Liter^Lry Studies 
 
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 LIBRARY 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALlFOor 
 
 RIVEI?SiOF 
 
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 ISAAC FOOT
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 A BOOK OF SCOUNDRELS 
 
 STUDIES IN FRANKNESS 
 
 THE PAGEANTRY OF LIFE 
 
 WILLIAM MAKEPEACE 
 THACKERAY 
 
 LITERARY PORTRAITS 
 
 WILLIAM PITT 
 
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 ESSAYS IN BIOGRAPHY 
 
 LETTERS OF AN ENGLISHMAN 
 
 Firs! and Second Series 
 
 POLITICAL PORTRAITS
 
 LITERARY STUDIES
 
 MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited 
 
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 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
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 CHARLES WHIBLEY 
 
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 BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 
 
 The Rogues and Vagabonds of Shakespeare's Time was 
 a chapter in Shakespeare'' s England, pubhshed by the 
 Clarendon Press in 191 6. Sir JF alter Ralegh was 
 contributed to Blackzoood's Magazine in November 
 191 8. Jonathan Szvift was given at Cambridge, as 
 the Leshe Stephen Lecture, in 191 7. The rest of 
 the book was first printed in the Cambridge History 
 of English Literature. I desire to m.-.Le whatever 
 acknowledgment is due to the editors under whose 
 auspices the chapters of the book have appeared, 
 especially, as in duty bound, to the Press of my 
 own University.
 
 PR*?'? 
 WHS'
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE CHRONICLERS AND HISTORIANS OF 
 
 THE TUDOR AGE i 
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 60 
 
 ROGUES AND VAGABONDS OF SHAKE- 
 SPEARE'S TIME 112 
 
 SIR WALTER RALEGH 158 
 
 THE COURT POETS 190 
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS . . .240 
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS . . .298 
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT 343
 
 THE CHRONICLERS AND 
 
 HISTORIANS OF THE 
 
 TUDOR AGE 
 
 THE chroniclers and antiquaries of the Tudor 
 period, various as they were in style and 
 talent, shared the same sentiment, the same ambition. 
 There breathed in each one of them the spirit of 
 nationality. They recognised that the most brilliant 
 discovery of a brilHant age was the discovery of their 
 own country. With a full voice and a fervent heart 
 they sang the praise of England, They celebrated 
 with what eloquence they possessed her gracious 
 climate, her fruitful soil, her brave men, and her 
 beautiful women. Both by precept and by example 
 they did honour to their native speech. ' Our 
 English tongue,' said Camden, ' is as fluent as the 
 Latin, as courteous as the Spanish, as Court-like as 
 the French, and as amorous as the Italian.' Camden 
 praised by precept alone, and composed all his works, 
 save one, in Latin. The other chroniclers, discarding 
 Latin and writing in their own English, paid the lan- 
 guage a far higher tribute — the tribute of example. 
 All agreed with Plutarch that ' a part of the Elisian 
 
 A
 
 2 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 Fields is to be found in Britain.' And, as they re- 
 garded these fair fields with enthusiasm, so they 
 looked back with pride upon Britain's legendary his- 
 tory and the exploits of her kings. Steadfast in obser- 
 vation, tireless in panegyric, they thought no toil, 
 no paean, outran the desert of England. Topo- 
 graphers, such as Camden and Leland, travelled the 
 length and breadth of England, marking highroad, 
 village, and township, collecting antiquities, copying 
 inscriptions, and painting with what fidelity they 
 might the face of the country. The ingenuity of 
 Norden and Speed designed the maps which have 
 acquired vidth time an unexpected value and import- 
 ance. The popular historians, gentle and simple, 
 gathered the truth and falsehood of the past with 
 indiscriminate hand, content if they might restore 
 to the world the forgotten splendour of England, 
 and add a new lustre to England's ancient fame. 
 
 Their goodwill and patriotism were limited only by 
 their talent. Zealous in intention, they were not 
 always equal to the task they set themselves. The 
 most of them had but a vague sense of history. They 
 were as Uttle able to sift and weigh evidence as to 
 discern the true sequence and meaning of events. Few 
 were even dimly interested in the conflict of policies 
 or in the science of government. What they best 
 understood were the plain facts of battle and death, 
 of plague and famine, of sudden comets and strange 
 monsters. Their works, for the most part, are the 
 anecdotage of history, and not to be wholly despised
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 3 
 
 on that account, since an anecdote, false in itself, is 
 often the symbol of the truth, and since, in defiance 
 of research, it is from the anecdotes of the Tudor 
 chroniclers that we derive our knowledge of English 
 history. For that which had been said by others they 
 professed an exaggerated respect. They accepted the 
 bare word of their predecessors with a touching 
 credulity. In patient submission and without criti- 
 cism they followed the same authorities. There is 
 no chronicler, who did not use such poor light as 
 Matthew Paris and Roger Hoveden, Geoffrey of Mon- 
 mouth and Gildas, Giraldus Cambrensis and Polydore 
 Vergil could afford. Each one of them borrowed his 
 description of Agincourt from Titus Livius, and, 
 with a wisdom which deserves the highest applause, 
 they all adapted to their purpose the account of 
 Richard iii.'s reign, attributed to Sir Thomas More. 
 With one or two exceptions, then, the Chronicles are 
 not so much separate works as variations of the same 
 legend. Their authors pillaged with a light heart 
 and an unsparing hand, and, at times, did what they 
 could to belittle their robberies by abusing the victims. 
 If their sense of history was small, small also was 
 their tact of selection. They looked upon the world 
 with the eye of the modern reporter. They were 
 hot upon the discovery of strange ' stories.' They 
 loved freaks of nature, and were never so happy as 
 when a new star flashed into their ken. Their works, 
 indeed, hold a place midway between history and 
 what we should now call journalism. Stow, for in-
 
 4 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 stance, tells us that, in 1505, * on S. Thomas Day at 
 night, afore Christmas was a bakers house in Warwike 
 Lane brent, with the Mistres of the House, ii women 
 servants, and iii other ' ; and he brings his Chronicle 
 to an end, not upon the praise of England or of Queen 
 EHzabeth but upon a monstrous birth. ' The xvii 
 day of June last past,' he writes in the year 1580, ' in 
 the parish of Blamsdon, in Yorkshire, after a great 
 tempest of lightning and thunder, a woman of foure 
 score yeares old named Ales Perin, was delivered of a 
 straunge and hideous Monster, whose heade was like 
 unto a sallet or heade-peece. . . . Whiche Monster,' 
 adds Stow devoutly, ' brought into the world no 
 other newes, but an admiration of the devine workes 
 of God.' Not even Camden, scholar though he was, 
 rose always superior to the prevailing habit of gossip. 
 * I know not,' he writes, under the year 1572, ' whether 
 it be materiall or no, here to make mention, as all the 
 Historiographers of our time have done, how in the 
 moneth of November was seene a strange starre.' 
 And, presently, he interrupts his account of a mission 
 to Russia, in 1583, with this comment upon Sir 
 Hierome Bowes, the ambassador : ' Hee was the first 
 that brought into England, where the like was never 
 seene (if an Historian may with good leave make 
 mention of so small a thing) a beast called Maclis, 
 which is a creature likest to an Al^e, very swift, and 
 without joynts.' 
 
 Camden at least apologised for his amiable irrele- 
 vancy, and it is not for modern readers to regret a
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 5 
 
 practice which has preserved for them the fooHsh 
 trivial excitements of the moment. But it is a truth 
 not without meaning that the chroniclers, who might 
 have kept before their eyes the example of the classics, 
 who might have studied the two masters of what was 
 then modern history — Machiavelli and Commines — 
 should have preferred to follow in the footsteps of 
 the mediaeval gossips and of the ambling Fabyan. 
 And, as they thought no facts too light to be recorded, 
 so they considered no age too dark for their investi- 
 gation. They penetrated, with a simple faith, ' the 
 backward and abysm of time.' Many of them begin 
 their histories with Brute, who, they say, was born 
 1 108 B.C., and thus prove that, for all their large 
 interests and their love of life, they were not without 
 a spice of that pedantry which delights to be thought 
 encyclopaedic. 
 
 II 
 
 The chroniclers, then, share the same faults and 
 the same virtues. Beyond these similarities of char- 
 acter there is room enough for the display of different 
 temperaments and personal talents. Each one will 
 be found to possess a quality or an interest which 
 the others lack, and it is by their differences rather 
 than by their resemblances that they must be judged. 
 The first of them, Edward Hall, holds a place apart. 
 Of the man himself we know little. Of gentle parent- 
 age, he was educated at Eton and King's College, 
 Cambridge. He entered Gray's Inn in due course.
 
 6 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 was appointed common sergeant of the city of 
 London in 1532, and was afterwards a judge in the 
 sheriff's court. The first edition of his Chronicle 
 was printed by Berthelet, in 1542, and was so effect- 
 ively burnt by the orders of Queen Mary that it 
 exists only in fragments. Reprinted by Grafton, in 
 1548 and 1550, it won and deserved esteem, and is 
 now commonly regarded, for one reign at least, as an 
 authority at first hand. The truth is. Hall wrote as 
 an eye-witness as well as a chronicler, and his work 
 is naturally divided into two parts, far distant from 
 one another both in style and substance. The title 
 of the book gives an instant clue to this natural 
 division. ' The Union of the two noble and illustrate 
 famelies of Lancastre and Yorke,' thus Hall describes 
 it in his grandiloquent language, ' beeyng long in con- 
 tinual discension for the croune of this noble realme, 
 with all the actes done in bothe the tymes of the 
 Princes, both of the one linage, and of the other, 
 beginnyng at the tyme of Kyng Henry the Fowerth, 
 the first aucthor of this devision, and so successively 
 proceadyng to the reigne of the high and prudent 
 prince, King Henry the Eight, the indubitate flower 
 and very heire of both the sayd Hnages.' 
 
 So far as the death of Henry vii.. Hall is a chronicler 
 after the fashion of Holinshed and Stow. He accepted 
 the common authorities, and translated them into his 
 own ornate English, or embellished them with new 
 words and strange metaphors. With the accession of 
 Henry viii. he began a fresh and original work.
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 7 
 
 Henceforth he wrote only of what he saw and thought 
 from day to day. And, in thus writing, he revealed 
 most clearly what manner of man he was. His pat- 
 riotism equalled his loyal worship of King Henry viii., 
 the greatest monarch, in Hall's eyes, who had sat 
 upon the English throne. The reformation won his 
 full sympathy, and he looked ever upon the see of 
 Rome with Protestant suspicion. When the King 
 was proclaimed supreme head of the Church, Hall's 
 enthusiasm was unbounded. Hereafter, he says, 
 ' the Pope with all his college of Cardinalles with all 
 their Pardons and Indulgencies was utterly abolished 
 out of this realme. God be everlastyngly praysed 
 therefore.' And if he was a patriotic Englishman 
 first, he was, in the second place, a proud and faithful 
 Londoner. He championed the interests of his 
 fellow- citizens with a watchful eloquence. When, in 
 151 3, the fields about Islington, Hoxton, and Shore- 
 ditch were enclosed by hedges and ditches, that youth 
 might not shoot nor old age walk abroad for its 
 pleasure, Hall triumphantly records that a mob of 
 citizens, armed with shovels and spades, levelled the 
 hedges and filled the ditches with so diligent a speed 
 that the mayor bowed in submission, and that the 
 hateful restraints were never afterwards set in the way 
 of young or old. He was, moreover, the first to raise 
 the cry of ' London for the Londoners.' He hated the 
 alien v^dth a constant heart, and in the many quarrels 
 which arose between the citizens and the foreign 
 artificers, Hall was always on the side of the citizens.
 
 8 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 With full sympathy, for instance, he tells the story of 
 the honest broker, John Lyncoln, who, in 1 5 1 6, exhorted 
 Dr. Bale, a canon in St. Mary Spittall, to speak for the 
 people, lamentably declaring to him, ' howe miserably 
 the common artificers lyved, and skase coulde get any 
 worke to fynde them, their wyfes and chyldren, for 
 there were such a number of artificers straungers, that 
 tooke awaye all the lyvynge in maner. And also howe 
 the Englyshe marchauntes could have no utterance, for 
 the marchaunt straungers brynge in all Silkes, clothes 
 of Golde, Wyne, Oyle, Iron, and suche other mar- 
 chaundyse, that no man almoste byeth of an Englysh- 
 man. . . . Wherefore, sayed Lyncolne, master 
 Doctor, syth you were borne in London, and se the 
 oppression of the straungers, and the great misery 
 of your awne natyve countrey, exhorte all the cytezens 
 to joyne in one against these straungers, raveners, and 
 destroyers of your countrey.' And, added Lyncoln, 
 the case was worse than he had declared, ' for the 
 Duchemen bryng over Iron, Tymber, lether and 
 Weynskot ready wrought, as Nayles, Lockes, Baskettes, 
 Cubbordes, Stooles, Tables, Chestes, girdels, with 
 paintes, saddles and painted clothes so that if it were 
 wrought here. Englishmen might have some worke 
 and lyvynge by it.' Doctor Bale preached a sermon 
 to the text, fugna pro fatria^ and when a riot followed 
 was apprehended, and sent to the Tower. John Lyn- 
 coln fared worse than his fellows ; for him alone there 
 was no pardon ; and though the others were respited, 
 he was hanged at the standard in Chepe.
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 9 
 
 It was, in truth, this feeling of love and reverence for 
 London which intensified Hall's dislike of the proud 
 Cardinal. A champion rather of prosperity at home 
 than of a spirited policy abroad, he could not appreci- 
 ate at their proper worth the grandeur of Wolsey's 
 schemes. He knew only that Wolsey was extortionate, 
 that, whenever he was in need of money, he came to 
 the city, and loudly did Hall echo the cry of the 
 aldermen : ' For Goddes sake remembre this, that 
 riche merchauntes in ware be bare of money.' 
 
 It has been thrown at Hall for a reproach by some 
 of his critics that he was too keenly interested in the 
 pomp of the court, in the shows and sights of the 
 streets. One of his editors has gone so far in mis- 
 understanding as to expunge or curtail many of his 
 characteristic descriptions. This perversity seems the 
 stranger, because a love of display was in Hall's blood. 
 He belonged to an age and to a city of pageants. 
 King and Cardinal vied with one another in splendour 
 and ingenuity. They found a daily excuse for some 
 piece of well - ordered magnificence. May Day, 
 Christmas, and Twelfth Night each had its appointed 
 festival. The King and his friends lived in a perpetual 
 masquerade, and Hall found the right words for their 
 every extravagance. No writer has employed a 
 more variously coloured vocabulary. Turn his pages 
 where you will, and you will find brave pictures of 
 banquets and disguises. Here, for instance, is a de- 
 cription of a Twelfth Night festival : ' This yere the 
 Kyng kept his Christmas at his maner of Grenewiche,
 
 10 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 and on the xii night, according to the old custome, he 
 and his quene came in to the hal, and when they were 
 set, and the quene of Scottes also, there entered in to 
 the hall a Gardeyn artificiall, called the Gardeyn of 
 Esperance. This Gardeyn was towred at every corner, 
 and railed with railes gilt, all the bankes were set with 
 floures artificiall of silke and gold, the leves cut of 
 grene sattyn, so that they semed very floueres. In 
 the middest of this Gardeyn was a piller of antique 
 worke, al gold set with perle and stone, and on the 
 toppe of the piller, which was vi square, was a lover 
 or an arche embowed, crouned with gold : within 
 whiche stode a bushe of Roses red and white, al of 
 sylke and golde, and a bushe of Pomegranates of like 
 stuf. In this gardeyn walked vi knights and vi ladyes 
 rychely appareyled, and then they discended and 
 daunsed many goodly daunses, and so ascended the 
 gardeyn agayne, and were conveighed out of the hal, 
 and then the Kyng was served of a great banket.' 
 And Hall's style rises with the occasion. The Field 
 of the Cloth of Gold inspires his masterpiece. The 
 pages dedicated to this royal meeting-place are bril- 
 liant with jewels and the precious metals. Gold and 
 the Cloth of Gold, tissue and hangings of cramosyn, 
 sackbuts and clarions flash and re-echo like the refrain 
 of a ballade, and everywhere ' Bacchus birls the wine,' 
 which ' by the conduyctes in therth ranne, to all 
 people plentiously with red, white, and claret wyne, 
 over whose hedde was writen in letters of Romayn 
 in go\di, faicte honne chere quy vovldra.''
 
 Chroniclers of the tudor age n 
 
 I have said that Hall's Chronicle is made up of two 
 separate works. With a wise sense of propriety he 
 employs two separate styles. If this distinction be 
 not made, it is not easy to admit the justice of 
 Ascham's famous criticism. Now, Ascham, in urg- 
 ing the use of epitomes, illustrates his argument thus 
 from Hall's Chronicle : * As if a wise man would take 
 Halles Cronicle, where moch good matter is quite 
 marde with Indenture Englishe, and first change 
 strange and inkhorne tearmes into proper, and com- 
 monlie used wordes : next, specially to wede out, that, 
 that is superfluous and idle, not onelie where wordes 
 be vainlie heaped one upon another, but also where 
 many sentences, of one meaning, be so clowted up 
 together, as though M. Hall had bene, not writing the 
 storie of England, but varying a sentence in Hitching 
 schole.' The censure implied in this passage is 
 amply justified by the first part of Hall's Chronicle. 
 Where he is adapting the words of other writers, he 
 does not check his love of ' Indenture EngHshe ' ; he 
 exults in * inkhorne tearmes ' ; and he ' clowtes ' up 
 his sentences with superfluous variations. But no 
 sooner does he describe what he sees, no sooner do his 
 brain and hand respond to his eye, than he forgets the 
 lessons of ' Hitching schole,' and writes with a direct- 
 ness, which in no sense deserves the reproach of 
 Ascham. Though it is true that the simplicity of his 
 time was not the simplicity of ours. Hall employs with 
 excellent effect the words of familiar discourse, and 
 records that of which he was an eye-witness with an
 
 12 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 intimate sincerity, which separates him, on the one 
 hand, from journeymen Hke Stow, and, on the other, 
 from scholars Hke Camden and Hayward, whose 
 ambition it was to give a classic shape and form to 
 their prose. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles of England^ Scot- 
 land, and Ireland are wider in scope and more ambi- 
 tious in design than the work of Hall. Though they 
 are not more keenly critical, they are, at least, more 
 widely comprehensive than any of their rivals. They 
 begin with Noah and the Flood, and the history of the 
 British Isles descends wellnigh to the day of the book's 
 publication. And, if Richard Stanyhurst may speak for 
 them all, the industrious compilers took a lofty view 
 of their craft. * The learned,' says Stanyhurst, ' have 
 adjudged an historic to be the marrow of reason, the 
 cream of sapience, the sap of wisdome, the pith of 
 judgment, the librarie of knowledge, the kernell of 
 policie, the unfoldresse of treacherie, the kalendar 
 of time, the lanterne of truth, the life of memorie, the 
 doctresse of behaviour, the register of antiquitie, the 
 trumpet of chivalrie.' If Holinshed's history were 
 all these, it is not surprising that it was fashioned by 
 many hands, and in nothing did the editor prove his 
 wisdom more clearly than in the selection of his staff. 
 Of Holinshed himself little is recorded. He came 
 of a Cheshire family, and is said by Anthony a Wood 
 to have been educated at Cambridge and to have
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 13 
 
 been ' a minister of God's word.' All that is certain 
 is that he took service with Wolfe, the publisher, to 
 whom, says he, he was ' singularly beholden,' and 
 under whose auspices he planned the Chronicles which 
 bear his name. The death of Wolfe, in 1573, was 
 no interruption to the work, and in 1578 appeared the 
 first edition, dedicated, in the famihar terms of 
 adulation, to Sir William Cecil, baron of Burghley. 
 Each portion of the Chronicles is assigned to its 
 author with peculiar care. The Description of 
 England is William Harrison's, It is Holinshed him- 
 self who compiled the Historie of England from the 
 accustomed sources. The Description of Scotland is 
 a * simple translation ' made by William Harrison, 
 whose vocation, he tells us, calls him to a far other 
 kind of study ; ' and this the cause,' he writes, 
 ' wherefore I have chosen rather, onlie with the loss 
 of three or foure dales to translate Hector out of the 
 Scotish (a toong verie like unto ours), than with more 
 expence of time to devise a new, or follow the Latine 
 copie. . . . How excellentlie if you consider the art, 
 Boetius hath penned it, . . . the skilfull are not ignor- 
 ant, but how profitablie and compendiouslie John 
 Bellenden Archdeacon of Murrey his interpretor 
 hath turned him from the Latine into the Scotish 
 toong, there are verie few Englishmen that know.' 
 From the same Hector Boece, together with Johannes 
 Major and 'Jovian Ferreri Piedmontese,' 'interlaced 
 sometimes with other authors,' Holinshed digested 
 his Historie of Scotland. The Description of Ireland
 
 14 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 was the work of Richard Stanyhurst and Edward 
 Campion, his ' first friend and inward companion,' 
 while Richard Hooker provided the translation of 
 Giraldus Cambrensis, which served Ireland for a 
 chronicle. 
 
 The work, done by many hands, preserves a uni- 
 formity of character. Holinshed, it is true, made 
 the apology which his age seems to have demanded. 
 ' The histories,' he says, ' I have gathered according 
 to my skill . . . having had more regard to the 
 manner than the apt penning.' Again, declaring that 
 his speech is plain, he disclaimed any rhetorical show 
 of elegance. Thus the Elizabethans deceived them- 
 selves. Plainness was the one virtue beyond their 
 reach. They delighted in fine phrases and far-sought 
 images. Even while they proclaimed their devotion 
 to truth unadorned, they were curious in the selection 
 of ' decking words,' and HoHnshed and his colleagues 
 wrote with the colour and dignity which were then 
 within the reach of all. The history which was of 
 his own compiling is of a better scholarship than we 
 expect of the time. He cites his authorities at first 
 hand, though he still accepts them without question; 
 he avoids the trivialities which tempt many of 
 the chroniclers ; and he concludes the reign of each 
 king with a deftly drawn character. And in these 
 characters he tries his hardest to hold the balance 
 true and fair. King John, for instance, has not been 
 kindly treated in our annals, and yet Holinshed admits 
 that he ' had a princelie hart in him, and wanted
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 15 
 
 nothing but faithfull subjects, to have assisted him 
 in revenging such wrongs as were done and offered 
 by the French King and others.' Moreover, he 
 says, ' he was comeHe of stature, but of looks and 
 countenance displeasant and angrie ; somewhat 
 cruell of nature, doubtfull in time of perill and danger. 
 . . . Howbeit some give this witnesse of him : that 
 he was a great and mightie prince, but yet not 
 verie fortunate, much like to Marcius the noble 
 Romane, tasting of fortune both waies; bountifull 
 and liberall unto strangers, but of his oune people (for 
 their dailie treasons practised towards him) a great 
 oppressour; so that he hasted more to forreners then 
 to them, and therefore in the end he was of them 
 utterlie forsaken.' 
 
 The popularity which the work achieved is not sur- 
 prising. The simple citizen found in its pages the pane- 
 gyric of England which was grateful to his patriotism. 
 The poet sought therein, and sought not in vain, a 
 present inspiration. ' Master Holinshed,' said Spenser, 
 ' hath much furthered and advantaged me.' The un- 
 known author of Arden of Fever sham also found his 
 material in Holinshed's Chronicle, and amply justified 
 the forced loan. Shakespeare borrowed from his pages 
 the substance of his historical plays, and, paying him 
 the same compliment which he paid to North, did not 
 disdain to turn his rugged prose into matchless verse 
 — a compliment which, of itself, is sufficient for im- 
 mortality. In all his English plays from King Lear and 
 Cymbeline to Richard III. and HenryVIII. Shakespeare
 
 i6 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 is Holinshed's debtor. Not only does he follow the 
 story faithfully, which is presented to him ; he takes 
 such words and phrases as befit his purpose. The 
 witches in Macbeth, as well as the hopeful prophecies 
 that Macbeth ' should never be vanquished till 
 Bernane wood was brought to Dunsinane ; nor yet 
 to be slaine with anie man, that should be or was born 
 of anie woman,' come straight from the Chronicle. 
 The famous speeches upon the evil and the good of 
 Wolsey delivered by Katharine and the honest 
 Griffith may be traced to the same source. Thus 
 Shakespeare transmuted Holinshed's decent, if baser, 
 metal to the pure gold of his own poetry. Where he 
 found narrative he left drama, and breathed into the 
 dry bones of fact the spirit of immortal character. 
 
 As Hall's Chronicle is memorable chiefly for the 
 vivid sketch it affords of life as it was lived in the 
 reign of Henry viii., so it is Harrison's Description 
 of England which gives a separate distinction to the 
 history of Raphael Holinshed. No work of the time 
 contains so vivid and picturesque a sketch. In his 
 first book, Harrison makes the customary concession 
 to the encyclopaedic habit of the Elizabethans. He 
 begins with a description of the whole earth, accepts 
 with a simple credulity the homely legends, and 
 wonders gravely whether the land was ever inhabited 
 by giants. But no sooner does he leave the province 
 of fairyland for the province of fact, than he displays 
 a knowledge as wide as his interest is deep. His is a 
 very vigilant treatise. His theme is whatever was
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 17 
 
 done or thought in the England of his day. Nothing is 
 alien from his interest. He is as learned in the history 
 of the Church as in the speech and rascahty of the 
 Egyptian rogues, his account of whom closely follows 
 Harman's Caveat, or W arening for Commen Cursetors. 
 He is eloquent concerning either university, as in duty 
 bound, since he belonged to both. For fine and 
 excellent workmanship he praises ' the moold of the 
 king's chapell in Cambridge,' next to which in beauty 
 he sets the divinity school at Oxford. For the rest, 
 he finds perfect equality between them ; they are the 
 body of one well - ordered commonwealth, divided 
 only by distance : ' they are both so deere unto me,' 
 says he, ' as that I can not readihe tell unto whether 
 of them I owe the most good will.' 
 
 Thereafter, he discusses the food and diet of the 
 English, approving ' our tables plentifully garnished,' 
 and deploring the cooks of the nobility, who are ' for the 
 most part musicall headed Frenchmen and strangers.' 
 Our apparel and attire suggest to him a chapter of fine 
 invective. He is the resolute enemy of foreign 
 fashions. He cannot bear the fantastical folly of our 
 nation more easily than Shakespeare. He is at pains 
 to prove that nothing is constant in England Hke 
 inconstancy of attire. ' Such is our mutabilitie,' he 
 writes, ' that to-day there is none but to the Spanish 
 guise, to morrow the French toies are most fine and 
 delectable, ere long no such apparell as that which is 
 after the High Almaine fashion, by and by the 
 Turkish maner is generallie best liked of, otherwise 
 
 B
 
 iS LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 the Morisco gounes and the Barbarian sleeves make 
 such a comelie vesture that except it were a dog in a 
 doublet, you shall not see anie so disguised, as are 
 my countrie men of England.' In the same spirit he 
 describes the building and furniture of Englishmen, 
 their cities and tow^ns, their fairs and markets, their 
 gardens and orchards, their vv^oods and marishes, their 
 dogs, especially the mastiff or banddog, ' stubbourne, 
 ougly, eagre, burthenous of body (and therefore but 
 of little swiftnesse), terrible and feareful to behold, 
 and more fearse and fell than any Archadien curre.' 
 And to all things animate and inanimate he brings 
 the criticism of an active and humorous mind, which 
 not even patriotism can warp to a false judgment. 
 
 In describing England, Harrison has half-know- 
 ingly described himself. It is our own fault if this 
 amiable, shrewd, and scholarly parson be not our 
 familiar friend. Born in London in 1534, he was 
 educated at Westminster school and (as has been 
 said) took his degrees at both universities. Hence- 
 forth he lived the tranquil life of a country clergy- 
 man, endowed with forty pounds a year, which, 
 computatis computandis, he thought no great thing. 
 He was household chaplain to Sir William Brooke 
 and rector of Radwinter in Essex, and, wherever he 
 sojourned, he pursued most zealously the calling of 
 scholar and antiquary. He devised the chronology 
 which served as a guide to Holinshed. He collected 
 coins, he examined monuments ; in brief, he neglected 
 nothing which could throw a light upon the history
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 19 
 
 of his country. While his wife and her maids brewed 
 his beer with such skill and economy ' that for my 
 twentie shillings I have ten score gallons of beere or 
 more,' he boasted of his garden, whose whole area was 
 little above 300 foot of ground, and which yet con- 
 tained three hundred simples, ' no one of them being 
 common or usualhe to be had.' An untravelled man, he 
 wrote often of what he knew only by hearsay. ' Untill 
 nowe of late,' he confesses to Sir W. Brooke, ' except 
 it were from the parish where I dwell, unto your 
 Honour in Kent ; or out of London where I was 
 borne, unto Oxford and Cambridge where I have bene 
 brought up, I never travelled 40 miles foorthright 
 and at one journey in all my life.' 
 
 And not only was he something of a recluse, but 
 he wrote his Description, when his books and he ' were 
 parted by fourtie miles in sunder.' Nevertheless, 
 he managed to consult the best authorities. He was 
 one of the unnumbered scholars who owed a debt 
 to Leland's famous notes. Stow and Camden were 
 of his friends, and, doubtless, lent him their aid, and 
 he acknowledges a debt to ' letters and pamphlets, 
 from sundrie places and shires of England.' Yet, if 
 we leave his first book out of our count, he was far 
 less beholden than the most of his contemporaries. 
 He had the skill of making the facts of others his own. 
 And as the substance, so the style, of the book belongs 
 to him. Though he proffers the same apology as 
 Holinshed, he proffers it with far less excuse. He 
 protests that he never made any choice of words,
 
 20 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 ' thinking it sufficient truellie and plainlie to set 
 foorth such things as I minded to treat of, rather than 
 with vaine affectation of eloquence to paint out a 
 rotten sepulchre.' And then straightway he belies 
 himself by describing his book as ' this foule frizeled 
 Treatise of mine,' which single phrase is enough to 
 prove his keen interest, and lively habit, in the use 
 of words. 
 
 In love of country he yielded to no man of his age. 
 Herein, also, he was a true Elizabethan. The situa- 
 tion of the island, its soil, its husbandry ( ' my time 
 fellows can reape at this present great commoditie in 
 a little roome '), the profusion of its hops, ' which 
 industrie God continue,' the stature of its men, the 
 comeliness of its women — all these he celebrates in 
 his dithyrambic prose. He is one of the first to exalt 
 the English navy. ' Certes,' says he, ' there is no 
 Prince in Europe that hath a more beautifull and 
 gallant sort of ships than the Queenes Majestic of 
 England at this present.' And, like many other 
 patriots, he fears the encroachment of softer manners 
 and of growing luxury. Comfort he holds the foe 
 of hardihood. The times, in his view, were not 
 what they were. When, indeed, have they been ? 
 He contemplates the comely houses and the splendid 
 palaces which made a paradise of Tudor England with 
 a kind of regret. He sadly (and unreasonably) recalls 
 the past, when men's houses were builded of willow, 
 plum, hornbeam, and elm, when oak was dedicated 
 to churches, palaces, and navigation. ' And yet see
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 21 
 
 the change,' says he in a characteristic passage, 
 
 * for when our houses were builded of willow, then 
 had we oaken men ; but now that our houses are come 
 to be made of oke, our men are not onlie become 
 willow, but a great manie, through Persian delecacie, 
 crept in among us, altogither of straw, which is a sore 
 alteration.' Harrison's lament was ill-founded. In 
 little more than ten years, the men of willow, or of 
 straw, defended their oaken ships with oaken hearts 
 against the Armada. 
 
 Withal, Harrison was of an ingenuous mind and 
 simple character. When he had wandered in fancy the 
 length and breadth of England, he wrote down in all 
 gravity the four marvels of his country. And they 
 were : a strong wind, which issueth out of the hills 
 called the Peak ; Stonehenge ; Cheddar Hole ; and 
 
 * Westward upon certaine hilles ' — this may be cited 
 only in his own words — ' a man shall see the clouds 
 gather togither in faire weather unto a certeine thick- 
 nesse, and by and by to spread themselves abroad and 
 water their fields about them, as it were upon the 
 sudden.' These wonders surprise by their sim- 
 plicity. Simple, also, are Harrison's wishes, yet all 
 save one are still ungratified. ' I could wish,' he 
 wrote, * that I might live no longer than to see foure 
 things in this land reformed, that is : (i) the want 
 of discipline in the Church ; (2) the covetous deahng 
 of most of our merchants in the preferment of the 
 commodities of other countries, and hinderence of their 
 own ; (3) the holding of faires and markets upon the
 
 22 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 sundaie to be abolished, and referred to the wednes- 
 daies ; (4) and that everie man in whatsoever part 
 of the champaine soile enjoieth fortie acres of land 
 and upwards, after that rote, either by free deed, 
 copie hold, or fee farme, might plant one acre of wood, 
 or sow the same with oke mast, hasell, beech, and 
 sufficient provision be made that it may be cherished 
 and kept.' Thus, in his wishes as in his life, Har- 
 rison was a wise patriot. He sought nothing else 
 than a knowledge of his country, and her advantage. 
 A scholar and a man of letters, he was master of a 
 style from which the wind of heaven has blown the 
 last grain of pedantry. Best of all, he painted an 
 intimate portrait of himself, in painting also the 
 truest picture that has come down to us of the Eng- 
 land that Shakespeare knew and sang. 
 
 IV 
 
 John Stow and John Speed were chroniclers of a 
 like fashion and a like ambition. They were good 
 citizens, as well as sound antiquaries, and, by a 
 strange chance, they followed the same craft. ' We 
 are beholding to Mr. Speed and Mr. Stow,' writes 
 Aubrey, echoing Sir Henry Spelman, ' for stitching 
 up for us our English history. It seems they were 
 both tailors — quod N.B.' And if Speed found a 
 pleasanter employ, a tailor Stow remained unto the 
 end of his days. One in their pursuits, they were one, 
 also, in disinterestedness. The love of England and 
 of letters brought neither of them any profit. Stow
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 23 
 
 * made no gain by his travail,' and died poor. With 
 a sort of pathos, he pleads that men who ' have 
 brought hidden histories from duskie darkness to the 
 sight of the world ' deserve thanks for their pains, 
 and should not be misrepresented. * I write not this,' 
 says he, ' to complain of some men's ingratitude 
 towards me (although justly I might).' There is the 
 pith of the matter enclosed within parentheses, and 
 Stow, may be, was thinking of Grafton's reckless 
 animadversion on ' the memories of superstitious 
 foundacions, fables and lyes foolishly stowed together.' 
 
 Speed lags not far behind in reproach of the world, 
 and felicitation of himself. He describes his work 
 as ' this large Edifice of Great Britain's Theatre,' and 
 likens himself to the silkworm, that ends her life in 
 her long-wrought clue. ' So I in this Theatre have 
 built my owne grave,' he writes ; ' whose Architec- 
 ture howsoever defective it may be said to be, yet 
 the project is good, and the cost great, though my- 
 selfe have freely bestowed this paines to the Presse, 
 without pressing a penny from any man's purse.' 
 Neither the one nor the other complained justly of 
 neglect. Stow won all the honour, both in his life- 
 time and after, which belongs to the lettered citizen. 
 He grew into a superstition of homely wit and genial 
 humour. Henry Holland, Philemon's son, calls him 
 
 * the merry old man,' and Fuller celebrates his virtues 
 as Stow himself would have them celebrated. He 
 admits that he reported toys and trifles, res in se 
 minutas, that he was a smell-feast, who could not pass
 
 24 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 by the Guildhall without giving his pen a taste of 
 the good cheer, and he excuses this on the ground 
 that ' it is hard for a citizen to write history, but that 
 the fire of his gun may be felt therein.' So much 
 may be truly said in gentle dispraise. For the rest, 
 Fuller has nothing but applause. He declares that 
 our most elegant historians have thrown away the 
 basket and taken the fruit — even Sir Francis Bacon 
 and Master Camden. And * let me add of John 
 Stow,' he concludes, ' that (however he kept tune) he 
 kept time very well, no author being more accurate in 
 the notation thereof.' Nor did Speed, even if he 
 pressed no penny from any man's purse, ask the aid 
 of any scholar in vain. Sir Robert Cotton opened his 
 library and his collections to the chronicler's eye. 
 Master John Barkham gave such help as he alone 
 could give, while Master William Smith, Rouge 
 Dragon, was ever at hand to solve the problems of 
 heraldry. Surely no citizen ever found better en- 
 couragement, especially in the telling of a thrice-told 
 tale. 
 
 Stow was the more industrious of the two. In 
 1 561 he pubHshed an edition of Chaucer's works. 
 Four years later came his Summarie of Englysh 
 Chronicles^ and then, in 1580, he dedicated to Robert 
 Dudley, earl of Leicester, a far better book, ^he 
 Chronicles of England from Brute until this present 
 yeare of Christ 1580. His purpose it is to celebrate 
 ' the worthie exploits of our Kings and governors,' 
 and of that purpose he takes a lofty view. He regards
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 25 
 
 himself not only as a historian, but as an inculcator 
 of sound morals. ' It is as hard a matter,' he says in 
 pride, ' for the Recorder of Chronicles, in my fansie, 
 to passe without some colours of wisdome, invite- 
 ments to vertue, and loathing of naughtie factes, as 
 it is for a welfavoured man to walk up and downe in 
 the hot parching Sunne, and not to be therewith sun- 
 burned.' His knowledge is not often better than 
 that of his predecessors. He believes in the same 
 fairy-tales ; he accepts without question the same 
 rumours. But, in one respect, he differs from all 
 his rivals : he possesses an interest in literature 
 which they lack. Under 1341 he records the fact 
 that this year John Malvern, fellow of Oriel College, 
 made and finished his book entitled The Visions of 
 Pierce Plowman ; and, in due course, he laments 
 Geoffrey Chaucer, ' the most excellent poet of Eng- 
 lande, deceased the xxv of October, 1400.' His 
 knowledge of literature did not give him a lettered 
 style. His prose is the plainest and most straight- 
 forward of his time, and he deserves whatever praise 
 may be given to the diligent and conscientious 
 journeyman. 
 
 John Speed, on the other hand, was a born rheto- 
 rician. His love of words outstripped his taste. 
 When Richard i. dies, ' now ensued,' says he, ' the 
 fatall accident, which drew the blacke cloud of death 
 over this triumphal and bright shining Starre of 
 Chivalrie.' The battle of Agincourt inspires him to 
 such a piece of coloured writing as Hall would not
 
 26 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 have disdained. * And surely,' thus he writes, * the 
 beauty and honourable honour of both the Armies, 
 no heart can judge of, unlesse the eye hath scene it, 
 the Banners, Ensigns, and Penons, streaming in the 
 ayre, the glistening of armours, the varietie of colours, 
 the motion of Plumes, the Forrests of Lances, and 
 the thickets of shorter weapons, made so great and 
 goodly a show ; but the silent expectation of the 
 bloudy blast was as the bullet ramd into the Canon, 
 whose roaring voyce is not so soone heard, as the 
 stroake of death felt by the aimed-at marke.' What- 
 ever the occasion be, he is determined to attain what 
 he thinks is a brilliant effect, and his Historie of Great 
 Britaine is marred by a monstrous ingenuity. One 
 virtue he has which must not be passed over : he 
 supports his narrative more often than the others 
 from unpublished documents. He quotes the Life 
 of fVolsey, which Stow had quoted before him without 
 acknowledgment, and ascribes it honourably to 
 George Cavendish. Hs character of Henry vii. is 
 borrowed, with some verbal differences, from the 
 manuscript of Sir Francis Bacon, ' a learned, eloquent 
 knight, and principall lawyer of our time.' And, of 
 whatever he writes, truth and patriotism are his aims. 
 Like all the chroniclers, and with an unrestrained 
 eloquence, he hymns the glory of England, ' the Court 
 of Queene Ceres, the granary of the Western world, 
 the fortunate Island, the Paradise of Pleasure and 
 Garden of God.'
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 27 
 
 With William Camden, the chronicle reached its 
 zenith. His Rerum Anglicarum et Hibernicarum. 
 Annales, Tegnante Elizabetha is by far the best example 
 of its kind. Though it is * digested into annals,' 
 according to the practice of the time, though its author 
 bundles marriages, deaths, embassies, and successions 
 together, like the common ' stitchers of history,' 
 though he does not disdain strange stars and frozen 
 rivers, it is informed throughout with a sense of his- 
 tory and with a keen perception of conflicting poHcies. 
 Old-fashioned in design alone, the work is a genuine 
 piece of modern history, in which events are set in a 
 proper perspective, and a wise proportion is kept of 
 great and small. Its faults are the faults inherent in 
 the chronicle : no sure plan of selection, a rigid 
 division into years, an interspersion of the text with 
 documents. Its virtues are its own : clearness of ex- 
 pression, cathoHcity of interest, a proud consciousness 
 of the great events, whereof Camden was at once the 
 partaker and the historian. 
 
 He declares in his preface that William Cecil, baron 
 Burghley, ' opened unto him first some memorials of 
 state of his own,' and that afterwards he * sought all 
 manner of help on every side ... for most of which 
 (as I ought) I hold myself chiefly bound to Sir R. 
 Cotton, who with great expense and happy labour 
 hath gathered most choice variety of Histories and 
 antiquity ; for at his torch he willingly suffered me
 
 28 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 to light my taper.' He learned much, also, by his 
 own observation and by converse with those who 
 had played their part in affairs, and, heedless of him- 
 self, he made no sacrifice save to truth. Nor does he 
 vaunt his achievement in any lofty terms. He will be 
 content, he says, with professional modesty, to be 
 * ranked amongst the lowest writers of great things.' 
 He would have been placed far higher in the general 
 esteem if he had not, by an unhappy accident, com- 
 posed his book in Latin. This misfortune, the greater 
 because he was one of the last to inflict so grave an in- 
 justice upon himself, was mitigated by the skill and 
 loyalty of his translators. The first part of his Annales, 
 the substance of which had already been communi- 
 cated to Thuanus, was published in 1615, and, ten 
 years later, translated out of the French into Enghsh 
 by Abraham Darcie, who gave his own flourishing 
 title to the book : ' The True and Royall History of 
 the famous Empresse Ehzabeth, Queene of England, 
 France and Ireland &c. True Faith's defendresse of 
 Divine renowne and happy Memory.' The second 
 part, which describes the affairs of the kingdom from 
 1589 to the queen's death, was printed posthumously 
 in 1627, ^^^ translated into EngUsh by Thomas 
 Browne, student of Christ Church, under the title of 
 Tomus Idem et Alter (1629). 
 
 Though Camden did himself the injustice to write 
 in Latin, he was fortunate in his translators, each 
 one of whom might boast his own particular gift. 
 Abraham Darcie, or, as he liked to call himself,
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 29 
 
 ' Abraham de Villa Adrecie, alias Darcie,' was a fan- 
 tastic, something akin in style and character to John 
 Florio. His father was Peter Darcie, of Geneva, and 
 having no Latin he made his version of Camden, 
 as I have said, out of the French. He delighted in 
 elaborately decorated phrases, and he was a pretty 
 hand at funeral odes. The death of Ludovick, Duke 
 of Richmond and Lennox, inspired him to his highest 
 flights of eloquence. He composed in English and 
 in French, equally unreadable, the * Funerall Teares ' 
 or ' Larmes Funebres ' of the sorrowing widow ; and 
 he was the author of ' A Monumentall Pyramide to 
 all Posterities : Erected to the ever-living memory 
 and perpetuall Honour of the All-vertuous and Ever- 
 glorious Prince, Lodowick, late Duke of Richmond 
 and Lenox ' (1624). Beyond the title it is great 
 rubbish ; ' all posterities ' set little store by poems, 
 shaped pyramidally, and ' the all-vertuous Prince ' is 
 otherwise remembered. Still more pompous is his 
 work entitled ' Honor's True Arbor ; or the Princely 
 Nobilitie of the Howwards,' which gives ' the Source 
 and Originall of their mightye Name,' and duly cele- 
 brates all the Howards, ' since the first man that was 
 knowne in England by the name of Howard.' That he 
 was not wholly without courage in his sycophancy is 
 proved by a dedication to the daughter of Overbury's 
 murderess. ' To honour and illustrate also,' thus 
 runs the characteristic passage, ' the most Noble birth 
 of the right gracefull and beautifull young Lady, the 
 Lady Anne Carr, the onely Daughter and Co-heere
 
 30 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 apparent to the right Religious, truly gracious and 
 most noble Lord Sir Robert Carr, Knight of the most 
 Royall Order of the Garter, Baron of Branspeth, 
 Viscount Rochester, Earle of Somerset, etc., by the 
 Princely Lady, Frances Howard, his gracious Comtessc, 
 second daughter to Tho: Howard, Earle of Suffolk 
 &c., and Grandchild to Tho: Howard late Duke of 
 Norfolk, to whose immortal goodnesse and greatnesse, 
 these my poor Endeavours are by me humbly con- 
 secrated.' It must be admitted that Darcie did 
 the work of adulation with skill and without stint. To 
 applaud ' the greatness and goodness ' of the wickedest 
 woman of her time is as high a feat of obsequious 
 oblivion as it is to call the infamous Robin Carr ' right 
 religious, truly gracious, and most noble.' However, 
 Darcie performed his task of translation with accuracy 
 and spirit, and we need not grudge him his humorous 
 extravagance. 
 
 A very different man was Thomas Browne, to 
 whom we owe the second volume of Camden's 
 Elizabeth. A student of Christ Church, he was 
 proctor of the University of Oxford in 1636, and a year 
 later was appointed chaplain to Archbishop Laud. 
 By that time he had already published his one ex- 
 periment in letters, and the rest of his life and energy 
 was given to religious and political controversy. The 
 high hopes which he had of preferment in the Church 
 were dashed by the Civil War : he was stripped of his 
 benefices, and accompanied the King to Oxford as his 
 chaplain. Like many another he suffered for his
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 31 
 
 loyalty, and found safety overseas. At the Restora- 
 tion he returned to England, and was given a 
 Canonry at Windsor, where he died. He was not a 
 mere translator, being something of an historian as 
 well, and he equipped his version with a set of 
 annotations, far beyond the reach of his fantastic 
 colleague. 
 
 Such is the history of the book and its translators. 
 Its purpose and motive are apparent upon every page : 
 to applaud the virtues of the Queen and to uphold 
 the Protestant faith. In devising fitting titles for 
 Elizabeth, Camden exhausts his ingenuity. She is 
 the Queen of the Sea, the North Star, the restorer of 
 our naval glory. He defends her actions with the 
 quiet subtlety which suggests that defence is seldom 
 necessary. His comment upon the death of Mary of 
 Scotland is characteristic. Thus were achieved, he 
 thinks, the two things which Mary and Elizabeth 
 always kept nearest their hearts : the union of 
 England and Scotland was assured in Mary's son, and 
 the true religion, together with the safety of the 
 English people, was effectively maintained ! 
 
 But Camden was not wholly engrossed in the glory 
 and wisdom of the Queen. He looked beyond her ex- 
 cellences to the larger movements of the time. None 
 understood better than he the spirit of enterprise, 
 which was founding a new England across the sea. 
 He pays a just tribute of honour to Drake and Hawkins, 
 he celebrates the prowess of John Davis and William 
 Sanderson, and he hails the rising colony of Virginia.
 
 32 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 Of Shakespeare and the drama he has not a word to 
 say. The peculiar glory of his age escaped him. 
 The death of Ascham, it is true, tempts him to a 
 digression, and persuades him to deplore that so fine 
 a scholar should have lived and died a poor man 
 through love of dicing and cock-fighting. He fires 
 a salute over the grave of Edmund Spenser, who 
 surpassed all English poets, not excepting Chaucer, 
 and into whose tomb the other poets cast mournful 
 elegies and the pens wherewith they wrote them.^ 
 And, in the end, he returns to his starting-place, con- 
 cluding, as he began, with a panegyric of the Queen. 
 ' No oblivion,' he says, ' shall ever dim the glory of 
 her name : for happy and renowned memory still lives, 
 and shall forever live in the Minds of Man to all pos- 
 terity, as of one who (to use no other than her suc- 
 cessor's expression) in Wisedome and Felicitie of 
 government surpassed (without envy be it spoken) 
 all the Princes since the days of Augustus.' 
 
 Master Camden, as his contemporaries call him 
 with respect, was well fitted for his task by nature 
 and education. He was a man of the world as well 
 as a scholar. Born in 1551, he was brought up at 
 
 * In his Rernaines concerning Britaine, Camden does make 
 some attempt to celebrate the glory of his age. ' If I would 
 come to our time,' says he, ' what a world could I present to 
 you out of Sir Philipp Sidney, Ed. Spencer, Samuel Daniel, 
 Hugh Holland, Ben. Johnson, Th. Campion, Mich. Drayton, 
 George Chapman, John Marsten, William Shakespeare, and 
 other most pregnant witts of these our times, whom succeeding 
 ages may justly admire.'
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 33 
 
 the Blue Coat School, and sent thence, as chorister 
 or servitor, to Magdalen College, Oxford. Presently 
 he migrated to Broadgate's Hostel, now Pembroke 
 College, and, afterwards, to Christ Church. In 1582 
 he took his famous journey through England, the 
 result of which was his Britannia ; ten years later he 
 was made head master of Westminster School ; and 
 in 1597 was appointed, successively, Richmond 
 Herald, and Clarencieux King of Arms. His life was 
 full and varied ; his character, as all his biographers 
 testify, candid and amiable. The works he left 
 behind speak eloquently of his learning and industry. 
 To our age he is best known as the historian of Eliza- 
 beth. To his own age he was eminent as an anti- 
 quary, and it was his Britannia, published in 1582, 
 and rescued from Latin by the incomparable Philemon 
 Holland in 1610, which gave him his greatest glory. 
 Anthony a Wood calls him ' the Pausanias of the 
 British Isles.' Fuller, not to be outdone in praise, 
 says that ' he restored Britain to herself.' Like all 
 the other topographers of his century, he made use 
 of Leland's notes, but the works of the two men are 
 leagues apart. Camden's Britannia is, in effect, a real 
 piece of literature. It is not intimate, like Harrison's 
 England. It is not a thing of shreds and patches, 
 like the celebrated Itinerary. Wisely planned, nobly 
 written, and deliberately composed, it is the fruit of 
 deep and diligent research. ' It is most worthy 
 observation,' says Fuller, ' with what diligence he 
 inquired after ancient places, making Hue and Crie 
 
 c
 
 34 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 after many a City which was acres away, and by certain 
 marks and tokens proving to find it.' Camden loved 
 England and loved to embellish her with his phrases. 
 He carried his readers along the high-roads, through 
 the towns and cities of his native country, reveahng, 
 as he went, her natural scenery, her antiquities, her 
 learning, and her strength. And if to-day we shared 
 his pride in England, we should still echo, with all 
 sincerity, the praises lavished upon his work by his 
 contemporaries. 
 
 VI 
 
 Ralph Brooke, with more malice than discretion, 
 charged Camden with making an unacknowledged 
 use of Leland's Collectanea. The acknowledgment 
 was generously given, and Leland's Collections were 
 made but to be used. Camden, in fact, was only 
 following the general practice of his age. There was 
 no topographer who did not take what he wanted 
 from Leland, and there was none who did not improve 
 what he took. If Leland's inchoate notes were of 
 service to Harrison and Camden, they were all that 
 could be expected of them. The truth is, Leland 
 was a superstition. He received the inordinate 
 praise which is easily given to those of whom it is 
 said that they might achieve wonders if they would. 
 The weight of learning which he carried was thought 
 to be so great that he could not disburden it in 
 books. He aroused great expectations, and never 
 lessened them by performance. His erudition was
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 35 
 
 inarticulate; his powers were paralysed by ambition ; 
 he knew so much that he feared to give expression 
 to his knowledge ; and he won the greater glory 
 because the masterpiece never achieved was enveloped 
 in an atmosphere of mystery. 
 
 His career, however, the career of the silent scholar, 
 is not without its interest and its tragedy. Born in 
 1506, he studied both at Christ's College, Cambridge, 
 and at All Souls' College, Oxford, and, after some years 
 spent in Paris,where he was the friend of Bude, and may, 
 through his mediation, have encountered Rabelais, he 
 was appointed chaplain and Hbrarian to Henry viii., 
 and rector of Papeling in the marches of Calais, In 
 1533 his great opportunity came, for, in that year, he 
 was given a commission, under the broad seal, to travel 
 in search of England's antiquities, to examine whatever 
 records were to be found and to read in the libraries 
 of cathedrals, colleges, priories, and abbeys. For 
 some six years he gave himself to this toil with tire- 
 less diligence, and in 1546 presented to the King the 
 only finished piece of his writing that exists in Eng- 
 Hsh : ' The laboriouse Journey and Serche of Johan 
 Leylande, for Englande's Antiquitees, geven of hym 
 as a newe yeares gyfte to Kyng Henry the viii. in the 
 xxxvii yeare of his raigne.' In this somewhat ornate 
 pamphlet Leland extols the Reformation, reproves 
 the usurped authority of the bishop of Rome and his 
 comphces, and sets forth the extent and result of his 
 many journeys. In no spirit of pride, but with a 
 simple truth, he describes his peregrination. ' I have
 
 36 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 so traveled in your domynions,' he writes, ' both by 
 the see coastes and the myddle partes, sparynge 
 neyther labour nor costes by the space of these vi 
 yeares past, that there is almost neyther cape nor baye, 
 haven, creke or pere, ryver or confluence of ryvers, 
 breches, washes, lakes, meres, fenny waters, moun- 
 taynes, valleys, mores, hethes, forestes, woodes, cyties, 
 burges, castels, pryncypall manor places, monasterys, 
 and colleges, but I have seane them, and noted in so 
 doynge a whole worlde of thynges verye memorable.' 
 It is a formidable list, and we may well believe that 
 this old pedant on the tramp omitted nothing in his 
 survey. Whatever he saw or heard he committed to 
 his note-book, and carried back with him the vast 
 undigested mass of facts from which many wiser 
 heads are said to have pilfered. His ambition was 
 commensurate with his industry. He trusted shortly 
 to see the time when the King should have his 'worlde 
 and impery of Englande set forthe in a quadrate table 
 of sylver,' and, knowing that silver or brass is im- 
 permanent, he intended, as he told the King, ' by the 
 leave of God, within the space of xii moneths folowyng, 
 such a descripcion to make of the realme in wryttinge, 
 that it shall be no mastery after, for the graver or 
 painter to make the lyke by a perfect example.' Nor 
 would his work end here. He determined to restore 
 the ancient names which Caesar, Tacitus, and others 
 employed. In brief, said he, ' I trust so to open the 
 wyndow, that the lyght shal be seane, so long, that 
 is to say by the space of a whole thousand yeares.
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 37 
 
 stopped up, and the glory of your renoumed Britain 
 to reflorish through the worlde.' 
 
 Alas for the vanity of human hopes ! It is easy to 
 travel ; it is not easy to convert a traveller's note- 
 book into literature ; and John Leland, elegant poet 
 though he was in the Latin tongue, found the work 
 of arrangement and composition beyond his powers. 
 Unhappily, he seems to have known the limit of his 
 talent. He complains that ' except truth be dely- 
 cately clothed in purpure her written veryties can 
 scant fynde a reader.' This purple vesture it was not 
 his to give, and the world looked in vain for his ex- 
 pected masterpiece. When, at last, he recognised 
 that it was for others he had gathered the honey of his 
 knowledge, he went mad, ' upon a foresight,' said 
 Wood, ' that he was not able to perform his promise.' 
 Some charged him with pride and vainglory without 
 justice. He was not proud, merely inarticulate. The 
 work he designed for himself was done by Camden. 
 And, now that his Itinerary is printed, it is difficult 
 to understand the enthusiasm of his contemporaries. 
 It makes no pretence to be written. It is the per- 
 fection of dryasdust, and the only writer with whom 
 Leland may profitably be compared is the author of 
 Bradshaw's Guide. Here are two specimens of his 
 lore, chosen at random : ' Mr. Pye dwellit at ... a 
 little from Chippenham, but in Chippenham Paroche.' 
 * One told me that there was no notable Bridge on 
 Avon betwixt Malmesbyri and Chippenham. I passed 
 over 2 Bekkes betwixt Malmesbyri and Chippenham.'
 
 38 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 The statements are superbly irrelevant, and it is 
 clear that even the old tailors had the better of the 
 vaunted scholar. 
 
 As a topographer, indeed, it is Stow who takes his 
 place by Camden's side. The Survey of the Cities of 
 London and Westminster (1598 and 1603) is a diligent 
 and valuable piece of work, at once faithful and en- 
 thusiastic. For Stow, London was the fairest, largest, 
 richest, and best inhabited city in the world, and he 
 gave it all the care and study which he thought it 
 deserved. Other travellers went further afield. To 
 Richard Carew we owe A Survey of Cornwall (1602) ; 
 to WiUiam Lambarde an industrious Perambulation 
 of Kent (1570) ; and John Norden cherished the wider 
 ambition of composing a series of county histories. 
 Only a fragment of his vast design which he would 
 have entitled ' Speculum Britanniae ' has come down 
 to us — a ' preparative ' to the whole work, together 
 with brief sketches of Middlesex and Hertford (1593). 
 The failure is more to be regretted because Norden 
 himself was a man of parts. He came of a ' gentile 
 family,' says Wood, was authorised in 1593 by a 
 privy council order to travel through England and 
 Wales, ' to make more perfect descriptions, charts, 
 and maps,' and was a very deft cartographer, as is 
 shown to all in Camden's Britannia. The liveliest 
 of his works, the Surveyor's Dialogue (1608), may still 
 be read with pleasure. Therein Norden deplores, 
 like many another, the luxury which had come upon 
 the country under the rule of the Tudors ; he ob-
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 39 
 
 serves with sorrow the enhanced prices of all com- 
 modities, the smoke of many chimneys, which 
 
 * hinders the heate and light of the Sunne from 
 earthly creatures,' and the many acres of deforested 
 land. The farmers, he says, are not content unless 
 they are gentry and ' gentlemen have sunke them- 
 selves by rowing in vanities boate.' In truth, he sees 
 about him all the signs of ruin and desolation, and 
 his treatise may aptly be compared with some pas- 
 sages of Harrison's Description of England. 
 
 VII 
 
 What the travellers did for their country, Sir 
 Thomas Smith, in his Common Wealth of England 
 (written in 1565, printed in 1583), did for its laws 
 and government. No treatise ever written owed less 
 to ornament. As the author himself says, he has 
 
 * declared summarily as it were in a Chart or Map ' 
 the form and manner of government and the policy 
 of England. His is no feigned commonwealth such 
 as never was nor shall be, no vain imagination, no 
 fantasy of philosophers, but England as she ' standeth 
 and is governed at this day the eight and twentie of 
 March, Anno 1565, in the seventh yeere of the Raigne 
 and Administration thereof by the most religious, 
 virtuous, and noble Queene Ehzabeth.' In style 
 and substance the book is as concise as a classic. It 
 wastes no words and betrays few emotions. Only 
 once or twice does Sir Thomas Smith permit himself 
 a touch of humanity or a hint of observation. The
 
 40 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 yeomen of England, the good Archers, ' the stable 
 troupe of Footemen that affraid all France,' arouse 
 him to a fitful enthusiasm, and, in the discussion of 
 England's malefactors, he reveals a flash of real in- 
 sight, namely that EngHshmen, while they neglect 
 death, will not endure torture,^ ' The nature of our 
 Nation is free, stout, hault, prodigall of hfe and 
 blood,' says he, ' but contumely, beating, servitude, 
 and servile torment, and punishment it will not 
 abide.' The popularity of the book is easily intelli- 
 gible. It appealed to a people hungry for know- 
 ledge of itself ; it gives no hint of the erudite Greek 
 professor, the adroit ambassador, the wise secretary 
 of state, the curious astrologer, all whose parts Sir 
 Thomas Smith played with distinction and success. 
 
 In a full age few had a fuller life than Thomas 
 Smith. In him courage and scholarship were equally 
 matched, and erudite though he was he threw himself 
 with untiring energy into the fierce politics of his age. 
 Born in 15 14, he was educated at Queens' College in 
 
 * Unhappily for him, he was once bidden to impose the 
 torture, which he with other Englishmen could not endure. 
 After the Duke of Norfolk's conspiracy in 1571, he was ordered 
 to examine Barker and Bannister, and if necessary to bring them 
 to the rack. He obeyed very much against the grain, and made 
 a formal protest to Burghley. * Though we be importune to 
 crave Revocation from this unpleasant and panefull Toile, I 
 pray yow be not angry with us. I assure, for my Part, I wold 
 not wish to be one of Homer's Gods, if I thought I should be 
 Minos, Aeacus, or Radamanthus j I had rather be one of the 
 least Umbrae in Campis Elysiis.'
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 41 
 
 Cambridge, of which foundation he became a fellow 
 in 1529. A fighter always, he aided Cheke in the long 
 battle for the new pronunciation of Greek, and took 
 the side of Erasmus against Bishop Gardiner.^ Being 
 reader in Greek and Public Orator, Smith spoke with 
 authority, but he found in Gardiner, who would not 
 be * deluded and contempned,' a doughty opponent. 
 Though the etists won in the end, and though in the 
 hour of victory Smith was following another craft 
 than the scholar's, it is to him and to Cheke that we 
 owe the fashion of pronouncing Greek which prevails 
 to-day. Meanwhile Smith, in accord with the custom 
 of his age, had increased his learning by foreign travel. 
 He had disputed in Paris, he had argued in Padua, and 
 a year after his return to Cambridge, in 1543, he was 
 elected Vice-Chancellor. Other offices fell to him ; he 
 was clerk of Queen Catherine Parr's council ; and he 
 showed such state as his high dignity demanded of 
 him, ' And this was the port,' says Strype, ' he lived 
 in before his leaving of Cambridge : He kept three 
 servants, and three guns, and three winter geldings. 
 And they stood him in £t,o per annum, together with 
 his own board.' 
 
 At the death of Henry viii. he threw in his lot with 
 the Lord Protector, by whom he was appointed 
 master of requests, steward of the stannaries, provost 
 of Eton, and dean of Carlisle. His loyalty to this 
 
 ' Gardiner and his friends allowed but two sounds to all the 
 vowels and diphthongs of the Greek language, which become, 
 said Ascham, ' a feeble piping like that of sparrows.'
 
 42 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 generous patron was further recompensed by im- 
 prisonment in the Tower, where he translated some of 
 the Psalms into English verse, and by a fine of ^^3000. 
 But, even under the sovereignty of Mary, who owed 
 him no complaisance, his good luck did not desert 
 him. True, he was stripped of his preferments and 
 benefices. On the other hand, he was saved from 
 persecution by an indulgence from the Pope, and 
 lived in secure retirement until Elizabeth, his best 
 friend of them all, ascended the throne. Henceforth 
 he became the Queen's Envoy, and the success with 
 which he accomplished the tasks entrusted to him, 
 the persistent energy wherewith he addressed the 
 princes and statesmen of France, are duly set forth 
 in Digges' Compleat Ambassador. In 1567 he was 
 sent to demand the surrender of Calais from the 
 French King, and he acquitted himself nobly in a 
 hopeless business. He made the demand, * first at 
 the gates of Calais, next the sea, in a loud voice in 
 French, by the sound of a trumpet,' and repeated 
 it presently to the King himself. And in vain. 
 A partisan always of a French alliance, he did his 
 best to promote the marriage of Elizabeth first with 
 the Duke of Anjou, then with the Duke of Alengon, 
 and it was not his fault that the negotiation failed. 
 In all the parleyings with Catherine de Medici he 
 held himself like the man and the statesman that he 
 was, and if he did not attain his purpose, his blunt 
 speech and ready wit got the better of the argument. 
 In whatever field he tried his talents he re-
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 43 
 
 mained a humanist, delicate and refined. For the 
 rest, he had something of the same spirit which 
 animated Walter Ralegh. He was ready for any 
 enterprise, except the torturing of others. With 
 Sir Humphrey Gilbert's aid he obtained a patent 
 for * The Society of the New Art,' whose purpose 
 was to transmute iron into copper. Meadley, the 
 Alchemist, who was to perfect the design, failed 
 his patrons, which need not surprise us, and Sir 
 Thomas Smith made as a comment what he should 
 have pronounced as a warning. ' Trust little to words 
 and promises and accounts of men of that faculty,' 
 he said. ' Fain would they be fingering of money ; 
 but when it is once in their hands, we must seek it in 
 the ashes.' Nor was this his only failure. Unabashed 
 by Meadley's cunning, he sent forth a colony, not so 
 far as Virginia, but to the Ardes in County Down, 
 where a vast tract of land had been granted him by 
 the Queen. His natural son, who was in charge of 
 the adventure, was killed by a wild Irishman, and the 
 estate presently passed out of the hands of Smith's 
 family. But it was part of his life's ambition to try 
 all things, and to-day, by a stroke of irony, this busy 
 man of affairs is remembered chiefly by a wise tract, 
 which first saw the Hght six years after his death. 
 
 VIII 
 
 An encyclopaedic method claims for John Foxe, 
 the martyrologist, a place among the chroniclers. 
 Not that his aim and purpose resembled theirs. It
 
 44 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 was not for him to exalt his country, or to celebrate 
 the triumphs of her past. His was the gloomier task 
 of recounting the torments suffered by the martyrs 
 of all ages, and he performed it with so keen a zest 
 that it was not his fault if one single victim escaped 
 his purview. In other words, he was content only 
 vdth universality, and how well he succeeded let 
 Fuller tell : * In good earnest, as to the particular 
 subject of our English martyrs, Mr. Foxe hath done 
 everything, leaving posterity nothing to work upon.' 
 So he goes back to the beginning, describing the 
 martyrdoms of the early Church, and of those who 
 suffered in England under King Lucius. As he passes 
 by, he pours contempt upon Becket, attempting to 
 prove that he, at least, was no true martyr, being the 
 open and avowed friend of the Pope. And it is when 
 he arrives within measurable distance of his own time 
 that he finds the best food for his eloquence. The 
 prowess of Henry viii., the exploits of Thomas 
 Cromwell, his prime hero, the magnanimity of Anne 
 Boleyn, ' who, without controversy, was a special 
 comforter and aider of all the professors of Christ's 
 gospel,' tempt him to enthusiasm, and he rises to the 
 highest pitch of his frenzy when he recounts the 
 tortures of those who suffered death in the reign of 
 Queen Mary. 
 
 He is no sifter of authorities ; he is as credulous 
 as the simplest chronicler ; he gathers his facts 
 carelessly, as Grafton and Stow gathered theirs, and 
 he makes no attempt to test their accuracy. His sin
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 45 
 
 is the greater because he is not writing to amuse 
 or to enlighten his readers, but to prove a point in 
 controversy. He is, in brief, a violent partisan. His 
 book is the longest pamphlet ever composed by the 
 hand of man. It is said to be twice as long as Gibbon's 
 Decline and Fall, and never for one moment does it 
 waver from its purpose, which is to expose the wicked- 
 ness of ' the persecutors of God's truth, commonly 
 called Papists.' It is idle, therefore, to expect truth 
 or a quiet statement from Foxe. If any one belong 
 to the other side, Foxe can credit him neither with 
 honesty nor with intelUgence. Those only are 
 martyrs who die for the Protestant cause. The spilt 
 blood of such men as Fisher and More does not dis- 
 tress him. For the author of Utopia, indeed, he has 
 a profound contempt. He summarily dismisses him 
 as ' a bitter persecutor of good men, and a wretched 
 enemy against the truth of the gospel.' It follows, 
 therefore, that Foxe's mind also was enchained. It 
 was not liberty of opinion which seemed good in his 
 eyes, but the vanquishing of the other side. Though 
 he interceded for certain anabaptists condemned by 
 Queen EHzabeth, it was his object to rescue them 
 not from punishment but from the flames, which 
 was, he thought, in accord with a Roman rather than 
 with a Christian custom. 
 
 However, the success of his Jctes and Monu- 
 ments was immediate. It was universally read, it 
 aroused a storm of argument, it was ordered to 
 be chained in churches for the general edification
 
 46 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 of the people. The temper in which it is written, 
 the inflexible judgment which, throughout, distorts 
 the facts, no doubt with the best motive, have 
 rendered the book less valuable in modern than in 
 contemporary eyes. If we read it to-day, we read 
 it not for its matter or for its good counsel, but for 
 its design. As a mere performance, the Actes and 
 Monuments is without parallel. Foxe was an astound- 
 ing virtuoso, whose movement and energy never flag. 
 With a fever of excitement he sustains his own interest 
 (and sometimes yours) in his strange medley of gossip, 
 document, and exhortation. The mere style of the 
 work — homely, quick, and appropriate — is sufficient 
 to account for its favour. The dramatic turn which 
 Foxe gives to his dialogues, the vitality of the in- 
 numerable men and women, tortured and torturers, 
 who throng his pages — these are qualities which do 
 not fade with years. Even the spirit of bitter raillery 
 which breathes through his pages amazes, while it 
 exasperates, the reader. From the point of view of 
 presentation, the work's worst fault is monotony. 
 Page after page, the martyrologist revels in the terms 
 of suffering. He spares you nothing, neither the 
 creeping flames, nor the chained limb, until you begin 
 to believe that he himself had a love of blood and fire. 
 The man was just such a one as you would expect 
 from his book. Born in 15 17, to parents ' reputed of 
 good estate,' sent to Oxford in 1533 by friends who 
 approved his ' good inclination and towardness to 
 learning,' and elected fellow of Magdalen College, he
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 47 
 
 was presently accused of heresy and expelled from 
 Oxford. He was of those who can neither brook 
 opposition nor accept argument. Henceforth, 
 though he never stood at the stake, he suffered the 
 martyrdom of penury and distress. Now tutor in a 
 gentleman's house, now in flight for the sake of his 
 opinions, he passed some years at Basle reading for 
 the press, and in 1559 he published at Strassburg 
 the first edition of his masterpiece, in Latin. In 1563 
 it was printed in Enghsh by John Day, with the title 
 Actes and Monuments of these latter and perilous 
 times touching matters of the Church. With charac- 
 teristic ingenuity, Foxe composed four dedications: 
 to Jesus Christ, to the Queen, to the learned reader, 
 and to the persecutors of God's truth, commonly 
 called Papists. The last is a fine example of savage 
 abuse, and, as Foxe wrote in safety and under the pro- 
 tection of a Protestant Queen, its purpose is not 
 evident. No more can be said than that rage and 
 fury are in his heart and on his tongue, that he pos- 
 sessed a genius of indignation which he had neither 
 wish nor power to check, and that he bequeathed 
 to us a larger mass of invective than any writer in any 
 age has been able to achieve. 
 
 IX 
 
 Francis Bacon's masterpiece, The Historie of the 
 Raigne of King Henrie the Seventh, is separated from 
 the Chronicles by its author's gifts of thought and 
 expression. The prose, apt for its purpose, is never
 
 48 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 without dignity, and the thought contained therein 
 is deliberate and profound. Bacon was a politician 
 as well as a writer, and he knew well how to reveal 
 the secrets of the statecraft, which he understood. 
 Moreover he does not disdain the simple arts of 
 narrative. Nowhere more exactly than in this history- 
 may you follow the movements of Lambert Simnel 
 and Perkin Warbeck, and though the author pro- 
 fesses an admiration for Henry vii., he is not blind 
 in his partiality. He names him ' this Solomon of 
 England,' and hastens to add that ' Solomon also was 
 too heavie upon his People in Exaction.' Yet, despite 
 its many merits, The Historie of the Raigne of King 
 Henrie the Seventh (1622) is still in thrall to the fashion 
 of the time. It tells its story year by year, sometimes 
 month by month, and intersperses the text lavishly 
 with documents. Bacon is stiU a chronicler, though he 
 rises easily above his kind. In nothing does he show 
 his superiority more clearly than in the character of the 
 King, which brings the work to a close. And if you 
 compare this with the brief, if sometimes balanced, 
 enumeration of qualities, affected by Holinshed, you 
 may measure how far Bacon has travelled along the 
 road which leads from the chronicle to the history. 
 
 ' The King,' he says, ' (to speak of him in Tearmes 
 equall to his Deserving) was one of the best sort of 
 wonders : a Wonder for Wisemen.' And thereafter 
 he writes not as a courtly panegyrist, but as a man 
 doing his best, without fear, to understand the 
 Wonder. He pitches his intelhgence against Henry
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 49 
 
 vii.'s, so to say, and comes not off the worse for 
 the encounter. Equally sensible of the monarch's 
 strength and weakness, he is unsparing of praise or 
 blame. ' Hee professed alwayes to love and seeke 
 Peace,' thus he writes : ' And it was his usuall 
 Preface in his Treaties, That when Christ came into 
 the World, Peace was sung ; and when Hee went out 
 of the World, Peace was bequeathed. And this 
 Vertue could not proceede out of Feare, or Softnesse ; 
 for hee was Vahant and Active, and therefore (no 
 doubt) it was truly Christian and Morall. Yet hee 
 knew the way to Peace was not to seeme to bee de- 
 sirous to avoide Warres.' He makes no attempt to 
 gloss over the King's extortion. ' The lesse Bloud 
 he drew,' says he, ' the more hee tooke of Treasure. 
 And (as some construed it) he was the more sparing 
 in the One, that hee might bee the more pressing in 
 the Other ; for both would have been intollerable. 
 Of Nature assuredly hee coveted to accumulate 
 Treasure, and was a little Poore in admiring Riches.' 
 Foi Henry's grandeur Bacon has a frank admiration : 
 * Hee was of an High Mind, and loved his owne Will, 
 and his owne Way ; as One that revered himself e, and 
 would Raigne indeed. Had hee beene a Private-man, 
 hee would have beene termed Proud. But in a wise 
 Prince, it was but keeping of Distance, which indeed 
 hee did towards all ; not admitting any neare or full 
 Approach, either to his power, or to his secrets. For 
 hee was governed by none.' Thereafter in a close, 
 antithetical style Bacon marks the qualities of 
 
 D
 
 50 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 his hero : a prince ' Sad, Serious, and full of Thoughts 
 and secret Observations,' wholly given to his affairs, 
 in aspect ' a little like a Churchman,' w^hose face 
 was ' to the Disadvantage of the Painter, for it was 
 best when he spake.' Thus has he sketched a great 
 and famous king, and set a fashion in character- 
 drawing which many have sought in vain to follow. 
 
 The most of the writers hitherto discussed have 
 been intent either to amuse or to inform. They have 
 composed their works, for the most part, in sound 
 and living EngHsh, because they spoke and wrote a 
 language that had not yet been attenuated by the 
 formality of pedants and grammarians. Few of them, 
 save Bacon, were sensible of an artistic impulse. They 
 began at the beginning, and pursued their task 
 patiently unto the end, unconscious of what the next 
 page would bring forth. But there are three writers, 
 the author of the History of King Richard the thirde, 
 George Cavendish, and Sir John Hayward, who 
 are separated from the chroniclers, even from 
 Camden himself, both by ambition and by talent. 
 Each of them set before him a consistent and 
 harmonious design ; each of them produced, in his 
 own fashion, a deliberately artistic effect. The 
 History of Richard the thirde has been generally 
 ascribed to Sir Thomas More, on hazardous authority. 
 An incomplete manuscript of the book was found 
 among his papers, and printed as his both in Hall's
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 51 
 
 Chronicle and in Grafton's edition of Hardyng. Sir 
 George Buck, in his History of the Life and Reigne of 
 Richard 1 11.^ published in 1646, but written many- 
 years earher, declares that ' Doctor Morton (acting 
 the part of Histiaeus) made the Booke, and Master 
 Moore like Aristagoras set it forth, amplifying and 
 glossing it.' 1 Where the evidence is thus scanty, 
 dogmatism may appear inapposite, but it may be said 
 that the book itself does not chime with the character 
 and temper of More. It is marked throughout by 
 an asperity of tone, an eager partisanship, which 
 belong more obviously to Morton than to the humane 
 author of Utopia. And it is reasonable to believe 
 that More took the Cardinal's Latin history, written 
 to placate the house of Tudor, and turned it into his 
 own living English prose. 
 
 * Buck, being, like the author of the History of Richard the 
 thirde, an open partisan, denounces More in round terms. He 
 denies him ' the attributes of learning and religion,' declaring 
 that 'in both he came short of what was ascribed to him ' ; for 
 if he understood 'the Latine and Grceke (then held great learn- 
 ing), yet was he so farre under the desert of an excellent Scholler, 
 as the learned censured him a man of slender reading, and 
 generous Brixius, " Irruditus," i.e. unlearned.' Erasmus did not 
 agree with Brixius. And for 'the sanctity of his life,' Buck 
 quotes John Baleus, who calls More • hie Harpagus,' and thus 
 ♦ gives us his draught ' : ' Hoc nos probe novimus qui eramus 
 eidem Thomae Moro viciniores, quod pontificum, et pharisae- 
 orum crudelitati ex avaritia subserviens omni tyranno truculentior 
 ferocicbat, imo insaniebat in eos qui aut Papae primatum, aiit 
 purgatorium, aut mortuorum invocationes, aut imaginum cultus 
 aut simile quiddam diabolicarum imposturarum negabant, a 
 vivifica Dei veritate ita edocti.' This vituperation is in the 
 region not of truth but of political controversy.
 
 52 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 From beginning to end Richard in. is painted in 
 the blackest colours. No gossip is overlooked which 
 may throw a sinister light upon the actions of the 
 prince. It is hinted not only that he slew Henry vi., 
 but that he was privy to Clarence's death. The most 
 is made of his deformed body and cunning mind, 
 the least of his policy. If accuracy be sacrificed, the 
 artistic effect is enhanced. The oneness of Richard's 
 character gives a unity and concentration to the por- 
 trait which cannot be overpraised. For the first 
 time in English literature, we come upon a history 
 which is not a mere collection of facts, but a deliber- 
 ately designed and carefully finished whole. The 
 author has followed the ancient models. He knows 
 how fine an effect is produced by the putting of 
 appropriate speeches in the mouths of his characters. 
 The value of such maxims as sum up a situation and 
 point a moral does not escape him. ' Slipper youth 
 must be underpropped with elder counsayle,' says he. 
 And again : ' The desire of a kingdome knoweth no 
 kindred. The brother hath been the brother's bane.' 
 Here we have the brevity and the wise commonplace 
 of the Greek chorus. 
 
 Above all, he proves the finest economy in pre- 
 paring his effects. The great scene in which 
 Richard arrests Lord Hastings opens in a spirit 
 of gentle courtesy. ' My Lord,' says the Protector 
 to the bishop of Ely, 'you have very good straw- 
 berries at your gardayne in Holberne, I request 
 you let us have a messe of them. Gladly, my lord,
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 53 
 
 quod he, woulde God I had some better thing as 
 redy to your pleasure as that.' And then the storm 
 breaks. The author's sense of what is picturesque 
 never slumbers. The sketches of the Queen and 
 Shore's wife are drawn by a master. The persistence 
 with which Richard tightens his grasp upon the throne 
 is rendered with the utmost skill. Nor is the sense 
 of proportion ever at fault. You are given the very 
 essence of the tragedy, and so subtle is the design 
 that, at the first reading, it may escape you. The 
 style is marked by a strict economy of words and a 
 constant preference of English before Latin. From 
 beginning to end, there is no trace of flamboyancy or 
 repetition, and, while we applaud the wisdom of the 
 chroniclers who made this history of Richard their 
 own, we cannot but wonder that one and all failed 
 to profit by so fine an example of artistry and restraint. 
 
 XI 
 
 Few books have had a stranger fate than George 
 Cavendish's Life and Death of Thomas Wolsey. 
 Written when Queen Mary was on the throne, it 
 achieved a secret and furtive success. It was passed 
 in manuscript from hand to hand. Shakespeare 
 knew it and used it. As I have said, both Stow and 
 Speed leaned upon its authority. First printed in 
 1641, it was then so defaced by interpolations and 
 excisions as to be scarce recognisable, and it was not 
 until 1657 that a perfect text was given to the world. 
 And then, for no visible reason, it was ascribed
 
 54 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 to William, not to George, Cavendish. The un- 
 certainty had no other excuse save that William, 
 the better known of the two, was the founder of a 
 great family. Speed yields the credit where it is 
 due, to George — and Speed's word was worth more 
 than surmise. However, all doubt was long since 
 removed, and to George Cavendish, a simple gentle- 
 man of the cardinal's household, belongs the glory of 
 having given to EngUsh literature the first specimen 
 of artistic biography. 
 
 Steadfast in devotion, plain in character. Caven- 
 dish left all to follow the fortunes of the cardinal. 
 He was witness of his master's pomp and splen- 
 dour ; he was witness of his ruin and his death. 
 He embellished his narrative with Wolsey's own 
 eloquence ; he recorded the speech of Cromwell, 
 Northumberland, and others ; and he imparted to 
 his pages a sense of reality which only a partaker of 
 Wolsey's fortunes could impart. But he was not a 
 Boswell, attempting to produce a large effect by a 
 multiplicity of details. His book has a definite plan 
 and purpose. Consciously or unconsciously. Caven- 
 dish was an artist. His theme is the theme of many 
 a Greek tragedy, and he handles it with Greek aus- 
 terity. He sets out to show how Nemesis descends 
 upon the haughty and overbold, how the mighty are 
 suddenly cast down from their seats, how the hair- 
 shirt lurks ever beneath the scarlet robes of the car- 
 dinal. This is the confessed end and aim of his work. 
 He is not compiling a ' life and times.' He discards
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 55 
 
 as irrelevant many events which seem important in 
 the eye of history. The famous words which he puts 
 in the mouth of Wolsey dying might serve as a text 
 for the whole work : * If I had served God as dili- 
 gently as I have done the King, he would not have 
 given me over in my grey hairs.' 
 
 That his readers may feel the full pathos of Wolsey's 
 fall, he paints the magnificence of his life in glowing 
 colours. Titles are heaped upon titles. The boy 
 bachelor grows to the man of affairs, the ambassador, 
 the King's almoner, the chancellor of England, the 
 archbishop of York, the cardinal. In lavish entertain- 
 ment, in noble pageantry, the cardinal surpassed the 
 King. His banquets ' with masks and mummers it 
 was a heaven to behold.' The officers of his chapel 
 and of his household were like the sands in number. 
 He moved always in a procession. ' He rode like a 
 cardinal, very sumptuously, on a mule trapped with 
 crimson velvet upon velvet, his stirrups of copper 
 and gilt ; and his spare mule following him with like 
 apparel.' Is it any wonder that fortune ' began to 
 wax something wroth with his prosperous estate ' ? 
 Almost at the outset the note of warning is struck. 
 The sinister influence of Anne Boleyn begins to be 
 felt from the moment that the cardinal comes between 
 her and the love of Lord Percy. In other words, 
 fortune ' procured Venus, the insatiate goddess, to 
 be her instrument.' The King's displeasure at the 
 slow process of divorce is heightened by the whisper- 
 ings of Mistress Anne.
 
 56 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 And then, at Grafton, the blow falls. The 
 cardinal is ordered to give up the great seal 
 and to retire to Esher. Henceforth, misfor- 
 tunes are heaped upon him, as they were heaped 
 upon Job, and he bears them with an equal resig- 
 nation. He is stripped of wealth and state. His 
 hopeless journey from town to town brings him 
 nearer only to death. The omens are bad. A cross 
 falls upon Bonner's head as he sits at meat. When 
 the Earl of Northumberland, charged to arrest him 
 of high treason, visits him, ' Ye shall have such cheer,' 
 says the cardinal, with the true irony of Sophocles, 
 * as I am able to make you, with a right good will . . . 
 hoping hereafter to see you oftener, when I shall be 
 more able and better provided to receive you with 
 better fare.' So, at last, he dies at Leicester, dis- 
 honoured and disgraced, stripped of his splendour, 
 abandoned by his train. And Cavendish, speaking 
 with the voice of the tragic chorus, exhorts his readers 
 to behold ' the wondrous mutability of vain honours, 
 the brittle assurance of abundance, the uncertainty 
 of dignities, the flattery of feigned friends, and the 
 fickle trust to worldly princes.' 
 
 XII 
 
 Talent and opportunity were given to the simple, 
 unlettered Cavendish, and he made the fullest of 
 them. Sir John Hayward was a historian of another
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 57 
 
 kind. He was not driven by accident or experience 
 to the practice of his craft. He adopted it as a pro- 
 fession, and resembled the writers of a later age more 
 nearly than any of his contemporaries. Born in 
 Suffolk about 1560, he was educated at the Univer- 
 sity of Cambridge, and devoted himself with a single 
 mind to the study of history. He was in no sense a 
 mere chronicler. He aimed far higher than the 
 popular history digested into annals. His mind 
 was always intent upon the example of the ancients. 
 His style is concise, as the style of his models, and his 
 syntax is closely allied to the syntax of Latin. He 
 liked to trick out his narratives with appropriate 
 speeches, after the manner of Livy. He delighted in 
 the moral generalisations which give an air of solem- 
 nity to the art of history as it was practised by the 
 Greeks and the Romans. His first work, in which 
 are described the fall of Richard 11. and the first years 
 of Henry iv. (1599), and which is dedicated to the 
 Earl of Essex, incurred the wrath of EHzabeth, and cost 
 him some years of imprisonment. The Queen asked 
 Bacon if he could find any passages in the book which 
 savoured of treason. ' For treason surely I find 
 none,' said Bacon, * but for felony very many.' And 
 when the Queen asked him ' Wherein ? ' he told her 
 that ' the author had committed very apparent theft ; 
 for he had taken most of the sentences of CorneHus 
 Tacitus, and translated them into EngHsh, and put 
 them in his text.' This criticism is as true as it is 
 witty. Hayward aims at sententiousness with an
 
 58 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 admirable success, and did his best to make himself 
 the Tacitus of England.* 
 
 In the ' Epistle Dedicatorie ' to his Lives of the 
 Three Normans^ Kings of England (1613), he declares 
 that, though he had written of the past, he ' did princi- 
 pally bend and binde himself to the times wherein he 
 should live.' His performance did not agree with his 
 bent. Concerning the times near which he hved he 
 has left but a fragment, The beginning of the Raigne of 
 Queene Elizabeth^ of which beginning he had no more 
 personal knowledge than of the Life and Raigne of 
 King Edward the Sixt (1630), which in some respects is 
 his masterpiece. But, whatever was the period of his 
 choice, he treated it with the same knowledge and 
 impartiality. He made a proper use of unpublished 
 material. The journal of Edward vi. gives an air of 
 authenticity to his biography of that King, and in 
 
 * How right was the judgment of Bacon maybe seen in every 
 page of Hayward's writing. It is thus that he describes the 
 sack of Tunis : ' here streams of bloud, and heapes of slaughtered 
 bodies, hard by dissolute and licentious wantonnesses in some, all 
 the miseries of a cruell warre, and the looseness of a secure 
 peace.' The comment on the Londoners, which follows, sounds 
 like a translation direct from Tacitus : * Thus did the Londoners 
 manifest in themselves a strange diversity of disposition, both 
 licentiously to commltte offence, and patiently to endure punish- 
 ment ; having rashnesse and rage so tempered with obedience, 
 that they were easily punished, who could not possibly bee 
 ruled.' So when he describes John of Gaunt as 'liking better 
 safe courses with reason than happy by chance,' or says of 
 Henry iv. that ' he seemed rather worthy of a kingdom than 
 desirous,' we know well where he has committed his felonies.
 
 CHRONICLERS OF THE TUDOR AGE 59 
 
 treating of William i. he went back to sources of 
 information which the chroniclers had overlooked. 
 In brief, he was a scholar who took a critical view of 
 his task, who was more deeply interested in policies 
 and their result than in the gossip of history, and 
 who was always quick to illustrate modern England 
 by the examples of Greece and Rome. His pages 
 are packed with literary and historical allusions. He 
 was, moreover, always watchful of his style, intent 
 ever upon producing a definite effect, and if he errs, 
 as he does especially in his Henry IF., on the side of 
 elaboration, it is a fault of which he is perfectly 
 conscious, and which he does not disdain. Thus at 
 last, with the author of Richard III. and Sir John 
 Hayward, England reverted to the ancient models, 
 and it is from them and not from the chroniclers that 
 our art of history must date its beginnings.
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 
 
 THE translators of Elizabeth's age pursued their 
 craft in the spirit of bold adventure which 
 animated Drake and Hawkins. It was their ambi- 
 tion to discover new worlds of thought and beauty. 
 They sailed the wide ocean of knowledge to plant 
 their colonies of intellect where they might, or to 
 bring back to our English shores some eloquent 
 stranger whom their industry had taught to speak 
 with our English tongue. Holland justly describes 
 his enterprise as a conquest. He ' would wish rather 
 and endeavour,' says he in the preface to his trans- 
 lation of Pliny, ' by all means to triumph now over 
 the Romans in subduing their hterature under the 
 dent of the English pen, in requitall of the conquest 
 some time over this Island, atchieved by the edge of 
 their sword.' And, harbouring this sentiment of 
 conquest, the translators were strongly impelled also 
 by the desire to benefit their native land and its rulers. 
 They had learned from the classics deep lessons of 
 policy and statecraft, which they would impart to 
 their Queen and her magistrates. Their achievement 
 
 60
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 6i 
 
 was, indeed, the real renascence of England, the 
 authentic recovery of the ancient spirit. 
 
 That they were keenly conscious of what they 
 were doing is clear from their dedications and 
 their prefaces. The choice of the great person- 
 ages to whom they presented their works was 
 made with a deliberate purpose. When North 
 and Holland asked the Queen's protection for their 
 masterpieces, it was in the full hope and know- 
 ledge that Plutarch and Livy would prove wise 
 guides unto her footsteps. Nor was it with the 
 mere intent of flattery or applause that other trans- 
 lators offered the fruits of their toil to Cecil, Leicester, 
 and Christopher Hatton. They wished to give 
 counsel where they deemed it useful. Thomas 
 Wilson, for instance, the translator of Demosthenes, 
 thought that every good subject should compare the 
 present and the past ; that, when he heard of Athens 
 and the Athenians, he should remember England 
 and Englishmen ; that, in brief, he should learn from 
 the doings of his elders how to deal with his own 
 affairs. John Brende, who EngUshed Quintus 
 Curtius, in presenting his book to the Duke of 
 Northumberland, thus explained his purpose : 
 ' There is required in all Magistrates,' says he, * both 
 a faith and a feare in God, and also an outward 
 pollicie in worldly thinges : ^ whereof, as the one is 
 
 » GefFraie Fenton showed his approval of this sentiment by 
 borrowing it word for word in his preface to The Tragicall 
 Discourses.
 
 62 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 to be learned by the Scriptures, so the other must 
 chiefly be gathered by reading of histories.' Wher- 
 ever you turn, you find the same admirable excuse ; 
 and, as the translators gave to England w^ellnigh the 
 vi^hole wisdom of the ancients, they provided not 
 merely grave instruction for kings and statesmen, but 
 plots for the dramatists, and entertainment for 
 lettered ease. 
 
 As their interest lay chiefly in the matter of their 
 originals, they professed little desire to illustrate a 
 method of translation. They had neither the know- 
 ledge nor the sense of criticism, which should measure 
 accurately the niceties of their craft. They set about 
 their work in a spirit of subUme unconsciousness. 
 In their many prefaces, and they delighted in prefaces, 
 there is scarce a hint that they are pursuing a dehcate 
 art. The most of them were indifferent to, or igno- 
 rant of, Horace's maxim : 
 
 Nee verbum verbo curabis reddere fidus 
 Interpres, 
 
 though, for the best of reasons, they followed the 
 poet's liberal counsel. They would not have under- 
 stood the scientific care with which Dryden pre- 
 sently distinguished metaphrase and paraphrase. 
 Chapman, it is true, knew the end at which he aimed, 
 and, in the preface to his Homer, lucidly describes 
 what should be the ambition of the translator : 
 * The work of a skilfull and worthy translator,' says 
 he, * is to observe the sentences, figures, and forme-s
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 63 
 
 of speech proposed in his author, his true sence and 
 height, and to adorn them with figures and formes 
 of oration fitted to the originall in the same tongue 
 to which they are translated.' And one W. R., in 
 an eloquent epistle addressed to the translator, 
 wittily defends Lodge against the charge that he had 
 not parrot-like spoken Seneca's own words and lost 
 himself in a Latin echo. But both Chapman and 
 Lodge's defender wrote when the art of translation 
 had been pursued for two generations and was faUing, 
 not unnaturally, into a habit of self-criticism. In 
 general, the translators of the heyday were accurate 
 neither in word nor in shape. They followed the 
 text as remotely as they imitated the style of their 
 originals. 
 
 I have said that North and his colleagues were 
 inspired by a love of adventure. They resembled 
 the pioneers of our empire also in a splendid lack of 
 scruple. As the early travellers cheerfully seized 
 upon the treasure of others, painfully acquired, and 
 turned to their own profit the discoveries of Spaniard 
 and Portuguese, so the translators cared not by what 
 intermediary they approached the Greek and Latin 
 texts. Very few were scholars in the sense that 
 Philemon Holland was a scholar. Like Shakespeare, 
 the most had little Latin and less Greek. When 
 Thomas Nicolls, citizen and goldsmith of London, set 
 out to translate Thucydides (1550), he went no further 
 than the French of Claude de Seyssel, and Claude de 
 Seyssel made his version not from the Greek but
 
 64 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 from the Latin of Laurentius Valla. Between 
 Thomas North and Plutarch stands the gracious 
 figure of Jacques Amyot. Thomas Underdowne 
 derived his Aethiopian Historic from the Latin of 
 Stanislaus Warschewiczki, a Polish country gentle- 
 man, who translated the Greek of Heliodorus, rure 
 faterno, in 1551. Thus Adlington, in interpreting 
 ^he Golden Ass, was misled by Lasne Dore of Guil- 
 laume Michel. Thus Aristotle came into our speech 
 through the French of Leroy, and even Bandello 
 crossed from Italy to England by the courtly bridge 
 of Belleforest. 
 
 The result of this careless method is that the trans- 
 lations of Elizabeth's age (in prose, at any rate) are un- 
 soiled by pedantry. They do not smell of the lamp ; 
 they suggest nowhere the laborious use of the pedes- 
 trian dictionary. They call up a vision of space and 
 courage and the open air. That they are inappro- 
 priate seems no fault in them. If they replace the 
 restraint of the classics with the colour and sentiment 
 of romance, it is because the translators have done 
 their work thoroughly. They have turned the 
 authors of Greece and Rome not merely into a new 
 language but into the feeling of another age and 
 clime. In other words, their books carry with 
 them the lively air of brave originals. And this 
 natural impress is the deeper, because translation 
 was not then an exclusive craft, pursued in the 
 narrow spirit of mere scholarship. Many of the 
 most ingenious craftsmen were men of the world,
 
 TtJDOR TRANSLATORS 65 
 
 who made their versions to beguile a leisure 
 snatched from the conduct of affairs. 
 
 Sir Thomas Hoby, who gave us The Courtier, v^^as 
 an ambassador ; Danett, who put Commines in an 
 English dress, practised the art of diplomacy loftily 
 exemplified in his original ; with a fine sense of pro- 
 priety, Peter Whitehorne translated Machiavelli's 
 Arte of Warre when he was in Barbary with the 
 emperor, ' at the siege and winning of Calibbia ' ; 
 Thomas North himself played his part as a magistrate 
 in the policies of the larger world. Even those who, 
 like Holland and Golding, adopted translating as a 
 profession, practised a style all untrammelled by the 
 schools. The reproach of Dryden, that ' there are 
 many who understand Greek and Latin, and yet are 
 ignorant of their mother-tongue,' might not be 
 brought with justice against them. Few men of the 
 century knew Greek and Latin. Many were masters 
 of English, which they wrote with an eloquence and 
 elaboration rarely surpassed. 
 
 II 
 
 The translators' range of discovery was wide- 
 They brought into the ken of Enghshmen the vast 
 continent of classical literature. Only a few pro- 
 vinces escaped their search, and, of the few, one was 
 the province which should have had the quickest 
 attraction for them. It is not a httle strange that 
 the golden age of our drama should have seen the 
 translation of but one Greek play. Of Aeschylus and 
 
 £
 
 66 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 Sophocles there is nothing. A free paraphrase of the 
 Phoenissae^ presented at Gray's Inn under the name 
 of Jocasta in 1566 by George Gascoigne and Francis 
 Kinwelmersh, and made not from the Greek but from 
 the Italian of Ludovico Dolce, is the Elizabethans' 
 only and fragile link with Euripides. Plautus fared 
 not much better : we have no more than the 
 Menaechmi of William Warner (1595), which may 
 have given Shakespeare a hint for The Comedy of 
 Errors. More popular were Seneca and Terence — 
 Seneca, no doubt, for his ingenious maxims, and 
 Terence because he was appointed to be read in 
 schools. Of the historians, both Greek and Latin, 
 there is a long list. An unknown translator, who 
 hides his name under the initials B. R., and who 
 may be Barnabe Rich, published two books of Hero- 
 dotus in 1584, and Thomas Nicolls, already mentioned, 
 gave to England a complete Thucydides in 1550. Of 
 Livy, we have a fragment by Antony Cope (1544), 
 and a version of all that remains by the incomparable 
 Philemon Holland (1600), to whose industry also are 
 due Suetonius (1606), Ammianus Marcellinus (1609), 
 and Xenophon's Cyropaedia (1632). Sallust, as 
 might be expected, was a favourite of Tudor England. 
 His Catiline was translated by Thomas Paynell 
 (1541), his Jugurtha by Alexander Barclay, and both 
 histories by Thomas Heywood, the dramatist (1608). 
 Golding's Csesar (1565), Brende's Quintus Curtius 
 (1553), and Stocker's Diodorus Siculus (1569), by no 
 means complete the tale. What Sir Henry Savile
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 67 
 
 did for the Histories and the Agricolaoi Tacitus (1591), 
 Richard Greenway did for the Annals and the De- 
 scription of Germany (1598), and there is no author 
 EngHshed for us in fuller and worthier shape than 
 the wisest of Roman historians. Xenophon found 
 other translators besides Holland, and Plutarch's 
 Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romayis fell happily 
 into the hands of Sir Thomas North, whose skill gave 
 them a second and a larger immortality. 
 
 The philosophers and moralists of the ancient 
 world chimed with the humour of Tudor England. 
 Their simple disputations possess the charm of fresh- 
 ness and curiosity. The problems of conduct posed 
 by Cicero and Plutarch are of a kind that found an 
 eager solution in the minds of men, still simple 
 enough to love casuistry for its own sake. Such 
 questions as how a man may praise himself without 
 incurring envy or blame, or whether philosophers 
 ought to converse with princes and rulers, were met, 
 it is certain, with many arguments and various answers. 
 And the translators supplied those ignorant of the 
 dead languages with a mighty armoury of intellectual 
 weapons. Of Plato, to be sure, there is little enough. 
 Besides Sir Thomas Elyot's Of the Knowledge which 
 maketh a wise man (1533), distantly inspired by the 
 philosopher, immediately suggested by Diogenes 
 Laertius, there is but a version of the Axiochus (1592), 
 a doubtful dialogue. Aristotle received more generous 
 treatment. His Ethics were translated from the 
 ItaHan by John Wylkinson (1547), and, as has been
 
 68 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 said, one J. D. made a version of the Politics from the 
 French of Loys Leroy, dit Regius (1598). 
 
 Far more popular were Cicero and Seneca, the chief 
 instructors of the age. Tully's Offices, translated by- 
 Robert Whittington, laureate in grammar (1533), and 
 by Nicholas Grimalde (1553), were confidently com- 
 mended to rulers, schoolmen, orators, and rheto- 
 ricians : * At few words,' says the ingenious Grimalde, 
 ' al men, that of wisdome be studious, may gette 
 sommewhat herein to sharpe the wyt, to store the 
 intelligence, to fede the minde, to quicke the sprite, 
 to augment the reason, to direct the appetite, to 
 frame the tounge, to fashion the maners.' Nor were 
 the two treatises on Friendship and Old Age over- 
 looked. The one was translated by John Harington 
 (1550), the other by Thomas Newton (1569), and 
 both have as handsome an appearance in their English 
 dress as any books of the time; and, in 1561, John 
 Dolman ' englysshed these fyve Questions, which 
 Marke Tullye Cicero disputed in his Manor of Tus- 
 culanum.' Upon Seneca, also, Whittington tried 
 his hand, to whom we owe The Fame and Rule of 
 Honest lyvynge (1546), and The Remedyes against all 
 casuall Chances. For the rest, Arthur Golding trans- 
 lated The Woorke cojtcerning Benefyting (1558), and, 
 in 1614, Thomas Lodge published his monumental 
 version of Seneca's prose, a work undimmed by 
 comparison even with Holland's translation of 
 Plutarch's Morals (1603).
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 69 
 
 III 
 
 The modern world yielded as rich a spoil as the 
 ancient. The Italianate Englishman, bitterly re- 
 proached by his contemporaries, brought back from 
 Italy, with his fantastic costume and new-fangled 
 manners, a love of Italian literature and of Italian 
 romance. From across the Alps came our knowledge 
 of the court, of arms, and of the arts. In a famous 
 passage, Ascham deplored the encroaching influence. 
 Evil as he thought the Morte Arthure^ * the whole 
 pleasure of which booke standeth in two speciall 
 poyntes, in open mans slaughter, and bold bawdrye,' 
 he declared that ' ten Morte Arthure do not the 
 tenth part so much harme as one of these bookes, 
 made in Italie, and translated in England.' Yet their 
 growing popularity could not be gainsaid : ' That 
 which is most to be lamented ' — again Ascham speaks 
 — ' and therefore more nedefull to be looked to, there 
 be mo of these ungratious bookes set out in Printe 
 within these fewe monethes, than have been sene in 
 England many score yeare before.' Ascham wrote 
 in 1567, and there is no doubt that he had in his mind 
 William Painter's Palace of Pleasure, of which the 
 first volume was published in 1566, the second in 
 1567, and Geffraie Fenton's Certaine Tragicall Dis- 
 courses (1567). Few books of the time had a more 
 immediate and profound influence than these. They 
 entertained the court, and were an inspiration to the 
 poets. Had it not been for Painter, the English
 
 70 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 drama would have taken another path. The stories 
 of blood and lust, appropriate to the ferocity of the 
 Italian republics, were eagerly retold by our drama- 
 tists, avid of the fierce emotions which Elizabeth's 
 peaceful England did not encourage in act. 
 
 The tale of borrowings from Painter's Palace is 
 a long one. Shakespeare and Webster, Marston 
 and Massinger, all owe a debt to the ingenious 
 writer whom Ascham savagely condemned. And 
 they could not have gone for their plots to a 
 better source. For Painter was a true child of 
 his age. His ambition, like the ambition of the 
 chroniclers, was encyclopaedic. He aimed, not at 
 telling one story, but at telling all stories. He 
 began at the beginning and carried his work to the 
 very end. It would be difficult to find a plot that 
 has not its origin, or its counterpart, in Painter's 
 treasure-house. His earliest stories are taken from 
 Livy, Herodotus, and Aulus Gellius ; and, presently, 
 he seeks his originals in the works of Queen Margaret 
 and Boccaccio, of Bandello and Straparola. What- 
 ever were the origin and substance of his tales, he 
 reduced them all to a certain plainness. He had a 
 ready talent for story-telling ; he cultivated a straight- 
 forward style ; and, unlike the most of his fellows, 
 he avoided embroidery. His popularity, therefore, 
 is easily explained : his work was quickly intelligible 
 to simple folk, and the dramatists had no difficulty in 
 clothing his dry bones with their romantic imagery. 
 But they acknowledged their debt with a difference.
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 71 
 
 Shakespeare did not scruple to borrow the very words 
 of North and Holinshed. He took no more than the 
 plot from Painter's version of Rhomeo and Julietta. 
 
 Ascham's judgment of Painter and Fenton, foolish 
 and unjust as it is, seems to have been anticipated by 
 the translator of the Tragicall Discourses of Bandello. 
 Fenton, indeed, securely defends himself against the 
 detraction of the puritan. In an epistle dedicatory, 
 addressed to the Lady Mary Sidney, he professes that 
 his choice of stories was made with the best motive. 
 He had no other desire than to improve the occasion. 
 ' Albeit, at the firste sighte,' says he, ' theis discourses 
 maye importe certeine vanytyes or fonde practises in 
 love, yet I doubte not to bee absolved . . ., seinge 
 I have rather noted diversitie of examples in sondrye 
 younge men and women, approvynge suflficientlye 
 the inconvenience happenynge by the pursute of 
 lycenceous desyer, then affected in anye sorte suche 
 uncerteyne follyes.' If Bandello incurred censure, 
 what sentence would have been passed upon 
 Boccaccio ? Though his Decameron was involved in 
 the harsh judgment passed upon Painter's Palace^ 
 though some stories found a place in Turbervile's 
 Tragical Tales, it was not known to England, save 
 in fragments, until 1620. His Philocopo was trans- 
 lated in 1566 by H. Grantham, and, twenty 
 years later, Bartholomew Young did into English 
 the Amorous Fiammetta, ' wherein is sette doune 
 a catalogue of all and singular passions of love 
 and iealosie incident to an enamoured yong gentle-
 
 72 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 man.' Of the other Italian books, thus early done 
 into English, the most famous was Castiglione's // 
 Cortegiano, of which Hoby's version (1561) won the 
 difficult approval of Ascham himself. This book, he 
 said, ' advisedlie read, and diligentlie folowed, but 
 one yeare at home in England, would do a yong 
 gentleman more good, I wisse, then three yeares 
 travell abrode spent in Italie.' And then came 
 Machiavelli, whose Arte of Warre^ as has been said, 
 was Englished by Peter Whitehorne (1560), and of 
 whose Florentine Historic we owe an excellent version 
 to Thomas Bedingfield (1598). But there is no 
 Prince in English until 1640, and thus we are con- 
 fronted by a literary puzzle. 
 
 No work had a profounder influence upon the 
 thought and policy of Tudor England than Machia- 
 velli's Prince. It was a text-book to Thomas Crom- 
 well ; its precepts were obediently followed by Cecil 
 and Leicester. The mingled feare and respect in 
 which its author was held converted him into a mon- 
 strous legend. No writer is more frequently cited, 
 generally with disapproval, than Machiavelli, and it 
 is always the Prince^ which was not translated, and 
 not the Arte of Warre and the Florentine Historie, 
 which were, that arouses the ire of Enghshmen. A 
 German scholar has counted more than three hundred 
 references to the Prince in the works of the dramatists 
 alone, and has traced them to the celebrated treatise 
 of Gentillet : Discours sur les moyens de bien gouverner 
 et maintenir en bonne faix un royaume . . . contre
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 73 
 
 N. Machiavel le Florentin (1576), a work translated 
 into English by Simon Patericke (1602). Thus the 
 hostihty of the EHzabethans against the Florentine 
 was inspired not by the study of the original but by 
 the violent partisanship of a Huguenot. However, 
 if the accident which tooke the Arte of Warre and 
 left the Prince remains unexplained, the preference 
 of French to Itahan is natural enough. The truth 
 is, French was the language best understood by the 
 EngHsh of the sixteenth century. Not merely was it 
 the avenue through which many of the classics passed 
 into our language and our literature ; its familiar use 
 tempted the translators to make known in England 
 the learning and philosophy of France. The French 
 books which we find in EngHsh are many and of many 
 kinds. First in importance is Florio's Montaigne 
 (1603), after which may be placed Danett's Commines 
 (1596), a finished portrait of the poHtician, which 
 partly atones for the absence of the Prince.'^ The 
 indefatigable Arthur Golding translated the Politicke, 
 Moral, and Martiall Discourses, written in French by 
 Jacques Hurault (1595), while Henri Estienne, La 
 Noue, and La Primaudaye all found their way into 
 our EngHsh speech. And France, also, like Italy, has 
 her paradox. As we have no Prince before Dacres, 
 
 * That masterpiece of satiric observation, de la Sale's Les 
 i^inze Joyes de Mariage, should surely have found a translator 
 in the sixteenth century. And, though the earliest version 
 noted bears the date 1694, it is a fourth edition, and earlier in 
 style than the year of its publication.
 
 74 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 so we have no Rabelais before Sir Thomas Urquhart. 
 The influence of Gargantua, now the legendary giant, 
 now Rabelais's own creation, and of Pantagruel, is 
 plain for all to see. They are among the common- 
 places of our dramatists, and, but for the example of 
 Rabelais, at least two masters of prose, Nashe and 
 Harvey, would have written far other than they did. 
 Though a version of Gargantua his Prophecie is 
 entered in Stationers' registers (1592), either it was 
 never published, or it has disappeared, and those who 
 studied the style and gospel of Messer Alcofribas 
 must have studied them in the original. 
 
 There remains Spain, united to England in the 
 bonds of enmity, and then, as now, the land of 
 curiosity and romance. Her influence, widely felt, 
 was deepest in the realms of discovery and mysticism, 
 of manners and chivalry. The great masterpieces, 
 Cervantes' Don Quixote and Exemplary Novels^ and 
 the Celestina of Fernando de Rojas, came to England 
 when the Stewarts sat upon the throne. But the 
 sixteenth century knew no more popular book, no 
 more potent influence than The Diall of Princes^ 
 translated from Guevara by Thomas North (1557), 
 in which may be detected the first seeds of euphuism. 
 Vives taught philosophy, rhetoric, and civil law orally 
 at Oxford, and, by his translated works, to England. 
 The ' spiritual and heavenly exercises ' of Granada 
 brought comfort and inspiration to the devout ; it 
 was through Spain that Amadis and Palmerin came 
 to England ; and many of the bravest adventures
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 75 
 
 chronicled in Hakluyt's treasury of voyages were 
 sought and found in the peninsula. The earliest 
 example of the picaresque novel, Lazarillo de Tormes^ 
 was ' drawen out of Spanish ' by David Rowland 
 (1576), and, among many others, Bartholomew 
 Young, already mentioned as a scholar in Italian, 
 translated from its native Spanish the Diana of Gorge 
 de Montemayor (1598). 
 
 Thus it will be seen that the translators into prose 
 of Elizabeth's reign were impartial, as they were 
 courageous, in their choice. They were appalled 
 neither by the difficulty of strange tongues nor by 
 the freedom of foreign tales. And, various as was 
 their excuse, their style is uniform. As I have said, 
 they made no attempt to represent the niceties of the 
 original in their own tongue. They cut and clipped 
 French and Roman, Spanish and Greek, to the same 
 form and shape. Some were simpler than others ; 
 some were less cunning in the search after strange 
 words. WilHam Adlington, for instance, who might 
 have found in Apuleius an opportunity for all the 
 resources of Elizabethan vigour and Elizabethan 
 slang, treated his author with a certain reserve. But, 
 for the most part, the colour of the translations is the 
 colour of the translator's time and country, and if 
 we study the method of one or two chosen examples, 
 we shall get an insight into the method of them 
 aU.
 
 76 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 IV 
 
 The most famous, and perhaps the best, of 
 Elizabethan translations is Sir Thomas North's 
 Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans (1579). That 
 Shakespeare used it in patient obedience, borrowing 
 words as well as plots, is its unique distinction. But 
 if Shakespeare had never laid upon it that hand of 
 Midas, which transmuted whatever it touched into 
 pure gold, the version had yet been memorable. It 
 is not Plutarch. In many respects it is Plutarch's 
 antithesis. North composed a new masterpiece upon 
 Plutarch's theme. As I have said, he saw Plutarch 
 through Amyot's eye. And the result is neither 
 Amyot nor Plutarch. No book, in truth, ever had a 
 stranger history. There came out of Chaeronea in 
 the first century after Christ a scholar and a writer 
 who was destined to exert a powerful, if indirect, 
 influence upon the greatest of our poets. Thus was 
 Boeotia avenged of her slanderers ; thus did a star 
 of intelligence shine over despised Thebes. The 
 Boeotian wrote a book, which, in due time, fell into 
 the hands of Jacques Amyot. What Amyot did 
 with the book, Montaigne, himself a humble debtor, 
 shall proclaim : ' Je donne avec raison,' he writes, 
 ' ce me semble, la palme a Jacques Amyot, sur touts 
 nos escrivains frangois. . . . Nous, aultres ignorants 
 estions perdus, si ce livre ne nous eust releve du 
 bourbier ; sa mercy, nous osons a cett'heure et parler 
 et escrire : les dames en regentent les maistres 
 d'eschole : c'est nostre breviaire,'
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 77 
 
 And Plutarch's good fortune did not rest here. 
 Amyot's book, which was Montaigne's breviary, 
 came to Thomas North, who embelHshed Amyot, 
 as Amyot had embelHshed Plutarch. North's 
 Plutarch is as far from Amyot's as Amyot's is 
 from its original. Not merely the words, but the 
 very spirit is transformed. Change the names, and 
 you might be reading in North's page of Philip 
 Sydney and Richard Grenville, of Leicester and 
 of the great Lord Burghley. For North, though 
 he knew little of the classics, was a master of noble 
 English. He was neither schoolman nor euphuist. 
 As he freed his language from the fetters which im- 
 mature scholars had cast upon it, so he did not lay 
 upon its bones the awkward chains of a purposed 
 ingenuity. He held a central place in the history of 
 our speech. He played upon Enghsh prose as upon 
 an organ whose every stop he controlled with an easy 
 confidence. He had a perfect sense of the weight 
 and colour of words ; pathos and gaiety, familiarity 
 and grandeur resound in his magnificently cadenced 
 periods. It was his good fortune to handle a lan- 
 guage still fired with the various energy of youth, 
 and he could contrive the effects of sound and sense, 
 which had neither been condemned nor worn out by 
 the thoughtful pedant. Above all, his style had a 
 dramatic quahty, which suggests to the reader a con- 
 stant movement, and the value of which, no doubt, 
 was candidly recognised by Shakespeare. 
 
 An example will best illustrate this peculiar skill
 
 78 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 of the translator. Here is the prelude to the 
 immortal discourse of Coriolanus : ' It was even 
 twy light when he entred the cittie of Antium, 
 and many people met him in the streetes, but 
 no man knewe him. So he went directly to 
 Tullus Aufidius house, and when he came thither, 
 he got him up straight to the chimney harthe, 
 and sat him downe, and spake not a worde to any 
 man, his face all muffled over. They of the house 
 spying him, wondered what he should be, and yet 
 they durst not byd him rise. For, ill-favoredly 
 muffled up and disguised as he was, yet there ap- 
 peared a certaine majestic in his countenance, and in 
 his silence : whereupon they went to Tullus who 
 was at supper, to tell him of the straunge disguising 
 of this man.' The beauty of this passage is incon- 
 testable, and yet it is hard to explain. There is no 
 striving after effect. There are no strange words. 
 If it has a modern air, it is because the words used 
 are of universal significance, and belong neither to 
 this age nor to that. And, simple as they are, they 
 breathe the very spirit of romance. They move and 
 throb with life, as if they were not mere symbols, 
 but were the very essence of drama and of action. 
 Now turn to the French of Amyot, and you will dis- 
 cern the same quality sternly subdued to the finer 
 classicism of the language : ' Ains s'en alia il droict 
 a la maison de Tullus, la ou de primsault il entra 
 jusques au fouyer, et illec asseit sans dire mot a per- 
 sonne, ayant le visage couvert et la teste aff ublee : de-
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 79 
 
 quoy ceulx de la maison feurent bien esbahis, et 
 neantmoins ne I'ozerent faire lever : car encores 
 qu'il se cachast, si recognoissoit on ne sgay quoy de 
 dignite en sa contenance et en son silence, et s'en 
 allerent dire a Tullus, qui souppoit, ceste estrange 
 fagon de faire.' 
 
 At first sight the economy of the French is 
 apparent. The words are fewer and are held to- 
 gether by a firmer thread than in the English ver- 
 sion. And North has contrived by a touch here and 
 there to give a picturesqueness to the scene which 
 neither the French nor the Greek warrants. For 
 instance, ' they of the house spying him ' introduces 
 a new image. Ceulx de la maison is in Amyot's ver- 
 sion and corresponds to 01 koto, r-qv oiKiav. The 
 spying is North's own legitimate invention. And 
 again, the words ' ill-favoredly muflSed up and dis- 
 guised as he was,' which give an accent to the whole 
 passage, represent no more than a particle in the 
 Greek (f]v ydp n koI irepl auTov, k.t.A.), and are 
 far more finely dramatic than the French : encores 
 qu'il se cachast. Moreover, the last words of the 
 EngHsh passage, ' the straunge disguising of this 
 man,' find their excuse neither in French nor in 
 Greek. There is a commonness of phrase in tj)i/ 
 droTTiav ToO ;r/)dy/iaTos as in ceste estrange fa(^on 
 de faire^ which finds no echo in North's splendidly 
 inaccurate rendering. He instantly calls your atten- 
 tion from the thing to the man, and asks you to look 
 once again at the strange mufiled figure sitting by
 
 8o LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 the hearth. And this, perhaps, is one of his secrets : 
 an intent always to flatter the eye as well as the ear, 
 and to reveal in pictures the meaning of his author. 
 At any rate, there are few who, were the choice given 
 them, would not rather read Plutarch in the noble 
 English of North than in the restrained and some- 
 times inexpressive Greek of Plutarch. North, it is 
 true, turned Plutarch's men into heroes of English 
 blood and bone, but, in separating them thus ruth- 
 lessly from their origin, he endowed them with a 
 warm, pulsing humanity, of which their author 
 dreamed not. 
 
 Philemon Holland was a translator of another kind. 
 His legendary pen was apt for any enterprise. He 
 was a finished master utriusque linguae, and so great 
 was his industry that he is not the hero of one but of 
 half a dozen books. It was not for him to ask the 
 aid of French or Italian. He went straight to the 
 ancient texts — Greek or Latin — and brought back 
 with him to his native English spoils which were 
 legitimately his own. His whole career was a proper 
 training for the work of his mature years. Born in 
 1552, he was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, 
 and, having studied medicine, settled at Coventry in 
 the practice of his profession. But humane letters had 
 laid a stern hand upon him, and, while he cured the 
 poor in charity, he became usher in the Coventry 
 Grammar School, and gave his life to scholarship and
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 8i 
 
 the Muses, Fuller, who had a genius for devising 
 names, called him ' the Translator Generall in his 
 age,' and it is thus that he will be remembered unto 
 the end of time. 
 
 As I have said, his knowledge of Greek and 
 Latin was accurate and profound. Still rarer was 
 his knowledge of English. True, he did not 
 possess the tact and simplicity of North. He could 
 not produce wonderful effects by the use of a few 
 plain words. His was the romance not of feeling, 
 but of decoration. He loved ornament with the 
 ardour of an ornamental age, and he tricked out his 
 authors with all the resources of Elizabethan English. 
 The concision and reticence of the classics were as 
 nothing to him. He was ambitious always to clothe 
 them in the garb which they might have worn had 
 they been not mere Englishmen, but fantastics of his 
 own age. Like all his contemporaries, he was eager 
 to excuse his own shortcomings. ' According to this 
 purpose and intent of mine,' he wrote, ' I frame 
 my pen, not to any affected phrase, but to a meane 
 and popular stile. Wherein, if I have called againe 
 into use some old words, let it be attributed to the 
 love of my countrey language : if the sentence be not 
 so concise, couched and knit togither as the originall, 
 loth I was to be obscure and darke ; have I not Eng- 
 lished every word aptly ? ech nation hath several 
 maners, yea, and tearmes appropriate by themselves.' 
 
 His phrase is often affected, his style is neither 
 mean nor popular ; and thus far he speaks the lan- 
 
 F
 
 82 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 guage of convention. The rest of the passage is the 
 soundest criticism. Holland had a natural love of 
 the old words and proverbs which distinguished his 
 country language. His sentences are seldom con- 
 cise or knit together, and his translations, though not 
 apt to their originals, are apt enough to the language 
 of their adoption. If he seldom echoed the sound of 
 Greek and Latin, he never missed the sense, nor did 
 he feare a comparison of his own work with the 
 classical texts. When it was said that his versions 
 were not in accord with the French or Italian, he 
 knew that he was in the right of it. ' Like as Alci- 
 biades said to one ' — thus he wrote — ' irdra^ov ovv 
 Ktti aKovaov, i.e. Strike hardly (Euribiades), so you 
 hear me speake : even so I say ; Find fault and 
 spare not ; but withal, read the original better before 
 you give sentence.' Let his own test be applied to 
 him, and he will not fail. Take, for instance, a 
 famous passage in the fifth book of Livy, which 
 describes the salvation of the Capitol from the Gauls. 
 Here is the Latin, simple and straightforward : 
 * Anseres non fefellere, quibus sacris Junonis in summa 
 inopia cibi tamen abstinebatur. Quae res saluti fuit ; 
 namque clangore eorum alarumque crepitu excitus 
 M. Manlius, qui triennio ante consul fuerat, vir bello 
 egregius, armis arreptis simul ad arma ceteros ciens 
 vadit.' 
 
 Holland's English, close as it keeps to the text 
 of Livy, has its own colour and quality : ' But they 
 could not so escape the geese ' — thus it runs — -
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 83 
 
 * which were consecrated unto Juno, and for all the 
 scarcitie of victuals were spared and not killed up. 
 And this it was that saved them all. For with their 
 gagling and fluttering of their wings, M. Manlius, 
 who three yea res before had been Consul, a right 
 hardie and noble warriour, was awaked. Who taking 
 weapon in hand, speedily went forth and raised the 
 rest vvdthall to take armes.' The English has a plain- 
 ness to which Holland very rarely attains ; but it is 
 not its plainness nor its perfect harmony that gives 
 it a character of its own. In the first place, ' gagling ' 
 arrests the ear so sharply, that the reader is as wide 
 awake as M. Manlius himself. And then how ad- 
 mirable in sound and sense is the equivalent of vir 
 bello egregius — ' a right hardie and noble warriour ! ' 
 It is by such touches as this, and by a feeling of what 
 is musical in prose, which never deserted him, that 
 Holland produced his effects. 
 
 His failing from a pedantic point of view is 
 an excess of ornament. He was not always con- 
 tent to say what he had to say once. He 
 delighted to turn a statement about — to put it 
 now in this light, now in that. * Jacta est alea,' 
 writes Suetonius. ' The dice be thrown,' says 
 Holland ; ' I have set up my rest ; come what will 
 of it.' His variety and resources are endless. In a 
 single passage he makes VitelHus his own contem- 
 porary, ' Being given most of all to excessive bellie 
 cheere and crueltie,' he writes, * he devided his repast 
 into three meales every day at least, and sometimes
 
 84 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 into foure, to wit, Breakefast, Dinner, Supper, and 
 rere-bankets.' From this, the last drop of Latin 
 austerity is gone. And you can hear Vespasian riot- 
 ing with his friends when Holland writes : ' given 
 exceedingly hee was to skoffs, and those so skurrile 
 and filthy, that he could not so much as forbeare words 
 of ribaudrie. And yet there be many right pleasant 
 conceited jests of his extant.' 
 
 In such terms as these might Rabelais have com- 
 posed the lives of the Roman Emperors. Excellent 
 in tone and movement as is the Suetonius, in some 
 respects his Pliny is Holland's masterpiece. The 
 difficulty of this enterprise was far greater. If the 
 obstacle in the way of a familiar rendering might have 
 seemed insuperable, Holland has easily surmounted 
 it. He has thawed the frigid original at the fire of 
 his romantic temper. ' Sirrah (quoth he) remember 
 you are but a shoemaker, and therefore meddle no 
 higher I advise you than with shoes.' The mere 
 ' Sirrah ' carries you leagues away from Apelles, and 
 the shoemaker whom he bade look to his last, and 
 reminds you of the truth that Holland, like the old 
 painters, put the noblest of his Greeks and Romans 
 into doublet and hose. 
 
 His industry was universally applauded. He com- 
 posed folios with as little toil as other men give to 
 the writing of pamphlets. The two largest of his 
 works are separated by a bare year. It was said that 
 he wrote the whole of Plutarch's Morals with one 
 pen — a pen which became mythical. ' It seemed that
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS S5 
 
 he leaned very lightly on the Neb thereof,' says Fuller, 
 * though weightily enough in another sense, perform- 
 ing not slightly but solidly what he undertook.' 
 Fuller, with his usual good sense, puts his finger 
 upon the truth. It was the solidity of Holland's 
 achievement, not its extent, which was remarkable. 
 His industry was always well directed. Few writers 
 have ever kept so consistently at a high level of excel- 
 lence. He was no master in the art of sinking. His 
 narrative never flags ; his argument knows no failure. 
 His style was apt alike for history or reflection. And 
 if he did not accurately represent in English the 
 prose of Livy and Plutarch, of Suetonius and Pliny, 
 he left us a set of variations upon ancient motives, 
 to which we may listen with an independent and 
 unalloyed pleasure. 
 
 VI 
 
 John Florio's Montaigne holds a place apart. This 
 translator had neither the sentiment of North nor 
 the scholarship of Holland. He brought to his task 
 that which neither the one nor the other of these 
 masters possessed — a curious fantasy, which was all 
 his own. He was of the stuff whereof pedants are 
 made. He delighted in eccentricity and extravagance. 
 His prefaces are masterpieces of pomp and decoration. 
 Asking, in a breathless refrain, ' Madame, now do I 
 flatter you ? ' he exhausts the language of adulation, 
 until at last he falls back upon ecstatic repetitions. 
 He dedicates the first book of his Montaigne ' to the
 
 86 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 Right Honourable my best-best Benefactors, and 
 most-most honoured Ladies, Lucie Countesse of 
 Bedford ; and hir best-most loved-loving mother 
 Lady Anne Harrington.' He plays upon words ; he 
 lets sound take the place of sense ; he cultivates 
 alliteration, and pleads guilty to ' a jirke of the French 
 jargon.' A plain simplicity is beyond his reach ; 
 he fetches his frequent images from afar. He declares 
 that in his translation he serves ' but as Vulcan, to 
 hatchet this Minerva from that Jupiter's bigge 
 braine.' When he contemplates his finished work, he 
 strikes an attitude of valiance. ' I sweat, I wept, and 
 I went-on, til now I stand at bay.' He is modest 
 only when he thinks of his original. ' Him have I set 
 before you,' says he, ' perhaps without his trappings,' 
 and his ' meate without sauce.' He keeps a stern face 
 even in the presence of his ' peerlesse, and in all good 
 gifts unparagonised Ladies ' ; he tells his reader that 
 he is ' still resolute John Florio ' ; and there is always 
 more of Bobadill in his bearing than of Holofernes. 
 
 Upon his version of Montaigne's Essays he ex- 
 hausted his gifts and lavished his temperament. 
 He loved words for their own sakes with a love which 
 Montaigne would not have appreciated, and which 
 will be easily intelligible to all who know Florio's 
 famous Worlde of Wordes, Turn where you will in 
 his translation, and you will find flowers of speech, 
 which grow not in the garden of the original. ' Je n'y 
 vauls rien,' says Montaigne, and Florio interprets : 
 * I am nothing worth, and I can never fadge well.'
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 87 
 
 For soufflet Florio can find nothing simpler than ' a 
 whirret in the ear ' ; iox finesses verbales he gives us 
 * verbal wily-beguilies,' surely a coinage of his own. 
 Fade becomes ' wallowish,' and crestez is admirably- 
 rendered by ' pert and cocket.' The ' jirke of the 
 French jargon,' already mentioned, is evident in such 
 borrowed words as ' tintamare,' ' entrecuidance,' 
 ' friandize,' and ' mignardize,' He is as fond as 
 Montaigne himself of proverbial phrases. ' I will 
 have them to give Plutarch a bob upon mine own 
 lips ' has precisely the same sense and sound as the 
 French : ' Je veux qu'ils donnent une nazarde a 
 Plutarque sur mon nez.' And, though the metaphor 
 is changed, * he hath had the canvas ' (as who should 
 say ' he hath had the sack ') is an excellent match for 
 ' cettuy-cy aura donne du nez a terre.' It will be seen 
 that Florio's method was neither just nor accurate. 
 He made no attempt to suppress himself as we are 
 told a good translator should. The reader never 
 forgets that ' resolute John Florio ' is looking out 
 from the page as well as Montaigne. He is often 
 inaccurate, and not seldom he misses the point. But 
 compare his version with Cotton's, and you will not 
 hesitate to give the palm to Florio. Cotton's trans- 
 lation is a sound and scholarly piece of work ; Florio's 
 is a living book. 
 
 VII 
 
 The translations in verse made in the age of the 
 Tudors may not be compared with the translations
 
 88 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 in prose. For their inferiority there are many plain 
 reasons. Only a poet can render in another tongue 
 the works of a poet, and even a poet cannot ensure 
 a just interpretation. Between one language and 
 another there are many obstacles of metre and style, 
 of temper and music, which are most often insuper- 
 able. Moreover, in the sixteenth century, the trans- 
 lating of prose was governed by so wise a convention, 
 that mere journeymen could attempt a delicate task 
 without risking conspicuous failure. The secret of 
 verse could not be thus easily imparted, and much 
 that won the approval of its own time appears to us 
 the saddest of doggerel. Of the one or two poets 
 who were content to take the invention of others for 
 the theme of their verse, Henry Howard, the Earl of 
 Surrey, is the first in age and interest. Born in 1 5 1 7 he 
 displayed in the highest measure the restless curiosity 
 of his time. Courtier, soldier, poet, jouster, lover of 
 chivalry, he held nothing beyond the reach of his 
 skill and courage. Apt for experiment, he was always 
 eager to try and to test whatever was new, and in his 
 translations from the Aeneid he comes before us as 
 the inventor of English blank verse. 
 
 It is said that Chaucer's Tale of Melibee was 
 an example to him, and though he was plainly 
 a pupil of Chaucer, the twisted specimens of 
 blank verse supposed to have been detached from 
 that piece of prose are not enough to take from 
 Surrey the pride of discovery. And after all the 
 invention would have been natural enough, even
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 89 
 
 had the Itahans not anticipated it. Surrey was 
 a true classic in temperament, and he was familiar 
 with the unrhymed verse of the ancients. What 
 is more to the point than how he found the metre 
 is what he did with it when he had found it, and 
 it cannot be said that he used it with a marvellous 
 success. Some innovators there are who leave little 
 enough for their followers to accomplish. Van Eyck, 
 the only begetter of painting in oil, showed himself not 
 a primitive but a finished craftsman. You might 
 think from Tamerlane and Dr. Faustus and Edward II. 
 that Marlowe was at the end, not at the beginning, 
 of a great tradition. Fielding was the first of our 
 novelists, and is still unsurpassed. Surrey's trans- 
 lations, on the other hand, are remembered, not for 
 their mastery, but because they are composed in 
 the metre, which Marlowe and Shakespeare and 
 Milton presently endowed with their own immortal 
 music. 
 
 Having invented blank verse, Surrey used it timidly 
 and with caution. Rarely does he run one line into 
 another, and his version gives the mournful im- 
 pression that it was cut into lengths, as it were, 
 mechanically. His love of monosyllable is as con- 
 stant as Tennyson's, and he varies his caesura as 
 seldom as he strengthens his line with long and 
 weighty words. He keeps close enough to the Latin 
 original, and for all his neatness fills his reader with 
 wonder that so poor an instrument, as he wields, 
 should have attained in the hands of Shakespeare
 
 go LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 and Milton the effect, which it did, of variety and 
 pomp. The familiar passage from the fourth Aeneidy 
 which follows, is characteristic in monotony and 
 sparseness : 
 
 ' It was then night ; the sound and quiet sleep 
 Had through the earth the wearied bodies caught ; 
 The woods, the raging seas are fallen to rest ; 
 When that the stars had half their course declined ; 
 The fields whist, beasts, and fowls of divers hue, 
 And what so that in the broad lakes remained. 
 Or yet among the bushy thicks of brier. 
 Laid down to sleep by silence of the night 
 'Gan swage their cares, mindless of travails past.' 
 
 These lines show none of the colour and riot dear to 
 the poets of Elizabeth's age. Skimped of effect, they 
 wear the aspect of a modern experiment. 
 
 Lord Surrey's version of Virgil was followed half a 
 century later by the First Book of Lucan, Englished by 
 Marlowe, and it would not be easy to find a clearer 
 contrast than is evident between these two works. 
 Marlowe tackled his difficult enterprise with fire 
 and spirit. He delighted in the closely serried bom- 
 bast of his author, with whose style his own was in 
 sympathy. Those there are who find Marlowe's 
 version too ' slow and dignified.' But it is a poet's 
 comment upon a poet, and is many leagues removed 
 from Surrey's pallid version of Virgil. The move- 
 ment of the English grows swifter with the movement 
 of the Latin, for Marlowe, not content to tell the 
 story in his own tongue, did his best to represent the
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 91 
 
 sound and fashion of the original. It is thus that 
 he renders the famous lines at the end of the book : 
 
 * These sad presages were enough to scare 
 The quivering Romans ; but worse things affright them. 
 As Maenas full of wine on Pindus raves, 
 So runs a matron through the amazed streets. 
 Disclosing Phoebus' fury in this sort : 
 " Paean, whither am I haled ? where shall I fall, 
 Thus borne aloft? I see Pangaeus' hill 
 With hoary top, and under Haemus' mount, 
 Philippi plains. Phoebus, what rage is this? 
 Why grapples Rome, and makes war, having no foes? 
 Whither turn I now ? thou lead'st me toward th' east. 
 Where Nile augmenteth the Pelusian sea : 
 This headless trunk that lies on Nilus' sand 
 I know. Now throughout the air I fly 
 To doubtful Syrtes and dry Afric, where 
 A Fury leads the Emathian bands." ' 
 
 Here is a bold attempt to transmute the close, con- 
 gested Latin into English, not as a scholar, but as a 
 poet, might transmute it. 
 
 VIII 
 
 The enterprise of translation into verse was yet 
 further hampered by a vain love of experiment. An 
 age which desired to leave nothing untried did its 
 best to introduce the hexameter into Enghsh verse, 
 and, as Virgil and Ovid composed their poems in 
 hexameters, it seemed proper to some translators to 
 follow an ahen example. Ascham began an eager con-
 
 92 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 troversy both by practice and precept. In his 7oxo- 
 philus, he gave the world some poor specimens of 
 the kind. The exercise of some ingenuity may scan 
 the hnes which follow : 
 
 ' What thing wants quiet and meri rest endures but a smal 
 while. 
 
 Both merie songs and good shoting dehteth Apollo.' 
 
 His precept was better than his practice. He con- 
 demned the English hexameter far more effectively 
 than he wrote it. Carmen exametrum, said he, ' doth 
 rather holte and hoble than run smothly in an English 
 tong.' The question, once posed, was hotly debated. 
 Gabriel Harvey wished no other epitaph than this : 
 * the inventor of the English hexameter.' Spenser 
 gave Harvey a ready approval, and Nashe, of course, 
 took the other side. ' The Hexameter verse,' says 
 he, with excellent sense, * I grant to be a gentleman 
 of an auncient house (so is many an Enghsh beggar) ; 
 yet this clyme of ours hee cannot thrive in.' Time has 
 proved the justice of Nashe's opinion. The experi- 
 ments of Spenser and Harvey were long since forgotten, 
 and those who turned Virgil and Ovid into their own 
 measures are remembered only as curiosities. 
 
 By far the bravest of them was Richard Stanyhurst, 
 who, in 1582, pubhshed the First Foure Bookes oj 
 Virgil his Aeneis translated intoo English heroical 
 verse. He was an Irishman, born in Dublin, and 
 entered University College, Oxford, as a Commoner in 
 1561. He wrote the Irish Chronicle for Hohnshed^
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 93 
 
 as well as commentaries on Porphyry and other 
 works in Latin. He presently found his way to 
 Louvain, where he studied in the English College, 
 and to Antwerp, where he professed alchemy, and 
 ' took upon him to make gold.' Thence he found 
 his way to Spain, where he practised as a physician, 
 and ended a life of adventure as a ' massing priest ' 
 in the Low Countries. His life and his work are of 
 one piece. Whether he wrote in prose or verse, he 
 surpassed in a fantastic eccentricity the vainest of his 
 contemporaries. Never was there a stranger mixture 
 of pedantry and slang than is to be found in his work. 
 His criticism is his own and expressed in his own 
 terms. The verses of Ennius, he says, ' savoure 
 soomwhat nappy of thee spigget,' and he classes him 
 with Horace, Juvenal, and Persius among a ' rablement 
 of cheate Poetes.' Virgil, on the other hand, ' for his 
 peerlesse style, and matchlesse stuffe doth beare 
 thee prick and price among al thee Roman Poets.' 
 He declares that, if any hold that Phaer's version 
 lightened his enterprise, they ' are altogether in a 
 wrong box.' He offers to go over these books again, 
 and give them a new livery, which shall neither ' jet 
 with Mr. Phaer his badges, ne yeet bee clad with this 
 apparaile wherewith at this present they coom furth 
 atyred.' Indeed, he makes light of his labour. 
 Phaer took fifteen days to translate the fourth book. 
 He ' huddled up ' his in ten. And for this he asks 
 no praise but pardon, adding, characteristically, that 
 * foreUttring bitches whelp blynd puppies.' But,
 
 94 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 though he wasted not his time, he did nothing at 
 haphazard. He expounds his theory of the hexa- 
 meter with great care, and gives every syllable its 
 proper quantity, varying its length according to its 
 termination and to the consonant or vowel which 
 follows it. His labour is lost. Even if his theory 
 were admissible, it would not save his version from 
 ridicule. 
 
 Yet, absurd as it is, Stanyhurst's Virgil is worth 
 examination. It is a work which owes no debt to 
 anything save to its author's perverted ingenuity. 
 Orthography, metre, vocabulary, are each unique. 
 Stanyhurst aimed, not merely at a new prosody, but at 
 a new language. He invented a set of onomatopoeic 
 symbols, which you cannot match elsewhere in litera- 
 ture. What can we make of such lines as these : 
 
 ' Theese flaws theyre cabbans wyth stur snar jarrye doe 
 ransack. 
 
 Now doe they rayse gastly lyghtnings, now grislye re- 
 
 boundings 
 Of ruffe raff"e roaring, mens harts with terror agrysing, 
 With peale meale ramping, with thwick thwack sturdelye 
 
 thundring? ' 
 
 Not content with these mimicries of sound, he in- 
 vented whatever new words seemed useful for his 
 purpose. ' Mutterus humming,' ' gredelye bibled,' 
 ' smacklye bebasse thee,' * boucherous hatchet ' — 
 these are a few of his false coins. And he used the 
 slang which was modern in his day for the inter-
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 95 
 
 pretation of Virgil without scruple or shame. Imagine 
 Dido, queen of Carthage, asking in fury : ' shall a 
 stranger give me the slampam ' ! With an equal 
 contempt of fitness he renders pollutum hospitium by 
 * Paltock's Inn,' and so pleased is he with ' Scarboro 
 warning,' for the blow before the word, that he uses it 
 with no better excuse than incautam, and, in another 
 place, he is guilty of ' Scarboro scrabbling,' without 
 any excuse at all. As Httle did he hesitate to mar 
 the epic dignity of Virgil with the popular proverbs 
 of every day, such as ' in straw there lurketh some 
 pad,' or ' as wild as a March hare.' And, being bound 
 in the chains of the hexameter, he distorts the order 
 of the words out of all semblance to English, until 
 his version is wholly unintelligible without the 
 friendly aid of the Latin. 
 
 His monstrous incongruities pleased the taste 
 of his time. Harvey is proud to have been 
 imitated by * learned Mr. Stanyhurst ' ; and Phaer 
 fell, that this ' thrasonicall huffe snuffe ' might 
 rise. Richard Carew mentions him in the same 
 breath with Sir Philip Sidney, and Francis Meres 
 cites him without disapproval. But critics there 
 were who saw through his pretence. Nashe, above 
 all, rated him at a proper value ; and Barnabe Rich 
 did him ample justice in few words : ' Among 
 other Fictions,' says Rich, ' he tooke upon him to 
 translate Virgill, and stript him out of a Velvet 
 gowne into a Fooles coate, out of a Latin Heroicall 
 verse into an English rifie raffe.' The question of
 
 96 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 the English hexameter has received a final answer, 
 and, for us, Stanyhurst is but an episode in the history 
 of literature. What an episode ! His very gravity 
 makes him the more ludicrous, and his only pupils 
 are Charles Cotton, Captain Alexander Radcliffe, 
 Thomas Bridges, and the other writers of burlesque. 
 It is still a wonder that even the Elizabethans, avid 
 as they were of eccentricity, should have relished 
 such stuff as this description (from the Third Aeneid) 
 of Mount Aetna : 
 
 ' Soomtyme owt yt balcketh from bulck clowds grimlve 
 
 bedymmed. 
 Lyke fyerd pitche skorching, or flash flame sulphurus 
 
 heating : 
 Flownce to the stars towring thee fire, like a pellet, is 
 
 hurled, 
 Ragd rocks up raking : and guts of mounten yrented 
 From roote up hee jogleth : stoans hudge slag molten he 
 
 rowseth : 
 With route snort grumbling, in bottom flash furye 
 
 kendling.' 
 
 To Stanyhurst, Thomas Phaer seemed an insignifi- 
 cant competitor. He had enjoyed twenty years 
 of fame before Stanyhurst's version was printed, 
 and, though momentarily depressed, he survived the 
 absurd fashion of the hexameter in the esteem of his 
 contemporaries. Webbe praises his * most gallant 
 verse,' and chooses him as an example to prove ' the 
 meetnesse of our speeche to receive the best forme 
 of poetry.' The proof is deficient. Phaer was no
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 97 
 
 poet, and very ill-skilled to present the beauty of 
 Virgil in English verse. As Anthony a Wood says, 
 he was ' a person of a mutable mind,' who addicted 
 his muse to many studies. Educated at Oxford, he 
 studied law, wrote a work Of the Nature of Writts, 
 and presently adopted medicine as his profession. 
 Translation was his pastime, and, doubtless, his 
 knowledge of the heahng art was profounder than 
 his knowledge of EngHsh or Latin. His Virgil, com- 
 posed in lines of fourteen syllables, hke Golding's 
 Ovid and Chapman's Homer, never rises above a 
 facile mediocrity. The translator constantly sacri- 
 fices taste and sense to the demands of rhyme, and 
 mixes in a kind of familiar jingle the easy statehness 
 of the original. Even in the rare passages which 
 display some movement and energy, he descends 
 suddenly upon the wrong word, and sets the reader 
 on his guard. Here, for instance, is his rendering 
 of the celebrated lines, Monstrum horrendum ingens, 
 etc, in the fourth book : 
 
 ' A monster gastly great, for every plume her carkas beareS 
 Lyke number leering eies she hath, like number harckning 
 
 eares, 
 Lyke number tounges and mouthes she waggs, and 
 
 wondrous thing to speake ; 
 At midnight fourth she flies, and under shade her sounde 
 
 doth squeake.' 
 
 If the first two lines might pass muster, no word can 
 be said in defence of the others. With the word 
 ' squeake,' Phaer descends into bathos, and the best 
 
 G
 
 98 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 that can be said for him is that, while Stanyhurst 
 
 always lets his reason go, Phaer is sometimes 
 sane. 
 
 IX 
 
 The best loved of all the ancient poets was Ovid, 
 whose popularity is attested by many translations of 
 varying worth. The first version in point of date is 
 The Fable of Ovid treting of Narcissus, translated cute 
 of Latin into Englysh Mytre, with a moral therein to, 
 very fleasante to rede. This was followed, five years 
 later, by the first edition of Arthur Golding's work 
 (1565), of which more will be said presently. In 1567 
 George Turbervile translated The Heroycall Epistles 
 of the learned Poet Puhlius Ovidius Naso, and in 1577 
 there came from the press two versions of Ovid 
 his Invective against Ibis, one of which is the work of 
 Thomas Underdowne, to whom, also, we owe the 
 Aethiopian Historie of Heliodorus. Marlowe turned 
 the Elegies into rhymed couplets with a clumsiness, 
 which proves that he was attempting a work ill-suited 
 to his genius, and George Chapman in 1595 pub- 
 lished Ovid's Banquet of Sence, with a Coronet for his 
 Mistresse Philosophy, and his Amorous Zodiak. De 
 Tristibus was Englished by Churchyard (1572), and 
 Francis Beaumont gave proof of his skill in a lively 
 version of Salmacis and Hermaphroditus (1602). The 
 cause of Ovid's popularity is not far to seek. He 
 was an efficient guide to the Greek and Roman 
 mythologies, and he furnished the poets with; theme,
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 99 
 
 sentiment, and allusion. Of all the translations, by 
 far the most famous was Arthur Golding's rendering 
 of the Metamorf hoses. The first edition (1565) 
 contained but four books. In 1567 the work was 
 complete. It is described on the title-page as 
 ' a worke very pleasaunt and delectable,' and a stern 
 couplet warns the reader against frivolity : 
 
 ' With skill, heede, and judgment, thys work must be red. 
 For els to the reader it stands in small stead.' 
 
 Golding's motive, in truth, was above suspicion. 
 His work was 'pleasaunt and delectable' by accident. 
 He wished to improve the occasion before all things. 
 In a long epistle, addressed to Robert, Earl of Leicester, 
 he clearly sets forth his purpose. There is no fable 
 of Ovid which does not make for edification. For 
 instance : 
 
 ' In Phaeton's fable untoo syght the Poet dootli expresse 
 The natures of ambition blynd, and youthful wilfulnesse.' 
 
 So a little ingenuity will interpret every book in a 
 sense most profitable to the reader. That Ovid and 
 his readers were paynims he confesses with regret, 
 and takes heart in the reflection that they may all be 
 reduced ' too ryght of Christian law.' In the same 
 spirit, he hopes that the simple sort of reader will 
 not be offended when he sees the heathen names of 
 feigned gods in the book, and assures him that every 
 living wight, high and low, rich and poor, master 
 and slave, maid and wife, simple and brave, young 
 and old, good and bad, wise and foolish, lout and
 
 loo LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 learned man, shall see his whole estate, words, 
 thoughts, and deeds in this mirror. It is a bold 
 claim of universatility, which Ovid himself would 
 not have made. But it was in tune with the temper 
 of the age, and, doubtless, added to the popularity of 
 the work. 
 
 The chief characteristic of the translation is its 
 evenness. It never falls below or rises above a certain 
 level. Turn whichever page you choose, and you 
 will come upon lines unhampered by the Latin 
 original. Take, for instance, the description of 
 Envy's House : 
 
 ' It standeth in a hollow dale where neyther light of Sunne, 
 Nor blast of any winde or Ayre may for the decpnesse 
 
 come. 
 A dreyrie sad and dolefull den ay full of slouthfull colde, 
 As which ay dimd with smoldring smoke doth never fire 
 
 beholde. 
 When Pallas that same manly Maide approched nere this 
 
 plot, 
 She staide without, for to the house in enter might she not. 
 And with hir Javelin point did give a push against the 
 
 doore. 
 The door flue open by and by, and fell me in the floore. 
 There saw she Envie set within, fast growing on the flesh 
 Of Snakes and Todes, the filthie foode that keepes hir vices 
 
 fresh. 
 It lothde hir to beholde the sight.' 
 
 The craftsmanship is neither slovenly nor distin- 
 guished. The narrative flows through its easy 
 channel without the smallest shock of interruption.
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS loi 
 
 In other words, the style is rapid, fluent, and mono- 
 tonous. The author is never a poet and never a 
 shirk. You may read his melhfluous Hnes with some- 
 thing of the same simple pleasure which the original 
 gives you. Strength and energy are beyond Gold- 
 ing's compass, and he wisely chose a poet to translate, 
 who made no demand upon the qualities he did not 
 possess. He chose a metre, too, very apt for con- 
 tinuous narrative — the long line of fourteen syllables, 
 and it is not strange that his contemporaries bestowed 
 upon him their high approval. Puttenham paid him 
 no more than his due when he described him as ' in 
 translation very cleare and very faithfully answering 
 his author's intent.' He won the rare and difficult 
 praise of Thomas Nashe, and he was honoured by 
 Shakespeare, who did not disdain to borrow of his 
 verses. The hnes which follow will recall to every 
 one a celebrated passage in The 1 em-pest : 
 
 ' Ye Ayres and windes : ye Elves of Hills, of Brookes, of 
 Woods alone, 
 Of standing Lakes, and of the Night approche ye every- 
 chone. 
 
 And Golding was by no means a man of one 
 book. Educated at Jesus College, Cambridge, he had 
 a scholar's qualification for his many tasks. He turned 
 Latin and French into English with equal faciUty. 
 Had it not been for Holland, he might justly have 
 been called the ' Translator Generall in his age.' A 
 friend of Sir Philip Sidney, he completed that poet's
 
 102 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 translation of De Mornay's Worke concerning the 
 trewnesse of the Christian Religion. To him we owe 
 our earliest and best version of Cesar's Gallic War 
 (1565), besides ^he ahridgemente of the Historie of 
 7rogus Pompeius, gathered and written in the Latin 
 tung by the famous Historiographer Justin (1570), 
 several works translated from Calvin and the Politicke^ 
 Moral and Martial Discourses written in French by 
 M. Jacques Hurault (1595). He set his hand to 
 many enterprises, and failed in none, and Webbe's 
 panegyric might still stand for his epitaph : ' For 
 which Gentleman surely our Country hath greatly 
 to gyve. God thankes : as for him which hath taken 
 infinite paynes without ceasing, travelling as yet 
 indefatigably, and is addicted without society by 
 his continual! laboure to profit this nation and 
 speeche in all kind of good learning.' 
 
 X 
 
 Though Ovid and Virgil were the favourites the 
 other poets were by no means neglected. Though 
 another reign than Elizabeth's saw the completion 
 of Chapman's vigorous and faithful Homer, which 
 Pope should never have displaced. Chapman pub- 
 lished a translation of seven books of the Iliad in 1598, 
 and a word must be said here of his splendid achieve- 
 ment. To do full justice to Chapman's work a con- 
 tinuous reading is necessary. It shines less brightly 
 in isolated passages than in its whole surface, various
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 103 
 
 and burnished, like the shield of Achilles, It is a 
 poet's echo of a poet — loud and bold. Justly may 
 the same indulgence be granted Chapman which he 
 would claim for Homer : he ' must not bee read for 
 a few lynes with leaves turned over caprichiously in 
 dismembred fractions, but throughout, the whole 
 drift, weight, and height of his workes set before the 
 apprensive eyes of his judge.' Then shall we per- 
 ceive the true merit of Chapman's masterpiece. 
 From end to end it gives proof of an abounding hfe, 
 a quenchless energy. There is a grandeur and spirit 
 in Chapman's rendering, not unworthy the original, 
 ' of all bookes extant in all kinds the first and best.' 
 The long, swinging line of fourteen syllables, chosen 
 for the Iliad^ is the fairest representative of Homer's 
 majestic hexameters, and it is a matter for regret that 
 Chapman preferred the heroical distich in his render- 
 ing of the Odyssey. 
 
 See, from a single scene, how Chapman pictured 
 the shield of Achilles : 
 
 * He set neare this, a vine of gold ; that crackt beneath the 
 
 weight 
 Of bunches, blacke with being ripe, to keepe which, at 
 
 the height, 
 A silver raile ranne all along ; and round about it flow'd 
 An azure mote; and to this guard, a quick-set was 
 
 bestow'd 
 Of Tin, one onely path to all ; by which the pressemen came 
 In time of vintage ; youths, and maids, that bore not yet 
 
 the flame
 
 I04 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 Of manly Hymen; baskets bore, of grapes, and mellow 
 
 fruit e. 
 A lad that sweetly toucht a harpe, to which his voice did 
 
 suite, 
 Centered the circles of that youth; all whose skill could 
 
 not do 
 The wantons pleasure to their minds, that danc't, sung, 
 
 whistl'd to.' 
 
 Moreover, Chapman claimed an advantage over his 
 fellows in that he translated his author without a 
 French or Latin intermediary. His knowledge of 
 Greek was not impeccable. Errors due to ignorance 
 or haste are not infrequent, nor need they cause us 
 surprise, if it be true, as he asserts, that he translated 
 the last twelve books in fifteen weeks. As little need 
 they incur our censure. If Chapman, the scholar, 
 sometimes nodded, Chapman, the poet, was ever 
 awake, and his version of Homer will remain 
 one among the masterpieces of his age and 
 country. 
 
 In his prefaces he vindicates both Homer and him- 
 self from the detraction of enemies. Admitting 
 proudly that his manner of writing is ' farre fecht, 
 and, as it were, beyond sea,' he defends, as well he 
 may, his ' varietie of new wordes.' If ' my countrey 
 language were an usurer,' says he, ' hee would thanke 
 mee for enriching him.' Chaucer had more new 
 words than any man since him need devise, * and 
 therefore for currant wits to crie from standing 
 braines, like a broode of Frogs from a ditch, to have
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 105 
 
 the ceaseless flowing river of our tongue turnde into 
 their Frogpoole, is a song farre from their arrogation 
 of sweetnes.' And, ready as he was, in his ' harmlesse 
 and pious studie,' to esteem the poHcies and wisdoms 
 of his enemies at no more value than a musty nut, he 
 was readier still to champion the fame of Homer, 
 especially against the ' soule-blind Scaliger ' and his 
 * impalsied diminuation.' He did not belittle the 
 beauty of the Aeneid, but, with perfect truth, de- 
 clared that Homer's poems were ' writ from a free 
 furie,' Virgil's out of a ' courtly, labourious, and 
 altogether imitatorie spirit.' Thus he was loyal 
 alike in commentary and interpretation, and, as he 
 hailed Homer ' the Prince of Poets,' so he himself 
 may justly be styled the prince of poetical translators. 
 Even he had his forerunners. In 1579 Thomas 
 Purfoote gave to English what he calle The Croune of 
 Homer's Works, or The Battel of the Frogges and Myce, 
 and, in 1 5 8 1 , Arthur Hall, M.P. for Grantham,translated 
 ten books of the Iliad from the French. Hall was of 
 a turbulent spirit, in politics or out of it, a gambler 
 and a brawler, but courageous withal, and untamed 
 by his upbringing in Cecil's household. He had no 
 Greek, and approached Homer through the timid 
 version of Solel, whose timidity he found no diffi- 
 culty in avoiding. He says that Ascham (he calls 
 him Richard), ' a verie good Grecian, and a familiar 
 acquaintance of Homer,' animated him much ' with 
 great entreatie to goe forwarde with my begun enter- 
 prise.' Ascham, who seems to have heard some of
 
 io6 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 Hall's verses, should have known better. For his 
 model he took Phaer's Virgil, and used that writer's 
 metre of fourteen syllables to the Hne, known as 
 Poulter's measure. ' When I lighted on M. Thomas 
 Phaer's Virgilian English,' thus he writes with great 
 respect, ' quoth I, what have I done ? am I become 
 senselesse, to travaile to be laughed at, to presume 
 and to be scorned, and to put forth myself and not 
 to be received ? ' And, speaking of his Homer as 
 ' Satiricall,' he shows a glimpse of true self-criticism. 
 His Homer is ' satiricall,' as were the travesties. As 
 he followed Phaer in metre, in style, and vocabulary, 
 so he gave a hint to Stanyhurst, who followed him. 
 He is inapposite as only slang could make him. Jove 
 in his doggerel warns Juno to ' talk no more so fonde 
 and fooHshly ' : 
 
 ' Least moved I, with both my fistes I give you banging 
 lawes, 
 And in such sort, as no god here can save you from my 
 clawes,' 
 
 and he rises to his greatest height when he says of 
 Aeneas, gazing on the prowess of Diomedes, that he 
 
 ' Thus behelde the Trojans go to wracke, 
 With wounds and slaughter only one to put them al to 
 
 sacke, 
 And at his pleasure play the Bug.' 
 
 Truly Hall had travelled far on the road away from 
 Homer, and he cannot plead in excuse that Solel 
 was his guide.
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 107 
 
 Of Horace, Thomas Drant Englished both Satires 
 and Epistles, and Ben Jonson translated, in his own 
 stiff fashion, the Ars Poetica; 'which Book amongst 
 the rest of his Strenuous and Sinewy Labours, for 
 its rare profundity, may challenge a just admira- 
 tion of the Learned in this and future Ages, and 
 crowne his name with a lasting memory of never- 
 dying glory ' ; while Timothy Kendall's Flowres of 
 Epigrajnmes (1575 and 1577) were gathered out of 
 sundry authors, and particularly from Martial. The 
 deficiency in Greek drama, as has been said, was made 
 up for by many versions of Seneca, and there was no 
 reason why an Englishman of the sixteenth century, 
 who had not the ancient tongues, should have been 
 deprived of a fair knowledge of the Greek and Latin 
 poets. 
 
 XI 
 
 There is not so long a tale to tell of modern poets. 
 Dante was unknown, and Petrarch was revealed for 
 the most part surreptitiously under the names of his 
 translators. The most widely read of them all was 
 Du Bartas, styled by Gabriel Harvey ' the Treasury 
 of Humanity and the Jewell of Divinity,' whose 
 Divine Weekes and Workes were translated into rhymed 
 decasyllabic verse by Joshua Sylvester (1590-2). The 
 popularity which this version enjoyed is not easily 
 intelligible, and the fact that Milton sought therein 
 some sort of inspiration is not enough to tempt a 
 modern curiosity. Tasso's masterpiece found two
 
 io8 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 translators in Edward Fairfax and Richard Carew, 
 and Sir John Harington, at the behest of Queen 
 Elizabeth, made a version of Ariosto's Orlando 
 Furioso (1591) in eight-lined stanzas. His trans- 
 lation, like the other verse translations of the time, 
 displays ease and fluidity without distinction. Its 
 rapid course knows neither check nor variety. Its 
 style is rather famihar than dignified, and Harington 
 errs like Stanyhurst in the use of modern slang. 
 Such lines as — 
 
 ' They tooke them to a fort, with such small treasure, 
 And in so Scarborow warning they had leasure,' 
 
 suggest the barbarism of the barbarous Aeneid. 
 
 Harington, moreover, embelHshed his text with a set 
 of notes, in which he extols his family and his friends. 
 He was a pedant and a courtier, who took to 
 letters as a pastime, and practised them after the 
 fashion of his kind. In a characteristic preface, he 
 defended the craft of the poet, his chosen author, and 
 his own enterprise. Though the craft, as he knew 
 well enough, needed no apology, he could not refrain 
 from breaking a lance with Puttenham, whose 
 treatise had recently been pubHshed, and who had 
 withheld the ' high and supernatural ' title of maker 
 from mere translators. In his defence of Ariosto, 
 Harington appeals to authority and to sound morals. 
 The Itahan poet, says his translator, follows the rules 
 of Aristotle. More than this, he follows Virgil with 
 a patient fidelity. ' Virgill extolled Aeneas to please
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS 109 
 
 Augustus ; Ariosto prayseth Rogero to the honour 
 of the house of Este.' And does not Alcina beguile 
 Rogero, as Dido beguiled Aeneas ? It is clear, there- 
 fore, that Ariosto should share the common eulogy 
 of Virgil, Indeed, he may claim a higher praise, 
 because there may be found in his many writings 
 passages of which Virgil was incapable — such as the 
 Christian demeanour of Charlemagne in the four- 
 teenth book, and the conversion of Rogero to the 
 Christian faith in the forty-first. Thus Harington 
 treats Virgil as Golding treats Ovid, and reproves 
 him, in sorrow rather than in anger, for his inevitable 
 paganism. As for the mention of himself and his 
 kinsmen in his notes, to which Harington pleads 
 guilty, he made them because Plutarch blamed Homer 
 for nowhere explaining of what stock he was, of what 
 town, or of what country. ' Excuse me, then,' says 
 he, ' if I in a work that may perhaps last longer than 
 a better thing, and being not ashamed of my kindred, 
 name them here and there to no man's offence.' No 
 excuse is necessary. Who would blame a whimsical 
 scholar for chattering of himself, and for interrupting 
 a serious work with amiable anecdotage ? 
 
 Besides the translations openly made and avowed, 
 there are others which masquerade as fresh, un- 
 borrowed works. In his Elizabetha7i Sonnets, Sir 
 Sidney Lee has traced to their origin in France or 
 Italy a vast number of English sonnets. He has 
 proved the debt which the poets of the sixteenth 
 century owed to their predecessors. He has set side
 
 no LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 by side in a close parallel the sonnets of Lodge and 
 Ronsard, of Daniel and Desportes. He has shown 
 most clearly what Wyatt and many others took from 
 Petrarch. He has illustrated the ' influence ' of 
 Marot, du Bellay, de Pontoux, Jacques de Billy, and 
 Durant upon our bards, great and small. As an 
 episode in the history of translation this ' influence ' 
 is of the greatest interest. We should not consider 
 its moral aspect too censoriously. In Puttenham's 
 despite, the Elizabethans do not seem to have re- 
 garded plagiarism as a heinous sin. If they had, who 
 would have escaped condemnation ? No doubt 
 Soothern, who pilfered from Ronsard, and spoiled what 
 he pilfered, deserved all the censure which Putten- 
 ham heaped upon him.^ But there are indications not 
 merely that plagiarism was thought respectable, but 
 
 1 ' Another of reasonable good facilitie in translation,' writes 
 the wise critic In his Arte of English Poesie of Soothern, 'finding 
 certaine of the hymnes of PyiiJarus and of Anacreons odes, and 
 other Lirlclces among the Grcekes very well translated by 
 Rounsard the French poet, and applied to the honour of a great 
 Prince in France, comes our minion and translates the same out 
 of French into English, and applieth them to the honour of a 
 great noble man in England (wherein I commend his reverend 
 minde and duetle) but doth so impudently robbe the French 
 Poet both of his prayse and also of his French termes, that I 
 cannot so much pitie him as be angry with him for his injurious 
 dealing. . . . And in the end (which is worst of all) makes his 
 vaunt that never English singer but his hath toucht Pindar's 
 string which was neverthelesse word by word as Rounsard had 
 said before by like braggery.' Thus Puttenham justly trounced 
 the bungling pickpocket of letters.
 
 TUDOR TRANSLATORS iii 
 
 that a translator might claim as his own that which 
 he had put into English. ' I call it mine,' says 
 Nicholas Grimald of his translation of Cicero's De 
 Officiisy 'as Plautus and Terence called the comedies 
 theirs which they made out of Greek ' ; and, doubt- 
 less, Wyatt, Daniel, Lodge, Spenser, and the rest 
 called the sonnets theirs which they had made out 
 of French and Italian, because they had made them. 
 Ben Jonson did not think it worth while to give 
 Philostratus credit for his ' Drink to me only with 
 thine eyes,' and he left it for the critics of a later age 
 to track every chapter of his Discoveries to its lair. 
 In neither case need the morality of his method be 
 discussed, and Dryden's defence of him may stand 
 as a defence for all save for such burglars as Soothern : 
 ' he has done his robberies so openly, that we may 
 see that he fears not to be taxed by any law. He 
 invades authors like a monarch ; and what would be 
 theft in other poets, is only victory in him.'
 
 ROGUES AND VAGABONDS OF 
 SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 
 
 IN the sixteenth century rogues and vagabonds in- 
 fested every corner of England. They packed 
 the towns, they haunted the countryside to the 
 common danger of peaceful citizens. ' Worke is left 
 at home undone,' wrote Rowlands in his Martin 
 Mark-all (1610), ' and loyterers laze in the streete, 
 lurke in the Ale-houses, and range in the high-waies.' 
 It is difficult to say by what means these vagabonds 
 inflicted the heavier injury on the commonwealth — 
 by their idleness or their depredations. Of many 
 kinds, they were driven by many causes to their 
 shiftless, wandering life. The largest class of all was 
 the ' masterless ' men, who refused to come beneath 
 the yoke of labour, and who hoped by threats or beg- 
 ging to extort the bread which they would not earn 
 with their hands. ' Work they will not,' wrote 
 Edward Hext, a justice of the peace for Somerset- 
 shire in 1596; 'neither can they, without extreme 
 pains, by reason their sinews are so benumbed and 
 
 stiff through idleness, as their limbs being put to any 
 112
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 113 
 
 hard labour will grief them beyond measure : so as 
 they will rather hazard their lives than work.' In 
 brief, they preferred death before toil, and thought 
 it better to confess a felony which was a hanging 
 matter, than to perform the tasks allotted them in 
 the house of correction. 
 
 Another dangerous mob of ' vagrom men ' {Much 
 Ado, III. iii. 26) consisted of the disbanded soldiers, 
 who esteemed it a disgrace, after the free life of the 
 camps, to resume their humble crafts. They, hke 
 their masterless fellows, refused to abandon the 
 liberty of idleness, and since they were strong in arm 
 and resolution they deprived of peace and comfort all 
 those, who dwelt in upland towns and little villages. 
 And after them came the bands of adventurers, whose 
 trades made vagabondage inevitable, men whole and 
 mighty in body, who used no ' merchandise, craft, or 
 mystery whereby they might get their living.' These 
 were of various character and many pursuits — fencers, 
 who for centuries were accounted the promoters of 
 idleness, ballad-mongers, and minstrels, who carried 
 sedition up and down the country in their songs, 
 bearwards, whose bears devoured many a child play- 
 ing at the roadside, common players, who belonged 
 to no baron of this realm, ' bawkers,' who haunted 
 bowling-alleys to cozen the poor fools who resorted 
 thither for sport, scholars of Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge, who went abroad begging, without the 
 authority of the Vice-Chancellor, shipmen, pretend- 
 ing losses at sea, together with a vast mob of jugglers, 
 
 H
 
 114 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 tinkers, and petty chapmen. A motley crew indeed, 
 which, while it levied an infamous toll upon rich and 
 poor, endued the roads of England with the colours 
 of romance, and lent the excitement of uncertainty 
 to the lives of the people. 
 
 Thus year by year the rogues and vagabonds in- 
 creased in number, until in 1596 it could be said 
 with truth that ' the able men that were abroad, 
 seeking the spoil and confusion of the land, could, if 
 they were reduced to good subjection, give the great- 
 est enemy her Majesty hath a strong battle, and (as 
 they were then) were so much strength to the enemy.' 
 In the meantime the gipsies were gathering in force, 
 and leading their free lawless life under the stars. 
 It was in the beginning of the sixteenth century that 
 they made their first appearance, and the mystery 
 of their coming and going was still unsolved. Though 
 they were called Egyptians, or in derision, Moonmen, 
 there were few who believed in their eastern origin. 
 ' Ptolomy, I warrant,' says Dekker, ' never called 
 them his subjects, no, nor Pharao before him.' And 
 the same writer, declaring that their complexion is 
 filthier than the tawny face of a red-ochre man, is sure, 
 in defiance of the truth, that it is not their own. 
 * Yet are they not borne so,' says he, ' neither has the 
 Sunne burnt them so, but they are painted so.' 
 
 Concerning their organisation and pursuits there 
 is little difference of opinion. Their headquarters 
 were in the Derbyshire Peak, whence they travelled 
 southward over the country — 'Egyptian grass-
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 115 
 
 hoppers that eate up the fruites of the earth ' — fre- 
 quenting fairs and pillaging farmyards. It was an 
 order among them, that ' none eate meat, as Pigges, 
 Capons, Geese, or such like, unlesse he purchaise it 
 by privie pilfery, or cleanly conveyance.' They 
 travelled in companies of a hundred or more, men 
 and women, and detached flying squadrons of four or 
 five to do the work of cozenage by which they eked 
 out the living they made by the roadside. They 
 lightly deceived the common people, ' wholly ad- 
 dicted and given to novelties, toyes, and new fangles,' 
 whom they delighted with the strangeness of their 
 headgear, and of whose credulity they took an easy 
 advantage. Wherever they went they practised 
 legerdemain, or fast and loose, they professed a know- 
 ledge of physiognomy, palmistry, and other abused 
 sciences, and by foretelling in the hand destinies, 
 deaths, and fortunes, they robbed poor country girls 
 of money and linen. Truly, they were ' charmers,' 
 as Othello called the Egyptian, who gave the fatal 
 handkerchief to his mother : 
 
 ' She was a charmer, and could almost read 
 The thoughts of people ; she told her, while she kept it, 
 'Twould make her amiable and subdue my father 
 Entirely to her love.' {Othello, in. iv. 58-61.) 
 
 Shakespeare, as always, took the humaner view. That 
 the gipsies were more harshly spoken of in general 
 than they deserved is not wholly strange. They 
 were enemies at once of the law-maker and the law-
 
 ii6 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 breaker. The sturdy rogue, thinking that they took 
 the bread out of his dishonest mouth, hated them as 
 bitterly as did the constable, whose duty it was to 
 arrest them. And so strong was the general feeling 
 against them that they would have one and all gone 
 to the gallows, had not the lawyers declared them 
 not chargeable with felony, because, Scotland being 
 their last home, they had not come into England from 
 beyond the sea. 
 
 II 
 
 Many causes contributed to the vast increase of 
 rogues and vagabonds. The old spirit of almsgiving, 
 lavish and improvident, was no more. The territorial 
 aristocracy had not yet recovered from the heavy 
 blow dealt by the Wars of the Roses. The dis- 
 solution of the monasteries had destroyed the aris- 
 tocracy of the Church. Stow unfeignedly regrets the 
 ancient habit of generosity, which persuaded the great 
 men of our realm to give relief to the poor. ' I my- 
 selfe,' he writes, ' in that declining time of charity, 
 have oft seene at the Lord Cromwel's gate in London, 
 more than two hundred persoas served twise every 
 day with bread meate and drinke sufficient, for hee 
 observed that auncient and charitable custome as all 
 prelates, noble men, or men of honour and worship 
 his predecessors had done before him.' For good 
 or evil this ancient custom was dead. The poor, 
 brought up to rely upon the munificence of others, 
 found the doors of their benefactors closed suddenly
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 117 
 
 against them, and were forced into the devious paths 
 of begging and extortion. 
 
 The abbots, moreover, had been kindly landlords. 
 They had always been ready to come to the aid of their 
 tenants, and had done their best to lessen the risks 
 which still beset the craft and mystery of farming. 
 They did not hesitate to remit their rents, when bad 
 seasons had made payment a hardship, and the con- 
 fiscation of their land drove many an honest tiller of 
 the soil to begging. But, great as was the injury 
 inflicted upon agricultural England by Henry viii.'s 
 policy, there was another and deeper reason for the 
 prevailing distress. Though it was hardly recognised 
 at the time, a silent and far-reaching revolution was 
 in progress. The merchants of England were ac- 
 quiring a wealth and influence which had never been 
 theirs, and they marked the first step which they took 
 in prosperity by the purchase of land. With all speed 
 they bought farms ' out of the hands of worshipful 
 gentlemen, honeste yeomen, and poor laborynge 
 husbands.' An immense increase of manufactures, 
 had it not been checked at will by extortionate taxa- 
 tion, might have provided fresh work for idle hands, 
 but the moment of transition, as always, was attended 
 with great difficulty, and the new owners of the soil 
 felt no inherited responsibility for the welfare of those, 
 who had served their predecessors. The old re- 
 lations which had bound the husbandman to his land 
 were passing away ; the merchant, proud of the 
 wealth which he had acquired himself, did not under-
 
 ii8 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 stand the obligation of generosity ; the labourers 
 whom he found attached to the soil were as nothing 
 to him, nor did he scruple to turn them straightway 
 adrift. ' Some also,' wrote Harrison, ' doo grudge 
 at the great increase of people in these dales, think- 
 ing a necessarie brood of cattell farre better than a 
 superfluous augmentation of mankind.' Such men 
 he likened unto the pope and the devil, and rightly 
 did he see in them a danger for the future. ' If it 
 should come to passe,' he added, ' that any forren in- 
 vasion should be made, which the Lord God forbid 
 for his mercies sake ! — then should these men find that 
 a wall of men is farre better than stackes of corne and 
 bags of monie, and complaine of the want when it is 
 too late to seeke remedie.' 
 
 And they were likely to find more money than corn. 
 For everywhere the plough was being suppressed, 
 pasture was replacing arable, and many a labourer was 
 driven upon the pad, to learn in starvation the hard 
 shifts of beggary and crime. A single boy can mind 
 a flock of sheep ; the fair tillage of the soil was work 
 for many men. The danger in which the ruin of 
 agriculture placed the country was early understood. 
 A petition presented to Edward vi.'s Council in 1550 
 boldly attributed the decay of England to the great 
 multitude of sheep which were fed on her pastures. 
 Its authors saw no profit either in sheep or shepherds. 
 They demonstrated that the increase of sheep meant 
 dearer wool, dearer mutton, dearer beef, and fewer 
 eggs for a penny. Moreover, it caused ' great decay
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 119 
 
 to artyllary ; for that do we reken that shepherdes be 
 but yll artchers.' And even then, thought they, 
 we were but on the threshold of the havoc wrought 
 by these silly sheep. They declared that since the 
 reign of Henry viii. every town and village in Eng- 
 land, to the number of fifty thousand, had suppressed 
 one plough. And of these fifty thousand ploughs — 
 such is their tragic conclusion — ' everye ploughe were 
 able to maintain 6 persons : that is to saye, the 
 man, the wyfe, and fower other in his house, lesse 
 and more. 50 thousande plowes, six persons to 
 every plough, draweth to the nomber of three hundred 
 thousand persons were wont to have meate, drynke, 
 and rayment, uprysing and down lying paying skot 
 and lot to God and to the Kynge. And now they 
 have nothynge, but goeth about in England from 
 dore to dore, and axe theyr almose for Goddes sake. 
 And because they will not begge, some of them doeth 
 steale, and then they be hanged, and thus the Realme 
 doeth decay, and by none other wayes els, as we do 
 thynke,' 
 
 Such were the main causes of roguery and vaga- 
 bondage. Ingenious persons, who did not always 
 separate causes from symptoms, were not at a loss to 
 discover others. This one declared it was the fault of 
 the tippling houses, that one ascribed all the evils of 
 the commonwealth to the sorry justice that was meted 
 out to the wrongdoer ; and many others were sure 
 that the only begetter of England's poverty and 
 distress was the ever-increasing size of London.
 
 120 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 There was, indeed, a steady, unceasing influx of 
 artificers, unskilled labourers, and insolvent loafers 
 into the metropolis. The suburbs were infested 
 with loose, dissolute people, harboured in ' noysom 
 and disorderly howses.' This overcrowding involved 
 a double loss. The smaller towns in the kingdom 
 with difficulty found enough labourers to do their 
 proper work, while London swarmed with idle rogues, 
 who hung about the taverns, ordinaries, dice-houses, 
 and bowling-alleys to do what mischief they might. 
 And thus it was that the statesmen of Elizabeth's 
 reign attempted the hopeless task of checking the 
 growth of London. They devised the most ingenious 
 schemes. They passed what they deemed the wisest 
 bills, and all in vain. They ordered that no new 
 house should be built within three miles of London 
 or Westminster, that no single house should be con- 
 verted into two, that all shops and sheds, erected 
 within seven years, should be razed to the ground, 
 and that all unfinished buildings should be pulled 
 down, and new foundations abolished. Schemes and 
 Acts of Parliament were alike ineffective. Nothing 
 could check the growth of London, and with her 
 growth the rogues and vagabonds marvellously 
 increased. 
 
 Ill 
 
 If it was impossible to get rid of the prevailing 
 poverty, the statesmen of the sixteenth century did 
 their best to mitigate it. They spared no pains to
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 121 
 
 come at an exact knowledge of the wandering rogues, 
 who covered England like a plague of locusts. In 
 1 57 1 a determined effort was made in every parish, in 
 every wapentake, in every county, to make a census of 
 all ' rogues, vagabonds, and mighty valliant beggars,' 
 and to examine, whip, stock, and punish them accord- 
 ing to law. And the punishment was in no sense 
 indiscriminate. The poor were distinguished and 
 classified with care and prudence. They were divided, 
 as Harrison tells us, into three sorts. First came 
 those who were poor by impotency — the fatherless 
 child, the aged, the blind and the lame, the incurably 
 diseased. Then there were those impoverished by 
 casualty — the wounded soldier, the decayed house- 
 keeper, the sick person grievously visited. And 
 finally the thriftless poor had to be reckoned withal, 
 the rioters who had consumed their livelihood, the 
 vagabonds that would abide nowhere, the canting 
 crew of rogues and strumpets, who lived on the high- 
 road or in the woods, and levied a shameless toll 
 upon society. 
 
 For all these was decreed relief or restraint accord- 
 ing to their needs. The threefold object of Ehza- 
 beth's poor-laws was to feed the hungry, to punish 
 the evildoer, and to exact payment from the unwiUing 
 rich. They were thus an inglorious mixture of en- 
 forced charity and the branding-iron. The first Act 
 of Elizabeth's reign, for instance, provided that all 
 who would not work should be adjudged vagabonds, 
 that the poor and aged, forbidden to beg, should be
 
 122 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 relieved in the parishes of their birth, that collectors 
 of alms should be appointed on the Sunday after 
 Midsummer Day, and fined ^lo if they refused to 
 serve, that the Bishop or his Ordinary should exhort 
 the wealthy to subscribe, each according to his means, 
 for the relief of the poor. Those who declined to 
 pay were treated none too harshly. For their amiable 
 guidance the statute enacted that if any person, pro- 
 perly exhorted, should, ' of his froward, wilful mind, 
 obstinately refuse to give weekly to the relief of the 
 poor, according to his abihty ; the Bishop, or his 
 Ordinary, shall bind him, by recognisance, to appear 
 at the Quarter Sessions ; and at the said Sessions, 
 the Justices shall charitably and gently persuade and 
 move him.' If gentle persuasion were of no effect, 
 the recalcitrant almsgiver was taxed a weekly sum, 
 and shut up in prison until it was paid. One other 
 necessary provision was added : if a parish was cursed 
 with more poor than it could support, certain persons 
 were licensed to beg within the limits of the county, 
 and were bidden for their better control to wear 
 badges on their breast and back. Here was a great 
 loophole for corruption. The forgery of licences 
 became a profitable trade, carried on by a set of 
 scoundrels, called * Jarkemen ' in the canting tongue, 
 whose skill, as Harman testifies, might have been more 
 worthily and profitably employed. 
 
 Such was the Act which formed the basis of legis- 
 lation for many years. Its scope was increased and 
 modified from time to time. Now, to prevent the
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 123 
 
 increase of ' masterless ' men, wages were regulated 
 by law, and no person was permitted to depart out 
 of service, ' onles he had a Testemoniall under the 
 Scale of City or Towne corporate.' Now the defini- 
 tion of vagabond was so widely extended as to in- 
 clude every man and woman who did not follow an 
 acknowledged trade, craft, or mystery. Again, the 
 punishment of vagrancy varied in severity from year 
 to year, which proved that legislation was still in the 
 region of experiment. In 1572 rogues and vaga- 
 bonds were condemned to be * grevouslye whipped, 
 and burnte through the gristle of the right Eare with 
 a hot Yron of the compasse of an ynche about.' At 
 a second offence they were adjudged felons without 
 benefit of clergy. Even these penalties were too light 
 for James i., who in the first year of his reign ordained 
 that rogues should be branded in the left shoulder 
 with a great roman R of the breadth of an Enghsh 
 shilling, and when this failed to cleanse the highroad, 
 he bade them summarily be banished to Virginia. 
 
 Charity and the branding-iron were, as might have 
 been expected, wholly ineffectual. The severest 
 punishments meted out to the scoundrel, the heaviest 
 tolls levied upon the wealthy, neither cured nor dis- 
 couraged the crime of vagabondage. A larger 
 measure of relief was deemed necessary, and so it was 
 that in 1598, in the thirty-ninth year of Elizabeth's 
 reign, overseers were appointed in every parish, who 
 should impose a rate, to provide sufl'icient flax, thread, 
 wool, and iron, on which the poor might work, to
 
 124 LITKRARY STUDIES 
 
 apprentice destitute children, and to keep the aged, 
 lame, and blind from starvation. As an offset to this 
 humane provision, the penalties against roguery were 
 made yet harsher. ' Every vagabond found begging ' 
 — thus ran the law — ' is to be stripped naked from the 
 middle upwards, and openly whipped, until his or 
 her body be bloody, and then be passed to his or her 
 birthplace or last place of residence, and in case thev 
 know neither, they are to be sent to the House of 
 Correction for a year, unless some one gives them 
 employment sooner.' This Act, important of itself, 
 gains increased importance from the fact that, with 
 certain changes and additions, it was presently con- 
 verted into the celebrated Act of i6oi, which for 
 more than three centuries has shaped our poHcy. 
 Passed as an experiment, and, according to the general 
 practice of England, in the panic caused by several 
 bad harvests, it was made perpetual in the reign of 
 Charles i., and remains, despite the many changes of 
 thought and creed, upon our Statute-book. 
 
 IV 
 
 Meanwhile, the line which separated vagabondage 
 from crime grew thinner with the years. The wan- 
 derers, whose very idleness was an offence against the 
 law, turned readily to more evil practices. Many a 
 simple trade, innocent of itself, assumed an air of 
 roguery, when it was pursued on the high-road. 
 ' The tinker in his budget, the pedlar in his hamper, 
 the glass-man in his basket, and the lewd proctors
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 125 
 
 which carry the broad seal and green seal in their 
 bags, cover an infinite number of felonies.' And 
 whatever trifles these scoundrels picked up they dis- 
 posed of easily enough. There were receivers in 
 every ale-house, in every bush, who not merely sold 
 the ' purchases ' of their colleagues, but, like the old 
 Jew whom Edward Wakefield found in Newgate, and 
 Dickens's own Fagin, instructed the youth in light- 
 fingered arts. * These rabble are,' in fact, * the very 
 nurseries of rogues,' and the canting tongue was their 
 fruitful method of instruction. ' If you can cant,' 
 wrote Rowlands, ' you will never worke,' and true it 
 was that they who had been long enough on the road 
 to learn the dialect of the canting-men, never settled 
 themselves to labour again. Thus the vast army 
 of outlaws ever increased, and England won an un- 
 enviable supremacy in the kingdom of crime. 
 
 Yet all men were not permitted to come within the 
 guilty circle. In the sixteenth and seventeenth cen- 
 turies thievery was a science as well as an art. It 
 was hedged about with a hundred technicalities ; 
 it was organised strictly into a close corporation ; it 
 imposed on all those who embraced it its own laws, 
 its own customs, its own language. Before a rascal 
 could be admitted of the tribe, he underwent a sort 
 of apprenticeship, he performed the proper rites of 
 initiation. The Upright Man, of whom more pres- 
 ently, could make whom he would free of the guild. 
 Did he meet a rogue, sturdy or impotent, who still 
 dwelt without the pale, he carried him straightway
 
 126 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 to the bousing-ken. ' Then,' says Harman, ' doth this 
 upright man call for a gage of bowse, whiche is a 
 quarte pot of drinke, and powres the same upon his 
 peld pate, adding these words : " I. G. P. do stalle 
 thee W. T. to the Roge, and that from hence forth 
 it shall be lawefull for thee to Cant " — that is, to aske 
 or begge — " for thy living in al places." ' After this 
 the initiate might be promoted to the highest order 
 of roguery ; with talent and courage he might even 
 become an Upright Man himself, and administer the 
 laws of his tribe to all the ' rowsey, ragged rabble- 
 ment of rakehelles ' which followed him. 
 
 That we possess so precise a knowledge of the 
 fraternity of vagabonds, of its kinds and craft, is due 
 to Thomas Harman, whose Caveat, or Warening for 
 commen cursetors vulgar ely called Vagabones (1567) 
 bears upon every line the stamp of truth and authen- 
 ticity. Harman, in truth, is the Hakluyt of roguery. 
 He did for the underworld of Shakespeare's England 
 that which the author of the Voyages achieved for the 
 world of adventure. Like the honest man that he 
 was, he acknowledges the good work done by Awdeley^ 
 his predecessor. ' There was a fewe yeares since a 
 small breefe,' says he, ' set forth of some zelous man 
 to his countrey, of whom I knowe not, that made a 
 lytle shewe of there names and usage, and gave a 
 glymsinge lyghte, not sufficient to perswade of their 
 pevishe peltinge and pickinge practyses, but well 
 worthy of prayse.' This is a fair estimate of 
 Awdeley's Fraternitye. It is a ' gHmsing light ' and
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 127 
 
 * well worthy of praise.' Harman cherished a larger 
 ambition. His book is a book of acute observation 
 and varied experience. He sets down nothing that 
 he has not seen with his eyes and heard with his ears. 
 There is an intimacy in his descriptions which con- 
 vinces the reader that he writes out of a fullness of 
 knowledge. He has met his rogues face to face, has 
 spoken with them, and marked well their peculiarities. 
 When in his list of names he sets down John Stradling 
 with the shaking head, and Harry Walles with the 
 little mouth, when he records that Robert Brown- 
 swerd weareth his hair long, and that John Browne is 
 a great stammerer, he intensifies the impression of 
 truth. 
 
 Who and what he himself was remains un- 
 certain. The few hints which he gives us are 
 insufficient for a portrait. He hved at Crayford in 
 Kent, a near neighbour of the right honourable and 
 singular good lady, Elizabeth, Countess of Shrews- 
 bury, to whom his dedication is addressed. He had 
 been in the Commission of the Peace, and bore arms, 
 which he tells us were engraved upon his pewter plate. 
 Indeed, says he, ' beinge placed as a poore gentle- 
 man, [I] have kepte a house these twenty yeares, 
 where unto poverty dayely hath and doth repayre, not 
 without some reliefe, as my poore callinge and 
 habylytie maye and doth extende.' And having occa- 
 sion through sickness to tarry at home, he talked and 
 conferred daily with many wily wanderers of both sorts, 
 men and women, boys and girls. He had no difficulty
 
 128 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 in surprising their secrets and measuring their am- 
 bitions, which he reveals, with no other motive (he 
 is sure) than that ' their undecent, dolefull dealing 
 and execrable exercyses may apere to all as it were 
 in a glasse.' But no sooner does he take pen in hand 
 than the artist which is in him gets the better of the 
 Justice of the Peace, and he describes his fleeting 
 fellowship, his Cursetors, with the zest and enthu- 
 siasm which are bred of sympathy. It is true that he 
 preserves scrupulously and unto the end the farce of 
 moral sentiments, but these sentiments carry no 
 more weight than do the dull, inapposite moralisings 
 of the Newgate Calendar. 
 
 Like most of his contemporaries, he disclaims any 
 attempt at fine writing. He is content to be neither 
 ' homely ' nor ' darke.' He refuses to use such words, 
 like ' robardesmen ' and ' drawlatches,' as were 
 familiar in Edward iii.'s time. For the rest he con- 
 fesses a love of plain order and common words. 
 ' Eloquence have I none,' he says ; ' I never was ac- 
 quaynted with the muses ; I never tasted of Helycon.' 
 Here he strays from the truth. Throughout his 
 book he betrays a love of artifice and ingenuity. 
 He has a pretty taste for alliteration, and his sense 
 of style is so acute that we owe to him our first voca- 
 bulary of the pelting speech. And what a gallery of 
 portraits he has bequeathed to us, drawn each one 
 of them with a cunning hand and a sureness of tech- 
 nical knowledge unsurpassed ! The Ruffler is first 
 of ' this odious order,' ' the worthiest of this unruly
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 129 
 
 rablement.' He has either fought in the wars or has 
 been a serving-man, and, having shaken off all toil, 
 lives by extorting defiantly w^here he thinks he may 
 be bold, or by asking elsewhere a tearful charity for his 
 maimed and bruised limbs. If twined hemp do not 
 prevent him, he becomes in due course an Upright 
 Man, a hero of great authority, whose behest all 
 rogues obey, who travels the country, attended by 
 his Mort or Doxy, who will turn his hand to pilfering 
 clothes or breaking houses, and whose pride it is that, 
 scorning the offer of meat and drink, he will accept 
 nothing in charity save money. 
 
 Then follow the Hookers or Anglers, habited in 
 frieze jerkins and gaily slops, who mark by day 
 what they carry off at night on their iron-hooked 
 staves ; the Triggers of Prancers, who lurk in 
 the highways, and ride away on their booty 
 threescore miles or more ; the Palhards or 
 Clapperdogens, ragged in patched clothes, who for 
 gain and to be pitied bhster their legs with spear- 
 wort or arsenic ; the Abraham Men, who feign to 
 have been mad, and ask at the farmhouses for bacon, 
 cheese, or wool, or anything that they may turn to 
 money ; the Fresh-water Mariners, whose ships have 
 sunk in SaHsbury Plain ; the Counterfeit Cranks, 
 who pretend sickness and never go abroad without a 
 piece of white soap, which should make them foam 
 at the mouth, and so deceive the common people ; 
 the Dummerers, who hold their tongues downdoubled, 
 and show a forged writing that they were dumb, 
 
 I
 
 130 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 together with a vast mob of Tinkers and Swadders, 
 of Morts, Doxies, and Dells, who practise their trade 
 of theft and beggary in every shire of England. And 
 in their wake come an army of roaring boys and bullies, 
 Corinthians or Ephesians of the true Church, as 
 Shakespeare called them, who bouse in taverns, ruffle 
 it at ordinaries, take their pleasure at their ' manner 
 of Picked Hatch,' and who are always ready to empty 
 a pocket or cog the dice. 
 
 Varying in skill and livery, they had a common pur- 
 pose — to live without work, and a common end — 
 the gallows. Harrison cites Cardan, an insecure 
 authority, as saying that Henry viii. hanged up three- 
 score and twelve thousand of them in his time, and 
 admits that there is commonly not one year ' wherein 
 three hundred or foure hundred of them are not de- 
 voured and eaten up by the gallows in one place and 
 other.' But wherever they went, whatever they did, 
 they remained a class apart, separated from the rest 
 of the world by strange names and a secret speech. 
 No better means of defence against the realm of 
 honesty, no better method of helping the hopeless 
 beggar along the high-road, could have been devised 
 than the Canting tongue or Pedlars' French, ' com- 
 pact thirtie yeares since,' says Harrison, ' of English, 
 and a great number of od words of their owne devising, 
 without all order or reason : and yet such is it as none 
 but themselves are able to understand.' 
 
 If we might believe Harrison,' the first deviser thereof 
 was hanged by the necke'; a just reward no doubt for
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 131 
 
 his deserts. But we may not believe Harrison. The 
 pelting speech was not devised by one man, and cant 
 words came into our English language long before the 
 sixteenth century. They were derived from many 
 and far distant sources. Each influx of foreign 
 beggars added something to the Pedlars' French. 
 Ireland and Wales contributed a large share to the 
 slang of the Canting Crew. French words crossed 
 the Channel, or travelled southward from Scotland. 
 The vagrant monks, sent tramping up and down 
 England at the dissolution of the monasteries, in- 
 vented many a useful Latinism, and the old soldiers 
 brought back from their campaigns strange, foreign 
 words, half remembered and sometimes misunder- 
 stood. Above all, it should not be forgotten that 
 the dialect of the rogues and vagabonds was not the 
 same as the gipsy tongue, which did but increase its 
 variety, and that it kept alive many specimens of 
 provincial English, which otherwise had perished. 
 
 Thus the rogues and vagabonds, a close body, were 
 walled about with a language and a nomenclature of 
 their own. In the same spirit of technical exclusive- 
 ness each manifestation of their skill was controlled 
 by rule and described in terms, of which the people, 
 their victims, knew nothing. The cony-catchers, 
 cross-biters, and shifters, who haunted London, 
 chased their prey and played their confidence-tricks 
 in obedience to an inexorable convention, which 
 proves that the skilled industries of the underworld 
 were highly organised, and that their practitioners
 
 132 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 were closely banded together. ' If you marvel at 
 these misteries and queynt words,' says Greene, ' con- 
 sider, as the carpenter hath many terms famiUar 
 enough to his prentices, that others understand not 
 at al, so have the cony catchers, not without great 
 cause ; for a falsehood once detected can never com- 
 pass the desired effect.' 
 
 So they called their knaveries by the names of 
 arts or laws,i of which names the most have long 
 since lost their meaning. For instance, the craft 
 of cheating at cards was called Barnard's law, and 
 those who took part in it went by strange titles. 
 The first of the cozens was called the Taker-up or 
 Setter. ' O ! 'tis our setter : I know his voice,' 
 says Poins of Falstaff in i Henry IV. (ii. ii. 56). His 
 business it was to decoy the victim. Then came the 
 Verser to his help, a man of more worship than the 
 Taker-up, and wearing the countenance of a landed 
 man. And when they were set the Barnard stumbles 
 in, habited like an aged farmer, and a pretended stranger 
 to them all. Those who in our own days have seen the 
 three-card trick played will recognise the procedure, 
 and know that for the cozen there is no way of escape. 
 The rest, in fact, was easy, and if the cozen lost un- 
 graciously at cards, there stood a Rutter at the door 
 with drawn sword ready to force a quarrel on an 
 ostler or on his own shadow, so that, in the turmoil 
 
 1 In the eighteenth century the word ' law ' was changed to 
 ' lay.' The figging law ot" the cony-catchers became the 
 figging lay of Jonathan Wild.
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 133 
 
 of the fray, the Barnard may steal away with the 
 spoil. 
 
 That is a typical example of cheating law, and 
 Vincent's law matches it in curiosity. This was a 
 species of cozenage practised by those who frequented 
 bowling-alleys, and it explains why those resorts, 
 innocent enough of themselves, were condemned as 
 lewd and unlawful places. The Bawkers, as they 
 were called, who took the chief part, came into the 
 alley, like honest citizens eager for the sport. No 
 sooner does the game begin, than the Gripes, who 
 are their accomplices, shout the odds aloud, and 
 quietly take up whatever bets are offered. Thus they 
 entice the Vincent, who is their victim, to his undoing. 
 * I take six to one,' says the Gripe. ' I lay it,' answers 
 the Vincent, and one thing only was certain, that he 
 lost whom the Vincent backed. In the same lingo 
 the simple practice of shoplifting was known as the 
 Lifting Law, and they who followed it are thus de- 
 scribed : he that steals the parcel is known as the Lift ; 
 he that receives it is the Marker ; the Santar stands 
 without and carries it off ; and the goods thus stolen, 
 or purchased, to use the euphemism of Bardolph and 
 Nym, was known as the garbage. 
 
 The High Law was the most famous of all — the 
 law of robbing on the highway — which gave England 
 a perverse celebrity until the end of the eighteenth 
 century. The adventurer who practised this dan- 
 gerous art was called a High Lawyer, and to succeed 
 he needed nothing less than a bold, stern look, a stout
 
 134 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 heart, and a good sword. He was, in truth, the plain 
 antithesis of the palhards and dummerers, who 
 mumped at the roadside ; yet he, too, though free- 
 dom was the essence of his craft, subscribed to the 
 articles, and used the jargon of his law. The names 
 and duties of his accomplices were duly set forth. 
 He who set a watch was called a Scripper ; the watch 
 was known as the Oak, and the victim was the Martin, 
 who, when he yielded, was said to stoop. From 
 these confused images and the restraints which they 
 imposed the High Lawyer presently emancipated 
 himself, and he remained for two centuries the inde- 
 pendent sovereign of the road. 
 
 Thus in the sixteenth century the science of 
 roguery was patiently studied and thoroughly under- 
 stood by its professors. The art, as happens often, 
 lagged far behind the science. When men analyse 
 their handicraft too closely they are wont to forget 
 their skill. Yet signs of improvement were not lack- 
 ing, and the fact that the pickpocket was throwing 
 the cutpurse into contempt proves that at least one 
 branch of roguery was pursued with lightness of hand 
 and courage of heart. The historians, indeed, 
 separate, by a sharp contrast, the Nip and the Foist. 
 The object of both was the same — a heavily laden 
 purse ; but while the Nip was content to use a knife 
 and cut the purse, the Foist drew the pocket into his
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 135 
 
 hand. The artistic superiority of the Foist was 
 evident, and he was not slow to claim it. He called 
 himself always a Gentleman Foist, and so bitterly 
 did he disdain the clumsiness of his brother Nip, that 
 he would not carry a knife in his pocket, wherewith 
 to cut his meat, lest he might be suspected of putting 
 it to any improper use. Here breathes the spirit of 
 true artistry ; and it is not surprising that the rhap- 
 sodist describes the perfections of the Foist with a 
 thinly veiled enthusiasm. 
 
 ' An exquisite Foist,' says Greene, ' must have three 
 properties that a good surgion should have, and that is 
 an Eagles eie, a Ladies hand, and a Lyons heart : an 
 Eagles eie to spy a purchase, to have a quick insight 
 where the boung ^ lies, and then a Lyons heart not 
 to feare what the end will bee, and then a Ladies hand 
 to be little and nimble, the better to dive into the 
 pocket.* In short, the true Foist had nothing to help 
 him save what Hamlet called his ' pickers and stealers ' 
 {Hamlet, in. ii. 355-6), and he deserved all the credit 
 that his sleight of hand won for hirh. The Nip, on 
 the other hand, could not work without a clumsy 
 apparatus. Ben Jonson calls him a ' knight of the 
 knife,' or ' a child of the horn-thumb,' referring of 
 course to the guard or stall which was his protection 
 against the sharp edge of the knife. And even the Nip 
 was forced to do his work with celerity. ' I warrant 
 him a quick hand,' says Overdo of Ezekiel Edgworth 
 
 • The boung is the purse, still known as the bung in the flash 
 speech of to-day.
 
 136 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 in Bartholomew Fair, and quick as he was Ezekiel did 
 not escape the eye of the critic. However, it was a 
 time of change, and some there were who employed 
 both methods. If the Foist would never stoop 
 to nip, the Nip sometimes aspired to higher game. 
 Autolycus, a finished artist only in speech, used the 
 knife as well as his hand. ' In this time of lethargy,' 
 said he, * I picked and cut most of their festival 
 purses ' {Winter's Tale, iv. iii. 628-30). And, despite 
 the jealousy which divided them, the Foists and the 
 Nips met on common ground. As has been said, they 
 sought the same end by different roads, and so they 
 instituted a kind of brotherhood amongst themselves, 
 and kept their own meeting-place. Once their hall 
 was near Bishop's Gate, if we may beheve Greene, 
 and, when that became too familiar, they removed to 
 Kent Street, to the house of one Laurence Pickering, 
 the brother-in-law of Ball, the hangman, who ac- 
 counted for the most of them in the end. 
 
 Both the Foist and the Nip worked with an accom- 
 plice, whom they called a Stall, and whose business 
 it was to jostle and perplex the victim while his purse 
 was being removed. Oftentimes, too, the ballad- 
 monger was their ally, who gathered a crowd about 
 him and held its attention. In Bartholomew Fair, 
 Nightingale, the ballad-man, calls Edgworth, the civil 
 cutpurse, his secretary, and, as Mooncalf says, ' they 
 are never asunder." By a fine irony Edgworth tickles 
 Cokes in the ear with a straw, to make him draw his 
 hand from his pocket, at the very moment when the
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 137 
 
 ballad-man is singing his ' Caveat for Cutpurses ' to 
 the famous tune of ' Paggington's Pound.' ' Repent 
 then,' says Nightingale, 
 
 ' Repent then, repent you, for better, for worse, 
 And kiss not the gallows for cutting a purse. 
 Youth, youth, thou hadst better been starv'd by thy nurse, 
 Than live to be hanged for cutting a purse.' 
 
 And Cokes cries aloud, ' O Lord ! my purse is gone, 
 my purse, my purse, my purse ! ' 
 
 Wherever men were gathered together on business 
 or pleasure, there the Foists and the Nips pHed their 
 trade. Paul's was their favourite haunt at the hour 
 of noon, and during Term time they found great 
 profit at Westminster Hall. The Tiltyard knew 
 them, and Tyburn on execution days. They fre- 
 quented fairs, and assemblies of all sorts. So rapidly 
 did their fame increase, that to lose a purse seemed 
 as intimately a part of London as its fog. In 1598 
 Paul Hentzner visited Bartholomew Fair, and thus 
 recorded his experience : ' While we were at this 
 show, one of our company, Tobias Salander, Doctor 
 of Physic, had his pocket picked of his purse, with 
 nine crowns, which, without doubt, was so cleverly 
 taken from him by an Englishman, who always kept 
 very close to him, that the Doctor did not perceive 
 it.' Poor Salander, the first foreigner to suffer from 
 a craft which ever since has won for England a world- 
 wdde renown !
 
 138 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 VI 
 
 The High Lawyers, if more highly respected, were 
 less famous than the Foists. Their day was still 
 to come, yet there was one exponent of the High 
 Law in Shakespeare's time who is worth more than 
 a passing notice. Gamaliel Ratsey was his name, and 
 though he might not hold a candle to such heroes 
 as Captain Hind, he was a man of infinite humour, 
 who looked further than the profit of the moment. 
 Born at Market Deeping, in Lincolnshire, of prosper- 
 ous parents, he was bred a scholar, like many of his 
 kind, and renounced scholarship to follow the Earl 
 of Essex to Ireland. He retired a disbanded soldier, 
 with nothing to help him to a living save a love of 
 fight and a resolution to repel any injury that might 
 be offered him. His first exploit was at Spalding, 
 and was little to his credit. Putting up at an inn, he 
 soon became free of the landlady's parlour, saw where 
 on a market-day a farmer put ^40 for safety, and 
 stole it. And then he made the gravest mistake 
 of his life. He fled straight to Market Deeping, con- 
 fessed his crime to his mother, who gave him up, and 
 was lodged in gaol. However, he lost no time in 
 breaking prison, escaped in his shirt, and eluded his 
 pursuers by swimming ' a very dangerous great water.' 
 Being an outlaw, he took to the road, and presently 
 had the good fortune to rob a serving-man of his horse. 
 Henceforth his way was easy, and having fallen in 
 with George Snell and Henry Shorthose, two likely
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 139 
 
 confederates, he played his game in accord with all 
 the rules of the High Law. 
 
 It is recorded of him that he had his intel- 
 ligencers abroad and robbed by system. His best 
 aids were the ostlers and chamberlains of the 
 wayside inns, who felt the weight of the traveller's 
 capcase, and knew well the road he would take. 
 The fraudulent ostlers were familiar to Harrison. 
 They ' make such packs,' said he, ' with slipper 
 merchants which hunt after preie (for which place 
 is sure from evill and wicked persons) that manie 
 an honest man is spoiled of his goods as he travelleth 
 to and fro, in which feat also the counsell of the 
 tapsters or drawers of drinke and chamberlains 
 is not seldome behind or wanting.' So, in Shake- 
 speare's Henry IV. the chamberlain of the inn at 
 Rochester was in league with the ' pick-purse.' 
 ' Good morrow, Master Gadshill,' says he. ' It 
 holds current that I told you yesternight : there 's a 
 franklin in the wild of Kent hath brought three 
 hundred marks with him in gold : I heard him tell it 
 to one of his company, last night at supper ; a kind of 
 auditor ; one that hath abundance of charges too, 
 God knows what. They are up already, and call 
 for eggs and butter ; they will away presently.' 
 ' Sirrah,' replies Gadshill, ' if they meet not with 
 Saint Nicholas' clerks, I '11 give thee this neck ' 
 (i Henry IV., i. ii. 52-60). 
 
 Such were the accomplices who aided the ingenious 
 Gamaliel on his predatory journeys, and Gamaliel
 
 I40 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 had no lack of talent to improve their aid. He wore 
 a mask, which struck terror into the minds of all 
 beholders. ' A face worse than Gamaliel Ratsey's,' 
 writes Ben Jonson in The Alchemist. And his courage 
 took quick advantage of the terror which he inspired. 
 Thus with ' a base and boisterous sword ' he enforced 
 for many years ' a thievish living on the common road.' 
 But it was his humour and sense of oratory which 
 gave Ratsey his greatest fame. In the gallant High 
 Lawyer that he became there was lost a man of 
 letters or, at least, a rhetorician. The right word was 
 ready on his tongue for every occasion. When he 
 faced nine men alone and took ;^200, ' it is well 
 known,' said he curtly, ' that I rob not for trifles.' 
 His encounter with a scholar from Cambridge was 
 conducted with a graver pomp. The two ambled on 
 together a summer's day, and passed the time in 
 amiable discourse. At last cried Ratsey, turning 
 curtly to business : ' We will have money if it walke 
 upon the earth.' The scholar surrendered what he 
 had, and would have been gone. But Ratsey stayed 
 him, saying that he liked his discourse so well, he 
 would have him preach him ' some short sermon of 
 repentance.' The scholar perforce complied, and 
 preached for two hours to such purpose that the 
 rascal gave him two of his own angels back, and pro- 
 mised him that if ever patronage were his he should 
 come to preferment. 
 
 It was in the same spirit that Ratsey conducted the 
 pretty prank he put upon some actors whom he met
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 141 
 
 in an inn. Nothing would satisfy him but they must 
 play before him, and a magnificent reward of forty 
 shillings marked his approval. The next morning 
 the actors rode off, well content, but Ratsey soon 
 overtook them, with a very different tale to tell. 
 ' Therefore, be short,' said he, ' deliver mee your 
 money ; for I will turne usurer now ; my fortie 
 shilhngs again will not serve without interest.' And he 
 in exchange gave the players the benefit of his advice. 
 ' Get thee to London,' he bids the better of them, 
 ' for if one man were dead, they will have much neede 
 of such a one as thou art. . . . And when thou feelest 
 thy purse well lined, buy thee some place or lordship 
 in the country, that, growing weary of playing, thy 
 money may there bring thee to dignitie and reputation ; 
 then thou needest care for no man, nor not for them 
 that before made thee prowd with speaking their 
 words on the stage.' ' Sir, I thank you,' quoth the 
 player, * for this good counsell ; I promise you I will 
 make use of it, for I have hearde, indeede, of some 
 that hath gone to London very meanly, and have 
 come in time to be exceeding wealthy.' ' And in this 
 presage and propheticall humour of mine,' says 
 Ratsey, ' kneele downe. Rise up, Sir Simon two 
 Shares and a Halfe ; thou art now one of my knights, 
 and the first knight that ever was player in England.' 
 The obvious reference to Burbage and Shakespeare has 
 raised this prank above the common level of the jest- 
 book. 
 
 Thus Ratsey rode up and down the country in true
 
 142 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 merriment of spirit, and all the while there lay upon 
 him the shadow of the tree. The fatal hour overtook 
 him at Bedford, where he and Snell robbed a gentle- 
 man after a desperate encounter. Ratsey, gravely 
 wounded, rode off with the spoil, and might never 
 have been charged with the crime, had not Snell, who 
 was caught stealing a horse at Gravesend, thought 
 to save his skin by giving up his companion. His 
 treachery was unavaihng, and all three, Ratsey, Snell, 
 and Shorthose, ' suffered ' at Bedford on the 26th of 
 March 1605. As for Ratsey, not merely did he make 
 a noble and dignified end, but he composed in gaol 
 just such a copy of verses, unimpeachable alike in senti- 
 ment and scansion, as we should expect from one who, 
 even on the pad, never lost touch with scholarship. 
 
 Just such another as Gamaliel Ratsey was Luke 
 Hutton, a scholar also and a knight of the road. He, 
 too, cried ' stand and deliver ' — already the classic 
 formula — on every highway in England. Of gentler 
 birth than Ratsey, for in Fuller's despite he seems to 
 have been a younger son of the Archbishop of York, 
 he was educated at Trinity College in Cambridge, and 
 left that honourable foundation in 1584 without a 
 degree. He instantly became an adept at the High 
 Law, repented more than once of his profession, and 
 each time took to the highway again, until in 1598 he 
 was hanged for robbing at York. There is a certain 
 indelicacy in thus being brought to justice within his 
 father's diocese, and the Archbishop's refusal to inter- 
 rupt the course of justice was perhaps not unreason-
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 143 
 
 able. It is thus that Sir John Harington excuses the 
 severity. Luke, he says, was ' so vaHant that he 
 feared not men nor Laws, and for a robbery done on 
 St. Luke's Day, for name's sake he died as bad a death, 
 I hope with a better mind, than the Theef of whom 
 St. Luke writes, that he bad our Saviour, if he were 
 Christ, to save himself and him. The Archbishop 
 herein shovv'd the constancy and severity worthy of 
 his place ; for he would not endeavour to save him 
 (as the world thought he easily might) and deserved 
 herein the praise of justice, which Eli wanted, that was 
 too indulgent of his sonnes vices.' In his last days 
 Hutton's scholarship profited him not a little. He 
 composed a ballad of Repentance, which he dedicated 
 to Henry Earl of Huntingdon, and in The Blacke Dogge 
 of Newgate he produced a work, ' pithie and profitable 
 for all readers,' which has kept his memory green unto 
 this day. 
 
 The age of Shakespeare produced many admirable 
 artists in crime ; yet none of them was more bravely 
 characteristic of the age than was Mary Frith, the 
 famous Moll Cutpurse, a true Elizabethan in courage 
 and flamboyancy of spirit. Everything about her was 
 great — her knowledge, her voice, her heart. She was 
 born four years after the destruction of the Armada, 
 and she died a brief year before the return of Charles 11, 
 to his rightful throne. Her activities thus covered a 
 long period, and as she was the heroine of a comedy 
 of Middleton, so, says rumour, with her own voice 
 she bade the rebel Fairfax stand and deliver. A
 
 144 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 woman neither in kind nor manner, she well earned 
 her title of ' Roaring Girl,' and she was ready to 
 drink her tobacco or use her sword with any roy- 
 sterer in London. ' She has the spirit of four great 
 parishes,' says the dramatist, ' and a voice that will 
 draw all the city.' She cherished also a natural love 
 of skill, and did her best, by discouraging the Nip, 
 to admit the Foist to the fullness of his glory. ' The 
 best signs and marks of a happy industrious hand,' 
 she wrote, ' is a long middle finger usually suited with 
 what they call the fool's or first finger.' Later artists 
 called these twain ' the forks.' And it was not long 
 before Moll retired from the eager practice of her 
 craft. She quickly discovered that hers were the 
 gifts of command and government, and thus she made 
 herself the head of a vast gang, which for many years 
 was a terror to Brentford and Shooter's Hill. Not 
 merely did she plan the robberies which her hench- 
 men carried out, but she disposed of their purchases, 
 either to their just owners, if the reward were suffi- 
 cient, or to certain cunning merchants whom she knew. 
 Thus for many years she ruled the underworld of 
 England with an iron hand, and in the heyday of her 
 youth shared the sovereignty of the realm not un- 
 fittingly with the austere, implacable Elizabeth 
 herself. 
 
 VII 
 
 Such are some of the rogues who trampled honesty 
 under foot in Shakespeare's time. That he knew 
 them and their exploits is certain ; it is certain also
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 145 
 
 that he saw them, as he saw all men, in an atmosphere 
 of romance. Ben Jonson, stern realist that he was, 
 paints them in their true colours. You know that 
 Jordan Knockem and Zekiel Edgworth plied 
 their trade in the streets and fairs of London. 
 FalstaflF is the High Lawyer purged of reality. The 
 fat knight bade no man stand and deliver save on the 
 highroad of poetry. His humour throws a radiance 
 over his worst villainies. A word elevates his greed, 
 his cowardice, his falsehood, to sublimity. No 
 sooner does he come upon the stage than ' nimble 
 fiery and delectable shapes ' (2 Henry IF., iv. iii. 108) 
 emanate from his brain. ' We that take purses,' says 
 he, ' go by the moon and the seven stars, and not 
 by Phoebus, he, " that wandering knight so fair " ' 
 (i Henry IV .^ i. ii. 15-17). Himself and his friends 
 are ' Diana's foresters, gentlemen of the shade, 
 minions of the moon ' {ibid., i. ii. 29-30). Even when 
 he would mend his ways it is but in thought and for a 
 moment. ' I must give over this life,' he says, ' and 
 I will give it over ; by the Lord, an I do not, I am a 
 villain : I '11 be damned for never a king's son in 
 Christendom ' {ibid., i. ii. 106-9). Before the end 
 of the sentence his humour has changed, and there 
 follows a dialogue which sets this wayward ' tun of a 
 man ' vividly before us : 
 
 Prince. ' Where shall we take a purse to-morrow, 
 Jack ? ' 
 
 Fal. ' Zounds ! where thou wilt, lad, I '11 make 
 one ; an I do not, call me a villain and baffle me.' 
 
 K
 
 146 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 Prince. ' I see a good amendment of life in thee ; 
 from praying to purse-taking,' 
 
 Fal. ' Why, Hal, 'tis my vocation, Hal ; 'tis no 
 sin for a man to labour in his vocation ' (ibid., i. 
 ii. 1 10-17). 
 
 So robbery and repentance are alike the fruit of his 
 fancy. Why should he rob, if he may not repent ? 
 Why should he repent, if he may not rob again ? It 
 is but as the mood takes him, and for all his fat body, 
 for aU the weight of flesh that ' lies three fingers on 
 the ribs ' (ibid., iv. iii. 78-81), he is capricious as a 
 child, mobile as the changing wdnd. 
 
 Thus the plot is laid. In Poins's exhortation is 
 summarised the whole art and science of the road : 
 ' My lads, my lads, to-morrow morning, by four 
 o'clock, early at Gadshill ! There are pilgrims going 
 to Canterbury with rich offerings, and traders riding 
 to London with fat purses : I have vizards for you 
 all ; you have horses for yourselves. Gadshill lies 
 to-night in Rochester ; I have bespoke supper to- 
 morrow night in Eastcheap : we may do it as secure 
 as sleep. If you will go I will stuff your purses full 
 of crowns ; if you will not, tarry at home and be 
 hanged' (ibid., i. ii. 137-47). Such is the prelude 
 to the famous episode of the man in buckram. 
 
 Gadshill is a match in vaunting cowardice for 
 the fat knight. He is a true Trojan, a veritable 
 roaring boy. ' I am joined with no foot-land-rakers,' 
 he brags, ' no long-staff sixpenny strikers, none of 
 those mad mustachio-purple-hued malt worms '
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 147 
 
 (ibid., II. i. 81-3). For all his brave words he loves 
 fighting as little as the others, and, like Peto, cares 
 not who sees his back. And it is Bardolph that is the 
 mean-souled, irredeemable villain of the gang. A 
 born rogue, he has Hved in the hedgerow. Falstaff 
 has seen other days, and loves adventure as he loves 
 sack. When he is out at heels, he must cony-catch. 
 As he says, ' I myself sometimes, leaving the fear of 
 God on the left hand and hiding mine honour in my 
 necessity, am fain to shuffle, to hedge, and to lurch ' 
 (Merry Wives, 11. ii. 23-6). 
 
 Bardolph has no honour to hide. He shuffles 
 willingly and by the light of nature. Purse-picking 
 is for him a plain promotion. He confesses that 
 he has been a clapperdudgeon and feigned wounds. 
 Seven years before he had tickled his nose with 
 spear-grass to make it bleed, and beslubbered his 
 garments with it. Even when the warlike Harry 
 ' assumed the port of Mars,' it was the hope of petty 
 theft that drove him and Nym to France. ' They 
 will steal anything and call it purchase,' complains 
 the Boy. ' Bardolph stole a lute-case, bore it twelve 
 leagues, and sold it for three-halfpence. Nym and 
 Bardolph are sworn brothers in filching, and in Calais 
 they stole a fire-shovel : I knew by that piece of ser- 
 vice the men would carry coals. They would have me 
 as familiar with men's pockets as their gloves or 
 their handkerchers ' (Henry V ., iii. ii. 45-53). And 
 their very meanness makes Bardolph and the rest 
 the best foil for Falstaff, whose gay-hearted mag-
 
 148 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 nanimity not even cowardice can impair, who, old as 
 he is, confronts the travellers on Gadshill with a 
 ' What ! ye knaves, young men must live ' (i Henry 
 IV. y II. ii. 99-100) ; and in the midst of riot cries, 
 ' a plague of sighing and grief ! it blows a man up like 
 a bladder ' {ibid., 11. iv. 370-1). 
 
 VIII 
 
 Falstaflr is of an heroic mould. He transcends the 
 scale of human life. Autolycus brings us back to the 
 earth again. Save in speech, he goes not beyond the 
 general experience of his time. This ' snapper-up of 
 unconsidered trifles ' is, as it were, an epitome of 
 vagabondage ; he resumes the rogueries of Harman's 
 * Caveat ' in his proper person ; he is a cozener, that 
 will turn his hand to anything. His traffic is sheets. 
 ' When the kite builds,' says he, ' look to lesser linen ' 
 {Winter's Tale, iv. ii. 23-4). And being born of 
 Shakespeare's fancy, he cannot but set his cozenage 
 to music : 
 
 ' The white sheet bleaching on the hedge, 
 
 With heigh ! the sweet birds, O, how they sing ! 
 Doth set my pugging teeth on edge ; 
 For a quart of ale is a dish for a king ' 
 
 {il^id., IV. ii. 5-8). 
 
 When the Clown surprises him, he is grovelling on 
 the ground, playing a trick that the counterfeit crank 
 did not disdain. ' O ! help me, help me ! ' he cries, 
 ' pluck but off these rags, and then death, death ! '
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 149 
 
 {ibid., IV. ii. 56-7). To courage and virtue he makes 
 no pretence. ' I must confess to you, sir, I am no 
 fighter,' says he : 'I am false of heart that way ' 
 (ibid., IV. ii. 116-17). Much as he loves the crime, he 
 dreads its consequences. ' Gallows and knock are too 
 powerful on the high road,' he admits, ' beating and 
 hanging are terrors to me ' (ibid., iv. ii. 28-30). At 
 the same time he finds Honesty a fool, and ' Trust, his 
 sworn brother, a very simple gentleman ' (ibid., iv. 
 iii. 608-10). If he is honest himself, it is ' by chance,' 
 and he takes a noble pride in his own superiority, 
 when he envisages the Clown and the Shepherd : 
 
 ' How bless'd are we that are not simple men ! 
 Yet nature might have made me as these are ' 
 
 (ibid., IV. iii. 744-5). 
 
 Nor does he underrate the difficulties of his craft : 
 ' to have an open ear, a quick eye, and a nimble hand, 
 is necessary for a cut-purse ; a good nose is requisite 
 also, to smell out work for the other senses ' (ibid., 
 IV. iii. 688-91). In just such words as these does 
 Greene appreciate the qualities of the Foist, and it 
 is evident that Autolycus had the whole duty of the 
 cony-catcher at his fingers' ends. Above all, this 
 filcher, this ballad-singer, this counterfeit crank, is 
 endowed with a fine sense of irony. When the Clown 
 picks him up after his feigned beating, he empties 
 the Clown's pocket, and then gallantly refuses the 
 offer of money : 
 
 ' No, good sweet sir : no, I beseech you, sir . . .
 
 ISO LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 offer me no money, I pray you ! that kills my heart 
 {ibid.^ IV. ii. 85-9). 
 
 In King Lear we may watch the same process at 
 work, yet more intimately. Mad Tom is at once 
 closer to and more remote from his model than 
 Autolycus. The hapless figure, strange to us, was 
 famihar in its essence to all those who frequented 
 Shakespeare's theatre.^ Awdeley, in The Fraternitye 
 of Vacabondes, gave Shakespeare the rough sketch : 
 ' An Abraham man ' — thus he writes — ' is he that 
 walketh bare armed, and bare legged, and fayneth 
 hym selfe mad, and caryeth a packe of wool, or a 
 stycke with baken on it, or such lyke toy, and nameth 
 himselfe poore Tom.' Harman adds that the Abra- 
 ham men beg at farmers' houses, and that if they espy 
 small company therein ' they wyll with fierce counten- 
 aunce demaund somewhat.' Nowsee what Shakespeare 
 makes of the Abraham man in the person of Edgar : 
 
 ' The country gives me proof and precedent 
 Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices 
 Strike in their numb'd and mortified bare arms 
 Pins, wooden pricks, nails, sprigs of rosemary ; 
 And with this horrible object, from low farms, 
 Poor pelting villages, sheep-cotes, and mills. 
 Sometime with lunatic bans, sometime with prayers. 
 Enforce their charity. Poor Turlygod, poor Tom ! ' 
 
 {K'tJig Lear, n. iii. 13-20). 
 
 ^ That there was no doubt about the personage whom Edgar 
 represented is evident in Act iv. sc. i. 1. 26, where the Old 
 Man at his first appearance on the stage recognises the Bed- 
 lamite. ''Tis poor mad Tom,' he says.
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 151 
 
 There is a close resemblance of fact between the verse 
 and the prose, but in fancy how far are they remote ! 
 By every touch Shakespeare emphasises poor Tom's 
 madness, and suppresses the beggar that is in 
 him. It is the Bedlamite, not the rogue, that 
 stands before us. 
 
 ' Fathom and half, fathom and half! Poor Tom ! 
 
 {ibid., HI. iv. 37). 
 
 Thus he sings on the borderland of sense and non- 
 sense. Even when he begs, his voice rather claims 
 pity than utters threats. ' Who gives anything to 
 poor Tom ? ' he asks, ' . . . Tom 's a-cold. . . , 
 Do poor Tom some charity, whom the foul fiend 
 vexes' {ibid., in. ii. 49-61). He shows his misery 
 and hunger through a veil of fancy. ' Poor Tom ; 
 that eats the swimming frog, the toad, the tadpole, 
 the wall-newt, and the water' {ibid., in. iv. 132-4). 
 The revenge which society takes upon him seems 
 actual. He is 'whipped from tithing to tithing, 
 and stock-punished, and imprisoned' (ibid., iii. iv. 
 138-9). Yet even this toll of vengeance is levied 
 by the imagination. You cannot beheve that it is 
 Shakespeare's Poor Tom who is whipped and stocked. 
 He still remains ethereahsed, a poetical symbol of 
 Bedlam. Lear, with the intuition of madness, sees 
 through his rags, ' his Persian attire,' to the dis- 
 embodied spirit within, and says : ' thou owest the 
 worm no silk, the beast no hide, the sheep no wool, 
 the cat no perfume . . . Thou art the thing itself ;
 
 152 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 unaccommodated man is no more but such a poor, 
 bare, forked animal as thou art ' {ibid., in. iv. 
 106-11). 
 
 IX 
 
 After crime the punishment. And though of old 
 it was a commonplace that every rogue was at last 
 ' trussed up in a Tyburn tip,' Shakespeare fills us with 
 surprise that so many vagabonds were called to 
 account. The skill of the rogue was ill-matched by 
 the pompous simplicity of the law. ' The thief doth 
 fear each bush an officer,' says Shakespeare (3 Henry 
 VI., V. vi. 12), and if the officer were no better than 
 Dogberry or Elbow, he was less formidable even than 
 a bush. The constable, the headborough, and the 
 watch are mere figures of fun in the plays. ' If we 
 know him to be a thief,' asks the watch, ' shall we not 
 lay hands on him ? ' ' Truly, by your office, you 
 may,' answers Dogberry, ' but I think they that touch 
 pitch will be defiled. The most peaceable way for 
 you, if you do take a thief, is, to let him show himself 
 what he is and steal out of your company ' (Much 
 Ado, III. iii. 58-64). Shakespeare's constables, in 
 truth, are no better able to keep the peace than a 
 constable in a modern pantomime. Their skill is an 
 inspired misuse of words, the utmost of their en- 
 deavour is to raise the parish. Again, the poet in- 
 dulged his fancy, proving his humorous sympathy for 
 the thief by his ridicule of the thief-taker. For in
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 153 
 
 Dogberry's despite the rascals who levied toll on rich 
 and poor went not unpunished. 
 
 When once the malefactor was caught, he suffered 
 summary punishment. The prisons of the seventeenth 
 century were for criminals places of brief resort. There 
 the thief sojourned on his way to the gallows, and the 
 debtor lingered until he had satisfied the demands of 
 his creditors. Nor were they managed with any regard 
 to the comfort of their occupants. Those who had 
 no money in their pockets found in them little enough 
 to eat. There remains a prisoner's petition, which 
 reveals their pitiful condition. It runs thus : ' in all 
 lamentable manner, most humbly beseecheth your 
 good Worship, wee, the miserable multitude of very 
 poore distressed prisoners, in the hole of Wood-street 
 Counter, in number fiftie poore men or thereabouts, 
 lying upon the bare boordes, still languishing in great 
 neede, colde, and miserie, who, by reason of this 
 daungerous and troublesome time, be almost famished 
 and hunger-starved to death ; others very sore sicke, 
 and diseased for want of reliefe and sustenance, by 
 reason of the great number, which dayly increaseth, 
 dooth in all humblenes most humbly beseech your 
 good worship, even for Gods sake, to pitie our poore 
 lamentable and distressed cases ; and nowe helpe to 
 relieve and comfort us with your Christian and Godly 
 charitie against this holie and blessed time of Easter.' ^ 
 
 1 A Collection of Se've/ity-nine Black-Lrtter Ballr.Js and Broad- 
 sides, printed in the Reign of ii^iteen Elizahet/i hetiveen the Tears 
 1539 '^I'-'^l IS97- London, 1867, pp. 16-17.
 
 154 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 This is a sincere cry from the heart, which went 
 not unregarded. To alleviate the distress a humane 
 clause was inserted in the famous Act of the forty- 
 third year of Elizabeth's reign, directing a sum of 
 money to be raised by a weekly rate for the relief of 
 the poor prisoners in the King's Bench and Marshal- 
 sea. On the other hand, a prison was not too harsh 
 a dwelling-place for those who had money to spend. 
 There was at least the freedom of squalor. Barnar- 
 dine in Measure for Measure ' hath evermore had the 
 liberty of the prison.' If leave were given him to 
 escape he would not take it. ' Drunk many times 
 a day, if not many days entirely drunk,' he was 
 unmoved even when he saw the warrant of execu- 
 tion (iv. ii. 154-60). And when at last the hang- 
 man calls for him in seeming earnest he is deaf 
 to the summons. ' I have been drinking hard all 
 night, and I will have more time to prepare me, 
 or they shall beat out my brains with billets. 
 I will not consent to die this day, that 's certain ' 
 {ibid., IV. iii. 57-61). 
 
 In the jails of the sixteenth century, if there was 
 greater cruelty, there was, to be sure, less formality 
 than to-day. Crime and the law were more closely 
 connected. A prisoner, if he would turn hangman, 
 had a fair chance of saving his life. ' Thou shalt have 
 the hanging of the thieves,' says the Prince to Falstaff, 
 ' and so become a rare hangman ' (i Henry IV., i. ii. 
 75-6). And in Measure for Measure Pompey is 
 offered his freedom on the familiar condition. But
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 155 
 
 Abhorson, the executioner, likes not his new col- 
 league. ' A bawd, sir ? ' says he to the Provost. ' Fie 
 upon him ! he will discredit our mystery ' (iv. ii. 
 29-30). The jailers, whether pardoned criminals or 
 not, erred not on the side of clemency. They were 
 made, says William Fennor, of the same stuff as the 
 fabric, stone and iron ; and, as the jails themselves 
 were ' noisome and unsavoury,' it was well that they 
 were for the most part mere halting-places between 
 the crime and the scaffold. The ancient laws of 
 England were like the laws of Draco in their sim- 
 plicity. Rogues and vagabonds were, at their first 
 offence, branded, or stocked. They might be 
 whipped at the cart's tail, or be asked to preach in a 
 pillory for lack of pulpit. But a second offence 
 brought them within the reach of felony, and felony 
 meant the gallows. So even a poor, masterless man, 
 if he disdained work, was compelled at last to groan 
 out of a cart up the heavy hill. 
 
 Truly, felony was a large and comprehensive term. 
 Breach of prison, hunting by night with painted faces, 
 carrying of horses into Scotland, stealing of hawks' eggs, 
 conjuring and witchcraft, diminution of coin, stealing 
 of cattle, robbing by the highway, or on the sea, or 
 of dwelling-houses, letting out of ponds, cutting of 
 purses, deer-stealing by night, counterfeiting of coins, 
 impenitent roguery and idleness — all these were 
 felonies and punishable according to law with a 
 hempen rope. In England, then, the gibbet was, 
 with one exception, universal. At Halifax alone the
 
 156 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 felon climbed no triple tree. If he was convicted of 
 stealing thirteen-pence-halfpenny or upwards he 
 was beheaded upon the next market-day. The 
 instrument of his suffering was, as Harrison describes 
 it, not unlike the guillotine ; and, it is satisfactory to 
 reflect, when the pin was pulled out ' the head blocke 
 wherein the ax is fastened dooth fall downe with such 
 a violence, that if the necke of the transgressor were 
 so big as that of a bull, it should be cut in sunder at 
 a stroke, and roll from the bodie by an huge distance.' 
 The felon's death, if brutal, was instantaneous, and 
 it was probably only the honourable tradition of the 
 gallows that made the malefactors of England beware 
 of Halifax. 
 
 The malefactors of England, though they feared 
 not death, refused obstinately to be tortured. By an 
 ancient statute jailers were held guilty of felony, 
 if they inflicted pain upon any prisoner for the 
 revealing of his accomplices. ' The nature of English- 
 men,' says Sir Thomas Smith, ' is to neglect death, 
 to abide no torment.' ^ And with a just pride the 
 author of The Commonzvealth of England declares 
 that ' in no place shall you see malefactors goe more 
 constantly, more assuredly, and with less lamen- 
 tation to their death than in England.' It was not 
 a time of sentimentality. He who had done wrong 
 thought it no shame to pay the penalty. And the 
 scoundrels of Elizabeth's reign, though they were a 
 burden on the country, though in artistry they yielded 
 * See above, p. 40.
 
 ROGUES OF SHAKESPEARE'S TIME 157 
 
 to their successors, yet knew how to make a noble and 
 becoming end. If it were their fate to dance without 
 the music or to tend the sheep by moonhght, they did 
 not whine of wasted opportunities, they did not 
 complain of the harshness of the law.
 
 SIR WALTER RALEGH 
 
 THREE hundred years ago ^ Sir Walter Ralegh, a 
 hero eminent in arms and arts, perished on the 
 scaffold. The infamy of his belated and judicial 
 murder turned to his favour the current of popular 
 opinion, yet the voice of detraction was not silenced, 
 and even to-day the scandal of his death casts a 
 shadow upon his greatness. Therefore are we of this 
 present day bound in gratitude to remember, at the 
 tercentenary of his disgrace, the eminent services 
 which he did to his Queen and his native land. A 
 true Elizabethan, he engrossed the activities of his 
 age. There breathed within him the very spirit of 
 English enterprise. No field of adventure was closed 
 to his courage and energy. He was courtier, soldier, 
 seaman, and poet ; he set his hand to no task which 
 he had not well considered, nor, when fortune failed 
 him, did he lose heart or renounce faith in the future. 
 To him, among other boons, we owe our Empire over- 
 seas, and it is fitting that we should do him honour 
 when we have been fighting, with that Empire's 
 
 1 This chapter was written in October 1918. 
 158
 
 SIR WALTER RALEGH 159 
 
 help, a foe bitterer and more implacable than the 
 Spaniard, to whom Ralegh gave neither rest nor 
 mercy. 
 
 I 
 Walter Ralegh was born in 1552 at Hayes Barton, 
 in Devonshire. The son of a country gentleman, he 
 is said by John Hooker to have carried the blood of 
 the Plantagenets in his veins, and even if this be a 
 fable, as some assert, no slur can be cast upon his 
 honourable descent. His boyhood he spent among 
 the sailors of the Devon coast, heard what stories they 
 had to tell him of the mysterious West, and caught 
 from them that love of adventure which left him only 
 with his death. For a while he sojourned at Oxford 
 — a commoner of Oriel College, where, says Wood, 
 ' his natural parts being strangely advanced by 
 Academical learning under the care of an excellent 
 tutor, he became the ornament of the Juniors, and 
 was worthily esteemed a proficient in Oratory and 
 Philosophy.' Oxford did not detain him long. He 
 was of those who pick up their learning as they go, 
 who read on shipboard or in the field, and he was no 
 more than seventeen when he took service as a volun- 
 teer with the Huguenot army. He fought at Jarnac, 
 and in Languedoc helped to smoke out the Catholics. 
 ' I saw in the third civil war in France,' he wrote 
 many years afterwards in his History of the World, 
 ' certain caves which had but one entrance, and that 
 very narrow, cut out in the midway of high rocks, 
 which we knew not how to enter by any ladder or
 
 i6o LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 engine, till at last by certain bundles of straw let down 
 by an iron chain, and a weighty stone in the midst, 
 those who defended it were so smothered as they 
 rendered themselves with their plate, money, and 
 other goods therein hidden.' For at least six years 
 he remained in France, since Hakluyt, in a dedication, 
 calls to mind that Ralegh had ' spent more years in 
 France than he,' and we know that five years were the 
 term of Hakluyt's sojourn. At any rate, in 1576 
 Ralegh was in London again, contributing a copy of 
 verses to the Steel Glass of Gascoigne, whom he may 
 have met in the Low Countries, and prophesying in 
 an aphorism his own future : 
 
 ' For whoso reaps renown above the rest, 
 With heaps of hate shall surely be opprest.' 
 
 After an ineffectual voyage of discovery, in which he 
 commanded the Falcon, whose motto — Nee viortem 
 ■peto, nee Jinem fugio — might have been his own, Ralegh 
 sailed, the captain of a hundred men, for Ireland. 
 That country was proving its intense love of inde- 
 pendence, as it has proved it since, by welcoming the 
 enemies of England to land upon its shores. So there 
 came to Munster seven hundred Spaniards and 
 Italians, who told the Lord-Deputy roundly that 
 ' they were sent, some from the most holy Father the 
 Pope of Rome,' as Camden reports, ' and the rest from 
 the most Catholic King of Spain, to whom he had 
 given Ireland : Queen Elizabeth being fallen from it 
 by reason of her Heresy.' This kindly forethought
 
 SIR WALTER RALEGH i6i 
 
 of the Pope brought a due reward to his emissaries. 
 Then happened what has always happened in Ireland. 
 The foreigners, seeing no hope of succour from Des- 
 mond, put forth a white flag, crying ' Misericordia ! 
 Misericordia ! ' Mercy was not shown them, and 
 there seems no reason why they should have been 
 treated with forbearance. At Lord Grey's command, 
 and with the approval of the gentle Spenser, Ralegh 
 put six hundred of them to the sword, acting in accord 
 with his just behef that 'leniency to bloody-minded 
 malefactors is cruelty to good and peaceable citizens.' 
 
 II 
 
 Such was Walter Ralegh's apprenticeship to hfe, 
 and having served it he came triumphantly to Court. 
 That his triumph should have been instant is not 
 strange, Ehzabeth loved a man, and a man Ralegh 
 assuredly was. He was also a Devonshire gentleman, 
 and Oxford's ill-humoured jest that he was a Jack and 
 an Upstart savours of jealousy. He was tall, hand- 
 some, and bold. He was, moreover, of a boisterous 
 temper, one who brooked not insult nor opposition. ^ 
 Already he had been committed to the Fleet for a 
 quarrel with Sir Thomas Perrott, and to the Marshal- 
 sea with one Wingfield * for a fray beside the Tennis- 
 
 * Ben Jonson tells us that when Ralegh's son, of whom he was 
 governor in Paris, made a scandal in the street, 'young Ralegh's 
 mother delighted much (saying his father young was so inclined) 
 though the father abhorred it.' 
 
 L
 
 i62 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 Court at Westminister.' His pride and arrogance 
 were the wonder of a proud age. ' Old Sir Robert 
 Harley of Brampton-Brian Castle,' so Aubrey tells us, 
 ' who knew him, would say 'twas a great question who 
 was the proudest, Sir Walter or Sir Thomas Overbury, 
 but the difference that was, was judged on Sir 
 Thomas's side.' To yield to Overbury in pride need 
 have shamed no man, and we may take it that Ralegh 
 was furnished with that triple brass which was neces- 
 sary to protect him against the slings and arrows of a 
 hard extravagant age. And not only was he a man 
 of action, he was a man of speech also. Aubrey says 
 his voice was ' small,' but it was persuasive ; and the 
 broad Devonshire accent, which Ralegh never lost, 
 added to its effectiveness. His first meeting with 
 the Queen, at Greenwich, was fortunate for him. 
 He came from Ireland to urge his policy against Lord 
 Grey's, and so much the better had he in the telling 
 of his tale, that, in Naunton's words, ' he had gotten 
 the Queen's ear in a trice, and she began to be taken 
 by his elocution, and . . . took him for a kind of 
 oracle, which nettled them all.' 
 
 Morever, Ralegh chimed with his Queen and her 
 age in his love of magnificence. He loved humility 
 neither of apparel nor of life. He was no starveHng 
 soul content with a crust. His fixed intent was to 
 get out of the world whatever of honour and wealth 
 it had to give. ' Shall we value honour and riches,' 
 he asks in the preface to his History, ' at nothing, and 
 neglect them, as unnecessary and vain I ' As to the
 
 SIR WALTER RALEGH 163 
 
 answer he is in no doubt. ' Certainly no : for that 
 infinite wisdom of God, which hath , . . made differ- 
 ences between beasts and birds ; created the eagle 
 and the fly, the cedar and the shrub ; and among 
 stones, given the fairest tincture to the ruby, and the 
 quickest light to the diamond ; hath also ordained 
 kings, dukes, or leaders of the people, magistrates, 
 judges, and other degrees among men.' He was an 
 eagle who would always soar sunwards, leaving the 
 poor fly happy upon the window pane. At the very 
 first he showed his wit in his apparel, and well it 
 became him. Drexelius, the Flemish Jesuit, says 
 that the mere jewels in his shoes were estimated to be 
 worth six thousand six hundred gold pieces ; yet so 
 fine was his delicacy that when he was appointed to 
 attend Biron, the French ambassador, he instantly 
 conformed to the fashion of his guest. ' The French,' 
 said he, ' wear all black, and no kind of bravery at all ; 
 so as I have only made me a black taffeta suit to be in, 
 and leave all my other suits.' 
 
 Walter Ralegh, then, a man and a courtier, was 
 welcomed naturally by a Queen who had inherited 
 her father's love of pageantry and a splendid life, 
 who was never so happy as when upon a pro- 
 gress, and who loved to see what she called 
 ' proper men ' about her. The legends preserved 
 by Fuller of Ralegh's sudden rise need not be 
 accepted literally. They are, nevertheless, fitting 
 symbols of the truth. Who would willingly part 
 with the story of the cloak, for instance ? ' This
 
 i64 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 Captain Ralegh,' says Fuller, ' coming out of Ireland 
 to the English Court in good habit (his clothes 
 being then a considerable part of his estate) found 
 the Queen walking, till meeting with a plashy place, 
 she seemed to scruple going thereon. But presently 
 Ralegh cast and spread his new plush cloak on the 
 ground, whereon the Queen trod gently, rewarding 
 him after with many suits for his so free and season- 
 able tender of so fair a foot-cloth.' So Fuller writes 
 with essential truth. Had Ralegh met the Queen in a 
 plashy place, he would surely have flung his cloak upon 
 the ground ; and why should not fate have given an 
 occasion for his courtliness ? 
 
 The other anecdote of Fuller suggests a know- 
 ledge of the after-event, and is justly suspect. 
 'Fain would I climb, but that I fear to fall' — such 
 are the words that Ralegh is said to have scratched 
 with a diamond upon a window, obvious to the 
 Queen's eye, and they might have carried a heavy 
 burden of meaning for him when he looked back 
 across the years to his happy beginning. He knew 
 himself then to have been what many called him, a 
 mere tennis-ball of fate, and he had wise words to say 
 about the tricks of destiny. ' As fortune's man rides 
 the horse,' thus he wrote in the Tower, ' so fortune 
 herself rides the man who, when he is descended on 
 foot, the man taken from his beast, and fortune from 
 the man, a base groom beats the one, and a bitter 
 contempt spurns the other with equal liberty.' But, 
 assuredly, he did not foresee, in the exulting flam-
 
 SIR WALTER RALEGH 165 
 
 boyancy of his youth, the misery which was to over- 
 take him. 
 
 A man of his sanguine temper and gay adventurous- 
 ness was troubled by no doubt. It was enough for 
 him to bask in the sun of Gloriana's smiles, and 
 Gloriana did more than smile upon him. When once 
 she had taken him for a favourite, she loaded him with 
 benefits. He was given a licence to export woollen 
 broadcloths ; the Farm of Wines wis granted him. 
 In rapid succession he was appointed Lord Warden 
 of the Stannaries, Lieutenant of Cornwall, Vice- 
 Admiral of Cornwall and Devon, and Captain of the 
 Queen's Guard. With the increase of honour he in- 
 creased marvellously in worldly possessions. The 
 acquisition of Babington's forfeited estates made him 
 a landowner in five English counties. The castle of 
 Lismore and the manor of Youghal gave him a position 
 in the Ireland, which he had helped to punish and 
 to pacify. And at last he estabhshed himself in the 
 place he loved best — at Sherborne, where his beauti- 
 fying hand may still be marked. Wherever he went 
 he builded and he planted. He took a natural dehght 
 in fine houses and handsome gardens. They were the 
 outward expression of the grandeur which he deemed 
 his right, and as intimate a part of him as the ships 
 which he knew well how to build and to sail, and 
 which he hoped always against hope would bring him 
 a vast store of gold and precious stones from the 
 Orinoco. 
 
 To be a favourite of Ehzabeth was an ill trade, as
 
 i66 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 Ralegh presently^discovered to his cost. Not only did 
 the Queen for her sport play one favourite off against 
 the other, but in her eyes the rising star seemed always 
 to shine more brightly than the risen. And Ralegh 
 aroused the jealousy of his rivals the more easily 
 because they recognised in him an intellectual superior. 
 He had a better head, as well as a better heart, than 
 they. If he did not yield to Leicester in the graces, 
 he was a master of a knowledge and a courage, of which 
 that courtier knew nothing. But Leicester's power 
 was already waning when Ralegh first encountered 
 his Queen, and it was the advent of Essex at Court 
 which threatened his supremacy. When he was but 
 twenty-one, Essex was already writing to Elizabeth 
 of that knave Ralegh, and it was only the threat of 
 the Armada which interrupted his plottings against 
 the man, in whose influence he saw the chief obstacle 
 to his omnipotence. 
 
 In the battle against Spain, who in her pride thought 
 she could overthrow the might of England, Ralegh 
 took the ample share that belonged to him. He was 
 of those who planned the defence of the country ; he 
 stirred to patriotism the men of Cornwall and Devon, 
 who, for the love they bore him, would have followed 
 him to the death ; and when the time of fighting 
 came, his ship hung on to'the skirts of the retreating 
 Spaniards until the end. Moreover, when certain 
 hotheads urged Howard of EflRngham straightway to 
 board the Spanish ships, Ralegh threw his influence 
 into the scale of prudence and good sense ; and in his
 
 SIR WALTER RALEGH 167 
 
 History seized upon the siege of Agrigcntum as an 
 excuse for a wise comment on the greatest of sea- 
 battles. * To clap ships together,' thus he wrote, 
 ' without consideration belongs rather to a madman 
 than to a man-of-war. By such an ignorant bravery- 
 was Peter Strozzi lost at the Azores when he fought 
 against the Marquess of Santa Cruz. In like sort had 
 Lord Charles Howard, Admiral of England, been lost 
 in the year 1588, if he had not been better advised 
 than a great many malignant fools were that found 
 fault with his demeanour. The Spaniards had an 
 army aboard them, and he had none. They had more 
 ships than he had, and of higher building and charg- 
 ing, so that had he entangled himself with those great 
 and powerful vessels he had greatly endangered this 
 kingdom of England, for twenty men on the defence 
 are equal to a hundred that board and enter. Whereas, 
 then, contrariwise, the Spaniards had an hundred for 
 twenty of ours to defend themselves withal. But our 
 Admiral knew his advantage and held it, which had he 
 not done he had not been worthy to have held his 
 head.' There speaks one who combines with the 
 authority of an expert a rare gift of lucid exposition. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The great year of our history, 1588, saw Ralegh 
 at the zenith of his fortune. So high had he climbed 
 that envy and malice were already fitting their slings 
 with pebbles. Nevertheless, at the zenith of his 
 fortune, he was but at the beginning of his great
 
 i68 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 career. So long as the Queen smiled upon him, his 
 work remained unaccomplished. When he did his 
 native land his noblest services, he was thwarted at 
 every step by jealousy and intrigue. The mere 
 favourite triumphed ; the patriot found fiercer 
 enemies at home than abroad. A brief year after the 
 Armada, Ralegh left the Court, driven thence, it is said, 
 by the plots of a rival. ' My Lord of Essex,' wrote 
 Sir Francis Allen to Anthony Bacon, ' hath chased 
 Mr. Ralegh from the court, and hath confined him 
 in Ireland.' Whether this be true or not, it is certain 
 that Ralegh withdrew himself to Kilcolman, and 
 there renewed his ancient friendship with Spenser. 
 It was a happy meeting for the poets and for poetry, 
 a meeting which Spenser has commemorated in un- 
 dying verse. As he sat by the Mulla's shore, 
 
 ' There a strange shepherd chanced to find me out, 
 
 Whether allured by my pipe's delight, 
 Whose pleasing sound yshrilled far about, 
 
 Or thither led by chance, I know not right. 
 Whom, when I asked from what place he came, 
 
 And how he hight, himself he did ycleepe. 
 The Shepherd of the Ocean, by name. 
 
 And said he came far from the Mainsea-deep.' 
 
 ' The Shepherd of the Ocean ' — what better name 
 could be found for Walter Ralegh ? Thus by Mulla's 
 shore the two friends talked and sang. They exchanged 
 compUments in verse, and Ralegh, enthusiastic 
 always for fresh enterprises, insisted that Spenser 
 should forthwith accompany him to Court, there to
 
 SIR WALTER RALEGH 169 
 
 win the patronage of Elizabeth, and to publish the 
 first part of the Faerie Oueene. Of Ralegh's fidelity to 
 Spenser there is ample proof. He gave him praise, 
 and, what is rarer and more useful, he gave him 
 practical aid. Had it not been for his intervention, 
 the Faerie Oueene would have made a late appearance, 
 and when in 1590 she saw the light of day under his 
 auspices, he appended his sonnets to the poem, which 
 show clearly enough his appreciation. That which 
 begins ' Methought I saw the grave where Laura lay ' 
 is universally acclaimed, and has won from Milton the 
 high tribute of imitation. In the other, Ralegh 
 sounds the trumpet of generous applause : 
 
 ' Of me no lines are loved nor letters are of price, 
 Of all which speak our English tongue, but those of thy 
 device.' 
 
 This friendship, then, was pleasant and honourable 
 to them both, and, be it remembered, they sang in 
 amoebaean strains, not as patron and poet, but as 
 equals. For Ralegh also was himself a true poet. 
 Careless, like the rest of his contemporaries, about 
 the fate of his verses, he wrote them to please himself, 
 and did not trouble to gather them together. Some 
 of them appeared in England's Helicon, signed by 
 Ignoto, others have been discovered by the research 
 of scholars. That they were known to his own age 
 and highly esteemed we know from Puttenham. ' For 
 ditty and amorous ode,' says he in his Arte of English 
 Poesie, ' I find Sir Walter Ralegh's vein most lofty.
 
 170 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 insolent, and passionate.' His style is concise and 
 forcible. He had that love of aphorism which was 
 natural to his time and kind. And none but a true 
 poet could have written his ' Pilgrimage ' : 
 
 ' Give me my scallop-shell of quiet, 
 
 My staff of faith to lean upon, 
 My scrip of joy, immortal diet, 
 
 My bottle of salvation, 
 My gown of glory, hope's true gage ; 
 And thus I '11 take my pilgrimage.' 
 
 These lines, beautiful in themselves, are a foreshadow- 
 ing of the mystical poetry of the seventeenth century. 
 Yet it is his prose rather than his verse which has 
 given Ralegh an immortahty of letters. The enforced 
 leisure of his voyages taught him to be a scholar, and 
 the friendship of Cotton persuaded him to join Bishop 
 Parker's Society of Antiquaries. Of his masterpiece 
 in prose — The History of the World — something will 
 be said presently. Of his voyages he wrote like a 
 man of action, who was also a poet ; his political 
 pamphlets are marvels of sound doctrine and clear 
 statement ; and there is not one of his letters — • 
 ' lofty, insolent, and passionate,' like his verse — that 
 does not reveal the touch of the true craftsman. If 
 you would have an example, turn to the letter which 
 he wrote to Cecil on the death of his wife. ' It is true,' 
 said he, ' that you have lost a good and virtuous wife, 
 and myself an honourable friend and kinswoman. 
 But there was a time when she was unknown to you,
 
 SIR WALTER RALEGH 171 
 
 for whom you then lamented not. She is now no 
 more yours, nor of your acquaintance, but immortal, 
 and not needing or knowing your love or sorrow. 
 Therefore you shall but grieve for that which now 
 is as then it was, when not yours ; only bettered by 
 the difference in this, that she hath passed the weari- 
 some journey of this dark world, and hath possession 
 of her inheritance.' And again, in the same letter : 
 * The minde of man is that part of God which is in us, 
 which, by how much it is subject to passion, by so 
 much it is farther from Him that gave it us. Sorrows 
 draw not the dead to life, but the Hving to death.' ^ 
 Here is noble thought matched with noble words, 
 written by one who did not lay aside his gift of litera- 
 ture when he addressed his friends. 
 
 Indeed, courtier and adventurer though he was, 
 Ralegh lived on easy terms with the writers of his 
 time. It is said that he proposed those meetings at 
 the Mermaid Tavern which had a legendary influence 
 upon English poetry and English wit. He befriended 
 
 * It is strange that the fanatical persons who can believe in 
 nothing so obvious as that Shakespeare wrote his own plays, 
 should have pitched upon Bacon for a substitute. Ralegh 
 would have been a far wiser choice. And here is a parallel 
 ready to their hand. ' Sorrows draw not the dead to life, but the 
 living to death,' writes Ralegh ; and Shakespeare in All V IVtll 
 that Etids (Fell puts these words in Lafeu's mouth : ' Moderate 
 lamentation is the right of the dead ; excessive grief the enemy 
 of the living.' Shakespeare could not have known Ralegh's 
 words, and Ralegh was far too sincere to plagiarise in an hour 
 of deep emotion.
 
 172 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 Hakluyt, and aided him in his epic enterprise. That 
 Marlowe should have been his associate is not surpris- 
 ing, since they are close akin in temperament. In 
 Marlowe's plays there has been noted a love of the 
 impossible. A love of the impossible was the inspiration 
 of Ralegh's active life ; and he was content to suffer 
 for the friendship of Marlowe as he suffered for his 
 loyalty to other friends. A foolish charge of atheism 
 was brought against him, who never wrote a word 
 nor did a deed that was not a refutation of the foul 
 calumny. Truly, jealousy of those who rise too 
 quickly is always ingenious, and Ralegh paid a heavier 
 penalty for his virtues than the most of men pay 
 for their vices. 
 
 IV 
 
 However, it was not intrigue that at last caused 
 Ralegh's downfall at Court. He had withstood the 
 devilish machinations of Essex ; he could not with- 
 stand the Queen's anger at his marriage with Elizabeth 
 Throgmorton, one of her maids of honour. The 
 Queen did not easily forgive the defection of her 
 favourites, and she fell upon Ralegh with an unre- 
 strained fury. With no better reason than her dis- 
 pleasure, she sent both Ralegh and his lady to the 
 Tower, and enlarged him only when his services were 
 needed to save the great carrack, the Madre de Dios, 
 which his expedition, commanded by Martin Fro- 
 bisher, had brought home, from indiscriminate 
 pillage. Then the Queen's avarice got the better 
 of her resentment, and Ralegh was permitted to go to
 
 SIR WALTER RALEGH 173 
 
 Dartmouth, ' still the Queen of England's poor cap- 
 tive.' He liked his imprisonment as little as the eagle 
 likes its cage. This foretaste of suffering, whose 
 cup he was to drink to the dregs, was bitter in his 
 mouth. He protested, he cajoled, he flattered. He 
 tells Cecil that he has become ' hke a fish cast on dry- 
 land, gasping for breath, with lame legs and lamer 
 lungs.' Angrily he protests to Admiral Howard at 
 the chafing of captivity. ' Would God it were all 
 concluded,' says he, ' that I might feed the lions as I 
 go bv, to save labour. For the torment of the mind 
 cannot be greater, and for the body, would others did 
 respect themselves as much as I value it not little.' 
 And then it was that he wrote the letter to Cecil about 
 the Queen, which seems to the modern eye abject in 
 its abandonment. He laments to hear that she has 
 gone far off. When she was near at hand, and he 
 might hear of her, his sorrows were less. ' I that was 
 wont to behold her,' he writes in a famous passage, 
 ' riding hke Alexander, hunting like Diana, walking 
 like Venus, the gentle wind blowing her fair hair about 
 her pure cheeks, like a nymph ; sometime sitting in 
 the shade like a goddess ; sometime singing like an 
 angel ; sometime playing like Orpheus. Behold the 
 sorrow of the world ! " Once amiss, hath bereaved 
 
 us of all ! " ' 
 
 The very extravagance of the tirade proves its in- 
 sincerity, and we, in the full knowledge of the truth, 
 need not take it seriously. Intended for the Queen's 
 eye, it is overcharged in colour and design. But
 
 174 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 Elizabeth, who never saw her face in the mirror un- 
 farded, cared not for the finer shades. She demanded 
 always an excess of praise, and she got it. Nor was 
 Ralegh under any illusion. Freedom was what he 
 longed for, and there were no words which he would 
 not have used to attain it. The Court and the 
 Queen's favour were for him but means to an end. He 
 knew that without them he could not achieve the 
 lofty purposes of his life, and the work to which he 
 had put his hand was so vast in scope that he would 
 sacrifice its fulfilment to no scruple of reticence. It 
 was for his career that he abased himself before the 
 Queen. For the rest, he was a gainer by her frowns. 
 If he had lost her patronage, he had won the loyal 
 and constant support of his wife, whose broken letters 
 to Cecil attest the depth of her affection, who stood 
 by Ralegh in the hour of his peril and distress, and 
 who fought without rest for the inheritance of her 
 son. And Ralegh generously repaid her fidelity. ' I 
 chose you,' he said, in a letter which he thought would 
 be his last, ' and I loved you, in my happiest times.' 
 
 To two policies Ralegh was always faithful — the 
 discomfiture of Spain, whom he recognised truly as 
 the enemy of England, and the foundation of another 
 England across the seas. The poUcies were so closely 
 interlocked as to be sometimes indistinguishable, for 
 the Spaniards claimed the right of sovereignty over 
 all America, and were supported in their impudent
 
 SIR WALTER RALEGH 175 
 
 claim by the authority of the Pope, That we should 
 be at war with Spain, then, was inevitable, and 
 Ralegh fought the Spaniards with sword or tongue 
 as long as he had breath. His letters are packed with 
 warnings against the enemy. He watched their ac- 
 tivities in Ireland unceasingly. ' The King of Spain,' 
 he wrote to Cecil in 1593, ' seeking not Ireland for 
 Ireland, but having raised up troops of beggars in 
 our backs, shall be able to enforce us to cast our eyes 
 over our shoulders, while those before us strike us on 
 the brains.' He watched the coast anxiously for 
 Spanish vessels, knowing that his own Plymouth was 
 in danger, and he urged Parliament not to wait the 
 coming of the Spaniard, but to go forth and meet him. 
 ' Let us send a royal army,' said he to the House of 
 Commons in 1593, ' to supplant him in Brittany, and 
 to possess ourselves there ; and send also a strong 
 navy to sea, and lie with it upon the Cape and such 
 places as his ships bring his riches to, that we may set 
 upon all that come. This we are able to do, and we 
 shall undoubtedly have fortunate success if we under- 
 take it.' This is the speech of a fighting sailor who 
 knew full well what sea-power meant to England. 
 ' There are two ways by which England may be 
 afflicted,' he wrote in A Discourse Touching a War 
 with Spain. ' The one by invasion, being put to the 
 defensive, in which we shall cast lots for our own 
 garments. The other by impeachment of our trades, 
 by which trades all commonwealths flourish and are 
 enriched. Invaded or impeached we cannot be lost
 
 176 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 but by sea, and, therefore, that enemy that is strongest 
 by shipping is most to be suspected and feared.' Nor 
 was he willing to hold out his hand for a premature 
 peace. ' After the Spaniards shall have repaired his 
 losses,' said he, ' I know not how your Majesty may 
 be assured of his enmity, for the Kings of Spain are 
 not wont to keep either promises or oaths longer than 
 they may prove profitable to themselves.' This is a 
 wise counsel, which the rulers of England will always 
 do well to ponder. 
 
 And Ralegh did not only speak against Spain ; he 
 fought against Spain. As I have said, he gallantly 
 played his part in the defeat of the Armada. At 
 Cadiz, in the JVar-Spright, he led the van, captured 
 the St. Andrew and the St. Matthew before the 
 Spaniards could blow them up, and brought them 
 home with him to serve in the English navy. When 
 the victory was won, merciful as always, he helped to 
 beat off the Flemings, who, having done nothing in 
 the fight, afterwards used pitiless slaughter, and he 
 sketched the scene indeUbly in two or three lines. 
 * Withal,' wrote he, * there was so huge fire, and such 
 tearing of the ordnance in the great Philip and the 
 rest, when the fire came to them, as, if any man had 
 a desire to see Hell itself, it was there most livelily 
 figured.' Thus Walter Ralegh was justly accounted 
 the great antagonist of Spain, and nowhere did he 
 fight her more resolutely than in America, He would 
 forestall her everywhere, and see to it that a new 
 England and not a new Spain should come into being.
 
 SIR WALTER RALEGH 177 
 
 For it is his great glory to have sought always the wel- 
 fare of the natives in such lands as he discovered. 
 The Spaniards of the sixteenth century, like the 
 Germans of our own time, thought it enough to make 
 a desert and to call it peace. Ralegh contemned the 
 vindictive fury of such colonists. He would bring 
 prosperity wherever he went ; he would encourage 
 trade, and exchange the commodities of the old world 
 for the rich produce of the new. Obsessed as he 
 was v^dth the constant vision of gold and precious 
 stones, he did not disdain the humbler solace of 
 tobacco and the potato. If Drake and Hawkins first 
 brought tobacco to these shores, it was Ralegh who 
 made its use fashionable, and thus not only increased 
 our stock of harmless pleasures, but added vastly 
 to the wealth of the country.^ And by planting 
 potatoes at Youghal he suppHed the land, where he 
 had great possessions, with its staple food, 
 
 Ralegh's first enterprise across the seas was shared 
 with his gallant brother, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who 
 had less hope of establishing colonies than of finding 
 the North- West Passage — a hope which lured many 
 a brave man to his death. That was in 1583, and 
 Ralegh, already a favourite, was forbidden by the 
 Queen to risk his life in * dangerous sea-fights.' But 
 to Sir Humphrey she gave her blessing, and for a token 
 ' an anchor guided by a lady,' which he wore at his 
 
 ^ Aubrey was assured by Mr. Michael Weekes of the Royal 
 Society, 'out of the custom-house books, that the custom of 
 tobacco all over England was ^400,000 per annum ' (1682). 
 
 M
 
 17^ LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 breast. Like all the early voyagers, Gilbert met with 
 a series of mishaps, and was fortunate only in making 
 Newfoundland, of which he took possession in the 
 Queen's name. SaiHng southward, he was overtaken 
 by a violent storm ; two of his ships were wrecked, 
 and he himself went down, ' sitting abaft with a 
 book in his hand,' and telling his men to be of 
 good cheer, since ' we are as near to Heaven by 
 sea as by land.' 
 
 It is characteristic of Ralegh that failure never 
 daunted him, and after his brother's heroic death he 
 applied for instantly and was granted a charter to dis- 
 cover unknown lands. In 1584, though he was still 
 kept at home, an English colony was established, 
 under his auspices, by Philip Amadas and Arthur 
 Barlow at Roanoake, and to this colony was given the 
 name of Virginia. Amadas and Barlow, as bidden by 
 Ralegh, treated the natives with justice and con- 
 sideration, exchanged such goods as they had for 
 sweet-smelling timber and other commodities, and 
 then sailed for home, bringing with them two of the 
 natives. A year later, Sir Richard Grenville was dis- 
 patched with ' a fleet of seven sails, with one hundred 
 householders and many things necessary to begin a 
 new state.' But no sooner were the householders 
 landed than discontent overtook them. They en- 
 countered a tribe of savages less easily managed than 
 those whom their predecessors had traded with, and 
 when Sir Francis Drake, ' coming thither from the 
 sack of divers Spanish towns,' visited the colony, they
 
 SIR WALTER RALEGH 179 
 
 did not scruple to accept his offer of a safe conduct 
 to England. 
 
 Even then Ralegh did not despair. He sent 
 expedition after expedition, sparing neither his 
 wealth nor his thought. As Hakluyt said, * it 
 required a prince's purse to have it thoroughly 
 followed out,' and Ralegh must needs depend chiefly 
 upon himself. Cecil blew hot and cold upon the 
 project, according to the whim and temper of the 
 Queen. But with the prescience of a great statesman, 
 Ralegh permitted no check and no discouragement. 
 In 1602, the year of the Queen's death, a few months 
 before ruin overtook him, Ralegh wrote to Cecil pro- 
 testing against the seizure of part of a cargo of sassa- 
 fras for the tenths. ' It were pity to overthrow the 
 enterprise,' said he, ' for I shall yet live to see it an 
 English nation.' His prophecy came true, though 
 his charter had by then reverted to the Crown, and 
 he had been deprived of the reward which should in 
 justice have been his. He did see it an English 
 nation, and thus did more to change the history of his 
 own country and of the world than any victorious 
 captain that ever laid low a barbarous enemy. For, 
 foiled himself, he pointed out the true way of colonial 
 enterprise, and proved himself, in effect, the only 
 begetter of our dominions oversea. 
 
 VI 
 
 Meanwhile his thoughts were turning always 
 towards the fabled wealth of Guiana. El Dorado,
 
 i8o LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 first conceived of as a gold-besprinkled king, and then 
 as the golden city of Manoa, had captured his imagina- 
 tion. His ambition was stirred by Francisco Lopez' 
 account of the Emperor of Guiana, all the vessels of 
 whose home, table and kitchen, were of gold and 
 silver. ' He had in his wardropp,' said Lopez, 
 ' hollow statues of gold which seemed giants, and the 
 figures in proportion and bigness of all the beasts, 
 birds, trees, and herbs that the earth bringeth forth, 
 and of all the fishes that the sea or waters of his king- 
 dom breedeth.' Such was a dream of wealth which 
 easily touched the fancy of the Elizabethans. Mar- 
 lowe, of like temperament to Ralegh's, had dreamed 
 the same dream, after his own fashion, and had told 
 it in immortal verse : 
 
 ' Give me the merchants of the Indian mines, 
 That trade in metal of the purest mould ; 
 The wealthy Moor, that in the Eastern rocks 
 Without control can pick his riches up. 
 And in his house heap pearls like pebble-stones, 
 Receive them free, and sell them by the weight.' 
 
 What limit was there to the power of such mer- 
 chants as these ? And if Ralegh thought of the 
 power which the master of El Dorado might possess, 
 he thought of much else besides. He knew that to 
 limit the Spaniard's wealth was to ensure the peace 
 of England. ' For we find,' said he, ' that the Spanish 
 King vexeth all the Princes of Europe, and is become 
 in a few years from a poor King of Castile the greatest
 
 SIR WALTER RALEGH i8i 
 
 monarch of this part of the world, and likely every 
 day to increase if other princes forslow the good 
 occasions offered and suffer him to add this empire 
 to the rest.' Thus Ralegh believed that his voyage 
 to Guiana would not only enrich England, but check 
 the power of his and England's inveterate enemy, 
 Spain. For once the Queen and Cecil smiled upon 
 his enterprise. The crafty Cecil risked money for 
 the scheme, and the Queen granted Ralegh a com- 
 mission to attack the Spaniards. Only Lady Ralegh 
 was fearful of her husband's safety. ' I hope you will 
 rather draw Sir Walter towards the east than help 
 him towards the sunset, if any respect to me, or love 
 to him, be not forgotten.' Alas for Lady Ralegh's 
 peace of mind ! The Queen would not restrain a 
 man who was no longer her favourite. Cecil had 
 yielded to the hope of gain, and all was made easy for 
 Sir Walter's experiment in high romance. 
 
 At first he was delayed by adverse weather. ' This 
 wind breaks my heart,' he wrote to Cecil from Sher- 
 borne in December 1594. 'That should carry me 
 hence now stays me here, and holds seven ships in 
 the river of Thames. As soon as God send them 
 hither I will not lose one hour of time.' And he did 
 not. In February he set sail, arrived at Trinidad, 
 made his expedition with five small boats in search of 
 Manoa, the golden city, and though he found it not, 
 brought back an earnest of wealth and an exact know- 
 ledge of the country through which he passed. It 
 was a pioneer's voyage, and had it been followed up
 
 i82 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 much of Ralegh's promising might have been fulfilled. 
 Nor was it in vain, even if we measure it by the results 
 attained. Wherever he went Ralegh was seen by the 
 natives in the guise of a liberator. He struck the 
 Spanish fetters from the kindly, ill-treated inhabitants, 
 and won their confidence for England and himself. 
 He lost no chance of gathering the facts which would 
 be useful in the future. He sought out all the aged 
 men and greatest travellers in the country, and, 
 questioning them narrowly, he ' came to understand 
 the situations, the rivers, the kingdoms from the 
 East Sea to the borders of Peru, and from Orinoco 
 southward as far as the Amazon or Maragnon.' Wher- 
 ever he went he sang to the natives the praises of 
 England and her Queen, ' dilating at large her 
 Majesty's greatness, her justice, her charity to all 
 oppressed nations, with as many of the rest of her 
 beauties and virtues as either he could express or 
 they conceive,' until they were ready idolatrously to 
 worship her. And the rest of the things that he saw 
 and did on his voyage, are they not written in The 
 Discovery of Guiana, an admirable discourse, which 
 he printed on his return to England ? 
 
 He came home, content with what he had achieved, 
 and implored Cecil ' to move her Majesty that none 
 be suffered to soil the enterprise.' He implored in 
 vain. The Kings of the borders, which were by his 
 peril, labour, and charge won to her Majesty, were 
 ' by other pilferers lost again.' Worse than this, 
 Ralegh's enemies contrived to throw doubt upon the
 
 SIR WALTER RALEGH 183 
 
 whole enterprise. They spread a rumour about that 
 he had remained hidden in Cornwall, while his friends 
 risked their lives in ' the broken islands and drowned 
 lands ' of Guiana. They charged him with having 
 ' salted ' the new discovered country with gold from 
 Barbary. In their envy they hoped that any lies were 
 good enough to besmirch the honest fame of Ralegh, 
 and doubtless were content to see their malice prevent 
 the proper furthering of his scheme. To-day we 
 know that Ralegh's own story went not an inch 
 beyond the truth, that it has been amply confirmed 
 by later travellers. But Ralegh was one upon whose 
 head the tile always fell, and it was decreed that he 
 should sow what others were to reap. Sic vos non 
 vobis. 
 
 VII 
 
 Hitherto Ralegh had borne without complaint the 
 alternations of fortune, high and low, and now, after 
 a few years more of royal favour, he approached the 
 long fifth act of his life's tragedy. His fall, which 
 came with the accession of James i., was in due accord 
 with the ordered catastrophe of theEHzabethan drama. 
 Ruin came upon him with astonishing swiftness. The 
 new King, poisoned in his mind by Henry Howard, 
 Earl of Northampton, the wickedest man of a wicked 
 age, received Sir Walter Ralegh with coldness, and 
 straightway began to deprive him of his offices. The 
 captaincy of the guard was taken from him ; he was 
 bidden instantly to resign the wardenship of the 
 Stannaries and the government of Jersey, though he
 
 1 84 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 had established there a land system which survives 
 to-day, and, faithful to his own colonial policy, had 
 encouraged the trade in fish between Jersey and 
 Newfoundland. Past services weighed not a feather 
 in the scale against the displeasure of the King. As 
 a worse insult than those that had gone before, he was 
 commanded to leave Durham House, of which he 
 had held possession for nearly twenty years. * I am 
 of opinion,' he told Cecil, ' that if the King's Majesty 
 had recovered this house, or the like, from the meanest 
 gentleman he had in England, that his Majesty would 
 have given six months' time for the avoidance, and I 
 do not know but that the poorest artificer in London 
 hath a quarter's warning given him by his landlord.' 
 Thus Ralegh was treated worse than a poor artificer; 
 and, not content with insult, his enemies presently 
 haled him, in their minds an already convicted criminal, 
 before a court of justice. He was charged with at- 
 tempting ' to deprive the King of his crown and 
 dignity ; to subvert the government, and alter the 
 true religion established in England ; and to levy war 
 against the King.' It was idle for him to deny the 
 charge. His cause was forejudged, his sentence fore- 
 determined. A Ufe spent in fighting Spain with all 
 the weapons which came to his hand was no answer 
 to his accusers, who, through Coke's malignant tongue, 
 charged him with having an English face and a Spanish 
 heart, ' Thou hast a Spanish heart,' screamed the 
 Attorney-General, ' and thyself art a spider of hell.' 
 The trial s?epis repiarksble to-day for Coke's dunisy
 
 SIR WALTER RALEGH 185 
 
 insolence and Ralegh's dignity. Coke used not any- 
 other means than reiteration to prove the charges 
 which he brought against Ralegh, who, when his voice 
 was heard above the din of abuse, had no difficulty 
 in getting the better of his antagonist. To put him 
 to shame were impossible, and Coke had the Court 
 upon his side. The wiseacres tell us that Ralegh was 
 legally guilty, and I daresay he was. According to the 
 rules of the game, a man was proved guilty by the un- 
 supported evidence of one who claimed him for an 
 accomplice, and who was not asked to confront him. 
 That Ralegh was innocent morally and in truth there 
 can be no doubt whatever. His life speaks for him 
 and his character. Cobham, the sole witness to his 
 dishonour, was a witness of falsehood, and he varied 
 his tale as he would. But if half a dozen witnesses had 
 sworn that Ralegh had conspired with Spain for the 
 destruction of England, they should not have been 
 believed. 
 
 However, the rules were not broken. Ralegh was 
 duly condemned to death and duly reprieved. Im- 
 prisoned, he fought for his liberty as fiercely as he 
 fought for his life, when the scaffold loomed ahead of 
 him. He addressed Cecil and the other Lords in such 
 terms of craven humility as must have been a cruel 
 scourge to his pride. When death still faced him 
 he implored pardon of the King ' on the knees of his 
 heart,' and yet, in what he thought would have been 
 his last letter to his wife, he proves that he repented 
 him most bitterly of his petitions. ' Get those letters
 
 i86 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 (if it be possible),' he writes, ' which I writ to the 
 Lords, wherein I sued for my life, but God knoweth 
 that it was for you and yours that I desired it, but it 
 is true that I disdain myself for begging it. And 
 know it (dear wife) that your son is the child of a true 
 man, who, in his own respect, despiseth death and all 
 his misshapen and ugly forms.' Indeed, his son was 
 the son of a true man, who turned even the weary 
 years of his imprisonment to the worthiest account. 
 No sooner was Ralegh condemned than an ignoble 
 scramble began for his worldly possessions. Even 
 Sherborne, which he loved best, was taken from 
 him at last, and conferred upon the infamous Carr. 
 ' I maun ha' the land, I maun ha' the land,' was all 
 that James replied to I,ady Ralegh's protest, and 
 Ralegh's noble letter to Carr himself was unregarded. 
 ' And for yourself, sir,' he wrote, ' seeing your day is 
 but now in the dawn, and mine come to the evening 
 — your own virtues and the King's grace assuring you 
 of many good fortunes and much honour — I beseech 
 you not to begin your own buildings upon the ruins 
 of the innocent ; and that their griefs and sorrows 
 do not attend your first plantation.' Carr in his hey- 
 day knew no scruple of compassion. He seized Sher- 
 borne, as he seized everything else that he could lay 
 his hand upon. Nor did he remain long in honour 
 to enjoy the stolen property. He was sent to the 
 Tower, a disgraced and fallen man, as Ralegh was 
 leaving it, and he never rose again. But to Ralegh's 
 active mind his prison did but suggest another form
 
 SIR WALTER RALEGH 187 
 
 of energy. ' Sorrow rides the ass,' he wrote to Cecil, 
 ' prosperity the eagle.' If the eagle were denied him, 
 he would do what he could astride the ass. He turned 
 him from a fearless adventurer into a patient, laborious 
 scholar. In the ample leisure of captivity, he studied 
 chemistry, he busied himself with the education of 
 the wisest of Princes, Henry of Wales, whose early 
 death alone prevented Ralegh's enlargement, and he 
 wrote his History of the World. 
 
 A biographer of Ralegh has said that it is easier to 
 praise The History of the World than to read it. It is 
 impossible to turn over its pages without praising it. 
 Whatever faults modern criticism may find with it, 
 it remains an unexampled monument of English 
 prose. The author can be grave or familiar as he 
 chooses. On one page he calls Agathocles an 
 ' eloquent knave,' and ' claps ' a crown upon his head, 
 on another he discourses of fate and death and life 
 with a lofty seriousness. His style is apt equally for 
 reflection and narrative. In the vast scope of his 
 work he covers centuries with something of Gibbon's 
 mastery ; and all the while he illustrates the far-off 
 past with modern instances. He weaves his own 
 experience, his own practical knowledge, into the 
 texture of his ancient history. When he compares 
 the Roman and Macedonian, he turns his eyes will- 
 ingly upon the valour of the English soldiers, levied 
 in haste from ' following the cart, or sitting in the 
 shop-stall.' And in his final invocation to Death, his 
 constant theme — ' O eloquent, just, and mighty
 
 i88 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 Death ! whom none could advise, thou hast per- 
 suaded ' — he writes a prose which Donne could not 
 surpass, and which may well have been a model to 
 Sir Thomas Browne himself. 
 
 That James i. should have pounced upon the book, 
 and been minded to suppress it is not strange. For 
 not only did Ralegh in his preface sketch Henry viii. 
 in the colours of truth, but he preached always to this 
 text : ' God is the sorest and sharpest schoolmaster 
 that can be devised for such kings as think this world 
 ordained for them without curtailment to turn it 
 upside down at their pleasure.' Ralegh, enclosed 
 within the Tower, thought himself free to express 
 such thoughts as were in him, and he recked not of 
 the King's disapproval. And all the while he was 
 dreaming of Guiana and its gold. Even The History 
 of the World was but an interlude in the constancy of 
 his purpose. At last he moved the obduracy of the 
 King, and in i6i6 was Uberated from the Tower to 
 prepare for the last voyage, in which he risked all that 
 was left of fortune to him and his wife. The voyage 
 failed miserably. How could it succeed when its 
 leader travelled with a halter about his neck ? Scurvy 
 and foul winds prepared for disaster. Mutiny en- 
 sured it. His ships were filled with the world's scum, 
 and his disheartened followers refused to go on when 
 triumph seemed within their reach. There is little 
 doubt that the King increased his danger by warning 
 the Spaniards of his coming. His son was killed, and 
 Keymys, his friend, put an end to his own life.
 
 SIR WALTER RALEGH 189 
 
 So Ralegh came back with no hope, and the cer- 
 tainty in his heart of a shameful death. He was be- 
 headed in October 161 8 in Old Palace Yard, and he 
 matched his heroic life with an heroic death. ' He 
 was the most fearless of death that ever was known,' 
 said the Dean of Westminster, who was with him at 
 the scaffold, ' and the most resolute and confident, 
 yet with reverence and conscience.' When he 
 touched the edge of the axe with his finger, ' This 
 gives me no fear,' said he ; ' it is a sharp and fair 
 medicine to cure me of all my diseases.' And the 
 man of the crowd who cried as the head was shown 
 to the people, ' We have not such another head to be 
 cut off,' spoke with the voice of all his countrymen. 
 Thus died a great Englishman who, having many 
 aims, fell not short of attaining them all — a true 
 Elizabethan, faithful with an equal mind to words 
 and deeds. His death, noble for himself, was in- 
 famous only for them who compassed it ; and 
 Ralegh, the hero, is still remembered with honour 
 when the names of his murderers are but blots 
 upon soiled parchment.
 
 THE COURT POETS 
 
 THE career of the Court Poets is an episode not 
 merely in the history of literature but in the 
 history of manners. In their lives as in their art, 
 they were an outspoken protest against the domina- 
 tion of the puritans. Whatever their predecessors 
 in their stern morality had disdained, they pursued 
 with a rare fervency of spirit. The chief end of 
 their ambition was to catch pleasure on the wing, 
 and they gave to pleasure a liberal interpretation. 
 Gallantry was not enough for them. No courtier 
 could hope to win the approval of his sovereign 
 who had not given proof of his ' wit,' who had not 
 publicly burned incense before the muse of frivolity. 
 So it came about that, in Sedley's phrase, ' every 
 fop wrote songs,' that few refrained from libelling 
 their friends in satire, and that a freedom in written, 
 as in spoken, speech matched the prevailing freedom 
 of thought and conduct. 
 
 The court, in truth, cherished an ideal hitherto 
 strange to English austerity. It no longer took a 
 
 190
 
 THE COURT POETS 191 
 
 keen interest in rival policies. The bitter conflict 
 of the civil war, followed by the domination of 
 Oliver, had obscured the spark of patriotism which 
 burned only in a few loyal hearts. The King and his 
 courtiers were determined to amuse themselves. 
 They had learned in Paris how to temper their 
 magnificence with wit and politesse, and, in the glamour 
 of beauty and courage, they forgot the long, dark 
 days when all the decorative arts of life had been 
 banished, when even the smile of irony was deemed 
 a disgrace. Charles 11., a monarch to whom most 
 things were easy save wisdom, led the band of revellers, 
 preferred the ribaldry of Buckhurst and Sedley to 
 the grave advice of Arlington, sauntered away his 
 days in the society of his mistresses, and delighted 
 in satire, even though it was directed against him- 
 self. It was a golden age, truly, in which life seemed 
 desirable for its own sake, and in which nobody 
 thought of its drearier purpose. ' Les plus hon- 
 netes gens du monde,' says St. ^fivremond, ' ce sont 
 les Frangais qui pensent, et les Anglais qui parlent.' 
 And at Whitehall, which he graced by his presence 
 for so many years, he might have encountered them 
 both. 
 
 Such is one side of the medal. The reverse is 
 less amiable. If it were frivolity whose muse reigned 
 in Whitehall, it was a pompous frivolity. There 
 was very little spontaneous gaiety in the court of 
 the returned King. The intention to be gay was so 
 loudly expressed that it seemed to come from the
 
 192 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 head rather than from the heart. The sense of 
 relief, the determination to be happy at all costs, 
 suggest that a spice of maUce flavoured the joyous- 
 ness of the courtiers. In what they said and did 
 there was no trace of the golden mean. Their 
 merriment was too often the merriment of con- 
 straint. Rochester declares in one of his letters 
 that it wasn't safe for a man to leave the court, if 
 he didn't want to be hanged. The exploits, set 
 forth in the Memoires de Gramont, are, so to say, 
 conscious of reaction. Their persistent monotony 
 fatigues us who read of them, as perchance they 
 fatigued the courtiers, who are their heroes. The 
 King and his friends were too flagrantly industrious 
 in the pursuit of pleasure. Gramont himself was 
 not content to rely upon his own graces for success. 
 He wooed his goddesses with ' gloves, pocket looking- 
 glasses, elegant boxes, apricot paste, essences, and 
 other small wares of love.' To be jealous without 
 being in love, to play for stakes so high that they 
 could not be paid without distress, to indulge in 
 practical jokes which had no better excuse than 
 physical infirmity — these are not the marks of happi- 
 ness. They were the misfortunes of every one who 
 came within the circle of Whitehall. The manners 
 of the time thus proved the best material for satire 
 and comedy. There was, perhaps, more joy in 
 their contemplation than in their exercise. Pepys, 
 who lived on the fringe of the court, was gay, because 
 he carried his indomitable gaiety into the simplest
 
 THE COURT POETS 193 
 
 affairs of his life. We can believe that there was a 
 flash of genuine gaiety at Epsom, when Nell Gwynn 
 and Buckhurst ' kept mery house ' there. But the 
 pleasure of Charles ii.'s court was marred by the 
 inverse of puritanism. It was austere even in its 
 love-making. 
 
 At times the courtiers broke through all bonds 
 of restraint. They thought it no shame to commit 
 acts of violence in the streets. Once upon a time, 
 Buckhurst and his friends killed a tanner at Stoke 
 Newington, whom they suspected of theft, and whose 
 pockets they emptied, as of stolen goods. A far 
 worse scandal was caused by Sir Charles Sedley's 
 amazing apparition at Oxford Kate's in Bow Street. 
 He came in open day, as Pepys tells us, ' into the 
 Balconie and showed his nakedness . . . and abusing 
 of scripture and as it were from thence preaching a 
 mountebank sermon from the pulpit, saying that 
 there he had to sell such a powder as should make 
 all the women run after him, 1000 people standing 
 underneath to see and hear him, and that being done 
 he took a glass of wine, and drank it off, and then 
 took another and drank the King's health.' It is 
 not surprising that the unbridled conduct of Sir 
 Charles Sedley and Buckhurst, who was of the com- 
 pany, came near to causing a riot, brought the 
 offenders before the court, and received from the 
 Lord Chief Justice ' a most high reproof.' 
 
 The news of these pranks, moreover, went abroad, and 
 lost nothing, we may be sure, in the telling. The voice 
 
 N
 
 194 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 of scandal was noisy and unscrupulous, then as now, 
 and, though it is evident that the ' wits ' were not 
 innocent of brutality, it is unfair to judge all their 
 lives by one or two episodes. Hasty generalisation 
 is ever the foe of truth, and charges are more hghtly 
 made than refuted. No man, for instance, was 
 ever so careless of his reputation as Rochester, 
 and even he protests in a letter addressed to Savile 
 against an unfounded indictment. Accused of the 
 same folly as that of which Sedley and Buckhurst 
 were guilty, he was eager in excuse. ' For the 
 hideous deportment,' he writes, ' which you have 
 heard of, concerning running naked, so much is 
 true, that we went into the river somewhat late in 
 the year, and had a frisk for forty yards in a meadow, 
 to dry ourselves.' The trivial adventure was in- 
 stantly turned to his disgrace, and so deeply sensible 
 was he of the public contempt that he confessed 
 himself ' extremely revived at the receipt of a kind 
 letter from an old friend.' ' I ever thought you an 
 extraordinary man,' says he, ' and must now think 
 you such a friend, who, being a courtier, as you are, 
 can love a man, whom it is the great mode to hate.' 
 
 II 
 
 Nor was exaggeration the only foe of the wits. 
 Many there were, without a spark of talent, who 
 imitated the vices of Rochester and Sedley, and who, 
 by their senseless extravagance, brought their betters 
 into contempt. When wit became a fashion, the
 
 THE COURT POETS 195 
 
 fools could ape it, and the poets have been compelled 
 ever since to bear a weight of unmerited odium. 
 Pepys once strayed into the society of these pre- 
 tenders, and their talk made even his hard heart 
 ache. ' But, Lord ! what cursed loose company 
 was this,' says he, ' that I was in to-night, though 
 full of wit ; and worth a man's being in once to know 
 the nature of it, and their manner of talk, and lives.' 
 Pepys' curiosity no doubt got the better of his judg- 
 ment, and the wit of these men, who called them- 
 selves the ' Bailers,' was probably as false as their 
 pretence. They are memorable only because they 
 did the poets an injustice — an injustice which no 
 less a man than Dryden has removed. None knew 
 better than he the talents of the poets and their 
 lives, and he treated them as true Augustans, prais- 
 ing their eruditam voluptatem. 
 
 ' We have,' said he, Hke the poets of the 
 Horatian age, ' our genial nights, when our dis- 
 course is neither too serious nor too light, but 
 always pleasant, and for the most part instructive ; 
 the raillery neither too sharp upon the present, nor 
 too censorious on the absent, and the cups only 
 such as will raise the conversation of the night, 
 without disturbing the business of the morrow.' 
 As in duty bound, he who had been admitted to 
 these banquets of wit and sense defended them 
 against the detraction of pedants. The wits, said 
 he, were insulted by those who knew them not. ' As 
 we draw giants and anthropophagi ' — to cite his
 
 196 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 words — ' in those vacancies of our maps, where we 
 have not travelled to discover better, so those wretches 
 paint lewdness, atheism, folly, ill-reasoning, and all 
 manner of extravagances amongst us, for want of 
 knowing what we are.' It was not difficult to rebut 
 precise charges. The wits, described by the ignorant, 
 were the fops whom Dryden and his friends banished. 
 As for blasphemy and atheism, even if they were 
 not ill manners, they were worn threadbare. In 
 other words, the true wits are blamed for the excesses 
 of those, who had never tasted the waters of Helicon. 
 If the court poets needed a defence, they could 
 not have found a wiser, juster defence than Dryden's. 
 And even when they have been relieved of the crimes 
 of which others were guilty, there is another mis- 
 understanding which should be dispelled. The 
 brutalities of Rochester, Buckhurst, and Sedley were 
 the brutalities of a fierce, unscrupulous youth, and 
 mere incidents sometimes in long and honourable 
 careers. To pretend that these courtiers carried their 
 pranks into a ripe old age is to endow them with per- 
 petual strength and high spirits. Rochester, it is true, 
 died on the very threshold of middle life. The rest 
 grew sober with the years. Buckhurst was pres- 
 ently transformed into a grave and taciturn man, 
 well versed in affairs, and entrusted, in William iii.'s 
 absence, with the regency of the kingdom. Sedley, 
 too, turned politician, was guilty of ' reflections on 
 our late proceedings,' and delivered speeches upon 
 ways and means. In brief, the court poets were
 
 THE COURT POETS 197 
 
 like those who, in other times, shared their talent 
 and temperament. They seized life with both 
 hands, and wrung from it at each stage whatever 
 of varying ease and pleasure it held. 
 
 And they were men of action as well as men of 
 letters. There was scarcely one of them that had 
 not taken arms in the service of their country. They 
 proved their gallantry on the field of battle as on 
 the field of love. In later years, a charge of cowardice 
 was brought against Rochester. The bravery of 
 his youth is beyond dispute. He was but seventeen 
 when he went to sea with Lord Sandwich, and, on 
 board the Revenge, took part in the hopeless attack 
 upon Bergen, where the Dutch ships had taken 
 refuge. Of this action he left a spirited account in a 
 letter addressed to his mother.^ A year later he 
 
 1 Rochester writes to his mother on August 3, 1665, ' troiii 
 the coast of Norway amongst the Rocks aboard the Reaienge' 
 Lord Sandwich had ordered twenty sail of fourth and fifth rate 
 to take the Dutch East India fleet under de Ruyter. ' It was not 
 fitt for mee,' says Rochester, ' to see any occasion of service to 
 the King without offering myself,' and he sailed for Bergen, as 
 full of hope as the rest, and already sharing in fancy the rich 
 treasures of the East Indies. He was all for shirts and gold, 'what 
 I had most need of,' and reckoned, like the others, without his 
 host. ' However wee came bravely into the harbour' — thus he 
 writes — 'in the midst of the toune and castles, and there anchored 
 close by Dutchmen ; wee had immediately a message from the 
 Governor full of civility and offers of services, which was re- 
 turned by us, Mr. Mountague being the messenger. ... It 
 grew darke and wee were faine to ly still untill morning. All 
 the night the Dutch carried above 200 pieces of Cannon into the 
 Danish castles and forts, and wee were by morne draune into a very
 
 198 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 was in the great sea fight, serving under Sir Edward 
 Spragge, and there gave a signal proof of his courage. 
 ' During the action,' says Burnet, * Sir Edward 
 Spragge, not being satisfied with the behaviour of 
 one of the Captains, could not easily find a Person, 
 that would cheerfully venture through so much 
 danger, to carry his commands to that captain. 
 This Lord offered himself to the service, and went 
 in a little boat through all the shot, and delivered 
 his message, and returned back to Sir Edward : 
 which was much commended by all that saw it.' 
 
 Buckhurst was not a whit behind Rochester in 
 courage : he was present, a volunteer, on the Duke 
 of York's ship in the battle of 3rd June 1665, when 
 the Dutch admiral's ship was blown up with all 
 hands. But it was Mulgrave who saw more of active 
 service than any of them. At the age of seventeen 
 he was on board the ship which Prince Rupert and 
 
 faire halfe moone ready tor both toune and ships. . . . Just upon 
 the stroke of five wee lett flye our fighting couiours and imme- 
 diately fired upon the shippes, who answered us immediately and 
 were seconded by the castles and fortsof the toune, upon which wee 
 shot at all and in a short time beat from one of there greatest 
 forts some three or four thousand men that were placed with 
 small shott upon us ; but the castles were not to be taken, for 
 besides the strength of their walls they had soe many Dutch 
 gunners (besides their owne), which played in the hulls and decks 
 of our shipps that in 3 hours time wee lost some 500 men and 
 six captains, our cables were cut, and wee were driven out by the 
 winde.' And with a characteristic touch he concludes his letter: 
 ' I have binn as good a husband as I could, but in spite of my 
 best have binn faine to borrow money.'
 
 THE COURT POETS . 199 
 
 Albemarle jointly commanded against the Dutch, 
 and, when the war was brought to a close, he was 
 given a troop of horse to guard Dover. At the next 
 outbreak of war, he was again at sea with his kins- 
 man, the Earl of Ossory, on board the Victory, when 
 he chose, as Dryden says in a passage of uncon- 
 scious humour, ' to abandon those delights, to which 
 his youth and fortune did invite him, to undergo 
 the hazards, and, which was worse, the company 
 of common seamen.' And so bravely did he bear 
 himself, that he was given the command of the 
 Katharine, ' the best of all the second rates.' Nor 
 was this the end of his military career. He was 
 presently colonel of the regiment of foot which his 
 own energy had raised, served for the sake of experi- 
 ence under Schomberg and Turenne, and, finally, 
 in 1680, went to the relief of Tangier with two 
 thousand men, and was triumphantly successful. 
 
 HI 
 
 There is thus a clear uniformity in the lives of 
 the wits ; and poetry was even a closer bond between 
 them than the service of their king. They essayed 
 the same tasks, they sang the same tunes, each in 
 accord with his own talent. They composed pro- 
 logues for their friends, they laid sacrilegious hands 
 upon the works of Shakespeare and Fletcher, which 
 they changed to suit the humour of the ' quality,' 
 They wrote songs in honour of Corinna and Phyllis,
 
 200 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 Chloris and Olinda. They delighted in an insipidity 
 of phrase, which kept their passion harnessed to 
 ' good sense.' They played with the counters of 
 an outworn classicism, and attempted to pass off 
 ' Cupid,' ' Bacchus,' and the rest as the current 
 coins of poetry. Only in satire did they give a free 
 rein to their eager antipathies and generous im- 
 pulses. They bowed the knee to the same masters, 
 and believed that originality consisted in the imita- 
 tion of Horace and Boileau. And, for all their study, 
 they were, for the most part, amateurs. 
 
 ' Wit is a good diversion but base trade,' said 
 Sedley, and, with the exception of Rochester, a born 
 man of letters, not one of them had the power of 
 castigating his verses into perfection. It was not for 
 these happy triflers to con their manuscripts by day 
 and night, to guard them for ten years from the eager 
 eye of the public. They threw them off in their 
 hours of ease, and did not make them proof against 
 the attack of time. They were precisians without 
 being precise. They followed those whom they 
 considered the best models. The Stagyrite is ever 
 on their tongues, and if they could they would have 
 obeyed his laws. Their highest ambition was to 
 equal Horace. They could not be at the pains to 
 use his file. It is the true mark of the amateur to 
 begin a work as a poet and to end it as a versifier. 
 They had happy thoughts these court poets ; they 
 hit upon ingenious images ; an elegance of phrase 
 was not beyond their reach. What they found
 
 THE COURT POETS 201 
 
 almost impossible was to sustain the level of their 
 inspiration. 
 
 When Sedley begins a song with the lines, 
 
 ' Love still has something of the sea, 
 From whence his mother rose,' 
 
 you are reminded of the Greek anthology, and think 
 you are in the presence of a little masterpiece. But 
 the poet soon loses interest in his work, and relies 
 upon the common words and familiar metaphors 
 of his day. Even at the third line, ' No time his 
 slaves from doubt can free,' the illusion is dispelled. 
 And it is this carelessness, characteristic of them all, 
 which makes it difficult to distinguish the works 
 of one from another, and explains the many false 
 ascriptions which perplex the reader. ' Lord Dorset 
 and Lord Rochester,' says Pope, ' should be con- 
 sidered as holiday- writers, as gentlemen that diverted 
 themselves now and then with poetry, rather than 
 as poets.' From this condemnation Rochester 
 must be excluded. His energy and concentration 
 entitled him to be judged by the highest standard. 
 The others cannot resent a wise and just sentence. 
 
 This union of poetry with the court had one evil 
 result. It involved literature in an atmosphere of 
 coxcombry. Social eminence appeared the very 
 inspiration of Apollo. To deserve the bays nothing 
 was necessary save to be a person of honour. All 
 the resources of eloquent flattery were exhausted 
 in the praise of noblemen who condescended to
 
 202 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 poetry. Criticism was thus poisoned at its source, 
 A poet should be judged by his poetry and by nothing 
 else. The accidents of his Hfe should not be per- 
 mitted to cloud our judgment. To find a pecuHar 
 virtue in a courtier's verses is no better and no worse 
 than to hail a farmer's boy as a man of genius merely 
 because he follows the plough. And it is difficult 
 to read the contemporary eulogies of Buckhurst, 
 Mulgrave, and the rest with patience. Of course, 
 the utmost latitude may be granted to dedications. 
 No writer is upon oath when he addresses a dedica- 
 tory epistle to friend or patron ; and if only he content 
 himself viath making a panegyric of his patron's 
 character or person no harm is done, while a pleasant 
 tradition is observed. 
 
 When, for instance, Sir Francis Fane assures 
 Rochester that, after his charming and most in- 
 structive conversation, he ' finds himself, not 
 only a better poet, a better philosopher, but, 
 much more than these, a better Christian,' you 
 smile, as, no doubt, Rochester smiled at Sir Francis 
 Fane's temerity and lack of humour. You cannot 
 smile when Dryden, who should have been a king 
 among them all, stoops to the very servitude of 
 praise, acclaiming in the language of extravagance 
 not their graces, not their gallantry, not their wit 
 flung lightly across the table, but their poetry. In 
 thus honouring Buckhurst and Mulgrave, he dis- 
 honours the craft of which he was a faithful follower, 
 and his offence is less against humour than against
 
 THE COURT POETS 203 
 
 truth. To confess at the outset, as Dryden con- 
 fesses, that ' the Court is the best and surest judge 
 of writing,' is a mere hyperbole, which may be ex- 
 cused. His praise of Rochester, vague though it 
 be, displays all the vice of a false judgment. ' Wit,' 
 he writes, ' seems to have lodged itself more nobly 
 in this age, than in any of the former, and the people 
 of my mean condition are only writers because some 
 of the nobility, and your Lordship in the first place, 
 are above the narrow praises which poesy could give 
 you.' The statement is abject in humility, yet still 
 without pretence to criticism. 
 
 He goes furthest astray when he speaks of Buck- 
 hurst. It is Buckhurst the poet, not Buckhurst 
 the courtier, that he extols, and thus, upon every 
 line that he devotes to his friend, he lays the 
 foundation of error. He congratulates himself 
 that he was inspired to foretell Buckhurst to 
 mankind, ' as the restorer of poetry, the greatest 
 genius, the truest judge, and the best patron.' 
 Never for a moment does he hesitate to com- 
 pare him with the greatest. He declares that Buck- 
 hurst forgives ' the many failings of those, who, in 
 their wretched art, cannot arrive to those heights, 
 that he possesses from a happy, abundant, and native 
 genius : which are as inborn to him, as they were 
 to Shakespeare, or for aught I know, to Homer.' So he 
 sets him high above all living poets. ' Your Lord- 
 ship,' says he, ' excels all others in all the several 
 parts of poetry, which you have undertaken to adorn.'
 
 204 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 And, again : ' the most vain, and the most ambitious 
 of our age have . . . yielded the first place without 
 dispute,' As his lyric poems are ' the delight and 
 wonder of this age,' so they will prove ' the envy 
 of the next.' And it is of satire that he is ' the most 
 perfect model.' ' If I have not written better,' 
 confesses Dryden, ' it is because you have not written 
 more.' Finally, in a comparison of ancient and 
 modern, he divides the wreath of glory between Shake- 
 speare and Buckhurst. ' This age and the last,' he 
 declares, ' especially in England, have excelled the 
 ancients in both these kinds, and I would instance 
 in Shakespeare of the former, in your Lordship of 
 the latter sort.' What boots it, after this eulogy, to 
 call Buckhurst the king of poets ? It would have 
 been less mischievous to call him the king of men. 
 
 With the same recklessness of adulation, Dryden 
 praises Mulgrave's Essay on Poetry. He read it, 
 he says, with much delight, as much instruction, and 
 not without some envy. He assures his patron that 
 the anonymity of the work was ' not altogether so 
 fair, give me leave to say, as it was politic' The 
 motive was obvious. ' By concealing your quality,' 
 writes Dryden, * you might clearly understand how 
 your work succeeded, and that the general appro- 
 bation was given to your merit, not your title. 
 Thus, like Apelles, you stood unseen behind your 
 own Venus, and received the praises of the passing 
 multitude ; the work was commended, not the author ; 
 and I doubt not, this was one of the most pleasing
 
 THE COURT POETS 205 
 
 adventures of your life.' It was not like Mulgrave 
 to remain long in the dark, and the adventure, if 
 pleasing, was soon over. As for Dryden, he could 
 sink lower (or rise higher) even than this in the 
 scale of adulation. A couplet upon Mulgrave 
 remains his masterpiece of bathos : 
 
 ' How will sweet Ovid's ghost be pleased to hear 
 His fame augmented by an English peer ! ' 
 
 IV 
 
 The poets themselves, being men of the world, 
 knew what value to put upon Dryden's panegyrics. 
 The best of them, Rochester and Buckhurst, treated 
 their own poems with a light-hearted disdain. They 
 left others to gather up the flowers which they 
 scattered with a prodigal hand. If they are to be 
 accounted artists, let it be in life not in verse. Poetry 
 was but an episode in their multicoloured careers ; 
 and, though we may wisely neglect the lives of 
 greater poets, with them, criticism inevitably becomes 
 biography. John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, the 
 one man of undisputed genius among them, will 
 ever be memorable for the waywardness and com- 
 plexity of his character, for the vigour and energy 
 of his verse. Few poets have suffered more acutely 
 than he from the flattery of friends, or the disdain 
 of enemies. The lofty adulation offered at his youth- 
 ful shrine was soon turned to a violent malignity, 
 and in the clash of opinions it is not easy to dis-
 
 2o6 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 engage the truth. He was born in 1648 at Ditchley 
 near Woodstock, the son of the pleasure-loving, wary, 
 ambitious Henry Wilmot, who fought for his king, 
 and who, after Worcester, shared the wanderings 
 and hardships of Charles 11. Educated ' in grammar 
 learning ' at Burford, in Oxfordshire, he entered 
 Wadham College in 1659, was created a master of 
 arts in 1661, 'at which time he, and none else, was 
 admitted very affectionately into the fraternity, by 
 a kiss on the left cheek from the Chancellor of the 
 University (Clarendon), who then sate in the supreme 
 chair to honour that Assembly.' 
 
 A veritable child of the muses ' he lisped in 
 numbers.' At the age of twelve he addressed a re- 
 spectable copy of verses 'to his Sacred Majesty on his 
 Restoration,' and mourned in English and Latin the 
 death of Mary, Princess of Orange. Having taken 
 his degree, he travelled in France and Italy, and, at 
 eighteen, returned to England and the court, a finished 
 scholar and an accomplished gentleman. None of the 
 courtiers who thronged Whitehall made so brilliant 
 an appearance as Rochester. All the gifts of nature 
 were his. ' He was a graceful, well-shaped person,' 
 says Burnet, ' tall and well made. He was exactly 
 well-bred, and what by a modest behaviour natural 
 to him, what by a civility become almost as natural, 
 his conversation was easy and obhging.' He had a 
 talent of intimacy and persuasiveness, which none 
 could resist. Even when his words lacked sincerity, 
 they won the hearts of his hearers. ' II entre dans
 
 THE COURT POETS 207 
 
 vos gouts,' said a woman, who was not in love with 
 him, ' dans tous vos sentiments ; et tandis qu'il ne 
 dit pas un seul mot de ce qu'il pense, il vous fait 
 croire tout ce qu'il dit.' He gained an easy ascend- 
 ancy over the court and assumed all the freedoms of 
 a chartered libertine. Once upon a time, as Pepys 
 tells us, he had a difference with Tom Killigrew, 
 whose ear he boxed in the presence of the King. 
 This barbarous conduct, says the diary, ' do give 
 such offence to the people here at court, to see how 
 cheap the King makes himself, and the more, for 
 that the King hath not only passed by the thing, 
 and pardoned it to Rochester already, but this very 
 morning the King did pubHcly walk up and down, 
 and Rochester I saw with him as free as ever to the 
 King's everlasting shame, to have so idle a rogue 
 his companion.' 
 
 Not even the people at court could for long harbour 
 a feeling of resentment against the insolence of 
 Rochester. Charles himself was ever ready with a 
 pardon. Though he banished Rochester many 
 times from his presence, he as often recalled him. 
 The truth is that, in Burnet's words, ' the King 
 loved his company for the diversion it afforded him.' 
 Little as Charles appreciated the bitter satires upon 
 ' Old Rowley,' he could not but forgive the satirist. 
 Though Rochester professed a hatred of the court, 
 it was the only place in which his talents found a 
 proper freedom, and he always returned thither, so 
 long as his health lasted. And it was not only|the
 
 2o8 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 licence of his speech that involved him in disgrace. 
 At nineteen, to repair the sole deficiency of his lot, 
 he had seized upon Mrs. Mallet, a great beauty and 
 a great fortune, ' by horse and foot men,' put her 
 ' into a coach with six horses, and two women pro- 
 vided to receive her,' and carried her away. The 
 King, who had tried in vain to advance the match, 
 was ' mighty angry,' and sent Rochester to the Tower, 
 But the triste Heritiere, as Gramont calls her, did 
 not long withstand the fierce suit of her lover, and 
 Rochester, as his letters show, made a reasonably 
 fond husband. Indeed, though after the adventure 
 what most strongly attracted him was the lady's 
 fortune, he honourably repented of his greed, and 
 presently tells her that her money ' shall always be 
 employed for the use of herself and those dependent 
 on her ... so long as he can get bread without it.' 
 
 Adventure, in truth, was the passion of his life. 
 When he could not seek it in the field of battle, he 
 must find it perforce in the tamer atmosphere of 
 the court. He had a perfect genius for disguise, 
 and delighted to assume the likeness now of a porter, 
 now of a beggar. Like the true histrion that he was, 
 he neglected no part of his craft, and entered into 
 the very skin of the character he chose to impersonate. 
 ' Sometimes to follow some mean amours,' says 
 Burnet, ' which for the vanity of them he affected, 
 at other times merely for diversion, he would go 
 about in odd shapes, in which he acted his part so 
 naturally, that even those who were in the secret
 
 THE COURT POETS 209 
 
 and saw him in these shapes could perceive nothing 
 by which he might be discovered.' 
 
 In one of his banishments, he and the Duke 
 of Buckingham, also in disgrace, found an inn 
 to let on the Newmarket road. Filled with the 
 joyous spirit of masquerade, they took the inn, 
 and each in turn played the part of landlord. 
 Less with the purpose of selling their ale than to 
 get what sport they might out of the ramble, they 
 invited the whole countryside to frequent feasts, 
 and with the help of their neighbours enacted 
 a veritable comedy. At last Rochester became 
 enamoured of a wood-nymph, compared with whom 
 ' Salmacis was not more charming,' and whom he 
 visited in the garb of an old gentlewoman, thus 
 giving the court the matter of not a little gossip, 
 before the King, passing by that road to New- 
 market, took him into favour again. 
 
 But his greatest exploit in this kind was to 
 set himself up in Tower Street for a German 
 (or ItaHan) astrologer, who declared that he had 
 discovered the profoundest secrets of nature and 
 promised infallible remedies for every disease. His 
 success in the city was immediate, and his fame 
 so quickly spread to the other end of the 
 town that the courtiers flocked to hear his 
 eloquence and to profit by his wisdom. So well 
 contrived was his disguise, that his nearest friends 
 did not know him ; and, as Hamilton tells us, but 
 for an accident he would have numbered Miss
 
 210 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 Jennings and Miss Price among his patients. None 
 knew better than he how to beat the drum and to 
 urge the passers-by into his booth. As Alexander 
 Bendo, he put himself high above ' the bastard-race 
 of quacks and cheats.' He was ready to cure the 
 spleen and all the other ills of mankind. Before 
 all, he declared that he had learned in a long sojourn 
 abroad how art assists nature in the preservation 
 of beauty. Under his treatment women of forty 
 should bear the same countenance as girls of fifteen. 
 There was no miracle of embellishment that he 
 would not undertake. ' I will also preserve and 
 cleanse your teeth,' he boasted, ' white and round 
 as pearls, fastening them that are loose.' And he 
 did not underrate the benefits which he was ready 
 to confer. ' Now should Galen himself look out 
 of his grave,' said he, ' and tell me these are baubles 
 below the profession of a physician, I would boldly 
 answer him, that I take more glory in preserving 
 God's image in its unblemished beauty upon one 
 good face, than I should do in patching up all the 
 decay'd carcases in the world.' That is in the 
 proper key of extravagance, and it is not wonderful 
 that courtiers and citizens alike sought out Alexander 
 Bendo at his lodgings in Tower Street, next door 
 to the sign of the Black Swan. 
 
 Thus it was that Rochester spent the interludes of 
 enforced exclusion from court. Nothing could tame 
 the ardent gaiety of his spirits, or check his boisterous 
 love of Hfe and pleasure. His tireless wit came to
 
 THE COURT POETS 211 
 
 the aid of his indination, and his deep knowledge of 
 hterature made him welcome even among the serious. 
 Like Gramont, he sought joy everywhere, and carried 
 it with him into every company. His unwearied 
 curiosity sustained him in the most hazardous 
 adventures, and taught him how to make light of 
 the worst misfortunes. Burnet declares that he 
 had conquered his love of drink while upon his 
 travels, and that, falling once more into a society 
 that practised every sort of excess, he was brought 
 back to it again. It is probable that no vast per- 
 suasion was necessary. ' Do a charity,' he writes in 
 an early letter to Henry Savile, ' becoming one of your 
 pious Principles, in preserving your humble Servant 
 Rochester from the imminent Peril of Sobriety ; which 
 for want of good Wine more than Company (for I 
 can drink like a Hermit betwixt God and my Con- 
 science) is very like to befall me.' His constant 
 disposition was toward gaiety and mirth, and ' the 
 natural bent of his fancy,' to quote Burnet's words, 
 ' made him so extravagantly pleasant, that many, 
 to be more diverted by that humour, studied to 
 engage him deeper and deeper in intemperance, 
 which at length did so entirely subdue him, that, 
 as he told me, for five years together he was con- 
 tinually drunk.' When Burnet wrote these words, 
 he desired, no doubt, to make the worst of Rochester. 
 The greater the sin, the greater was the conversion. 
 And thus it was that Rochester's vices became 
 legendary, and Rochester himself was chosen as an
 
 212 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 awful example of demoniacal passion, a kind of bogey 
 to frighten children withal. 
 
 Yet far worse than his manifold intemperance, in 
 the eyes of his contemporaries, were his principles 
 of morality and religion. Evelyn found him * a 
 very profane wit,' and doubtless he took a peculiar 
 pleasure in shocking that amiable philosopher. 
 Worse than all, he was ' a perfect Hobbist, ' and, 
 upon his Hobbism, his glaring vices seemed but 
 evanescent spots. He freely owned to Burnet, 
 with a smile, let us hope, that ' though he talked of 
 morality as a fine thing, yet this was only because 
 he thought it a decent way of speaking, and that as 
 they went always in clothes though in their frolics 
 they would have chosen sometimes to have gone naked, 
 if they had not feared the people, so though some of 
 them found it necessary for human life to talk of 
 morality, yet he confessed they cared not for it,' 
 
 As in prose, so in verse, Rochester delighted to 
 outrage his critics. Dryden charged him with self- 
 sufficiency, and out of his mouth he might have 
 convicted him. Thus writes Rochester in An 
 Epistolary Essay : 
 
 ' Born to myself, I like myself alone; 
 And must conclude my Judgement good, or none : 
 For cou'd my Sense be nought, how shou'd I know 
 Whether another Man's were good or no ? 
 If then I'm happy, what does it advance 
 Whether to Merit due, or Arrogance ? 
 Oh ! but the World will take offence thereby ! 
 Why then the World shall suffer for 't, not I.'
 
 THE COURT POETS 213 
 
 It was not the world which suffered. It was 
 Rochester. Like all men who set out to astonish 
 the citizen, to put the worst possible construction 
 upon his own words and acts, he saw his self-denun- 
 ciation accepted for simple truth.^ Even Dr. Johnson 
 did not rise superior to the prejudice of Rochester's 
 own contemporaries. He, too, thought that 
 Rochester's intervals of study were ' yet more 
 criminal ' than his ' course of drunken gaiety and 
 gross sensuality,' and thus proved how long endures 
 the effect of mystification. 
 
 As has been said, it is difficult in the clash of 
 opinions to disengage the character of Rochester. 
 Fort impie, jort ordurier dans ses propos et ses ecrits — 
 such is Hamilton's judgment. ' There has not lived 
 in many Ages (if ever) so extraordinary, and I think I 
 may add so useful a Person, as most Englishmen 
 know my Lord to have been, whether we consider 
 the constant good Sense, and the agreeable Mirth 
 of his ordinary Conversation, or the vast Reach and 
 
 ' It was, thus, partly by his own fault, that all outrages com- 
 mitted in London were set down to Rochester. ' Last night,' 
 writes Henry Savile to his butler Halifax on June <;, 1677, ' Du 
 Puis, a French cook, in the Mall, was stabb'd for some pert 
 answer by one Mr. Floyd, and because my Lord Rochester and 
 my Lord Lumley were supping in the same house, though in 
 both different rooms and companys, the good nature of the town 
 has reported it all this day that his Lordship was the stabber. 
 He desired me therefore to write to you to stop that report 
 going northward, for he says if it were to get as far as York the 
 truth will not be believed for two or three years.' Thus his ill 
 fame pursued him even along the road of innocence.
 
 214 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 Compass of his Invention ' — so says Wolseley, 
 his loyal panegyrist. Somewhere between these 
 two extremes the truth will be found. Rochester 
 was as Httle ' useful ' as he was fort impie,fort ordurier. 
 He was a man, not a monster, a man of genius, 
 moreover, and, in his hours, a man of rare simplicity 
 and candour. 
 
 A good friend, a kind, if fickle lover, he has left 
 behind in his letters a better proof of his character 
 than either obloquy or eulogy affords. His corres- 
 pondence with Henry Savile ^ does equal credit to 
 them both. Though Rochester's letters are touched 
 with the sadness which underlay his mirth, what 
 spirit is in them, what courage, even when he con- 
 fesses himself ' almost blind, utterly lame, and 
 scarce within the reasonable Hope of ever seeing 
 London again ' ! As sickness overtakes him, he rests 
 the more heavily on Savile's friendship. ' Harry,' 
 he writes, ' 'tis not the least of my Happiness, that 
 I think you love me ; but the first of my pretensions 
 is to make it appear, that I faithfully endeavour to 
 
 * Henry Savile, Rochester's friend and correspondent, the 
 ' Harry ' of Rochester's letters, though no poet, was a friend of 
 poets, and numbered Dorset as well as Rochester among his 
 intimates. The brother of George Savile, the famous author of 
 The Trimmer, he went early to Court, fought at sea with 
 courage, like the rest, and presently proved his skill in the art of 
 diplomacy. A handsome, pleasant-mannered, jovial courtier — 
 'no man,' said he, ' shall keep company with me without drink- 
 ing except Ned Waller' — he was typical of his age, and worthy 
 to enjoy the companionship of Rochester.
 
 THE COURT POETS 215 
 
 deserve it. If there be a real good upon earth, 'tis 
 in the name of Friend, without which all others are 
 fantastical. How few of us are fit stuff to make 
 that thing, we have daily the melancholy experience.' 
 
 His letters to his wife, moreover, exhibit us a 
 Rochester, who has hitherto been obscured from view. 
 Whimsical, humorous, ironic he appears in them 
 also, but something else than the cynical hunter 
 after pleasure. He shows himself curious concerning 
 the details of household management. He discusses 
 oats and coal, deplores the want of ready cash, which 
 is hard to come by, and hopes his wife excuses him 
 sending no money, ' for till I am well enough,' thus 
 he writes, ' to fetch it myself, they will not give me 
 a farthing, and if I had not pawn'd my plate I believe 
 I must have starv'd in my sickness.' Here, indeed, 
 is an unfamiliar Rochester, in dire straits of poverty, 
 pawning his plate to keep his restless soul within its 
 case, and nearer to the truth, perhaps, than the 
 monster painted in their blackest colours by anxious 
 divines. 
 
 Two episodes in Rochester's career have involved 
 him in charges of dishonour, from one of which he 
 cannot emerge with credit. In both, Mulgrave was 
 engaged, and it is easy to believe that the antipathy 
 which separated the two men was innate and pro- 
 found. When neither of them was of age, Mulgrave, 
 being informed that Rochester had said something 
 malicious of him, sent Colonel Aston to call him 
 to account. Rochester proved, even to Mulgrave's
 
 2i6 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 satisfaction, that he had not used the offending words, 
 but Mulgrave thought himself compelled by the 
 mere rumour to prosecute the quarrel. He owned 
 his persistence foolish, and Rochester, as it was his 
 part to choose, elected to fight on horseback. They 
 met at Knightsbridge, and Rochester brought with 
 him not his expected second, but ' an errant life- 
 guards-man, whom nobody knew.' Aston objected 
 to the second as an unsuitable adversary, ' especially 
 considering how well he was mounted.' And, in 
 the end, they agreed to fight on foot. Whereon, 
 Rochester declared that ' he had at first chosen to 
 fight on horseback, because he was so weak with a 
 certain distemper, that he found himself unfit to 
 fight at all any way, much less on foot.' Accord- 
 ingly, no fight took place, and Mulgrave's second 
 lost no time in spreading a report injurious to 
 Rochester, upon whom henceforth was fostered a 
 reputation for cowardice. The charge is not fully 
 sustained. Rochester, it seems, was too weak to 
 fight afoot, Mulgrave objected to fight on horse- 
 back, being worse mounted. A little ingenuity 
 might have turned the blame on either side, and 
 Mulgrave, by his own confession, was persisting in 
 a quarrel which had no justification. Rochester, 
 with his customary cynicism, shrugged his shoulders, 
 and replied to the charge of cowardice with a famous 
 couplet : 
 
 * Merely for safety, after Fame they thirst, 
 For all men would be Cowards if they durst.'
 
 THE COURT POETS 217 
 
 The origin of his quarrel with Dryden is by no 
 means creditable to his honour or his generosity. 
 ' He had a particular pique to him,' says St. Evre- 
 mond, ' after his mighty success in the Town, either 
 because he was sensible, that he deserved not that 
 applause for his Tragedies, which the mad, un- 
 thinking audience gave him ... or out of indigna- 
 tion of having any rival in reputation.' Whatever 
 might be the cause of Rochester's malice, its effect 
 was to set up Crowne in opposition to Dryden, a 
 piece of impudence which nothing but Rochester's 
 influence at court could have carried off. And no 
 sooner had Crowne enjoyed his unwarranted success 
 than Rochester withdrew his favour, ' as if he would 
 still be in contradiction with the Town, and in that,' 
 says St. Evremond with uncontested truth, ' he was 
 generally in the right, for of all Audiences in polite 
 Nations, perhaps there is not one which judges so 
 very falsely of the drama.' 
 
 With this piece of injustice Rochester was not 
 content. If he had been, An Essay on Satire soon 
 gave him, as he thought, another ground of anger. 
 That he should have attributed this piece of weak 
 and violent spite to Dryden speaks ill of his 
 critical sense. He might have discerned the hand 
 of Mulgrave in every line. Perhaps he believed 
 them accomplices. At any rate, as Dryden was 
 going home one night from Will's to his lodging, 
 he was waylaid by a pack of ruffians and soundly 
 beaten. There is no doubt that Rochester
 
 2i8 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 was guilty of the outrage. His guilt stands con- 
 fessed in a letter to Savile. ' You write me word,' 
 says he, ' that I am out of favour with a certain poet. 
 ... If he fall on me at the Blunt, which is his very 
 good Weapon in Wit, I will forgive if you please, 
 and leave the Repartee to Black Will, with a Cudgel.' 
 The punishment he meted out to Mulgrave was 
 better deserved, and delivered in verse : 
 
 ' Half-witty, and half-mad, and scarce half-brave, 
 Half-honest, which is very much a knave. 
 Made up of all these Halves, thou canst not pass 
 For anything entirely but an Ass.' 
 
 As for Dryden, whose genius, as whose years, should 
 have protected him, he passed by Rochester with a 
 single reference. ' An author of your own quality, 
 whose ashes I will not disturb,' he wrote to Buckhurst 
 after Rochester's death, with a magnanimity which, 
 even at this distance of time, it is hard to condone. 
 At the age of thirty-one, Rochester died, his wild 
 oats sown, and his mind turned to ampler purposes. 
 Though his cynical temper was still unconquered, 
 his wit began ' to frame and fashion itself to public 
 business .' As Wolseley, the truest of his friends, tells us, 
 he was 'informing himself of the Wisdom of our Laws 
 and the excellent Constitution of the English Govern- 
 ment, and spoke in the House of Peers with general 
 Approbation.' That he would ever have grown into 
 a statesman is unlikely. Though others escaped 
 censure, the scandal of his life had destroyed his 
 authority. Besides, he was a poet, to whom politics
 
 THE COURT POETS 219 
 
 would ever have seemed a base trade. What he 
 did for the solace of his reputation was to make an 
 edifying end, and to prove a chance of exhortation 
 to two divines. That these worthy men made him 
 out rather worse than he was is probable. Burnet, 
 at any rate, told us something of him by the way, 
 and set forth his views with impartiality. So much 
 may not be said of the Rev. Robert Parsons, who 
 considered him in a general sense and with a kind 
 of unctuous awe, found ' something singular and para- 
 doxical in his conflicts above the reach and thought 
 of other men,' and handed him over, as an inverted 
 hero, to the authors of the chapbooks. 
 
 V 
 
 Such was the life and death of one who set forth 
 his character in his writings with the utmost candour. 
 Though he was never at the pains to gather together 
 his flying sheets, though he is said on his death- 
 bed, one hopes falsely, to have desired the destruc- 
 tion of his poems, it is his poems which still give us 
 the true measure of his genius. And, even here, 
 misunderstanding has pursued him. The worst 
 that he wrote has been acclaimed to be the best. 
 Johnson declares that the strongest effort of his 
 muse is his poem entitled Nothing,^ a piece of in- 
 
 * * Nothing ' as a theme was long a commonplace. Johnson 
 compares with Rochester's verses Passerat's Latin poem Nihil 
 (1567). Two years before Passerat, Sir Edward Dyer had 
 written a tract in prose, The Prayse of Nothing, which had 
 suggested a popular broadside, with the same title, printed in 
 J. P. Collier's Book of Roxburghe Ballads (1847).
 
 220 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 genuity, unworthy his talent, as the first three 
 lines are enough to testify : 
 
 * Nothing ! thou Elder Brother cv'n to shade, 
 Thou hadst a being ere the World was made, 
 And (well fixt) art alone, of ending not afraid.' 
 
 Still more foolish has been the common assump- 
 tion that Rochester's poems are unfit to be read. 
 In some few he reached a height of outspoken 
 cynicism, rarely scaled by an English poet. But 
 the most of his works may be studied without fear, 
 and judged upon their very high merits. Tonson's 
 collection contains more than two hundred pages, 
 and amply justifies the claim, made for it by Rymer, 
 that it consists ' of such pieces only as may be re- 
 ceived in a vertuous Court, and not unbecome the 
 Cabinet of the severest Matron.' 
 
 It was in satire above all that Rochester excelled. 
 For this kind, he was richly endowed by nature and 
 art. He had studied the ancient models with con- 
 stancy and understanding. The quenchless vigour 
 of his mind found its best expression in castigating 
 the vices and foibles of humankind, which he knew 
 so well. His daring and malice equalled his vigour, 
 and he attacked Charles ii.,^ the Royal Angler, or 
 
 1 Though he dealt out the fiercest justice to the King in 
 satire, it is in an epitaph that he comes nearest the truth : 
 ' Here lies our Sovereign Lord the King, 
 Whose word no man relies on, 
 Who never said a foolish thing, 
 Nor ever did a wise one.'
 
 THE COURT POETS 221 
 
 Nelly, the reigning favourite, with as hght a heart 
 as he brought to the demolition of Sir Car Scroop, 
 the purblind knight. He wrote the heroic couplet 
 with a life and freedom that few have excelled, and 
 the most that can be said in his dispraise is that, 
 like the rest of the courtiers, he knew not the use of 
 the file. ' Rochester,' said Andrew Marvell, with 
 the voice not of flattery but of criticism, ' is the only 
 man in England who has the true vein of Satire,' 
 and Marvell, in speaking of satire, spoke of an art 
 which he himself had practised with success. And 
 that Rochester looked upon satire as an art is evident 
 from the answer, which he gave to Burnet, who 
 objected that revenge and falsehood were its blemishes. 
 ' A man,' said he, ' could not write with life, unless 
 he were heated with Revenge, for to make a Satire 
 without Resentments, upon the cold Notions of 
 Philosophy, was as if a man would in cold blood cut 
 men's throats, who had never offended him.' And 
 he added : ' the lyes in these Libels came often in as 
 ornaments that could not be spared without spoiling 
 the beauty of the Poem.' 
 
 His masterpiece, without doubt, is A Satire against 
 Mankind. Imitated from Boileau, it bears in every 
 line the impress of Rochester's mind. The energy 
 of its thought and style separates it sharply from 
 its original, and, if you compare the two works, you 
 may find a clue to the difference between French 
 and English. The one is marked by order, modera- 
 tion, and good sense. The other moves impetuous
 
 222 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 like a torrent, and sweeps out of its way the pre- 
 judices of all time. In cynical, closely argued con- 
 tempt of man this satire is unmatched ; in expression, 
 it surpasses the most vivid of Rochester's works. 
 The denunciation of reason,^ 
 
 ' an ignis faluus of the Mind, 
 Which leaves the Hght of Nature, Sense, behind, 
 Pathless, and dang'rous, wand'ring ways it takes, 
 Through Errour's fenny Bogs, and thorny Brakes,' 
 
 is a purple passage of English poetry, in which the 
 optimist can take no delight. Its conclusion is the 
 very essence of hopelessness : 
 
 ' Whilst the misguided Follower climbs with pain, 
 Mountains of Whimseys, heapt in his own Brain : 
 Stumbling from thought to thought, falls headlong down 
 Into Doubt's boundless Sea ; where like to drown. 
 Books bear him up a-while, and make him try 
 To swim with Bladders of Philosophy : 
 In hopes still to o'ertake the skipping Light, 
 The Vapour dances, in his dazzled sight. 
 Till spent, it leaves him to eternal night. 
 
 1 Tennyson was a fervent admirer of Rochester. * His taste,' 
 wrote Lecky of the Laureate, ' lay chiefly in sixteenth and seven- 
 teenth century poetry, in which he was widely read, and which he 
 used to quote with admirable power. I can still remember the 
 almost terrible force he threw into the noble lines of Rochester 
 on the "Vanity of Human Reason."' — Tennyson's Life,vo\. ii. 
 p. 20 1.
 
 THE COURT POETS 123 
 
 Then old Age, and Experience, hand in hand, 
 Lead him to Death, and make him understand. 
 After a Search so painful, and so long, 
 That all his Life he has been in the wrong.' 
 
 Like many of his contemporaries, Rochester 
 followed Horace in making verse a vehicle of criti- 
 cism. His ' Allusion to the Tenth Satire of the 
 First Book' may be said to contain his hterary pre- 
 ferences. With candour and sound judgment he 
 characterises the most eminent of his contem- 
 poraries. He declines to be ' blindly partial ' to 
 Dryden, defends Jonson and Shakespeare against 
 detraction, ridicules the ' tedious scenes ' of Crowne, 
 virhom he had used as the instrument of his jealousy, 
 and detects a sheer original in Etherege, who returned 
 the compliment by painting him as Dorimant. He 
 finds the right epithets for ' hasty Shadwell ' and 
 ' slow Wycherley,' chooses Buckhurst for pointed 
 satire, and extols the ' gentle prevaiHng art ' of Sir 
 Charles Sedley. For the uncritical populace, he 
 expresses his frank contempt. ' I loathe the rabble,' 
 says he, ' 'tis enough for me 
 
 ' If Sedley, Shadwell, Sheppard, Wycherley, 
 Godolphin, Butler, Buckhurst, Buckingham, 
 And some few more, whom I omit to name, 
 Approve my Sense, I count their Censure Fame.' 
 
 It is Rochester's added distinction that, almost 
 alone in his age, he wrote lyrics touched with feeUng, 
 even with passion. Though, at times, he makes
 
 224 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 sport of his own inconstancy, though, hke the rest, 
 he rhymes ' kisses ' with ' blisses ' and ' heart ' with 
 * smart,' he could yet write : 
 
 'An Age in her Embraces past, 
 Would seem a Winter's Day ; 
 Where Life and Light, with envious haste 
 Are torn and snatch'd away. 
 
 But, oh ! how slowly Minutes roul, 
 
 When absent from her Eyes ; 
 That fed my Love, which is my Soul, 
 
 It languishes and dies. 
 
 For then no more a Soul but Shade, 
 
 It mournfully does move ; 
 And haunts my Breast, by Absence made 
 
 The living Tomb of Love. 
 
 You wiser men despise me not ; 
 
 Whose Love-sick Fancy raves, 
 On Shades of Souls, and Heav'n knows what ; 
 
 Short Ages live in Graves.' 
 
 Nor should ever be forgotten that masterpiece of 
 heroic irony. The Maini'd Debauchee, who, like a 
 brave admiral, crawling to the top of an adjacent 
 hill, beholds the battle, in which he can take no part : 
 
 ' As some brave Admiral, in former War 
 
 Depriv'd of Force, but prest with Courage still. 
 Two Rival Fleets appearing from afar, 
 Crawls to the top of an adjacent Hill ;
 
 THE COURT POETS 225 
 
 From whence (with Thoughts full of Concern) he views 
 
 The wise and daring Conduct of the Fight : 
 And each bold Action to his Mind renews, 
 
 His present Glory, and his past Delight. 
 
 • . 
 
 So when my Days of Impotence approach, 
 
 And I 'm by Love and Wine's unlucky Chance, 
 Driv'n from the pleasing Billows of Debauch, 
 
 On the dull Shoar of lazy Temperance ; 
 
 My Pains at last some Respite shall afford, 
 While I behold the Battels you maintain : 
 
 When Fleets of Glasses sail around the Board, 
 
 From whose Broad-sides Volleys of Wit shall rain. 
 
 Nor shall the Sight of honourable Scars, 
 Which my too forward Valour did procure, 
 
 Frighten new-listed Souldiers from the Wars ; 
 Past Joys have more than paid what I endure.' 
 
 You can but say of it, as of much else, that it bears 
 the stamp of Rochester's vigour and sincerity in 
 every line, and that he alone could have written it.^ 
 
 * By a strange irony the Seventh Emble?n of Francis Quarles' 
 Third Book has long been ascribed to Rochester, both in 
 Editions of his works and in Anthologies. It is suggested by 
 the verse of Job : * Wherefore hidest thou thy face, and holdest 
 me for thine enemy ? ' And thus begins: 
 
 'Why Host thou shade thy lovely face ? O why 
 Does that eclipsing hand so long deny 
 The sunshine of thy soul-enlivening eye ? * 
 
 How did the false ascription come about ? By the folly of 
 editors, or by Rochester's own desire to mystify his readers by 
 converting an exquisite piece of devotion, written before he was 
 born, to a love-song of his own ? 
 
 P
 
 226 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 VI 
 
 Sir Charles Sedley, if he lacked Rochester's genius, 
 was more prosperously endowed. He was rich as 
 well as accomplished, and outhved his outrageous 
 youth, to become the friend and champion of William 
 III, Born in 1639, he preceded Rochester at Wadham 
 College, and came upon the town as a poet and 
 profligate at the Restoration. Concerning his wit, 
 there is no doubt. Pepys pays it a compliment 
 which cannot be gainsaid. He went to the theatre 
 to hear The Maides Tragedy, and lost it all, listening 
 to Sedley's discourse with a masked lady, ' and a 
 more pleasant rencontre I never heard,' and his 
 exceptions ' against both words and pronouncing 
 very pretty.' Dryden describes Sedley as ' a more 
 elegant TibuUus, whose eulogy by Horace he applies 
 to him : 
 
 ' Non tu corpus eras sine pectore : Dii tibi formam, 
 Dii tibi divitias dederant, artemque fruendi.' 
 
 He applauds above all the candour of his opinions, 
 his dislike of censoriousness, his good sense and 
 good nature, and proclaims the accusations brought 
 against him as ' a fine which fortune sets upon all 
 extraordinary persons.' It is certain that, v^th 
 the years, his gravity increased, and the quip which 
 he made to explain his hostility to James 11., who 
 had taken his daughter for his mistress, and made 
 her Countess of Dorchester, was but an echo of
 
 THE COURT POETS 227 
 
 his lost youth. ' I hate ingratitude,' said he, * the 
 King has made my daughter a countess ; I can do 
 no less than try to make his daughter a Queen.' 
 
 As a poet, he followed obediently the fashion of 
 the time. He wrote The Mulberry Garden, which 
 failed to please Pepys or to provoke a smile from the 
 King, and The Tyrant King of Crete. He perverted 
 Antony and Cleopatra into rhyme, and permits the 
 Egyptian queen to speak these last words : 
 
 ' Good asp, bite deep and deadly in my breast, 
 And give me sudden and eternal rest.' [She dies. 
 
 He translated Virgil's Fourth Georgic as well as the 
 Eclogues, and composed a poem on matrimony called 
 The Happy Pair, which was long ago forgotten. 
 Such reputation as he has guarded depends wholly 
 upon his songs. What Burnet said of his wit might 
 be apphed to his songs with equal truth : ' he had 
 a sudden and copious wit, but it was not so correct 
 as Lord Dorset's, nor so sparkling as Lord Rochester's.' 
 He had far less faculty than either Rochester or 
 Dorset of castigating his idly written lines. He 
 was content with the common images of his day, 
 with the fancy of Gradus ad Parnassum, The maids 
 and shepherds of his songs like their ' balmy ease ' 
 on ' flowery carpets ' under ' the sun's genial ray.' 
 Their favourite weapons are ' darts and flames.' In 
 the combination of these jejune words there can be 
 no feeling and no surprise. But Sedley had his 
 happy moments, in which he discarded the poor
 
 228 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 artifices of his muse, and wrote like a free and un- 
 trammelled poet. ' Phillis is my only joy,' apart from 
 its metrical ingenuity, has a lyrical sincerity which 
 has kept it fresh unto this day. Written to be sung, 
 it is the work not of a fop but of a poet, and it can 
 still be heard gladly without the music : 
 ' Phillis is my only joy. 
 
 Faithless as the winds or seas, 
 Sometimes cunning, sometimes coy, 
 Yet she never fails to please ; 
 If with a frown 
 I am cast down, 
 Phillis, smiling 
 And beguiling, 
 Makes me happier than before.' 
 
 A near rival is ' Not CeHa that I juster am,' memor- 
 able for its epigrammatic conclusion : 
 
 ' When Change itself can give no more, 
 'Tis easy to be true.' 
 
 When he condescends to lyrical patriotism, Sedley 
 is seen at his worst. Not even his hatred of James ii. 
 can palliate such doggerel : 
 
 ' Behold the happy day again, 
 Distinguish'd by the joy in every face ; 
 This day great WilHam's life began, 
 Soul of our war and guardian of our peace.' 
 
 For the rest, Rochester's criticism of Sedley is not 
 without truth. He praised the gentle Art 
 
 ' That can with a resistless Power impart 
 The loosest wishes to the chastest Heart.'
 
 THE COURT POETS 229 
 
 Sedley's early ambition could not be more justly or 
 delicately expressed. 
 
 VII 
 
 The reputation of Charles Sackville, Lord Buck- 
 hurst and Earl of Dorset, is a puzzle of literary 
 history. An age lavish of panegyric exhausted in 
 his praise all its powers of flattery. In no other 
 poet will you find so vast a disproportion between 
 his works and the eulogies, which they evoked. Some 
 specimens of Dryden's adulation have already been 
 quoted. And Dryden did not stand alone. Prior 
 was his friendly rival in exaggeration. ' The manner 
 in which he wrote,' said he of Buckhurst, ' will 
 hardly ever be equalled. . . . Every one of his pieces 
 is an ingot of gold, intrinsically and solidly valuable ; 
 such as wrought or beaten thinner, would shine thro' 
 a whole book of any author.' For every virtue of 
 his friend's writings Prior found a happy image. 
 ' There is a lustre in his verses,' he wrote, ' like that 
 of the sun in Claude Lorraine's landskips ; it looks 
 natural, and it is inimitable.' And when we turn 
 from the encomiasts to the poet's own works, we 
 find them to be no more than what Johnson called 
 them, ' the effusions of a man of wit, gay, vigorous, 
 and airy.' 
 
 Buckhurst was, above all, a satirist. He had the 
 mordant humour, the keen eye, the perfect close- 
 ness of phrase, essential to one who lashes the folUes 
 of his age. He knew not how to spare the objects
 
 230 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 of his contempt. He left upon his enemies not the 
 flicker of irony, but the indelible mark of his scorn. 
 Rochester, in a line of praise, not of ill-nature, as 
 Dryden took it, called him ' the best good man with 
 the worst natur'd Muse,' a line which Buckhurst's 
 addresses ' To Mr. Edward Howard ' seem to justify. 
 Of their skill and energy there can be no doubt. 
 Their victim, assuredly, found them deficient in 
 good taste. ' The gentleman,' says Prior, ' had 
 always so much the better of the satirist, that the 
 persons touched did not know where to fix their re- 
 sentments, and were forced to appear rather ashamed 
 than angry.' It was more anger than shame, I 
 imagine, that attacked Edward Howard, when he 
 read Buckhurst's ferocious lines upon his plays. 
 
 The best known of all his works is the celebrated 
 song, ' To all you Ladies now at land,' a true ballad 
 in form and rhythm, touched in every line with the 
 inborn wit and sentiment of its author, who sees 
 the sea with the eye of a landsman and courtier, 
 and who sends his tears a speedier way than the 
 post : ' The tide shall bring them twice a day.' 
 Tradition has persuaded the world to believe that the 
 poem was written at sea, in the first Dutch war, 
 1665, the night before the engagement of 3rd June. 
 As Johnson says, ' seldom any splendid story is wholly 
 true,' and this splendid story must be abandoned. 
 The ' hereditary intelligence ' of the Earl of Orrery 
 half persuaded Johnson to believe ' that Lord Buck- 
 hurst had been a week employed upon it, and only
 
 THE COURT POETS 231 
 
 retouched or jfinished it on the memorable evening.' 
 Even this account, as Johnson admits, * whatever 
 it may subtract from his facility, leaves him his 
 courage.' To-day we have surer intelhgence even 
 than had Lord Orrery. ' By coach to my Lord Brun- 
 ker's,' wrote Pepys on 2nd January 1665, 'by appoint- 
 ment, in the Piazza in Covent-Guarding, where I 
 occasioned much mirth with a ballet I brought with 
 me, made from the seamen at sea to their ladies 
 in town.' Though Pepys says that Sir W. Pen, Sir 
 J. Ascue, and Sir J. Lawson ' made them,' it is 
 evident that it is Buckhurst's ' ballet ' that is in 
 his mind, and as Pepys knew it six months before 
 the battle, clearly Buckhurst did not write it at sea, 
 with the expectation of an engagement upon him. 
 The time and place of its writing, however, do not 
 lessen the admirable quality of the ballad, which 
 keeps its place in our anthologies by its own shining 
 merits, and from which it is never inapposite to 
 quote : 
 
 ' To all you Ladies now at land 
 We men at sea indite ; 
 
 But first would have you understand 
 How hard it is to write ; 
 
 The Muses now, and Neptune too. 
 We must implore to write to you. 
 
 Then if we write not by each post, 
 
 Think not we are unkind. 
 Nor yet conclude our ships are lost 
 
 By Dutchmen, or by wind ;
 
 232 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 Our tears we '11 send a speedier way, 
 The tide shall waft them twice a day. 
 
 And now we 've told you all our loves, 
 And likewise all our fears, 
 
 In hopes this declaration moves 
 Some pity from your tears : 
 
 Let 's hear of no inconstancy, 
 
 We have too much of that at sea.' 
 
 Nevertheless, not his ballad, not his satires, not 
 his songs, quick as they are with epigram and wit, 
 justify the praises which have been generously 
 bestowed upon their author. It may be that we 
 have but a fragment of his work ; that, as Prior suggests, 
 he cared not what became of his verses when the 
 writing of them had amused his leisure. Many of 
 his happiest efforts may have been preserved only 
 by memory, like the sayings of the ancient Druids. 
 If that be so, they have perished as utterly as the 
 Druids and their wisdom. The mere rumour of 
 them cannot affect our judgment, and we are driven 
 to conclude that it was Buckhurst the man, not Buck- 
 hurst the poet, who won the universal esteem. The 
 follies of his youth were easily forgiven, as Rochester's 
 were not, or perhaps it was his singular good fortune, 
 that the excellences of his maturer years should show 
 the brighter with his follies for a background. His 
 character was amiable as his pen was acrid. Rochester, 
 never lavish of compliments, paid him the highest 
 that ingenuity could devise. ' He did not know how
 
 THE COURT POETS 233 
 
 it was,' said he, ' but my Lord Dorset might do any- 
 thing, yet was never to blame.' His skill in diplo- 
 macy, his tact in affairs, are acknowledged by all, 
 and he was evidently one of those who, without 
 effort, claim and keep the respect and affection of 
 their fellows. Prior's eulogy of his virtues is as 
 sincere as it is eloquent, and if we estimate his 
 poetry more modestly than his contemporaries, we 
 may still echo their praises of his character and 
 person. 
 
 VIII 
 
 It would be difficult to find a greater contrast to 
 Buckhurst than John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave 
 and Duke of Buckinghamshire, who was as little able 
 to hold the sympathy of his age as to preserve the 
 reputation of poet which once was his. Not even 
 the tongues of flatterers can defend him successfully 
 against the assault of truth. ' He is a nobleman of 
 learning,' wrote Macky, ' and good natural parts, 
 but of no principles. Violent for the High Church, 
 yet seldom goes to it. Very proud, insolent, and 
 covetous, and takes all advantages. In paying his 
 debt unwilling, and is neither esteemed, nor beloved : 
 for notwithstanding his great interest at Court, it is 
 certain he has none in either House of Parliament, 
 or in the country.' The conduct of his quarrel with 
 Rochester, and whatever else is known of him, justify 
 this harsh opinion. As a writer of verses, he is 
 fluent and undistinguished. His ' Temple of Death '
 
 234 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 has no better claim to be remembered than his ' Ode 
 on Love.' In * The Vision,' which was written 
 during a voyage to Tangier, we come with surprise 
 upon a line, ' odd antic shapes of wild unheard of 
 things,' which is not made up of current phrases, 
 and seems a piece of driftwood from the distant 
 ocean of romance. His ' Essay on Satire,' which 
 cost Dryden an encounter with Black VViU, belies 
 the principles which he himself has set forth : the 
 accent of the scold is heard in every line. 
 
 The work by which he is best known is 'An Essay on 
 Poetry,' a piece of rhymed criticism, then fashionable. 
 It is neither profound nor original. Even as a chapter 
 in the history of criticism it is not valuable, because 
 whatever of wisdom it contains is borrowed from 
 Boileau. It is full of commonplaces, his own and 
 others. ' Nature's chief masterpiece,' says he, ' is 
 writing well.' Number and rhyme he finds ' but 
 vulgar arts,' and employed in vain without genius, 
 ' for that 's the soul.' He discourses, vnthout illum- 
 ination, of satires, songs, odes, and epics. As for 
 dialogue, he finds that ' Shakespeare and Fletcher 
 are the wonders now,' pays a lofty tribute to Homer, 
 ' Read Homer once, and you can read no more,' 
 and in the second edition, pubhshed nine years 
 after the first, in 1691, puts Milton on the topmost 
 pinnacle of fame, above even Tasso and Spenser. This 
 is the highest feat of his inteUigence, and he would 
 have deserved still greater credit for it, had not 
 Roscommon anticipated him. In general, he leans
 
 THE COURT POETS 235 
 
 to the school of ' good sense ' ; he accepts Dryden's 
 definition of wit, ' exact propriety of word and 
 thought,' and would judge poetry by a rigid standard 
 of life. In condemning ' such nauseous songs as 
 the late Convert made,' he voided his spleen against 
 his old enemy Rochester, and suggested his dishke 
 of the sheer wit of Restoration Comedy. His con- 
 demnation inspired Robert Wolseley, in his preface 
 to Valentinian (1685), valiantly to defend the memory 
 of his friend Rochester, and to strike a blow for the 
 freedom of poetry, ' It never yet came into any 
 Man's Head, who pretended to be a Critick,' says 
 Wolseley, ' except this Essayer's that the Wit of a 
 Poet was to be measured by the worth of his Subject, 
 and that when this was bad, that must be so too ; 
 the manner of treating the subject has hitherto been 
 thought the true test, for as an ill Poet will depresse 
 and disgrace the highest, so a good one will raise and 
 dignifie the lowest.' None can doubt that Wolseley, 
 the Convert's champion, had the best of the argument. 
 
 IX 
 
 Poetry, it may be assumed, was but an interlude 
 in the Hfe of Mulgrave. Politics were always his 
 chief employment, from which he retired only while 
 William in. was on the throne. The favourite of 
 Queen Anne, he held high office during her reign, 
 opposed the Duke of Marlborough, ill requited the 
 Queen's amiability by inviting the Princess Sophia 
 to England, and built the palace in the park, which.
 
 236 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 more than his works, keeps green his name, Went- 
 worth Dillon, Earl of Roscommon, on the other hand, 
 meddled in the affairs of the court as httle as he 
 practised its vices. Born in Ireland during the 
 reign of Strafford, his kinsman, he was given the 
 name of that statesman, who presently sent him to 
 his own estate in Yorkshire to be educated. He 
 showed an aptitude for learning, and, as his biog- 
 rapher says, ' attained to write in Latin with classical 
 elegance and propriety,' When the blow fell upon 
 Strafford, Roscommon sought refuge at Caen, there 
 to complete his education, and spent the years of 
 civil war in learning the life and language of foreign 
 countries, ' applying himself particularly to the 
 knowledge of medals, which he gained in perfection.' 
 He returned to England at the Restoration, a 
 scholar, an honest man, and something of a prig. He 
 had but one vice, the unamiable vice of gambling, with 
 which he diminished his resources, and which once, 
 in Dubhn, went near to cause his death. ' As he 
 returned to his lodgings from a gaming-table,' writes 
 Fenton in his observations on Mr. Waller's poems, 
 * he was attack'd in the dark by three ruffians, who 
 were employ'd to assassinate him : the Earl defended 
 himself with so much resolution, that he dispatch'd 
 one of the aggressors ; whilst a Gentleman, accident- 
 ally passing that way, interpos'd, and disarm'd 
 another ; the third secur'd himself by flight.' This 
 is a solitary adventure in a well-ordered, drab 
 career. A friend of Dryden, Roscommon engaged
 
 THE COURT POETS 237 
 
 that great man's sympathy for his favourite pro- 
 ject, the founding of a British Academy which 
 should * refine and fix the standard of our lan- 
 guage.' And the academic bent of his mind is 
 seen in his verses. His Essay on Translated, Verse 
 (1684) might well have been an exercise presented 
 to an academy of letters. It is tame, frigid, and 
 uninspired. Johnson says he is ' the only correct 
 writer of verse before Addison,' a judgment which 
 sets a strange meaning upon correctness. The 
 poets to whom Roscommon owes the greatest debt 
 are Horace, whom he says he has served more than 
 twenty years, and Boileau, whose apologue of the 
 quack he introduces into his poem without perti- 
 nence. The style of the Essay never rises above a 
 prosaic commonplace. It is only by courtesy that 
 we call such couplets as these poetry : 
 
 ' Provok'd too far, we resolutely must 
 To the few virtues that we have be just,' 
 
 or 
 
 * From hence our gen'rous Emulation came, 
 We undertook, and we perform'd the same.' 
 
 The few precepts which he gives us would not 
 prove of the smallest use to the translator. They 
 are httle else than the platitudes generally beloved 
 by moral guides. Polonius himself might have com- 
 posed this specimen : 
 
 ' The first great work (a Task perform'd by few) 
 Is, that yourself may to yourself be true.'
 
 238 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 He was as resolute a champion of good sense 
 as Rymer himself, and he treats Homer with the 
 same scant courtesy which the author of The Short 
 View meted out to Shakespeare : 
 
 ' For who, without a qualm, hath ever lookt, 
 On holy garbage, the' by Homer Cookt, 
 Whose rayling hero's, and whose wounded gods 
 Make some suspect. He snores as well as nods.' 
 
 In the controversy between morality and art, he 
 is strongly ranged on the side of morahty. ' Want 
 of decency is want of sense,' says he in a line that 
 Mulgrave pilfered. He shines most brilliantly in 
 aphorisms, but he cannot sustain his wisdom, and 
 what most surprises us in An Essay on Translated 
 Verse is its reception. In Granville's eyes, he, 
 with Mulgrave's aid, had entirely eclipsed ' the 
 Stagyrite and Horace.' Henceforth, said this too 
 flattering critic, ' we need no foreign guide.' But 
 let it not be forgotten that Roscommon, before 
 Mulgrave, discerned the genius of Milton and the 
 splendour of blank verse. ' Of many Faults,' he 
 thought, ' Rhyme is (perhaps) the Cause,' and he 
 brought his Essay to an end with a pious aspiration : 
 
 ' O may I live to hail the glorious Day, 
 And sing loud Pceans thro' the crowded Way, 
 When in Triumphant State the British Muse, 
 True to herself, shall barb'rous Aid refuse, 
 And in the Roman Majesty appear. 
 Which none know better, and none come so near.'
 
 THE COURT POETS 239 
 
 His theory was better than his precept. In his 
 version of Ar^ Poetica, he proved that, however 
 deep might be his admiration of Milton, he could 
 not emulate the noble dignity of his style. Never- 
 theless, the merit of one who, in 1680, dared to write 
 blank verse, is not that he uses it well, but that he 
 uses it at all. Perturbed by the religious strife 
 which followed James ii.'s accession to the throne, 
 Roscommon took the prudent resolution, says his 
 biographer, ' to pass the remainder of his life at 
 Rome, telling his friends it would be better to sit 
 next to the chimney when the chamber smok'd.' 
 He did not effect his purpose. Overtaken by the 
 gout, he died suddenly in 1684, reciting as he died 
 two lines of his own : 
 
 ' My God, my father, and my friend, 
 Do not forsake me at my End.'
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 
 
 WILLIAM CONGREVE, a spoilt child of life 
 and literature, was born in 1670 at Bardsey, 
 near Leeds. He came of an ancient family, long 
 settled in Staffordshire ; and it was due to the 
 accident of his father's commanding the garrison 
 at Youghal that he sat upon the same bench with 
 Swift at Kilkenny school, and finished his studies at 
 Trinity College, Dublin. In 1691 he was admitted 
 to the Middle Temple, presently deserted law for 
 literature, like many another, composed a story 
 called Incognita, or Love and Duty Reconciled, in 
 which Aurelian, the son of a Florentine nobleman, 
 plays an austere part, and of which Dr. Johnson 
 rightly said that ' he would rather praise than read 
 it,' and then, in 1693, came upon the town with The 
 Old Bachelor. 
 
 It was Congreve's signal good fortune to appear 
 at the right moment. The theatre then enjoyed 
 a larger licence and a loftier repute than ever before. 
 The town asked no other favour of its comic writers 
 
 240
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 241 
 
 than to be amused, and the interpreters of comedy- 
 rose to the full height of their opportunity. ' No 
 stage,' said Cibber with perfect truth, ' at any one 
 period, could show thirteen actors, standing all in 
 equal light of excellence, in their profession,' and 
 it was these actors who came loyally to Congreve's 
 aid. The incomparable Betterton, the acclaimed 
 master of them all, and the enchanting Mrs. Brace- 
 girdle portrayed the two chief characters. The 
 poet's colleagues endorsed the approval of the pit. 
 Dryden, then in the plenitude of his power, gener- 
 ously hailed the rising star. He declared that he 
 had never seen such a first play, and gave the young 
 author the practical benefit of his advice. Congreve, 
 after his wont, set no great value upon his achieve- 
 ment. ' When I wrote it,' said he, in his reply to 
 Collier, ' I had little thoughts of the stage ; but 
 did it, to amuse myself, in a slow recovery from a fit 
 of sickness.' If it amused its author, it amused, also, 
 its spectators. Its success was triumphant, and the 
 fortunate Congreve became famous in a day. 
 
 In his preface to the published play, Congreve 
 pleaded in extenuation an ignorance of the town and 
 stage. No plea was necessary ; and, if his ignorance 
 of the town were rightly confessed, the stage had 
 left him no lessons to learn. With him, indeed, the 
 craft of the stage was instinctive. From the very 
 first he translated whatever he saw and heard in 
 terms of the theatre. The comedy, which beguiled 
 * a slow recovery,' displays all the technical adroit-
 
 242 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 ness of an old hand. The dialogue is polished to 
 an even surface ; the play of wit flashes like sunlight 
 upon water ; of the writing no more need be said 
 than that it is Congreve's own. For the rest, The 
 Old Bachelor wears upon it every sign of youth 
 and inexperience. Neither of the two stories which 
 are interlaced, none too closely, in its plot is fresh 
 or original. Though none of Congreve's contem- 
 poraries could have written the play, any one of 
 them might have devised its fable. In other words, 
 Congreve is playing supremely well the tune of 
 the time. Heartfree and Silvia are but the counters 
 of artificial comedy. The marriage of the lady in 
 the mask, which unties the knot of the play, is no 
 better than an accepted convention of the stage. 
 Bluffe, Sharper, and Wittol, who conduct the under 
 plot, are stock characters of a still older fashion. 
 They might have stepped out from Ben Jonson's 
 comedy of humours. When Bluffe says, ' Sir, I 
 honour you, I understand you love fighting, I rever- 
 ence a man that loves fighting, sir, I kiss your hilts,' 
 you recognise the authentic accent of Bobadill. 
 Even Fondlewife, that ' kind of mongrel zealot,' 
 owes less to life than to Zeal-of-the-land Busy. In 
 the scene where Lucy, Silvia's maid, altercates with 
 Setter, the pimp, the language is marked by all the 
 bombast of youth, which Congreve presently laid 
 aside. Says Setter : ' Thou art some forsaken 
 Abigail we have dallied with heretofore, and art 
 come to tickle thy imagination with remembrance
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 243 
 
 of iniquity past.' And Lucy replies',: ' No, thou 
 pitiful flatterer of thy master's imperfections ! thou 
 maukin, made up of the shreds and parings of his 
 superfluous fopperies ! ' This is the language neither 
 of life nor of comedy, and it was doubtless acceptable 
 to the audience by its mere expectedness. 
 
 But, if we put aside the youthful extravagance of 
 some passages and the too frequent reliance upon 
 familiar types, we may discern in The Old Bachelor 
 the true germs of Congreve's comedy. Not merely 
 is the style already his own ; his purpose and sense 
 of character are evident on every page. BeHnda, an 
 affected lady, who ' never speaks well of Bellmour 
 herself, nor suffers anybody else to rail at him,' might 
 be a first, rough outline of Millamant. And Bell- 
 mour sketches, in a single speech, the whole philosophy 
 of the poet : ' Come, come,' says he, ' leave busi- 
 ness to idlers, and wisdom to fools : they have need 
 of 'em : wit be. my faculty, and pleasure my occupa- 
 tion, and let father Time shake his glass.' Hence- 
 forth, wit was Congreve's faculty, pleasure his 
 occupation, and he succeeded so well that father 
 Time stiU shakes his glass at him in vain. 
 
 II 
 
 In the same year (1693) The Double-Dealer was 
 played at Drury Lane, and Congreve's reputation, 
 great already, was vastly enhanced. In character, 
 style, and construction The Double-Dealer is far 
 above its predecessor. The one fault commonly
 
 244 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 imputed to it is that it has too grave a motive for a 
 comedy of manners. Lady Touchwood is in love 
 with Millefont, to whom Cynthia is promised ; 
 Maskwell, Lady Touchwood's gallant, knows her 
 secret, and attempts to use it for Millefont's discom- 
 fiture, and his own conquest of Cynthia. Such is 
 the simple story, told with a simplicity of purpose 
 in which Congreve himself took a proper pride. 
 ' The rnechanical part of it,' said he, in the dedica- 
 tion addressed to Charles Montague, * is regular. 
 ... I designed the moral first, and to that moral 
 I invented the fable, and do not know that I have 
 borrowed one part of it anywhere. I made the plot 
 as strong as I could, because it is single, because I 
 would avoid confusion, and was resolved to pre- 
 serve the three unities of the drama.' 
 
 That he succeeded in his design none will deny, 
 The Double-Dealer is sternly classical in construction, 
 and moves, from the rise of the curtain in the first 
 act to the fall of the curtain in the fifth, to a settled 
 end and with a settled purpose. Some machinery of 
 the play is still conventional. A wrong letter given 
 to Sir Paul by Lady Plyant, the villain surprised 
 from behind a screen — - these are the keys which 
 unlock the plot. We might forget their simple 
 artifice, were it not for the conscious villainy of 
 Maskwell. That surpasses pretence and belief. 
 Maskwell, indeed, is the familiar villain of melodrama. 
 He is the ancestor in a direct line of Blifil and Joseph 
 Surface, ' a sedate, thinking villain,' as Lady Touch-
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 245 
 
 wood calls him, ' whose black blood runs temperately- 
 bad.' The violence of his scenes with this lady 
 exceeds the proper limit of comedy, and his dis- 
 covery by Lord Touchwood verges upon the tragic : 
 * Astonishment,' he exclaims, ' binds up my rage ! 
 Villainy upon villainy ! Heavens, what a long track 
 of dark deceit has this discovered ! I am confounded 
 when I look back, and want a clue to guide me through 
 the various mazes of unheard-of treachery. My 
 vdfe ! damnation ! my hell ! ' There is no anti- 
 climax. Congreve, with characteristic restraint, 
 permits Maskwell after his unmasking to say no 
 word. 
 
 Indeed, were it not for Maskwell's inveterate habit 
 of soliloquy, he might trick us almost as easily as 
 he tricks Millefont. ' Why, let me see,' he murmurs, 
 ' I have the same force, the same words and accents, 
 when I speak what I do think, and when I speak what 
 I do not think — the very same — and dear dissimula- 
 tion is the only art not to be known from nature.' 
 And again, ' I will deceive 'em all and yet secure 
 myself : 'twas a lucky thought ! Well, this double- 
 dealing is a jewel.' Here Congreve resolutely parts 
 company with nature, and relies upon an artifice of 
 the stage, an artifice which he defends with con- 
 siderable ingenuity. ' A man in soliloquy,' he argues, 
 ' is only thinking, and thinking such matter as were 
 inexcusable folly in him to speak.' In other words, 
 ' because we are concealed spectators of the plot 
 in agitation, and the poet finds it necessary to let us
 
 246 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 know the whole mystery of his contrivance, he is 
 wilHng to inform us of this person's thoughts ; and 
 to that end is forced to make use of the expedient of 
 speech, no other better way yet being invented for 
 the communication of thought.' That is as good 
 a defence of soliloquy as may be made, and, employed 
 by Congreve, soliloquy had this advantage : it gave 
 the author an opportunity, which he was quick to 
 seize, of Sophoclean irony. None of the personages 
 of the drama, except Lady Touchwood, knows what 
 is evident to the audience, that Maskwell is a villain. 
 When Millefont says, ' Maskwell, welcome ! thy 
 presence is a view of land appearing to my ship- 
 wrecked hopes,' the sense of irony is complete, and 
 Congreve plays upon this note with the highest 
 skill. 
 
 But it is not for its fable or for Its Sophoclean irony 
 that The Double-Dealer is chiefly admirable. Rather, 
 we wonder to-day, as the town wondered then, at 
 its well-drawn characters and its scenes of brilliant 
 comedy. Lord and Lady Froth, who might have 
 been inspired by the Duke and Duchess of New- 
 castle, are masterpieces of witty invention. The 
 scene is never dull when her ladyship, a true 
 precieuse, counters the gallantry and bel air of Mr. 
 Brisk, the most highly finished of coxcombs, with 
 her coquettish pedantry. And is not Sir Paul Plyant, 
 a kind of Fondlewife in a higher sphere, an excellent 
 creature ? And is not the vanity of his lady touched 
 with a Hght and vivid hand ? When she accepts
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 247 
 
 Millefont's addresses to Cynthia as an assault upon 
 her own honour, bidding him ' not to hope, and not 
 to despair neither,' our ear listens to the authentic 
 voice of comedy. 
 
 That the play was ill-received, until it won the 
 approval of the Queen, is surprising. Dryden, 
 the omnipotent dispenser of reputations, had no 
 doubt of its merit. He wrote such a set of com- 
 mendatory verses as might have put a seal upon the 
 highest fame. He pictured himself as worn with 
 cares and age, ' unprofitably kept at Heaven's ex- 
 pense,' and living ' a rent-charge on his providence.' 
 He implored Congreve to be kind to his remains, 
 to defend his departed friend, and ' to shade those 
 laurels, which descend to him.' Meanwhile, he 
 lavishes the most generous praises upon him, whom 
 he looked upon as his inevitable successor : 
 
 ' In easy dialogue is Fletcher's praise ; 
 He moved the mind, but had not power to raise. 
 Great Jonson did by strength of judgment please ; 
 Yet doubling Fletcher's force, he wants his ease. 
 In differing talents both adorned their age ; 
 One for the study, t'other for the stage. 
 But both to Congreve justly shall submit, 
 One matched in judgment, both o'ermatched in wit. . 
 
 • • • • • • 
 
 This is your portion, this your native store ; 
 Heaven, that but once was prodigal before. 
 To Shakespeare gave as much ; she could not give 
 him more.'
 
 248 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 This, of course, is the hyperbole of friendship. 
 Congreve was supreme in his own realm ; it was not 
 for him to match his prowess against greater monarchs. 
 
 With all good faith, Dryden adjured Congreve to 
 maintain his post : ' that 's all the fame you need.' 
 In Love for Love, his next comedy, Congreve did far 
 more than maintain his post. He travelled one 
 stage further towards the final triumph of The Way 
 of the World. In 1695, Betterton and the best of 
 his colleagues, having a just quarrel with the patentees 
 of Drury Lane, and being empowered by the King's 
 licence to act in a separate theatre for themselves, 
 opened the famous house in Lincoln's Inn Fields 
 with Love for Love. The success of the play was 
 without precedent and well merited. At each step 
 Congreve approached nearer to life as to the summit 
 of his art. It is true that the pure comedy of Love 
 for Love is intricated with a farce, in which Prue and 
 Young Ben play their parts. It is true, also, that 
 the hoyden's nurse had been a convention upon the 
 stage ever since the performance of Romeo and Juliet. 
 But she affords a relief to the brilliant flash of 
 Congreve's wit, and, as for the sailor, if he be not 
 ' accounted very natural,' he is ' very pleasant,' as 
 Dr. Johnson observed long ago. 
 
 Thus at last Congreve has entered into his 
 kingdom. In every scene he shows himself a 
 master of his craft. The exposition of the plot 
 is perfect. Jeremy, although he speaks with Con- 
 greve's voice, is the best servant in the whole
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 249 
 
 range of comedy. You will search in vain for a 
 truer picture of a curmudgeon than Sir Sampson 
 Legend, compact of humour and ill nature, whose 
 * blunt vivacity,' as Cibber calls it, was marvellously 
 portrayed by Underbill. Foresight, that ' peevish 
 and positive ' old fellow, with an absurd pretence 
 to understand palmistry, astrology, physiognomy, 
 dreams and omens, was familiar to all frequenters 
 of the theatre in those days of occult and half- 
 understood superstitions. When the two meet to 
 discuss the marriage of Ben and Angelica they vaunt 
 their excellence in alternate strains. ' But I tell 
 you,' brags Foresight, ' I have travelled, and travelled 
 in the celestial spheres, know the signs and the 
 planets, and their houses . . . know whether life 
 shall be long or short, happy or unhappy, whether 
 diseases are curable or uncurable. If journeys shall 
 be prosperous, undertakings successful ; or goods 
 
 stolen recovered, I know ' Sir Sampson's riposte 
 
 is magnificent : * I know,' thus he interrupts, ' the 
 length of the Emperor of China's foot ; have kissed 
 the great Mogul's slipper, and rid a hunting upon 
 an elephant with the Cham of Tartary — Body o' 
 me, I have made a cuckold of a king, and the 
 present Majesty of Bantam is the issue of these 
 loins,' a valiant boast, the repartee to which — ' thou 
 modern Mandeville ! Ferdinand Mendez Pinto was 
 but a type of thee, thou liar of the first magni- 
 tude ! ' — seems singularly ineffective. 
 
 But it was upon Valentine, the lover of Angelica,
 
 250 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 that Congreve lavished all the resources of his art. 
 There is a nobility of phrase and thought in Valen- 
 tine's encounters with his father, Sir Sampson, 
 which may be called Shakespearean in no mere spirit 
 of adulation. In these passages Congreve rises 
 to a height of eloquent argument, which gives a 
 tragic force to his work. ' Why, sirrah,' asks Sir 
 Sampson, ' mayn't I do what I please ? are you not 
 my slave ? did I not beget you ? and might not I 
 have chosen whether I would have begot you or 
 not ? ' 'Oons, who are you ? whence come you ? . . . 
 Come, uncase, strip, and go naked out of the world, 
 as you came into it.' ' My clothes are soon put off,' 
 replies Valentine ; ' but you must also divest me 
 of reason, thought, passions, inclinations, affections, 
 appetites, senses, and the huge train of attendants 
 that you begot along with me.' Still better, as 
 diction or invention, are the speeches of the mad 
 Valentine, who speaks with the very voice of Hamlet. 
 * Alas, poor man ! his eyes are shrunk, and his hands 
 shrivelled ; his legs dwindled, and his back bowed, 
 pray, pray, for a metamorphosis. Change thy shape, 
 and shake off age ; get thee Medea's kittle and be 
 boiled anew ; come forth with labouring callous 
 hands, a chine of steel, and Atlas shoulders.' But 
 aU is not on this high plane. Ben and Prue, Tattle 
 and Scandal carry us away to the lower slopes of 
 farce, and when Mrs. Frail meets her sister, Mrs. 
 Foresight, it is a contest always of gaiety. No scene 
 in Congreve's plays is touched with a lighter hand
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 251 
 
 than that in which Mrs. Foresight asks Mrs. Frail 
 where she lost her gold bodkin : ' O Sister, 
 Sister ! ' And Mrs. Frail demands in answer, ' If 
 you go to that where did you find this bodkin ? O 
 Sister, Sister ! — Sister every way,' 
 
 After the triumph of Love for Love at the theatre 
 in Lincoln's Inn Fields, Congreve agreed to give 
 the managers a new play every year, if his health 
 permitted, in exchange for a * full share.' In 1697 
 he produced, not another comedy, but The Mourning 
 Bride, a rash experiment in the later Elizabethan 
 drama. To a modern ear The Mourning Bride is sad 
 fustian. The action, such as it is, is enwrapped in 
 impenetrable gloom. Prisons and burial-vaults are 
 its sombre background. The artifice — disguise — 
 upon which its plot turns is borrowed from comedy, 
 with the simple difference that the wrong man is 
 not married but murdered. In other words, Manuel, 
 King of Granada, personates Alphonso for jealousy 
 of Zara : 
 
 ' There with his turbant, and his robe arrayed, 
 And laid along as he now lies supine, 
 I shall convict her to her face of falsehood.' 
 
 Were it not that Manuel is decapitated by his favourite, 
 we might be assisting at Captain Bluffe's marriage 
 with the masked Lucy. But the taste of the time 
 hailed The Mourning Bride as a masterpiece. It was 
 heard with enthusiasm, and held the stage for many 
 years. Stranger still is it that Dr. Johnson said
 
 252 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 of the description of the temple ^ in the second act 
 that ' if I were required to select from the whole 
 mass of English poetry the most poetical passage, I 
 know not what I could prefer to an exclamation in 
 The Mourning Bride. ^ It is idle to discuss the vagaries 
 of criticism, though few will be found now to mistake 
 the Miltonic echoes of Congreve for the highest 
 poetry. For the rest, the play opens with one of 
 the oftenest quoted lines in English — ' Music has 
 charms to soothe a savage breast ' ; its third act 
 concludes on a famous tag, the sense of which is 
 borrowed from Cibber : 
 
 ' Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned, 
 Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned ' ; 
 
 and its production was but an interlude in the career 
 of Congreve. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Three years later, in 1700, Congreve's master- 
 piece, The Way of the Worlds was played at the theatre 
 
 * Here is the passage which called forth the ecstatic praises of 
 Dr. Johnson, who maintained that it is a finer passage 'than any 
 that can be found in Shakespeare ': 
 
 ' No, all is hushed, and still as death. 'Tis dreadful ! 
 How severed is the face of this tall pile, 
 Where ancient pillars rear their marble heads. 
 To bear aloft its arched and ponderous roof. 
 By its own weight made steadfast and immoveable, 
 Looking tranquillity ! It strikes an awe 
 And terror on my aching sight ; the tombs 
 And monumental cayes of death look cold 
 And shoot a chillness to my trembling heart.'
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 253 
 
 in Lincoln's Inn Fields. That it was a failure on 
 the stage is not remarkable. It was written to 
 please its author's fastidious taste, not to chime with 
 the humour of the age. It was a new invention in 
 English literature. It is deformed neither by realism 
 nor by farce. The comic spirit breathes freely 
 through its ample spaces. ' That it succeeded on 
 the stage,' says Congreve, ' was almost beyond my 
 expectation.' There is no hint of grossness in the 
 characters. They are not of the common sort, 
 * rather objects of charity than contempt,' which 
 were then popular on the stage. In brief, it was 
 Congreve's purpose ' to design some characters 
 which should appear ridiculous, not so much through 
 a natural folly (which is incorrigible, and therefore 
 not proper to the stage) as through an affected wit ; 
 a wit, which at the same time that it is affected, is 
 also false.' 
 
 And so he set upon the boards a set of men and 
 women of quick brains and cynical humours, who 
 talked with the brilliance and rapidity wherewith 
 the finished swordsman fences. They are not at 
 the pains to do much. What Congreve calls the 
 fable is of small account. It is difficult to put faith 
 in the document, which unravels the tangle, and 
 counteracts the villainy of Fainall. The trick played 
 upon Lady Wishfort, that most desperate of all 
 creatures, a lady fighting an unequal battle with 
 time, does no more than interrupt the raillery, which, 
 with a vivid characterisation, is the play's excuse.
 
 254 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 The cabal nights, on which they all come together, 
 and sit like a coroner's inquest on the murdered repu- 
 tations of the week, and of which Sheridan's imita- 
 tion fell far below the original, demonstrate at once 
 what manner of men and women are the persons 
 of the drama. Witwoud is the very triumph of 
 coxcombry, with Petulant for his engaging foil. He 
 never opens his lips without an epigram, and in his 
 extravagant chatter climbs to the topmost height 
 of folly. ' Fainall,' says he, ' how 's your lady . . . 
 I beg pardon that I should ask a man of pleasure and 
 the town, a question at once so foreign and domestic' 
 And again : ' A wit should be no more sincere than 
 a woman constant ; one argues a decay of parts, 
 as t' other of beauty.' How light, and cynical, and 
 well-bred it is, in spite of its purposed affecta- 
 tion ! And the other characters, Mrs. Marwood 
 and the Fainalls, though the deeper seriousness of 
 intrigue inspires them, are drawn with a perfect 
 surety of skill and knowledge. 
 
 Mrs. Millamant and Mirabell overtop them all. 
 The warfare of their wits and hearts is the very 
 essence of the drama. George Meredith has said 
 with justice that the play might be called ' The 
 Conquest of a Town Coquette ' ; and, when the en- 
 chanting Millamant and her lover are on the stage, 
 our interest in the others fades to nothingness. By 
 a happy stroke, Millamant does not appear until the 
 second scene of the second act, but Mirabell has 
 discoursed of her qualities, and you are aU expectancy.
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 255 
 
 And nobly does the love-sick Mirabell hail her approach. 
 'Here she comes, i' faith, full sail, with her fan spread 
 and her streamers out, and a shoal of fools for tenders ; 
 ha, no, 1 cry her mercy ! ' It is impossible to think 
 of anything save the apparition of Dalila in Samson 
 Agonistes, which surely was in Congreve's mind : 
 
 ' That so bedeckt, ornate, and gay, 
 Comes this way sailing 
 Like a stately Ship 
 Of Tarsus, bound for th' Isles 
 Of Javan or Gadier 
 
 With all her bravery on and tackle trim, 
 Sails fill'd, and streamers waving.' 
 
 And Mrs. Millamant reveals herself at once as 
 a woman of fashion, sated with life. Instantly she 
 strikes the note of nonchalance in her famous com- 
 ment upon letters. ' Nobody knows how to write 
 letters and yet one has 'em, one does not know why. 
 They serve one to pin up one's hair.' Then she 
 and Mirabell fall bravely to the encounter. ' Nay, 
 'tis true,' says he, ' you are no longer handsome 
 when you 've lost your lover ; your beauty dies upon 
 the instant ; for beauty is the lover's gift.' ' Lord, 
 what is a lover, that it can give,' asks Millamant. 
 ' Why, one makes lovers as fast as one pleases, and 
 they live as long as one pleases, and they die as soon 
 as one pleases ; and then, if one pleases, one makes 
 more.' Whenever Millamant is upon the stage, 
 Congreve is at his best. The speeches which he
 
 256 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 puts in her mouth are all delicately turned and finely 
 edged. She is a personage by and of herself. She 
 comes before you visibly and audibly. She is no 
 profile, painted upon paper, and fitted with tags. 
 Her creator has made her in three dimensions ; and, 
 as she always differs from those about her, so she is 
 always consistent with herself. Mirabell knows her 
 when he says that ' her true vanity is in her power 
 of pleasing.' She is, indeed, a kind of Beatrice, 
 who strives with a willing Benedick. But, though 
 she loves her Mirabell, yet will she not submit. 
 When he, lacking humour as a lover would in the 
 circumstances, complains that ' a man may as soon 
 make a friend by his wit, or a fortune by his honesty, 
 as win a woman by plain-dealing and sincerity,' how 
 deftly she turns his gravity aside ! ' Sententious 
 Mirabell ! ' And it is to Mrs. Fainall, not to her 
 lover, that at last she acknowledges, ' well, if Mirabell 
 should not make a good husband, I am a lost thing — 
 for I find I love him violentlv.' 
 
 But, before the end, there is many a battle to be 
 fought. In her contest with Mrs. Marwood, the 
 spurned beauty, she hides her passion behind a veil 
 of malicious merriment. ' I detest him, hate him, 
 madam,' declares Mrs. Marwood. ' O madam, why, 
 so do I,' answers the defiant Millamant, ' and yet 
 the creature loves me, ha ! ha ! ha ! how can one 
 forbear laughing to think of it.' Nor will she dwindle 
 into marriage without an exaction at every step. 
 She '11 be solicited to the very last, nay, and after-
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 257 
 
 wards. It is not for her to endure ' the saucy looks 
 of an assured man.' And so she makes terms with 
 Mirabell, and he, in turn, offers conditions of 
 matrimony, in a scene which for phrase and diction 
 Congreve himself has never surpassed. Thus the 
 encounter begins in good earnest : 
 
 Mrs. Millamant : ' Ah ! idle creature, get up 
 when you will — and d' ye hear, I won't be called 
 names after I 'm married ; positively I won't be 
 called names.' 
 
 Mirabell : ' Names ! ' 
 
 Mrs. Millamant : ' Ay, as wife, spouse, my dear, 
 joy, jewel, love, sweetheart, and the rest of the 
 nauseous cant, in which men and their wives are so 
 fulsomely familiar — I shall never bear that. Good 
 Mirabell, don't let us be famihar or fond, nor kiss 
 before folks, like my Lady Fadler and Sir Francis : 
 nor go to Hyde Park together the first Sunday in a 
 new chariot, to provoke eyes and whispers, and then 
 never to be seen there together again ; as if we were 
 proud of one another the first week, and ashamed 
 of one another ever after. Let us never visit together, 
 nor go to a play together ; but let us be very strange 
 and well-bred : let us be as strange as if we had been 
 married a good while ; and as well-bred as if we were 
 not married at all.' 
 
 Thus the ball of wit is tossed from one hand to 
 the other. Even at the last, Millamant will yield 
 only with an impertinence. ' Why does not the 
 man take me ? would you have me give myself to 
 
 R
 
 258 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 you over and over again ? ' And Mirabell replies, 
 * Ay, and over and over again.' Thus they share 
 the victory ; and, as you lay down the play, in which 
 incense has been offered to the muse of comedy, 
 you feel that The Way of the Worlds for all its malice, 
 all its irony, all its merriment, is as austere as tragedy, 
 as rarefied as thought itself. 
 
 IV 
 
 Congreve, then, carried to its highest perfection 
 what is known as the artificial comedy or comedy 
 of manners. He regarded himself as the legitimate 
 heir of Terence and Menander, and claimed with 
 perfect justice to paint the world in which he lived. 
 Something, of course, he owed to his predecessors, 
 and to the noble traditions of the English stage. 
 Shakespeare, as has been hinted, was ever an example 
 to him, and at the beginning of his career he worked 
 under the domination of Ben Jonson. Of those 
 nearer to his own time, he was most deeply indebted 
 to the light-hearted Etherege. But, being himself a 
 true master of comedy, he took for his material the 
 life about him, a life which still reflected the gaiety 
 of King Charles's court. The thirty years wliich 
 had passed since the Restoration, when Congreve 
 began to write, had not availed to darken ' the gala 
 day of wit and pleasure.' A passage, in which he 
 describes the composition of The Way of the World, 
 reveals in a flash his aim and ambition. ' If it has
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 259 
 
 happened,' he writes in a dedication addressed to 
 Ralph, Earl Montague, ' in any part of this comedy, 
 that I have gained a turn of style or expression more 
 correct, or at least, more corrigible, than in those that 
 I have formerly written, I must, with equal pride and 
 gratitude, ascribe it to the honour of your Lordship's 
 admitting me into your conversation, and that of a 
 society where everybody else was so well worthy of 
 you, in your retirement last summer from the town.' 
 When due allowance is made for the terms of a dedi- 
 cation, in which accuracy is asked of no man, it is 
 easy to believe that, in Lord Montague's country 
 house, Congreve found that wit and sparkle of life 
 which he transferred to his scene, ' as upon a canvas 
 of Watteau ' — a Watteau whose gaiety and elegance 
 are tempered by malice. 
 
 The life which he painted was not the life of com- 
 mon day. It was a life of pleasure and gallantry, 
 which had a code and speech of its own. No man 
 ever selected from the vast world of experience what 
 served his purpose more rigorously than Congreve. 
 He never cared for seeing things that forced him to 
 entertain low thoughts of his nature. ' I don't know 
 how it is with others,' said he, ' but I confess freely 
 to you, I could never look long upon a monkey, 
 without mortifying reflections.' Nor was he one 
 who saw life whole. His sympathy was for ' persons 
 of quality,' and he lived in a world situate on the 
 confines of cynicism and merriment. Had he ever 
 descended to realism, his comedies might have been
 
 26o LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 open to reproach. But the scene, in which his 
 Plyants and Froths, his Mirabells and Millefonts, 
 his MiUamants and Angehcas, his Brisks and Tattles, 
 play their parts, is, like their names, fantastic enough 
 to justify the famous paradox of Charles Lamb. 
 Even while we admit that Congreve painted what he 
 chose to see, we may yet acknowledge that the persons 
 of his drama ' have got out of Christendom into the 
 land of — what shall I call it ? — of cuckoldry — the 
 Utopia of gallantry, whose pleasure is duty, and the 
 manners perfect freedom.' ^ 
 
 It is in the interpretation of this gallantry that 
 Congreve displayed his true genius. He was, above 
 and before all, a man of letters. It was not enough 
 for him, as for most of his contemporaries, to devise 
 an ingenious situation or to excite the laughter of the 
 pit by the voice of boisterous fun. He had a natural 
 love and respect for the English tongue. He cared 
 supremely for the making of his sentences. His nice 
 scholarship had taught him the burden of associa- 
 tion which time had laid upon this word or that. 
 He used the language of his own day like a master, 
 because he was anchored securely to a knowledge 
 of the past. In point and brevity, his style is still 
 unmatched in the literature of England. There is 
 never in his writings a word too much, or an epithet 
 that is superfluous. He disdains the worn and string- 
 like artifices, wherewith the journeyman ties his poor 
 
 ' See Lamb's essay On the Artificial Comedy of the Last 
 Century.
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 261 
 
 sentences together. As a rigorous castigator of prose, 
 he goes far beyond the example of his master, MoHere. 
 And this rightly chastened prose, with its haunting 
 memories of Shakespeare and Jonson and Milton, 
 its flashing irony, and its quick allusiveness, is a clear 
 mirror of Congreve's mind. The poet's phrase is 
 penetrated and informed by the wit and raillery of 
 the poet's thought. 
 
 In nothing does Congreve prove his art more 
 abundantly than in the rhythm and cadence of his 
 speech. His language appeals always to the ear 
 rather than to the eye. So fine a master of comic 
 diction was he, that, in every line he wrote, you may 
 mark the rise and fall of the actor's voice. His 
 words were written to be spoken ; he sternly ex- 
 cludes whatever is harsh or grating ; and we in our 
 studies may still charm our ears with the exquisite 
 poise of his lines, because the accent still falls where 
 he meant that it should fall, because the stage effect 
 may still be recovered in the printed page. He 
 arranges his vowels with the same care which a 
 musician gives to the arrangement of his notes. 
 He avoids the clashing of uncongenial consonants, 
 as a maker of harmonies refrains from discord. 
 Open Love for Love or The Way of the World where 
 you will, and you will find passages which, by the 
 precision wherewith they fit the voice, would give 
 you pleasure were they deprived of meaning. 
 
 Congreve was thirty when he gave The Way of the 
 World to the theatre. He wrote no more for the
 
 262 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 stage.^ The history of literature shows no other 
 instance of defection so great as this. Several 
 reasons for his sudden abandonment of letter^ have 
 been suggested — the cold reception of The Way of 
 the World, or the blundering attack of Jeremy Collier, 
 The reasons are insufficient. The natural aristo- 
 cracy of Congreve's mind makes light of such rebuffs 
 as these. A better reason is not far to seek. In 
 depicting society Congreve had fallen in love with 
 it. He turned willingly from art to life, for which 
 his character and his studies alike fitted him. He 
 was by temperament what himself would have 
 called a man of quality. He might have sat for the 
 portrait of Valentine or Mirabell. He lavished in 
 talk his incomparable gifts as an intellectual gladiator, 
 choosing only a quieter field for their display. The 
 generosity of his friends placed him above and beyond 
 the irking of want or debt. Soon after the production 
 of Love for Love he was appointed commissioner for 
 the licensing for hackney coaches, an office which he 
 held until 1 707. Commissioner of wine licences 
 from 1705 to 1 7 14, secretary for Jamaica from 17 14 
 
 * We cannot reckon in his work the share he had in Squire 
 Treloohy. Here for the sake of completeness Is his account of 
 the matter, given in a letter to Joseph Keatly on 20th May 
 1704: 'The translation you speak of is not altogether mine, for 
 Vanbrugh and Walsh had a part in it. Each did an act of a 
 French farce. Mine, and I believe theirs, was done in two 
 mornings ; so there can be no great matter in it. It was a 
 compliment made to the people of quality at their subscription 
 music, without any design to have it acted or printed further.'
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 263 
 
 onwards, he enjoyed also a place in the Paper 
 Office, and lived in comfortable affluence upon 
 j^i200 a year. 
 
 Taking but a modest interest in poHtics, he kept aloof 
 from the strife of parties, and neither side was urgent 
 to strip him of his emoluments. When — ^in 171 1 — 
 he feared to be deprived of his commissionership of 
 wine licences, Swift waited upon ' my Lord-Treasurer,' 
 successfully pleaded the cause of Congreve, and was 
 able to reassure his friend. ' So I have made a 
 worthy man easy,' he writes, ' and that is a good 
 day's work.' Few of his contemporaries had more 
 or more closely attached friends. Halifax accepted 
 his dedication and guarded his interests. Of 
 Dryden's generous sympathy towards him some- 
 thing has already been said. It was to him that 
 Steele dedicated his Miscellanies, and that Pope 
 addressed the famous epilogue of his Iliad, which 
 does equal honour to himself and to Congreve.^ 
 
 1 This epilogue is ever memorable. ' For what remains,' thus it 
 runs, 'I beg to be excused from the ceremonies of taking leave at 
 the end of my work ; and from embarrassing myself or others with 
 Defences or Apologies about it. But instead of endeavouring 
 to raise a vain monument to myself or others, of the Merits and 
 Difficulties of it (which must be left to the World, to Truth, 
 and to Posterity) let me leave behind me a memorial of my 
 Friendship with one of the most valuable of men, as well as 
 finest Writers, of my Age and Country: one who has try'd and 
 knows by his own Experience, how hard an Undertaking it is 
 to do Justice to Homer : and one, who (I am sure) sincerely 
 rejoices with me at the period of my Labours. To him, there- 
 tore, having brought this long work to a conclusion, I desire to
 
 264 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 Such were some of Congreve's intimates, nor did 
 his wealth of friendship proceed from mere com- 
 placency. He was not every man's friend because 
 he was no man's enemy. The social graces were 
 active in him. His talk must have been a lively 
 echo of his comedies. Swift, the severest of judges, 
 ' dined with him and Estcourt ' on one occasion, ' and 
 laughed till six.' Though long before his death he was 
 acclaimed the greatest man of letters in his time, though 
 he lived in an atmosphere of grandeur, his kindly ser- 
 vices were always at the disposition of others, ' On 
 another visit he gave me a Tatler,' says Swift, ' as 
 blind as he is, for little Harrison.' The courage and 
 gaiety of his heart were undiminished by gout or 
 by that fiercest scourge of a scholar, the loss of his 
 eyesight. As the passage of the years separated 
 him further from the triumphs of the stage, the 
 writer was lost in the man of the world. ' He is so 
 far from being puff'd up with vanity,' wrote Giles 
 Jacob, ' that he abounds with humility and good 
 nature. He does not show so much the poet as the 
 gentleman.' It was this worldly front, which he 
 showed to Voltaire in 1726, and which shocked the 
 French philosopher, avid of literary fame. Con- 
 greve, in conversation, dismissed his masterpieces as 
 trifles, and received Voltaire on the foot of a gentle- 
 man, who lived very plainly. Voltaire replied that, 
 
 Dedicate it j and to have the honour and satisfaction of placing 
 together, in this manner, the names of Mr. Congreve and of 
 A. Pope.'
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 265 
 
 had Congreve had the misfortune to be a mere 
 gentleman, he would not have visited him. Both 
 men spoke justly. But Voltaire did not sufficiently 
 appreciate the natural reticence of the Englishman, 
 who, without the slightest vanity, was still un- 
 willing to discuss the masterpieces which lay a 
 quarter of a century behind him. 
 
 Thus he lived a discreet, well-ordered life, visit- 
 ing the country houses of his friends, gossiping at 
 Will's, seeking such solace as Bath or Tunbridge 
 Wells might afford him. Of Mrs. Bracegirdle, the 
 enchantress, whose genius embellished his plays, 
 he remained unto the end the friend and neighbour. 
 To the Duchess of Marlborough, the wife of Francis 
 Godolphin, he was bound in the bonds of a close 
 attachment. When he died in 1729 he left ;^200 to 
 the actress, and to the Duchess ^10,000, a sum which 
 might, as Johnson says, ' have given great assistance 
 to the ancient family, from which he was descended.' 
 For this disposal of his wealth Congreve has been 
 rated by Macaulay in his best Orbilian manner. At 
 this distance of time and with our imperfect know- 
 ledge of his motives, it seems rash to condemn the 
 poet, whose generosity was rewarded after her own 
 guise by the Duchess of Marlborough. Davies tells 
 us that she had 'an automaton, or small statue of ivory, 
 made exactly to resemble him, which every day was 
 brought to table. A glass was put in the hand of 
 this statue, which was supposed to bow to her Grace, 
 and to nod in approbation of what she spoke to it.'
 
 266 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 This is the mere frippery of fame. Posterity, con- 
 tent, hke Voltaire, to forget the gentleman, remem- 
 bers the poetjwho used the English tongue with perfect 
 mastery, and who, alone of his race and time, was fit 
 to tread a measure in wit and raillery with Moliere 
 himself. 
 
 V 
 
 It would be difficult to find a more obvious contrast 
 to Congreve than Sir John Vanbrugh. In the sense 
 that Congreve was a man of letters Vanbrugh was 
 not a man of letters at aU. He was wholly uncon- 
 scious of the diction, which for Congreve was a 
 chief end of comedy. Cibber spoke the truth when 
 he said that the best scenes of Vanbrugh's plays 
 ' seem'd to be no more than his common conversa- 
 tion committed to paper.' In other words, Van- 
 brugh wrote as he talked, without reflection and 
 with great good humour. But, if the gift of artistic 
 expression were denied him, he lacked not compen- 
 sations. He was a man of a bluff temper and vigor- 
 ous understanding, who easily communicated to his 
 works the energy and humour of his mind. Like 
 many another of foreign descent, he was more English 
 than the English, he engrossed in his own tempera- 
 ment the good and evil qualities of John Bull. Thus 
 it was that he delighted in farce, not of situation but 
 of character, and he separated himself from the other 
 writers of comedy by a vivid talent of caricature. 
 He overcharged the eccentricity of his personages 
 with so bold a hand as to anticipate the excesses of
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 267 
 
 Gillray in another art. In brief, he was a highly- 
 competent gentleman, who found no enterprise too 
 difficult for his courage and intelligence. He was a 
 man of affairs, a soldier, a herald, an architect ; and, 
 no doubt, following the fashion, he sat himself down 
 to write a comedy with the same easy carelessness 
 wherewith he undertook to build a palace. Few 
 men known to history were more of a piece than he. 
 In his life, as in his works, he was a simple, sturdy, 
 natural Englishman, devoid alike of affectation and 
 concealment. Pope ranked him among the three 
 ' most honest-hearted real good men ' of the Kitcat 
 Club, and his dignity wrung from Swift, not apt for 
 apology, a pubhc regret that he had once satirised 
 * a man of wit and humour.' 
 
 His grandfather, a merchant of Ghent, had found 
 an asylum in London from the persecutions of the 
 Duke of Alva, had followed his craft with success, 
 and had left two sons, the younger of whom, Giles, 
 was the father of the dramatist. Nothing is known 
 of Sir John's youth and training. In 1691, when 
 he was twenty-seven years of age, he was clapt up 
 in the Bastille as a suspected spy, meditated a comedy 
 within its comfortable walls, and, as Voltaire owns 
 with surprise, was never guilty of ' a single satirical 
 stroke against the country, in which he had been 
 so injuriously treated.' Six years later, in 1697, he 
 produced The Relapse, or Virtue in Danger, and in- 
 stantly established his reputation. This broad and 
 lively farce, which at once caught the popular favour,
 
 268 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 owed its inspiration to Gibber's Love's Last Shift. 
 The character of Sir Novelty Fashion in that play- 
 made an instant appeal to Vanbrugh's fancy ; he 
 raised the beau to the peerage, with the title of 
 Lord Foppington, and converted Gibber's puppet 
 into a brilliant caricature. It is easy to find fault 
 with the fable of The Relapse. It is less a play than 
 two plays spliced into one. Loveless, ' resolved 
 this once to launch into temptation,' and Berinthia, 
 willing to abet him, cannot engage our interest. The 
 farce exists for the proper display of Lord Fopping- 
 ton, Sir Tunbelly Glumsey, and Miss Hoyden. Here, 
 indeed, are three caricatures after Vanbrugh's own 
 heart. What they do matters not. It is what they 
 say that reveals their eccentricities. 
 
 Lord Foppington is the true fop of the period, with 
 all his qualities exaggerated. His title gives him un- 
 feigned delight. ' Strike me dumb — My lord — Your 
 Jordship — . . . Sure whilst I was a knight, I was a very 
 nauseous fellow. Well 'tis ten thousand pawnd well 
 given — stap my vitals.' He has the idle elegance 
 of his kind. When the tailor tells him that if his 
 pocket had been an inch lower down it would not 
 have held his pocket-handkerchief, ' Rat my packet- 
 handkerchief ! ' he exclaims. ' Have I not a page to 
 carry it ? ' So he finds his life a perpetual ' raund 
 of delights,' and believes himself acceptable to all. 
 When Amanda strikes him in her defence, ' Gad's 
 curse, madam,' he cries, ' I am a peer of the realm ! ' 
 No better foil could be found for him than Sir Tun-
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 269 
 
 belly, the ancestor in a direct line of Squire Western. 
 That he bears a close resemblance to nature need 
 not be admitted. That he is an excellent piece of 
 fooling cannot be denied. He holds siege in his 
 country house, asks at the approach of a stranger 
 whether the blunderbuss is primed, and, when he 
 and his servants at last appear on the scene, they 
 come armed with ' guns, clubs, pitchforks, and 
 scythes.' Miss Hoyden is first cousin to Prue, and 
 shows you in a phrase her true character. ' It 's 
 well I have a husband a coming, or i' cod, I 'd marry 
 the baker, I wou'd so.' While these immortal three 
 are on the stage, they excite our whole-hearted mirth. 
 Their fate cannot touch us, for in ridicule they 
 transcend the scale of humankind. 
 
 The Provok'd Wife, produced in 1697, is, in all 
 respects, a better play. Sir John Brute is Vanbrugh's 
 masterpiece. Caricature though he be, there are 
 many touches of nature about him. He is the beau 
 inverted, the man of fashion crossed with the churl. 
 And he is fully conscious of his dignity. ' Who do 
 you call a drunken fellow, you slut you ? ' he asks 
 his wife. ' I 'm a man of quality ; the King has made 
 me a knight.' He would not give a fig for a song 
 that is not ' full of sin and impudence.' His cry is 
 ' Liberty, and property, and old England, Huzza ! ' 
 He stands out in high relief by the side of Lady 
 Brute and Belinda, who speak with the accent of 
 every day, and who are far nearer to common life 
 than are the fine ladies of Congreve. His servants
 
 270 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 rival their master in impudence ; and Rasor and 
 Mademoiselle are worthy of all the praise which 
 Hazlitt ^ has bestowed upon them. 
 
 It has been Sir John Vanbrugh's fate to prove an 
 inspiration to our English novehsts. Sir John Brute 
 has long been a commonplace of fiction, and made a 
 last appearance as Sir Pitt Crawley in Vanity Fair. 
 Still more vivid as a painting of life than The Pro- 
 voFd Wife is the fragment, A Journey to London, 
 left unfinished at Vanbrugh's death. There is very 
 little that is dramatic in this masterly sketch. It is 
 but a picture of manners, of the impact of the country 
 upon the town. Yet how well are the characters 
 drawn ! Sir Francis Headpiece, a softened Sir 
 Tunbelly ; John Moody, his servant, who ' stumps 
 about the streets in his dirty boots, and asks every 
 man he meets, if he can tell him where he may have 
 a good lodging for a parliament man ' ; young Squire 
 Humphrey the unhcked cub of the country-side — 
 are painted in colours fresh to the drama. They 
 have taken their place, one and all, in English fiction, 
 and it is easy to measure the debt which Fielding 
 and Smollett owed to Vanbrugh's happy fragment. 
 
 Like many others of his contemporaries, Vanbrugh 
 did a vast deal of journeywork. He botched a 
 comedy of Fletcher's ; he translated plays from Bour- 
 sault, from Dancourt, from Moliere, and, through 
 Le Sage, from the Spanish. None of his versions 
 is memorable save The Confederacy (1705), engHshed 
 1 See Hazlitt's lectures on The English Comic Writers.
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 271 
 
 from Dancourt's Les Bourgeoises a la Mode, and com- 
 pletely transformed in the process. As mere sleight 
 of hand, The Confederacy claims our admiration. 
 Closely as it follows the original, it is racy of our 
 soil. As you read it, you think, not of the French 
 original, but of Middleton and Dekker. It is as 
 though Vanbrugh had breathed an Enghsh soul into 
 a French body. Though he added but three scenes, 
 though he never strays far, even in word, from the 
 prose of Dancourt, he has handled his material with 
 so deft a hand that he has made another man's play 
 his own and his country's. Dick Amlet and Brass 
 are of the true breed ; Mrs. Amlet would not have 
 disgraced the earher age of comedy ; and the quick- 
 ness of the dialogue, the speed of the action carried 
 the play for many a year down the current of success. 
 The last years of Vanbrugh's hfe were devoted 
 to architecture, and to its consequent disputes. His 
 first experiment in the art — Castle Howard — was 
 finished under happy auspices. The theatre, which 
 he built in the Haymarket, the single failure of a 
 fortunate life, involved him in disaster, because he 
 forgot that the chief end of a theatre is to transmit 
 what was spoken on the stage to the audience, and 
 because he did not foresee that the Havmarket would 
 prove inaccessible to the quality. Blenheim, inter- 
 rupted though it was by the meanness and temper 
 of the implacable Duchess, was one of the triumphs 
 of his career. Confused in construction, like The 
 Relapse, it is as vividly effective as the most brilliant
 
 272 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 of the author's comedies. A finished artist in neither 
 medium, he was Hfted high above such difficulties, 
 as perplex smaller men, by his courage and good 
 temper, and even though architects may easily discern 
 his technical deficiencies, he w^on a lofty tribute of 
 praise from Sir Joshua Reynolds, who speaking in 
 the language of a painter declared that Vanbrugh 
 * had originality of invention, he understood light 
 and shadow, and had great skill in composition.' He 
 suffered the fate of the great Perrault, with whom he 
 may fittingly be compared, from the wits of his 
 time. But detraction never checked the buoyancy of 
 his spirit, and he died, still untouched by the years, 
 in 1726. 
 
 VI 
 
 Twenty-eight years before the death of Vanbrugh 
 — in 1698 — Jeremy Collier had startled the town 
 with his Short View of the Immorality and Profane- 
 ness of the English Stage, and as Congreve and Van- 
 brugh are arraigned therein with especial bitterness, 
 something must be here said of this unforgotten, 
 acrid controversy. The attack upon literature was 
 not new. Evelyn had already deplored the licence 
 of the stage. In his preface to Prince Arthur, Sir 
 Richard Blackmore had complained that the poets 
 used ' all their wit in opposition to religion, and to 
 the destruction of virtue and good manners in the 
 world.' The old question of art and morals had 
 been debated with rare intelligence by Robert 
 VVolseley in 1685, by way of preface to Valentinian ;
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 273 
 
 and Joseph Wright in his Country Conversations 
 (1694) had protested against the attacks made by 
 the stage upon virtue and the clergy. Jeremy 
 Colher, then, addressed a pubhc, inured to his 
 argument, which he pressed with a ferocity beyond 
 the reach of his immediate predecessors. 
 
 A clergyman and non-juror, Collier was indicted for 
 absolving Friend and Parkyns at Tyburn, and, refusing 
 to give himself up, was outlawed. As a critic, if critic 
 he may be called. Collier was a patient pupil of Thomas 
 Rymer, whose style, method, and paraded erudition he 
 most faithfully mimicked. He did but apply the 'good 
 sense,' wherewith Rymer demolished Shakespeare, 
 to the comedies of his time. Indeed, it is not too 
 much to say that had the Short View of Tragedy not 
 been written, we never should have seen the Short 
 View oj Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage. 
 When Rymer says, ' should the Poet have provided 
 such a husband for an only daughter of any noble Peer 
 in England, the Blackamoor must have changed his skin 
 to look our house of Lords in the face,' and roundly 
 declares that ' there is not a monkey but understands 
 nature better, not a pig in Barbary that has not a truer 
 taste of things ' than Othello, you see the cupboard 
 from which Jeremy Collier filched his good things. 
 
 Relying upon Rymer, Collier went boldly to the 
 attack. The playwrights, he asserted, were immodest, 
 profane, and encouragers of immorahty. He made 
 an appeal to universal history, that he might prove 
 the baser wickedness of EngHshmen. As little a 
 
 s
 
 274 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 respecter of persons as Rymer, he lets his cudgel fall 
 indiscriminately upon the backs of great and small. 
 ' Aristophanes his own plays,' says he, ' are sufficient 
 to ruin his authority. For he discovers himself a 
 downright atheist.' He shares his master's contempt 
 of Shakespeare, who, says he, ' is too guilty to make 
 an evidence : but I think he gains not much by his 
 misbehaviour ; he has commonly Plautus's fate, 
 when there is most smut there is least sense.' His 
 comment on Ophelia matches Rymer's demolition 
 of Desdemona. Having extolled Euripides for seeing 
 to it that Phaedra's ' frenzy is not lewd,' he proceeds : 
 ' had Shakespeare secur'd this point for his young 
 virgin Ophelia, the play had been better contriv'd. 
 Since he was resolved to drown the lady like a kitten, 
 he should have sent her swimming a little sooner.' 
 There we have the key to his ' criticism.' 
 
 Again, he wiU not permit the smallest reference to 
 the Bible in a comedy. When Sir Sampson in Love 
 for Love says, ' your Sampsons were strong dogs from 
 the beginning,' Collier's comment is characteristic : 
 * Here you have the sacred history burlesqu'd, and 
 Sampson once more brought into the House of Dagon 
 to make a sport for the Philistines.' He is indignant 
 that Lord Foppington should confess that ' Sunday 
 is a vile day,' though the statement is perfectly con- 
 sonant with the part. That Valentine, in Love for 
 Love^ should murmur ' I am truth ' fills the non- 
 juror with fury. ' Now a poet,' says he, ' that had 
 not been smitten with blasphemy would never
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 275 
 
 have furnished frenzy with inspiration.' The thought 
 of The Relapse drives him to the verge of madness : 
 ' I ahnost wonder,' says he, ' the smoke of it had not 
 darkened the sun, and turned the air to plague and 
 poison.' 
 
 The worst offence of all committed by the drama- 
 tists is, in his eyes, the abuse of the clergy. ' They 
 play upon the character and endeavour not only 
 the men but the business.' If he had his way, he 
 would forbid the introduction of any priest, heathen 
 or Christian, into literature. ' The author of Don 
 Sebastian^ says he, ' strikes at the bishops through 
 the sides of the Mufti, and borrows the name of 
 the Turk to make the Christian ridiculous.' Then, 
 with a tedious circumstance, he discusses the priest- 
 hood in all climes and ages, approves Racine, who 
 brings a high priest into Athalie, but ' does him 
 justice in his station,' and awards the true palm to 
 Corneille and Moliere, who set no priest upon the 
 stage. ' This is certainly the right method, and best 
 secures the outworks of piety.' And, after a priest, 
 he best loves a man of quality. Plautus wins his 
 approval because his boldest ' sallies are generally 
 made by slaves and pandars.' He asks indignantly 
 what quarter the stage gives to quality, and finds it 
 extremely free and familiar. That Manly in Wycher- 
 ley's play should call a duke a rascal he confesses is 
 very much plain deahng. ' What necessity is there,' 
 he demands, ' to kick the coronets about the stage, 
 and to make a man a lord, only in order to make him
 
 276 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 a coxcomb ? ' Plainly there is no necessity ; but the 
 fact that Collier should put the question is the best 
 measure of his irrelevance. 
 
 It was Collier's supreme error to confuse art with 
 life. He had but one touchstone for the drama, 
 and that was the habit of his kind. He laid it down 
 for an axiom that nothing must be discussed upon 
 the stage, which was contrary to the experience of 
 his own blameless fireside. He assumed that the 
 poet was an advocate for all the sins which he depicted ; 
 that, if he brought upon the stage a thief or an 
 adulterer, he proudly glorified adultery and theft. 
 Never once did he attempt to understand the artist's 
 motive or point of view, to estimate the beauty or 
 value of words, to make allowance for the changing 
 manners of changed times. His mind was not 
 subtle enough to perceive that, in Congreve's words, 
 ' it is the business of the comic poet to paint the 
 vices and follies of human kind.' As he could see 
 no difference between art and life, so he could not 
 separate satire from the thing satirised. That Lord 
 Foppington is held up to ridicule did not hinder his 
 condemnation. His famous comment upon Juvenal 
 convicts him of absurdity : ' He teaches those vices 
 he would correct, and writes more like a pimp than 
 a poet. . . . Such nauseous stuff is almost enough to 
 debauch the alphabet, and make the language scandal- 
 ous.' And he does not understand that, if Juvenal be 
 not justified, then he himself is guilty of the crimes 
 which he imputes to Congreve and Vanbrugh.
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 277 
 
 So the worthy non-juror laid about him, fathering 
 vice upon blameless words, and clipping wiser, better 
 men than himself to fit his bed of Procrustes. And 
 even if we allowed that there was no difference 
 between deed and speech, that a writer who men- 
 tioned a crime had already committed it, that, in 
 fact, every theatre should be supplied with a gallows, 
 and a judge and jury sit permanently in the Green 
 Room, it would still be easy to convict Collier of 
 injustice, especially towards Congreve. Nothing can 
 be said in a critic's favour who detects profaneness 
 and immodesty in The Mourning Bride, who con- 
 demns the mere use of the words ' martyr ' and 
 ' inspiration,' who finds a depth of blasphemy in 
 the sentence ' my Jehu was a hackney-coachman.' 
 There can be no doubt, however, that Collier's 
 pamphlet enjoyed all the success which scandal 
 could bring it. For a while the town talked and 
 thought of nothing else. The King issued a solemn 
 proclamation against vice and profaneness. Con- 
 greve and D'Urfey were prosecuted by the Middle- 
 sex magistrates. Fines were imposed upon Betterton 
 and Mrs. Bracegirdle. Then, alarmed at the publicity 
 of the pamphlet, the poets began to write in their 
 defence. More wisely guided, they would have held 
 their tongues. The encounter could not be closely 
 engaged. Jeremy, having said little to their purpose, 
 should have been ignored. To have demolished his 
 principles might have been worth while. To oppose him 
 in detail was merely to incur anotherViolent onslaught.
 
 278 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 As they used other weapons, and fought another 
 battle than Collier, neither Congreve nor Vanbrugh 
 emerged with credit from the encounter. ' Con- 
 greve,' said Cibber, ' seemed too much hurt to be 
 able to defend himself, and Vanbrugh felt Collier 
 so little that his wit only laughed at his lashes.' 
 Vanbrugh, indeed, had put forth an admirable 
 defence in anticipation, and with an evident refer- 
 ence to Rabelais. ' As for the saints,' he wrote 
 two years before the Short Vinv in a preface to The 
 Relapse, ' (your thorough-pac'd ones, I mean, with 
 skrew'd faces and wry mouths) I despair of them ; 
 for they are friends to nobody : They love nothing 
 but their altars and themselves ; they have too 
 much zeal to have any charity ; they make de- 
 bauches in piety, as sinners do in wine ; and are 
 as quarrelsome in their religion, as other people 
 are in their drink : so I hope nobody will mind 
 what they say,' That is in the right vein. But 
 it was Farquhar, who, in an ingenious little work. The 
 Adventures of Covent Garden (1699), justly ascribed 
 to him by Leigh Hunt, made the wisest comment of 
 all, to the effect ' that the best way of answering 
 Mr. Collier was not to have replied at all ; for there 
 was so much fire in his book, had not his adversaries 
 thrown in fuel, it would have fed upon itself, and so 
 gone out in a blaze.' 
 
 The others flung themselves into the contro- 
 versy with what spirit they might. Dryden, worn 
 with the battle of life and letters, looked wearily
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 279 
 
 on the fray. He owned that in many things 
 CoUier had 'taxed him justly,' and added 'if he 
 be my enemy, let him triumph.' But he did 
 not plead guilty, as is generally supposed, without 
 extenuating circumstances and without the just 
 condemnation of his adversary. ' It were not 
 difficult to prove,' said he, ' that in many places he 
 has perverted my meaning by his glosses ; and inter- 
 preted my words into blasphemy and bawdry, of 
 which they are not guilty. Besides that he is too 
 much given to horseplay in his raillery ; and comes 
 to battel, like a dictator from the plough. I will not 
 say, the Zeal of God's House has eaten him up ; but 
 I am sure it has devoured some part of his good 
 manners and civility.' D'Urfey rushed into the 
 field with a preface to ^he Campaigners, like the 
 light horseman that he was, and with a song of The 
 New Reformation dismissed the non- juror from his 
 
 mind : 
 
 ' But let State Revolvers 
 And Treason Absolvers 
 Excuse if I sing : 
 
 The Scoundrel that chooses 
 To cry down the Muses 
 Would cry down the King.' 
 
 With far greater solemnity did Dennis, who him- 
 self was not attacked by Collier, defend the Use- 
 fulness of the Stage, to the Happiness of Mankind, 
 to Government, and to Religion. Collier replied to 
 Congreve with superfluous violence, to Vanbrugh
 
 28o LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 and Dennis with what seemed to him, no doubt, 
 an amiable restraint. For years the warfare was 
 carried on in pamphlet and prologue, and echoes 
 of it may be heard to-day. The high respect in 
 which ColHer has been held remains a puzzle of 
 criticism. Macaulay, for instance, finds him ' a 
 singularly fair controversialist,' and at the same 
 time regards Rymer as the worst critic that ever 
 lived, not perceiving that their method is one and 
 the same ; that, if CoUier is in the right of it, so is 
 Rymer. No doubt the hand of tradition is strong, 
 but to forget all that has been said in the non- juror's 
 favour, and to return to his text, is to awaken rudely 
 from a dream. There seems to me nothing of worth 
 in Collier's pamphlet, save the forcible handhng of 
 the vernacular, which he owed, as has been said, 
 to Rymer. Not even is his sincerity obvious-. He 
 strains his sarcasm as he strains his argument. His 
 object was to abolish not to reform the stage, and 
 he should have begun, not ended, with his Dis- 
 suasive from the Playhouse (1703). 
 
 If the respect lavished upon him is surprising, 
 still stranger is the conviction which prevails 
 of his influence. Scott and Macaulay, Leigh 
 Hunt and Lecky, speak with one voice. And 
 a brief examination of the facts proves that 
 Collier's success was a success of scandal and 
 no more.i The poets bowed their knee not an 
 
 ' Oldmixon, in his History^ accurately cstiiriated the eflect of 
 Collier's attack. ' Neither the actors nor the poets,' he wrote,
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 281 
 
 inch in obedience to him. They rephed to him, 
 they abused him, and they went their way. Con- 
 greve's true answer was not his Amendments but 
 The Way of the World. Vanbrugh showed in The 
 Confederacy how hghtly he had taken his scolding. 
 Farquhar made his first flight in December 1698, 
 and nobody can assert that he clipped the wings 
 of his fancy with Collier's shears. Meanwhile, the 
 old repertory remained unchanged in the theatres. 
 The pages of Genest, a much surer guide than tradi- 
 tion or desire, make evident the complete failure of 
 Colher's attack, Dryden and Shadwell, Aphra Behn 
 and D'Urfey, Ravenscroft and Wycherley were 
 still victorious. In the very year of Collier's sup- 
 posed triumph. The Mourning Bride, the peculiar 
 object of his attack, ' brought the greatest audience 
 they have this winter,' Congreve, the most bitterly 
 mahgned of all, seized the highest popularity. Love 
 for Love flourished in the nineteenth century. 
 D'Urfey's Don Quixote (1694-6), which Collier 
 thought he had left dead on the field, was still 
 played a quarter of a century after the fray, and 
 The Country Wife long outlived it. 
 
 Nor were the alterations, said to have been 
 introduced into the plays, of a feather's weight. 
 To change Valentine's ' I am truth ' into ' I am 
 honest ' was to spoil a fine passage, not to recast the 
 
 ' much regarded it. There was a little awe upon tliem at first, 
 but it wore off, and this attempt to reform them was the sport 
 of what wit they had in their plays, prologues, and epilogues/
 
 282 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 stage ; and Vanbrugh's transformation of the drunken 
 clergyman, in whose robes Sir John Brute disguised 
 himself, into a drunken woman, was not made until 
 1725. The new plays were of no other fashion than 
 the old. Gibber's Careless Hiishnnd (1704), Charles 
 Shadwell's Fair Quaker of Deal (1710), Gay's Three 
 Hours after Marriage {ijij), the comedies of Mrs. 
 Centlivre and Fielding afford no evidence of a 
 chastened spirit. Sir Richard Blackmore, who had 
 anticipated ColHer, did not conceal his disappoint- 
 ment. ' The stage has become impregnable,' he 
 wrote in 171 6, ' where loose poets, supported by 
 numbers, power, and interest, in defiance of all 
 rules of decency and virtue still provide new snares 
 and new temptations to seduce the people, and corrupt 
 their manners.' The reformation, in brief, was, 
 as Tom Brown called it, ' a drowsie reformation,' 
 and when it came in fact, it came not from the 
 admonitions of Jeremy Collier, who was remem- 
 bered only as a cat-o'-nine-tails of the stage, or as 
 a proper jest for an epilogue, but from a change in 
 the manners of the people. 
 
 VII 
 
 George Farquhar appeared too late to feel the 
 parson's whip. He began his career as Congreve 
 was closing his, and he could look upon the fierce 
 dispute with an eye of contemptuous impartiality. 
 That CoUier would have spared him there is no 
 reason to beHeve, for though in temperament as in
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 283 
 
 art he differed from his contemporaries, he claimed 
 the full licence of his time. A man in whom there 
 was no disguise, he unpacked his heart upon paper. 
 Whatever he knew and saw, all the manifold experi- 
 ments of his life, he put unrestrainedly into his 
 comedies. Ireland, the recruiting officer, the dis- 
 banded soldier, love, the bottle, and the road — these 
 he handled with the freedom and joyousness of one 
 who knew them well. In a word, he broke the bonds 
 of tradition, and declared, when he was truly himself, 
 that gallantry was merely one aim of mankind. Of 
 Congreve it is impossible to deduce anything from 
 his plays. Like all great artists, he is enwrapped 
 in a cloak of aristocratic impersonality. Farquhar, 
 living and breathing without the shackles of art, 
 reveals himself to us in every scene of his plays. 
 Humour and high spirits were always his. He was 
 lighthearted whatever befell him, and, having a 
 natural propensity to ease, knowing, moreover, that 
 he had very little estate ' but what lay under the 
 circumference of his hat,' he expected misfortune 
 and faced it without a murmur. 
 
 His love of ease made him impatient of study, 
 and this impatience is discernible in his works. He 
 knew not how to polish his dialogue. If it advanced 
 the action of his piece or gave an additional touch 
 to character he was content. Though he mani- 
 festly owed something to Thomas Heywood in his 
 sense of the open air and his treatment of the country- 
 side ; though, like the rest of his age, he had read
 
 284 LITERAHY STUDIES 
 
 Moliere, and could borrow a scene of Le Bourgeois 
 Gentilhomme for his Love and a Bottle^ it is not by 
 his Hterary preferences that you judge him. Few 
 comic poets who keep a place in the history of the 
 stage were less truly men of letters than he. For 
 the rules of his craft he cared not a jot. He used, 
 without shame, all the threadbare expedients of 
 the theatre. There is not one of his plays whose 
 plot is not unravelled by disguise. Leanthe, Oriana, 
 and Silvia all masquerade as men. Clincher and 
 Tom Errand in The Constant Couple exchange their 
 clothes. Even the blameless Angelica, in Sir Harry 
 TFildair, not content with being a ghost, must don 
 the finery of Beau Banter. But we let him trick us 
 as he will. We know that he looks upon the world 
 with honest eyes, and sees that herein which escaped 
 the others. And, as for the critics, says he, they 
 may go hang. He spurns the unities, roundly declar- 
 ing that ' the rules of English comedy don't lie in 
 the compass of Aristotle or his followers, but in 
 the Pit, Box, and Galleries.' 
 
 If you would understand his plays, you must 
 perforce know something of his life. Born at London- 
 derry in 1677, ^^ composed a Pindarick ode at four- 
 teen, went, in 1694, to Trinity College, Dublin, 
 and, though intended for the Church, found his way 
 eagerly to the stage. To be an actor was his earliest 
 ambition, and he appeared at the Smock Alley Theatre 
 in the part of Othello. The discomfiture caused 
 him by stage-fright was greatly enhanced by an
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 285 
 
 accidental wound which he inflicted upon a fellow- 
 player, and he gladly took the advice of Robert 
 Wilks, who remained his lifelong friend, and who 
 played the chief part in all his plays save one, to 
 write a comedy. So it was that, in 1698, he came 
 to London with Love and a Bottle in his pocket, and 
 made an instant conquest of the theatre. The 
 comedy, which has little to commend it, save a vivid 
 sense of life and movement, is, doubtless, autobio- 
 graphical. Farquhar himself must have sat for 
 Roebuck, the young Irishman freshly arrived in 
 town, and it is easy to believe that the artifice where- 
 with Lyrick, the dishevelled poet, escaped his creditors, 
 was part of Farquhar's own experience. The 
 dramatist, in truth, whose youth would excuse 
 grosser absurdities than are here exhibited, displays 
 more energy than skill. His comedy is crude and 
 filled with crudities, but a bluflf sincerity shines 
 through it all, and it is not surprising that an audience, 
 accustomed to disguises as the traditional trappings 
 of the stage, should have received it with favour. 
 
 A year later followed The Constant Couple, or a Trip 
 to the Jubilee, which owed something of its plot to 
 an imitation of Scarron's City Romance, entitled The 
 Adventures of Covent Garden, rightly ascribed to 
 Farquhar, as has been said, by Leigh Hunt. This 
 comedy, a clear advance in workmanship, was hailed 
 as a masterpiece with acclamation. Though it is 
 not free from artifice, it is far better constructed 
 than Love and a Bottle, and its hero, Sir Harry Wildair,
 
 286 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 appeared a beau of a new breed to a generation 
 sated with Foppingtons. He has honour and courage, 
 he has lived abroad, and he does not bound his 
 horizon, like Sir Novelty Fashion, with the creations 
 of his tailor. And Clincher, the false beau, the dis- 
 creet Colonel Standard, and Lady Lurewell herself, 
 though not quite unknown to comedy, have some- 
 thing in them of the blood and bone of humankind. In 
 1 701 Sir Harry Wildair appeared in another play, 
 of which he is the eponymous hero, and renewed 
 his career of wit and cynicism. Truly ' the gentle- 
 man from France,' as Farquhar called his Wildair, 
 enjoyed the freedom of the British stage, and brought 
 fame if not wealth to the author of his being. 
 
 Thereafter came two failures, and then, in 1705, a 
 piece of good fortune sent Farquhar on miHtary 
 duty to Shrewsbury. His recruits, as he tells us, 
 were reviewed by his general and his colonel, and 
 could not fail to pass muster. More than that, he 
 brought back with him a comedy. The Recruiting 
 Officer, which he dedicated ' to all friends round 
 the Wrekin,' and which, for him, was the beginning 
 of a new drama. Henceforth he has done with 
 the town and its gallants for ever. The example 
 of Congreve and Vanbrugh compels him no more. 
 He takes for his material the episodes of a broader 
 life, and helps to bridge the chasm which lies 
 between the comedy of manners and the English 
 novel, upon whose beginnings he had a profound 
 influence. He has done what he could to make
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 287 
 
 an end of disguise, though Silvia must perforce put 
 on the breeches. The most of his characters are 
 natural men and women, not above nor below the 
 stature of mankind. His soldiers, as has been pointed 
 out, are- no longer Miliies gloriosi, pale reflections of 
 Bobadill, but such as himself, whom he paints as 
 Captain Plume, and his comrades. Costar Pearmain 
 and Thomas Apple-tree are true men of the soil. 
 Even Silvia is far remote from the fine ladies who for 
 twenty years had railed and bantered on the stage. 
 ' The common jealousy of her sex,' as Plume says, 
 ' which is nothing but their avarice of pleasure, 
 she despises.' Thus Farquhar had at last found 
 his way. He had put a new set of characters in a 
 new scene. He had added something fresh to the 
 material of comedy. 
 
 A year later was played The Beaux' Stratagem^ 
 in construction as character the masterpiece of its 
 author. Full of the gaiety and bustle of the road, 
 it depicts the life of taverns and the highway. Here 
 are travellers burdened with trunks and bandboxes. 
 There is Boniface to fleece them, with his gag and 
 his cunning, and Gibbet to take what Boniface has 
 left. The whole comedy moves in an atmosphere 
 of boisterous merriment. Aimwell and Archer 
 
 ' In 1704 he had produced, with the aid of Peter Motteux, a 
 larce in three acts called T/ie Stage-coach. It was adapted f'lom 
 Les Carrosses d'Orleans, by Jean de la Chapelle, and its chief 
 interest is that it seems a rough sketch for 7/ie Beaux" 
 Stratagem.
 
 288 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 are beaux drawn from the life, not taken from a 
 comedy, generous, gallant, and lighthearted. And 
 Cherry and her catechism : is there not humour 
 there ? Throughout the play, Farquhar criticises 
 life in a humaner fashion than any dramatist since 
 the author of The English Traveller. He does not 
 possess the artistry of Congreve ; he was, perhaps, 
 a beginner of the sentimental comedy, of that 
 passion to be both merry and wise which has been 
 the ruin of our stage ; but he looked upon life with 
 the eye not of Will's coffee-house but of a man, and 
 the result is that The Beaux' Stratagem is not 
 indelibly marked with the date of its birth. 
 
 His muse was happier than his life. An ill- 
 provided pocket could not keep pace with the joy- 
 ousness of his heart. A lack of pence interrupted 
 the course of his harmless pleasures. He took 
 delight always in fresh scenes and quick impressions ; 
 the pictures of Holland, which he drew in his letters, 
 prove how well he understood the art of travelling ; 
 and, held fast in the bonds of penury, he was seldom 
 able to escape from Covent Garden. If misfortune 
 were abroad, it was certain to fall on him. A noble 
 patron persuaded him to pay his debts by the sale 
 of his commission, promising him another : that 
 other never came. In 1703 he married a lady who 
 pretended to be a fortune, and who, for love of 
 Farquhar, had concealed her poverty. Here was a 
 plot which might have served him for a comedy, 
 and which, with him cast for the chief role, could
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 289 
 
 have had only a tragic ending. Being Farquhar, 
 he harboured no resentment for the trick that had 
 been put upon him, but ' behaved to her with all the 
 delicacy and tenderness of an indulgent husband.' 
 Nothing could daunt the brave serenity of his spirit. 
 If he clung to the gaiety of the beau, he never knew 
 the beau's cynicism. He has sketched himself in a 
 page which you may well believe is without flattery, 
 and he confesses himself so great an epicure that he 
 ' hates all pleasure that 's purchas'd by excess of 
 pain.' He, at any rate, did not accept Sir Harry 
 Wildair's theory of Hfe. ' I would have my passion,' 
 he writes in a passage of evident sincerity, * if not 
 led, at least waited on by my reason ; and the greatest 
 proof of my affection that a lady must expect is this : 
 I would run any hazard to make us both happy, but 
 would not for any transitory pleasure make either 
 of us miserable.' 
 
 It was not within his compass to make them both 
 happy. His friend Wilks, missing him at the theatre, 
 discovered him lodged in a back garret in St. Martin's 
 Lane. He advised him to write a play which should 
 be instantly put upon the stage. ' Write ! ' says 
 Farquhar, ' it is impossible that a man can write 
 common sense who is heartless and has not a shilling 
 in his pocket.' Wilks gave him twenty guineas, 
 and, in six weeks. The Beaux' Stratagem^ that marvel 
 of merriment and good-humour, was finished. It 
 hints by no sign that the author wrote it with ' a 
 settled sickness upon him,' nor ' that before he finished 
 
 T
 
 ^90 LITERARY STUDIED 
 
 the second act he perceived the approaches of death.' 
 It was produced on 8th March 1707, and Farquhar 
 Uved just long enough to hear of its triumphant 
 success. A last note to the friend of his brief life, 
 Wilks, was found among his papers : ' Dear Bob, 
 I have not anything to leave thee to perpetuate my 
 memory, but two helpless girls ; look upon them 
 sometimes, and think on him who was to the last 
 moment of his life thine, G. Farquhar.' An epilogue 
 fittingly spoken by a gallant man, whose life was 
 in dire conflict with his theory of living, and whose 
 courage, in suffering, sustained him to the end. 
 
 VII 
 
 Whenever this or that battle of hterature is engaged, 
 the leaders are attended by a vast mob of camp- 
 foUowers, who v^thout natural talent or obvious 
 ingenuity, hope to share the spoils of victory. Thus 
 it was that the masters of comedy saw their works 
 mimicked, and the repute of their craft not enhanced 
 by eager, industrious journeymen. The most of 
 these preserve their names and no more in the annals 
 of the stage. Now and again they emerge, for some 
 quaUty of wit or good nature, from the rest and, 
 with their half-forgotten works, prompt the curiosity 
 of the historian. Thomas Shadwell, poet laureate, 
 for instance, enjoyed a popularity in his own day 
 which is not easily expHcable in ours. Literary 
 skill was not among the gifts of his mind. He had 
 a trick of invention, and was determined to turn
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 291 
 
 the best models to account. And when he had in- 
 vented (or adapted) his puppets, he handled them 
 so carelessly that they long since lost their inte- 
 rest for us. The sense of style, the mastery of 
 language, which might have tempered their extrava- 
 gance, were lacking to him, and he resembled the 
 facile playwrights of to-day in refusing to look upon 
 the drama as a branch of literature. In his preface 
 to The Sullen Lovers he proudly professed himself 
 a pupil of Ben Jonson, whose variety of ' humours ' 
 he attempted to reproduce, and whom, he thought, 
 ' all dramatic poets ought to imitate.' His debt to 
 Ben Jonson was infinitely less than his debt to Moliere. 
 The Sullen Lovers (1668) is based upon Les Fdcheux; 
 Bury Fair (1689), his masterpiece, owes its fantastic 
 characters to Les Precieuses Ridicules ; and The Miser 
 (1672) is no more than a perversion of VAvare. 
 Yet so good a conceit of himself had Shadwell, that 
 he thought he did his masters no discredit. ' 'Tis 
 not barrenness of wit or invention that makes me 
 borrow from the French,' he boasted, ' but laziness.' 
 To be lazy is a greater sin, in the realm of art, than 
 to be barren. He patronised Shakespeare as amiably 
 as he patronised Moliere. When he had mangled 
 Timon of Athens (1678), ' I can truly say,' he 
 wrote, ' that I have made it a play.' Yet with 
 all his shortcomings he held the stage for a 
 quarter of a century. His Epsom Wells (iSy^) was 
 praised by St. Evremond. He had the wit to 
 make Don Juan the hero of The Libertine (1676), and
 
 292 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 with The Squire of Alsatia (1688) he scaled the top- 
 most height of his popularity. This last play has 
 many faults. Its story is incredible. The cant 
 used by the rufflers of Whitefriars is handled with 
 so little tact, that it seems an excrescence upon the 
 dialogue rather than a part of it. Yet how much 
 excellent material it contains was revealed by Sir 
 Walter Scott, who made a free use of it in The 
 Fortunes of Nigel. Briefly, the vices and virtues 
 of hasty Shadwell have been well summed up by 
 Rochester in four lines : 
 
 ' Shadwell's unfinished Works do yet impart 
 Great Proofs of force of Nature, none of Art ; 
 With just bold Strokes he dashes here and there, 
 Showing great Mastery with little Care.' 
 
 It is this judgment which, together with Dryden's 
 satire, has preserved the name and fame of Shadwell 
 from oblivion. 
 
 Another camp-follower was Thomas D'Urfey, a 
 French Huguenot by descent and a habitant of 
 Grub Street by profession, who turned his hand to 
 prose or verse, composed songs, elegies, and pane- 
 gyrics, wrote tales, tragical and comical, contrived 
 operas and pantomimes, satirised ministers, culti- 
 vated the friendship of kings, changed his politics 
 as he changed his coat, and left behind him a vast 
 number of boisterous farces and bombastic melo- 
 dramas. A scurrilous fellow in his Ufe and speech, 
 he was the familiar friend of all, was called ' Tom '
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 293 
 
 by high and low, and for nearly half a century played 
 a part in the life of his time. Addison remem- 
 bered ' King Charles the Second leaning on his 
 shoulder more than once, and humming over a song 
 with him.' He was important enough to incur 
 Buckingham's disfavour, and lives undeservedly in 
 the distich : 
 
 ' And sing-song D'Urfey, placed beneath abuses, 
 Lives by his impudence, and not the Muses.' 
 
 His more serious plays, mere burlesques of 
 tragedy, are in ' Ercles' vein.' The Siege of 
 Memphis (1676) and The Famous History of the 
 Rise and Fall of Massaniello (1700) may scarcely 
 be matched, for sheer fustian, in English htera- 
 ture. Thus it is that Genovino, the Jesuit, 
 apostrophises the friends of Massaniello : 
 
 'Shout on, ye sons of clamour, louder still, 
 And fright the Grandees with obstreperous noise. 
 Whilst I secure in Darling Policies 
 Am pleased with the success of my Designs 
 Against this vile ungrateful City Naples.' 
 
 Eor two parts, of five acts each, D'Urfey sustains 
 his rant at this high level, interrupting it, charac- 
 teristically, with songs. The fourth act opens with 
 a fisherman's rousing chorus, and the serious busi- 
 ness of the fifth act is pleasantly beguiled by an 
 encounter, in amoebean strains, between two fish- 
 fags. Thus the method and temperament of
 
 294 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 D'Urfey are sufficiently displayed, and a mere glance 
 at Massaniello will explain why his friends vastly 
 preferred his songs to his tragedies. 
 
 The plays which he dignifies by the name of 
 comedy are, one and all, the broadest of broad farces. 
 There is no trick of the time which he does not employ. 
 The thinnest disguises are sufficient to deceive his 
 simple heroes. His country squires are guilty of 
 wilder antics than any devised by Vanbrugh. As he 
 borrowed from his contemporaries, so his poor treasury 
 of wit was rifled by his successors. Madam Fickle, 
 in the comedy of that name (1682), gave Farquhar 
 a hint for the Lady Lurewell of The Constant Couple^ 
 and the well-deserved misfortunes of Beau Clincher 
 and Old Smuggler owe something to the disaster 
 which overtakes Beauford and Brainworm in The 
 Firtuous Wife. Many years later, in 1709, D'Urfey 
 astonished the town with a play of a wholly new 
 pattern. It was called The Modern Prophets, and 
 was described by Steele as ' a most unanswerable 
 satire against the late spirit of enthusiasm.' The 
 writer ' had by long experience observed,' wrote 
 The Tatler, ' that, in company, very grave dis- 
 courses had been followed by bawdry ; and there- 
 fore has turned the humour that way with great 
 success, and taken from his audience aU manner of 
 superstition, by the agitations of pretty Mrs. Bignell, 
 whom he has, with great subtlety, made a lay-sister, 
 as well as a prophetess.' Of the virtues that should 
 grace a comic poet D'Urfey. had none. He showed
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 295 
 
 not even a passing interest in human character ; 
 he knew no other wit than horseplay. Save in the 
 writing of songs, he was a man of very slender talent, 
 and it is a high tribute to his amiable qualities that 
 his memory has been so long and so clearly preserved. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Colley Gibber was what D'Urfey was not, a born 
 man of the theatre. An actor by temperament, a 
 comic poet by accident, he took a perfect measure 
 of the public taste, and he knew his colleagues as 
 he knew the pit and boxes. He could fit himself 
 and them with parts nicely suited to the talent of 
 each. The result is that his plays are no more than 
 delicately poised machines, which run easily enough 
 upon the stage, but creak horribly in the study. 
 Congreve's criticism of Gibber's first play. Lovers Last 
 Shift (1696), the justice of which Gibber in his candid 
 way publicly acknowledged, would serve as a criticism 
 for them all. ' It has only in it,' said Gongreve, ' a 
 great many things that were like wit, that in reality 
 were not wit.' Even when he declared that he drew 
 from life, he succeeded in making the portrait life- 
 less as stone. Lady Betty Modish, in The Careless 
 Husband (1704), is said to have owed not a httle to 
 Mrs. Oldfield's manner of converse. 'There are many 
 sentiments in this character,' the author confesses, 
 * that I may almost say, were originally her own, or 
 only dress'd vvdth a little more care, than when they 
 negligently fell from her hvely humour.' And Lady
 
 296 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 Betty is essentially a puppet of the stage. As you 
 listen to her wit, when it encounters the wit of Sir 
 Charles Easy or Lord Foppington, your mind never 
 flits for a moment to the talk of human beings. You 
 are reminded, at every page, of that phrase-book 
 of ironic genius, Swift's Genteel Conversation. 
 
 However, Cibber, being a man of the theatre, 
 cared as little for human character as for literature. 
 It was for him to fill the pit and boxes, and he filled 
 them for two generations. In the making of plays 
 he was an expert, and he cared not whose work it 
 was that he adapted. He improved Shakespeare 
 with as hght a heart as he improved Mrs. Centlivre. 
 His most important service to the stage of his time 
 was the invention of a new kind of beau in Sir Novelty 
 Fashion, who was accepted by Vanbrugh as a type, 
 and held the stage until he was reincarnated as Lord 
 Dundreary. Services such as this hardly outlast 
 the author who does them, and CoUey Cibber has a 
 claim upon our regard which all his journeywork 
 would not merit. He left us in his Apology for his 
 Life an incomparable record (pubHshed in 1740). 
 It is to his talent of observation, to his good-humour, 
 and to his sense of justice that we owe the best set 
 of theatrical portraits that ever came down to us. 
 As much as words can tell, he has told us of Mrs, 
 Bracegirdle and Betterton, of Leigh and Nokes, of 
 Estcourt and Powell, of all the briUiant actors, who 
 in our golden age of comedy made the representation 
 of that comedy possible. And he has done this with
 
 CONGREVE AND SOME OTHERS 297 
 
 never a jealous word, with never a hinted dishke at 
 a prosperous rival. Above all, he has drawn an 
 imperishable portrait of himself, a man protected 
 against insult by a triple brass of confidence, whose 
 vanity smiled untouched at the fierce assaults of 
 desperate enemies. That presently he was chosen 
 by Pope to succeed Theobald on the throne of folly 
 gave him a strange pleasure, and he discovered, I 
 think, the real reason of Pope's choice. ' Right or 
 wrong,' said he, ' a Hck at the laureate will always be 
 a sure bait, ad captandum vulgus, to catch him little 
 readers.' It was, in effect, the laureate unworthy 
 of his wreath that the great poet attacked, and the 
 poet's shaft should have been directed against the 
 Court which put Gibber in a false position. His 
 laureate odes, sunk in the waters of oblivion, no 
 longer trouble us. We may even forget the skilful 
 maker of stage-plays. The historian of the theatre, 
 the apologist, who has left behind him the best com- 
 mentary that we have upon the comedy of manners, 
 will still be entitled to the world's gratitude, though 
 he wear the bays no longer on his brow.
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF 
 LETTERS 
 
 AS the seventeenth century drew to its close, 
 l~\ there came into being a strange underworld 
 of letters, an inferno inhabited by lettered vagabonds, 
 who matched, in scholarship and scurrility, the 
 heroes of Petronius. Beggar students, tavern keepers, 
 idlers from the inns of court, adventurers who had 
 trailed a pike in Holland, flocked thither with spruce 
 young squires who ' knew the true manage of the 
 hat,' and loungers fresh from the universities. Thus, 
 in the coffee-houses, there grew up a new public, 
 for whose amusement a new literature was invented. 
 The old days of dignity and leisure were past. The 
 wits of the town wrote, not to please themselves, but 
 to flatter the taste of their patrons, and many of 
 them succeeded so well as to echo in prose or verse 
 the precise accent of the tavern. A familiarity of 
 speech and thought distinguished them all. They were 
 noisy, they were agile, they were fearless. They inso- 
 lently attacked their great contemporaries. They 
 had, indeed, as little respect for high personages in 
 
 298
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS 299 
 
 life or letters as for the English tongue, which they 
 maltreated with lighthearted ribaldry. The slang 
 which they used — and they were all masters in this 
 kind — was not the curious slang of metaphor, such 
 as is enshrined in the pages of Cotgrave's Dictionary ; 
 rather, it was composed of the catchwords which 
 seemed worth a smile when they were heard in 
 the coffee-house, which instantly lost their savour 
 when they were put in print, and which to-day 
 defy the researches of the archaeologist. As they 
 aimed, one and all, at the same mark — popu- 
 larity — they exhibited in their works no subtle 
 differences. The vanity of individual expression 
 was not for them. They admitted that the book- 
 sellers, who paid the piper, had a perfect right to 
 call the tune, and they sang and danced in loyal 
 obedience to the fashion of the moment. They 
 wrote the slippered doggerel, the easy prose, the 
 flippant plays that were asked of them, and their 
 names might be transposed on many title-pages 
 without any violation of justice or probability. 
 
 In spirit and ambition, they were true cockneys. 
 They readily shook off the influence and associa- 
 tions of their childhood. Though Tom Brown 
 went to Christ Church from Shifnal, though Ned 
 Ward was a loyal son of Oxfordshire, though Peter 
 Motteux first saw the light at Rouen, London was 
 their paradise. They saw through her eyes, they 
 spoke with her tongue. Most intimately at home 
 in Will's or Ned Ward's, they dragged their muse.
 
 300 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 as they would still have called her, down to the level 
 of sawdust and spilled wine. Before all things, and 
 at all times, they were anti-heroic. Their jests 
 never sparkled more brightly than when they aimed 
 at authority. No poets, living or dead, were sacred 
 in their careless eyes. It seemed to them a legiti- 
 mate enterprise to ridicule Virgil, or to trick Homer 
 out in the motley garments of the age. ^neas and 
 Ulysses, esteemed heroes by many generations of 
 men, were for them no better than those who fre- 
 quented Grub Street or took their pleasure in the 
 Mall. And they found in travesty or burlesque an 
 admirable field for the exercise of their untidy talent. 
 In burlesque, Scarron was their openly acknow- 
 ledged master. They did not make any attempt to 
 belittle the debt which they owed to Le Virgile 
 Travesti. They announced their obligation not 
 merely in their style, but in their titles, and, if this 
 antic form of poetry took some years in crossing the 
 Channel, it flourished with amazing energy after its 
 passage. The success of Scarron himself is a curi- 
 osity of literary history. The form was no new 
 thing when Scarron made it his own. The reverse 
 process, the exaltation of paltry subjects by august 
 treatment, such as was afterwards employed by John 
 Philips in his Splendid Shilling, was not unknown to 
 the ancients. The trick of putting the gods and 
 heroes of Greece and Rome into dressing-gowns had 
 been practised in Spain and Italy before Scarron 
 pubhshed, in 1648, the first book of his famous
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS 301 
 
 Virgile. But, for France, and for England, Scarron 
 was a real inventor. The artifice seemed simple 
 enough when it was discovered. It depended for 
 its triumph upon nothing else than an obvious 
 contrast. To represent whatever had seemed sacred 
 to the tradition of the race as trivial and ludicrous 
 was not a difficult enterprise, while the anachronism 
 which persuaded Virgil to speak of oil-paintings and 
 to quote Corneille was assured of a laugh. The 
 example of Scarron was quickly followed. Furetiere, 
 Dufresnoy, d'Assoucy hastened to prove themselves 
 possessed of this new humour. Ovid, curled and 
 barbered, was sent to pay his addresses to the ladies 
 of the court with M. de Boufflers. Not even Lucan 
 or Juvenal escaped the outrage of parody. And the 
 style of the burlesques matched the irreverence of 
 their thought. It was familiar to baseness ; it 
 flowed with the ease and swiftness of a turbid stream. 
 As Boileau said, Parnassus spoke the language of 
 the market, and Apollo, travestied, became a Tabarin. 
 The enthusiasm which Scarron's experiment 
 aroused made an easy conquest of courtier and 
 scholar alike. From the capital, it spread to the 
 provinces, and, though none of his imitators is 
 worth remembrance, Scarron deserves his meed of 
 praise. He did an ill thing supremely well. In 
 facility and suppleness, his Virgile has never been 
 surpassed. His humour, such as it is, is tireless 
 and inexhaustible. Moreover, if he be happy in 
 his raillery, his work, as French admirers have said,
 
 302 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 is not without some value as a piece of criticism. 
 He touches with a light hand the weakness of the 
 lachrymose hero. He turns the light of the pre- 
 vailing good sense upon Virgil's many simplicities, 
 for which few will thank him ; and, even in the very 
 act of burlesque, he pays his victim the compliment 
 of a scrupulously close adherence to his text. 
 
 II 
 
 The fashion was already overpast in France, when 
 Charles Cotton made his first experiment in English 
 burlesque. In 1664 was published under the title 
 Scarronides, or Virgil Travestie, a mock-poem on the 
 first book of the Mneid. To this Cotton added the 
 fourth book six years later, and, presently, put some 
 of Lucian's dialogues into ' EngHsh fustian,' with 
 the title Burlesque upon Burlesque : or the Scoffer 
 Scoffed. Of these experiments in the new craft, 
 no more can be said than that they were better than 
 the base imitations which speedily followed. Cotton, 
 at any rate, was a man of letters, with a sense of 
 style and variety, and if he stooped to play the tune 
 which the tavern-haunters demanded, he played it 
 with some skill and energy. He uses the artifices 
 which they all use. He mixes ancient and modern 
 inextricably. He measures the distance which ^Eneas 
 rowed by a familiar standard, ' 'twixt Parson's Dock 
 and Billingsgate.' As to Dido's temple, ' I cannot 
 liken any to it,' says he, ' unless 't be Pancras, if
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS 303 
 
 you know it.' It is thus that he turns into Enghsh 
 a familiar passage of the first Mneid : 
 
 ' But oh, my Muse, put me in mind, 
 To which o' th' gods was he unkind : 
 Or, what the Plague did Juno mean 
 (That cross-grain'd, peevish, scolding Q.uean, 
 That scratching, cater-wawling Puss) 
 To use an honest Fellow thus ? 
 (To curry him like Pelts at Taners), 
 Have goddesses no better manners ? ' 
 
 The last line, as the author proudly tells us in a 
 note, is a translation of ' tantaene animis coelestibus 
 irae ? ' The humour is forced and barren ; but those 
 French critics are in the wrong who declare that 
 Cotton was content merely to translate Scarron. If 
 this theory of burlesque was Scarron's, the applica- 
 tion of it was all his own. 
 
 Cotton's success did not long remain unchal- 
 lenged. Within a year, one Monsey of Pembroke 
 Hall, Cambridge, gave to the world his own Scarronides, 
 a mock-poem, being the second and seventh books 
 of Virgil's JSneid, which he dedicated, by what, no 
 doubt, he thought a great stroke of humour, to ' Lady 
 Ann Dido, Countess of Carthage.' It is a work 
 without character, scrupulously fashioned according 
 to the pattern of the hour ; and a reference to James 
 Hind proves that this author also has learned the 
 lesson of anachronism. Then John Phillips, a true 
 denizen of Grub Street, paraphrased, in his Maronides 
 (1672), the fifth and sixth books of the Mneid. In a
 
 304 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 preface he attempts a timid defence of his temerity. 
 * I leave the world to determine,' says he, ' whether it 
 be not reason that he that has caused us so often to 
 cry when we were Boys, ought not to make us laugh 
 as much now we are men.' As PhiUips travestied 
 him, Virgil does not make us laugh, and the justifi- 
 cation fails. The experiment, in truth, differed little 
 from the others, save that its author, for the moment 
 a zealous royalist, put the puritans in hell. There 
 they all lie, Haselrigge and Pym, Hugh Peters, the 
 chief of English rogues, Bradshaw, 
 
 * in a Squarr 
 Of burning Canvas, lined with Tarr,' 
 
 and Cromwell himself, 
 
 ' that Devil of a Devil, 
 Whose Noddle was the Mint of Evil.' 
 
 Thus did Phillips take vengeance upon Milton's 
 severe discipline. 
 
 The licence which John Phillips allowed himself 
 in his treatment of Virgil was vastly increased by 
 James Farewell, the author of The Irish Hudibras, or 
 Fingallian Prince (1698), who boldly adapted the sixth 
 book of the Mneid to his own time, and turned it to 
 a high encomium of Wilham in., ' this present 
 Monarch, England's timely Redeemer, whom Heaven 
 long preserve.' Nor was Virgil the only one of 
 the poets attacked in England with wanton in- 
 solence. In 1664, James Scudamore's Homer a
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS 305 
 
 la Mode, A Mock Poem upon the first and 
 second books of Homer's Iliads, came upon the 
 town. The version is free from the brutahty 
 which disgraced many of its rivals, and gives pro- 
 mise of better things. The promise remained un- 
 fulfilled, for the author, who was brfed at Christ 
 Church, had but just taken his degree when he was 
 drowned in the Wye, ' to the great reluctancy of 
 all those who were acquainted with his pregnant 
 parts.' The author of Homerides : or Homer's First 
 Book Modernized, who, some fifty years later, essayed 
 Scudamore's task over again, need not awaken our 
 curiosity. He showed a spark of self-knowledge 
 when he called himself Sir Iliad Doggercll, and a 
 complete ignorance of literary fitness when he 
 regretted that Pope did not give Homer ' the Enghsh 
 air as well as tongue.' Ovid, better suited to the 
 methods of burlesque, did but tempt the makers 
 of travesties to a wilder extravagance. ' Naso 
 Scarronomimus,' the writer of Ovidius Exulans 
 (1673), can scarcely persuade the sorry tit of his 
 humour to move for all his thwackings, and even 
 Alexander Radcliffe, a captain, an inns-of-court- 
 man and a poet, who, in The Ramble, An Anti- 
 Heroic Poem, gave proof of a rough vigour and fresh- 
 ness, fails to rouse a laugh by his Ovid Travestie 
 (1680). To send Ulysses to Scotland as a volunteer, 
 for the suppression of rebellion, and to leave him 
 loitering at an inn on the homeward road, is an 
 artifice which no literary fashion can justify. In 
 
 u
 
 3o6 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 truth, the taste of the dying seventeenth century 
 was not our taste, and we can only wonder at the 
 indiscretion of our ancestors. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Even before Cotton wrote, Samuel Butler had 
 discovered in Hudibras (1663) the real purpose of 
 burlesque. If Scarron had done nothing else than 
 to inspire, at a distance, this work of genius, we 
 should still owe him a debt of gratitude. It was 
 not for Butler to ridicule the ancient mythologies ; 
 he saw before his eyes the follies and pretensions 
 of his own time and country awaiting castigation. 
 And so, he turned the travesty magnificently to 
 the uses of satire. He employed the artifices of 
 contrast and anachronism beloved by the imitators 
 of Scarron to exhibit in the clear light of absurdity 
 the hypocrisy and meanness of Presbyterians. He, 
 too, expressed the high in terms of the low. His 
 work is the masterpiece of its kind, unique and in- 
 comparable. It is idle to praise its technical per- 
 fection. The resource and ingenuity of the author's 
 rhymes, the tireless exuberance of his wit, his easy 
 movement, his bold extravagance are qualities un- 
 matched elsewhere in Hterature. Nor does his 
 wisdom lag behind his wit. He concentrates into 
 aphorisms the fruit of his keen observation with so 
 happy a skill that a great part of his work has passed 
 into the possession of all Englishmen. Thousands 
 quote him with assurance who have never turned
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS 307 
 
 the pages of Hudibras, who would care not a fig for 
 his fable or his satire, even if they understood them. 
 And, though he won instant acceptance, he defied 
 imitation. When he had fashioned his masterpiece, 
 he broke the mould; and, for that very reason, perhaps, 
 he became the prey of the parodists. 
 
 IV 
 
 There is nothing that looks so easy as perfection, 
 and the coffee-house poets, easily beguiled, thought 
 it no shame to express themselves and their politics 
 in Hudibrastic verse. If they could not rival the 
 master, they could at least pretend to mimicry in 
 halting octosyllabics. The boldest of them all was 
 Ned Ward, who combined the crafts of publican 
 and poet. Born in Oxfordshire in 1667, he was, 
 says his biographer, ' of low extraction and little 
 education.' Whatever his extraction may have 
 been, he cleverly picked up his knowledge of letters 
 as he went along. He did not scruple to call one 
 of his books Vulgus Britannicus, and he believed in 
 the singularity of ' an Egyptian Magi.' In his 
 youth he had travelled in the West Indies, a fact 
 commemorated by Pope : ' or shipp'd with Ward 
 to Ape and Monkey Lands.' But he early settled 
 to the professions which suited him best. His 
 first experiment in Inn-keeping was made in Moor- 
 fields. He presently moved to Fullwood Rents, 
 where he opened a punch-shop and tavern, ' but in a 
 genteel way,' says Giles Jacob, * and with his wit.
 
 3o8 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 humour, and good liquor, has afforded his guests 
 pleasurable entertainment.' Whatever he did was, 
 doubtless, done in ' a genteel way,' and the guests 
 who found pleasure in his entertainment were, one 
 and all, sound Tories and High Churchmen. A big, 
 burly man, he showed a practical faith in his own 
 ale and his own punch, and, while he gossiped at 
 the fireside with his cHents, never let a day pass 
 without a verse : 
 
 ' So Ned, divided, writes and brews, 
 To try if darling gain accrues 
 More from his Mash-tub than his Muse.' 
 
 His mash-tub had the better of it. Not only did 
 it fill his pocket ; it did not put him into the pillory. 
 Twice, for his Muse's sake, he faced the angry mob 
 at the Royal Exchange and at Charing Cross. ' As 
 thick as eggs at Ward in piUory,' says Pope ; but 
 his humour carried him safely through the vicissi- 
 tudes of politics, and he died at his tavern, a pros- 
 perous potman and scurrile poet, in 1731. 
 
 He was a journalist in verse. His Hudibras Redi- 
 vivus (1708) is a gazette in rhyme, which was inspired 
 by the moment, and was pubhshed in parts. The 
 ingenious Ward begins his preface with an apology. 
 ' Tho' I have made bold,' he says, ' to borrow a 
 Title from one of the best poems that ever was 
 published in the English Tongue — yet I would not 
 have the world expect me such a wizard as to con- 
 jure up the spirit of the inimitable Butler.' He need 
 not have been in doubt. He was no wizard, but a
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS 309 
 
 pedestrian jogtrot writer of doggerel, or ' bitcherel,' 
 as D'Urfey called it, whom criticism could not affright 
 nor opposition baulk. Nevertheless his Hudibras is a 
 wonderful achievement. Its facile, fluent ease marks 
 the versifier who could write two hundred lines 
 standing on one foot. His language is common 
 enough. Neither Brown nor Motteux surpasses 
 him in knowledge of the slang which was heard in 
 the tavern or at the street corner. Had he lived 
 to-day, he might have been an ornament of the 
 sporting press. Living when he did, he supported 
 the cause of Church and State in such couplets as 
 jingled in the brain, and tripped readily to the tongue. 
 For popular government he had a hearty contempt : 
 
 'For he that will oblige the throng. 
 Must ne'er hold one opinion long, 
 But turn his doctrine and his creed. 
 As often as the Cause has need.' 
 
 Among those upon whom he poured out his con- 
 tempt are ' prophet Dan ' with ' the scoundrel 
 Freedom of his Pen,' all Whigs and all Dissenters. 
 He believed, like an eminent statesman, that the 
 one object of the Whigs was to make themselves 
 * masters for life ' of England and all that it contained. 
 
 ' A man of sense, with half an Eye, 
 (Says he) may easily descry, 
 Thro' all their conscientious Cant, 
 What in reality they want ; 
 Which is, believe me, in a word, 
 All that the Kingdom can afford.'
 
 310 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 Compromise he hated, and impartiahty. He pro- 
 fessed a deep distrust of moderation, which was no 
 better in his eye than a ' modish cant,' with which 
 fools disguise ' their spite, their venom, and their 
 lies.' The book is tedious in its facility. It weighs 
 upon the reader's spirit with the heaviness of all 
 dead controversies. Even where he protests against 
 the debtors' prison, where 
 
 * men for poverty alone 
 Must wear these doublets made of stone,' 
 
 he wins your reluctant approval. 
 
 He is at his best when he describes the 
 taverns and shops of the town, their picturesque 
 signs, and the strange characters who throng the 
 streets, the campaign wenches and the ale-wives, 
 the lame mumpers and the disabled seamen. 
 Here, he speaks with an authority which none 
 of his colleagues in Grub Street could rival. If 
 he had but a casual acquaintance with the English 
 tongue, he knew London and its slang like the 
 tavern-keeper that he was. Whatever were his 
 shortcomings, his industry was prodigious. Fulgus 
 Britannicus (1710) rivalled his Hudibras Redivivus 
 in dullness and prolixity. The Republican Pro- 
 cession (17 14), in which, among others, he ridicules 
 Marlborough, ' a great Pretender to the trick of 
 State,' is merry only on the title-page. He poured 
 forth broadsides, satires, prose, and verse with an 
 equal hand. Impartially, he sang the praises of a
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS 311 
 
 Derby-Ale-House and the New Tunbridge Wells 
 at Islington. The love of good living and high 
 principles breathes in all that he wrote. The pity 
 is that a sound inspiration found so poor and grace- 
 less an expression. Now and then, he could sing a 
 song in the true Rabelaisian strain, as in his Wine 
 and Wisdom : or The Tipling Philosophers (17 19) : 
 
 ' Wise Thales, the Father of all 
 The Greek Philosophical! Crew, 
 Ere he gaz'd at the Heavens, would call 
 For a chirruping Bottle or two.' 
 
 In fifty stanzas, he thus extolled what was, assuredly, 
 the more profitable of his two trades, and, for the 
 moment, endowed his doggerel with a rollicking 
 sincerity. 
 
 It is, as has been said, by his sketches of London 
 and its streets that Ned Ward saves his Hudibrastic 
 experiments from dullness, and there, in the sights 
 and sounds about him, he found the material best 
 suited to his talent. Whatever disloyalty the hacks 
 of Grub Street may have shown to the English lan- 
 guage, they were constant in their devotion to the 
 London which was their world. Ned Ward, in his 
 London Spy, and Tom Brown, in his Amusements 
 Serious and Comical, have bequeathed to us a picture 
 of the town whose merit is wholly independent of 
 literature. They are the true descendants of Dekker 
 and Nashe, from whom they are separated by less 
 than a century of time. Between them are many
 
 312 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 centuries of style and thought. The London which 
 Dekker and Nashe described is enwrapped in an 
 atmosphere of dark mystery and impenetrable 
 gloom. They see the Seven Deadly Sins ever before 
 them, and deplore the iniquity of their city with 
 the solemn eloquence of prophets. Satire is their 
 lightest weapon. They condemn even where they 
 admire. It is in no spirit of flippancy that Dekker 
 denounces the cruelty of this ' now once-againe 
 New-reared-Troy.' Nashe's voice is the voice of 
 a sincerely repentant sinner. ' London,' he cries, 
 ' lay off thy gorgeous attire and cast downe thy 
 selfe before God in contrition and prayer, least hee 
 cast thee downe in his indignation into hell-fire.' 
 
 Ned Ward and Tom Brown could not look upon 
 the life about them with the grave eyes of their 
 predecessors. It was not for them to be censorious 
 or to hope for better things. If only the city of 
 their habitation were a place of pleasant resort, 
 they cared not for its morals. And they wrote of 
 it in the easy style of the trained reporter. Their 
 temperament in no sense diminishes the value of 
 their sketch. They have shown us a London in- 
 finitely more supple, infinitely commoner, and, at 
 the same time, far closer to our own than the London 
 of Dekker and Nashe. The cockney with his nimbler 
 wit and paltrier ideals had intervened, and fixed for 
 all time certain Hneaments of the city. No longer 
 is it dominated by gallant or beau or gull. Those 
 who throng the taverns of the time are either im-
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS 313 
 
 posters, such as Radcliffe paints in The Ramble, or 
 mere citizens meanly ambitious of cutting a dash. 
 It seems perfectly consonant with the prevailing 
 manners that Ned Ward should keep an ale-house, 
 or that Motteux, the translator of Rabelais, should 
 desert literature for the selling of china goods. 
 
 The London Spy (1704-6) is, undoubtedly, Ward's 
 masterpiece. After two centuries, it still keeps the fresh 
 stamp of truth. Its design, if design it may be called, 
 is of the simplest. A citizen, who, ' after a tedious 
 confinement in a country Hutt,' breaking loose from 
 ' the scholar's gaol, his study,' revisits London. 
 There he meets an old schoolfellow, who shows him 
 the sights, and especially the taverns, of the town. 
 It is a Gulfs Horn-book of another age, written with 
 plain simplicity, and with scarce a touch of satire. 
 The two friends range from Billingsgate, where they 
 observe the ' oars ' and ' scullers ' who tout by the 
 waterside, and note ' the stink of sprats and the 
 untuneable clamours of the wrangling society,' to 
 Hummun's Turkish bath. They wander from the 
 Quaker's tavern in Fish Lane to that hideous inferno, 
 the Poultry Compter, from the Wits' coffee-house, 
 where the cockney sketches for his friend a character 
 of the modern poets, to Bartholomew Fair, now 
 stripped of its glory. By the way they encounter 
 many strange personages, such as the highwayman, 
 who ' has good friends in Newgate,' and is ' well 
 acquainted with the ostlers about Bishopsgate and 
 Smithfield, and gains from them intelligence of
 
 314 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 what booties go out that are worth attempting.' 
 The book is written with a directness and simphcity 
 which command belief, and ends, as in duty bound, 
 with a description of the death and funeral of Dryden, 
 who was the master of them all, and who impressed 
 his laws upon his liege subjects, like the dictator 
 that he was. 
 
 V 
 
 Tom Brown preceded Ned Ward by a year or two, 
 and, in his Amusements Serious and Comical Calcu- 
 lated for the Meridian of London (1700), pictured the 
 London that he saw, with less truth than Ward, 
 and greater wit. London he recognises to be a 
 world by itself, and he pictures ' what an Indian 
 would think of such a motley herd of people,' thus 
 anticipating Macaulay's imagined New Zealander. 
 He sketches the city, and those whom he and his 
 Indian encounter — the alderman, the usurer, the 
 broker, and the rest — with a good-humoured enthu- 
 siasm. For him, the playhouse is ' an enchanted 
 island.' When they walk in the Mall, he persuades 
 his Indian to exclaim : * I never beheld in my life so 
 great a flight of birds.' Much of the book is the 
 comedy of the age translated into a light-fingered 
 prose. Tom Brown finds it as hard as Ned Ward 
 finds it to keep away from the taverns and gaming- 
 houses, and, in his exposure of the many rascals, 
 who lay in waiting for the unwary traveller, he sets 
 a fashion speedily followed in The Cheats of London 
 and a vast library of similar chapbooks.
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS 315 
 
 He was, in truth,well fitted by character and training 
 to do the work of Grub Street. Educated at Christ 
 Church, he won an instant fame by a pleasant trick 
 of writing Latin verse, and it is said that many pieces 
 were extant of his composition, bearing other names. 
 Even in his youth, his cynic temper preferred money 
 to fame, and no sooner had he left the university 
 for London than he was ready to hire himself out 
 to the highest bidder. There was little of which his 
 facile brain was incapable. To show his touch with 
 the classics, he translated Persius and mimicked 
 Horace. The example of Rabelais was ever before 
 him, and he followed John Phillips in imitating the 
 prognostications of Pantagruel. His epigrams, in 
 Latin or English, are rather coarse than witty. The 
 best of his work is journalism, illuminated always by 
 the light of scholarship. There is no topic so bare that 
 he will not embroider it with tags from the classics. 
 His favourite trick was to indite letters -from the 
 dead to the living, a trick which gave him the chance 
 to ridicule ' Tom ' D'Urfey, ' Joe ' Harris the player, 
 and even the great Dryden himself. The death of 
 ' the gallant Dundee ' inspired him to imitate Cowley's 
 pindarics, though, as he said himself, he was ill 
 acquainted with that kind of writing. 
 
 He suffered at once from excessive praise and 
 ill-deserved blame. ' Without partiahty, we may 
 say,' wrote Sam Briscoe, his bookseller, ' for 
 satyrical Prose or Verse, Mr. Brown was not 
 inferior to Petronius, Martial, or any other of
 
 3i6 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 the witty ancients.' These were his models, 
 truly ; but his works testify how far he fell 
 short of their performance. On the other hand, a 
 grave injustice was done to him, as it has been to 
 many another, by the thoughtless, who fathered 
 upon him ' all the pamphlets good and bad, Lam- 
 poons, Trips, London Spies, and the like insignifi- 
 cant Trifles.' His lively humour won him the name 
 of ' Tom Brown the facetious,' and the epithet, not 
 wholly complimentary, still clings to him. The 
 enemy, who said of him that ' he had less the Spirit 
 of a Gentleman than the rest, and more of a Scholar,' 
 spiced his malice with the truth. What, indeed, 
 had a gentleman to make in Grub Street ? How- 
 ever, with all his faults, Tom Brown was immeasur- 
 ably superior to Ward and his other rivals, a real 
 man of letters, who, had he not been ' too lazy in 
 his temper to write much, would have builded him- 
 self a better monument.' In character, he was 
 careless and independent. He did his best to live 
 by his pen, and, when his pen failed him, he turned 
 pedagogue. At no time would he rely upon the 
 caprices of a patron. ' I am one of the first of the 
 Suburban class,' he boasted, ' that has ventur'd 
 out without making an apphcation to a nobleman's 
 porter, and tiring him out with showing him his 
 master's name.' For the rest, he wrote the famous 
 epigram upon Dr. Fell, and died, at last, repentant 
 and absolved. He confessed on his death-bed that 
 he had ' complied too much with the Libertinism
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS 317 
 
 of the time,' and extorted a promise from lus 
 bookseller, who speedily went back upon his word, 
 to expunge ' all prophane undecent passages ' from 
 his works, when he came to reprint them. 
 
 VI 
 
 The career of Tom Brown is characteristic of 
 Grub Street and his age. From one — incompar- 
 ably the best — you may learn all. And, by a curious 
 irony, neither poverty nor the bottle impaired the 
 tireless industry of the hacks. Though the stand- 
 ard of style which they set up for themselves was 
 not high, they never feared to put their talent to 
 the test. They fought for causes good or evil with 
 a kind of ferocity. None of them disdained the 
 weapons of the wits. We have seen how Ned Ward 
 expressed his opinions and his prejudices in Hudi- 
 brastic verse. The gathered pamphlets of Roger 
 L'Estrange, written, for the most part, in defence 
 of himself and the High Church party, would fill a 
 shelf. John Phillips, whom Milton trained for wiser 
 purposes, disgraced himself for ever by selling a 
 hireling pen to Titus Oates. If there is nothing 
 so transient as dead controversy, it must yet be 
 admitted that these writers were artists in their 
 own style. Their skill in invective, their assumption 
 of passionate conviction, their outspoken contempt 
 for the enemy of the moment, cannot but claim our 
 admiration. 
 
 And in nothing did they display their marvellous
 
 3i8 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 energy so clearly as in the task of translation. 
 Here, again, they recall the enterprise of the 
 Elizabethans. They do not challenge comparison 
 with their predecessors. They recognised that each 
 age must look at the classics through its own eyes. 
 They knew, also, that the France and Spain of their 
 time had provided a treasure-house of masterpieces, 
 which their skill and knowledge could unlock. And, 
 when they had taken these masterpieces from their 
 treasure-house, they did not scruple to trick them 
 out in the familiar, parti-coloured style of their own 
 Grub Street. It seems, indeed, as though the 
 fashion of translation changed as rapidly as the 
 fashion of hats and coats. Though the Plutarch of 
 North and Holland, the Montaigne of Florio, the 
 Seneca of Lodge were but a century old, they 
 appeared fantastic, if not unintelligible, to the con- 
 temporaries of Dryden. The ' several hands,' the 
 * persons of quahty,' who presumed to do again the 
 tasks valiantly performed by their grandsires, aimed 
 less at a splendour of effect than at a plain uni- 
 formity. The one licence they permitted themselves, 
 as we shall see, was an incorrigible licence of slang. 
 They thought that their habit of speech was perfectly 
 suited to the heroes and gods of antiquity. They 
 clipped their words in translating the classics, as 
 they clipped them in an insolent pamphlet. They 
 possessed not the smallest sense of propriety, and 
 believed that there was no writer, ancient or modern, 
 whose meaning could not be adequately expressed
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS 319 
 
 in their vernacular. Thus, it mattered not who 
 gazed in their mirror ; it gave back always the same 
 reflection. Their theory of translation was, of 
 course, the theory of Dryden, who marshalled them 
 for the fray. ' The Quahfication of a Translator 
 worth reading,' said he, ' must be a Mastery of the 
 Language he translates out of, and that he trans- 
 lates into ; but if a deficiencie be allowed in either, 
 it is in the Original.' And it was in the original, 
 were it Latin or Greek, that many of them were 
 deficient. Like the Ehzabethans, they, too, sought 
 what help they could find in French versions of their 
 author. Nor was it for them to disobey Dryden's 
 second injunction. ' A Translator,' wrote the master, 
 * that would write with any force or spirit of an 
 Original, must never dwell on the words of an author.' 
 So lightly did they dwell upon their authors' words, 
 that, in many specimens, it is not easy to distinguish 
 between translation and burlesque. 
 
 By the preferences of these writers we come to 
 know the taste of the booksellers and of the town. 
 They were not animated by the spirit of adventure, 
 or by that ambition of instructing kings and nobles 
 in high pohcy, which moved the Ehzabethans. 
 Their sole object was to profit themselves by pleasing 
 the pubhc. Petronius, to whom they owed a special 
 allegiance, was easily taught to speak their dialect. 
 The first version (1694) ^v<^ owe to William 
 Burnaby and another hand. In the second 
 (1708), Tom Brown, Captain Ayloflte, and others
 
 320 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 are said to have given their aid, though it is 
 not clear what they contributed, and a compari- 
 son of the two versions by no means justifies the 
 bookseller's claim that the second is ' wholly new.' 
 Though much of Petronius is lost in the process of 
 translation, the work is done with a sympathy and 
 an energy which we expect from the authentic 
 descendants of Ascyltus and Encolpius. Here is no 
 dwelling on the words of the author. The book may 
 be read from beginning to end as though it were 
 an independent and original romance. 
 
 The version of Lucian (171 1) by several emi- 
 nent hands displays precisely the same qualities. 
 Deprived of its atmosphere, it has the look of 
 an English work. The ' eminent hands ' — Tom 
 Brown, John Phillips, Walter Moyle, and the 
 rest — handled the English tongue with ease and 
 familiarity, and, if they owed more to the French 
 of d'Ablancourt than to the Greek of Lucian, 
 they had no difficulty in transposing their author 
 into the guise of their own place and time. The 
 work, done under Dryden's eye, was journeywork, 
 if you will, and defaced by a tone of commonness. 
 But it has a character which removes it by many 
 leagues from the crib, and Dryden, no doubt, speaks 
 truth when he places the translators among ' the 
 finer spirits of the age.' Walter Moyle and Sir 
 Henry Sheeres deserve whatever praise he could 
 give them, and let it not be forgotten that it is the 
 facetious Tom Brown, whom Dryden would not
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS 321 
 
 mention with honour, that bore the brunt of the 
 work. 
 
 VII 
 
 John Phillips, whose travesties have already been 
 mentioned, was eminent among the translators of 
 the time. He took his share in Englishing Lucian 
 and Plutarch, and the folios to which he put his 
 name were neither few nor slight. He was bred in 
 classical learning by his uncle, John Milton, under 
 whose grave auspices he had read the most of the 
 Greek and Latin poets by the time he was twelve, 
 and whose influence he early shook off. For many 
 years he seems to have gained his livelihood by his 
 pen, and was as versatile as he was industrious. 
 What Aubrey calls his ' jiggish phancy ' inspired 
 him to the making of almanacks, to the inditing of 
 satires, and to the conduct of political controversy. 
 A loyal disciple of Rabelais, he composed a sermon 
 with a passage from Gargantua for his text, and em- 
 braced the doctrine of Pantagruel with a constant 
 heart. His policy shifted with the convenience of 
 the hour. He approached Cromwell cap in hand 
 when it suited him, and afterwards, in a travesty, 
 set the Protector in hell. He shouted for the King 
 at the Restoration, and hailed the infamous Gates 
 as the saviour of his country. He naturally in- 
 curred the hatred of Anthony a Wood, both for his 
 own sake and on account of Milton, ' that villainous 
 leading incendiary.' But, whatever blots there may 
 have been upon his honour, he was tireless in in- 
 
 X
 
 322 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 dustry. He died, so to say, with a pen in his hand. 
 At seventy years of age he is described by Dunton 
 as ' a gentleman of good learning, and well born ; and 
 will write you a design off in a very little time, if the 
 gout or claret does not stop him.' For many years he 
 edited a grave periodical. The Present State of Europe , 
 and, in the compass and extent of his translations, he 
 was a near rival to Philemon Holland. To provide 
 two vast folios in a year is a triumph of persistence, 
 if no other merit be claimed for it. 
 
 And John Phillips's versions are always work- 
 manlike. La Calprenede's Pharamond was once, no 
 doubt, ' a fam'd romance,' though it is no more 
 likely to find readers to-day than Madeleine de 
 Scudery's Almahide, or The Captive Queen ; and 
 Phillips's task, in Englishing both (1677), was faithfully 
 performed. His chief lack is a lack of distinction. 
 There is not a page that most of the other hacks 
 might not have written with equal ease. For ease 
 is its chief characteristic — ease of phrase, ease of 
 movement. With the same nonchalance, he translated 
 Tavernier's Voyages in the East^ Ludolphus's History 
 of Ethiopia, Gr clot's Voyage to Constantinople (1683), 
 and many another forgotten work of travel or fiction. 
 Besides these monuments of energy, a version of 
 Scarron's Typhon (1665) seems but the solace of a 
 summer's afternoon. 
 
 None of these, as we have said, bears the sole 
 and individual mark of Phillips's talent. There 
 is one book — his translation of Don Quixote —
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS 323 
 
 which, for good or evil, is all his own. Not even 
 Ned Ward, whose inappropriate courage persuaded 
 him to turn the masterpiece of Cervantes into Hudi- 
 brastic verse, committed so great an outrage on a noble 
 original as did John Phillips when he made The History 
 of the most Renowned Don Quixote English ' according 
 to the humour of our Modern Language (1687).' 
 It is difficult to describe this rash experiment. 
 Imagine Hamlet turned into the lingo of the music 
 hall, and fitted with occasional songs and dances, 
 and you will have a faint impression of Phillips's 
 impropriety. Little as he respected his author, he 
 respected still less the time and place of his incompar- 
 able romance. He has reduced to the level of his own 
 Grub Street the style and manner of Cervantes. His 
 work is less a translation than a travesty. He has 
 treated Don Quixote as Scarron treated the Mneid. 
 He has composed a debased fantasia of his own 
 upon a well-known and beautiful theme. In other 
 words, he has employed an imagery as vulgar as 
 the slang of the tavern can make it. Rosinante, in 
 his eyes, is a ' Dover post-horse,' the inn-keeper is 
 
 * as true a thief as ever sung psalms at Tyburn.' 
 The fish which Don Quixote has for his supper is 
 
 * so ill-dress'd as if it had been cook'd in Ram Alley 
 or White-Fryers.' Such humour as anchronism 
 will afford may be found on every page, and, as 
 though it were not enough to create a confusion of 
 time, Phillips never ceases to confound the Spain of 
 the age of Cervantes with the England of his own.
 
 324 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 The sail of the windmill throws the knight sprawl- 
 ing, says he, ' at the distance of more yards than would 
 have measured Long Megg of Lincoln a gown and 
 petticoat.' He likens the lovers to ' young citizens 
 and their wives in an Epsom coach ' ; in his version 
 Tolosa masquerades as Betty, ' the daughter of a 
 Cobbler in Southwark, that kept a stall under a 
 Chandler's shop in Kent street ' ; and, by way of a 
 crowning absurdity, the lady tells Don Ferdinand 
 ' to read Baxter's Saints^ Everlasting Rest.'' Now, he 
 merely hints at a false comparison, as when he says 
 that Cardenio held his Lucinda ' as the Lobster held 
 the Hair upon SaHsbury Plain.' Now, he seems to 
 exhaust his ingenuity in a single passage. When the 
 inn-keeper tells Don Quixote that he, too, had been 
 a knight errant, he boasts, in Phillips's travesty, how 
 ' he himself had pursu'd the same Chance of Honour 
 in his youth, travelling through all parts of the 
 World in search of bold Adventures ; to which 
 purpose he had left no corner unvisited of the King's 
 Bench Rules, the Skulking Holes of Alsatia, the 
 Academy of the Fleet, the Colledge of Newgate, the 
 Purliews of Turnbull, and Pickt Hatch, the Bordellos 
 of St. Giles's, Banstead-Downs, Newmarket-Heath : 
 . . . not a Publick Bowling Green where he had 
 not exercis'd his heels ; nor an Execution-crowd, nor 
 a Hedge- Tavern, where he had not employ'd his 
 pawning, topping, cogging fingers.' This is monu- 
 mental, but it is not Cervantes. And by how many 
 leagues is it removed from the splendour of Shelton !
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS 325 
 
 Worse still, the ingenious Phillips makes Don 
 Quixote an occasion for setting forth his preferences 
 and his animosities. He packs his pages with 
 modern instances. He drags in Hobbes and the 
 Protector by the heels ; nor does he lose a chance 
 of insulting Milton, to whom he owed such scholar- 
 ship as he possessed. Thus it is that Don Diego 
 di Miranda describes his son's attainments : ' he is 
 a great admirer of Horace, Juvenal, and Persius — but 
 as for the modern poets he allows very few to be 
 worth a straw ; among the rest he has a particular 
 Peek against Du Bartas, and Paradise Lost, which 
 he says has neither Rhime nor Reason.' To defend 
 such a work as Phillips's Don Quixote is not easy. 
 There is a flippant irreverence in its jests and jibes, 
 which criticism is forced to condemn. No man 
 has a right thus licentiously to transform a master- 
 piece of literature. The very readiness, with which 
 a writer of burlesque can achieve a laugh, should 
 warn him that the laugh is not worth achievement. 
 Yet, when all is said that can be said in dispraise, 
 we cannot but acknowledge the supreme skill with 
 which Phillips has performed his task. His zest 
 never flags, his imagery never grows tired. On 
 every page he has a fresh, if perverse, simile. With 
 untiring energy he illustrates Cervantes from the 
 Hfe of the taverns which he frequented. The vigour 
 and levity of his style are amazing ; his understanding 
 of the original is seldom at fault ; and, though it 
 may be said that the book should never have been
 
 326 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 done, it must be added that it is done exceedingly 
 well. For, if it gives us a very blurred picture of 
 Don QuixoUy it presents the clear image of the most 
 flippant, restless, and debauched mind of an age 
 which ill understood the punctilio of life or letters. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Peter Motteux, a fitting companion in literature 
 for John Phillips, differed widely from him in blood 
 and breeding. His youthful steps were not en- 
 couraged by a great poet. Thrown early upon a 
 country whose language he did not understand, he 
 was compelled to make a double conquest, first of a 
 speech which was not his own, and then of the town 
 in which he was an enforced exile. Born in 1663 
 at Rouen, he came to England when the edict of 
 Nantes was revoked, and speedily found a place 
 among English men of letters. So swift a change of 
 nationality is almost without parallel in the history of 
 literature. The author of Gramont is no near rival, 
 since he was but four when he was carried to France, 
 and a Frenchman he remained, in all save blood, till 
 the end. Motteux left France at the age of twenty- 
 two, probably with no training either in English or 
 in literature, and, within a few years, he was writing 
 with precisely the same accent as any other haunter 
 of the coffee-houses. In the preface to his Rabelais, 
 he fears that he has ' not given his Author the graces 
 of the EngHsh language in every place,' and protests 
 that he has not followed the example of LucuUus,
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS 327 
 
 who wrote a book in Greek and scattered some false 
 Greek in it, to let the world know it was not written 
 by a Greek. Motteux was not guilty of a similar 
 indiscretion. What errors may be found in his 
 diction, he assures us, have crept in without his 
 intent. He need have had no fear, nor have offered 
 his reader any apology. Motteux had many faults. 
 GalHcism was not among them. He compared 
 himself, proudly enough, with Livius Andronicus, a 
 Greek, and Terence, a Carthaginian, who chose 
 Latin for their tongue, and if he could not vie with 
 them in purity of style, he surpassed them, doubt- 
 less, in fluency. 
 
 There was no task to which he did not turn a 
 ready hand. He made a loose paragraph of 
 Don Quixote. He wrote plays, after the pre- 
 scribed model, and without the smallest distinction. 
 He furnished the plays of others with doggerel 
 prologues. He edited The Gentleman's Journal, for 
 which Le Mercure Galant of his own land served as 
 a model, and was not refused the assistance of the 
 great. Congreve and Prior both condescend to his 
 pages, and, as it was Dryden under whose banner he 
 fought, so it is the influence of Dryden which governs 
 his journal. Frenchman though he was, he differs 
 little enough from his neighbours in Grub Street. 
 He might sign their works or they his without much 
 detriment to either side. Nevertheless, he played 
 a part in the literary history of his time. If he won 
 the approval of Dryden and Steele, he was deemed
 
 328 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 worthy the rancour of Pope, who celebrates him as 
 a bore : 
 
 * Talkers I 've learned to bear, Motteux I knew ' ; 
 
 and, in The Art of Sinking, puts him among the eels, 
 ' obscene authors that wrap themselves up in their 
 own mud, but are mighty nimble and pert.' And 
 then, to prove an astonishing adaptability, Motteux 
 turned an honest tradesman, and sold china and 
 japan wares ' cheap for a quick return.' He did not 
 go back to the craft of letters, and, after six years of 
 honourable dealing, died a mysterious and shameful 
 death. 
 
 Had it not been for his translation of the 
 fourth and fifth books of Rabelais (1694), Mot- 
 teux's name would not have outlived this crown- 
 ing scandal. His translation gives him a place in 
 history. The work has many faults. It is ' nimble 
 and pert,' like its author, and Rabelais himself was 
 never for a moment either pert or nimble. A still 
 worse fault is its diffuseness, a fault of which Motteux 
 appears to have been wholly unconscious. His 
 style is as far from the Latin gravity of the original 
 as from the humorous eloquence of Sir Thomas 
 Urquhart. He is able neither to represent the one 
 nor to carry on the tradition of the other. Between 
 him and the knight of Cromarty there is not merely 
 the difference which separates the English of Eliza- 
 beth (for Urquhart was a belated Tudor) from the 
 English of Dutch William, but the difference which
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS 329 
 
 parts an erudite and curious Scots pedant from the 
 trivial, boisterous frequenter of Will's. Motteux's 
 phrase is simple to tawdriness. He drags Rabelais 
 down to his own level, and in nothing does he prove 
 his lack of taste so clearly as in his use of slang. 
 
 Now, slang, to the translator of Rabelais, is indispens- 
 able. The romance of Pantagruel and Panurge cannot 
 be turned out of its own into any other tongue save by 
 an artist in strange words. Urquhart was perfectly 
 equipped for the task, because his interest in oddly 
 coloured speech never tired, and because, when he 
 was himself at a loss, he made a hberal use of Cot- 
 grave's Dictionary. Thus it was that his slang had 
 ever a literary flavour ; it had already won the 
 freedom of humane letters ; the dust of the street 
 corner was not thick upon it. Motteux's slang was 
 of another kind. It lacked literary association. 
 The quickwitted Frenchman had picked it up in 
 the gutter or the tavern ; he had caught it fresh- 
 minted from the vulgar brains of his friends ; and, 
 though it was lively enough to gain an instant laugh, 
 it long since lost its humour. Motteux makes free 
 and frank acknowledgment of the source of his 
 common talk, as he calls it. ' Far be it from me,' 
 he writes, ' for all this to value myself upon hitting 
 the words of Cant, in which my drolling Author is 
 so luxuriant, for though such words have stood me 
 in good stead, I scarce can forbear thinking myself 
 unhappy in having insensibly hoarded up so much 
 Gibberish and Billingsgate trash in my memory ;
 
 330 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 nor could I forbear asking myself as an Italian Cardinal 
 said on another account . . . Where the devil 
 didst thou make up all these fripperies ? ' He made 
 them up in Grub Street ; and, when he had contrived 
 them, they were ill suited to his purpose. 
 
 The only literary sources from which he gathered 
 his * words of Cant ' were the travesties. He was 
 no better able than John Phillips to escape the anach- 
 ronisms of Cotton and Radcliffe. Though he had a 
 finer restraint than the rascal who burlesqued Don 
 Quixote, he could not forbear to treat the text of 
 Rabelais with the same kind of wantonness. His 
 version is full of allusions to his own time, which 
 are wholly out of place in the Englishing of a master- 
 piece of the sixteenth century, and which to-day no 
 man may understand. Nothing can be more im- 
 pertinent than to interrupt the narrative of Rabe- 
 lais with so foolish a catchword as ' his name 's 
 Twyford.' To translate maitre d^eschole by * the 
 Busby of the place ' is wofully to misunderstand 
 the business of a translator. Still less excuse has 
 Motteux, when, instead of the simple words ' at 
 dawn,' he indulges his fancy thus extravagantly : 
 ' when day, peeping in the East, made the Sky turn 
 Black to Red, like a boihng Lobster.' The fact that 
 he conveyed the image from Hvdibras, where it was 
 appropriate, to Rabelais, where it is a tiresome 
 excrescence, does but heighten his sin. On every 
 page he affronts the reader. He calls Panurge a 
 ' sweet babe ' ; like the journahst that he was, he clips
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS 331 
 
 * doctor ' into ' doc' Worse still, he can find no 
 better equivalent for c^est tout ung than ' it 's all one 
 to Frank.' Thus, he destroys the illusion of Rabe- 
 lais, and, as though that were not enough, he drags 
 in by the heels all the thievish gibberish that he 
 could pick up in the purlieus of Newgate in New- 
 gate's heyday. 
 
 IX 
 
 For Roger L'Estrange, the work of translation 
 was but a profitable interlude in a busy, active hfe. 
 He was by temperament a fighter ; by habit, a man 
 of affairs. No man loved the fray better than he ; 
 none defended his opinions more bravely. For the 
 principles of an aristocratic Toryism, which he 
 advocated fiercely and consistently, he suffered exile 
 and imprisonment. The highest reward, which he 
 obtained for his loyalty to the king, was to be 
 appointed some years after the Restoration ' sur- 
 veyor of the imprimery ' and one of ' the licensers 
 of the press.' To the end of his long life, therefore, 
 it was to his pen alone that he could trust, and, 
 though controversy was most to his taste, he fell to 
 translating with the same brisk energy which made 
 him formidable as a pamphleteer. It was for money, 
 of course, that he wrote his many lively versions ; 
 he was paid for his Josephus, at so much a sheet, 
 as he might be paid to-day ; but he could show his 
 tastes by his selection of authors, and a preface 
 always gave him an opportunity of pubHshing his 
 views. Thus, the face of the controversialist is
 
 332 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 always seen through the mask of the translator. 
 In his Colloquies of Erasmus, for instance, he roundly 
 states that he made choice of this piece and subject 
 for his own sake and not for the readers'. Writing 
 at the time of the popish plot, and with a full con- 
 sciousness of the suspicion that fell upon him, he 
 makes clear his own position. ' Some will have the 
 Translator to be a Papist in Masquerade,' says he, 
 * for going so far. Others again will have him to be 
 too much of a Protestant, because he will go no 
 farther : so that he is crushed betwixt the two 
 Extremes, as they hang up Erasmus himself, betwixt 
 Heaven and Hell.' In his preface to Seneca's Morals^ 
 he descends from truth itself to his own experience 
 with yet greater clarity. For L'Estrange, though 
 he spoke with another's voice, could still advocate 
 the causes which for him were never lost. 
 
 He did his work of translation with the utmost 
 thoroughness. He was the master of many tongues, 
 and when, in EngHshing Greek, he used the French 
 version, which lay at his hand, he was very careful 
 to compare the result with the original. And his 
 chiefest quahfication for the task was his mastery 
 of his own language. Having spent fifty years in 
 the service of letters, he had turned our English 
 speech into the ready instrument of his thought. 
 Whatever author he translated, he took him not onlv 
 out of his own tongue, but out of his own land. He 
 made him, for the moment, a true-born Englishman, 
 speaking the slang of the day with the proper accent
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS 333 
 
 of the cockney. As I have said, there are objec- 
 tions to this method. It is inevitable that all works, 
 of whatever time or place, should wear the same 
 aspect when they have undergone this equalising 
 process. They cannot but lose much of their indi- 
 vidual character if they are all brought to walk with 
 the same gait, to use the same gesture. 
 
 When Nero ' looks big upon disaster,' and ' carries it 
 on at a huffing note,' the reader loses sight of Rome and 
 Judiea, and is instantly borne back to Gray's-inn-gate 
 or Little Britain. And the mere fact that L'Estrange 
 set upon all the works which he translated this very 
 stamp and pattern of his own time, while it increased 
 their momentary popularity, prevents their general 
 acceptance as classics. They are translated not 
 into English, but into the dialect of a particular 
 time and place, and thus, with happy exceptions, 
 they leave the work of interpretation to be done all 
 over again. L'Estrange's method has one con- 
 spicuous merit. It removes all signs of halting un- 
 certainty. You read a version, composed in accord 
 with it, in the confidence that the idiom of the 
 original will never disturb you, that you may judge 
 it not as the tortured expression of a foreign tongue, 
 but as a fresh and independent experiment in style. 
 PepySji a critic of quick intelhgence, was not blind 
 
 * On June 9, 1667, Pepys writes: 'And then to my boat 
 again, and home, reading and making an end of the book I 
 lately bought — a merry satyr, called The Visions, translated 
 from Spanish by L'Estrange, wherein there are many very pretty
 
 334 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 to the peculiar merit of L'Estrange, thus fortunate 
 in the appreciation of his contemporaries, who saw 
 and approved the end at which he aimed. 
 
 In the selection of his originals, L'Estrange dis- 
 played a true cathohcity. He turned easily from 
 Bona's Guide to Eternity (1672) to Tully's Offices 
 (1680). He took a hand in the translation of Ter- 
 ence and Tacitus, and, by himself, was responsible 
 for The Visions of Ouevedo (i66y) and The Spanish 
 Decameron (1685). Far better than these are his 
 Select Colloquies out of Erasmus Roterodamus (1680). 
 The light touch and merry conceit of the author 
 are qualities after L'Estrange's own heart. The 
 original, moreover, being of a gay irony, was per- 
 fectly suited to L'Estrange's licentious method. 
 Here, he could leave the word for the sense with 
 a good heart ; and, as Erasmus wrote for all time, 
 looking through the foibles of his friends to the very 
 nature of man, he wore, without difficulty, the garb 
 of an Enghsh man of the world. By a hundred 
 happy turns, such as 'spoken like a true tarpaulin ' 
 for orationem vere nauticam, the translator produces 
 the impression of a living book — not the best of 
 living books, truly, for there is sometimes a flippancy 
 of phrase in L'Estrange's version, which is not 
 merely irksome in itself, but wholly unwarranted 
 by the text. However, L'Estrange was no verbal 
 
 things; but the translation is, as to the rendering it into English 
 expression, the best that ever I saw, it being impossible almost 
 to conceive that it should be a translation.'
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS 335 
 
 copier ' encumbered with so many difficulties at 
 once, that he could never disentangle himself from 
 all.' He kept his freedom at the expense of pro- 
 priety. Even so, he preserved a mean which eluded 
 most of his contemporaries. To compare his Col- 
 loquies with those done in English by Tom Brown 
 is to measure the distance between the scholar and 
 the bookseller's hack. When Brown put his hand 
 to the Colloquies, he forgot his scholarship, he showed 
 no respect for Erasmus, little for himself. He declares 
 that he ' keeps his Author still in sight ' ; but he has 
 no scruple in making his version ' palatable to the 
 EngUsh reader.' So, he sprinkles the text with the 
 expletives of the hour, deems no absurdity too bold, 
 and hopes, for instance, to win readers by rendering 
 nuptias Mortis, opinor, cum Marie by ' not that of death 
 and the Cobbler, I hope, nor of Bully-Bloody-Bones 
 and Mother Damnable.' Thus, he too has produced, 
 not a translation, but a travesty, and is guilty of the 
 same outrage which John Phillips committed upon 
 Don Quixote. L'Estrange has many faults ; he never 
 sank to the depth of Brown's ineptitude. 
 
 The work by which L'Estrange is best known, and 
 by which he best deserves to be remembered, is his 
 version of vEsop's Fables. His language, here also, 
 is the language of talk rather than of Hterature ; yet, 
 for the most part, he observes a strict economy of 
 words, and seldom commits the blunder of making 
 his fables diffuse. ' A daw that had a mind to be 
 sparkish,' says he ; ' I had much rather be knabbing
 
 336 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 of crusts,' his Country Mouse declares, ' without 
 fear of danger in my own httle hole, than be mistress 
 of the whole world with perpetual cares and alarums.' 
 In a sensible essay upon fables in general, he asserts 
 that the foundation of knowledge and virtue are 
 laid in childhood, and, presently, with an inapposite 
 humour, makes his fables unfit for a child's compre- 
 hension. What child, we wonder, would read 
 further after being confronted by such an opening 
 as this : ' In days of old, when Horses spoke Greek 
 and Latin, and Asses made Syllogisms ' ? The 
 fault of taste is doubled when it is committed in 
 defiance of a necessary simplicity. Yet, he sins not 
 always, and his ^sop, stripped of its ' reflexions,' 
 still remains the best that we have. In Seneca's 
 Morals and the works of Josephus, he was less happily 
 inspired. In the first place, he challenged com- 
 parison with the incomparably better versions of 
 Lodge ; in the second, neither Seneca nor Josephus 
 gave the smallest scope for his peculiar humour : 
 when he was most himself, in their case he was 
 furthest from excellence. But, of his Josephus, 
 it may, at least, be said that it was a marvellous 
 achievement for a man of eighty-six, beset, as he 
 tells us, by ' frequent troubles, and by ill-health.' 
 Good or bad, it was a fitting conclusion to a career 
 of rare vigour and energy, the crowning work of one 
 whom Pepys found ' a man of fine conversation,' 
 and whom even the grave Evelyn pronounced ' a 
 person of excellent parts.'
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS 337 
 
 Charles Cotton, in his translations, set before 
 himself the same ideals as Roger L'Estrange. He 
 hoped that his versions might have the air of true 
 originals. And certain it is that you may read them 
 without any thought of his texts. Though his style, 
 too, errs, now and again, on the side of the tavern, 
 he sternly avoids the excesses of slang which soil 
 the works of his contemporaries. Moreover, he 
 made a resolute attempt to keep close to the sense 
 of the authors whom he translated, and, here again, 
 he separated himself rigidly from the custom of his 
 age. His versions are made one and all from the 
 French, and, within the limits of this languaee, he 
 permitted himself a great latitude of choice. Cor- 
 neille's Horace (1671) is among his works, and Du 
 Vair's Moral Philosophy of the Stoics (1664). To 
 these he added Gerard's History of the Life of the 
 Duke of Espernon (1670), and the admirable Com- 
 mentaries of Blaise de Montluc (1674). ^^ this 
 last, perhaps, his talent found its worthiest 
 expression. He had a natural sympathy with the 
 original, and he translated it into an English that is 
 both dignified and appropriate. Narrative was in 
 closer accord with his temper than philosophical 
 disquisition, and, though it is by his version of 
 Montaigne's Essays that he is principally remem- 
 bered to-day, his Commentaries of Montluc approach
 
 338 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 more nearly in style and quality to what a transla- 
 tion should be. 
 
 In translating Montaigne, Cotton was at a disad- 
 vantage, of which he himself was wholly unconscious. 
 He followed in the footsteps of a far greater adept 
 in the difficult art, John Florio. Florio had all the 
 virtues, save accuracy. If his book fails to represent 
 the style of Montaigne, and not infrequently distorts 
 his meaning, it is none the less a piece of living prose. 
 Perhaps, it tells you more of Florio than of Mon- 
 taigne ; but it has that enduring quality, character, 
 and it is unlikely that fashion will ever drive it from 
 the minds of admiring scholars. Cotton's version 
 is of other stuff. Though not always correct, 
 though never close-knit as is the original, it is more 
 easily intelligible than Florio's, and gives, may be, 
 a clearer vision of the French. That, indeed, was 
 Cotton's purpose. ' My design,' says he, ' in attempt- 
 ing this translation was to present my country with 
 a true copy of a very brave original.' Both trans- 
 lators use too many words for their purpose, Florio 
 because he delights in the mere sound of them. 
 Cotton because he had not acquired the gift of 
 concise expression, because he did not always know 
 how to discard the tiresome symbols which encumber 
 his sentences as with pack-thread. Florio, on the 
 one hand, wrote like a fantastic, to whom embroideries 
 were essential, Cotton, on the other, wrote like 
 a country gentleman, who, after a day's fishing, 
 turned an honest penny by the pursuits of scholar-
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS 339 
 
 ship. The one lacks precision, the other distinc- 
 tion, and each man will decide for himself which he 
 prefers. 
 
 Charles Cotton, in truth, holds a place apart in 
 the literary history of his time. Though L'Estrange 
 was born to an ancient house in Norfolk, the strife 
 of art and politics, the necessities of his journals 
 had driven him to London and the taverns. Cotton, 
 well as he knew London, remained still faithful to 
 his dale in Derbyshire. In Lamb's phrase, he 
 ' smacked of the rough magnanimity of the old 
 English vein.' It was in all sincerity that he praised 
 his beloved caves, 
 
 ' from Dog-star heats, 
 And hotter persecution safe retreats.' 
 
 When poverty drove him to do the work of a hack, 
 he did it with what skill and spirit he might. If 
 The Compleat Gamester was unworthy his pen, his 
 Planter''s Manual is a pleasant and practical little 
 treatise. His verses have won the deserved approval 
 of Coleridge and Lamb and Wordsworth, and his 
 lines to his ' dear and most worthy Friend, Mr. 
 Isaac Walton ' remind us of Horace and his Sabine 
 farm : 
 
 ' A day without too bright a Beam, 
 A warm, but not a scorching Sun. 
 A Southern gale to curl the Stream, 
 And (master) half our work is done.' 
 
 These four lines are worth the whole of ScarronideSy
 
 340 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 and, doubtless, they will be remembered when the 
 translation of Montaigne has faded utterly from 
 the minds of men. 
 
 XI 
 
 The most industrious and by no means the least 
 distinguished of the translators of his time was 
 Captain John Stevens. Who and what he was we 
 know not. Rumour says that he accompanied 
 James ii. in Ireland, and his own attainments 
 suggest a sojourn in Spain. For the rest there 
 is no record of him or his achievements, save on 
 the title-pages of his many books. Without doubt 
 he did a signal service to English letters. It 
 was through his skill and learning that the his- 
 tory of Spain and Spanish literature was made 
 known to his countrymen. His mere energy is 
 astonishing. He translated nothing save the works 
 of Spaniards, and he accommodated his style to 
 the style of his originals with a variety which no 
 other of his contemporaries could match. Where a 
 light and easy manner was required, as by Quevedo, he 
 knew how to give it, and when he brought Mariana's 
 History of Spain ' to speak English,' as he said, under 
 the auspices of the Earl of Dorset, to whom it is 
 dedicated, he did it with a dignity and eloquence 
 which befit the Muse of history. The one cause 
 of complaint against him is that he could not 
 keep away from Shelton's Don Quixote, which he 
 * revised and corrected ' with a lavish hand. Nor
 
 AN UNDERWORLD OF LETTERS 341 
 
 does his excuse better his ill-doing. He declares in 
 a dedication that Cervantes's ' successful masterpiece 
 has not prov'd happy in its translators, for though it 
 has been made English twice the versions have 
 neither time been proportionable to the Beauty of 
 the Original.' As to Shelton's work, he pronounces 
 it ' almost a literal version,' and then complains 
 that it is ' in such unpolish'd language, and with 
 so many Mistakes, that there seem'd to be nothing 
 left but the outlines and rough Draught of this 
 curious piece,' So Stevens took Shelton's master- 
 piece and amended it, bringing it, it is true, far 
 nearer to the original, and robbing it of what is far 
 higher worth than accuracy, its style and character. 
 With this single exception, Stevens touched little 
 that he did not embellish. Though he did not 
 disdain romance, though we owe to his pen Pablo 
 de Segovia, the Spanish Sharper, and a collection of 
 novels, with the title The Spanish Libertines, his 
 preference, or the preference of his readers, was 
 for history and travel. Sandoval's History of 
 Charles V. followed The Spanish Rule of Trade to 
 the West Indies, written by Don Joseph de Veitia 
 Linage, He took his share in the English of a 
 series of voyages, published in monthly parts, thus 
 making a link between the old method of publishing 
 and the practice of to-day. So far as we know, he 
 was a translator and an antiquary, and no more. 
 His dedications, couched in the terms of the loftiest 
 flattery, afford us little clue to his career. Perhaps,
 
 342 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 as he inscribes his translation of The Portuguese 
 Asia, with humble adulation, to Catherine, Queen 
 Dowager of England, he may have professed the 
 Catholic faith. But, by his works we know him, and 
 they tell us that he did the journeywork of transla- 
 tion with a sounder scholarship and with a more 
 various style than any of the men of letters, his con- 
 temporaries, could boast.
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT 
 
 THE most of writers are freed by death from 
 the enmities ar^d controversies of life. Of 
 Swift alone it may be said that the evil opinion they 
 held of him, who had felt his righteous scourge, was 
 not interred with his bones. Ever since the hght 
 of his genius went out in the darkness of misery, 
 he has been attacked, with a violent rancour, by 
 critics who regarded him not as a great historical 
 figure, but as a miscreant who had inflicted upon 
 them a personal injury. These critics clamoured 
 in a loud voice not for judgment, but for vengeance. 
 The passage of a century did not mitigate their 
 animosity nor soften their rage. For Macaulay, 
 Swift was an apostate poHtician, a ribald priest, a 
 perjured lover, a heart burning with hatred against 
 the whole human race, a mind richly stored with 
 images from the dunghill and the lazar-house. These 
 expletives mean nothing more than that Macaulay 
 was a Whig, and that Swift was a Tory, a kind of 
 antiquated Croker, whose varlet's jacket it was the 
 proper business of an Edinburgh Reviewer to dust. 
 Thackeray's attack upon Swift is far more virulent 
 
 34?
 
 344 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 and less easily explained than Macaulay's. There 
 is no vileness, of which a Yahoo might be capable, 
 that the author of Esmond does not attribute to his 
 foe. Indeed I do not know why the sinister figure, 
 which Thackeray chooses to invent, should have 
 been included in a gallery of English Humorists 
 at all. There is little humour in the ruffian, whose 
 very Adrtues were, according to Thackeray, vices in 
 disguise, who insulted those whom he succoured, 
 who flung his benefactions in poor men's faces, who 
 was ' boisterously servile,' and who, a ' life-long 
 hypocrite,' put his apostasy out to hire. Of Swift's 
 Modest Proposal Thackeray has nothing wiser to say 
 than that ' he enters the nursery with the tread and 
 gaiety of an ogre.' Even Gulliver^ which, defying 
 time and place, is as fresh to-day as when it was 
 written, and has found a home in every corner of 
 the globe, which is read by children for its fable and 
 by men for its satire, merely arouses the wrath of 
 the critic. ' As for the moral,' says Thackeray, * I 
 think it horrible, shameful, unmanly, blasphemous ; 
 and giant and great as this Dean is, I say we should 
 hoot him.' 
 
 Hooting is perhaps not the soundest method of 
 criticism, and yet were Swift all that he has been 
 painted, hooting would seem mild and ineflficient. 
 ' If you had been his inferior in parts ' — again it is 
 Thackeray who speaks — ' his equal in mere social 
 station, he would have bullied, scorned, and insulted 
 you ; if, unde^ierred by his great reputation, you
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT 345 
 
 had met him like a man, he would have quailed 
 before you, and not had the pluck to reply, and gone 
 home, and years after written a foul epigram about 
 you — watched for you in a sewer, and come out to 
 assail you with a coward's blow and a dirty bludgeon.' 
 Of course this amazing invective, which has no 
 touch with reality, is an expression of Victorian pre- 
 judice and no more, Thackeray himself does not 
 attempt to justify it, and it is not worth refutation. 
 But it makes us wonder why Svdft, alone of men 
 and writers, should be thus singled out for posthu- 
 mous obloquy, and persuades us to discover if we 
 can what definite charge has been brought against 
 his character and his genius. 
 
 He was a misanthrope, says the Friend of Man. 
 And Swift himself gave some colour to this charge. 
 In a famous letter to Pope he explained the system 
 upon which he had governed himself many years. ' I 
 have ever hated all nations, professions, and com- 
 munities,' he says, ' and aU my love is towards indi- 
 viduals : for instance, I hate the tribe of laviyers, 
 but I love Counsellor Such-a-One, and Judge Such- 
 a-One. . . . But principally I hate and detest that 
 animal called man, although I heartily love John, 
 Peter, Thomas, and so forth.' And which, indeed, 
 is better : to love John, Peter, and Thomas with a 
 constant heart, or, feigning a bland and general love 
 of abstract humanity, to wreak a wild revenge upon 
 individuals ? We know well enough whither uni- 
 versal philanthropy leads us. The Friend of Man
 
 346 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 is seldom the friend of men. At his best he is content 
 with a moral maxim, and buttons up his pocket in 
 the presence of poverty. ' I give thee sixpence ! 
 I will see thee damned first.' It is not for nothing 
 that Canning's immortal words were put in the 
 mouth of the Friend of Humanity, who, finding that 
 he cannot turn the Needy Knife-grinder to poHtical 
 account, gives him kicks for ha'pence, and goes off 
 in ' a transport of republican enthusiasm.' Such is 
 the Friend of Man at his best. At his worst, he 
 expresses his philanthropy most eloquently upon 
 the scaffold, Robespierre and the infamous Joseph 
 Le Bon, for instance, loved humanity so dearly that 
 they delighted to see the heads of men and women 
 too fall beneath the knife of the guillotine. Perhaps 
 they thought of Humanity as a tree, which would 
 grow in greater strength and beauty, the more 
 savagely it was pruned. 
 
 For this philanthropy, then. Swift cared nothing. 
 He loved such of his friends, as he deemed worthy 
 of his love, with an unchanging loyalty. He did 
 not close his eyes to the general infamy of mankind. 
 He had lived at too close quarters with poHtics and 
 poHticians to harbour the genial, easy-going illusions 
 of the philanthropist. While he knew the true 
 worth of his friends, he admitted that such men as 
 they were rare visitants upon this earth. * Oh ! if 
 the world had but a dozen Arbuthnots in it, I would 
 burn my Travels ' — thus he wrote to Pope soon after 
 the publishing of Gulliver, But there were not a
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT 347 
 
 dozen Arbuthnots, and the irony of Gulliver was 
 abundantly justified. 
 
 And then we hear Thackeray objecting that he 
 would not have Hked to live with Swift, he would 
 not have been a friend of the great Dean. As he 
 lay in no danger of this awkward companionship, 
 the objection seems irrelevant. But there is no 
 doubt that the best of Swift's contemporaries were 
 very eager to live with him. He was, so to say, a 
 great centre of amiability and friendship. He held 
 together, in pleasant bondage to himself, the most 
 highly distinguished men of his time. Since he did 
 not waste his affection upon the vague thing, called 
 humanity, he had all the more to spare for those 
 friends who loved and understood him. Even when 
 he is as far from them as Dublin is from London, he 
 dominates them by the mere force of his constancy. 
 You feel that they would not have thought so warmly 
 one of another, if they had not united in thinking 
 warmly of him. 
 
 Nor did he take a light or trivial view of the bond 
 which he believed should hold good men together. 
 ' I have often endeavoured,' he wrote to Pope, in 
 1723, ' to establish a friendship among all men of 
 genius, and would fain have it done. They are 
 seldom above three or four contemporaries, and if 
 they could be united would drive the world before 
 them. I think it was so among the poets in the time 
 of Augustus, but envy, party, and pride have hindered 
 it among us.' Swift's was a dream which could
 
 348 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 never come true. What could men of genius, held 
 together by an indissoluble bond, achieve against 
 the settled opposition of mediocrity ? They could 
 indulge their talent for friendship — that is all. And 
 in this indulgence assuredly Swift never fell below 
 his opportunity. Those friends he had, and their 
 adoption tried, he kept until the last separation of 
 death. They belonged to many worlds, and Swift 
 was the captain of them all. If they were busied 
 with affairs, Swift knew how to separate the man 
 from the politician. ' I always loved you just so 
 much the worse for your station,' he wrote to 
 Harley in the hour of Harley's trial, ' for in your 
 public capacity you have often angered me to the 
 heart, but, as a private man, never once.' His affec- 
 tion for Harley survived all the chances and changes 
 of life, even the bitter feud, which separated St. 
 John from his leader ; and the affection was trans- 
 mitted faithfully to Harley's son. 
 
 So too Ormond, Peterborough, and Bathurst 
 delighted in his companionship, without thought of 
 self. But the four friends, whose names will ever 
 be linked with Swift's, are Bolingbroke and Arbuth- 
 not, Pope and Gay. There is nothing in the corre- 
 spondence, which passed between these great men, 
 that does not do them honour. Transparently 
 sincere himself. Swift schooled even Pope to sin- 
 cerity. When Swift is in Ireland, they are urgent 
 one and all that he should visit them in London. 
 They disclose their literary plans to him, as to one
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT 349 
 
 who is always ready with counsel and never at fault. 
 And Swift treated them, each after his kind, with 
 the truthfulness of a friend. 
 
 Indulgent to Gay's foibles, he addresses him as a 
 father might address a loved and careless son. He 
 would have him save his money, that he might live 
 happily independent of court and patronage. He 
 is anxious always lest Gay should squander his talent 
 unworthily, and be content to repeat himself and 
 his old successes. And yet so nicely did he measure 
 the limits of Gay's fancy, that it was he who sug- 
 gested the theme of The Beggar's Opera. ' What 
 think you of a Newgate pastoral,' wrote Swift to 
 Pope, in his desire to fit Gay with a subject, ' among 
 the thieves and whores there ? ' And Gay repaid 
 his friend with a joyous devotion, sent him the news 
 of the town, touched lightly as he alone could touch 
 it, persuaded the Duchess of Queensberry to enter- 
 tain the Dean with letters, and was tireless in trans- 
 mitting the kindly messages of his friends. Nor 
 did he forget Swift in the very presence of death. 
 
 * He asked for you a few hours before,' wrote Pope, 
 and Swift showed his sensibility by endorsing Pope's 
 letter, a sad messenger of woe, with the words : 
 
 * On my dear friend Mr. Gay's death ; received 
 December 15th, but not read till the 20th, by an 
 impulse foreboding some misfortune.' 
 
 It mattered not which of the four Swift addressed. 
 He wrote to him fully and faithfully what was in 
 his mind. Now and again he seems to remember
 
 350 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 that Pope is vastly superior to him in the artistry of 
 verse. Of this superiority he makes full confession 
 in the poem on his own death : 
 
 ' In Pope I cannot read a line, 
 But with a sigh I wish it mine ; 
 When he can in one couplet fix 
 More sense than I can do in six.' 
 
 But otherwise his comradeship knows no restraint. 
 Not unnaturally it is with Bolingbroke that he is 
 on terms of closest intimacy. He had shared that 
 great man's secrets from the time of their first 
 acquaintance. Together they had lived through the 
 last troubled years of the Queen's reign. Together 
 they had fallen into disgrace, and had known the 
 misery of exile. And thus retired, both of them, 
 from the competition of Hfe, they were free to discuss 
 philosophy and to defy the Whigs. Whilst BoHng- 
 broke affected a contempt of the world. Swift cried 
 Vive la Bagatelle^ and hoped to silence the voice of 
 regret. 
 
 But, if Bolingbroke was most intimate to his 
 understanding, Arbuthnot was nearest to Swift's 
 heart. Though the two men were of the same 
 •temperament, scholars and ironists both, it was for 
 themselves that Swift and Arbuthnot loved one 
 another, not for their intellectual gifts. ' All your 
 honour, generosity, good nature, good sense, wit, 
 and every other praise-worthy quality,' wrote Swift 
 to Arbuthnot in 17 14, ' will never make me think
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT 351 
 
 one jot the better of you. That time is now some 
 years past ; and you will never mend in my opinion. 
 But really, brother, you have a sort of shuffle in your 
 gait ; and now I have said the worst that your most 
 mortal enemy could say of you with truth.' And 
 twelve years later, in complete forgetfulness, I am 
 sure, of Swift's letter, and not in any competition 
 with his characteristic humour, Arbuthnot echoed 
 the comphment. ' I had a great deal of discourse,' 
 said he, ' with your friend, her Royal Highness. 
 She insisted upon your wit and good conversation. 
 I told her Royal Highness, that was not what I 
 valued you for, but for being a sincere honest man, 
 and speaking truth when others were afraid to 
 speak it.' 
 
 It has been said by Swift's enemies that he slunk 
 away from his friends, and the truth is that the links 
 of the chain which bound the five together were 
 never weakened. Hear what Bohngbroke wrote to 
 Swift after twenty years of companionship : * I 
 loved you almost twenty years ago : I thought of you 
 as well as I do now, better was beyond the power of 
 conception, or to avoid an equivoque, beyond the 
 extent of my ideas. . . . While my mind grows daily 
 more independent of the world, and feels less need 
 of leaning on external objects, the ideas of friend- 
 ship return oftener, they busy me, they warm me 
 more. Is it that we grow more tender as the moment 
 of our great separation approaches ? Or is it that 
 they who are to live together in another state, for
 
 352 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 vera amicitia non nisi inter bonos^ begin to feel that 
 divine sympathy which is to be the great bond of 
 their future society ? There is no one thought 
 which soothes my mind like this.' These words 
 breathe the true spirit of loyalty, and assure us that 
 inter bonos both Bolingbroke and Swift must be 
 counted. And Arbuthnot too sent from his death- 
 bed a last message to Swift. ' I am afraid, my dear 
 friend,' he wrote, ' we shall never more see each other 
 in this world. I shall, to the last moment preserve 
 my love and esteem for you, being well assured you 
 will never leave the paths of virtue and honour ; 
 for all that is in this world is not worth the least 
 deviation from this way.' I do not think that we 
 shaU match elsewhere this record of noble friend- 
 ships, at once gay and sincere. And there are those 
 who condemn the gaiety, and doubt the sincerity. 
 To one distinguished biographer a letter addressed 
 by Bolingbroke to the three Yahoos of Twickenham, 
 Pope, Gay, and Swift, and ending with the benedic- 
 tion, ' Mirth be with you,' suggests nothing happier 
 ' than the mirth of Redgauntlet's companions, when 
 they sat dead (and damned) at their ghastly revelry, 
 and their laughter passed into such wild sounds as 
 made the daring piper's " very nails turn blue." ' ^ 
 
 Swift was not content merely to write letters 
 to his friends. He looked upon practical benevo- 
 
 ' It is true that this letter was written during Stella's illness. 
 But Bolingbroke knew nothing of this illness, and Swift was not 
 one of those who unpack their sorrowful hearts to their friends.
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT 35;^ 
 
 lence as the first duty of friendship. If he could 
 not command the preferment he wished for himself, 
 he could at least help to ensure the preferment of 
 others. The list of those whom he aided in the 
 hour of his influence is long and various. As Mr. 
 Lecky says, ' there is scarcely a man of genius of the 
 age who was not indebted to him.' When service 
 might be rendered, he forgot himself and the claims 
 of party. He collected a thousand guineas for Pope's 
 Iliad. Steele and Rowe and Parnell all owed places 
 to his amiable pressure. He commended Congreve 
 to Harley, and was able to write in a letter to Stella : 
 ' So I have made a worthy man happy, and that is a 
 good day's work. ' 
 
 And no better example of Swift's kindliness can 
 be found than his treatment of young William 
 Harrison, a little pretty fellow and a Whig, who had 
 come from the University of Oxford a year or two 
 before Swift encountered him. Now young Harrison 
 had more ambition than talent, more hopefulness 
 than industry. He was witty and pleasant in com- 
 pany, and ' the fine fellows,' said Swift, ' invited him 
 to the tavern, and asked him to pay his shot.' Such 
 as he was Swift was resolved to make his fortune. 
 He set him up in a new Tatler, when Steele's came to 
 an end. He busied himself about printers and 
 proofs. He suggested articles or wrote them. He 
 persuaded Congreve to help the young editor, and 
 Congreve, generous as Swift, wrote a paper for him, 
 in spite of his blindness. Nothing was left undone 
 
 z
 
 354 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 that might ensure the success of the venture. One 
 night Swift confides in Stella that he is ' tired with 
 correcting Harrison's trash,' and that he is afraid 
 that the little toad has not the vein for it. Indeed 
 he had not, and no sooner was Swift convinced of 
 his inaptitude than he began to seek other employ- 
 ment for him. Already he had made him known to 
 St. John and Harley, and through their influence 
 obtained for him a secretary's post at the Hague ; 
 but young Harrison, doomed to misfortune, came 
 back from Holland only to die. Swift, tireless in 
 help until the end, has sketched the last scene in 
 a letter to Stella. ' I took Parnell this morning,' he 
 wrote, ' and we walked to see poor Harrison. I had 
 the hundred pounds in my pocket. I told Parnell 
 I was afraid to knock at the door ; my mind misgave 
 me. I knocked, and his man told me his master was 
 dead an hour before.' 
 
 And when Swift went an exile into Ireland, he 
 extended his literary patronage to all the sad poets 
 and faded blue-stockings of Dublin. He corrected 
 their poor copies of verses, he pretended to discover 
 genius, where not a spark was shining, and he sent 
 them off to London, with letters in their pocket to 
 Pope and Bolingbroke and Gay. Their reception 
 at Twickenham was not always gracious, and often- 
 times the Yahoos by the Thames expostulated justly 
 with the Dean. But Swift, commonly the sternest 
 of judges, softened his criticism for the incompetent, 
 and if he were pitiless to the pretentious impostor,
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT 355 
 
 he had ever a word of over-kind sympathy for the 
 modest aspirant. 
 
 Thus the charge that Swift was a misanthrope, if 
 we interpret the term rightly, has, I think, no support 
 in fact. The other charge of cynicism, which has 
 oftentimes been brought against him, is equally in- 
 secure. Now the cynic may be defined as one who 
 looks upon life and morals with an indifferent curi- 
 osity, whose levity persuades him to smile upon the 
 vices of others, and to let them go to destruction 
 each his own way. Of this kind of cynicism Swift 
 was wholly innocent. He may be absolved also of 
 that cynicism, which the dictionary defines as ' cap- 
 tious fault-finding.' The heart that was torn by 
 scBva indignatio, to use a phrase from the epitaph he 
 composed for himself, was no cynic's heart. The 
 truth is that he was a born ideahst, with no desire 
 either to snarl or to smile at life. The master- 
 passion of his mind was anger against injustice and 
 oppression. To the articles of his own faith he was 
 always loyal. The profitable changes of the renegade 
 were as far beyond his reach as the wiles of the time- 
 server. That he thought himself ill-used by the 
 world, that he knew his preferment was incommen- 
 surate with his worth and talent, is evident. But 
 he would rather have spoken out what was in his 
 mind than have won the mitre of an archbishop. 
 
 Throughout a long career he wrote nothing that 
 did not clamour for expression, and no consideration 
 of prudence ever hindered him from doing what he
 
 356 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 believed his duty. I will choose one incident out 
 of many to illustrate his honesty. The Duke of 
 Schomberg was killed at the battle of the Boyne, 
 and was buried in St. Patrick's Cathedral. When 
 Swift was appointed Dean, no stone marked the 
 soldier's resting-place, and Swift, to whom nothing 
 was indifferent which touched the beauty and 
 dignity of the church committed to his charge, 
 demanded of Schomberg's heirs, by letters and by 
 the intervention of friends, that they should put up 
 a suitable monument. The demand was made in 
 vain, and Swift punished the neglect and discourtesy 
 by erecting a monument himself, and by commemo- 
 rating in a lapidary inscription the careless ingratitude 
 of Schomberg's descendants. Had Swift wished to 
 stand well with the Court, he would not thus have 
 risked its good opinion. George ii. declared in a 
 fury that Dr. Swift's design was to make him quarrel 
 with the King of Prussia, and henceforth regarded 
 the Dean of St. Patrick's with a still acuter suspicion. 
 But Swift had done what he thought right, and made 
 to Lord Bathurst a characteristic and ironical com- 
 ment upon his own action. ' Thus I endeavour,' 
 said he, ' to do justice to my station, and give no 
 offence.' 
 
 It was in his Irish policy that Swift proved 
 most clearly the pure and lofty idealism that burned 
 within him. In defending the Irish from oppression 
 he was not swayed by the motives of patriotism ; 
 he did not yield even to a personal prejudice. He
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT 357 
 
 was not an Irishman, No drop of Irish blood flowed 
 in his veins. As he said himself, he was born in 
 Ireland by a mere accident, and he bitterly resented 
 the superstition that the children of a man, living 
 in Ireland, are all Irish, ' while a thief transported 
 to Jamaica, and married to a battered Drury Lane 
 hackney jade, should produce true Britons.' Nor 
 did he love Ireland. He knew himself condemned 
 to die there, as he said, ' like a poisoned rat in a hole,' 
 and gladly would he have found an excuse to live 
 out his life among his friends in England. But he 
 hated injustice and dishonour, wherever he saw them, 
 and so he became as wise and valiant a champion 
 of Ireland as that unhappy country ever found. 
 
 With characteristic frankness he disclaimed the 
 name of patriot. * I do profess without affectation,' 
 he wrote to Pope, ' that your kind opinion of me as 
 a patriot, since you will call it so, is what I do not 
 deserve ; because what I do is owing to perfect rage 
 and resentment, and the mortifying sight of slavery, 
 folly, and baseness about me, among which I am 
 forced to live.' He was furiously enraged against 
 the Irish for not making the best of their resources, 
 against the English for the unjust restrictions which 
 they put upon Irish industries. It irked him that 
 all the profitable offices in the country should be 
 held by those to whom reversions had been granted, 
 that the notorious Bubb Dodington, for instance, 
 should be Clerk of the Pells, at a salary of j^250o a 
 year. And when once he had been convinced of
 
 358 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 the prevailing injustice, he put all the eloquence of 
 his scorn at the service of Ireland. First came his 
 proposal for the universal use of Irish manufactures, 
 utterly rejecting and renouncing everything wearable 
 that was made in England. He was in favour of 
 total exclusion. ' I should rejoice to see an English 
 stay-lace thought scandalous,' he said, ' and become 
 a topic for censure at visits and tea-tables.' He 
 applied the fable of Pallas and Arachne to England 
 and Ireland, and thought England harsher than the 
 goddess. He spoke in vain to a people, indifferent 
 to prosperity, a people which would rather have 
 kept in the fashion, by wearing foreign stuffs and 
 silks, than have ensured the success of Irish manu- 
 factures. 
 
 Since he held ever in scorn the indifference of 
 Ireland, the patent granted to William Wood, 
 a gentleman eminent in the hardware trade, to 
 impose a new copper coinage upon Ireland, stirred 
 his savage indignation to its depths. That there 
 was a great lack of pence and ha'pence in Ireland 
 is certain. The want was not supplied most 
 economically by promising comfortable bribes to 
 many personages about the Court, and by making 
 the egregious Wood a present of ^3000 a year for 
 eight years. In all these transactions the need and 
 benefit of Ireland were forgotten, and Swift made it 
 his business to paint in the darkest colours what he 
 deemed an injustice done to a whole country. The 
 Drapier's Letters, which were sold by the Flying
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT 359 
 
 Stationers for twopence in the streets of Dublin, 
 had their due effect. They forced the Government 
 to withdraw Wood's ha'pence, and they set Swift, 
 who, in Pope's phrase, had unbound ' Ireland's 
 copper chains,' upon the topmost pinnacle of glory. 
 
 Henceforth he was the idol of the Irish people. 
 Once when he returned from London to Dublin, 
 bonfires were lit in his honour, and peals of bells 
 rang out their welcome. In vain did Walpole and 
 the Whigs clamour for his arrest. They were asked 
 if they had 10,000 men to spare, for assuredly the 
 Dean could not be taken with less. The utmost 
 that Swift's enemies dared to do was to throw the 
 printer into jail, though the secret of authorship 
 was so ill kept that the whole of Dublin knew that 
 it was Swift's hand and none other that had written 
 The Drapier's Letters. A verse which was sent 
 broadcast over the town, and which was at once a 
 confession and a threat, made all doubt impossible : 
 ' And the people said unto Saul, Shall Jonathan die, 
 who hath wrought this great salvation in Israel ? 
 God forbid : as the Lord liveth, there shall not one 
 hair of his head fall to the ground ; for he hath 
 wrought with God this day. So the people rescued 
 Jonathan, that he died not.' 
 
 And the same eyes of idealism, with which he 
 looked on Ireland, Swift turned upon the larger 
 world of morals in Gvlliver's Travels. The senti- 
 mentalists have condemned the conclusions of this 
 celebrated satire as hateful and blasphemous, and it
 
 360 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 is not easy to follow their argument. If they pretend 
 that it is the purpose of the famous fourth voyage 
 to preach the superiority of all horses to all men, 
 they have singularly misread the fable. Nor is 
 Swift, when he makes the King of Brobdingnag a 
 scourge, wherewith to beat the politicians and plotters 
 of his own land, passing a universal sentence upon 
 the human race. Gulliver himself is not represented 
 as the only man who has escaped the vices of his 
 country. And the King makes no more than a 
 general comment upon the intrigues of politicians, 
 when he says that, by the answers he has ' wringed 
 and extorted ' from Gulliver, he cannot but con- 
 clude ' the bulk of your natives to be the most per- 
 nicious race of little odious vermin, that nature 
 ever suffered to crawl upon the surface of the 
 earth,' What more do we find here than a pictur- 
 esque interpretation of Walpole and his govern- 
 ment ? 
 
 It is plain, moreover, that Swift puts in the mouth 
 of the Brobdingnagian King his own hopes and 
 opinions. By a stroke of irony, he confesses that 
 the learning most highly prized by the giants, being 
 wholly applied to the improvement of agriculture 
 and the mechanical arts, would be as little esteemed 
 among us, as the ideas, entities, abstractions, and 
 transcendentals, which we ourselves prized, would 
 be esteemed among them. It is plain also that 
 Swift accepts as his own the generous creed of the 
 King of Brobdingnag, ' that whoever could make
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT 361 
 
 two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow 
 upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, 
 would deserve better of mankind, and do more 
 essential service to his country, than the whole 
 race of pohticians put together.' Two hundred 
 years after Swift we have rediscovered the truth of 
 this simple doctrine, and nothing but a vain super- 
 stition of party can dismiss the moral of Gulhver 
 as shameful, horrible, blasphemous. 
 
 Why, then, should Swift have been thus mon- 
 strously misunderstood ? Why should he still be 
 pursued after death, by a kind of personal venom ? 
 I think for the very reason that he was no cynic. 
 He could not regard leniently the folly of those 
 about him. He did not write for his own pleasure, 
 or to put money in his pocket. He wrote in scorn 
 of stupidity, or with a fixed desire to reform abuses. 
 He does not temper the wind of his wrath to his 
 shorn victims. He does not bring an easy message 
 of perfectibiHty to a sanguine world. He is even 
 cruel in his denunciations of abuses, and those who 
 regard hterature as an anodyne do not Hke cruelty. 
 But let it be remembered that Swift's cruelty was 
 always justified. 
 
 Secondly, Swift was a great master of irony — the 
 greatest that ever was born in these isles. Great 
 enough to teach a lesson to Voltaire himself, and to 
 inspire the author of Jonathan Wild. And irony 
 does not make for popularity. The plain man hkes 
 a plain statement, and resents it, if his idle brain
 
 362 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 be confused. Swift was frankly conscious of his 
 
 gift : 
 
 ' Arbuthnot is no more my friend, 
 Wno dares to irony pretend, 
 Which I was born to introduce, 
 Refin'd it first, and shew'd its use.' 
 
 Thus he wrote with perfect truth. He was born 
 to introduce irony, and he did not succeed in making 
 it understood. Now irony has been described as 
 the boomerang of literature, and assuredly it comes 
 back upon the head of the hero who dares to wield 
 it. Though we all know what it is when we see it, 
 a definition is not easy. The wise author of The 
 Courtier thus describes it : ' There is in like manner 
 an honest and comely kind of jesting that consisteth 
 in a certain dissimulation, when a man speaketh one 
 thing and privily meaneth another. I speak not of 
 the manner that is clean contrary, as if one should 
 call a dwarf a giant, and a black man white, or one 
 most ill-favoured beautiful, because they be open 
 contraries. But when with a grave and dry speech 
 and in sporting a man speaketh pleasantly that he 
 hath not in his mind.' 
 
 Such a dissimulation, indeed, covers all the kinds 
 of irony — the Sophoclean irony, in accord with which 
 a secret, known to the audience, eludes the per- 
 sonages on the Stage ; the Socratic irony, which is 
 no more than a pretended lack of knowledge ; and 
 the irony of Swift, in which the word and the spirit 
 are opposed to the sense, and in which a heightened 
 effect is produced by overstating the other side of
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT 363 
 
 the case. There is no artifice of literature more 
 instantly effective for those who appreciate it. There 
 is none more fertile in misunderstanding. In 
 England especially it is used at the writer's peril. 
 That wonderful masterpiece, Jonathan Wild, is still 
 condemned as an affront upon sound morality. 
 George Meredith was asked to wait twenty years for 
 readers, because he could not resist an ironic pre- 
 sentation. And it is Swift who has suffered most 
 bitterly for the irony which was in his blood. All 
 the sins and vices which he castigated have been 
 visited by the unwary upon his innocent head. When 
 he wrote in Mr. Collins'' s Discourse, that ' the Clergy 
 who are so impudent to teach the people the doctrines 
 of faith, are all either cunning knaves or mad fools,' 
 his enemies cried out upon him for an atheist. When 
 in a second tract he declared that another ' advan- 
 tage proposed by the abolishing of Christianity, is 
 the clear gain of one day in seven, which is now 
 entirely lost, and consequently the kingdom one- 
 seventh less considerable in trade, business and 
 pleasure,' he was denounced as a blasphemous hypo- 
 crite, who had gone into the Church with the base 
 hope of gain. When, with his heart full of rage at 
 the misery of Dubhn, he wrote his Modest Proposal, 
 he was charged with an unnatural hankering after 
 human flesh. This obstinate refusal to understand 
 the meaning and purpose of irony has turned A 
 Tale of a Tnb, that amazing riot of wit and satire, 
 into a work of dangerous example. And Swift could 
 no more avoid irony than Rabelais could avoid ridi-
 
 364 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 cule. It was an integral part of his temper and his 
 genius. Thus and thus only could he express the 
 truth that was in him, and so fine an instrument did 
 irony become in his skilful hands, that none has ever 
 used it since with a like mastery and to the same 
 effect. 
 
 It has been the custom to compare Swift with 
 Rabelais. We all remember Pope's amiable criticism : 
 
 * Whether he choose Cervantes' serious air, 
 Or laugh and shake in Rabelais' easy chair, 
 Or praise the court or magnify mankind. 
 Or his grieved country's copper chains unbind.' 
 
 The comparison is more kindly than just. Swift 
 was not an English Rabelais. He rarely laughed ; 
 he never shook in an easy chair. He was as remote 
 from the rollicking humour of Rabelais as he was 
 from the light-fingered cynicism of Voltaire, who by 
 the way was too much a Frenchman of the eighteenth 
 century thoroughly to appreciate his brother in 
 irony. Rabelais lived laughing, and died laughing, 
 and when he laughed the laughter of scorn, he would 
 still be merry. Even Coleridge's witty phrase for 
 Swift, ' the soul of Rabelais, habitans in sicco^ is less 
 luminous than it seems. For, as I have said, the 
 master-passion of Swift is anger against injustice 
 and oppression. As he seldom laughs, so he is 
 seldom the cause of laughter in others. Rather he 
 is one who, having no illusions himself, would strip 
 away the illusions which mask the faces of men.
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT 365 
 
 You marvel at the genius of A Tale of a Tub ; you 
 do not laugh at it. 
 
 Moreover, there is a certain dryness in Swift's 
 style, in the perfection of his work, in the essential 
 justice of his opinions, a dryness in which the soul 
 of Rabelais could never dwell. The humour of 
 Rabelais is wide and spacious as the universe ; the 
 wit of Swift is confined within the bounds of pre- 
 cision, and has no margin over. When in Gulliver 
 he increases or diminishes the scale of life, that he 
 may represent the small folHes of his countrymen or 
 picture their grosser, larger vices, he does it with a 
 sort of mathematical accuracy which is wholly alien 
 to the careless genius of Rabelais. In brief, the 
 Frenchman and the Englishman fulfilled themselves, 
 each in keeping with his own temper. They stand 
 upon equal pinnacles of fame, and no good can come 
 of their inapposite comparison. 
 
 The mathematical accuracy, with which in Gulliver 
 Swift takes the measure of mankind, is aUied to another 
 faculty, which he shares with none other except 
 Defoe. And that is the faculty of authentic and 
 plausible narrative. By a hundred small touches, 
 accurately designed, he renders the story of Gulliver's 
 Travels credible to its readers. Neither the dwarfs 
 nor the giants make too great a demand upon our 
 faith. And thus Swift achieves, in the face of far 
 greater difficulties, the difficulties of the super- 
 natural, the same sort of triumph or reality which 
 Defoe achieved in Robinson Crusoe. No sooner were
 
 366 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 the Travels piiblished than they were discussed 
 gravely as a record of actual happenings. An Irish 
 bishop, taking the view that was expected of him, 
 said that the book was full of improbable lies, and 
 that for his part he hardly believed a word of it. 
 And Arbuthnot sent to Swift the best news of his 
 Travels. He prophesied truly for the book as great 
 a run as John Bunyaji, and he gave gratifying 
 examples of its literal acceptance. ' Lord Scar- 
 borough,' he wrote, 'who is no inventor of stories, 
 told me that he fell in company with a master of a 
 ship, who told him that he was very well acquainted 
 with Gulliver, but that the printer had been mis- 
 taken, that he lived in Wapping, not in Rotherhithe. 
 I lent the book to an old gentleman who went imme- 
 diately to his map to search for Lilliput.' The sim- 
 plicity of the Irish bishop, the master of the ship, 
 and the old gentleman, proved to Swift that he had 
 not failed in the art of verisimilitude, and explains 
 for us why Gulliver after two centuries is still the 
 delight of children. 
 
 Swift's highest gift of all was his gift of prose. 
 It is this gift which has kept alive and fresh his 
 political controversy, the kind of writing which is 
 soonest withered by the bhght of time. It is this 
 gift which has ensured a lasting interest for every 
 line which the Dean of St. Patrick's touched with his 
 pen. He could write well about a broomstick, it 
 was said with perfect truth ; and assuredly he never 
 wrote ill about anything. We care nothing to-day
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT 367 
 
 about Wood's ha'pence or the restrictions put upon 
 Irish manufactures, except that they gave an excuse 
 for the sohd eloquence of Swift. What then was 
 the secret of his style ? He has defined it himself : 
 ' Proper words in proper places,' he tells a young 
 clergyman, ' make the true definition of style.' He 
 warns his fellows solemnly against the frequency of 
 flat superfluous epithets, and the folly of using old 
 threadbare phrases. He cited it as an eminent 
 virtue in the Brobdingnagians that they avoided 
 nothing more than multiplying unnecessary words, 
 or using various expressions. And Dr. Johnson, 
 in his own despite, has most clearly defined the 
 virtue of Swift's simplicity. Now, Dr. Johnson did 
 not like Swift, and a passage in Bos well's Life, dis- 
 praising The Conduct of the Allies, is an excellent 
 comment upon the styles of the two great writers. 
 Thus runs the passage : ' Johnson. — " Sir, his Con- 
 duct of the Allies is a performance of very little ability." 
 " Surely, Sir," said Dr. Douglas, " you must allow it 
 has strong facts." Johnson. — " Why yes, Sir, but what 
 is that to the merit of the composition ? In the 
 Sessions-paper of the Old Bailey there are strong facts. 
 Housebreaking is a strong fact ; robbery is a strong 
 fact ; and murder is a mighty strong fact ; but is great 
 praise due to the historian of these strong facts ? No, 
 Sir, Swift has told what he had to tell distinctly 
 enough, but that is aU. He had to count ten, and 
 he has counted it right. . . . Why, Sir, Tom Davies 
 might have written The Conduct of the Allies.''^ '-
 
 368 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 Of course Johnson knew better than any other 
 that Tom Davies could not have written The Conduct 
 of the Allies. Indeed, had Tom Davies written it, 
 no passion of its readers could have supplied its 
 efficacy. But Johnson was convinced that the 
 ' wonder-working pamphlet ' operated ' by the mere 
 weight of facts, with very little assistance from the 
 hand that produced them.' It is a strange opinion 
 held dialectically and perhaps perversely. The 
 strength of facts and the strength of their expression 
 have little enough to do with one another. In flaccid 
 hands that ' mighty strong fact,' murder, might 
 appear like a simple story for the tea-table. And 
 Johnson, in pretending that Swift's effects depended 
 less upon himself than upon his matter, was, I think, 
 contrasting Swift's style with his own. Johnson 
 sought in a sentence a balance and an arrangement, 
 which all eyes might see, which all ears might hear. 
 He was unhappy if there was not, here and there, 
 a polysyllable to hold the lesser words in subjection. 
 And thus he fashioned for himself that highly elabo- 
 rated instrument, with which he hammered his 
 thought into others. In the writings of Swift, no 
 doubt, he missed the balance and the arrangement 
 which were for him synonymous with style. And, 
 for the sake of argument, he was ready to assert 
 that Tom Davies might have written The Conduct 
 of the Allies. 
 
 Johnson, in thus criticising Swift, reveals what 
 was the aim of his own style, and by its opposite
 
 JONATHAN SWIFT 369 
 
 enlightens us about Swift's. The truth is that 
 Swift's method of writing was at once more subtle 
 and more just, if less nobly decorated, than John- 
 son's. Tliut is to say, he was all for structure and 
 not for ornament. Logic of thought, economy of 
 phrase — these are the guiding principles of his 
 prose. It is his great merit to have given a new force 
 to the common forms of speech, to have set his 
 words in so precise an order that the stress always 
 falls where the sense demands it. His prose is not 
 sonorous, save in pages ; it is frequently inaccurate, 
 as any pedant may see for himself. He depends not 
 at all for his effect upon a curious vocabulary. He is 
 as remote from the flamboyancy of his Elizabethan 
 ancestors as from the prim elegance of Addison. 
 His style is inevitably clear, direct and appropriate. 
 There is, so to say, the briefest interval between his 
 thought and its expression ; and since his thought 
 was commonly wit, it follows that the expression 
 was witty also. Within the limits which he imposed 
 on himself he could do what he liked with words. 
 With greater ease than other men have attained he 
 bent the stubborn English sentence to his will. He 
 forged of English prose an instrument, which was 
 apt for every enterprise : narrative and controversy 
 were treated by him with equal happiness. The 
 same hand, which lashed the follies and injustices 
 of men, enlivened the loyal solitude of Stella with 
 the incomparable journal. The same hand, which 
 in the Genteel Conversation gave us a perfect exposi- 
 
 2 A.
 
 370 LITERARY STUDIES 
 
 tion of the commonplace, and invented a set of per- 
 sonages not one of which might boast a shred of 
 character, penned also the savage satire of the Direc- 
 tions to Servants. Any one of these achievements is 
 sufficient for an enduring fame, and with their sum 
 Swift shall defy death, so long as English prose is 
 read and understood. 
 
 In conclusion : Jonathan Swift may be viewed 
 from many points, and in many aspects. There are 
 still those, who, with something of the eavesdropper's 
 impertinence, would pierce the mystery of his loves. 
 Others there are who would dwell willingly upon the 
 tragic years in which he died slowly, like a tree from 
 the top, and which seem to belong less to history 
 than to medical science. But for those who care 
 for humane letters the supreme interest and merit 
 of Swift will always lie in the assured mastery where- 
 with he illustrates, as very few have ever illustrated 
 them, the greatness and simplicity of our English 
 tongue. 
 
 Printed by 1'. and A. Constable, Printers to His Majesty 
 at the Edinburgh University Press
 
 BY CHARLES WHIBLEY 
 POLITICAL PORTRAITS 
 
 Crowii 8vo. 7s. 6d. net. 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 Tliomas Wolsey, Minister of War — Shakespeare, Patriot and 
 Tory — Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon — ^Gilbert Burnet — The 
 Duke of Newcastle — ' The Crowned Philosopher ' — Charles James 
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 these new days.' 
 
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