learned clerks to " Dan Phebus or Apollo-Delphicus." Else where, a commonplace remark on art intrudes in the midst of an impassioned description. He uses three thousand verses to conduct Troilus to his first interview. He is like a precocious and poetical child, who mingles in his love- dreams quotations from his grammar and recollections of his alphabet.* Even in the Canterbury Tales he repeats himself, unfolds artless developments, forgets to concentrate his passion or his idea. He begins a jest, and scarcely ends it. He dilutes a bright coloring in a monotonous stanza. His voice is like that of a boy breaking into man- hood. At first a manly and firm accent is maintained, then a shrill sweet sound shows that his growth is not finished, and that his strength is subject to weakness. Chaucer sets out as if to quit the middle age ; but in the end he is there still. To-day he composes the Canterbury Tales ; yesterday he was translating the Roman de la Rose. To-day * Speaking of Cressida, iv., book i. p. 236, he says : " Right as our first letter is now an a, In beautie first so stood she makeles, Her goodly looking gladed all the prees, Nas never scene thing to be praised so derre. Nor under cloude blacke so bright a sterre. THE SOURCE. [BOOK I he is studying the complicated machin- ery of the heart, discovering the issues of primitive education or of the ruling- disposition, and creating the comedy of manners ; to-morrow, he will have no pleasure but in curious events, smooth allegories, amorous discussions, imitated from the French, or learned moralities from the ancients. Alter- nately he is an observer and a trouvere ; instead of the step he ought to have advanced, he has but made a half- step. Who has prevented him, and the others who surround him ? We meet with the obstacle in the tales he has translated of Melibeus, of the Parson, in his Testament of Love ; in short, so long as he writes verse, he is at his ease ; as soon as he takes to prose, a sort of chain winds around his feet and stops him. His imagination is free, and his reasoning a slave. The rigid scholastic divisions, the mechnni- cal manner of arguing and replying, the ergo, the Latin quotations, the authority of Aristotle and the Fathers, come and weigh down his budding thought. His native invention disap- pears under the discipline imposed. The servitude is so heavy, that even in the work of one cf his contemporaries, f"he Testament of Love, which, for a long time, was believed to be written by Chaucer, amid the most touching plaints and the most smarting pains, the beautiful ideal lady, the heavenly mediator who appears in a vision, Love, sets her theses, establishes that the cause of a cause is the cause of the thing caused, and reasons as pedanti- cally as they would at Oxford. In what can talent, even feeling, end, when it is kept down by such shack- les ? What succession of original truths and new doctrines could be found and proved, when in a moral tale, like that of Melibeus anJ his wife Prudence, it was thought necessary to establish a formal controversy, to quote Seneca and Job, to forbid tears, to bring forward the weeping Christ to authorize tears, to enumerate every proof, to call in Solomon, Cassiodorus, and Cato ; in short, to write a book for schools? The public cares only for pleasant and lively thoughts ; not serious and gene- ral ideas ; these latter are for a special class only. As soon as Chaucer gets into a reflective mood, straightway Saint Thomas, Peter Lombard, the manual of sins, the treatise on defini- tion and syllogism, the army of the ancients and of the Fathers, descend from their glory, enter his brain, speak in his stead ; and the trouvere's pleas- ant voice becomes the dogmatic and sleep-inspiring voice of a doctor. In love and satire he has experience, and he invents ; in what regards morality and philosophy he has learning, and copies. For an instant, by a solitary leap, he entered upon the close obser- vation and the genuine study of man ; he could not keep his ground, he did not take his seat, he took a poetic ex- cursion ; and no one followed him. The level of the century is lower ; he is on it himself for the most part. He is in the company of narrators like Froissart, of elegant speakers like Charles of Orleans, of gossipy and bar- ren verse-writers like Gower, Lydgate, and Occleve. There is no fruit, but frail and fleeting blossom, many useless branches, still more dying or dead branches ; such is this literature. And why ? Because it had no longer a root ? after three centuries of effort, a heavy instrument cut it underground. This instrument was the Scholastic Philos- ophy. VI. Beneath every literature there is a philosophy. Beneath every work of art is an idea of nature and of life ; this idea leads the poet. Whether the au- thor knows it or not, he writes in order to exhibit it; and the characters which he fashions, like the events which he arranges, only serve to bring to light the dim creative conception which raises and combines them. Under- lying Homer appears the noble life of heroic paganism and of happy Greece'. Underlying Dante, the sad and violent life of fanatical Catholicism and of the much-hating Italians. From either we might draw a theory of man and of the . beautiful. It is so with others ; and this is how, according to the variations, the birth, blossom, decline, or slug- gishness of the master-idea, literature varies, is born, flourishes, degenerates, comes to an end. Whoever plants the one, plants the other : whoever under CHAP. III.] THE NEW TONGUE. mines the one, undermines the other. Place in all the minds of any age a new grand idea of nature and life, so that they feel and produce it with their whole heart and strength, and you will see them, seized with the craving to express it, invent forms of art and groups of figures. Take away from these minds every grand new idea of nature and life, and you will see them, deprived of the craving to express all- important thoughts, copy, sink into silence, or rave. What has become of these all-impor- tant thoughts. What labor worked them out ? What studies nourished them ? The laborers did not lack zeal. In the twelfth century the ener- gy of their minds was admirable. At Oxford there were thirty thousand scholars. No building in Paris could contain the crowd of Abelard's disci- ples ; when he retired to solitude, they accompanied him in such a multitude, that the desert became a town. No difficulty repulsed them. There is a story of a young boy, who, though beaten by his master, was wholly bent on remaining with him, that he might still learn. When the terrible ency- clopedia of Aristotle was introduced, though disfigured and unintelligible, it was devoured. The only question pre- sented to them, that of universals, so abstract and dry, so embarrassed by Arabic obscurities and Greek subtilties, during centuries, was seized upon eagerly. Heavy and awkward as was the instrument supplied to them, I mean syllogism, they made themselves masters of it, rendered it still more heavy, plunged in into every object and in every direction. They con- structed monstrous books, in great numbers, cathedrals of syllogism, of unheard of architecture, of prodigious finish, heightened in effect by intensity of intellectual power, which the whole sum of human labor has only twice been able to match.* These young * Under Proclus and under Hegel. Duns Scotus, at the age of thirty-one, died, leaving beside his sermons and commentaries, twelve 'olio volumes, in a small close handwriting, in A style like Hegel's, on the same subject as Proclus treats of. Similarly with Saint Thomas and the whole train of schoolmen. No idea can be formed of such a labor before handling ;he books themselves. and "valiant minds thought they had found the temple of truth ; they rushed at it headlong, in legions, breaking in the doors, chambering over the walls, leaping into the interior, and so found themselves at the bottom of a moat. Three centuries of labor at the bottom of this black moat added not one idea to the human mind. For consider the questions which they treat of. They seem to be march- ing, but are merely markinr; ime. People would say, to see them moil and toil, that they will educe from heart and brain some great original creed, and yet all belief was imposed upon them from the outset. The sys- tem was made ; they could only ar- range and comment upon it. The con- ception comes not from them, but from Constantinople. Infinitely com- plicated and subtle as it is, the supreme work of Oriental mysticism ;,id Greek metaphysics, so disproportioned to their young understanding, they exhaust themselves to reproduce it, and more- over burden their unpractised hands with the weight of a logical instrument which Aristotle created for theory and not for practice, and which ought to have remained in a cabinet of philoso- phical curiosities, without being ever car- ried into the field of action. " Whether the divine essence engendered the Son, or was engendered by the Father ; why the three persons together are not greater than one alone ; attributes de- termine persons, not substance, that is, nature ; how properties can exist in the nature of God, and not determine it ; if created spirits are local and can be circumscribed ; if God can know more things than Pie is aware of; " * these are the ideas which they moot : what truth could issue thence ? From hand to hand the chimera grows, and spreads wider its gloomy wings. " Can God cause that, the place and body being retained, the body shall have no posi- tion, that is, existence in place? Whether the impossiblity of being en- gendered is a constituent property of the First Person of the Trinity Whether identity, similitude, and equal- ity are real relations in God." t Duns * Peter Lombard ; Book of Sentences. It wa the classic of the middle age. t Duns Scotus, ed. 1639. 102 THE SOURCE. [BOOK I Scotus distinguishes three kinds of matter : matter which is firstly first, secondly first, thirdly first. According to him, we must clear this triple hedge of thorny abstractions in order to un- derstand the production of a sphere of brass. Under such a regimen, imbecility soon makes its appear- ance. Saint Thomas himself considers, " whether the body of Christ arose with its wounds, whether this body moves with the motion of the host and the chalice in consecration, whether at the first instant of concep- tion Christ had the use of free judg- ment, whether Christ was slain by Himself or by another ? " Do you think you are at the limits of human folly ? Listen. He considers " whether the dove in which the Holy Spirit ap- peared was a real animal, whether a glorified body can occupy one and the same place at the same time as another glorified body, whether in the state of innocence all children were mascu- line ? " I pass over others as to the digestion of Christ, and some still more untranslatable.* This is the point reached by the most esteemed doctor, the most judicious mind, the Bossuet of the middle age. Even in this ring of inanities the answers are laid down. Roscellinus and Abelard were excom- municated, exiled, imprisoned, because they swerved from it. There is a com- plete minute dogma which closes all issues ; there is no means of escaping ; after a hundred wriggles and a hundred efforts, you must come and tumble into a formula. If by mysticism you try to fly over their heads, if by experi- ence you endeavor to creep beneath, powerful talons await you at your exit. The wise man passes for a magician, the enlightened man for a heretic. The Waldenses, the Catharists, the dis- ciples of John of Parma, were burned ; Roger Bacon died only just in time, otherwise he might have been burned. * Utrum angelus diligat se ipsum dilectione naturali vel electiya ? Utrum in statu innocen- tise fuerit generatio per coituin ? Utrum omnes fuissent nati in sexu masculine? Utrum cog- nitio angeli posset dici matutina et vespertina ? Utrum martyribus aureoia debeatur ? Utrum virgo Maria fuerit virgo in concipiendo? Utrum remanserit virgo post partum? The reader may look out in the text the reply to these last two questions. (S. Thomas, Sumina Theolo- gica % ed. 1677.) Under this constraint men ceased to think ; for he who speaks of thought, speaks of an effort at invention, an in- dividual creation, an energetic action. They recite a lesson, or sing a cate- chism ; even in paradise,even in ecstasy and the divinest raptures of love. Dante thinks himself bound to show an exact memory and a scholastic orthodoxy. How then with the rest ? Some, like Raymond Lully, set about inventing an instrument of reasoning to serve in place of the understanding. About i.he fourteenth century, under the blows of Occam, this verbal science began to totter ; they saw that its entities were only words ; it was discredited. In 1367, at Oxford, of thirty thousand students, there remained six thou- sand ; * they still set their " Barbara and Felapton," but- only in the way of routine. Each one in turn mechani- cally traversed the petty region of threadbare cavils, scratched himself in the briars of quibbles, and burdened himself with his bundle of texts ; noth- ing more. The vast body of science which was to have formed and vivified the whole thought of man, was reduced to a text-book. So, little by little, the conception which fertilized and ruled all others, dried up ; the deep spring, whence flowed all poetic streams, was found empty ; science furnished nothing more to the world. What further works could the world produce ? As Spain, later on, renewing the middle- age, after having shone splendidly and foolishly by her chivalry and devotion, by Lope de Vega and Calderon, Loyola and St. Theresa, became enervated through the Inquisition and through casuistry, and ended by sinking into a brutish silence ; so the middle age, outstripping Spain, after displaying the senseless heroism of the crusades, ar, J the poetical ecstasy of the cloister, aL ter producing chivalry and saintship, Francis of Assisi, St. Louis, and Dante, languished under the Inquisition and the scholastic learning, and became extinguished in idle raving and inanity. * The Rev. Henry Anstey, in his Introduc- tion to Munimenta Academica, Lond., 1868, says that " the statement of Richard of Armagh that there were in the thirteenth century 30,000 scholars at Oxford is almost incredible." P. xlviii. TR. CHAP. Ill] THE NEW TONGUE. Must we quote all these good peo- ple who speak without having any thing to say ? You may find them in Warton;* dozens of translators, im- porting the poverties of French litera- ture, and imitating imitations ; rhym- ing chroniclers, most commonplace of mei t, whom we only read because we must accept history from every quar- ter, even from imbeciles ; spinners and spinsters of didactic poems, who pile up verses on the training of falcons, on heraldry, on chemistry; editors of moralities, who invent the same dream over again for the hundredth time, and get themselves taught universal history by the goddess Sapience. Like the writers of the Latin decadence, these folk only think of copying, com- piling, abridging, constructing m text- books, in rhymed memoranda, the en- cyclopedia of their times. Listen to the most illustrious, the grave Gower "morall Gower," as he was called ! t Doubtless here and there he contains a remnant of brilliancy and grace. He is like an old secretary of a Court of Love, Andre le Chapelain or any other, who would pass the day in solemnly registering the sentences of ladies, and in the evening, partly asleep on his desk, would see in a half- dream their sweet smile and their beautiful eyes.} The ingenious but exhausted vein of Charles of Orleans still flows in his French ballads. He has the same fondling delicacy, almost a little affected. The poor little poetic spring flows yet in thin transparent streamlets over the smooth pebbles, and murmurs with a babble, pretty, but so low that at times you cannot bear it. But dull is the rest! His great poem, Confessio Amantis, is a dialogue between a lover and his con- fessor, imitated chiefly from Jean de Meung, having for object, like the Roman de la Rose, to explain and classify the impediments of love. The superannuated theme is always reappearing, covered by a crude erudi- tion. You will find here an exposition of hermetic science, lectures on the philosophy of Aristotle, a treatise on * History of English Poetry, vol. H. t Contemporary with Chaucer. The Con- fessio Amantis dates from 1393. t History ofRosiphele. Ballads. politics, a litany of ancient and modern legends gleaned from the compilers, marred in the passage by the pedantry of the schools and the ignorance of the age. It is a cart-load of scholastic rubbish ; the sewer tumbles upon this feeble spirit, which of itself was flowing clearly, but now, obstructed by tiles, bricks, plaster, ruins from all quarters of the globe, drags on darkened and sluggish. Gower, one of the most learned of his time,* supposed that Latin was invented by the old prophet- ess Carmentis ; that the grammarians, Aristarchus, Donatus, and Didymus, regulated its syntax, pronunciation, and prosody ; that it was adorned by Cicero with the flowers of eloquence and rhetoric; then enriched by translations from the Arabic, Chaldaean, and Greek ; and that at last, after much labor of celebrated writers, it attained its final perfection in Ovid, the poet of love. Elsewhere he discovers that Ulysses learned rhetoric from Cicero, magic from Zoroaster, astronomy from Ptol- emy, and philosophy from Plato. And what a style! so long, so dull,t so drawn out by repetitions, the most minute details, garnished with refer- ences to his text, like a man who, with his eyes glued to his Aristotle and his Ovid, a slave of his musty parchments, can do nothing but copy and string his rhymes together. Schoolboys even in old age, they seem to believe that every truth, all wit, is in their great wood- bound books ; that they have no need to find out and invent for themselves ; that their whole business is to repeat; that this is, in fact, man's business. The scholastic system had enthroned the dead letter, and peopled the wcrld with dead understandings. After Gower come Occleve and Lydgate.f " My father Chaucer would willingly have taught me," says Oc- cleve, "but I was dull, and learned little or nothing." He paraphrased in verse a treatise of Egidius, on govern- ment ; these are moralities. There are others, on compassion, after Augus- tine, and on the art of dying ; then love tales ; a letter from Cupid, dated * Warton, ii. 240. t See, for instance, his description of the sun's crown, the most poetical passage in book vii. t 1420, f43o 104 THE SOURCE. [BOOK 1 from his court in the month of May. Love and moralities,* that is, abstrac- tions and affectation, were the taste of the time ; and so, in the time of Le- brun, of Esmenard, at the close of contemporaneous French literature,! they produced collections of didactic poems, and odes to Chloris. As for the monk Lydgate, he had some talent, some imagination, especially in high- toned descriptions : it was the last flicker of a dying literature ; gold re- ceived a golden coating, precious stones were placed upon diamonds, ornaments multiplied and made fantastic; as in their dress and buildings, so in their style. \ Look at the costumes of Henry IV. and Henry V., monstrous heart-shaped or horn-shaped head- dresses, long sleeves covered with ridic- ulous designs, the phimes, and again the oratories, armorial tombs, little gaudy chapels, like conspicuous flowers under the naves of the Gothic perpendicular. When we can no more speak to the soul, we try to speak to the eyes. This is what Lydgate does, nothing more. Pageants or shows are required of him, " dis- guisings " for the Company of gold- smiths ; a mask before the king, a May-entertainment for the sheriffs of London, a drama of the creation for the festival of Corpus Christi, a mas- querade, a Christmas show; he gives the plan and furnishes the verses. In this matter he never runs dry; two hundred and fifty-one poems are attri- buted to him. Poetry thus conceived becomes a manufacture ; it is composed by the yard. Such was the judgment of the Abbot of St. Albans, who, having got him to translate a legend in verse, pays a hundred shillings for the whole, verse, writing, and illuminations, plac- ing the three works on a level. In fact, no more thought was required for the one than for the others. His three g /eat works, The Fall of Princes, The D, tfruction of Troy, and The Siege of Thebes, are only translations or para- phrases, verbose, erudite, descriptive, a kind of chivalrous processions, color- ed for the twentieth time, in the same * This is the title Froissart (1397) gave to his collection when presenting it to Richard II. t Lebrun, 1729-1807; Esmenard, 1770-1812. % Lydgate, The Destruction of Troy de- scription of Hector's chapel. Especially read the Pageants or Solemn Entries, manner, on the same vellum. The only point which rises above the average, at least in the first poem, is the idea of Fortune,* and the violent vicissitudes of human life. If there was a philosophy at this time, this was it. They willingly narrated horrible and tragic histories ; gather them from antiquity down to their own day ; they were far from the trusting an 1 passionate piety which felt the hand of God in the government of the world ; they saw that the world went blunder- ing here and there like a drunken man. A sad and gloomy world, amused by eternal pleasures, oppressed with a dull misery, which suffered and feared without consolation or hope, isolated between the ancient spirit in which it had no living hope, and the modern spirit whose active science it ignored. Fortune, like a black smoke, hovers over all, and shuts out the sight of heaven. They picture it as follows : " Her face semyng cruel and terrible And by disdayne menacing of loke, . . . An hundred handes she had, of eche part . . Some of her handes lyft up men alofte, To hye estate of worldlye dignite ; Another hande griped ful unsofte, Which cast another in grete adversite." f They look upon the great unhappy ones, a captive king, a dethroned queen, assassinated princes, noble cit- ies destroyed,} lamentable spectacles as exhibited in Germany and France, and of which there will be plenty in England; and they can only regard them with a harsh resignation. Lyd- gate ends by reciting a commonplace of mechanical piety, by way of conso- lation. The reader makes the sign of the cross, yawns, and goes away. In fact, poetry and religion are no longer capable of suggesting a genuine senti- ment. Authors copy, and copy again, Hawes copies the House of ' Fame of Chaucer, and a sort of allegorical amor- ous poem, after the Roman de la Rose. Barclay || translates the Mirror -f Good * See the Vision of Fortune, a gigantic fig- ure. In this painting he shows both feeling and talent. t Lydeate, Fall of Princes. Warton, ii. 280. t The^War of the Hussites, The Hundred Years' War, and The War of the Roses. About 1506. The Temple of Glass. Passe* tyrne of Pleasure. || About 1500. CHAP. III.] THE NEW TONGUE. Manners and the Ship of Fools. Contin- ually we meet with dull abstractions, used up and barren ; it is the scholastic phase of poetry. If anywhere there is an accent of greater originality, it is in this Ship of Fools^ and in Lydgate's Dance of Death, bitter buffooneries, sad gayeties, which, in the hands of artists and poets, were having their run throughout Europe. They mock at each other, grotesquely and gloomily ; poor, dull, and vulgar figures, shut up in a ship, or made to dance on their tomb to the sound of a fiddle, played by a grinning skeleton. At the end of all this mouldy talk, and amid the disgust which they have conceived for each other, a clown, a tavern Tribou- let,* composer of little jeering and mac- aronic verses, Skelton,t makes his appearance, a virulent pamphleteer, who, jumbling together French, Eng- * The court fool in Victor Hugo's drama of Le Rot s* amuse. TR. t Died 1529; Poet-Laureate 1489. His Bouge of Court, his Crown of Laurel, his Elegy on the Death of the Earl of Northitm- berland, are well written, and belong to offi- cial poetry. lish, Latin phrases, with slang, and fashionable words, invented words, in- termingled with short rhymes, fabri* cates a sort of literary mud, with which he bespatters Wolsey and the bishops. Style, metre, rhyme, language, art of every kind, is at an end ; beneath the vain parade of official style there is only a heap of rubbish. Yet, as he says, " Though my rhyme be ragged, Tattered and gagged, Rudely rain-beaten, Rusty, moth-eaten, Yf ye take welle therewithe, It hath in it some pithe." It is full of political animus, sensual liveliness, English and popular in- stincts ; it lives. It is a coarse life, still elementary, swarming with igno- ble vermin, like that which appears in a great decomposing body. It is life, nevertheless, with its two great features which it is destined to display : the hatred of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, which is the Reformation ; the return to the senses and to natural life, which is the Renaissance. HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, BOOK II. THE RENAISSANCE. CHAPTER I. i. MANNERS OF THE TIME. I. FOR seventeen centuries a deep and sad thought had weighed upon the spirit of man, first to overwhelm it, then to exalt and to weaken it, never loosing its hold throughout this long space of time. It was the idea of the weakness and decay of the human race. Greek corruption, Roman oppression, and the dissolution of the ancient world, had given rise to it ; it, in its turn, had produced a stoical resigna- tion, an epicurean indifference, Alexan- drian mysticism, and the Christian hope in the kingdom of God. " The world is evil and lost, let us escape by insen- sibility, amazement, ecstasy." Thus spoke the philosophers ; and religion, comii >g after, announced, that the end was near : " Prepare, for the kingdom ot God is at hand." For a thousand years universal ruin incessantly drove still deeper into their hearts this gloomy thought ; and when man in the feudal state raised himself, by sheer force oi courage and muscles, from the depths of final imbecility and general misery, he discovered his thought and his work fettered by the crushing idea, which, forbidding a life of nature and worldly hopes, erected into ideals the obedience of the monk and the dreams of fanatics. It grew ever worse and worse. For the natural result of such a conception, as of the miseries which engender it, and the discouragement which it gives rise to, is to do away with personal action, and to replace originality by submission. From the fourth century, gradually the dead letter was substitu- ted for the living faith. Christians resigned themselves into the hands of the clergy, they into the hands of the Pope. Christian opinions were subor- dinated to theologians, and theologians to the Fathers. Christian faith was reduced to the accomplishment of works, and works to the accomplish- ment of ceremonies. Religion, fluid during the first centuries, was now congealed into a hard crystal, and the coarse contact of the barbarians had deposited upon its surface a layer of idolatry : theocracy and the Inquisi- tion, the monopoly of the clergy and the prohibition of the Scriptures, the worship of relics and the sale of in- dulgences began to appear. In place of Christianity, the church; in place of a free creed, enforced orthodoxy ; in (107) roS THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II place of moral fervor, fixed religious practices ; in place of the heart and stir- ring thought, outward and mechanical discipline : such are the characteristics of the middle ages. Under this constraint thinking society had ceased to think ; philosophy was turned into a text-book, and poetry into dotage ; and mankind, slothful and crouching, delivering up their conscience and their conduct into the hands of their priests, seemed but as puppets, fit only for reciting a cat- echism and mumbling over beads.* At last invention makes another start ; and it makes it by the efforts of the lay society, which rejected theoc- racy, kept the State free, and which presently discovered, or re-discovered, one after another, the industries, sci- ences, and arts. All was renewed ; America and the Indies were added to the map of the world ; the shape of the earth was ascertained, the system of the universe propounded, modern philology was inaugurated, the experi- mental sciences set on foot, art and literature shot forth like a harvest, religion was transformed : there was no province of human intelligence and action which was not refreshed and fertilized by this universal effort. It was so great, that it passed from the innovators to the laggards, and re- formed Catholicism in the face of Protestantism which it formed. It seems as though men had suddenly opened their eyes and seen. In fact, they attain a new and superior kind of intelligence. It is the proper fea- ture of this age, that men no longer make themselves masters of objects by lits, or isolated, or through scholastic or mechanical classifications, but as a whole, in general and complete views, with the eager grasp of a sympathetic spirit, which being placed before a vast object, penetrate? it in all its parts, tries it in all its relations, appropriates and assimilates it, impresses upon itself its living and potent image, so life-like and so powerful, that it is fain to trans- late it into externals through a work of art or an action. An extraordinary * See, at Bruges, the pictures of Hemling 'fifteenth century). No paintings enable us to understand so well the ecclesiastical piety of the middle age, which was altogether like that of the Buddhists. warmth of soul, a superabundant and splendid imagination, reveries, visions, artists, believers, founders, creators, that is what such a form of intellect produces ; for to create we must have, as had Luther and Loyola, Miche* Angelo and Shakspeare, an idea, not abstract, partial, and dry, but well de- fined, finished, sensible, a true creation which acts inwardly, and struggles to appear to the light. This was Europe's grand age, and the most notable epoch of human growth. To this day we live from its sap, we only carry on its pres- sure and efforts. II. When human power is manifested so clearly and in such great works, it is no wonder if the ideal changes, and the old pagan idea reappears. It recurs, bringing with it the worship of beauty and vigor, first in Italy ; for this of all other countries in Europe, is the most pagan, and the nearest to the ancient civilization; thence in France and Spain, and Flanders,* and even in Germany; and finally in Eng- land. How is it propagated ? What revolution of manners reunited man- kind at this time, everywhere under a sentiment which they had forgotten for fifteen hundred years ? Merely that their condition had improved, and they felt it. The idea ever expresses the actual situation, and the creatures of the imagination, like the concep- tions of the mind, only manifest the the state of society and the degree of its welfare ; there is a fixed connection between what man admires and what he is. While misery overwhelms him, while the decadence is visible, and hope shut out, he is inclined to curse his life on earth, and seek consolation in another sphere. As soon as his sufferings are alleviated, his Dov/er made manifest, his prospects brightened, he begins once more to love the present life, to be self-confident," to love and praise energy, genius, all the effective faculties which labor to procure him happiness. About the twentieth year of Elizabeth's reign, the nobles gave up shield and two-handed sword for * Van Orley, Michel Ccxcie, Franz Floris. the de Vos', the Sadelers, Crispin de Pass, and the artists of Nuremberg. CHAP. I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSAA 7 CE. 109 the rapier ; * a little, almost impercep- tible fact, yet vast, for it is like the change which, sixty years ago, made us give up the sword at court, to leave us with our arms swinging about in our black coats. In fact it was the close of feudal life, and the beginning of court-life, just as to-day court-life is at an end, and the democratic reign has begun. With the two-handed swords, heavy coats of mail, feudal keeps, private warfare, permanent disorder, all the scourges of the middle age retired, and faded into the past. The English had done with the Wars of the Roses. They no longer ran the risk of being pillaged to-morrow for being rich, and hung the next day for being traitors ; they have no further need to furbish up their armor, make alliances with powerful nations, lay in stores for the winter, gather to- gether men-at-arms, scour the country to plunder r>nd hang others. t The monarchy, in England as throughout Europe, establishes peace in the com- munity,:}: and with peace appear the useful arts. Domestic comfort follows civil security ; and man, better fur- nished in his home, better protected in his hamlet, takes pleasure in his life on earth, which he has changed, and means to change. Toward the close of the fifteenth century the impetus was given ; com- merce and the woollen trade made a sudden advance, and such an enor- mous one, that cornfields were changed into pasture-lands, " whereby the in- habitants of the said town (Manchester) have gotten and turned into riches and wealthy livings," || so that in 1553, 40,000 pieces of cloth were exported in English ships. It was already the England which we see to-day, a land of green meadows, intersected by * The first carriage was in 1564. It caused much astonishment. Some said that it was " a tji^at sea-shell brought from China ; " others, l% that it was a temple in which cannibals wor- shipped the devil." t For a picture of this state of things, see Fenn's Paston Letters, \ Louis XI. in France, Ferdinand and Isa- bella in Stain, Henry VII. in Eng'and. In Italy the feudal regime ended earlier, by the establishment of republics and principalities. 1488, Act of Parliament on Enclosures. |j A Compendious Examination, 1581, by William Strafford. Act of Parliament, 1541. hedgerows, crowdc. d with cattle, and abounding in ships a manufacturing opulent land, with a people of beef- eating toilers, who enrich it while they enrich themselves. They improved agriculture to such an extent, that in half a century the produce of an acre was doubled.* They grew so rich, that at the beginning of the reign of Charles I. the Commons represented three times the wealth of the Upper House. The ruin of Antwerp by the Duke of Parma t sent to England "the third part of the merchants and manufacturers, who made silk, damask, stockings, taffetas, and serges." The defeat of the Armada and the decadence of Spain opened the seas to English merchants.J The toiling hive, who would dare, attempt, explore, act in unison, and always with profit, was about to reap its advantages and set out on its voyages, buzzing over the universe. At the base and on the summit of society, in all ranks of life, in all grades of human condition, this new welfare became visible. In 1534, considering that the streets of London were " very noyous and foul, and in many places thereof very jeopardous to all people passing and repassing, as well on horseback as on foot," Henry VIII. began the paving of the city. New streets covered the open spaces where the young men used to run races and to wrestle. Every year the number of taverns, theatres, gambling rooms, bear- gardens, increased. Before the time of Elizabeth the country-houses of gen- tlemen were little more than straw- thatched cottages, plastered with the coarsest clay, lighted only by trellises. " Howbeit," says Harrison (1580), " such as be latelie builded are com- monlie either of bricke or hard stone, or both ; their roomes large and come- lie, and houses of office further distant from their lodgings." The old wooden * Between 1377 and 1588 the increase was from two and a half to five millions. t In 1585 ; Ludovic Guicciardini. $ Henry VIII. at the beginning of his reign had but one f hip of war. Elizabeth sent out one hundred and fifty against the Armada. In 1553 was founded a company to trade with Russia. In 1578 Drake circumnavigated the globe. In 1600 the East India Company was founded. THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK IL houses were covered with plaster, "which, beside the delectable white- nesse of the stuffe itselfe, is laied on so even and smoothlie, as nothing in my judgment can be done with more ex- actnesse." * This open admiration shows from what hovels they had es- caped. Glass was at last employed for windows, and the bare walls were cov- ered with hangings, on which visitors might see, with delight and astonish- ment, plants, animals, figures. They began to use stoves, and experienced the unwonted pleasure of being warm. Harrison notes three important changes which had taken place in the farm- houses of his time : " One is, the multitude of chimnies lately erected, whereas in their yoong daies there were not above two or three, if so manie, in most up- landishe townes of the realme. . . . The second is the great (although not generall), amendment of lodging, for our fathers (yea and we ourselves also) have lien full oft upon straw pallets, on rough mats covered onelie with a sheet, under coverlets made of dagswain, or hop-harlots, and a good round log under their heads, insteed of a bolster or pillow. If it were so that the good man of the house, had within seven yeares after his marriage purchased a matteres or flockebed, and thereto a sacke of chaffe to rest his head upon, he thought himself e to be as well lodged as the lord of the towne. . . . Pillowes (said they) were thought meet onelie for women in childbed. . . . The third thing is the exchange of vessel!, as of treene platters into pewter, and - wodden spoones into silver or tin ; for so com- mon was all sorts of treene stuff in old time, that a man should hardlie find four peeces of pewter (of which one was peradventure a salt) in a good farmers house." t It is not possession, but acquisition, which gives men pleasure and sense of power; they observe sooner a small happiness, new to them, than a great nappiness which is old. It is not when all is good, but when all is better, that they see the bright side of life, and are tempted to make a holiday of it. This is why at this period they did make a holiday of it, a splendid show, so like a picture that it fostered painting in Italy, so like a piece of acting, that it produced the drama in England. Now that the axe and sword of the civil wars bad beaten down the independent no- Dility, and the abolition of the law of maintenance had destroyed the petty * Nathan Drake, Shakspeareandhis Times, 1817, i. v. 72 et passim. t Ibid. i. v. 102. royalty of each great feudal baron, th lords quieted their sombre castles, bat tlemented fortresses, surrounded by stagnant water, pierced with narrow windows, a sort of stone breastplates of no use but to preserve the life of their master. They flock into new palaces, with vaulted roofs and turrets, covered with fantastic and manifold ornaments, adorned with terraces and vast staircases, with gardens, fountains, statues, such as were the palaces of Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, half Gothic and half Italian,* whose convenience, splendor, and symmetry announced al- ready habits of society and the taste for pleasure. They came to court and abandoned their old manners ; the four meals which scarcely sufficed their former voracity were reduced to two ; gentlemen soon became refined, plac- ing their glory in the elegance and sin- gularity of their amusements, and their clothes. They dressed magnificently in splendid materials, with the luxury of men who rustle silk and make gold sparkle for the first time : doublets of scarlet satin ; cloaks of sable, costing a thousand ducats ; velvet shoes, em- broidered with gold and silver, covered with rosettes and ribbons ; boots with falling tops, from whence hung a cloud of lace, embroidered with figures of birds, animals, constellations, flowers in silver, gold, or precious stones ; orna- mented shirts costing ten pounds a piece. " It is a common thing to put a thousand goats and a hundred oxen on a coat, and to carry a whole manor on one's back." t The costumes of the time were like shrines. When Eliza- beth died, they found three thousand dresses in her wardrobe. Need we speak of the monstrous ruffs of the ladies, their puffed out dresses, their stomachers stiff with diamonds ? As a singular sign of the times, the men were more changeable and more bedecked than they. Harrison says : " Such is our mutabilitie, that to daie there is none to the Spanish guise, to morrow th French toies are most fine and delectable yer * This was called the Tudor style. Under James I., in the hands of Inigo Jones, it be* came entirely Italian, approaching the antique. t Burton, 'Anatomy of Melancholy, i2th ed. 1821. Stubbes, Anatomie of Abuses, ed. Turn* bull, 1836. CHAP. I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. IH long no such appr.rell as that which is after the high Alman fashion, by and by the Turkish maner is generallie best liked of, otherwise the Morisco gowns, the Barbarian sleeves . . . and the short French breeches. . . . And as these fashions are diverse, so likewise it is a world to see the costlinesse and the curiositie ; the excesse and the vanitie ; the pompe and the braverie ; the change and the varietie ; and finallie, the ficklenesse and the follie that is in all degrees." * Folly, it may have been, but poetry likewise. There was something more than puppyism in this masquerade of splendid costu.ne. The overflow of inner sentiment found this issue, as also in drama and poetry. It was an artistic spirit which induced it. There was an incredible outgrowth of living forms from their brains. They acted like their engravers, who give us in their frontispieces a prodigality of fruits, flowers, active figures, animals, gods, and pour out and confuse the whole treasure of nature in every corner of their paper. They must enjoy the beautiful ; they would be happy through their eyes ; they perceive in conse- quence naturally the relief and energy of forms. From the accession of Henry VIII. to the death of James I. we find nothing but tournaments, processions, public entries, masquerades. First come the royal banquets, coronation displays, large and noisy pleasures of Henry VIII. Wolsey entertains him " In so gorgeous a sort and costlie maner, that it was an heaven to behold. There wanted no dames or damosels meet or apt to danse with the maskers, or to garnish the place for the time : then was there all kind of musike and harmonie, with fine voices both of men and children. On a time the king came suddenlie thither in a maske with a dozen maskers all in garments like sheepheards, made of fine cloth of gold, and crimosin sattin paned, . . . having sixteene torch-bearers. ... In came a new banket before the king wherein were served two hundred diverse dishes, of costlie devises and subtilities. Thus passed they foorth the night with banketting, dansing, and other triumphs, to the great comfort of the king, and pleasant regard of the nobilitie there assembled." f Count, if you can, the mythological entertainments, the theatrical recep- "tions, the open-air operas played be- fore Elizabeth, James, and their great * Nathan Drake, Shakspeare and his Times, !shed (1586), 1808, 6 vols. iii. 763 et H. 6, 87. t Holin: frissim. lords. * At Kenilworth, the pageants lasted ten days. There was every thing ; learned recreations, novelties, popular plays, sanguinary spectacles; coarse farces, juggling and feats of skill, allegories, mythologies, chivalric exhibitions, rustic and national com- memorations. At the same time, in this universal outburst and sudden ex- panse, men become interested in them- selves, find their life desirable, worthy of being represented and put on the stage complete ; they play with it, de- light in looking upon it, love its ups and downs, and make of it a work of art. The queen is received by a sibyl, then by giants of the time of Arthur, then by the Lady of the Lake, Syl- vanus, Pomona, Ceres, and Bacchus, every divinity in turn presents her with the first fruits of his empire. Next day, a savage, dressed in moss and ivy, discourses before her with Echo in her praise. Thirteen bears are set fighting against dogs. An Italian acrobat performs wonderful feats be- fore the whole assembly. A rustic marriage takes place before the queen, then a sort of comic fight amongst the peasants of Coventry, who repre- sent the defeat of the Danes. As she is returning from the chase, Triton, rising from the lake, prays her, in the name of Neptune, to deliver the en- chanted lady, pursued by a cruel knight, Syr Bruse satms Pitee. Pres- ently the 'lady appears, surrounded by nymphs, followed close by Proteus, who is borne by an enormous dolphin. Concealed in the dolphin, a band of musicians with a chorus of ocean-dei- ties, sing the praise of the powerful, beautiful, chaste queen of England, t You perceive that comedy is not con- fined to the theatre ; the great of the realm and the queen herself become actors. The cravings of the imagination are so keen, that the court becomes a stage. Under James I., every year, on Twelfth-day, the queen, the chief ladies and nobles, played a piece called a Masque, a sort of allegory combined with dances, heightened in effect by decorations and costumes of great * Holinshed, iii., Reign of Henry VIII. lizabeth and James Progresses, by Nichols. by Ni illing Eliz , t Laneham's Entertainment at Killingworth Castle, 1575. Nichol's Progresses^ vol. i. London 1788. THE RENAISSANCE. [BooK II splendor, of which the mythological paintings of Rubens can alone give an idea : " The attire of the lords was from the an- tique Greek statues. On their heads they wore Persic crowns, that were with scrolls of gold plate turned outward, and wreathed about with a carnation and silver net-lawn. Their bodies were of carnation cloth of silver ; to express the naked, in manner of the Greek thorax, girt under the breasts with a broad belt of cloth of gold, fastened with jewels ; the mantles were of coloured silke ; the first, sky-colour ; the second, pearl-colour ; the third, flame colour ; the fourth, tawny. The ladies attire was of white cloth of silver, wrought with Juno's birds and fruits ; a loose under garment, full gath- ered, of carnation, striped with silver, and parted with a golden zone ; beneath that, an- other flowing garment, of watchet cloth of silver, laced with gold ; their hair carelessly bound under the circle of a rare and rich coro- net, adorned with all variety, and choice of jewels ; from the top of which flowed a trans- parent veil, down to the ground. Their shoes were azure and gold, set with rubies and dia- monds." * I abridge the description, which is like a fairy tale. Fancy that all these cos- tumes, this glitter of materials, this sparkling of diamonds, this splendor of nudities, was displayed daily at the marriage of the great, to the bold sounds of a pagan epithalamium. Think of the feasts which the Earl of Carlisle introduced, where was served rirst of all a table loaded with sumptu- ous viands, as high as a man could reach, in order to remove it presently, and replace it by another similar table. This prodigality of magnificence, these costly follies, this unbridling of the imagination, this intoxication of eye and ear, this comedy played by the lords of the realm, showed, like the pictures of Rubens, Jordaens, and th^.ir Flemish contemporaries, so open an appeal to the senses, so complete a return to nature, that our chilled and g' oomy age is scarcely able to imagine it t III. To vent the feelings, to satisfy the heart and eyes, to set free boldly on all the roads of existence the pack of appetites and instincts, this was the * Ben Jonson's works, ed. Gifford, 1816, 9 vols. Masque of Hymen, vol. vii. 76. t Certain private letters also describe the court of Elizabeth as a place where there was little piety or practice of relig'.on, and where all enormities reigned in the higl est degree. craving which the manners of the time betrayed. It was "merry England," as they called it then. It was not yet stern and constrained. It expanded widely, freely, and rejoiced to find it- self so expanded. No longer at court only was the drama found, but in the village. Strolling companies betook themselves thither, and the country folk supplied any deficit nci?s f when necessary. Shakspeare saw, before he depicted them, stupid fellows, car- penters, joiners, bellows-menders, play Pyramus and Thisbe, -represent the lion roaring as gently as any sucking dove, and the wall, by stretching out their hands. Every holiday was a pageant, in which townspeople, work- men, and children bore their parts. They were actors by nature. When the soul is full and fresh, it does not express its ideas by reasonings ; it plays and figures them ; it mimics them ; that is the true and original lan- guage, the children's tongue, the spee,:h of artists, of invention, and of joy. It is in this manner they please them- selves with songs and feasting, on all the symbolic holidays with whioh tra- dition has filled the year.* On the Sunday after Twelfth-night the labor- ers parade the streets, with their shirts over their coats, decked with ribbons, dragging a plough to the sound of music, and dancing a sword- dance ; on another day they draw in a cart a figure made of ears of corn, with songs, flutes, and drums ; on another, Father Christmas and his company ; or else they enact the history of Robin Hood, the bold archer, around the May-pole, or the legend of Saint George and the Dragon. We might occupy half a volume in describing all these holidays, such as Harvest Home, All Saints, Martinmas, Sheepshearing, above all Christmas, which lasted twelve days, and sometimes six weeks. They eat and drink, junket, tumble about, kiss the girls, ring the bells, satiate themselves with noise : coarse drunken revels, in which man is an un- bridled animal, and which are the incarnation of natural life. The Puri tans made no mistake about that, Stubbes says : * Nathan Drake, Shakspeare and his Times\ chap. v. and vi. CHAP. I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. " First, all the wilde heades of the parishe converitying together, chuse them a groum capitaine of mischeef, whan they innoble wit! the title of my Lorde of Misserule, and hy iue line ui my juuiuc ui ivjubberuu:, ciuu nyi they crown with great solemnitie, and adopt Id jurueiy uiaiesuc. ... j.iieii nave iney uieir hobbie horses, dragons, and other antiques, to- gether with their baudie pipers and thunderyng drommers, to strike up the devilles daunce withall : then marche these heathen companie towardes the churche and churche-yarde, thei~ pipers pipyng, their drommers thonderyng their stumppes dauncyng, their belles rynglyng their handkerchefes swyngyng about thei heades like madmen, their hobbie horses and othe-; ironsters skirmishyng amongest the throng; tnd in this sorte they goe to the churche (though the minister bee at praier or preachyng), dauncyng, and swingyng their handkercheefes over their heades, in the churche, like devilles incarnate, with such a confused noise, that no man can heare his owne voice. Then the fool- ishc people they looke, they stare, they laugh, they fleere, and mount upon formes and pewes, to see these goodly pageauntes, solemnized in this sort. Then after this, aboute the churche they goe againe and againe, and so forthe into the churche-yarde, where they have commonly their sommer haules, their bowers, arbours, and banquettyng houses set up, wherein they feaste, banquet, and daunce all that daie, and peradventure all that night too. And thus these terrestriall furies spend the Sabbaoth daie ! ... An other sorte of fantastical! fooles bringe to these helhoundes (the Lorde of Mis- rule and his complices) some bread, some good ale, some newe cheese, some olde cheese, some custardes, some cakes, some flaunes, some tartes, some creame, some meate, some one thing, some an other." He continues thus : _ " Against Maie, every parishe, towne and village assemble themselves together, bothe men, women, and children, olde and yong, even all indifferently ; they goe to the woodes where they spende all the night in pleasant pastymes, and in the momyng they returne, bringing with them birch, bowes, and branches of trees, to deck their assemblies withall. But their cheef- est iewell they bringe from thence is their Maie poole, whiche they bring home with great ven- eration, as thus : They have twenty or fourtie yoke of oxen, every ox havyng a sweete nose- gaie of flowers tyed on the tippe of his homes, and these oxen, drawe home this Maie poole (this stinckyng idoll rather) . . . and thus be- yng i ^ared up, they strawe the grounde aboute, oinde greene boughes about it, sett up sommer haules, bowers, and arbours hard by it ; and then fall they to banquet and feast, to leape and daunce aboute it, as the heathen people did at the dedication of their idolles. ... Of a hundred maides goyng to the woode over night, there have scarcely the third parte returned nome againe undefiled." * * Stubbes Anatomic of Abuses, p. 168 et passim . " On Shrove Tuesday," says another,* " at the sound of a bell, the folk be- come insane, thousands at a time, and forget all decency and common sense. ... It is to Satan and the devil that they pay homage and do sacrifice to in these abominable pleasures." It is in fact to nature, to the ancient Pan, to Freya, to Hertha, her sisters, to the old Teutonic deities who survived the middle age. At this period, in the temporary decay of Christianity, and the sudden advance of corporal well- being, man adored himself, and there endured no life within him but that of paganism. IV. To sum up, observe the process of ideas at this time. A few sectarians, chiefly in the towns and of the people, clung gloomily to the Bible. But the court and the men of the world sought their teachers and their heroes from pagan Greece and Rome. About 1490 t they began to read the classics ; one after the other they translated them ; it was soon the fashion to read them in the original. Queen Eliza- beth, Jane Grey, the Duchess of Nor- folk, the Countess of Arundel, and many other ladies, were conversant with Plato, Xenophon, and Cicero in the original, and appreciated them. Gradually, by an insensible change, men were raised to the level of the ;reat and healthy minds who had free- ly handled ideas of all kinds fifteen centuries before. They comprehend- ed not only their language, but their thought ; they did not repeat lessons from, but held conversations with them ; they were their equals, and found in them intellects as manly as their own. For they were not scholastic cavillers, miserable compilers, repulsive pedants, "ike the professors of jargon whom the middle age had set over them, like ;loomy Duns Scotus, whose leaves Henry VIII.s' Visitors scattered to the winds. They were gentlemen, * Hentzner's Travels in /ivz whose powerful body and fine growth bespeak her race and her vigor ; the artist did not paint moral expression as nowadays, the depth of a soul tortured and refined by three centuries of culture. They confine themselves to the body, to the extent even of speaking enthusiastically of the spinal column itself, "which is * See his sketches at Oxford, and those ol Fra Bartolomeo at Florence. See also the Martyrdom of St. Laurence, by Baccio Bandi- nelli. n6 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II us, with the body's life ; the one is not so lowered and degraded, that we dare magnificent of the shoulder-blades, which in the movements of the arm " produce an admirable effect." " You will next draw the bone which is situ- ated between the hips. It is very fine, and is called the sacrum." * The im- portant point with them is to represent the nude well. Beauty with them is that of the complete skeleton, sinews which are linked together and tight- ened, the thighs which support the trunk, the strong chest breathing freely, the pliant neck. What a pleasure to be naked ! How good it is in the full light to rejoice in a strong body, well- formed muscles, a spirited and bold soul 1 The splendid goddesses reap- pear in their primitive nudity, not dreaming that they are nude ; you see from the tranquillity of their look, the simplicity of their expression, that they have always been thus, and that shame has not yet reached them. The soul's life is not here contrasted, as amongst body's l and degr not show its actions and functions; they do not hide them ; man does not dream of being all spirit. They rise, as of old, from the luminous sea, with their rearing steeds tossing up their manes, champing the bit, inhaling the briny savor, whilst their companions wind the sounding-shell ; and the spec- tators,! accustomed to handle the sword, to combat naked with the dag- ger or double-handled blade, to ride on perilous roads, sympathize with the proud shape of the bended back, the effort of the arm about to strike, the long quiver of the muscles, which, from neck to heel, swell out, to brace a man, or to throw him. * Benvenuto Cellini, Principles of the A rt of Design. t Life of Cellini. Compare also these exer- cises which Castiglione prescribes for a well- educated man, in his Cortegiano, ed. 1585, p. 55 : " Pero yoglio che il nostro cortegiano sia .perfetto cavaliere cl'ogni sella. . . . Et perche degii Italian! e peculiar laude il cavalcare bene alia brida, il maneggiar con raggione massima- mente cavalli aspri, il corre lance, il giostare, sia in questo de maglior Italiani. . . . Nel tor- neare. tener un passo, combattere una sbarra, sia buono tra il migiiur francesi. . . Nel gio- 2are a carme, correr torri, lanciar haste e dardi, sia tra Sf agnuoli eccellente. . . . Conveniente k ancor sapere saltare, e cprrere ; . . . . ancor nobile exercitio il gioco di palla. . . . Non di minor laude estimo il voltegiar a cavallo.' 2. POETRY. I. Transplanted into different races and climates, this paganism receives from each, distinct features and a dis- tinct character. In England it be- comes English ; the English Renais- sance is the Renaissance of the Saxon genius. Invention recommences ; and to invent is to express one's genius. A Latin race can only invent by ex- pressing Latin ideas ; a Saxon lace by expressing Saxon ideas ; and we shall find in the new civilization and poetry, descendants of Caedmon and Adhelm, of Piers Plowman, and Robin Hood. II. Old Puttenham says : " In the latter end of the same king CHenry the eighth) reigne. sprong up a new company of court' y makers, or whom Sir Thomas Wyat th* elder and Henry Earle of Surrey were the two chieftaines, who having travailed into Italic, and there tasted the sweete and stately measures and stile of the Italian Poesie, as novices newly crept out of the schooles of Dante, Arioste, and Petrarch, they greatly pollished our rude and homely maner of vulgar Poesie, from that it had bene before, and for that cause may justly be sayd the first reformers of our English meetre and stile." * Not that their style was very original, or openly exhibits the new spirit : the middle age is nearly ended, but not quite. By their side Andrew Borde, John Bale, John Heywood, Skelton himself, repeat the platitudes of the old poetry and the coarseness of the old style. Their manners, hardly re- fined, were still half feudal ; on the field, before Landrecies, the English commander wrote a friendly letter to the French governor of Terouanne, to ask him " if he had not some gentlemen disposed to break a lance in honor of the ladies," and promised to send six champions to meet them. Parades, combats, wounds, challenges, love, appeals to the judgment of God, pen- ances, all these are found in the life of Surrey as in a chivalric romance. A great lord, an earl, a relative of Jie king, who had figured in processions and ceremonies, had made war, com- manded fortresses, ravaged countries, * Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie ed. Arber, 1869, book i. ch. 3 1, p. 74. CHAP. I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 117 mounted to the assault, fallen in tl breach, had been saved by his servant magnificent, sumptuous, irritable, am bitious, four times imprisoned, finall^ beheaded. At the coronation of Anne ISoleyn he wore the fourth sword ; a the marriage of Anne of Cleves he wai one of the challengers at the jousts Denounced and placed in durance, he offered to fight in his shirt against an armed adversary. Another time he was put in prison for having eaten flesh in 'Lent. No wonder if this prolongation of chivalric manners brought with it a prolongation of chivalric poetry ; if in an age which had known Petrarch, poets displayed the sentiments ot Petrarch. Lord Berners, Sackville, Sir Thomas Wyatt, and Surrey, in the first rank, were like Petrarch plaintive and platonic lovers. It was pure love to which Surrey gave expression ; for his lady, the beautiful Geraldine, like Beatrice and Laura, was an ideal per- sonage, and a child of thirteen years. And yet, amid this languor of mys- tical tradition, a personal feeling had sway. In this spirit which imitated, and that badly at times, which still groped for an outlet, and now and then admitted into its polished stanzas the old, simple expressions and stale meta- phors of heralds of arms and trouveres, there was already visible the Northern melancholy, the inner and gloomy emo- tion. This feature, which presently, at the finest moment of its richest blossom, in the splendid expansiveness of natural life, spreads a sombre tint over the poetry of Sidney, Spenser, Shakspeare, already in the first poet separates this pagan yet Teutonic world from the other, wholly voluptuous, which in Italy, with lively and refined irony, had no taste, except for art and pleasure. Surrey translated the Eccle- siastes into verse. Is it not singular, at this early hour, in this rising dawn, to f nd such a book in his hand ? A disenchantment, a sad or bitter dreami- ness, an innate consciousness of the vanity of human things, are never lacking in this country and in this race ; the inhabitants support life with diffi- culty, and know how to speak of death. Surrey's finest verses bear witness thus soon to his serious bent, this in- stinctive and grave philosophy. He , records his griefs, regretting his beloved Wyatt, his friend Clere, his companion, the young Duke of Richmond, all dead in their prime. Alone, a prisoner at Windsor, he recalls the happy days they have passed together : " So cruel prison how could betide, alas, As proud Windsor, where I in lust and joy, With a Kinges son, my childish years did pass, In greater feast than Priam's son of Troy. Where each sweet place returns a taste full sour, The large green courts, wh-re we were wont to hove, With eyes cast up into the Maiden's tower, And easy sighs, such as folk draw in love. The stately seats, the ladies bright of hue, The dances short, long tales of great de- light, With words and looks, that tigers could but rue ; Where each of us did plead the other's right. The palme-play, where, despoiled for the game, With dazed eyes oft we by gleams of love Have miss'd the ball, and got sight of our dame, To bait her eyes, which kept the leads above. . . . The secret thoughts, imparted with such trust ; The wanton talk, the divers change of play ; The friendship sworn, each promise kept so just, Wherewith we past the winter night away. And with his thought the blood forsakes the face | The tears berain my cheeks of deadly hue : The which, as soon as sobbing sighs, alas ! Up-supped have, thus I my plaint renew : O place of bliss ! renewer of my woes ! Give me account, where is my noble fere ? Whom in thy walls thou dost each night en- close ; To other lief ; but unto me most dear. Echo, alas ! that doth my sorrow rue, Returns thereto a hollow sound of plaint."* So in love, it is the sinking of a weary ioul, to which he gives vent : ' For all things having life, sometime hath quiet rest ; The bearing ass, the drawing ox, and every other beast ; The peasant, and the post, that serves at all assays ; The ship-boy, and the galley-slave, have time to take their ease ; Save I, alas ! whom care of force doth so constrain, * Surrey's Poems, Pickering, 1831, p. 17. n8 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK IL To wail the day, and wake the night, continu- ally in pain, From pensiveness to plaint, from plaint to bitter tears, From tears to painful plaint again } and thus my life it wears." * That which brings joy to others brings him grief : " The soote season, that bud and bloom forth brings, With green hath clad the hill, and eke the vale. The nightingale with feathers new she sings ; The turtle to her mate hath told her tale. Summer is come, for every spray now springs ; The hart has hung his old head on the pale ; The buck in brake his winter coat he flings ; The fishes flete with new repaired scale ; The adder all her slough away she slings ; The swift swallow pursueth the flies smale ; The busy bee her honey now she mings ; Winter is worn that was the flowers' bale. And thus I see among these pleasant things Each care decays, and yet my sorrow springs ! " t For all that, he will love on to his last sigh. ** Yea, rather die a thousand times, than once to false my faith ; And if my feeble corpse, through weight of wpful smart Do fail, or faint, my will it is that still she keep my heart. And when tiiis carcass here to earth shall be refar'd, I do bequeath my wearied ghost to serve her afterward." % An infinite love, and pure as Pe- trarch's ; and she is worthy of it. In the midst of all these studied or imi- tated verses, an admirable portrait stands out, the simplest and truest we can imagine, a work of the heart now, and not of the memory, which behind the Madonna of chivalry shows the English wife, and beyond feudal gal- lantry domestic bliss. Surrey alone, restless, hears within him the firm tones of a good friend, a sincere coun- sellor, Hope, who speaks to him thus : ** For I assure thee, even by oath, And thereon take my hand and troth, That she is one the worthiest, The truest, and the faithfullest ; The gentlest and the meekest of mind That here on earth a man may find : * Surrey's Poems. " The faithful lover de- clare th his pains and his uncertain joys, and with Dnly hope recomforteth his woful heart," p. 53. t Ibid. tl Descr pticgi of Spring, wherein every thing renews 1 sav* only the lover," p. 3. t Ibid. p. 56. And if that love and truth were gone, In her it might be found alone. For in her mind no thought there is, But how she may be true, I wis ; And tenders thee and all thy heale, And wishes both thy health and weal ; And loves thee even as far forth than As any woman may a man ; And is thine own, and so she says ; And cares for thee ten thousand ways. Of thee she speaks, on thee she thinks ; With thee she eats, with thee she drinks ; With thee she talks, with thee she moans ; With thee she sighs, with thee she groans ; With thee she says ' Farewell mine own 1 * When thou, God knows, full far art gone. And even, to tell thee all aright, To thee she says full oft ' Good night ! ' And names thee oft her own most dear, Her comfort, weal, and all her cheer ; And tells her pillow all the tale How thou hast done her woe and bale ; And how she longs, and plains for thee, And says, ' Why art thou so from me ?' Am I not she that loves thee best ! Do I not wish thine ease and rest ? Seek I not how I may thee please ? Why art thou then so from thine ease? If I be she for whom thou carest, For whom in torments so thou farest, Alas ! thou knowest to find me here, Where I remain thine own most dear. Thine own most true, thine own most just, Thine own that loves thee still, and must ; Thine own that cares aione for thee, As thou, I think, dost care for me ; And even the woman, she alone, That is full bent to be thine own." * Certainly it is of his wife t that he is thinking here, not of an imaginary Laura. The poetic dream of Petrarch has become the exact picture of deep and perfect conjugal affection, such as yet survives in England ; such as all the poets, from the authoress of the Nut-brown Maid to Dickens, \ have never failed to represent. III. An English Petrarch : no juster title could be given to Surrey, for it express- es his talent as well as his dispositi 3n. In fact, like Petrarch, the oldest of the humanists, and the earliest exact wnter of the modern tongue, Surrey intro- duces a new style, the manly style, which marks a great change of the * Ibid. " A description of the restless state of the lover when absent from the mistress of his heart," p. 78. t In another piece, ComplaintontheAbsen.ee of her Lover being upon the Sea, he speaks in direct terms of his wife, almost as affection* ately. $ Greene, Beaumont and Fletcher, Webster, Shakspeare, Ford, Otway, Richardson, .De Foe, Fielding, Dickens, Thackeray, etc. CHAP. I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. mind ; for this new form of writing is the result of superior reflection, which, governing the primitive impulse, calcu- lates and selects with an end in view. At last the intellect has grown capable of self-criticism, and actually criticises itself. It corrects its unconsidered works, infantine and incoherent, at once incomplete and superabundant ; it strengthens and binds them together ; it prunes and perfects them ; it takes from them the master idea, to set it c ree and to show it clearly. This is what Surrey does, and his education had prepared him for it ; for he had studied Virgil as well as Petrarch, and translated two books of the sEneid, almost verse for verse. In such com- pany a man cannot but select his ideas and connect his phrases. After their example, Surrey gauges the means of striking the attention, assisting the intelligence, avoiding fatigue and weari- ness. He looks forward to the last line whilst writing the first. He keeps the strongest word for the last, and shows the symmetry of ideas by the sym- metry of phrases. Sometimes he guides the intelligence by a continuous series of contrasts to the final image ; a kind of sparkling casket, in which he means to deposit the idea which he carries, and to which he directs our attention from the first.* Sometimes he leads his reader to the close of a long flowery description, and then suddenly checks him with a sorrowful phrase. f He arranges his process, and knows how to produce effects ; he uses even clas- sical expressions, in which two subtan- tives, each supported by its adjective, are balanced on either side of the verb. J He collects his phrases in harmonious periods, and does not neglect the delight of the ears any more than of the mind. By his inversions he adds force to his ideas, and weight to his argument. He selects elegant or noble terms, rejects idle words and redun- dant phrases. Every epithet contains an idea, every metaphor a sentiment. There is eloquence in the regular development of his thought ; music in the sustained accent of his verse. * The Frailty and Hurtfulncss of Beauty. t Description of Spring. A Vow to love faithfully. \ Complaint of tJie Lover dU iained. Such is the new-born art. Those who have ideas, now possess an instru- ment capable of expressing them. Like the Italian painters, who in fifty years had introduced or discovered all the technical tricks of the brush, English writers, in half a century, introduce or discover all the artifices of language, period, elevated style, heroic verse, soon the grand stanza, so effectually, that a little later the most perfect versi- fiers, Dryden, and Pope himself, says Dr. Nott, will add scarce any thing to the rules, invented or applied, which were employed in the earliest efforts.* Even Surrey is too near to these authors, too constained in his models, not sufficiently free ; he has not yet felt the fiery blast of the age ; we do not find in him a bold genius, an impas- sioned writer capable of wide expan- sion, but a courtier, a lover of elegance, who, penetrated by the beauties of two finished literatures, imitates Horace and the chosen masters of Italy, cor- rects and polishes little morsels, aims at speaking perfectly fine language. Amongst semi-barbarians he wears a full dress becomingly. Yet he does not wear it completely at his ease : he keeps his eyes too exclusively on his models, and does not venture on frank and free gestures. He is sometimes as a school-boy, makes too great use of * hot ' and ' cold,' wounds and martyr- dom. Although a lover, and a genuine one, he thinks too much that he must be so in Petrarch's manner, that his phrase must be balanced and his image kept up. I had almost said that, in his sonnets of disappointed love, he thinks less often of the strength of love than of the beauty of his writing. He has conceits, ill-chosen words ; he uses trite expressions ; he relates how Nature, having formed his lady, broke the mould; he assigns parts to Cupid and Venus ; he employs the old ma- chinery of the troubadours and the an- cients, like a clever man who wishes to pass for a gallant, At first scarce any mind dares be quite itself; when a new art arises, the first artist listens not to his heart, but to his masters, and asks himself at every step whether he be setting foot on solid ground, or wke ther he is not stumbling. * Surrey, ed. Nolt. 120 THE RENAISSANCE. [BooK II IV. Insensibly the growth became com- plete, and at the end of the century all was changed. A new, strange, overloaded style had been formed, destined to remain in force until the Restoration, not only in poetry, but a ? so in prose, even in ceremonial speech and theological discourse,* so suitable to the spirit of the age, that we meet with it at the same time throughout the whole of Europe, in Ronsard and d'Aubigne, in Calderon, Gongora, and Marini. In 1580 appeared Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit, by Lyly, which was its text-book, its masterpiece, its caricature, and was received with universal admiration. t " Our nation," says Edward Blount, " are in his debt for a new English which hee taught them. All our ladies were then his scollers; and thatbeautie in court who could not parley Euphuesme was as little regarded as shee which now there speakes not French." The ladies knew the phrases of Euphues by heart : strange, studied, and refined phrases, enigmatical; whose author seems of set purpose to seek the least natural expressions and the most far-fetched, full of exaggeration and antithesis, in which mythological allusions, reminis- cences from alchemy, botanical and astronomical metaphors, all the rubbish and medley of learning, travels, man- nerism, roll in a flood of conceits and comparisons. Do not judge it by the grotesque picture that Walter Scott drew of it. Sir Piercie Shafton is but a pedant, a cold and dull copyist; it is its warmth and originality which give this style a true force and an ac- cent of its own. You must conceive it, not as dead and inert, such as we have it to-day in old books, but spring- ing from the lips of ladies and young lords in pearl-bedecked doublet, quick- ened by their vibrating voices, their laughter, the flash of their eyes, the motion of their hands as they played * The Speaker's address to Charles II. on his restoration. Compare it with the speech of M. de Fontanes under the Empire. In each case it was the close of a literary epoch. Read for illustration the speech before the University of Oxford, Athena Oxonienses, i. 193. t His second work, Euphues and his Eng- land, appeared in 1581. with the hilt ^f their swords or with their satin cloaks. They were full of life, theii heads filled to overflowing ; and they amused themselves, as our sensitive and eager artists do, at their ease in the studio. They did not speak to convince or be understood, but to satisfy their excited imagination, to expend their overflowing wit.* They played with words, twisted, put them out of shape, enjoyed sudden Views, strong contrasts, which they produced one after another, ever and anon, and in great quantities. They cast flower on flower, tinsel on tinsel : every thing sparkling delighted them ; they gilded and embroidered and plumed their language like their gar- ments. They cared nothing for clear- ness, order, common sense; it was a festival and a madness ; absurdity pleased them. They knew nothing more tempting than a carnival of splendors and oddities ; all was hud- dled together : a coarse gayety, a ten- der and sad word, a pastoral, a sound- ing flourish of unmeasured boasting, a gambol of a Jack -pudding. Eyes, ears, all the senses, eager and excited, are satisfied by this jingle of syllables, the display of fine high-colored words, the unexpected clash of droll or famil- iar images, the majestic roll of well- poised periods. Every one had his own oaths, his elegances, his style. " One would say/' remarks Heylyn, " that they are ashamed of their mother- tongue, and do not find it sufficiently varied to express the whims of their mind." We no longer imagine this inventiveness, this boldness of fancy, this ceaseless fertility of nervous sen- sibility : there was no genuine prose at that time ; the poetic flood swallowed it up. A word was not an exact sym- bol, as with us ; a document which from cabinet to cabinet carried a pre- cise thought. It was part of a com- plete action, a little drama ; when they read it, they did not take it by itself, but imagined it with the intonation of a hissing and shrill voice, with the puck- ering of the lips, the knitting of the brows, and the succession of pictures which crowd behind it, and which it calls forth in a flash of lightning. * See Shakspeare's young men, Mercutio especially. CHAP. L] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 121 Each one mimics and pronounces it in his own style, and impresses his own soul upon it. It was a song, which like the poet's verse, contains a thou- sand things besides the literal sense, and manifests the depth, warmth, and sparkling of the source whence it flowed. For in that time, even when the man was feeble, his work lived; there is some pulse in the least pro- ductions of this age ; force and creative fire signalize it ; they penetrate through bon bast and affectation. Lyly himself, so fantastic that he seems to write pur- posely in defiance of common sense, is at times a genuine poet ; a singer, a man capable of rapture, akin to Spenser and Shakspeare ; one of those intro- spective dreamers, who see dancing fc-iries, the purpled cheeks of goddesses, drunken, amorous woods, as he says : " Adorned with the presence of my love, The woods I fear such secret power shall prove, As they'll shut up each path, hide every wny, Because they still would have her go astray.''* The reader must assist me, and assist himself. I cannot otherwise give him to understand what the men of this age had the felicity to experience. Luxuriance and irregularity were the two features of this spirit and this literature, features common to all the literatures of the Renaissance, but more marked here than elsewhere, because the German race is not con- fined, like the Latin, by the taste for harmonious forms, and prefers strong impression to fine expression. We must select amidst this crowd of poets ; and here is one amongst the first, who exhibits, by his writings as well as by his life, the greatness and the folly of the prevailing manners and the public taste : Sir Philip Sidney, nephew of t'ie Earl of Leicester, a great lord and a man of action, accomplished in every dnd of culture ; who after a good .raiivng in classical literature, trav- elled in France, Germany, and Italy ; read Plato and Aristotle, studied as- tronomy and geometry at Venice ; pondered over the Greek tragedies, the Italian sonnets, the pastorals of Mon- temayor, the poems of Ronsard ; dis- playing an interest in science, keeping * The Maid her Metamorphosis. up an exchange of letters with the learned Hubert Languet ; and withal a man of the world, a favorite of Eliza- beth, having had enacted in her honor a flattering and comic pastoral ; a gen- uine "jewel of the court ;" a judge, like d'Urfe, of lofty gallantry and fir e language ; above all, chivalrous in heart and deed, who wished to follow maritime adventure with Drake, and, to crown all, fated to die an early and heroic death. He was a cavalry offi- cer, and had saved the English army at Gravelines. Shortly after, mortally wounded, and dying of thirst, as some water was brought to him, he saw by his side a soldier still more desperate- ly hurt, who was looking at the water with anguish in his face : " Give it to this man," said he ; " his necessity is still greater than mine." Do not forget the vehemence and impetuosity of the middle age; one hand ready for action and kept incessantly on the hilt of the sword or poniard. " Mr. Molineux," wrote he to his father's secretary, " if ever I know you to do so much as read any letter I write to my father, without his commandment or my consent, I will thrust my dagger into you. And trust to it, for I speak it in earnest/' It was the same man who said to his uncle's adversaries that they " lied in their throat ; " and to support his words, promised them a meeting in thn e months in any place in Europe. The savage energy of the preceding age remains intact, and it is for this reason that poetry took so firm a hold on these virgin souls. The human harvest is never so fine as when cultivation opens up a new soil. Impassioned, moreover, melancholy and solitary, he naturally turned to noble and ardent fantasy; and he was so much the poet, that he had no need of verse. Shall I describe his pastoral epic, the Arcadia ? It is but a recreation, a sort of poetical romance, written in the country for the amusement of his sis- ter ; a work of fashion, which, like Cyrus and Clelie^ is not a monument, but a document. This kind of books shows only the externals, the current elegance and politeness, the jargon of * Two French novels of the age of Louis XIV., each in ten volumes, and written by Mademoiselle de Scudery. TR. 6 122 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK IL the fashionable world, in short, that which should be spoken before ladies ; and yet we perceive from it the bent of the public opinion. In Clelie, oratori- cal development, delicate and collected analysis, the flowing converse of men seated quietly in elegan* arm-chairs ; in the Arcadia, fantastic imagination, excessive sentiment, a medley of events which suited men scarcely recovered rrom barbarism. Indeed, in London they still used to fire pistols at each )ther in the streets ; and under Henry VI II. and his children, Queens, a Pro- rector, the highest nobles, knelt under the axe of the executioner. Armed and perilous existence long resisted in Europe the establishment of peaceful and quiet life. It was necessary to change society and the soil, in order to transform men of the sword into citi- zens. The high roads of Louis XIV. and his regular administration, and more recently the railroads and the Szrgents de ville, freed the French from habits of violence and a taste for dan- gerous adventure. Remember that at this period men's heads were full of tragical images. Sidney's Arcadia contains enough of them to supply half-a-dozen epics. "It is a trifle," says the author ; " my young head must be delivered." In the first twenty-five pages you meet with a ship- wreck, an account of pirates, a half- drowned prince rescued by shepherds, a journey in Arcadia, various disguises, the retreat of a king withdrawn into solitude with his wife and children, the deliverance of a young imprisoned lord, a war against the Helots, the conclusion of peace, and many other things. Read on, and you will find princesses shut up by a wicked fairy, who beats them, and threatens them with death if they refuse to marry her son , a beautiful queen condemned to perish by fire if certain knights do not come to her succor ; a treacherous pi i nee tortured for his wicked deeds, then cast from the top of a pyramid ; fights, surprises, abductions, travels : in short, the whole programme of the most romantic tales. That is the seri- ous element : the agreeable is of a like nature ; the fantastic predominates. Improbable pastoral serves, as in Shakspeare or Lope de Vega, for an intermezzo to improbable tragedy You are always coming upon dancing shepherds. They are very courteous, good poets, and subtle metaphysicians. Several of them are disguised princes who pay their court to the princesses. They sing continually, and get up alle- gorical dances; two bands approach, servants of Reason and Passion ; their hats, ribbons, and dress are described in full. They quarrel in verse, and their retorts, which follow close on one another, over-refined, keep up a tour- nament of wit. Who cared for wnat was natural or possible in this age ? There were such festivals at Elizabeth's * progresses ; ' and you have only to look at the engravings of Sadeler, Martin de Vos, and Goltzius, to find this mixture of sensitive beauties and philosophical enigmas. The Countess of Pembroke and her ladies were de- lighted to picture this profusion of cos- tumes and verses, this play beneath the trees. They had eyes in the six- teenth century, senses which sought satisfaction in poetry the same satis- faction as in masquerading and paint- ing. Man was not yet a pure reasoner ; abstract truth was not enough for him. Rich stuffs, twisted about and folded ; the sun to shine upon them, a large meadow studded with white daisies ; ladies in brocaded dresses, with bare arms, crowns on their heads, instru- ments of music behind the trees, this is what the reader expects ; he cares nothing for contrasts ; he will readily accept a drawing-room in the midst of the fields. What are they going to say there ? Here comes out that nervous exalta- tion, in all its folly, which is character- istic of the spirit of the age ; love rises to the thirty-sixth heaven. Musidorus is the brother of Celadon ; Pamela is closely related to the severe heroines of Astree /* all the Spanish exaggera- tions abound and all the Spanish false- hoods. For in these works of fashion or of the Court, primitive sentiment never retains its sincerity : wit, the necessity to please, the desire for ef- fect, of speaking better than others, alter it, influence it, heap up embellish- * Celadon, a rustic lover in Astrte, a French novel in five volumes, named after the heroine, and written by d'Urfe" (d. 1625). TR. CHAP I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 123 menib ana refinements, so that nothing is left but twaddle. Musidorus wished to give Pamela a kiss. She repels him. He would have died on the spot ; but luckily remembers that his mistress commanded him to leave her, and finds himself still able to obey her command. He complains to the trees, weeps in verse : there are dialogues where Echo, repeating the last word, replies ; duets in rhyme, balanced stanzas, in wh.'ch the theory of love is minutely detailed; in short, all the grand airs of ornamental poetry. If they send a letter to their mistress, they speak to it, tell the ink : " Therefore mourne boldly, my inke ; for while shee lookes upon you, your blacknesse will shine : cry out boldly my lamentation ; for while shee reades you, your cries will be musicke." * Again, two young princesses are go- ing to bed : " They impoverished their clothes to enrich their bed, which for that night might well scorne the shrine of Venus ; and there cherishing one another with deare, though chaste embracements ; with sweete, though cold kisses ; it might seeme that love was come to play him there without dart, or that wearie of his owne fires, he was there to refresh himselfe be- tween their sweete breathing lippes." t In excuse of these follies, remem- ber that they have their parallels in Shakspeare. Try rather to compre- hend them, to imagine them in their place, with their surroundings, such as they are ; that is, as the excess of singularity and inventive fire. Even though they mar now and then the finest ideas, yet a natural freshness pierces through the disguise. Take another example : " In the time that the morning did strew roses and violets in the heavenly floore against the com- ing of the sun, the nightingales (striv- ing >ne with the other which could in most dainty varietie recount their wronge-caused sorrow) made them put off their sleep." In Sidney's second work, The De- fence of Poesie, we meet with genuine imagination, a sincere and serious tone, a grand, commanding style, all the passion and elevation which he * Atcadia, ed. fol. 1629, p. 117. t Ibid, book ii. p. 114. carries in his heart and puts into his verse He is a muser, a Platonist, who is penetrated by the doctrines of the ancients, who takes things from a lofty point of view, who places the ex- cellence of poetry not in pleasing ef- fect, imitation, or rhyme, but in that creative and superior conception by which the artist creates anew and em- bellishes nature. At the san e time, he is an ardent man, trusting in the nobleness of his aspirations and in the width of his ideas, who puts down the brawling of the shoppy, narrow, vulgar Puritanism, and glows with the lofty irony, the proud freedom, of a poet and a lord. In his eyes, if there is any art or science capable of augmenting and cul- tivating our generosity, it is poetry. He draws comparison after comparison between it and philosophy or history, whose pretensions he laughs at and dismisses.* He fights for poetry as a knight for his lady, and in what heroic and splendid style ! He says : " I never heard the old Song of Percie and Douglas, that I found not my heart moved more than with a trum- pet : and yet it is sung by some blinde Crowder, with no rougher voyce, than rude stile ; which beeing so evill ap- parelled in the dust and Cobweb of that uncivill age, what would it work, trimmed in the gorgeous eloquence tf Pindare ? " t The philosopher repels, the poet attracts : " Nay hee doth as if your journey should lye through a faire vineyard, at the very first, give you a cluster of grapes, that full of that taste, you may long to passe fur- ther." f What description of poetry can dis- please you ? Not pastoral so easy and genial ? " Is it the bitter but wholesome lambicke, who rubbes the galled minde, making shame the Trum- pet of villanie, with bold and openciy- ing out against naughtinesse ? " * The Defence of Poesie, ed. fol. 1620, p. 558 : " I dare undertake, that Orlando Furioso, or honest Kin?; Arthur, will never displease a soldier: but the quidditie of Ens and prima mater ia, will hardly agree with a Corselet." See also, in the same book, the very lively and spirited personification of History and Philo* ophy, full of genuine talent. t Ibid. p. 553. J Ibid. p. 550. Ibid. p. 552- 124 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK It At the close he reviews his argu- ments, and the vibrating martial accent of his poetical period is like a trump of victory : " So that since the excel- lencies of it (poetry) may bee so easily and so justly confirmed, and the low- creeping objections so soone trodden downe, it not being an Art of lyes, but of true doctrine ; not of effeminate- ne^se, but of notable stirring of cour- age ; not of abusing man's wit, but of strengthning man's wit ; not banished, but hon ired by Plato ; let us rather plant mDre Laurels for to ingarland the Poets heads than suffer the ill- savored breath of such wrong speakers, once to blow upon the cleare springs of Poesie." * From such vehemence and gravity you may anticipate what his verses will be. Often, after reading the poets of this age, I have looked for some time at the contemporary prints, telling my- self that man, in mind and body, was not then such as we see him to-day. We also have our passions, but we are no longer strong enough to bear them. They unsettle us ; we are no longer poets without suffering for it. Alfred cle Musset, Heine, Edgar Poe, Burns, Byron, Shelley, Cowper, how many shall I instance ? Disgust, men- tal and bodily degradation, disease, impotence, madness, suicide, at best a permanent hallucination or feverish raving, these are nowadays the ordi- nary issues of the poetic temperament. The passion of the brain gnaws our vitals, dries up the blood, eats into the marrow, shakes us like a tempest, and the human frame, such as civilization has made us, is not substantial enough long to resist it. They, who have been more roughly trained, who are more inured to the inclemencies of climate, more hardened by bodily ex- e-cise, more fi-m against danger, en- d-ire and live. Is there a man living who could witl jtand the storm of pas- saons and visions which swept over oiiakspeare, and end, like him, as a * The Defence of Poesie, p. 560. Here and there we find also verse as spirited as this : ** Or Pindar's Apes, flaunt they in phrases fine, Enam'ling with pied flowers their thoughts of gold." P. 568. sensible citizen and landed proprietor in his small county ? The muscles were firmer, despair less prompt. Tha rage of concentrated attention, the half hallucinations, the anguish and heaving of the breast, -the quivering of the limbs bracing themselves involun- tarily and blindly for action, all the painful yearnings which accompany grand desires, exhausted them less ; this is why they desired longer, and dared more. D'Aubigne, wounded with many sword-thrusts, conceiving death at hand, had himself bound on his horse that he might see his mis- tress once more, and rode thus sev- eral leagues, losing blood all the way, and arriving in a swoon. Such feel- ings we glean still from their portraits, in the straight looks which pierce like a sword ; in that strength of back, bent or twisted ; in the sensuality, en- ergy, enthusiasm, which breathe from their attitude or look. Such feelings we still discover in their poetry, in in Greene, Lodge, Jonson, Spenser, Shakspeare, in Sidney, as in all the rest. We quickly forget the faults of taste which accompany them, the af- fectation, the uncouth jargon. Is it really so uncouth? Imagine a man who with closed eyes distinctly sees the adored countenance of his mis- tress, who keeps it before him all the day; who is troubled and shaken as he" imagines ever and anon her brow, her lips, her eyes ; who cannot and will not be separated from his vision ; who sinks daily deeper in this passion- ate contemplation ; who is every in- stant crushed by mortal anxieties, or transported by the raptures of bliss : he will lose the exact conception of objects. A fixed idea becomes a false idea. By dint of regarding an object under all its forms, turning it over, piercing through it, we at last deform it. When we cannot think of a thing without being dazed and without tears, we magnify it, and give it a character which it has not. Hence strange com- parisons, over-refined ideas, excessive images, become natural. However tar Sidney goes, whatever object he touches, he sees throughout the uni- verse only the name and features of Stella. All ideas bring him back to her. He is drawn ever and invincibly CHAP. L] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. by the same thought : and comparisons which seem far-fetched, only express the unfailing presence and sovereign power of the besetting image. Stella is i]l ; it seems to Sidney that "Joy, which is inseparate from those eyes, Stella, now learnes (strange case) to weepe in thee." * To us, the expres- sion is absurd. It is so for Sidney, who for hours together had dwelt on the expression of those eyes, seeing in them at last all the beauties of heaven and earth, who, compared to them, finds all light dull and all happiness stale ? Consider that in every extreme passion ordinary laws are reversed, that our logic cannot pass judgment on it, that we find in it affectation, childishness, witticisms, crudity, folly, and that to us violent conditions of the nervous machine are like an unknown and marvellous land, where common sense and good language cannot pene- trate. On the return of spring, when May spreads over the fields her dap- pled dress of new flowers, Astrophel and Stella sit in the shade of a retired grove, in the warm air, full of birds' voices and pleasant exhalations. Hea- ven smiles, the wind kisses the trem- bling leaves, the inclining trees inter- lace their sappy branches, amorous earth swallows greedily the rippling water : " In a grove most rich of shade, Where birds wanton musicke made, May, then yong, his py'd weeds showing, New perf um'd with flowers fresh growing, ' Astrophel with Stella sweet. Did for mutuall comfort meet, Both within themselves oppressed, But each in the other blessed. . . . * Their eares hungry of each word, Which the deere tongue would afford. But their tongues restrain'd from walking, Till their hearts had ended talking. 1 But when their tongues could not speake, Love it selfe did silence breake ; Love did set his lips asunder, Thus to speake in love and wonder. . . . ** This small winde which so sweet is, See how it the leaves doth kisse, Each tree in his best attyring, Sense of love to love inspiring." t On his knees, with beating heart, op- * Astrophel and Stella, ed. fol. 1629, loist sonnet, p. 613. * Ibid. (1629), 8th song, p. 603. pressed, it seems to him that his mis- tress becomes transformed; " Stella, soveraigne of my joy, Stella, starre of heavenly fire, Stella, load-starre of desire, Stella, in whose shining eyes Are the lights of Cupid's skies. . . , Stella, whose voice when it speakes Senses all asunder breakes ; Stella, whose voice when it singeth. Angels to acquaintance bringeth." * These cries of adoration are like a hymn. Every day he writes thoughts of love which agitate him, and in this long journal of a hundred pages we feel the heated breath swell each moment. A smile from his mis.ress, a curl lifted by the wind, a gesture, all are events. He paints her in every attitude ; he cannot see her too con- stantly. He talks to the birds, plants, winds, all nature. He brings the whole world to Stella's feet. At the notion of a kiss he swoons : " Thinke of that most gratefull time When thy leaping heart will climbe, In my lips to have his biding. There those roses for to kisse, Which doe breath a sugred blisse, Opening rubies, pearles dividing." f " O joy, too high for my low stile to show : O blisse, fit for a nobler state then me : Envie, put out thine eyes, lest thou do see What Oceans of delight in me do flow. My friend, that oft saw through all maskes my wo, Come, come, and let me powre my selfe on thee ; Gone is the winter of my miserie, My spring appeares, O see what here doth grow, For Stella hath with words where faith doth shine, Of her high heart giv'n me the monarchic : I, I, O I may say that she is mine." i There are Oriental splendors in the dazzling sonnet in which he asks why Stella's cheeks have grown pale : " Where be those Roses gone, which sweetned so our eyes ? Where those red cheekes, which oft with faire encrease doth frame The height of honour in the kindly badge of shame ? Who hath the crimson weeds ttolne from my morning skies ? As he says, his " life melts with toe much thinking." Exhausted by ecstasy * Ibid. p. 604. t Ibid, loth song, p. 610. \ Ibid, sonnet 69, p. 555. Ibid. 102, p. 614. 126 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II he pauses ; then he flies from thought to thought, seeking relief for his wound, like the Satyre whom he describes : " Prometheus, when first from heaven hie He brought downe fire, ere then on earth not scene, Fond of delight, a Satyr standing by Gave it a kisse, as it like sweet had beene. " Feeling forthwith the other burning power, Wood with the smart with showts and shryk- ing shrill, He sought his ease in river, field, and bower, But for the time his griefe went with him still." * At last calm returned ; and whilst this calm lasts, the lively, glowing spirit plays like a nickering flame on the surface of the deep brooding fire. His love-songs and word-portraits, delight- ful pagan and chivalric fancies, seem to be inspired by Petrarch or Plato. We feel the charm and sportiveness under the seeming affectation : " Faire eyes, sweete lips, deare heart, that foolish I Could hope by Cupids helpe on you to pray ; Since to himselfe he doth your gifts apply, As his maine force, choise sport, and ease- full stray. " For when he will see who dare him gainsay, Then with those eyes he lookes, lo by and by Each soule doth at Loves feet his weapons lay, Glad if for her he give them leave to die. " When he will play, then in her lips he is, Where blushing red, that Loves selfe them doth love, With either lip he doth the other kisse : But when he will for quiets sake remove From all the world, her heart is then his rome, Where well he knowes, no man to him can come." t Both heart and sense are captive here. If he finds the eyes of Stella more beautiful than any thing in the world, he finds her soul more lovely than her body. He is a Platonist when he re- counts how Virtue, wishing to be loved of men, took Stella's form to enchant their eyes, and make them see the neaven which the inner sense reveals to heroic souls. We recognize in him that entire submission of heart, love turned into a religion, perfect passion which asks only to grow, and which, * Astrophel and Stella, p. 525: this sonnet is headed E. D. Wood, in his Athen. Oxon. i., says it was written by Sir Edward Dyer, Chancellor of the Most noble Order of the Garter. TR. t Ibid, sonnet 43, p. 545- like the piety of the mystics, finds itself always too insignificant when it compares itself with the c oject loved : " My youth doth waste, my knowledge brings forth toyes, My wit doth strive those passions to defend, Which for reward spoyle it with vaine an- noy es, I see my course to lose my selfe doth bend . I see and yet no greater sorrow take, Thau that I lose no more for Stella's sake." * At last, like Socrates in the banquet, he turns his eyes to deathless beauty heavenly brightness : " Leave me, O Love, which reachest but to dust, And thou my minde aspire to higher things : Grow rich in that which never taketh rust: Whatever fades, but fading pleasure brings. . . O take fast hold, let that light be thy guide, In this small course which birth drawes out to death." t Divine love continues the earthly love ; he was imprisoned in this, and frees himself. By this nobility, these lofty aspirations, recognize one of those serious souls of which there are so many in the same climate and race. Spiritual instincts pierce through the dominant paganism, and ere they make Christians, make Platonists. V. Sidney was only a soldier in an army , there is a multitude about him, a mul- titude of poets. In fifty-t*vo years, without counting the drama, two hun dred and thirty-three are enumer- ated,! of whom forty have genius or talent : Breton, Donne, Dray ton, Lodge, Greene, the two Fletchers, Beaumont, Spenser, Shakspeare, Ben Jonson, Mar- lowe, Wither, Warner, Davison, Carew, Suckling, Herrick; we should grow tired in counting them. There i* a crop oi tnem, ana so there is at the same time in Catholic and heroic Spain ; and as in Spain it was a sign oi the times, the mark of a public wioit, the index to an extraordinary and transient condition of the mind. What. is this condition which gives rise to so universal to taste for poetry ? Whac * Ibid, r8, p. 573. t Last sonnet, p. 539. J Nathan Drake, Shakspeare and kis Times, i. Part 2, ch. 2, 3, 4. Among these 233 poets the authors of isolated pieces are not reckoned, but only those who published or col lected their works. CHAP. I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 127 Its it breathes life into their books ? How happens it, that amongst the least, in spite of pedantries, awkward- nesses, in the rhyming chronicles or descriptive cyclopedias, we meet with brilliant pictures and genuine love- cries ? How happens it, that when this generation was exhausted, true poetry ended in England, as true painting in Italy and Flanders ? It was because an epoch of the mind came and passed away, that, namely, of instinctive and creative conception. These men had new senses, and no theories in their heads. Thus, when they took a walk, their emotions were not the same as ours. What is sunrise to an ordinary man ? A white smudge on the edge of the sky, between bosses of clouds, amid pieces of land, and bits of road, which he does not see because he has seen them a hundred times. But for them, all things have a soul ; I mean that they feel within themselves, indi- rectly, the uprising and severance of the outlines, the power and contrast of tints, the sad or delicious sentiment, which breathes from this combination and union like a harmony or a cry. How sorrowful is the sun, as he rises in a mist above the sad sea-furrows ; what an air of resignation in the old trees rustling in the night rain ; what a feverish tumult in the mass of waves, whose dishevelled locks are twisted for- ever on the surface of the abyss ! But the great torch of heaven, the lumin- ous god, emerges and shines ; the tall, soft, pliant herbs, the evergreen mead- ows, the expanding roof of lofty oaks, the whole English landscape, continually renewed and illumined by the flooding moisture, diffuses an inexhaustible freshness. These mead- ows, red and white with flowers, ever moist and ever young, slip off their veil of golden mist, and appear sudden- ly, timidly, like beautiful virgins. Here Is the cuckoo-flower, which springs up before the coming of the swallow ; there the hare-bell, blue as the veins of a woman ; the marigold, which sets with the sun, and, weeping, rises with him. Drayton, in his Polyolbion, sings Then from her burnisht gate the goodly glit- tring East Guilds every lofty top, which late the hu- morous Night Bespangled had with pearle, to please the Mornings sight ; On which the mirthfull Quires, with their cleerc open throats, Unto the joyfull Morne so straine their war- bling notes, That Hills and Valleys ring, and even the ecchoing Ayre Seemes all compos'd of sounds, about them everywhere. . . . Thus sing away the Morne, untill the mount- ing Sunne, Through thick exhaled fogs, his golden head hath runne, And through the twisted tops of our dose Covert creeps, To kiss the gentle Shade, th while that sweetly sleeps." * A step further, and you will find the old gods reappear. They reappear, these living gods these living gods mingled with things which you cannot help meeting as soon as you meet nature again. Shakspeare, in the Tempest, sings : " Ceres, most bounteous lady thy rich leas Of wheat, rye, barley, vetches, oats, and pease ; Thy turfy mountains, where live nibbling sheep, And flat meads thatch'd with stover, them to keep ; Thy banks with peoned and lilied brims, Which spongy April at thy hest betrims, To make cold nymphs chaste crowns . . . Hail, many-colour'd messenger (Iris.) . . . Who, with thy saffron wings, upon my flowers Diffuses! honey-drops, refreshing showers, And with each end of thy blue bow dost crown My bosky acres and my unshrubb'd down."t In Cymbeline, he says : " They are as gentle as zephyrs, blowing be- low the violet, Not wagging his sweet head." \ Greene writes : " When Flora, proud in pomp of all her flowers, Sat bright and gay, And gloried in the dew of Iris' showers, And did display Her mantle chequered all with gaudy green." The same author also says : " How oft have I descending Titan seen, His burning locks couch in the sea-queen's lap; And beauteous Thetis his red body wrap In watery robes, as he her lord had been!" |j * M. Drayton's Polyolbion, ed, 1622, isth song, p. 214. t Act iv. i. J Act iv. 2. Greene's Poems, ed. Bell, Eurymachus in Laudem Mirimidtz, p. 73. || Ibid. Melicertus? description of his Mis* tress, p. 38. 128 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II So Spenser, in his Faerie Queene, sings : " The ioyous day gan early to appeare ; And f nyre Aurora from the deawy bed Of aged Tithone gan herselfe to reare With rosy cheekes, for shame as blushing red: Her golden locks, for hast, were loosely shed About her eares, when Una her did marke Clymbe to her charet, all with flowers spred, From heven high to chace the chearelesse darke ; With mery note her lowd salutes the mount- ing larke." * All the splendor and sweetness of this moist and well-watered land ; all the specialties, the opulence of its dissolv- ing tints, of its variable sky, its luxu- riant vegetation, assemble thus about the gods, who gave them their beauti- ful form. In the life of every man there are moments when, in presence of objects, he experiences a shock. This mass of ideas, of mangled recollections, of mutilated images, which lie hidden in all corners of his mind, are set in motion, organized, suddenly developed like a flower. He .is enraptured ; he cannot help looking at and admiring the charming creature which has just appeared ; he wishes to see it again, and others like it, and dreams of noth- ing else. There are such moments in the life of nations, and this is one of them. They are happy in contempla- ting beautiful things, and wish only that they should be the most beautiful pos- sible. They are not preoccupied, as we are, with theories. They do not excite themselves to express moral or philosophical ideas. They wish to en- joy' through the imagination, through the eyes, like those Italian nobles, who, at the same time, were so captivated by fine colors and forms, that they covered with paintings not only their rooms and their churches, but the lids of their chests and the saddles of their horses. The rich and green sun- ny country ; young, gayly-attired la- dies, blooming with health and love ; half-draped gods and goddesses, mas- terpieces and models of strength and grace, these are the most lovely ob- j iects which man can contemplate, the ' most capable of satisfying his senses and his heart of giving rise to smiles and joy; and these are .the objects which occur in all tl.e poets in a most wonderful abundance of songs, pas- torals, sonnets, little fugitive pieces, so lively, delicate, easily unfolded, that we have never since had their equals. What though Venus and Cupid have lost their altars ? Like the contempo- rary painters of Italy, they willingly imagine a beautiful naked child, drawn on a chariot of gold through the limpid air ; or a woman, redolent with youth, standing on the waves, \\ ucr. kiss her snowy feet. Harsh Ben Jon son is ravished with the scene. The disciplined battalion of his sturdy verses changes into a band of little graceful strophes, which trip as lightly as Raphael's children. He sees his lady approach, sitting on the chariot of Love, drawn by swans and doves. Love leads the car ; she passes calm and smiling, and all hearts, charmed by her divine looks, wish no other joy than to see and serve her forever. " See the chariot at hand here of Love, Wherein my lady rideth ! Each that draws is a swan or a dove, And well the car Love guideth. As she goes, all hearts do duty Unto her beauty ; And, enamoured, do wish, so they might But enjoy such a sight, That they still were to run by her side, Through swords, through seas, whither she would ride. Do but look on her eyes, they do light All that Love's world cprnpriseth ! Do but look on her hair, it is bright As Love's star when it riseth! . . . Have you seen but a bright lily grow, Before rude hands have touched it ? Have you marked but the fall o' the snow, Before the soil hath smutched it ? Have you felt the wool of beaver ? Or swan's down ever ? Or have smelt o' the bud o' the brier? Or the nard in the fire ? Or have tasted the bag of the bee ? O so white! O so soft! O so swe If she!"* What can be more lively, moic unlike measured ai d art ftcial mythology ? Like Theocritus and Moschus, they play with their smiling gods, and their belief becomes a festival. One clay, in an alcove of a wood, Cupid meets a nymph asleep : * Spenser's Works, ed. Todd, 1863, The * Ben Jonson's Poems, ed. R. Bell. Cek* Faerie Queene, i. c. n, bt. 51. bration of Char is ; her Triumph, p. 12 5. JHAP. I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 129 *' Her golden hair o'erspread her face, Her careless arms abroad were cast, Her quiver had her pillow's placed, Her breast lay bare to every blast." * He approaches softly, steals her arrows, and puts his own in their place. She hears a noise at last, raises her reclining head, and sees a shepherd approach- ing. She flees; he pursues. She bends her bow, and shoots her arrows at him. He only becomes more ar- dent, and is on the point of seizing her. In despair, she takes an arrow, and bur- ies it in her lovely body. Lo ! she is changed, she stops, smiles, loves, draws near him. " Though mountains meet not, lovers may. What other lovers do, did they. The god of Love sat on a tree, And laught that pleasant sight to see." t A drop of archness falls into the med- ley of artlessness and voluptuous charm ; it was so in Longus, and in all that delicious nosegay called the Anthology. Not the dry mocking of Voltaire, of folks who possessed only wit, and always lived in a drawing- room ; but the raillery of artists, lovers whose brain is full of color and form, who, when they recount a bit of roguish- ness, imagine a stooping neck, lowered eyes, the blushing of vermilion cheeks. One of these fair ones says the fol- lowing verses, simpering, and we can even see now the pouting of her lips : " Love in my bosom like a bee Doth suck his sweet. Now with his wings he plays with me, Now with his feet. Within my eyes he makes his rest, His bed amid my tender breast, My kisses are his daily feast. And yet he robs me of my rest. -Ah! wanton, will ye! " $ Whit relieves these sportive pieces is their splendor of imagination. There are effects and flashes which we hardly dare quote, dazzling and maddening, as in the Song of Songs: " Her eyes, fair eyes, like to the purest lights That animate the sun, or cheer the day ; In whom the shining sunbeams brightly play, Whiles fancy doth on them divine delights. " Her cheeks like ripened lilies steeped in wine, Or fair pomegranate kernels washed in milk, * Cupid^s Pastime, unknown author, ab. 162 u t Ibid. \ Rysalind's Madrigal. Or snow-white threads in nets of crimson silk, Or gorgeous clouds upon the sun's decline. " Her lips are roses over-washed with dew, Or like the purple of Narcissus' flower . . . " Her crystal chin like to the purest mould, Enchased with dainty daisies soft and white, Where fancy's fair pavilion once is pight, Whereas embraced his beauties he doth hold. " Her neck like to an ivory shining tower, Where through with azure veins sweet nectar runs, Or like the down of swans where Senesse woons, Or like delight that doth itself devour. " Her paps are like fair apples in the pnme As round as orient pearls, as soft as down ; They never vail their fair through winter's frown, But from their sweets love sucked his summer time." * " What need compare, where sweet exceeds compare ? Who draws his thoughts of love from sense- less things, Their pomp and greatest glories doth impair, And mounts love's heaven with overladen wings." t I can well believe that things had no more beauty then than now ; but I am sure that men found them more beau- tiful. When the power of embellishment is so great, it is natural that they should paint the sentiment which unites all joys, whither all dreams con- verge, ideal love, and in particular, artless and happy love. Of all senti- ments, there is none for which we have more sympathy. It is of all the most simple and sweet. It is the first mo- tion of the heart, and the first word of nature. It is made up of inno- cence and self-abandonment. It is clear of reflection and effort. It extricates us from complicated pas- sion, contempt, regret, hate, violent de- sires. It penetrates us, and we breathe it as the fresh breath of the morning wind, which has swept over flowery meads. The nights of this perilous court inhaled it, and were enraptured, and so rested in the contrast from their actions and their dangers. The most severe and tragic of their poets turned aside to meet it, Shakspeare among the evergreen oaks of the forest of Ar- den, J Ben Jonson in the woods of Sher- * Green's Poems, ed. R. Bell, Menaphorf* Eclogue i p. 41. t Ibid. Melicertus 1 EclogTie, p. 43. t As you Like it. 130 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II. wood,* amid the wide shady glades, the shining leaves and the moist flow- ers, trembling on the margin of lonely springs. Marlowe himself, the terrible painter of the agony of Edward II., the impressive and powerful poet, who wrote Faustus, Tamerlane, and the Jew of Malta, leaves his sanguinary dramas, his high-sounding verse, his images of fury, and nothing can be more musical and sweet than his song. A shepherd, to gain his lady-love, says to her : " Come live with me and be my Love, And we will all the pleasures prove That hills and valleys, dale and field, And all the craggy mountains yield. There we will sit upon the rocks, And see the shepherds feed their Hocks, By shallow rivers, to whose falls Melodious birds sing madrigals. There will I make thee beds of roses And a thousand fragrant posies, A cap of flowers, and a kirtle Embroider'd all with leaves of myrtle. A gown made of the finest wool, Which from our pretty lambs we pull, Fair lindd slippers for the cold, With buckles of the purest gold. A belt of straw and ivy buds, With coral clasps and amber studs : And if these pleasures may thee move, Come live with me and be my Love. . . . The shepherd swains shall dance and sing For thy delight each May-morning : If these delights thy mind may move, Then live with me and be my Love " t The unpolished gentlemen of the period, returning from hawking, were more than once arrested by such rustic pictures ; such as they were, that is to say, imaginative and not very citizen- like, they had dreamed of figuring in them on their own account. But while entering into, they reconstructed them ; they reconstructed them in their parks, prepared for Queen Elizabeth's en- trance, with a profusion of costumes and devices, not troubling themselves to copy rough nature exactly. Im- probability did not disturb them ; they * The Sad Shepherd. See also Beaumont and Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess. t This poem was, and still is, frequently at- tributed to Shakspeare. It appears as his in Knight's edition, published a few years ago, Isaac Walton, however, writing about fifty years after Marlowe's death, attributes it to him. In Palgrave's Golden Treasury it is also ascribed to the same author. As a confirma- tion, let us state that Ithamore, in Marlowe's Jew of Malta, says to the courtesan (Act iv. Sc. 4): " Thou in those groves, by Dis above, Shah \ive with me, and be my love." TR. were not minute imitators, students of manners : they created ; the country for them was but a setting, and the complete picture came from their fan- cies and their hearts. Romantic it may have been, even impossible, but it was on this account the more charm- . ing. Is there a greater charm than putting on one side this actual world which fetters or oppresses us, to float vaguely and easily in the azure and the light, on the summit of the cloud- capped land of fairies, to arrange things according to the pleasure of the mo- ment, no longer feeling the oppressive laws, the harsh and resisting frame work of life, adorning and varying every thing after the caprice and the re* fmements of fancy? That is what is done in these little poems. Usually the events are such as happen nowhere or happen in the land where kings turn shepherds and marry shepherdesses. The beautiful Argentile * is detained at the court of her uncle, who wishes to deprive her of her kingdom, and commands her to marry Curan, a boor in his service ; she flees, and Curan in despair goes and lives two years among the shepherds. One day he meets a beautiful country-woman, and loves her ; gradually, while speaking to her, he thinks of Argentile, and weeps ; he describes her sweet face, her lithe fig- ure, her blue-veined delicate wrists, and suddenly sees that the peasant girl is weeping. She falls into his arms, and says, "I am Argentile." Now Curan was a king's son, who had disguised himself thus for love of Argentile. He resumes his armor, and defeats the wicked king. There never was a braver knight ; and they both reigned long in Northumberland. From a hundred such tales, tales of the spring- time, the reader will perhaps bear with me while I pick out one more, gay ana simple as a May morning. The Prin- cess Dowsabel came down one morn- ing into her father's garden ; she gath- ers honeysuckles, primroses, violets, and daisies ; then, behind a hedge, she heard a shepherd singing, and that so finely that she loved him at once. He promises to be faithful, and asks for a * Chalmers' English Poets, William War- ner, Fourth Book of Albion's England, :ht xx. p. 551. CHAP. I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. kiss. Her cheeks became as crimson as a rose : " With that she bent her snow white knee, Down by the shepherd kneeled she, And him she sweetly kiss'd. Wich that the shepherd whoop'd for joy; Quoth he : 'There's never shepherd's be That ever was so blest.' " * boy Nothing more; is it not enough? It is but a moment's fancy-; but they had such fancies every moment. Think what poetry was likely to spring from them, how superior to common events, how free from literal imitation, how smitten with ideal beauty, how capable of creating a world beyond our sad world. In fact, among all these poems there is one truly divine, so divine that the reasoners of succeeding ages have found it wearisome, that even now but few understand it Spenser's Faerie Qifeene. One day Monsieur Jourdain, having turned Mamamouchi t and learned orthography, sent for the most illustri- ous writers of the age. He settled himself in his arm-chair, pointed with his finger at several folding-stools for them to sit down, and said : " I have read your little productions, gentle- men. They have afforded me much pleasure. I wish to give you some work to do. I have given some lately to little Lulli, J your fellow- laborer. It was at my command that he intro- duced the sea-shell at his concerts, a melo- dious instrument, which no one thought of be- fore, and which has such a pleasing effect. I insist that you will work out my ideas as he has worked them out, and I give you an order for a poem in prose. What is not prose, you know, is verse ; and what is not verse, is prose. When I say, ' Nicolle, bring me my slippers and give me my nightcap,' I speak prose. Take this sentence as your model. This style is much more pleasing than the jargon of unfin- ished lines which you call verse. As for the subject, let it be myself. You will describe my flowered dressing-gown which I have put on to receive you in, and this little green velvet undress which I wear underneath, to do my morning exercise in. You will set down that this chintz costs a louis an ell. The cle- icription, if well worked out, will furnish some very pretty paragraphs, and will enlighten the public as to the cost of things. I desire also that you should speak of my mirrors,my carpets, ^* Chalmers 1 English Poets, M. Drayton's Fmrth Eclogue, iy. p. 436. t Mons. Jourdain is the hero of Moliere's comedy, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, the type ->f a vulgar and successful upstart ; Mama- mouchi is a mock title. TR. % Lulli, a celebrated Italian composer of the ^ime of Moliere TR. my hangings. My tradesmen will let you have their bills ; don't fail to put them in. I shali be glad to read in your works, all fully and naturally set forth, about my father's shop, who, like a real gentleman, sold cloth to oblige his friends ; my maid Nicolle's kitchen, the genteel behavior of Brusquet, the little dog of my neighbor M. Dimanche. You might also explain my domestic affairs : there is nothing more interesting to the public than to hear how a million may be scraped together. Tell them also that my daughter Lucile has not married that little rascal Cleonte, but M. Samuel Ber- nard, who made his fortune as a fermier-gen- cral } keeps his carriage and is going to be a minister of state. _ For this I will pay you liberally, half-a-iouis for a yard of writing. Come back in a month, and let me see what my ideas have suggested to you." We are the descendants of M. Jour- dain, and this is how we have been talking to the men of genius from the beginning of the century, and the men of genius have listened to us. Hence arise our shoppy and realistic novels. I pray the reader to forget them, to forget himself, to become for a while a poet, a gentleman, a man of the six- teenth century. Unless we bury the M. Jourdain who survives in us, we shall never understand Spenser. VI. Spenser belonged to an ancient family, allied to great houses; was a friend of Sidney and Raleigh, the two most accomplished knights of the age a knight himself, at least in heart ; who had found in his connections, his friendships, his studies, his life, every thing calculated to lead him to ideal poetry. We find him at Cambridge, where he imbues himself with the no- blest ancient philosophies ; in a north- ern country, where he passes through a deep and unfortunate passion ; at Penshurst, in the castle and in the society where the Arcadia was pro- duced; with. Sidney, in whom survived entire the romantic poetry and heroic jenerosity of the feudal spirit; at court, where all the splendors of a disciplined and gorgeous chivalry were gathered about the throne ; finally, at Kilcolman, on the borders of a beauti- ful lake, in a lonely castle, from which the view embraced an amphitheatre of mountains, and the half of Ire- and. Poor on the other hand,* not * It is very doubtful whether Spenser was so joor as he is generally believed to have been. TR. 132 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II fit f>r court, and though favored by the queen, unable to obtain from his patrons any thing but inferior employ- ment ; in the end, wearied of solicita- tions, and banished to his dangerous property in Ireland, whence a rebellion expelled him, after his house and child had been burned ; he died three months later, of misery and a broken heart.* Expectations and rebuffs, many sorrows and many dreams, some few joys, and a sudden and frightful calam- ity, a small fortune and a premature end ; this indeed was a poet's life. But the heart within was the true poet from it all proceeded ; circumstances furnished the subject only; he trans- formed them more than they him ; he received less than he gave. Philosophy and landscapes, ceremonies and orna- ments, splendors of the country and the court, on all which he painted or thought, he impressed his inward no- bleness. Above all, his was a soul cap- tivated by sublime and chaste beauty, eminently platonic ; one of these lofty and refined souls most charming of all, who, born in the lap of nature, draw thence their sustenance, but soar higher, enter the regions of mys- ticism, and mount instinctively in or- der to expand on the confines of a lof- tier world. Spenser leads us toMilton, and thence to Puritanism, as Plato to Virgil, and thence to Christianity. Sensuous beauty is perfect in both, but their main worship is for moral beauty. He appeals to the Muses : " Revele to me the sacred noursery Of vertue, which with you doth there re- maine, Where it in silver bowre does hidden ly 1" rom view of men and wicked worlds dis- daine! " He encourages his knight when he sees him droop. He is wroth when he sees him attacked. He rejoices in his justice, temperance, courtesy. He in- troduces in the beginning of a song, )ong stanzas in honor of friendship and justice. He pauses, after relating a .ovely instance of chastity, to exhort women to modesty. He pours out the wealth of his respect and tenderness at the feet of his heroines. If any coarse * " He died for want of bread, in King Street." Ben Jonson, qioted by Drummond. man insults them, he calls to their aid nature and the gods. Never does he bring them on his stage without adorn- ing their name with splendid eulogy. He has an adoration for beauty worthy of Dante and Plotinu?. And this, be- cause he never considers it a mere har- mony of color and form, but an emana tion of unique, heavenly, imperishable beauty, which no mortal eye can see, and which is the masterpiece of the great Author of the worlds.* Bodies only render it visible ; it does not live in them ; charm and attraction are not in things but in the immortal idea which shines through them : " For that same goodly hew of white and red, With which the cheekes are sprinckled, shall decay, And those sweete rosy leaves, so fairly spred Upon the lips, shall fade and fall away To that they were, even to corrupted clay : That golden wyre, those sparckling stars so bright, Shall turne to dust, and lose their goodly light. But that faire lampe, from whose celestiall ray That light proceedes, which kindleth lovers fire, Shall never be extinguisht nor decay ; But, when the vitall spirits doe expyre, Upon her native planet shall retyre ; For it is heavenly borne, and cannot die, Being a parcell of the purest skie." f In presence of this ideal of beauty, love is transformed : " For Love is lord of Truth and Loialtie, Lifting himself out of the lowly dust, On golden plumes up to the purest skie, Above the reach of loathly sinfull lust, Whose base affect through cowardly distrust Of his weake wings dare not to heaven fly, But like a moldwarpe in the earth doth ly."J Love such as this contains all that is good, and fine, and noble. It is the prime source of life, and the eternal soul of things. It is this love which, pacifying the primitive discord, has created the harmony of the spheres, and maintains this glorious universe, It dwells in God, and is God Himself, come down in bodily form to regenerate the tottering world and save the human race ; around and within animated be- ings, when our eyes can pierce outward appearances, we' behold it as a living light, penetrating and embracing every * Hymns of Love and Beauty ; of heavenly Love and Beauty. t A Hymne in Honour of Beautie, I. 92-105 \ A Hymne in Honour of Love , /. 176-182. CHAP I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE 133 creature. We touch here the sublime sharp summit where the world of mind and the world of sense unite ; where man, gathering with both hands the loveliest flowers of either, feels himself at the same time a pagan and a Chris- tian. So much, as a testimony to his heart. But he was also a poet, that is, pre- eminently a creator and a dreamer, and that most naturally, instinctively, unceasingly. We might go on for- ever describing this inward condition of all great artists ; there would still remain much to be described. It is a sort of mental growth with them ; at every instant a bud shoots forth, and on this another, and still another; each producing, increasing, blooming of it- self, so that after a few moments we find first a green plant crop up, then a thicket, then a forest. A character appears to them, then an action, then a landscape, then a succession of actions, characters, landscapes, producing, com- pleting, arranging themselves by in- stinctive development, as when in a dream we behold a train of figures which, without any outward compul- sion, display and group themselves be- fore our eyes. This fount of living and changing forms is inexhaustible in Spenser; he is always imaging; it is his specialty. He has but to close his eyes, and apparitions arise; they abound in him, crowd, overflow ; in vain he pours them forth; they con- tinually float up, more copious and more dense. Many times, following the in- exhaustible stream, I have thought of the vapors which rise incessantly from the sea, ascend, sparkle, commingle their golden and snowy scrolls, while under- neath them new mists arise, and others again beneath, and the splendid pro- cession never grows dim or ceases. But what distinguishes him from all others is the mode of his imagination. Generally with a poet his mind fer- ments vehemently and by fits and starts ; his ideas gather, jostle each other, suddenly appear in masses and heaps, and burst forth in sharp, pierc- ing, concentrative words ; it seems that they need these sudden accumula- tions to imitate the unity and life-like energy of the objects which they re- produce ; at least almost all the poets of that time, Shakspeare at their head, act thus. Spenser remains calm in the fervor of invention. The visions which would be fever to another, leave him at peace. They come and unfold themselves before him, easily, entire, uninterrupted, without starts. He is epic, that is, a narrator, not a singei like an ode-writer, nor a mimic like a play-writer. No modern is more like Homer. Like Homer and the great epic-writers, he only presents consecu- tive and noble, almost classical images, so nearly ideas, that the mind seizes them unaided and unawares. Like Homer, he is always simple and clear : he makes no leaps, he omits no argu- ment, he roos no word of its primitive and ordinary meaning, he preserves the natural sequence of ideas. Like Ho- mer, again, he is redundant, ingenuous, even childish. He says every thing, he puts down reflections which we have made beforehand ; he repeats without limit his grand ornamental epithets. We can see that he beholds objects in a beautiful uniform light, with infinite detail ; that he wishes to show all this detail, never fearing to see his happy dream change or disappear; that he traces its outline with a regular move- ment, never hurrying or slackening. He is even a little prolix, too unmind- ful of the public, too ready to lose himself and dream about the things he beholds. His thought expands in vast repeated comparisons, like those of the old Ionic poet. If a wounded giant falls, he finds him " As an aged tree, High growing on the top of rocky clift. Whose hart-strings with keene steele nigh hew en be, The mightie trunck halfe rent with ragged rift, Doth roll adowne the rocks, and fall with fearv full drift. Or as a castle, reared high and round, By subtile engins and malitious slight Is undermined from the lowest ground, And her foundation forst, and feebled quighl, At last downe falles ; and with her heaped hight Her hastie ruine does more heavie make, And yields it selfe unto the victours might Such was this Gyaunt's fall, that seemd to shake The stedfast globe of earth, as it for feare did quake." * He develops all the ideas which he handles. All his phrases become pe * The Faerie Qwene t i. c. 8, st. 22, 23. 134 THE RENAISSANCE, [BOOK II. r/'ods. Instead of compressing, he ex- pands. To bear this ample thought and its accompanying train, he requires a long stanza, ever renewed, long alter-, nate verses, reiterated rhymes, whose uniformity and fulness recall the ma- jestic sounds which undulate eternally through the woods and the fields. To unfold these epic faculties, and to dis- play them in the sublime region where his soul is naturally borne, he requires an ideal stage, situated beyond the bounds of reality, with personages who could hardly exist, and in a world which could never be. lie made many miscellaneous at- tempts in sonnets, elegies, pastorals, hymns of love, little sparkling word pictures ; * they were but essays, in- capable for the most part of support- ing his genius. Yet already his mag- nificent imagination appeared in them ; gods, men, landscapes, the world which he sets in motion is a thousand miles from that in which we live. His Shep- herd^s Calendar t is a thought-inspir- ing and tender pastoral, full of delicate loves, noble sorrows, lofty ideas, where no voice is heard but of thinkers ar>cl poets. His Visions of Petrarch and Dit Bellay are admirable dreams, in which palaces, temples of gold, splen- did landscapes, sparkling rivers, mar- vellous birds, appear in close succession as in an Oriental fairy-tale. If he sings a " Prothalamion," he sees two beautiful swans, white as snow, who come softly swimming down amidst the songs of nymphs and vermeil roses, while the transparent water kisses their silken feathers, and murmurs with joy : " There, in H meadow, by the river's side, .*. flocke of Nymphes I chaunced to espy, All lovely daughters of the Flood thereby, With goodly greenish locks, all loose untyde, As each had bene a bryde ; And each one had a little wicker basket, Made of fine twigs, entrayled curiously, In which they gathered flowers to fill their flasket, And with fine fingers cropt full feateously The tender stalkes on hye. Of every sort, which in that meadow grew, * The Shepherd's Calendar, A moretti, Son- ttits, Prothalamion, Epithalamion, Muiopot- mos, Virgil"* s Gnat, The Ruines of Time, The T cares of the Muses, etc. t Published in 1589 ; dedicated to Philip Sid- Thsy gathered some ; the violet, pallid blew, The little dazie, that at evening closes, The virgin lillie, and the primrose trew, With store of vermeil roses, To deck their bridegroomes posies Against the brydale-day, which was not long : Sweet Themmes! runne softly, till I end my song. With that I saw two Swannes of goodly hewe Come softly swimming downe along the lee . Two fairer birds I yet did never see ; The snow, which doth the top of Pindvs strew, Did never whiter shew . . . So purely white they were, That even the gentle stream, the whicl .hern bare, Seem'd foule to them, and bad his billowes spare To wet their silken feathers, least they might Soyie their fayre plumes with water not so fayre, And marre their beauties bright, That shone as heavens light, Against their brydale day, which was nc-f long : Sweet Themmes ! runne softly, till I end my song! " * If he bewails the death of Sidney, Sid- ney becomes a shepherd ; he is slain like Adonis ; around him gather weep- ing nymphs : " The gods, which all things see, this same be- held, And, pittying this paire of lovers trew, Tran formed them there lying on the field, Into one flowre that is both red and blew : It first growes red, and then to blew doth fade, Like Astrophel, which thereinto was made. And in the midst thereof a star appeares, As fairly formd as any star in skyes : Resembling Stella in her freshest yeares, Forth darting beames of beautie from her eyes ; And all the day it standeth full of deow, Which is the teares, that from her eyes did flow." t His most genuine sentiments become thus fairy-like. Magic is the mould of his mind, and impresses its shape on all that he imagines or thinks. Involuntarily he robs objects of their ordinary form. If he looks z.\ a lan^* scape, after an instant he sees it quuc differently. He carries it, unconscious- ly, into an enchanted land ; the azure heaven sparkles like a canopy of diamonds, meadows are clothed with flowers, a biped population flutters in the balmy air, palaces of jasper shine among the trees, radiant ladies appear on carved balconies above galleries of * Prothalamion, I. 19-54. t Astroplul, L 181-192. CHAP. L] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. '35 emerald. This unconscious toil of mind is like the slow crystallizations of nature. A moist twig is cast into the bottom of a mine, and is brought out again a hoop of diamonds. At last he finds a subject which suits him, the greatest joy permitted to an artist. He removes his epic from the common ground which, in the hands of Homer and Dante, gave expression to a living creed, and depicted national heroes. He leads us to the summit of fairy land, soaring above history, on tha extreme verge where objects vai. dh and pure idealism begins : " I haw* undertaken a work," he says, " to represent all the moral vertues, assign- ing to every vertue a knight to be the patron and defender of the same ; in whose actions and feats of armes and chivalry the operations of that vertue, whereof he is the protector, are to be expressed, and the vices and unruly appetites that oppose themselves against the same, to be beaten downe and overcome." * In fact, he gives us an allegory as the foundation of his poem, not that he dreams of becoming a wit, a preacher of moralities, a pro- pounder of riddles. He does not sub- ordinate image to idea ; he is a seer, not a philosopher. They are living men and actions which he sets in mo- tion; only from time to time, in his poem, enchanted palaces, a whole train of splendid visions trembles and divides like a mist, enabling us to catch a glimpse of the thought which raised and arranged it. When in his Garden of Adonis we see the countless forms of all living things arranged in due order, in close compass, awaiting life, we conceive with him the birth of universal love, the ceaseless fertility of the great mother, the mysterious swarm of creatures which rise in suc- cession from her " wide wombe of the world." When we see his Knight of the Cross combating with a horrible woman-serpent in defence of his belov- ed lady Una, we dimly remember that, if we search beyond these two figures, we shall find behind one Truth, be- nind the other, Falsehood. We per- ceive that his characters are not flesh * Words attributed to him by Lodowick Bryskett, Discourse of Civil Life, ed. 1606, p. 26. and blood, and that all these brilliant phantoms are phantoms, and nothing more. We take pleasure in their brilliancy, without believing in their substantiality ; we are interested in their doings, without troubling our- selves about their misfortunes. We know that their tears and cries are not real. Our emotion is purified and raised. We do not fall into gross illusion; we have that gentle feeling of knowing ourselves to be dreaming. We, like him, are a thousand leagues from actual life, beyond the pangs of painful pity, unmixed terror, violent and bitter hatred. We entertain only refined sentiments, partly formed, arrested at the very moment they were about to affect us with too sharp a stroke. They slightly touch us, and we find ourselves happy in being ex- tricated from a belief which was begin ning to be oppressive. VII. What world could furnish materials to so elevated a fancy ? One only, that of chivalry; for none is so far from the actual. Alone and indepen- dent in his castle, freed from all the ties which society, family, toil, usually impose on the actions of men, the feu- dal hero had attempted every kind of adventure, but yet he had done less than he imagined ; the boldness of his deeds had been exceeded by the mad- ness of his dreams. For want of use- ful employment and an accepted rule his brain had labored on an unreason ing and impossible track, and the ur- gency of his wearisomeness had in- creased beyond measure his craving for excitement. Under this stimulus his poetry had become a world of im- agery. Insensibly strange conceptions had grown and multiplied in his brains, one over the other, like ivy woven round a tree, and the original trunk had disappeared beneath their rank growth and their obstruction. The delicate fancies of the old Welsh poetry, the grand ruins of the German epics, the marvellous splendors of the conquered East, all the recollections which four centuries of adventure had scattered among the minds of men, had become gathered into one great dream ; and giants, dwarfs, monsters, the whole J36 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II P' h medley of imaginary creatures, of su- perhuman exploits and splendid fol- ies, were grouped around an unique conception, exalted and sublime love, like courtiers prostrated at the feet of their king. It was an ample and buoy- ant subject - matter, from which the great artists of the age, Ariosto, Tasso, Cervantes, Rabelais, had hewn their poems. But they belonged too complete- ly to their own time to admit of their belonging to one which had passed.* They created a chivalry afresh, but it was not genuine. The ingenious Ari- osto, an ironical epicurean, delights his gaze with it, and grows merry over it, like a man of pleasure, a skeptic who rejoices doubly in his pleasure, because it is sweet, and because it is forbidden. By his side poor Tasso, inspired by a fanatical, revived, facti- tious Catholicism, amid the tinsel of an old school of poetry, works on the same subject, in sickly fashion, with great effort and scant success. Cer- vantes, himself a knight, albeit he loves chivalry for its nobleness, per- ceives its folly, and crushes it to the ground with heavy blows, in the mis- haps of the wayside inns. More coarsely, more openly, Rabelais, a rude commoner, drowns it with a burst of laughter, in his merriment and nasti- ness. Spenser alone takes it seriously and naturally. He is on the level of so much nobleness, dignity, reverie. He is not yet settled and shut in by that species of exact common sense which was to found and cramp the whole modern civilization. In his heart he inhabits the poetic and shadowy land from which men were daily drawing further and further away. He is en- amored of it, even to its very language ; he revives the old words, the expres- sions of the middle age, the style of Chaucer, especially in the Shepherd's Calendar. He enters straightway upon the strangest dreams of the old story- filers, without astonishment, like a man who has still stranger dreams of his own. Enchanted castles, monsters and giants, duels in the woods, wan- dering ladies, all spring up under his hands, the medieval fancy with the mediaeval generosity; and it is just be- * Ariosto, 1474-1533- Tasso, 1544-1595. Cer- vantes, 1547*1616. Rabelais, 1483-1553. cause this world is unreal that it so suits his humor. Is there in chivalry sufficient to fur- nish him with matter ? That is but one world, and he has another. Be- yond the valiant men, the glorified im- ages of moral virtues, he has the gods, finished models of sensible beauty ; beyond Christian chivalry he has the pagan Olympus ; beyond the idea of heroic will which can only be satisfied by adventures and danger, there exists calm energy, which, by its own im- pulse, is in harmony with actual exist- ence. For such a poet one ideal is not enough ; beside the beauty of effort he places the beauty of happiness; he couples them, not deliberately as a philosopher, nor with the design of a scholar like Goethe, but because they are both lovely; and here and there, amid armor and passages of arms, he distributes satyrs, nymphs, Dia \a, Ve- nus, like Greek statues amid the turrets and lofty trees of an English park. There is nothing forced in the union ; the ideal epic, like a superior heav- en, receives and harmonizes the two worlds ; a beautiful pagan dream car- ries on a beautiful dream of chivalry ; the link consists in the fact that they are both beautiful. At this elevation the poet has ceased to observe the differences of races and civilizations. He can introduce into his picture whatever he will ; his only reason is, '* That suited ; " and there could be no better. Under the glossy-leaved oaks, by the old trunk so deeply rooted in the ground, he can see two knights cleaving each other, and the next in- stant a company of Fauns who came there to dance. The beams of light which have poured down upon the velvet moss, the green turf of an Eng- lish forest, can reveal the dishevelled locks and white shoulders of nymphs. Do we not see it in Rubens ? And what signify discrepancies in the happy and sublime illusion of fancy ? Are there more discrepancies ? Who per- ceives them, who feels them ? Who does not feel, on the contrary, that to speak the truth, there is but one woiid that of Plato and the poets ; that ac- tual phenomena are but outlines mutilated, incomplete and blurred out lines wretched abortions scattered CHAP. I.] . THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE '37 here and there on Time's track, like fragments of clay, half moulded, then cast aside, lying in an artist's studio ; that, after all, invisible forces and ideas, which forever renew the actual existences, attain their fulfilment only in imaginary existences ; and that the poet, in order to express nature in its entirety, is obliged to embrace in his sympathy all the ideal forms by which nature reveals itself? This is the greatness of his work ; he has suc- ceeded in seizing beauty in its fulness, because he cared for nothing but beauty. The reader will feel that it is impos- sible to give in full the plot of such a poem. In fact, there are six poems, each of a dozen cantos, in which the action is ever diverging and converg- ing again, becoming confused and starting again ; and all the imaginings of antiquity and of the middle age are, I believe, combined in it. The knight " pricks along the plaine," among the trees, and at a crossing of the paths meets other knights with whom he en- gages in combat ; suddenly from with- in a cave appears a monster, half wo- man and half serpent, surrounded by a hideous offspring ; further on a giant, with three bodies ; then a dragon, great as a hill, with sharp talons and vast wings. For three days he fights him, and twice overthrown, he comes to himself only by aid of " a gracious ointment." After that there are sav- age tribes to be conquered, castles sur- rounded by flames to be taken. Mean- while ladies are wandering in the midst of forests, on white palfreys, exposed to the assaults of miscreants, now guarded by a lion which follows them, now delivered by a band of satyrs who adore them. Magicians work mani- fold charms ; palaces display their fes- tivities ; tilt-yards provide interminable tournaments ; sea-gods, nymphs, fairies, kings, intermingle in these feasts, sur- prises, dangers. You will say it is a phantasmagoria. What matter, if we see it ? And we do see it, for Spenser does. His sin- cerity communicates itself to us. He is so much at home in this world, that we end by finding ourselves at home in it too. He shows no appearance of astonishment at astonish ing events ; he comes upon them so natural!), that he makes them natural ; he defeats the miscreants, as if he he had done noth- ing else all his life. Venus, Diana, and the old deities, dwell at his gate and enter his threshold without his taking any heed of them. His serenity becomes ours. We grow credulous and happy by contagion, and to the same extent as he. How could it be otherwise ? Is it possible to refuse credence to a man who paints things for us with such accurate details and in such lively colors ? Here with a dash of his pen he describes a forest for you ; and are you not instantly in it with him ? Beech trees with their silvery stems, " loftie trees iclad with sommers pride, did spred so broad, that heavens light did hide ; " rays of light tremble or the bark and shine on the ground, on the reddening ferns and low bushes, which, suddenly smitten with the luminous track, glisten and glimmer. Footsteps are scarcely heard on the thick beds of heaped leaves; and at distant intervals, on the tall her- bage, drops of dew are sparkling. Yet the sound of a horn reaches us through the foliage ; how sweetly yet cheerfully it falls on the ear amidst this vast silence ! It resounds more loudly ; the clatter of a hunt draws near; "eft through the thicke they heard one rudely rush ; " a nymph approaches, the most chaste and beautiful in the world. Spenser sees her ; nay, more he kneels before her : " Her face so faire, as flesh it seemed not, But hevenly pourtraict of bright angels hew, Cleare as the skye, withouten blame or blot, Through goodly mixture of complexions dew; And in her cheekes the vermeill red did shew Like roses in a bed of lillies shed, The which ambrosiall odours from them threw, And gazers sence with double pleasure fed, Hable to heale the sicke and to revive th ded. In her faire eyes two living lamps did flame, Kindled above at th' Hevenly Makers light, And darted fyrie beames out of the same ; So passing persanc and so wondrous bright, That quite bereav'd therasl: Ve.lolde;s sight: In them the blinded god his lustful! fyre To kindle oft assayd, but had no might ; For, with dredd maiestie and awfull yre. She broke his wanton daits, and quenched bace desyre. Her yvorie forhead, full o bountie brave. Like a broad table did itselfe dispred, '38 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II For Love his loftie triumphes to engrave, And write the battau'es of his great godhed : All good and honour might therein be red ; For there their dwelling was. And, when she spake, Sweete wordes, like dropping honny, she did shed; And 'twixt the perles and rubins softly brake A silver sound, that heavenly musicke seemd to make. Upon her eyelids many Graces sate, Under the shadow of her even browes, Working belgardes and amorous retrate ; And everie one her with a grace endowes, And everie one with meekenesse to her bowes : So glorious mirrhour of celestiall grace, And soveraine moniment of mortall vowes, How shall frayle pen descrive her heavenly face, For feare, through want of skill, her beauty to disgrace ! So faire, and thousand thousand times more faire, She seemd, when she presented was to sight ; And was yclad, for heat of scorching aire, All in a silken Camus lilly whight, Purfled upon with many a folded plight, Which all above besprinckled was throughout With golden aygulets, that glistrecl bright, Like twinckling starres J and all the skirt about Was hemd with golden fringe. Below her ham her weed did somewhat trayne, And her streight legs most bravely were em- bayld In gilden buskins of costly cordwayne, All bard with golden bendes, which were en- tayld With curious antickes, and full fayre au- mayld : Before, they fastned were under her knee In a rich iewell, and therein entrayld The ends of all the knots, that none might see How they within their fouldings close en- wrapped bee. Like two faire marble pillours they were seene, Which doe the temple of the gods support, Whom all the people decke with girlands greene, And honour in their festivall resort ; TLvse same with stately grace and princely port She taught to tread, when she herselfe would grace ; But with the woody nymphes when she did play, Or when the flying libbard she did chace, She could them nimbly move, and after fly apace. And in her hand a sharpe bore-speare she held, And at her backe a bovr and quiver gay, Stuft with steel-headed dartes wherewith she queld The salvage beastes in her victorious play, Knit with a golden bauldricke which forelay Athwart her snowy brest, and did divide Her daintie paps ; which, like young fruit in May, Now little gan to swell, and being tide Through her thin weed their places only sig nifide. Her yellow lockes, crisped like golden wye, About her shoulders weren loosely si ed, And, when the winde emongst them did L- spyre, They waved like a penon wyde dispred And low behinde her backe were scattered : And, whether art it were or heedlesse hap, As through the flouring forrest rash she fled, In her rude heares sweet flowres themselves did lap, And flourishing fresh leaves and blossomes did enwrap." * " The daintie rose, the daughter of her morne, More deare than life she tendered, whose flowre The girlond of her honour did adorne ; Ne suffered she the middayes scoiching powre. Ne the sharp northerne wind thereon to showre ; But lapped up her silken leaves most chayre, Whenso the froward skye began to lowre'; But, spone as calmed was the cristall ayre, She did it fayre dispred, and let to florish fayre." t He is on his knees before her, I repeat, as a child on Corpus Christi day, among flowers and perfumes, trans- ported with admiration, so that he sees a heavenly light in her eyes, and angel's tints on her cheeks, even impressing into her service Christian angels and pagan graces to adorn and wait upon her ; it is love which brings such visions before him ; " Sweet love, that doth his golden wings em- bay In blessed nectar and pure pleasures well." Whence this perfect beauty, this modest and charming dawn, in which he assembles all the brightness, all the sweetness, all the virgin graces of the full morning ? What mother begat her, what marvellous birth brought to light such a wonder of grace and puri- ty ? One day, in a sparkling, solitary fountain, where the sunbeams shone, Chrysogone was bathing with roses and violets. allay ; * The Faerie Queene, ii. c. 3, st. 22-30. t Ibid. iii. c. 5, St. 51. CHAP. I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. '39 She bath'd with roses red and violets blew, And all the sweetest flowers that in the f orrest grew. Till faint through yrkesome wearines adowne Upon the grassy ground herselfe she layd To sleepe, the whiles a gentle slombring swowne Upon her fell all naked bare displayd." * The beams played upon her body, and "fructified" her. The months rolled on. Troubled and ashamed she went into the " wildernesse," and sat down, " every sence with sorrow sore op- ?rest." Meanwhile Venus, searching >r her boy Cupid, who had mutinied and fled from her, "wandered in the world." She had sought him in courts, cities, cottages, promising "kisses sweet, and sweeter things, unto the man that of him tydings to her brings." " Shortly unto the wastefull woods she came, Whereas she found the goddesse (Diana) with her crew. After late chace of their embrewed game, Sitting beside a fountaine in a rew ; Some of them washing with the liquid dew From off their dainty limbs the dusty sweat And soyle, which did deforme their lively hew; Others lay shaded from the scorching heat The rest upon her person gave attendance great. She, having hong upon a bough on high Her bow and painted quiver, had unlaste Her silver buskins from her nimble thigh, And her lanck loynes ungirt, and brests un- braste, After her heat the breathing cold to taste ; Her golden lockes, that late in tresses bright Embreaded were for hindring of her haste, Now loose about her shoulders hong undight, And were with sweet Ambrosia all be- sprinckled light." t Diana, surprised thus, repulses Venus, "and gan to smile, in scorne of her vaine playnt," swearing that if she should catch Cupid, she would clip his wanton wings. Then she took pity on the afflicted goddess, and set herself with her to look for the fugitive. They came to the " shady covert " where Chrysogone, in her sleep, had given lirth " unawares," to two lovely girls, " as faire as springing day." Diana took one, and made her the purest of all virgins. Venus carried off the other to the Garden of Adonis, "the first seminary of all things, that are borne to live and dye;" where Psyche, the bride of Love, disports herself ; where Pleasure, their daughter, wantons with * The Faerie Qw.ne, iii. c. 6, st. 6 and 7. f Ibid. st. 17 and 8. the Graces ; where Adonis, " lapped in flowres and pretious spycery," " liveth in eternal bliss," and came back to life through the breath of immortal Love. She brought her up as her daughter, selected her to be the most faithful of loves, and after long trials, gave her hand to the good knight Sir Scuda? more. That is the kind of thing we meet with in the wondrous forest Are you ill at ease there, and do you wish to leave it because it is wondrous ? At every bend in the alley, at every change of the light, a stanza, a word, reveals a landscape or an apparition. It is morning, the white dawn gleams faintly through the trees ; bluish vapors veil the horizon, and vanish in the smiling air ; the springs tremble and murmur faintly amongst the mosses, and on high the poplar leaves begin to stir and flutter like the wings of butterflies. A knight alights from his horse, a valiant knight, who has unhorsed many a Sar- acen, and experienced many an adven- ture. He unlaces his helmet, and on a sudden you perceive the cheeks of a young girl ; " Which doft, her golden lockes, that were up- bound Still in a knot, unto her heeles downe traced, And like a silken veile in compasse round About her backe and all her bodie wound ; Like as the shining skie in summers night, What time the dayes with scorching heat abound, Is creasted all with lines of firie light, That it prodigious seemes in common peoples sight." * It is Britomart, a virgin and a heroine, like Clorinda or Marfisa,! but how much more ideal ! The deep senti- ment of nature, the sincerity of reverie, the ever-flowing fertility of inspiration, the German seriousness, reanimate in this poem classical or chivalrous con- ceptions, even when they are the oldest or the most trite. The train of splen- dors and of scenery never ends. Deso- late promontories, cleft with gaping chasms ; thunder-stricken and black- ened masses of rocks, against which the hoarse breakers dash ; palaces * Ibid. iv. c. r, st. 13. t Clorinda, the heroine of the infidel army in Orlando Innamorato. TR. Boya 140 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK U sparkling with gold, wherein ladies, beauteous as angels, reclining care- lessly on purple cushions, listen with sweet smiles to the harmony of music played by unseen hands; lofty silent walks, where avenues of oaks spread their motionless shadows over clusters of virgin violets, and turf which never mortal foot has trod; to all these beauties of art and nature he adds the marvels of mythology, and describes them with as much of love and sin- cerity as a painter of the Renaissance or an ancient poet. Here approach on chariots of shell, Cymoent and her nymphs : '* A teme of dolphins raunged in aray Drew the smooth charett of sad Cymoent J They were all taught by Triton to obay To the long raynes at her commaundement : As swifte as swallowes on the waves they went, That their brode flaggy finnes no fome did reare, Ne bubling rowndell they behinde them sent ; The rest, of other fishes drawen weare ; Which with their finny oars the swelling sea did sheare." * Nothing, again, can be sweeter or calm- er than the description of the palace of Morpheus : " He, making speedy way through spersed ayre, And through the world of waters wide and deepe, To Morpheus house doth hastily repaire. Amid the bowels of the earth full steepe, And low, where dawning day doth never peepe His dwelling is ; there Tethys his wet bed Doth ever wash, and Cynthia still doth steepe In silver deaw his ever-drouping hed, Whiles sad Night over him her mantle black doth spred. And, more to lulle him in his slumber soft, A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe And ever-drizzling raine upon the loft, Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swowne. No other noyse, nor peoples troublous cryes, As still are wont t' annoy the walled towne, Might there be heard: but careless Quiet lyes, Wrapt in eternall silence farre from eni- myes." t Observe also in a corner of this forest, SL band of satyrs dancing under the preen leaves. They come leaping like wanton kids, as g?y as birds of joyous spring. The fail Hellenore, whom * The Faerie Queene, iii. c. 4, st. 33. t Ibid. i. c. i, st. 39 and 41. they have chosen for " May-lady," " daunst lively " also, faughing, and " with girlonds all bespredd." The wood re-echoes the sound of their "merry pypes." "Their horned feet the greene gras wore." " All day they daunced with great lustyhedd," with sudden motions and alluring looks, while about them their flock feed on " the brouzes," at their pleasure.* In every book we see strange processions pass by, allegorical and picturesque shows, like those which were then dis- played at the courts of princes ; now a masquerade of Cupid, now of the Rivers, now of the Months, now of the Vices. Imagination was never more prodigal or inventive. Proud Lu- cifera advances in a chariot " adorned all with gold and girlonds gay," beam- ing like the dawn, surrounded by a crowd of courtiers whom she dazzles with her glory and splendor : " six unequall beasts " draw her along, and each of these is ridden by a Vice. Idleness " upon a slouthfull asse . . . in habit blacke . . . like to an holy monck," sick for very laziness, lets his heavy head droop, and holds in his hand a breviary which he does not read ; gluttony, on " a filthie swyne," crawls by in his deformity, " his belly . . . upblowne with luxury, and eke with fatnesse swollen were his eyne ; and like a crane his necke was long and fyne," drest in vine-leaves, through which one can see his body eaten by ulcers, and vomiting along the road the wine and flesh with which he is glutted. Avarice seated between " two iron cof- fers," " upon a camell loaden all with gold," is handling a heap of coin, with threadbare coat, hollow cheeks, and feet stiff with gout. Envy " upon a ravenous wolfe still did chaw between his cankred teeth a venemous tode, that all the poison ran about his chaw," and his discolored garment " ypainted full of eies," conceals a snake wound about his body. Wrath, covered with a torn and bloody robe, comes riding on a lion, brandishing about his head " a burning brond," his eyes sparkling, his face pale as ashes, grasping in his feverish hand the haft of his dagger. The strange and terrible procession passes on, led by the solemn harmony * Ibid. iii. c. 10, st. 43-45. CHAP. I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 141 of the stanzas ; and the grand music of oft-repeated rhymes sustains the imagination in this fantastic world, which, with its mingled horrors and splendors, has just been opened to its flight. Yet all this is little. However much mythology and chivalry can supply, they do not suffice for the needs of this poetical fancy. Spenser's charac- teristic is the vastness and overflow of his picturesque invention. Like Ru- bens, whatever he creates is beyond the region of all traditions, but complete in all parts, and expresses distinct ideas. As with Rubens, his allegory swells its proportions beyond all rule, and withdraws fancy from all law, ex- cept in so far as it is necessary to harmonize forms and colors. For, if ordinary minds receive from allegory a certain weight which oppresses them, lofty imaginations receive from it wings which carry them aloft. Freed by it from the common conditions of life, they can dare all things, beyond imitation, apart from probability, with no other guides but their inborn energy and their shadowy instincts. For three days Sir Guyon is led by the cursed spirit, the tempter Mammon, in the subterranean realm, across wonderful gardens, trees laden with golden fruits, glittering palaces, and a confusion of all worldly treasures. They have de- scended into the bowels of the earth, and pass through caverns, unknown abysses, silent depths. "An ugly Feend . . . with monstrous stalke behind him stept," without Guyons' knowledge, ready to devour him on the least show of covetousness. The bril- liancy of the gold lights up hideous figures, and the beaming metal shines tvith a beauty more seductive in the gloom of the infernal prison. ' That Houses forme within was rude and strong, Lyke an huge cave hewne out of rocky clifte, From whose rough vaut the ragged breaches hong Embost with massy gold of glorious guifte, And with rich metall loaded every rifte, That heavy mine they did seeme to threatt ; And over them Arachne high did lifte Her cunning web, andspred her subtile nett, Enwrapped in fowle smoke and clouds more black than iett. Both roote, and floore. and walls, were all of gold, But overgrowne with dust and old decay, And hid m darknes, that none could behold The hew thereof ; for vew of cherefull day Did never in that House itselfe display, But a faint shadow of uncertein light ; Such as a lamp, whose life does fade away ; Or as the moone, cloathed with clowdy night, Does show to him that walkes in feare and sad affright. In all that rowme was nothing to be scene But huge great yron chests and coffers strong* All bard with double bends, that none could weene Them to enforce by violence or wrong ; On every side they placed were along. But all the grownd with sculs was scattered And dead mens bones, which round about were flong ; Whose lives, it seemed, whilome there were shed, And their vile carcases now left unburied. . . Thence 'orward he him ledd and shortly brought Unto another rowme, ^hose '-ore forthright To him did open as it had beene taught : Therein an hundred raunges weren pight, And hundred fournaces all burning bright ; By ever/ fournace many Feends did byde, Deformed creatures, horrible in sight ; And every Feend his busie paines applyde To melt the golden metall, ready to be tryde. One with great bellowes gathered filling ayre, And with forst wind the fewell did inflame ; Another did the dying bronds repayre With yron tongs, and sprinckled ofte the same With liquid waves, fiers Vulcans rage to tame, Who, maystring them, renewd his former heat: Some scumd the drosse that from the metall came ; Some stird the molten owre with ladles great : And every one did swincke, and every one did sweat . . . He brought him, through a darksom narrow strayt, To a broad gate all built of beaten gold : The gate was open ; but therein did wayt A sturdie Villein, stryding stiffe and bold, As if the Highest God defy he would : In his right hand an yron club he held But he himselfe was all of golden mould, Yet had both life and sence, and well could weld That cursed weapon, whet his cruell foes he queld . . . He brought him in. The rowme was large and wyde, As it some gyeld or solemne temple weare ; Many great golden pillours did upbeare The massy roofe, and riches huge sustayne J And every pilldur decked was full deare With crownes, and diademes, and titles vaine, Which mortall princes wore whiles they on earth did rayne. A route of people there assembled were, Of every sort and nation under skye, Which with great uprore preaced to dran nere 142 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II To th' upper part, where was advaunced hye A stately siege of soveraine maiestye ; And thereon satt a Woman gorgeous gay, And richly cladd in robes of royaltye, That never earthly prince in such aray His glory did enhaunce, and pompous pryde display . . . There, as in glistring glory she did sitt, She held a great gold chaine ylincked well, Whose upper end to highest heven was knitt, And lower part did reach to lowest hell." * No artist's dream matches these vis- i jus : the glow of the furnaces beneath the vaults of the cavern, the lights flickering over the crowded figures, the throne, and the strange glitter of the gold shining in every direction through the darkness. The allegory assumes gigantic proportions. When the ob- ject is to show temperance struggling with temptations, Spenser deems it ne- cessary to mass all the temptations to- gether. He is treating of a general virtue ; and as such a virtue is capable of every sort of resistance, he re- quires from it every sort of resistance alike ; after the test of gold, that of pleasure. Thus the grandest and the most exquisite spectacles follow and are contrasted with each other, and all are supernatural ; the graceful and the terrible are side by side, the happy gar- dens close by with the cursed subter- ranean cavern. No gate, but like one, being goodly dight With bowes and braunches, which did br dilate broad Their clasping armes in wanton wreathings intricate : So fashioned a porch with rare device, Archt over head with an embracing vine, Whose bounches hanging downe seemed to entice All passers-by to taste their lushious wine, And did themselves into their hands incline, As freely offering to be gathered ; Some deepe empurpled as the hyacine, Some as the rubine laughing sweetely red, Some like faire emeraudes, not yet well ri- pened. . . . And in the midst of all a fountaine stood, Of richest substance that on earth might bee, So pure and shiny that the silver flood Through every channell running one might see ; Most goodly it with curious ymageree Was over-wrought, and shapes of naked boyes, Of which some seemed with lively iollitee To fly about, playing their wanton toyes, Whylest others did themselves embay in liquid ioyes. * The Faerie Que<. nt , ii. c. 7, st. 28-46. And over all of purest gold was spred A trayle of yvie in his native hew ; For the rich metall was so coloured, That wight, who did not well avis'd it vew, W.oulcl surely deeme it to bee yvie trew; Low his lascivious armes adown did creepe. That themselves dipping in the silver dew Their fleecy flowres they fearfully did steepe. Which drops of christall seemd for wantonea to weep. Infinit streames continually did well Out of this fountaine, sweet and faire to see, The which into an ample laver fell, And shortly grew to so great quantitie, That like a little lake it seemd to bee ; Whose depth exceeded not three cubits hight, That through the waves one might the t jt- torn see, All pav'd beneath with jaspar shining bright, That seemd the fountaine in that sea did sayle upright. . . . The ioyous birdes, shrouded in chearefull shade, Their notes unto the voice attempred sweet ; Th' angel icall soft trembling voyces made To th' instruments divine respondence meet , The silver-sounding instruments did meet With the base murmur of the waters fall ; The waters fall with difference discreet, Now soft, now loud, unto the wind did call J The gentle warbling wind low answered t all. . . . Upon a bed of roses she was layd, As faint through heat, or dight to pleasant sin ; And was arayd, or rather disarayd, All in a vele of silke and silver thin, That hid no whit her alabaster skin, But rather shewd more white, if more might bee : More subtile web Arachne cannot spur: ; Nor the fine nets, which oft we woven see Of scorched deaw, do not in th' ayre more lightly flee. Her snowy brest was bare to ready spoyle Of hungry eies, which n' ote therewith be fild ; And yet, through languour of her late sweet toyle, Few drops, more cleare then nectar, forth distild, That like pure orient perles adowne it trild ; And her faire eyes, sweet smyling in delight, Moystened their fierie beames, with which she thrild Fraile harts, yet quenched not, like starry lights Which sparckling on the silent waves, does seeme more bright." * Do we find here nothing but fairy land ? Yes ; here are finished pictures true and complete, composed with a painter's feeling, with choice of tints and outlines ; our eyes are delighted by them. This reclining Acrasia has the pose of a goddess, or of one of * Ibid. 12, st. 53-78. CHAP. I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. Titian's courtesans. An Italian artist might copy these gardens, these flowing waters, these sculptured loves, those wreaths of creeping ivy thick with glossy leaves and fleecy flowers. Just before, in the infernal depths, the lights, with their long streaming rays, were fine, half-smothered by the dark- ness ; the lofty throne in the vast hall, between the pillars, in the midst of a swarming multitude, connected all the forms around it by drawing all looks towards one centre. The poet, here and throughout, is a colorist and an architect. However fantastic his world may be, it is not factitious ; if it does not exist, it might have been ; indeed, it should have been ; it is the fault of circumstances if they do not so group themselves as to bring it to pass ; taken by itself, it possesses that internal har- mony by which a real thing, even a still higher harmony, exists, inasmuch as, without any regard to real things, it is altogether, and in its least detail, constructed with a view to beauty. Art has made its appearance : this is the great characteristic of the age, which distinguishes the Faerie Queene from all similar tales heaped up by the middle age. Incoherent, mutilated, they lie like rubbish, or roughhewn stones, which the weak hands of the trouveres could not build into a monument. At last the poets and artists appear, and with them the conception of beauty, to wit, the idea of general effect. They understand proportions, relations, con- trasts ; they compose. In their hands the blurred vague sketch becomes de- fined, complete, separate ; it assumes color is made a picture. Every object thus conceived and imaged acquires a definite existence as soon as it assumes a true form ; centuries after, it will be acknowledged and admired, and men will be touched by it ; and more, they tfill be touched by its author ; for, be- * ;des the object which he paints, the poet paints himself. His ruling idea is stamped upon the work which it pro- duces and controls. Spenser is supe- rior to his subject, comprehends it fully, frames it with a view to its end, in order to impress upon it the proper mark of his soul and his genius. Each story is modulated with respect to another, and all with respect to a cer- tain effect which is being worked out - Thus a beauty issues from this harmo- ny, the beauty in the poet's heart, which his whole work strives to ex- press ; a noble and yet a cheerful beau- ty, made up of moral elevation and sensuous seductions, English in senti- ment, Italian in externals, chivalric in subject, modern in its perfection, repre. se'nting a unique and wonderful epoch, the appearance of paganism in a Christian race, and the worship of 01 ** by an imagination of the North. 3. PROSE. Such an epoch can scarcely last, and the poetic vitality wears itself out by its very efflorescence, so that its expan- sion leads to its decline. From the beginning of the seventeenth century, the subsidence of manners and genius grows apparent. Enthusiasm and re- spect decline. The minions and court- fops intrigue and pilfer, amid pedantry, puerility, and show. The court plun- ders, and the nation murmurs. The Commons begin to show a stern front, and the king, scolding them like a schoolmaster, gives way before them like a little boy. This sorry monarch (James I.) suffers himself to be bullied by his favorites, writes to them like a gossip, calls himself a Solomon, airs his literary vanity, and in granting an audience to a courtier, recommends him to become a scholar, and expects to be complimented on his own schol- arly attainments. The dignity of the government is weakened, and the peo- ple's loyalty is cooled. Royalty de- clines, and revolution is fostered. At the same time, the noble chivalric paganism degenerates into a base and coarse sensuality. The king, we are told, on one occasion, had got so drunk with his royal brother Christian of Denmark, that they both had to be carried to bed. Sir John Harrirgton says : " The ladies abandon their sobriety, and are seen to roll about in intoxication. . . . The Lady who did play the Queen's part (in the Masque of the Queen of Sheba) did carry most precious gifts to both their Majesties ; but, for- getting the steppes arising to the canopy, over- set her caskets into his Danish Majesties laj>, and fell at his feet, tho I rather think it was in 144 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II his face. Much was the hurry and confusion ; cloths and napkins were at hand, to make all clean. His Majesty then got up and would dance with the Queen of Sheba ; but he fell down and humbled himself before her, and was carried to an inner chamber and laid on a bed of state ; which was not a little defiled with the presents of the Queen which had been bestowed on his garments ; such as wine, cream, jelly, beverage, cakes, spices, and other good matters. The entertainment and show went forward, and most of the presenters went backward, or fell down | wine did so occupy their upper cham- bers. Now did appear, in rich dress, Hope, Faith, and Charity : Hope did assay to speak, but wine rendered her endeavours so feeble t' lat she withdrew, and hoped the king would excuse her brevity: Faith . . . left the court in a staggering condition. . . . They were both sick and spewing in the lower hall. Next came Victory, who ... by a strange medley of ver- sification . . . and after much lamentable ut- terance was led away like a silly captive, and laid to sleep in the outer steps of the anti-cham- ber. As for Peace, she most rudely made war with her olive branch, and laid on the pates of those who did oppose her coming. I ne'er did see such lack of good order, discretion, and so- briety in our Queen's days." * Observe that these tipsy women were great ladies. The reason is, that the grand ideas which introduce an epoch, end in their exhaustion, by preserving nothing but their vices ; the proud sentiment of natural life becomes a vulgar appeal to the senses. An en- trance, an arch of triumph under James I., often represented obscenities ; and later, when the sensual instincts, exas- perated by Puritan tyranny, begin to raise their heads once more, we shall find under the Restoration excess revel- ling in its low vices, and triumphing in its shamelessness. Meanwhile literature undergoes a change ; the powerful breeze which had wafted it on, and which, amidst singularity, refinements, exaggerations, had made it great, slackened and di- minished. With Carew, Suckling, and Herrick, prettiness takes the place of the beautiful. That which strikes them is no longer the general features of things ; and they no longer try to express the inner character of what they describe. They no longer pos- sess that liberal conception, that in- stinctive penetration, by which we sympathize with objects, and grow capable of creating them anew. They no longer boast of that overflow of emotions, that excess of ideas and * Nugce Antiques, i. 349 et passim. images, which compelled a man to re- lieve himself by words, to act exter- nally, to represent freely and boldly the interior drama which made his whole body and heart tremble. They are rather wits of the court, cavaliers of fashion, who wish to show off their imagination and style. In their hands love becomes gallantry ; they write songs, fugitive pieces, compliments to the ladies. There are no more up- wellings from the heart. They write eloquent phrases in order to be ap- plauded, and flattering exaggerations in order to please. The divine faces, the serious or profound looks, the vir- gin or impassioned expressions which burst forth at every step in the early poets, have disappeared ; here we see nothing but agreeable countenances, painted in agreeable verses. Black- guardism is not far off ; we meet with it already in Suckling, and crudity to boot, and prosaic epicurism ; their sentiment is expressed before long, in such a phrase as : " Let us amuse our selves, and a fig for the rest." The only objects they can still paint, are little graceful things, a kiss, a May- day festivity, a dewy primrose, a daf- fodil, a marriage morning, a bee.* * " Some asked me where the Rubies grew, And nothing I did say ; But with my finger pointed to The lips of Julia. Some ask'd how Pearls did grow, and where ; Then spake I to my girle, To part her lips, and shew me there The quarelets of Pearl. One ask'd me where the roses grew ; I bade him not go seek ; But forthwith bade my Julia show A bud in either cheek." HERRICK'S Hesperides, ed. Walford, 1859 ; The Rock of Ruozes, p. 32. " About the sweet bag of a bee, Two Cupids fell at odds ; And whose the pretty prize shu'd be, They vow'd to ask the Gods. Which Venus hearing, thither came, And for their boldness stript them ; And taking thence from each his flame, With rods of mirtle whipt them. Which done, to still their wanton cries, When quiet grown sh'ad seen them, She kist and wip'd their dove-like eyes, And gave the bag between them." HERRICK, Ibid. ; The Bag q/ tht Bee, p. 41. " Why so pale and wan, fond lover? Pr'ythee, why so pale ? Will, when looking well can't move her CHAP. I.] THE PAGAN- RENAISSANCE. Herrick and Suckling especially pro- duce little exquisite poems, delicate, ever pleasant or agreeable, like those attributed to Anacreon, or those which abound in the Anthology. In fact, here, as at the Grecian period alluded to, we are in the decline of paganism ; energy departs, the reign of the agree- able begins. People do not relinquish the worship of beauty and pleasure, but daUy with them. They deck and fi,t :hem to their taste ; they cease to ia*xlue and bend men, who enjoy them whilst they amuse them. It is the last beam of a setting sun; the genuine poetic sentiment dies out with Sedley, Waller, and the rhymesters of the Restoration ; they write prose in verse ; their heart is on a level with their style, and with an exact language we find the commencement of a new age and a new art. Side by side with prettiness comes affectation ; it is the second mark of the decadence. Instead of writing to express things, they write to say them well ; they outbid their neighbors, and strain every mode of speech ; they push art over on the side to which it had a leaning ; and as in this age it had a leaning towards vehemence and imagination, they pile up their empha- sis and coloring. A jargon always springs out of a style. In all arts, the first masters, the inventors, discover the idea, steep themselves in it, and leave it to effect its outward form. Looking ill prevail ? Pr' ythee, why so pale ? Why so dull and mute, young sinner? Pr'ythee, why so mute ? Will, when speaking well can't win her, Saying nothing do't ? Pr'ythee, why so mute ? Quit, quit for shame : this will not move, This cannot take her ; If of herself she will not love, Nothing can make her. The devil take her!" Sir JOHN SUCKLING'S Works, ed. A. Suckling, 1836, p. 70. As when a lady, walking Flora's bower, "icks here a pink, and there a gilly-flower, Now plucks a violet from her purple bed, And then a primrose, the year's maidenhead, There nips the brier, here the lover's pansy, Shifting her dainty pleasures with her fancy, This on her arms, and that she lists to wear Upon the borders of her curious hair ; \t length a rose-bud (passing all the rest) She plucks, and bosoms in her lily breast. QUAKLHS. Stanzas. Then come the second class, the im- itators, who sedulously repeat this form, and alter it by exaggeration. Some nevertheless have talent, as Quarles, Herbert, Habington, Donne in particular, a pungent satirist, of terrible crudeness, * a powerful poet, of a precise and intense imagination, who still preserves something of the energy and thrill of the original inspi- ration.f But he deliberately spoils all these gifts, and succeeds with great difficulty in concocting a piece of non- sense. For instance, the impassioned poets had said to their mistress, that if they lost her, they should hate all other women. Donne, in order to eclipse them, says : " O do not die, for I shajl hate All women so, when thou art gone, That thee I shall not celebrate When I remember thou wast one." t Twenty times while reading him we rub our brow, and ask with astonish- ment, how a man could have so tor- mented and contorted himself, strained his style, refined on his refinement, hit upon such absurd comparisons ? But this was the spirit of the age ; they * See, in particular, his satire against cour- tiers. The following is against imitators. " But he is worst, who (beggarly) doth chaw Others wit's fruits, and in his ravenous maw Rankly digested, doth those things out-spew, As his owne things ; and they 're his owne, 't is true, For if one eate my meate, though it be knowne The meat was mine, th* excrement is hit owne." DONNE'S Satires, 1639. Satire ii. p. 128. t " When I behold a stream, which frcm ta* spring Doth with doubtful melodious murmurii g t Or in a speechless slumber calmly ride Her wedded channel's bosom, and there chide And bend her brows, and swell, if ;tny bough Does but stoop down to kiss her utmost brow ; Yet if her often gnawing kisses win The traiterous banks to gape and let her in, She rusheth violently and doth divorce Her from her native and her long-kept course, And roares, and braves it, and in gallant scorn In flatt'ring eddies promising return, She flouts her channel, which thenceforth is dry, Then say I : That is she, and this am I." DONNE, Elegy vi t Poems, 1639 : A Feaver, p. 15, 7 146 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II made an effort to be ingeniously absurd. A flea had bitten Donne and his mis- tress, and he says : " This flea is you and I, and this Our manage bed and manage temple is. Though Parents grudge, and you, w' are met, And cloyster'd in these living walls of Jet. Though use make you apt to kill me, Let not to that selfe-murder added be, And sacrilege, three shis in killing three." * The Marquis de Mascarille t never fo?rd any thing to equal this. Would }ou have believed a writer could in- vent such absurdities? She and he made but one, for both are but one with the flea, and so one could not be killed without the other. Observe that the wise Malherbe wrote very similar enor- mities, in the Tears of St. Peter, and that the sonneteers of Italy and Spain reach -simultaneously the same height of folly, and you will agree that throughout Europe at that time they were at the close of a poetical epoch. On this boundary line of a closing and a dawning literature a poet ap- peared, one of the most approved and illustrious of his time, Abraham Cow- ley, | a precocious child, a reader and a versifier like Pope, and who, like Pope, having known passions less than books, busied himself less about things than about words. Literary exhaus- tion has seldom been more manifest. He possesses all the capacity to say whatever pleases him, but he has pre- cisely nothing to say. The substance has vanished, leaving in its place an empty form. In vain he tries the epic, the Pindaric strophe, all kinds of stan- zas, odes, short lines, long lines ; in vain he calls to his assistance botanical and philosophical similes, all the erudi- tion of the university, all the recollec- tions of antiquity, all the ideas of new science : we yawn as we read him. Except in a few descriptive verses, two or three graceful tendernesses, he feels nothing, he speaks only ; he is a poet of the brain. His collection of * Ibid. The Flea, p. i. t A valet in Mo'iere's Les Precieuses Ridi- cules, who apes and exaggerates his master's manners and style, and pretends to be a mar- quess. He also appears in LS Etourdi and Le depit A moureux, by the same author. TR. % 1608-1667. I re f r to tne eleventh edition of 1710. The Spring (The Mistress, i. 72). amorous pieces is but a vehicle for a scientific test, and serves to show that he has read the authors, that he knows geography, that he is well versed in anatomy, that he has a smattering of medicine and astronomy, that he has at his service comparisons and allu- sions enough to rack the brains of his readers. He will speak in this wise : " Beauty, thou active passive 111! Which dy'st thyself as fast as thou clcst kill ! or will remark that his mistress is to blame for spending three hours every morning at her toilet, because " They make that Beauty Tyranny, That's else a Civil-government." After reading two hundred pages, you feel disposed to box his ears. You have to think, by way of consolation, that every grand age must draw to a close, that this one could not do so otherwise, that the old glow of enthu- siasm, the sudden flood of rapture, images, whimsical and audacious fan- cies, which once rolled through the minds of men, arrested now and cooled down, could only exhibit dross, a curdling scum, a multitude of brilliant and offensive points. You say to yourself that, after all, Cowley had perhaps talent ; you find that he had in fact one, a new talent, unknown to the old masters, the sign of a new culture, which needs other manners, and announces a new society. Cowley had these manners, and belongs to this society. He was a well- governed, reasonable, well-informed, polished, well-educated man, who after twelve years of service and writing in France, under Queen Henrietta, retires at last wisely into the country, where he studies natural history, and prepares a treatise on religion, philosophizing on men and life, fertile in general re- flections and ideas, a moralist, bidding his executor " to let nothing stand in his writings which might seem the least in the world to be an offence against religion or good manners." Such in- tentions and su:h a life produce and indicate less a poet, that is, a seer, a creator, than a literary man, I mean a man who can think and speak, and who therefore ought to have read much, learned much, written much, ought to CHAP. I ] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 147 possess a calm and clear mind, to be accustomed to polite society, sustain- ed conversation, pleasantry. In fact, Cowley is an author by profession, the oldest of those, who in England deserve the name. His prose is as easy and sensible as his poetry is contorted and unreasonable. A polished man, wri- ting for polished men, pretty much as he would speak to them in a drawing- room, this I take to be the idea which they had of a good author in the seven- teenth century. It is the idea which Cowley's Essays leave of his character ; it is the kind of talent which the wri- ters of trie coming age take for their model ; and he is the first of that grave and amiable group which, continued in Temple, reaches so far as to include Addison. II Having reached this point, the Re- naissance seemed to have attained its limit, and, like a drooping and faded flower, to be ready to leave its place for a new bud which began to spring up amongst its withered leaves. At all events, a living and unexpected shoot sprang from the old declining stock. At the moment when art lan- guished, science shot forth ; the whole labor of the age ended in this. The fruits are not unlike ; on the contrary, they come from the same sap, and by the diversity of the shape only mani- fest two distinct periods of the inner growth which has produced them. Every art ends in a science, and all poetry in a philosophy. For science and philosophy do but translate into precise formulas the original concep- tions which art and poetry render sen- sible by imaginary figures : when once the idea of an epoch is manifested in verse by ideal creations, it naturally comes to be expressed in prose by posi- tive arguments. That which had struck men on escaping from ecclesias- tical oppression and monkish asceticism was the pagan idea of a life true to na- ture, and freely developed. They had found nature buried behind scholasti- cism, and they had expressed it in poems and paintings; in Italy by su- perb healthy corporeality, in England by vehement and unconventional spirit- uality, with such divination of its laws, instincts, and forms, that we might ex tract from their theatre and their pic tures a complete theory of soul and body. When enthusiasm is past, curi osity begins. The sentiment of beauty gives way to the need of truth. The theory contained in works of imagina- tion frees itself. The gaze continues fixed on nature, not to admire now, but to understand. From painting we pass to anatomy, from the drama to moral philosophy, from grand poetical divinations to great scientific views ; the second continue the first, and the same mind displays itself in both; for what art had represented, and science proceeds to observe, are. living things, with their complex and complete struc- ture, set in motion by their internal forces, with no supernatural interven- tion. Artists and savants, all set out, without knowing it themselves, from the same master conception, to wit, that nature subsists of herself, that every existence has in its own womb the source of its action, that the causes of events are the innate laws of things ; an all-powerful idea, from which was to issue the modern civilization, and which, at the time I write of, produced in England and Italy, as before in Greece, genuine sciences, side by side with a complete art : after da Vinci and Michel Angelo, the school of anat- omists, mathematicians, naturalists,end- ing with Galileo; after Spenser, Ben Jonson, and Shakspeare, the school of thinkers who surround Bacon and lead up to Harvey. We have not far to look for this school. In the interregnum of Chris- tianity the dominating bent of mind belongs to it. It was paganism which reigned in Elizabeth's court, not only in letters, but in doctrine, a paganism of the north, always serious, generally sombre, but which was based, like that of the south, on natural forces. In some men all Christianity had passed away; many proceeded to atheism through excess of rebellion and de- bauchery, like Marlowe and Greene. Wilh others, like Shakspeare, the idea of God scarcely makes its appearance ; they see in our poor short human life only a dream, and beyond it the long sad sleep : for them, death is the goal THE RENAISSANCE. 148 of life ; at most a dark gulf, into which man plunges, uncertain of the issue. If they carry their gaze beyond, they perceive,* not the spiritual soul wel- comed into a purer world, but the corpse abandoned to the damp earth, or the ghost hovering about the church- yard. They speak like skeptics or su- perstitious men, never as true believers. Their heroes have human, not religious virtues; against crime they rely on honor and the love of the beautiful, not on piety and the fear of God. If others, at intervals, like Sidney and Spenser, catch a glimpse of the Divine, it is as a vague ideal light, a sublime Platonic phantom, which has no resem- blance to a personal God, a strict inquisitor of the slightest motions of the heart. He appears at the summit, of things, like the splendid crown of the world, but He does not weigh upon human life ; He leaves it intact and free, only turning it towards the beau- tiful. Man does not know as yet the sort of narrow prison in which official cant and respectable creeds were, later on, to confine activity and intelligence. Even the believers, sincere Christians like Bacon and Sir Thomas Browne, discard all oppressive sternness, reduce Christianity to a sort of moral poetry, and allow naturalism to subsist be- neath religion. In such a broad and open channel, speculation could spread its wings. With Lord Herbert ap- peared a systematic deism ; with Milton and Algernon Sidney, a philosophical religion ; Clarendon went so far as to compare Lord Falkland's 'gardens to the groves of Academe. Against the rigorism of the Puritans, Chillingworth, Hales, Hooker, the greatest doctors of me English Church, give a large place to natural reason, so large, that never even to this day, has it made such an advance. An astonishing irruption of facts t/.e discovery of America, the revival of antiquity, the restoration of philol- ogy, the invention of the arts, the development of industries, the march of human curiosity over the whole of the past and the whole of the globe * See in Shakspeare, The Tempest, Measure for Meastire, Hamlet : in Beaumont and Fletcher, Thierry and Tlteodoret^ Act iv. ; Webster, passi m. [BOOK II came to furnish subject-matter, and prose began its reign. Sidney Wilson, Ascham, and Puttenham explored the the rules of style ; Hackluyt and Pur- chas compiled the cyclopaedia of travel and the description of every land ; Holinshed, Speed, Raleigh, Stowe, Knolles, Daniel, Thomas May, Lord Herbert, founded history ; Camden, Spelman, Cotton, Usher, and Selden inaugurate scholarship; a legion 'of patient workers, of obscure collect- ors, of literary pioneers, amassed, ar- ranged, and sifted the documents which Sir Robert Cotton and Sir Thomas Bodley stored up in their libraries ; whilst Utopians, moralists, painters of manners Thomas More, Joseph Hall, John Earle, Owen Feltham, Burton described and passed judgment on the modes of life, continued with Fuller, Sir Thomas Browne, and Isaac Wal- ton up to the middle of the next cen- tury, and add to the number of contro- versialists and politicians who, with Hooker, Taylor, Chillingworth, Alger- non Sidney, Harrington, study religion, society, church and state. A copious and confused fermentation, from which abundance of thoughts rose, but few notable books. Noble prose, such as was heard at the court of Louis XIV., in the house of Pollio, in the schools at Athens, such as rhetorical and sociable nations know how to produce, was altogether lacking. These men had not the spirit of analysis, the art of following step by step the natural order of ideas, nor the spirit of con- versation, the talent never to weary or shock others. Their imagination is too little regulated, and their manners too little polished. They who had mixed most in the world, even Sidney, speak roughly what they think, and as they think it. Instead of glossing they exaggerate. They blurt out *", and withhold nothing. When they do not employ excessive compliments, they take to coarse jokes. They are ignorant of measured liveliness, refined raillery, delicate flattery. They rejoice in gross puns, dirty allusions. They mistake in- volved charades and grotesque images for wit. Though they are great lords and ladies, they talk 'like ill-bred per- sons, lovers of buffoonery, of shows, and bear fights. With some, as Overbury CHAP. I.] THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. 149 or Sir Thomas Browne, prose is so much run over by poetry, that it covers its narrative with images, and hides ideas under its pictures. They load their style with flowery comparisons, which produce one another, and mount one above another, so that sense dis- appears, and ornament only is visible. In short, they are generally pedants, still stiff with the rust of the school ; they divide and subdivide, propound theses, definitions; they argue solidly and heavily, and quote their authors in Latin, and even in Greek ; they square their massive periods, and learnedly knock their adversaries down, and their readers too, as a natural conse- quence. They are never on the prose- level, but always above or below above by their poetic genius, below by the weight of their education and the barbarism of their manners. But they think seriously and for themselves ; they are deliberate ; they are convinced and touched by what they say. Even in the compiler we find a force and loyalty of spirit, which give confidence and cause pleasure. Their writings are like the powerful and heavy en- gravings of their contemporaries, the maps of Hofnagel for instance, so harsh and so instructive ; their conception is sharp and clear ; they have the gift of perceiving every object, not under a general aspect, like the classical writers, but specially and individually. It is not man in the abstract, the citi- zen as he is everywhere, the countryman as such, that they represent, but James or Thomas, Smith or Brown, of such a parish, from such an office, with such and such attitude or dress, distinct from all others ; in short, they see, not the idea, but the individual. Imagine the disturbance that such a disposition produces in a man's head, how the regular order of ideas becomes deranged by it ; how every object, with the in- finite medley of its forms, properties, appendages, will thenceforth fasten itself by a hundred points of contact unforeseen to other objects, and bring before the mind a series and a family ; vhat boldness language will derive jfom it; what familiar, picturesque, absurd words, will break forth in suc- cession ; how the dash, the unforeseen, the originality and inequality of inven- tion will stand out. Imagine, at the same time, what a hold this form of mind has on objects, how many facts it condenses in each conception ; what amass of personal judgments, foreign authorities, suppositions, guesses, im- aginations, it spreads over every sub- ject ; with what venturesome and crea- tive fecundity it engenders both truth and conjecture. It is an extraordinary chaos of thoughts and forms, often abortive, still more often barbarous, sometimes grand. But from this super- fluity something lasting and great is produced, namely science, and we have only to examine more closely into one or two of these works to see the lew creation emerge from the blocks and the debris. III. Two writers especially display this state of mind. The first, Robert Bur- ton, a clergyman and university recluse, who passed his life in libraries, and dabbled in all the sciences, as learn- ed as Rabelais, having an inexhausti- ble and overflowing memory ; unequal, moreover, gifted with enthusiasm, and spasmodically gay, but as a rule sad and morose, to the extent of confessing in his epitaph that melancholy made up his life and his death ; in the first place original, liking his own common sense, and one of the earliest models of that singular English mood which, withdrawing man within himself, de- velops in him, at one time imagina- tion, at another scrupulosity, at an- other oddity, and makes of him, accord- ing to circumstances, a poet, an ec- centric, a humorist, a madman, or a puritan. He read on for thirty years, put an encyclopaedia into his head, and now, to amuse and relieve himself, takes a folio of blank paper. Twenty lines of a poet, a dozen lines of a trea- tise on agriculture, a folio page of heraldry, a description of rare fishes, a paragraph of a sermon on patience, the record of the fever fits of hypochon- dria, the history of the particle that, a scrap of metaphysics, this is what passes through his brain in a quarter of an hour: it is a carnival of ideas and phrases, Greek, Latin, German, French, Italian, philosophical, geomet- THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II rical, medical, poetical, astrological, musical, pedagogic, heaped one on the other ; an enormous medley, a prodig- ious mass of jumbled quotations, jost- ling thoughts, with the vivacity and the transport of a feast of unreason. " This roving humour (though not with like success) I have ever had, and> like a ranging spaniel that barks at every bird he sees, leaving his game, I have followed all, saving that which I should, and may justly complain, and truly, qui ubique est, nusquam est, which Gesner did in modesty, that I have read many books* but to little purpose, for want of good method, I have confusedly tumbled over divers authors in our libraries with small profit, for want of art, order, memory, judgment. I never travelled but in map or card, in which my unconfined thoughts have freely expatiated, as having ever been especially delighted with the study of cos- mography. Saturn was lord of my geniture, culminating, etc., and Mars principal sigmfica- tor of manners, in partile conjunction with mine ascendent ; both fortunate in their houses, etc. I am not poor, I am not rich ; nihil est, nihil deest ; I have little; I want nothing: all my treasure is in Minerva's tower. Greater prefer- ment as I could never get, so am I not in debt for it. I have a competency (laus Deo) from my noble and munificent patrons. Though I live still a collegia! student, as Democritus in his garden, and lead a monastique life, ipse mihi theatrum, sequestred from those tumults and troubles of the world, et tat^iam in spec- ula posilus (as he said), in some high place above you all, like Stdicus sapiens, omnia scecula prceterita prcesentiaque videns, uno uelut intuitu, I hear and see what is done abroad, how others run, ride, turmoil, and macerate themselves in court and countrey. Far from these wrangling lawsuits, aula vani- tatem,fori ambitionem, rider e mecum soleo : I laugh at all, only secure, lest my suit go amiss, my ships perish, corn and cattle mis- carry, trade decay ; I have no wife nor chil- dren, good or bad, to provide for ; a mere spec- tator of other men's fortunes and adventures, and how they act their parts, which methinks are diversely presented unto me, as from a common theatre or scene. I hear news every day: and those ordinary rumours of war, plagues, fires, inundations, thefts, murders, massacres, meteors, comets, spectrums, prodi- gies, apparitions ; of towns taken, cities be- sieged in France, Germany, Turkey, Persia, Jt'oiand, etc., daily musters and preparations, arj.d such like, which these tempestuous times afford, battles fought, so many men slain, moiiomachies, shipwracks, piracies, and sea- fights, peace, leagues, stratagems and fresh alarms a vast confusion of vows, wishes, ac- tions, edicts, petitions, lawsuits, pleas, laws, proclamations, complaints, grievances, are daily brought to our ears : new books every day, pamphlets, currantoes, stories, whole cata- logues of volumes of all sorts, new paradoxes, opinions, schisms, heresies, controversies in philosophy, religion, etc. Now come tidings of weddings, maskings, mummeries, entertain- ments, jubilies, embassies, tilts and tourna- ments, trophies, triumphs, revels, sports, playes: , then again, as in a new shifted scene, treasons; cheating tricks, robberies, enormous villaniea in all kinds, funerals, burials, death of princes, new discoveries, expeditions ; now comical, then tragical matters. To-day we hear of new lords and officers created, to-morrow of some great men deposed, and then again of fresh honours conferred: one is let loose, another imprisoned : one purchaseth, another breaketh : he thrives, his neighbour turns bankrupt ; now plenty, then again dearth and famine ; one runs, another rides, wrangles, laughs, weeps, etc. Thus I daily hear, and such like, both private and publick news." * " For what a world of books offers itself, in all subjects, arts, and sciences, to the sweet content and capacity of the reader? In arith- metick, geometry, perspective, optick, astrono- my, architecture, sculptura, pictura, of which so many and such elaborate treatises are of late written : in mechanicks and their mysteries, military matters, navigation, riding of horses, fencing, swimming, gardening, planting, great tomes of husbandry, cookery, faulconry, hunt- ing, fishing, fowling, etc., with exquisite pic- tures of all sports, games, and what not. In musick, metaphysicks, natural and moral phi- losophy, philologie, in policy, heraldry, gene- alogy, chronology, etc., they afford great tomes, or those studies of antiquity, etc., et quid sub- til tus arithmeticis i?iventionibus ? quid jucun- dius musicis rationibus ? qriid div inius astron- omicis ? quid rectius geometricis demonstra- tionibus ? What so sure, what so pleasant ? He that shall but see the geometrical tower of Garezenda at Bologne in Italy, the steeple and clock at Strasborpugh, will admire the effects of art, or that engine of Archimedes to remove the earth itself if he had but a place to fasten his instrument*. A rchimedis cochlea, and rare devises to corrivate waters, musick instruments, and trisyllable echoes again, again, and again repeated, with miriades of such. What vast tomes are extant in law, physick, and divinity, for profit, pleasure, practice, speculation, in verse or prose, etc. ! Their names alone are the subject of whole volumes ; we have thou- sands of authors of all sorts, many great libra- ries, full well furnished, like so many dishes of meat, served out for several palates, and he is a very block that is affected with none of them. Some take an infinite delight to study the very languages wherein these books are written Hebrew, Greek, Syriack, Chalde, Arabick, etc. Methinks it would well please any man to look upon a geographical map (sriavi animum delec- tatione allicere, ob incredibilem rerum varie- tatem etjucunditatem, et ad pleniorem suicog- nitionem excitare), chorographical, tope graph- ical delineations ; to behold, as it were, ,1 tha remote provinces, towns, cities of the wot Jd, and never to go forth of the limits of his study , to measure, by the scale and compasse, their e iu, habits, temptations, not merely in 8i speculative way, but with a view to the cure or diminution of vice, and as- signs to the science of morals as its goal the amelioration of morals. For him, the object of. science is always the * The Works of Francis Bacon, London, 1824, vol. vii. p. 2 Latin Biography by Raw- ev ' r t This point is brought out by the review of Lord Macaulay, Critical and Historical Es- Tays, vol. iii. establishment of an art, that is, the production of something of practical utility ; when he wished to describe the efficacious nature of his philosophy by a tale, he delineated in the Neu. Atlantis, with a poet's boldness and the precision of a seer, almost employing the very terms in use now, modern applications, and the present organiza- tion of the sciences, academies, obser- vatories, airballoons,submarine vessels, the improvement of land, the trans- mutation of species, regenerations, the discovery of remedies, the preservation of food. The end of our foundation, says his principal personage, is the knowledge of causes and secret mo- tions of things, and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to. the effect- ing of all things possible. And this " possible " is infinite. How did this grand and just concep- tion originate ? Doubtless common sense and genius too were necessary to its production ; but neither common sense nor genius was lacking to men : there had been more than one who, observing, like Bacon, the progress of particular industries, could, like him, have conceived of universal industry, and from certain limited ameliorations have advanced to unlimited ameliora- tion. Here we see the power of con- nection; men think they do every thing by their individual thought, and they can do nothing without the assist- ance of the thoughts of their neigh- bors ; they fancy that they are follow- ing the small voice within them, but they only hear it because it is swelled by the thousand buzzing and imperious voices, which, issuing from all sur- rounding or distant circumstances, are confounded with it in an harmonious vibration. Generally they hear it, as Bacon did, from the first moment of reflection ; but it had become inaudible among the opposing sounds which came from without to smother it. Could this confidence in the infinite enlargement of human power, this glorious idea of the universal conquest of nature, this firm hope in the con- tinual increase of well-bein-g and happi- ness,- have germinated, grown, occu- pied an intelligence entirely, and thence have struck its roots, been pro* pagated and spread over neighboring '56 'ntelligences, in a time of discourage- ment and decay, when men believed the end of the world at hand, when things were falling into ruin about them, when Christian mysticism, as in the first centuries, ecclesiastical tyr- anny, as in the fourteenth century, were convincing them of their impo- tence, by perverting their intellectual efforts and curtailing their liberty. On the contrary, such hopes must then have seemed to be outbursts of pride, or suggestions of the carnal mind. They did seem so ; and the last representatives of ancient science, and the first of the new, were exiled or imprisoned, assassinated or burned. In order to be developed an idea must be in harmony with surrounding civili- zation ; before man can expect to at- tain the dominion over nature, or at- tempts to improve his condition, ame- lioration must have begun on all sides, industries have increased, knowledge have been accumulated, the arts ex- panded, a hundred thousand irrefuta- ble witnesses must have come inces- santly to give proof of his power and assurance of his progress. The "mas- culine birth of the time " (temforis fartus masculus] is the title which Bacon applies to his work, and it is a true one. In fact, the whole age co- operated in it ; by this creation it was finished. The consciousness of human power and prosperity gave to the Re- naissance its first energy, its ideal, its poetic materials, its distinguishing fea- tures ; and now it furnishes it with its final expression, its scientific doctrine, and its ultimate object. We may add also, its method. For, the end of a journey once determined, the route is laid down, since the end always determines the route ; when the point to be reached is changed, the path of approach is changed, and science, varying its object, varies also its method. So long as it limited its effort to the satisfying an idle curi- osity, opening out speculative vistas, establishing a sort of opera in specula- tive minds, it could launch out any moment into metaphysical abstractions and distinctions : it was enough for it to skim over exper ence ; it soon quitted it. and caine all at once upon great fcrords, quiddities, the principle of in- TIIE RENAISSANCE. [BooK II. dividuation, final causes. Half proofs sufficed science ; at bottom it did not care to establish a truth, but to get an opinion ; and its instrument, the syllo- gism, was serviceable only for refuta- tions, not for discoveries : it took gen eral laws for a starting-point mstead of a point of arrival : instead of going to find them, it fancied them found. The syllogism w?.s good in the schools, not in nature ; it made disputants, net discoverers. From the moment that science had art for an end, and men studied in order to act, all was trans- formed ; for we cannot act, without cer- tain and precise knowledge. P'orces, before they can be employed, must be measured and verified ; before we can build a house, we must know ex- actly the resistance of the beams, or the house will collapse ; before we can cure a sick man, we must know with certainty the effect of a remedy, or the patient will die. Practice makes certainty and exactitude a necessity to science, because practice is impossible when it has nothing to lean upon but guesses and approximations. How can we eliminate guesses and approx- imations ? How introduce into science solidity and precision ? We must im- itate the cases in whiclrscience, issuing in practice, has proved to be precise and certain, and these cases are the in dustries. We must, as in the indus- tries, observe, essay, grope about, ver- ify, keep our mind fixed on sensible and particular things, advance to gen- eral rules only step by step ; not an- ticipate experience, but follow it ; not imagine nature, but interpret it. For every general effect, such as heat, whiteness, hardness, liquidity, we must seek a general condition, so that in producing the condition we may pro- duce the effect. And for this it is ne- cessary, by fit rejections and exclusions, to extract the condition sought from the heap of facts in which it lies buried, construct the table of cases from which the effect is absent, the table where it is present, the table where the effect is shown in various degrees, so as to isolate and bring to light the condition which produced it.* Then we shall have, not useless uni- versal axioms, but efficacious mediate * Novum Organwn) ii. 15 and 16. :HAP. I.J THE PAGAN RENAISSANCE. axioms, true laws from which we can derive works, and which are the sources of power in the same degree as the sources of light.* Bacon de- scribed and predicted in this modern science and industry, their correspond- ence, method, resources, principle ; and after more than two centuries, it is still to him that we go even at the present day to look for the theory of what we are attempting and doing. Beyond this great view, he has dis- covered nothing. Cowley, one of his admirers, rightly said that, like Moses on Mount Pisgah, he was the first to announce the promised land ; but he might have added quite as justly, that, like Moses, he did not enter there. He pointed out the route, but did not travel it ; he taught men how to dis- cover natural laws, but discovered none. His definition of heat is ex- tremely imperfect. His Natural His- tory is full of fanciful explanations.! Like the poets, he peoples nature with instincts and desires ; attributes to bodies an actual voracity, to the atmos- phere a thirst for light, sounds, odors, vapors, which it drinks in ; to metals a sort of haste to be incorporated with acids. He explains the duration of the bubbles of air which float on the surface of liquids, by supposing that air has a very small or no appetite for height. He sees in every quality, weight, ductility, hardness, a distinct essence which has its special cause ; so that when a man knows the cause of every quality of gold, he will be able to put all these causes together, and make gold. In the main, with the al- chemists, Paracelsus and Gilbert, Kep- ler himself, with all the men of his time, men of imagination, nourished on Aristotle, he represents nature as a compound of secret and living energies, inexplicable and primordial forces, dis- trict and indecomposable essences, adapted each by the will of the Creator to produce a distinct effect. He almost saw souls endowed with latent repug- nances and occult inclinations, which aspire to or resist certain directions, certain mixtures, and certain localities. On this account also he confounds * Nomim Organum, i. i. 3. t Natural History , 800, 24, etc. De Aug- mentis, iii. i. every thing in his researches in an undistinguishable mass, vegetative and medicinal properties, mechanical and curative, physical and moral, without considering the most complex as de- pending on the simplest, but each on the contrary in itself, and taken apart, as an irreducible and independent ex- istence. Obstinate in this error, the thinkers of the age mark time without advancing. They see clearly with Ba- con the wide field of discovery, but they cannot enter upon it. They want an idea, and for want of this idea they do not advance. The disposition of mind which but now was a ever, is be- come an obstacle : it must _e changed, that the obstacle may be got rid of. For ideas, I mean great and efficacious ones, do not come at will nor by chance, by the effort of an individual, or by a happy accident. Methods and philoso- phies, as well as literatures and relig- ions, arise from the spirit o the age ; and this spirit of the age makes them potent or powerless. One state of public intelligence excludes a certain kind of literature ; another, a certain scientific conception. When it hap- pens thus, writers and thinkers labor in vain, the literature is abortive, the conception does not make its appear- ance. In vain they turn one way and another, trying to remove the weight which hinders them ; something more powerful than themselves paralyzes their hands and frustrates their en- deavors. The central pivot of the vast wheel on which human affairs move must be displaced one notch, that all may move with its motion. At this moment the pivot was moved, and thus a revolution of the great wheel begins, bringing round a new concep- tion of nature, and in consequence that part of the method which was lacking. To the diviners, the creators, the com- prehensive and impassioned mil ids who seized objects in a lump and in masses, succeeded the discursive think- ers, the systematic thinkers the grad- uated and clear logicians, who, dis> posing ideas in continuous series, lead the hearer gradually from the simple to the most complex by easy and unbroken paths. Descartes superseded Bacon; the classical age obliterated the Re- naissance ; poetry and lofty imagination 158 gave way before rhetoric, eloquence and analysis. In this transformation of mind, ideas were transformed Every thing was drained dry and sim- plified. The universe, like all else was reduced to two or three notions and the conception of nature, whicl: was poetical, became mechanical. In- stead of souls, living forces, repugnan- ces, and attractions, we have pulleys levers, impelling forces. The world, which seemed a mass of instinctive powers, is now like a mere machinery of cog-wheels. Beneath this adventur- ous supposition lies a large and certain truth : that there is, namely, a scale of facts, some at the summit very complex, others at the base very simple ; those above having their origin in those be- low, so that the lower ones explain the higher ; and that we must seek the primary laws of things in the laws of motion. The search was made, and Galileo found them. Thenceforth the work of the Renaissance, outstripping the extreme point to which Bacon had pushed it, and at which he had left it, was able to proceed onward by itself, and did so proceed, without limit. THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II. CHAPTER II. WE must look at this world more closely, and beneath the ideas which are developed seek for the living men ; it is the theatre especially which is the original product of the English Renais- sance, and it is the theatre especially which will exhibit the men of the English Renaissance. Forty poets, amongst them ten of superior rank, as well as one, the greatest of all artists who have represented the soul in words ; many hundreds of pieces, and nearly fifty masterpieces; the drama extended over all the provinces of his- tory, imagination, and fancy, expand- ed so as to embrace comedy, tragedy, pastoral and fanciful literature to represent all degrees of human con- dition, and all the caprices of human invention to express all the percepti- Dle details of actual truth, and all the philosophic grandeur of general reflec- tion ; the stage disencumbered of all precept and freed from all imitation, given up and appropriated in the mi- nutest particulars to the reigning taste and public intelligence : all this was a I. Let us try, then, to set before cur eyes this public, this audience, and this stage all connected with one another, as in every natural and living work ; and if ever there was a living and natural work, it is here. There were already seven theatres in London, in Shakspeare's time, so brisk and univer- sal was the taste for dramatic repre- sentations. Great and rude contri- vances, awkward in their construction, barbarous in their appointments ; but a fervid imagination readily supplied all that they lacked, and hardy bodies endured all inconveniences without difficulty. On a dirty site, on the banks of the Thames, rose the principal the- atre, the Globe, a sort of hexagonal tower, surrounded by a muddy .ditch, on which was hoisted a red flag. The common people could enter as well as the rich : there were sixpenny, two- penny, even penny seats ; but they could not see it without money. If it rained, and it often rains in London, :he people in the pit, butchers, mercers, oakers, sailors, apprentices, receive the streaming rain upon their heads. I suppose they did not trouble them- selves about it ; it was not so long since they began to pave the streets o London ; and when men, like these, have had experience of sewers and pud- dles, they are not afraid of catching cold. While waiting for the piece, they amuse :hemselves after their fashion, drink :>eer, crack nuts, eat fruit, howl, and now and then resort to their fists ; they lave been known to fall upon the actors, and turn the theatre upside down. At other times they were dis- .atisfied and went to the tavern to give he poet a hiding, or toss him in a * "The very age and body of the time, his orm and pressure." Shakspeare. I CHAP. II.] THE THEATRE. blanket ; they were coarse fellows, and there was no month when the cry of " Clubs " did not call them out of their shops to exercise their brawny arms. When the beer took effect, there was a great upturned barrel in the pit, a peculiar receptacle for general use. The smell rises, and then comes the cry, " Burn the juniper ! " They burn some in a plate on the stage, and the heavy smoke fills the air. Certainly the folk there assembled could scarcely get disgusted at any thing, and cannot have had sensitive noses. In the time of Rabelais there was not much clean- liness to speak of. Remember that they were hardly out of the middle age, and that in the middle age man lived on a dunghill. Above them, on the stage, were the spectators able to pay a shilling, the elegant people, the gentlefolk. These were sheltered from the rain, and if they chose to pay an extra shilling, could have a stool. To this were re- duced the prerogatives of rank and the devices of comfort : it often happened that there were not stools enough ; then they He down on the ground : |jiis was not a time to be dainty. They play cards, smoke, insult the pit, who gave it them back without stinting, and throw apples at them into the bargain. They also gesticulate, swear in Italian, French, English ; * crack aloud jokes in dainty, composite, high-colored, words : in short, they have the ener- getic, original, gay manners of artists, the same humor, the same absence of constraint, and, to complete the resem- blance, the same desire to make them- selves singular, the same imaginative cravings, the same absurd and pictu- resque devices, beards cut to a point, into the shape of a fan, a spade, the letter T, gaudy and expensive dresses, copied from five or six neighboring nations, embroidered, laced with gold, motley, continually heightened in effect, or changed for others : there was, as it were, a carnival in their brains as well as on their backs. With such spectators illusions could be produced wjthout much trouble : here were no preparations or per- spectives ; few _r no movable scenes : * Ben Jonson, Every Man in his Humour ; Cynthia* s Revels. their imaginations took all this upon them. A scroll in big letters an- nounced to the public that they were in London or Constantinople ; and that was enough to carry the public to the desired place. There was no trou- ble about probability. Sir Philip Sid- ney writes : " You shall have Asia of the one side, and Africke of the other, and so many other under- kingdomes, that the Plaier when hee comes in, must ever begin with telling where hee is, or else the tale will not be conceived. Now shall you have three Ladies walke to gather flowers, and then wee must beleeve the stage to be a garden. By and by wee heare newes of ship- wracke in the same place, then wee are to blame if we accept it not for a rocke ; . . . while in the meane time two armies flie in, represented with foure swordes and bucklers, and then what hard heart will not receive it for a pitched field ? Now of time they are much more liberall. For ordinary it is, that two young Princes fall in love, after many traverses, shee is got with childe, delivered of a faire boy, hee is lost, groweth a man, falleth in love, and is readie to get another childe ; and all this in two houres space." * Doubtless these enormities were some- what reduced under Shakspeare ; with a few hangings, crude representations of animals, towers, forests, they assisted somewhat the public imagination. But after all, in Shakspeare's plays as in all others, the imagination from within is chiefly drawn upon for the machinery ; it must lend itself to all, substitute all, accept for a queen a young man who has just been shaved, endure in one act ten changes of place, leap suddenly over twenty years or five hundred miles,t take half a dozen supernume- raries for forty thousand men, and to have represented by the rolling of the drums all the battles of Caesar, Henry V., Coriolanus, Richard III. And imagination, being so overflowing and so young, accepts all this ! Recall your own youth; for my part, the deepest emotions I have ever felt at a theatre were given to me by a strolling bevy of four young girls, playing comedy and tragedy on a stage in a coffeehouse ; true, I was eleven years old. So in this theatre, at this moment, their souls were fresh, as ready to feel every thing as the poet was to dare every thing. * The Defence of Poet ze, ed. 1629, p. 562. t Winter's Tale ; Cymbeline ; Julius Catsar* i6o THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II. II. These are but externals ; let us try to advance further, to observe the pas- sions, the bent of mind, the inner man : it is this inner state which raised and modelled the drama, as every thing else ; invisible inclinations are every- where the cause of visible works, and the interior shapes the exterior. What are these townspeople, courtiers, this public, whose taste fashions the theatre ? what is there peculiar in the structure and condition of their minds ? The condition must needs be peculiar ; for the drama flourishes all of a sud- den, and for sixty years together, with marvellous luxuriance, and at the end of this time is arrested so that no effort could ever revive it. The structure must be peculiar ; for of all theatres, old and new, this is distinct in form, and displays a style, action, characters, an idea of life, which are not found in any age or any country beside. This particular feature is the free and com- plete expansion of nature. What we call nature in men is, man such as he was before culture and civ- ilization had deformed and reformed him. Almost always, when a new gen- eration arrives at manhood and con- sciousness, it finds a code of precepts impose on it with all the weight and authority of antiquity. A hundred kinds of chains, a hundred thousand kinds of ties, religion, morality, good breeding, every legislation which regu- lates sentiments, morals, manners, fet- ter and tame the creature of impulse and passion which breathes and frets within each of us. There is nothing like that here. It is a regeneration, and the curb of the past is wanting to the present Catholicism, reduced -> external ceremony and clerical chi- canery, had just ended ; Protestantism, arrested in its first gropings after truth, >r straying into sects, had not yet gained the mastery; the religion of discipline was grown feeble, and the religion of morals was not yet estab- lished ; men ceased to listen to the directions of the clergy, and had not yet spelt out the law of conscience. The church was turned into an assem- bly-room, as in Italy ; the young fel- Ws came to St. Paul's to walk, laugh. chatter, display their new cloaks ; the thing had even passed into a custom. They paid for the noise they made with their spurs, and this tax was a source of income to the canons ;* pickpockets, loose girls, came there by crowds ; these latter struck their bargains while service was going on. Imagine, in short, that the scruples of conscience and the severity of the Puritans were at that time odious and ridiculed on the stage, and judge of the difference between this sensual, unbridled Eng- land, and the correct, disciplined, stiff . England of our own time. Ecclesiasti- cal or secular, we find no signs of rule. In the failure of faith, reason had not gained sway, and opinion is as void of authority as tradition. The imbecile age, which has just ended, continues buried in scorn, with its ravings, its verse-makers, and its pedantic text- books ; and out of the liberal opinions derived from antiquity, from Italy, France, and Spain, every one could pick and choose as it pleased him, without stooping to restraint or ac- knowledging a superiority. There was no model imposed on them, as nowa- days ; instead of affecting imitation, they affected originality.! Each strove to be himself, with his own oaths, peculiar ways, costumes, his specialties of conduct and humor, and to be unlike every one else. They said not, " So and so is done," but" I do so and so." Instead of restraining they gave free vent to themselves. There was no etiquette of society; save for an exag- gerated jargon of chivalresque cour- tesy, they are masters of speech and * Strype, in his A nnals of the Reformation (1571), says: " Many now were wholly departed from the communion of the church, and came no more to hear divine service in their parish churches, nor received the holy sacrament, ac- cording to the laws of the realm." Richaid Baxter, in his Life, published in 1696, says- : "We lived in a country that had but litt'e preaching at all. ... In the village where I lived the Reader read the Common Prayc.r briefly ; and the rest of the day, even till dark night almost, except Eating time, was spent in Dancing under a Maypole and a great tree, not far from my father's door, where all the Town did meet together. And though one of my father's own Tenants was the piper, he could not restrain him nor break the sport. So that we could not read the Scripture in our family without the great disturbance of the Taber and Pipe and noise in the street." t Ben Jonson, Every Man in his Humour* CHAP. II.] THE THEATRE. 161 action on the impulse of the moment, \ ou will find them free from deco- rum, as of all else. In this outbreak jtnd absence of fetters, they resemble fine strong horses let loose in the mea- dow. Their inborn instincts have not been tamed, nor muzzled, nor dimin- ished. On the contrary, they have been preserved intact by bodily and military training ; and escaping as they were from barbarism, not from civilization, they had not been acted upon by the innate softening and hereditary tem- pering which are now transmitted with the blood, and civilize a man from the moment of his birth. This is why man, who for three centuries has been a domestic animal, was still almost a savage beast, and the force of his mus- cles and the strength of his nerves increased the boldness and energy of his passions. Look at these unculti- vated men, men of the people, how suddenly the blood warms and rises to their face ; their fists double, their lips press together, and those hardy bodies rush at once into action. The courtiers of that age were like our men of the people. They had the same taste for the exercise of their limbs, the same indifference toward the inclemencies of the weather, the same coarseness of language, the same undisguised sen- suality. They were carmen in body and gentlemen in sentiment, with the dress of actors and the tastes of artists. " At fourtene," says John Hardyng, " a lordes sonnes shalle to felde hunte the dere. and catch an hardynesse. For dere to hunte and slea, and see them blede, ane hardyment gyffith to his courage. ... At sextene yere, to wer- ray and to wage, to juste and ryde, and castels to assayle . . . and every day his armure to assay in fete of armes with some of his meyne." * When ripened to manhood, he is em- ployed with the bow, in wrestling, leaping, vaulting. Henry VIII. 's court, in its noisy merriment, was like a vil- lage fair. The king, says Holinshed, exercised himself " dailie in shooting, singing, dancing, wrestling, casting of the barre, plaieing at the recorders, flute, virginals, in setting of songs, * The Chronicle of John Hardyng (1436), ed. H. Ellis, 1812. Preface. and making of ballads." He leaps the moats with a pole, and was once with- in an ace of being killed. He is so fond of wrestling, that publicly, on the field of the Cloth of Gold, he seized Francis I. in his arms to try a throw with him. This is how a common sol- dier or a bricklayer nowadays tries a new comrade. In fact, they regarded gross jests and brutal buffooneries as amusements, as soldiers and bricklay- ers do now. In every nobleman's house there was a fool, whose business it was to utter pointed jests, to make eccentric gestures, horrible faces, to sing licentious songs, as we might hear now in a beer-house. They thought insults and obscenity a joke. They were foul-mouthed, they listened to Rabelais' words undiluted, and de- lighted in conversation which would revolt us. They had no respect for humanity ; the rules of properties and the habits of good breeding began only under Louis XIV., and by imitation of the French ; at this time they all blurt- ed out the word that fitted in, and that was most frequently a coarse word. You will see on the stage, in Shak- speare's Pericles, the filth of a haunt of vice.* The great lords, the well- dressed ladies, speak Billingsgate. When Henry V. pays his court to Catherine of France, it is with the coarse bearing of a sailor who may have taken a fancy to a sutler ; and like the tars who tattoo a heart on their arms to prove their love for the girls they left behind them, there were men who " devoured sulphur and drank urine " t to win their mistress by a proof of affection. Humanity is as much lacking as decency. \ Blood, * Act iv. 2 and 4. See also the character of Calypso in Massinger ; Putana in Ford \ Pro- :alyce in Beaumont and Fletcher, t Middleton, Drttch Courtezan. % Commission given by Henry VIII. to the Earl of Hertford, 1544 : " You are there to put all to fire and sword ; to burn Edinburgh town, and to raze and deface it, when you have sacked t, and gotten what you can out of it. ... Do what you can out of hand, and without long tarrying, to beat down and overthrow the castle, sack Holyrood-House, and as many towns and villages about Edinburgh as ye conveniently can ; sack Leith, and burn and subvert it, and ill the rest, putting man, woman, and child to fire and sword, without exception, when any resistance shall be made against you ; and this done, pass over to the Fife land, and extend ike extremities and destructions in. all towns l62 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II. suffering, does not move them. The court frequents bear and bull bait- jigs, where dogs are ripped up and chained beasts are sometimes beaten to death, and it was, says an officer of the palace, " a charming entertain- ment." * No wonder they used their arms like clodhoppers and gossips. Elizabeth used to beat her maids of honor, "so that these beautiful girls could often be heard crying and lamenting in a piteous manner." One day she spat upon Sir Mathew's fringed coat ; at another time, when Essex, whom she was scolding, turned his back, she gave him a box on the ear, It was then the practice of great ladies to beat their children and their ser- vants. Poor Jane Grey was sometimes so wretchedly " boxed, struck, pinched, and ill-treated in other manners which she dare not relate/' that she used to wish herself dead. Their first idea is to come to words, to blows, to have satis- faction. As in feudal times, they ap- peal at once to arms, and retain the habit of taking the law in their own hands, and without delay. "On Thursday laste," writes Gilbert Talbot to the Earl and Countess of Shrews- bury, " as my Lorde Rytche was ryd- ynge in the streates, there was one "Wyndam that stode in a dore, and sliotte a dagge at him, thynkynge to have slayne him .... The same daye, also, as Sr John Conway was S>ynge in the streetes, M r - Lodovyke revell came sodenly upon him, and stroke him on the hedd w th a sworde. ... I am forced to trouble yo r Honors w* 11 thes tryflynge matters, for I know no greater." t No one, not even the queen is safe among these violent dis- positions. \ Again, when one man struck another in the precincts of the court, his hand was cut off, and the and villages whereunto ye may reach conven- iently, not forgetting amongst all the rest, so to spoil and turn upside down the cardinal's town of St. Andrew's, as the upper stone may be the nether, and not one stick stand by another, sparing no creature alive within the same, specially such as either in friendship or blood be allied to the cardinal. This journey shall succeed most to his majesty's honour." * Laneham, A Goodly Relief. f isth February, 1587. Nathan Drake, Shakspeare and his Times, ii. p. 165. See also Jhe same work for all these details. t Essex, when struck by the queen, put his *iand on the hilt of his sword. arteries stopped with a red-hot iron. Only such atrocious imitations of their own crimes, and the painful image of bleeding and suffering flesh, could tame their vehemence and restrain the up- rising of their instincts. Judge now what materials they furnish to ihe the- atre, and what characters they look for at the theatre. To please the public, the stage cannot deal too much in open lust and the strongest passions ; it must depict man attaining the limit of his desires, unchecked, almost mad, now trembling and rooted before the white palpitating flesh which his eyes devour, now haggard and grinding his teeth before the enemy whom he wishes to tear to pieces, now carried beyond himself and overwhelmed at the sight of the honors and wealth which he covets, always raging and enveloped in a tempest of eddying ideas, sometimes shaken by impetuous joy, more often on the verge of fury and madness, stronger, more ardent, more daringly let loose to infringe on reason and law than ever. We hear from the stage as from the history of the time, these fierce murmurs : the sixteenth century is like a den of lions. Amid passions so strong as these there is not one lacking. Nature appears here in all its violence, but also in all its fulness. If nothing had been weakened, nothing had been mutilated. It is the entire man who is displayed, heart, mind, body, senses, with his noblest and finest aspirations, as with his most bestial and savage appetites, without the preponderance of any domi- nant circumstance to cast him alto- gether in one direction, to exalt or degrade him. He has not become rigid, as he will be under Puritanism. He is not uncrowned as in the Restora- tion. After the hollowness and weari- ness of the fifteenth century, he rose up by a second birth, as before in Greece man had risen by a first birth ; and now, as then, the temptations of the outer world came combined to raise his faculties from their sloth and torpor. A sort of generous warmth spread over them to ripen and make them flourish. Peace, prosperity, comfort began ; new industries and increasing activity suddenly multiplied objects of utility and luxury tenfold. America :HAP. II.] THE THEATRE. and India, by their discovery, caused the treasures and prodigies heaped up afar over distant seas to shine before their eyes ; antiquity re-discovered, sciences mapped out, the Reformation begun, books multiplied by printing, ideas by books, doubled the means of enjoyment, imagination, and thought. People wanted to enjoy, to imagine, and to think ; for the desire grows with the attraction, and here all attractions were combined. There were attractions for the senses, in the chambers which they began to warm, in the beds newly furnished with pillows, in the coaches which they began to use for the first time. There were attractions for the imagination in the new palaces, ar- ranged after the Italian manner ; in the variegated hangings from Flanders ; in the rich garments, gold-embroidered, which, being continually changed, com- bined the fancies and the splendors of all Europe. There were attractions for the mind, in the noble and beautiful writings which, spread abroad, trans- lated, explained, brought in philosophy, eloquence, and poetry, from restored antiquity, and from the surrounding Renaissances. Under this appeal all aptitudes and instincts at once started up ; the low and the lofty, ideal and sensual love, gross cupidity and pure generosity. Recall what you yourself experienced, when from being a child 'ou became a man : what wishes for lappiness, what breadth of anticipation, what intoxication of heart wafted you towards all joys ; with what impulse your hands seized involuntarily and all at once every branch of the tree, and would not let a single fruit escape. At sixteen years, like Cherubin,* we wish for a servant girl while we adore aMadcnna; we are capable of every species of covetousness, and also of e\ cry species of self-denial ; we find virtue more lovely, our meals more enjoyable ; pleasure has more zest, heroism more worth ; there is no allure- ment which is not keen ; the sweetness and novelty of things are too strong ; and in the hive of passions which buzzes within us, and stings us like the sting of a bee, we can do nothing but plunge, one after another, in all direc- * A page in the Mariage de Figaro, a comedy by Beaumarchais. TR. C 163 tions. Such were the men of this time, Raleigh, Essex, Elizabeth, Henry VIII. himself, excessive and inconstant, ready for devotion and for crime, violent in good and evil, heroic with strange weak- nesses, humble with sudden changes of mood, never vile with premeditation like the roysterers of the Restoration, never rigid on principle like the Puri- tans of the Revolution, capable of weep- ing like children,* and of dying like men, often base courtiers, more than once, true knights, displaying constantly, amidst all these contradictions of bear- ing, only the fulness of their charac- ters. Thus prepared, they could take in every thing, sanguinary ferocity and refined generosity, the brutality of shameless debauchery, and the most divine innocence of love, accept all the characters, prostitutes and virgins, princes and mountebanks, pass quickly from trivial buffoonery to lyrical sublim- ities, listen alternately to the quibbles of clowns and the songs of lovers. The drama even, in order to imitate and satisfy the fertility of their nature, must talk all tongues, pompous, inflated verse, loaded with imagery, and side by side with this, vulgar prose : more, it must distort its natural style and limits ; put songs, poetical devices, into the discourse of courtiers and the speeches of statesmen ; bring on the stage the fairy world of the opera, as Middleton says, gnomes, nymphs of the land and sea, with their groves and their meadows ; compel the gods to descend upon the stage, and hell itself to furnish its world of marvels. No other theatre is so complicated; for nowhere else do we find men so com- plete. III. In this free and universal expansion, the passions had their special bent withal, which was an English one, inasmuch as they were English. After all, in every age, under every civiliza- tion, a people is always itself. What- ever be its dress, goat-skin blouse, gold- laced doublet, black dress-coat, the five or six great instincts which it pos- sessed in its forests, follow it in its palaces and offices. To this day, war- * The great Chancellor Burleigh often wept so harshly was he used by Elizabeth. 164 like passions, a gloomy humor, subsist under the regularity and propriety of modern manners.* Their native energy aud harshness pierce through the perfection of culture and the habits of comfort. Rich young men, on leaving Oxford, go to hunt bears on the Rocky Mountains, the ele- phant in South Africa, live under can- vas, box, jump hedges on horseback, sail their yachts on dangerous coasts, delight in solitude and peril. The an- cient Saxon, the old rover of the Scan- dinavian seas, has not perished. Even at school the children roughly treat one another, withstand one another, fight like men ; and their character is so indomitable, that they need the birch and blows to reduce them to the disci- pline of law. Judge what they were in the sixteenth century; the English race passed then for the most warlike of Europe, the most redoubtable in battle, the most impatient of any thing like slavery.f " English savages " is what Cellini calls them ; and the " great shins of beef " with which they fill themselves, keep up the force and ferocity of their instincts. To harden them thoroughly, institutions work in the same groove with nature. The na- tion is armed, every man is brought up like a soldier, bound to have arms ac- cording to his condition, to exercise himself on Sundays or holidays ; from the yeoman to the lord, the old military constitution keeps them enrolled and ready for action. J In a state which resembles an army, it is necessary that punishments, as in an army, shall in- spire terror; and to make them worse, the hideous Wars of the Roses, which on every flaw of the succession to the throne are ready to break out again, are ever present in their recollection. Such instincts, such a constitution, * Compare, to understand this character, the parts assigned to James Harlowe by Richard- son, old Osborne by Thackeray, Sir Giles Overreach by Massinger, and Manly by Wych- erley. t Hentzner's Travels; Benvenuto Cellini. See passim, the costumes printed in Venice ind Germany: Bellicosissimi. Froude, i. pp. 9 52. $ This is not so true of the English now, if it vas in the sixteenth century, as it is of conti- nental nations. The French lyctes are far more military in character than English schools. THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II. such a history, rai ,es before them, with tragic severity, an idea of life : death is at hand, as well as wounds, the block, tortures. The fine cloaks of purple which the Renaissances of the vSouth displayed joyfully in the sun, to wear like a holiday garment, are here stained with blood, and edged with black. Throughout,* a stern discipline, and the axe ready for every suspicion of treason ; great men, bishops, a chan- cellor, princes, the king's relatives^ queens, a protector, all kneeling in the straw, sprinkled the Tower with their blood ; one after the other they march- ed past, stretched out their necks ; the Duke of Buckingham, Queen Anne Boleyn, Queen Catherine Howird, the Earl of Surrey, Admiral Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, Lady Jane Grey and her husband, the Duke of North- umberland, Mary Stewart, the Earl of Essex, all on the throne, or on the steps of the throne, in the highest rank of honors, beauty, youth, and genius ; of the bright procession nothing is left but senseless trunks, marred by the tender mercies of the executioner. Shall I count the funeral pyres, the hangings, living men cut down from the gibbet, disembowelled, quartered,! their limbs cast into the fire, their heads exposed on the walls ? There is a page in Holinshed which reads like a death register : " The five and twentith dale of Maie (1535)* was in saint Paules church at London exam- ined nineteene men and six women born in Holland, whose opinions were (heretical). Fourteene of them were condemned, a man and a woman of them were burned in Smith- field, the other twelve were sent to other townes, there to be burnt. On the nineteenth of June were three moonkes of the Charter- house hanged, drawne, and quartered at Tiburne, and their heads and quarters set up about London, for denieng the king to be supreme head of the church. Also the one and twentith of the same moneth, and for the same cause, doctor John Fisher, bishop of Roches- ter, was beheaded fc r denieng of the suprema* cie, and his head set upon London bridge, but his bodie buried within Barking churchyard. The pope had elected him a cardmall, and sent his hat as far as Calais, but his head was off before his hat was on : so that they met not. On the sixt of Julie was f T Thomas Moore ' * Froude's Hist, of England, vols. i. ii. iii t " When his heart was torn out he uttered a deep groan." Execution of Parry; Strype, in. 251. , U\J\.t CHAP. II ] THE THE A 7 RE. headed for the like crime, that is to wit, for denieng the king to be supreme head." * None of these murders seem extraor- dinary ; the chroniclers mention them without growing indignant ; the con- demned go quietly to the block, as if the thing were perfectly natural. Anne Boleyn said seriously, before giving up her head to the executioner : " I praie God save the king, and send him long to reigns over you, for a gentler, nor a more mercifull prince was there never." t Society is, as it were, in a state of siege, so incited that beneath the idea of order every one entertained the idea of the scaffold. They saw it, the terrible machine, planted on all the highways of human life ; and the by- ways as well as the highways led to it. A sort of martial law, introduced by conquests into civil affairs, entered thence into ecclesiastical matters,} and social economy ended by being en- slaved by it. As in a camp, expen- diture, dress, the food of each class, are fixed and restricted ; no one might stray out of his district, be idle, live after his own devices. Every stranger was seized, interrogated ; if he could not give a good account of himself, the parish-stocks bruised his limbs ; as in time of war he would have passed for a spy and an enemy, if caught amidst the army. Any person, says the law. || found living idly or loiteringly for the space of three days, shall be marked with a hot iron on his breast, and ad- judged as a slave to the man who shall inform against him. This one "shall take the same slave, .and give him bread, water, or small drink, and refuse meat, and cause him to work, by beat- Ing, chaining, or otherwise, in such work and labor as he shall put him to, be it never so vile." He may sell him, bequeath him, let him out for hire, or trade upon him " after the like sort as they may do of an ; other their moveable goods or chattels^" put a ring of iron about his neck or leg ; if he runs away and absents himself for fourteen days, he is branded on the forehead with a hot iron, and remains a slave for the 793- * Holinshed, Chronicles of England, Hi. p. 3- t Ibid. p. 797. ry IV and Henry V. |j In 1547. \ Under Henry I tfroude, i. 15. whole of his life; if he runs away a second time, he is put to death. Some- times, says More, you might see a score of thieves hung on the same gibbet. In one year * forty persons were put to death in the county of Somerset alone, and in each county there were three or four hundred vagabonds who would sometimes gather together and rob in armed bands of sixty at a time. Follow the whole of this history close- ly, the fires of Mary, the pillories of Elizabeth, and it is plain that the moral tone of the land, like its physical con- dition, is harsh by comparison with other countries. They have no relish in their enjoyments, as in Italy; what is called Merry England is England given up to animal spirits, a coarse animation produced by abundant feeding, continu- ed prosperity, courage, and self-reliance; voluptuousness does not exist in this climate and this race. Mingled with the beautiful popular beliefs, the lugu- brious dreams and the cruel nightmare of witchcraft make their appearance. Bishop Jewell, preaching before the queen, tells her that witches and sor- cerers within these few last years are marvellously increased. Some minis- ters assert " That they have had in their parish at one in- stant, xvij or xviij witches ; meaning such as could worke miracles supernaturallie ; that they work spells by which men pine away even unto death, their colour fadeth, their flesh rottcth, their speech is benumbed, their senses are be- reft ; that instructed by the devil, they make ointments of the bowels and members of chil- dren, whereby they ride in the aire, and accom- plish all their desires. When a child is not baptized, or defended by the sign of the cross, then the witches catch them from their mothers sides in the night . . . kill them ... or after buriall steale them out of their graves, and seeth them in a caldron, untill their flesh be made potable. ... It is an infallible rule, that everie fortnight, or at the least everie moneth, each witch must kill one child at the least for hir part." Here was something to make the teeth chatter with fright. Add to this re- volting and absurd descriptions, wretch- ed tomfooleries, details about the infer- nal cauldron, all the nastinesses which could haunt the trite imagination of a hideous and drivelling old woman, and you have the spectacles, provided b^ Middleton and Shakspeare, and which * In 1596. i66 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II suit the sentiments of the age and the national humor. The fundamental gloom pierces through the glow and rapture of poetry. Mournful legends have multiplied ; every churchyard has its ghost ; wherever a man has been murdered his spirit appears. Many people dare not leave their village after sunset. In the evening, before bedtime, men talk of the coach which is seen drawn by headless horses, with headless postilions and coachmen, or of unhappy spirits who, compelled to inhabit the plain, under the sharp north-east wind, pray for the shelter of a hedge or a valley. They dream terribly of death : '* To die and go we know not where ; To lie in cold obstruction and to rot ; This sensible warm motion to become A kneaded clod ; and the delighted spirit To bathe in fiery floods, or to reside In thrilling regions of thick-ribbed ice ; To be imprison'd in the viewless winds, And blown with restless violence, round about The pendent world ; or to be worse than worst Of those that lawless and incertain thought Imagine howling : 'tis too horrible ! " * The greatest speak with a sad resigna- tion of the infinite obscurity which embraces our poor, short, glimmering life, our life, which is but a troubled dream ;t the sad state of humanity, which is passion, madness, and sor- row ; the human being who is himself, perhaps, but a vain phantom, a grievous sick man's dream. In their eyes we roll down a fatal slope, where chance dashes us one against the other, and the inner destiny which urges us on- ward, only shatters after it has blinded us. And at the end of all is " the silent grave, no conversation, no joyful tread of friends, no voice of lovers, no careful father's counsel ; nothing's heard, nor nothing is, but all oblivion, dust, and endless darkness." \ If yet there were nothing. " To die, to sleep; to sleep, perchance to dream." To dream sadly, to fall into a nightmare like the nightmare of life, like that in * Shakspeare, Measure for Measure, Actiii. .. See also The Tempest, Hamlet, Macbeth. " We are such stuff As dreams are made on, and our little life 1& rounded with a sleep." Tempest, iv. i. \ Beaumont and Fletcher. Thierry and Theodoret t Act iv. x. which we are struggling and crying to day, gasping with hoarse throat I this is their idea of man and of existence, the national idea, which fills the stage with calamities and despair, which makes 3 display of tortures and massacres,vvhich abounds in madness and crime, which holds up death as the issue through' out. A threatening and sombre fog veils their mind like their sky, and joy, like the sun, only appears in its full force now and then. They are differer t from the Latin race, and in the com- mon Renaissance they are regenerated otherwise than the Latin races. The free and full development of pure na- ture which, in Greece and Italy, ends in the painting of beauty and happy energy, ends here in the painting of ferocious energy, agony, and death. IV. Thus was this theatre produced ; a theatre unique in history, like the ad- mirable and fleeting epoch from which it sprang, the work and the picture of this young world, as natural, as un- shackled, and as tragic as itself. When an original and national drama springs up, the poets who establish it, carry in themselves the sentiments which it rep- resents. They display better than other men the feelings of the public, because those feelings are stronger in them than in other men. The passions which sur- round them, break forth in their heart with a harsher or a juster cry, and hence their voices become the voices of all. Chivalric and Catholic Spain had her interpreters in her enthusiasts and her Don Quixotes : in Calderon, first a soldier, afterwards a priest ; in Lope de Vega, a volunteer at fifteen, a pas- sionate lover, a wandering duellist, a soldier of the Armada, finally, a priest and familiar of the Holy Office ; so full of fervor that he fasts till he is exhaust- ed, faints with emotion while singing mass, and in his flagellations stains the walls of his cell with blood. Calm and noble Greece had in her principal tragic poet one of the most accomplished and fortunate of her sons : * Sophocles, first in song and palaestra; who at fifteen * Ate7TOv>j0T] 8' ei/ naicri KOLL nepi TraAaurryai. . . . 4iAa0/jrcu6Ta.TOs KCU 0eositions, and doubts have more than once sen suggested as to whether the play was operly assigned to him. We think that Mar- lowe did not write it." Dyce is of a contrary opinion. TR. po be I 7 o THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II bast decreases, the violence remains. Barabas the Jew maddened with hate, is thenceforth no longer human; he has been treated by the Christians like a beast, and he hates them like a beast. He advises his servant Ithamore in the following words : " Hast thou no trade ? then listen to my words, And I will teach thee that shall stick by thee : First, be thou void of these affections, Compassion, love, vain hope, and heartless fear ; Be mov'd at nothing, see thou pity none, But to thyself smile when the Christians moan. ... I walk abroad a-nights, And kill sick people groaning under walls ; Som atimes I go about and poison wells. . . . Being young, I studied physic, and began To practise first upon the Italian ; There I enrich' d the priests with burials, And always kept the sexton's arms in ure With digging graves and ringing dead men's knells. . . . I fill'd the jails with bankrouts in a year, And with young orphans planted hospitals ; And every moon made some or other mad, And now and then one hang himself for grief, Pinning upon his breast a long How I with interest tormented grea him. :at scroll All these cruelties he boasts of and chuckles over, like a demon who re- joices in being a good executioner, and plunges his victims in the very ex- tremity of anguish. His daughter has two Christian suitors ; and by forged letters he causes them to slay each other. In despair she takes the veil, and to avenge himself he poisons his daughter and the whole convent. Two friars wish to denounce him, then to convert him ; he strangles the first, and jokes with his slave Ithamore, a cut- throat by profession, who loves his trade, rubs his hands with joy, and says : " Pull amain, Tis neatly done, sir ; here's no print at all. So, let him lean upon his staff ; excellent ! he stands as if he were begging of bacon." t ' O mistress, I have the bravest, gravest, se- cret, subtle, bottle-nosed knave to my master, that ever gentleman had." \ The second friar comes up, and they accuse him of the murder : " Barabas. Heaven bless me ! what, a friar a murderer I * Marlowe's The Jew of Malta, ii. p. 275 ei fassim. t Ibid. iv. p. 311. J Ibid. iii. p. 291 When shall you see a Jew commit the like ? Ithamore. Why, a Turk could ha' done n more. Bar. To-morrow is the sessions ; you shall to it- Come Ithamore, let's help to take him hence. Friar, Villains, I am a sacred person ; touch me not. Bar. The law shall touch you ; we'll but lead you, we : 'Las, I could weep at your calamity I '* * We have also two other poisonings, an infernal machine to blow up the Turkish garrison, a plot to cast the Turkish commander into a well. Bara- ias falls into it himself, and dies in the hot cauldron,! howling, hardened, re- morseless, having but one regret, that he had not done evil enough. These are the ferocities of the middle age ; we might find them to this day among the companions of Ali Pacha, among the pirates of the Archipelago ; we re- tain pictures of them in the paintings of the fifteenth century, which repre- sent a king with his court, seated calmly round a living man who is being layed ; in the midst the flayer on his knees is working conscientiously, very careful not to spoil the skin. J All this is pretty strong, you will say ; these people kill too readily, and too quickly. It is on this very account that the painting is a true one. For the specialty of the men of the time, as of Marlowe's characters, is the abrupt commission of a deed ; they are chil- dren, robust children. As a horse kicks out instead of speaking, so they pull out their knives instead of asking an ex- planation. Nowadays we hardly know what nature is ; instead of observing it we still retain the benevolent prej- udices of the eighteenth century ; we only see it humanized by two centuries of culture, and we take its acquired calm for an innate moderation. The foundations of the natural man are irresistible impulses, passions, desires, greeds ; all blind. He sees a woman, thinks her beautiful ; suddenly he rushes towards her ; people try to re- strain him, he kills these people, gluts his passion, then thinks no more of it, * Ibid. iv. p. 313. t Up to this time, in England, poisoners were cast into a boiling cauldron. Jin the Museum of Ghent. See in the Jeiu of Malta the seduction ol Ithamore, by Bellamira, a rough, but truly ad j mirable picture. CHAP. II.] THE THEATRE. save when at times a vague picture of a moving lake of blood crosses his brain and makes him gloomy. Sudden and extreme resolves are confused in his mind with desire ; barely planned, the thing is done ; the wide interval which a Frenchman places between the idea of an action and the action it- self is not to be found here.* Barabas conceived murders, and straightway murders were accomplished ; there is no deliberation, no pricks of conscience ; that is how he commits a score of them ; his daughter leaves him, he becomes unnatural, and poisons her ; his con- fidential servant betrays him, he dis- guises himself, and poisons him. Rage seizes these men like a fit, and then they are forced to kill. Benvenuto Cellini relates how, being offended, he tried to restrain himself, but was nearly suffocated ; and that in order to cure himself, he rushed with his dagger upon his opponent. So, in Edward //., the nobles immediately appeal to arms ; all is excessive and unforeseen : between two replies the heart is turned upside down, transported to the ex- tremes ' of hate or tenderness. Ed- ward, seeing his favorite Gaveston again, pours out before him his treas- ure, casts his dignities at his feet, gives him his seal, himself, and, on a threat from the Bishop of Coventry, suddenly cries : " Throw off his golden mitre, rend his stole, And in the channel christen him anew." f Then, when the queen supplicates : " Fawn not on me, French strumpet ! get thee gone. . . . Speak not unto her : let her droop and pine."t Furies and hatreds clash together like horsemen in battle. The Earl of Lan- caster draws his sword on Gaveston to slay him, before the king; Mortimer wounds Gaveston. These powerful loud voices growl ; the noblemen will * Nothing could be falser than the hesitation and arguments of Schiller's William Tell; for a contrast, see Goethe's Goetz von Berlich- ingen. In 1377, Wiclif pleaded in St. Paul's before the Bishop of London, and that raised a quarrel. The Duke of Lancaster, Wiclif's protector, " threatened to drag the bishop out of the church by the hair ; " and next day the furious crowd sacked the duke's palace. t Marlowe, Edward the Second, i. p. 173. \ Ibid. p. 186. not even let a dog approach the prince^ and rob them of their rank. Lancaster says of Gaveston : " . . . . He comes not back, Unless the sea cast up his shipwrack'd body. Warwick. And to behold so sweet a sight as that, There's none here but would run his horse to death." * They have seized Gaveston, and in- tend to hang him " at a bough ; " they refuse to let him speak a single minute with the king. In vain they are en- treated; when they do at last consent, they are sorry for it ; it is a prey they want immediately, and Warwick, seiz- ing him by force, " strake off his head in a trench." Those are the men of the middle age. They have the fierce- ness, the tenacity, the pride of big, well-fed, thorough-bred bulldogs. It is this sternness and impetuosity of primitive passions which produced the Wars of the Roses, and for thirty years drove the nobles on each other's swords and to the block. What is there beyond all these fren- zies and gluttings of blood ? The idea of crushing necessity and inevitable ruin in which every thing sinks and comes to an end. Mortimer, brought to the block, says with a smile : " Base Fortune, now I see, that in thy wheel There is a point, to which when men aspire, They tumble headlong down : that point I touch' d, And, seeing there was no place to mount up higher, Why should I grieve at my declining fall ? Farewell, fair queen ; weep not for Mortimer, That scorns the world, and, as a traveller, Goes to discover countries yet unknown." t Weigh well these grand words ; they are a cry from the heart, the profound confession of Marlowe, as also of By- ron, and of the old sea-kings. The northern paganism is fully exj: rested in this heroic and mournful sigh : i; is thus they imagine the world so long as they remain on the outside of Chns- tianity, or as soon as they quit it. ThviS, when men see in life, as they did, noth- ing but a battle of unchecked passions, and in death but a gloomy sleep, per- haps filled with mournful dreams, there is no other supreme good but a day of enjoyment and victory. They glu * Ibid. p. 188. t Edward the Second, last scene, p. 288. 172 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II themselves, shutting their eyes to the issue, except that they may be swal- lowed up on the morrow. That is the master-thought of Doctor Faustus, the greatest of Marlowe's dramas: to satisfy his soul, no matter at what price, or with what results : " A sound magician is a mighty god. . . . How am I glutted with conceit of this 1 ... I'll have them fly to India for gold, Ransack the ocean for orient pearl. . . . I'll have them read me strange philosophy, And tell the secrets of all foreign kings ; I'll have thorn wall all Germany with brass, And make swift Rhine circle fair Werten- berg. . . . Like lions shall they guard us when we please j Like Almain rutters with their horsemen's staves, Or Lapland giants, trotting by our sides ; Sometimes like women, or unwedded maids, Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows Than have the white breasts of the queen of love." * What brilliant dreams, what desires, what vast or voluptuous wishes, worthy of a Roman Caesar or an eastern poet, eddy in this teeming brain ! To satiate them, to obtain four-and-twenty years of power, Faustus gives his soul, with- out fear, without need of temptation, at the first outset, voluntarily, so sharp is the prick within : " Had I as many souls as there be stars, I'd give them all for Mephistophilis. By him I'll be great emperor of the world, And make a bridge thorough the moving air. . Why shouldst thou not ? Is not thy soul thine own ? " f And with that he gives himself full swing : he wants to know every thing, to have every thing : a book in which he can behold all herbs and trees which grow upon the earth; another in which shall be drawn all the con- stellations and planets ; another which shall bring him gold when he wills it, and "the fairest courtezans : " another which summons "men in armour" ready to execute his commands, and which holds " whirlwinds, tempests, thunder and lightning " chained at his disposa". He is like a child, he stretch- es out his hands for every thing shin- ing ; then grieves to think of hell, then lets himself be diverted by shows : * Marlowe, Doctor Faustus^ i. p. 9, et pas- tim. t Ibid. pp. 27, 29. " Faustus. O tliis feeds my soul I Lucifer. Tut, Faustus, in hell is all man- ner of delight. Faustus. Oh, might I see hell, and retura again, How happy were I then!" . . .* He is conducted, being invisible, over the whole world: lastly to Rome, amongst the ceremonies of the Pope's court. Like a schoolboy du/ing a holi- day, he has insatiable eyes, he forgets every thing before a pageant, he amuses hims'elf in playing tricks, in giving the Pope a box on the ear, in beating the monks, in performing magic tricks be- fore princes, finally in drinking, feast- ing, filling his belly, deadening his thoughts. In his transport he becomes an atheist, and says there is no hell, that those are " old wives' tales." Then suddenly the sad idea knocks at the gates of his brain. " I will renounce this magic, and repent . . . My heart's so harden'd, I cannot repent : Scarce can I name salvation, faith, or hea- ven, But fearful echoes thunder in mine ears, 1 Faustus, thou art damn'd I ' then swords, and knives, Poison, guns, halters, and envenom'd steel Are laid before me to despatch myself ; And long ere this I should have done the deed, Had not sweet pleasure conquer'd deep despair. Have not I made blind Homer sing to me Of Alexander's love and OZnon's death ? And hath not he, that built the walls of Thebes With ravishing sound of his melodious harp, Made music with my Mephistophilis ? Why should I die, then, or basely despair ? I am resolv'd ; Faustus shall ne'er repent. Come Mephistophilis, let us dispute again, And argue of divine astrology. Tell me, are there many heavens above the moon ? Are all celestial bodies but one globe, As is the substance of this centric earth?. " t " One thing . . . let me crave of thee To glut the longing of my heart's desire. . . . Was this the face that launch'd a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium ? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss! Her lips suck forth my soul : see, where it flies ! Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips, And all is dross that is not Helena. . . . O thou art fairer than the evening air Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars ! " J " Oh, my God, I would weep ! but the * Ibid. p. 43. t Ibid. p. 37. t Ibid. p. 75. CHAP. II.] THE THEATRE. 173 devil draws in my tears. Gush forth blood, instead of tears ! yea, life and soul ! Oh, he stays my tongue ! I would lift up my hands ; but see, they hold them, they hold them : Lucifer and Mephistophilis." . . .* " Ah, Faustus, Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, And then thou must be damn'd perpetually ! Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of heaven, That time may cease, and midnight never come. . . . The stars move still, time runs, the clock will strike, The devil will comei and Faustus must be damn'd. Oh, I'll leap up to my God! Who pulls me down ? See, see, where Christ's blood streams in the firmament ! One drop would save my soul, half a drop : ah, my Christ, Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my Christ, Yet will I call on him. . . . Ah, half the hour is past! 'twill all be past anon. . . . Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years, A hundred thousand, and at last be sav'd. . . . It strikes, it strikes. . . . Oh soul, be chang'd into little water-drops, And fall into the ocean, ne'er be found! " t There is the living, struggling, natural, personal man, not the philosophic type which Goethe has created, but a prim- itive and genuine man, hot-headed,fiery, the slave of his passions, the sport of his dreams, wholly engrossed in the present, moulded by his lusts, contra- dictions, and follies, who amidst noise and starts,cries of pleasure and anguish, rolls, knowing it and willing it, down the slope and crags of his precipice. The whole English drama is here, as a plant in its seed, and Marlowe is to Shakspeare what Perugino was to Raphael. V. Gradually art is being formed ; and toward the close of the century it is complete. Shakspeare, Beaumont, Fletcher, Ben Jonson, Webster, Mas- singer, Ford, Middleton, Heywood, appear together, or close upon each other, a new and favored generation, flourishing largely in the soil fertilized by the efforts of the generation which preceded them. Thenceforth the scenes are developed and assume * Marlowe, Doctor Faustus, p. 78. t Ibid, p, 80. consistency; the characters cease to move all of a piece, the drama is no longer like a piece of statuary. The poet who a little while ago knew only how to strike or kill, introduces now a sequence of situation and a rationale in intrigue. He begins to prepare the way for sentiments, to forewarn i;s of events, to combine effects, and we find a theatre at last, the most complete the most life-like, and also the most strange that ever existed. We must follow its formation, and regard the drama when it was formed, that is, in the minds of its authors. What was going on in these minds? What sorts of ideas were born there, and how were they born ? In the first place, they see the event, whatever it be, and they see it as it is ; I mean that they have it within themselves, with its persons and details, beautiful and ugly, even dull and grotesque. If it is a trial, the judge is there, in their minds, in his place, with his physiog- nomy and hts warts ; the plaintiff in another place, with his spectacles and brief -bag; the accused is opposite, stooping and remorseful ; each with his friends, cobblers, or lords ; then the buzzing crowd behind, all with their grinning faces, their bewildered or kindling eyes.* It is a genuine trial which they imagine, a trial like those they have seen before the justice, where they screamed or shouted as witnesses or interested parties, with their quibbling terms, their pros and cons, the scribblings, the sharp voices of the counsel, the stamping of feet, the crowding, the smell of their fel- low-men, and so forth. The endless myriads of circumstances which ac- company and influence every event, crowd round that event in their heads, and not merely the externals, that is, the visible and picturesque traits, the details of color and costume, but also, and chiefly, the internals, that is, the motions of anger and joy, the secret tumult of the soul, the ebb and flow of ideas and passions which are expressed by the countenance, swell the veins, make a man to grind his teeth, to clench his fists, which urge him on or * See the trial of Vittoria Corombona, of Vir- ginia in Webster, of Coriolanus and Julius Caesar in Shakspeare. 174 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II restrain him. They see all the details, the tides that sway a man, one from without, another from within, one through another, one within another, both together without faltering and without ceasing. And what is this insight but sympathy, an imitative sym- pathy, which puts us in another's place, which carries over their agitations to our own breasts, which makes our life a little world, able to reproduce the great one in abstract ? Like the char- acters they imagine, poets and specta- tors make gestures, raise their voices, act. No speech or story can show their inaer mood, but it is the scenic effect which can manifest it. As some men invent a language for their ideas, so these act and mimic them ; theatri- cal imitation and figured representation is their genuine speech : all other ex- pression, the lyrical song of ^schylus, the reflective symbolism of Goethe, the oratorical development of Racine, would be impossible for them. Invol- untarily, instantaneously, without fore- cast, they cut life into scenes, and carry it piecemeal on the boards ; this goes so far, that often a mere character becomes an actor,* playing a part with- in a part ; the scenic faculty is the natural form of their mind. Beneath the effort of this instinct, all the acces- sor}' parts of the drama come before the footlights and expand before our eyes. A battle has been fought; instead of relating it, they bring it before the public, trumpets and drums, pushing crowds, slaughtering combatants. A shipwreck happens ; straightway the ship is before the spectator, with the sailors' oaths, the technical orders of the pilot. Of all the details of human life,t tavern-racket and statesmen's councils, scullion's talk and court processions, domestic tenderness and pandering, none is too small or too lofty : these things exist in life let them exist on the stage, each in full, in the rough, atrocious, or absurd, just as they are, no matter how. Neither in Greece, nor Italy, nor Spain, nor France, has an art been seen which tried so boldly to * Falstaff in Shakspeare ; the queen in Lon- don, by Greene and Decker ; Rosalind in bhakspeare. t In Webster's Duchess of Malfi there is an admirable accouchement scene. express the soul, and its innermost depths the truth, and the whole truth. How did they succeed, and what is this new art which tramples on all or- dinary rules ? It is an art for all that, since it is natural ; a great art, since it embraces more things, and that more deeply than others do, like the art of Rembrandt and Rubens ; but like theirs, it is a Teutonic art, and one whose every step is in contrast with those of classical art. What the Greeks and Romans, the originators of the latter, sought in every thing, was charm and order. Monuments, statues, and paintings, the theatre, eloquence and poetry, from Sophocles to Racine, they shaped all their work in the same mould, and attained beauty by the same method. In the infinite entanglement and complexity of things, they grasped a small number of simple ideas, which they embraced in a small number of simple representations, so that the vast confused vegetation of life is presented to the mind from that time forth, pruned and reduced, and perhaps easily em- braced at a single glance. A square of walls with rows of columns all alike ; a symmetrical group of draped or un- draped forms ; a young man standing up and raising one arm; a wounded warrior who will not return to the camp, though they beseech him : this, in their noblest epoch, was their archi- tecture, their painting, their sculpture, and their theatre. No poetry but \ few sentiments not very intricate, al- ways natural, not toned down, intelli- gible to all ; no eloquence but a con - tinuous argument, a limited vocabulary, the loftiest ideas brought down to their sensible origin, so that children can understand such eloquence and feel such poetry ; and in this sense they are classical.* In the hands of Frenchmen, the last inheritors of the simple art, these great legacies of antiquity under- go no change. If poetic genius is less, the structure of mind has not altered. Racine puts on the stage a sole action, * This is, in fact, the English view of the French mind, which is doubtless a refinement, many times refined, of the classical spirit. But M. Taine has seemingly not taken into account such products as the Medea on the one hand, and the works of Aristophanes and the Latin sensualists on the other. TR. CHAP. II.] THE THEATRE. '75 whose details he adjusts, and whose course he regulates ; no incident, noth- ing unforeseen, no appendices or in- congruities ; no secondary intrigue. The subordinate parts are effaced ; at the most four or five principal charac- ters, the fewest possible ; the rest, re- duced to the condition of confidants, take the tone of their masters, and mere- ly reply to them. All the scenes are connected, and flow insensibly one into the other ; and every scene, like the en- t'ie i iece, has its order and progress. The tragedy stands out symmetrically and clear in the midst of human life, like a complete and solitary temple which limns its regular outline on the luminous azure of the sky. In England all is different. All that the French call proportion and fitness is wanting ; Englishmen do not trouble themselves about them, they do not need them. There is no unity ; they leap suddenly over twenty years, or five hundred leagues. There are twenty scenes in an act we stumble without prepara- tion from one to the other, from tragedy to buffoonery ; usually it appears as though the action gained no ground ; the different personages waste their time in conversation, dreaming, dis- playing their character. We were moved, anxious for the issue, and here they bring us in quarrelling servants, lovers making poetry. Even the dia- logue and speeches, which we would think ought particularly to be of a regular and continuous flow of engross- ing ideas, remain stagnant, or are scattered in windings and deviations. At first sight we fancy we are not ad- vancing, we do not feel at every phrase that we have made a step. There are none of those solid pleadings, none of those conclusive discussions, which ;very moment add reason to reason, rl jection to objection ; people might say that the different personages only knew how to scold, to repeat them- selves, and to mark time. And the disorder is as great in general as in particular things. They heap a whole reign, a complete war, an entire novel, into a drama ; they cut up into scenes an English chronicle or an Italian novel : this is all their art ; the events matter little ; whatever they are, they accept them. They have no idea of progressive and individual action. Two or three actions connected endwise, or entangled one with another, two 01 three incomplete endings badly con trived, and opened up again ; no ma- chinery but death, scattered right and left and unforeseen : such is the logic of their method. The fact is, that our logic, the Latin, fails them. Their mind does not march by the smooth and straightforward paths of rhetoric and eloquence. It reaches the same end, but by other approaches. It is at once more comprehensive and less reg- ular than ours. It demands a concep- tion more complete, but less consecu- tive. It proceeds, not as with us, by a line of uniform steps, but by sudden leaps and long pauses. It does not rest satisfied with a simple idea drawn from a complex fact, but demands the com- plex fact entire, with its numberless particularities, its interminable ramifi- cations. It sees in man not a general passion ambition, anger, or love ; not a pure quality happiness, avarice, folly ; but a character, that is, the im- print, wonderfully complicated, which inheritance, temperament, education, calling, age, society, conversation, habits, have stamped on every man ; an incommunicable and individual im- . print, which, once stamped in a man, is not found again in any other. It sees in the hero not only the hero, but the individual, with his manner of walking, drinking, swearing, blowing his nose ; with the tone of his voice, whether he is thin or fat ; * and thus plunges to the bottom of things, with every look, as by a miner's deep shaft. This sunk, it little cares whether the second shaft be two paces or a hundred from the first ; enough that it reaches the same depth, and serves equally well to display the inner and invisible layer. Logic is here from beneath, not from above. It is the unity of a character which binds the two actions of the personage, as the unity of an impression connects the two scenes of a drama. To speak exactly, the spectator is like a man whom we should lead along a wall pierced at separate intervals with little windows ; at every window he catches for an in- * See Hamlet, Coriolanus, Hotspur. Th queen in Hamlet (v. 2) says: " He (Hamlet)'s fat, and scant of breath." i 7 6 stant a glimpse of a new landscape, with its million details : the walk over, if he is of Latin race and training, he finds a medley of images jostling in his head, and asks for a map that he may recollect himself ; if he is of German race and training, he perceives as a whole, by natural concentration, the wide country which he has only seen piece-meal. Such a conception, by the multitude of details which it combines, and by the depth of the vistas which it embraces, is a half-vision which shakes the whole soul. What its works are about to show us is, with what energy, what disdain of contrivance, what vehemence of truth, it dares to coin and hammer the human medal ; with what liberty it is able to reproduce in full prominence worn out characters, and the extreme flights of virgin nature. VI. Let us consider the different person- ages which this art, so suited to depict real manners, and so apt to paint the living soul, goes in search of amidst the real manners and the living souls of its time and country. They are of two kinds, as befits the nature of the drama : one which produces terror, the other which moves to pity ; these grace- ful and feminine, those manly and vio- lent. All the differences of sex, all the extremes of life, all the resources of the stage, are embraced in this contrast ; and if ever there was a complete con- trast, it is here. The reader must study for himself some of these pieces, or he will have no idea of the fury into which the stage is hurled; force and transport are driven every instant to the point of atrocity, and further still, if there be any further. Assassinations, poison- ings, tortures, outcries of madness and rage ; no passion and no suffering are too extreme for their energy or their effort. Anger is with them a madness, ambition a frenzy, love a delirium. Hippolyto, who has lost his mistress, says, " Were thine eyes clear as mine, thou might'st behold her, watching up- on yon battlements of stars, how I ob- serve them." * Aretus, to be avenged on Valentinian, poisons him after *Middleton, The Honest Whore, parti, iv.i. THE RENAISSANCE. [BooK II. poisoning himself, and with the death- rattle in his throat, is brought to his enemy's side, to give him a foretaste of agony. Queen Brunhalt has panders with her on the stage, and causes her two sons to slay each other. Death everywhere ; at the close of every play, all the great people wade in blood : with slaughter and butcheries, the stage becomes a field of battle or a church- yard.* Shall I describe a few of these tragedies ? In the Duke of Milan, Francesco, to avenge his sister, who has been seduced, wishes to seduce in his turn the Duchess Marcelia, wife of Sf orza, the seducer ; he desires her, he will have her ; he says to her, with cries of love and rage : " For with this arm I'll swim through seas of blood, Or make a bridge, arch'd with the bones of men, But I will grasp my aims in you, my dearest, Dearest, and best of women ! " t For he wishes to strike the duke through her, whether she lives or dies, if not by dishonor, at least by murder ; the first is as good as the second, nay better, for so he will do a greater in- jury. He calumniates her, and the duke, who adores her, kills her ; then, being undeceived, loses his senses, will not believe she is dead, has the body brought in, kneels before it, rages and weeps. He knows now the name of the traitor, and at the thought of him he swoons or raves : ' I'll follow him to hell, but I will find him, And there live a fourth Fury to torment him. Then, for this cursed hand and arm that guided The wicked steel, I'll have them, joint by joint, With burning irons sear'd off, which I will eat, I being a vulture fit to taste such carrion." J Suddenly he gasps for breath, and falls; Francesco has poisoned . him. The duke dies, and the murderer is led to torture. There are worse scenes than this ; to find sentiments strong enough,, they go to those which change the very nature of man. Massinger puts on the stage a father who judges and condemns his daughter, stabbed by her * Beaumont and Fletcher, Valentinian^ Thierry and Theodoret. See Massinger'a Picture, which resembles Musset's Barberine. Its crudity, the extraordinary and repulsive energy, will show the difference of the two ages-, t Massinger's Works, ed- H. Coleridge, 1859, Duke of Milan, ii. i. i Duke of Milan, v. 2. CHAP. II.] THE THEATRE. 177 husband ; Webster and Ford, a son who assassinates his mother; Ford, the incestuous loves of a brother and sister.* Irresistible love overtakes then* ; the ancient love of Pasiphae and Myrrha, a kind of madness-like enchantment, and beneath which the will entirely gives way. Giovanni says: " Lost ! I am lost ! My fates have doom'd my death! The more I strive, I love ; the more I love, The less I hope: I see my ruin certain. . . . I have even wearied heaven with pray'rs, dried up The spring of my continual tears, even starv'd My veins with daily fasts : what wit or art Could counsel, I have practis'd ; but, alas ! I find all these but dreams, and old men's tales, To fright unsteady youth : I am still the same ; Or I must speak, or burst." t What transports follow ! what fierce and bitter joys, and how short too, how grievous and mingled with anguish, especially for her ! She is married to another. Read for yourself the admi- rable and horrible scene which repre- sents the wedding night. She is pregnant, and Soranzo, the husband, drags her along the ground, with curses, demanding the name of her lover : (i Come strumpet, famous whore ? . . . Harlot, rare, notable harlot, That with thy brazen face maintain'st thy sin, Was there no man in Parma to be bawd To your loose cunning whoredom else but I ? Must your hot itch and plurisy of lust, The heyday of your luxury, be fed Up to a surfeit, and could none but I Be pick'd out to be cloak to your close tricks, Your belly-sports? Now I must be the dad To all that gallimaufry that is stuffed In thy corrupted bastard-bearing womb ? Say, must I ? Annabella. Beastly man? why, 'tis thy fate. I su'd not to thee. . . . S. Tell me by whom." J She gets excited, feels and cares for nothing more, refuses to tell the name of her lover, and praises him in the following words. This praise in the midst of danger is like a rose she has plucked, and of which the odor intox- icates her : * Massinger, The Fatal Dowry ; Webster and Ford, A late Murther of the Sonne upon the Mother (a play not extant) ; Ford, ' Tis i>ity she's a IVhore. See also Ford's Broken Heart, with its sublime scenes of agony and madness. t Ford's Works, ed. H. Coleridge, 1859, 'Tis pity she's a Whore t i. 3. \ Ibid. iv. 3. " A . Soft! 'twas not in my bargain. Yet somewhat, sir, to stay your longing stomach I am content t' acquaint you with THE man, The more than man, that got this sprightly boy, (For 'tis a boy, and therefore glory, sir, Your heir shall be a son-) S. Damnable monster? A . Nay. an you will not hear I'll fjr eak n more. S. Yes, speak, and speak thy .tit. A . A match, a match ? . . . You, why you are not worthy once to name His name without true worship, or, indeed, Unless you kneel'd to hear another came him. .S. Whatwashecall'd? A . We are not come to that ; Let it suffice that you shall have the glory To father what so brave a father got. . . . S. Dost thou laugh ? Come, whore, tell me your lover, or, by truth I'll hew thy flesh to shreds ; who is't? " * She laughs ; the excess of shame and terror has given her courage ; she in- sults him, she sings ; so like a woman ! " A' (Sings) Che morte piu dolceche morir* per amore. S. Thus will I pull thy hair, and thus I'll drag Thy lust be-leper'd body through the dust. . . . (Hales her / and down) A. Be a gallant hangman. . . . I leave revenge behind, and thou shalt feel 't. . (To Vasquez.} Pish, do not beg for me, I prize my life As nothing ; if the man will needs be mad, Why, let him take it." t In the end all is discovered, and the two lovers know they must die. For the last time, they see each other in Annabella's chamber, listening to the noise of the feast below which shall serve for their funeral-feast. Gio- vanni, who has made his resolve like a madman, sees Annabella richly dressed, dazzling. He regards her in silence, and remembers the past. He weeps and says : " These are the funeral tears, Shed on your grave ; these furrow'd-up my cheeks When first I lov'd and knew not how to woo. . . Give me your hand : how sweetly life doth ran In these well-colour'd veins ! How constantly These palms do promise health ! . . . Kiss me again, forgive me. . . Farewell." \ . . He then stabs her, enters the banquet- ing room, with her heart upon his dag- ger : * Ibid. t Ibid. 8* t Ibid. v. 5. i 7 8 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II " Sorauzo see this heart, which was thy wife's. Thus I exchange it royally for thine." * He kills him, and casting himself on the swords of banditti, dies. It would seem that tragedy could go no fur- thur. But it did go further ; for if these are melodramas, they are sincere, com- posed, not like those of to-day, by Grub Street writers for peaceful citi- zens, but by impassioned men, expe- rienced in tragical arts, for a violent, over-fed melancholy race. From Shakspeare to Milton, Swift, Hogarth, no race has been more glutted with coarse expressions and horrors, and its poets supply them plentifully; Ford less so than Webster ; the latter^ a sombre man, whose thoughts seem in- cessantly to be haunting tombs and charnel-houses. " Places in court," he says, " are but like beds in the hospital, where this man's head lies at that man's foot, and so lower and lower." t Such are his images. No one has equalled Webster in creating desperate char- acters, utter wretches, bitter misan- thropes,}: in blackening and blasphem- ing human life, above all, in depicting the shameless depravity and refined ferocity of Italian manners. The Duch- ess of Malfi has secretly married her steward Antonio, and her brother learns that she has children; almost mad || with rage and wounded pride, he re- mains silent, waiting until he knows the name of the father; then he arrives all of a sudden, means to kill her, but so that she shall taste the lees of death. She must suffer much, but above all, she must not die too quickly ! She must suffer in mind ; these griefs * T is pity she's a Whore, v. 6. t Webster's Works, ed. Dyce, 1857, Duchess of Malfi, i. i. \ The characters of Bosola, Flaminio. See Stendhal Chronicles of Italy, The Cenci, The Duchess of Pallia-no, and all the biographies of the time ; of the Borgias, of Bianca Capello, of Vittoria Accoramboni. II Ferdinand, one of the brothers, says (ii. 5) : " I would have their bodies Burnt in a coal-pit with the ventage stopp'd, That their curs'd smoke might not ascend to heaven ; Or dip the sheets they lie in in pitch or sulphur, Wrap them in't, and then light them as a match ; Or else to-boil their bastard to a cullis, And give't his lecherous father to renew The ain of his back." are worse than the body's. He sends assassins to kill Antonio, and mean- while comes to her in the dark, with affectionate words ; pretends to be reconciled, and suddenly shows her waxen figures, covered with wounds, whom she takes for her slaughtered husband and children. She staggers under the blow, and remains in gloom without crying out. Then she says : ! Good comfortable fellow, Persuade a wretch that's broke upon the wheel To have all his bones new set ; entreat him live To be executed again. Who must despatch me? ... Bosola. Come, be of comfort, I will sava your life. Duchess. Indeed, I have not leisure to tend So small a business. B. Now, by my life, I pity you. D. Thou art a fool, then, To waste thy pity on a thing so wretched As cannot pity itself. I am full of daggers."* Slow words, spoken in a whisper, as in a dream, or as if she were speaking of a third person. Her brother sends to her a company of madmen, who leap and howl and rave around her in mournful wise ; a pitiful sight, calcu- lated to unseat the reason ; a kind of foretaste of hell. She says nothing, looking upon them ; her heart is dead, her eyes fixed, with vacant stare : Car tola. What think you of, madam? Duchess. Of nothing : When I muse thus, I sleep. C. Like a madman, with your eyes open? D. Dost thou think we shall know one another In the other world ? C. Yes, out of question, D. O that it were possible we might But hold some two days' conference with the dead! From them I should learn somewhat, I am I never 'shall know here. I'll tell thee a miracle ; I am not mad yet, to my cause of sorrow : The heaven o'er my head seems ma'ie of mOx ten brass, The earth of flaming sulphur, yet I am not mad. I am acquainted with sad misery As the tann'd galley-slave is with his oar." f In this state, the limbs, like those of one who has been newly executed, still quiver, but the sensibility is worn out the miserable body only stirs mechani * Duchess of Malfi, iv. t Ibid. iv. 2. CHAP. II.] THE THEATRE. 179 cnlly; it has suffered too much. At last the gravedigger comes with execu- tioners, a coffin, and they sing before her a funeral dirge : ' Duchess. Farewell, Cariola . . . I pray thee, look thou giv'st my little boy Some syrup for his cold, and let the girl Say her prayers ere she sleep. Now, what you please : What death ? Bo sola. Strangling ; here are your execu- tioners. D. I forgive them : The apoplexy, catarrh, or cough o' the lungs Would do as much as they do. . . . My body Bestow upon my women, will you ? . . . Go, tell my brothers, when I am laid out, They then may feed in quiet." * After the mistress the maid ; the latter cries and struggles : * { Cariola* I will not die ; I must not ; I am contracted To a young gentleman. \st Executioner. Here's your wedding- ring. C. If you kill me now, I am damn'd, I have not been at confession This two years. B. WhenPt C. I am quick with child." % They strangle her also, and the two children of the duchess. Antonio is assassinated ; the cardinal and his mis- tress, the duke and his confidant, are poisoned or butchered ; and the solemn words of the dying, in the midst of this butchery, utter, as from funereal trum- pets, a general curse upon existence : " We are only like dead walls or vaulted graves, That, ruin'd yield no echo. Fare you well, . . O, this gloomy world ! In what a shadow, or deep pit of darkness, Doth womanish and fearful mankind live ! " " In all our quest of greatness, Like wanton boys, whose pastime is their care, We follow after bubbles blown in the air. Pleasure of life, what is't? only the good hours Of an ague ; merely a preparative to rest, To endure vexation. . . . Whether we fall by ambition, blood, or lust, Like diamonds, we are cut with our own dust." || Vou will find nothing sadder or greater from the Edda to Lord Byron. We can well imagine what powerful * Duchess of Malfi, iv. 2. t " When," an exclamation of impatience, equivalent to "make haste," very common among the old English dramatists. TR. \ Duchess of Malfi, iv. 2. Ibid. v. 5. |j Ibid. v. 4 and 5. characters are necessary to sustain these terrible dramas. All these per- sonages are ready for extreme acts; their resolves break forth like blows of a sword ; we follow, meet at every change of scene their glowing eyes, wan lips, the starting of their muscles, the tension of their whole frame. Their powerful will contracts their violent hands, and their accumulated passion breaks out in thunder-bolts, which tear and ravage all around them, and in their own hearts. We know them, the heroes of this tragic population, lago, Richard III., Lady Macbeth, Othello, Coriolanus, Hotspur, full of genius, courage, desire, generally mad or crim- inal, always self-driven to the tomb. There are as many around Shakspeare as in his own works. Let me exhibit one character more, written by the same dramatist, Webster. No one, except Shakspeare, has seen further into the depths of diabolical and un- chained nature. The " White Devil " is the name which he gives to his heroine. His Vittoria Corombona re- ceives as her lover the Duke of Brachi- ano, and at the first interview dreams of the issue : " To pass away the time, I'll tell your grace A dream I had last night." It is certainly well related, and still bet- ter chosen, of deep meaning and very clear import. Her brother Flaminio says, aside : " Excellent devil ! she hath taught him in a dream To make away his duchess and her hus- band."* So, her husband, Camillo, is strangled, the Duchess poisoned, and Vittoria, accused of the two crimes, is brought before the tribunal. Step by step, like a soldier brought to bay with his back against a wall, she defends herself, re- futing and defying judges and advo- cates incapable of blenching or quail- ing, clear in mind, ready in word, amid insults and proofs, even menaced with death on the scaffold. The advocate begins to speak in Latin. " Vittoria. Pray my lord, let him speak his usual tongue ; I'll make no answer else. 1 Vittoria Corombona, i. 3. i8o THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II. Francisco de Mcdicis. Why, you under- stand Latin. V. I do, sir ; but amongst this auditory Which come to hear my cause, the half or more May be ignorant in't." She wants a duel, bare-breasted, in open day, and challenges the advocate : " I am at the mark, sir: I'll give aim to you, And tell you how near you shoot." She mocks his legal phraseology, in- sults him, with biting irony : * Surely, my lords, this lawyer here hath swal- low' d Some pothecaries' bills, or proclamations ; And now the hard and undigestible words Come up, like stones we use give hawks for physic : Why, this is Welsh to Latin." Then, to the strongest adjuration of the judges : " To the point, Find me but guilty, sever head from bod}', We'll part good friends ; I scorn to hold my life At yours, or any man's entreaty, sir. . . . These are but feigned shadows of my evils : Terrify babes, my lord, witli painted devils ; I am past such needless palsy. For your names Of whore and murderess, they proceed from you, As if a man should spit against the wind ; The filth returns in's face." * Argument for argument : she has a parry for every blow : a parry and a thrust : " But take you your course : it seems you have beggar' d me first, And now would fain undo me. I have houses, Jewels, and a poor remnant of crusadoes : Would those would make you charitable I " Then, in a harsher voice : * In faith, my lord, you might go pistol flies ; The sport would be more noble." They condemn her to be shut up in a house of convertites : ' J-'. A house of convertites! What's that? Monticelso. A house of penitent whores. V. Do the noblemen in Rome trect it for their wives, that I am sent To lodge there ? " t The sarcasm comes home like a sword- thrust ; then another behind it; then cries and curses. She will not bend, * Webster Dyce, 1857, Vittoria Corombona, *J]>. 20-21. t Vittoria Corombona, iii. 2, p. 23. idy ith she will not weep. She goes off erect bitter and more haughty than ever : " I will not weep ; No, I do scorn to call up one poor tear To fawn on your injustice : bear me hence Unto this house of , what's your mitigating title ? Mont. Of convertites. V. It shall not be a house of convertites ; My mind shall make it honester to me Than the Pope's palace, and more peaceable Than thy soul, though thou art a cardinal."* Against her furious lover, who accuses her of unfaithfulness, she is as strong as against her judges ; she copes with him, casts in his teeth the death of his duchess, forces him to beg pardon, to marry her ; she will play the corned; to the end, at the pistol's mouth, witi the shamelessness and courage of a courtesan and an empress ; t snared at last, she will be just as brave and more insulting when the dagger's point threatens her : " Yes, I shall welcome death As princes do some great ambassadors ; I'll meet thy weapon half way. . . . 'Tvras a manly blow ; The next thou giv'st, murder some sucking infant ; And then thou wilt be famous." $ When a woman unsexes herself, her actions transcend man's, and there is nothing which she will not suffer or dare. VII. Opposed to this band of tragic char- acters, with their distorted features, brazen fronts, combative attitudes, is a troop of sweet and timid figures, pre- eminently tender-hearted, the most graceful and loveworthy, whom it has been given to man to depict. In Shak- speare you will meet them in Miranda, Juliet, Desdemona, Virgilia, Ophelia, Cordelia, Imogen ; but they abound also in the others ; and it is a character- istic of the race to have furnished them, as it is of the drama to have rep- resented them. By a singular coin- cidence, the women are more of women, the men more of men, here than else- where. The two natures go each to * Ibid. p. 24. t Compare Mme. Marneffe in Balzac's La Cousine Bette. Vittoria Corontbotta^ v. last scene, pp.- 49-50. CHAP. I.] THE THEATRE. fts extreme : in the one to boldness, the spirit of enterprise and resistance, the warlike, imperious, and unpolished character ; in the other to sweetness, devotion, patience, inextinguishable af- fection,* a thing unknown in distant lands, in France especially so : a wo- man in England gives herself without drawing back, and places her glory and duty in obedience, forgiveness, adora- tion, wishing and professing only to be melted and absorbed daily deeper and deeper in him whom she has freely and forever chosen.f It is this, an old German instinct, which these great painters of instinct diffuse here, one and all: Penthea, Dorothea, in Ford and Greene ; Isabella and the Duchess of Main", in Webster ; Bianca, Ordella, Arethusa, Juliana, Euphrasia, Amoret, and others, in Beaumont and Fletcher : there are a score of them who, under the severest tests and the strongest temptations, display this wonderful power of self-abandonment and devo- tion.} The soul, in this race, is at once primitive and serious. Women keep their purity longer than elsewhere. They lose respect less quickly; weigh worth and characters less suddenly: they are less apt to think evil, and to take the measure of their husbands. To this day, a great lady, accustomed to company, blushes in the presence of an unknown man, and feels bashful like a little girl : the blue eyes are dropt, and a child-like shame flies to her rosy cheeks. English women have not the smartness, the boldness of ideas, the assurance of bearing, the precocity, which with the French make of a young girl, in six months, a woman >f intrigue and the queen of a drawing- * Hence the happiness and strength of the marriage tie. In France it is but an association of two comrades, tolerably alike and tolerably equal, which gi/es i*e to endless disturbance and bickering. t See the representation of this character throughout English and German literature. Stendhal, an acute observer, saturated with Italian and French morals and ideas, is aston- ished at this phenomenon. He understands nothing of this kind of devotion, " this slavery which English husbands have had the wit to im- pose on their wives under the name of duty." These are " the manners of a seraglio." See also Ccrinne, by Madame de Stael. t A perfect woman already : meek and pa- tient. HEYWOOD. room.* Domestic life and obedience are more easy to them. More pliant and more sedentary, they are at the same time more concentrated and in- trospective, more disposed to follow the noble dream called duty, which is hardly generated in mankind but by silence of the senses. They are not tempted by the voluptuous sweetness which in southern countries is breath- ed out in the climate, in the sky, in the general spectacle of things ; which dissolves every obstacle, which causes privation to be looked upon as a snare and virtue as a theory. They can rest content with dull sensations, dispense with excitement, endure weariness ; and in this monotony of a regulated exist- ence, fall back upon themselves, obey a pure idea, employ all the strength of their hearts in maintaining their moral dignity. Thus supported by in- nocence and conscience, they introduce into love a profound and upright sen- timent, abjure coquetry, vanity, and flirtation : they do not lie nor simper. When they love, they are not tasting a forbidden fruit, but are binding them- selves for their whole life. Thus un- derstood, love becomes almost a holy thing ; the spectator no longer wishes to be spiteful or to jest ; women do not think of their own happiness, but of that of the loved ones ; they aim not at pleasure, but at devotion. Euphra- sia, relating her history to Philaster, says : " My father oft would speak j Your worth and virtue ; and, as I did grow More and more apprehensive, I did thirst To see the man so prais'd ; but yet all this Was but a maiden longing, to be lost As soon as found ; till sitting in my window. Printing my thoughts in lawn, I saw a god, I thought, (but it was you) enter our gates. My blood flew out, and back again as fast, As I had puff'd it forth and suck'd it in Like breath : Then was I call'd away in haste To entertain you. Never was a man, Heay'd from a sheep-cote to a sceptre, rais'd So high in thoughts as I : You left a kiss Upon these lips then, which I mean to keep From you for ever. I did hear you talk, Far above singing ! After you were gone, I grew acquainted with my heart, and search'd What stirr'd it so : Alas I I found it love ; * See, by way of contrast, all Moliere'i women, so French ; even Agnes and little Louison. 182 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK IL Yet far from lust ; for could I but have liv'd In presence of you, I had had my end." * She had disguised herself as a page,t followed him, was his servant ; what greater happiness for a woman than to serve on her knees the man she loves ? She let him scold her, threaten her with death, wound her. " Blest be that hand ! It meant me well. Again, for pity's sake !"^ Do what he will, nothing but words of tenderness and adoration can proceed from this heart, these wan lips. More- over, she takes upon herself a crime of which he is accused, contradicts him when he asserts his guilt, is ready to die in his place. Still more, she is of use to him with the Princess Arethusa, whom he loves ; she justifies her rival, brings about their marriage, and asks no other thanks but that she may serve them both. And strange to say, the princess is not jealous. " Euphrasia. Never, Sir, will I Marry ; it is a thing within my vow : But if I may have leave to serve the princess, To see the virtues of her lord and her, I shall have hope to live. A rethusa. . . . Come, live with me ; Live free as I do. She that loves my lord, Curst be the wife that hates her ! " What notion of love have they in tfcis country ? Whence happens it that all selfishness, all vanity, all ran- cor, every little feeling, either personal or base, flees at its approach ? How comes it that the soul is given up wholly, without hesitation, without re- serve, and only dreams thenceforth of prostrating and annihilating itself, as in the presence of a god ? Biancha, thinking Cesario ruined, offers herself to him as his wife ; and learning that he is not so, gives him up straightway, without a murmur : " Biancha. So dearly I respected both your fame And quality, that I would first have perish'd In my sick thoughts, than e'er have given con- sent To have undone your fortunes, by inviting A marriage with so mean a one as I am : I should have died sure, and no creature known The sickness that had kill'd me. . . . Now since I know * Beaumont and Fletcher, Works, ed. G.Col- man, 3 vols., 1811, Philaster, v. t Like Kaled in Byron's Lara. \ Philaster, iv. ' Philaster ; v. There is no difference 'twixt your birth and mine, Not much 'twixt our estates ("if any be, The advantage is on my side) I come willingly To tender you the first-fruits of my heart, And am content t' accept you for my husband, Now when you are at lowest. . . . Cesario. Why, Biancha, Report has cozen'd thee ; I am not fallen From my expected honours or possessions, Tho' from the hope of birth-right. B. Are you not ? Then I am lost again! I have a suit too ; You'll grant it, if you be a good man. . . . Pray do not talk of aught what I have said t'ye. . . . . . . Pity me ; But never love me more ! . . . I'll pray for you, That you may have a virtuous wife, a fair oni] And when I'm dead . . . C. Fy, f y ! A. Think on me sometimes, With mercy for this trespass ! C. Let us kis* At parting, as at coming ! B. This I hav s As a free dower to a virgin's grave, All goodness dwell with you! " * Isabella, Brachiano's duchess is be- trayed, insulted by her faithless hus- band ; to shield him from the ven- geance of her family, she takes upon herself the blame of the rupture, pur- posely plays the shrew, and leaving him at peace with his courtesan, dies embracing his picture. Arethusa al- lows herself to be wounded by Philas- ter, stays the people who would hold back the murderer's arm, declares that he has done nothing, that it is not he, prays for him, loves him in spite of all, even to the end, as though all his acts were sacred, as if he had power of life and death over her. Ordella devotes herself, that the king, her husband, may have children ; t she offers her- self for a sacrifice, simply, without grand words, with her whole heart : " Ordella. Let it be what it may then, what it dare, I have a mind will hazard it. Thierry. But, hark you ; What may that woman merit, makes this bless* ing? O. Only her duty, sir. T. 'Tis terrible 1 O. 'Tis so much the more noble. T. 'Tis full of fearful shadows O. So i sleep, sir, Or anything that's merely ours, and mortal ; We were begotten gods else : but those fears Feeling but once the fires of nobler thoughts, Fly, like the shapes of clouds we form, to notli- I * Beaumont and Fletcher, The Fair Maid of the Inn, iv. t Beaumont and Fletcher, Thierry and Theodoret, The Maid's Tragedy, Philaster See also the part of Iuciiia in Valentinian, I CHAP. II.] THE THEATRE. T. Suppose it death! O- I do. T. And endless parting With all we can call ouis, with all our sweet- ness, With youth, strength, pleasure, people, time, nay reason ! For in the silent grave, no conversation, No joyful tread of friends, no voice of lovers, No careful father's counsel, nothing's heard, Nor nothing is, but all oblivion, Dust and an endless darkness : and dare you, woman, Desire this place? O. 'Tis of all sleeps the sweetest : Children begin it to us, strong men seek it, Aucl kings from height of all their painted glories F ill, like spent exhalations, to this centre. . . . T. Then you can suffer ? O. As willingly as say it. T. Martell, a wonder i iere is a woman that dares die. Yet, tell me, Are you a wife? O. 1 am, sir. T. And have children ? She sighs and weeps ! O. Oh, none, sir. T. Dare you venture For a poor barren praise you ne'er shall hear, To part with these sweet hopes ? O. With all but Heaven."* Is not this prodigious ? Can you un- derstand how one human being can thus be separated from herself, forget and lose herself in another ? They do so lose themselves, as in an abyss. When they love ' in vain and without hope, neither reason nor life resist ; they languish, grow mad, die like Ophelia. Aspasia, forlorn, " Walks discontented, with her watry eyes Bent on the earth. The unfrequented woods Are her delight ; and when she sees a bank Stuck full of flowers, she with a sigh will tell Her servants what a pretty place it were To bury lovers in ; and make her maids Pluck 'em, and strew her over like a corse. She carries with her an infectious grief, That strikes all her beholders ; she will sing The mournful'st things that ever ear hath heard, And sigh and -sing again ; and when the rest Of our young ladies, in their wanton blood, Tell mirthful tales in course, that fill the room With laughter, she will with so sad a look Bring forth a story of the silent death Of si me forsaken virgin, which her grief Will put in such a phrase, that, ere she end, Shr'll send them weeping one by one away." t Like a spectre about a tomb, she wan- ders forever about the remains of her destroyed love, languishes, grows pale, swoons, ends by causing herself to be killed, Sadder still are those who, * Thierry and Tkeodoret, iv. i. t Beaumont and F letcher, The Maid's Trag- dy t i. 183 from duty or submission, allow them, selves to be married, while their heart belongs to another. They are not re- signed, do not recover, like Pauline in Polyeucte. They are crushed to death. Penthea, in Ford's Broken Heart, is as upright, but not so strong, as Pauline ; she is the English wife, not the Roman stoical and calm.* She despaiis, sweetly, silently, and pines to death. In her innermost heart she holds her- self married to him to whom she has pledged her soul : it is the marriage of the heart which in her eyes is alone genuine; the other is only disguised adultery. In marrying Bassanes she has sinned against Orgilus ; moral in- fidelity is worse than legal infidelity, and thenceforth she is fallen in her own eyes. She says to her brother : " Pray, kill me. . . . Kill, me, pray ; nay, will ye ? Ithocles. How does thy lord esteem thee? P. Such an one As only you have made me ; a faith-breaker, A spotted whore ; forgive me, I am one In act, not in desires, the gods must wit- ness. . . . For she that's wife to Orgilus, and lives In known adultery with Bassanes, Is, at the best, a whore. Wilt kill me now? . . . The handmaid to the wages Of country toil, drinks the untroubled streams With leaping kids, and with the bleating lambs, And so allays her thirst secure ; whiles I Quench my hot sighs with fleetings of my tears." t With tragic greatness, from the height of her incurable grief, she throws her gaze on life : " My glass of life, sweet princess, hath few minutes Remaining to run down ; the sands are spent ; For by an inward messenger I feel * Pauline says, in Corneille's Polyeucte (iii. 2) : " Avant qu'abandonner mon a"me a mes dou leurs, II me faut essayer la force de mes pleurs ; En qualite de femme ou de fille, j'espere Qu'ils vaincront un epoux, ou flechiront un pere. Que si sur 1'un et 1'autre ils manquent de pouvoir, Je ne prendrai conseil que de mpn de*sespoir. Apprends-moi cependant ce qu'ils ont fait au temple." We could not find a more reasonable and rea- soning woman. So with Eliante, and Henriette, in Moliere. t Ford's Broken Heart* iii. 2. i8 4 The summons of departure short and certain. . . . Glories Of human greatness are but pleasing dreams, And shadows soon decaying ; on the stage Of my mortality, my youth hath acted Some scenes of vaiuty, drawn out at length By varied pleasures, sweeten'd in the mix- ture, But tragical in issue. . . . That remedy Must be a winding-sheet, a fold of lead, And some untrod-on corner in the earth." * There is no revolt, no bitterness ; she affectionately assists her brother who has caused her unhappiness ; she tries to enable him to win the woman he loves ; feminine kindness and sweet- ness overflow in her in the depths of her despair. Love here is not despotic, passionate, as in southern climes. It is only deep and sad ; the source of life is dried up, that is all ; she lives no longer, because she cannot ; all go by degrees health, reason, soul ; in the end she becomes mad, and behold her dishevelled, with wide staring eyes, with words that can hardly find utter- ance. For ten days she has not slept, and will not eat any more ; and the same fatal thought continually afflicts her heart, amidst vague dreams of maternal tenderness and happiness brought to nought, which come and go in her mind like phantoms : " Sure, if we were all sirens, we should sing pitifully, And 'twere a comely music, when in parts One sung another's knell ; the turtle sighs When he hath lost his mate ; and yet some say He must be dead first : 'tis a fine deceit To pass away in a dream! indeed, I've slept With mine eyes open, a great while. No falsehood Equals a broken faith ; there's not a hair Sticks on m/ nead, but, like a leaden plum- met, It sinks me to the grave : I must creep thither ; The journey is not long. . . . Since I was first a wife, I might have been Mother to many pretty prattling babes ; They would have smiled when I smiled ; and, for certair , I should have cried when they cried : truly, brother, My father would have pick'd me out a hus- band, And then my little ones had been no bas- tards ; But 'tis too late for me to marry now, I am past child-bearing ; 'tis not my fault. . . . Spare your hand ; Believe me, I'll not hurt it. ... * Ford's Broken Heart, iii. 5. THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II Complain not though I wring it hard : I'll kiss it ; Oh, 'tis a fine soft palm! hark, in thine ear ; Like whom do I look, prithee ? nay, no whis- pering. Goodness ! we had been happy ; too much happiness Will make folk proud, they say. . . . There is no peace left for a ravish'd wife, Widow'd by lawless marriage ; to all memory Penthea's, poor Penthea's name is strumpet- ed. . . . Forgive me ; Oh ! I faint." * She dies, imploring that some gentle voice may sing her a plaintive air, a farewell ditty, a sweet funeral song. I know nothing in the drama more pure and touching. When we find a constitution of soul so new, and capable of such great ef- fects, it behoves us to look at the bodies. Man's extreme actions come not from his will, but his nature. t In order to understand the great tensions of the whole machine, we must look upon the whole machine, I mean man's temperament, the manner in which his blood flows, his nerves quiver, his muscles act : the moral in- terprets the physical, and human qual- ities have their root in the animal spe- cies. Consider then the species in this case namely, the race ; for the sisters of Shakspeare's Ophelia and Virgilia, Goethe's Clara and Margaret, Otway's Belvidera, Richardson's Pa- mela, constitute a race by themselves, soft and fair, with blue eyes, lily white- ness, blushing, of timid delicacy, seri- ous sweetness, framed to yield, bend, cling. Their poets feel it clearly when they bring them on the stage ; they surround them with the poetry which becomes them, the murmur of streams, the pendent willow-tresses, the frail and humid flowers of the country, so like themselves : " The flower, that's like thy face, pale prim. rose, nor The azure harebell, like thy veins ; no, nor The leaf of eglantine, whom *ot to slander, Out-sweeten'd not thy breath." J t Ibid. iv. 2. * Schopenhauer, Metaphysics of Love ana Death. Swift also said that death and love are the two things in which man is fundamentally irrational. In fact, it is the species and the in- stinct which are displayed in them, not the will and the individual. t Cymbelinf) iv. 2. CHAP. II.] THE THEATRE. They make them sweet, like the south wind, which with its gentle breath causes the violets to bend their heads, abashed at the slightest reproach, al- ready half bowed down by a tender and dreamy melancholy.* Philaster, speaking of Euphrasia, whom he takes to be a page, and who has disguised herself in order to be near him, says : " Hunting the buck, [ found him sitting by a fountain-side, Of which he borrow'd some to quench his thirst, And paid the nymph again as much in tears. A garland lay him by, made by himself, Of many several flowers, bred in the bay, Stuck in that mystic order, that the rareness Delighted me : But ever when he turn'd His tender eyes upon 'em, he would weep, As if he meant to make 'em grow again. Seeing such pretty helpless innocence Dwell in his face, I asked him all his story. He told me, that his parents gentle dy'd, Leaving him to the mercy of the fields, Which gave him roots ; and of the crystal springs, Which did not stop their courses ; and the sun, Which still, he thank'd him, yielded him his light. Then he took up his garland, and did shew What every flower, as country people hold, Did signify ; and how all, order'd thus, Express'd his grief : And, to my thoughts, did read The prettiest lecture of his country art That could be wish'd. ... I gladly enter- tain'd him, Who was as glad to follow ; and have got The trustiest, loving'st, and the gentlest boy That ever master kept." t The idyl is self-produced among these human flowers : the dramatic action is stopped before the angelic sweetness of their tenderness and modesty. Sometimes even the idyl is born com- plete and pure, and the whole theatre is occupied by a sentimental and poet- ical kind of opera. There are two or three such plays in Shakspeare; in rude Jonson, The Sad Shepherd ; in Pletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess. Ridiculous titles nowadays, for they .emind us of the interminable plati- tudes of d'Urfe, or the affected con- ceits of Florian; charming titles, if we note the sincere and overflowing poetry which they contain. Amoret, the faith- ful shepherdess, lives in an imaginary country, full of old gods, yet English, like the dewy verdant landscapes in * The death of Ophelia, the obsequies of Imogen. f Philaster, i. which Rubens sets his nymphs danc- ing : " Thro' yon same bending plain That flings his arms down to the main, And thro' these thick woods, have I run, Whose bottom never kiss'd the sun Since the lusty spring began." . . " For to that holy wood is consecrate A virtuous well, about whose flow' ry banks The nimble-footed fairies dance their rounds) By the pale moon-shine, dipping oftentimes Their stolen children, so to make them free From dying flesh, and dull mortality." . . * " See the dew-drops, how they kiss Ev'ry little flower that is ; Hanging on their velvet heads, Like a rope of christal beads. See the heavy clouds low falling And bright Hesperus down calling The dead Night from underground." f These are the plants and the aspects of the ever fresh English country, now enveloped in a pale diaphanous mist, now glistening under the absorbing sun, teeming with grasses so full of sap, so delicate, that in the midst of their most brilliant splendor and their most luxuriant life, we feel that to- morrow will wither them. There, on a summer night, the young men and girls, after their custom, J go to gather flowers and plight their troth. Amoret and Perigot are together ; Amoret, " Fairer far Than the chaste blushing morn, or that fair star That guides the wand' ring seaman thro' the deep," modest like a virgin, and tender as a wife, says to Perigot : " I do believe thee : 'Tis as hard for me To think thee false, and harder, than for thee To hold me foul." Strongly as she is tried, her heart, once given, never draws back. Peri- got, deceived, driven to despair, per- suaded that she is unchaste, strikes her with his sword, and casts her bleeding to the ground. The " sullen shepherd " throws her into a well ; but the god lets fall " a drop from his watery locks " into the wound ; the chaste flesh closes at the touch of the * Beaumont and Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess^ i. t Ibid. h. \ See the description in Nathan Drake, Shakspeare and his Times. Beaumont and Fletcher, The Faithful Shepherdess^ i. i86 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II divine water, and the maiden, recover- ing, goes once more in search of him sne loves : " Spenk, if thou be here, My Perigot! Thy Amoret, thy dear, CJls on thy loved name. . . . 'Tis thy friend, Thy Amoret ; come hither, to give end To these consumings. Look up, gentle boy, I have forgot those pains and dear annoy I suffer'd for thy sake, and am content To be thy love again. Why hast thou rent Those curled locks, where I have often hung Ribbons, and damask-roses, and have flung Waters distill'd to make thee fresh and gay, Sweeter than nosegays on a bridal day ? Why dost thou cross thine arms, and hang thy face Down to thy bosom, letting fall apace, from those two little Heav'ns, upon the ground, Show'rs of more price, more orient, and more round, Than those that hang upon the moon's pale brow? Cease these complainings, shepherd! I am now The same I ever was, as kind and free, And can forgive before you ask of me : Indeed, I can and will." * Who could resist her sweet and sad smile ? Still deceived, Perigot wounds her again ; she falls, but without an- ger. " So this work hath end! Farewell, and live! be constant to thy friend That loves thee next." t A nymph cures her, and at last Peri- got/disabused, comes and throws him- self on his knees before her. She stretches out her arms ; in spite of all that he had done, she was not changed : " I am thy love, Thy Amoret, for evermore thy love ! Strike once more on my naked breast, I'll prove As constant still. Oh, could'st thou love me yet, How soon could I my former griefs for- get! " I Such are the touching and poetical figures which these poets introduce in their dramas, or in connection with their dramas, amidst murders,- assassi- nations, the clash of swords, the howl of slaughter, striving against the raging ITMI who adore or torment them, like them carried to excess, transported by their tenderness as the others by their violence ; it is a complete exposition, * The Faithful Shepherdess, iv. 1 Ibid. \ Ibid. v. Compare, as an illustration of the contrast of races, the Italian pastorals, Tasso's A minta, Guarini's // Pastor fido, etc. as well as a perfect opposition of the feminine instinct ending in excessive self-abandonment, and of masculine harshness ending in murderous infiexi bility. Thus built up and thus pro- vided, the drama of the age was en abled to bring out the inner depths of man, and to set in motion the most powerful human emotions ; to bring upon the stage Hamlet and Lear, Ophelia and Cordelia, the death of Desdemona and the butcheries of Mac- beth. CHAPTER III. WHEN a new civilization brings a new art to light, there are about a dozen men of talent who partly express the general idea, surrounding one or two men of genius who express it thorough- ly. Guillen de Castro, Perez de Mon- talvan, Tirzo de Molina, Ruiz de Alarcon, Agustin Moreto, surrounding Calderon and Lope de Vega; Grayer, Van Oost, Rombouts, Van Thulden, Van Dyck, Honthorst, surrounding Rubens; Ford, Marlowe, Massinger. Webster, Beaumont, Fletcher, sur- rounding Shakspeare and Ben Jonson. The first constitute the chorus, the others are the leading men. They sing the same piece together, and at times the chorist is equal to the solo artist ; but only at times. Thus, in the dramas which I have just referred to, the poet occasionally reaches the sum- mit of his art, hits upon a complete character, a burst of sublime passion ; then he falls back, gropes amid qualified successes, rough sketches, feeble im- itations, and at last takes refuge in the tricks of his trade. It is not in him, but in great men like Ben Jonson and Shakspeare, that we must look for the attainment of his idea and the fulness of his art. " Numerous were the wit- combats," says Fuller, "betwixt him (Shakspeare) and Ben Jonson, which two I behold like a Spanish great galleon and an English man-of-war. Master Jonson (like the former) was built far higher in learning ; solid, but slow in his performances. Shak- CHAP. III.] BEN JONSON. 187 speare, with the English man-of-war, jesser in bulk, but lighter in sailing, could turn with all tides, tack about and take advantage of all winds by the quick- ness of his wit and invention." * Such was Ben Jonson physically and morally, and his portraits do but confirm this just and animated outline : a vigorous, heavy, and uncouth person; a broad and long face, early disfigured by scurvy, a square jaw, large cheeks ; his animal organs as much developed as those of his intellect : the sour aspect of a man in a passion or on the verge of a passion ; to which add the body of an athlete, about forty years of age, " mountain belly, ungracious gait." Such was the outside, and the inside is like it. He was a genuine English- man, big and coarsely framed, ener- getic, combative, proud, often morose, and prone to strange splenetic imag- inations. Pie told Drummond that for a whole night he imagined " that he saw the Carthaginians and Romans fighting on his great toe." t Not that he is melancholic by nature; on the contrary, he loves to escape from him- self by free and noisy, unbridled merri- ment, by copious and varied converse, assisted by good Canary wine, which he imbibes, and which ends by becom- ing a necessity to him. These great phlegmatic butchers' frames require a generous liquor to give them a tone, and to supply the place of the sun which they lack. Expansive more- over, hospitable, even lavish, with a frank imprudent spirit, \ making him forget himself wholly before Drum- mond, his Scotch host, an over rigid and malicious pedant, who has marred his ideas and vilified his character. * Fuller's Worthies, ed. Nuttall, 1840, 3 rcrs. iii. 284. ( There is a similar hallucination to be met *rith in the life of Lord Castlereagh, who after- wards committed suicide. % His character lies between those of Field- ing and Dr. Johnson. Mr. David Laing remarks, however, in Drummond's defence, that as "Jonson died August 6, 1637, Drummond survived till De- cember 4, 1649, and no portion of these Notes (Conversations) were made public till 1711, or sixty-two years after Drummond's death, and seventy-four after Jonson's, which renders quite nugatory all Gifford's accusations of Drummond's having published them ' without shame.' As to Drummond decoying Jonson under his roof with any premeditated design on What we know of his life is in har- mony with his person : he suffered much, fought much, dared much. He was studying at Cambridge, when his stepfather, a bricklayer, recalled him, and taught him to use the trowel. He ran away, enlisted as a common soldier and served in the English army, at that time engaged against the Spaniards in the Low Countries, killed and despoiled a man in single combat, " in the view of both armies." He was a man of bodily action, and he exercised his limbs in early life.* On his return to England, at the age of nineteen, he went on the stage for his livelihood, and occupied himself also in touching up dramas. Having been challenged, he fought a duel, was seriously wounded, but killed his adversary; for this he was cast into prison, and found him- self "nigh the gallows." A Catholic priest visited and converted him ; quitting his prison penniless, at twenty years of age, he married. At last, four years later, his first successful play was acted. Children came, he must earn bread for them ; and he was not in- clined to follow the beaten track to the end, being persuaded that a fine philos- ophy a special nobleness and dignity ought to be introduced into comedy, that it was necessary to follow the ex- ample of the ancients, to imitate their severity and their accuracy, to be above the theatrical racket and the common improbabilities in which the vulgar de- lighted. He openly proclaimed his intention in his prefaces, sharply railed at his rivals, proudly set forth on the stage t his doctrines, his morality, his character. He thus made bitter en- emies, who defamed him outrageously and before their audiences, whom he exasperated by the violence of his satires, and against whom he struggled without intermission to the end. He did more, he constituted himself a judge of the public corruption, sharply at- tacked the reigning vices, "fearing nj strumpet's drugs, nor ruffian's stab." f his reputation, as Mr. Campbell hasremarkedj no one can seriously believe it." Arckaolog* ica Scotica, vol. iv. page 243. TR. * At the age of forty-four he went to Scot- land on foot. t Parts of Crites and Asper. \ Every Man out of his ffutnow t i. J Gif ford's Jonson, p. 30. i88 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II. He treated his hearers like schoolboys, and spoke to them always like a censor and a master. If necessary, he ventured further. His companions, Marstonand Chapman, had been committed to pris on for some reflections on the Scotch in one of their pieces called " Eastward- Hoe ; " and the report spreading that they were in danger of losing their noses and ears, Jonson, who had written part of the piece, voluntarily surrendered himself a prisoner, and obtained their pardon. On his return, amid the feast- ing and rejoicing, his mother showed him a violent poison which she intend- ed to put into his drink, to save him from the execution of the sentence ; and "to show that she was not a coward," adds Jonson, "she had resolved to drink first." We see that in vigorous actions he found examples in his own family. Toward the end of his life, money was scarce with him ; he was liberal, improvident ; his pockets always had holes in them, and his hand was al- ways ready to give; though he had written a vast quantity, he was still obliged to write in order' to live. Paral- ysis came on, his scurvy became worse, dropsy set in. He could not leave his room, nor walk without assistance. His last plays did not succeed. In the epilogue to the New Inn he says : " If you expect more than you had to-night, The maker is sick and sad. . . . All that his faint and falt'ring tongue doth crave, Is, that you not impute it to his brain, That's yet unhurt, altho' set round with pain, It cannot long hold out." His enemies brutally insulted him : " Thy Pegasus . . . He had bequeathed his belly unto thee, To hold that little learning which is fled Into thy guts from out thy emptye head." Inigo Jones, his colleague, deprived him of the patronage of the court. He was obliged to beg a supply of money from the Lord Treasurer, then from the Earl of Newcastle : *' Disease, the enemy, and his engineers, Want, with the rest of his concealed com- peers, Have cast a trench about me, now five years. . . . The muse not peeps out, one of hundred days ; But lies blocked up and straitened, narrowed in, Fixed to the bed and boards, unlike to win Health, or scarce breath, as she had nevel been." * His wife and children were dead ; he lived alone, forsaken, waited on by an old woman. Thus almost always sadly and miserably, is dragged o-ut and ends the last act of the human comedy. After so many years, after so many sustained efforts, amid so much glory and genius, we find a poor shattered body, drivelling and suffering, between a servant and a priest. II. This is the life of a combatant, bravely endured, worthy of the seven- teenth century by its crosses and its energy ; courage and force abounded throughout. Few writers have labored more, and more conscientiously; his knowledge was vast, and in this age of eminent scholars he was one of the best classics of his time, as deep as he was accurate and thorough, having studied the most minute details and understood the true spirit of ancient life. It was not enough for" him to have stored his mind from the best writers, to have their whole works con- tinually in his mind, to scatter his pages whether he would or no, with recollec- tions of them. He dug into the or- ators, critics, scholiasts, grammarians, and compilers of inferior rank ; he picked up stray fragments ; he took characters, jokes, refinements, from Athenaeus, Libanlas, Philostratus. He had so well entered into and digested the Greek and Latin ideas, that they were incorporated with his own. They enter into his speech without incon- gruity ; they spring forth in him as vigorous as at their first birth ; he orig- inates even when he remembers. On every subject he had this thirst fcr knowledge, and this gift of masiering knowledge. He knew alchemy when he wrote the Alchemist. He is familiar with alembics, retorts, receivers, as if he had passed his life seeking after the philosopher's stone. He explains in- cineration, calcination, imbibition, rec- tification, reverberation, as well as Agrippa and Paracelsus. If he speaks * Ben Jonson's Poems, ed. Bell, An Epistle Mendicant, to Richard, Lord Weston, Lord High Treasurer (163 1), p. 244. CHAP. III.] BEN JONSON. 189 of cosmetics,* he brings out a shopful of them ; we might make out of his plays a dictionary of the oaths and costumes of courtiers; he seems to have a specialty in all branches. A still greater proof of his force is, that his learning in nowise mars his vigor ; heavy as is the mass with which he loads himself, he carries it without stooping. This wonderful mass of reading and observation suddenly be- gins to move, and falls like a mountain on the overwhelmed reader. We must hear Sir Epicure Mammon unfold the vision of splendors and debauchery, in which he means to plunge, when he has learned to make gold. The refined and unchecked impurities of the Roman decadence, the splendid obscenities of Heliogabalus, the gigantic fancies of luxury and lewdness, tables of gold spread with foreign dainties, draughts of dissolved pearls, nature devastated to provide a single dish, the many crimes committed by sensuality against nature, reason, and justice, the delight in defying and outraging law, all these images pass before the eyes with the dash of a torrent and the force of a great river. Phrase follows phrase without intermission, ideas and facts crowd into the dialogue to paint a situa- tion, to give clearness to a character, produced from this deep memory, directed by this solid logic, launched by this powerful reflection. It is a pleasure to see him advance weighted with so many observations and recol- lections, loaded with technical details and learned reminiscences, without de- viation or pause, a genuine literary Leviathan, like the war elephants which used to bear towers, men, weapons, machines, on their backs, and ran as swiftly with their freight as a nimble Bteed. In the great dash of this heavy at- tempt, he finds a path which suits him. He has his style. Classical erudition and education made him a classic, and he writes like his Greek models and his Roman masters. The more we study the Latin races and literatures in contrast with the Teutonic, the more fully we become convinced that the proper and distinctive gift of the first is the art of development, that is, of * The Devil is an A ss. drawing up ideas in continuous rows, according to the rules of rhetoric and eloquence, by studied transitions, with regular progress, without shock or bounds. Jonson received from his ac- quaintance with the ancients the habit of decomposing ideas, unfolding them bit by bit in natural order, making him- self understood and believed. From the first thought to the final conclusion, he conducts the reader by a continuous and uniform ascent. The track never fails with him as with Shakspeare. He does not advance like the rest by abrupt intuitions, but by consecutive deduc- tions ; we can walk with him without need of bounding, and we are con- tinually kept upon the straight path : antithesis of words unfolds antithesis of thoughts ; symmetrical phrases guide the mind through difficult ideas ; they are like barriers set on either side of the road to prevent our falling into the ditch. We do not meet on our way extraordinary, sudden, gorgeous im- ages, which might dazzle or delay us ; we travel on, enlightened by moderate and sustained metaphors. Jonson has all the methods of Latin art; even, when he wishes it, especially on Latin subjects, he has the last and most erudite, the brilliant conciseness of Seneca and Lucan, the squared, equi- poised, filed off antithesis, the most happy and studied artifices of oratori cal architecture.* Other poets are nearly visionaries ; Jonson is almost a logician. Hence his talent, his successes, and his faults : if he has a better style and better plots than the others, he is not, like them, a creator of souls. He is toe much of a theorist, too preoccupied by rules. His argumentative habits spoil him when he seeks to shape and motion complete and living men. No one is capable of fashioning these unless he possesses, like Shakspeare, the imagin- ation of a seer. The human being is so complex that the logician who per- ceives his different elements in suc- cession can hardly study them all, much less gather them all in one flash, so as to produce the dramatic response or action in which they are concentrated and which should manifest them. To discover such actions and responses., * Sejanusi Catilina, Passim. 190 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II we need a kind of inspiration and fever. Then the mind works as in a dream. The characters move within the poet, almost involuntarily : he waits for them to speak, he remains motionless, hear- ing their voices, wholly wrapt in con- templation, in order that he may not disturb the inner drama which they are about to act in his soul. That is his artifice : to let them alone. He is q ,ite astonished at their discourse ; as he observes them, he forgets that it is he who invents them. Their mood, character, education, disposition of mind, situation, attitude, and actions, form within him so well-connected a whole, and so readily unite into pal- pable and solid beings, that he dares not attribute to his reflection or reason- ing a creation so vast and speedy. Beings are organized in him as in na- ture, that is, of themselves, and by a force which the combinations of his art could not replace.* Jonson has noth- ing wherewith to replace it but these combinations of art. He chooses a general idea cunning, folly, severity and makes a person out of it. This person is called Crites, Asper, Sordido Deliro, Pecunia, Subtil, and the trans- parent name indicates the logical pro- cess which produced it. The poet took an abstract quality, and putting to- gether all the actions to which it may give rise, trots it out on the stage in a man's dress. His characters, like those of la Bruyere and Theophrastus, were hammered out of solid deductions. Now it is a vice selected from the cata- logue of moral philosophy, sensuality thirsting for gold : this perverse double inclination becomes a personage, Sir Epicure Mammon; before the alche- mist, before the famulus, before his friend, before his mistress, in public or alone, all his words denote a greed of pleasure and of gold, and they express nothing more.t Now it is a mania gathered from the old sophists, a babbling with horror of noise ; this jorm of mental pathology becomes a personage, Morose ; the poet has the air of a doctor who has undertaken to * Alfred de Musset, preface to La Coupe et Us Levres. Plato : Ion. t Compare Sir Epicure Mammon with Baron Hulot from Balzac's Causing Bette. Balzac, who is learned like Jonson, creates real beings like Shakspeare. record exactly all the desires of speech, all the necessities of silence, and to re- cord nothing else. Now he picks out a ridicule, an affectation, a species of folly, from the manners of the dandies and the courtiers; a mode of swearing, an extravagant style, a habit of gesticu- lating, or any other oddity contracted by vanity or fashion. The hero whom he covers with these eccentricities, is overloaded by them. He disappears beneath his enormous trappings ; he drags them about with him everywhere; he cannot get rid of them for an in- stant. We no longer see the man under the dress ; he is like a mannikin, oppressed under a cloak, too heavy for him. Sometimes, doubtless, his habits of geometrical construction produce personages almost life-like. Bobadil, the grave boaster ; Captain Tucca, the begging bully, inventive buffoon, ridic- ulous talker ; Amorphus the traveller, a pedantic doctor of good manners, laden with eccentric phrases, create as much illusion as we can wish ; but it is because they are flitting comicalities and low characters. It is not necessary for a poet to study such creatures ; it is enough that he discovers in them three or four leading features ; it is of little consequence if they always present themselves with the same attitudes ; they produce laughter, like the Count- ess d 1 Escarbagnas or any of the Fdcheux in Moliere ; we want nothing else of them. On the contrary, the others weary and repel us. They are stage- masks, not living figures. Having ac- quired a fixed expression, they persist to the end of the piece in their unvary- ing grimace or their eternal frown. A man is not an abstract passion. He stamps the vices and virtues which he possesses with his individual maik. These vices and virtues receive, on entering into him, a bent and form which they have not in others. No cne is unmixed sensuality. Take a thou- sand sensualists, and you will find a thousand different modes of sensuality; for there are a thousand paths, a thou- sand circumstances and degrees, in sensuality. If Jonson wanted to make Sir Epicure Mammon a real being, he should have given him the kind of dis- position, the species of education, the manner of imagination, which produce CHAP. III.] BEN JONSON. 191 sensuality. When we wish to construct a man, we must dig down to the founda- tions of mankind ; that is, we must de- fine to ourselves the structure of his bodily machine, and the primitive gait of his mind. Jonson has not dug sufficiently deep, and his constructions are incomplete ; he has built on the surface, and he has built but a single story. He was not acquainted with the whole man, and he ignored man's basis ; he put on the stage and gave a ic presentation of moral treatises, frag- ments of history, scraps of satire ; he did not stamp new beings on the imag- ination of mankind. He possesses all other gifts, and in particular the classical; first of all, the talent for composition. For the first time we see a connected, well-contrived plot, a complete intrigue, with its be- ginning, middle, and end ; subordinate actions well arranged, well combined ; an interest which grows and never flags; a leading truth which all the events tend to demonstrate ; a ruling idea which all the characters unite to illustrate ; in short, an art like that which Moliere and Racine were about to apply and teach. He does not, like Shakspeare, take a novel from Greene, a chronicle from Holinshed, a life from Plutarch, such as they are, to cut them into scenes, irrespective of likelihood, indifferent as to order and unity, caring only to set up men, at times wandering into poetic reveries, at need finishing up the piece abruptly with a recognition or a butchery. He governs himself and his characters; he wills and he knows all that they do, and all that he does. But beyond his habits of Latin regularity, he possesses the great fac- ulty of his age and race, the senti- men< of nature and existence, the exact knowledge of precise detail, the power in frankly and boldly handling frank passions. This gift is not wanting in k;tj writer of the time ; they do not fear words that are true, shocking, and striking details of the bedchamber or medical study ; the prudery of modern England and the refinement of mon- archical France veil not the nudity of their figures, or dim the coloring of their pictures. They live freely, amply, amidst living thing; ; they see the ins and outs of lust raging without any feeling of shame, hypocrisy, or pallia tion ; and they exhibit it as they see it, Jonson as boldly as the rest, occasion- ally more boldly than the rest, strength- ened as he is by the vigor and rugged- ness of his athletic temperament, by the extraordinary exactness and abundance of his observations and his knowledge. Add also his moral loftiness, his as- perity, his powerful chiding wrath, exas- perated and bitter against vice, his will strengthened by pride and by con science : " With an armed and resolved hand, I'll strip the ragged follies of the time Naked as at their birth . . . and with a whip of steel, Print wounding lashes in their iron ribs. I fear no mood stampt in a private brow, When I am pleas'd t' unmask a public vice. I fear no strumpet's drugs, nor ruffian's stab, Should I detect their hateful luxuries ; " * above all, a scorn of base compliance, an open disdain for " Those jaded wits That run a broken pace for common hire," f an enthusiasm, or deep love of " A happy muse, Borne on the wings of her immortal thought, That kicks at earth with a disdainful heel, And beats at heaven gates with her bright hoofs." % Such are the energies which he brought to the drama and to comedy ; they were great enough to ensure him a high and separate position. III. For whatever Jonson undertakes, whatever be his faults, haughtiness, rough-handling, predilection for mo- rality and the past, antiquarian and censorious instincts, he is never little or dull. It signifies nothing that in his Latinized tragedies, Sejanus, Catiline, he is fettered by the worship of the old worn models of the Roman decadence ; nothing that he plays the scholar, manu- factures Ciceronian harangues, hauls in choruses imitated from Seneca, holds forth in the style of Lucan and the rhetors of the empire ; he more than once attains a genuine accent ; through his pedantry, heaviness, literary adora- tion of the ancients, nature forces it3 * Every Man out of his Humour, Prologue t Poetaster, i. i. I Ibid. I 9 2 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK IL way ; he lights, at his first attempt, on the crudities, horrors, gigantic lewd- ness, shameless depravity of imperial Rome ; he takes in hand and sets in motion the lusts and ferocities, the passions of courtesans and princesses, the daring of assassins and of great men, which produced Messalina, Agrip- pina, Catiline, Tiberius.* In the Rome which he places before us we go boldly and straight to the end ; justice and pity oppose no barriers. Amid these customs of victors and slaves, human nature is upset ; corruption and villany are held as proofs of insight and energy. Observe how, in Sejamis, assassination is plotted and carried out with marvel- lous coolness. Livia discusses with Sejanus the methods of poisoning her husband, in a clear style, without cir- cumlocution, as if the subject were how to gain a lawsuit or to serve up a dinner. There are no equivocations, no hesitation, no remorse in the Rome of Tiberius. Glory and virtue consist in power ; scruples are for base minds ; the mark of a lofty heart is to desire all and to dare all. Macro says rightly : *' Men's fortune there is virtue ; reason their will; Their license, law ; and their observance, skill. Occasion is their foil ; conscience, their stain ; Profit, their lustre ; and what else is, vain." f Sejanus addresses Livia thus : " Royal lady, . . . Yet, now I see your wisdom, judgment, strength, Quickness, and will, to apprehend the means To your own good and greatness, I protest Myself through rarified, and turn'd all flame In your affection." J These are the loves of the wolf and his mate ; he praises her for being so ready to kill. And observe in one moment the morals of a prostitute appear behind the manners of the poisoner. Sejanus goes out, and im- mediately, like a courtesan, Livia turns to her physician, saying : " How do I look to-day? Eudemus. Excellent clear, believe it. This same fucus Was well laid on. * See the second Act of Catiline. t The Fall of Sejanus, iii. last Scene. \ Ibid. ii. Livia.. Methinks 'tis here not whitCi E. Lend me your scarlet, lady. 'Tis the sun Rath giv'n some little taint unto the ceruse, You should have us'd of the white oil I gave you. Sejanus, for your love ! His very name Commandeth above Cupid or his shafts. . . . [Paints her cheeks. "\ " 'Tis now well, lady, you should Use of the dentifrice I prescrib d you too, To clear your teeth, and the prepar'd poma- tum, To smooth the skin. A lady cannot be Too curious of her form, that still would hold The heart of such a person, made her cap- tive, A.S you have his : who, to endear him more In your clear eye, hath put away his wife . . Fair Apicata, and made spacious room To your new pleasures. L. Have not we return* d That with our hate to Drusus, and discovery Of all his counsels ? . . . E. When will you take some physic, lady? L. When I shall, Eudemus : but let Drusus' drug Be first prepar'd. E. Were Lygdus made, that's done. . . . I'll send you a perfume, first to resolve And procure sweat, and then prepare a bath To cleanse and clear the cutis ; against when I'll have an excellent new fucus made Resistive 'gainst the sun, the rain or wind^ Which you shall lay on with a breath or oil, As you best like, and last some fourteen hours. This change came timely, lady, for your health/' * He ends by congratulating her on her approaching change of husbands ; Dru- sus was injuring her complexion ; Seja- nus is far preferable; a physiological and practical conclusion. The Roman apothecary kept on the same shelf his medicine-chest, his chest of cosmetics, and his box of poisons. t After this we find one after another all the scenes of Roman life unfolded, the bargain of murder, the comedy of justice, the shamelessness of flattery, the anguish and vacillation of the sen- ate. When Sejanus wishes to buy a conscience, he questions, jokes, plays round the offer he is abou k to make, throws it out as if in pleasantry, so as to be able to withdraw it, if need be ; then, when the intelligent look of the rascal, whom he is trafficking with, shows that he is understood : * Ibid. t See Catiline, Act ii . ; a very fine scene, no less plain spoken and animated 'on the dissipa- tion of the higher ranks in Rcire. CHAP. III.] BEN JONSON. '* Protest not, Thy looks are vows to me. . . Thou art a man, made to make consuls. Go."* Elsewhere, the senator Latiaris in his own house storms before his friend Sabinus, against tyranny, openly ex- presses a desire for liberty, provoking him to speak. Then two spies who were hid " between the roof and ceil- ing," cast themselves on Sabinus, cry- ing, " Treason to Caesar ! " and drag him, with his face covered, before the tribunal, thence to " be thrown upon the Gemonies." t So when the senate is assembled, Tiberius has chosen be- forehand the accusers of Silius, and their parts distributed to them. They mumble in a corner, whilst aloud is heard, in the emperor's presence : " Cassar, Live long and happy, great and royal Cassar; The gods preserve thee and thy modesty, Thy wisdom and thy innocence. . . . Guard His meekness, Jove, his piety, his care, His bounty." % Then the herald cites the accused ; Varro, the consul, pronounces the in- dictment; Afer hurls upon them his bloodthirsty eloquence: the senators get excited ; we see laid bare, as in Tacitus and Juvenal, the depths of Roman servility, hypocrisy, insensi- bility, the venomous craft >f Tiberius. At last, after so many others, the turn of Sejanus comes. The fathers anx- iously assemble in the temple of Apollo; for some days past Tiberius has seemed to be trying to contradict himself ; one day he appoints the friends of his fa- vorite to high places, and the next day sets his enemies in eminent positions. The senators mark the face of Sejanus, and know not what to anticipate ; Sejanus is troubled, then after a mo- ment's cringing is more arrogant than ever. The plots are confused, the rumors contradictory. Macro alone is in the confidence of Tiberius, and soldiers are seen drawn up at the porch of the temple, ready to enter at the slightest commotion. 'The formula of convocation is read, and the council marks the names of those who do not respond to the summons ; then Regu- lus addresses them, and announces that Caesar * The Fall of Sejanus, i. f Ibid. iv. I Ibid. iii. " Propounds to this grave senate, the bestow- ing Upon the man he loves, honour'd Sejanus, The tribunitial dignity and power : Here are his letters, signed with his signet. What pleaseth now the Fathers to be done ? " " Senators. Read, read them, open, pub- licly read them. Cotta. Caesar hath honour'd his own great- ness much In thinking of this act. Trio. It was a thought Happy, and worthy Cassar. Latiaris. And the lord As worthy it, on whom it is directed I Hater ius. Most worthy ! Sanquinms. Rome did never boast the virtue That could give envy bounds, but his : Se- janus \st Sen. Honour'd and noble ! zd Sen. Good and great Sejanus! Prcecones. Silence ! " * Tiberius' letter is read. First, long obscure and vague phrases, mingled with indirect protestations and accusa- tions, foreboding something and reveal- ing nothing. Suddenly comes an in- sinuation against Sejanus. The fathers are alarmed, but the next line reassures them. A word or two further on, the same insinuation is repeated with greater exactness. " Some there be that would interpret this his public severity to be particular ambition ; and that, under a pretext of service to us, he doth but remove his own lets : al- leging the strengths he hath made to himself, by the praetorian soldiers, by his faction in court and senate, by the offices he holds himself, and confers on others, his popularity and depend- ents, his urging (and almost driving) us to this our unwilling retirement, and lastly, his aspiring to be our son-in- law." The fathers rise: "This is strange ! " Their eager eyes are fixed on the letter, on Sejanus, who per- spires and grows pale; their thoughts are busy with conjectures, and the words of the letter fall one by one, amidst a sepulchral silence, caught up as they fall with all devouring and attentive eagernejss. The senators anxiously weigh the value of these shifty expressions, fearing to com- promise themselves with the favorite or with the prince, all feeling that they must understand, if they value their lives. * Ibid. v. 9 194 THE RENAISSANCE. [BOOK II " ' Ymfr wisdoms, conscript fathers, are able to examine, and censure these sugges- tions. But, were they left to our absolving voice, we durst prono^^nce them, as we think them, most malicious. 1 Senator. O, he has restor'd all ; list. Prtzco. ' Yet are they offered to be averred, and on the lives of the ityformers? " * At this word the letter becomes menacing. Those next Sejanus forsake him. " Sit farther. . . . Let's remove ! " The heavy Sanquinius leaps panting ever the benches. The soldiers come in ; then Macro. And now, at last, the .etter orders the arrest of Sejanus. " Regulus. Take him hence ; And all the gods guard Cassar I Trio. Take him hence. Haterius. Hence. Cotta. To the dungeon with him. Sanquinius. He deserves it. Senator. Crown all our doors with bays. San* And let an ox, With gilded horns and garlands, Straight be led unto the Capitol, Hat. And sacrific'd To Jove, for Csesar's safety. Tri. All our gods Be present still to Caesar ! . . . Cot. Let all the traitor's titles be defac'd. Tri. His images and statues be pull'd down. . . . Sen. Liberty, liberty, liberty ! Lead on, And praise to Macro that hath saved Rome ! " * It is the baying of a furious pack of hounds, let loose at last on him, under whose hand they had crouched, and who had for a long time beaten and bruised them. Jonson discovered in his own energetic soul the energy of these Roman passions ; and the clear- ness of his mind, added to his profound knowledge, powerless to construct characters, furnished him with general ideas and striking incidents, which suffice to depict manners. IV. Moreover, it was to this that he turned his talent. Nearly all- his work consists of comedies, not sentimental inr j fanciful as Shakspeare's, but imi- tatwe and satirical, written to repre- sent and correct follies and vices. He introducer a new model ; he had a doctrine ; his masters were Terence and Plautus. He observes the unity of time and place, almost exactly. He ridicules the authors who, in the same play, * The Fall of Sejanus, v.