COMPENDIOUS HISTORY OF ENGLISH LITERATURE, AND OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, FROM THE NORMAN CONQUEST. WITH NUMEROUS SPECIMENS. BY GEORGE L. CRAIK, LL.D., ROFESSOR OF HISTORY AND OF ENGLISH LITERATURE IN QUEEN'S COLLEGE, BELFAU1 IN TWO VOLUMES. VOL. I. NEW YORK: SCR1BNER, ARMSTRONG k CO., 1877. T8*5 c v, I PREFACE. In the largest or loosest sense of the expression a History of English Literature might be taken to mean an account of everything that has been written in the language. But neither is the literature of a language everything that has been written in it, nor would all that has been written in the language necessarily com- prehend all its literature, for much true literature may exist, and has existed, without having been written. Literature is composed of words, of thought reduced to the form of words ; but the words need not be written ; it is enough that they be spoken or sung, or even only conceived. All that writing does is to record and preserve them. It no more endows them with any new character than money acquires a new character by being locked up in a desk or paid into a bank. But, besides this, if the history of a national litera- ture is to have any proper unity, it can rarely em- brace the language in its entire extent. If it should attempt to do so, it would be really the history not of one but of several literatures. In some cases it might even be made a question when it was that the language properly began, at what point of the un- broken thread — which undoubtedly connects every form of human speech with a succession of preceding forms out of which it has sprung — we are to say that an old n PREFACE. language has died and a new one come into existence ; but, at any rate, even when the language is admitted to be the same, it not unfreqnently differs almost as much in two of its stages as if it were two languages. We have a conspicuous example of this in our own English. We may be said to have the language before us in complete continuity from the seventh century; but the English of the earliest portion of this long space of time, or what is commonly called Anglo-Saxon, is no more intelligible to an Englishman of the present day who has not made it a special study than is Ger- man or Dutch. The cast' is even a great deal worse than that. Dutch and German and other foreign tongues are living ; our earliest English has been dead and buried for centuries. Nay, for a long time even the fact that it had once existed was all but universally forgotten. And even since it has come to be once more studied we know it only as a fossil — as the dust and dry bones of a language. Of the literature written in it we may in- deed acquire such a conception as we might of a liv- ing human being from a skeleton; but nothing more. ()C that nocturnal portion of our literature, as it may be called, no critical survey is attempted in the pres- ent work. Only the principal compositions of which it consists, and the names of their authors, are rapidly enumerated by way of Introduction, along with the leading particulars of the same kind belonging to tic histories of the Latin, the Welsh, and the Irish litera- tures of the same early period. The history of any national literature, in fact, natu- rally divides itself into three portions, all very distinct from one another, and demanding each a treatment of its own. First, there is the portion which, as has just been said, may lie named after the night, not perhaps PREFACE. vii altogether as being the product of a period of dark- ness, but as lying now, from distance and change of circumstances, in the dark to us ; secondly, there is so much of that produced after what seems to us to have been the rising of the sun as we can look back upon ; thirdly, there is what belongs to our own day, and lies not behind us but rather before us or around us. Of the three subjects thus presented, the first offers a field chiefly for philological and antiquarian erudition ; even the third, not being yet past, does not come properly within the domain of history ; the only one that per- fectly admits of being treated historically is the day- light or middle division. But that is always -both by far the most extensive and also in every other respect the most important. The survey which is taken in the present work of so much of our English literature as is thus properly historical is no doubt far from complete. Still it will be found to include not only, of course, all our writers of the first class, but also, I believe, all those, without exception, who can be regarded as of any considerable distinction. If that be so, it will, whatever its defects of execution, present a view of the whole subject of which it professes to treat ; for it is only great names and great works that make a literature. An account of the writings of Chaucer, of Spenser, of Shakspeare, of Bacon, of Milton, of Dryden, of Pope, of Swift, of Burke, of Burns, of Cowper, would sufficiently unfold the course and revolutions of our English literature from its commencement down to the besdnnino; of the present century. Many names, however, have also been noticed in these volumes which have no pretensions to be considered as even of second-rate importance, but vet some information in regard to which, if it were no more than the date to which each of them belongs, vni PREFACE. might, it was thought, add to the serviceableness of the work as a book of reference. Such brief notices are rather for being turned to by means of the Index than for straightforward perusal. The history of our literature, in so far as it is of uni- versal interest, is all contained in the longer and fuller accounts; — the space allotted to which, however, it will be obvious, is not in all cases proportioned to the emi- nence of the writers. On the contrary, several writers of the first class whose works are in the hands of everybody, as, for example, Shakspeare and Milton, are disposed of without the critical remarks on them being illustrated by any specimens ; of others, again, who are less read in the present day, such as Chaucer and Spenser of earlier, Swift and Burke of later, date, the poetry and eloquence are amply exemplified from what they have left us that is most characteristic and re- markable. Any one who will take the trouble to ascertain the fact will find how completely even our great poets and other writers of the last generation have already faded from the view of the present with the most numerous class of the educated and reading public. Scarcely anything is generally read except the publications of the day. Yet nothing is more certain than that no true cultivation can be so acquired. This is the extreme case of that entire ignorance of history or of what had been done in the world before we our- selves came into it, which has been affirmed, not with more point than truth, to leave a person always a child. Having already gone over the greater part of the present subject in a work entitled Sketches of the His- tory of Literature and Learning in England, which was published in 1844—5, I have only revised and retouched here, and not sought to rewrite, whatever as it there PREFACE. u stood still sufficiently expressed what I had to say. The present work, therefore, it will be understood, comprehends and incorporates all of the former one (now out of print) which it has been considered desir- able to preserve. It is, in truth, in the main a repub- lication of that, though with many alterations and some curtailments, as well as considerable additions and en- largements. I have even retained, though hardly com- ing under the new title, the summaries of the progress of Scientific Discovery in successive periods, as not, taking up very much room, and supplying a good many dates and other facts which even in following the history of Literature it is sometimes convenient to have at hand. The present work, on the other hand, professes to combine the history of the Literature with the history of the Lano;uao-e. The scheme of the course and rev- olutions of the Language which is followed here, and also in the later editions of my Sketches of the His- tory of the English Language, was first announced by me in an article published in the Dublin University Magazine for July, 1857. It is extremely simple, and, resting not upon arbitrary but upon natural or real distinctions, gives us the only view of the subject that can claim to be regarded as of a scientific character. In the earliest state in which it is known to us the English is both a homogeneous and a synthetic language, — homogeneous in its vocabulary, synthetic in its gram- matical structure. It has since, though of course al- ways operated upon, like everything human, by the law of gradual change, undergone only two decided revolutions ; the first of which destroyed its synthetic, the second its homogeneous, character. Thus, in its second form it is still a homogeneous, but no longer a synthetic, language ; in its third, it is neither synthetic VOL. I. 2 x PREFACE nor homogeneous, but has become both analytic in its grammar and composite in its vocabulary. The three forms may be conveniently designated: — the First, that of Pure or Simple English ; the Second, that of Broken or Semi-English; the Third, that of Mixed, or Compound, or Composite English. The first of the three stages through which the language has thus passed may be considered to have come to an end in the eleventh century ; the second, in the thirteenth century ; the third is that in which it still is. In another paper, published in the Dublin University Magazine for October, 1857, I applied this view to the explanation of the action upon the language of the Norman Conquest ; the immediate effect of which was to produce the first of the two revolutions, its ultimate effect to produce the second. I there, also, gave an account of the examination of the vocabulary of our exist ing English instituted by Dr. J. P. Thommerel, in his Recherches sur la Fusion du Franco-Normand et de P Anglo-Saxon, published at Paris in 1841, in which he •showed, in opposition to all previous estimates, that, of the words collected in our common dictionaries, in- stead of two thirds being of native origin, as usually assumed, and only one third of Latin or French extrac- tion, the fact is just the other way; — two thirds are foreign and only one third native. I proceeded to re- mark, however, that of the words in common use both in Bpeaking and in writing, which may be taken as aboul L0,000 in number, probably full a half are pure English ; and that of those in common, colloquial use, which may 1><' about 5000 in all, probably four fifths are of native stock. '-'And the 4000 or 5000 non- Roman words," I added, "that are in general use (4000 in OUT common speech, 5000 in literary composition), compose all the fundamental framework of the language, PREFACE. 3Q all that may be called its skeleton or bony structure, and also perhaps the better part of its muscular tis- sue." The portion of our literature to which the present work is properly speaking devoted is that of the Third Form of the Language, and may be regarded as com- mencing with the poetry of Chaucer in the middle of the fourteenth century. G. L. C. P. S. Upon more careful consideration, I find that the simile in the 6th Iliad is not fairly represented in the translation given vol. ii. p. 546. Nothing turns upon it; but I ought not to have supposed it possible that Homer could have been in anything inconsistent with truth and nature. Queen s College, Belfast, September, 1861. CONTENTS. VOL. I. INTRODUCTORY. PA „ Literature and Language . 21 The Languages of Modern Europe 23 Early Latin Literature in Britain 26 The Celtic Languages and Literatures 32 Decay of the Earliest English Scholarship 41 The English Language 48 Original English : — Commonly called Saxon, or Anglo-Saxon .... 52 THE NORMAN PERIOD. — The Conquest 61 Arabic and other New Learning 67 Schools and Universities .72 Rise of the Scholastic Philosophy . 78 John of Salisbury. Peter of Blois 80 Classical Learning. Mathematics. Medicine. Law. Books ... 83 The Latin Language in England after the Norman Conquest .... 87 The Latin Poets. — Mapes ; etc 89 Latin Chroniclers. Collections . . . 90 Ingulphus 92 William of Poitiers . . 94 Ordericus Vitalis 96 Gesta Stephani. William of Jumieges . 97 Florence of Worcester 98 Matthew of Westminster .99 William of Malmesbury 100 Eadmer 101 Turgot. Simeon of Durham. John of Hexham. Richard of Hexham 102 Ailred 103 Geoffrey of Monmouth. Alfred of Beverley 104 Giraldus Cambrensis 106 Henry of Huntingdon 107 Roger de Hoveden 108 William of Newburgh 109 Benedictus Abbas. Ralph de Diceto. Gervase of Canterbury . . .110 Vinsauf. Richard of Devises. Joscelin de Brakelonda 112 Monastic Registers 114 xiv CONTENTS. THE NORMAN PERIOD. (Continued.) pagi Law Treatises. Domesday Book. Public Rolls and Registers . . . 115 The French Language in England 116 The Langue D'Oc and the Langue D'Ovl 121 Norman Trouveres. — Duke Richard I. Thibaut de Vernon. Turold, oi Theroulde. Chanson de Roland 124 Anglo-Norman Poets. — King Henry I. His Queens, Matilda and Alice 1 28 Philip de Than. Geoffrey, Abbot of St Albans 1 29 Pil«Timace of Saint Brandan. Charlemagne 130 Anglo-Norman Chroniclers. — Gaimar. David 132 Wace . . 134 Benoit 136 Everard. — French Language in Scotland 137 Luc de la Barre. Guichard de Beaulieu 139 Arthurian Romance. — The Saint Greal. Luc du Gast. Buron. Mapes 141 Roman du Roi Horn 144 Tristan, or Tristrem 145 Guernes de Pont Sainte Maxence 146 Herman 147 Hugh of Rutland. Boson. Simon du Fresne 147 Cardinal Langton 148 King Richard Coeur-de-Lion 149 Vernacular Lanrmanic tongues, with their broad vowels and guttural combina- VOL. i. 4 26 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. tions, may be the natural product of the bracing mountain-air of the south ; the clearer and neater articulation of the Low-Germanic ones, that of the milder influences of the plain ; the thinner and sharper sounds of the Scandinavian group, that of the more chill and pinching hyperborean atmosphere in which they have grown up and been formed. EARLY LATIN LITERATURE IN BRITAIN. When the South of Britain became a part of the Roman empire, the inhabitants, at least of the towns, seem to have adopted gener- ally the Latin language and applied themselves to the study of the Latin literature. The diffusion among them of this new taste was one of the first means employed by their politic conquerors, as soon as they had fairly established themselves in the island, to rivet their dominion. A more efficacious they could not have devised ; and, happily, it was also the best fitted to turn their subjugation into a blessing to the conquered people. Agricola, having spent the first year of his administration in establishing in the province the order and tranquillity which is the first necessity of the social condition, and the indispensable basis of all civilization, did not allow another winter to pass without beginning the work of thus training up the national mind to a Roman character. Tacitus informs us that he took measures for ha vino; the sons of the chiefs educated in the liberal arts, exciting them at the same time by professing to prefer the natural genius of the Britons to the studied acquirements of the Gauls ; the effect of which was, that those who lately had disdained to use the Roman tongue now became ambitious of excelling in eloquence. In later times, schools were no doubt established and maintained in all the principal towns of Roman Britain, as they were throughout the empire in general. There are still extant many imperial edicts relating to these public seminaries, in which privileges are conferred upon the teachers, and regulations laid down as to the manner in which they were to be appointed, the salaries they were to receive, and the branches of learning they were to teach. But no account of the British schools in particulai has be< n preserved. It would appear, however, that, for some time at least, the older schools of Gaul were resorted to by the EARLY LATIN LITERATURE. 27 Britons who pursued the study of the law : Juvenal, who lived in the end of the first and the beginning of the second century, speaks, in one of his Satires, of eloquent Gaul instructing the pleaders of Britain. But even already forensic acquirements must have be- come very general in the latter country and the surrounding regions, if we may place any reliance on the assertion which he makes in the next line, that in Thule itself people now talked of hiring rhetoricians to manage their causes. Thule, whatever may have been the particular island or country to which that name was given, was the most northern land known to the ancients. It is somewhat remarkable that, while a good many names of natives of Gaul are recorded in connection with the last age of Roman literature, scarcely a British name of that period of any literary reputation has been preserved, if we except a few which figure in the history of the Christian Church. The poet Ausonius, who flourished in the fourth century, makes frequent mention of a contemporary British writer whom he calls Sylvius Bonus, and whose native name is supposed to have been Coil the Good ; but of his works, or even of their titles or subjects, we know nothing. Ausonius, who seems to have entertained strong prejudices against the Britons, speaks of Sylvius with the same animosity as of the rest of his countrymen. Of ecclesiastical writers in Latin belong- ing to the sixth century, the heresiarch Pelagius and his disciple Celestius, St. Patrick, the apostle of Ireland, with his friend Bishop Secundums, and the poet Sedulius, are generally regarded as hav- ing been natives of the British islands. Gildas, our earliest historian of whom anything remains, also wrote in Latin. St. Gildas the Wise, as he is styled, w r as a son of Caw, Prince of Strathclyde, in the capital of which kingdom, the town of Alcluyd, now Dunbarton, he is supposed to have been born about the end of the fifth or beginning of the sixth century. Caw was also father of the famous bard Aneurin : one theory, indeed, is that Aneurin and Gildas were the same person. In his youth Gildas is said to have gone over to Ireland, and to have studied in the schools of the old national learning that still flour- ished there ; and, like his brother Aneurin, (if Aneurin was his Drother,) he also commenced his career as a bard, or composer of poetry in his native tongue. He was eventually, however, con- verted to Christianity, and became a zealous preacher of his new religion. The greater part of his life appears to have been spent 28 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. in his native island ; but at last lie retired to Armorica, or Little Britain, on the Continent, and died there. He is said to lie buried in the Cathedral of Vannes. Qild as is the author of two declama- tory effusions, the one commonly known as his History (De Excidic Britannise Liber Querulus), the other as his 'Epistle (De Excidio Britannia} et Britonum Exulatione), which have been often printed. The latest edition is that contained in the Monumenta Historica Britannica, 1848 ; and there is also an edition prepared by Mr. Joseph Stevenson for the English Historical Society, 8vo. London : 183-1. A translation of the Epistle was published in 1638 ; and both works are included in Dr. Giles's Six Old English Chronicles, 1848. They consist principally of violent invectives directed, against his own countrymen as well as their continental invaders and con- querors ; and throw but little light upon the obscure period to which they relate. Our next historical writer is Nennius, said to have been a monk of Bangor, and to have escaped from the massacre of his brethren in 613. He too, like Gildas, is held to have been of Welsh or Cumbrian origin : his native name is conjectured to have been Ninian. But there is much obscurity and confusion in the ac- counts Ave have of Nennius : it appears to be probable that there were at least two early historical writers of that name. The au- thor of a late ingenious work supposes that the true narrative of the ancient Nennius only came down to the invasion of Julius Caesar, and is now lost, although we probably have an abridgment of it in the British History (Eulogium Britanniae, sive Historia Britonum), published by Gale in his Scriptores Quindecim, Oxon. 1691, which, however, is expressly stated in the preface by the author himself to have been drawn up in 858. 1 A very valuable edition of " The Historia Britonum, commonly attributed to Nen- nius, from a MS. lately discovered in the Library of the Vatican Palace at Home," was published in 8vo. at London, in 1819, by the Rev. W. Gunn, 15. D., rector of Irstead, Norfolk; and his greatly improved text has been chiefly followed in the subsequent edition prepared by Mr. Stevenson for the Historical Society (8vo. London, 1838). The most complete text, however, is probably thai given in the Monumenta Historica Britannica, from a collation 1 "Britannia after the Romans, being an Attempt to illustrate the Religious and Political Revolutions of that Province in the Fifth and succeeding Centuries [By the late Hon Algernon Herbert]; vol. i. 4to. 1836, pp, 21, 22." EARLY LATIN LITERATURE. 29 of no fewer than twenty-six manuscripts. An English version, originally published by Mr. Gunn in his edition of the Vatican text, is reprinted by Dr. Giles in his Six Old English Chronicles. But the most curious and important volume connected with Nen- nius is that published in 1847 by the Irish Archasological Society, containing an Irish version of his History executed in the fourteenth century, with a translation and Notes by Dr. Todd, together with a large mass of Additional Notes, and an Introduction, by the Hon. Algernon Herbert, who has here discussed nearly all the leading questions in the obscure region of early British antiquities with profuse learning, and at the same time, whatever may be thought of some of his conclusions, with an ingenuity and freshness still more rare and valuable. Of the Latin writers among the Angles and Saxons any of whose works remain, the most ancient is AJkJheJm, abbot of Malmesbury, and afterwards the first bishop of Sherborn, who died in 709. Aldhelm was of the stock of the kings of Wessex, and Avas initiated in Greek and Latin learning at the school in Kent presided over by the Abbot Adrian, who, like his friend Archbishop Theodore, ap- pears to have been a native of Asia Minor, so that Greek was his native tongue. We are assured by one of his biographers that Aldhelm could write and speak Greek like a native of Greece. He also early associated himself with the monastic brotherhood of Malmesbury, or Meildulfesbyrig, that is, burgh or town of Meil- dulf, Maildulf, or Meldun, an Irish exile, by whom the monastery had been founded about half a century before the birth of Aldhelm. Among the studies of Aldhelm's after-life are mentioned the Ro- man law, the rules of Latin prosody, arithmetic, astronomy, and astrology. He is said to have written a tract on the great scientific question of the age, the proper method of computing Easter. Ald- helm's favorite subject, however, would seem to have been the virtue of virginity, in praise of which he wrote first a copious trea- tise in prose and then a long poem. Both of these performances are preserved, and have been printed. Aldhelm long enjoyed the highest reputation for learning ; but his writings are chiefly remark- able for their elaborately unnatural and fantastic rhetoric. His Latin style bears some resemblance to the pedantic English, full of alliteration and all sorts of barbarous quaintness, that was fash- ionable among our theological writers in the reigns of Elizabeth and James the First. 30 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. But the English name of the times before the Norman Conquest that is most distinguished in literature is that of Beda, or Bede, upon whom the epithet of "The Venerable" has been justly be- stowed by the respect and gratitude of posterity. All that we have written by Bede is in the Latin languao;e. He was born some time between the years 672 and 677, at Jarrow, a village near the mouth of the Tyne, in the county of Durham, and was educated in the neighboring monastery of Wearmouth under its successive abbots Benedict and Ceolfrid. He resided here, as he tells us himself, from the age of seven to that of twelve, during which time he applied himself with all diligence, he says, to the meditation of the Scriptures, the observance of regular discipline, and the daily prac- tice of singing in the church. " It was always sweet to me," he adds, " to learn, to teach, and to write." In his nineteenth year he took deacon's orders, and in his thirtieth he was ordained priest. From this date till his death, in 735, he remained in his monastery, giving up his whole time to study and writing. His principal task was the composition of his celebrated Ecclesiastical History of Eng- land, which he brought to a close in his fifty-ninth year. It is our ehief original authority for the earlier portion even of the civil history of the English nation. But Bede also wrote many other works, among which he has himself enumerated, in the brief ac- count he gives of his life at the end of his Ecclesiastical History, Commentaries on most of the books of the Old and New Testaments and the Apocrypha, two books of Homilies, a Martyrology, a chron- ological treatise entitled On the Six Ages, a book on orthography, a book on the metrical art, and various other theological and bio- graphical treatises. He likewise composed a book of hymns and another of epigrams. Most of these writings have been preserved, and have been repeatedly printed. The first edition of the Ecclesi- astical History is without date, but it probably appeared at Eslingen, in Germany, between 1471 and 1475. Three other continental editions followed before the end of the fifteenth century; and no fewer than nine more in the course of the sixteenth. The first edition printed in England was that of Abraham Wheloc, folio, Cambridge, 1644, accompanied by the old vernacular translation attributed to King Alfred, then also for the first time given to the world through the press ; this was followed by the Jesuit Clii- Het's edition, 4to. Paris, 1681 ; then came Dr. Smith's greatly improved edition both of the original Latin and of Alfred's trans- EARLY LATIN LITERATURE. 31 Hation, folio, Cambridge, 1722 ; and this remained the standard edition till the appearance of that of Mr. Stevenson (containing also the Minor Historical Works), under the auspices of the English Historical Society, in 2 vols. 8vo. 1838-41, and of that of Mr. Petrie, in the Monumenta, folio, 1848. There are three continen- tal editions of the entire works of Bede, each in eight volumes folio, the latest of which was published at Cologne in 1688. Some ad- ditional pieces were published at London in a quarto volume, by Henry Wharton, in 1693 ; and an edition of the complete works of Bede in the original Latin, accompanied with a translation, was produced by Dr. Giles, in 12 vols. 8vo. London, 1843-44. It appears, from an interesting account of Bede's last hours by his pupil St. Cuthbert, that he was engaged at the time of his death in translating St. John's Gospel into his native tongue. Among his last utterances to his affectionate disciples watching around his bed were some recitations in the English language : " For," says the account, " he was very learned in our songs ; and, putting his thoughts into English verse, he spoke it with compunction." Beside King Alfred's version in the earlier form of the language, there are translations of Bede's Ecclesiastical History into modem English by Thomas Stapleton (1565), by John Stevens (1723), and by W. Hurst (1814). Stevens's translation, altered and cor- rected, was reproduced by Dr. Giles in 1840, and again in 1842 ; and it is given also bofh in his edition of the complete works of Bede, and, along with his translation of the Chronicle, in one of the volumes of Bonn's Antiquarian Library, 1849. Finally, a new translation of all Bede's Historical Works by the Rev. Joseph Ste- venson forms the second part of volume first of the collection enti- tled The Church Historians of England, London, 1853-54. Another celebrated English churchman of this age was St. Boni- face, originally named Winfrith, who was born in Devonshire about the year 680. Boniface is acknowledged as the Apostle of Germany, in which country he founded various monasteries, and was greatly instrumental in the diffusion both of Christianity and of civilization. He eventually became archbishop of Mentz, and was killed in East Friesland by a band of heathens in 755. Many of his letters to the popes, to the English bishops, to the kings of France, and to the kings of the various states of his native country, still remain, and are printed in the collections entitled Bibliotheere Patrum. We may here also mention another contemporary of Bede's, Ed 32 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. dius, suraamed Stephanus, the author of a Latin life of Bishop Wilfrid. Bede mentions him as the first person who taught sing- ing in the churches of Northumberland. THE CELTIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES. No other branch of what is called the Indo-European family of languages is of higher interest in certain points of view than the Celtic. The various known forms of the Celtic are now regarded as coming under two great divisions, the Gaelic, and the Cymric ; Ireland being the head seat of- the Gaelic (which may therefore also be called Irish), Wales being the head seat of the Cymric (which accordingly is by the English commonly called Welsh). Subordinate varieties of the Irish are the Gaelic of Scotland (often called Erse, or Ersh, that is, Irish), and the Manks, or Isle of Man tongue (now fast dying out) : other Cymric dialects are the Cor- nish (now extinct as a spoken language), and the Armorican, or that still spoken in some parts of Bretagne. The probability is, that the various races inhabiting the British islands when they fh-st became known to the civilized world were mostly, if not all, of Celtic speech. Even in the parts of the coun- try that were occupied by the Caledonians, the Picts, and the Bel- gian colonists, the oldest topographical names, the surest evidence that we have in all cases, and in this case almost our only evidence, arc all, so far as can be ascertained, Celtic, cither of the Cymric or of the Gaelic form. And then there arc the great standing facts of the existence to this day of a large Cymric population in South Britain, and of a still larger Gaelic-speaking population in North Britain and in Ireland. No other account of these Celtic popula- tions, or at least of the Welsh, has been attempted to be given, than that, as their own traditions and records are unanimous in asserting, they are the remnants of the races by which the two islands wore occupied when they first attracted the attention of the Romans about half a century before the commencement of the Christian era. And both the Welsh and the Irish possess a large mass of litera- ture in their native tongues, much of which has been printed, in THE CELTIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES. 33 great part no doubt of comparatively modem production, but claim- ing some of it, in its substance if not exactly in the very form in which it now presents itself, an antiquity transcending any other native literature of which the country can boast. Neither the Welsh nor the Irish language and literature, how- ever, can with any propriety be included in a history of English literature and of the English language. The relationship of Eng- lish to any Celtic tongue is more remote than its relationship not only to German or Icelandic or French or Italian or Latin, but even to Russian or Polish, or to Persian or Sanscrit. Irish and Welsh are opposed in their entire genius and structure to English. It has indeed been sometimes asserted that the Welsh is one of the fountains of the English. One school of last-century philologists maintained that full a third of our existing English was Welsh. No doubt, in the course of the fourteen centuries that the two languages have been spoken alongside of each other in the same country, a considerable number of vocables can hardly fail to have been bor- rowed by each from the other ; the same thing would have hap- pened if it had been a dialect of Chinese that had maintained itself all that time among the- Welsh mountains. If, too, as is probable, a portion of the previous Celtic population chose or were suffered to remain even upon that part of the soil which came to be gener- ally occupied after the departure of the Romans by the Angles, Saxons, and other Teutonic or Gothic tribes, the importers of the English language and founders of the English nation, something of Celtic may in that way have intermingled and grown up with the new national speech. But the English language cannot therefore be regarded as of Celtic parentage. The Celtic words, or words of Celtic extraction, that are found in it, be they some hundreds in number, or be they one or two thousands, are still only something foreign. They are products of another seed that have shot up here and there with the proper crop from the imperfectly cleared soil ; or they are fragments of another mass which have chanced to come in contact with the body of the language, pressed upon by its weight, or blown upon it by the wind, and so have adhered to it or become imbedded in it. It would perhaps be going farther than known facts warrant us if we were to say that a Gothic tongue and a Celtic tongue are incapable of a true amalgamation. But undoubt- edly it would require no common pressure to overcome so strong an opposition of nature and genius. The Gothic tongues, and the VOL. I. 6 34 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. Latin or Romance tongues also, indeed, belong to distinct branches of what is called the Indo-European family ; but the Celtic branch, though admitted to be of the same tree, has much more of a char- acter of its own than any of the others. Probably any other two languages of the entire multitude held to be of this general stock would unite more readily than two of which only one was Celtic. It would be nearly the same case with that of the intermixture of an Indo-European with a Semitic language. It has been suggested that the Celtic branch must in all probability have diverged from the common stem at a much earlier date than any of the others. At any rate, in point of fact the English can at most be said to have been powdered or sprinkled with a little Celtic. Whatever may be the number of words which it has adopted, whether from the ancient Britons or from their descendants the Welsh, they are only single scattered words. No considerable department of the English dictionary is Welsh. No stream of words has flowed into the language from that source. The two languages have in no sense met and become one. They have not mingled as two rivers do when they join and fall into the same channel. There has been no chemical combination between the Gothic and the Celtic ele- ments, but only more or less of a mechanical intermixture. We shall limit ourselves to the briefest notice of the remains of the ancient vernacular literature of Ireland and of Wales. The earliest literatui'e of which any remains still exist in any of the native languages of the British Islands must be held to be the Irish. The Irish were probably possessed of the knowledge of letters from a very remote antiquity. Although the forms of their present alphabetical characters are Roman, and are supposed to have been introduced by St. Patrick in the fifth century, it is very remarkable that the alphabet, in the number and powers of its ele- ments, exactly corresponds with that which Cadmus is recorded to have brought to Greece from Phoenicia. If we may believe the national traditions, and the most ancient existing chronicles, the IrMi also possessed a succession of bards from their first settlement in the country, and the names of some of those that are said to have flourished so early as in the first century of our era are still remembered ; but the oldest bardic compositions that have been oreserved claim to be of the fifth century. Some fragments of metrical productions to which this date is attributed are found in the old annalists, and more abundant specimens occur in the same THE CELTIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES. 35 records under each of the succeeding centuries. The oldest exist- ing Irish manuscript, however, is believed to be the Psalter of Casjiel, a collection of bardic legends, compiled about the end of the ninth century, by Cormac MacCulinan, bishop of Cashel and kino; of Minister. But the most valuable remains of ancient Irish literature that have come down to us are the various historical records in prose, called the Annals of Tigernach, of the Four Mas- ters, of Ulster, and others. Portions of these were first published in the original, accompanied with Latin translations, in Dr. O'Conor's Re rum Hibernicarum Scriptores Veteres, 4 vols. 4to., Buckingham, 1814-1826 ; a splendid monument of the munificence of his Grace the late Duke of Buckingham, at whose expense the work was prepared and printed, and from the treasures of whose library its contents were principally derived. Tigernach, the oldest of these Irish annalists, lived in the latter part of the eleventh cen- tury ; but both his and the other annals profess, and are believed, to have been compiled from authentic records of much greater antiqttity. They form undoubtedly a collection of materials in the highest degree precious for the information they supply with regard to the history both of Ireland and of the various early British king- doms. These Annals differ wholly in character from the metrical legends of Irish history found in the Book of Cashel and in the other later compositions of the bards. They consist of accounts of events related for the most part both with sobriety and precision, and with the careful notation of dates that might be expected from a contemporary and official recorder. They are in all probability, indeed, copies of, or compilations from, public records. A much more satisfactory edition in all respects of the Annals of the Four Masters, which were compiled in the seventeenth century, and of which only the portion ending with the year 1171 is in Dr. O'Conor's work, has since been produced under the auspices of the Irish Archaeological Society, by Dr. O'Donovan, Professor of the Celtic Languages in Queen's College, Belfast. This edition (which was originally brought out in 5 vols. 4to. in 1848-51, and reprinted in 7 vols. 4to. in 1856) contains the Annals from their commencement at the Creation down to their termination in a. d. 1616, and, besides, a translation of the whole in English presents a mass of learned annotation, making it almost a cyclopaedia both of Irish history and of Irish topography. 1 To the Archaeological 1 There is also an English translation of the Annals of the Four Masters, bj Owen Connellan, Esq., in one volume, 4to., 1846. B6 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE Society, founded in 1840, and now united with the Celtic Society, we owe also many other important publications. And on one which will be perhaps the most important of all that have yet appeared in illustration of the ancient civilization of the country, and to a considerable extent too of the earlier forms of the lan- guage, that of the remains of what are called the Brehon Laws, Dr. O'Donovan is understood to have been for some years en~ gaged. Not of such historic importance, biat perhaps still more ciu'ious and interesting in other points of view, are the remains we still possess of the early Welsh literature. The Welsh have no national annals to be compared in value with those of the Irish ; but some of their Chronicles, fabulous as they evidently are in great part, are undoubtedly of considerable antiquity. It is now almost uni- versally admitted that the famous Latin Chronicle of the Britons, published by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the twelfth century, is really what it professes to be, at least in the main, a translation from a much older Welsh original. The Laws of Howel Dha, who reigned in South Wales in the early part of the tenth century, have been printed with a Latin translation, by Wotton, in his Leges Wallicse, fol. 1730 ; and again in the late Record Commis- sion edition of the Ancient Laws and Institutes of Wales, by Anewrin Owen, Esq., fol. 1841. They develop a state of society in which many primitive features are strangely mixed up with a general aspect of considerable civilization, and all. the order of a well-established political system. Then there are the singular com- positions called the Triads, which are enumerations of events or other particulars, bound together in knots of three, by means of some title or general observation, — sometimes, it must be confessed, forced and far-fetched enough, — under which it is conceived that they may all lie included. Of the Triads, some are moral, and others historical. The historical are certainly not all ancient; for they contain allusions to events that took place in the reign of our Edward I. ; but it appears most probable lhat the form of composi- tion which they exemplify was long in use ; and, if so, the com- paratively modern character of some of them does not disprove the antiquity of others. A late writer, who considers them to be a com- pilation of the thirteenth century, admits that they " reflect, 'n a .small and moderately faithful mirror, various passages of Bardic composition which are lost." 1 Then there is the collection of 1 The Hon. Algernon Herbert;, in Britannia after the Romans, p. xiv. THE CELTIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES. 37 romantic prose tales known as the Mabinogion, preserved in a MS. of the fourteenth century, which has now been published, with an English translation and notes, by Lady Charlotte Guest, in three sumptuous volumes, 8vo., London, 1838—1850, — one of the most remarkable feats of the female authorship of our day. The most voluminous of the ancient Welsh remains, however, are the poems of the Bards. The authenticity of these compositions had till re- cently been regarded as having been established, beyond dispute, by various investigators, and especially by Mr. Sharon Turner's elaborate Vindication. 1 But now again the judgment of the most advanced Celtic scholarship seems to be tending the other way. 2 The poems professing to be the most ancient are those ascribed to the four bards, Aneurin, Taliesin, Llywarch Hen, and Merdhin, or Merlin, the Caledonian, who all appear to have belonged to the sixth century. A few additional pieces have also been preserved of the seventh, eighth, ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, which are printed along with these in the first volume of the Myvyrian Archaiology of Wales, 3 vols. 8vo., Lond. 1801. Much of this early Welsh poetry is in a strangely mystical style ; its general spirit being, according to one theory, much more Druidical than Christian. The author of Britannia after the Romans has en- deavored to show that a partial revival of Druidism was effected in Wales in the sixth century, principally through the efforts of the Bards, whose order had formerly composed so distinguished a part of the Druidical system ; and much in the character of this ancient poetry would seem to favor that supposition, which does not, however, rest upon this evidence alone. No existing manuscript of these poems, we may observe, nor any other Welsh manuscript appears to be much older than the twelfth century. As the forms of the original English alphabetical characters are me same with those of the Irish, it is probable that it was from Ireland the English derived their first knowledge of letters. There 1 First published separately in 1803, and since, much enlarged, at the end of the third and subsequent editions of his History of the Anglo-Saxons. See also the Rev E. Davies's Celtic Researches, Mr. Probert's Preface to his edition of Aneurin, and Mr. Herbert's Britannia after the Romans, pp. i-vi. a See an important work entitled Taliesin ; or, the Bards and Druids of Britain. A translation of the Remains of the earliest Welsh Bards, and an Examination of „he Bardic Mysteries. By D. W. Nash, Member of the Royal Society of Litera- Aire. 8vo., London, 1858. 88 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. was certainly, however, very little literature in the country before the arrival of Augustine, in the end of the sixth century. Augus- tine is supposed to have established schools at Canterbury ; and, about a quarter of a century afterwards, Sigebert, king of the East Angles, who had spent part of his early life in France, is stated by Bede to have, upon liis coming to the throne, founded an institu- tion for the instruction of the youth of his dominions similar to those he had seen abroad. The schools planted by Augustine at Canterbury were afterwards greatly extended and improved by his successor, Archbishop Theodore, who obtained the see in 668. Theodore and his learned friend Adrian, Bede informs us, delivered instructions to crowds of pupils, not only in divinity, but also in astronomy, medicine, arithmetic, and the Greek and Latin lan- guages. Bede states that some of the scholars of these accom- plished foreigners were alive in his time, to whom the Greek and Latin were as familiar as their mother tongue. Schools now began to multiply in other parts, and were generally to be found in all the monasteries and at the bishops' seats. Of these episcopal and monastic schools, that founded by Bishop Benedict in his abbey at Wearmouth, where Bede was educated, and that which Archbishop Egbert established at York, were among the most famous. But others of great reputation at a somewhat later date were super- intended by learned teachers from Ireland. One was that of Maildulf at Malmesbury. At Glastonbury, also, it is related in one of the ancient lives of St. Dunstan, some Irish ecclesiastics had settled, the books belonging to whom Dunstan is recorded to have diligently studied. The northern parts of the kingdom, more- over, were indebted for the first light of learning as well as of religion to the missionaries from Iona, which was an Irish founda- lion. For some ages Ireland was the chief seat of learning in Chris- tian Eiu'ope ; and the most distinguished scholars who appeared in other countries were mostly either Irish by birth or had received their education in Irish schools. We are informed by Bede that in his day, the earlier part of the eighth century, it was customary for his English fellow-countrymen of all ranks, from the highest to tin 1 Lowest, to retire for study and devotion to Ireland, where, he adds, they were all hospitably received, and supplied gratuitously vrith food, with books, and with instruction. 1 The glory of this 1 Hist. Eccles. iii. 28. THE CELTIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES. 39 age of Irish scholarship and genius is the celebrated Joannes Scotus, or Erigena, as he is as frequently designated, — either appellative equally proclaiming his true birth-place. He is sup- posed to have first made his appearance in France about the year 845, and to have remained in that country till his death, which appears to have taken place before 875. Erigena is the 'author of a translation from the Greek of certain mystical works ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, which he executed at the com- mand of his patron, the French king, Charles the Bald ; and also of several original treatises on metaphysics and theology. His productions may be taken as furnishing clear and conclusive evi- dence that the Greek language was taught at this time in the Irish schools. Mr. Turner has given a short account of his principal work, his Dialogue De Divisione Natura3 (On the Division of Na- ture), which he characterizes as " distinguished for its Aristotelian acuteness and extensive information." In one place " he takes occasion," it is observed, " to give concise and able definitions of the seven liberal arts, and to express his opinion on the composition of things. In another part he inserts a very elaborate discussion on arithmetic, which he says he had learnt from his infancy. He also details a curious conversation on the elements of things, on the motions of the heavenly bodies, and other topics of astronomy and physiology. Among these he even gives the means of calcu- lating the diameters of the lunar and solar circles. Besides the fathers Austin, the two Gregories, Chrysostom, Basil, Epiphanius, Origen, Jerome, and Ambrosius, of whose works, with the Plato- nizing Dionysius and Maximus, he gives large extracts, he also quotes Virgil, Cicero, Aristotle, Pliny, Plato, and Boethius ; he details the opinions of Eratosthenes and of Pythagoras on some astronomical topics ; he also cites Martianus Capella. His knowl- edge of Greek appears almost in every page." 1 The subtle speculations of Erigena have strongly attracted the notice of the most eminent among the modern inquirers into the history of opinion and of civilization ; and the German Tenneman agrees with the French Cousin and Guizot in attributing to them a very extraordinary influence on the philosophy of his own and of suc- ceeding times. To his writings and translations, it is thought, may be traced the introduction into the theology and metaphysics of Europe of the later Platonism of the Alexandrian school. It is 1 Turner, Anglo-Sax. iii. 393. 40 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. remarkable, as Mr. Moore has observed, that the learned Mosheim had previously shown the study of the scholastic or Aristotelian philosophy to have been also of Irish origin. " That the Hiber- nians," says that writer, " who were called Scots in this [the eighth] century, were lovers of learning,. and distinguished them- selves in these times of ignorance by the culture of the sciences beyond all the other European nations, travelling through the most distant lands, both with a view to improve and to communicate their knowledge, is a fact with which I have been long acquainted ; as we see them in the most authentic records of antiquity dis- charging, with the highest reputation and applause, the function of doctor in France, Germany, and Italy, both during this and the following century. But that these Hibernians were the first teach- ers of the scholastic theology in Europe, and so early as the eighth century illustrated the doctrines of religion by the principles of philosophy, I learned but lately." 1 And then he adduces the proofs that establish his position. Among the earlier productions of Irish scholarship may espe- cially be mentioned the two Latin lives of Columba, the founder of the monastery of Iona, and its abbot from 563 till his death in 597 ; the first by Cuminius, who succeeded as abbot of Iona in 657 ; the second, which is of much greater length, by Adamnan, who succeeded to the same office in 679. Both these productions, the second of which in particular is highly curious, have been re- peatedly printed. 2 1 Translated in Moore's Ireland, i. 302. 2 The late edition of Adamnan's Life of St. Columba (in which nearly the whole of the other by Cuminius is incorporated), prepared for the Irish Archaeological and Celtic Society by Dr. Reeves, 4to , Dublin, 1857, while its typography, and the maps and other plans by which it is adorned, make it one of the handsomest productions of the modern press, is illustrated, in an abundant apparatus of notes and explana- tory matter of all kinds, with an extent of research and copiousness of learning which place it on a level with whatever has been recently done best among us in this department of scholarship, if, indeed, any other work has appeared for many years on the subject of the early ecclesiastical history of these islands that deserves to be compared with this admirable edition of a most curious account of the great Scottish missionary of the sixth century, compiled by a writer of the seventh, and preserved to our day in a manuscript of the eighth. DECAY OF TUP: EARLIEST ENGLISH SCHOLARSHIP. It should seem not to be altogether correct to attribute the decline and extinction of the earliest literary civilization of the Angles and Saxons wholly to the Danish invasions. The North- men did not make their appearance till towards the close of the eighth century, nor did their ravages occasion any considerable public alarm till long after the commencement of the ninth ; but for a whole century preceding this date, learning in England ap- pears to have been falling into decay. Bede, who died in 735, exactly ninety-seven years before that landing of the Danes in the Isle of Sheppey, in the reign of Egbert, which was followed by incessant attacks of a similar kind, until the fierce marauders at jast won for themselves a settlement in the country, is the last name eminent for scholarship that occurs in this portion of the English annals. The historian William of Malmesbury, indeed, affirms that the death of Bede was fatal to learning in England, and especially to history ; " insomuch that it may be said," he adds, writing in the early part of the twelfth century, " that almost all knowledge of past events was buried in the same grave with him, and hath continued in that condition even to our times." " There was not so much as one Englishman," Malmesbury de- clares, " left behind Bede, who emulated the glory which he had acquired by his studies, imitated his example, or pursued the path to knowledge which he had pointed out. A few, indeed, of his successors were good men, and not unlearned, but they generally 6pent their lives in an inglorious silence ; while the far greater number sunk into sloth and ignorance, until by degrees the love of learning was quite extinguished in this island for a long time." The devastations of the Danes completed what had probably been begun by the dissensions and confusion that attended the breaking up of the original political system established by the Angles and Saxons, and perhaps also by the natural decay of the national spirit among a race long habituated to a stirring and ad- venturous life, and now left in undisturbed ease and quiet be- fore the spirit of a new and more intellectual activity had been sufficiently diffused among them. Nearly all the monasteries and the schools connected with them throughout the land were either actually laid in ashes by the northern invaders, or were vol. i. e 42 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. deserted in the general terror and distraction occasioned by their attacks. When Alfred was a young man, about the middle of the ninth century, he could find no masters to instruct him in any of the higher branches of learning : there were at that time, accord- ing to his biographer Asser, 1 few or none among the West Saxons 1 The Life of King Alfred, professing to have been written by his contemporary and friend Asser, bishop of Sherborn, afterwards Salisbury, one of the two sees (Winchester being the other) into which the original bishopric of Wessex was divided in the beginning of the eighth century, is in Latin, and was first printed, in folio, at London in 1574, along with Alfred's Preface to his translation of Pope Gregory's Pastorale, at the end of Archbishop Parker's edition of the English and Norman Histories of Thomas Walsingham. This first edition of Asser is remark- able as exhibiting the Latin text in what are called Saxon characters. The second edition is in Camden's collection (Anglica, Normannica, &c), fol. Frankfort, 1602 ; the third in Gale's Scriptores Quindecim, fol. Oxford, 1691. It was first published separately by Francis Wise, in 8vo., at Oxford, in 1722. And a fifth edition, being the latest, is given in the Monumenta Historica Britannica, 1848. Meanwhile Mr. Thomas Wright, having previously intimated his suspicions in a communication to the Society of Antiquaries, published in their Transactions, had, in 1842, in the first volume of his Biographia Britannica Literaria, pp. 408-412, stated in full certain reasons which led him to believe that this Life of King Alfred could not have been written before the end of the tenth century, and that " it was probably the work of a monk who, with no great knowledge of history, collected some of the numerous traditions relating to King Alfred which were then current, and joined them with the legends in the life of St. Neot and the historical entries in the Saxon Chronicle ; and, to give authenticity to his work, published it under the name of Asser." Mr. Wright, however, does not put forward his objections as depriving the biography of all historical value; " it contains," he admits, " interesting traditions relating to Alfred's life and character, many of which were without doubt true in substance." And, since Mr. Wright's work appeared, the authenticity of the biography has been maintained by the late Dr. Lingard, in an elaborate investigation inserted in the second edition of his History and Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church, 1845, vol. ii. pp. 424-428. The reader may further be referred to what is said on this subject by Mr. Hardy in his Preface to the Monumenta Historica Britannica, pp. 77-81 ; ami by Dr. Pauli in the Introduction to his Life of Alfred the Great (Eng- lish translation by Thorpe), 1853, pp. 3-11. Mr. Hardy holds that the inconsis- tencies which arc to be found in Asser's narrative as we now have it are explained by the fact " that many passages of the printed text formed no part of Asser's work, but were the insertions of Archbishop Parker," from a spurious work which he found bound up witli the MS., still in the library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, from which he printed his edition. Dr. Pauli, after referring to the continued confidence of the best English and German writers, such as Lappenberg, Pcrtz, and Kemble, in the general authenticity of the work, adds that he cannot Limself altogether avoid considering it in the same light ; and, having pointed out various passages which may be suspected, he concludes by stating that he will, nevertheless, frequently refer to it in the course of his own narrative ; and, in fact, it is one of his leading authorities. "Lingard," he observes, "brings forward good reasons for differing with Wright." Dr. Giles has given an English translation of Asser in his Six Old English Chronicles, 1848. Along with Asser's work may be noticed the chronicle of Ethelwerd, which in a DECAY OF THE EARLIEST ENGLISH SCHOLARSHIP. 43 who had any scholarship, or could so much as read with propriety and ease. The reading of the Latin language is probably what is here alluded to. Alfred has himself stated, in the preface to his translation of Gregory's Pastorale, that, though many of the Eng- lish at his accession could read their native language well enough, the knowledge of the Latin tongue was so much decayed, that there were very few to the south of the Humber who understood the common prayers of the church, or were capable of translating a single sentence of Latin into English : and to the south of the Thames he could not recollect that there was one possessed of this very moderate amount of learning. Contrasting this lamentable state of things with the better days that had gone before, he ex- claims, " I wish thee to know that it comes very often into my mind, what wise men there Avere in England, both laymen and ecclesiastics, and how happy those times were to England ! The sacred profession was diligent both to teach and to learn. Men from abroad sought wisdom and learning in this country, though we must now go out of it to obtain knowledge, if we should wish to have it." It was not till he was nearly forty years of age that Alfred him- self commenced his study of the Latin language. Before this, however, and as soon as he had rescued his dominions from the hands of the Danes, and reduced these foreign disturbers to sub- jection, he had exerted himself with his characteristic activity in bringing about the restoration of letters as well as of peace and order. He had invited to his court all the most learned men he could discover anywhere in his native land, and had even brought over instructors for himself and his people from other countries. Werfrith, the bishop of Worcester ; Ethelstan and Werwulf, two Mercian priests ; and Plegmund, also a Mercian, who afterwards became archbishop of Canterbury, were some of the English of whose superior acquirements he thus took advan- few pages of affected, and, in some places, nearly or altogether unintelligible, Latin, gives a summary of the course of human affairs from the creation to the year 975.' Ethelwerd — or, as he styles himself, Patricius Consul Fabius Quaestor Ethel- werdus — appears from his Prologue, or dedication, to have been a member of the "•oyal family, a descendant of King Alfred. His work is little more than a dry ab- stract from the national Chronicle. It is contained in Savile's Collection, 1596, and also in the Monumenta Historica Britannica. There is an English translation of .t in Dr. Giles's Six Old English Chronicles, Bohn, 1848, and another by Mr. Ste- venson in vol. ii. part 2d of the Church Historians of England, 1854., 44 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. tage. Asser he brought from the western extremity of Wales. Grimbald he obtained from France, having sent an embassy of bishops, presbyters, deacons, and religious laymen, bearing val- uable presents to his ecclesiastial superior Fulco, the archbishop of Rheims, to ask permission for the great scholar to be allowed to come to reside in England. And so in other instances, like the bee, looking everywhere for honey, to quote the simili- tude of his biographer, this admirable prince sought abroad in all directions for the treasure which his own kingdom did not afford. His labors in translating the various works that have been men- tioned above from the Latin, after he had acquired that language, he seems himself to have been half inclined to regard as to be justified only by the low state into which all learning had fallen among his countrymen in his time, and as likely perhaps to be rather of disservice than otherwise to the cause of real scholar- ship. Reflecting on the erudition which had existed in the coun- try at a former period, and which had made those volumes in the learned languages useful that now lay unopened, " I wondered greatly," he says in the Preface to his translation of the Pastorale, " that of those good wise men who were formerly in our nation, and who had all learned fully these books, none would translate any part into their own language ; but I soon answered myself, and said, they never thought that men could be so reckless, and that learning would be so fallen. They intentionally omitted it, and wished that there should be more wisdom in the land, by many languages being known." He then called to recollection, however, what benefit had been derived by all nations from the translation of the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures, first into Latin, and then into the various modern tongues ; and, " therefore," he concludes, " I think it better, if you think so, (he is addressing Wulfsig, the bishop of London,) that we also translate some books, the most necessary for all men to know, that Ave all may know them ; and we may do this, with God's help, very easily, if we have peace ; so that all the youth that are now in England, who are freemen, and possess sufficient wealth, may for a time apply to no other task till they first well know how to read English. Let 'hose learn Latin afterwards, who will know more, and advance to a higher condition." In this wise and benevolent spirit he acted. The old writers seem to state that, besides the transla- DECAY OF THE EARLIEST ENGLISH SCHOLARSHIP. 45 tions that have come down to us, he executed many others that are now lost. It is probable, though there is no sufficient authority for the statement, that Alfred reestablished many of the old monastic and episcopal schools in the various parts of the kingdom. Asser ex- pressly mentions that he founded a seminary for the sons of the nobility, to the support of which he devoted no less than an eighth part of his whole revenue. Hither even some noblemen repaired who had far outgrown their youth, but nevertheless had scarcely or not at all begun their acquaintance with books. In another place Asser speaks of this school, to which Alfred is stated to have sent his own son Ethelward, as being attended not only by the sons of almost all the nobility of the realm, but also by many of the inferior classes. It was provided with several masters. A notion that has been eagerly maintained by some antiquaries is, that this seminary, instituted by Alfred, is to be considered as the founda- tion of the University of Oxford. Up to this time absolute illiteracy seems to have been common even among the highest classes of the English. We have just seen that, when Alfred established his schools, they were as much needed for the nobility who had reached an advanced or mature age as for their children ; and, indeed, the scheme of instruction seems to have been intended from the first to embrace the former as well as the latter, for, according to Asser's account, every person of rank or substance who, either from age or want of capacity, was unable to learn to read himself, was compelled to send to school either his son or a kinsman, or, if he had neither, a servant, that he might at least be read to by some one. The royal charters, instead of the names of the kings, sometimes exhibit their marks, used, as it is frankly explained, in consequence of their ignorance of letters. The measures begun by Alfred for effecting the literary civiliza- tion of his subjects were probably pursued under his successors ; but the period of the next three quarters of a century, notwith- standing some short intervals of repose, was on the whole too troubled to admit of much attention being given to the carrying out of his plans, or even, it may be apprehended, the maintenance of what he had set up. Dunstan, indeed, during his administra- tion, appears to have exerted himself with zeal in enforcing a higher standard of learning as well as of morals, or of asceticism, among 16 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. the clergy. But the renewal of the Danish wars, after the acces- sion of Ethelred, and the state of misery and confusion in which the country was kept from this cause till its conquest by Canute, nearly forty years after, must have again laid in ruins the greater part of its literary as well as ecclesiastical establishments. The concluding portion of the tenth century was thus, probably, a time of as deep intellectual darkness in England as it was throughout most of the rest of Europe. Under Canute, however, who was a wise as well as a powerful sovereign, the schools no doubt rose again and flourished. We have the testimony, so for as it is to be relied upon, of the history attributed to Ingulphus, which professes to be written immediately after the Norman conquest, and the boy- hood of the author of which is made to coincide with the early part of the reign of the Confessor, that at that time seminaries of the higher as well as of elementary learning existed in England. In- gulphus, according to this account, having been born in the city of London, was first sent to school at Westminster ; and from West- minster he proceeded to Oxford, where he studied the Aristotelian philosophy and the rhetorical writings of Cicero. This is the ear- liest express mention of the University of Oxford, if a passao-e in Asser's work in which the name occurs be, as is generallv supposed, spurious, and if the History passing under his name was really written by Ingulphus. The studies that were cultivated in those ao;es were few in num- ber and of very limited scope. Alcuin, in a letter to his patron Charlemagne, has enumerated, in the fantastic rhetoric of the period, the subjects in which he instructed his pupils in the school of St. Martin at Paris. " To some," says he, " I administer the honey of the sacred writings ; others I try to inebriate witli the wine of the ancient classics. I begin the nourishment of some with the apples of grammatical subtlety. I strive to illuminate many by the arrangement of the stars, as from the painted roof of a lofty palace." In plain language, his instructions embraced grammar, the Greek and Latin languages, astronomy, and theology. In the poem in which lie gives an account of his own education at York, the same writer informs us that the studies there pursued compre- hended, besides grammar, rhetoric, and poetry, "the harmony of the sky, the labor of the sun and moon, the five zones, the seven wandering planets; the laws, risings, and settings of the .-tars, and the aerial motions of the sea; earthquakes; the nature of man, DECAY OF THE EARLIEST ENGLISH SCHOLARSHIP. 47 cattle, birds, and wild beasts, with their various kinds and forms ; and the sacred Scriptures." This poem of Alcuin's is especially interesting for the account it gives us of the contents of the library collected by Archbishop Egbert at York, the benefit of which Alcuin had enjoyed in his early years, and which he seems to speak of in his letter to Charle- magne, already quoted, as far superior to any collection then exist- ing in France. He proposes that some of his pupils should be sent to York to make copies of the manuscripts there for the imperial library at Tours. Among them, he says, were the works of Je- rome, Hilary, Ambrose, Austin, Athanasius, Orosius, the Popes Gregory and Leo, Basil, Fulgentius, Cassiodorus, John Chrysos- tom, Athelmus, Bede, Victorinus, Boethius ; the ancient historical writers, as he calls them, Pompeius (most probable Justin, the epitomizer of the lost Trogus Pompeius,) and Pliny ; Aristotle, Cicero ; the later poets Sedulius and Juvencus ; Alcuin himself, Clement, Prosper, Paulinus, Arator, Fortunatus, and Lactantius (writers of various kinds, evidently thus jumbled together to suit the exigencies of the verse) ; Virgil, Statius, Lucan ; the author of the Ars Grammatical ; the grammarians and scholiasts, Probus, Phocas, Donatus, Priscian, and Servius ; Euty chins ; Pompeius (probably Festus) and Commenianus ; besides, he adds, many more whom it would be tedious to enumerate. This was certainly a very extraordinary amount of literary treasure to be amassed in one place, and by one man, at a period when books were everywhere so scarce and necessarily bore so high a price. " Towards the close • of the seventh century," says Wharton, in his Dissertation on the Introduction of Learning into England, " even in the Papal library at Rome, the number of books were so inconsiderable that Pope St. Martin requested Sanctamand, bishop of Maestricht, if possible, tc supply this defect from the remotest parts of Germany. In the year 855, Lupus, abbot of Ferrieres in France, sent two of his monks to Pope Benedict the Third, to beg a copy of Cicero De Oratore and Quintilian's Institutes, and some other books : ' for,' says the abbot, ' although we have part of these books, yet there is no whole or complete copy of them in all France.' Albert, abbot of Gemblours, who with incredible labor and immense expense had collected a hundred volumes on theological and fifty on profane subjects, imagined he had formed a splendid library. About the year 790 Charlemagne granted an unlimited right of hunting to the 48 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. abbot and monks of Sithiu, for making their gloves and girdles of the skins of the deer they killed, and covers for their books. We may imagine that these religionists were more fond of limiting than of reading. It is certain that they were obliged to hunt before they could read ; and, at least, it is probable that under these cir- cumstances, and of such materials, they did not manufacture many volumes. At the beginning of the tenth century books were so scarce in Spain, that one and the same copy of the Bible, St. Je- rome's Epistles, and some volumes of ecclesiastical offices and mar- tyrologies often served several different monasteries." 1 To these instances we may add what Bede relates in his " History of the Abbots of Wearmouth," in which monastery Benedict Biscop, the founder, had, about the end of the seventh century, collected a con- siderable library, at the cost not only of much money, but also of no little personal exertion, having made five journeys to Rome for the purchase of books, relics, and other furniture and decorations for the establishment. Bede records that Benedict sold one of his volumes, a work on cosmography, to his sovereign, Alfred of Nor- thumberland, for eight hides of land. THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. The earliest historically known fact with regard to the English language is, that it was the language generally, if not universally, spoken by the barbaric invaders, apparently for the greater part of one race or blood, though of different tribes, who, upon the breakingup of the empire of the West in the fifth century, came over in successive throngs from the opposite continent, and, after a protracted struggle, acquired the possession and dominion of the principal portion of the province of Britain. They are stated to have consisted chiefly of Angles and Saxons. But, although it is usual to designate them rather by the general denomination of the Saxons, or Anglo-Saxons, it is probable that the Saxons were in 11 ality only a section of the Angles. The Angles, of which term our modem English is only another form, appears to have been always recognized among themselves as the proper national appella- 1 History of English Poetry, vol. i. p. cviii. (edit, of 1824V THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 49 tion. They both concurred, Angles and Saxons alike, after their establishment in Britain, in calling their common country Angle- land, or England, and their common language English, — that is, the language of the Angles, — as there can be little doubt it had been called from the time when it first became known as a distinct form of human speech. This English language, since become so famous, is ordinarily regarded as belonging to the Low-Germanic, or middle, group of the Gothic tongues. That is to say, it is classed with the Dutch and the Flemish, and the dialects generally of the more north- ern and low-lying part of what was anciently called Germany, under which name were included the countries that we call Holland and the Netherlands, as well as that to which it is now more espe- cially confined. It appears to have been from this middle region, lying directly opposite to Britain, that the Angles and Saxons and other tribes by whom the English language was brought over to that island chiefly came. At any rate, they certainly did not come from the more elevated region of Southern Germany. Nor does the language present the distinguishing characteristics of a High- Germanic tongue. What is now called the German language, therefore, though of the same Gothic stock, belongs to a different branch from our own. We are only distantly related to the Ger- mans proper, or the race among whom the language and literature now known as the German have originated and grown up. We are, at least in respect of language, more nearly akin to the Dutch and the Flemings than we are to the Germans. It may even be doubted if the English language ought not to be regarded as hav- ing more of a Scandinavian than of a purely Germanic character, — as, in other words, more nearly resembling the Danish or Swed- ish than the modern German. The invading bands by whom it was originally brought over to Britain in the fifth and sixth centu- ries were in all probability drawn in great part from the Scandina- vian countries. At a later date, too, the population of England was directly recruited from Denmark, and the other regions around the Baltic to a large extent. From about the middle of the ninth cen- tury the population of all the eastern and northern parts of the country was as much Danish as English. And soon after the be- ginning of the eleventh century the sovereignty was acquired by the Danes. The English language, although reckoned among modern lan- VOL. I. 7 50 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. guages, is already of respectable antiquity. In one sense, indeed, all languages may be held to be equally ancient ; for we can in no case get at the beginning of a language, anymore than we can get at the beginning of a lineage. Each is merely the continuation of a preceding one, from which it cannot be separated in any case except by a purely arbitrary mark of distinction. Take two por- tions of the line at some distance from one another, and they may be very unlike ; yet the change which has transformed the one into the other, or produced the one out of the other, has been, even when most active, so gradual, so perfectly free always from any- thing that can be called a convulsion or catastrophe, so merely a process of groAvth, however varying in its rate of rapidity, that there is no precise point at which it can be said to have begun. This is undoubtedly the way in which all languages have come into existence ; they have all thus grown out of older forms of speech ; none of them have been manufactured or invented. It would seem that human skill coidd as soon invent a tree as invent a lano;uao;e.' The one as well as the other is essentially a natural production. But, taking a particular language to mean what has always borne the same name, or been spoken by the same nation or race, which is the common or conventional understanding of the matter, the English may claim to be older than the great majority of the tongues now in use throughout Europe. The Basque, perhaps, and the various Celtic dialects might take precedence of it ; but hardly any others. No one of the still spoken Germanic or Scan- dinavian languages could make out a distinct proof of its continuous existence from an equally early date. And the Romance tongues, the Italian, the Spanish, the French, are all, recognized as such, confessedly of much later origin. The English language is recorded to have been known by that name, and to have been the national speech of the same race, at least since the middle of the fifth century. It was then, as we have seen, that the first settlers by whom it was spoken established themselves in the country of which their descendants have ever since retained possession. Call them either Angles, (that is, Eng- lish) or Saxons, it makes no difference ; it is clear that, whether or no the several divisions of the invaders were all of one blood, all branches of a common stock, they spoke all substantially the same language, the proper name of which, as lias been stated, Avas the Anglish, or English, as England, or Angle-land (the land of the THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 51 Angles), was the name which the country received from its new occupants. And these names of England and English the country and the language have each retained ever since. © © Nor can it be questioned that the same tongue was spoken b\ the same race, or races, long before their settlement in Britain. The Angles figure as one of the nations occupying the forest land of Germany in the picture of that country sketched by Tacitus in the first century of our era. The most distinct and satisfactory record, however, of a language is afforded by what exists of it in a written form. In applying this test or measure of antiquity, the reasonable rule would seem to be, that, Avherever we have the clear beginning or end of a distinct 7 © © body or continuous series of literary remains, there we have the beginning or end of a language. Thus, of what is called the Moe- sogothic we have no written remains of later date than the fourth century (or, at any rate, than the sixth, if we reckon from what is probably the true age of the transcripts which we actually possess) ; and accordingly we hold the Mo^sogothic to be a language which has passed away and perished, notwithstanding that there may be some other language or languages still existing of which there is © © © © © good reason to look upon it as having been the progenitor. But of the English language we have a continuous succession of written remains since the seventh century at least ; that is to say, we have an array of specimens of it from that date such as that no two of them standing next to one another in the order of time could pos- sibly be pronounced to belong to different languages, but only at most to two successive stages of the same language. They afford us a record or representation of the language in which there is no gap. This cannot be said of any other existing European tongue for nearly so great a length of time, unless we may except the two principal Celtic tongues, the Welsh and the Irish. The movement of the language, however, during this extended existence, has been immense. No language ever ceases to move ' © © until it becomes what is called dead, which term, although com- monly understood to mean merely that the language has ceased tc be spoken, really signifies, here as elsewhere, that the life is gone out of it, which is indeed the unfailing accompaniment of its ceasing *"o be used as an oral medium of communication. It cannot grow after that, even if it should still continue to a certain extent to be used in writing, as has been the case with the Sanscrit in the East 52 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. and the Latin in the West, — except perhaps as the hair and the nails are said sometimes to grow after the animal body is dead. It is only speaking that keeps a language alive ; writing alone will not do it. That has no more than a conservative function and effect ; the progressive power, the element of fermentation and change, in a lano;uao;e is its vocal utterance. We shall find that the English language, moving now faster, now slower, throughout the twelve or thirteen centuries over which our knowledge of it extends, although it has never been all at once or suddenly converted from one form into another, — which is what the nature of human speech forbids, — has yet within that space undergone at least two complete revolutions, or, in other words, presents itself to us in three distinct forms. ORIGLNAL ENGLISH: — COMMONLY CALLED SAXON, OR ANGLO-SAXON. The English which the Angles and Saxons brought over with them from the Continent, when they came and took possession of the greater part of South Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries, differed from the English that we now speak and write in two im- portant respects. It was an unmixed language ; and it was what is called a synthetic, in contradistinction to an analytic, language. Its vocables were all of one stock or lineage ; and it expressed the relations of nouns and verbs, not by separate words, called auxili- aries and particles, but by terminational or other modifications, — that is, by proper conjugation and declension, — as our present English still does when it says, I loved instead of I did love, or Tlie King's throne instead of The throne of the King. These two characteristics are what constitute it a distinct form, or stage, of the language : — its synthetic or generally inflected grammatical structure, and its homogeneous vocabulary. As a subject of philological study the importance of this earliest known form of the English language cannot be over-estimated ; and much of what we possess written in it is also of great value for the matter. But the essential element of a literature is not matter, but manner. Here too, as in everything else, the soul of the ORIGINAL ENGLISH. 53 artistic is form ; — beauty of form. Now of that what has come down to us written in this primitive English is, at least for us of the present day, wholly or all but wholly destitute. There is much writing in forms of human speech now extinct, or no longer in oral use, which is still intelligible to us in a certain sort, but in a certain sort only. It speaks to us as anything that is dead can speak to us, and no otherwise. We can decipher it, rather than read it. We make it out as it were merely by the touch, getting some such notion of it as a blind man might get of a piece of sculpture by passing his hand over it. This, for instance, to take an extreme case, is the position in which we stand in refer- ence to the hieroglyphic inscriptions on the ancient monuments of Egypt. They can be read as the multiplication table can be read. But that is all. There may be nothing more in them than there is in the multiplication table ; but if there were, Ave could not get at it. M. Champollion, indeed, in his enthusiasm, saw a vision of an amatory or bacchanalian song laughing under the venerable veil of one of them ; but it is plain that this must have been an illusion. A mummy from one of the neighboring tombs, embalmed some three or four thousand years ago, might almost as soon be expected to give forth a living voice. Even the ancient Assyrian inscriptions, which are in alphabetical characters, will certainly never be made to render up to us more than the dead matters of fact that may be wrapt up in them. If there be any grace in the manner in which the facts are related, any beauty of style in the narrative, it has perished irretrievably. But this is what also appears to happen, in a greater or less degree, in the case even of a language the vocabulary of which we have completely in our possession, and which we are therefore quite able to interpret so far as regards the substance of anything written in it, whenever it has for some time — for a single generation, it may be — ceased both to be spoken and to be written. Something is thus lost, which seems to be irrecoverable. The two great classic tongues, it is to be observed, the old Greek and Latin, although they have both long passed out of popular use, have always con- tinued to be not only studied and read by all cultivated minds throughout Europe, but to be also extensively employed by the learned, at least in writing. And this has proved enough to main- tain the modern world in what may be called a living acquaintance vnth them, — such an acquaintance as we have with a person we 04 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. have conversed with, or a place where we have actually heen, as distinguished from our dimmer conception of persons and places known to us only by description. The ancient classic literature charms us as well as informs us. It addresses itself to the imagi- nation, and to our sense of the beautiful, as well as to the under- standing. It has shape and color and voice for us, as well as mere substance. Every word, and every collocation of words, carries with it a peculiar meaning, or effect, which is still appre- ciated. The whole, in short, is felt and enjoyed, not simply inter- preted. But a language, which has passed from what we may call its natural condition of true and full vitality as a national speech cannot, apparently, be thus for preserved, with something of the pulse of life still beating in it, merely by such a knowledge of it being kept up as enables us to read and translate it. Still less can a language, the very reading of which has been for a time sus- pended, and consequently all knowledge whatever of it forgotten, ever be restored to even the appearance of life. It has become a fossil, and cannot be resuscitated, but only dug up. A thousand facts warrant us in saying that languages, and even words, are subject to decay and dissolution as well as the human beings of whose combined mental and physical organizations they are the mysterious product ; and that, once really dead, nothing can reani- mate their dust or reclothe their dry bones with flesh. The original form of the English language is in this state. It is intelligible, but that is all. What is written in it can in a certain sense be read, but not so as to bring out from the most elaborate compositions in it any artistic element, except of the most dubious and unsatisfactory kind. Either such an element is not present in any considerable degree, or the language is not now intimately enough known for any one to be able to detect it. If it is not lit- erally dumb, its voice has for us of the present day entirely lost its music. Even of the system of measure and arrangement according to which it is ordinarily disposed for the purposes of poetry we have no proper a] (prehension or feeling. Certain mechanical principles or rules may have been discovered in obedience to which the ver- sification appears to be constructed; but the verse as verse remains not the less for our ears and hearts wholly voiceless. When it can be distinguished from prose at all it is only by certain marks or characteristics which may indeed be perceived by the eye, or counted on the fingers, but which have no expression that excites ORIGINAL ENGLISH. 55 in us any mental emotion. It is little better than if the composition merely had the words " This is verse " written over it or under it. In respect of everything else appertaining to the soul of the lan- guage, our understanding of it is about equally imperfect. The consequence is, that, although it can be translated, it cannot be written. The late Mr. Conybeare, indeed, has left us a few speci- mens of verse in it of his own composition ; but his attempts are of the slightest character, and, unadventurous as they are, nobody can undertake to say, except as to palpable points of right or wrong in grammar, whether they are well or ill done. The language, though so far in our hands as to admit of being analyzed in gram- mars and packed up in dictionaries, is not recoverable in such a degree as to make it possible to pronounce with certainty whether anything written in it is artistically good or bad. As for learning to speak it, that is a thing as little dreamt of as learning to speak the language of Swift's Houyhnhnms. When the study of this original form of the national speech was revived in England in the middle of the sixteenth century, it had been for wellnigh four hundred years not only what is commonly called a dead language, but a buried and an utterly forgotten one. It may be questioned if at least for three preceding centuries any one had been able to read it. It was first recurred to as a theo- logical weapon. Much in the same manner as the Reformers gen- erally were drawn to the study of the Greek language in maintain- ing the accordance of their doctrines with those of the New Testa- ment and of the first ages of Christianity, the English Reformers turned to the oldest writings in the vernacular tongue for evidence of the comparatively unromanized condition of the early English church. In the next age history and law began to receive illus- tration from the same source. It was not till a considerably later date that the recovered language came to be studied with much of a special view to its literary and philological interest. And it is only within the present century that it has either attracted any attention in other countries, or been investigated on what are now held to be sound principles. The specially theological period of its cultivation may be regarded as extending over the latter half •)f the sixteenth century, the legal and historical period over the whole of the seventeenth, the philological of the old school over the whole of the eighteenth, and the philological of the modern school over the nineteenth, so far as it has gone. 56 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. If the English language as it was written a thousand years ago had been left to itself, and no other action from without had inter- fered with that of its spontaneous growth or inherent principles of change and development, it might not have remained so stationary as some more highlv-cultivated languages have done throughout an equal space of time, but its form in the nineteenth century would in all probability have been only a comparatively slight modification of what it was in the ninth. It would have been essentially the same language. As the case stands, the English of the ninth cen- tury is one language, and the English of the nineteenth century another. They differ at least as much as the Italian differs- from the Latin, or as English differs from German. The most familiar acquaintance with the one leaves the other unintelligible. So much is this so that it has long been customary to distinguish them by different names, and to call the original form of the national speech Saxon, or Anglo-Saxon, as if it were not English at all. If the notion be that the dialect in which most of the ancient English that has come down to us is written is that which was in use among the specially Saxon part of the population, that would have been better indicated by calling it, not Anglo-Saxon, but Saxon English. But even such a designation would be inapplicable to those specimens of the language in which there is unquestionably nothing whatever that is specially Saxon, and which recent inves- tigations have shown to be not inconsiderable in amount, as well as of high philological importance ; and it would also leave the limita- tion of the name English to the more modern form of the language without any warrant in the facts of the case. Objectionable, how- ever, as may be the common nomenclature, it is still indisputable that we have here, for all practicable purposes, not one language, but two languages. The one may have grown out of the other, and no doubt has done so at least in part or in the main ; but in part also the modern language is of quite a distinct stock from the ancient. Of English Literature, therefore, and the English Lan- guage, commonly so called, the language and literature of the Angles and Saxons before the twelfth century make no proper part. The history of the latter can only with propriety be glanced at as introductory to that of the former. The mass of writing that has been preserved in this earlier English is very considerable, but only a small portion of it can be regarded as coming under the head of literature. Even of what ORIGINAL ENGLISH. 57 has been printed, much, and that not the least interesting and val- uable part, has no claim to that title ; for example, the numerous mere documents that are given by Hickes in his most learned Thesaurus, and those that compose the six volumes of Mr. Kem- ble's Codex Diplomaticus. Most of what is of much value or curiosity in the language has now probably been committed to the press, — much of it by scholars still living or only recently deceased, both in our own and other countries. ,The names of Conybeare, Ingram, Sharon Turner, Price, Kemble, Garnett, Miss Gurney, Thorpe, Guest, Bosworth, Fox, Goodwin, Langley, Norman, Offer, Cardale, Vernon, Barnes, Wright, Barrow, Stevenson, Thorkelin, Rask, Jacob Grimm, Leo, Schmidt, Ettmuller, Lappenberg, K. W. Bouterwek, to mention no others, may illustrate the wide diffusion of the interest that in our day has been and still continues to be taken in this field of study. The epic of Beowulf is the most considerable poetical composi- tion of which this primitive English literature has to boast. It ex- ists only in a single manuscript, of the tenth century, one of those in the Cottonian Collection, from which it was first published, with a Latin translation, at Copenhagen, in 1816, by Dr. G. J. Thorke- lin, whose transcript had been made so early as in 1786. A far superior text, however, accompanied by an English translation, notes, and a glossary, w T as afterwards produced by Mr. Kemble, in two volumes, the first published in 1833 (and again in 1835), the second in 1837. Copious extracts from Beowulf had previously been given by Mr. Sharon Turner in his History of the Anglo- Saxons, 1803 ; and the English reader will find a complete analysis of the poem, with versions of many passages in blank verse, in Professor Conybeare's Illustrations of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, pub- lished in 1826 by his brother, the Rev. W. D. Conybeare. There is likewise an English translation of the whole in rhyme by Pro- fessor A. Diedrich Wackerbarth, published in 1849. The only other long work in verse that has been preserved is what is some- times described as a metrical version of Scripture history by a poet of the name of Caadmon, recorded by Bede as having lived in the seventh century, but which is in fact a collection of separate Scrip- tural narratives, mostly paraphrased from the book of Genesis, possibly by various writers, and certainly of much later date. It was first published from the only known manuscript, which is of the tenth century, and is now in the Bodleian Library, by the vol. i. 8 58 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. (earned Francis Junius, at Amsterdam, in 1655 : but a much more commodious and in every way superior edition, with an English translation, was brought out at London in 1832, under the auspices of the Society of Antiquaries, by Mr. Thorpe. Another, by K. W. Bouterwek, in two volumes octavo, was published at Elberfeld in 1847 and 1848. Some remarkable coincidences have often been noticed between Caedmon's treatment of his first subject, that of the Fall, and the manner in which it is treated by Milton, who may very possibly, it has been thought, have looked into his pre- decessor's .performance, unless we should rather suppose that a common ancient source may have supplied some hints to. both. There is also another religious poem, on the subject of Judith, preserved in the same Cottonian volume with Beowulf; but it is only a fragment. It was first published by Edward Thwaites in a volume entitled Heptateuchus, containing the Five Books of Moses and other portions of Scripture, Oxford, 1699 ; and it is reprinted in Thorpe's Analecta Anglo-Saxonica, 1884, and again in 1846. Other fragmentary or short pieces are a song attributed to Caedmon (sometimes styled the Elder Caxlmon) in King Alfred's transla- tion of Bede, which if genuine must be of the latter part of the seventh century, and would be the oldest specimen of the language that has been preserved ; a small portion of a warlike chant, first printed by Hickes (Grammatica Anglo-Saxonica, 192), and styled by Kemble, who has reproduced it in his edition of Beowulf, The Battle of Finnesburh ; The Traveller's Song, first printed by Conybeare ; several compositions interspersed in the historical record called the Chronicle, of which the most famous is that on the victory of King Athelstan over the Scots and Danes at a place called Brunanburg in 938 ; a considerable portion of a poem on the battle of Maldon, fought in 998, originally printed from one of the Cotton manuscripts, in his Johannis Glastoniensis Chronicon, 1726, by Hearne, who, however, mistook it for prose, and since reproduced both by Conybeare and by Thorpe (in the Analecta) ; and others in the two collections known as the Exeter and the Yereelli Manuscripts, both which have now been edited in full, the former (which is of the eleventh century) by Thorpe in 1842, the latter (having however been previously printed in an appendix to the Record Commission edition of Rymer's Fcedera) by Kemble, for the JEli'ric Society, in 1843. One romance in prose has been discovered, on the mediaeval ORIGINAL ENGLISH. 59 story of Apollonius of Tyre (the same on which the play of Peri- cles, attributed to Shakspeare, is founded) ; of this also an edition by Mr. Thorpe, with a literal translation, appeared in 1834. Of the other prose remains the most important are the fragments of the Laws, among which are some of those of Ethelbert, king of Kent, who reigned in the latter part of the sixth and the early part of the seventh century, but evidently reduced to the language of a later age ; the Chronicle, the earlier portion of which is chiefly a compilation from the Historia Ecclesiastica of Bede, but which may be regarded as a contemporary register of public events from perhaps about the middle of the tenth century, and which termi- nates at the close of the reign of Stephen in 1154 ; the various works of King Alfred, which, however, are all in the main only translations from the Latin, though occasionally interspersed with original matter ; his Pastorale of Pope Gregory, his Boethius De Consolatione Philosophic (with the verse in some of the copies metrically paraphrased and expanded), his English Ecclesiastical History of Bede, and his General History of Orosius ; and the various theological, grammatical, and other writings of Alfric, or iElfric, generally supposed to have been the individual of the same name who was archbishop of Canterbury from 995 to 1006. There are also translations of the Pentateuch, the Psalms, the Gospels, and other parts of Scripture ; and numerous lives of saints, besides some treatises on medicine and botany, and a great many wills, charters, and other legal instruments. Portions of the Laws were given in William Lambarde's Archaionomia, 4to., 1568, and fob, 1643, by Hickes in his Dissertatio Epistolaris (in the Thesaurus), and in Hearne's Textus Roffensis, Oxford, 1720 ; and there are complete collections by Wilkins, 1721 ; by Dr. Reinhold Schmidt, Leipzig, 1832 ; and by Thorpe (for the Record ( om mis- sion), 1840. Of the Chronicle, of which there are many manu- scripts more or less perfect, a portion was appended by Wheloc to his Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, with Alfred's translation, Cam- bridge, 1643 ; the earliest edition of the whole was that of Bishop Gibson, with a Latin translation, Oxford, 1692 ; and there have since appeared that of the Rev. J. Ingram, London, 1823, and that, by the late Richard Price, Esq., contained in the Monumenta Historica Britannica, 1848 (coming down, however, only to the Norman Conquest), both with translations into English. An Eng- lish MS. translation by the late Richard Gough, Esq., is preserved, 60 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. with the rest of his collection, in the Bodleian Library ; and another, printed, but not published, by the late Miss Gurney, of Keswick, Norfolk, in 1819, has been made the basis of that edited by Dr. Giles, along with Bede's Ecclesiastical History, in one of the volumes of Bonn's Antiquarian Library, 1819. The Chronicle " in part translated," by Mr. Stevenson, is contained in the First Part of the Second Volume of The Church Historians of Eno- land, 1853. Many portions of it are also given in the original in a volume entitled Ancient History, English and French, exempli- fied in a regular dissection of the Saxon Chronicle, 8vo., Lond. 1880. Of the translations from the Latin attributed to Alfred the Great, the preface to the Pastorale of Pope Gregory was first printed, with a Latin translation, by Archbishop Parker, along with his edition of Asser's (Latin) Life of Alfred, fob, Lond. 1574 ; from this it was transferred to a scarce octavo volume published at Leyden in 1597, with the title of De Literis et Lingua Getarum, sive Gothorum, by a writer calling himself Bonaventura Vulcanius Brugensis, meaning, it has been conjectured, Smidt, or De Smet, of Bruges, and who has been asserted to have really been Antony Morillon, secretary to Cardinal Grandvelle ; it is also given along with his reprint of Asser by Camden in his Collection, published at Francfort in 1603, and in Wise's Asser, 8vo., Oxford, 1722; and Mr. Wright has inserted it, with an English translation, in his Biographia Britannica Literaria, 1842, vol. i. pp. 397-400. The version of Boethius De Consolatione Philosophic was first edited by Christopher Rawlinson, 8vo., Oxford, 1698 ; and there are modern editions of the prose, with an English translation and notes, by Mr. J. S. Cardale, 8vo., Lond. 1829, and of the verse (Alfred's claim to which, however, is very doubtful), also with an English translation and notes, by the Rev. Samuel Fox, 8vo., Lond. 1835. Alfred's Orosius was first edited, "with an English translation from the Anglo-Saxon," by the Hon. Daines Barring- ton, in 1773 ; and it has been reproduced, with a new translation by Mr. Thorpe, in a veiy convenient form, along with Dr. R. Pauli's Life of Alfred, in one of the volumes of Bonn's Antiqua rian Library, 1853. Alfred's Bede was published, in folio, at Cambridge, first by Wheloc in 1643, and again by Dr. John Smith, with large and learned annotations, in 1722. We may mention that a collection, professing to contain " The Whole Works of King Alfred the Great, with Preliminary Essays Ulus- THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 61 trative of the History, Arts, and Manners of the Ninth Century," and calling itself the Jubilee Edition, was produced at London, by " the Alfred Committee," in 2 vols, (commonly bound in 3), in 1852. It consists, however, only of translations into modern English. The various treatises passing under the name of Alfric, iElfric, or Elfric, have recently engaged much attention, and the name has been assumed by a society established some years ago for the publication of literary remains in early English. He is known by the titles of the Grammarian and the Abbot ; and the writings attributed to him, which are very numerous, are mostly theological and grammatical. The JElfric Society has published a collection of his Homilies, edited, with a translation, by Mr. Thorpe, in 2 vols. 8vo., 1854 ; and a Latin grammar, compiled by him in his native language, first published by Somner in his Dictionarium Saxonico-Latino-Anglicum, Oxford, 1659, has been reprinted in part, from a different manuscript, at the expense of Sir Thomas Phillipps. For further information respecting iElfric and his works the reader is referred to the account of him given bv Mr. Wrio-ht in the first volume of the Biographia Britannica Literaria, pp. 480- 494. His Homilies, Mr. Wright observes, are " written in very easy Anglo-Saxon, and form on that account the best book for the student who is beginning to study the language." THE NORMAN CONQUEST. The year 1066 is memorable as that of the Norman Conquest, — the conquest of England by the Normans. The conquests of which we read in the history of nations are of three kinds. Some- times one population has been overwhelmed by or driven before another as it might have been by an inundation of the sea, or at the most a small number of the old inhabitants of the invaded ter- ritory have been permitted to remain on it as the bondsmen of theii conquerors. This appears to have been the usual mode of pro- ceeding of the barbarous races, as we call them, by which the greater part of Europe was occupied in early times, in their con- .ests with one another. When the Teuton or Goth from the one 62 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. side of the Rhine attacked the Celt on the other side, the whole tribe precipitated itself upon what was the object at once of its hos- tility and of its cupidity. Or even if it was one division of the great Gothic race that made war upon another, as, for instance, the Scandinavian upon any Germanic country, the course that was taken was commonly, or at least frequently, the same. The land was cleared by driving away all who could fly, and the universal massacre of the rest. This primitive kind of invasion and conquest belonged properly to the night of barbarism, but in certain of the extreme parts of the European system something of it survived down to a comparatively late date. Much that Ave are told, of the manner in which Britain was wrested from its previous Celtic occu pants by the Angles and Saxons in the fifth and sixth centuries of our era would lead us to think that the enterprise of these invaders was both originally conceived and conducted throughout in this spirit. Nay, for some centuries after this we have the Danes in their descents and inroads upon all parts of the British territories still acting, apparently, in the same style. But, ever from the time of the settlement of the barbarous nations in the more central prov- inces of the old Roman Empire, another kind of conquest had come into use among them. Corrupted and enfeebled as it was, the advanced civilization which they now encountered seems to have touched them as with a spell, or rather could not but communicate to its assailants something of its own spirit. A policy of mere destruction was evidently not the course to be adopted here. The value of the conquest lay mainly in preserving as far as possible both the stupendous material structures and the other works of art by which the soil was everywhere covered and adorned, and the living intelligence and skill of which all these wonders were the product. Hence the second kind of conquest, in which for the first time the conquerors were contented to share the conquered country, usually according to a strictly defined proportional division, with its previous occupants. But this system too was only transitory. It passed away with the particular crisis which gave birth to it; and then arose the third and last kind of conquest, in which there is no general occupation of the soil of the conquered country by the con- querors, but only its dominion is acquired by them. The first of the three kinds of conquest, then, has for its object and effect the complete displacement of the ancient inhabitants. It is the kind which is proper to the contests of barbarians with THE NORMAN CONQUEST. 63 oarbarians. Under the second form of conquest the conquerors, recognizing a superiority to themselves in many other things even in those whom their superior force or ferocity has subdued, feel that they will gain most by foregoing something of their right to the wholesale seizure and appropriation of the soil, and neither wholly destroying or expelling its ancient possessors, nor even reducing them to a state of slavery, but only treating them as a lower caste. This is the form proper and natural to the exceptional and rare case of the conquest of a civilized by a barbarous people. Finally, there is that kind of subjugation of one people or country by another which results simply in the overthrow of the independence of the former, and the substitution in it or over it of a foreign for a native government. This is generally the only kind of conquest which attends upon the wars of civilized nations with one another. The conquest of England by the Normans in the year 1066 may be regarded as having been professedly a conquest of this last description. The age of both the first and the second kinds of conquest was over, at least everywhere throughout Europe except it may be onjy along some few portions of its extreme northern boundary. ■'Both the English and the Normans stood indisputably within the pale of civilization, the former boasting the possession both of Christianity and of a national literature for four or five cen- turies, the latter, if more recently reclaimed from paganism and barbarism, nevertheless already recognized as one of the most brilliantly gifted of European races, and distinguished for their superior aptitude in the arts both of war and of peace, of polity and of song./'And the Norman leader, having with him in his enterprise tne approval and sanction of the Church, claimed the English crown as his by right ; nor were there probably wanting many Englishmen, although no doubt the general national feeling was different, who held his claim to be fully as good in law and jus- tice as that of his native competitor. In taking the style of the Conqueror with respect to England, as he had been wont to take that of the Bastard with reference to his ancestral Normandy, Wil- liam, as has been often explained, probably meant nothing more than that he had acquired his English sovereignty for himself, by the nomination or bequest of his relation King Edward, or in what- ever other way, and had not succeeded to it under the ordinary rule of descent. Such a right of property is still, in the old feudal language, technically described in the law of Scotland as acquired 64 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. by conquest, and in that of England by purchase, whichjs etymo- logically of tlie same meaning, — the one word being the Latin Conqucestus, or Conquisitio, the other PerquWdto. And in point of fact the Normans never transferred themselves m a body, or generally, to England. They did not, like the bar- barons populations of a preceding age, abandon for this new coun- try the one in which they had previously dwelt. England was never thus taken possession of by the Normans. It was never colonized by these foreigners, or occupied by them in any other than a military sense. The Norman Duke invaded it with an army, raised partly among his own subjects, partly drawn from other regions of the Continent, and so made himself master of it. It received a foreign government, but not at all a new population. Two causes, however, meeting from opposite points, and working together, soon produced a result which was to some extent the same that would have been produced by a Norman colonization. The first was the natural demand on the part of William's follow- ers or fellow-soldiers for a share in the profits and advantages of their common enterprise, which would probably in any case have compelled him eventually to surrender his new subjects to spolia- tion ; the second was the equally natural restlessness of the latter under the foreign yoke that had beep imposed upoiiihem, bv which they f the same kind in the beginning of the fifteenth century. In France, indeed, the learning that had flourished in the time of Charlemagne had never undergone so exeat a decay as had befallen that of England since the days of Alfred. The schools planted by Alcuin and the philosophy taught by Erigena had both been Derpetuated by a line of the disciples and followers of these dis- tinguished masters, which had never been altogether interrupted. But in the tenth century this learning of the West had met and pret, ARABIC AND OTHER NEW LEARNING. 69 been intermixed with a new learning originally from the East, but obtained directly from the Arab conquerors of Spain. The Arabs had first become acquainted with the literature of Greece in the beginning of the eighth century, and it instantly exercised upon their minds an awakening influence of the same powerful kind with that with which it again kindled Europe seven centuries afterwards. One difference, however, between the two cases is very remarkable. The mighty effects that arose out of the second revival of the an- cient Greek literature in the modern world were produced almost solely by its eloquence and poetry ; but these were precisely the parts of it that were neglected by the Arabs. The Greek books which they sought after with such extraordinary avidity were almost exclusively those that related either to metaphysics and mathe- matics on the one hand, or to medicine, chemistiy, botany, and the other departments of physical knowledge, on the other. All Greek works of these descriptions that they could procure they not only translated into their own language, but in course of time illustrated with voluminous commentaries. The prodigious magnitude to which this Arabic literature eventually grew will stagger the reader who has adopted the common notion with regard to what are called the middle or the dark ages. " The royal library of the Fatimites " (sovereigns of Egypt), says Gibbon, " consisted of 100,000 man- uscripts, elegantly transcribed and splendidly bound, which were lent, without jealousy or avarice, to the students of Cairo. Yet this collection must appear moderate, if we can believe that the Ommi- ades of Spain had formed a library of 600,000 volumes, 44 of which were employed in the mere catalogues. Their capital Cor- dova, with the adjacent towns of Malaga, Almeria, and Murcia, had given birth to more than 300 writers, and above 70 public libraries were opened in the cities of the Andalusian kingdom." x The difficulty we have in conceiving the existence of a state of things such as that here described arises in great part from the cir- cumstance of the entire disappearance now, and for so long a period, of all this Arabic power and splendor from the scene of European affairs. But, long extinct as it has been, the dominion of the Arabs in Europe was no mere momentary blaze. It lasted, with little diminution, for nearly five hundred years, a period as long as from the age of Chaucer to the present day, and abundantly sufficient for the growth of a body of literature and science even 1 Decline and Fall of the Rnm. Emp. c. lii. 70 ENGLISH LITERATURE AVD LANGUAGE. of the wonderful extent that has been described. In the tenth century Arabic Spain was the fountain-head of learning in Europe. Thither students were accustomed to repair from every other coun- tiv to study in the Arabic schools; and many of the teachers in the chief towns of France and Italy had finished their education in these seminaries, and were now diffusing among their countrymen the new knowledge which they had thence acquired. The writings of several of the Greek authors, also, and especially those of Aris- totle, had been made generally known to scholars by Latin versions of them made from the Arabic. There is no trace of this new literature having found its way tc England before the Norman Conquest. But that revolution immedi- ately brought it in its train. " The Conqueror himself," observes a writer who has illustrated this subject with a profusion of curious learning, "patronized and loved letters. He filled the bishoprics and abbacies of England with the most learned of his countrymen, who had been educated at the University of Paris, at that time the most flourishing school in Europe. He placed Lanfranc, abbot of the monastery of St. Stephen at Caen, in the see of Canterbury, — an eminent master of logic, the subtleties of which he employed with great dexterity in a famous controversy concerning the real presence. Anselm, an acute metaphysician and theologian, his im- mediate successor in the same see, was called from the government of the abbey of Bee, in Normandy. Herman, a Norman, bishop of Salisbury, founded a noble library in the ancient cathedral of that sec. Many of the Norman prelates preferred in England by the Conqueror were polite scholars. Godfrey, prior of St. Swithin's at Winchester, a native of Cambray, was an elegant Latin epigram- matist, and wrote with the smartness and ease of Martial: a cir- cumstance which, by the way, shows that the literature of the monks at this period was of a more liberal cast than that which we commonry annex to their character and profession." 1 Geoffrey, dso, another learned Norman, came over from the University of Paris, ;iikI established a school at Dunstable, where, according to Matthew Paris, he composed a play, called the play of St. Catha- rine, which was acted by his scholars, dressed characteristically in copes borrowed from the sacrist of the neighboring abbey of St. Albans, of which Geoffrey afterwards became abbot. " The king 1 Warton's Dissertation on Introduction of Learning into England, prefixed to History »f English Poetry, p. cxii. (edit, of 1840.) ARABIC AND OTHER NEW LEARNING. 71 himself," Warton continues, " gave no small countenance to the clergy, in sending his son Henry Beauclerc to the abbey of Abing- don, where he was initiated in the sciences under the care of the abbot Grimbald, and Faritius, a physician of Oxford. Robert d'Oilly, constable of Oxford Castle, was ordered to pay for the board of the young prince in the convent, which the king himself fre- quently visited. Nor was William wanting in giving ample rev- enues to learning. He founded the magnificent abbeys of Battle and Selby, with other smaller convents. His nobles and their suc- cessors cooperated with this liberal spirit in erecting many monaste- ries. Herbert de Losinga, a monk of Normandy, bishop of Thet- ford in Norfolk, instituted and endowed with large possessions a Benedictine abbey at Norwich, consisting of sixty monks. To men- tion no more instances, such great institutions of persons dedicated to religious and literary leisure, while they diffused an air of civil- ity, and softened the manners of the people in their respective circles, must have afforded powerful incentives to studious pursuits, and have consequently added no small degree of stability to the interests of learning." x To this it may be added, that most of the successors of the Con- queror continued to show the same regard for learning of which he had set the example. Nearly all of them had themselves received a learned education. Besides Henry Beauclerc, Henry II., whose father Geoffrey Plantagenet, Earl of Anjou, was famous for his literary acquirements, had been carefully educated under the super- intendence of his admirable uncle, the Earl of Gloucester ; and he appears to have taken care that his children should not want the advantages he had himself enjoyed ; for at least the three eldest, Henry, Geoffrey, and Richard, are all noted for their literary as well as their other accomplishments. What learning existed, however, was still for the most part con- fined to the clergy. Even the nobility — although it cannot be supposed that they were left altogether without literary instruction — appear to have been very rarely initiated in any of those branches which were considered as properly constituting the scholarship of the times. The familiar knowledge of the Latin language in par- ticular, which was then the key to all other erudition, seems to have been almost exclusively confined to churchmen, and to those 1 Ibid. Some inaccuracies in Warton's account of Geoffrey and his play are col- lected from a note by Mr. Douce. T2 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. few of the laity who embraced the profession of schoolmasters, as some, at least on the Continent, were now wont to do. The con- temporary writer of a Lite of Becket relates, that when Henry II., in 1164, sent an embassy to the Pope, in which the Earl of Arun- del and three other noblemen were associated with an archbishop, lour bishops, and three of the royal chaplains, four of the church- men, at the audience to which they were admitted, first deliv- ered themselves in as many Latin harangues ; and then the Earl of Arundel stood up, and made a speech in English, which he began with the words, " We, who are illiterate laymen, do not understand one word of what the bishops have said to your holiness." The notion that learning properly belonged exclusively to the clergy, and that it was a possession in which the laity were unwor- thy to participate, was in some degree the common belief of the age, and by the learned themselves was almost universally held as an article of faith that admitted of no dispute. Nothing can be more strongly marked than the tone of contempt which is expressed for the mass of the community, the unlearned vulgar, by the scholars of this period : in their correspondence with one another especially, they seem to look upon all beyond their own small circle as beings of an interior species. This pride of theirs, however, worked ben- eficially upon the whole: in the first place, it was in great part merely a proper estimation of the advantages of knowledge over ignorance ; and, secondly, it helped to make the man of the pen a match for him of the sword, — the natural liberator of the human race for its natural oppressor. At the same time, it intimates very forcibly at once the comparative rarity of the highly prized distinc- tion, and the depth of the darkness that still reigned far and wide around the few scattered points of light. SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES. Si iimmi ~ ;, n d other seminaries of learning, however, were greatly multiplied in this age, and were also elevated in their character, in England a. well as elsewhere. Both Archbishop Lanfranc and his raccessor Anselm exerted themselves witli great zeal in establish- '".^ proper scl Is in connection with the cathedrals and monaste- SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES. 73 ries in all parts of the kingdom ; and the object was one which was also patronized and promoted by the general voice of the Church. In 1179 it was ordered by the third general council of Lateran, that in every cathedral there should be appointed and maintained a head teacher, or scholastic, as was the title given to him, who, besides keeping a school of his own, should have authority over all the other schoolmasters of the diocese, and the sole right of grant- ing licenses, without which no one should be entitled to teach. In former times the bishop himself had frequently undertaken the office of scholastic of the diocese ; but its duties were rarely efficiently performed under that arrangement, and at length they seem to have come to be generally altogether neglected. After the custom was introduced of maintaining it as a distinct office, it was filled in many cases by the most learned persons of the time. And besides these cathedral schools there were others established in all the religious houses, many of which were also of high reputa- tion. It is reckoned that of religious houses of all kinds there were founded in England no fewer than five hundred and fifty- seven between the Conquest and the death of King John ; and, besides these, there still existed many others that had been founded in earlier times. All these cathedral and conventual schools, how- ever, appear to have been intended exclusively for the instruction of persons proposing to make the Church their profession. But mention is also made of others established both in many of the principal cities and even in the villages, which would seem to have been open to the community at large ; for it may be presumed that the laity, though generally excluded from the benefits of a learned education, were not left wholly without the means of obtaining some elementary instruction. Some of these city schools, how- ever, were eminent as institutes of the highest departments of learning. One in particular is mentioned in the History ascribed to Matthew Paris as established in the town of St. Albans, which was presided over by Matthew, a physician, who had been educated at the famous school of Salerno, in Italy, and by Ins nephew, Garinus, who was eminent for his knowledge of the civil and canon laws, and where we may therefore suppose instructions were given both in law and in medicine. According to the account of London by William Stephanides, or Fitz-Stephen, written in the reign of Henry II., there were then three of these schools of a higher order established in London, besides several others that were occasionally VOL. i. 10 74 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. opened by distinguished teachers. The London schools, however, do not seem to have been academies of science and the higher Learning, like that of St. Albans: Fitz-Stephen's description would rather lead us to infer that, although they were attended by pupils of different ages and degrees of proficiency, they were merely schools of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectics. " On holidays," he says, " it is usual for these schools to hold public assemblies in the churches, in which the scholars engage in demonstrative or logical disputations, some using enthymems, and others perfect syllogisms ; some aiming at nothing but to gain the victory, and make an osten- tatious display of their acuteness, while others have the investiga- tion of truth in view. Artful sophists on these occasions acquire great applause ; some by a prodigious inundation and flow of words, others by their specious but fallacious arguments. After the dispu- tations other scholars deliver rhetorical declamations, in which they observe all the rules of art, and neglect no topic of persuasion. Even the younger boys in the different schools contend against each other, in verse, about the principles of grammar, and the pret- erites and supines of verbs." The twelfth century may be considered as properly the age of the institution of what we now call Universities in Europe, though many of the establishments that then assumed the regular form of universities had undoubtedly existed long before as schools or studia. This was the case with the oldest of the European universities, with Bologna and Paris, and also, in all probability, with Oxford and Cambridge. But it may be questioned if even Bologna, the mother of all the rest, was entitled by any organization or constitu- tion it had received to take a higher name than a school or studium before the latter part of this century. It is admitted that it was not till about the year 1200 that the school out of which the Uni- versity of Paris arose had come to subsist as an incorporation, divided into nations, and presided over by a rector. 1 The Univer- sity of Oxford, properly so called, is probably of nearly the same antiquity. It seems to have been patronized and fostered by Richard I., as that of Paris was by his great rival, Philip Augustus. Both Oxford and Cambridge had undoubtedly been eminent seats of learning long before this time, as London, St. Albans, and othei ?iti»'s had also been ; hut there is no evidence that either the one or the other had at an earlier date become anything more than a 1 See Crevier, Hist, de l'Univ. de Paris, i. 255. SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES. 75 great school, or even that it was distinguished by any assigned rank or privileges above the other great schools of the kingdom. In the reign of Richard I. we find the University of Oxford recognized as an establishment of the same kind with the University of Paris, and as the rival of that seminary. We have the following account of what is commonly deemed the origin of the University of Cambridge in the continuation of the history of Ingulphus, attributed to Peter of Blois, under the year 1109 : — " Joffrid, abbot of Croylancl, sent to his manor of Cot- tenham, near Cambridge, Master Gislebert, his fellow-monk, and professor of theology, with three other monks who had followed him into England ; who, being very well instructed in philosophical theorems and other primitive sciences, went every day to Cam- bridge, and, having hired a certain public barn, taught the sciences openly, and in a little time collected a great concourse of scholars ; for, in the very second year after their arrival, the number of their scholars from the town and country increased so much that there was no house, barn, nor church capable of containing them. For this reason they separated into different parts of the town, and, imitating the plan of the Studium of Orleans, brother Odo, who was eminent as a grammarian and satirical poet, read grammar, according to the doctrine of Priscian and of his commentator Remigius, to the boys and younger students, that were assigned to him, early in the morning. At one o'clock, brother Terricus, a most acute sophist, read the Logic of Aristotle, according to the Introductions and Commentaries of Porphyry and Averroes, 1 to those who were further advanced. At three, brother William read lectures on Tully's Rhetoric and Quintiiian's Institutions. But Master Gislebert, being ignorant of the English, but very ex- pert in the Latin and French languages, preached in the several churches to the people on Sundays and holidays." 2 The history in which this passage occurs is, as will presently be shown, as apocryphal as that of which it professes to be the continuation ; but even if we waive the question of its authenticity, there is here no hint of any sort of incorporation or public establishment whatever; 1 The works of Averroes, however, who died in 1198, were certainly not in ex- istence at the time here referred to. Either Peter of Blois must have been igno- rant of this, or — if he was really the author of the statement — the name must have been the insertion of some later transcriber of his text. a Petri Blesensis Continuatio ad Historiam Ingulphi ; in Rerum Anglicarum Script. Vet. : Oxon. 1684, p. 114. The translation is that given by Henry in his History of Britain. 76 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. the description is merely that of a school set on foot and conducted by an association of private individuals. And even this private school would seem to have been first opened only in the year 1109, although there may possibly have been other schools taught in the place before. It may be gathered from what is added, that at the time when the account, if it was written by Peter of Blois, must have been drawn up (the latter part of the same century), the school founded by Gislebert and his companions had attained to great celebrity ; but there is nothing to lead us to suppose that it had even then become more than a very distinguished school. " From this little fountain," he says, " which hath swelled into a great river, we now behold the city of God made glad, and all England rendered fruitful, by many teachers and doctors issuing from Cambridge, after the likeness of the holy Paradise." Notwithstanding, however, the rising reputation of Oxford and Cambridge, the most ambitious of the English students continued to resort for part of their education to the more distinguished foreign schools during the whole of the twelfth century. Thus, it is recorded that several volumes of the Arabian philosophy were brought into England by Daniel Merlac, who, in the year 1185, had gone to Toledo to study mathematics. Salerno was still the chief school of medicine, and Bologna of law, although Oxford a\:is also becoming famous for the latter study. But, as a place of general instruction, the University of Paris stood at the head of all others. Paris Avas then wont to be styled, by way of preemi- nence, the City of Letters. So many Englishmen, or, to speak more strictly, subjects of the English crown, were constantly found among the students at this great seminary, that they formed one of the four nations into which the members of the university were divided. The English students are described by their country- man, the poet Nigellus Wireker, in the latter part of the twelfth century, in such a manner as to show that they were already noted for that spirit of display and expense which still makes so promi- nent a part of our continental reputation : — Moribus egregii, verbo vultuque venusti, Ingenio pollent, consilioque vigent; Dona pluunt populis, et detestantur avaros, Fercula multiplicant, et sine lege bibunt. 1 1 These verses arc quoted by A. Wood, Antiq. Oxon., p. 55. The poem in which they occur is entitled Speculum Stultorum, or sometimes Brunellus (from its principa" personage). It has been repeatedly printed. SCHOOLS AND UNIVERSITIES. 77 Of noble manners, gracious look and speech, Strong sense, with genius brightened, shines in each. Their free hand still rains largess ; when they dine Course follows course, in rivers flows the wine. Among the students at the University of Paris in the twelfth century are to be found nearly all the most distinguished names among the learned of every country. One of the teachers, the celebrated Abelard, is said to have alone had as pupils twenty persons who afterwards became cardinals, and more than fifty who rose to be bishops and archbishops. Thomas a Becket received part of his education here. Several of the most eminent teachers ■were Englishmen. Among these may be particularly mentioned Robert of Melun (so called from having first taught in that city), and Robert White, or Pullus, as he is called in Latin. Robert of Melun, who afterwards became bishop of Hereford, distinguished himself by the zeal and ability with which he opposed the novel views which the rising sect of the Nominalists were then introduc- ing both into philosophy and theology. He is the author of sev- eral theological treatises, none of which, however, have been printed. Robert White, after teaching some years at Paris, where he was attended by crowded audiences, was induced to re- turn to his own country, where he is said to have read lectures on theology at Oxford for five years, which greatly contributed to spread the renoAvn of that rising seminary. After having declined a bishopric offered to him by Henry I., he went to reside at Rome in 1143, on the invitation of Celestine II., and was soon after made a cardinal and chancellor of the holy see. One work written by him has been printed, a summary of theology, under the then common title of The Book of Sentences, which has the reputation of being distinguished by the superior correctness of its style and the lucidness of its method. Another celebrated name amonfj the Englishmen who are re- corded to have studied at Paris in those days is that of Nicolas Breakspear, who afterwards became pope by the title of Adrian IV. But, above all others, John of Salisbury deserves to be here mentioned. It is in his writings that we find the most complete account that has reached us not only of the mode of study fol- lowed at Paris, but of the entire learning of the age. 78 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. RISE OF THE SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. At this time those branches of literary and scientific knowl- edge which were specially denominated the arts were considered as divided into two great classes, — the first or more elementary of which, comprehending Grammar, Rhetoric, and Logic, was called the Trivium ; the second, comprehending Music, Arith- metic, Geometry, and Astronomy, the Quadrivium. The seven arts, so classified, used to be thus enumerated in a Latin hexam- eter : — Lingua, Tropus, Ratio, Numerus, Tonus, Angulus, Astra ; or, with definitions subjoined, in two still more singularly con- structed verses, — Gram, loquitur, Dia. vera docet, Rhet. verba colorat, Mm. cadit, Ar. numerat, Geo. ponderat, Ast. colit astra. John of Salisbury speaks of this system of the sciences as an ancient one in his day. " The Trivium and Quadrivium," he says, in his work entitled Metalogicus, "were so much admired by our ancestors in former ages, that they imagined they com- prehended all Avisdom and learning, and were sufficient for the solution of all questions and the removing of all difficulties ; for whoever understood the Trivium could explain all manner of books without a teacher ; but he who was farther advanced, and was master also of the Quadrivium, could answer all questions and unfold all the secrets of nature." The present age, however, had outgrown the simplicity of this arrangement ; and various new studies had been added to the ancient seven, as necessary tc complete the circle of the sciences and the curriculum of a liberal education. It was now, in particular, that Theology first came to be ranked is a science. This was the age of St. Bernard, the last of the fathers, and of Peter Lombard, the first of the Schoolmen. The distinction between these two classes of writers is, that the latter do, and the former do not, treat their subject in a system- atizing spirit. The change was the consequence of the cultiva tion of the Aristotelian logic and metaphysics. When these stud- RISE OF THE SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. 79 ies were first introduced into the schools of the West, they were wholly unconnected with theology. But, especially at a time when all the learned were churchmen, it was impossible that the great instrument of thought and reasoning could long remain unapplied to the most important of all the subjects of thought, — the subject of religion. It has already been remarked that John Erigena and other Irish divines introduced philosophy and metaphysics into the discussion of questions of religion as early as the ninth century ; and they are consequently entitled to be regarded as having first set the example of the method afterwards pursued by the school- men. But, although the influence of their writings may probably be traced in preparing the way for the introduction of the scholas- tic system, and also, afterwards, perhaps, in modifying its spirit, that system was derived immediately, in the shape in which it ap- peared in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, from another source. Erigena was a Platonist : the spirit of his philosophy was that of the school of Alexandria. But the first schoolmen, properly so called, were Aristotelians : they drew their logic and metaphysics originally from the Latin translations of the works of Aristotle made from the Arabic. And they may also have been indebted for some of their views to the commentaries of the Arabic doctors. But, whether they took their method of philosophy entirely from the ancient heathen sage, or in part from his modern Mahomedan interpreters and illustrators, it could in neither case have had at first any necessary or natural alliance with Christianity. Yet it very soon, as we have said, formed this alliance. Both Lanfranc and Anselm, although not commonly reckoned among the school- men, were imbued with the spirit of the new learning, and it is infused throughout their theological writings. Abelard soon after, before he was yet a churchman, may almost be considered to have wielded it as a weapon of scepticism. Even so used, however, re- ligion was still the subject to which it was applied. At last came Peter Lombard, who, by the publication, about the middle of the twelfth century, of his celebrated Four Books of Sentences, prop- erly founded the system of what is called the Scholastic Theol- ogy. The schoolmen, from the Master of the Sentences, as Lom- bard was designated, down to Francis Suarez, who died after the commencement of the seventeenth century, were all theologians. Although, however, religious speculation was the field of thought upon which the spirit of the Aristotelian philosophy chiefly ex 80 JiJNUiJSH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. pended itself, there was scarcely any one of the arts or sciences upon which it did not in some degree seize. The scholastic logic became the universal instrument of thought and study : every branch of human learning was attempted to be pursued by its assistance ; and most branches were more or less affected by its influence in regard to the forms which they assumed. JOHN OF SALISBURY. - PETER OF BLOIS. John of Salisbury went to complete his education at Paris in the year 1136. " When I beheld," he writes in a letter to his friend Becket, " the reverence paid to the clergy, the majesty and glory of the whole Church, and the various occupations of those who applied themselves to philosophy in that city, it raised my admiration as if I had seen the ladder of Jacob, the top of which reached to Heaven, while the steps were crowded with angels ascending and descending." The first master whose lee- tures he attended was the renowned Abelard, still, after all the vicissitudes of his life, teaching with undiminished glory, in the midst of a vast confluence of admiring disciples, on the Mount of St. Genevieve. " I drank in," says his English pupil, " with incredible avidity, eveiy word that fell from his lips ; but he soon, to my infinite regret, retired." Abelard lived only a few years after this date, which he spent in devotion and entire seclusion from the world. John of Salisbury then studied dialectics for two veins under two other masters, one of whom was his countryman, Robert de Melun, mentioned above. After this he returned to the study of grammar and rhetoric, which he pursued for three years under William de Conches, of whose method of teaching he has left a particular account. It appears to have embraced a critical exposition both of the style and the matter of the writers com- mented upon, and to have been well calculated to nourish both the understanding and the taste. After this he spent seven years under other masters, partly in the further prosecution of his ac- quaintance with the writers of antiquity and the practice of Latin composition, partly in the study of the mathematics and theology. The entire course thus occupied twelve years; but some, it would JOHN OF SALISBURY. — PETER OF BLOIS. 8l appear, devoted the whole of this time to the study of dialectics, or logic, alone. John of Salisbury's treatise entitled Metalogicus is intended principally to expose the absurdity and injurious effects of this exclusive devotion to the art of wrangling ; and, although it must be considered as written with some degree of satirical license, the representation which it gives of the state of things produced by the new spirit that had gone abroad over the realms of learning is verv curious and interesting. The turn of the writer's own genius was decidedly to the rhetorical rather than the metaphysi- cal, and he was not very well qualified, perhaps, to perceive certain of the uses or recommendations of the study against which he directs his attack ; but the extravagances of its devotees, it may be admitted, fairly exposed them to his ridicule and castigation. " I wish," he says in one place, " to behold the light of truth, which these logicians say is only revealed to them. I approach them, — I beseech them to instruct me, that, if possible, I may become as wise as one of them. They consent, — they promise great things, — and at first they command me to observe a Pythagorean silence, that I may be admitted into all the secrets of wisdom which they pretend are in their possession. But by and by they permit, and even command me, to prattle and quibble with them. This they call disputing ; this they say is logic ; but I am no wiser." He accuses them of wasting their ingenuity in the discussion of such puerile puzzles as whether a person in buying a whole cloak also bought the cowl ; or whether, when a hog was carried to market with a rope tied about its neck, and held at the other end by a man, the hog was really carried to market by the man or by the rope. It must be confessed that, if their logic had been worth much, it ought to have made short work with these questions, sup- posing them to be worth settling at all. Our author adds, however, that they were declared to be questions which could not be solved, the arguments on both sides exactly balancing each other. But his quarrel with the dialecticians was chiefly on the ground of the disregard and aversion they manifested, in their method of exer- cising the intellectual powers, to all polite literature, to all that was merely graceful and ornamental. And there can be no question that the ascendancy of the scholastic philosophy was fatal for the time to the cultivation of polite literature in Europe. So long as it reigned supreme in the schools, learning was wholly divorced from taste. The useful utterly rejected all connection with the VOL. I. 11 82 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. beautiful. The head looked down with contempt upon the heart. Poetry and fiction, and whatever else belonged to the imaginative part of our nature, were abandoned altogether to the unlearned, to the makers of songs and lays for the people. It was probably fortunate for poetry, and the kindred forms of literature, in the end, that they were thus left solely to the popular cultivation for a time : they drew nourishment and new life from the new soil into which they were transplanted ; and their produce has been the richer and the racier for it ever since. The revival of polite liter- ature probably came at a better time in the fifteenth than if it had come in the twelfth century. Yet it was not to be expected, that, when it was threatened with blight and extinction at the earlier era, its friends should either have been able to foresee its resurrec- tion two or three centuries later, or should have been greatly con- soled by that prospect if they had. John of Salisbury's chief woi'k is his Polycraticon, or, as he fur- ther entitles it, A Treatise in eight books, on the Frivolities of Courtiers and the Footsteps of Philosophers (De Nugis Curialium et Vestigiis Philosophorum). " It is," says Warton, " an extremely pleasant miscellany, replete with erudition, and a judgment of men and things which properly belongs to a more sensible and reflecting period. His familiar acquaintance with the classics appears not only from the happy facility of his language, but from the many citations of the purest Roman authors with which his works are perpetually interspersed." J Pie also wrote Latin verses with ex- treme elegance. John of Salisbury died bishop of Chartres in 1182. Peter of Blois (or Petrus Blesensis), a native of the town in, France from which he takes his name, was another distinguished cultivator of polite literature in the same age. Among the writ- ings he has left us, his Letters collected by himself to the number of 134, are especially interesting, abounding as they do in graphic descriptions of the manners and characters of the time. But neither in elegance of taste and style, nor in general literary accomplishment, is the Frenchman to be compared with his Eng- lish contemporary. 1 Introd. of Learning into Eng. p. cxx. (ed. 1840). 1-wAnfete. CLASSICAL LEARNING. — MATHEMATICS. — MEDICINE. — LAW. — BOOKS. The classical knowledge of this period, however, was almost con- fined to the Roman authors, and some of the most eminent of these were as yet unstudied and unknown. Even John of Salisbury, though a few Greek words are to be found in his compositions, seems to have had only the slightest possible acquaintance with that language. Both it and the Hebrew, nevertheless, were known to Abelard and Eloisa ; and it is probable that there were both in England and other European countries a few students of the Oriental tongues, for the acquisition of which inducements and facilities must have been presented, not only by the custom of re- sorting to the Arabic colleges in Spain, and the constant intercourse with the East kept up by the pilgrimages and the crusades, but also by the numbers of learned Jews that were everywhere to be found. In England the Jews had schools in London, York, Lin- coln, Lynn, Norwich, Oxford, Cambridge, and other towns, which appear to have been attended by Christians as well as by those of their own persuasion. Some of these seminaries, indeed, were rather colleges than schools. Besides the Hebrew and Arabic Ian- guages, arithmetic and medicine are mentioned among the branches of Imowledo-e that were taught in them : and the masters were generally the most distinguished of the rabbis. In the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the age of Sarchi, the Kimchis, Ma'imonides, and other distinguished names, rabbinical learning was in an emi- nently flourishing state. There is no certain evidence that the Arabic numerals were yet known in Europe : they certainly were not in general use. Al- though the Elements of Euclid and other geometrical works had been translated into Latin from the Arabic, the mathematical sciences appear to have been but little studied. " The science of demonstration," says John of Salisbury, in his Metalogicus, " is of all others the most difficult, and alas ! is almost quite neglected, except by a very few who apply to the study of the mathematics, and particularly of geometry. But this last is at present very lit- tle attended to amongst us, and is only studied by some persons in Spain, Egypt, and Arabia, for the sake of astronomy. One reason >f this is, that those parts of the works of Aristotle that relate to 84 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. the demonstrative sciences are so ill translated, and so incorrectly transcribed, that we meet with insurmountable difficulties in everj chapter." The name of the mathematics at this time, indeed, was chiefly given to the science of astrology. " Mathematicians," says Peter of Blois, " are those who, from the position of the stars, the aspect of the firmament, and the motions of the planets, discover things that are to come." Astronomy, however, or the true science of the stars, which was zealously cultivated by the Arabs in the East and in Spain, seems also to have had some cultivators among the learned of Christian Europe. Latin translations existed of several Greek and Arabic astronomical works. In the History attributed to Ingulphus, is the following curious description of a sort of scheme or representation of the planetary system called the Nadir, which is stated to have been destroyed when the abbey of Croyiand was burnt in 1091 : " We then lost a most beautiful and precious table, fabricated of different kinds of metals, according to the variety of the stars and heavenly signs. Saturn was of copper, Jupiter of gold, Mars of iron, the sun of latten, Mercury of amber, Venus of tin, the Moon of silver. The eyes were charmed, as well as the mind instructed, by beholding the colure circles, with the zodiac and all its signs, formed with wonderful art, of metals and precious stones, according to their several natures, forms, figures, and colors. It was the most admired and celebrated Nadir in all England." These last words would seem to imply that such tables Avere then not uncommon. This one, it is stated, had been presented to a former abbot of Croyiand by a king of France. John of Salisbury, in his account of his studies at Paris, makes no mention cither of medicine or of law. With regard to the for- mer, indeed, he elsewhere expressly tells us that the Parisians themselves used to go to study it at Salerno and Montpellier. By tlie beginning of" the thirteenth century, however, we find a school of medicine established at Paris, which soon became very cele- brated. Of course there were, at an earlier date, persons who practised the medical art in that city. The physicians in all the countries of Europe at this period were generally churchmen. Many of the Arabic medical works were early translated into Latin ; but the Parisian professors soon began to publish treatises on the art of their own. The science of the physicians of this age, besides comprehending whatever was to be learned respecting the diagnosties and treatment of diseases from Hippocrates, Galen, MEDICINE AND LAW. 85 and the other ancient writers, embraced a considerable body of botanical and chemical knowledge. Chemistry in particular the Arabs had carried far beyond the point at which it had been left by the ancients. Of anatomy little could as yet be accurately known, while the dissection of the human subject was not practised. Yet it would appear that physicians and surgeons were already begin- ning to be distinguished from each other. Both the canon and civil laws were also introduced into the routine of study at the Univer- sity of Paris soon after the time when John of Salisbury studied there. The canon law was originally considered to be a part of theology, and only took the form of a separate study after the pub- lication of the systematic compilation of it called the Decretum of Gratian, in 1151. Gratian was a monk of Bologna, and his work, not the first collection of the kind, but the most complete and the best arranged that had yet been compiled, was immediately intro- duced as a text-book in that university. It may be regarded as having laid the foundation of the science of the canon law, in the same manner as the system of the scholastic philosophy was founded by Peter Lombard's Book of Sentences. Regular lecturers upon it very soon appeared at Orleans, at Paris, at Oxford, and all the other chief seats of learning in western Christendom ; and before the end of the twelfth century no other study was more eagerly pursued, or attracted greater crowds of students, than that of the canon law. One of its first and most celebrated teachers at Paris was Girard la Pucelle, an Englishman, who afterwards became bishop of Lichfield and Coventry. Girard taught the canon law in Paris from 1160 to 1177 ; and, in consideration of his distinguished merits and what was deemed the great importance of his instruc- tions, he received from Pope Alexander III. letters exempting him from the obligation of residing on his preferments in England while he was so engaged ; this being, it is said, the first known example of such a privilege being granted to any professor. * The same professors who taught the canon law taught also, along with it, the civil law, the systematic study of which, likewise, took its rise in this century, and at the University of Bologna, where the Pandects of Justinian — of which a more perfect copy than had before been known is said to have been found in 1137 at Amain 2 — were arranged 1 Crevier, Hist, de l'Univ. de Paris, i. 244. 2 "The discovery of the Pandects at Amalfi," says Gibbon, "is first noticed (in 1501) by Ludovicus Bologninus, on the faith of a Pisan Chronicle, without a name or date. The whole story, though unknown to the twelfth century, embellished by 86 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. and first lectured upon by the German Irnerius, — the Lamp of the Law, as he was called, — about the year 1150. Both the canon and the civil law, however, are said to have been taught a few years before this time at Oxford by Roger, surnamed the Bachelor, a monk of Bee, in Normandy. The study was, from the first, vehemently opposed by the practitioners of the common law ; but, sustained by the influence of the Church, and eventually also fa- vored by the government, it rose above all attempts to put it down. John of Salisbury affirms that, by the blessing of God, the more it was persecuted the more it flourished. Peter of Blois, in one of his letters, gives us the following curious account of the ardor with which it was pursued under the superintendence of Archbishop Theobald: — " In the house of my master, the Archbishop of Can- terbury, there are several very learned men, famous for their knowl- edge of law and politics, who spend the time between prayers and dinner in lecturing, disputing, and debating causes. To us all the knotty questions of the kingdom are referred, which are produced in the common hall, and every one in his order, having first pre- pared himself, declares, with all the eloquence and acuteness of which he is capable, but without wrangling, what is wisest and safest to be done. If God suggests the soundest opinion to the youngest amongst us, we all agree to it without envy or detraction." * Study in every department must have been still greatly impeded by the scarcity and high price of books ; but their multiplication now went on much more rapidly than it had formerly done. We have already noticed the immense libraries said to have been accu- mulated by the Arabs, both in their Oriental and European seats of empire. No collections to be compared with these existed any- where in Christian Europe ; but, of the numerous monasteries that were planted in every country, few were without libraries of greater or less extent. A convent without a library, it used to be prove r- bially said, was like a castle without an armory. When the mon- astery of Croyland was burnt in 1091, its library, according to In- gulphus, consisted of 900 volumes, of which 300 were very large. " In every groat abbey," says Warton, "there was an apartment failed the Scriptorium; where many writers were constantly busied in transcribing not only the service-books for the choir, but books ignorant ages, ami BUSpected by rigid criticism, is not however destitute of much internal probability ." 1 Ep. vi., as translated in Henry's History of Britain. THE LATIN LANGUAGE: 87 for the library. The Scriptorium of St. Albans abbey was built by Abbot Paulin, a Norman, who ordered many volumes to be writ- ten there, about the year 1080. Archbishop Lanfranc furnished the copies. Estates were often granted for the suppoit of the Scriptorium. ... I find some of the classics written in the English monasteries very early. Henry, a Benedictine monk of Hyde Abbey, near Winchester, transcribed in the year 1178 Ter- ence, Boethius, Suetonius, and Claudian. Of these he formed one book, illuminating the initials, and forming the brazen bosses of the covers with his own hands." Other instances of the same kind are added. The monks were much accustomed both to illuminate and to bind books, as well as to transcribe them. " The scarcity of parchment," it is afterwards observed, "undoubtedly prevented the transcription of many other books in these societies. About the year 1120, one Master Hugh, being appointed by the convent of St. Edmondsbury, in Suffolk, to write and illuminate a grand copy of the Bible for their library, could procure do parchment for this purpose in England." * Paper made of cotton, however, was certainly in common use in the twelfth century, though no evi- dence exists that that manufactured from linen rags was known till about the middle of the thirteenth. THE LATIN LANGUAGE. During the whole of the Anglo-Norman period, and down to a much later date, in England as in the other countries of Christendom, the common language of literary composition, in all works intended for the perusal of the educated classes, was still the Latin, the lan- guage of religion throughout the western world, as it had been from the first ages of the Church. Christianity had not only, through its monastic institutions, saved from destruction, in the breaking up of the Roman Empire, whatever we still possess of ancient litera- ti ire, but had also, by its priesthood and its ritual, preserved the language of Rome in some sort still a living and spoken tongue, — corrupted indeed by the introduction of many new and barbarous terms, and illegitimate acceptations, and by much bad taste in style 1 Introd. of Learning into England, p. cxvi. 88 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. and phraseology, but still wholly unchanged in its grammatical forms, and even in its vocabulary much less altered than it proba- bly would have been if it had continued all the while to be spoken and written by an unmixed Roman population. It would almost seem as if, even in the Teutonic countries, such as England, the services of the church, uninterruptedly repeated in the same words since the first ages, had kept up in the general mind something of a dim traditionary understanding of the old imperial tongue. We read of some foreign ecclesiastics, who could not speak English, being accustomed to preach to the people in Latin. A passage quoted above from the Croyland History seems to imply that Gisle- bert, or Gilbert, one of the founders of the University of Cam- bridge, used to employ Latin as well as French on such occasions. So, Giraldus Cambrensis tells us that, in a progress which he made through Wales in 1186, to assist Archbishop Baldwin in preaching a new crusade for the delivery of the Holy Land, he was always most successful when he appealed to the people in a Latin sermon ; he asserts, indeed, that they did not understand a word of it, although it never failed to melt them into tears, and to make them come in crowds to take the cross. No doubt they were acted upon chieflv through their ears and their imaginations, and for the most part only supposed that they comprehended what they were listen- ing to ; but it is probable that their self-deception was assisted by their catching a word or phrase here and there the meaning of which they really understood. The Latin tongue must in those days have been heard in common life on a thousand occasions from which it has now passed away. It was the language of all the learned professions, of law and physic as well as of divinity, in all their grades. It was in Latin that the teachers at the Universities (many of whom, as well as of the ecclesiastics, were foreigners) delivered their prelections in all the sciences, and that all the dis- putations and other exercises among the students were carried on. Tt was the same at all the monastic schools and other seminaries of learning. The number of persons by whom these various institu- tions were attended was very great : they were of all ages from boy- hood to advanced manhood : and poor scholars must have been found in every village, mingling with every class of the people, in some one or other of the avocations which they followed in the intervals of their attendance at the Universities, or after they had finished their education, from parish priests down to wandering beggars. LATIN POETS. — MAPES, ETC. Much Latin poetry was written in this age by Englishmen, some of it of a popular character. Warton enumerates Joannes Gram- maticus, 1 Lawrence, prior of Durham, Robert Dunstable, 2 the his- torians Henry of Huntingdon, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Eadmer, William of Malmesbury, Giraldus Cambrensis, and Geoffrey de Vinsauf (Gralfridus de Vinosalvo), John Hauvill, 3 Alexander Neckam, Walter Mapes, archdeacon of Oxford, and above all Joseph Iscanus, or Joseph of Exeter, whom he characterizes as " a miracle in classical composition ; " adding, in regard to one of his works, an epic on the subject of the Trojan war, " The diction of this poem is generally pure, the periods round, and the numbers harmonious ; and on the whole the structure of the ver- sification approaches nearly to that of polished Latin poetry." 4 Walter Mapes, or rather Map, who was archdeacon of Oxford, has the credit of having been the author of most of the pieces of Latin poetry belonging to the latter part of the twelfth century, which from their form and character may be supposed to have ac- quired anything like general popularity. In particular the famous drinking song, in rhyming or Leonine verse, beginning — " Meum est propositum in taberna mori," is attributed to this " genial archdeacon." 5 1 Mr. "Wright (Biog. Brit. Lit., ii. 48) denies the existence of this writer, supposed by Tanner and others to have belonged to the latter part of the eleventh century. The works attributed to him, he says, were certainly written by other persons. 2 His name appears to have been, not Robert, but Radulph (or Ralph). See Wright's Biog. Brit. Lit., ii. 212. 3 Mr. Wright has shown that the name is not Hanvill (as given by Warton), but Hauvill, or Hauteoille, in Latin De Alta Vitra. See his note on Warton, p. cxxi., and Biog. Brit. Lit., ii. 250, &c. 4 Dissertation on the Introd. of Learning into England, cxvii.-cxxxiv. 5 The expression is Warton's (Diss, on Introd. of Learning, p. cxxvi.). The Latin Poems commonly attributed to Walter Mapes have been printed by the Cam- den Society, as collected and edited by Thomas Wright, Esq., M. A., F. S. A., &c, 4to. Lond. 1841. In an introduction to this volume Mr. Wright remarks : — " The common notion that Walter Mapes was a 'jovial toper ' must be placed in the long ast of vulgar errors." The drinking song, nevertheless, as commonly given, forms part of one of the pieces which Mr. Wright has printed, one which he admits has been constantly attri crated to Mapes, and the authorship of which, he says, he hesi- tates, without any direct evidence to the contrary, in taking from him ; and the only correction which the perusal of the entire poem can make upon the impression Droduced by the part commonly quoted is to extend the sense in which we mus* vol i. 12 90 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. To Warton's dozen names, or thereby, Mr. Wright, in his ac- count of the writers of the Anglo-Norman Period (Biog. Brit. Lit., vol. ii. 1846), has added about a score of others belonging to Latin poets and versifiers of the first century and a half after the Conquest. Among the most important are those of Guy, or Wido, bishop of Amiens, author of an elegiac poem on the Battle of Hastings, discovered a few years ago at Brussels, and since sev- eral times printed; Godfrey, prior of Winchester, in the latter part of the eleventh century, whom Mr. Wright designates as " the first and best of the Anglo-Norman writers of Latin verse ; " Hilarius, author of three scriptural dramas and a number of shorter pieces, preserved in a single manuscript now in the Bibliotheque Impdriale at Paris, from which they were edited in 1838 by M. Champollion-Figeac ; John of Salisbury, a work in verse by whom was edited by Professor Christian Petersen, at Hamburgh, in 1843 ; and Nigellus Wireker, for whose surname, however, Mr. Wright finds no satisfactory authority, the author, among other pieces, of the Speculum Stultorum referred to in a preceding page. LATIN CHRONICLERS. But by far the most valuable portion of our Latin literature of this age consists of the numerous historical works which it has be- queathed to us. As these works have a double interest for the English reader, belonging to the country and the age in which they were written by their subject as well as by their authorship, we will give some account of the most important of them. The following are the principal collections that have been made in modern times of our old Latin historians or chroniclers : — 1. Rerum Britannicarum, id est, Angliae, Scotise, Vicinarnmque Insularum ac Regionum, Scriptores Vetustiores ac Prgecipui : (a Hier. Commelino). Fol. Heidelb. & Lugd. 1587. consider the author to have been what he has been designated, the Anacreon of his day. Lord Lyttelton, from whom that epithet is quoted by Warton as a very happy one, has inadvertently written the Anaereon of the eleventh, instead of the twelfth, century. Mapes lived and wrote in the reigns of Henry II. and Richard I. : his It ath, according to Mr. Wright, "is supposed to have occurred towards the year 1210." (Introd. to Poems, p. vii.) LATIN CHRONICLERS. 91 2. Rerum Anglicarum Scriptores post Bedam Prsecipui, ex Ve- tustissimis MSS. nunc primum in lucem editi : (a Hen. Savile). Fol. Lon. 1596, and Francof. 1601. 3. Anglica, Normannica, Hibernica, Cambrica, aveteribus Scripta, 8x Bibl Guilielmi Camdeni. Fol. Francof. 1602 and 1603. 4. Historian Normannorum Scriptores Antiqui ; studio Andreje Duchesne. Fol. Paris. 1619. 5. Historise Anglican® Scriptores Decern, ex vetustis MSS. nunc primum in lucem editi : (a Rog. Twysden et Joan. Selden). Fol. Lon. 1652. 6. Rerum Anglicarum Scriptorum Veterum Tomus I m " 3 ; Quo- rum Ingulfus nunc primum integer, ceteri nunc primum, prodeunt : (a Joan. Fell, vel potius Gul. Fulman). Fol. Oxon. 1684. (Sometimes incorrectly cited as the 1st vol. of Gale's Collection.) 7. Historian Anglican* Scriptores Quinque, ex vetustis Codd. MSS. nunc primum in lucem editi : (a Thom. Gale). Fol. Oxon. 1687. (This is properly the 2d vol. of Gale's Collection.) 8. Historian Britannicse, Saxonicas, Anglo-DanicaB, Scriptores Quindeeim, ex vetustis Codd. MSS. editi, -opera Thom^e Gale. Fol. Oxon. 1691. (This is properly the 1st vol. of Gale's Collec- tion, though often cited as the 3d.) 9. Anglia Sacra ; sive Collectio Historiarum . . . de Archie- piscopis et Episcopis Angliae ; (a Henrico Wharton). 2 Tom. Fol. Lon. 1691. 10. Historic Anglicanae Scriptores Varii, e Codd. MSS. nunc primum editi: (a Jos. Sparke). Fol. Lon. 1723. 11. Historian Anglicanse circa tempus Conquestus Angliae a Guilielmo Notho, Normannorum Duce, selecta Monumenta ; ex- cerpta ex volumine And. Duchesne ; cum Notis, &c. : (a Francisco Maseres). 4to. Lon. 1807. 12. Monumenta Historica Britannica ; or, Materials for the His- tory of Britain from the earliest period to the end of the reign of King Henry VII. Published by command of her Majesty. Vol. 1st (extending to the Norman Conquest). Fol. Lon. 1848. (By Petrie, Sharpe, and Hardy.) To which may be added : — 13. The series of works printed by the Historical Society, from 1838 to 1856, extending to 29 vols. 8vo. ; and, 14. The series entitled Rerum Britannicarum Medii ^Evi Scrip- tores, or Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland 92 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. during the Middle Ages. Published by authority of her Majesty's Treasury, under the direction of the Master of the Rolls. 8vo. Lon. 1857, &c. INGULPHUS. The History of the Abbey of Croyland, or, as the place is now called, Crowland, in Lincolnshire, professing to be written by the Abbot Ingulphus, who presided over the establishment from a. d. 1075 till his death, at the age of about eighty, in 1109, was first published from an imperfect copy by Sir Henry Savile in his collec- tion (Lon. 1596, and Francfort 1601) ; and afterwards in a more complete form by Fulman in his Scriptores Veteres (Oxford 1684). In the interval between these two (the only) editions of the work, the Laws of William the Conqueror, in French, which were wanting m the MS. used by Savile, were published from another MS. by Selden in 1623 in his edition of Eadmer, and from another bv Sir Henry Spelman hi 1639 in the first volume of his Concilia. All these four (the only known) MSS. of the work have now disap- peared. Of what has become of that used by Savile nothing is known ; that from which Selden took his copy of the Laws of the Conqueror seems to have been one which was in the Cotton Library, — the same from which Fulman was supplied with a leaf in which Ins own MS. was defective by his friend Gale, 1 — and that was destroyed by the calamitous fire at Ashburnham House in 1731 ; that which Spelman transcribed was preserved in the church of Croyland, in a chest locked with three keys, which were kept by the church-wardens, and was believed by him to be what it w r as reputed, the author's autograph, — but, as Selden could not obtain access to it a few years before, so nobody has seen it since, and, Avhen Fulman made inquiry after it in the latter part of the same century, it was no longer to be found ; — finally, that employed by Fulman, which belonged to Sir John Marsham, was afterwards given or lent by him to Obadiah Walker, the famous Master of University College, who was turned out at the Revolution in 1688, and all that further appears is that Walker told Bishop Gibson in 1694 that it was then in the library of University College, where 1 See Rer. Ang. Script. 1684, Praefat., and p. 131. INGULPHUS. 93 however it has not since been found. It seems most likely that it never was deposited there, but was carried off by Walker, who pro* fessed to consider it as his own property on the simple principle, which it appears is recognized among antiquarian collectors, that a manuscript belongs to any one who has once, no matter by what means, got it into his possession. " The old gentleman," writes Gibson to Dr. Charlett, the then Master of University College, in relating what had just passed between them on the subject, " has too much of the spirit of an antiquary and a great scholar to think stealing a manuscript any sin. He has ordered me not to discover where it is lodged." These particulars are mostly collected from a learned and valuable paper on the sources of Anglo-Saxon history which appeared some years ago in the Quarterly Review, 1 and to which we shall have frequent occasion further to refer. The writer (understood to be Sir Francis Palgrave) proceeds to show, very ingeniously and conclusively, that the MS. which Spelman saw at Croyland could not in all probability have been older than the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century, from a mistranscription of a word in his extract (JSustres for Eucsqes), which was very likely to have taken place in copying a writing of that date, but could hardly have happened in reading a manuscript of the end of the eleventh century, the age of Ingulphus. But, if the external evidence for the antiquity and authenticity of the work be thus defective, the internal evidence may be pronounced to be conclusive against its claim to be accounted either the com- position of Ingulphus or a work of any historical value. It appears in fact to be, if not altogether what the reviewer calls it, " an his- torical novel," at least in the main a monkish forgery of the thir- teenth or fourteenth century, which may possibly contain some things not the produce of the writer's invention, and found by him in histories or other records now lost, but no statement in which, whatever appearance of probability it may wear, can be safely re- ceived upon its authority. Not only the portion of the history which relates to the times preceding the pretended writer's own age, but the account which Ingulphus is made to give of himself, is full of the most glaring improbabilities, and in some parts demon- 1 Vol. xxxiv. No. 67 (for June, 1826), pp. 248-298. According to Mr. Wright, how- ever (Biog. Brit. Lit., ii. 31), " there is a transcript of the latter part of the sixteenth century among the Arundel MSS. in the British Museum, No. 178, which was evi- dently the copy from which Savile printed his edition." " The MS. used by Gale Fuhnan]," he adds, "is said to exist in the Library at Holkham." 94 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. strably false and impossible. For the demonstration, however, we must refer the reader to the article in the Quarterly Review, the writer of Avhich justly observes that " anachronisms which merely impeach the accuracy of the historian are entirely fatal to autobiog- raphy." In none of our chroniclers anterior to the fourteenth cen- tury, the reviewer asserts, is there a single line to be traced that is borrowed from Ingulphus. And this is a fact of no slight signifi- cance : — "If the work," he remarks, " had existed, it could scarcely have been neglected by these inveterate compilers." Of course, if the History of Croyland by Ingulphus be rejected, its continuation to A. D. 1118, attributed to Peter of Blois, which was also contained in the Cotton and Sir John Marsham's codices, and is published in Fulman's Collection, must be included in the same sentence, its pretended author having died long before the date at which, upon this supposition, the work he professes to continue was written. There are also three further continuations, brinrdericus Vitalis, making about a thirteenth part of the whole, has been reprinted by Maseres in his Selects Monumenta; and there is a French translation of the entire work by Louis Du Bois, in the collection of ancient French Memoires, published at Paris under the superintendence of M. Guizot. (Vols. 25, 26, 27, and 28.) An English translation, with Notes, by Mr. Thomas Forester, has appeared in Bonn's Antiquarian Library, in 4 vols., 1853-4. GESTA STEPHAN1. — WILLIAM OF JUMIEGES. 97 A remarkable fragment, taken from an ancient book belonging to the monastery of St. Stephen at Caen, containing an account of the last hours of the Conqueror, and of his death and funeral, which Camden has printed in his Collection, and which he conjec- tures to be probably from the pen of Guillelmus Pictaviensis, is in fact the concluding portion of the Seventh Book of Ordericus Vitalis. A translation of it is given by Stow in his Chronicle. Or- dericus has himself told us that Pictaviensis was prevented by cir- cumstances from bringing down his History, as he had intended to do, to the death of the Conqueror. GESTA STEPHANL — WILLIAM OF JUMIEGES. Another valuable portion of the English history of this period by a contemporary writer, which Duchesne has published, is the tract entitled Gesta Stephani, filling about fifty of his pages. It is by a partisan of Stephen, but is probably the fairest, as it is the fullest and most distinct, account we have of his turbulent reign. A new edition of it, prepared by Mr. R. C. Sewell, was pub- lished by the English Historical Society in 1846 ; and it is trans- lated, along with the Chronicle of Henry of Huntingdon, by Mr. Forester, in one of the volumes of Bonn's Antiquarian Library, 1853. In Duchesne's Collection is likewise the History, in eight books, of the Dukes of Normandy, by William, the monk of Jumieges, surnamed Calculus, — Willelmi Calculi Gemmeticensis Monachi Historia Normannorum, — which Camden had printed before, from a worse manuscript and less correctly, in his Anglica, Normannica, &c. Of this also there is a French translation in M. Guizot's Col- lection (vol. 29) : it was originally published at Caen, along with William of Poitiers, in 1826. Gemmeticensis in the earlier part of his work, down to the accession of Duke Richard II., the great- grandfather of William the Conqueror, in 996, is little more than an abridger of the earlier Norman historian Dudo (also in Du- chesne) ; but there are a few facts not elsewhere to be found in the sequel, which brings down the nai'rative of Norman and Eng- lish affairs to his own time, and which is farther continued through vol. r. 13 58 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. the reigns of the Conqueror and his two sons, apparently by another hand ; for Gemmeticensis dedicates his work to the Con- queror, and Orderieus Vitalis expressly states that he finished it with the battle of Hastings. FLORENCE OF WORCESTER. The earliest of our English chroniclers or annalists, properly so called, who Avrote after the Norman Conquest is commonly held to be the monk Florence of Worcester, whose work, entitled Chroni- con ex Chronicis, was printed in 4to., at London, in 1592, under the care of Lord William Howard, 1 and reprinted in folio at Franc- fort in 1601. Two new editions have recently been published: — one, by Mr. Petrie, in the Monumenta, 1848 ; the other pre- pared by Mr. Thorpe for the Historical Society, 2 vols. 8vo., 1848-49. It extends from the Creation to the year 1119, in which the author died ; and there is printed along with it a con tinuation by another writer to the year 1141. It is, for the greater part, a transcript from the notices of English affairs contained in the General History or Chronology which bears the name of Marianus Scotus, intermixed with a nearly complete transcript of Asser's Life of King Alfred, and enlarged in the times not treated of in that work by ample translations from the National Chronicle. The Chronicle of Scotus (said to have been of English birth and descended from a relation of Bede), was a favorite book in our monasteries in the Middle Ages ; " there was hardly one in the kingdom," says Bishop Nicolson, " that wanted a copy of it, and some had several." Besides the numerous transcripts, which vary greatly, it has been more than once printed, but never, we believe, in a enmplete form. Speaking of Florence of Worcester's compi- lation, the writer of the article in the Quarterly Review, to which we have more than once referred, observes: "Some notices are 1 This was Lord William Howard, Warden of the Western Marches, the " Belted Will Howard" of Border tradition, whose castle of Naworth.in Cumberland, where his bedroom and library were preserved, with the books and furniture, in the same state as when he tenanted the apartments more than two centuries ago, was unhap- pily consumed a few years ago by an accidental fire, with all its interesting cod tents. MATTHEW OF WESTMINSTER. 99 extracted from Bede. The facts of which the original sources can- not be ascertained are very few, but important, and occur princi- pally in the early part of this history. They are generally of that class which we may suppose to have been derived from the Saxon genealogies. Though the great mass of information afforded bv Florence is extant in the Saxon Chronicle, still his work is ex- tremely valuable. He understood the ancient Saxon language well — better, perhaps, than any of his contemporaries; and he has furnished us with an accurate translation from a text which seems to have been the best of its kind." The principal value of Florence's performance in fact consists in its serving as a key to the Chronicle. One of the volumes of Bohn's Library contains a translation, by Mr. Forester, of Florence of Worcester, and also of two anonymous continuations of his work, one of which, extend- ing to the year 1141, is accounted of great value. This is not given in the Monumenta, but it is in the other editions. Both Florence and his continuators appear also in the First Part of the Second Volume of The Church Historians of England (1853), "in part translated " by Mr. Stevenson. MATTHEW OF WESTMINSTER. The Quarterly Reviewer, however, is inclined to think that Florence was preceded by another writer, the author of the com- pilation entitled Flores Historiarum, usually ascribed to Matthew of Westminster, who appears to be a fictitious personage. This English History, which has been brought down by other unknown writers to the year 1307 (or to the end of the reign of Edward I.), is based upon another general chronicle similar to that of Marianus Scotus, with the addition of much matter derived apparently from ancient English sources, some of which are unknown. The wri- ter in the Quarterly Review, who prefers giving the author the name of Florilegus, thinks it probable that his work supplied Florence with certain passages which are not found in the National Chronicle. " Florilegus," he observes, " has retained and quoted a sufficient number of Anglo-Saxonisms, and of Anglo-Saxon phrases, to show that he was in possession of Saxon materials, 100 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. which he consulted to the best of his ability. He has not useo them with the fidelity of Florence of Worcester, for his knowledge of the Anglo-Saxon language was imperfect, but still he is not guilty of any intentional falsification, and, therefore, when he re- lates probable facts, it is fair to conclude that he is equally veracious, although the Saxon original of his Chronicle be not extant." 1 The work, under the title of Matthaei Westmonasteriensis Flores His- toriarum, prnecipue de Rebus Bi'itannicis, ab exordio mundi usque ad A. D. 1307, was first published by Archbishop Parker, in folio, at London in 1567, and again in 1570 ; and was reprinted, in folio, at Francfort in 1601, along with Florence of Worcester. There is an English translation of it, by Mr. C. D. Yonge, making two volumes of Bonn's Library, 1853. WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY. The first, in point of merit and eminence, of our Latin histo- rians of this period is William of Malmesbury, so designated as having been a monk of that great monastery, although his proper surname is said to have been Somerset. He was probably born about the time of the Norman Conquest ; and, though of English birth, he intimates that he was of Norman descent by one parent, putting in a claim on that ground to be accounted an impartial witness or judge between the two races. Malmesbury's English History consists of two parts, or rather distinct works; the first entitled Gesta Regum Anglorum, in five books, extending from the arrival of the Angles and Saxons to the year 1120 ; the second entitled ffistoria Novella, in three books, bringing the narrative down to 1142. It has been commonlv supposed that the author died in that or the following year; but there is no evidence that he did not live to a later date. A portion of the Gesta was printed, as the work of an unknown author, in Commeline's vol- ume of British writers, in 1587 ; both the Gesta and the Historia Novella are in Savile's Collection, 1596 and 1601 ; and a new and much more correct edition of the two, by Mr. Thomas Duffus Hardy, in two vols. 8vo. Lon. 1840, forms one of the publications 1 Quarterly Review, No. lxvii. p. 282. WILLIAM OF MALMESBURY. — EADMER 101 of the Historical Society. There is a very good English transla- tion of William of Malmesbury by the Rev. John Sharpe, 4to. Lon. 1815 ; and another, professing to be based upon it, by Dr. Giles, makes one of the volumes of Bonn's Library, 1847 Malmesbury, although there is an interval of nearly five hundreo years between them, stands next in the order of time after Bede in the series of our historical writers properly so called, as distin- guished from mere compilers and diarists. His Histories are throughout original works, and, in their degree, artistic composi- tions. He has evidently taken great pains with the manner as well as with the matter of them. But he also evinces throughout a love of truth as the first quality of historical writing, and far more of critical faculty in separating the probable from the im- probable than any other of his monkish brethren of that age who have set up for historians, notwithstanding his fondness for prodi- gies and ecclesiastical miracles, in which of course he had the ready and all-digestive belief which was universal in his time. Of course, too, he had his partialities in the politics of his own day ; and his account of the contest between Matilda and Stephen may be com- pared with that of the author of the Gesta Stephani by those who would study both sides of the question. Both his histories are in- scribed in very encomiastic dedications to Robert Earl of Glouces- ter, Matilda's famous champion. Savile's Collection also contains another work of Malmesbury's, his Lives of the Bishops of Eng- land (De Gestis Pontificum Anglorum), in four books ; and a Life of St. Aldhelm (bishop of Sherborn), assumed to be a fifth book of this work, was afterwards published by Gale in his Scrip- tores XV. Oxon. 1691, and the same year by Henry Wharton, in the second volume of his Anglia Sacra. Gale's volume contains, besides, a History of the Monastery of Glastonbury by Malmes- bury, — De Antiquitate Glastoniensis Ecclesiae ; — and Wharton's contains his Life of St. Wulstan. Others of his treatises still remain in manuscript. EADMER. The Modern History, or History of His Own Time (Historia Novorum, sive Sui Seculi), by his contemporary Eadmer, the 102 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. monk of Canterbury, is noticed by Malmesbury in the Prologue, or Preface, to the First Book of his Gesta, as a lucubration written with a sober festivity of style (sobria sennonis festivitate elucubra- tum opus). It was first published (folio, Lon. 1628), with learned annotations, by Selden, who holds that in style Eadmer equals Malmesbury, and in the value of his matter excels him. It is also added, with the other writings of Eadmer, as a supplement to the Works of Archbishop Anselm, both in Gerberon's edition, folio, Paris, 1675, and in that of the Benedictines, folio, Paris, 1721. Eadmer's History is distributed into six books, and com- prehends the reigns of the Conqueror and Rufus, and the first twenty-two years of Henry the First (that is, from a.d. 1066 to 1122). One distinction belonging to Eadmer's narrative is the nearly entire absence of miracles. He probably considered it im- proper to introduce such high matter into a composition which did not profess to be of a sacred or spiritual nature. Much of his work, however, is occupied with ecclesiastical transactions, which indeed formed almost the entire home politics, and no small part of the foreign politics also, of that age. He has in particular en- tered largely into the great controversy between the crown and the pope about investiture ; and one of the most curious parts of his history is a long and detailed account which he gives of his own appointment to the bishopric of St. Andrew's in Scotland, and his contest about his consecration with the stout Scottish king, Alex- ander I. Mabillon has published a life of St. Wilfrid, by Eadmer, in the Acta Sanctorum Benedictinorum (Saec. iii. part i.) ; and other tracts by him are in the Anglia Sacra. TURCOT, AND SIMEON OF DURHAM.— JOHN OF HEXHAM, AND RICHARD OF HEXHAM. Eadmer's immediate predecessor in the see of St. Andrew's was [argot, wIki bad been a monk of Durham before he was elevated to the primacy of Scotland in 1109. Perhaps the most interesting composition that we have from the pen of Turgot is a life of Mal- colm Canmore's queen, Margaret, the sister of Edgar Atheling, whose confessor he was: it was drawn up at the request of hei AILRED. 10 D daughter Maud, wife of Kmg Henry I., and is printed in the Acta Sanctorum of the Bollandists. 1 Selden, in his learned Preface to the Decern Scriptores, has advanced strong reasons for believing that the History of the Church of Durham which passes under the name of Simeon Dunelmensis, and which that monk appears to have published as his own, was really written by Turgot ; but this view has been disputed in a disquisition by Thomas Reed, which accompanies an edition of the History published at London in an octavo volume in 1732 by the Rev. Thomas Bedford. It is in four books, and extends over the time from a. d. 635 to 1095. This History, along with a continuation to a. d. 1154, and a His- tory of St. Cuthbert, an Epistle respecting the Archbishops of York, a toact on the siege of Durham by the Scots in 969, and a history of English affairs, entitled De Regibus Anglorum et Daco- rum, from a. d. 616 to 1129, which, for anything that is known, are really by Simeon, are all in Twysden's Collection ; and the English History to a. d. 957 is in the Monumenta. The latter, which is in the form of compendious annals, is continued to 1154, by John, prior of Hexham (Joannes Hagustaldensis), whose Chronicle is likewise in Twysden ; as are also two books of Lives of the Bishops of Hexham, and an historical fragment on the reign of Stephen from 1135 to 1139, including a narrative of the battle of the Standard, by his successor Prior Richard, together with a short poem in rhyming Latin verses on that battle by Serlo, a monk of Fountain Abbey in Yorkshire. AILRED. But the best account we have of the battle of the Standard is that of Ailred, abbot of Rievault, in Yorkshire, — Ailredi Abbatis Rievallensis Historia de Bello Standardii, — also printed among the Scriptores X., along with an Epistle on the Genealogy of the English Kings, a Life of Edward the Confessor, and a singular 1 Acta Sanct. Junii, pp. 328-535. Papebroch, the editor, has printed the tract, on the authority of the MS. he used, as the work of an unknown monk of the name of Theodoric; but Lord Hailes has adduced sufficient reasons for believing it to be by Turgot to whom it is ascribed by Fordun. See his Annals of Scotland, i. 36, 37 (edit, of 1819). 104 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. relation, entitled De Quodara Miraeulo Mirabili, all by the same writer. Ailred, Ealred, Elred, Alured, Adilred, Ethelred, or Valred, who is supposed to have died about 1166, and who is one of the saints of the Roman calendar (his day is the 12th of Jan- uary), spent his life in studious retirement, and is the author of many other treatises, some printed in various collections, some still remaining in manuscript. 1 But those that have been mentioned are the only ones that relate to English history. He often writes with considerable animation, and a decided gift of popular elo- quence may be discerned in his fluent though not very classical Latin. GEOFFREY OF MONMOUTH. — ALFRED OF BEVERLEY. The famous British History of Geoffrey of .Monm oufh was printed at Paris, in 4to., in 1508, and again in 1509, and it is also contained in Commeline's Collection, folio, Heidelberg, 1587. It professes to be, and, as already intimated, in all probability is in the main, a translation from a Welsh Chronicle, given to Geoffrey by his friend "Walter, archdeacon of Oxford (a different person from Walter M apes, the poet, though they have been usually con- founded), who had procured the manuscript in Brittany. It con- tains in nine books the history of the Britons, or Welsh, from the era of their leader Brutus, the great-grandson of the Trojan .yEneas, to the death, in 688, of their king Cadwallo, or Cadwal- Iader, the same personage called by the English historians Cead- wall, or Ceadwalla, and represented by them as King of Wessex. Geoffrey, archdeacon of Monmouth, and afterwards bishop of St. Asaph, is a clever and agreeable writer, and his Latin is much more scholarly than that, of the generality of the monkish chroni- clers of his time. His work, whatever may be thought of its his- torical value, has at least the merit of having preserved the old legends and traditions of the race who were driven out bv the Angles and Saxons in a more complete and consistent form than we have them elsewhere. But the outline of the same story in The fullest and most accurate accounts of the writings of Ailred are in the Biographical Dictionary of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and in Mr. Wrighfs Biog. Brit. Lit., ii. 187-196. ALFRED OF BEVERLEY. 105 all its parts, from the Trojan descent to the wars of Arthur, is found in Nennius, who lived and wrote certainly not later than the middle of the ninth century, or nearly three centuries before Geoffrey. The archdeacon of Monmouth, therefore, was at any rate not the inventor of the fables, if they be such, to which his name has been generally attached. At the most he can only be suspected of having sometimes expanded and embellished them. But, if not the creator of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, Geoffrey was their reviver from almost universal oblivion to sudden and universal notoriety; his book, published probably about 1128, and dedicated to the same Earl of Gloucester whom Malmesbury chose for his patron, obtained immediately the most wonderful currency and acceptance ; and from the date of its ap- pearance we find a new inspiration, derived from its pages, per- vading the popular literature of Europe. Most of the subsequent Latin chroniclers also adopt more or less of his new version of our early history. An English translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth by Aaron Thompson, originally published in an 8vo. volume at London in 1718, was reprinted in 1842, as " revised by J. A. Giles, LL. D. ; " and it is included by Dr. Giles in his volume entitled Six Old English Chronicles (Bohn), 1848. A detailed analysis of Geoffrey's work is given by the late George Ellis in his Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances. The compendium of Alfred, Aired, or Alured, canon of the col- legiate church of St. John at Beverley, in Yorkshire, published by Hearne, in 8vo., at Oxford, in 1716, under the title of Aluredi Beverlacensis Annales, sive Historia de Gestis Regum Britanniae, Libris IX., comes down to the year 1129, but is in the first five books (making half the w r ork, which consists only of 152 pages altogether) a mere abridgment of Geoffrey of Monmouth. Alured, in fact, though he does not expressly name the archdeacon, sets out with stating that his design simply is to epitomize the new History of the Britons, which everybody was so eager to read, and of which he had himself for some time in vain sought to procure a copy ; a fact which is strangely suppressed both by Hearne and by Dr. Campbell in the Biographia Britannica, in their at- tempts to show that Alured did not copy Geoffrey, but Geoffrey him. Geoffrey's very expressions are sometimes adopted by Alured. What the latter has added in the continuation of the history down to his own time contains scarcely anything not to be vol. i. 14 106 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. found elsewhere. The period from the Norman Conquest, extend- ing over sixty-two years, which may probably have been about that of his own life, is all comprised in the last book, filling twenty-seven pages. GIRALDUS CAMBRENSIS. Giraldus Cambrensis, another learned Welshman, who makea a principal figure among our historical writers of the twelfth cen- tury, is of somewhat later date than his countryman Geoffrey of Monmouth : — Geoffrey died in 1154 ; Giraldus, whose proper WeLsh name was Gerald Barry, appears to have been born about 1146. His Itinerary and Description of Wales (the first book) — Itinerarium Cambria? and Descriptio Cambria? — were published, with learned annotations, by Dr. David Powell, in a 12mo. vol- ume, at London, in 1685 ; both are included in Camden's Anglica, Normanniea, &c, together with his Topography and Conquest of Ireland, — Topographia Hibernia? and Expugnatio Hibernian, — there published for the first time ; and a second book of the De- scription of Wales, various biographies of English bishops, an ac- count of his own life, entitled De Rebus a Se Gestis, in three books, together with two separate catalogues of his works drawn up by himself, a treatise concerning the Church of St. Asaph (De Jure et Statu Menevensis Ecclesiae Distinctiones vii.), and two or three other short pieces, are in the second volume of Wharton's Anglia Sacra. An English translation of the Itinerary and of both parts of the Description of Wales, profusely illuminated with en- gravings as well as with annotations and commentary, was pub- lished by Sir Richard Colt Hoare, Bart., in two vols. 4to., Loud. 1806, under the title of The Itinerary of Archbishop Baldwin through Wales, a. d. 1187, by Giraldus de Barri, and forms one of the most magnificent productions of the modern English press. 1 Many other writings, however, both in prose and verse, are attrib- uted to him, which are either lost (if they ever existed), or re- jnain in manuscript, with the exception of a treatise, called by 1 In lii> Preface, Sir Richard seems to state that he had also reprinted the Itiner- ary and Description of Wales in the original Latin, but we have never seen the book. HENRY OF HUNTINGDON. 107 himself Gemma Ecclesiastica, which is said to have been printed at Mentz without his name in 1549 under the title of Gemme- Animse. Giraldus, though his style abounds in the conceits and false ornaments which constituted the eloquence of his time, is a very lively writer, and he shows a genius both for narrative and description to which nothing is wanting except the influences of a happier age. In literary ardor and industry, at least, he has not often been surpassed. He " deserves particular regard," says Warton, " for the universality of his works, many of which are written with some degree of elegance. He abounds with quotations of the best Latin poets. He was an historian, an antiquary, a topographer, a divine, a philosopher, and a poet. His love of science was so great that he refused two bishoprics ; and from the midst of public busi- ness, with which his political talents gave him a considerable con- nection in the court of Richard the First, he retired to Lincoln for seven years with a design of pursuing theological studies." * The fancy of Giraldus, however, it must be confessed, was more vigor- ous than either his judgment or his veracity ; and much of the matter in his historical works would have suited poetry better than history. HENRY OF HUNTINGDON. Malmesbury's two Histories are followed in Savile's Collection by the Eight Books of that of Henry, archdeacon of Huntingdon, extending from the invasion of Julius Caesar to the accession of Henry II. (a. d. 1154). The work has not been elsewhere printed in full ; but a very superior text of the first Six Books, with the exception of the Third, which is only an abridgment of Bede, is given by Mr. Petrie in the Monumenta, 1848. Henry of Hun- tingdon first distinguished himself as a poet, and is said by Leland to have in the earlier part of his fife written eight books of Latin epigrams, and eight more of love verses, besides a long didactic poem on herbs, another on spices, and a third on precious stones. His History, which he composed in his more advanced years, is interspersed with a good deal of verse, most of it professing to be quoted, but some of it confessedly his own. Savile describes him 1 Dissertation on Intro-i. of Learning, p. exxiv. 108 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. as, in respect of historical merit, although separated by a long in- terval from Malmesbury, yet making as near an approach to him as any other writer of the time, and as deserving to be placed in the first rank of the most diligent explorers and most truthful ex- pounders of the times preceding their own. He is, indeed, more of an antiquary than an historian. His work, in so far as it is a history of his own time, is of little importance. The writer in the Quarterly Review, however, remarks that it is a more ambitious attempt than had been made by such mere annalists as the Saxon chroniclers on the one hand, or such compilers as Florence of Worcester and Simeon of Durham on the other. " Abandoning the simple plan of his predecessors, he divided his History into books, treating distinctly upon each of the kingdoms of the Hep- tarchy, until their union under Edgar. Huntingdon states that, taking Bede as his basis, he added much from other sources, and borrowed from the chronicles which he found in ancient libraries. His descriptions of battles are often more diffuse than in the Anglo- Saxon chronicles. It has been supposed that, because these scenes and pictures are not warranted by the existing texts, they are mere historical amplifications ; but we find no difficulty in believing that the researches of a writer who was considered as a most learned antiquarian should have enabled him to discover a chronicle lost to us, and which contained more fragments of poetry or poetical prose than the chronicles which have been preserved." 1 The second volume of Wharton's Anglia Sacra contains a Long Letter from Henry of Huntingdon to his friend Walter, abbot of Ramsay (De Episcopis Sui Temporis), which is full of interesting notices and anecdotes of the kings, prelates, and other distinguished person- ages of his time. Both the History and this Letter are translated by Mr. Forester in one of the volumes of Bonn's Antiquarian Library, 1853. ROGER DE HOVEDEN. The next work printed in Savile's Collection (and his edition is again our only one) is the copious Chronicle of Roger de Hoveden 1 Quarterly Review, xxxiv., 283. WILLIAM OF NEWBURGH. 109 (probably so designated from having been a native of Hoveden, or Howden, in Yorkshire). It fills 430 pages, or not much less than half the volume. Hoveden takes up the narrative at the year 782, where the History of Bede (a north-country man like himself) ends, and brings it down to 1202. His account is particularly full throughout the reigns of Henry II. and Richard I., and the com- mencement of that of John, making together what may be called his own half-century. The greater portion, indeed, of the 340 pages of which this second or latter part of his annals — Annalium Pars Posterior — consists, is occupied by letters of kings, popes, and prelates, and other public documents ; but it contains also an extraordinary number of minute historical details. Hoveden is of all our old chroniclers the most of a matter-of-fact man ; he in dulges occasionally in an epithet, rarely or never in a reflection ; his one notion of writing history seems to be to pack as many par- ticulars as possible into a given space, giving one the notion in perusing his close array of dates and items that he had felt con- tinually pressed by the necessity of economizing his paper or parch- ment. It is true that he has no notion of the higher economv of discrimination and selection ; but among the multitude of facts of all kinds that crowd his pages are many that are really curious and illustrative. A translation of Roger de Hoveden by Mr. Henry T. Riley makes two of the volumes of Bonn's Antiquarian Library 1853. WILLIAM OF NEWBURGH. William of Newburgh (in Latin Gulielmus Neubrigensis), so called from the monastery of Newburgh, in Yorkshire, to which he belonged, — although his proper name is said to have been Little, whence he sometimes designates himself Petit, or Parvus, — has had the luck to have the five books of his English History from the Conquest to the year 1197 repeatedly printed ; first, in 12mo., at Antwerp in 1597 ; a second time, with notes by J. Picard, in 8vo., at Paris in 1610 ; again, under the care of the industrious Thomas Hearne, in 3 vols. 8vo., at Oxford in 1719 ; and still once more, rs edited for the Historical Society by Mr. H. C. Hamilton, in 2 vols., in 1856. It is also in the collection of Jerome Commelinus. 110 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. The work of Neubrigensis is much more what we now understand by a history than those of either Hoveden or Huntingdon : in the superior purity of its Latinity it ranks with that of Malmesbury : and it has the same comparatively artistic character in other re- spects. But his merit lies rather in his manner than in his matter ; he has disposed the chief events of the times of which he treats into a regular and readable narrative, but has not contributed many new facts. He is famous as having been, so far as is known, the first writer after Geoffrey of Monmouth who refused to adopt the story of the Trojan descent of the old Britons, and the other " fig- ments," as he calls them, of the Welsh historians, which moreover he accuses Geoffrey of having made still more absurd and mons- trous by his own " impudent and impertinent lies." Whether he knew enough of the original chronicle which Geoffrey professed to translate, or of the language in which it was written, to be entitled to express an opinion upon this latter point, does not appear. The Welsh maintain that he had a personal spite at their whole nation : " This William," says Dr. Powell, " put in for the bishopric of St. Asaph upon the death of the said Geoffrey, and, being disappointed, fell into a mad humor of decrying the whole principality of Wales, its history, antiquity, and all that belongs to it." It must be ad- mitted, too, that, if not guilty of the same dishonesty and forgery which he imputes to Geoffrey, William of Newburgh is himself, in credulity at least, a match for the most fabulous of our old chroni- clers. BENEDICTUS ABBAS. — RALPH DE DICETO. - GERVASE OF CANTERBURY. One of the most valuable of our chronicles of the twelfth ceii- tury is that of the Abbot Benedict, embracing the space from a. d. 1170 to 1192, which was published by Hearne, in 2 vols. 8vo., at Oxford in 1785, under the title of Benedictus Abbas Petroburgen- sis de Vita et Rebus Gestis Henrici II. et Ricardi I. Benedict, though a partisan of Becket, and one of his biographers, was so highly c-tccined by Henry II., who had both the eye to discern, and the magnanimity to appreciate merit and ability wherever they were to be found, that he was by his direction elected abbot of RALPH DE DICETO. — GERVASE OF CANTERBURY. Ill Peterborough in 1177 ; and in 1191, after Richard had come to the throne, he was advanced to be Keeper of the Great Seal, in which high office he died in 1193. Ralph de Diceto, archdeacon of London, who probably died soon after the commencement of the thirteenth century, is the author of two chronicles : the first entitled Abbreviationes Chronicorum, and extending from a. d. 589 to 1148 ; the second, continuing the narrative, upon a larger scale, to a. d. 1199. Both are published in the Collection of the Scriptores X., where they occupy together not quite 300 columns. They are followed by a brief outline of the controversy between King Henry and Becket, — Series Causae inter Henricum Regem et Thomam Archiepiscopum, — which may also perhaps have been drawn up by Diceto. A compendium of the early British History from Brutus to the death of Cadwallader, after Geoffrey of Monmouth, by this writer (Historia Compendiosa de Regibus Britonum), is given in his collection entitled Scriptores XV. by Gale, who says that he had seen a better manuscript of the Abbreviationes Chronicorum than that used by Twysden. He adds a short tract of two or three pages from a manuscript in the Arundel Collection (now in the British Museum) entitled De Partitione Province in Schiras et Episcopatus et Regna, which he entitles as by Diceto, although in his Preface he describes it as by an unknown writer. There is a short history of the Archbishops of Canterbury to the year 1200 by this Diceto in the second volume of Wharton's Anglia Sacra. Bishop Nicolson complains of it as not only of little value, from its brevity, but as " stuffed with matters foreign to the purpose." The Chronicle of Gervase of Canterbury, — Gervasii Monachi Dorobernensis, sive Cantuarensis, Chronica, — from the accession of Henry I. in a. d. 1100 (or 1122, as he reckons, " secundum Evangelium ") to the end of the reign of Richard I. and of the century, is published in the collection of the Scriptores X. (col. 1338-1628) ; together with three shorter pieces by the same writer : — the first, an account of the burning, a. d. 1174, and subsequent restoration of Canterbury Cathedral (Tractatus de Combustione et Reparatione Dorobernensis Ecclesiaa) ; the second, on the contest between the monks of Canterbury and Archbishop Baldwin (Imaginationes de Discordiis inter Monachos Cantuariensis et Archiepiscopum Baldwinum) ; the third, a history of the Arch- bishops of Canterbury (Actus Pontificum Cantuariensis Ecclesise) 112 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. from Augustine, to Hubert Walter, who died in 1205, and whom Gervase probably did not long survive. Leland, who gives this writer a hiffh character for his diligent study and accurate and ex- tensive knowledge of the national antiquities, speaks of his History as commencing with the earliest British times, and including the whole of the Saxon period (" turn Britannorum ab origine histo- riam, turn Saxonum et Normannorum fortia facta, deduxit"). He takes great pains in the portion we have of it to present a correct and distinct chronology ; but it is principally occupied with ecclesi- astical affairs. VINSAUF. - RICHARD OF DEVISES. — JOSCELIN DE BRAKELONDA. An account of the expedition of Richard Cceur de Lion to the Holy Land, in six books, by Geoffrey Vinsauf, has been published, under the title of Itinerarium Regis Anglorum Richardi, et aliorum, in terrain Hierosolymorum, by Gale in his Scriptores Quinque (pp. 24o-4ii'.»)' A portion of the same work had been previously printed by Bongarsius in his Gesta Dei per Francos, 1611, as a fragment of the History of Jerusalem (Hierosolimitana? Historian Fragmentum) from A. D. 1171 to 1190, by an unknoAvn writer, probably an Englishman. There is a translation of the whole in the volume of Bolm's Antiquarian Lib ary entitled Chronicles of the Crusaders. Geoffrey, or Walter, Vinsauf, orVinisauf, orVinesalf (in Latin de Vino Salvo), was an Englishman by birth, although of Norman parentage, and accompanied Richard on his crusade. His prose is spirited and eloquent, and he was also one of the best Latin poets of his day. His principal poetical work, entitled De Nova Poetria (On the; New Poetry), has been several times print- ed : it " is dedicated," Warton observes, " to Pope Innocent the Third, ami its intention was to recommend and illustrate the new and legitimate mode of versification which had lately begun to flourish in Europe, in opposition to the Leonine or barbarous species." This work, published soon after the death of King Richard, contains an elaborate lamentation over that event, which is quoted in what is called Bromton's Chronicle 1 (written in the 1 In the Scriptores X. col. 1280. The author's name is misprinted Galfridus de Nino Salvo. JOSCELIN DE BRAKELONDA. 113 reign of Edward III.), and, as both Camden 1 and Selden 2 have noted, is referred to by Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales, 3 although only the latter seems to have understood the delicate ridicule of the allusion. The " craft of Galfride " (so he names Vinsauf ) is also celebrated by the great English poet, apparently with much less irreverence, in his Court of Love,* no doubt composed at a much less advanced period of his life. Another valuable contemporary history of the early part of .the reign of Richard the First (from a. d. 1189 to 1192), comprehend- ing the transactions in England as well as abroad, the Chronicle of Richard of Devises, has been printed for the first time by the Historical Society: — Chronicon Ricardi Divisiensis de Rebus Ges- tis Ricardi Primi, Regis Anglise ; nunc primum typis mandatum, curante Josepho Stevenson ; — 8vo. Lon. 1838. Divisiensis ap- pears to have written before either Diceto or Hoveden, and his work forms therefore an authority additional to and quite inde- pendent of theirs. . Finally, we ought not to omit to mention the singularly curious Chronicle of Joscelin de Brakelonda, printed a few years ago by the Camden Society, — Chronica Jocelini de Brakelonda, de Rebus Gestis Samsonis Abbatis Monasterii Sancti Edmundi ; nunc primum typis mandata, curante Johanne Gage Rokewode ; 4to. Lon. 1840, — which, although professing to record only the acts of Abbot Samson and the history of the monastery of St. Edmondsbury, includes also several notices of the public affairs of the kingdom, as well as lets us see farther into the system of English life and society in that remote time than perhaps any other record that has come down to us. It embraces the space from 1173 to 1202, com- prehending the last sixteen years of the reign of Henry II., the whole of that of Richard I., and the first three years of that of John ; and it contains repeated personal notices of all these three kings. Brakelonda's Chronicle has been translated by Mr. T. E. Tomlins (8vo. Lon. 1840) ; and Mr. Carlyle's brilliant resuscita- tion of the old Abbot and his century in his Past and Present, 1843, lives in the memory of most readers of modern English books. 1 Remains, 7th edit., p. 414. 3 Nonne's Preestis Tale, v. 15,353, &c. 2 Prsefat. ad Scriptores X., p. xli. * v. 11. vol. I. 15 114 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. MONASTIC REGISTERS. Among the contemporary historical monuments of this age are also to be reckoned parts at least of several of the monastic regis- ters, compiled by a succession of writers, which have been pub- lished ; — such as that of Melrose, extending from a. d. 735 to 1270 (in Fulman, 1684, and much more carefully edited by Mr. Steven- son for the Bannatyne Club, 4to. 1835) ; that of Margan, from 1066 to 1232 (in Gale, 1687) ; that of Waverley, 1 from 1066 to 1291 (in the same collection) ; those of Ramsay and Ely, both, as far as printed, coming down to the Conquest (the former in Gale, 1691, the latter in the same collection, and also, in part, in the second Seculum of Mabillon's Acta Sanctorum Benedictinorum) ; that of Ely by the Priors Thomas and Richard, from a. d. 156 to 1169 (in Wharton's Anglia Sacra) ; those of Holyrood, from a. d. 596 to 1163, and of Abingdon, from 870 to 1131, and the History of the Bishops and Church of Durham from a. d. 633 to 1214 (all in the same collection). A new and much improved edition of that of Holyrood was brought out in 1828 for the Bannatyne Club by the late Mr. R. Pitcairn. To these may be added some of the tracts relating to the great monastery of Peterborough in Sparke's collection ; and several lives of prelates by Malmesbury, Goscelin of Canterbury, Osbern, John of Salisbury, Eadmer, &c, in Whar- ton. The Annals of the Monastery of Burton, in Staffordshire, from a. n. 1004 to 1263, and the continuation of the History of England from 1149 to 1470 (both in Fulman), appear to be throughout compilations of a later date. The venerable collection of ancient monuments relating to the church of Rochester and the kingdom of Kent, entitled the Textus Roffensis, which was published by Hearne, in 8vo., at Oxford in 1720, was drawn up by Bishop Ernnlplms, who presided over the see of Rochester from a.d. 1115 till his death in 1124 ; and Heming's Chartulary of the Church of Worcester, — Hemingi Chartularium Ecclesiae Wigor- niensis, — published by Hearne in two vols. 8vo. in 1723, is of still curlier date, having been compiled in the reign of the Conqueror. 1 Tlio passnpe, however, from the earlier portion of the Waverley Annals, which Gale quotes in proof of the writer having liveil at the time of the Conquest, is merely a translation from the vernacular Chronicle LAW TREATISES. — DOMESDAY BOOK. — PUBLIC ROLLS AND REGISTERS. We may close the account of the numerous historical writings of the first century and a half after the Conquest by merely no- ticing, that to the same period belong the earliest work on the common law of England, the Tractatus de Legibus et Consuetu- dinibus Anglia?, commonly ascribed to the chief justiciary Ranulf de Grlanvil, which was first printed, in 4to., at London in 1673, and of which there is an English translation, with notes, by Mr. John Beanies, 8vo. Lon. 1812 ; the Liber Niger, or Black Book of the Exchequer, supposed to have been compiled by Gervase of Til- bury (Gervasius Tilburiensis), who, according to some authorities, was a nephew of King Henry II., of which there is an edition by Hearne, 2 vols. 8vo. Oxford, 1728, reprinted at London in 1771 ; and the Dialogus de Scaccario, or Dialogue respecting the Ex- chequer, probably written by Richard Fitz-Nigel, or Fitz-Neale, bishop of London, from a. d. 1189 to 1198, which is printed at the end of Madox's History of the Exchequer, 4to. Lon. 1711, and again 2 vols. 4to. 1769 ; and of which there is an English transla- tion, 4to. Lon. 1756. Along with these text-books of English law may be noticed the book of the laws and legal usages of the Duchy of Normandy, called the Coutumes de Normandie, of which there are editions of 1681, 1684, 1694, and 1709, all printed at Rouen, and each in 2 volumes folio. It hardly belongs to our subject to mention the most venerable of all national registers, the Domesday Book of the Conqueror, printed at London in 1783, in 2 volumes, folio, under the title of Domesday Book, seu Liber Censualis Wil- lehni Primi Regis Anglian inter Archivos Regni in Domo Capitu- lari Westmonasterii conservatus ; the Indices printed in 1811, and the additional volume printed in 1816 containing the Exon Domes- day, the Inquisitio Eliensis, the Book of Winchester, and the Boldon Book ; the public documents appertaining to the present period in the Statutes of the Realm, the Fcedera, the Calendar of Patent Rolls in the Tower, the Calendar of Rolls, Charters, and Inquisitions Ad Quod Damnum, the Placitorum Abbreviatio, the Rotuli Literarum Patentium, the Rotuli Literarum Clausarum, the Great Rolls of the Pipe of the 31st of Henry I. and of the 3d of John, the Rotuli Normanniae, the Rotuli de Oblatis et Fini- 116 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. bus, the Fines in Curia Domini Regis, the Rotuli Curiae Regis, the Charter Rolls of John, the Ancient Laws and Institutes of England from iEthelbert to Henry I., and perhaps one or two other publications of the late Record Commission ; the Concilia of Spelman, and of Wilkins, &c. * THE FRENCH LANGUAGE LN ENGLAND. It is commonly asserted that for some reigns after the Norman Conquest the exclusive language of government and legislation in England was the French, — that all pleadings, at least in the su- preme courts, were carried on in that language, — and that in it all deeds were drawn up and all laws promulgated. " This popu 4 lar notion," observes a learned living writer, " cannot be easily- supported. . . . Before the reign of Henry III. Ave cannot dis- cover a deed or law drawn or composed in French. Instead of prohibiting the English language, it was employed by the Con- queror and his successors in their charters until the reign of Henry II., when it was superseded, not by the French but by the Latin language, which had been gradually gaining, or rather regaining, ground ; for the charters anterior to Alfred are invariably in Latin." 1 So far was the Conqueror from showing any aversion to the English language, or making any such attempt as is ascribed to him to effect its abolition, that, according to Ordericus Vitalis, when he first came over he strenuously applied himself to learn it for the special purpose of understanding, without the aid of an interpreter, the causes that were pleaded before him, and perse- vered in that endeavor till the tumult of many other occupations, and what the historian calls "durior astas " — a more iron time 2 — of necessity compelled him to give it up. 3 The common statement rests on the more than suspicious authority of the History attrib- uted to Ingulphus, the fabricator of which, in his loose and igno- rant account of the matter, has set down this falsehood along with 1 Sir Francis Palgrave, Rise and Progress of the English Commonwealth, vol. i p. 66. 2 Quid nos dura refugimus actas ? — Hor. Od. i. 35. * Excerpta ex Libro iv. Orderici Vitalis, p. 247 ; edit. Maseres. THE FRENCH LANGUAGE IN ENGLAND. 117 some other things that are true or probable. Even before the Conquest, the Confessor himself, according to this writer, though a native of England, yet, from his education and long residence in Normandy, had become almost a Frenchman ; and when he suc- ceeded to the English throne, he brought over with him great numbers of Normans, whom he advanced to the highest dignities in the church and the state. " Wherefore," it is added, " the whole land began, under the influence of the king and the other Normans introduced by him, to lay aside the English customs, and to imitate the manners of the French in many things; for example, all the nobility in their courts began to speak French as a great piece of gentility, to draw up their charters and other writings after the French fashion, and to grow ashamed of their old national habits in these and many other particulars." 1 Further on we are told, " They [the Normans] held the language [of the natives] in such abhorrence that the laws of the land and the statutes of the English kings were drawn out in the Gallic [or French] tongue ; and to boys in the schools the elements of grammar were taught in French and not in English ; even the English manner of writ- ing was dropped, and the French manner introduced in all charters and books." 2 The facts are more correctly given by other old writers, who, although not contemporary with the Conquest, are probably of as early a date as the compiler of the Croyland His- tory. The Dominican friar Robert Holcot, writing in the earlier part of the fourteenth century, informs us that there was then no institution of children in the old English, — that the first language O 7 OCT they learned was the French, and that through that tongue they were afterwards taught Latin ; and he adds that this was a prac- tice which had been introduced at the Conquest, and which had continued ever since. 3 About the middle of the same century Ranulf Higden, in his Polychronicon, says, as the passage is trans- lated by Trevisa, " This apayringe (impairing) of the birthe tonge is by cause of tweye thinges ; oon is for children in scole, aghenes (against) the usage and maner of alle other naciouns, beth (be) compelled for to leve her (their) owne langage, and for to con- 1 Ingulphi Historia, in Savile, 895 ; or in Fulman, 62. The translation, which is ufficiently faithful, is Henry's. 2 Id. Savile, 001 ; Fulman, 71. 3 Lect. in Lihr. Sapient. Lect. ii. 4to. Paris, 1518 ; as referred to hy Warteu, Hist Eng. Poetry, i. 5. 118 ENGLISH LITERATUKE AND LANGUAGE. stivwe her lessouns and her thingis a Frensche, and haveth siththe (have since) that the Normans come first into England. Also gentil mennes children beth ytaught (be taught) for to speke Frensche from the time that thei beth rokked in her cradel, and cunneth (can) speke and playe with a childes brooche ; and up- londish (rustic) men wol likne hem self (will liken themselves) to gentilmen, and fondeth (ai'e fond) with grete bisynesse for to speke Frensche, for to be the more ytold of." * The teachers in the schools, in fact, were generally, if not universally, ecclesiastics ; and the Conquest had Normanized the church quite as much as the state. Immediately after that revolution great numbers of foreigners were brought over, both to serve in the parochial cures and to fill the monasteries that now began to multiply so rapidly. These churchmen must have been in constant intercourse with the people of all classes in various capacities, not only as teachers of youth, but as the instructors of their parishioners from the altar, and as holding daily and hourly intercourse with them in all the relations that subsist between pastor and flock. They probably in this way diffused their own tongue throughout the land of their adoption to a greater extent than is commonly suspected. We shall have occasion, as we proceed, to mention some facts which would seem to imply that in the twelfth century the French lan- guage was very generally familiar to the middle classes in Eng- land, at least in the great towns. It was at any rate the only language spoken for some ages after the Conquest by our kings, and not only by nearly all the nobility, but by a large proportion even of the inferior landed proprietors, most of whom also were of Norman birth or descent. Ritson, in his rambling, incoherent Dissertation on Romance and Minstrelsy, prefixed to his Ancient English Metrical Romances, has collected, but not in the most satisfactory manner, some of the evidence we have as to the speech of the first Norman kings. He does not notice what Or- dericus Vitalis tells us of the Conqueror's meritorious attempt, which does not seem, however, to have been more successful than Midi experiments on the part of grown-up gentlemen usually are: so that he may be allowed to be correct enough in the assertion with which he sets out, that we have no information "that William the Bastard, his son Rufus, his daughter Aland, or his nephew 1 Quoted from MS. Karl. l'JOO, by Tvrwhitt, in Essay on the Language anc 5 Versification of Chaucer, prefixed to his edition of the Canterbury Tales. THE FRENCH LANGUAGE IN ENGLAND. 119 Stephen, did or could speak the Anglo-Saxon or English lan- guage." Reference is then made to a story told in what is called Brompton's Chronicle respecting Henry II., which, however, is not very intelligible in all its parts, though Ritson has slurred over the difficulties. As Henry was passing through Wales, the old chronicler relates, on his return from Ireland in the spring of 1172, he found himself on a Sunday at the castle of Cardiff, and stopped there to hear mass ; after which, as he was proceeding to mount his horse to be off again, there presented itself before him a some- what singular apparition, a man with red hair and a round ton- sure, 1 lean and tall, attired in a white tunic and barefoot, who, addressing him in the Teutonic tongue, began, " Gode Olde Kinge," 2 and proceeded to deliver a command from Christ, as he said, and his mother, from John the Baptist and Peter, that he should suffer no traffic or servile works to be done throughout his dominions on the Sabbath-day, except only such as pertained to the use of food; "which command, if thou observest," concluded the speaker, " whatever thou mayest undertake thou shalt happily accomplish." The king immediately, speaking in French, desired the soldier who held the bridle of his horse to ask the rustic if he had dreamed all this. The soldier made the inquiry, as desired, in English ; and then, it is added, the man replied in the same lan- guage as before, and addressing the king said, " Whether I have dreamed it or no, mark this day ; for, unless thou shalt do what I have told thee, and amend thy life, thou shalt within a year's time hear such news as thou shalt mourn to the day of thy death." And, having so spoken, the man vanished out of sight. With the calamities which of course ensued to the doomed king we have here nothing to do. Although the chronicler reports only the three commencing words of the prophet's first address in what he calls the Teutonic tongue, there can be no doubt, we conceive, that the rest, though here translated into Latin, was also delivered in the same Teutonic (by which, apparently, can only have been meant the vernacular English, or what is commonly called Saxon) 1 Tonsura rotunda. Scriptores Decern, 1079. The epithet would seem to imply f hat there were still in Wales some priests of the ancient British Church who re- tained the old national crescent-shaped tonsure, now deemed heretical. 2 Henry and his son of the same name were commonly distinguished as the Old and the Young King from the date of the coronation of the latter (whom his father survived ) in 1170. 120 ENGLISH LITER ATL RE AND LANGUAGE. The man would not begin his speech in one language, and then suddenly break away into another. But, if this was the case, Henry, from his reply, would appear to have understood English, though he might not be able to speak it. The two languages, thus subsisting together, were probably both understood by many of those who could only speak one of them. We have another evi- dence of this in the fact of the soldier, as we have seen, speaking English and also understanding the King's French. It is, we sup- pose, merely so much affectation or bad rhetoric in the chronicler that makes him vary his phrase for the same thing from " the Teu- tonic tongue" (Tevctomca lingua) in one place to "English" (Anglice) in another, and immediately after to " the former lan- guage " (lingua priori) ; for the words which he gives as Teutonic are English words, and, when Henry desired the soldier to address the priest in English and the soldier did so, it must have been because that was the language in which he had addressed the king. 1 " King Richard," Ritson proceeds, " is never known to have uttered a single English word, unless one may rely on the evi dence of Robert Mannyng for the express words, when, of Isaac King of Cyprus, ' O dele,' said the king, ' this is a fole Breton. The latter expression seems proverbial, whether it alludes to the Welsh or to the Armoricans, because Isaac was neither by birth, though he might be both by folly. Many great nobles of Eng- land, in this century, were utterly ignorant of the English lan- guage." As an instance, he mentions the case, before noticed by Tyrwhitt, of William Longchamp, bishop of Ely, chancellor and prime minister to Richard L, who, according to a remarkable account in a letter of his contemporary Hugh bishop of Coventry, preserved by Hoveden, did not know a word of English. 2 The only fact relating to this subject in connection with John or his 1 A somewhat different view of tliis story is taken by Mr. Luders in his tract On the Use (>t the French Language in our ancient Laws and Acts of State. (Tracts on Various Subjects, p. 400.) He remarks: " The author does not tell why the ghost >i»>ke German to the King in Wales, or how this German became all at once good English ; nor how it happened that the groom addressed the German ghost in English." Mr. Luders, therefore, understands "the Teutonic tongue" to mean, not EinfHah, hut German. ' l.iii-ii.i Anglicanum prorsus ignorabat. — Hoveden, 704. Ritson, omitting all mention either of Hoveden or Tyrwhitt. chooses to make a genera] reference to the chronicle called Bromton's, a later compilation, the author of which (vide col. 1227) uas quietly appropriated Bishop Hugh's Letter, and made it part of his narrative. THE LANGUE D'OC AND THE LANGUE D'OYL. 121 reign that Ritson brings forward, is the speech which that king's ambassador, as related by Matthew Paris, made to the King of Morocco : — " Our nation is learned in three idioms, that is to say, Latin, French, and English." * This would go to support the conclusion that both the French and the Latin lansuag-es were at this time not unusually spoken by persons of education in England. THE LANGUE D'OC AND THE LANGUE D'OYL. French as well as Latin was at least extensively employed among us in literary composition. The Gauls, the original inhabitants of the country now called France, were a Celtic people, and their speech was a dialect of the same great primitive tongue which probably at one time prevailed over the whole of Western Europe, and is still vernacular in Ireland, in Wales, and among the High- landers of Scotland. After the country became a Roman province, this ancient language gradually gave place to the Latin ; which, however, here as elsewhere, soon became corrupted in the mouths of a population mixing it with their own barbarous vocables and forms, or at least divesting it of many of its proper characteristics in their rude appropriation of it. But, as different depraving or obliterating influences operated in different circumstances, and a variety of kinds of bad Latin were thus produced in the several countries which had been provinces of the empire, so even within the limits of Gaul there grew up two such distinct dialects, one in the south, another in the north. All these forms of bastard Latin, wherever they arose, whether in Italy, in Spain, or in Gaul, were known by the common name of Roman, or Romance, languages, or the Rustic Roman (Romana Rustica), and were by that generic term distinguished from the barbarian tongues, or those that had been spoken by the Celtic, German, and other uncivilized nations before they came into communication with the Romans. From 1 This was a secret mission despatched by John, the historian tells us, in 1213, '' ad Admiralium Murmelium, regem magnum Aphricae, Marrochiae, et Hispaniae, quem vulgus Miramumelinum vocat." The words used by Thomas Herdington, the one of the three commissioners selected, on account of his superior gift of elo- quence, to be spokesman, were " Gens nostra speciosa et ingeniosa tribus pollet idiomatibus erudita, scilicet Latino, Gallico, et Anglico." — Matt. Paris, 243 VOL. I. 16 122 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. them have sprung what are called the Latin languages of modern Europe, — the Italian, the Spanish, and the Portuguese, as well as what we now denominate the French. The Romance spoken in the south of Gaul appears to have been originally nearly, if not altogether, identical with that spoken in the northeast of Spain ; and it always preserved a close resemblance and affinity to that and the other Romance dialects of Spain and Italy. It is in fact to be accounted a nearer relation of the Spanish and Italian than of the modern French. The latter is exclusively the offspring of the Romance of Northern Gaul, which, both during its first growth and subsequently, was acted upon by different influences from those which modified the formation of the southern tongue. It is proba- ble that whatever it retained of the Celtic ingredient to begin with was, if not stronger or of larger quantity than what entered into the Romance dialect of the south, at any rate of a somewhat differ- ent character ; but the peculiar form it eventually assumed may be regarded as having been mainly owing to the foreign pressure to which it was twice afterwards exposed, first by the settlement of the Franks in the north and northeast of Gaul in the fifth cen- tury (while the Visigoths and Burgundians had spread themselves over the south), and again by that of the Normans in the north- west in the tenth. What may have been the precise nature or amount of the effect produced upon the Romance tongue of North- ern Gaul by either or both of these Teutonic occupations of the country, it is not necessary for our present purpose to inquire ; it is sufficient to observe that that dialect could not fail to be thereby peculiarly affected, and its natural divergence from the southern Romance materially aided and promoted. The result, in fact, was that the two dialects became two distinct languages, differing from © © ' © one another more than any two other of the Latin languages did, — the Italian, for example, from the Spanish, or the Spanish from the Portuguese, and even more than the Romance of the south of Gaul differed from that either of Italy or of Spain. This southern Ro- mance, it only remains further to be observed, came in course of time to be called the Provencal tongue ; but it does not appear to have received this name till, in the beginning of the twelfth cen- tury, the county of Provence had fallen to be inherited by Ray- mond Berenger, Count of Catalonia, who thereupon transferred his court to Aries, and made that town the centre and chief seat of the literary cultivation which had previously flourished at Barce- THE LANGUE D'OC AND THE LANGUE D'OYL. 123 lona. There had been poetry written in the Romance of Southern Gaul before this ; but it was not till now that the Troubadours, as the authors of that poetry called themselves, rose into much celeb- rity ; and hence it has been maintained, with great appearance of reason, that what is best or most characteristic about the Provencal poetry is really not of French but of Spanish origin. In that case the first inspiration may probably have been caught from the Arabs. The greater part of Provence soon after passed into the possession of the Counts of Toulouse, and the Troubadours flocked to that city. But the glory of the Provencal tongue did not last altogether for much more than a century ; and then, when it had ceased to be employed in poetry and literature, and had declined into a mere provincial patois, it and the northern French were wont to be sev- erally distinguished by the names of the Langue d'Oc (sometimes called by modern writers the Occitanian) and the Langue d'Oyl, from the words for yes, which were oo in the one, and oyl, after- wards oy or out, in the other. Dante mentions them by these appellations, and with this explanation, in his treatise De Vulgari Eloquio, written in the end of the thirteenth or beginning of the fourteenth century ; and one of them still gives its name to the great province of Languedoc, where the dialect formerly so called yet subsists as the popular speech, though, of course, much changed and debased from what it was in the days of its old renown, when it lived on the lips of rank and genius and beauty, and was the favorite vehicle of love and song. The Langue d'Oyl, on the other hand, formerly spoken only to the north of the Loire, has grown up into what we now call the French language, and has become, at least for literary purposes, and for all the educated classes, the established language of the whole country. Some fond students of the remains of the other dialect have deplored this result as a misfortune to France, which they contend would have had a better modern language and lit- erature if the Langue d'Oc, in the contest between the two, had prevailed over the Langue d'Oyl. It is probable, indeed, that Accident and political circumstances have had more to do in deter- mining the matter as it has gone than the merits of the case ; but in every country as well as in France, — in Spain, in Italy, in Ger- many, in England, — some other of the old popular dialects than the one that has' actually acquired the ascendancy has in like man- ner had its enthusiastic reclaimers against the unjust fortune which 124 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. has condemned it to degradation or oblivion ; and we may suspect that the partiality which the mind is apt to acquire for whatever it has made the subject of long investigation and study, especially if it be something which has been generally neglected, and perhaps in some instances a morbid sympathy with depression and defeat, which certain historical and philosophical speculators have in com- mon with the readers and writers of sentimental novels, are at the bottom of much of this unavailing and purposeless lamentation. The question is one which we have hardly the means of solving, even if any solution of it which might now be attainable could have any practical effect. The Langue d'Oyl is now unalterably estab- lished as the French language ; the Langue d'Oc is, except as a local patois, irrecoverably dead. Nor are there wanting French archaeologists, quite equal in knowledge of the subject to their op- ponents, who maintain that in this there is nothing to regret, but the contrary, — that the northern Romance tongue was as superior to the southern intrinsically as it has proved in fortune, and that its early literature was of far higher value and promise than the Provencal. 1 NORMAN TROUVEURS : — DUKE RICHARD I. — THIBAUT DE VERNON. — TUROLD, OR THEROULDE. — CHANSON DE RO- LAND. It is, at any rate, this early literature of the Langue d'Oyl which is for us in England of most interest. It is, in fact, in a manner a part of our own. Not only did it spring up, and for a long time nourish exclusively, among those same wonderful Nor- mans whose greatest and most enduring dominion has been estab- lished in this island ; the greater part of it appears to have been 1 What has come to be called the French tongue, it may be proper to notice, has no relationship whatever to that of the proper French, or Franks, who were a Teu- tonic people, speaking a punly Teutonic language, resembling the German, or more nearly the Flemish. This old Teutonic French, which the Franks continued to speak for several centuries after their conquest of Gaul, is denominated by phi- lologists the Prankish^ °r Francic. The modern French, which is a Latin tongue, has come to be so called, from the accident of the country in which it was spokeu having been conquered by the French or Franks, — the conquerors, as in other cases, in course of time adopting the language of the conquered, and bestowing jpon it their own name. NORMAN TROUVEURS:— DUKE RICHARD I. 125 produced not in France, but in England. This was first shown by the late Abbe de la Rue in a series of dissertations published in 1796 and 1797 in the twelfth and thirteenth volumes of* the Ar- chgeologia, or Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries, and sub- sequently, at more length and with more elaborate research, in his work entitled Essais Historiques sur les Bardes, les Jongleurs, et les Trouveres Normands et Anglo-Normands ; 3 vols. 8vo. Caen, 1834. The earliest recorded writer of French verse appears to be Richard I., Duke of Normandy, the natural but only son of Wil- liam L, son and successor of Rollo, the great founder of the duchy. Richard, who afterwards acquired for himself the surname of Sans- peur, (the Fearless,) was born in 933, was recognized as duke on the death of his father, ten years after, and died, after a glorious reign of more than half a century, in 996. Of his poetry, how- ever, nothing remains except the fame, preserved in the writings of another Trouvere of the next age. Richard, it may observed, had been sent by his father to be educated at Bayeux, where the Danish language was still spoken, instead of at Rouen, the capital of the duchy, where even already, only a generation after the arrival of the Normans, they or their children, as well as the na- tive population, spoke only French ; and his taste for poetry is said to have been first- awakened by the songs of the land of his ances- tors. Much of the peculiar character, indeed, of the early north- ern French poetry betokens a Scandinavian inspiration. With this influence was probably combined that of the old Celtic poetry of Britany, or Armorica, of which the country now called Normandy had been originally a part, and with which it still continued to be intimately connected. In this way may be reconciled the various theories that have been proposed on the subject of the origin of romantic poetry and fiction in Europe ; one deducing it from a Scandinavian, another from a Celtic, a third from an Oriental source ; and each, separately looked at, appearing to support itself by facts and considerations of great force. When these several theories were advanced in opposition to one another by ingenious and more or less well-informed speculators of the last century, the iistinction between the early language and poetry of the south and hose of the north of France had been little attended to, and was very imperfectly understood. Had the love-songs of the Proven- cal Troubadours, and the lays and tales of the Norman Trouveres, 126 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. not been confounded together, it might have been perceived that both the internal and the external evidence concurred in assigning, in great part at least, a Saracenic origin to the former, and a mixed Scandinavian and Armorican parentage to the latter. Another early Norman Trouvere, whose name only has been preserved, is Thibaut de Vernon, who was a canon of Rouen in the early part of the eleventh century, or in the age intermediate between that of Duke Richard Sans-peur and that of the Con- queror. A collection of fifty-nine old French Lives of Saints, of which three are in verse and the rest in prose, has been attributed to De Vernon ; but erroneously, as is shown by M. de la Rue. What he really wrote was a verse Life of St. Vandrille (the Abbot Wandregisilus), which appears to be lost. The renowned minstrel Taillefer, who struck the first blow at the battle of Hastings, is described by his countryman Wace, in the next century, as having dashed on horseback among the ranks of the English, to meet his glorious death, singing of Charlemagne and Roland and Oliver, and the other peers who died at Ronces- vaux : — De Karlemaigne et de Rollant, E d'Oliver, et des vassals, Qy morurent en Roncesvals. Various pieces of ancient verse have been from time to time pro- duced, claiming to be this Song of Roland (as it is styled by sev- eral later chroniclers) ; and it has been generally assumed that it was a short lyrical strain, and a composition of Taillefer's own. Lately, however, much attention has been attracted to a long poem, of nearly three hundred stanzas, or some three thousand lines, which was first published by M. Francisque Michel from the manuscript in the Bodleian Library, under the title of La Chanson de Roland, on de Roncevaux (8vo. Paris, 1837), and which is main- tained to be the true old epic of which a portion was recited by Taillefer on this occasion. The existence of this poem was, we believe, first pointed out in a note to his edition of Chaucer's Can- terbury Tales (v. 13,741), by Tyrwhitt, so many of whose hints and conjectures on such subjects have anticipated or been con- firmed by more recent inquiry, and who observes that the " ro- mance, which in the MS. has no title, may possibly be an older copy of one which is frequently quoted by Du Cange, under the CHANSON DE ROLAND. 138/ title of Le Roman de Ronceveaux." " The author's name," he adds, " is Turold, as appears from the last line : — Ci fait le geste que Turold' declinet. 1 He is not mentioned by any of the writers of French literary his- tory that I have seen." There are in fact other manuscripts of the work, but of a later age, and exhibiting a modernized text. It appears, however, to have been generally forgotten until it was again mentioned by the late Rev. J. F. Conybeare, in announcing, in the Gentleman's Magazine for August, 1817, his Illustrations of the Early History of English and French Poetry, — a work which, unfortunately, he did not live to publish. That same year an an- alysis of the poem was given in the first volume of the Memoires et Dissertations de la Societe* Royale des Antiquaires de France, by M. de Musset, who at the same time announced an edition of it as in preparation by M. Guyot des Herbiers. This, however, never appeared, any more than an edition which was announced in 1832 as then preparing by M. Bourdillon. Nor, although it was sub- sequently made the subject of much discussion by M. H. Monin, who published a Dissertation upon it in an 8vo. volume, at Paris, in 1832, by M. Paulin Paris, by M. Le Roux de Lincy, in his Analyse du Roman de Garin le Loherain (12mo. Paris, 1835), and other French poetical antiquaries, was the poem made accessible to the public, till M. Michel was enabled to bring out his edition of it (of ■which the impression, however, was very limited) by the liber- ality of the French government. But a more sumptuous edition was subsequently produced by the late M. F. Genin, — La Chan- son de Roland, Texte Critique ; 8vo. Par. 1850, — founded on a further examination, conducted with extraordinary care, of the original manuscript (which the enthusiastic editor is inclined to believe to be the very copy that had belonged to Taillefer) — and illustrated with everything in the way of explanation and disqui- sition that any student could desire, or that rare ingenuity as well as erudition could supply. 2 1 Turold' is the common contraction for Titroldus. 2 See also Lettre sur les Variantes de la Chanson de Roland, (edition de M. F. Genin), a M. Le'on de Bastard, par F. Guessard ; Lettre a M. Paulin Paris, par F. Genin ; and Lettre a un Ami sur l'Article de M. Paulin Paris, inse're' dans la Bib iotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, par F. Ge'nin ; all published at Paris in 1851. 128 ENGLISH LITERAJLUttE AND LANGUAGE. ANGLO-NORMAN POETS. — KING HENRY I. — HIS QUEENS MATILDA AND ALICE. To our King Henry I., surnamed Beauclerc, or the Scholar, who was carefully educated under the superintendence of the learned Lanfranc, afterwards archbishop and saint, M. de la Rue attributes both an English translation of a collection of Latin JEso- pian fables, mentioned in the next age by Marie de France, and rendered by her into French verse, and a short poem in Romance entitled Urbanus, or Le Dictie" d'Urbain, being a sort of code of the rules of politeness as understood and observed in his day. The evidence, however, is not very conclusive as to either produc- tion ; and the English fables, in particular, now only known from Marie's translation, have been claimed, with perhaps more proba- bility, for King Alfred, whose name appears instead of that of Henry in some manuscripts of Marie's work. 1 Both Henry's queens, it may be noticed, are recorded to have been, as well as himself, fond of literature and poetry. M. de la Rue refers to the works of Hildebert, bishop of le Mans, as containing several pieces of Latin poetry addressed to the first of them, Matildis, or Matilda, the daughter of the Scottish kin ir Malcolm Canmore and the English Margaret, herself a learned as well as pious princess. But the liveliest picture of this part of Queen Matilda's character is that drawn by William of Malmesbury. who, it will be perceived however, is no great admirer of some of the tastes which he de- scribes : — " She had a singular pleasure in hearing the service of God ; and on this account was thoughtlessly prodigal towards clerks of melodious voice ; addressed them kindly, gave to them liberally, and promised still more abundantly. Her generosity be- coming universally known, crowds of scholars, equally lamed for verse and for singing, came over; and happy did he account him- self who could soothe the ears of the queen by the novelty of his song. Nor on those only did she lavish money, but on all sorts of men, especially foreigners, that, through her presents, they might proclaim her liberality abroad ; for the desire of lame is so rooted in the human mind that scarce] v is anv one contented with the 1 See a note upon this subject ( which, however, appears not to have convinced De la Rue) by the late Mr. Price, in his edition of Warton's History of English Poetry, i. lvii.-lxvi. PHILIP DE THAN. 129 precious fruits of a good conscience, but is fondly anxious, if he does anything laudable, to have it generally known. Hence, it was generally observed, the disposition crept upon the queen to reward all the foreigners she could, while the others were kept in suspense, sometimes with effectual, but often with empty promises. Hence, too, it arose that she fell into the error of prodigal givers ; bringing many claims on her tenantry, exposing them to injuries, and taking away their property ; by which, obtaining the credit of a liberal benefactress, she little, regarded their sarcasms." : With all this vanity, however, and love of admiration and applause, if such it is to be called, Matilda is admitted by the historian to have con* stantly practised the humblest and most self-denying offices of re- ligion : she did not shrink, Ave are told, either from washing the feet of diseased persons, or even from touching and dressing their sores and pressing their hands for a long time with devout affection to -her lips ; and her chief pleasure was in the worship of God. It is a trait of the times to find the same person the chief patroness of piety and of poetry. Henry's second queen, also, Adelais, or Alice, of Louvain, is addressed by several of the Norman and Anglo-Norman trouveres as the special protectress of them and their art. PHILIP DE THAN. — GEOFFREY, ABBOT OF ST. ALBANS. One of those by whom Queen Adelais is thus distinguished is Philip de Than (anciently Thaon or Thaun), who, if the age of Turold and his Roman de Roncevaux be disputed, may be regard- ed as the earliest of the trouveres any of whose works have cer- tainly come down to us. He is the author of two French poems of considerable length : one a treatise on chronological computation, entitled Li Livre des Creatures ; the other, known as The Bestiary, being a sort of natural history, comprising an account of both ani- mal and mineral productions. The latter is dedicated to the Eng- lish queen, and was probably written between 1120 and 1130. Both poems are mainly compiled from various Latin originals. 2 1 Willelmi Malmesbiriensis Gesta Regum Anglorum, lib. v. ad an. 1107 ; as • translated by the Rev. John Sharpe. 4to. London, 1815, p. 516. 2 They are both given, with translations, in Mr. Wright's Popular Treatises on vol. I. 17 180 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. We have already mentioned Geffroy, or Geoffrey, also a native of Normandy, who died abbot of the monastery of St. Albans in 1140, and his miracle-play of St. Catharine, which is stated by Matthew Paris to have been acted by the boys attending his school at Dunstable about the year 1110, and is generally referred to as the earliest drama upon record in any modern tongue. 1 But in truth we have no information in what language this lost production of Geoffrey was composed ; it may have been in French, in Eng- lish, or in Latin, though it is most probable that it was in the first- mentioned tongue. If so, it is by much the most ancient French play of which the name has been preserved. Its claim to stand at the head of modern dramatic literature, however, has been disputed. " Perhaps," observes a late learned writer, " the plays of Roswitha, a nun of Gandersheim in Lower Saxony, who lived towards the close of the tenth century, afford the earliest specimens of dramatic composition since the decline of the Roman empire." 2 These plays of Roswitha's appear to have been intended only for reading, and are not known ever to have been acted ; but they have been twice published, — first by Conrad Celtes in 1501, and again by Leonard Schurtzfleisch in 1707. PILGRIMAGE OF SAINT BRANDAN. — CHARLEMAGNE. Another of the poetical protege's or celebrators of Queen Ad- elais is the unknown author of a poem of between 800 and 900 verses on the Pilgrimage of St. Brandan. There were, it appears, in the sixth century two Irish ecclesiastics of the name of Brandan or Brendan, both of whom have since been canonized, the day as- signed in the Calendar to the one being the 29th of November, to the other the 16th of May. It is the latter with whom we have here to do. He has the credit of having been the founder of the abbey of Clonfert in Galway ; but the most memorable passage of his history is his voyage, along with some of his monks, in quest of a more profound seclusion from the world, which was believed Science written during the Middle Ages, in Anglo-Saxon, Anglo-Norman, and Eng- lish. Hvo. London, is II. 1 See nut.-, p. 70. 2 Note by Price to Warton'e Hist, of Eng. Poet., ii. 68. PILGRIMAGE OF SAINT BRANDAN. 131 in an after-age to have conducted him to one of the Fortunate Islands, or one of the Canaries according to a still later interpreta- tion. He did not find the scheme of so distant a retirement to an- swer, and he soon returned to Ireland ; but M. de la Rue thinks it probable that he drew up a narrative of his adventures for the infor- mation of the European public of that day, out of which there grew in course of time the legend which bears the name of his Voyage to the Terrestrial Paradise, and which is as full of marvels and miracles as that of Ulysses, or any of those of Sinbad the Sailor. Indeed, one of Sinbad's principal wonders, his landing on the whale, is actually found in the Voyage of St. Bran dan. De la Rue has given copious extracts from the poem on this subject which he notices, and which professes to have been composed at the com- mand of Queen Adelais, and immediately after her marriage in 1121. But the fullest account of St. Brandan and his Pilgrimage will be found in the Preface to a more recent publication by M. Achille Jubinal, entitled La Legende Latine de S. Brandaines, avec une traduction inedite en prose et en poesie Romane, publiee d'apres les manuscrits de la Bibliotheque du Roi, remontant aux xi% xii% etxiii 6 siecles ; 8vo., Paris, 1886. Of the French metrical legend here printed, which is different from the Anglo-Norman romance analyzed by De la Rue, M. Jubinal states that there are many manuscripts. It is found as part of a poem of the thirteenth century written by Gauthier de Metz, entitled Image du Monde. Several copies of the story in Latin prose also exist ; of the French prose version there is only one known text, which is in the Biblio- theque Imperial e at Paris. It is found, however, both in verse and prose in most of the other European tongues, — in Irish, in Welsh, in Spanish, in German of various dialects, in Flemish, in English ; and there are printed editions of it, both recent and in the earlier ages of typography, in several of these languages. M. Jubinal mentions an edition of it in English prose, printed by Wynken de Worde, in folio, in 1516 : it appears to be a translation from a Latin version contained in a volume of Lives of the Saints, compiled under the title of Legenda Aurea, by John Capgrave, who was an Eng lish monk of the fourteenth century, and the author also of a quan- tity of verse, some of which still exists, in his native tongue. 1 It is remarkable that St. Brandan, or Brandain, has given his name to an imaginary island long popularly believed to form one of the Ca- 1 See Warton's Hist, of Eng. Poet., ii. 355 ; and additional note by Park, p. 514 edit, of 1824). 132 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. nary group, although become invisible since his day, or at least not to be discovered by modern navigators, to whom it was a frequent object of search from the beginning of the sixteenth down to so late a date as the beginning of the eighteenth century: the last expedition in quest of it was fitted out from Spain in 1721. The Spaniards, who call the lost island San Borendon, believe it to be the retreat of their Kino; Rodrigo ; the Portuguese assign it to their Don Sebastian. 1 The acquaintance of the modern nations of Eu- rope with the Canary Islands dates only from about the year 1330, when a French ship was driven upon one of them in a storm. Along with this romance on the pilgrimage of St. B randan may be noticed another old French poem on a fabulous journey of Charlemagne to Constantinople and Jerusalem, which is perhaps of still earlier date, and which has also from the language been supposed to have been written in England. An account of it is given by De la Rue (Essais, ii. 23—32) ; and the poem has been since published by M. Francisque Michel, from the Royal MS. 16 E. viii., at the British Museum, under the title of Charlemagne, an Anglo-Norman poem of the Twelfth Century, with an Introduc- tion and a Glossarial Index ; 12mo. Lon. 1836. It consists of only 870 lines. ANGLO-NORMAN CHRONICLERS : — GAIMAR ; — DAVID. But the farther we pursue the history of this early Norman poetry, the closer becomes its connection with our own country. Not only does it seek its chief audience in England, but the sub- jects with which it occupies itself come to be principally or almost exclusively English. The earliest of the old French versifiers of our English history appears to be GefFroy Gaimar, the author of a metrical chronicle, entitled Estorie des Engles (History of the English). It, was probably completed about the middle of the twelfth century. Attention was first called to Gaimar and his work by the Abbe* de la Rue, who appears, however, to have in part mistaken the sense of the account the old chronicler gives of 1 Both the Abbe de la Rue and M. Jubinal refer the reader for information upon the subject of the Isle of St. Brandan to the Noticiaa de la Historia de las islas de Oanaria of Dom Joseph da Viera y Clavigo (Madrid, 1672 or 1771). GAIMAR. — DAVID. 133 mmself. In the complete work the History of the English was preceded by a Brut d'Angleterre, or History of the Britons, which he had compiled principally, he tells us, from a Latin work, itself a translation from a Welsh original, the good book of Oxford belong- ing to Walter the archdeacon. Comparing this with what is stated by Geoffrey of Monmouth in the Preface or Dedication to his History, we cannot doubt that that was the Latin original upon which Gaimar worked. He seems to say that he also made some use of another book which he calls the History of Winchester, and of an English book of Washingburgh (in Lincolnshire), where he found accounts of the Roman emperors who possessed the sover- eignty of England and of the kings who had held of them. This portion of Gaimar' s performance, however, is no longer known to exist. His English History extends from the coming of the Angles and Saxons to the death of William Rums, and is for the most part based on the vernacular National Chronicle, but owes its chief interest and value to certain legendary matter gathered either from other written sources, or, in some cases perhaps, from mere popular tradition. The first portion of it which was printed was that containing the story of Havelok the Dane, which was given by Sir Frederic Madden in his edition of that romance prepared for the Roxburghe Club, London, 1828. The latter por- tion of the work, commencing from the Norman Conquest, was published by M. Francisque Michel, at Rouen, in 1835, in the first volume of his collection entitled Chroniques Anglo-Normandes. The portion relating to the period before the Norman Conquest, again, extending to above 5300 lines in all, is contained in the Monumenta Historica Britannica, 1848. Finally, the whole has been edited by Mr. Thomas Wright, for the Caxton Society, under the title of Gaimar's Anglo-Norman Metrical Chronicle, with Illustrative Notes and Appendix, containing the Lay of Havelok, the Legend of Ernulf, and the Life of Herward ; 8vo. London, 1850. A translation of Gaimar by Mr. Stevenson is given in the Second Part of the Third Volume of The Church Historians of England, 1854. At the end of his History, Gaimar, who here describes himself *s of Troyes, intimates his intention of writing a separate Life of King Henry I., of whom he says that he could tell a thousand things omitted by David, who did not go sufficiently into details to io justice to the nobleness, the liberality, the magnificence, and 134 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. the other brilliant qualities of that great king, although his chron icle was highly esteemed, and in particular was a favorite book with the Queen Adelais. Of this David, who is nowhere else made mention of, nothing is known. His performance was in verse ; Gaimar calls it a Chanson. Nor have we any evidence that Gaimar's own promised Life of King Henry was ever written. WACE. The most famous of these w r riters of early English history in romance verse is Master Wace, — Maitre Wace, elerc lisant (that is, writing clerk), as he calls himself, — in Latin Magister Wacius. The name is also otherwise written in his own day Waice, Grace, Gasse, and Gasce ; but Guace, Huace, Haistace, Wistace, Extasse, Eustace, Eustache, are the corruptions of a subsequent age or modern variations, and Wate, which is the form adopted by some modern writers, is a mere mistranscription. 1 His Christian name appears to have been Richard. He was a native of the island of Jersey, where he was probably born in the last decade of the eleventh century, and of a good family : his father was one of the Norman barons who accompanied the Conqueror to England and fought at Hastings ; he himself was educated for the ecclesiastical profession at Caen, and, after passing some years in other parts of France, and also, it appears, visiting England, he returned and settled in that city, where he spent the rest of his life in writing his several poetical works. In his latter years he was made by Henry II. a canon of Bayeux. The Waces, probably descendants of the poet's father, obtained large possessions in Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire ; and another branch continued to flourish for some ages in Normandy. The first of Wace's chronicles is entitled the Brut d'Angleterre, 2 and is in the main a translation into romance 1 Wace, however, according to Mr. Wright, is really " merely the vernacular form of tin Latin Ewtaciw." — (Biog. Brit. Lit., ii. 206.) - The British Chronicles are generally supposed to have been called Bruts from Brutus, the great-grandson '>t' -Tineas, who is represented in them as the first king of the Britons; hut the author of Britannia after the Romans puts forward a new interpretation. '• Brud," he says (p. xxii.), "in construction Brut, is reputation, or rumor, and in the secondary sense, a chronicle, or history. It reta ns that WACE. 135 verse of eight syllables of the British History of Geoffrey of Mon- mouth, although it contains also a good many things which are not in Geoffrey. It extends to upwards of 15,000 lines. After fin- ishing his work Wace is said to have presented it to Henry II. 's queen, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Many manuscripts of it exist both in England and in France ; and it has now been printed, under the title of Le Roman de Brut, par Wace ; avec un Commentaire et des Notes, par Le Roux de Liney ; 2 vols. 8vo. Rouen, 1836, 1838. Wace's other great work is his Roman de Rou, that is, Romance of Rollo. It is a chronicle of the Dukes of Normandy, in two parts : the first, in Alexandrine verses, extending only to the beginning of the reign of the third duke, Richard Sans-peur ; the second, in eight-syllable rhymes, coining down to the year 1170, the sixteenth of Henry II. There are nearly 17,000 lines in all. The composition of the first part is stated to have been commenced in 1160, and it appears to have been published by itself ; but some years after, on learning that the charge of writing the history of the Dukes of Normandy in verse had been confided by King Henry to another poet named Benoit, Wace, as M. de la Rue supposes, resumed his pen, and, adopting for expedition the easier octosyllabic verse, hastened to complete his task before his rival. 1 The entire work was printed for the first time in 1827 at Rouen, in 2 vols. 8vo., under the title of Le Roman de Rou et des Dues de Normandie, par Robert Wace ; avec des Notes par Fred- eric Pluquet ; but, although M. Pluquet, who had in 1824 pub- lished a short notice about Wace (Notice sur la Vie et les Ecrits de Robert Wace), mostly copied from the Abbe* de la Rue's paper in the Archaeologia, was assisted in the preparation of his edition by M. Auguste le Prevost, whose notes are often learned and curious, it is evident that very little knowledge or critical judg- ment has been employed in settling the text, which is often mani- festly corrupt either from mistranscription or reliance on a faulty original. Some of its errors have been pointed out, with sufficient gentleness, by M. Raynouard in a small tract entitled Observations Philosophiques et Grammaticales sur le Roman de Rou, 8vo. original sense in the French and English word bruit ; and, though it is curious that ill the Welsh Chronicles begin with the reign of Brutus, we must not be seduced Sy that accident into etymological trifling." 1 M. Le Roux de Lincy, however, denies that this latter part of the Roman des Dues de Normandie is by Wace, or that he ever really attempted in his old age to >ompete with Benoit. 136 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. Rouen, 1829 ; which ought always to accompany M. Pluquet's edition. Mr. Edgar Taylor (author of the volume entitled Lays of the Minnesingers or German Troubadours, and other works) has translated so much of the Roman de Rou as relates to the Conquest of England into English prose, with notes and illustra- tions, 8vo. Loud. 1837. The interest that has been lately excited by this old Norman poet is further evinced by the publication of two others of his supposed works ; his Shorter Chronicle of the Dukes of Normandy, in Alexandrine verse, from Henry II. back to Rollo, which is printed in the first volume (Part ii. pp. 444—447) of the Memoires de la Soci^te" des Antiquaires de Normandie, 8vo. 1824 ; 1 and his poem, in verse of eight syllables, on the establish- ment by William the Conqueror of the Festival of the Conception of the Virgin, which was printed in 8vo. at Caen, in 1842, under the title of L'Etablissement de la Fete de la Conception Notre Dame, dite la Fete aux Normands ; public pour la premiere fois d'apr^s les MSS. de la Bibliotheque du Roi, par MM. Mancel et Trebutien. A very limited impression, also, of another of his romances, entitled La Vie de St. Nicholas, in about 1500 lines, of which there are several manuscripts in existence, and some extracts from which are given by Hickes in his Thesaurus Linguarum Sep- tentrionalium, is stated by M. le Roux de Lincy to have been pro- duced by M. Monmerque for the Societe des Bibliophiles Fran- cois, and to be contained in the seventh volume of their privately printed Melanges, 8vo. Paris, 1820-1834. Wace is besides com- monly held to be the author of a Romance about the Virgin, extending to 1800 verses, and comprising a full account of her life and death, which is still in manuscript. BENOiT. Wace's contemporary and rival, Benoit, also wrote a Chronicle of the Norman Dukes, though not till some years after Wace had finished his. Benoit's performance consists of above 30,000 octo- 1 Both M. I.e Roux de Lincy, however, and M. Francisque Michel, a much higher authority (in the Preface to his Chronique des Dues de Normandie par Henoit, 1886, p. ST.), agree in holding this to be the production of a later writer thai Wace. EVERARD.- FRENCH LANGUAGE IN SCOTLAND. 137 syllabic verses, and begins at the first irruption of the Normans under their leaders Hastings and Bier Ironside, but comes down no farther than to the end of the reign of Henry I. It was sup- posed to have been preserved only in one MS. which is in the Har- leian collection in the British Museum, and from which it has been printed at Paris, under the care of M. Francisque Michel, with the title of Chronique des Dues de Nurmandie, par Benoit, Trou- vere Anglo-Normand du 12 rae siecle, 3 vols. 4to. 1836-44. 1 But another MS. has since been found in the Library of the city of Tours. It is, from its fuhiess and minuteness, one of the most curious monuments we possess of early Norman history, and con- tains many details nowhere else to be found. This Benoit also appears to be the same with the Benoit de St. More, or St. Maure, by whom we have another long romance of nearly 30,000 verses, entitled the Roman de Troye, being a legendary history of the Trojan war, founded on the favorite authorities of the Middle Ages, the fictitious Dares Phrygius and Dictys of Crete : their identity had been doubted by M. Michel in his edition of the Norman Chronicle ; but he was subsequently induced, Mr. Wright informs us (Biog. Brit. Lit., ii. 262) to change his opinion. EVERARD. — FRENCH LANGUAGE IN SCOTLAND. Among these early romance poets, the Abbe de la Rue reckons a Scotsman, one Everard, who, after having been a monk of Kirk- ham in Yorkshire, was in 1150 appointed by David I. of Scotland — that " sore saint to the crown," as he was called by his succes- sor, the first James — the first abbot of his newly-founded abbey of Ulme or Holme-Cultraine in Cumberland. To him M. de la Rue attributes a French metrical translation of what are called the Distichs of Cato, which is said to afford the earliest known ex- ample in the language of mixed rhymes, that is, of the alternation of masculine and feminine rhymes, now an established rule of French poetry. A romance history of the Passion of Christ, in 126 strophes, and in the same style with the Distichs, wliich is found along with the Latin work in one of the Arundel MSS., for- 1 In the Collection de Documents Inedits sur l'Histoire de France. VOL. i. 18 138 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. merly belonging to the Royal Society, now in the British Museum, the Abbe conceives to be also in all probability by Everard. But the evidence for identifying the translator of the Distichs with the monk of Kirkham appears, it must be confessed, to be extremely slight. 1 A knowledge of the French language, nevertheless, seems to have been as general at this date in Scotland as in England. Pinkerton, in his Essay on the Origin of Scottish Poetry, prefixed to his Ancient Scotish Poems, 2 vols. 8vo. Loud. 1786, after ob- serving that the chief English poets wrote solely in French for three centuries after the Conquest, — that French was the only lan- guage used at court or by the nobility, nay even by the middle ranks of people, — that Saxon was left merely to the mob, — that the apophthegms, expressions, &c, preserved by historians of the time, are all in old French, — and that probably upwards of a hun- dred names of English writers who wrote in French during that interval might yet be recovered, — proceeds to mention some facts which illustrate the prevalence of the same language in the north- ern kingdom. " Upon the murder of Duncan by Macbeth," he remarks, " in 1039, Malcolm, the heir of the crown, fled into Eng- land, where he remained for seventeen years before he was enabled to resume his kingdom. Edward the Confessor was king of Eng- land from 1041 till 1065, and in his reign we know that French was the court-language in England. Malcolm surely used this speech, and his court also. Many Saxons came to Scotland with him in 1056, and also at the Conquest (1066) ; but in 1093 they were all very prudently ordered to leave the kingdom by Dovenald Ban, his successor. They were chiefly men of rank ; and, had they introduced any language, it would have been the French. .... But yet another point requires our attention. In 945, Ed- mund king of England gave Cumberland to Malcolm I., king of Scotland, on condition of homage for it. From this period the heir of the Scotish crown was always Prince of Cumberland, and resided as a king in that country Now the prince, it may be supposed, di 1 not use the Gaelic in a country where it was never spoken ; but, remaining there from early youth, adopted French, the court-tongue of England, in which country his princi- pality was, and to the king of which he was bound to do homage." 2 He then mentions that under William of Scotland, in 1165, the coin of that country bears a French inscription ; and that Alexan- 1 See Wright's Biog. Brit. Lit., ii. 124. 2 Essay, p. lxiv. LUC DE LA BARRE. — GUICHARD DE BEAULIEU. 139 der III., in 1249, is stated to have taken the coronation oath Latine et Gallice, in Latin and in French : it was read in Latin (probably after the ancient formula), and then expounded in French. 1 And he concludes : — " French being the language of the polite, and Latin of the learned, who could use the vulgar tongue in writing ? .... I suspect that no Scotish poet, before Thomas of Ersildon, ventured beyond a ballad when using his na- tive tongue. Perhaps one or two may have written a romance in French rhyme, though now lost or unknown The poor bards who entertained the mob might recite ballads and short romances in the vulgar tongue ; but the minstrels who appeared in the king's or in the baron's hall would use French only, as in Eng- land ; for had they tried the common language they would have been sent into the kitchen." 2 By the common language, Pinker- ton means the Pictish, which he conceives to have been a Gothic dialect nearly allied to the English. In this notion he is probably wrong : there is every reason to believe that the Picts spoke a Celtic dialect ; but it is true, nevertheless, that the popular speech of the south-eastern half of Scotland at this period was, as he as- sumes, a Gothic dialect, though derived not from the Picts, but from the Anglian and Danish settlers, who had occupied the whole of that region partially, and a great part of it exclusively, ever since the seventh century. LUC DE LA BARRE. — GUICHARD DE BEAULIEU. Another early trouvere whose history connects him with Eng- land is Luc de la Barre, famous for the satirical rhymes which he composed against Henry I., and for the terrible punishment (the extinction of his sight) which he drew down upon himself from the exasperated king. It appears, however, that it was not till aftei repeated and extreme provocation, and the abuse of much clemency, that Henry took this savage revenge. De la Barre, who was a distinguished Norman baron and warrior as well as a poet, had espoused the cause of Duke Robert in the quarrel between the two brothers ; but, although, in the course of the contest of arms for the possession of the duchy, he had been several times taken 5 Hailes, Annals, i. 195. 2 Essay, p. lxvi. 140 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. prisoner, he had always been dismissed without ransom by the English king, perhaps out of respect to his poetical talents or repu- tation, till he at last, in a fatal hour for himself, turned against his benefactor with his pen as well as with his sword. Henry was perhaps stung more by the ingratitude of the poet than by the sharpness of his sarcasms ; or, at any rate, as De la Rue insinuates, if it was an acute feeling of the wit and the poetry which actuated him, there was still something generous and highminded even in an excess of such sensibility. There is nothing, however, of De la Barre's remaining. Guichard (or Guiscard) de Beaulieu describes himself as a monk, and is supposed by M. de la Rue to have belonged to the priory of that name, which was a dependency of the abbey of St. Albans. Mr. Wright, however, doubts this, and thinks that Beaulieu was probably his family name. 1 His only known work is a sort of sermon, in French verse, on the vices of the age, con- sisting of nearly 2000 Alexandrine lines. It has been edited by M. Achille Jubinal, 8vo. Paris, 1834. It appears to have been intended for a popular audience. The poetical preacher begins by telling his hearers that he is not going to speak to them in Latin, but in Romance, in order that all may understand him. " The mention of sermons in verse," observes De la Rue, " may perhaps surprise the reader ; but it is certain that at this epoch, at least among the Normans and the Anglo-Normans, it was customary to read to the people the lives of the Saints in French verse, on Sun- days and holidays." 2 Guichard's poetry is described as often naive and graceful in expression, and sweet in its flow ; and he is the first writer who is known to have introduced into the romance poetry the practice of preserving the same rhyme throughout each stanza or paragraph, extending sometimes to thirty, sixty, or even eighty lines or more 3 — a fashion followed by many succeeding writers in ten and twelve syllabled verse, and which De la Rue conceives Guichard must have borrowed from the Welsh, or their kindred the Armoricans. i Biog. Brit. Lit., ii. 132. 2 Essais, ii. 138. 8 The commencing stanza of Parise la Puchesse (considered as one of the parts of the Roman dcs Pouze Paires de France), which has been puhlished under the care of M. G. F. de Martonne, 12mo. Paris, 183G, consists of 119 lines, all ending rith the same rhyme. ARTHURIAN ROMANCE: — THE SAINT GREAL. — LUC DU GAST. — BURON. — M APES. We cannot here attempt to take up the intricate and obscure question of the origin of the Arthurian body of Romance, includ- ing the romances of the Round Table and those of the quest of the Saint Greal, about which so much has been written, in great part to little purpose except to be refuted by the next inquirer. In addition to the earlier speculations of Warburton, Tyrwhitt, Warton, Percy, and Ritson, and to what has been more recently advanced by Ellis, Southey, Scott, Dunlop, and other writers among ourselves, the Preface of the late Mr. Price to his edition of Warton' s Histoiy of English Poetry (pp. 68, &c), and the In- troduction to Britannia after the Romans (pp. vi. &c), may be pointed out to the reader's attention. The theory of the author of the last-mentioned treatise is in some respects new and curious. " The great Work," he observes, " and, as I may say, the Alcoran, of Arthurian romance was the Book of the Saint Greal. In truth, it is no romance, but a blasphemous imposture, more extravagant and daring than any other on record, in which it is endeavored to pass off the mysteries of bardism for direct inspirations of the Holy Ghost." The original work, this writer holds, was actually composed in Welsh, as it professes to have been, in the year 717. "Greal," he says, "is a Welsh word, signifying an aggregate of principles, a magazine ; and the elementary world, or world of spirits, was called the Country of the Greal. From thence the word Greal, and in Latin Gradalis, came to signify a vessel in which various messes might be mixed up." The Saint Greal, according to the common account in the British romances, which appears to be derived from the apocryphal gospel of Nicodemus, is the plate from which Christ ate his last supper, and which is said to have been appropriated by Joseph of Arimathea, and to have been afterwards used by him to collect the blood that flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer. It makes a great figure in the romantic history of Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, as may be seen in the eleventh and subsequent books of the popular compilation entitled Morte Darthus. The author of Britannia after the Romans maintains that the original Welsh Book of the Saint Greal was unquestionably the work of the bard Tysilio. De la 112 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. Rue holds that the original romances on the quest of the Saint Greal, or Saint Graal, are to be considered as forming quite a dis- tinct body of fiction from those relating to the Round Table, and that much misapprehension has arisen from confounding the two. The account given by him is in substance as follows : — The oldest verse romance on the subject of the Saint Greal appears to have been composed by Chretien de Troyes about the year 1170 ; but of his work only some fragments remain, and the earliest entire romance now existing which treats of this subject is the prose Roman de Tristan, written by Luc du Gast, who was a person of family and property ; he calls himself Chevalier and Sire du Chas- tel du Gast — that is, according to M. de la Rue, Gast in Nor- mandy, now situated in the canton of St. Sever, and the depart- ment of Calvados. Although of Norman descent, hoAvever, he was a native and inhabitant of England : he resided, he tells us, near Salisbury ; and, if his French should not always be correct, he begs his readers to excuse him on the score of his English birth and breeding. It was from this prose romance, the Abbe" proceeds to state, and from a continuation of it by Walter Map, or Mapes, already mentioned, whose work is entitled Roman des Diverses Quetes du Saint Graal, and is dedicated to Henry II., that Chre- tien de Troyes soon after drew the materials of his verse romance, which is called the Roman du Saint Graal, or sometimes the Roman de Perceval. But both Luc du Gast and Walter Map, and also Robert de Borron, who likewise wrote in this age a prose Roman du Saint Graal (which, however, is merely a life of Joseph of Arimathea), all declare that they translated from a Latin original, which they say had been drawn up by order of King Arthur himself, and deposited by him in the library of the cathedral of Salisbury. Another romance on the subject of the Saint Greal, which is now lost, is attributed to a writer named Gace le Blount, who is said to have been a relation of Henry II. Map, in addition to his Roman dr. Diverses Quetes, which is in two parts, continued the history of the knights who had engaged in the search for the Saint Greal in a third romance, also in prose, which he entitled La Mort d'Artur; and he is also the author of another prose romance on the adven- tures of Lancelot du Lac. Upon one of the incidents in this last, Chretien de Troyes founded his verse romance, also still extant, entitled La icelot de la Charette. From another prose romance by Robert de Borron, on the subject of the enchanter Merlin, an LUC DU GAST. — BURON. — MAPES. 143 Anglo-Norman trouvere of the latter part of the thirteenth cen- tury composed a verse romance, which is still preserved, entitled Merlyn Ambroise. Finally, in association with his relation Elie de Borron, and with another writer called Rusticien de Pise, Robert de Borron produced a prose translation of the Historia Rritonum of Geoffrey of Monmouth, and also the two romances of Meliadus de Leonois and Giron le Courtois ; and Elie de Bor- ron wrote by himself the Roman de Palamedes. 1 Thus far the Abbe de la Rue. Since his work appeared, how- ever, some parts of his statement have been corrected or contro- verted by M. Michel and other recent writers. In the elaborate Introduction to his edition of Tristan, to be presently mentioned (Paris, 1835), M. Michel, accepting his own account of himself, maintains Luc, or Luces, to whom he attributes either the inven- tion, or at least the first translation from the Latin, of that ro- mance, to have been an Englishman, and lord of a chateau in the neighborhood of Salisbury, the name of which is variously given in the manuscripts as Gat, Gast, Gad, Gant, and Gail. Henry II., M. Michel further states, delighted with this prose work of Luce, engaged Walter Map to follow it up in the same style with the Romance of Lancelot ; and Robert de Buron, Borron, or Bowron, to add that of the Saint Greal : finally, Heyle de Buron, a brother, or at least a relation, of Robert, revised the whole, and gave a unity and completeness to the cycle by finishing the story of Tris- tram. In the Notice prefixed to his publication, from the MS. in the Bibliotheque du Roi, now the Bibliotheque Imperiale, of the Roman du Saint Graal, in old French verse (12mo. Bordeaux, 1841), M. Michel states that Map, by order of Henry II., drew up the Romance of the Saint Graal in Latin from the songs and lays of the bards of Britany ; and that his work was afterwards translated into French by Robert de Borron. The Roman de Perceval of Chrestien de Troves is not, he says, a romance of the Saint Graal at all ; it only contains the last adventures of the Saint Graal. The poem which he publishes, and which is incomplete, extends to 4018 octosyllabic lines. 2 1 De la Rue, Essais Historiques, ii. 206-248. 2 " "Walter Mapes," says Mr. Wright, " was distinguished as a writer in the Anglo-Norman language, as well as in Latin. It is to him we owe a large portion »f the cycle of the romances of the Round Table in the earliest form in which they 144 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. ROMAN DU ROI HORN. It will be most convenient to notice here the French metrical Romance of Kino- Horn (Roman dn Roi Horn). This is the work of a poet who calls himself " Mestre Thomas," and is regarded by Ritson and M. de la Rue as a composition of the latter part of the twelfth century, and as the original of the English Home Childe, or Geste of Kyng Horn ; but by other eminent authorities, such as Bishop Percy and the late learned editor of Warton, the English poem has been held to be the earlier of the two ; and in this, latter opinion both Mr. Wright and Sir F. Madden concur. A few ex- tracts from this French Romance were given by Ritson in the notes to his edition of the English Geste (Ancient English Metri- cal Romances, iii. 264-28 1 ) ; others were printed by M. de la Rue (Essais Hist. ii. 251-260) ; and a complete edition by M. Fran- cisque Michel has long been announced, to include also the Eng- lish romance from a text prepared by Mr. Wright. Bishop Percy ascribed the English Kyng Horn to so early a date as " within a century after the Conquest ; " and, although in its present form it is probably not older than the latter part of the thirteenth century, Mr. Price has no hesitation in expressing his belief that it owes its origin to a period even long anterior to the date assigned by Percy. 1 are known. This first series of these romances consists of the Roman de St. Graal, or the history of the Graal before its pretended arrival in Britain, brought by Joseph of Arimathea ; of the Roman de Merlin ; of the Roman de Lancelot du Lac ; of the Quete du Saint Graal, which is a sequel to the 'adventures of Lancelot; and of the death of Bang Arthur, forming the Roman ologia, xii. 024. 2 An account of Guernes, nearly the same as in the Archa:ologia, is given by De la Bue in his Essais (vol. ii. pp. 309-313), under the name of Gervais de Pont Ste. Maxence. In the Harleian MS. the poem is entitled, in Latin, Vita Thome Cantuar. per Guernes de Ponte Sti Maxcntii. This title is in a more recent hand than the poem ; and under " Guernes " is written " Garnerius." lie is called " Ger- vais," or " Gcrveis," by the transcriber of another work. " This poem," says Mr Wright, " is especially valuable in a philological point of view, because we know the exact date at which it was written. It is historically important as the earliest of the Lives of Beeket. Guernes tells us that he had collected his materials from Beeket's friends and acquaintance, that he had repeatedly and carefully corrected it, and that lie had read it many times at the martyr's tomb. His narrative is very clear and vigorous, and furnishes valuable information not found in the same detail in the other biographers."— Biog. Brit. Lit., ii. 329. HERMAN. A writer named Herman, who calls himself a priest, and was no doubt of English birth, is the author of several religious ro- mance poems : — a Life of Tobias, in about 1400 verses, written at the request of William, prior of Kenilworth, in Warwickshire (Keneilleworth en Ardenne) ; another, of 1152 verses, on the birth of the Redeemer, entitled Les Joies de Notre Dame ; a third, of 841 verses, on a curious theme, — Smoke, Rain, and Woman con- sidered as the three disturbers of a man's domestic comforts, — Avhich was given him, it seems, by Alexander, bishop of Lincoln ; a fourth, in 712 verses, on the Miracles of Magdalen of Marseilles ; a fifth, on the life, death, and burial of the Virgin Mary ; a sixth, a sort of mystery, or scriptural drama, on the divine scheme of redemption, also written at the request of the prior of Kenilworth ; and a seventh, a History of the ten ancient Sibyls, extending to 2498 verses, which professes to be a translation from the Latin, and which he composed at the desire of the Empress Matilda. The era of this poet is ascertained from that of his patron, Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, who died in 1147, and that of Matilda, who died in 1167, while he was employed on his last-mentioned work. HUGH OF RUTLAND. — BOSON.— SIMON DU FRESNE. Other English trouveurs of the same age were Hughes de Rotelande, or Hugh of Rutland, who lived, it seems, according to his own account, at Credenhill in Cornwall, 1 and who is the author of two romances, each containing between 10,000 and 11,000 ver- ses, the Roman d'Ypomedon and its continuation the Roman de Protesilaus, which are remarkable as having their scene in Magna Gra>cia, or the south of Italy, and as not drawing their subject from the Welsh or Armorican legends of Arthur and his Knignts of the Round Table, which were now become the common source of the chivalrous romance : 2 a religious poet of the name of Boson, from whom we have a volume of lives of nine of the Saints, and 1 There is a place of this name in Hereford. 2 See an account of these two poems in De la Rue, Essais, ii. 285-296. 148 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. who the Abbe de la Rue thinks may have been the same person with a learned theologian of that name who was nephew and secre- tary to Pope Adrian IV. ; * and Simon du Fresne, canon of the Cathedral of Hereford (sometimes called by later authorities Simon Ash), the friend and correspondent of Giraldus Cambrensis, and well known among the Latin versifiers of his time, who has left us a French poem of considerable merit entitled in one manuscript Diet-id du Clerc et de la Philosophic, in another Romance Dame Fortunee, founded on the favorite classic work of the Middle Ages, Boethius De Consolatione Philosophise. 2 CARDINAL LANGTON. De la Rue has introduced among his Anglo-Norman poets of the twelfth or the early part of the thirteenth century the great Stephen Langton, who was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1207 to 1228, and also a cardinal. The only undoubted specimen of Cardinal Langton's French poetry occurs, strangely enough, in the course of one of his Latin Sermons (preserved in one of the Arun- del MSS., now in the British Museum), where, deserting his prose and the more learned language, he suddenly breaks out into song in the idiom of the trouveurs, and, after having pronounced eight graceful and lively lines relating Iioav " belle Alice" rose betimes, and, having bedecked herself, went out into a garden and there gathered five flowers which she wove into a chaplet, proceeds throughout the remainder of the discourse to make a mystical ap- plication of the several points of this little anecdote to the Holy Virgin — exclaiming at the close of each enthusiastic paragraph, Ceste est la bele Aliz, Ceste est la flur, ceste est le lis. (She is the fair Alice. She is the flower, she is the lily,) 8 " It will be admitted," remarks the Abbe de la Rue, " that the taste for French poetry must have been very general in England i De la Rue, Essais, ii. pp. 297-300. 2 Id. pp. 329-334 See also Wright, Biog. Brit. Lit., ii. 349, 350. 8 Mr. Wright has printed the entire sermon, in his Biog. Brit. Lit., ii. 446, 447 KING RICHARD CCEUR-DE-LION. 149 when we find the chief prelate of the kingdom taking this way of conciliating the attention of his audience." The Abbe thinks it highly probable that Cardinal Langton is also the author of two poetical pieces which occur in the same manuscript with his ser- mon ; the first a little theological drama on the subject of the Fall and Restoration of Man, the other a canticle or song, of 126 strophes, on the Passion of Christ. Both are stated to be of con- siderable merit. KING RICHARD C(EUR-DE-LION. Finally, we have to enroll in this list of the early English writers of French poetry the renowned King Richard I., if we may put faith in old tradition. Among the poetical performances attributed to Richard are several Sirventes or Serventois} and his share in the song formerly composed between them, which, accord- ing to the well-known story, discovered him in his prison to his faithful minstrel Blondel, the strain begun by the latter having been taken up and finished by the king. But all this, it must be confessed, is not so clear or certain as were to be desired. The song said to have been sung by Richard and Blondel was printed by Mademoiselle l'He"ritier in her volume entitled La Tour Tend- breuse et les Jours Lumineux, 12mo. Paris, 1705 ; it is in mixed Norman and Provengal ; but, unfortunately, the manuscript from which it professes to have been extracted is now unknown. Mile. I'Heritier also prints as a composition of Richard a love-song in Norman French. But the most celebrated composition attributed to Richard is a poem addressed by him from his prison to his bar- ons of England, Normandy, Poitou, and Gascony, remonstrating with them for suffering him to remain so long a captive. A Pro- vencal version of this poem, one of the stanzas of which only had been previously quoted by Crescimbini in his Istoria della Volgar Poesia, was first printed from a manuscript in the library of San Lorenzo at Florence by Horace Walpole, in his Catalogue of Royal 1 M. de la Rue shows that, originally and properly, a Serventois, or Sirvente (the former the northern, the latter the southern term), was a poem relating to military affairs, from serventayium or sirventagium, the low Latin for servitium, service ; accord- ing to the definition in Ducange, " Poemata in quibus servieiifium seu militum facta et servitia referuntur." 150 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. and Noble Aithors, 1758. It consists of six stanzas of six line? each, with an Envoy of five lines. Two English verse translations of it have been produced ; one by Dr. Burney, in his History of Music, the other by the late Mr. George Ellis, which is given in Park's edition of the Royal and Noble Authors. More recently, the appearance of a version of the same poem in Norman French in Sismondi's LitteYature du Midi de l'Europe (vol. i. p. 149), has raised the question in which of the two dialects it was originally written. 1 Meanwhile the Provencal version has been more cor- rectly republished by Raynouard in the fourth volume of his Choix des Poesies Originales des Troubadours. And the poetical repu- tation of Richard has been also enlarged by the appearance of another Provencal song claiming to be of his inditing in the Par- nasse Occitanien (by the Comte de Roehegude), 2 vols. 8vo., Tou- louse, 1819. It cannot be said, however, that any or all of these effusions, supposing their authenticity to be admitted, tend to give us a high idea of the genius of the lion-hearted king in this line, — even if we should not go the length of Walpole, who declares the particular poem he has printed to be so poor a composition that the internal evidence weighs with him more than anything else to believe it of his majesty's own fabric. 2 VERNACULAR LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE : — A. D. 1066-1216. From the Norman Conquest to the termination of the reign of the seventh Norman sovereign, King John, is almost exactly a cen- tury and a half, even to a day. The victory of Hastings was gain- ed on the 14th of October, 10G6, and John died on the 19th of Oc- tober, 1216. His death, happening at the time it did, Avas prob- ably an event of the greatest importance. The political constitu- tion, or system of government, established by the Conquest, — a sys- tem of pure monarchy or absolutism — had been formally brought to an end the year before by the grant of the Great Charter wrung from the crown by the baronage, which at any rate tempered 1 See it also in M. Le ftoux de Lincy's Recueil de Chants Historiques (1842), I. 66. 2 See, fur notices of other compositions attributed to Ricliard, Wright's Biog Brit. Lit., ii. 824r-827 VERNACULAR LANGUAGE AND LITERA1 URE. 151 ihe monarchical despotism by the introduction of the aristocratic element into the theory of the constitution ; but this might have proved little more than a theoretical or nominal innovation if John had lived. His death, and the non-age of his son and heir, left the actual management of affairs in the hands of those by whom the constitutional reform had been brought about ; and that reform be- came a practical reality. At the least, its legal character and au- thority never were disputed ; no attempt ever was made to repeal it ; on the contrary it was ratified no less than six times in the sin- gle reign of Henry III., John's successor ; and it has retained its proper place at the head of the Statute Book down to our own day. Its proper place ; for it is indeed our first organic law, the true commencement or foundation-stone, of the constitution. Be- fore it there was no mechanism in our political system, no balance of forces or play of counteracting elements and tendencies ; noth- ing but the sort of life and movement that may belong to a stone or a cannon-ball or any other mere mass. The royal power was all in all. With the Charter, and the death of the last despotic king, from whom it was extorted, begins another order of things both political and social. It may be likened to the passing away of the night and the dawning of a new day. In particular, the Charter may be said to have consummated by a solemn legislative fiat the blending and incorporation of the two races, the conquer- ors and the conquered, which had been actively going on without any such sanction, and under the natural influence of circumstan- ces only, throughout the preceding half century, — having com- menced, we may reckon, perhaps, half a century earlier, or about the middle of the reign of Henry I. There is, at least, not a word in this law making the least reference to any distinction between the two races. Both are spoken of throughout only as English ; the nation is again recognized as one, as fully as it aad been before either William the Norman or Canute the Dane. We have thus four successive periods of about half a century ?ach : — The first, from the Danish to the Norman Conquest, — naif English, half Danish ; the second, from the Norman Conquest to the middle of the reign of Henry I., in which the subjugated English and their French or Norman rulers were completely divided ; the Third and Fourth extending to the date of Magna Charta, and presenting, the former the comparatively slow, the .atter the accelerated, process of the intermixture and fusion of 152 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. the two races. Some of our old chroniclers would make the third half century also, as well as the first and second, to have been in- augurated bv a great constitutional or political event : as the year 1016 is memorable for the Danish and the year 1066 for the Nor- man Conquest, so in 1116, we are told by Stow, " On the 19th day of April, King Henry called a council of all the States of his realm, both of the Prelates, Nobles, and Commons, to Salisbury, there to consult for the good government of the Commonwealth, and the weighty affairs of the same, which council, taking the name and fame of the French, is called a Parliament ; " and this," he adds, " do the historiographers note to be the first Parliament in England, and that the kings before that time were never' wont to call any of their Commons or people to council or lawmaking." This theory of the origin of our parliamentary government must, indeed, be rejected ; * but the year 1116 will still remain notable as that in which Henry, reversing what had been done fifty years before, crossed the sea with an army of English to reduce his an- cestral Normandy, or prevent it from falling into the hands of the son of his unfortunate elder brother. Even the next stage, half a century further on, when we have supposed the amalgamation of the two races to have assumed its accelerated movement, may be held to be less precisely indicated by such events as the appoint- ment of Becket, said to be the first Englishman since the Conquest promoted to high office either in the Church or the State, to the archbishopric of Canterbury in 1161, — the enactment in 1164 of the Constitutions of Clarendon, by which the clergy, a body essen- tially foreign in feeling and to a great extent even of foreign birth, were brought somewhat more under subjection to the law of the land — and the Conquest of Ireland in 1172, to the vast exaltation of the English name and power. What was the history of the vernacular language for this first century and a half after the Norman Conquest, throughout which everything native would thus seem to have been in a course of gradual re-emergence from tin 1 general foreign inundation that had overwhelmed the country? We have no historical record or state- ment as to this matter: the question can only be answered, in so fir as it can be answered at all, from an examination of such com- positions of the time in the vernacular tongue as may have come town to us. 1 See Sir H. Spclman, Concilia; ad an. 1116. /Tl VERNACULAR LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 15? The principal literature of this period, it will have been seen from the above notices, was in the Latin and French languages. In the former were written most works on subjects of theology, philosophy, and history ; in the latter most of those intended rather to amuse than to inform, and addressed, not to students and profes- sional readers, but to the idlers of the court and the upper classes, by whom they were seldom actually read, or much expected to be read, but only listened to as they were recited or chanted (for most of them were in verse) by others.! How far over society such a knowledge of the imported tongue came to extend as was requisite for the understanding and enjoyment of what was thus written in it has been matter of disputej The Abbe de la Rue conceives that a large proportion even of the middle classes, and of the town population generally, must have been so far frenchified ; but later authorities look upon this as an extravagant supposition^/ It is, | at all events, this French literature only that isto be con- sidered as having come into competition with, or to have taken the place, of the old vernacular literature. J The employment of the Latin language in writing by monks, secular churchmen, and other per- sons who had had a learned education, was what had always gone on in England as in every other country of Western Christendom ; there was nothing new in that ; we continue to have it after the Conquest just as we had it before the Conquest. But it is quite otherwise with the writing of French ; that was altogether a new thing in England, and indeed very much of a new thing every- where, in the eleventh century : no specimen of composition in the Langue d'Oyl, in fact, either in verse or in prose, has come down to us from beyond that century, nor is there reason to believe that it had been much earlier turned to account for literary purposes even in France itself. The great mass of the oldest French literature that has been preserved was produced in England, or, at any rate, in the dominions of the King of England, in the twelfth century. To whatever portion of society in England an acquaintance with this French literature was confined, it is evident that it was for some time after the Conquest the only literature of the day that, without addressing itself exclusively to the learned classes, still demanded some measure of cultivation in its readers or auditors as well as in its authors. It was the only popular literature that was not adapted to the mere populace. We might infer this even from the fact that, if any other ever existed, it has mostly perished. vol. i. 20 154 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. The various metrical chronicles, romances, and other compositions in the French tongue, of the principal of which an account has been given, are very nearly the only literary works which have come down to us from this age. And, while the mass of this pro- duce that has been preserved is, as we have seen, very considera- ble, we have distinct notices of much more which is now lost. How the French language should have acquired the position which it thus appears to have held in England for some time after the Con- quest is easily explained. The advantage which it derived from, being the language of the court, of the entire body of the nobility, and of the opulent and influential classes generally, is obvious. This not only gave it the prestige and attraction of what we now call fashion, bat, in the circumstances to which the country was reduced, would very speedily make it the only language in which any kind of regular or grammatical training could be obtained. With the native population almost everywhere deprived of its natural leaders, the old landed proprietary of its own blood, it can- not be supposed that schools in which the reading and writing of the vernacular tongue was taught could continue to subsist. This has been often pointed out. But what we may call the social cause, or that arising out of the relative conditions of the two races, was probably assisted by another which has not been so much attended to. The languages themselves did not compete upon fair terms. The French would have in the general estima- tion a decided advantage for the purposes of literature over the English. The latter was held universally to be merely a barbarous form of speech, claiming kindred with nothing except the other half-articulate dialects of the woods, hardly one of which had ever known what it was to have any acquaintance with letters, or was conceived even by those who spoke it to be fit to be used in writing except on the most vulgar occasions, or where anything like either dignity or precision <>i' expression was of no importance; the for- mer, although somewhat soiled and disfigured by ill usage received at the hands of the uneducated multitude, and also only recently much employed in formal or artistic eloquence, could still boast the most honorable of all pedigrees as a daughter of the Latin, and >\:is thus besides allied to the popular speech of every more civilized province of Western Christendom. The very name by which it nad been known when it first attracted attention with refeience to literary capabilities was, as we have seen, the Rustic Latin, or VERNACULAR LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. L55 Roman (^Lingua Romana Rustica). Even without being favored by circumstances, as it was in the present case, a tongue having these intrinsic recommendations would not have been easily worsted, in a contest for the preference as the organ of fashionable litera- ture, by such a competitor as the unknown and unconnected English. There was only one great advantage possessed by the national tongue with which it was impossible for the other in the long run to cope. This was the fact of its being the national tongue, the speech, actual and ancestral, of the great body of the people. Even that, indeed, might not have enabled it to maintain its ground, if it had been a mere unwritten form of speech. But it had been cultivated and trained for centuries both by the practice of composition, in prose as well as in verse, and by the application to it of the art of the grammarian. It already possessed a litera- ture considerable in volume, and embracing a variety of depart- ments. It was not merely something floating upon men's breath, but had a substantial existence in poems and histories, in libraries and parchments. In that state it might cease, in the storm of na- tional calamity, to be generally either written or read, but even its more literary inflections and constructions would be less likely to fall into complete and universal oblivion. The memory, at least, of its old renown would not altogether die away ; and that alone would be found to be much when, after a time, it began to be again, although in a somewhat altered form, employed in writing. The nature of the altered form which distinguishes the written vernacular tongue when it reappears after the Norman Conquest from the aspect it presents before that date (or the earliest modern English from what is commonly designated Saxon or Anglo-Saxon) is not matter of dispute. " The substance of the change," to adopt the words of Mr. Price, the late learned editor of Warton, " is admitted on all hands to consist in the suppression of those gram- matical intricacies occasioned by the inflection of nouns, the seem- ingly arbitrary distinctions of gender, the government of preposi- tions, &c." 1 It was, in fact, the conversion of an inflectional into a non-inflectional, of a synthetic into an analytic, language. The syntactical connection of words, and the modification of the mental conceptions which they represent, was indicated, no longer, in gen- eral, by tl ose variations which constitute what are called declen- 1 Preface to Warton's Hist, of Eng. Poetry, p. 86. 156 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. sion and conjugation, but by separate particles, or simply by juxta- position ; and whatever seemed to admit of being neglected without injury to the prime object of expressing the meaning of the speaker, or writer, — no matter what other purposes it might serve of a merely ornamental or artistic nature, — was ruthlessly dispensed with. A change such as this is unquestionably the breaking up of a language. In the first instance, at least, it amounts to the destruc- tion of much that is most characteristic of the language, — of all that constitutes its beauty to the educated mind, imbued with a feeling for the literature into which it has been wrought, — of something, probably, even of its precision as well as of its expres- siveness in a higher sense. It has become, in a manner, but the skeleton of what it was, or the skeleton with only the skin hanging loose upon it : — all the covering and rounding flesh gone. Or we may say it is the language no longer with its old natural bearing and suitable attire, but reduced to the rags and squalor of a beggar. Or it may be compared to a material edifice, once bright with many of the attractions of decorative architecture, now stripped of all its splendors and left only a collection of bare and dilapidated walls. It may be, too, that, as is commonly assumed, a synthetic tongue is essentially a nobler and more effective instrument of expression than an analytic one, — that, often comprising a whole sentence, or at least a whole clause, in a word, it presents thoughts and emotions in flashes and pictures where the other can only em- ploy comparatively dead conventional signs. But perhaps the com- parison has been too commonly made between the synthetic tongue in its perfection and the analytic one while only in its rudimentary state. The language may be considered to have changed its con- stitution, somewhat like a country which should have ceased to be a monarchy and become a republic. The new political system could only be fairly compared with the old one, and the balance struck between the advantages of the one and those of the other, after the former should have had time fully to develop itself under the operation of its own peculiar principles. Even if it be inferior upon the whole, and for the highest purposes, an analytic language may perhaps have some recommendations which a synthetic one does not possess. It may not be either more natural or, properly speaking, more simple, for the original constitution of most, if not of all, languages seems to have been synthetic, and a synthetic VERNACULAR LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 157 language is as easy both to acquire and to wield as an analytic one to those to whom it is native ; nor can the latter be said to be more rational or philosophical than the former, for, as being in the main natural products, and not artificial contrivances, languages must be held to stand all on an equality in respect of the reasonableness at least of the principle on which they are constituted ; but yet, if comparatively defective in poetical expressiveness, analytic lan- guages will probably be found, whenever they have been suffi- ciently cultivated, to be capable, in pure exposition, of rendering thought with superior minuteness and distinctness of detail. With their small tenacity or cohesion, they penetrate into every chink and fold, like water or fine dust. But the great question in every case of the apparent conversion of a synthetic into an analytic language is, how, or under the operation of what cause or causes, the change was brought about. In the particular case before us, for instance, what was it that con- verted the form of our vernacular tongue which we find alone employed in writing before the Norman Conquest into the com- paratively uninflected form in which it appears in the generality of the compositions which have come down to us from the first ages after that great political and social catastrophe ? First, however, we may remark that there is no proof of the latter form having been really new, or of recent origin, about the time of the Conquest. All that we can assert is, that soon after that date it first appears in writing. If it was ever so employed before, no earlier specimens of it have been preserved. It was undoubtedly the form of the language popularly in use at the time when it thus first presents itself in our national literature. But did it not exist as an oral dialect long before ? May it not have so existed from the remotest antiquity alongside of the more artificial form which was exclusively, or at least usually, employed in writ- ing? It has been supposed that even the classical Greek and Latin, such as we find in books, may have always been accom- panied each by another form of speech, of looser texture, and probably more of an analytical character, which served for the ordinary oral intercourse of the less educated population, and of which it has even been conjectured we may have some much dis- guised vestige or resemblance in the modern Romaic and Italian. The rise, at any rate, of what was long a merely oral dialect into a language capable of being employed in literature, and of thereby 158 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. being gradually so trained and improved as to supplant and take the place of the ancient more highly inflected and otherwise more artificial literary language of the country, is illustrated by what is known to have happened in France and other continental provinces of the old Empire of the West, where the Romano, Rustica, as it was called, which was a corrupted or broken-down form of the proper Latin, after having been for some centuries only orally used, came to be written as well as spoken, and, having been first taken into the service of the more popular kinds of literature, ended by becoming the language of all literature and the only national speech. So in this country there may possibly have been in use for colloquial purposes a dialect of a similar character to our modern analytic English even from the earliest days of the old synthetic English ; and the two forms of the language, the regular and the irregular, the learned and the vulgar, the mother and the daughter, or rather, if you will, the elder and the younger sister, may have subsisted together for many centuries, till there came a crisis which for a time laid the entire fabric of the old national civilization in the dust, when the rude and hardy charac- ter of the one carried it through the storm which the more delicate structure of the other could not stand. Or was the written English of the twelfth and thirteenth cen- turies the same English (or Anglo-Saxon) that was written in the ninth and tenth, only modified by that process of gradual change the principle of which was inherent in the constitution of the lan- guage ? Was the former neither the sister nor the daughter of the latter, but the latter merely at a different stage of its natural growth ? This is the view that has been maintained by some eminent authorities. The late Mr. Price, acknowledging it to be a matter beyond dispute " that some change had taken place in the style of composition and general structure of the language " from the end of the ninth to the end of the twelfth century, adds : — " But that these mutations were a consequence of the Norman invasion, or were even accelerated by that event, is wholly incapa- ble of proof; and nothing is supported upon a firmer principle of rational induction, than that the same effects would have ensued, if William and his followers had remained in their native soil." * The change, as we have seen, may be said to have amounted to „he transformation of the language from one of a synthetic to one 1 Preface to Warton, 85. VERNACULAR LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 159 of an analytic constitution or structure ; but Mr. Price contends that, whether it is to be considered as the result of an innate law of the language, or of some general law in the organization of those who spoke it, its having been in no way dependent upon ex- ternal circumstances, — upon foreign influence or political disturb- ances, — is established by the undeniable fact that every other language of the Low-German stock displays the same simplification of its grammar. " In all these languages," he observes, " there has been a constant tendency to relieve themselves of that pre- cision which chooses a fresh symbol for every shade of meaning, to lessen the amount of nice distinctions, and detect as it were a royal road to the interchange of opinion. Yet, in thus diminishing their grammatical forms and simplifying their rules, in this common effort to evince a striking contrast to the usual effects of civiliza- tion, all confusion has been prevented by the very manner in which the operation has been conducted ; for the revolution produced has been so gradual in its progress, that it is only to be discovered on a comparison of the respective languages at periods of a consider- able interval." l The interval that Mr. Price has taken in the present case is certainly wide enough. What has to be explained is the difference that Ave find between the written English of the middle of the twelfth century and that, not of the age of Alfred, or the end of the ninth century, but rather of the end of the eleventh. The question is, how we are to account for a great change which would appear to have taken place in the language, as employed for liter- ary purposes, not in three centuries, but in one century, or even in half a century. The English of Alfred continues to be in all respects the English of Alfric, who lived and wrote more than a century later. The National Chronicle, still written substantially in the old language, comes down even to the year 1154. It is probable that we have here the continued employment, for the sake of uniformity, of an idiom which had now become antique, or what is called dead ; but there is certainly no evidence or trace of any other form of the national speech having ever been used in writing before the year 1100 at the earliest. The overthrow of the native government and civilization by the Conquest in the latter part of the eleventh century would not, of course, extinguish the knowl- edge of the old literary language of the country till after the lapse 1 Preface to Warton, 86. 160 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. of about a generation. We may fairly, then, regard the change in question as having taken place, in all probability, not in three centuries, as Mr. Price puts the case, but within at most the third part of that space. This correction, while it brings the breaking up of the language into close connection in point of time with the social revolution, gives it also much more of a svidden and convul- sionary character than it has in Mr. Price's representation. The gradual and gentle flow, assumed to have extended over three cen- turies, turns out to have been really a rapid precipitous descent, — something almost of the nature of a cataract, — effected possibly within the sixth or eighth part of that space of time. It may be that there is a tendency in certain languages, or in all languages, to undergo a similar simplification of their grammar to that which the English underwent at this crisis. And it is con- ceivable that such a tendency constantly operating unchecked may at last produce such a change as we have in the present case, the conversion of the language from one of a synthetic to one of an analytic structure. That may have happened with those other languages of the Low-Germanic stock to which Mr. Price refers. But such was certainly not the case with the English. We have that language distinctly before us for three or four centuries, dur- ing which it is not pretended that there is to be detected a tract. of the operation of any such tendency. The tendency, therefore, either did not exist, or must have been rendered inoperative by some counteracting influence. If, on the other hand, we are to suppose, that in our own or in any other language, the tendency suddenly developed itself or became active at a particular moment, that would necessarily imply the very operation of a new external cause which Mr. Price's theory denies. It is no matter whether we may or may not be able to point out the cause ; that a cause there must have been is unquestionable. In the case before us, the cause is sufficiently obvious. The in- tegrity of the constitution or grammatical system of the language was preserved so long as its literature flourished; when that ceased to be read and studied and produced, the grammatical cultivation and knowledge of the language also ceased. The two things, in- deed, were really one and the same. The literature and the liter- ary form of the language could not but live and die together. Whatever killed the one was sure also to blight the other. And what was it that did or could bring the native literature of England THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES. 161 suddenly to an end in the eleventh or twelfth century except the new political and social circumstances in which the country was then placed ? What other than such a cause ever extinguished in any country the light of its ancient literature ? Of at least two similar cases we have a perfect knowledge. How long did the classical Latin continue to be a living language ? Just so long as the fabric of Latin civilization in the Western Empire continued to exist ; so long, and no longer. When that was over- thrown, the literature which was its product and exponent, its ex- pression and in a manner its very soul, and the highly artificial form of language which was the material in which that literature was wrought, were both at once struck with a mortal disease under which they perished almost with the generation that had witnessed the consummation of the barbaric invasion. Exactly similar is the history of the classic Greek, only that it continued to exist as a living language for a thousand years after the Latin, the social sys- tem with which it was bound up, of which it was part and parcel, lasting so much longer. When that fell, with the fall of the East- ern Empire in the fifteenth century, the language also became extinct. The ancient Greek gave place to the modern Greek, or what is called the Romaic. The conquest of Constantinople by the Turks was to the Greek language the same thing that the Norman Conquest was to the English. ^s>-4 ^ ^ orx. THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES. — ASCEN- DENCY OF THE SCHOLASTIC PHILOSOPHY. Ever since the appearance of Peter Lombard's Four Books of Sentences, about the middle of the twelfth century, a struggle for ascendency had been going on throughout Europe between the Scholastic Theology, or new philosophy, and the grammatical and rhetorical studies with which men had previously been chiefly occupied. At first the natural advantages of its position told in favor of the established learning ; nay an impulse and a new inspi- ration were probably given to poetry and the belles-lettres for a time by the competition of logic and philosophy, and the general intellectual excitement thus produced : it was in the latter part of VOL. i. 21 162 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. the twelfth century that the writing of Latin verse was cultivated with the greatest success ; it was at the very end of that century, indeed, that Geoffrey de Vinsauf, as we have seen, composed and published his poem on the restoration of the legitimate mode of versification, under the title of Nova Poetria, or the New Poetry But from about this date the tide began to turn ; and the first half of the thirteenth century may be described as the era of the de- cline and fall of elegant literature, and the complete reduction of studious minds under the dominion of the scholastic logic and metaphysics. In the University of Paris, and it was doubtless the same else- where, from about the middle of the thirteenth century, the ancient classics seem nearly to have ceased to be read ; and all that was taught of rhetoric, or even of grammar, consisted of a few lessons from Priscian. The habit of speaking Latin correctly and ele- gantly, which had been so common an accomplishment of the scholars of the last age, was now generally lost: even at the uni- versities, the classic tongue was corrupted into a base jargon, in which frequently all grammar and syntax were disregarded. This universal revolt from the study of words and of assthetics to that of thoughts and of things is the most remarkable event in the intellectual history of the species. Undoubtedly all its results Mere not evil. On the whole, it was most probably the salvation even of that learning and elegant literature which it seemed for a time to have overwhelmed. The excitement of its very novelty awakened the minds of men. Never was there such a ferment of intellectual activity as now sprung up in Europe. The enthusiasm of the Crusades seemed to have been succeeded by an enthusiasm of study, which equally impelled its successive inundations of devotees. In the beginning of the fourteenth century there were thirty thousand students at the University of Oxford : and that of Paris could probably boast of the attendance of a still vaster mul- titude. This was something almost like a universal diffusion of education and knowledge. The brief revival of elegant literature in the twelfth century was a premature spring, which could not last. The preliminary processes of vegetation were not sufficiently advanced to sustain any general or enduring efflorescence ; nor was the state of the world such as t<> call for or admit of any exten- sive spread of the kind of scholarship then cultivated. The proba- bility is. that, even if nothing else had taken its place, it would THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES. 168 have gradually become feebler in character, as well as confined within a narrower circle of cultivators, till it had altogether evapo- rated and disappeared. The excitement of the new learning, tur- bulent and in some respects debasing as it was, saved Western Europe from the complete extinction of the light of scholarship and philosophy which would in that case have ensued, and kept alive the spirit of intellectual culture, though in the meanwhile imprisoned and limited in its vision, for a happier future time when it should have ampler scope and full freedom of range. Almost the only studies now cultivated by the common herd of students were the Aristotelian logic and metaphysics. Yet it was not till after a struggle of some length that the supremacy of Aris- totle was established in the schools. The most ancient statutes of the University of Paris that have been preserved, those issued by the pope's legate, Robert de Courcon, in 1215, prohibited the reading either of the metaphysical or the physical works of that philosopher, or of any abridgment of them. This, however, it has been remarked, was a mitigation of the treatment these books had met with a few years before, when all the copies of them that could be found were ordered to be thrown into the fire. 1 Still more lenient was a decree of Pope Gregory IX. in 1231, which only ordered the reading of them to be suspended until they should have undergone correction. Certain heretical notions in religion, promulgated or suspected to have been entertained by some of the most zealous of the early Aristotelians, had awakened the appre- hensions of the Church ; but the general orthodoxy of their suc- cessors quieted these fears ; and in course of time the authority of the Stagirite was universally recognized both in theology and in the profane sciences. Some of the most distinguished f the scholastic doctors of this period were natives of Britain. Such, in particular, were Alexan- der de Hales, styled the Irrefragable, an English Franciscan, who died at Paris in 1245, and who is famous as the master of St. Bonaventura, and the first of the long list of commentators on the Four Books of the Sentences ; the Subtle Doctor, John Duns Scotus, also a Franciscan and the chief glory of that order, who, after teaching with unprecedented popularity and applause at Oxford and Paris, died at Cologne in 1308, at the early age of forty-three, leaving a mass of writings, the very quantity of which 1 Crevier, Histoire de l'Univ. de Paris i. 313 164 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. would be sufficiently wonderful, even if they were not marked by a vigor and penetration of thought which, down to our own day, lias excited the admiration of all who have examined them ; and William Occam, the Invincible, another Franciscan, the pupil of Scotus, but afterwards his opponent on the great philosophical question of the origin and nature of Universals or General Terms, which so long divided, and still divides, logicians. Occam, who died at Munich in 1347, was the restorer, and perhaps the most able defender that the Middle Ages produced, of the doctrine of Nominalism, or the opinion that general notions are merely names, and not real existences, as was contended by the Realists. The side taken by Occam was that of the minority in his own day, and for many ages after, and his views accordingly were generally re- garded as heterodox in the schools ; but his high merits have been recognized in modern times, when perhaps the greater number of speculators have come over to his way of thinking. MATHEMATICAL AND OTHER STUDIES. In the mathematical and physical sciences, Roger Bacon is the great name of the thirteenth century, and indeed the greatest that either his country or Europe can produce for some centuries after this time. He was born at Ilchester about the year 1214, and died in 1292. His writings that are still preserved, of which the prin- cipal is that entitled his Opus Majus (or Greater Work), show that tin* range of his investigations included theologv, dammar, the ancient languages, geometry, astronomy, chronology, geography, music, optics, mechanics, chemistry, and most of the other branches of experimental philosophy. In all these sciences he had mastered whatever was then known; and his knowledge, though necessarily mixed with much error, extended in various directions considerably farther than, but for the evidence of his writings, we should have been warranted in believing that scientific researches had been car- ried in that age. In optics, for instance, he not only understood the general laws of reflected and refracted light, and had at least conceived such an instrument as a telescope, but he makes some advances towards an explanation of the phenomena of the rainbow. ROGER BACON. — ROBERT GROSSETESTE. 165 It may be doubted whether what have been sometimes called his inventions and discoveries in mechanics and in chemistry were for the greater part more than notions he had formed of the possibility of accomplishing certain results ; but, even regarded as mere spec- ulations or conjectures, many of his statements of what might be done show that he was familiar with mechanical principles, and possessed considerable acquaintance with the powers of natural agents. He appears to have been acquainted with the effects and composition of gunpowder, which indeed there is other evidence for believing to have been then known in Europe. Bacon's notions on the right method of philosophizing are remarkably enlightened for the times in which he lived ; and his general views upon most subjects evince a penetration and liberality much beyond the spirit of his age. With all his sagacity and freedom from prejudice, indeed, he was a believer both in astrology and alchemy ; but, as it has been observed, these delusions did not then stand in the same predicament as now: they were "irrational only because unproved, and neither impossible nor unworthy of the investigation of a phi- losopher, in the absence of preceding experiments." 1 Another eminent English cultivator of mathematical science in that age was the celebrated Robert Grosseteste, or Grostete, or Grosthead, bishop of Lincoln, the friend and patron of Bacon. Grostete, who died in 1253, and of whom we shall have more to say presently, is the author of a treatise on the sphere, which has been printed. A third name that deserves to be mentioned along with these is that of Sir Michael Scott, famous in popular tradition as a practitioner of the occult sciences, but whom his writings, of which several are extant, and have been printed, prove to have been possessed of acquirements, both in science and literature, of which few in those times could boast. He is commonly assumed to have been proprietor of the estate of Balwearie, in Fife, and to have survived till near the close of the thirteenth century ; but all that is certain is, that he was a native of Scotland, and one of the 1 Penny Cyclopaedia, iii. 243. Bacon's principal work, the Opus Majus, was pub- lished by Dr. Jebb, in a folio volume, at London in 1733 ; and several of his other treatises had been previously printed at Francfort, Paris, and elsewhere. His Opus Minus has also now been edited by Professor Brewer, of King's College, London, and forms one of the volumes of the series entitled Rerum Britannicarum Medii iEvi Scriptores, or Chronicles and Memorials of Great Britain and Ireland during the Middle Ages ; published by the authority of Her Majesty's Treasury, under the direction of the Master of the Rolls, 8vo., London, 1857, &c lt>6 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. most distinguished of the learned persons who nourished at the court of the Emperor Frederick II., who died in 1250. 1 Like Roger Bacon, Scott was addicted to the study of alchemy and astrology ; but these were in his eyes also parts of natural philoso- phy. Among other works, a History of Animals is ascribed to him ; and he is said to have translated several of the works of Aristotle from the Greek into Latin, at the command of the Em- peror Frederick. He is reputed to have been eminently skilled both in astronomy and medicine ; and a contemporary, John Bacon, himself known by the title of Prince of the Averroists, or follow- ers of the Arabian doctor Averroes, celebrates him as a great theologian. 2 These instances, however, were rare exceptions to the general rule. Metaphysics and logic, together with divinity, — which was converted into little else than a subject of metaphysical and logical contention, — so occupied the crowd of intellectual inquirers, that, except the professional branches of law and medicine, scarcely any other studies were generally attended to. Roger Bacon himself tells us that he knew of only two good mathematicians among his contemporaries, — one John of Leyden, who had been a pupil of his own, and another whom he does not name, but who is supposed" to have been John Peckham, a Franciscan friar, who afterwards became archbishop of Canterbury. Few students of the science, he says, proceeded farther than the fifth proposition of the first book of Euclid, — the well-known asses' bridge. The study of geometry was still confounded in the popular understanding with tin- study of magic, — a proof that it was a very rare pursuit. In arithmetic, although the Arabic numerals had found their way to Christian Europe before the middle of the fourteenth century, they do not appear to have come into general use till a considerably later date. Astronomy, however, was sufficiently cultivated at the Uni- versity of Paris to enable some of the members to predict an < el ipse of the sun which happened on the 31st of January, 1310. 3 This science was indebted for part of the attention it received to the belief that was universally entertained in the influence of the Btars over human affairs. And, as astrology led to the cultivation and improvement of astronomy, so the other imaginary science of 1 See article in Penny Cyclopaedia, xxi. 101. 2 See an article in Michael Scott in Bayle. 3 Crcvier, ii. 221. ALCHEMISTS. 167 alchemy undoubtedly aided the progress of chemistry and medi- cine. Besides Roger Bacon and Michael Scott in the thirteenth century, England contributes the names of John Daustein, of Richard, and of Cremer, abbot of Westminster, the disciple and friend of the famous Raymond Lully, to the list of the writers on alchemy in the fourteenth. Lully himself visited England in the reign of Edward L, on the invitation of the king ; and he affirms in one of his works, that, in the secret chamber of St. Katharine in the Tower of London, he performed in the royal presence the experiment of transmuting some crystal into a mass of diamond, or adamant as he calls it, of which Edward, he says, caused some little pillars to be made for the tabernacle of God. It was popu- larly believed, indeed, at the time, that the English king had been furnished by Lully with a great quantity of gold for defraying the expense of an expedition he intended to make to the Holy Land. Edward III. was not less credulous on the subject than his grand- father, as appears by an order which he issued in 1329, in the fol- lowing terms : — " Know all men, that we have been assured that John of Rous and Master William of Dalby know how to make silver by the art of alchemy ; that they have made it in former times, and still continue to make it ; and, considering that these men, by their art, and by making the precious metal, may be profitable to us and to our kingdom, we have commanded our well-beloved Thomas Cary to apprehend the aforesaid John and William, wherever they can be found, within liberties or without, and bring them to us, together with all the instruments of their art, under safe and sure custody." The earliest English writer on medicine, whose works have been printed, is Gilbeii; English (or Anglicus), who flourished in the thirteenth century ; and he was followed in the next century by John de Gaddesden. The prac- tice of medicine had now been taken in a great measure out of the hands of the clergy ; but the art was still in the greater part a mixture of superstition and quackery, although the knowledge of some useful remedies, and perhaps also of a few principles, had seen obtained from the writings of the Arabic physicians (many of which had been translated into Latin) and from the instructions delivered in the schools of Spain and Italy. The distinction be- tween the physician and the apothecary was already well under- stood. Surgery also began to be followed f,s a separate branch : some works are still extant, partly printed, partly in manuscript, 168 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. by John Ardern, or Arden, an eminent English surgeon, who practised at Newark in the fourteenth century. A lively picture of the state of the surgical art at this period is given by a French writer, Guy de Cauliac, in a system of surgery which he published in 1363. " The practitioners in surgery," he says, " are divided into five sects. The first follow Roger and Roland, and the four masters, and apply poultices to all wounds and abscesses ; the second follow Brunus and Theodoric, and in the same cases use wine only ; the third follow Saliceto and Lanfranc, and treat wounds with ointments and soft plasters ; the fourth are chiefly Germans, who attend the armies, and promiscuously use charms, potions, oil, and wool ; the fifth are old women and ignorant people, who have recourse to the saints in all cases." Yet the true method of philosophizing, by experiment and the collection of facts, was almost as distinctly and emphatically laid down in this age by Roger Bacon, as it was more than three cen- turies afterwards by his illustrious namesake. Much knowledge, too, must necessarily have been accumulated in various depart- ments by the actual application of this method. Some of the greatest of the modern chemists have bestowed the highest praise on the manner in which the experiments of the alchemists, or hermetic philosophers, as they called themselves, on metals and other natural substances appear to have been conducted. In an- other field — namely, in that of geography and the institutions, customs, and general state of distant countries — a great deal of new information must have been acquired from the accounts that were now published by various travellers, especially by Marco Polo, who penetrated as far as to Tartary and China, in the latter part of the thirteenth century, and by our countryman, Sir John Mandevil, who also traversed a great part of the East about a hun- dred years later. Roger Bacon has inserted a very curious epitome of the geographical knowledge of his time in his Opus Majus. UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES. Akout the middle of the thirteenth century, both in England and elsewhere, the universities began to assume a new form, by UNIVERSITIES AND COLLEGES. 169 the erection of colleges for the residence of their members as separate communities. The zeal for learning that was displayed in these endowments is the most honorable characteristic of the age. Before the end of the fourteenth century the following col- leges were founded at Oxford : — University Hall, by William, archdeacon of Durham, who died in 1249 ; Baliol College, by John Baliol, father of King John of Scotland, about 1263 ; Mer- ton College, by Walter Merton, bishop of Rochester, in 1268 ; Exeter College, by Walter Stapleton, bishop of Exeter, about 1315 ; Oriel College, originally called the Hall of the Blessed Virgin of Oxford, by Edward II. and his almoner, Adam de Brom, about 1324 ; Queen's College, by Robert Eglesfield, chap- lain to Queen Philippa, in 1340 ; and New College, in 1379, by the celebrated William of Wykeham, bishop of Winchester, the munificent founder also of Winchester School or College. In the University of Cambridge the foundations were, Peter House, by Hugh Balsham, sub-prior and afterwards bishop of Ely, about 1256 ; Michael College (afterwards incorporated with Trinity Col- lege), by Herby de Stanton, Chancellor of the Exchequer to Ed- ward II., about 1324 ; University Hall (soon afterwards burnt down), by Richard Badew, Chancellor of the University, in 1326 ;. King's Hall (afterwards united to Trinity College), by Edward III. ; Clare Hall, a restoration of University Hall, by Elizabeth de Clare, Countess of Ulster, about 1347 ; Pembroke Hall, or the Hall of Valence and Mary, in the same year, by Mary de St. Paul, widow of Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke ; Trinity Hall, in 1350, by William Bateman, bishop of Norwich ; Gonvil Hall, about the same time, by Edmond Gonvil, parson of Terrington and Rushworth, in Norfolk ; and Corpus Christi, or Ben'et (that is, Benedict) College, about 1351, by the United Guilds of Corpus Christi and St. Mary, in the town of Cambridge. The erection of these colleges, besides the accommodations which they afforded in various ways both to teachers and students, gave a permanent establishment to the universities, which they scarcely before pos- sessed. The original condition of these celebrated seats of learn- ing, in regard to all the conveniences of teaching, appears to have been humble in the extreme. Great disorders and scandals are also said to have arisen, before the several societies were thus as- sembled each within its own walls, from the intermixture of the students with the townspeople, and their exemption from all disci* vol. i. 22 170 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. pline. But, when the members of the University were counted by tens of thousands, discipline, even in the most favorable circum- stances, must have been nearly out of the question. The difficulty would not be lessened by the general character of the persons com- posing the learned mob, if we may take it from the quaint historian of the University of Oxford. Many of them, Anthony a Wood affirms, were mere " varlets who pretended to be scholars ; " he does not scruple to charge them with being habitually guilty of thieving and other enormities ; and he adds, " They lived under no discipline, neither had any tutors, but only for fashion sake would sometimes thrust themselves into the schools at ordinary lectures, and, when they went to perform any mischiefs, then would they be accounted scholars, that so they might free them- selves from the jurisdiction of the burghers." To repress the evils of this state of things, the old statutes of the University of Paris, in 1215, had ordained that no one should be reputed a scholar who had not a certain master. Another of these ancient regulations may be quoted in illustration of the simplicity of the times, and of the small measure of pomp and circumstance that the heads of the commonwealth of learning could then affect. It is ordered that every master reading lectures in the faculty of arts should have his cloak or gown round, black, and falling as low as the heels — " at least," adds the statute, with amusing naivete, " while it is new." But this famous seminary long continued to take pride in its poverty as one of its most honorable distinctions. There is something very noble and affecting in the terms in which the rector and masters of the faculty of arts are found petitioning, in 1362, for a postponement of the hearing of a cause in which they were parties. " We have difficulty," they say, " in finding the money to pay the procurators and advocates, whom it is neces- sary for us to employ — we whose profession it is to possess no wealth."'' l Yet, when funds were wanted for important purposes in connection with learning or science, they were supplied in this age with no stinted liberality. We have seen with what alacrity opulent persons came forward to build and endow colleges, as soon as the expediency of such foundations came to be perceived. In almost all these establishments more or less provision was made for the permanent maintenance of a body of poor scholars, in other words, for the admission of even the humblest classes to a share in 1 Crevier, ii. 404. LATIN HISTORICAL WORKS. 171 the benefits of that learned education whose temples and priesthood were thus planted in the land. It is probable, also, that the same kind of liberality was often shown in other ways. Roger Bacon tells us himself that, in the twenty years in which he had been engaged in his experiments, he had spent in books and instruments no less a sum than two thousand French livres, an amount of sil- ver equal to about six thousand pounds of our present money, and in effective value certainly to many times that sum. He must have been indebted for these large supplies to the gen- erosity of rich friends and patrons. LATIN HISTORICAL WORKS OF THE THIRTEENTH AND FOURTEENTH CENTURIES. Notwithstanding the general neglect of its elegancies, and of the habit of speaking it correctly or grammatically, the Latin tongue still continued to be in England, as elsewhere, the common language of the learned, and that in which books were generally written that were intended for their perusal. Among this class of works may be included the contemporary chronicles, most of which were compiled in the monasteries, and the authors of almost all of which were churchmen. The Chronicle of Roger de Wendover, hitherto existing only in MS., and in a single copy, has now been published, in the greater part, by the Rev. Henry O. Coxe, for the English Historical Soci- ety, under the title of Rogeri de Wendover Chronica, sive Flores Historiarum, 5 vols. 8vo. Lon. 1841-44. The portion omitted is merely the First Book, which contains the space from the creation to the commencement of the Christian era, and is abridged in the Flores Historiarum bearing the name of Matthew of Westminster, together with the first 446 years of Book Second, in which there is equally little that is peculiar or important. The remainder of the narrative comes down to the year 1235 (the 19th of Henry III.), and is very valuable. An English translation by Dr. Giles of so muah of Roger de Wendover's Chronicle as has been pub- Jshed by Mr. Coxe makes two of the volumes of Bonn's Anti- quarian Library, Lon. 1849. Wendover, who was probably a 172 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. native of the place of that name in Buckinghamshire, became a monk and precentor in the Benedictine monastery of St. Albans, and died prior of Belvoir, in a cell of that house, on the 6th of May, 1237. He has compiled the earlier portion of his work from Bede, Marianus Scotus, some of the Byzantine writers, Malmes- bury, Florence of Worcester, Henry of Huntingdon, and the other best and most reputable of preceding chroniclers, and in a very workmanlike manner. Mr. Coxe holds him to be quite as good a writer as Matthew Paris, whose more celebrated History is, down to the point where that of Wendover ends, copied from him with few alterations, and those, Mr. Coxe declares, mostly for the worse even in point of expression. Mr. Coxe vindicates the claim of Wendover to the authorship of the portion of the Chronicle bearing his name which has been thus transcribed by Paris, in answer to some remarks by Mr. Halliwell in the introduction to his late edition of Rishanger's Chronicle of the Barons' Wars. The most celebrated English historian of the thirteenth century, however, is Matthew Paris, who was another monk of the same great monastery of St. Albans, and was also much employed in affairs of state during the reign of Henry III. He died in 1259 : and his principal work, entitled Historia Major (the Greater His- tory), begins at the Norman Conquest, and comes down to that year. Matthew Paris is one of the most spirited and rhetorical of our old Latin historians ; and the extraordinary freedom with which he expresses himself, in regard especially to the usurpations of the court of Rome, forms a striking contrast to the almost uniform tone of his monkish brethren. Nor does he show less boldness in animadverting upon the vices and delinquencies of kings and of the great in general. These qualities have in modern times gained him much admiration among writers of one party, and much oblo- quy from those of another. His work has always been bitterly decried by the Roman Catholics, who at one time, indeed, were accustomed to maintain that much of what appeared in the printed copies of it was the interpolation of its Protestant editors. This charge has now been abandoned ; but an eminent Catholic histo- rian of the present day has not hesitated to denounce the narrative of the monk of St. Albans as " a romance rather than a history," on the ground of the great discrepancy which he asserts he has found between it and authentic records or contemporary writ- ers, in most instances when he could confront the one with the LATIN HISTORICAL WORKS. 17E other. 1 The Historia Major of Matthew Paris was first printed at London in 1571, under the care of Archbishop Parker; and it has been republished at Zurich in 1606 ; at London, under the care of Dr. William Wats, in 1640 ; at Paris, in 1644 ; and at London in 1684. All these editions are in folio. An excellent French translation, by M. A. Huillard-Breholles, has lately been published under the superintendence, or at the cost, of the Due de Luynes, in 9 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1840-41, with a few notes by the translator, but without the Introduction by the Duke, promised on the title- page — at least in the only copy of the work that has fallen in our way. An English translation, by Dr. Giles, makes three of the volumes of Bohn's Antiquarian Library. To the edition published by Dr. Wats, and those that have followed it, are appended some other historical pieces of the author ; and there also exists, in MS., an abridgment of the Historia Major, drawn up by himself, and generally referred to as the Historia Minor. The History of Matthew Paris was continued by William Rishanger, another monk of the same abbey, Avhose narrative ap- pears to have come down to the year 1322 (the 15th of Edward II.), although no complete copy is now known to be in existence, and only the earlier part, extending to the death of Henry III. (a. d. 1272), has been printed. It is at the end of Wats's edition of Matthew Paris. Rishanger is also the author of several other historical tracts, one of the most curious of which, his Chronicle of the Barons' Wars (preserved in a single MS., with the title of De Bellis Lewes et Evesham) has been printed for the Camden Society, under the care of Mr. James Orchard Halliwell, 4to. Lond. 1840. To Rishanger's narrative Mr. Halliwell has appended a collection of miracles attributed to Simon de Montfort, from another MS. in the Cotton Library. What is commonly called the Chronicle of John Bromton, and is printed among the Decern Scriptores (pp. 721-1284) under the titles of Chronicon Johannis Bromton, and Joralanensis Historia, a Johanne Brompton, Abbate Jorvalensi, Conscripta, has been shown by Selden, in his most learned and curious preface to that collection, not to be either the composition of Bromton, or in any sense a Chronicle of Jorevale or Jerevaux, of which monastery in Yorkshire Bromton, Brompton, or Bramton, was abbot. The book * as merely procured for the library of that house while he presided i Dr. Lingard, Hist, of Eng. iii. 160, edit, of 1837. 174 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. over it, and probably through his means. It does not appear from Seidell's account when Bromton lived ; but he has proved (p. xli) that the Chronicle must have been written in or after the year 1328, or the second of Edward III. At the commencement the author intimates that it is his design to bring it down to the time of Edward I., but it terminates with the death of Richard I. (a. d. 1199), having set out from the conversion of the Saxons by St. Augustine. It is not therefore, in any part of it, a contemporary history ; but the writer has gleaned from some authorities which we do not now possess, and he gives many details which have not elsewhere been preserved. Among the other Latin chroniclers of this period, whose works have been printed, the following are the principal : — Thomas "Wikes, or Wycke, in Latin Wiccius, canon regular of Osney, near Oxford, whose chronicle, otherwise called the Chronicle of the Church of Salisbury, fills from p. 21 to p. 129 of Gale's Scriptores Quinque, and, as there printed, extends from the Conquest to the year 1304, although it is afterwards intimated (p. 595) that the last ten pages of it are by another hand ; Walter Hemingford, or, as Leland calls him, Hemingoburgus, a monk of Gisborough in Yorkshire, the portion of whose work extending from the Conquest to the year 1273 (being the first three Books) was printed by Gale in the same collection (pp. 453-595), and the remainder, comprehending the reigns of Edward L, Edward II., and the first twenty years of that of Edward III., by Hearne, in 2 vols. 8vo., at Oxford, in 1731, and the whole of which has been edited by Mr. H. C. Hamilton for the Historical Society, in 2 vols. 8vo. Lon. 1848 ; Robert de Avesbury, register of the court of the Arch- bishop of Canterbury, whose history of the reign of Edward III., Hfttoria de Mirabilibus Gestis Edwardi III., which is esteemed for its accuracy, but comes down only to a. d. 1356, was published by Hearne, in 8vo., at Oxford, in 1720; Nicolas Trivet, whose clear and exact history of the reigns of Stephen, Henry II. , Richard I., John, Henry III., and Edward I. (or from a. d. 1135 to 1307), is printed in both editions of Father d'Achery's Spicilegium (1671 and 1723), and has also been published separately by Anthony Hall, in 8vo., at Oxford, in 1719, and, as edited by Mr. T. Hog for the Historical Society, 8vo., Lon. 1845 ; Adam Murimuth, whose short chronicle, extending from a. r>. 1303 to 1337, along with a continuation by an anonymous writer to 1380, was jointed LATIN HISTORICAL WORKS. 175 by Hall as a second volume to his Trivet, in 1721, and has also been edited for the Historical Society by Mr. Hog, 1846 ; Henry de Knyghton (or Cnitton, as he himself spells the name), a canor. of Leicester, the author of a History of English affairs from the time of King Edgar to the death of Richard II., which is printed among the Decern Scriptores (pp. 2297-2742) ; and the two ecclesiastical historians, Thomas Stubbs and William Thorne, the Chronicle of the acts of the Archbishops of York to a. d. 1378 by the former of whom, and that of the Abbots of St. Auo-ustine's monastery at Canterbury to 1397 by the latter, are in the same collection (pp. 1685-1734, and 1753-2202). The original Latin Polychronicon of Ranulph, or Ralph, Higden, monk of St. Wer- burgh's in Chester, which ends in 1357, still remains, for the greater part, in MS., only the portion of it relating to the period of English history before the Norman Conquest having been pub- lished by Gale among his Scriptores Quindecim (pp. 177-289) ; but an English translation of the whole by John de Trevisa, who was vicar of Berkeley in Gloucestershire towards the close of the fourteenth century, was printed, in folio, at Westminster, by Cax- ton in 1482, at the same place by Wynken de Worde in 1485, and at Southwark in 1517, and again in 1527. Besides many insertions, Caxton has added a continuation of the History down to 1460 ; but it appears that he has also omitted several passages which are found in Trevisa's MS. now in the Harleian collection. John Fordun, the earliest of the regular Scottish chroniclers, also belongs to the fourteenth century. His History, entitled Scoti- chronicon, beginning with the creation, comes down only to the end of the reign of David I. (a. d. 1153), but is continued by Walter Bower, abbot of Inchcolm, to the death of James I. (a. d. 1437), the materials for the space from 1153 to 1385 having been collected by Fordun. The portion of the Scotichronicon actually written by Fordun, being the first five of the sixteen books, was printed by Gale among his Scriptores Quindecim (pp. 563-701) ; and the whole was published by Hearne, at Oxford, in 5 vols. 8vo. in 1722, and again by Walter Goodall, at Edinburgh, in 2 vols, folio, in 1759. The most important of the monastic chronicles belonging to this period, which has been preserved, is that called (it does not appear for what reason) the Chronicle of Lanercost. It has now been printed for the Bannatyne and Maitland Clubs, under the superin- 176 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. ten donee of Mr. Joseph Stevenson, 4to., Edinburgh, 1839. Before this it existed only in one or two very incorrect modern transcripts, and in a single original codex (the Cotton MS. D. vii.), where it is appended, without any break, to an imperfect copy of what is printed by Savile as Hoveden's History. Hoveden ends on the reverse of what is numbered as folio 172 of the MS., having filled from folio 66 inclusive: the continuation, or Lanercost Chronicle, goes on in one handwriting to the end of the volume on the reverse of fol. 242. The time which it comprehends is from a. d. 1201 to 1346 : and Mr. Stevenson thinks that it was transcribed about the latter date from the contemporary register kept, most probably, in the Minorite monastery of Carlisle. As printed it fills 352 4to. pages ; and it abounds in curious and valuable information relat- ing to the course of events both in England and in Scotland during the period over which it extends. USE AND STUDY OF THE LATIN AND GREEK, THE HE- BREW AND OTHER ORIENTAL TONGUES. Latin was also, for a great part of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the usual language of the law, at least in writing. There may, indeed, be some doubt perhaps as to the Charter of John. It is usually given in Latin ; but there is also a French text first pub- lished in the first edition of D'Achery's Spicilegium (1653-57), xii. 573, &c, which there is some reason for believing to be the original. " An attentive critical examination of the French and Latin together," says Mr. Luders, " will induce any person capable of making it to think several chapters of the latter translated from the former, and not originally composed in Latin." x Yet the Capitula, or articles on which the Great Charter is founded, are known to us only in Latin. And all the other charters of liberties are in that lanjruaov. So is every statute down to the year 1275. The first that is in French is the Statute of Westminster the First, passed in that year, the 3d of Edward I. Throughout the remain- der of the reign of Edward they are sometimes in Latin, sometimes 1 Tracts on the Law and History of England (1810), p. 393. D'Achery's French texl may il-.> be read in a more common book, Johnson's History of Magna Charta, 2d edit. "(1772), pp. 182-224 ORIENTAL LEARNING. 177 in French, but more frequently in the former language. The French becomes more frequent in the time of Edward II. and is almost exclusively used in that of Edward III. and Richard II. Still there are statutes in Latin in the sixth and eighth years of the last-mentioned king. It is not improbable that, from the acces- sion of Edward I., the practice may have been to draw up every statute in both languages. Of the law treatises, Bracton (about 1265) and Fleta (about 1285) are in Latin ; Britton (about 1280) and the Miroir des Justices (about 1320), in French. Latin was not only the language in which all the scholastic divines and philosophers wrote, but was also employed by all writers on geometry, astronomy, chemistry, medicine, and the other branches of mathematical and natural science. All the works of Roger Bacon, for example, are in Latin ; and it is worth noting that, although by no means a writer of classical purity, this distin- guished cultivator of science is still one of the most correct Avriters of his time. He was indeed not a less zealous student of literature than of science, nor less anxious for the improvement of the one than of the other : accustomed himself to read the works of Aris- totle in the original Greek, he denounces as mischievous imposi- tions the wretched Latin translations by which alone they were known to the generality of his contemporaries : he warmly recom- mends the study of grammar and the ancient languages generally ; and deplores the little attention paid to the Oriental tongues in particular, of which he says there were not in his time more than three or four persons in Western Europe who knew anything. It is remarkable that the most strenuous effort made within the pres- ent period to revive the study of this last-mentioned learning pro- ceeded from another eminent cultivator of natural science, the famous Raymond Lully, half philosopher, half quack, as it has been the fashion to regard him. It was at his instigation that Clement V., in 1311, with the approbation of the Council of Vienne, published a constitution, ordering that professors of Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Chaldaic should be established in the univer- sities of Paris, Oxford, Bologna, and Salamanca. He had, more than twenty years before, urged the same measure upon Honorius IV., and its adoption then was only prevented by the death of that pope. After all, it is doubtful if the papal ordinance was ever carried into effect. There were, however, professors of strange,, or foreign, languages at Paris a few years after this time, as ap- vol. i. 23 178 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. pears from an epistle of Pope John XXII. to his legate there in 1825, in which the latter is enjoined to keep watch over the said professors, lest they should introduce anv dogmas as strange as the languages they taught. 1 Many additional details are collected by "Warton in his Disserta- tion on the Introduction of Learning into England. He is inclined to think that many Greek manuscripts found their way into Europe from Constantinople in the time of the Crusades. "Robert Grost- head, bishop of Lincoln," he proceeds, "an universal scholar, and no less conversant in polite letters than the most abstruse sciences, cultivated and patronized the study of the Greek language. This illustrious prelate, who is said to have composed almost two hun- dred books, read lectures in the school of the Franciscan friars at Oxford about the year 1230. He translated Dionysius the Areo- pagite and Damascenus into Latin. He greatly facilitated the knowledge of Greek by a translation of Suidas's Lexicon, a book in high repute among the lower Greeks, and at that time almost a recent compilation. He promoted John of Basingstoke to the archdeaconry of Leicester, chiefly because he was a Greek scholar, and possessed many Greek manuscripts, which he is said to have brought from Athens into England. He entertained, as a domestic in his palace, Nicholas, chaplain of the abbot of St. Albans, sur- named Grcecus, from his uncommon proficiency in Greek ; and by his assistance he translated from Greek into Latin the testaments of the twelve patriarchs. Grosthead had almost incurred the cen- sure of excommunication for preferring a complaint to the pope that most of the opulent benefices in England were occupied by Italians. But the practice, although notoriously founded on the monopolizing and arbitrary spirit of papal imposition, and a mani- fest act of injustice to the English clergy, probably contributed to introduce many learned foreigners into England, and to propagate philological literature." 2 "Bishop Grosthead," Warton adds, "is also said to have been profoundly skilled in the Hebrew language. William the Conqueror permitted greal numbers of Jews to come over from Rouen, and to settle in England, about the year 1087. Their multitude soon increased, and they spread themselves in \ ast bodies throughout most of the cities and capital towns in Eng- land, where they built synagogues. There were fifteen hundred 1 Crevier, Hist, de l'Univ. de Paris, ii. 112, 227. 2 Hist, of Eng. Poet., i. cxxxv. GREEK AND HEBREW. 179 at York about the year 1189. At Bury in Suffolk is a very com- plete remain of a Jewish synagogue of stone, in the Norman style, large and magnificent. Hence it was that many of the learned English ecclesiastics of those times became acquainted with their books and language. In the reign of William Rufus, at Oxford the Jews were remarkably numerous, and had acquired a consider- able property ; and some of their rabbis were permitted to open a school in the university, where they instructed not only their own people, but many Christian students, in the Hebrew literature, about the year 1054. Within two hundred years after their ad- mission or establishment by the Conqueror, they were banished the kingdom. This circumstance was highly favorable to the cir- culation of their learning in England. The suddenness of their dismission obliged them, for present subsistence, and other reasons, to sell their movable goods of all kinds, among which were large quantities of Rabbinical books. The monks in various parts availed themselves of the distribution of these treasures. At Huntingdon and Stamford there was' a prodigious sale of their effects, contain- ing immense stores of Hebrew manuscripts, which were imme- diately purchased by Gregory of Huntingdon, prior of the abbey of Ramsey. Gregory speedily became an adept in the Hebrew, by means of these valuable acquisitions, which he bequeathed to his monastery about the year 1250. Other members of the same convent, in consequence of these advantages, are said to have been equal proficients in the same language, soon after the death of Prior Gregory ; among whom were Robert Dodford, librarian of Ramsey, and Laurence Holbeck, who compiled a Hebrew lexicon. At Oxford, great multitudes of their books fell into the hands of Roger Bacon, or were bought by his brethren, the Franciscan friars of that university." 1 The general expulsion of the Jews from England did not take place till the year 1290, in the reign of Edward I. ; but they had been repeatedly subjected to sudden violence, both from the populace and from the government, before that grand catastrophe. 1 Hist, of Eng. Poet., i. cxxxvi. 180 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. LAST AGE OF THE FRENCH LANGUAGE IN ENGLAND. The French language, however, was still in common use among us down to the latter part of the reign of Edward III. It is well remarked by Pinkerton that we are to date the cessation of the general use of French in this country from the breaking out of " the inveterate enmity '' between the two nations in the reign of that king. 1 Higden, as we have seen, writing before this change had taken place, tells us that French was still in his day the lan- guage which the children of gentlemen were taught to speak from their cradle, and the only language that was allowed to be used by boys at school ; the effect of which was, that even the country- people generally understood it and affected its use. The tone, however, in which this is stated by Higden indicates that the pub- lic feeling had already begun to set in against these customs, and that, if they still kept their ground from use and wont, they had lost their hold upon any firmer or surer stay. Accordingly, about a quarter of a century or thirty years later, his translator Trevisa finds it necessary to subjoin the following explanation or correc- tion : — "This maner was myche yused tofore the first moreyn [before the first murrain or plague, which happened in 1349], and is siththe som dele [somewhat] ychaungide. For John Comwaile, a maister of gramar, chaungide the lore [learning] in gramar scole and construction of [from] Frensch into Englisch, and Richard IVncriche lerncd that maner teching of him, and other men of lVncriche. So that now, the yere of owre Lord a thousand thre hundred ftrare score and fyve, of the secunde King Rychard after the Conquest nyne, in alle the gramer scoles of England children leveth Frensch, and construeth and lerneth an [in] Englisch, and haveth thereby avauntage in oon [one] side and desavauntage in another. Her [their] avauntage is, that thei lerneth her [their] gramer in la^so tyme than children were wont to do ; desavaun- tage is, that now children of gramer scole kunneth [know] no more Frensch than can her lifte [knows their left] heele ; and that is harm for hem [them], and [if] thei schul passe the see and 1 Essay on the Origin of Scotisli Poetry, prefixed to Ancient Scotisli Poems, 1786, vol. i. p. lxiii. Some curious remarks upon the peculiar political position in which England was held to stand in relation to France in the first reigns after th« ?on<■ la Rue, Essais, iii. 127-138. 5 Id. 139-145. ' Id. 150, 151 ; see also Tyrwhitt, Essay, note 55. ANGLO-NORMAN POETS. 187 the anonymous author of a continuation of Wace's Brut, in the common octosyllabic verse, in which he brings down the history, in a fierce anti-Norman spirit, from the death of Cadwallader at the close of the seventh century to the twenty-fourth year of the reign of Henry III. (a. d. 1240), telling, among other things not else- where to be found, a remarkable story of a prophetic revelation made to the Conqueror touching the fates of his three sons ; ' Pierre du Ries, a Norman, described as a writer of true poetical genius, who is the author of the romance of Anseis de Carthage, one of the Paladins of Charlemagne, in 10,850 verses, of the Roman de Beuves de Hamton et de s'amie Josiane, fille du Roi d'Armenie (our English Bevis of Hampton), in 18,525 verses, and of a con- tinuation of a romance on the subject of Judas Machabeus begun by Gautier de Belleperche ; 2 Godfrey of Waterford, an Irish Do- minican monk, the author of a verse translation of the pretended Trojan History of Dares Phrygius, and also of several other ver- sions of Latin works into French prose ; 3 Robert Bikez, the writer, in the latter part of the thirteenth century, of the Lai du Corn, founded on a very popular Arthurian fiction ; 4 two anonymous writers of the same age, to each of whom we owe a short poem on the Purgatory of St. Patrick (one of about 1800, and the other of about 760 verses) ; 5 Walter of Exeter, a Franciscan monk of Cornwall, to whom is attributed the romance of Guy de Warwick, et de Felice fille du Comte de Bukingham (extending to nearly 11,500 verses) ; and Peter de Langtoft, a canon of the priory of St. Augustine at Bridlington, in Yorkshire, who has left us a trans- lation of the British History of Geoffrey of Monmouth, a continu- ation of the English story in the same style from the arrival of the Saxons to the reign of Edward I., a Life of that King, a transla- tion of Herbert de Bosham's Latin Life of Becket, and one or two shorter pieces, all in French verse. 6 1 See De la Rue, Essais, iii. 157-169 ; also in Archaeologia, xiii. 242-246. 2 Id. 170-179. 3 Id. p. 211. * See Tyrwhitt, Discourse, note 24 ; Warton, Hist. ii. 432 ; and De la Rue, Essais, iii. 216. 6 De la Rue, Essais, iii. 245. Upon this subject see St. Patrick's Purgatory, an Essay on the Legends of Purgatory, Hell, and Paradise, current during the Middls A.ges ; by Thomas Wright, Esq. 8vo. Lond. 1844. 6 De la Rue, Essais, iii. 234-239. 188 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. FRENCH PROSE ROMANCES. — FROISSART. Down to the end of the twelfth century verse was probably the only form in which romances, meaning originally any compositions in the Romance or French language, then any narrative composi- tions whatever, were written ; in the thirteenth, a few may have appeared in prose ; but before the close of the fourteenth prose had become the usual form in which such works were produced, and many of the old metrical romances had been recast in this new shape. The early French prose romances, however, do not, like their metrical predecessors, belong in any sense to the literature of this country : many of them were no doubt generally read for a time in England as w r ell as in France ; but we have no reason for believing that any of them were primarily addressed to the Eng- lish public, or were written in England or by English subjects, and even during the brief space that they continued popular they seem to have been regarded as foreign importations. Their history, therefore, is no part of our present subject. But there is one re- markable product of the French literature of the fourteenth cen- tury which must be made an exception, the Chronicle of the inimi- table Sire Jean Froissart. This work, indeed, has, in everything except the language in which it is written, nearly as much of an English as of a French interest. Froissart was a native of Valen- ciennes, where he appears to have been bora about 1337 ; but the four Books of his Chronicle — which relates principally to English affairs, though the narrative embraces also the course of events in France, Flanders, Scotland, and other countries — comprehend the space from 1326 to 1400, or the whole of the reigns of our Ed- ward III. and Richard II. For the first thirty years of this space he intimates that his authority was a previous writer, Jean le Bel, canon of Liege, whom he greatly praises for his diligence and ac- curacy ; and some years ago the Chronicle of Le Bel, which was supposed to have perished, was discovered in the library of the old Dukes of Burgundy at Brussels, when it turned out that Frois- Bart's first eighty chapters are almost a literal transcript from his predecessor. Froissart, however, is rather of authority as a painter of manners than as an historian of events; for his passion for the marvellous and the decorative was so strong, that the simple fact, we fear, would have had little chance of acceptance with him in FROISSART. 189 any case when it came into competition with a good story. In his own, and in the next age, accordingly, his history was generally reckoned and designated a romance. Caxton, in his Boke of the Ordre of Chevalrye or Knighthood, classes it with the romances of Lancelot and Percival ; and indeed the Roman an Chroniques seems to have been the title by which it was at first commonly known. On the other hand, however, it is fair to remember that a romance was not in those days held to be necessarily a fiction. Froissart's Chronicle is certainly the truest and most lively picture that any writer has bequeathed to us of the spirit of a particular era ; it shows " the very age and body of the time his form and pressure." In a higher than the literal sense, the most apocryphal incidents of this most splendid and imaginative of gossips are full of truth ; they cast more light upon the actual men and manners that are described, and bring back to life more of the long-buried past, than the most careful details of any other historian. The popularity of Froissart's Chronicle has thrown into the shade his other productions ; but his highest fame in his own day was as a writer of poetry. His greatest poetical work appears to have been a romance entitled Meliador, or the Knight of the Sun of Gold; and he also wrote many shorter pieces, chants royaux, ballads, ron- deaux, and pastorals, in what was then called the New Poetry, which, indeed, he cultivated with so much success that he has by some been regarded as its inventor. 1 On his introduction to Rich- ard II., when he paid his last visit to England in 1396, he presented that monarch, as he tells us, with a book beautifully illuminated, engrossed with his own hand, bound in crimson velvet, and embel- lished with silver bosses, clasps and golden roses, comprehending all the pieces of Amours and Moralities which he had composed in the twenty-four preceding years. Richard, he adds, seemed much pleased, and examined the book in many places ; for he was fond of reading as well as speaking French. 1 See Warton, Hist, of Eng. Poetry, ii. 173, 300. — "It is a proof of the decay of invention among the French in the beginning of the fourteenth century, that about that period they began to translate into prose their old metrical romances. .... At length, about the year 1380, in the place of the Provencial, a new speciee of poetry succeeded in France, consisting of Chants Royaux, Balades, Rondeaux md Pastorales. This was distinguished by the appellation of the New Poetry.'' 190 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. RESURRECTION OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. But for the last fifty years of the fourteenth century the French language had been rapidly losing the position it had held among us from the middle of the eleventh, and becoming amono- all classes in England a foreign tongue. We have already produced the tes- timonies of Higden writing immediately before the commencement of this change, and of Trevisa after it had been going on for about a quarter of a century ; to these may now be added what Chaucer writes, probably within ten years after the date (1385) which Tre- visa expressly notes as that of his statement. In the Prologue to his Testament of Love, a prose work, which seems to have been far advanced, if not finished, in 1392, 1 the great father of our Eng- lish poetry, speaking of those of his countrymen who still persisted in writing French verse, expresses himself thus : — " Certes there ben some that speke thyr poysy mater in Frenche, of whyche speche the Frenche men have as good a fantasye as we have in hearing of French mennes Englyshe." And afterwards he adds, " Let, then, clerkes endyten in Latyn, for they have the propertye in science and the knowinge in that facultye, and lette Frenchmen in theyr Frenche also endyte theyr queynt termes, for it is kyndly [natural] to theyr mouthes ; and let us shewe our fantasyes in suche wordes as we learneden of our dames tonge." French, it is evi- dent from this, although it might still be a common acquirement among the higher classes, had ceased to be the mother-tongue of any class of Englishmen, and was only known to those to whom it was taught by a master. So, the Prioress in the Canterbury Tales, although she could speak French "ful fayre and fetisly," or neatly, spoke it only " After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe, For Frenche of Paris was to hire [her] unknowe." 2 1 See Tyrwhitt's Account of the works of Chaucer, prefixed to his Glossary. 2 It is impossible to believe with Sir Harris Nicolas, in bis otherwise very clear and judicious Life of Cbaucer (8vo. Lond. 1843; additional note, p. 142), that Chaucer perbaps here meant to intimate that Che prioress could not speak Frencb at all, on tbc ground thai the expression "Frencb of Stratford-at-Bow " is used in a tract published in 1586 (Feme's Blazon of Gentrie), to describe the language of English heraldry. In the first place the phrase is not there "a colloquial para- phrase for English," but for the mixed French and English, or, as it might he re- garded, Anglicized or corrupted French, of our htralds. But, at any rate, can it RESURRECTION OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. 193 From this, as from many other passages in old writers, we learn that the French taught and spoken in England had, as was indeed inevitable, become a corrupt dialect of the language, or at least very different from the French at Paris. But, as the foreign tongue lost its hold and declined in purity, the old Teutonic speech of the native population, favored by the same circumstances and course of events which checked and depressed its rival, and having at last, after going through a process almost of dissolution and putrefaction, begun to assume a new organization, gradually recovered its ascendency. We have already examined the first revolution which the lan- guage underwent, and endeavored to explain the manner in which it was brought about. It consisted in the disintegration of the grammatical system of the language, and the conversion of it from an inflectional and synthetic into a comparatively non-inflected and analytic language. The vocabulary, or what we may call the sub- stance of the language, was not changed ; that remained still purely Gothic, as it always had been ; only the old form or struc- ture was broken up or obliterated. There was no mixture or infu- sion of any foreign element ; the language was as it were decom- posed, but was not adulterated, and the process of decomposition may be regarded as having been the work of the eleventh century, and as having been begun by the Danish Conquest and consum- mated by the Norman. This first revohition which the language underwent is to be care- fully distinguished from the second, which was brought about by the combination of the native with a foreign element, and con- sisted essentially in the change made in the vocabulary of the lan- guage by the introduction of numerous terms borrowed from the French. Of this latter innovation we find little trace till long after the completion of the former. For nearly two centuries after the Conquest the English seems to have been spoken and written (to the small extent to which it was written) with scarcely any inter- mixture of Norman. It only, in fact, began to receive such inter- mixture after it came to be adopted as the speech of that part of be supposed for a moment that Chaucer would take so roundabout and fantastic a way as this of telling his readers so simple a fact, as that his prioress could speak her native tongue ? He would never have spent three words upon such a matter, much less three lines. 192 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. the nation which had previously spoken French. And this adop- tion was plainly the cause of the intermixture. So long as it remained the language only of those who had been accustomed to speak it from their infancy, and who had never known any other, it might have gradually become changed in its internal organization, but it could scarcely acquire any additions from a foreign source. What should have tempted the Saxon peasant to substitute a Norman term, upon any occasion, for the word of the same meaning with which the language of his ancestors supplied him ? As for things and occasions for which new names were ne- cessary, they must have come comparatively little in his way ; and, when they did, the capabilities of his native tongue were siifficient to furnish him with appropriate forms of expression from its own resources. The corruption of the English by the intermixture of French vocables must have proceeded from those whose original language was French, and who were in habits of constant inter- course with French customs, French literature, and everything else that was French, at the same time that they, occasionally at least, spoke English. And this supposition is in perfect accordance with the historical fact. So long as the English was the language of only a part of the nation, and the French, as it were, struggled with it for mastery, it remained unadulterated ; — when it became the speech of the whole people, of the higher classes as Avell as of the lower, then it lost its old Teutonic purity, and received a larger alien admixture from the alien lips through which it passed. Whether this was a fortunate circiimstance, or the reverse, is another question. It may just be remarked, however, that the English, if it had been left to its own spontaneous and unassisted development, would probably have assumed a character resembling rather that of the Dutch or the Flemish than that of the German of the present day. The commencement of this second revolution, which changed the very substance of the language, may most probably be dated from about the middle of the thirteenth century, or about a cen- tury and a half after the completion of the first, which affected, not the substance or vocabulary of the language, but only its form or grammatical system. SECOND ENGLISH: — COMMONLY CALLED SEMI-SAXON. The chief remains that we have of English verse for the first two centuries after the Conquest have been enumerated by Sir Frederic Madden in a comprehensive paragraph of his valuable Introduction to the romance of Havelock, which we will take leave to transcribe : — " The notices by which we are enabled to trace the rise of our Saxon poetry from the Saxon period to the end of the twelfth century are few and scanty. We may, indeed, comprise them all in the Song of Canute recorded by the monk of Ely [Hist. Elyens. p. 505 apud Gale], who wrote about 1166; the words put into the mouth of Aldred, archbishop of York, who died in 1069 [W. Malmesb. de Gest. Pontif. 1. i. p. 271] ; the verses ascribed to St. Godric, the hermit of Finchale, who died in 1170 [Rits. Bibliogr. Poet.] ; the few lines preserved by Lam- barde and Camden attributed to the same period [Rits. Anc. Songs, Diss. p. xxviii.] ; and the prophecy said to have been set up at Here in the year 1189, as recorded by Benedict Abbas, Roger Hoveden, and the Chronicle of Lanercost [Rits. Metr. Rom. Diss. p. lxxiii.]. To the same reign of Henry II. are to be assigned the metrical compositions of Layamon [MS. Cott. Cal. A. ix., and Otho C. xiii.]. and Orm [MS. Jun. 1], and also the legends of St. Katherine, St. Margaret, and St. Julian [MS. Bodl. 34], with some few others, from which we may learn with tolerable accuracy the state of the language at that time, and its gradual formation from the Saxon to the shape it subsequently assumed. From this period to the middle of the next century nothing occurs to which we can affix any certain date ; but we shall probably not err in ascribing to that interval the poems ascribed to John de Gulde- vorde [MSS. Cott. Cal. A. ix., Jes. Coll. Oxon. 29], the Biblical History [MS. Bennet Cant. R. 11] and Poetical Paraphrase of the Psalms [MSS. Cott. Vesp. D. vii., Coll. Benn. Cant. O. 6, Bodl. 921] quoted by Warton, and the Moral Ode published by Hickes [MSS. Digby 4, Jes. Coll. Oxon. 29]. Between the years 1244 and 1258, we know, was written the versification of part of a meditation of St. Augustine, as proved by the age of the prior wha gave the MS. to the Durham Library [MS. Eccl. Dun. A. iii. 12 vol. i. 25 194 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. and Bodl. 42]. Soon after this time also were composed the ear- lier Songs in Ritson and Percy (1264), with a few more pieces which it is unnecessary to particularize. This will bring us to the close of Henry III/s reign and beginning of his successor's, the period assigned by our poetical antiquaries to the romances of Sir Tristrem, Kyng Horn, and Kyng Alesaunder." 1 The verse that has been preserved of the song composed by Canute as he was one day rowing on the Nen, while the holy music came floating on the air and along the water from the choir of the neighboring minster of Ely, — a song which we are told by the historian continued to his day, after the lapse of a century and a half, to be a universal popular favorite, 2 — is very nearly such English as was written in the fourteenth century. This interesting fragment properly falls to be given as the first of our specimens : — Merie sungen the muneches binnen Ely Tha Cnut Ching rew there by : Roweth, cnihtes, noer the lant, And here we thes muneches saeng. That is, literally, — Merry (sweetly) sung the monks within Ely That (when) Cnute King rowed thereby : Row, knights, near the land, And hear we these monks' song. Being in verse and in rhyme, it is probable that the words are reported in their original form ; they cannot, at any rate, be much altered. The not very clerical address of Archbishop Aldred to Ursus, Earl of Worcester, who refused to take down one of his castles the ditch of which encroached upon a monastic churchyard, con- sists, as reported by William of Malmesbury (whc by-the-by praises its elegance) of only two short lines : — Hatest thou 8 Urse ? Have thou God's curse. 1 The Ancient English Romance of Havelok the Dane; Introduction, p. xlix. We have transferred the references, enclosed in brackets, from the bottom of the page to tlie text. 1 Quae usque liodie in choris publice cantantur, et in proverbiis memorantur. 8 That is, Hightest thou (art thou called)? Malmesrury's Latin translation is, ST. GODRIC. 195 The hymn of St. Godric has more of an antique character. It is thus given by Ritson, who professes to have collated the Royal MS. 5 F. vii., and the Harleian MS. 322, and refers also to Matt. Parisiensis Historia, pp. 119, 120, edit. 1640, and to (MS. Cott.) Nero D. v. : — Sainte Marie [clane] virgine, Moder Jhesu Cristes Nazarene, On fo [or fong], schild, help thin Godric, On fang brieg hegilich with the in Godes riche. Sainte Marie, Christe's bur, Maidens clenhad, mode res flur, Dilie min sinne [or sennen], rix in min mod, Bring me to winne with the selfd God. " By the assistance of the Latin versions," adds Ritson, " one ii enabled to give it literally in English, as follows : — Saint Mary [chaste] virgin ; mother of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, take, shield, help thy Godric ; take, bring him quickly with thee into God's kingdom. Saint Mary, Christ's chamber, purity of a maiden, flower of a mother, destroy my sin, reign in my mind, bring me to dwell with the only God." Two other short compositions of the same poetical eremite are much in the same style. One is a couplet said to have been sung to him by the spirit or ghost of his sister, who appeared to him after her death and thus assured him of her happiness : — Crist and Sainte Marie swa on scamel me iledde That ic on this erde ne silde with mine bare fote itredde. Which Ritson translates : — " Christ and Mary, thus supported, have me brought, that I on earth should not with my bare foot tread." The other is a hvmn to St. Nicholas : — Sainte Nicholaes, Godes druth, Tymbre us faire scone hus. At thi burth, at thi bare, Sainte Nicholaes, bring us wel there. " That is," says Ritson, " Saint Nicholas, God's lover, build us a " Vocaris Ursus : habeas Dei maledictionem." But the first line seems to be inter rogative. 196 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. fair beautiful house. At thy birth, at thy bier, Saint Nicholas, bring us safely thither." As for the rhymes given by Lambarde and Camden as of the twelfth century, they can hardly in the shape in which we have them be of anything like that antiquity : they are, in fact, in the common English of the sixteenth century. Lambarde (in his Dictionary of England, p. 36) tells its that a rabble of Flemings and Normans brought over in 1173 by Robert, Earl of Leicester, when they were assembled on a heath near St. Edmond's Bury, " fell to dance and sing, Hoppe Wylikin, hoppe Wyllykin, Ingland is thyne and myne, &c." Camden's story is that Hugh Bigott, Earl of Norfolk, in the reign of Stephen, used to boast of the impregnable strength of his castle of Bungey after this fashion : — " Were I in my castle of Bungey, Upon the river of Waveney, I would ne care for the king of Cockeney." THE HERE PROPHECY. What Sir Frederick Madden describes as " the prophecy said to have been set up at Here in the year 1189 " is given by Ritson as follows : — Whan thu sees in Here hert yreret, Than sulen Engles in three be ydelet : That an into Yrland al to late wale, That other into Puille mid prude bileve, The thridde into Airhahen herd all wreken drechegen. These lines, which he calls a " specimen of English poetry, appar- ent I v of the same age" (the latter part of the 12th century), Ritson says are preserved by Benedictus Abbas, by Hoveden, and by the Chronicle of Lanercost ; and he professes to give them, and the account by which they are introduced, from " the former," by winch he means the first of the three. But in truth the verses do THE HERE PROPHECY. 197 not occur as he has printed them in any of the places to which he refers. Benedictus Abbas (p. 622) has two versions of them, the second of which he introduces by the word " rectius ; ' (more cor- rectly) ; there is a third in the printed Hoveden ; what Ritson has mistaken for the Lanercost Chronicle is an imperfect manuscript of Hoveden (Cotton MS. Claud. D. vii. fol. 101), in which they occur very nearly as printed in his Hoveden by Savile, — the only difference of any importance being, that the MS. has in the fourth line " bi leue," whereas Savile (both in the London edition 1596, fol. 386 r°, and in the Francfort edition 1601, p. 678) has " bi seue." Ritson's transcript is evidently taken either from the manuscript or the printed Hoveden : it is quite unlike either of the versions given by Benedictus. But it is a very inaccurate tran- script : to pass over minor variations, all the four originals, for in- stance, have " sal " or " sale " before " into Yrland " in the third line ; and the last line stands nowhere as Ritson has given it : — in the first copy of Benedictus it is, " The thirde in hayre haughen hert alle ydreghe ; " in the second it is, "The thride in hire athen hert alle wreke y-dreghe ; " in the MS. Hoveden it is, " The thridde into airhahen herd alle Wrek y drehegen " (or perhaps " drehegea ") ; in the printed Hoveden it is, " The thridde into Airhahen herd all wreke y drechegen." The line in any of the four forms in which we have it, appears to be entirely unintelligi- ble ; and indeed the verses are manifestly corrupt throughout, although a sort of sense may be made out of most of the others. '• 1'uille " is " Apulia " ; and the " wreke " in the last line may have something to do with a law about wrecks which both Benedict and Hoveden immediately go on to state that Richard proclaimed at this time, a. d. 1190, after his successful military operations against King Tancred in Sicily and Calabria (or Apulia) ; but what is "Airhahen " ? or where, can any one tell, is the town of " Here," of which Ritson and others who quote or refer to verses speak so familiarly ? Over this name the second version in Benedict has the word "Host" printed, with a point of interrogation, as if in- tended for a gloss. But the most remarkable circumstance of all is, that there is no ground at all for supposing, as is done by Ritson and .Sir Frederic Madden, that the verses were ever inscribed or set up upon any house at " Here " or elsewhere. What is said ooth by Benedict and Hoveden (who employ nearly the same woros) is simply that the figure of a hart was set upon the pinna- 198 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. cle of the house, in order, as was believed, that the prophecy con- tained in the verses might be accomplished, — which prophecy, we are told immediatelv before, had been found engraven i n ancient characters upon stone tables in the neighborhood of 'the place. It is clearly intended to be stated that the prophecy was much older than the building of the house, and the erection of the figure of a stag, in the year 1190. This is sufficiently conveyed in Ritson's own translation. What he means, therefore, by saying, " As the inscription was set up when the house was built, before the death of Henry the Second, in 1189," is not obvious. Benedict says that the house was built by Ranulfus, or Ralph (not " Randal," as Ritson translates it) Fitzstephen (Ranulfo, filio Stephani) ; Hoveden, by William ; which latter Ritson, we do not know upon what authority, intimates is the correct name. Both chroniclers state that the place, which was a royal town (yillam regis Anglice^), had been given to Fitzstephen by King Henry, that is, proba- bly, Henry II., as Ritson assumes ; but this, we repeat, deter- mines nothing as to the age of £he verses, which were, or were supposed to be, of much earlier date than either the erection of the house or the grant of the property. THE BRUT OF LAYAMON. Layamon, or, as he is also called, Laweman, — for the old char- acter represented in this instance by our modern y is really only a guttural (and by no means either a j or a 2, by which it is some- times rendered), — tells us himself that he was a priest, and that he resided at Ernley, near Radstone, or Redstone, which appears to have been what is now called Arley Regis, or Lower Arley, on the western bank of the Severn, in Worcestershire. He seems to say that he was employed in the services of the church at that place : — " ther he bock radde " (there he book read). And the only additional information that he gives us respecting himself is, that his father's name was Leovenath (or Leuca, as it is given in the later of the two texts). His Brut, or Chronicle of Britain (from the arrival of Brutus to 'he death of King Cadwalader in a. d. 689), is in the main, though THE BRUT OF LAYAMON. 199 with many additions, a translation of the French Brut d'Angleterre of Wace, which is itself, as has been stated above, a translation, also with considerable additions from other sources, of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Latin Historia Britonum, which again professes, and probably with truth, to be translated from a Welsh or Breton original. So that the genealogy of the four versions or forms of the narrative is : — first, a Celtic original, believed to be now lost ; secondly, the Latin of Geoffrey of Monmouth ; thirdly, the French of Wace ; fourthly, the English of Layamon. The Celtic or British version is of unknown date ; the Latin is of the earlier, the French of the latter, half of the twelfth century; and that of Layamon would appear to have been completed in the first years of the thirteenth. We shall encounter a second English translation from Wace's French before the middle of the fourteenth. The existence of Layamon's Chronicle had long been known, but it had attracted very little attention till comparatively recent times. It is merely mentioned even by Warton and Tyrwhitt, — the latter only remarking (in his Essay on the Language and Ver- sification of Chaucer), that, " though the greatest part of this work of Layamon resembles the old Saxon poetry, without rhyme or metre, yet he often intermixes a number of short verses of unequal lengths, but rhyming together pretty exactly, and in some places he has imitated not unsuccessfully the regular octosyllabic measure of his French original." George Ellis, in his Specimens of the Early English Poets, originally published in 1790, was, we believe, the first to introduce Layamon to the general reader, by giving an extract of considerable length, with explanatory annotations, from what he described as his u very curious work," which, he added, never had been, and probably never would be, printed. Subse- quently another considerable specimen, in every way much more carefully and learnedly edited, and accompanied with a literal translation throughout into the modern idiom, was presented by Mr. Guest in his History of English Rhythms, 1838 ii. (113-123).' But now the whole work has been edited by Sir Frederic Madden, for the Society of Antiquaries of London, in three volumes 8vo., 1847. This splendid publication, besides a Literal Translation, Notes, and a Grammatical Glossary, contains the Brut in two texts, separated .Tom each other by an interval apparently of about half a century, and, whether regarded in reference to the philological, to say nothing of the historical, value and importance of Layamon's work, or to 200 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. the admirable and altogether satisfactory manner in which the old chronicle is exhibited and illustrated, may fairly be characterized as by far the most acceptable present that has been made to the stu- dents of early English literature in our day. His editor conceives that we may safely assume Layamon's Eng- lish to be that of North Worcestershire, the district in which he lived and wrote. But this western dialect, he contends, was also that of the southern part of the island, having in fact originated to the south of the Thames, whence, he says, it gradually extended itself " as far as the courses of the Severn, the Wye, the Tame, and the Avon, and more or less pervaded the counties of Glouces- tershire, Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Warwickshire, and Oxford- shire," — besides prevailing "throughout the channel counties from east to west," — notwithstanding that several of the counties that have been named, and that of Worcester especially, had belonged especially to the non-Saxon kingdom of Mercia. "The language of Layamon," he further holds, "belongs to that transition period in which the groundwork of Anglo-Saxon phraseology and grammar still existed, although gradually yielding to the influence of the popular forms of speech. We find in it, as in the later portion of the Saxon Chronicle, marked indications of a tendency to adopt those terminations and sounds which characterize a language in a state of change, and which are apparent also in some other branches of the Teutonic tongue." As showing " the progress made in the course of two centuries in departing from the ancient and purer grammatical forms, as found in Anglo-Saxon manuscripts," he mentions " the use of a as an article ; — the change of the Anglo- Saxon terminations a and an into e and en, as well as the disregard of inflexions and genders ; — the masculine forms given to neuter nouns in the plural ; — the neglect of the feminine terminations of adjectives and pronouns, and confusion between the definite and indefinite declensions ; — the introduction of the preposition to before infinitives, and occasional use of weak preterites of verbs and participles instead of strong ; — the constant occurrence of en for on in the plurals of verbs, and frequent elision of the final e; — together with the uncertainty in the rule for the government of prepositions." In the earlier text one of the most striking pecu- liarities is what has been termed the nunnation, defined by Sir Frederic as "consisting: of the addition of a final n to certain cases of nouns and adjectives, to some tenses of verbs, and to several THE BRUT OF LAYAMON. 201 other parts of speech." The western dialect, of which both texts, and especially the earlier, exhibit strong marks, is further described as perceptible in the " termination of the present tense plural in th, and infinitives in i, ie, or y ; the forms of the plural personal pro- nouns, heo, heore, heom ; the frequent occurrence of the prefix i before past participles; the use of v for/"; and prevalence of the vowel u for i or y, in such words as dude, hudde, hulle, putte, Jiure, &c." " But," it is added, " on comparing the two texts carefully together, some remarkable variations are apparent in the later, which seem to arise, not from its having been composed at a more recent period, but from the infusion of an Anglian or Northern element into the dialect." From these indications the learned editor is disposed to think that the later text " may have been composed or transcribed in one of the counties conterminous to the Anglian border," and he suggests that "perhaps we might fix on the eastern side of Leicestershire as the locality." One thing in the English of Layamon that is eminently deserv- ing of notice with reference to the history of the language is the very small amount of the French or Latin element that is found in it. " The fact itself," Sir F. Madden observes, " of a transla- tion of Wace's poem by a priest of one of the midland counties is sufficient evidence how widely the knowledge of the writings of the trouveres was dispersed, and it would appear a natural conse- quence, that not only the outward form of the Anglo-Norman versification, but also that many of the terms used in the original would be borrowed. This, however, is but true in a very trifling degree, compared with the extent of the work ; for, if we number the words derived from the French (even including some that may have come directly from the Latin), we do not find in the earlier text of Layamon's poem so many as fifty, several of which were in usage, as appears by the Saxon Chronicle, previous to the middle of the twelfth century. Of this number the later text retains about thirty, and adds to them rather more than forty which are not found in the earlier version ; so that, if we reckon ninety words of French origin in both texts, containing together more than 56,800 lines, we shall be able to form a tolerably correct estimate how little the English language was really affected by foreign con- verse, even as late as the middle of the thirteenth century." * Layamon's poem extends to nearly 32,250 lines, or more than 1 Preface, xxiii. VOL. i. 26 202 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. double the length of Wace's Brut. This may indicate the amount of the additions which the English Chronicler has made to his French original. That, however, is only one, though the chief, of several preceding works to which he professes himself to have been indebted. His own account is : — He nom tha Englisca boc Tha makede Seint Beda ; An other he nom on Latin, Tha makede Seinte Albin, And the feire Austin, The fulluht broute hider in. Boc he nom the thridde, Leide ther amidden, Tha makede a Frenchis clerc, Wace was ihoten, The wel conthe writen, And he hoe yef thare aethelen Aelienor, the wes Henries quene, Thes heyes kinges. Layamon leide theos boc, And tha leaf wende. He heom leortiche bi-heold ; Lithe him beo Drihten. Fetheren he nom mid fingren, And fiede on boc-felle, And tha sotlie word Sette to-gathere, And tha thre boc Thrumde to ane. That is, literallv : — He took the English book That Saint Bede made ; Another he took in Latin, That Saint Albin made, And the fair Austin, That baptism brought hither in. The third book he took, [And] laid there in midst, That made a French clerk, Wace was [he] called, That well could write, THE BRUT OF LAYAMON. 202 And he it gave to the noble Eleanor, that was Henry's queen, The high king's. Layamon laid [before him] these books, And the leaves turned. He them lovingly beheld ; Merciful to him be [the] Lord. Feather (pen) he took with fingers, And wrote on book-skin, And the true words Set together, And the three books Compressed into one. His English book was no doubt the translation into the vernacu- lar tongue, commonly attributed to King Alfred, of Bede's Ecclesi- astical History, which Layamon does not seem to have known to have been originally written in Latin. What he says about his Latin book is unintelligible. St. Austin died in a. d. 604 ; and the only Albin of whom anything is known was Albin abbot of St. Austin's at Canterbury, who is mentioned by Bede as one of the persons to whom he was indebted for assistance in the compilation of his History ; but he lived more than a century after St. Austin (or Augustine). Some Latin chronicle, however, Layamon evi- dently had ; and his scholarship, therefore, extended to an acquaint- ance with two other tongues in addition to the now obsolete classic form of his own. The principal, and indeed almost the only, passage in Layamon's poem from which any inference can be drawn as to the precise time when it was written, is one near the end (p. 31, 979-80) in which, speaking of the tax called Rome-feoh, Rome-scot, or Peter-pence, he seems to express a doubt whether it will much longer continue to be paid — Drihte wat hu longe Theo lagen scullen ilaeste (The Lord knows how long The law shall last). This his learned editor conceives to allude to a resistance which it appears was made to the collection of the tax by King John and the nobility in the year 1205 ; and that supposition, he further sug- gests, may be held to be fortified by the manner in which Queen 204 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. Eleanor, who had retired to Aquitalne on the accession of John, and died abroad at an advanced age in 1204, is spoken of in the passage quoted above from what we may call the Preface, written, no doubt, after the work was finished — " Aelienor, the wes Hen- ries quene." " The structure of Layamon's poem," Sir Frederic observes, "consists partly of lines in which the alliterative system of the Anglo-Saxons is preserved, and partly of couplets of unequal length rhiming together. Many couplets, indeed, occur which have both of these forms, whilst others are often met with which possess neither. The latter, therefore, must have depended wholly on accentuation, or have been corrupted in transcription. The rela- tive proportion of each of these forms is not to be ascertained with- out extreme difficulty, since the author uses them everywhere intermixed, and slides from alliteration to rhime, or from rhime to alliteration, in a manner perfectly arbitrary. The alliterative por- tion, however, predominates on the whole greatly over the lines rhiming together, even including the imperfect or assonant termi- nations, which are very frequent." Mr. Guest, Sir Frederic notes, has shown by the specimen which he has given with the accents marked in his English Rhythms (ii. 114-124), " that the rhiming couplets of Layamon are founded on the models of accentuated Anglo-Saxon rhythms of four, five, six, or seven accents." Layamon's poetical merit, and also his value as an original au- thority, are rated rather high by his editor. His additions to and amplifications of Wace, we are told, consist in the earlier part of the work " principally of the speeches placed in the mouths of dif- ferent personages, which are often given with quite a dramatic effect." " The text of Wace," it is added, " is enlarged through- out, and in many passages to such an extent, particularly after the birth of Arthur, that one line is dilated into twenty ; names of persons and localities are constantly supplied, and not unfrequently interpolations occur of entirely new matter, to the extent of more than an hundred lines. Layamon often embellishes and improves on his copy ; and the meagre narrative of the French poet is height- ened by graphic touches and details, which give him a just claim to be considered, not as a mere translator, but as an original writer." " It is a remarkable circumstance," Sir Frederic afterwards re- marks, " that we find preserved in many passages of Layamon's THE BRUT OF LAYAMON. 205 poem the spirit and style of the earlier Anglo-Saxon writers. No one can read his descriptions of battles and scenes of strife with- out being reminded of the Ode on Athelstan's victory at Brunan- burh. The ancient mythological genders of the sun and moon are still unchanged ; the memory of the Witena- gemot has not yet be- come extinct ; and the neigh of the haengest still seems to resound in our ears. Very many phrases are purely Anglo-Saxon, and, with slight change, might have been used in Csedmon or JElfric. A foreign scholar and poet, versed both in Anglo-Saxon and Scan- dinavian literature, has declared, that, tolerably well read as he is in the rhiming chronicles of his own country, and of others, he has found Layamon's beyond comparison the most lofty and animated in its style, at every moment reminding the reader of the splendid phraseology of Anglo-Saxon verse." This is the Rev. N. F. S. Grundtvig, of Copenhagen, in a prospectus which he put forth in 1830, containing proposals for publishing Layamon and other an- cient English works. We cannot do .better than give as our specimen of Layamon's poetry King Arthur's account of his dream, to which both Sir Frederic Madden and Sharon Turner have called attention. " The dream of Arthur as related by himself to his companions in arms," Sir Frederic observes, " is the ci*eation of a mind of a higher order than is apparent in the creeping rhimes of more recent chroni clers." It runs thus : — To niht a mine slepe, [To night in my sleep] Ther ich laei on bure, [Where I lay in bower (chamber)] Me imaette a sweuen ; [I dreamt 1 a dream] Ther uore ich ful sari aem. [Therefore I full sorry am] Me imette that mon me hof [I dreamt 2 that men raised me] Uppen are halle. [Upon a hall] Tha halle ich gon bestriden, [The hall I gan bestride] Swulc ich wolde riden [So as I would ride] 1 Rather, There met me, there occurred to me ? 2 It occurred to me? 206 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. Alle tha lond tha ich ah [All the land that I owned] Alle ich ther ouer sah. [All I there over-saw] And Walwain sat biuoren me ; [And Walwain sat before me] Mi sweord he bar an honde [My sword he bare in hand]. Tha com Moddred faren ther [Then came Modred to fare (go) there] Mid unimete uolke. [With unmeasured (unnumbered) folk] He bar an his honde [He bare in his hand] Ane wiax stronge. [An axe strong] He bigon to hewene [He began to hew] Hardliche swithe, [Hardly exceedingly] And tha postes for-heou alle [And the posts thoroughly-hewed all] Tha heolden up the halle. [That held up the hall] Ther ich isey Wenheuer eke, [There I saw Wenhever (Guinever, the Queen) eke] Wimmonen leofuest me : [Of women loveliest to me] Al there muche halle rof [All the great (mickle) hall roof] Mid hire honden heo to-droh. [With her hands she drew (down)'} Tha halle gon to haelden, [The hall gan to tumble] And ich haeld to grunden, [And I tumbled to ground] That mi riht aerm to-brac. [That my right arm broke] Tha seide Modred, Haue that ! [Then said Modred, Have that] Adun ueol tha halle [Adown fell the hall] And Walwain gon to ualle, [And Walwain gan to fall] And feol a there eorthe ; [And fell on the earth] THE BRUT OF LAYAMON. 20 r His aermes brekeen beine. [His arms brake both] And ich igrap mi sweord leofe [And I grasped my dear sword] Mid mire leoft honde, [With my left hand] And smaet of Modred is haft, [And smote off Modred his head] That hit wond a thene ueld ; [That it rolled (wended) on the field] And tha quene ich al to-snathde, [And the queen I all cut to pieces (snedded)] Mid deore mine sweorde, [With my dear sword] And seodthen ich heo adun sette [And then I her adown set] In ane swarte putte. [In a black pit] And al mi uolc riche [And all my rich (great) people] Sette to Heme, [Set to flight] That nuste ich under Criste [That I wist not under Christ] Whar heo bicomen weoren. [Where they were become (gone)] Buten mi seolf ich gond atstonden [But myself I gan stand] Uppen ane wolden [Upon a wold (or weald)] And ich ther wondrien agon [And I there gan to wander] Wide yeond than moren. [Wide over the moors] Ther ich isah gripes [There I saw gripes (griffons)] And grisblche fugheles. [And grisly fowls (birds)] Tha com an guldene leo [Then came a golden lion] Lithen oner dune. [To glide over the down] Deoren swithe hende, [A beast (deer) very handsomej Tha ure Drihten make. [That our Lord made] 208 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. Tha leo me orn foren to, [The lion ran forward to me] And iueng me bi than midle, [And took me by the middle] And forth hire gun yeongen [And forth herself gan move] And to there sae wende. [And to the sea went] And ich isaeh thae vthen [And I saw the waves] I there sae driuen ; [In the sea drive] And the leo i than ulode [And the lion in the flood] Iwende with me seolue. [Went with myself] Tha wit i sae comen, [When we in sea came] Tha vthen me hire binomen. [The waves from me her took] Com ther an fisc lithe, [Came there a fish to glide] l And fereden me to londe. [And brought me to land] Tha wes ich al wet, [Then was I all wet] And weri of soryen, and seoc. [And weary from sorrow, and sick] Tha gon ich iwakien [When I gan to awake] Swithe ich gon to quakien ; [Greatly I gan to quake] Tha gon ich to binien [Then gan I to tremble] Swule ich al fur burne. [As if I all with fire burned] And swa ich habbe al niht [And so I have all night] Of mine sweuene swithe ithoht ; [Of my dream much thought] For ich what to iwisse [For I wot to certainty] 1 That is, A fish approached. Unless we should understand lithe to be an epithet of the fish. But the later text, " Com th.ir a fisc swemme " is against iliat. THE BRUT OF LAYAMON. 209 Agan is al mi blisse ; [Agone is all my bliss] For a to mine line [For aye to (throughout) my life] Soryen ich mot driye. [Sorrow I must endure] Wale that ich nabbe here [Welaway (alas) that I have not here] Wenhauer mine quene ! [Wenhaver, my queen]. 28014-28093. Here is evidently a considerable amount of true poetic life in the conception, and also, as far as the apparent rudeness of the lan- guage will admit, — if we ought not perhaps rather to say as far as the imperfect knowledge of its laws now attainable enables us to form a judgment, — considerable care and aptness of expression. The conclusion of the address, in particular, is worked up to no contemptible height of artistic elegance, as well as pathos. Let the strange antiquated spelling only be regulated according to the system with which we are all at present familiar, and, if we will accept such rhymes as night and thought, here and queen, — and also sometimes, perhaps, consent to be satisfied without rhyme at all in consideration of certain alliterative artifices, the beauty of which, it must be confessed, has now become of somewhat difficult appreciation, — Ave shall not find it deficient in harmony, any more than in a graceful and expressive simplicity of diction : — And sway I hab all night Of min-e sweeven swythe ythought; For I wot to ywiss Agone is all my bliss ; For aye to min-e liv-e Sorien I mote dri-e. Wail-e ! that I nab here Wenhavere min-e queen ! This will represent pretty nearly the manner in which the lines would probably be read by Layamon and his contemporaries. The philological interest and importance of this work of Laya- mon's are greatly enhanced by the fortunate circumstance of its having come down to us in two texts, the one evidently somewhat yol. i. 27 210 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. more recent than the other. Both have been most judiciously given by Sir Frederic Madden, — to whom, indeed, we may be said to be chiefly indebted for the preservation of the latter one, the manuscript containing which was so greatly injured by the deplorable fire that was allowed to seize upon the Cottonian Col- lection in the early part of last century as to be regarded as having been rendered almost entirely illegible and useless till he took the reparation of its fragments in hand, and had them bound and inlaid, after they had been collected and partially restored, about the year 1827, under the superintendence of the Rev. J. Forshall, his prede- cessor as keeper of the MSS. in the British Museum. Of about 27,000 lines of which this second edition, as it may be called,- is calculated to have consisted (for it is slightly condensed from the first,) not quite 2400 are supposed to be wholly lost, and only about 1000 more are in a partially injured state. So that, of the 32,250 lines, of which the poem in its more extended form consists, we have still between 23,000 and 24,000 perfect in both editions, — an amount of material for comparison which leaves us hardly anything to regret in the loss of the 3000 or 4000 that have perished. Fortunately the earlier edition appears to be com- plete. It is contained in the Cott. MS. Caligula A. ix., the hand- writing of which is of the early part of the thirteenth century ; the other in the MS. Otho C. xiii., the handwriting of which is supposed to be of the latter part of the same century. The first text may be regarded as giving us probably the west country Eng- lish of about the year 1200, the second that of 1250. The later text for the most part follows the earlier line for line, though with occasional omissions ; the differences which it exhibits are confined to the substitution of more modern forms for such vocables, constructions, and modes of expression as had gone out of use or of fashion since the poem first appeared. Unfortunately the manuscript has suffered considerably in the part containing Arthur's dream ; but many lines are still entire. The first six, for instance, stand thus: — To niht in mine bedde Thar ich lay in boure, Me imette a sweuen ; Thar fore ich sori ham. Me liictte that men me sette Vppen one halle. THE ORMULUM. 211 A.nd here are the concluding six lines : — » For ich wot al mid iwisse Agon his al min blisse ; For auere to mine lifue Sorewe ich mot drihe. Wele that ich nadde her Mine cweane Gwenayfer ! It ought to be observed that, although we have given through- o it the u and v exactly as they stand in the printed edition, these a r e really only two ways of writing what was regarded as the aime letter, and that in both texts sometimes the u is to be sounded like our modern v, sometimes the v like our modern u. Thus, sweuen was pronounced sweven t uore vore, vppen uppen, auere avere, &c. THE ORMULUM. Another metrical work of considerable extent, that known as the Ormulum, from Orm, or Ormin, which appears to have been the name of the writer, has been usually assigned to the same, or nearly the same, age with the Brut of Layamon. It exists only in a single manuscript, which there is some reason for believing to be the author's autograph, now preserved in the Bodleian Library among the books bequeathed by the great scholar Francis Junius, who appears to have purchased it at the Hague in 1659 at the sale of the books of his deceased friend Janus Ulitius, or Vlitius (van Vliet), also an eminent philologist and book-collector. It is a folio volume, consisting of ninety parchment leaves, besides twenty- nine others inserted, upon which the poetry is written in double columns, in a stiff but distinct hand, and without division into verses, so that the work had always been assumed to be in prose till its metrical character was pointed out by Tyrwhitt in his edition of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, 1775. Accordingly no mention is made of it by Warton, the first volume of whose His- tory was published in 1774. But it had previously been referred to by Hickes and others ; and it has attracted a large share of the attention of all recent investigators of the history of the language. 212 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. It has now been printed in full, under the title of The Ormulum ; Now first edited from the Original Manuscript in the Bodleian, with Notes and a Glossary, by Robert Meadows White, D. D., late Fellow of St. Mary Magdalene College, and formerly Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Oxford ; 2 vols. 8vo. Oxford, at the University Press, 1852. The Ormulum is described by Dr. White as being " a series of Homilies, in an imperfect state, composed in metre without allitera- tion, and, except in very few cases, also without rhyme ; the subject of the Homilies being supplied by those portions of the New Tes- tament which were read in the daily service of the Church." The plan of the writer is, we are further told, "first to give a para- phrastic version of the Gospel of the day, adapting the matter tc the rules of his verse, with such verbal additions as were required for that purpose. He then adds an exposition of the subject in its doctrinal and practical bearings, in the treatment of which he borrows copiously from the writings of St. Augustine and iElfric, and occasionally from those of Beda." " Some idea," it is added, " may be formed of the extent of Ormin's labors when we con- sider that, out of the entire series of Homilies, provided for nearly the whole of the yearly service, nothing is left beyond the text of the thirty-second." We have still nearly ten thousand long lines of the work, or nearly twenty thousand as Dr. White prints them, witli the fifteen syllables divided into two sections, the one of eight, the other of seven syllables, — the latter, which terminates in an unaccented syllable, being prosodieally equivalent to one of six, so that the whole is simply our still common alternation of the eight-syllabled and the six-syllabled line, only without either rhyme or even alliteration, which makes it as pure a species of blank verse, though a different species, as that which is now in use. The list of the texts, or subjects of the Homilies, as preserved in the manuscript, extends to 242, and it appears to be imperfect. Ormin plainly claims to have completed his long self-imposed task. Here is tin- beginning of the Dedication to his brother Walter which stands at the head of the work : — Nu, brotherr Wallterr, brotherr min [Now. brother Walter, brother mine] Affterr the flaeshes kinde; [After tin' flesh's kind (or nature)] THE ORMULUM. 213 Annd brotherr min i Crisstenndom [And brother mine in Christendom (or Christ's kingdom)] Thurrh fulluhht and thurrh trowwthe ; [Through baptism and through truth] Annd brotherr min i Godess hus, [And brother mine in God's hous.^] Yet o the thride wise, [Yet on (in) the third wise] Thurrh thatt witt bafenn takenn ba [Though that we two have taken both] An reghellboc to folghenn, [One rule-book to follow] Unnderr kanunnkess had and lif, [Under canonic's (canon's) rank and life] Swa summ Sannt Awwstin sette ; [So as St. Austin set (or. ruled)] Ice hafe don swa summ thu badd [I have done so as thou bade] Annd forthedd te thin wille ; [And performed thee thine will (wish)] Ice hafe wennd inntill Ennglissh [I have wended (turned) into English] Goddspelless hallghe lare, [Gospel's holy lore] AiFterr thatt little witt tatt me [After that little wit that me] Min Drihhtin hafethth lenedd. [My Lord hath lent] Thu thohhtesst tatt itt mihhte well [Thou thoughtest that it might well] Till mickell frame turrnenn [To miekle (much) profit turn] Yiff Ennglissh follk, forr lufe off Crist, [If English folk for love of Christ] • Itt wollde yerne lernenn, [It would earnestly learn] Annd follghenn itt, and fillenn itt [And follow it, and fulfil it] Withth thohht, withth word, withth dede* [With thought, with word, with deed] Annd forrthi gerrndesst tu thatt ice [And because thou desiredst that I] Thiss werrc the shollde wirrkenn ; [This work thee should work] Annd ice itt hafe forthedd te, [And I it have performed thee] 214 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. Ace all thurrh Cristess hellpe ; [But all through Christ's help] Annd mine birrth bathe thannkenn Crist [And us two it becomes both (to) thank Christ, Thatt itt iss brohht till ende. [That it is brought to end] Ice bafe sammned o tbiss boc [I have collected on (or in) this book] Tha Goddspelless neh alle [The Gospels nigh all] Thatt sinndenn o the messeboc [That are on (or in) the mass-book] Inn all the yer att messe. [In all the year at mass] Annd ayy affterr the Goddspell staunt [And aye after the Gospel stands] Thatt tatt the Goddspell menethth [That that the Gospel meaneth] Thatt mann birrth spellenn to the folic [That one ought (to) declare to the folk] Off theyyre sawle nede ; [Of (or for) their soul (or soul's) need] Annd yet taer tekenn mare inoh [And yet there in addition more enough] Thu shallt taeronne findenn [Thou shalt thereon (or therein) find] Off thatt tatt Cristess hallghe thed [Of that that Christ's holy people] Birrth trowwenn wel and folghenn. [Behove (to) believe well and follow] Ice bafe sett her o thiss boc [I have set here on (or in) this book] Amang Goddspelless wordess, [Among (the) Gospel's words] All thurrh me sellfenn, manig word [All through myself many (a) word] The rime swa to fillen ; [The rhyme so to fill] Ace thu shallt findenn thatt min word [But thou shalt find that my word] Eyywhaer timer itt iss ekedd [Everywhere there (or where) it is eked (or added) J Mayy hellpeno tha thatt redenn itt [May help them that read it] To sen and tunnderrstanndenn [To see and to understand] THE ORMULUM. 215 All thess te bettre hu theyym birrth [All this the better how them it behoveth] The Goddspel unnderrstanndenn. [The Gospel (to) understand] One remarkable feature in this English is evidently something very peculiar in the spelling. And the same system is observed throughout the work. It is found on a slight examination to con- sist in the duplication of the consonant whenever it follows a vowel having any other than the sound which is now for the most part indicated by the annexation of a silent e to the single consonant, or what may be called the name sound, being that by which the vowel is commonly named or spoken of in our modern English. Thus pane would by Ormin be written pan, but pan pann ; mean men, but men menn ; pine pin, but pin pinn ; own on, but on onn ; tune tun, but tun tunn. This, as Mr. Guest has pointed out, is, after all, only a rigorous carrying out of a principle which has always been applied to a certain extent in English orthography, — as in tally, or tall, berry, witty, folly, dull, as compared with tale, beer, white, lone, mule. The effect, however, in Ormin's work is on a hasty inspection to make his English seem much more rude and antique than it really is. The entry of the MS. in the catalogue of Vliet's library, as quoted by Dr. White, describes it as an old Swedish or Gothic book. Other early notices speak of it as semi- Saxon, or half Danish, or possibly old Scottish. Even Hickes appears to have regarded it as belonging to the first age after the Conquest. Ormin attaches the highest importance to his peculiar system of orthography. Nevertheless, in quoting what he says upon the subject in the subsequent passage of his Dedication we will take the liberty, for the sake of giving a clear and just idea of his lan- guage to a reader of the present day, to strip it of a disguise which so greatly exaggerates its apparent antiquity : — And whase willen shall this book [And whoso shall wish this book] Eft other sithe writen, [After (wards) (an) other time (to) write] Him bidde ice that he't write right, [Him bid I that he it write right] Swa sum this book him teacheth, [So as this book him teacheth] 216 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. All thwert out after that it is [All athwart (or through) out after that (or what) it is] Upo this firste bisne. [Upon this first example] With all suilk rime als here is set [With all such rhyme as here is set] With all se fele wordes [With all so many words] And tat he looke well that he [And that he look well that he] An bookstaff write twies [A letter write twice] Eywhere there it upo this book [Wherever there (or where) it upon this book] Is written o that wise. [Is written on (or in) that wise] Looke he well that he't write sway [Look he well that he it write so] For he ne may nought elles [For he may not else] On English writen right te word, [On (or in) English write right the word] That wite he well to soothe. [That wot (or know) he well to (or for) sooth (or truth)] Thus presented, Ormin's English certainly seems to differ much less from that of the present day than Layamon's. His vocabu- lary may have as little in it of any foreign admixture; but it appears to contain many fewer words that have now become obso- lete ; and both his grain mar and his construction have much more of a modern character and air. Dr. "White has not thought it necessary to subjoin any such translation to his author as Sii Frederic Madden rightly judged was indispensable in the case of Layamon. He confesses, also, that, while the handwriting, the ink, and the material of the manuscript would seem to assign it to the earlier part of the thirteenth century, "the grammatical forms and structure of the language rather indicate a later period." "We meet," he says, "with neglect of gender and number, a frequent use of prepositions substituted for the casal endings of nouns, and the rejection of the prefix ge in all those parts of speech which receive it in pure Anglo-Saxon There is also for the most part a simplicity in grammatical forms and in the construction of sentences." Of the amount of any French yc THE ORMULUM. 217 Latin element that there may be in the vocabulary we do not find that he says anything. But it is evidently very small, probably not greater than we have found it to be in Layamon's work. The Brut of Layamon was undoubtedly written in the south- west of England ; the dialect of the Ormulum is thought to betray a Scandinavian character, and to point to a northeastern, or at least an eastern, county as the part of the kingdom in which and for which it was written. Dr. Latham assigns it to Nortlmmbria. Mr. Guest is " inclined to fix on some county north of Thames, and south of Lincoln." And the late Mr. Garnett, Dr. White tells us, expressed his opinion in a letter to him that " the Ormu- lum was written a hundred miles or upwards to the south of Durham, and considered Peterborough not an unlikely locality." On the whole, it may be assumed that, while we have a dialect founded on that of the Saxons specially so called in Layamon, we have a specially Anglian form of the national language in the Or- mulum ; and perhaps that distinction will be enough, without suppos- ing any considerable difference of date, to explain the linguistic differences between the two. There is good reason for believing that the Anglian part of the country shook off the shackles of the old inflectional system sooner than the Saxon, and that our modern comparatively uninflected and analytic English was at least in its earliest stage more the product of Anglian than of purely Saxon influences, and is to be held as having grown up rather in the northern and northeastern parts of the country than in the south ern or southwestern. 1 1 Ormin's orthography, if minutely examined, might probably be made to throw considerable light upon the pronunciation of our ancestors. From the short ex- tract given above, for example, the following inferences, among others, might be de- duced : — The name Christ and the commencing syllable of Christendom would appear to have been when the Ormulum was composed distinguished in pronunciation in the same manner as they still are, the former taking the long or name sound of the vowel, the latter the short or shut sound. The case is different, however, so far as the evidence of this passage goes, with the name God and the commencing syllable of the word Gospel, which also then took a d; while the o of Gospel (or Godspel) was undoubtedly pronounced, as it still is, with the short sound, the o of God would appear, at least according to one mode of speaking, to have taken the name sound, go that the word would be pronounced exactly as we now pronounce the word goad. So in the present day many people distinguish the proper name Job by giving the o the name sound as in robe. This pronunciation is the more deserving of notice, as being in accordance with oth jr evidence opposed to the common notion of there being any connection between God and the adjective yood (which is the God of Gos- vel, or Godspd, = the good tidings, or evayys'Aiov). In the English of the period before vol. i. 28 218 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. THE ANCREN RIWLE. There is also to be mentioned, along with the Brut of Layamon and the Ormulum, a work of considerable extent in prose which has been assigned to the same interesting period in the history of the language, the Ancren Riwle, that is, the Anchorites', or rather Anchoresses' Rule, being a treatise on the duties of the monastic life, written evidently by an ecclesiastic, and probably one in a the Conquest the two words were always distinguished by the adjective being writ- ten with an accent, god ; but, the vowel being the same in both, this can hardly he taken to indicate the same distinction which we now make between God and good. In other passages of the Ormulum, however, we have the sacred name also writ- ten with the double d, which would seem to show that the present pronunciation was already beginning to drive out the other older one. But this instance must be held to make it somewhat questionable whether, in what is called the Anglo-Saxon form of the language, the accent, at least universally, is to be taken to indicate that the vowel over which it is placed had the name sound. The testimony of the Ormulum, at any rate, is apparently decisive to the fact that, of the two words at present under consideration, the one which used to be written without the accer.t was pronounced with the name sound, and the other, formerly taking the accent, with the shut sound. God was sounded goad, and grid was sounded god or godd. This was undoubtedly the case, if Ormin's distinctive spelling here indicates the same thing that it usually does. Again, gear and here and read appear, from the manner in which Ormin writes them, to have all been pronounced in his day as they are at present; and so, no doubt, they then said to seen (with the old termination of the infinitive) for our to see, not to sen (which Ormin would have given as senn). But, on the other hand, ye? and well were apparently then pronounced yeet and iveel, and have with the long a as in cave (the following consonant, besides, being an f instead of a v). There may be some doubt, perhaps, in regard to the o in brother and ivord and book and love, and the dom of Christendom. All we can say is, that it seems not to have been the ordi- nary shut sound ; it might be going too far to assume that people formerly said broather and woard and Christendoam and boalc and loof (or leuf). Probably both the w and the k were recognized as having a softening effect upon the vowel, so that they might pronounce it rather as we still do in Worcester and Wolverhampton and Wolsey and worsted and wolf and woman and Bolingbroke and Pembroke and other similar words (some of which have exchanged the oke for ook in our modern spell- in-.) Ormin has evidently taken the greatest pains with his orthography, and it is for the most part very uniform. It may be doubted if any other language possesses a record of its ancient pronunciation at all approaching in distinctness and complete- ness to what we thus have for the English in the single manuscript in which his work has been preserved, thanks to his singular scrupulosity in this particular. It is probably a unique instance of any considerable knowledge having been transmit- ted upon positive evidence of a part of human speech which has usually for the greater part perished with those upon whose lips it once lived, and is only at best to be imperfectly recovered, after some generations have passed away, by conjec- tural speculation, mostly of a very dubious and unsatisfactory character. THE ANCREN RIWLE. 219 position of eminence and authority, for the direction of three ladies to whom it is addressed, and who, with their domestic servants or lay sisters, appear to have formed the entire community of a relig- ious house situated at Tarente (otherwise called Tarrant-Kaines, Kaineston, or Kingston) in Dorsetshire. This work too has now been printed, having been edited for the Camden Society in 1853 by the Rev. James Morton, B.D. It is preserved in four manuscripts, three of them in the Cottonian Collection, the other belonging to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge ; and there is also in the Li- brary of Magdalen College, Oxford, a Latin text of the greater part of it. The entire work extends to eight Parts, or Books, which in the printed edition cover 215 quarto pages. Mr. Morton, who has appended to an apparently careful representation of the ancient text both a glossary and a version in the language of the present day, has clearly shown, in opposition to the commonly re- ceived opinion, that the work was originally written in English, and that the Latin in so far as it goes is only a translation. This, indeed, might have been inferred as most probable in such a case, on the mere ground that we have here a clergyman, however learned, drawing up a manual of practical religious instruction for readers of the other sex, even without the special proofs which Mr. Morton has brought forward. The conclusion to which he states himself to have come, after carefully examining and comparing the text which he prints with the Oxford MS., is, that the Latin is " a translation, in many parts abridged and in some enlarged, made at a comparatively recent period, when the language in which the whole had been originally written was becoming obsolete." In many instances, in fact, the Latin translator has misunderstood his original. Mr. Morton has also thrown great doubts upon the com- mon belief that the authorship of the work is to be ascribed to a certain Simon de Gandavo, or Simon de Ghent, who died bishop of Salisbury in 1315. This belief rests solely on the authority of an anonymous note prefixed to the Latin version of the work pre- served in Magdalen College, Oxford ; and Mr. Morton conceives that Simon is of much too late a date. It might have been thought that the fact of the work having been written in English would of itself be conclusive against his claim ; but the bishop of Salisbury, it seems, was born in London or Westminster ; it was only his father who was a native of Flanders. On the whole, Mr. Morton is inclined to substitute in place of Bishop Simon a Richard Poor, 220 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. who was successively bishop of Chichester, of Salisbury, and of Durham, and who was a native of Tarente, where also, it seems, he died in 12o7. Of this prelate Matthew Paris speaks in very high terms of commendation. Two other mistakes in the old accounts are also disposed of: — that the three recluses to whom the work is addressed belonged to the monastic order of St. James, and that they were the sisters of the writer. He merely directs them, if any ignorant person should ask them of what order they were, to say that they were of the oriler of St. James, who in his canonical epistle has declared that pure religion consists in visiting and relieving the widow and the orphan, and in keeping ourselves unspotted from the world ; and in addressing them as his dear sisters, " he only," as Mr. Morton explains, " uses the form of speech commonly adopted in convents, where nuns are usually spoken of as sisters or mothers, and monks as brothers or fathers." Upon what is the most important question relating to the work, regarded as a documentary monument belonging to the history of the language, the learned editor has scarcely succeeded in throw- ing so much light. Of the age of the manuscripts, or the charac- ter of the handwriting, not a word is said. It does not even appear whether any one of the copies can be supposed to be of the anti- quity assumed for the work upon either the new or the old theory of its authorship. The question is left to rest entirely upon the language, which, it is remarked, is evidently that of the first quar- ter of the thirteenth century, not greatly differing from that of Layamon, which has been clearly shown by Sir F. Madden to have been written not later than 120-">. The English of the Ancren Rule is, indeed, rude enough for the highest antiquity that can be demanded for it. " The spelling," Mr. Morton observes, "whether from carelessness or want of sys- ti in, is of an uncommon and unsettled character, and may be pro- nounced barbarous and uncouth." The language he considers to be what is commonly called Semi-Saxon, or " Anglo-Saxon some- what changed ; and in the first of the various stages through which it had to pass before it arrived at the copiousness and elegance of the present English." This statement is perhaps not quite consist- ent with the doctrine which afterwards seems to be laid down, that no particular effect was produced upon the language of England by Jhe Norman Conquest, that it only after that revolution continued THE ANCREN RIWLE. 221 to go on in the same course of gradual disintegration, or simplifi- cation, which it had been running for some centuries, suffering nothing more of change than it would have done if the Normans 'had never invaded the country. If that were so, how can the stage in which it is supposed to have been found some short time after the Conquest be with propriety spoken of as the first of a series? But is it possible to believe that so complete a social revo- lution as the Conquest, affecting everything else in the country, should have left the language, which is always to so great an extent the expression or reflection of everything else, untouched ? The gradual change that may have been proceeding for some time before is not inconsistent with or any disproof of the more sudden and violent change which may have taken place at this crisis, pre- cipitating the ruin of the already decaying original system of the language, just as the shaking of a tree, by a blast of wind or in any other way, would bring down at once a shower of leaves or blossoms, which, although beginning to wither or lose their hold, might still have hung on for a considerable time longer, if the tree had not been thus rudely assailed. In this work, according to Mr. Morton, the inflections which originally marked the oblique cases of substantive nouns, and also the distinctions of gender, are for the most part discarded. " Yet," he adds, " as these changes are partial and incomplete, enough of the more ancient characteristics of the language is left to justify the inference that the innovations are recent. Not only is es of the genitive case retained, but we very often meet with the dative and the accusative in e and the accusative in en, as then, the. We also meet occasionally with the genitive plural in re, from the Saxon ra, and ne and ene, from ena. 1 . . . The cases and genders of ad- jectives are generally disused, but not always. . . . The moods and tenses of verbs are little altered from the older forms, and in many words they are not changed at all. The infinitive, which in pure Saxon ends invariably in an, is changed into en" In only three infinitives, ivarnie (to warn), i-wurthe (to be), and windive (to win- now), has the final n dropped off; nor does the language exhibit any of the other Scandinavian peculiarities which mark what Hickes calls the Dano-Saxon, or what is known to modern philology as the Anglian dialect. From this, and from its general resemblance 1 Does not the very title of the book afford us also an instance of a genitive olural in en ; ancren = of anchoresses ? This, however, appears to be rare. 222 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. to the older text of Layamon, which appears to have been produced on the banks of the Severn, Mr. Morton thinks it most probable that the English we have in the Rule is that of the West of Eno;- land in the thirteenth century. In one particular, however, it differs remarkably from Layamon's English. In that, as we have seen, Sir F. Madden found in above 32,000 verses of the older text only about 50 words of French derivation, and only about 90 in all in the 57,000 of both texts ; whereas in the present work the infusion of Norman words is described as large. But this, as Mr. Morton suggests, is " owing probably to the peculiar subjects treated of in it, which are theo* logical and moral, in speaking of which terms derived from the Latin would readily occur to the mind of a learned ecclesiastic much conversant with that language, and with the works on similar subjects written in it." A few sentences from the Eighth or last Part, which treats of domestic matters, will afford a sufficient specimen of this curious work : — Ye ne schulen eten vleschs ne seim buten ine muchele secnesse ; other hwoso is euer feble eteth potage blitheliche ; and wunieth ou to lutel tninch. Notheleas, leoue sustren, ower mete and ower drunch haueth ithulit me lesse then ich wolde. Ne ueste ye nenne dei to bread and to watere, bute ye habben leaue. Sum ancre maketh hire bord raid hire gistes withuten. Tliet is to muche ureondschipe, uor, of alle ordres theonne is hit unkuindelukest and mest ayean ancre ordre, thet is al dead to the worlde. Me haueth i-herd ofte siggen thet deade men speken raid cwike men ; auh thet heo eten mid cwike men ne uond ich nener yete. Ne makie ye none gistninges ; ne ne tulle ye to the yete non unkuthe harloz ; thauh ther nere non other vuel of [hit?] bute hore methlease muth, hit wolde other hwule letten heouendliche thouhtes. [That is, literally : — Ye not shall eat flesh nor lard but in much sickness ; or whoso is ever feeble may eat potage blithely ; and accustom yourselves to little drink. Nevertheless, dear sisters, your meat and your drink have seemed to me less than I would (have it). Fast ye not no day to bread and to water but ye have leave. Some anchoresses make their board (or meals) with their friends without. That is too much friendship, for, of all orders, then is it most unnatural and most against anchoress order, that is ill djad to the world. One has heard oft say that dead men speak with quick (Jiving) men ; but that they eat with quirk men not THE ANCREN RIWLE. 223 found I never yet. Make not ye no banquetings, nor allure ye not to the gate no strange vagabonds ; though there were not none other evil of it but their measureless mouth (or talk), it would (or might) other while (sometimes) hinder heavenly thoughts.] And again : — Ye, mine leoue sustren, ne schulen habben no best, bute kat one. Ancre thet haueth eihte thuncheth bet husewif, ase Marthe was, then ancve ; n« none wise mei heo beon Marie, mid grithfulnesse of heorte. Vor theonne mot heo thenchen of the kues foddre, and of heorde-monne huire, oluhnen thene beiward, warien hwon me punt hire, and yelden, thauh, the hermes. Wat Crist, this is lodlich thing hwon me maketh in tune of ancre eihte. Thauh, yif eni mot nede habben ku, loke thet heo none monne ne eilie ne ne hermie ; ne thet hire thouht ne beo nout theron i-uestned. Ancre ne ouh nout to habben no thing thet drawe utward hire heorte. None chef- fare ne driue ye. Ancre thet is cheapild, heo cheapeth hire soule the chepmon of helle. Ne wite ye nout in oure huse of other monnes thinges, ne eihte, ne clothes ; ne nout ne underuo ye the chirche uestimenz, ne thene caliz, bute yif strencthe hit makie, other muchel eie ; vor of swuche witunge is i-kumen muchel vuel oftesithen. Withinnen ower woanes ne lete ye nenne mon slepen. Yif muchel neode mid alle maketh breken ower hus, the hwule thet it euer is i-broken, loke thet ye habben therinne mid ou one wummon of clene line deies and nihtes. Uorthi thet no mon ne i-sihth ou, ne ye i-seoth nenne mon, wel mei dou of ower clothes, beon heo hwite, beon heo blake ; but thet heo beon unorne and warme, and wel i-wrouhte, uelles wel i-tawed ; and habbeth ase monie ase ou to-neodeth, to bedde and eke to rugge. Nexst fleshe ne schal mon werien no linene cloth, bute yif hit beo of herde and of greate heorden. Stamin habbe hwose wide ; and hwose wille mei beon buten. Ye schulen liggen in on heater, and i-gurd. Ne bere ye non iren, ne here, ne irspiles felles ; ne ne beate on ther mide, ne mid schurge i-lethered ne i-leaded ; ne mid holie ne mid breres ne ne bib- lodge hire sulf withuten schriftes leaue ; ne ne nime, et enes, to veole dis- ceplines. Ower schone beon greate and warme. Ine sumer ye habbeth leaue uorto gon and sitten baruot ; and hosen withuten uaumpes ; and ligge iime ham hwoso liketh. . . . Ring ne broche nabbe ye ; ne gurdel i-men- bred, ne glouen, ne no swuch thing thet ou ne deih forto habben. . . . Ye ne schulen send en lettres, ne underuon lettres, ne writ en, buten leaue. Ye schulen beon i-dodded four sithen ithe yere, uorto lihten ower heaued ; and ase ofte i-leten blod ; and oftere yif neod is ; and hwoso mei beon ther withuten, ich hit mei wel i-tholien. [Laterally : — Ye, my dear sisters, shall not have no beast but (a) cat only. (An) anchoress that hath cattle seems (a) better 224 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. housewife", as Martha was, than anchoress, nor no w T ise may she be Mary with peacefulness of heart. For then must she think of the cow's fodder, and of the herdsman's hire, natter the hey ward (cat- tle-keeper), defend (herself) when they pound her (put her cattle in the pound), and pay, moreover, the harms (damages). Know- eth Christ, this is (an) ugly thing when they make moan (com- plaint) in town of anchoresses cattle. Though if any must needs have (a) cow, look that she no man not annoy nor not harm, nor that her thought not be not thereon fastened. (An) anchoress not ouo-ht not to have nothing that draweth outward her heart. No chaffering not drive ye (no buying and selling carry ye on). (An) anchoress that is a chafferer, she chaffereth her soul with the chap- man of hell. Nor take ye not charge in your house of other men's things, nor cattle, nor clothes ; nor not receive ye not (under your care) the church vestments, nor the chalice, but if (unless) strength it make (force compel it), or much fear; for of such charge-taking is come much evil oftentimes. Within your walls let ye not no man sleep. If much need (strong necessity), withal (however), make (cause) to use your house, the while that (so long as) it ever is used look that ye have therein with you a woman of clean life days and nights. Because that no man neither seeth you, nor ye see no man, well may (ye) do of (with) your clothes, be they white, lie they black; but (see) that they be plain and warm and well made, skins well tawed ; and have as many as it needeth you, to bed and eke to back. Next the flesh shall not one wear no linen cloth, but if it be of hards and of great (coarse) canvas. A stamin (shirt of woollen and linen) may have whoso will, and whoso will may be without. Ye shall lie iii a garment, and girt. Nor bear (carry) ye not iron, nor hair (haircloth), nor hedgehog skins; nor beat not yourselves therewith, nor with scourge leathered nor leaded; nor with holly nor with briars not blood not herself (yourselves) without shrift's (shriver's) leave; nor take not, at once, too many disciplines (flagellations). (Let) your shoes be large and warm. In sum- mer ye have leave for to go and sit barefoot ; and (to wear) hose without vamps ; and whoso liketh may lie in them. . . . Ring nor brooch do not ye have, nor girdle ornamented, nor gloves, nor no mkIi thing that it not behoveth you for to have. . . . Ye shall not send letters, nor receive letters, nor write without METRICAL LEGENDS. 225 leave. Ye shall be cropped four times in the yea**, for to lighten your head ; and as often let blood, and oftener if need is ; and whoso may be there-without (may dispense with this) I it may well endure.] METRICAL LEGENDS. -LAND OF COKAYNE. — GULDEVORD.— WILLE GRIS. — EARLY ENGLISH SONGS. With regard to the metrical Legends of Saints and other pieces, which have been assigned by Hickes and Warton to the twelfth century, it is in the highest degree probable, as already remarked, that none of them belong to an earlier period than the latter part of the thirteenth, and that some are not even of that antiquity. It is impossible, for instance, to believe that the cele- brated satirical poem on the Land of Cokayne, which Warton holds to have been " evidently written soon after the Conquest, at least before the reign of Henry the Second," can, in the form in which Ave have it, be older than the year 1300, if it be even quite so old. 1 Price has noted 2 that " a French fabliau bearing a near resemblance to this poem, and possibly the production upon which the English minstrel founded his song, has been published in the new edition of Barbazan's Fabliaux et Contes, Paris 1808, vol. iv. p. 175 ; " and Sir Frederic Madden has no doubt that the French composition is the original. 3 It is undoubtedly of the thirteenth century. The English poem, which he also assumes to be a trans- lation, is given in full by Ellis (Specimens of Early English Poets, 4th edit., i. 83-95) ; and abundant samples of the other fugitive and anonymous poetry which has been attributed to the same age, but the alleged antiquity of which is in many cases equally dispu- table, may be found in Hickes and in Warton. As we have had occasion to show that there is no authority in the Lanercost Chronicle for one specimen of early verse cited 1 In a note to the 1840 edition of Warton's History, i. 8, Mr. Wright says : — " The identical MS. from which Hickes transcribed this poem is in the Harleian Collection, No. 913. I have traced its history satisfactorily. It was written early in the fourteenth century, and this poem is a composition of at the most five or six years earlier." 2 Note on Warton (1824), i. 12. 8 Ibid. (1840), i. 8. vol. I. 29 226 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. thence by Ritson, we may here insert a couplet therein given un- der the year 1244, which has generally escaped attention. A Nor- folk peasant-boy, named William, had left his father's house and set out to seek his fortune, with no companion or other possession but a little pig (porcellus), whence the people used to call him Willy Grrice; 1 but having in his wanderings in France met with a rich widow, whom he wooed and wed, he became in the end a great man in that country : still he piously remembered his early life of poverty and vagrancy, and among the other ornaments of one of the apartments of his fine house, to which he used to retire every day for an hour's meditation and self-communion, he had himself pictured, leading the pig as he used to do with a string, with this superscription in his native tongue : — Wille Gris, Wille Gris ! Thinche twat thou was, and qwat thou es. Some of our earliest songs that have been preserved undoubt- edly belong to about the middle of the thirteenth century. The well-known lines beginning " Sumer is i-cumen in," first printed by Wart on in the Additions to his History, from the Harleian MS. 978, beino- the oldest English sono- that has been found with the musical notes annexed, appear to be of this antiquity ; 2 and so likewise may be some of the other pieces which Warton has quoted from another of the Harleian MSS. (2253). But the compositions of this kind of most certain date are some referring to the public events of the day, and evidently written at the time ; such as the ballad about the battle of Lewes (fought in 1264), and others in Percy's Reliques, in Ritson's Ancient Songs, and in Mr. Wright's collection printed for the Camden Society, and entitled The Politi- cal Songs of England, from the Reign of John to that of Edward II., 4to. Lond. 1839. 1 drier, which is of frequent occurrence in Piers Plowman, and continued in use in England at least down to the middle of the sixteenth century is still the com- mon word for a pig in Scotland. 2 In a note to the 1810 edition of Warton, Sir F. Madden states that the Ilarleiaq 'MS. 978 is certainly of the middle of the thirteenth century. EARLY ENGLISH METRICAL ROMANCES. From the thirteenth century also we are probably to date the origin or earliest composition of English metrical romances ; at least, none have descended to the present day which seem to have a claim to any higher antiquity. There is no absolutely conclu- sive evidence that all our old metrical romances are translation., from the French ; the French original cannot in eveiy case be produced ; but it is at least extremely doubtful if any such work was ever composed in English except upon the foundation of a similar French work. It is no objection that the subjects of most of these poems are not French or continental, but British, — that the stories of some of them are purely English or Saxon : this, as has been shown, was the case with the early northern French poe- try generally, from whatever cause, whether simply in consequence of the connection of Normandy with this country from the time of the Conquest, or partly from the earlier intercourse of the Nor- mans with their neighbors the people of Armorica, or Bretagne, whose legends and traditions, which were common to them with their kindred the Welsh, have unquestionably served as the foun- tain-head to the most copious of all the streams of romantic fiction. French seems to have been the only language of popular literature (apart from mere songs and ballads) in England for some ages after the Conquest ; if even a native legend, therefore, was to be turned into a romance, it was in French that the poem would at that period be written. It is possible, indeed, that some legends might have escaped the French trouveurs, to be discovered and taken up at a later date by the English minstrels ; but this is not likely to have happened with any that were at all popular or gen- erally known ; and of this description, it is believed, are all those, without any exception, upon which our existing early English met- rical romances are founded./ The subjects of these compositions — Tristrem, King Horn, Havelok, &c. — could hardly have be*n missed by the French poets in the long period during which they had the whole field to themselves : we have the most conclusive evidence with regard to some of the legends in question that they were well known at an early date to the writers in that language ; — the story of Havelok, for instance, is in Gaimar's Chronicle ; — apon this general consideration alone, therefore, which is at least 228 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. not contradicted by either the internal or historical evidence in airj particular case, it seems reasonable to infer that, where we have both an English and a French metrical romance upon the same subject, the French is the earlier of the two, and the original of the otli From this it is, in the circumstances, scarcely a step to the conclu- sion come to by/Tyr/whitt^who has intimated his belief " that we have no English romance prior to the age of Chaucer which is not a translation or imitation of some earlier French romance." 1 Cer- tainly, if this judgment has not been absolutely demonstrated, it has not been refuted, by the more extended investigation the question has since received. PUBLICATIONS OF PERCY — WARTOX — TYRWHITT — PIXKERTOX — HER- BERT — RITSOX — ELLIS — SCOTT — WEBER — UTTERSON — LAING — HARTSHORNE — THE ROXBURGHE CLUB — THE BAXXATYNE — THE MAITLAXD— THE ABBOTSFORD — THE CAMDEX SOCIETY. The first account, in any detail, of our early English metrical romances was given by Percy, in the third volume of his Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, first published in 1765. In this Essay, of twenty-four pages (extended to thirty-eight in the fourth edition of the work, 1794), he gave a list of thirty of these poems, to which, in subsequent editions, he added nine more. Then came the first volume of Warton's History of English Poetry, in 1774, with a much more discursive examination at least of parts of the subject, and ample specimens of several romances. Tyrwhitt's edition of the Canterbury Tales of Chaucer followed the next year, with many valuable notices on this as well as other matters belonging to our early literature in the interesting preliminary Es- say on the Language and Versification of his author, which is in fact a history of the language down to the end of the fourteenth century. In 1792 Pinkerton inserted the Scotch metrical romance of Gawan and Galogras, from an Edinburgh edition of 1508, in his collection of Scotish Poems, reprinted from scarce editions, 3 vols. 8vo., Lond. ; and he also gave in his last volume, as one of " three pieces before unpublished," that of Sir Gawan and Sir Galaron of Calloway; which was copied into Sibbald's Chronicle of Scottish Poetry (i. pp. xv. &c), 4 vols. 8vo., Edinb. 1802. In 1798 ap- 1 Essay on the Langunge of Chaucer, note 55. PRINTED METRICAL ROMANCES. 22S peared Roberte the Deuyll, a metrical romance, from an ancient illuminated MS. (8vo., Lond.), printed for I. Herbert; whose name is also at the end of a short prefatory advertisement, in which it is stated that the MS. agreed, word for word, with a remaining frag- ment of an edition of the poem which appears to have been printed early in the sixteenth century by Wynken de Worde, or Pynson. The volume has a number of engravings, which are very curious, and seem to be fac-similes of the illuminations in the MS. 1 In 1802 Ritson published at London his 3 vols. 8vo. of Ancient Eng- leish Metrical Romances, containing, besides his Dissertation on Romance and Minstrelsy, which tills 220 pages of the first volume, the romances, in their entire length, of Ywaine and Gawin (4032 lines) ; of Launfal, or Launfal Miles, a translation from the French of Marie by Thomas Chestre in the reign of Henry VI. (1044 lines) ; of Lybeaus Disconus, that is, Le Beau Desconnu, or The Fair Unknown, sometimes called Lybius Disconius (2130 lines) ; of The Geste of Kyng Horn (1546 lines) ; of The Kyng of Tars and the Soudan of Dammas (1148 lines) ; of Emare (1035 lines) ; of Sir Orpheo (510 lines) ; of The Chronicle of Engleland (1036 lines) ; of Le Bone Florence of Rome (2189 lines) ; of The Erie of Tolous (1218 lines) ; of The Squyr of Lowe Degre (1132 lines) ; and of The Knight of Curtesy and the Fair Lady of Fagnell (500 lines) : together with 133 pages of Notes, including the imperfect romance of Horn Childe and Maiden Rimnild (about 1150 lines) from the Auchinleck MS. in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh : the whole being followed by a Glossary, filling about 80 pages ; in commendation of which, however, very little can be said. With the exception of The Squyr of Lowe Degre, and The Knight of Curtesy, which are from rare black-letter copies of the sixteenth century, all the pieces in this collection of Ritson's are transcribed from manuscripts, most of them unique. A more successful at- tempt to diffuse a knowledge of this portion of our ancient poeti- cal literature was made by Mr. George Ellis in his Specimens of Early English Metrical Romances, 3 vols. 8vo., first published in 1805. Besides an Historical Introduction on the Rise and Progress of Romantic Composition in France and England — followed by an Analysis (by Mr. Douce) of the MS. work of Petrus Alphonsus entitled De Clericali Disciplina, and an account, amounting almost 1 See a note on the legend of Robert the Devil, by Sir F. Madden, in the 184C jdition of Warton, i. 187, and another by Mr. R. Taylor, pp. 207, 208. 230 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. to a complete translation, of the twelve Lays of Marie of France — this work, of which a second edition appeared in 1811, con- tained extended analytical reviews of the romances of Merlin, Morte Arthur, Guy of Warwick, Sir Bevis of Hamptoun, Richard Coeur de Lion, Roland and Ferragus, Sir Otuel, Sir Ferumbras, The History of the Seven Wise Masters, Florence and Blaunche- flour, Robert of Cysille, Sir Isumbras, Sir Triamour, The Life of Ipomydon, Sir Eglamour of Artbis, Lai le Fraine, Sir Eger, Sir Grahame, and Sir Graysteel, Sir Degore, Roswal and Lillian, and Amys and Amyhon. Most of these romances may be considered of later date than those published by Ritson : Mr. Ellis, indeed, on his title-page describes them as " chiefly written during the early part of the fourteenth century." Meanwhile, in 1804, Walter Scott had published at Edinburgh, in royal 8vo., the romance of Tristrem, from the Auchinleck MS., describing it on his title-page as a work of the thirteenth century, written in Scotland, by Thomas of Ercildoune, popularly called The Rhymer, and maintaining that theory in an elaborate and ingenious Introduction and a large body of curious illustrative annotation. One of the Appendices to this volume, which has been several times reprinted, contained an ac- count of the contents of the Auchinleck MS., consisting of forty- four pieces in all of ancient poetry, complete or imperfect. Scott, it mav be remarked, here acknowledges that there can be little doubt of the volume, which consists of 331 leaves of parchment, the writing being in double columns, in a nearly uniform hand of the earlier part of the fourteenth century, having been compiled in England ; and many circumstances, he says, lead him to con- clude that the MS. has been written in an Anirlo-Norman convent. In 1810, Scott's friend, Mr. Henry Weber, brought out at Edin- burgh, in 3 vols. 8vo., his collection entitled Metrical Romances of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries, published fiom Ancient MSS. ; with an Introduction, Notes, and a Glossary. Tin's woi'k contains the romances of King Alisaunder (8034 lines), Sir Cleges (540 lines), Lay le Freine (402 lines), Richard Coer de Lion (7136 lines), The Lyfe of Ipomydon (2346 lines), Amis and Amiloun ( 2495 lines), The Proces of the Seuyn Sages (4002 lines), Octouian Imperator (1962 lines), Sir Amadas (778 lines), and tlic Hunttyng of the Hare (270 lines). The next collection that appeared was that of Mr. Edward Vernon LTtterson, entitled Select Pieces of Early Popular Poetry; republished principally PRINTED METRICAL ROMANCES. 231 from early printed copies in the Black Letter ; 2 vols. 8vo., Lond 1817. It contained the metrical romances or tales of Syr Trya« monre (1593 lines), Syr Isenbras (855 lines), Syr Degore (99h lines), Syr Gowghter (685 lines) ; besides a number of other pieces (occupying the second volume) which cannot be included under that denomination. Next followed Mr. David Laing's three collec- tions : — the first, entitled Select Remains of the Ancient Popular Poetry of Scotland, 4to., Edinb. 1822 ; containing twenty-five pieces in all, among which are The Awntyrs of Arthure at the Terne Wathelyn, being another copy, from a MS. of the fifteenth century in the library of Lincoln cathedral, of Pinkerton's Sir Gawan and Sir Galaron of Galloway ; and the tale of Orfeo and Heurodis (that is, Orpheus and Eurydice), from the Auchinleck MS., being another and very different version of Ritsons Sir Orpheo : the second, entitled Early Metrical Tales, 8vo., Edinb. 1826 ; containing the History of Sir Eger, Sir Grahame, and Sir Graysteel (2860 lines), The History of Roswall and Lillian, which Mr. Laing had already printed separately in 1822 (876 lines), to- gether with other poems and shorter pieces, all from earlier printed copies: the third, entitled The Knightly Tale of Golagrus and Gawane, and other Ancient Poems, black letter, 4to., 1837 ; being a reprint of a unique volume in the Advocates' Library, printed by W. Chapman and A. Myllar, in 1508, and containing eleven pieces in all, among which, besides Golagrus and Gawane, are The Tale of Orpheus and Eurydice (another version, attributed to Robert Henryson), and Sir Eglamour of Artoys, which is analyzed in Ellis. This last-mentioned volume is extremely scarce, only sev- enty-four copies, most of them more or less damaged, having been saved from a fire at the printer's. The unique volume of which it is a reprint, and which is in a very decayed state, was presented to the Advocates' Library by a medical gentleman of Edinburgh, about 1788, and is understood to have been picked up somewhere in Ayrshire. One of the pieces, The Porteus of Noblenes, the last in the collection, is in prose. Then came the Rev. Charles Henry Hartshorne's Ancient Metrical Tales, printed chiefly from Original Sources, 8vo., Lond. 1829, containing, besides several pieces in other kinds of poetry, The Romance of King Athelstone, Florice and Blanchefour (apparently from the Auchinleck MS.), and a portion of the alliterative romance of Willyam and the Wer- ivolf. There have also been printed, by the Roxburghe Club, Le 232 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. Morte Arthure ; the Adventures of Sir Launcelot clu Lake, 4to M Loud. 1819, from the Harleian MS. 2252, being one of those an- alyzed by Ellis ; Chevelere Assigne — that is, the Chevalier au Cygne, or Knight of the Swan — from the Cotton MS. Cal. A. 2, being a translation of a portion of a French romance, which is also preserved (with a short Introduction and Glossary by Mr. Utter- son), 4to., Lond. 1820 ; The Ancient English Romance of Have- lok the Dane, accompanied by the French text, with an Introduc- tion, Notes, and a Glossary, by Frederic Madden, Esq. (now Sir F. Madden), 4to., Lond. 1828 ; and The Ancient English Ro- mance of William and the Werwolf, edited, with an Introduction and Glossary, by Sir Frederic Madden, 4to., Lond. 1832 : by the Bannatyne Club, The Buik of Alexander the Great, reprinted from the Metrical Romance printed at Edinburgh, by Arbuthnot, about the year 1580, 4to., Edinb. 1834 ; The Seven Sages, in Scotch metre, by John Rolland of Dalkeith, reprinted from the edition of 1578, 4to., Edinb. 1837 ; The Scottish Metrical Romance of Lan- celot du Lak, from a MS. of the Fifteenth Century (edited by Joseph Stevenson, Esq.), 4to., Edinb. 1839 ; and Syr Gawayne, a Collection of Ancient Romance Poems, by Scottish and English Authors, relating to that celebrated Knight of the Round Table, with an Introduction, Notes, and a Glossary, by Sir Frederic Mad- den (including Syr Gawayn and the Grene Knyght, The Awntyrs of Arthure at the Terne Wathelyne, The Knightly Tale of Go- lagros and Gawane, and an Appendix of shorter pieces), 4to., Lond. 1839 : by the Maitland Club, Sir Beves of Hamtoun, a Metrical Romance, now first edited from the Auchinleck MS. (by W. B. D. D. Turnbull, Esq.), 4to., Edinb. 1838 : by the Banna- tyne and Maitland Clubs in conjunction, Clariodus, a Metrical Ro- mance, from a MS. of the Sixteenth Century (edited by Edward Piper, Esq. ), 4to., Edinb. 1830 : by the Abbotsford Club, the Ro- mances of Rowland and Vemagu, and Otuel, from the Auchinleck MS. (edited by A. Nicholson, Esq.), 4to., 1836; and Arthour and Merlin, a Metrical Romance, from the Auchinleck MS. (edited by Mr. Turnbull), 4to., 1838: and by the Camden Society, Three Early English Metrical Romances, with an Introduction and Glos- sary, edited by John Robson, Esq., 4to., Lond. 1842 ; the three Romances (which are edited from a MS. of the fifteenth century, called the Ireland MS. from its former possessor of that name) being The Amur- of Arther at the Tarnewathelan (other versions HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH METRICAL ROMANCE. 233 of which, as already noticed, have been printed by Pinkerton, Laing, and Madden J ) ; Sir Amadace (a different version of which is in Weber's Collection) ; and The Avowynge of King Arther, Sir Gawan, Sir Kaye, and Sir Bawdewyn of Bretan, which is here printed for the first time. HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH METRICAL ROMANCE. / Although, however, it thus appears that a very considerable body of our early romantic poetry has now been made ^generally accessible, it is to be observed that only a small proportion of what has been printed is derived from manuscripts of even so early a date as the fourteenth century, and that many of the volumes which have just been enumerated are merely reimpressions of 1 Mr. Robson (who is rather sparing of distinct references) says (Introduction, p. xii.) that this romance was first printed by Pinkerton in his Scottish Ballads; remarking again (p. xvi.) that " Pinkerton published it as a Scottisli ballad." The collection, in fact, in which Pinkerton published it, as mentioned above, was entitled Scotish Poems, 1792. The curious notice of this proceeding by Ritson, to which Mr. Robson refers, occurs in his Ancient English Metrical Romances, vol. iii. p. 230, in a note on Ywaine and Gawin, where he says, " Two other romances on the same subject, but in a dialect and metre peculiar to Scotland, are printed in Pinker- ton's Scotish Poems ; the one from an edition at Edinburgh in 1508, the other from a MS., the property of the present editor, which the said Pinkerton came by very dishonestly." It appears from a letter of Ritson's, dated December 26, 1792, pub- lished in the Gentleman's Magazine for January, 1793 (vol. xliii. p. 32), that he was then in possession of the MS., which had belonged to his friend Mr. Baynes, of Gray's Inn, and that his complaint against Pinkerton was, that the latter had printed the poem from a transcript made by a third party many years before, which transcript the gentleman who made it declared he had never considered fit for the press ; assuring Ritson, moreover, on his refusal to allow a collation of the original, for which Pinkerton had applied, that the piece should not be printed by the latter at all. Pinkerton, in his Preface, or Preliminaries (vol. i. p. xxx.), merely says that the poem " was copied many years ago by a learned friend, from a MS. belonging to Mr. Baynes, of Gray's Inn, who was a noted collector of romances of chivalry." The MS. afterwards got into the possession of the late Mr. Douce, and is now, with the rest of his collection, in the Bodleian Library. In another place (p. xviii.) Mr. Robson observes, " Sir Walter Scott, where he alludes to this poem in his Min strelsy, asserts that it is not prior to the reign of James the Fifth of Scotland; ALLITERATIVE VERSE. — PIERS PLOUGHMAN. 245 That so gat fled 1 for feard ; Bot our king Edward come full still 2 "When that he trowed no harm him till, 3 And keeped him in the beard. 4 ALLITERATIVE VERSE. — PIERS PLOUGHMAN. It may be observed that Minot's verses are thickly sprinkled with what is called alliteration, or the repetition of words having the same commencing letter, either immediately after one another, or with the intervention only of one or two other words generally unemphatic or of subordinate importance. Alliteration, which we find here combined with rhyme, was in an earlier stage of our poetry employed, more systematically, as the substitute for that decoration, — the recurrence, at certain regular intervals, of like beginnings, serving the same purpose which is now accomplished by what Milton has contemptuously called " the jingling sound of like endings." To the English of the period before the Conquest, until its very latest stage, rhyme was unknown, and down to the tenth century our verse appears to have been constructed wholly upon the principle of alliteration. Hence, naturally, even after we had borrowed the practice of rhyme from the French or Ro- mance writers, our poetry retained for a time more or less of its original habit. In Layamon, as we have seen, alliterative and rhyming couplets are intermixed ; in other cases, as in Minot, we have the rhyme only pretty liberally bespangled with alliteration. t this date, in fact, the difficulty probably would have been to oid alliteration in writing verse ; all the old customary phraseol- ogies of poetry had been moulded upon that principle ; and indeed alliterative expression has in every age, and in many other lan- guages as well as our own, had a charm for the popular ear, so that it has always largely prevailed in proverbs and other such tra- ditional forms of words, nor is it yet by any means altogether dis- carded as an occasional embellishment of composition, whether in 1 Got put to flight ? 2 Came back quietly at his ease. 3 When he perceived there was no harm intended him. 4 Perhaps, " kept his beard untouched." 246 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. verse or in prose. But there is one poetical work of the fourteenth century, of considerable extent, and in some respects of remark- able merit, in which the verse is without rhyme, and the system of alliteration is almost as regular as what we have in the poetry of the times before the Conquest. This is the famous Vision of Piers Ploughman, or, as the subject is expressed at full length in the Latin title, Visio Willielmi de Petro Ploughman, that is, The Vision of William concerning Piers or Peter Ploughman. The manuscripts of this poem, which long continued to enjoy a high popularity, are very numerous, and it has also been repeatedly printed : first in 1550, at London, by Robert Crowley, " dwelling in Elye rentes in Holburne," who appears to have produced three successive impressions of it in the same year ; again in 1561, by Owen Rogers, " dwellyng neare unto great Saint Bartelmewes gate, at the sygne of the Spred Egle ; " next in 1813, under the superintendence of the late Thomas Dunham Whitaker, LL. D. ; lastly, in 1842, under the care of Thomas Wright, Esq., M. A., F. R. S., &c. The early editions, and also Dr. Whitaker's, are in quarto and in black letter. Mr. Wright's is in the common type, and in the much more commodious form of two volumes duodeci- mo ; and, furnished as it is with an introduction, notes, and a glos- sary, all very carefully and learnedly compiled, is as superior in all other respects as it is in cheapness and convenience for perusal to Dr. Whitaker's costly and cumbrous publication. Whitaker, moreover, whose acquirements in this department of study were very slender, has selected a text widely differing from the common one, and which has evidently no claim to the preference with which he has honored it ; that given by Mr. Wright (who has added in the notes the most important of the variations exhibited by Dr. Whitaker's edition) differs very little, except in greater accuracy, from that first printed by Crowley, while it is derived from what appears to be "the best and oldest manuscript now in existence." Dr. Whitaker's notes and glossary are • contemptible ; and his run- ning paraphrase, which accompanies the text, will be found much nmre frequently to slur over, when it does not mistake, the obscure passages of the original, than to explain, or attempt to explain, them. < )f the author of Piers Ploughman scarcely anything is known. He lias commonly been called Robert Langland: but there are grounds for believing that his Christian name was William, and it PIERS PLOUGHMAN. 247 is probable that it is himself of whom he speaks under that name throughout his work. He is supposed to have been a monk, and he seems to have resided in the West of England, near the Mal- vern Hills, where he introduces himself at the commencement of his poem as falling asleep " on a May morwenynge," and entering upon his dreams or visions. The date may be pretty nearly fixed. In one place there is an allusion to the treaty of Bretigny made with France in 1360, and to the military disasters of the previous year which led to it ; in another passage mention is made of a remarkable tempest which occurred on the 15th of January, 1362, as of a recent event. " It is probable," to quote Mr. Wright, " that the poem of Piers Ploughman was composed in the latter part of this year, when the effects of the great wind were fresh in people's memory, and when the treaty of Bretigny had become a subject of popular discontent." 1 We may assume, at least, that it was in hand at this time. We cannot attempt an analysis of the work. It consists, in Mr. Wright's edition, where the long line of the other editions is divid- ed into two, of 14,696 verses, distributed into twenty sections, or Passus as they are called. Each passus forms, or professes to form, a separate vision ; and so inartificial or confused is the con- nection of the several parts of the composition (notwithstanding Dr. Whitaker's notion that it had in his edition " for the first time been shown that it was written after a regular and consistent plan"), that it may be regarded as being in reality not so much one poem as a succession of poems. The general subject may be said to be the same with that of Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the exposition of the impediments and temptations which beset the crusade of this our mortal life ; and the method, too, like Bun- yan's, is the allegorical ; but the spirit of the poetry is not so much picturesque, or even descriptive, as satirical. Vices and abuses of all sorts come in for their share of the exposure and invective ; but the main attack throughout is directed against the corruptions of the church, and the hypocrisy and worldliness, the ignorance, indo- lence, and sensuality, of the ecclesiastical order. To this favorite theme the author constantly returns with new affection and sharper zest from any less high matter which he may occasionally take up. Hence it has been commonly assumed that he must have himself belonged to the ecclesiastical profession, that he was probably a 1 Introduction, p. xii. 248 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. priest or monk. And his Vision has been regarded not only as mainly a religious poem, but as almost a puritanical and Protestant work, although produced nearly two centuries before either Prot- estantism or Puritanism was ever heard of. In this notion, as we have seen, it was brought into such repute at the time of the Ref- ormation that three editions of it were printed in one year. There is nothing, however, of anti-Romanism, properly so called, in Lang- land, either doctrinal or constitutional ; and even the anti-clerical spirit of his poetry is not more decided than what is found in the writings of Chaucer, and the other popular literature of the time. In all ages, indeed, it is the tendency of popular literature to erect itself into a power adverse to that of the priesthood, as has been evinced more especially by the poetical literature of modern Europe from the days of the Provencal troubadours. In the Canterbury Tales, however, and in most other works where this spirit appears, the puritanism (if so it is to be called) is merely one of the forms of the poetry ; in Piers Ploughman the poetry is principally a form or expression of the puritanism. The rhythm or measure of the verse in this poem must be con- sidered as accentual ra ther than syllabica l — that is to say, it de- pends rath er upon t he number of the accents than of the syllables. This is, perhaps, the original principle of all" verse ; ~ and it still re- mains the leading principle in various kinds of verse, both in our own and in other languages. At first, probably, only the accented syllables were counted, or reckoned of any rhythmical value : other syllables upon which there was no emphasis went for nothing, and might be introduced in any part of the verse, one, two, or three at a time, as the poet chose. Of course it would at all times be felt that there were limits beyond which this license could not be carried without destroying or injuring the metrical character of the composition ; but these limits would not at first be fixed as they now for the most part are. The elementary form of the verse in Piers Ploughman demands a succession of four accented syllables — two in the first hemistich or short line, and two in the second; but, while each of those in the first line is usually preceded by either our or two unaccented Syllables, commonly only one of those in the second line is so preceded. The second line, therefore, is for the most part shorter than the first. And they also differ in regard to the alliteration : it being required that in the first both the accented or emphatic syllables, which are generally initial syl PIERS PLOUGHMAN. 249 Iables, should begin with the same letter, but that in the second only the first accented syllable should begin with that letter. This is the general rule ; but, either from the text being corrupt or from the irregularity of the composition, the exceptions are very numer- ous. 1 We may merely add, that, although in our extracts we shall for the convenience of printing, and for the greater intelligibility, follow Mr. Wright's edition, as in other respects, so in the bisection of the long line of the manuscripts and the other editions into two short ones, only marking the structural distinction between the first and second, which he does not, we suspect that the true prosody requires these short lines to be regarded rather as hemis- tichs than as entire verses, and sometimes only as false hemistichs — that is to say, that the eorrect prosodical division would be, not in all cases where he has placed it, but occasionally in the middle of the word with which he closes his first line. But this is a mat- ter of little moment. We shall adopt the plan of modernizing the spelling in all cases in which there can be no doubt that the pro nunciation is not thereby affected. The poem begins as follows : — In a summer season, When soft was the sun, I shoop me into shrowds 2 As I a sheep 3 were ; In habit as an hermit Unholy of werkes, 4 Went wide in this world Wonders to hear ; Ac 5 on a May morwening On Malvern hills Me befel a ferly, 6 Of fairy me thought. I was weary for-wandered, 7 Mr Wright observes that, when alliterative poetry was written in the fifteenth century, the writers, instead of three, " not unfrequently inserted four or five allit- erative words in the same [long] line, which would certainly have been considered a defect in the earlier writers." But this defect, if it be one, is very frequent in Piers Ploughman. It occurs, for instance, in the two commencing lines of the poem, at least as printed in Mr. Wright's edition. 2 I put myself into clothes. 3 A shepherd. 4 Whitaker's interpretation is, " in habit, not like an anchorite who keeps his ?ell, but like one of those unholy hermits who wander about the world to see and hear wonders." He reads, " That went forth in the worl," &c. 5 And. ° Wonder. 7 Worn out with wandering. vol. I 32 250 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. And went me to rest Under a brood * bank, By a burn's 2 side ; And as I lay and leaned, And looked on the waters, I slombered into a sleeping, It swayed so mury. 8 Then gan I meten 4 A marvellous sweven, 5 That I was in a wilderness, Wist I never where ; And, as I beheld into the east On high to the sun, I seigh 6 a tower on a toft 7 Frieliche ymaked, 8 A deep dale beneath, A donjon therein, With deep ditches and darke, And dreadful of sight. A fair field full of folk Found I there between, Of all manner of men, The mean and the rich, Werking 9 and wanderino; As the world asketh. Some putten hem 10 to the plough, Playden full seld, 11 In setting and sowing Swonken u full hard, And wonnen that wasters With gluttony destroyeth. 13 And some putten hem to pride, Apparelled hem thereafter, In countenance of clothing Comen deguised, 14 In prayers and penances Putten hem many, 16 1 Broad. 2 Stream's. 8 It sounded so pleasant * Meet. 5 Dream. 6 Saw. 7 An elevated ground. 8 Handsomely built. ° Working. r - Put them. n Played full seldom. 12 Labored. u Wan that which wasters with gluttony drstroy. 14 Came disguised. Whitaker reads, " In countenance and in clothing." 10 Many put them, applied themselves to, engaged in. PIERS PLOUGHMAN. 251 All for the love of our Lord Liveden full strait, 1 In hope to have after Heaven-riche bliss ; 2 As anchors and heremites 8 That holden hem in hir * cells, And coveten nought in country To carryen about, For no likerous liflode Hir likame to please. 5 And some chosen chaffer : 6 They cheveden 7 the better, As it seemeth to our sight That swich me thriveth. 8 And some murths to make As minstralles con, 9 And geten gold with hir glee, 10 Guiltless, I lieve. 11 Ac japers and jaugellers 12 Judas' children, Feignen hem fantasies And fools hem maketh, And han hir 13 wit at will To werken if they wold. That Poul preacheth of hem I wol nat preve 14 it here : But qui loquitur turpiloquium 15 Is Jupiter's hine. 16 Bidders n and beggars Fast about yede, 18 "With hir bellies and hir bags Of bread full y-crammed, Faiteden 19 for hir food, Foughten at the ale : In gluttony, God wot, * Lived full strictly. 2 The bliss of the kingdom of heaven. 3 Anchorites and eremites or hermits. 4 Hold them in their, 5 By no likerous living their body to please. 6 Merchandise. 7 Achieved their end. 8 That such men thrire. 9 And some are skilled to make mirths, or amusements, as minstrels. 10 And get gold with their minstrelsy. u Believe. 12 But jesters and jugglers. 13 Have their. 14 Will not prove. 15 Whoso speaketh ribaldry. 1B Our modern hind, or servant. 17 Petitioners. 18 Went. 19 Flattered. 252 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. Go they to bed, V And risen with ribaudry, 1 Tho Roberd's knaves ; 2 Sleep and sorry slewth 8 Sueth 4 hem ever. Pilgrims and palmers Plio-hten hem toeider 6 For to seeken Saint Jame And saintes at Rome : They wenten forth in hir way 8 With many wise tales, And hadden leave to lien 7 All hir life after. I seigh some that seiden 8 They had y-sought saints : To each a tale that they told Hir tongne was tempered to lie * More than to say sooth, It seemed by hir speech. Hermits on an heap, 10 With hooked staves, Wenten to Walsingham, And hir wenches after ; Great loobies and long, That loath were to swink, 11 Clothed hem in copes To be knowen from other, And shopen hem la hermits Hir ease to have. I found there freres, All the four orders, Preaching the people For profit of hem selve : Glosed the gospel As hem good liked ; 18 1 Rise with ribaldry. 2 Those Robertsmen — a class of malefactors mentioned in several statutes of the fourteenth century. The name may have meant originally Robin Hood's men, as Whitaker conjectures. 8 Sloth. 4 Pursue. 6 Gather them together. 6 They went forth on their way. 7 To lie. 8 I saw some that said. 9 In every tale that they told their tongue was trained to lie. 10 In a crowd. n Labor. 12 Made themselves. ia As it seemed to them good. PIERS PLOUGHMAN. 253 For covetise of copes 1 Construed it as they would. Many of these master freres Now clothen hem at liking, 2 For hir money and hir merchandize Marchen togeders, For sith charity hath been chapman, And chief to shrive lords, Many ferlies han fallen 3 In a few years : But holy church and hi 4 Hold better togeders, The most mischief on mould 5 Is mounting well fast. There preached a pardoner, As he a priest were ; Brought forth a bull With many bishops' seals, And said that himself might Assoilen hem all, Of falsehede of fasting, 6 Of avowes y-broken. Lewed 7 men leved 8 it well, And liked his words ; Comen up kneeling To kissen his bulls : He bouched 9 hem with his brevet, 10 And bleared hir eyen, 11 And raught with his ragman 12 Ringes and brooches. Here it will be admitted, we have both a well-filled canvas and a picture with a good deal of life and stir in it. The satiric touches are also natural and effective ; and the expression clear, easy, and not deficient in vigor. We will now present a portion of the Fifth Passus, which commences thus : — 1 Covetousness of copes or rich clothing. 2 Clothe themselves to their liking. 8 Many wonders have happened. * Unless holy church and they. 5 The greatest mischief on earth. 6 Of breaking fast-days. 7 Ignorant. 8 Loved. 9 Stopped their mouths. 10 Little brief. u Bedimmed their eyes. K Reached, drew in, with his catalogue or roll of names f 254 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. The king and his knights To the kirk went, To hear matins of the day, And the mass after. Then waked I of my winking, And wo was withal That I ne had slept sadder 1 And y-seighen 2 more. Ac ere I had faren 8 a furlong Faintise me hent, 4 That I ne might ferther a foot For de-faut of sleeping, And sat softly adown, And said my believe, And so I babbled on my beads, They brought me asleep. And then saw I much more Than I before of told ; For I seigh the field full of folk That I before of said, And how Reason gan arrayen him All the reaum to preach, 5 And with a cross afore the king Comsed 6 thus to teachen : — He preyed that these pestilences 7 "Were for pure sin, And the south-western wind On Saturday at even 8 Was pertlich 9 for pure pride, And for no point else. Pyries 10 and plum-trees Were puffed to the earth, In ensample that the segges n Sholden do the better ; Beeches and broad oaks Were blowen to the ground, 1 Sounder. 2 Seen. 8 But ere I had walked 4 Eaintness seized nie. 5 To preach to all the realm. c Commenced. 7 The three great pestilences which desolated England and the rest of Europe in the reign of Edward III. occurred in 1348-1349, 1361-1362, and 1369. 8 The great tempest of Saturday, Jan. 15, 1362. * Manifestly. 10 Pear-trees. n Men, people. PIERS PLOUGHMAN. 255 Turned upward hir tails, In tokening of dread That deadly sin ere doomsday Shall for-done 1 hem all. The account of Reason's sermon is continued at great length ; after which the repentance of his auditors is narrated as follows • — Pernel Proudheart Plat her 2 to the earth, And lay long ere she loked, And " Lord, Mercy," cried, And bi-highte 3 to him That us all made She should unsowen her serk * And set there an hair, To affaiten 5 her flesh, That fierce was to sin. • • • • • Envy with heavy heart Asked after shrift, And carefully mea culpa He comsed 6 to shew. He was as pale as a pellet, 7 In the palsy he seemed ; And clothed jn a kaury maury 8 I couth it nouffht descrive, In kirtle and courtepy, 9 And a knife by his side ; Of a frere's frock Were the fore-sleeves ; And as a leek that had y-lay Long in the sun, So looked he with lean cheeks Lowering foul. His body was to-bollen 10 for wrath That he boot ai his lips ; And wringing he yede 12 with the fust ; 13 1 Undo, ruin. 2 Threw herself clown. 3 Promised. 4 Shirt. 6 Tame. 6 Commenced. 7 Snowball. 8 In Cole's Dictionary this is given as a Dutch word, and interpreted " mock-gar ments." Wright, in his Dictionary of Obsolete and Provincial English, has caury worm-eaten. But see post, p. 263. 9 A short coat. 10 "Was swollen. n Bit. ^ Went. 13 Pist. 256 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. To wreaken himself he thought With werks or with words When he seigh his time. Each a werd that he warp 1 Was of a nedder's 2 tongue ; Of chiding and of chalenging Was his chief liflode ; 8 With backbiting and bismear 4 And bearing of false witness. " I wold been y-shrive," quod this shrew, " And 5 I for shame durst ; I wold be gladder, by God, That Gib had mischance Than though I had this wouk 6 y-AVon A wey 7 of Essex cheese. I have a neighbor by me ; I have annoyed him oft, And lowen 8 on him to lords To doon him lese his silver, 9 And made his friends be his foon 10 Thorough my false tongue : His grace and his good haps Grieven me full sore. Between many and many I make debate oft, That both life and limb Is lost thorough my speech. And when I meet him in market That I most hate, I hailse him hendly u As I his friend were ; For 12 he is doughtier than I I dare do none other ; Ac 18 had I mastery and might God wot my will ! And when I come to the kirk, And should kneel to the rood, And pray for the people 1 Each word that he utter 3d. 2 An adder's. 8 Livelihood (way of living). * Reproach, besmearing. 6 If, an. 6 Week. ' 256 pounds. 8 Lied? 9 To make him lose his money i° Foes. u I salute him politely. " Because. ' But PIERS PLOUGHMAN. 257 As the priest teacheth, For pilgrims and for palmers, For all the people after, Then I cry on my knees That Christ give hem sorrow That bearen away my boll And my broke shete. 1 Away fro the auter - then Turn 1 mine eyen, And behold Ellen Hath a new coat: I wish then it were mine, And all the web after. And of men's lesing 3 I laugh ; That liketh mine heart : And for hir winning I Aveep, And wail the time, And deem that they doon ill There I do well werse. 4 Whoso under-nymeth 5 me hereof, I hate him deadly after. I wold that each a wight Were my knave ; 6 For whoso hath more than I, That angereth me sore. And thus I live loveless, Like a hither 7 dog, That all my body bolneth 8 For bitter of my gall. I might nought eat many years As a man ought, For envy and evil will Is evil to defy. 9 May no sugar nor sweet thing Assuage my swelling ? Ne no diapenidion 10 Drive it fro mine heart ? 1 That bore away my bowl and shit my brook. 2 Altar. 8 Losing. 4 Where I do still worse {bien plus pis). 5 Mr. Wright translates undertakes, talcs jtossession of. Here, perhaps, the meali- ng is, takes me up in speeeh, checks me for that. Servant. 7 Vicious. 8 Swelleth. 9 111 to digest. 10 Electuary. vol. r. 33 268 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. Ne neither shrift ne shame, But whoso shrape l my maw ? " " Yes, readily," quod Repentance, And rad him to the best ; 2 " Sorrow of sins Is salvation of souls." " I am sorry," quod that segge ; 8 " I am but seld other ; * And that maketh me thus meagre For 5 I ne may me venge. Amonces bunj-e.sses have I be Dwelling in London, And "-art 6 backbiting be a broker To blame men's ware : When he sold and I nought, Then was I ready To lie and to lower on my neighbour, And to lack his chaffer. 7 I woll amend this if I may, Thorough might of God Almighty." The cases of Wrath, Covetousness, Gluttony, and Sloth follow at equal or greater length ; and then comes the passage in which Piers Ploughman is first mentioned. The people having been persuaded by the exhortations of Repentance and Hope to set out in quest of Truth, — A thousand of men tho 8 Thrunaren toireders, Cried upward to Christ, And to his clean moder, To have grace to go with them Truthe to seek. Ac 9 there was wight none so wise The way thider couth, 10 But blustreden u forth as beasts Over bankes and hills ; Till late was an long o 1 Unless one should scrape. Tt may perhaps be doubted if these last three coup eta are intended to he taken Interrogatively. * Counselled him for the host. ; Man. * I am seldom otherwise. 6 Because. ° Caused 7 To disparage his merchandise. 8 Then. ° But. 10 Knew. n Wandered along aimlessly PIERS PLOUGHMAN. 259 That they a leed 1 met, Apparelled as a paynim In pilgrimes' wise. He bar a burden y-bound With a broad list, In a with-wind wise 2 Y-wounden about ; A bowl and a bag He bar by his side, And hundred of ampuls 3 On his hat setten, Signs of Sinai, And shells of Galice, And many a crouch 4 on his cloak, And keyes of Rome, And the Vernicle 5 before, For 6 men shold know And see by his signs Whom he sought had. The folk frayned 7 him first Fro whennes he come. " From Sinai," he said, " And from our Lord's sepulchre : In Bethlem and in Babiloyn, I have been in both ; In Armony 8 and Alisandre, In many other places. Ye may see by my signs, That sitten on mine hat, That I have walked full wide In weet and in dry, And sought good saints For my soul's health." " Knowestow aught a corsaint 9 That men call Truth ? Coudestow aught wissen us the way ,0 Where that wye n dwelleth ? " " Nay, so me God help," 1 Person. 2 Withy-wand wise. 8 Ampulla:, small vessels of holy water or oil? 4 Cross. 6 The Veronica, or miraculous picture of Christ. 6 In order tlat. 7 Questioned. 8 Armenia. 9 Knowest thou of any relic. 10 Couldest thou tell us aught of the way. u Man. 260 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. Said the gome 1 then, " I seigh never palmer Willi pike ne with scrip Asken alter him ere Till now in this place." Then the narrative goes on, as printed and pointed by Mr. Wright, who has no note upon the passage, — " Peter," quod a ploughman, And put forth his head, " I know him as kindly As clerk doth his bookes : Conscience and kind 2 wit Kenned 3 me to his place, And diden me suren him sickerly 4 To serven him for ever, Both to sow and to set The while I swink 5 might. I have been his follower All this rlftv winter, Both y-sowen 6 his seed And sued " his beasts, Within and withouten Wailed his profit. I dig and I delve, I do that Truth hoteth : 8 Some time I sow And sometime I thresh ; In tailors' craft and tinkers' craft What Truth can devise ; I weave and I wind And do what Truth hoteth," &c. It is difficult to understand what meaning we are to give to the word "Peter," understood as part of the Ploughman's speech. ^Vllitaker , s interpretation is " One Peter, a ploughman, now put forth his head;" and in a note upon the passage, which in his (dition occurs in the eighth pa&ms, and stands "Peter quoth a Ploughman," he says, "As Piers Ploughman, wdio now first 1 Mnn. 2 Natural. 8 Showed. 1 And did assure (determine or fix) me to liim securely (firmly) " Labor. ° Sowed. 7 Tended. 8 Ordereth. PIERS PLOUGHMAN. 261 appears, is evidently the speaker, we must, notwithstanding the arrangement of the words, understand them to mean, ' Quoth Peter a ploughman.' ' But it is evident that this sense cannot be got out of the words as they stand. 1 The line is possibly cor- rupt ; and indeed the whole passage, though one on which so much of the structure of the poem hinges, exhibits other traces of having suffered from the carelessness or ignorance of the transcribers. It differs widely throughout in the two editions. But everything relating to the personage from whom the work takes its name would almost seem to be designedly involved in confusion and obscurity. The Ploughman ends his speech, of which we have quoted the commencement, by telling his auditors that, if they wish to know where Truth dwells, he is ready to show them the way to his residence ; upon which, proceeds the story, — " Yea, leve 2 Piers," quod these pilgrims, And proffered him hire, For to wend with hem To Truth's dwelling-place. " Nay, by my soul's help," 3 quod Piers, And gan for to swear, I nold fang a ferthing, 1 From its position the word Peter would almost seem to be nothing more than an exclamation. It does not appear to have been noticed that we have the same form of expression in two passages of Chaucer's House of Fame ; in book II., 1. 526, where, to the question of the eagle, " And what sown is it like? quod he," the author answers, " Peter! like the beating of the sea, Quod I, against the roches halow: " — and again in book III., 1. 910, where it is used by the eagle in addressing the author (elsewhere called Geffrey, see II. 221) — " Peter ! that is now mine intent, Quod he to me." Perhaps " Peter ! quod a Ploughman " means no more than what we find a few pages after : — " Quod Perkin the Ploughman, By Saint Peter of Rome ! " — 1. 3799. Besides, the Ploughman, we believe, is never afterwards called Peter ; but always either Piers or Perkin. 2 Deft. 3 Should not this be helth, or health ? The Saxon character for th is very apt to be mistaken for a p. 2l>2 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. For Saint Thomas' shrine ; * Truth wold love me the lass 2 A long time thereafter. Ac if you wilneth to wend well 8 This is the way thider : — Ye moten 4 go thorough Meekness, Both men and wives, Till ye come into Conscience," &c. The personage who thus speaks is afterwards constantly desig- nated Piers, or sometimes Perkin, the Ploughman, and he makes a considerable figure throughout the sixth and seventh Passus : after which we hear little more of him till we come to the six- teenth. In the eighteenth Passus "the character of Piers the Ploughman," according to Mr. Wright's view (Introduction, p. xxiv.), " is identified with that of the Saviour." Whitaker, who generally calls him " the mysterious personage," conceives (Intro- ductory Discourse, p. xxviii.) that Piers in the latter part of the poem is intended to be the representative of the Church. Taking the church as meaning, not the clergy or the ecclesiastical system, but the body of the faithful, it would not perhaps be impossible to understand Piers as sustaining that character throughout the work, PIEKS PLOUGHMAN'S CREED. The popularity of Langland's poem appears to have brought alliterative verse into fashion again even for poems of considerable length ; several romances were written in it, such as that of Wil- liam and the Werwolf, that of Alexander, that of Jerusalem, and others: and the use of it was continued throughout the greater part of the fifteenth century. But the most remarkable imitation of the Vision is the poem entitled Piers the Ploughman's Creed, which appears to have been written about the end of the fourteenth century'/ it was first printed separately at London, in 4to. by Rey- nold Wolfe, in 1553; then by Rogers, along with the Vision, in 1561. In modern times it has also been printed separately, in 1814, as a companion to Whitaker's edition of the Vision ; and, along with the Vision, in Mr. Wright's edition of 1842. The 1 I would not take a farthing, if you were to offer me all the wealth of St Thomas's shrine. - Eess. 8 But if you wish to go well. * Must. PIERS PLOUGHMAN'S CREED. 2(33 Creed is the composition of a follower of Wyclif, and an avowed opponent of Romanism. Here, Mr. Wright observes, " Piers Ploughman is no longer an allegorical personage : he is the simple representative of the peasant rising up to judge and act for himself — the English sans-culotte of the fourteenth century, if we may be allowed the comparison." The satire, or invective, in this effusion (which consists only of 1697 short lines), is directed altogether against the clergy, and especially the monks or friars ; and Piers or Peter is represented as a poor ploughman from whom the writer receives that instruction in Christian truth which he had sought for in vain from every order of these licensed teachers. The lan- guage is quite as antique as that of the Vision, as may appear from the following passage, in which Piers is introduced : — Then turned I me forth, And talked to myself Of the falsehede of this folk, How faithless they weren. And as I went by the way Weeping for sorrow, I see a seely 1 man me by Upon the plough hongen. 2 His coat was of a clout 3 That cary 4 was y-called ; His hood was full of holes, And his hair out ; With his knopped shoon 5 Clouted full thick, His ton c toteden " out As he the lond treaded: His hosen overhongen his hoc-shynes 8 On everich a side, All beslomered 9 in fen 10 As he the plough followed. 1 Simple. 2 Hung, bent, over. s Cloth. 4 Is not this the same word that we have in caury maury (vid. sup. p. 255) ? It jrould seem to be the name of a kind of cloth. 5 Knobbed shoes. 6 Toes. 7 Peeped. s Neither of Mr. Wright's explanations seems quite satisfactory : " crooked shins ; " >r " the shin towards the hock or ankle " 1 3 Bedaubed. 10 Mud. 1^04 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. Twey 1 mittens as meter 2 Made all of clouts, The fingers weren for-weard 8 And full of fen honged. This whit 4 wasled 8 in the feen • Almost to the ancle : Four rotheren 7 him beforn, That feeble were worthy ; 8 Men might reckon each a rib 9 So rentful 10 they weren. His wife walked him with, With a long goad, In a cutted coat Cutted full high, Wrapped in a winnow n sheet To wearen her fro weders, 12 Barefoot on the bare ice, That the blood followed. And at the lond's end 13 lath " A little crom-bolle, 15 And thereon lay a little child Lapped in clouts, And tweyn of twey years old lfl Opon another side. And all they songen 17 o 18 song, That sorrow was to hearen ; They crieden all o cry, A careful note. The seely man sighed sore, And said, " Children, beth 19 still." This man looked opon me, And leet the plough stonden ; 20 And said, " Seely man, Why sighest thou so hard ? 1 Two. 8 Mr. Wright suggests fitter; which does not seem to make sense. 8 Were worn out. 4 Wight. 6 Dirtied himself, 6 Fen, mild. 7 Oxen (the Four Evangelists). 8 Become? Perhaps the true reading vafortiaj, that is, for that. 3 Each rib. 10 Meagre 1 u Winnowing. 12 The meaning -seems to be, " to protect her from the weather." « The end of the field. 14 Lieth ? 16 Mr. Wright explains by " crum-bowl." i° Two of two years old. 17 Sang. 18 One. w Be. 2° Let the plough stand. ALLITERATIVE POETRY. 265 Gif thee lack lifelode, 1 Lene thee ich will z Swich 3 good as God hath sent : Go we, leve brother." 4 Alliterative verse, the most ancient form of our pcetry, would seem to have been revived, and brought into fashion or favor again for a time, after having been long disused, by its successful employ- ment in the Visions of Piers Ploughman, and the popularity of that work. Both Warton in his History, and Percy in an Essay published in the second volume of his Reliques, have noticed sev- eral other alliterative poems, in addition to the Creed, which, al- though not all strictly speaking to be regarded as imitations of Langland's performance, probably owed their existence mainly to the example he had set. In some of them the alliteration is carried much further than in the Visions, the jingle, or juggle, of like beginnings, as Milton might have called it, being introduced, not according to a rule only in certain places of the verse, but appar- ently to the utmost extent that the writer found possible by availing himself of all the resources of his vocabulary. Here, for instance, is the commencing stanza of a Hymn to the Virgin, given by Warton : — Hail beo yow, Marie, moodur and may, 5 Mylde, and meke, and merciable ; 6 Heyl, folliche 7 fruit of sothfast fay, 8 Agayn uche stryf 9 studefast and stable ! Heil, sothfast soul in uche a say, 10 Undur the son u is non so able. Heil, logge 12 that ur lord in lay, The formast that never was founden in fable ! 18 Heil, trewe, trouthfull, and tretable ! 14 Heil, cheef i chosen of chastite ! 15 Heil, homely, hende, 16 and amyable To preye for us to thi sone so fre ! 1 If livelihood lack, or be wanting to, thee. 2 Give or lend thee I will. 3 Such. 4 Let us go, dear brother. 5 Mother and maid. 6 Merciful. 1 Baptismal 1 ? 8 Truth-fast faith. 9 Against each strife steadfast. 10 In each assay, or trial. « The sun. n Lodge. 13 The foremost that ever was found in story ? 14 Tractable. 15 Chosen (ychosen) chief of chastity. 10 Gentle, courteous. vol. i. 84 THIRD ENGLISH. (MIXED OR COMPOUND ENGLISH.) GEOFFREY CHAUCER. The Vision of Piers Ploughman is our earliest poetical work of any considerable extent that may still be read with pleasure ; but not much of its attraction lies in its poetry. It interests lis chiefly as rather a lively picture (which, however, would have been nearly as effective in prose) of much in the manners and general social condition of the time, and of the new spirit of opposition to old things which was then astir ; partly, too, by the language and style, and as a monument of a peculiar species of versification. Langland, or whoever was the author, probably contributed by this great work to the advancement of his native tongue to a larger extent than he has had credit for. The gram- matical forms of his English will be found to be very nearly, if not exactly, the same with those of Chaucer's ; his vocabulary, if more sparingly admitting the non-Teutonic element, still does not abjure the principle of the same composite constitution ; nor is his style much inferior in mere regularity and clearness. So long a work was not likely to have been undertaken except by one who felt himself to be in full possession of the language as it existed : the writer was no doubt prompted to engage in such a task in great part by his gift of ready expression; and he could not fail to gain additional fluency and skill in the course of the composition, espe- cially with a construction of verse demanding so incessant an attention to words and syllables. The popularity of the poem, too, would diffuse and establish whatever improvements in the language it may have introduced or exemplified. In addition to the ability displayed in it, and the popular spirit of the day with which it was animated, its position in the national literature naturally and de- servedly gave to tlie Vision of Piers Ploughman an extraordinary influence; for it has the distinction (so far as is either known or probable) of being the earliest original work, of any magnitude, in the present form of the language. Robert of Gloucester an j GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 267 Robert de Brunne, Langland's predecessors, were both, it may be remembered, only translators or paraphrasts. If Langland, however, is our earliest original writer, Chaucer is still our first great poet, and the true father of our literature, properly so called. Compared with his productions, all that pre- cedes is barbarism. But what is much more remarkable is that very little of what has followed in the space of nearly five cen- turies that has elapsed since he lived and wrote is worthy of b i ?ing compared with what he has left us. He is in our English po 'try almost what Homer is in that of Greece, and Dante in that of Italy, — at least in his own sphere still the greatest light. Although, therefore, according to the scheme of the histor} of the language which has been propounded, the third form of it, or that which still subsists, may be regarded as having taken its com- mencement perhaps a full century before the date at which we are now arrived, and so as taking in the works, not only of Langland, but of his predecessors from Robert of Gloucester inclusive, our living English literature may be most fitly held to begin with the poetry of Chaucer. It will thus count an existence already of above five centuries. Chaucer is supposed to have been born about the beginning of the reign of Edward III. — in the year 1328, if we may trust what is said to have been the ancient, inscription on his tombstone ; so that he had no doubt begun to write, and was probably well known as a poet, at least as early as Langland. They may indeed have been contemporaries in the strictest sense of the word, for anything that is ascertained. If Langland wrote the Creed of Piers Ploughman, as well as the Vision, which (although it has not, we believe, been suggested) ie neither impossible nor very unlikely, he must have lived to as late, or very nearly as late, a date as Chaucer, who is held to have died in 1400. At the same time, as Langland's greatest, if not only, work appears to have been produced not long after the middle of the reign of Edward III., and the composition of Chaucer's Can terbmy Tales not to have been begun till about the middle of that of Richard II., the probability certainly is, regard being had to the species and character of these poems, each seemingly impressed vvith a long experience of life, that Langland, if not the earlier writer, was the elder man. The writings of Chaucer are very voluminous ; comprising, in so far as they have come down to us, in verse, The Canterbury 268 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. Tales ; the Romaunt of the Rose, in 7701 lines, a translation from the French Roman de la Rose of Gnillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun ; Troilns and Creseide, in Five Books, on the same sub- ject as the Filostrato of Boccaccio ; the House of Fame, in Three Books ; Chaucer's Dream, in 2235 lines ; the Book of the Duchess (sometimes called the Dream of Chaucer), 1334 lines; the Assem- bly of Fowls, 694 lines ; the Flower and the Leaf, 595 lines ; the Court of Love, 1442 lines ; together with many ballads and other minor pieces : and in prose (besides portions of the Canterbury Tales), a translation of Boethius' De Consolatione Philosophise; the Testament of Love, an imitation of the same treatise ; and a Treatise on the Astrolabe, addressed to his son Lewis in 1391, of which, however, we have only two out of five parts of which it was intended to consist. All these works have been printed, most of them more than once ; and a good many other pieces have also been attributed to Chaucer which are either known to be the com- positions of other poets, or of which at least there is no evidence or probability that he is the author. Only the Canterbury Tales, however, have as yet enjoyed the advantage of anything like care- ful editing. Tyrwhitt's elaborate edition was first published, in 4 vols. 8vo., in 1775, his Glossary to all the genuine works of Chaucer having followed in 1778 ; and another edition, presenting a new text, and also accompanied with notes and a Glossary, was brought out by Mr. T. Wright for the Percy Society in 1847. In his introductory Essay on the Language and Versification of Chaucer, Tyrwhitt observes, that at the time when this great writer made his first essays the use of rhyme was established in English poetry, not exclusively (as we have seen by the example of the Vision of Piers Ploughman), but very generally, " so that in this respect he had little to do but to imitate his predecessors." But the metrical part of our poetry, the learned editor conceives, "was capable of more improvement, by the polishing of the meas- ures already in use, as well as by the introduction of new modes of versification." " With respect," he continues, "to the regular measures then in use, they may be reduced, I think, to foui. first, the lung Iambic metre, consisting of not more than fifteen nor less than fourteen syllables, and broken by a caesura at the lighth syllable. Secondly, the Alexandrine metre, consisting of not more than thirteen syllables nor less than twelve, with a caesura at the sixth. Thirdly, the Octosyllable metre, which was in reality GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 269 the ancient dimeter Iambic. Fourthly, the stanza of six verses, of which the first, second, fourth, and fifth were in the complete octosyllable metre, and the third and last catalectic, — that is, wanting a syllable, or even two.*' The first of these metres Tyr- whitt considers to be exemplified in the Ormulum, and probably also in the Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, if the genuine text could be recovered; the second, apparently, by Robert de Brunne, in imitation of his French original, although his verse in Hfcarne's edition is frequently defective : the third and fourth were very common, being then generally used in lighter compositions, as they still are. " In the first of these metres," he proceeds, " it does not appear that Chaucer ever composed at all (fori presume no one can imagine that he was the author of Gamelyn), or in the second ; and in the fourth we have nothing of his but the Rhyme of Sire Thopas, which, being intended to ridicule the vulgar ro- mancers, seems to have been purposely written in their favorite metre. In the third or octosyllable metre he has left several compositions, particularly an imperfect translation of the Roman de la Rose, which was probably one of his earliest performances, The House of Fame, the Dethe of the Duchesse Blanche, and a poem called his Dreme : upon all which it Avill be sufficient here to observe in general, that, if he had given no other proofs of his poetical faculty, these alone must have secured to him the pre- eminence above all his predecessors and contemporaries in point of versification. But by far the most considerable part of Chau- cer's works is written in that kind of metre which we now call the Heroic, either in distichs or stanzas ; and, as I have not been able to discover any instance of this metre being used by any English poet before him, I am much inclined to suppose that he was the first introducer of it into our language." It had been long prac- tised by the writers both in the northern and southern French ; and within the half century before Chaucer wrote it had been suc- cessfully cultivated, in preference to every other metre, by the great poets of Italy, — Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio. Tyrwhitt argues, therefore, that Chaucer may have borrowed his new Eng- lish verse either from the French or from the Italian. That the particular species of verse in which Chaucer has written his Canterbury Tales and some of his other poems had not been used by any other English poet before him, has not, we believe, been disputed, and does not appear to be disputable, at 270 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. least from such remains of our early poetical literature as we now possess. Here, then, is one important fact. It is certain, also, that the French, if not likewise the Italian, poets who employed the decasyllabic (or more properly hendecasyllabic *) metre were well known to Chaucer. The presumption, therefore, that his new metre is, as Tyrwhitt asserts, this same Italian or French metre of ten or eleven syllables (our present heroic verse}, becomes very strong. Moreover, if Chaucer's verse be not constructed upon the prin- ciple of syllabical as well as accentual regularity, when was this principle, which is now the law and universal practice of our poe- try, introduced ? It will not be denied to have been completely established ever since the language acquired in all material re- spects its present form and pronunciation, — that is to say, at least since the middle of the sixteenth century : if it was not by Chau- cer at the end of the fourteenth, by whom among his followers in the course of the next hundred and fifty years was it first ex- emplified ? At present it is sufficient to say that no one of his successors throughout tills space has hinted that any improvement, any change, had been made in the construction of English verse since Chaucer wrote. On the contrary, he is generally recognized by them as the great reformer of our language and our poetry, and as their master and instructor in their common art. By his friend 1 In the Italian language, at least, the original and proper form of the verse ap- pears to have consisted of eleven syllables ; whence the generical name of the metre is endecasyllabo, and a verse of ten syllables is called endecasyllabo tronco, and one of twelve, endecasyllabo sdrucciolo. But these variations do not affect the prosodical character of the verse, which requires only that the tenth should be in all cases the last accented syllable. The modern English heroic, or, as we commonly call it, ten-syllabled verse, still admits of being extended by an eleventh or even a twelfth unaccented syllable ; although, from the constitution of our present language as to syllabic emphasis., such extension is with us the exception, not the rule, as it is (at least to tin' length of eleven syllables) in Italian. It may be doubted whether ( lhaucer's type or model line is to be considered as decasyllabic or hendecasyllabic; Tyrwhitt was of opinion that the greater number of his verses, when properly written and pronounced, would be found to consist of eleven syllables ; and this will semi probable, if we look to what is assumed, on the theory of his versification which we are considering, to have been the pronunciation of the language in his day. At the same time many of his lines evidently consist (even on this theory) Of ten syllables only; and such a construction of verse for ordinary purposes is become so much more agreeable to modern usage and taste that his poetry had Detter be BO read whenever it can be done, even at the cost of thereby s m tew hat violating the exactness oi the ancient pronunciation. GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 271 and disciple Occleve he is called " the first finder of our fair lan- gage." So Lydgate, in the next generation, celebrates him as his master — as " chief poet of Britain " — as — " he that was of making soverain, Whom all this lande of right ought prefer, Sith of our langage he was the lode-ster " — 'o~o~ and as — " The noble rhethor poet of Britain, That worthy was the laurer to have Of poetrye, and the palm attain ; That made first to distil and rain The gold dew-drops of speech and eloquence Into our tongue through his excellence, And found the flowres first of rhetoric Our rude speech only to enlumine," &c. A later writer, Gawin Douglas, sounds his praise as — " Venerable Chaucer, principal poet but 1 peer, Heavenly trumpet, orlege,' 2 and regulere; 3 In eloquence balm, condict, 4 and dial, Milky fountain, clear strand, and rose rial," 5 m a strain, it must be confessed, more remarkable for enthusiastic vehemence than for poetical inspiration. The learned, and at the same time elegant, Leland, in the next age describes him as the writer to whom his country's tongue owes all its beauties : — " Anglia Chaucerum veneratur nostra poetam, Cui veneres debet patria lingua suas ; " and again, in another tribute, as having first reduced the language into regular form : — " Linguam qui patriam redegit illam In formam." And such seems to have been the unbroken tradition down to Spenser, who, looking back through two centuries, hails his great predecessor as still the " well of English undefiled." If now we proceed to examine Chaucer's verse, do we find it actually characterized by this regularity, which indisputably has at 1 Without. 2 Horologe, clock or watch. 3 Regulator. 4 Condiment. 5 Royal. 272 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. least from within a century and a half of his time been the law of our poetry ? Not, if we assume that the English of Chaucer's time was read in all respects precisely like that of our own day. But are we warranted in assuming this ? "We know that some changes have taken place in the national pronunciation within a much shorter space. The accentuation of many words is different even in Shakspeare and his contemporaries from what it now is : even since the language has been what we may call settled, and the process of growth in it nearly stopped, there has still been observable a disposition in the accent or syllabic emphasis to pro- ject itself with more precipitation than formerly, to seize upon a more early enunciated part in dissyllables and other polysyllabic words than that to which it was wont to be attached. For exam- ple, we now always pronounce the word aspect with the accent on the first syllable ; in the time of Shakspeare it was always accented on the last. We now call a certain short composition an essay ; but only a century ago it was called an essay : " And Avrite next win- ter," says Pope, " more essays on man." Probably at an earlier period, when this change was going on more actively, it was part of that general process by which the Teutonic, or native, element in our language eventually, after a long struggle, acquired the as- cendency over the French element ; and, if so, for a time the accentuation of many words would be unfixed, or would oscillate between the two systems, — the French habit of reserving itself for the final syllable, and the native tendency to cling to a prior portion of the word. This appears to have been the case in Chau- cer's day : many words are manifestly in his poetry accented dif- ferently from what they are now (as is proved, upon either theory of his prosody, when they occur at the end of a verse), and in many also he seems to vary the accent — pronouncing, for instance, Ian gage in one line, langage in another — as suits his convenience. But again, under the tendencv to elision and abbreviation which is common to all lamniao-es in a state of growth, there can be no doubt that, in the progress of the English tongue, from its first subjection to literary cultivation in the middle of the thirteenth century to its final settlement in the middle of the seventeenth, it Jropt and lost altogether many short or unaccented syllables. Some of these, indeed, our poets still assert their right to revive in pressing circumstances : thus, though we now almost universally elide or suppress the e before the terminating d of the pieteritea GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 278 and past participles of our verbs, it is still sometimes called into life again to make a distinct syllable in verse. Two centuries ago, when perhaps it was generally heard in the common speech of the people (as it still is in some of our provincial dialects), and when its suppression in reading prose would probably have been accounted an irregularity, it was as often sounded in verse as not, 'and the license was probably considered to be taken when it was elided. The elision, when it took place, was generally marked by the omission of the vowel in the spelling. If we go back another cen- tury, w r e find the pronunciation of the termination as a distinct syllable to be clearly the rule and the prevailing practice, and the suppression of the vowel to be the rare exception. But even at so late a date as the end of the sixteenth and the beginning of the seventeenth century, other short vowels as well as this were still occasionally pronounced, as they were almost always written. Both the genitive or possessive singular and the nominative plu- ral of nouns were, down to this time, made by the addition not of s only, as now, but of es to the nominative singular ; and the es makes a distinct syllable sometimes in Shakspeare, and often in Spenser. In Chaucer, therefore, it is only what we should ex- pect that it should generally be so pronounced : it is evident that originally, or when it first appeared in the language, it always was,, and that the practice of running it and the preceding syllable to- gether, as we now do, has only been gradually introduced and established. Up to this point Tyrwhitt's theory of Chaucer's versification may be said to be admitted on all hands. It is allowed that in reading Chaucer's verses we should generally sound as distinct syllables the ed at the end of verbs and the es when it is the plu- ral or possessive termination of a noun ; and also that we must give many words a different accentuation from what they now pos- sess. But this is not enough to make the verse in all cases syllab- ically regular. The deficiencies of Chaucer's metres, Tyrwhitt contends, are to be chiefly supplied by the pronunciation of what he calls " the e feminine ; " by which he means the e which still terminates so many of our words, but is now either totally silent and ineffective in the pronunciation, or only lengthens or otherwise alters the sound of the preceding vowel — in either case is entirely inopera- tive upon the syllabication. Thus, such words as large, strange, vol. i. 35 274 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. time, &c. he conceives to be often dissyllables, and such woi'ds as Romaine, sentence, often trisyllables, in Chaucer. Some words also he holds to be lengthened a syllable by the intervention of such an e, now omitted both in speaking and writing, in the mid- dle — as in jug-e-ment, command-e-ment, voueh-e-safe, &c. Wallis, the distinguished mathematician, in his Grammar of the English Language (written in Latin, and published about the middle of the seventeenth century), had suggested, that the origin of this silent e probably was, that it had originally been pronour.ced, though somewhat obscurely, as a distinct syllable, like the French e feminine, which still counts for such in the prosody of that lan- guage. Wallis adds, that the surest proof of this is to be found in our old poets, with whom the said e sometimes makes a syllable, sometimes not, as the verse requires. " With respect to words imported directly from France," observes Tyrwhitt, " it is cer- tainly quite natural to suppose that for some time they retained their native pronunciation." " We have not indeed," he con- tinues, " so clear a proof of the original pronunciation of the Saxon part of our language ; but we know, from general observa- tion, that all changes of pronunciation are generally made by small degrees ; and, therefore, when we find that a great number of those words which in Chaucer's time ended in e originally ended in a, we may reasonably presume that our ancestors first passed from the broader sound of a to the thinner sound of e feminine, and not at once from a to e mute./ Besides, if the final e in such words was not pronounced, why was it added ? From the time that it has confessedly ceased to be pronounced it has been gradu- ally omitted in them, except where it may be supposed of use to lengthen or soften the preceding syllable, as in hope, name, &c. But according to the ancient orthography, it terminates many words of Saxon original where it cannot have been added for any such purpose, as herte, childe, olde, wilde, &c. In these, therefore, we must suppose that it was pronounced as e feminine, and made part of :i second syllable, and so, by, a parity of reason, in all others in which, :is in these, it appears to have been substituted for the Saxon a." From all this Tyrwhitt concludes that "the pronun- ciation of the e feminine is founded on the very nature of both the French and Saxon parts of our language," and therefore that "what is generally considered as an e mute, either at the end or in the middle of words, was anciently pronounced, but obscurely, GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 276 like the e feminine of the French." In a note, referring to an opinion expressed by Wallis, who, observing that the French very often suppressed this short e in their common speech, was led to think that the pronunciation of it would perhaps shortly be in all cases disused among them, as among ourselves, he adds : " The prediction has certainly failed ; but, notwithstanding, I will ven- ture to say that when it was made it was not unworthy of Wallis's sagacity. Unluckily for its success, a number of eminent writers happened at that very time to be growing up in France, whose works, having since been received as standards of style, must probably fix for many centuries the ancient usage of the e feminine in poetry, and of course give a considerable check to the natural progress of the language. If the age of Edward III. had been as favorable to letters as that of Louis XIV. ; if Chaucer and his contemporary poets had acquired the same authority here that Corneille, Moliere, Racine, and Boileau have obtained in France ;. if their works had been published by themselves, and perpetuated in a genuine state by printing ; I think it probable that the e femi- nine would still have preserved its place, in our poetical language at least, and certainly without any prejudice to the smoothness of our versification." In supporting his views by these reasons, Tyrwhitt avoids having recourse to any arguments that might be drawn from the practice of Chaucer himself, — that being in fact the matter in dispute ; but his main proposition, to the extent at least of the alleged capacity of the now silent final e to make a distinct syllable in Chaucer's day, appears to be demonstrated by some instances in the poet's Avorks. Thus, for example, in the following couplet from the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, unless the word Rome which ends the first line be pronounced as a dissyllable, there will be no rhyme : — " That straight was comen from the court of Rome ; Full loud he sang — Come hither, love, to me/' So again, in the Canon Yeoman's Tale, we have the following lines : — " And when this alchymister saw his time, Ris'th up, Sir Priest, quod he, and stondeth by me," in the first of which time must evidently in like manner be reao 276 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. as a word of two syllables. The same rhyme occurs in a quatrain in the Second Book of the Troilus and Creseide : — " All easily now, for the love of Marte, Quod Pandarus, for every thing hath time, So long abide, till that the night departe For all so sicker as thou liest here by me." Finding Rome and time to be clearly dissyllables in these passages, it would seem that we ought, as Tyrwhitt remarks (Note on Prol. to Cant. Tales, 674), to have no scruple so to pronounce them and other similar words wherever the metre requires it. Such is the outline of Tyrwhitt's theory, which, it must be ad- mitted, is at least extremely plausible, and which was long uni- versally assented to. Of late, however, it has been attacked from several quarters, and on various grounds. The question is one which is of fundamental and central importance in the history of our language and literature, and which therefore may not unprofit- ably detain us for a few pages more. The first person, we believe, who intimated a distinct dissent from Tyrwhitt's conclusions was the late Dr. Nott, in an elaborate Dissertation on the State of English Poetry before the Sixteenth Century, prefixed to his edition of The Works of the Earl of Sur- rey, 4to., Lon. 1815. Dr. Nott's object is to prove that the present system of our versification, the principle of which is syllabieal as well as accentual regularity, was the invention of Surrey in the middle of the sixteenth century, and that down to that date our verses of every kind were all what he is pleased to call " rhythmi- cal and not metrical ; " — that is, as he explains the expression, " they did not consist, as our verses do at present, of a certain number of feet, each foot of two syllables, but they were con- structed so as to be recited with a certain rhythmical cadence ; for which reason they seem to have been called Verses of cadence." (Diss. p. cli.) This nomenclature, at least, is unfortunate. The phrase "verse of cadence " is Lydgate's ; but, whatever may be its import, it certainly was not the only kind of verse known in Chaucer's time; for in his House of Fame (ii. 115), Chaucer himself is described in an address to him by the Eagle as having long been given to apply his wit " To make bokcs, snngis, and ditis. In rhyme or ellis in cadence." GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 277 It is remarkable that this passage, so clearly implying, as it would seem, that, besides verse of cadence, Chaucer was acquainted with a different sort of verse, which he distinguishes by the name of rhyme, should have escaped the attention of Dr. Nott, or should not be anywhere noticed by him. Further, it appears from a pas- sage in the Troilus and Creseide (v. 1796), which the learned editor does quote (Diss, clxiii.), that Chaucer himself considered his verse in that work to be metrical : it is where, after having thus gracefully dismissed his finished work, — " Go, little book ! go, little tragedy ! There God my Maker yet ere that I die So send me might to make some comedy : But, little book, make thou thee none envie, But subject ben unto all poesie, And kiss the steps whereas thou seest pace Of Virgil, Ovid, Homer, Lucan, Stace," — he proceeds in the next stanza to express his earnest hope that transcribers and reciters may be withheld from violating his metre : — " And, for there is so great diversity In English and in writing of our tongue, So pray I to God that none miswrite thee Ne thee mismetre for defaut of tongue." These passages may not be absolutely irreconcilable with the posi- tion that Chaucer's verse was not constructed upon the principle of syllabical regularity ; but they show that Dr. Nott has not been happy in the selection of his epithets when he affirms that the only kinds of verse known in Chaucer's time were all " verses of cadence " and all " not metrical." To speak, as he does, of the feet of our present verses as all consisting each of tivo syllables is another obvious error of expression. Dr. Nott maintains that Chaucer's supposed employment of the final and now silent e as a distinct syllable could not have been derived from the similar use of the e feminine in French poetry ; but he satisfies himself with a mere expression of his conviction on l his point. " It remains," he says, " yet to be proved that the use of the e feminine, such as is here contended for, was then estab- lished in French poetry. It seems clear to me that it was not ; 278 ENGLISH ] ] AND LANGUAGE. nor do I doubt but tha vill arrive at the same conclu- sion who will give bin ble to examine dispassionatelv the early French poets larly the manuscript copies of their works." It is t French verse was anciently written with less regi it afterwards acquired ; and in the earlier poets of that language, therefore, the prosodical use of what is called the e feminine may both seem and be somewhat capricious ; but it is a startling assumption that such use is alto- gether a modern invention. Upon this supposition it behoved Dr. Nott to point out when and by whom so extraordinary an innova- tion was introduced. It is strange he should not have perceived that his notion attributes to some comparatively recent French poet the very same thing which he properly objects to as unlikely to have happened in the case of Chaucer, — that, in his own words, "if Chaucer really did employ the e feminine in his versification in the manner supposed, it must have been a contrivance purely of his own invention," — "a supposition this," he adds, "which, I apprehend, few will be disposed to maintain." (Diss. p. cxliii.) But the supposition in question is one which nobody has ever advanced with regard to Chaucer. " It appears to me incredible," says Dr. Nott, a few sentences before, " that Chaucer, who was remarkable for his common sense and practical view of things, meaning to form a standard style in language, should begin by in- troducing a novel mode of pronunciation, which, being contrary to common usage, could not be generally adopted." This is an ab- surdity of the learned editor's own making. Tyrwhitt does not imagine that Chaucer introduced any novel mode of pronunciation ; he conceives that the pronunciation of the language found, accord- .ng to his view, in Chaucer's poetry was the common pronunciation of the time. If the poetry of Chaucer is to be so read, so un- doubtedly is that also of Langland, and Minot, and De Brunne, and Robert of Gloucester, and all our other early English poetry. What Chaucer introduced, and borrowed from the poetry of France or Italy, if he introduced or thence borrowed anything, was not the occasional pronunciation of the final e as a distinct syllable, but tin- general principle of metrical regularity, to which he adapted this and all the other points of the ancient and established national mode of speech. What particular advantage could he have gained by merely multiplying in this or in any other way the number of syllables in the language ? It is an odd notion for Dr. Nott tc GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 279 take up that Chaucer's only object in his supposed reformation of our verse was to contrive some ready way of always spinning out his line into ten or eleven syllables. A method of reducing it within those dimensions would have been found equally convenient, if he had ever thought of resorting to any such unheard of and absurd devices. But it is not necessary for the refutation of the claim set up by Dr. Nott in favor of the Earl of Surrey, that we should suppose Chaucer to have made any change whatever in the principles of English versification. If it be only admitted that his verses are constructed upon the principle of syllabical regularity, it does not matter, for this question, whether those of his predecessors are so or not. His versification may surpass theirs only by this common principle being applied by him with more care, skill, and success than it was by them. He may have made no innovation in the structure of our verse whatever, and borrowed nothing from the poets of France or Italy except only their superior correctness and elegance. The only one of Dr. Nott's arguments which has much or indeed any apparent force is that which he draws from the manner in which all our early poetry, that of Chaucer included, is stated to be written in the ancient manuscripts. " In all those MSS.," he says, " the caesura in the middle, and the pause at the end of the line, are pointed out with a precision that leaves no room for con- jecture. The points or marks made rise of have no reference whatever to punctuation : they never occur but at the place of caesura in the middle of the line, or at the pause at the end of it ; and are often made with red paint, the better to catch the eye. When the mark of caesura is omitted, an interval is generally left in the middle of the line, between the two hemistichs. The second hemistich frequently begins with a capital, though the introduction of a capital there, instead of assisting, often confuses the sense." (Diss. p. clii.) " An impartial consideration of the subject," he afterwards observes, " and a reference to good MSS., must, I think, lead us to conclude that Chaucer had not a metrical system of numbers in contemplation ; but that, on the contrary, he de- signed his verses to be read, like those of all his contemporaries, with a caesura and rhythmical cadence." (Id., p. clix.) Again, speaking particularly of the manuscripts of Chaucer's poems, he says, " In these MSS. either the caesura, or the pause at the end of the line, and sometimes both the pause and the caesura, are 280 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. almost always noted, and that in so careful a manner as makes it questionable whether there be any MS. of good date and authority in which one or both of them is not noted, either by a point or a virgule ; though the virgule or point may in some instances have been obliterated. Why this particularity, which must have been designed to answer some practical purpose, should not have been noticed by the several editors of Chaucer's works, I am at a loss to say. The omission is the more remarkable, as it could not have escaped observation that all the MSS. agree in fixing the caesura in every line, with hardly any variation, at the same place. This is another evident mark of design, amounting to little less than proof that Chaucer not only meant his verses to be rhythmical, but did all he could to settle what their rhythm should be." (Id., p. clxiii.) Finally, he remarks on the subject of the caesura: — " Its use, and the object proposed by it, is confirmed by the appearance of the early printed editions of Chaucer's works. In the editions subsequent to 1532 the caesura is almost entirely disused ; if it was retained, it seems to have been retained bv accident. The reason is obvious. Our English versification had then become metrical. The caesura was, therefore, no longer wanted for general purposes; it was consequently omitted, though, strictly speaking, in some works it ought to have been retained. But in the editions pre- \ ions to 1532 the case was different. The rhythmical cadence was then still in use, and therefore the division of the hemistich was still to be continued." (Id., p. clxix.) Surrey's poems were first printed in 1557 ; but there were editions of Chaucer in 1542, 1546, and 1555, which must be understood according; to this statement to be all without the caesura. Would it not appear, then, that metri- cal verse, upon Dr. Nott's own showing, had been introduced from fifteen to twenty-five years before Surrey's poems were given to the world? It is true they were written some years before, for Surrey was put to death in January 1547 ; but they can hardly have been supposed to have been already so widely diffused in manuscript as to have revolutionized the national versification. When the Chaucer of 1542, the first edition without the caesura, was published, Surrey, according to the common account, was not more than twenty-three or twenty-four years old. Even Dr. Nott iloes nut pretend that he was more than twenty-six. 1 What Dr. Nott calls the pause at the end of the hne seems tc 1 See Memoir, prefixed to Works, p. x. GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 281 have nothing to do with the question he raises in regard to the nature of Chaucer's versification. Of course, it is admitted upon either, and must be admitted upon any, system that a line is such an integral section as maybe properly separated by a point or other divisional mark, if it be thought necessary. As poetry is now writ- ten, nothing of the kind is required; the limits of the line or verse cannot be more distinctly indicated than they are by each being kept standing by itself; and it is not easy to see what practical purpose could be contemplated by retaining the points at the end of the line after this method was introduced. Probably it was merely a retention from habit of a usage to which transcribers and readers had become accustomed, and which was no doubt very ser- viceable while verse was written continuously like prose, as it gen- erally or always was in the earliest era of our language. We may, therefore, put aside altogether so much of the above statement as refers to this final point or pause. Let us see, then, how the fact stands as to the other and only important mark, that of the caesura, as Dr. Nott calls it, in the middle of each verse. He sets out by telling us that both the caesura in the middle and the pause at the end of the line are always pointed out with perfect precision ; but this broad assertion is very far from being adhered to when he comes to specify particulars. The next form in which we have the statement is, that, " when the mark of caesura is omitted, an interval is generally left in the middle of the line." Then, in still more qualified phrase, we are informed that in the manuscripts of Chaucer's poetry "either the caesura or the pause at the end of the line, and sometimes both, are almost always noted." He persists, however, in maintaining the careful manner in which this notation of the pause or pauses has been attended to in all good manuscripts, although he admits that the virgule or point may in some instances have been obliterated ; and he affirms, as we have seen, (though not very consistently with his previous admission of its being only in some manuscripts that the caesura is noted at all,) " that all the manuscripts [of Chaucer] agree in fixing the caesura, in every line, with hardly any variation, at the same place." Let us now turn to his examples. One will suffice to show how far his statements are borne out, even in their most limited form. The first seven lines of the Canterbury Tales are professed to be given from three different manuscripts. Of one of these, the Lansdowne MS. 907, the account given is, that in this passage the vol. i. 36 282 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. caesura or middle pause is not marked at all, either by point or vir- gule ; but that elsewhere we have the lines cut, not uniformly into two portions by a single virgule, but sometimes into two, sometimes into three, sometimes into four portions by a succession of such strokes. This is a phenomenon of which Dr. Nott's theory seems to take no account. All he has to say in regard to it is, that the frequent recurrence of the virgule may be suspected to be intended " to mark some rules in recitation, with which we now are unac- quainted." The two other manuscripts, Harl. MSS. 1758 and 7333, as here quoted, differ as to the place of the middle pause in the very first line ; and in three of the remaining six lines where the one has only a point the othsr has both a point and a virgule, in a fourth verse only a virgule, and in a fifth a point followed by a capital letter. But it is hard to say what dependence can be safely placed even upon this apparent amount of agreement. It so happens that the same passage has been printed from the same two manuscripts by Mr. Guest in his History of English Rhythms (2 vols. 8vo., London, 1838, vol. i., p. 215), and the variations between his transcripts and those of Dr. Nott are not a little start- ling. Dr. Nott evidently did not intend to preserve the old spell- ing, although for the object he had here in view that would have been almost necessary ; but some of the liberties he appears to have taken go far beyond the reformation of the antique verse in that particular. In his extract from the MS. 1758, which extends to eight verses, in the first line he might perhaps defend his change of wit into with, and of swote (for sweet) into soote ; in the third line, vain instead of veyne (or vein) is probably a typographical erratum ; in the fourth, the substitution of vertu for virtue, though not very intelligible, and indeed the very reverse of what might have been expected, is still not a very wide deviation ; but the printing of had for hath in the second line is an instance of unpar- donable inattention ; and to transform the eighth line from " Into the ram his half cours ronne." as it stands in Mr. Guest's transcript, into " Hath in the Ram . his half course y-run." Li proceeding to so great a length as to destroy all reliance upon such a mode of pretending to exhibit the testimony of ancient manuscripts, or upon any conclusions so supported. But the dis- crepancies between the two transcripts of the other MS. bear more GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 283 upon the question of the middle pause or caesura ; for, according to Mr. Guest's exhibition of this text, there is in three of the seven lines, the first, second, and sixth, actually no mark of any such pause at all. Mr. Guest states that in this manuscript " the pause, when inserted, is often nothing more than a mere scratch of the pen ; " and, so far from regarding either manuscript as a good one, or as carefully written in regard to the divisional point, he described " the occasional omission or misplacing of the dot as perfectly in keeping with the general inaccuracy " of both. His extract extends to eighteen lines ; and in regard to eight of the ten not already examined we are enabled to compare the two Harleian MSS. with another then belonging to the Marquess of Stafford, of which a transcript to that extent is given by Dr. Nott. Passing over other differences, we find that in the Harl. MS. 7333, the middle pause is wanting altogether in the second, fourth, and eighth ; that it is also wanting in the third of the Stafford MS. ; and that in the fifth it is placed differently in all the three MSS. It is also want- ing in the ninth fine in the Harl. MS. 1758. It seems plain that of such confusion and uncertainty as this little or nothing can be made, and that any attempt to exhibit, in printing Chaucer's poetry, the caesura or middle pause in each verse as noted in the manuscripts would be impracticable, even if it were ever so important. But is this caesural mark, in fact, of any importance in determining the nature of Chaucer's versifica- tion ? Mr. Guest holds, as well as Dr. Nott, that each line in Chaucer consists properly of two parts, which the caesural mark was designed to indicate : " Still, as it seems to me," he observes, after describing the irregularity with which this mark is introduced in the manuscripts, " we can only come to one conclusion in exam- ining these manuscripts ; namely, that each verse was looked upon as made up of two sections, precisely in the same way as the allit- erative couplet of the Anglo-Saxons." 1 Yet Mr. Guest finds no difficulty in reconciling with the principles of syllabical rhythm this fact of the division of each verse by the caesural mark, which Dr. Nott regards as demonstrative of the rhythm being not syllabi- cal but only accentual. Nor is there, in truth, anything in the caesura to decide the mat- ter either one way or the other. The middle pause, as found in the manuscripts of Chaucer, appears to be as consistent with the 1 History of English Rhythms, i. 216. !-84 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. syllabical as with tlie merely accentual scanning of the verse, if the right text be followed. For example, in printing the first eigh- teen lines of the Canterbury Tales with accentual marks, to show in what manner the verse was, as he apprehends, recited, Dr. Nott gives the first line thus : — " When that April | with his shoures soote ; " marking the three syllables, when, with, and show as long, the last syllable of April and the word soote with a grave accent, and the syllables that, his, and es (of shoures') as short ; the first syllable of April being left without any mark. It is not very clear what all the parts of this apparatus of notation are intended to mean ; but certainly, however the words so set down may be meant to be read or sung, they are not reducible to the regular metre of our modern heroic verse. It is by no means either certain or probable, however, that when is Chaucer's word ; the reading adopted by Tyrwhitt is whanne, which he regards as a dissyllable, and he has as good a right to select that form, which occurs in some of the manuscripts, as Dr. Nott has to select the monosyllabic form, when, or whan, from other manuscripts, for the purposes of his theory. The next five lines are every one of them, even as printed by Dr. Nott, of perfect metrical regularity ; the cassura is also where it should be upon either system ; the only thing that interferes with their being read like any modern English heroic verse is Dr. Nott's own notation of their supposed temporal and accentual character. All that is wanting to make the seventh line a correct modern verse, is to be read younge (in two syllables) with Tyrwhitt, in- stead of young with Nott, there being manuscript authority for both forms. The eighth line Dr. Nott prints — " Hath in the Ram | half his course y-run." We doubt whether there be any authority for this form of the verse ; but, at any rate, Tyrwhitt' s form, " Hath in the Bam his halfe cours y-ronne" (where halfe is a dissyllable), is supported by the Harleian MS. 7333. In the ninth line Nott obtains his text by changing the dissyllabic amale of both the Harleian MSS. into the modern mono- syllable small. The next three lines are equally regular upon either system. The thirteenth line will scan metrically, even aa GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 265 given by Nott, provided we reckon strange a dissyllable ; but we do not know where he has got his text : it does not agree witl either of the Haideian MSS., and as little with the Stafford MS as exhibited by himself in another page. The last five lines, again, are regular upon both systems. Upon the whole it does not appear that the cassural mark of the manuscripts can be regarded as indicating or proving, at the most, anything more than that, by the rule of the verse, the place where it fell should always be at the termination and never in the middle of a word — a rule which is also generally, though not always, observed in our modern prosody. As far as can be ascertained, the two parts into which, when it is employed, it divides each of Chaucer's lines, are as much the hemistichs of what Dr. Nott calls a metrical, as of what he calls a merely rhythmical, verse. We do not understand what notion of the harmony of English verse can have led Dr. Nott to quote the following line from the Canterbury Tales — " In her is high beauty withouten pride " — as one which, unless read rhythmically (as he calls it), has no prin- ciple of harmony at all, even if we read beauty with the accent on the last syllable. It is in fact a perfectly correct heroic verse according to the strictest laws of our modern prosody. Yet he asserts that, if Chaucer had followed that prosody, he would un- questionably have written the verse — " In her high beauty is withouten pride " — thus making it a perfect Iambic decasyllabic line, "by the transpo- sition of a single word." Let the reader who has any feeling of Chaucer's direct, natural, manly diction, or even of the most com- mon proprieties of speech, decide. Yet upon this single instance Dr. Nott lays it down that a large proportion of Chaucer's verses cannot be read metrically " without doing the utmost violence to our language ; all which verses are harmonious as verses of cadence, if read with the cassura rhythmically ; " and further, that: all those verses might easily, by a slight transposition, have been reduced to the pure Iambic decasyllabic measure, "if Chaucer had either known that mode of versification, or intended to have adopted it." Such an assertion, by the by, would be a somewhat bold one, even if a hundred instances were quoted instead of one, and those really instances in point. 286 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. While insisting that Chaucer's verses are constructed upon what he describes as the rhythmical principle, which he has begun by defining as independent of the number of feet or syllables, Dr. Nott, strangely enough, admits that the chief improvement which Chaucer made in our versification was the introduction of the line of ten syllables (Diss. p. clviii.) ; and he afterwards repeatedly calls his verses " Decasyllabic " (or, as he more usually chooses to ex- press himself, " Decasyllables "). But he cannot possibly mean that Chaucer's versification is, upon his theory, really syllabically, any more than that it is accentually, correct, according to our modern notions. In fact, of the eighteen lines which he has printed from the commencement of the Canterbury Tales, w to show in what manner rhythmical Decasyllabic verses were re- cited," no fewer than seven are, according to his own notation, not decasyllabic at all : they are verses of nine syllables (sometimes with an unaccented syllable at the end, which counts for nothing in prosody), not of ten. 1 Finally, before dismissing Dr. Nott and his theory, we may re- mark that no attempt is made by him or it to meet the apparently conclusive proof of the now silent final e having been enunciable as a distinct syllable in Chaucer's age derived from the occurrence of such rhymes as Ro-me and to me, ti-me and by me. Indeed he expressly states (Diss. p. clxxxiii. note), that with the exception of a passage in Occleve, of which he shows that the received reading is most probably incorrect (and which, by the by, would scarcely have been in point at any rate), he had nowhere met with a single rhyme " to justify the notion that the final e, which we properly call the e mute, was ever pronounced." 1 Either from a misprint or from something in his system of notation which is not explained, it is difficult with regard to certain of these lines to say in what manner Dr. Nott intends that they should he read. For instance, in the couplet (as he prints it), " And pal mores to seeken strange strondes, To serve halwes couth in sundry londes," the appearance of ten syllables is given to each of the two lines by throwing a double accent upon the terminating words strondes, Idndes — as if the rhyme lay in the des. But it is plain that, if strondes and londes are to he accounted dissyllables, we have here what is called a double rhyme — which can only count as one syllable in the measuri — just as in the immediately preceding couplet, which Dr. Nott himself prints — " So pricketh tlicm nature in their courages; Then longer] folk to go on pilgrimages." GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 287 More recently, however, Tyrwhitt's main principle for the scan ning of Chaucer's verse, the occasional pronunciation of this now mute final e, has been attacked, or at least denounced, on other grounds and by a higher authority. The late Mr. Richard Price, in his edition of Warton's History of English Poetry (4 vols. 8vo. Lon. 1824), assigns an origin to this termination which he con- siders to be altogether irreconcilable with Tyrwhitt's view of it. The change of orthography from the Anglo-Saxon forms which has taken place in a numerous class of our English words, Mr. Price maintains, " has arisen solely from the abolition of the accen- tual marks which distinguish the long and short syllables." "As a substitute for the former," he says, " the Norman scribes, or at least the disciples of the Norman school of writing, had recourse to the analogy which governed the French language ; and, to avoid the confusion which would have sprung from observing the same form in writing a certain number of letters differently enounced and bear- ing a different meaning, they elongated the word, or attached as it were an accent instead of superscribing it. From hence has ema- nated an extensive list of terms having final e's and duplicate con- sonants ; which were no more the representatives of additional syllables than the acute or grave accent in the Greek language is a mark of metrical quantity." And he adds in a note, — " The converse of this can only be maintained under an assumption that the Anglo-Saxon words of one syllable multiplied their numbers after the Conquest, and in some succeeding century subsided into their primitive simplicity." x Again, he observes in another place, " The Anglo-Saxon & was pronounced like the Danish aa, the Swedish a, or our modern o in more, fore, &c. The strong intona- tion given to. the words in which it occurred would strike a Nor- man ear as indicating the same orthography that marked the long syllables of his native tongue, and he would accordingly write them with an e final. It is from this cause that we find har, sar, hat, bat, wa, an, ban, stan, &c, written hore (hore), sore, bote (hot), bote (boat), woe, one, bone, stone, some of which have been retained. The same principle of elongation was extended to all the Anglo-Saxon vowels that were accentuated ; such as re"c, reke (reek), Iff, life, gode, gode (good), scur, shure (showei*) ; and hence the majority of those e's mute upon which Mr. Tyr- whitt has expended so much unfounded speculation." 2 And the 1 Preface to Warton, p. (114). 2 Note to Warton, Vol. I. p. c. ii. 288 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. complete development of these doctrines is promised in a supple- mentary volume, which was announced under the title of Illustra- tions of Warton's History of English Poetry, containing [among other things] an examination of Mr. Tyrwhitt's Essay on the Lanirnaoe and Versification of Chaucer : but which has never appeared. Upon this view of the matter let us hear a living writer who must be regarded as the highest authority on the earlier forms of the language. " The most frequent vowel endings of Anglo-Saxon substantives,"' says Mr. Guest (Hist, of Eng. Rhythms, i. 26), " were «, e, u. All the three were in the fourteenth century represented by the e final." And afterwards, in explaining the origin of our present mode of indicating the long quantity of a vowel preceding a single consonant by the annexation of an e, he observes (Id. p. 108) : — " In the Anglo-Saxon there was a great number of words which had, as it were, two forms : one ending in a consonant, the other in a vowel. In the time of Chaucer all the different vowel endings were represented by the e final ; and so great is the number of words which this writer uses, sometimes as monosyllables, and sometimes as dissyllables, with the addition of the e, that he has bsen accused of adding to the number of his syl- lables whenever it suited the convenience of his rhythm. In his works we find hert and kerte, bed and bedde, erth and erthe, &c. In the Anglo-Saxon we find corresponding duplicates, the additional syllable giving to the noun, in almost every case, a new declension, and in most a new gender. In some few cases the final e had become mute even before the time of Chaucer, and was wholly lost in the period which elapsed between his death and the accession of the Tudors. Still, however, it has its ground in our manuscripts, and ure our, rose a rose, &c, though pronounced as monosyllables, were still written according to the old spelling. Hence it came gradu- ally to be considered as a rule, that when a syllable ended in a single consonant and mute e the vowel was Ions." " Such," con- eludes Mr. Guest, " is clearly the origin of this very peculiar mode of indicating the long vowel : and it seems to me so obvious, that 1 always felt surprised at the many and various opinions that have been hazarded upon the subject. \Yi- could not expect much in- formation from men who, like Tyrwhitt, were avowedly ignorant ;>i' the early state of our language ; but even Ilickes had his loubts whether the fnal e of the Anglo-Saxon words were mute GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 289 or vocal ; and Rask, notwithstanding his triumph over that far superior scholar, has fallen into this his greatest blunder. Price, whose good sense does not often fail him, supposes this mode of spelling to be the work of the Norman, and the same as the ' or- thography that marked the long syllables of his native tongue.' As if the e final were mute in Norman French ! ' Throughout his work, Mr. Guest assumes the syllabic quality of the final e in Chaucer's verse, exactly as is done by Tyrwhitt. " After the death of Chaucer," he asserts (vol. i. p. 80), " the final e, so com- monly used by that poet and his contemporaries, fell into disuse. Hence many dissyllables became words of one syllable, mone be- came moon, and sunne sun ; and the compounds into which they entered were curtailed of a syllable." If it be meant that the change spoken of took place immediately or very soon after the death of Chaucer, the assertion is one which it would probably be somewhat difficult to make good. We should doubt if the new pronunciation was generally introduced before the commencement of the sixteenth century. 1 1 An important view of the final e in the English of the period from the Norman Conquest clown at least to the end of the fourteenth century has been for the first time propounded by Mr. Guest. He believes that it has, at least in many cases, a grammatical, as well as a prosodical, value ; that it is the remnant of or substitute for the vowel of inflection belonging to the original form of the language. Thus, in the expression shoures sote (showers sweet), he holds the e of sote to be the sign of the plural ; and that of rote in the expression to the rote (to the root_) to be the distinctive termination of the dative singular. In other cases, again, he conceives that the e distinguishes what is called (as in modern German) the definite from the indefinite form of the adjective ; in others, the adverb from the adjective (brighte, for example, being the former, equivalent to our modern brightly, bright the latter). See his English Rhythms, i. 29-34. It is, there can be little doubt, this short c, we may here remark, commuted into a short i, which we have in such modern forms as handicraft and handiwork. They are other forms of handcraft and handwork (both recently, if not still, belonging to the language), not of handy craft and handy work, which would be expressions having a different meaning altogether. A misunder- standing of this matter is probably what has led to the absurd neologism which has been current on title-pages for the last few years, first employed by a distinguished noble author (of much higher authority in legal than in linguistic learning), and forthwith adopted, of course, by the numerous class to whom anything and every- thing new recommends itself as certain to be right — the same who some years before at once and unanimously took to writing Dovor instead of Dover on no better ground than that the former spelling had appeared painted on some stage-coach — the neologism which turns our perfectly correct old Handbook (the Ilandbuch of the Germans) into Handy Book I Are we to have also handy ball, and handy barrow, and handy basket, and handy breadth, and handy maiden ? It is the same as if we were to call a sunbeam a sunny beam, or a f re-shovel a fiery shovel, or a hairbrush a hairy brush, yt a head-dress a heady dress. VOL. I. 37 290 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. A fact elsewhere noticed by Mr. Guest, we may just remark, although not adduced by him for that purpose, meets Mr. Price's objection about the unlikelihood or impossibility of many Anglo- Saxon monosyllables having after the Conquest been elongated into dissyllables, and having then in some succeeding century reverted to their original monosyllabic condition. If it were necessary to make such an assumption as this in order to vindi- cate Tyrwhitt's theory of Chaucer's versification, the thing sup- posed is no more than what has actually happened. As Mr. Guest has observed (vol. i. p. 40), " The dissyllables containing y and w seem to have been once so numerous in our language, that many words, both English and foreign, were adapted to their pronuncia- tion, and thus gained a syllable : scur A. S. became shower, and fieur Fr. became flower. Change of pronunciation has again re- duced them to their oritrinal dimensions." On the whole, then, we may say that substantially Tyrwhitt's theory remains unshaken ; and we shall, in our extracts, assume that the mode proposed by him of reading the verse of Chaucer and his contemporaries is the true one. The reader, to whom it may be new, will find, after a very little practice, that the ear soon gets accustomed to the peculiarities of pronunciation re- quired ; and the slight air of archaism which they impart rather adds to the effect of the poetry, so that we come to prefer the retention of these obsolete forms to any substitution, however deli- cately made, that would aim at modernizino- it or makino- it more intelligible. We shall not, however, in our transcripts, attempt to indicate the pronunciation by any accentual or other marks ; being of opinion with Tyrwhitt that " a reader who cannot perform such operations for himself had better not trouble his head about the versification of Chaucer." " The notion, probably, which most people have of Chaucer," to borrow a few sentences of what w,e have written elsewhere, " is merely that he was a remarkably good poet for his day ; but that, both from his lanmiao-e having become obsolete, and from the ad- vancement which we have since made in poetical taste and skill, he may now be considered as fairly dead and buried in a literary, as well as in a literal, sense. This, we suspect, is the common belief even of educated persons and of scholars who have not ac- tually made acquaintance with Chaucer, but know him only by GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 291 name or by sight ; — by that antique-sounding dissyllable that seems to belong to another nation and tongue, as well as to another age ; and by that strange costume of diction, grammar, and spelling, in which his thoughts are clothed, fluttering about them, as it appears to do, like the rags upon a scarecrow. "Now, instead of tin's, the poetry of Chaucer is really, in all essential respects, about the greenest and freshest in our language. We have some higher poetry than Chaucer's — poetry that has more of the character of a revelation, or a voice from another world : we have none in which there is either a more abounding or a more bounding spirit of life, a truer or fuller natural inspira- tion. He may be said to verify, in another sense, the remark of Bacon, that what we commonly call antiquity was really the youth of the world : his poetry seems to breathe of a time when human- ity was younger and more joyous-hearted than it now is. Un- doubtedly he had an advantage as to this matter, in having been the first great poet of his country. Occupying this position, he stands in some degree between each of his successors and nature. The sire of a nation's minstrelsy is of necessity, though it may be unconsciously, regarded by all who come after him as almost a portion of nature, — as one whose utterances are not so much the echo of hers as in very deed her own living voice, — carrying in them a spirit as original and divine as the music of her running brooks, or of her breezes among the leaves. And there is not wanting something of reason in this idolatry. It is he alone who has conversed with nature directly, and without an inter- preter, — who has looked upon the glory of her countenance unveiled, and received upon his heart the perfect image of what she is. Succeeding poets, by reason of his intervention, and that imitation of him into which, in a greater or less degree, they are of necessity drawn, see her only, as it were, wrapt in hazy and metamorphosing adornments, which human hands have woven for her, and are prevented from perfectly discerning the outline and the movements of her form by that encumbering investiture. They are the fallen race, who have been banished from the imme- diate presence of the divinity, and have been left only to conjec- ture from afar off the brightness of that majesty which sits throned to them behind impenetrable clouds: he is the First Man, who has seen God walking in the garden, and communod with him face to Pace. 292 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. " But Chaucer is the Homer of his country, not only as havino been the earliest of her poets (deserving to be so called), but also ;is being still one of her greatest. The names of Spenser, of Shakspeare, and of Milton are the only other names that can be placed on the same line with his. " His poetry exhibits, in as remarkable a degree perhaps as any other in any language, an intermixture and combination of Avhat are usually deemed the most opposite excellences. Great poet as he is, we might almost say of him that his genius has as much about it of the spirit of prose as of poetry, and that, if he had not sung so admirably as he has done of flowery meadows, and sum- mer skies, and gorgeous ceremonials, and high or tender passions, and the other themes over which the imagination loves best to pour her vivifying light, he would have won to himself the renown of a Montaigne or a Swift by the originality and penetrating sagacity of his observations on ordinary life, his insight into mo- tives aiid character, the richness and peculiarity of his humor, the sharp edge of his satire, and the propriety, flexibility, and exquisite expressiveness of his refined yet natural diction. Even like the varied visible creation around us, his poetry too has its earth, its sea, and its sky, and all the ' sweet vicissitudes ' of each. Here you have the clear-eyed observer of man as he is, catching ' the manners living as they rise,' and fixing them in pictures where not their minutest lineament is or ever can be lost : here he is the inspired dreamer, by whom earth and all its realities are forgotten, as his spirit soars and sings in the finer air and amid the diviner beauty of some far-off world of its own. Now the riotous verse rings loud with the turbulence of human merriment and laughter, easting from it, as it dashes on its way, flash after flash of all the forms of wit and comedy; now it is the tranquillizing companion- ship of the sights and sounds of inanimate nature of which the poet's heart is full, — the springing herbage, and the dew-drops on the leaf, and the rivulets glad beneath the morning ray and dan- cing to their own simple music. From mere narrative and playful humor up to the heights of imaginative and impassioned song, his genius has exercised itself in all styles of poetry, and won imper- ishable laurels in all." 1 It has been commonly believed that one of the chief sources from which Chaucer drew both the form and the spirit of his i Printing Machine, No. 37 (1835). GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 293 poetry was the recent and contemporary poetry of Italy — that eldest portion of what is properly called the literature of modern Europe, the produce of the genius of Petrarch and Boccaccio and their predecessor and master, Dante. But, although this may have been the case, it is by no means certain that it was so ; and some circumstances seem to make it rather improbable that Chau- cer was a reader or student of Italian. Of those of his poems which have been supposed to be translations from the Italian, it must be considered very doubtful if any one was really derived by him from that language. The story of his Palamon and Arcite, which, as the Knight's Tale, begins the Canterbury Tales, but which either in its present or another form appears to have been originally composed as a separate work, is substantially the same with that of Boccaccio's heroic poem in twelve books entitled Le Teseide, — a fact which, we believe, was first pointed out by War- ton. But an examination of the two poems leads rather to the conclusion that they are both founded upon a common original than that the one was taken frdm the other. Boccaccio's poem extends to about 12,000 octosyllabic, Chaucer's to not many more than 2000 decasyllabic, verses ; and not only is the story in the one much less detailed than in the other, but the two versions differ in some of the main circumstances. 1 Chaucer, moreover, nowhere mentions Boccaccio as his original; on the contrary, as Warton has himself noticed, he professes to draw his materials, not from the works of any contemporary, but from " olde Stories," and " olde bookes that all this story telleth more plain." 2 Tyrwhitt, too, while holding, as well as Warton, that Chaucer's original was Boccaccio, admits that the latter was in all probability not the inventor of the story. 3 Boccaccio himself, in a letter relating to his poem, describes the story as very ancient, and as existing in what he calls Latino volgare, by which he may mean rather the Provencal than the Italian. 4 In fact, as both Warton and Tyr- 1 See this pointed out by Dr. Nott (who nevertheless assumes the one poem to be a translation from the other), in a note to his Dissertation on the State of English Poetry before the Sixteenth Century, p. eclxxiv. 2 Warton's Hist. Eng. Poetry, ii. 179. 3 Introductory Discourse to Canterbury Tales, Note (13). 4 The letter is addressed to his mistress (La Fiametta), Mary of Aragon, a natural daughter of Robert king of Naples. " Trovata," he says, " una antichissima storia, ed al piii delle genti non manifesta, in Latino volgare," &c. The expression herf 294 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. whitt have shown, there is reason to believe that it had previously been one of the themes of romantic poetiy in various languages. The passages pointed out by Tyrwhitt in his notes to Chaucer's poem, as translated or imitated from that of Boccaccio, are few and insignificant, and the resemblances they present would be suffi- ciently accounted for on the supposition of both writers having drawn from a common source. Nearly the same observations apply to the supposed obligations of Chaucer in his Troilus and Creseide to another poetical work of Boccaccio's, his Filostrato. The discovery of these was first announced by Tyrwhitt in his Essay prefixed to the Canterbury Tales. But Chaucer himself tells us (ii. 14) that he translates his poem " out of Latin " ; and in other passages (i. 894, and v. 1653) he expressly declares his "auctor," or author, to be named Lollius. In a note to the Par- son's Tale, in the Canterbury Tales, Tyrwhitt assumes that Lollius is another name for Boccaccio, but how this should be he confesses himself unable to explain. In his Glossary (a later publication) he merely describes Lollius as " a writer from whom Chaucer pro- fesses to have translated his poem of Troilus and Creseide," add- ing, " I have not been able to find any further account of him." It is remarkable that he should omit to notice that Lollius is men- tioned by Chaucer in another poem, his House of Fame (iii. 378), as one of the writers of the Trojan story, along with Homer, Dares Phrygius, Livy (whom he calls Titus), Guido of Colonna, and " English Galfrid," that is, Geoffrey of Monmouth. The only writer of the name of Lollius of whom anything is now known appears to be Lollius Urbicus, who is stated to have lived in the third century, and to have composed a history of his own time, which, however, no longer exists. 1 But our ignorance of has a curious resemblance to the words used by Chaucer in enumerating his own works in the Legende of Good Women, v. 420, — " He made the boke that hight the House of Fame, &c. And all the love of Palamon and Areite Of Thebes, though the story is knowen lite." Tyrwhitfs interpretation of these last words is, that they seem to imply that the poem to which they allude, the Palamon and Areite (as first composed), had not made itself very popular. Both he and Warton understand the Latino volgare as meaning the Italian language in this passage of the letter to La Fiametta, as w T ell us in a stanza which he quotes from the Teseide in Discourse, Note (9). 1 See Warton, Hist. Eng. Poetry, ii. 220; and Vossius, de Historicis Latinis, ed. 1661, p. 176. GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 2y5 who Chaucer's Lollius was does not entitle us to assume that it is Boccaccio whom he designates by that name. Besides, the two poems have only that general resemblance which would result from then subject being the same, and their having been founded upon a common original. Tyrwhitt (note to Parson's Tale), while he insists that the fact of the one beino; borrowed from the other " is evident, not only from the fable and characters, which are the same in both poems, but also from a number of passages in the English which are literally translated from the Italian," admits that " at the same time there are several long passages, and even episodes, in the Troilus of which there are no traces in the Filos- trato ; ' : and Warton makes the same statement almost in the same words. 1 Tyrwhitt acknowledges elsewhere, too, that the form of Chaucer's stanza in the Troilus does not appear ever to have been used by Boccaccio, nor does he profess to have been able to find such a stanza in any early Italian poetry. 2 The only other composition of Chaucer's for which he can be imagined to have had an Italian original is his Clerk's Tale in the Canterbury Tales, the matchless story of Griselda. This is one of the stories of the Decameron ; but it was not from Boccaccio's Italian that Chaucer took it, but from Petrarch's Latin, as he must be under- stood to intimate in the Prologue, where he says, or makes the narrator say, — " I woll you tell a tale which that I Learned at Padowe of a worthy clerk, As preved by his wordes and his werk : He is now dead and nailed in his chest ; I pray to God so yeve his soule rest. Francis Petrarch, the laureat poet, Highte this clerk, whose rhethoricke sweet Enlumined all Itaille of poetrie." Petrarch's Latin translation of Boccaccio's tale is, as Tyrwhitt states, printed in all the editions of his works, under the title of De Obedientia et Fide TJxoria Mythologia (a Myth on Wifely Obedience find Faithfulness). 3 But, indeed, Chaucer may not have even had Petrarch's translation before him ; for Petrarch, in his letter to 1 Hist. Eng. Poetry, ii. p. 221, note. 2 Essay, § 9. 3 It is strange that Warton, Hist. Eng. Poetry, ii. 250, should say that this trans- lation was never printed. 296 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. Boccaccio, in which he states that he had translated it from the Decameron, only recently come into his hands, informs his friend also that the story had been known to him many years before. He may therefore have communicated it orally to Chaucer, through the medium of what was probably their common medium of com- munication, the Latin tongue, if they ever met, at Padua or else- where, as it is asserted they did. All that we are concerned with at present, is the fact that it does not appear to have been taken by Chaucer from the Decameron : he makes no reference to Boc- caccio as his authority, and, while it is the only one of the Canter- bury Tales which could otherwise have been suspected with any probability to have been derived from that work, it is at the same time one an acquaintance with which we know he had at least the means of acquiring through another language than the Italian. To these considerations may be added a remark made by Sir Harris Nicolas : — " That Chaucer was not acquainted with Italian," says that writer, " may be inferred from his not having introduced any Italian quotation into his works, redundant as they are with Latin and French words and phrases." To which he subjoins in a note : " Though Chaucer's writings have not been examined for the pur- pose, the remark in the text is not made altogether from recollec- tion ; for at the end of Speght's edition of Chaucer's works trans- lations are given of the Latin and French words in the poems, but not a single Italian word is mentioned." 1 y ±t may be questioned, then, if much more than the fame of Italian song had reached the ear of Chaucer ; but, at all events, 1 Life of Chaucer, p. 25. Sir Harris had said before : — " Though Chaucer un- doubtedly knew Latin and French, it is by no means certain, notwithstanding his 6uppoMil obligations to the Decameron, that lie was as well acquainted with Italian. There may have been a common Latin original of the main incidents of many if not of all the Tales for which Chaucer is supposed to have been wholly indebted to Boccaccio, and from which original Boccaccio himself may have taken them." Beside the Clerk's Tale, which has been noticed above, the only stories in the Can- terbury Tales which are found in the Decameron are the Reeve's Tale, the Ship- man's Tale, and the Franklin's Tale ; but both Tyrwhitt and Warton, while main- taining Chaucer's obligations in other respects to the Italian writers, admit that the two former are much more probably derived from French Fabliaux (the particular fabliau, indeed, on which the Reeve's Tale appears to be founded has been published by Le Grand) ; and the Franklin's Tale is expressly stated by Chaucer himself to be a Breton lay. He nowhere mentions Boccaccio or his Decameron, or any other Italian authority. Of the Pardoner's Tale, " the mere outline," as Tyrwhitt states. is to be found in the Cento X<>n!l<- Antiche; but the greater part of that collection is borrowed from the Contes and Fabliaux of the French. GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 297 the foreign poetry with which he was most familiar was certainly that of France. This, indeed, was probably still accounted every- where the classic poetical literature of the modern world ; the younger poetry of Italy, which was itself a derivation from that common fountain-head, had not yet, with all its real superiority, either supplanted the old lays and romances of the trouveres and troubadours, or even taken its place by their side. The earliest English, as wel l as the earliest Italian, poetry was for the most part a translation or imitation of that of France. Of the poetry written in the French language, indeed, in the eleventh, twelfth, and thir- teenth centuries, the larger portion, as we have seen, was produced in England, for English readers, and to a considerable extent by natives of this country. French poetry was not, therefore, during this era regarded among us as a foreign literature at all ; and even at a later date it must have been looked back upon by every edu- cated Englishman as rather a part of that of his own land. For a century, or perhaps more, before Chaucer arose, the greater num- ber of our common versifiers had been busy in translating the French romances and other poetry into English, which was r now fast becoming the ordinary or only speech even of the educated classes ; but this work had for the most part been done with little pains or skill, and with no higher ambition than to convey the mere sense of the French original to the English reader. By the time when Chaucer began to write, in the latter half of the fourteenth century, the French language appears to have almost gone out of use as a common medium of communication ; the English, on the other hand, as we may see by the poetry of Langland and Minot as compared with that of Robert of Gloucester, had, in the course of the preceding hundred years, thrown off much of its primitive rudeness, and acquired a considerable degree of regularity and flexibility, and general fitness for literary composition. In these circumstances, writing in French in England was over for any good purpose : Chaucer himself observes in the prologue to his prose treatise entitled the Testament of Love : — " Certes there ben some that speak their poesy matter in French, of which speech the Frenchmen have as good a fantasy as Ave have in hearing of Frenchmen's English." And again : — " Let, then, clerks enditen in Latin, for they have the property of science and the knowinge .n that faculty ; and let Frenchmen in their French also endite their quaint terms, for it is kindly [natural] to their mouths ; and fOL. I. 38 298 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. let us sliow our fantasies in such words as we learneden of oui dames' tongue." The two languages, in short, like the two na- tions, were now become completely separated, and in some sort hostile : as the Kings of England were no longer either Dukes of Normandy or Earls of Poitou, and recently a fierce war had sprung up still more effectually to divide the one country from the other, and to break up all intercourse between them, so the French tongue was fast growing to be almost as strange and distinctly foreign among us as the English had always been in France. Chaucer's original purpose and aim may be supposed to have been that of the generality of his immediate predecessors, to put his countrymen in possession of some of the best productions of the French poets, so far as that could be done by translation ; and with his genius and accomplishments, and the greater pains he was willing to take with it, we may conjecture that he hoped to execute his task in a man- ner very superior to that in which such work had hitherto been performed. With these views he undertook what was probably his earliest composition of any length, his translation of the Roman dc la Hose, begun by Guillaume de Lorris, who died about 1260, and continued and finished by Jean de Meun, whose date is about half a century later. " This poem," says Warton, " is esteemed by the French the most valuable piece of their old poetry. It is far be- yond the rude efforts of all their preceding romancers ; and they have nothing equal to it before the reign of Francis the First, who died in the year 1547. But there is a considerable difference in the merit of the two authors. William of Lorris, who wrote not one quarter of the poem, is remarkable for his elegance and luxu- riance of description, and is a beautiful painter of allegorical per- sonages. John of Meun is a writer of another cast. He possesses but little of his predecessor's inventive and poetical vein; and in that respect he was not properly qualified to finish a poem bofjun by William of Lorris. But he has strong satire and great liveli- ness. He was one of the wits of the court of Charles le Bel. The difficulties and dangers of a lover in pursuing and obtaining the object of his desires are the literal argument of this poem. This design is couched under the argument of a rose, which our lover after frequent obstacles gathers in a delicious garden. He traverses vast ditches, scales lofty walls, and forces the g£.i,ea of adamantine and almost impregnable castles. These enchant' d for- tresses are all inhabited by various divinities ; some of whic j j.s••• The statue of Mars upon a carte 17 stood Armed, and looked grim as he were wood ; 18 And over his head there shinen two figures Of sterres, that been cleped in scriptures 19 That one Puella, that other Rubeus. This God of Armes was arrayed thus : A wolf there stood beforn him at his feet With eyen red, and of a man he eat. Chaucer's merriment, at once hearty and sly, has of course the freedom and unscrupnlousness of his time ; and much of the best of it cannot be produced in our day without offence to our greatest sensitiveness, at least in the matter of expression. Besides, humor 1 Of the circumference of a tun. 2 Burning coal. 8 Stable. 4 Burning. B War. Contention. 7 Disagreeable sound. 8 Slayer. 9 Hair of the head. 10 Madness. n Outcry. 12 Carrion. 13 Cut. 14 Dead (starved). " Reft. i 8 Left. » Car, chariot. 18 Mad. 19 Stars that are called in books. GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 321 in poetry, or any other kind of writing, can least of all qualities be effectively exemplified in extract: its subtle life, dependent upon the thousand minutiae of place and connection, perishes under the process of excision ; it is to attempt to exhibit, not the building by the brick, but the living man by a " pound of his fair flesh." We will venture, however, to give one or two short passages. Nothing is more admirable in the Canterbury Tales than the manner in which the character of the Host is sustained throughout. He is t the moving spirit of the poem from first to last. Here is his first introduction to us presiding over the company at supper in his own gentle hostelry, That highte the Tabard faste by the Bell, in South wark, on the evening before they set out on their pil grimage : — Great cheere made our Host us everich one, And to the supper set he us anon, And served us with vitail of the best ; Strong was the wine, and well to drink us lest. 1 A seemly man our Hoste was with all For to han been a marshal in an hall ; A large man he was, with eyen steep ; A fairer burgess is there none in Cheap ; Bold of his speech, and wise, and well ytaught, And of manhood ylaked 2 right him naught : Eke thereto 3 was he right a merry man ; And after supper playen he began, And spake of mirth amonges other things, When that we hadden made our reckonings, And said thus : Now, Lordings, triiely Ye been to me welcome right heartily ; For, by my troth, if that I shall not lie, I saw nat this yer swich 4 a company At ones in this herberwe 6 as is now ; Fain would I do you mirth an I wist how : And of a mirth I am right now bethought To don you ease, and it shall cost you nought. Ye gon to Canterbury ; God you speed, The blissful martyr quite you your meed 1 It pleased us. 2 Lacked. * Such. 5 Inn> VOL. I. 41 322 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. And well I wot as ye gon by the way Ye shapen 1 you to talken and to play ; For triiely comfort ne mirth is none To riden by the way dumb as the stone ; And therefore would I maken you disport, As I said erst, and don you some comfort. And if you liketh all by one assent Now for to stonden 2 at my judgement, And for to werchen 3 as I shall you say To morrow, when ye riden on the way, Now, by my fader's soule that is dead, But ye be merry 4 smiteth 5 off my head : Hold up your hondes withouten more speech. They all gladly assent ; upon which mine Host proposes further that each of them (they were twenty-nine in all, besides himself) should tell two stories in going, and two more in returning, and that, when they got back to the Tabard, the one who had told the " tales of best sentence and most solace " should have a supper at the charge of the rest. And, adds the eloquent, sagacious, and large-hearted projector of the scheme, — for to make you the more merry I woll my selven gladly with you ride Right at mine owen cost, and be your guide. And who that woll my judgement withsay e Shall pay for all we spenden by the way. Great as the extent of the poem is, therefore, what has been executed, or been preserved, is only a small part of the design ; for this liberal plan would have afforded us no fewer than a hundred and twenty tales. Nothing can be better than the triumphant way in which mine Host of the Tabard is made to go through the duties of his self-assumed post ; — his promptitude, his decision upon all emergencies, and at the same time his good feeling never at fault any more than his good sense, his inexhaustible and unflagging fun and spirit, and the all-accommodating humor and perfect sympathy with which, without for a moment stooping from his own frank and manly character, he bears himself to every individual of the varied 1 Prepare yourselves, intend. 2 Stand. s Work, do. 4 If ye shall not be merry. Smite. The imperative lias generally this termination. Resist, oppose, withstand. GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 323 cavalcade. He proposes that they should draw cuts to decide who was to begin ; and with how genuine a courtesy, at once encourag- ing and reverential, he first addresses himself to the modest Clerk, and the gentle Lady Prioress, and the Knight, who also was " of his port as meek as is a maid : " — Sir Knight, quod he, my maister and my lord, Now draweth cut, for that is mine accord. Cometh near, quod he, my Lady Prioress ; And ye, Sir Clerk, let be your shamefastness, Ne studieth nought ; lay hand to, every man. But for personages of another order, again, he is another man, giv- ing and taking jibe and jeer with the hardest and boldest in their own style and humor, only more nimbly and happily than any of them, and without ever compromising his dignity. And all the while his kindness of heart, simple and quick, and yet considerate, is as conspicuous as the cordial appreciation and delight with which he enters into the spirit of what is going forward, and enjoys tho success of his scheme. For example, — When that the Knight had thus his tale told, In all the company n'as there young ne old That he ne said it was a noble storie, And worthy to be drawen to memorie, 1 And namely 2 the gentles everich one. Our Hoste lough 3 and swore, So mote I gon * This goth aright ; unbokeled is the male ; 5 Let see now who shall tell another tale, For triiely this game is well begonne : Now telleth ye, Sir Monk, if that ye conne, 6 Somewhat to quiten with 7 the Knighte's tale. The Miller, that for-dronken 8 was all pale, So that unneaths 9 upon his horse he sat, He n'old avalen 10 neither hood ne hat, Ne abiden n no man for his courtesy, But in Pilate's voice la he gan to cry, 1 Probably pronounced std-ri-e and me-mb-ri-e. 2 Especially. 8 Laughed. * So may I fare well. 5 Unbuckled « w«4*> N w- it. 6 Can. ~ To requite. 8 Very drum,. 9 With difficulty. w Would not doff or lower. « Stop for. 12 " In such a voice as Pilate was used to speak with in the M> *^eries. Pi'ate hcing an odious character, was probably represented as speaking win a hai«*t, di9 agreeable voice." — Tyrwhitt. 324 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. And swore. By armes, and by blood and bones, I can : a noble tale for the nones, 2 Witl which I wol now quite the Knightes tale. Our Hoste saw that he was dronken of ale, And said, Abide, Robin, my leve 3 brother ; Some better man shall tell us first another ; Abide and let us werken 4 thriftily. By Goddes soul, quod he, that woll not I, For I woll speak, or elles go my way. Our Host answered, Tell on a devil way ; Thou art a fool ; thy wit is overcome. Now, hearkeneth, quod the Miller, all and some ; But first I make a protestatioun That I am drunk, I know it by my soun, And therefore, if that I misspeak or say, Wite it 5 the ale of Southwark, I you pray. The Miller is at last allowed to tell his tale — which is more ac- cordant with his character, and the condition he was in, than with either good morals or good manners ; — as the poet observes : — What should I more say, but this Millere He n'old his wordes for no man forbere, But told his cherle's 6 tale in his manere ; Methinketh that I shall rehearse it here : And therefore every gentle wight I pray For Goddes love, as deem not that I say, Of evil intent, but that I mote rehearse Their tales all, al be they better or werse, Or elles falsen some of my matere: And, therefore, whoso list it not to hear, Turn over the leaf, and chese 7 another tale ; For he shall find enow, both great and smale, Of storial thing that toucheth gentiless, And eke morality and holiness. The Miller's Tale is capped by another in the same style from his fellow ''churl " the Reve (or Bailiff) — who before he begins, however, avails himself of the privilege of his advanced years to prelude away fur some time in a preaching strain, till his eloquence is suddenly cut short by the voice of authority: — 1 Know. 2 For the nonce, for the occasion. 3 Dear. 4 Go to work. 6 Lay the blame of it on. 6 Churl's. 7 Choose. GEOFFREY CliAUCER. 326 When that our Host had heard this sermoning, He gan to speak as lordly as a king, And saide, What amounteth all this wit ? What, shall we speak all day of holy writ ? The devil made a Reve for to preach, Or of a souter 1 a shipman or a leech. 2 Say forth thy tale, and tarry not the time ; Lo Depefbrd, 3 and it is half way prime ; 4 Lo Greenewich, there many a shrew is in : 6 It were all time thy Tale to begin. The las t specimen we shall give of " our Host " shall be from the Clerk's Prologue : — Sir Clerk of Oxenford, our Hoste said, Ye ride as still and coy as doth a maid Were newe spoused, sitting at the board ; This day ne heard I of your tongue a word. I trow ye study abouten some sophime, 6 But Salomon saith that every thing hath time. For Godde's sake as beth 7 of better cheer ; It is no time for to studien here. Tell us some merry tale by your fay ; 8 For what man that is entered in a play He needes must unto the play assent. But preacheth not, as freres don in Lent, To make us for our olde shines weep, Ne that thy tale make us not to sleep. Tell us some merry thing of aventures ; Y r our terms, your coloures, and your figures, Keep them in store till so be ye indite High style, as when that men to kinges write. Speaketh so plain at this time, I you pray, That we may understonden what ye say. This worthy Clerk benignely answerd ; Hoste, quod he, I am under your yerde ; Ye have of us as now the governance, And therefore would I do you obeisance, As fer as reason asketh hardily. 9 J Cobbler. 2 Physician.. 3 Deptford. 4 Tyrwhitt supposes this means half-past seven in the morning. 5 In -which (wherein) is many a shrew. • 6 Sophism, perhaps generally for a logical argument. ' Be. 8 Faith. 9 Surely. 326 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. I wol you tell a tale which that I Learned at Padow of a worthy clerk, As preved * by his wordes and his werk : He is now dead and nailed in his chest ; I pi-ay to God so yeve his soule rest. Francis Petrarch, the laureat poete Highte this clerk, whose rhethoricke sweet Enlumined all Itaille of poetry, As Linian " 2 did of philosophy, Or law, or other art particulere ; But death, that wol not suffre us dwellen here But as it were a twinkling of an eye, Them both hath slain, and alle we shall die. And our last specimen of the Canterbury Tales, and also of Chaucer, being a passage exhibiting that power of pathos in the delicacy as well as in the depth of which he is unrivalled, shall be taken from this tale told by the Clerk, the exquisite tale of Griselda. Her husband has carried his trial of her submission and endurance to the last point by informing her that she must return to her father, and that his new wife is " coming by the way " : — And she again ansvverd in patience : My lord, quod she, I wot, and wist alway, How that betwixen your magnificence And my povert no wight ne can ne may Maken comparison : it is no nay : I ne held me never digne s in no manere To be your wife, ne yet your chamberere.* And in this house there 5 ye me lady made (The highe God take I for my witness, And all so wisly 6 he my soule glade) I never held me lady ne maistress, But humble servant to your worthiness, And ever shall, while that my life may dure, Aboven every worldly creature. That ye so long, of your benignity, Han 7 holden me in honour and nobley, 8 1 Proved 2 A great lawyer of the fourteenth century. 8 Worth v. 4 Chambermaid. 5 Where. « Surely" 7 Have. B Nobility. GEOFFREY CHAUCER. 327 Whereas 1 1 was not worthy for to be, That thank I God and you, to whom I pray Foryeld 2 it you : there is no more to say. Unto my fader gladly wol I wend, And with him dwell unto my lives end. God shielde swich a lordes wife to take Another man to husband or to make. 3 And of your newe wife God of his grace So grant you weale and prosperity ; For I wol gladly yielden her my place, In which that I was blissful wont to be : For, sith it liketh you, my lord, quod she, That whilome weren all my heartes rest, That I shall gon, I wol go where you list. But, thereas 4 ye me profer swich dowair 5 As I first brought, it is well in my mind It were my wretched clothes, nothing fair, The which to me were hard now for to find. goode God! how gentle and how kind Ye seemed by your speech and your visage The day that maked was our marriage I But sooth is said, algate 6 I find it true, For in effect it preved 7 is on me, Love is not old as when that it is new. But certes, Lord, for non adversity 8 To dien in this case, it shall not be That ever in word or werk I shall repent That I you yave mine heart in whole intent. My lord, ye wot that in my fader's place Ye did me strip out of my poore weed, And richely ye clad me of your grace : To you brought I nought elles, out of drede,' But faith, and nakedness, and maidenhede : And here again your clothing I restore, And eke your wedding ring, for evermore. 9 1 Where. 2 Repay. 3 Mate. 4 Whereaa 6 Such dower. 6 In every way. 7 Proved. 8 For no unhappiness that may be my lot were it even to die 1 9 Doubt. >28 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. The remnant of your jewels ready be Within your chamber, I dare it safely sayn. Naked out of my fader's house, quod she, I came, and naked I mote turn again. All your pleasance wold I follow fain : But yet I hope it be not your intent That I smockless out of your palace went. • * • • • Let me not like a worm go by the way : Remember you, mine owen lord so dear, I was your wife, though I unworthy were. The smock, quod he, that thou hast on thy bake Let it be still, and bear it forth with thee. But well unneathes 1 thilke 2 word he spake, But went his way for ruth and for pitee. Before the folk herselven strippeth she, And in her smock, with foot and head all bare, Toward her father's house forth is she fare. 8 The folk her followen weeping in her way, And Fortune aye they cursen as they gone ; But she fro weeping kept her eyen drey, 4 Ne in this time word ne spake she none. Her fader, that this tiding heard anon, Curseth the day and time that nature Shope him 5 to been a lives 6 creature. There is scarcely perhaps to be found anywhere in poetry a finer burst of natural feeling than in the lines we have printed in italics. JOHN GOWER. Contemporary with Chaucer, and probably born a few years earlier, though of the two he survived to the latest date, for his death did not take place till the year 1408, was John Gower. It is affirmed by Leland in his Commentarii de Scriptoribus Britan- nicis that he was of the ancient family, said to have been seated 1 With groat difficulty. 2 This same. 3 Gone. * Dry. 6 Formed. 6 Living. JOHN GOWER. 329 at Stitenham, or Sittenham, in Yorkshire, before the Conquest, of which the Duke of Sutherland is now the head ; and Mr. Todd, in his valuable Illustrations of the Lives and Writings of Gower and Chaucer (8vo. Lon. 1810), has published a deed from the charter-chest of the Duke (then Marquis of Stafford), dated at Stitenham in 1346, to which the first of the subscribing witnesses is Johannes Croiver, and an indorsement upon which, but in a hand which is admitted to be at least a century later, states this person to have been " Sir John Gower the poet." This would make Gower to have been born before 1326 at the latest, and to have been some years beyond eighty when he died ; which is consistent enough with the manner in which his name is generally mentioned by old writers along with but before that of Chaucer, and with the express statement in some of the earlier accounts that he was the senior of the two. But it has since been conclusively shown by Sir Harris Nicolas that no reliance can be placed upon these asser- tions and inferences, and that Gower was really not a North of England, but a South of England man, and resided in the county of Kent. 1 It is proved, however, by his will, published by Mr. Todd (and previously by Gough, in his Sepulchral Monuments, 2 vols. fol. 1786), that he was a person of condition, and possessed of considerable property. He and Chaucer were friends, as well as contemporaries and brother-poets ; and there appears to be no sufficient reason for the notion that has been taken up by most of the modern biographers of the latter, that they were alienated from one another in their old age. 2 It may be safely assumed, at least, that their friendship remained unbroken down to 1393, the year in which Gower, as he tells us himself, finished his Confessio Amantis, where near the end he puts the following compliment to Chaucer into the mouth of Venus : — And greet well Chaucer when ye meet, As my disciple and my poete ; For in the Houres of his youth, In sondry wise, as he well couth, Of ditties and of sondes "lade, The which he for my sake made, 1 Retrospective Reviews, Second Series, ii. Ill ; and Dr. Pauli's Introductory Essay to the Confessio Amantis. 2 See the remarks of Sir Harris Nicolas, in his Life of Chaucer, p. 39. vol. i. 42 330 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. The land fulfilled is over all ; Whereof to him in special, Above all other, I am most hold : x Forthy - now in his dayes old Thou shalle him tell this message, That he upon his latter age, To set an end of all his werk, As he which is mine owne clerk, Do make his Testament of Love, As thou hast done thy shrift above, So that my court it may record. This was certainly liberal repayment for Chaucer's dedication to his friend, probably many years before, of his Troilus and Creseide, or rather of half that work, in the following sober lines : — O moral Gower ! this booke I direct To thee, and to the philosophical Strood, To vouchesauf there need is to correct Of your benignities and zeales good. The epithet here bestowed upon Gower is not perhaps exactly the one which a poet would most covet; but it has stuck, and Moral Gower is the name by which he has generally passed ever since. " O Moral Grower, and Lydgate laureat," exclaims the Scottish poet Dunbar, in his Golden Targe. " Moral Gower, whose sententious dew adown reflareth with fair golden beams," savs Hawes in his Pastime of Pleasure. " And near them sat old Moral Goore, with pleasant pen in hand," writes the author of A Dialogue both pleasant and pitiful, Lon. 1573. 3 But his pub- lisher, Berthelet the printer, is the most severe of all; — in the dedication prefixed to his edition of the Confessio Amantis, 1532, lie naively remarks : " It was not much greater pain to that ex- cellent clerk, the Moral John Gower, to compile the same noble wark than it was to me to print it." " No man," he adds, allud- ing to the former edition by Caxton, in 1483, " will believe it without conferring both the prints, the old and mine, together." Gower is the author of three great poetical works (sometimes spoken of as one, though they do not seem to have had any con- nection of plan or subject) : the Speculum Meditantis, which is, 1 Beholden. 2 Therefore. 8 Quoted by Mr. Todd in Illustrations, Introduction, p. xxix JOHN GOWER. 331 or was, in French ; the Vox Clamantis, which is in Latin ; and the Confessio Amantis, which is in English. Bnt the first, al- though an account of it, founded on a mistake, has been given by Warton, has certainly not been seen in modern times, and has in all probability perished. We have other specimens, however, of Gower's talents as a French and also as a Latin poet in certain short pieces in both these languages preserved in a volume in the Duke of Sutherland's library at Trentham (Staffordshire), of which an account has been given by Warton (Hist. Eng. Poetry, ii. 334—341), and another, more full, particular, and exact, by Mr. Todd (Illustrations, pp. 93—108). Speaking of Gower's Latin poetry, Warton says that he " copied Ovid's elegiacs with some degree of purity, and with fewer false quantities and corrupt phrases than any of our countrymen had yet exhibited since the twelfth century." 1 Of the French pieces in the Trentham vol- ume, which consist of fifty Balades, or sonnets, he observes, " They have much real and intrinsic merit. They are tender, pathetic, and poetical ; and place our old poet Gower in a more advantageous point of view than that in which he has hitherto been usually seen. I know not if any even among the French poets themselves, of this period, have left a set of more finished sonnets ; for they were probably written when Gower was a young man, about the year 1350. Nor had yet any English poet treated the passion of love with equal delicacy of sentiment, and elegance of composition." 2 Four of these French sonnets are given by Warton, and more correctly, with the addition of a fifth, by Todd ; and the entire contents of the volume were edited for the Roxburghe Club in 1818 by the present Duke of Sutherland (then Earl Gower) under the title of Balades and other Poems, by John Gower, printed from the original MS., Latin and French ; Black Letter, 4to. London. Gower was probably one of the last English- men who attempted the composition of poetry in French ; and at the end of one of the pieces in this volume he asks forgiveness of his reader for any inaccuracies he may have committed in the foreign idiom, on the ground of his English birth and his there fore not being master of the French eloquence : — P2t si ieo nai de Franfois la faconde, Pardonetz moi qe ieo de ceo forsvoie. Ieo sui Englois. 1 Hist. Eng. Poet. ii. 305. 2 Hist.Eng. Poet. p. 338. 332 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. The Vox Clamantis was edited for the Roxburghe Club in 1850 bv the Rev. H. G. Coxe. It consists of seven Books in Latin elegiacs. " The greater bulk of the work," says Dr. Pauli, " the date of which its editor is inclined to fix between 1382 and 1384, is rather a moral than an historical essay ; but the First Book describes the insurrection of Wat Tyler in an allegorical disguise ; the poet having a dream on the 11th of June 1381, in which men assumed the shape of animals. The Second Book contains a long sermon on fatalism, in which the poet shows himself no friend to Wiclif 's tenets, but a zealous advocate for the reformation of the clergy. The Third Book points out how all orders of society must suffer for their own vices and demerits ; in illustration of which he cites the example of the secular clergy. The Fourth Book is dedicated to the cloistered clergy and the friars, the Fifth to the military ; the Sixth contains a violent attack on the lawyers ; and the Seventh subjoins the moral of the whole, represented in Nebu- chadnezzar's dream, as interpreted by Daniel." 1 The allusion in the title seems to be to St. John the Baptist, and to the general clamor then abroad in the country. The Confessio Amantis has been several times printed : — by Caxton in 1483, by Berthelet in 1532 and again in 1554, and by Alexander Chalmers in the second volume of his English poets, 1810 ; but all these previous editions have been superseded by the very commodious and beautiful one of Dr. Reinhold Pauli, in 3 vols. 8vo. London, 1857. We will avail ourselves of Dr. Pauli's account of the course in which the work proceeds : — " The poem opens by introducing the author himself, in the character of an unhappy lover in despair. Venus appears to him, and, after having heard his prayer, appoints her priest called Genius, like the mystagogue in the picture of Cebes, to hear the lover's confession. This is the frame of the whole work, which is a singular mixture of classical notions, prin- cipally borrowed from Ovid's Ars Amandi, and of the purely medi- aeval idea, that as a good Catholic the unfortunate lover must state his distress to a father confessor. This is done with great regular- ity and even pedantry ; all the passions of the human heart, which generally stand in the way of love, being systematically arranged in the various books and subdivisions of the work. After Genius has fully explained the evil affection, passion, or vice under con- 1 Introd. Essay to Confessio Amantis. JOHN GOWER. 33 sideration, the lover confesses on that particular point; and fre- quently urges his boundless love for an unknown beauty, who treats him cruelly, in a tone of affectation which would appear highly ridiculous in a man of more than sixty years of age, were it not a common characteristic of the poetry of the period. After this profession the confessor opposes him, and exemplifies the fatal effects of each passion by a variety of opposite stories, gathered from many sources, examples being then, as now, a favorite mode of inculcating instruction and reformation. At length, after a fre- quent and tedious recurrence of the same process, the confession is terminated by some final injunctions of the priest — the lover's petition in a strophic poem addressed to Venus — the bitter judg- ment of the goddess, that he should remember his old age and leave off such fooleries .... his cure from the wound caused by the dart of love, and his absolution, received as if by a pious Roman Catholic." * Such a scheme as this, pursued through more than thirty thou- sand verses, promises perhaps more edification than entertainment ; but the amount of either that is to be got out of the Confessio Amantis is not considerable. Ellis, after charitably declaring that so long as Moral Gower keeps to his morality he is " wise, impres- sive, and sometimes almost sublime," is compelled to add, " But his narrative is often quite petrifying ; and when we read in his work the tales with which we had been familiarized in the poems of Ovid, we feel a mixture of surprise and despair at the perverse industry employed in removing every detail on which the imagina- tion had been accustomed to fasten. The author of the Metamor- phoses was a poet, and at least sufficiently fond of ornament ; Gower considers him as a mere annalist ; scrupulously preserves his facts ; relates them with great perspicuity ; and is fully satisfied when he has extracted from them as much morality as they can be reasonably expected to furnish." 2 In many cases this must be little enough. We shall confine our specimens of Gower's poetry to two short passages from the Confessio Amantis. The first is the tale of the coffers or caskets, in the Fifth Book, which has been given by Todd after a collation of the printed editions with the best manuscripts : 8 1 Introductory Essay, p. xxxiv. 2 Specimens of the Early English Poets, i. 179. 8 Illustrations, pp. 145-150; Notes, pp. 154-158. 334 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. this is the story, whether found bv him in Gower or elsewhere, from which Shakspeare is supposed to have taken the hint of the incident of the caskets in his Merchant of Venice : — In a cronique thus I read : About a kinge, as must need, There was of knig-htes and se«uiers Great rout and eke of officers : » Some of long time him hadden served, And thoughten that they have deserved Avancement, and gone without ; And some also been of the rou f , That come'n but a while agon, And they avanced were anon. There olde men upon this thing, So as they durst, again l the king Among themself 2 complainen oft : But there is nothing said so soft That it ne cometh out at last : The king it wist, and als 3 so fast As he which was of high prudence : He shope 4 therefore an evidence Of them that plainen in the cas, 5 To know in whose default it was ; And all within his own intent, That none may Aviste what it meant. Anon he let two coffers make Of one semblance, and of one make, So lich, G 'that no life tliilke throw 7 That one may fro that other know : They were into his chamber brought, But no man wot why they be wrought ; And natheless 8 the king hath bede 9 That they be set in privy stede, 10 As he that was of wisdom sly ; When n he thereto his time sy, 12 1 Against. 2 Gower, like Chancer and Langland, writes hem for what we now call them ; but we have taken the liberty throughout of discarding that peculiarity. 8 Also. * Contrived. 5 Case. 6 Like. " No person at any particular time ? 8 Nevertheli 9 Bidden. 10 Place. 11 Gower, also, like the other writers of his time, has whan and than, where we cow say when and then. 12 Saw. The old spelling is slih and sih. JOHN GOWER. 335 All privily, that none it wist, His owne hondes 1 that one chest Of fine gold, and of fine perie, 2 The which out of his treasury- Was take, anon he filled full ; That other coffer of straw and mull,' With stones meynd, 4 he filld also : Thus be they full both two. So that erlich 5 upon a day He had within, where he lay, There should be to form his bed A board upset and faire spread : And then he let the coffers fet 6 Upon the board, and did them set. He knew the names well of tho The which again him grutched so, 7 Both of his chamber and of his hall ; Anon and sente for them all, And saide to them in this wise : — There shall no man his hap 8 despise : I wot well ye have longe served, And God wot what ye have deserved ; But if it is along on 9 me Of that ye unavanced be, Or elles if it belong on yow, The soothe shall be proved now : To stoppe with your evil word, Lo ! here two coffers on the board ; Chese 10 which you list of bothe two, And witteth n well that one of tho Is with tresor so full begon 12 That, if ye happe therupon, Ye shall be riche men for ever : Now chese and take which you is lever ; M But be ye well ware that ye take, For of that one u I undertake ls 1 Hands. 2 Jewellery. 8 Rubbish * Mingled. 8 Early. 6 Fetch. 7 Those who against him grudged (or grumbled) so. 8 Fortune. 9 Owing to. 10 Choose. u Know, understand ye 12 Begun, used in a general sense, nearly with the effect of made. 13 Is more agreeable to you. 14 The one. 15 Promise, engage, assure you. 336 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. There is no manner good therein "Whereof ye mighten profit win. Now goth * together of one assent And taketh your avisement ; For, but I you this day avance, It stant upon your owne chance, All only in default of grace ; So shall he showed in this place Upon you alle well afin 2 That no defaulte shall be min. They kneelen all, and with one voice The king they thonken of this choice ; And after that they up arise, And gon aside and them avise ; And at laste they accord (Whereof their tale to record To what issue they be fall) A knight shall speake for them all. He kneeleth down unto the kin in words at full length ; but he is evidently not a person upon whose testimony much reliance can be placed as to such a matter. It is a suspicious circumstance, as is hinted by Macpherson, the editor of Wynton's Chronicle, that that writer, though he often quotes Barbour, has never once mentioned Fenton. 1 The Scotch in which Barbour's poem is written was undoubtedly the language then commonly in use among his countrymen, for whom he wrote and with whom his poem has been a popular favor- ite ever since its first appearance. By his countrymen, of course, we mean the inhabitants of southern and eastern, or Lowland Scot- land, not the Celts or Highlanders, who have always been and still are as entirely distinct a race as the native Irish are, and always have been, from the English in Ireland, and to confound whom 1 Wyntown's Chronicle, by Macpherson (1795), Pref. j. xxix. 342 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. either in language or in any other respect with the Scottish Low- landers is the same sort of mistake that it would be to speak of the English as being either in language or lineage identical with the Welsh. Indeed, there is a remarkable similarity as to this matter in the circumstances of the three countries : in each a primitive Celtic population, which appears to have formerly occupied the whole soil, has been partially expelled by another race, but still exists, inhabiting its separate locality (in all the three cases the maritime and mountainous wilds of the west), and retaining its own ancient and perfectly distinct language. The expulsion has been the most sweeping in England, where it took place first, and where the Welsh form now only about a sixteenth of the general population ; it has been carried to a less extent in Scotland, where it was not effected till a later age, and where the numbers of the Highlanders are still to those of the Lowlanders in the proportion of one to five or six ; in Ireland, where it happened last of all, the new settlers have scarcely yet ceased to be regarded as foreigners and intruders, and the ancient Celtic inhabitants, still covering, although not possessing, by far the greater part of the soil, the larger proportion of them, however, having relinquished their an- cestral speech, continue to be perhaps six or eight times as numer- ous as the Saxons or English. For in all the three cases it is the same Saxon, or at least Teutonic, race before which the Celts have retired or given way : the Welsh, the Scottish Highlanders, and the native Irish, indeed, all to this day alike designate the stranger who has set himself down beside them by the common epithet of the Saxon. We know that other Teutonic or northern races were mixed with the Angles and Saxons in all the three cases: not only were the English, who settled in Scotland in great numbers, and conquered Ireland, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, in part French Normans, but the original Normans or Danes had in the eighth and ninth centuries effected extensive settlements in each of the three countries. Besides, the original English were them- selves a mixed people ; and those of them who were distinctively Saxons were even the old hereditary enemies of the Danes. Still, as the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes were as one people against the Scandinavian Danes, or their descendants the French Normans, so even Saxons and Danes, or Normans, were united everywhere against the Celts. As for the language spoken by the Lowland Scots in the time of Barbour, it must have sprung out of the same BARBOUR. 313 sources, and been affected by nearly the same influences, with the English of the same age. Nobody now holds that any part of it can have been derived from the Picts, who indeed originally occu- pied part of the Lowlands of Scotland, but who were certainly not a Teutonic but a Celtic people. Lothian, or all the eastern part of Scotland to the south of the Forth, was English from the seventh century, as much as was Northumberland or Yorkshire : from this date the only difference that could have distinguished the language there used from that spoken in the south of England was probably a larger infusion of the Danish forms ; but this characteristic must have been shared in nearly the same degree by all the English then spoken to the north of the Thames. Again, whatever effect may have been produced by the Norman Conquest, and the events con- sequent upon that revolution, would probably be pretty equally diffused over the two countries. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries both the Normans themselves and their literature appear to have acquired almost the same establishment and ascendency in Scotland as in England. We have seen that French was the Ian- guage of the court in the one country as well as in the other, and that Scottish as well as English writers figure among the imitators of the Norman trouveurs and romance poets. Afterwards the con- nection of Scotland with France became much more intimate and uninterrupted than that of England ; and this appears to have affected the Scottish dialect in a way which will be presently noticed. But in Barbour's day, the language of Teutonic Scot- land was distinguished from that of the south of England (which had now acquired the ascendency over that of the northern coun- ties as the literary dialect) by little more than the retention, per- haps, of a good many vocables which had become obsolete among the English, and a generally broader enunciation of the vowel sounds. Hence Barbour never supposes that he is writing in any other language than English any more than Chaucer ; that is the name by which not only he, but his successors Dunbar and even Lyndsay, always designate their native tongue : down to the lat- ter part of the sixteenth century, by the term Scotch was generally understood what is now called the Gaelic, or the Erse or Ersh (that is, Irish), the speech of the Celts or Highlanders. Divested of the grotesque and cumbrous spelling of the old manuscripts, the language of Barbour is quite as intelligible at the present day to an English reader as that of Chaucer ; the obsolete words and 344 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. forms are not more numerous in the one writer than in the other, though some that are used by Barbour may not be found in Chau- cer, as many of Chaucer's are not in Barbour ; the chief general distinction, as we have said, is the greater breadth given to the vowel sounds in the dialect of the Scottish poet. The old termina- tion of the present participle in and is also more frequently used than in Chaucer, to whom however it is not unknown, any more than its modern substitute ing is to Barbour. The most remarka- ble peculiarity of the more recent form of the Scottish dialect that is not found in Barbour is the abstraction of the final I from sylla- bles ending in that consonant preceded by a vowel or diphthong : thus he never has a\ fa\ fv? or fou\ pow, how, for all, fall, full, poll, hole, &c. The subsequent introduction of this habit into the speech of the Scotch is perhaps to be attributed to their imitation of the liquefaction of the I in similar circumstances by the French, from whom they have also borrowed a considerable number of their modern vocables, never used in England, and to whose accentua- tion, both of individual words and of sentences, theirs has much general resemblance, throwing the emphasis, contrary, as already noticed, to the tendency of the English language, upon one of the latter syllables, and also running into the rising in many cases where the English use the falling intonation. The Bruce is a very long poem, comprising between twelve and thirteen thousand lines, in octosyllabic metre, which the two last editors have distributed, Pinkerton into twenty, Jamieson into fourteen, Books. It relates the history of Scotland, and especially the fortunes of the great Bruce, from the death of Alexander III. in 1286, or, rather, from the competition for the crown, and the announcement of the claims of Edward I. as lord paramount, on that of his daughter, Margaret the Maiden of Norway, in 1290 — the events of the first fifteen or sixteen years, however, before Bruce comes upon the stage, being very succinctly given — to the death of Bruce (Robert I.) in 1329, and that of his constant asso- ciate and brother of chivalry, Lord James Douglas, the bearer of the king's heart to the Holy Land, in the year following. The 12,500 verses, or thereby, may be said therefore to comprehend the events of about twenty-five years; and Barbour, though he calls his work a " romaunt," as being a narrative poem, professes to relate nothing but what he believed to be the truth, so that he is to be regarded not only as the earliest poet but also as the BARBOUR. 345 earliest historian of his country. Fordun, indeed, was his contem- porary, but the Latin chronicle of that writer was probably not published till many years after his death. And to a great extent Barbour's work is and has always been regarded as being an authentic historical monument ; it has no doubt some incidents or embellishments which may be set down as fabulous ; but these are in general very easily distinguished from the main texture of the narrative, which agrees substantially with the most trustworthy accounts drawn from other sources, and has been received and quoted as good evidence by all subsequent writers and investigators of Scottish history, from Andrew of Wynton to Lord Hailes inclu- sive. This is Barbour's own introduction of himself to his readers ; and the passage, besides explaining the design of his work, affords a fair example of the worthy archdeacon's manly bearing, and for- cible and cordial style : — Stories to read are delitable, Suppose that they be nought but fable ; Then l sulci 2 stories that suthfast 3 were, An they war 4 said on gud 5 manere, Have double pleasance in hearing. The first pleasance is the carping ; 6 And the tother the suthfastness, That shaws 7 the thing right as it wes ; 8 And such thinges that are likand 9 Till mannes hearing are pleasand. Therefore I wald 10 fain set my will, Gif u my wit might suffice theretill, To put in writ a suthfast story, That it lest 12 aye f'urth in memory, Swa 13 that na 14 time of length it let, 15 Ne ger 16 it hally 17 be foryet. 18 For auld 19 stories, that men reads, Represents to them the deeds 1 Barbour's word, like Chaucer's, is than. 2 Should. 3 True. 4 If they were. 6 Good. It may perhaps be doubted if the u here, and in other cases, was yet oronounced like the French u. * The narrative, the story. ? Shows. 8 Was. 9 Agreeable. i° Would. n If. 12 Last. 13 So (probably pronounced sway). 14 No. i fi Hinder, stop. 16 Nor cause. 17 Wholly. is Forgotten. » Old. vol. I. 44 346 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. Of stalwart folk, that livit are,i Right as they then in presence ware. 2 And certes they suld weil have prize That in their time were wight 3 and wise ; And led their life in great travail, And oft, in hard stour 4 of betail, Wan right great price of chivalry And war voidit of cowardy ; 5 As wes King Robert of Scotland, That hardy wes of heart and hand ; And gud Schir James of Douglas, That in his time sa worthy was, That of his price and his bounty In fer landes renownit was he. Of them I think this book to may : 6 Now God give grace that I may swa Treat it, and bring it till ending. That I say nought but suthfast thing. Some of the grammatical forms here, it may be observed, are even more modern than those we find in the English poetry of the same a«-e ; in particular, Barbour uses our present they, them, and their (or in the old spelling, thai, thaim, and thar*), Avhere Chaucer and his countrymen still adhere to the Saxon hey, or hi, hern, and hir or her. This may serve, with other considerations, to refute the notion taken up by some modern writers, that Barbour is an imitator of Chaucer : the Bruce, in fact, is an earlier poem than the Canterbury Tales, and, as it was written by Barbour in his old age, the probability is, that the Scottish poet was absolutely the predecessor of the English ; but at any rate there is no more reason to believe that he imitated Chaucer than that Chaucer imitated him. The one is never mentioned or alluded to by the other, and there is no ground for supposing that they were even acquainted with each other's works. From his habits of locomotion, and frequent journeys to England, a suspicion might arise that Barbour intended to write in the language of that country ; but such a supposition is negatived by the dialectic peculiarities which, notwithstanding a general resemblance in other respects, still distinguish his styh 1 Lived early, formerly. 2 Were. s Valiant. 4 Peril. Was the ou yet pronounced as in French ? 6 Voided or void, of cowardice. 6 Make. BARBOUR. 347 from that of his English contemporaries. Tha 1 " nis language, we may add, has not been modernized by the cranscriber upon whom we are dependent for the present text is, to a great extent, proved by several considerable passages of too poem which are quoted by Wynton being found with scarcely any variation in the work of that chronicler, of which we have one manuscript believed to be of as early a date as the year 1480 at the latest, or within little more than a quarter of a century from the time when Bar- bour lived. Besides, his language, as we have it, does not differ from that of Wynton, who was his contemporary, although he was born perhaps thirty years later, and although he appears not to have composed his chronicle till after the commence, iter A of tta fif- teenth century. Barbour is far from being a poet equal to Ch/acer ; but there is no other English poet down to a century and a half after their day who can be placed by the side of the one any more than of the other. He has neither Chaucer's delicate feeling of the beautiful, nor his grand inventive imagination, nor his wit or humor ; but in mere narrative and description he is, with his clear, strong, direct diction, in a high degree both animated and picturesque, and Ids poem is pervaded by a glow of generous sentiment, well befitting its subject, and lending grace as well as additional force to the ardent, bounding spirit of life with which it is instinct from begin- ning to end. The following passage, which occurs near the com- mencement, has been often quoted (at least in part) ; but it is too remarkable to be omitted in any exemplification of the characteristics of Barbour's poetry. He is describing the oppressions endured by the Scots during the occupation of their country by the EnglisV king, Edward I., after his deposition of his puppet Baliol : — And gif that ony man them by Had ony thing that wes worthy, As horse, or hund, or other thing, That war pleasand to their liking ! With right or wrang it wald have they. And git' ony wald them withsay, They suld swa do, that they suld tine * »ther 2 land or life, or live in pine. For they dempt 3 them efter their will, 1 Lose. 2 Either. s Doomed, judged 348 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. Takand na kepe x to right na skill. 2 Ah ! what they dempt them felonly ! 8 For gud knightes that war worthy, For little enchesoun 4 or then 5 nane They hangit be the neckbane. Als 6 that folk, that ever was free, And in freedom wont for to be, Through their great mischance and folly, Wor treated then sa wickedly, That their faes 7 their judges ware : What wretchedness may man have mair? 8 Ah ! Freedom is a noble thing ! Freedom mays 9 man to have liking ; 10 Freedom all solace to man gives : He lives at ease that freely lives ! A noble heart may have nane ease, Ne elles nought that may him please Giff freedom failye : for free liking Is yarnit u ower la all other thing. Na he that aye has livit free May nought knaw well the property, 18 The anger, na the wretched doom, That is couplit 14 to foul thirldoom. 15 But gif he had assayit it, Then all perquer 16 he suld it wit ; And suld think freedom mair to prise Than all the gold in warld that is. It is, he goes on to observe, by its contrary, or opposite, that the true nature of everything is best discovered : — the value and bless- ing of freedom, for example, are only to be fully felt in slavery ; and then the worthy archdeacon, who, although the humorous is not his strongest ground, does not want slyness or a sense of the comic, winds up with a very singular illustration, which, however, is more suited to his own age than to ours, and may be suppressed here without injury to the argument. 1 Taking no heed, paying no regard. 2 Reason. 3 Ah ! how cruelly they judged them ! 4 Cause. 6 Both the sense and the metre seem to require that this then (in orig. than) should be transferred to the next line ; " they hangit then." 6 Also, thus. 7 Foes. 8 More. * Makes. 10 Pleasure. n Yearned for, desired 12 Over, above. 13 The quality, the peculiar state or condition ? 14 Coupled, attached. 15 Thraldom. 16 Exactly. BAKBUUR. 349 But Barbour's design, no doubt, was to effect by means of this light and sportive conclusion an easy and harmonious descent from the height of declamation and passion to which he had been carried in the preceding lines. Throughout his long work he shows, for his time, a very remarkable feeling of the art of poetry, both by the variety which he studies in the disposition and treatment of his subject, and by the rare temperance and self-restraint which pre- vents him from ever overdoing what he is about either by prosing or raving. Even his patriotism, warm and steady as it is, is wholly without any vulgar narrowness or ferocity : he paints the injuries of his country with distinctness and force, and celebrates the hero- ism of her champions and deliverers with all admiration and sym- pathy ; but he never runs into either the gasconading exaggerations or the furious depreciatory invectives which would, it might be thought, have better pleased the generality of those for whom he wrote. His understanding was too enlightened, and his heart too large, for that. His poem stands in this respect in striking con- trast to that of Harry, the blind minstrel, on the exploits of Wal- lace, to be afterwards noticed ; but each poet suited his hero, — Bai'bour, the magnanimous, considerate, and far-seeing king ; Blind Harry, the indomitable popular champion, with his one passion and principle, hatred of the domination of England, occupying his whole soul and being. We will now give one of Barbour's portraits — that of Sir James of Douglas, the second figure in his canvas : — All men lovit him for his bounty ! * For he wes of full fair effer, 2 Wise, courtais, and deboner ; Large and lovand als wes he, And ower all thing lovit lawty. 8 Lawty to love is greatumly ; 4 Through lawty lives men righteously With a 8 virtue and lawty A man may yet sumciand be : And but 6 lawty may nane have price, Whether he be wight, or he be wise 1 Goodness of nature and disposition. 2 Appearance, or rather, perhaps, demeanor, bearing 3 Loyalty. 4 Great, magnanimous * 6 One. The reading seems doubtful. G Without. 300 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE; For where it failies na virtue May be of price, na of value, To mak a man sa gud that he May simply callit gud man be. He was in all his deedes leal ; 1 For him dedeigned 2 nought to deal With treachery ; na with falset : 8 His heart on high honour was set ; And him conteinit 4 on sic manere That all him lovit that were him near. But he wes nought so fair that we Sulci speak greatly of his beauty : In visage wes he some deal grey, And had black hair, as Ic 5 heard say ; But of limmes he wes weil made, With banes great, and shuldres braid. His body was well made and leanie, 6 As they that saw him said to me. When he was blythe 7 he was lovely, And meek and sweet in company ; But wha in battle might him see All other countenance had he. And in speek 8 lispit he some deal ; But that sat him right wonder weil. Till gud Ector of Troy might he In mony thinges likent be. Ector had black hair, as he had ; And stark limmes. and right weil made ; And lispit alsua 9 as did he; And wes fulfillit of leauty ; And was curtais, and wise, and wight. But of manhcid and mickle might Till Ector dar I nane compare Of all that ever in warldes ware. The whether, 10 in his time sa wrought he That he suld greatly lovit be. The only other passage for which we can make room is a short xtract from the narrative of the oreat day of Bannockburn, which e 1 Loyal, true, faithful. 2 He deigned (it deigned him). :i Falsehood. 4 Contained, held him in ? s I. ** These three words seem not to be in the MS., and the last of them at least may be douMed 7 Cheerful, in good spirits. f Speech ° Also. '" However. BARBOUR. 351 occupies altogether about 2000 lines of the poem, or the whole of the eighth and ninth Books of Dr. Jamieson's edition : — There might men see men felly fight ; And men that worthy war and wight Do mony worthy vassalage. 1 They faught as they war in a rage ; For, when the Scottis archery Saw their fayes 2 sa sturdily Stand in to battle them again, 3 With all their might and all their main They laid on as men out of wit ; And where they with full strak 4 might hit There might na armour stint their strak. They to-frushit 6 that they might ower-tak ; 6 And with axes sic dushes 7 gave, That they helmes and heades clave. And their fayes right hardily Met them, and dang on them doughtily With wapins 8 that were styth 9 of steel : There was the battle strekit 10 weil. Sa great din there wes of dints, As wapins upon armour stints ; u And of speares sa great bresting ; u And sic thrang, and sic thristing ; 13 Sic girning 14 graning, 15 and sa great A noise as they gan other beat; And ensenies 16 on every side ; Givand and takand woundes wide ; That it was hideous for to hear. All their four battles with that were Fechtand n in a front halily. 18 Ah ! mighty God, how doughtily Schir Edward the Bruce and his men Amang their fais conteinit them 19 then ! Fechtand in sa gud covine, 20 Sa hardy, worthy, and sa fine, 1 Acts of valiant service. * Stroke. 6 Whatever they might overtake. 9 Strong. 12 Breaking. 15 Groaning. 2 Foes. 6 Quite broke in pieces. 7 Such blows. 10 Struck, foughten. 18 Thrusting. 16 War-cries. 3 Against. 8 Weapons. 11 Rest, strike. 14 Grinning. 17 Fighting * 8 Wholly. Fighting all at once front to front ? yj Maintained themselves. 20 Combination (covenant) 3f>2 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. That their vaward rushit was, And maugre theires, left the place ;* And, till their great rout, 2 to warrand 8 They went, that tane had upon hand 4 Sa great annoy that they war effrayit For Scottis, that them hard arrayit, That than war in a schiltrum 5 all. Wha happent into that fight to fall, I trow again he suld nought rise. There men might see on mony wise » Hardiments 6 eschevit 7 doughtily ; J And mony, that wight war and hardy, Soon lyand under feet all dead, Where all the field of blud was red. Armes and whites 8 that they bare With blud war sa defoulit there, That they might not descroyit be. 9 Ah, mighty God ! wha then might see That Stewart, Walter, and his rout, And the gud Douglas, that was sa stout, Fechtand into that stalwart stour, 10 He suld say u that till all honour They war worthy, that in that fight Sa fast pressit their fayes might, That them rushit whar they yede. 12 There men might see mony a steed Fleand on stray, 13 that lord had nane. Ah Lord ! wha then gud tent had tane 34 Till the gud Earl of Murrave 15 And his, that sa great routes gave, And taught sa fast in that betail, Tholand 1G sic paines and travail, That they and theirs made sic debat That where they come they made them gat ; 17 1 The meaning evidently is, that the van of the English was broken, and left its ground, in spite of the efforts of its own side to support it. - To their great confusion. 8 A place of shelter or refuge. 4 Who had received 1 6 Supposed to mean a body of troops drawn up in a round form. Hardy deeds. 7 Achieved. 8 Coats of white woollen. n Described. 10 Fighting in that strong tumult of battle. 11 He would say. 12 That drove thein back wherever they went. 18 Flying astray, at large. 14 Good heed had taken. 15 Murray. 16 Sustaining. "" Get? But the word is perhaps wrong. Dr. Jamieson, whose pointing fi» EARLY ENGLISH PROSE 353 Then might men hear enseignies l cry, And Scottis men cry hardily, On them ! On them ! On them ! They fail ; With that sa hard they gan assail, And slew all that they might ower ta ; ' 2 And the Scottis archers alsua 3 Shot amang them sa deliverly, 4 Engrievand them sa greatumly, 5 That, what for them that with them faught, That swa great routes to them raught, 6 And pressit them full eagerly ; And what for arrows that felly Mony great woundes gan them ma, 7 And slew fast of their horse alsua, That they wandyst 8 a little wey ; They dread sa greatly then to dey 9 That their covine was wer and wer ; 10 For they that fechtand with them wer Set hardiment, and strength, and will, And heart, and courage als, theretill ! And all their main, and all their might, To put them fully to the flight. This, it must be allowed, if not quite a Homeric strain, is stren- uous and valiant writing for a Scottish archdeacon, advanced in years, of the fourteenth century. COMPOUND ENGLISH PROSE. — MANDEVIL. — TREVISA.— WICLIF. - CHAUCER. To the fourteenth century belong the earliest specimens of prose composition in our present mixed English that have been preserved. quently shows that he did not understand the text, affords us no light or assistance in any of its difficulties by the miserable glossary which lie has appended to his edition. 1 Dr. Jamieson's only r interpretation of the term is word of war. Here at least t seems rather to mean ensigns or standard-bearers, who raised the war-cry. 2 Overtake. 3 Also. 4 Nimbly, dexterously (our modern cleverly). 5 Distressing them so greatly. 6 It should probably be wraughl (wrought). 7 Make. 8 Recoil for fear. 9 Die. 10 That their combination was worse and worse. vol. i. 45 354 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. Among Sir Henry Ellis's contributions to the Pictorial History of England are two very curious extracts from the Arundel MS., No. 57, in the British Museum, entitled Ayenbyte of Inwyt, exempli- fying the dialect of Kent in 1340. At the beginning of the MS. is this inscription : — " This boc is dan Michelis of Northgate, ywrite an Englis of his ozene hand ; and is of the bochouse of Saynt Austine's of Canterberi under the letters CC." The first of the passages (which occurs on folio 48) is as follows : — The yonge grihound thet is yet al novis that yernth efter eche beste that yernth hevore him, and ne maketh bote him weri and his time lyese. Ther of zet Ysopes the fable of the little hounde and of the lesse. The bond at eche time that he yherth his lhord cometh horn, lie yernth to yens hym. and lharth about his zwere, and the lhord him maketh nayre chiere and him froteth, and maker him greate feste. The asse him be thozte thous ssolde ich do, and zno wolde mi lhord me louie. beterre he ssolde me make joye thet ich send eche daye thanne thise hounde thet him serueth of nazt. Hit nes naz lomre efterward thet the asse ne vzez his lhord come horn, he beginth to Iheap and yernth to yens him, and him prauth the net aboute his zuere and beginth zinge grauntliche. The sergons thet hit y zeze nome steues and byete than asse rizt to the uolle, and ther of thet he wende habbe worthssipe and guod he hedde ssame and harm. The other passage (which occurs on folio 82, and which gives the date of the manuscript) comprises the Kentish version of the Lord's Prayer, Ave Maria, and Creed, after an introductory para- graph, which, it will be observed, although written as prose, is really in rhyme : — Nou iche wille that ye ywryte hou hit is y went: thet this boc is ywrite mid Engliss of Kent. This boc is ymad uor lewede men, vor uader and nor moder and uor other ken ham uor to berze uram alle manyere zen that ine hare in wytte ne bleue ne uoul wen. Hno ase God is his name yred thet this boc made God him yeue thet bread of angles of heuene and ther to his red and onderuonge his zaule huanne thet he is dyad. Amen. Ymende thet this boc is uolueld ine the eue of the holy apostles Symon and Judas of ane brother of the cloystre of Sauynt Austin of Caunter- beri ine the yeare of our lhordes beringe, 1340. Pater Noster. — Vader oure thet art ine heuenes y halzed by thi name, eominde tin' riche, y worthe thi wil ase ii: heuene ine erthe, bread oure 'ilic dayes yef ous to day, and uor let ous oure yeldinges ase and we norleteth oure yelderes, and ne ous led nazt in to uondinge, ac vri ous uram queade. zo by hit. MANDEVIL. 355 Ave Maria. — Hayl Marie of thonke uol. H . . dby mid the, yblissed thou ine wymmen, and yblissed thet ouet of thine wombe. zuo by hit. Credo. — Ich leue ine God uader almizti, makere of heuene and of erthe, and ine Jesu Crist his zone onlepi our lhord, that ykend is of the holy Gost, ybore of Marie mayde, ypyned under Pontis Pilate, ynayled a rode, dyade and be bered, yede down to helle, thane thridde day aros uraip the dyade, steaz to heuenes, zit athe rizt half of God the uader almizti. thannes to comene he is to deme the quike and the dyade. Ich yleue ine the holy Gost, holy cherche generalliche, menesse of halzen, lesnesse of zennes, of ulesse arizinge, and lyf eurelestinde. zuo by hit. The sound here represented by z in certain words, such a> almizti, it should be noticed, is really a guttural, the same which at a later date came to be usually indicated by gh. In fact the character is a g, or something between a g and a y, and not at all our modern z. Sir Henry adds that the Harleian MS., No. 1022, contains sev- eral tracts in Northern English, of nearly the same age ; among which is a poem on the Decalogue, translated from the Latin in 1357, at the request of Archbishop Horesley, by John de Taystoke, a monk of St. Mary's, York. il . The reader," it is further stated, " who is inquisitive as to dialects will find among the Harleian manuscripts one, No. 221, which contains a Dictionary in English and Latin, the former language in the dialect of the East Country, compiled ninety years later by a friar preacher, a recluse at Lynne in Norfolk." Our oldest Mixed English prose author is Sir John Mandevil, whose Voyages and Travels, a singular repertory of the marvel- lous legends of the Middle Ages, have been often printed. The best editions are that published in 8vo., at London, in 1725, and the reprint of it in the same form in 1839, " with an introduction, additional notes, and a glossary, by J. O. Halliwell, Esq., F.S.A., F.R.A.S." The author's own account of himself and of his book is given in an introductory address, or Prologue : — And. for als moch as it is long time passed that there was no general passage ne vyage over the sea, and many men desiren for to hear speak o*" the Holy Lond, and han 1 thereof great solace and comfort, I, John Maun ileville, knight, all be it I be not worthy, that was born in Englond, in the town of Saint Albons, passed the sea in the year of our Lord Jesu Christ 1322, in the day of Saint Michel ; and hider-to have ben 2 longtime over 1 Have. - Been. 856 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. the sea, and have seen and gone thorough many divers londs, and nany provinces, and kingdoms, and isles, and have passed thorough Tartary Persie, Ermonie 1 the Little and the Great ; thorough Libye, Chaldee, and a great part of Ethiop ; thorough Amazoyn, Ind the Lass and the More, a great party ; and thorough out many other isles, that ben abouten Tnd ; 'where dwellen many divers folks, and of divers manners and laws, and of divers shapps of men. Of which londs and isles I shall speak more plainly hereafter. And I shall devise you some party of things that there ben, 2 whan time shall ben after it may best come to my mind; and specially for hem 3 that will 4 and are in purpose for to visit the Holy City of Jerusalem, and the holy places that are thereabout And I shall tell the way that they should holden thider. For I have often times passed and ridden the way, with good company of many lords, God be thonked. And ye shull understond that I have put this book out of Latin into French, and translated it agen out of French into English, that every man of my nation may understond it. But lords and knights, and other noble and worthy men, that con 5 Latin but little, and han ben beyond the sea, knowen and understonden gif I err in devising, for forgetting or else ; that they mowe 6 redress it and amend it. For things passed out, of long time, from a man's mind, or from his sight, turnen soon into for- getting; because that mind of man ne may not ben comprehended ne withholden for the freelty of mankind. Mandevil is said to have returned to England in 1856, or after an absence of thirty-four years ; and, as he is recorded to have died at Liege in 1371, his book must have been written early in the latter half of the fourteenth century. Of the many copies of it which exist in manuscript, some are as old as the close of that century ; so that the language may be presumed to have been preserved nearly as he wrote it. Divested of the old spelling, it will be seen from the above specimen to be still very readily intel- ligible : indeed it is remarkable for its clearness and correctness. Our other extracts, however, shall be given with the spelling of the time, as exhibited in the Cottonian MS. Titus c. xvi., which is believed to have been written about the year 1400. The fol- lowing is the Seventh Chapter, entitled Of the Pilgrimages in Jerusalem, and of the Holy Places thereaboute, as contributed after that MS. to the P'ctorial History of England by Sir Henry Ellin. i Armenia. a Be. 8 Them ('em). * Wish. 5 Know. 6 May. MANDEV1L. 357 After for to speke of Jerusalem the holy cytee, zee schull undirstonde that it stont full faire betwene hilles. and there be no ryveres ne welles but watar cometh by condyte from Ebron. And zee schulle understonde that Jerusalem of olde tyme, unto the tyme of Melchisedech, was cleped Jebus : and after it was clept Salem, unto the tyme of Kyng David, that put these two names to gider, and cleped it Jebusalem. And after that Kyng Salomon cleped it Jerosolomye. And after that men cleped it Jerusalem, and so it is cleped zit. And aboute Jerusalem is the kyngdom of Surrye. 1 And there besyde, is the lond of Palestyne. And besyde it is Ascalon. And besyde that is the lond of Maritanie. But Jerusalem is in the lond of Judee ; and it is clept Jude, for that Judas Machabeus was kyng of that conferee. And it marcheth estward to the kyngdom of Arabye ; on the south syde to the lond of Egipt ; and on the west syde to the grete see. On the north syde toward the kyngdom of Surrye, and to the see of Cypre. In Jerusalem was wont to be a Patriark and Erchebysshopes, and Bisshoppes abouten in the contree. Abowte Jerusalem be theise cytees ; Ebron at seven myle, Jerico at six myle, Bersabee at eyght myle, Ascalon at xvii myle, Jaff at xvi myle, Ramatha at iij myle, and Bethleem at ij myle. And a ij myle from Bethleem toward the southe is the chirche of Seynt Karitot that was abbot there, for whom thei maiden meche doel amongs the monks whan he scholde dye, and zit be in-moornynge in the wise that thei maden her 3 lamentacon for him the first tyme, and it is full gret pytee to beholde. This contree and lond of Jerusalem hath ben in many dyverse nacones hondes. And often therfore hath the contree suffred meche tribulacion for the synne of the people that duelle ther : for that contree hath be in the honds of all nacyonns : that is to seyne of Jewes, of Chananees, Assiryenes, Perses, Medoynes, Macedoynes, of Grekes, Romaynes, of Cristenemen, of Sarrazines, Barbaryenes, Turkes, Tartaryenes, and of manye othere dyverse nacyons. For God wole not that it be longe in the honds of traytours ne of synneres, be thei cristene or other. And now have the hethene men holden that lond in her honds xl zer and more. But thei schull not holde it longe zif God wold. And zee schull undirstonde that whan men comen to Jerusalem her first pilgrymage is to the chirche of the Holy Sepulcr wher oure Lord was buryed, that is with oute the cytee on the north syde. But it is now en- closed in with the ton wall. And there is a full fair chirche all rownd, and open above, and covered with leed. And on the west syde is a fair tour and an high for belles strongly made. And in the myddes of the chirche is a tabernacle as itwer a lytyll hows, made with a low lityll dore ; and that tabernacle is made in maner of a half a compas right curiousely °nd richely made of gold and azure and othere riche coloures. full 1 Syria. a Dolor, sorrow (Sc. dule). 8 T-asur. 358 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. nobelyche made. And in the ryght side of that tabernacle is the sepulere of oure Lord. And the tabernacle is viij fote long and v fote wyde, and xj fote in heghte. And it is not longe sithe the sepulere was all open, that men myghte kisse it and touche it. But for pilgrymes that comen thider peyned hem to breke the ston in peces, or in poudr ; therefore the Soudan 1 hath do make a wall aboute the sepulcr that noman may touche it. But in the left syde of the wall of the tabernacle is well the heighte of a man, is a gret ston, to the quantytee of a mannes hed, that was of the holy sepulcr, and that ston kissen the pilgrymes that comen thider. In that tabernacle ben no wyndowes, but it is all made light with lampes that hangen befor the sepulcr. And there is a lampe that hongeth before the sepulcr that brenneth light, and on the Gode ffryday it goth out be him self, at that hour that our Lord roos fro deth to lyve. Also within the chirche at the right syde besyde the queer of the churche is the Mount of Calvarye, wher our Lord was don on the cros. And it is a roche of white colour, and a lytill medled with red. And the cros was set in a morteys in the same roche, and on that roche dropped the woundes of our Lord, whan he was pyned on the cros, and that is cleped Golgatha. And men gon up to that Golgatha be degrees. 2 And in the place of that morteys was Adamps hed found after Noes flode, in tokene that the synnes of Adam scholde ben bought in that same place. And upon that roche made Abraham sacrifise to our Lord. And there is an Awter, and before that Awtier lyzn Godefray de Boleyne, and Bawdewyn, and othere cristene Kyngs of Jerusalem. And ther nygh wher our Lord was crucyfied is this writcn in Greew, 3 Otheos basilion ysmon psionas ergasa, sothias emesotis yye* that is to seyne in Latyn, ' Hie Deus noster Rex, ante secula, operatus est salutem id medio terre ; ' that is to seye ' This God oure Kyng, before the worldes, hath wrought hele in mydds of the Erthc.' And also on that roche where the cros was sett, is writen with in the roche these wordes, Cyos myst ys basis toupisteos they thesmofy, 5 that is to sayne in Latyn, ' Quod vides est fundamentum tocius fidei Mundi hujus ; ' that is to seye, ' That thou seest is ground of all the world and of this feyth.' And zee achull vndirstonde that whan oure Lord was don upon the cros, he was xxxiij zer and iij monethes of elde. And the prophecye of David sayth that, ' Quadraginta annis proximus fui generacioni huic ; ' that is to seye, k Forty zeer was I neighbore to this kynrede.' And thus scholde it seme that the prophecyes ne wor not trewe, but thei ben bothe trewe : for in old tyme men maden o zeer of x monethes, of the whiche March was the Srste and Decembr was the last. But Gayus that was Emperour of Rome 1 Sultan. 2 s tep8> 3 Greek. 4 In the printed editions the Greek is 6 tfedf (3aocXevt; jjfiuv irpb aluvuv eipyaaarc ruT7/piav hv jxiaff) tjjq y/)q, '" In the printed editions, o eldeig, earl Qaovc ttic niareuc ofajs tov ndopov rovrov. MANDEVIL. 359 putten theise ij moneths there to Janyuer and Feverer, and ordeyned the zeer of xij monethes, that is to seye ccc.lxv dayes, without leep zeer, after the propre cours of the Sonne. And therefore after cowntynge of x monethes of the zeer, he dyede in the xl zeer as the prophete seyde : and after the zeer of xij monethes he was of age xxxiij zeer and iij monethes. Also within the Mount of Calvarie, on the right side, is an Awter, wher the piler lyzth that oure lord Jhesu was bounden to whan he was scourged ; and there besyde iiij fote, ben iiij pilers of ston that allweys droppen water. And summe seyn that thei wepen for our Lordes deth. And nygh that awtier is a place under erthe xlij degrees of depnesse, wher the only croys was founden by the wytt of Seynte Elyne, under a roche wher ther Jewes had hidde it. And that was the verray croys assayed. For thei founden iij crosses, on of our Lord, and ij of the ij thefes. And Seynte Elyne preved hem on a ded body that ai-os from deth to lyve, whan that it was leyd on it that our Lord dyed on. And there by in the wall is the place wher the iiij nayles of our Lord were liidd, for he had ij in his honds, and ij in his feet : and of on of theise the Emperour of Constantynople made a brydill to his hors, to ber him in bataylle, and thorgh vertue there of he overcam his enemyes, add wan all the lond of Asye the lesse, that is to seye Turkye, Ermonye the lasse and the more, and from Surrye to Jerusalem, from Arabye to Persie, from Mesopotayme to the kingdom of Halappe, 1 from Egypte the highe and the lowe, and all the othere kyng- domes unto the depe of Ethiope, and in to Ynde the lesse that thanne was cristerne. And there was in that tyme many gode holy men and holy Heremytes of whom the book of Fadres lyfes speketh and thei ben now in paynemes and Sarazines honds. And in mydds of that chirche is a compas, in the whiche Joseph of Aramathie leyde the body of our Lord whan he had taken him down of the croys, and wer he wassched the wounds of our Lord. And that compas, sey men is the mydds of the world. And in the chirche of the Sepulchre on the north syde is the place wher oure Lord was put in preson. For he was in preson in many places. And ther is a partye of the cheyne that he was bounden with. And ther he appered first to Marie Magdaleyne, whan he was rysen, and sche wende 2 that he had ben a gardener. In the chirche of Seynt Sepulcr was wont to be chanons of the ordr of Seynt Augustyn, and had- den a Priour, but the Patriark was her sovereyn. And with oute the dores of the chirche, on the right syde as men gone upward xviij greces, 8 seyd our Lord to his moder, ' Mulier, ecce filius tuus,' that is to seye, ' Woman, lo thi sone.' And after that he seyde to John his disciple, ' Ecce Mater tua' that is to seyne, ' Lo behold thi moder.' And theise words he seyde on the cros. And on theise greces went our Lord whan he bar the cross on his schulder. And under this grees is a chapell and 1 Aleppo. 2 Weened, thought. 3 Steps. 360 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. in that chapell syngen prestes, Yndyenes, 1 that is to seye prests of Ynde ; noght after oure law, but after her, and al wey thei maken her sacrement of the awtier, seyenge Pater noster and othere prayeres there with. With the whiche preyeres thei seye the words that the sacrement is made of. For thei ne knowe not the addicions that many Popes han made, but thei Bynge with gode devocion. And there ner is the place where that oure Lord rested him whan he was /(very for berynge of the cros. And zee schull understonde that before/ the chirche of the Sepulcre is the cytee more feble than in ony other partie, for the grete playn that is betwene the chirche and the citee. And toward the est syde, with oute the walles of the cytee, is the Vale of Josaphath, that toucheth to the walles as though it wer a large dych. And above that Vale of Josaphath out of the cytee is the chirche of Seynt Stevene wher he was stoned to deth. And there beside is the gildene 2 zate that may not be opened, be the which zate our Lord entred on Palmesonday upon an asse, and the zate opened azenst him whan he wolde go unto the Temple. And zit apperen the steppes of the asses feet in iij places of the degrees that ben of full harde ston. And before the chirche of Seynt Sepulcr toward the south, a cc paas is the gret Hospitall of Seynt John, of the whiche the Hospitleres hadd here foundacion. And with inne the Palays of the seke men of that Hospitall be sixe score and iiij pileres of ston. And in the walles of the hows, with oute the nombre aboveseyd, there be liiij pileres that beren up the hows. And fro that Hospitall to go toward the est is a full fayr chirche that is clept Notre Dame la graund. And than is there another chirche right nygh that is clept Notre Dame de Latyne. And there were Marie Cleophes and Marie Magdaleyne and teren here heer, 8 whan our Lord was peyned in the cros. The following is the account of Mahomet in the fourteenth chapter. And zee schull vnderstonde that Machamete was born in Arabye, that was first a pore knaue that kept cameles that wenten with marchantes for marchandise, and so befell that he wente with the marchandes in to Egipt, and thei were thanne cristene in tho 4 partyes. And at the desartes of Arabye he wente in to a chapell wher a Eremyte duelte. And whan he entred in to the chapell, that was but a lytill and a low thing, and had but a lityl dor' and a low, than the entree began to wexe so gret and so large, and so high, as though it had be of a gret mynstr, or the zate of a paleys. And this was the first myracle the Sarazins seyn that Machomete dide in <\\- /.oiitlic After began he for to wexe wyse and riche ; and he was p jurist Astronomer ; and, after, he was gouernour and prince of the lond of 1 Indians. 2 Gilded. a Tore their hair. * Those. MAN DEVIL. 361 Corrodane, and he gouerned it full wisely, in such manere, that whan the Prince was ded, he toke the lady to wyfe that highte J Gadrige. Ana Machomete fell often in the grete sikeness that men calle the fallynge euyll. Wherfore the lady was full sory that euere sche toke him to hus- bonde. But Machomete made hire to beleeue that all tymes when he fell so, Gabriel the angel cam for to speke with him, and for the grete light and brightnesse of the angell, he myghte not susteyne him fro fallynge. And therefore the Sarazines seyn that Gabriel cam often to speke with him. This Machomete regned in Arabye, the zeer of our Lord Jhesu Crist sixe hundred and ten, and was of the generacion of Ysmael, that was Abrahames sone that he gat upon Agar his chamberer ; 2 and there- fore ther be Sarazines that be clept Ismaelytenes ; and sume Agarzenes, of Agar, and the othere propurly be clept Sarrazines of Sarra ; and sumnie be clept Moabytes, and summe Amonytes, for the two sones of Loth, Moab and Amon, that he begatt on his daughtres, that were aftirward grete erthely princes. And also Machomete loued wel a gode heremyte that duelled in the desertes, a myle from Mount Synay in the weye that men gon fro Arabye toward Caldee, and toward Ynde, o 3 day iorney fro the See wher the Marchaunts of Venyse comen often for merchandize. And so often wente Machomete to this heremyte that all his men were wrothe, for he wolde gladly here this heremyte preche, and make his men wake all nyght ; and therefore his men thoughten to putte the heremyte to deth ; and so befell vpon a nyght that Machomete was dronken of god wyn and he fell on slepe, and his men toke Machomete's swerd out of his schethe, whils he slepte, and there with thei slowgh this heremyte and putte his swerd al blody in his schethe azen. And at morwe whan he found the heremeyte ded, he was fully sory and wroth, and wolde haue don his men to deth, but thei all with on accord [said] that he him self had slayn him whan he was dronken and schewed him his swerd all blody, and he trowed that thei hadden seyd soth. 4 And than he cursed the wyn, and all tho that drynken it. And therefore Sarrazines that be deuout drynken neuer no wyn, but sum drynkon it priuyly, for zif thei dronken it openly thei scholde ben reproued. But thei drynken gode beuerage, and swete and noryfshynge, that is made of Galamell, and that is that men maken sugr' of that is of right gode sauor, and it is gode for the breest. Also it be falleth sumtyme that cristene men become Sarazines outher for pouertee or for sympleness, or elles for her owne wykkedness. And therefore the Archiflamyn or the Flamyn, os 8 our Echebisshopp or Bisshopp, whan he resceyueth hem seyth thus : La ellec olla syla Machomet roves alia, that is to seye, " There is no God but on and Machomete his messager." We have already had occasion to quote a short passage fron: 1 Was called. 2 Chambermaid. 8 One. 4 Sooth, true. 6 As. vol. I. 46 362 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. John de Trevisa's translation of Higden 's Polychrome on, in speaK ing of the new mode of teaching Latin in schools, through the medium of English instead of French, which Trevisa tells us had been introduced shortly before the time at which he was then writing, which was the year 1385. His translation of Higden, which was undertaken at the request of Thomas Lord Berkeley, to whom he was chaplain, is stated at the end to have been finished in 1387. It was printed by Caxton in 1482, with a continuatior bringing down the narrative from 1357, at which Higden had stopped, to 1460 ; but, besides that Trevisa's text is extensively altered hi this edition both by insertions and omissions, his language is modernized throughout. " I, William Caxton, a simple person," says the worthy printer, in his Preface, " have endeavoured me tc writ first over all the said book of Polychronicon, and somewhat have changed the rude and old English, that is to wit, certain words which in these days be neither used ne understood." Yet not more than the ordinary span of a single human life had elapsed since the translation had been executed by Trevisa, no doubt in the current English of his day ; such was the rapid growth of the language in the earlier half of the fifteenth century. Besides the Polychronicon, Trevisa rendered several other works from the Latin into his mother-tongue ; and some of his other translations are still preserved in manuscript. Of a version of the whole of both the Old and New Testaments, however, which he is said to have executed, nothing is now known. The oldest English translation we have of the Bible is that of Wiclif. John de Wiclif, or Wycliffe, died at about the age of sixty in 1384, and his translation of the Scriptures from the Vul- gate appears to have been finished two or three years before. The New Testament has been several times printed: first in folio in 1731 under the care of the Rev. John Lewis; next in 4to. in 1810 under that of the Rev. H. H. Baber ; lastly in 4to. in 1841, and again in 1846, in Bagster's English Hexapla. And now the Old Testament has also been given to the world from the Clarendon press, at the expense of the University of Oxford, admirably edited by the Rev. J. Forshall and Sir Frederick Madden, in four magnifi- cent quartos, Oxford, 1850. The following extracts from Wiclif's Bible were communicated to the Pictorial History of England by Sir Henry Ellis from one of the best manuscripts of the entire translation, the Royal MS. 1 C. viii. in the British Museum. The WICLIF 363 first, from the Old Testament, consists of part of the fifteenth chap- ter of Exodus, containing the Song of Moses : — Thanne Moises song, and the sones of Israel, this song to the Lord ; and thei seiden, Synge we to the Lord for he is magnafied gloriousli ; he castide down the hors and the stiere into the see. My strengthe and my preisyng is the Lord, and he is maad to me into heelthe ; this is my God : y schal glorifie hym the God of my fadir : and y schal enhaunce hyrn : the Lord is as a man fk;ten : his name is almizti. He castide doun into the see the charis of Farao and his oost, his chosun princes weren drenchid in the reed see, the deepe watris hiliden them ; thei zeden doun into the depthe as a stoon. Lord thy rizt hond is magnyfied in strengthe : Lord tlii rizt hond smoot the enemye : and in the mychilnesse of thi glorie thou hast put doun all thyn adversaryes ; thou sentist thine ire that devouride hem as stobil : and watris weren gaderid in the spirit of thi woodnesse ; flowinge watir stood : depe watris weren gaderid in the middis of the see : the enemy seide, Y schal pursue and y schal take, y schal departe spuylis : «ny soule schal be fillid : I schal drawe out my swerde : myn hond schal »le hem. Thi spirit blew ; and the see hilide hem, thei weren drenchid as leed, in grete watris. Lord, who is lyk thee in stronge men : who is lyk thee : thou art greet doere hi hoolynesse ; ferdful and p'isable, and doyng miracles ; thou heldist forth thine hond, and the erthe devouride hem : Thou were ledere, in thi merci, to thi puple, which thou azen bouztest, and thou hast bore hym, in thi strengthe, to thin holi dwellyng place : pu- plis stieden and weren wroothe : sorewis helden the dwelleris of Flistiym ; thane the pryncis of Edom weren disturblid ; trembling helde the stronge men of Moab : all the dwelleris of Canaan weren starke. Inward drede falle on hem : and outward drede in the greetnesse of thin arm. Be thei maad unmoovable as a stoon, til thi puple passe, lord, til this thi puple passe. Whom thou weldidist, thou schalt brynge hem in and thou schalt plaunte in the liil of thin eritage : in the moost stidefast dwellyng place which thou hast wrodzt, Lord, Lord, thi seyntuarie which thin hondis made stidefast. The Lord schal regne in to the world and ferth'e. For- sothe Farao a ridere entride with his charis and knyztis in to the see : and the Lord brouzte the watris of the see on him ; sotheli the sones of Israel zeden bi the drie place, in the myddis of the see. Therefore Marie profetesse, the sister of Aaron, tooke a tympan in hir hond, and all the wymmen zeden out aftir hyr with tympans companyes : to which sche song before and seide, Synge we to the Lord : for he is magnyfied gloriously, he castide doun into the see the hors and the stiere >f hym. The specimen selected from the New Testament is the last chap- ter of St. Luke : — 364 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. But in o daj of the woke ful eerli thei camen to the grave, and broujrhten swete smelling spices that thei hadden araved. And thei founden the stoon turnyd awey fro the graue. And thei geden in and foundun not the bodi of the Lord Jhesus. And it was don. the while thei weren astonyed in thought of this thin°\ \o t~e men stodun bisidis hem in schynyng cloth. And whjvme thei dredden and bowiden her semblaunt into erthe, thei seiden to hem, what seeken ye him tha* lyueth with deede men ? He is not here : but he is risun : haue y° mbs^'O how he spak to yoti whanne he was yit in Golilee, and seide, tor it behoueth mannes sone tc be bitakun into the hondis of synful men : and to be crucifyed : and th« thridde day to rise agen ? And thei bithoughten on hise wordis, and thei geden agen fro the graue : and teelden alle these thingis to the ellevene and to all othere. And there was Marye Maudeleyn and Jone and Marye of James, and othere wymmen that weren with hem, that seiden to Apes- tlis these thingis. And these wordis were seyn bifore hem as madnesse and thei bileueden not to hem ; but Petre roos up and ran to the graue, and he oowide doun, and sigh the lynen clothis liynge aloone; and he wente by himsilf, wondrynge on that that was don. And lo tweyne of him wenten in that day into a castel, that was fro Jerusalem the space of sixty furlongis, by name Emaws. And thei spaken togidre of alle these thingis that hadden bifalle. And it was don the while thei talkiden, and soughten by hemsilf : Jesus himsilf neighede and wente with hem. But her yghen weren holdun, that thei knewen him not. And he seide to hem, What ben these wordis that ye speken togidere wondringe : and ye ben sorewful ? And oon, whos name was Cleofas, ansvverde and seyde, Thou thi silf art a pilgrim in Jerusalem, and hast thou not knowun what thingis ben don in it these dayes ? To whom he seyde, What thingis ? and thei seiden to him, Of Jhesus of Nazareth, that was a man profete myghti in werk and word bifore God and al the puple. And how the higheste prestis of our Princis bitokun him into dampnacioun of deeth : and crucifieden him. But we hopiden that he schulde haue agen boughte Israel : and now on alle these thingis, the thirdde day is to day that these thingis weren don. But also summe wymmen of ouris maden us aferd whiche bifore day weren at the graue. And whan his bodi was not foundun, thei camen and seiden that they sighen also a sight of aungels, which seiden that he lyueth. And summe of ouren wenten to (In- graue, and thei foundun so as the wymmen seiden ; but they foundun not him. And he seide to him, A foolis and slowe of herte to bileue in alle thingis that the profetis han spoken : Wher it binofte not Crist tc suffre these thingis, and so to entre into his giorye ? And he began at Moyses and at alle the profetis and declaride to hern in alle scripturis that weren of him. Ar.d thei camen nygh the castel whidir thei wenten : and he made eountenaua ce that he wolde go ferthir. And thei constreyneder WICL1F. 36-5 him and seiden, Dwelle with us, for it draweth to nyght, and the day is now bowed doun ; and he entride with them. And it was don the while he sat at the mete with hem, he took breed and blisside and brak, and took to hem. And the yghen of hem weren opened, and thei knewen hem ; and he vanyschide fro her yghen. And thei seiden togidere, Wher oure herte was not biernynge in us, while he spak to us in the weye, and opened to us Scripturis ? And thei risen up in the same our and wenten agen into Jerusalem, and foundun the ellevene gaderid togidre, and hem that weren with him, seiynge, that the Lord is risim verily : and append to Sy mount. And thei tolden what thingis weren don in the weye, and how thei knewen him in the brakinge of bred. And the while thei spaken these thingis Jhesus stood in the myddil of hem and seide to hem ; Pees to you, I am, nyl ye drede : but thei weren affrayed and agast and gessiden him to be a spirit. And he seide to hem, what ben ye troubled : and thoughtis camen up into youre hertis ? Se ye my hondis and my feet : for I my silf am, feele ye and se ye, for a spirit hath not flesch and boones as ye seen that I haue. And whenne he hadde seid this thing ; he schewide hondis and feet to hem. And yet while thei bileueden not and wondriden for joye : he seide, Han ye here ony thing that schal be etun ? and thei profriden to him a part of a fisch roostyd, and a honycomb And whanne he hadde etun bifore hem, he toke that that lefte and gaf to hem, and seyde to hem, These ben the wordis that I spak to you, whanne I was yit with you, for it is nede that alle thingis ben fulfilled that ben writun in the Lawe of Moyses and in the profetis and in Salmes of me. Thanne he openide to hem with that thei schulden undirstonde Scripturis. And he seide to hem, For thus it is writun, and thus it bihofte Crist to suffre : and rise agen fro death in the thridde day : and penaunce and re- missioun of synnes to be prechid in his name into all folkis bigynnynge at Jerusalem. And ye ben witnessis of these thingis. And I schal send the biheest of my fadir into you, but sitte ye in the citee till that ye ben clothed with vertu fro an high. And he ledrle hem forth into Bethanye ; and whan hise hondes weren lift up, he blesside hem. And it was don the while he blessid hem he departede fro hem, and was borun into hevene. And thei worschipiden and wenten agen into Jerusalem, with gret ioye « and weren euer more in the temple heriynge and blessinge God. It would appear from these two specimens that the English of this early version of the Bible is considerably less antique in the New Testament than in the Old. Wiclif is also the author of many original writings in his native language, in defence of his reforming views in theology and church government, some of which have been printed, but most of which that are preserved still remain in manuscript. His style is everywhere coarse and 566 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. slovenly, though sometimes animated by a popular force or boldness of expression. Chaucer is the author of three separate works in prose : a trans- lation of Boethius de Consolatione Philosophise, printed by Caxton, in folio, without date, under the title of The Boke of Consolacion of Philosophic, wich that Boecius made for his Comforte and Con- solacion : a Treatise on the Astrolabe, addressed to his son Lewis, in 1391, and printed (at least in part) in the earlier editions of hia works ; and The Testament of Love, an apparent imitation of tits treatise of Boethius, written towards the end of his life, and also printed in the old editions of his collected works. But, perhaps, the most highly finished, and in other respects also the most inter- esting of the great poet's prose compositions are the Tale of Meli- boeus and the Parson's Tale, in the Canterbury Tales. The for- mer, which he tells himself as one of the company of pilgrims, and which is a very close translation from a French treatise enti- tled Le Livre de Melibee et de Dame Prudence (existing both in prose and verse), has been supposed, as mentioned in a preceding page, to be written in a sort of blank measure or rhythm, perhaps, Mr. Guest thinks, the same that is called cadence In the House of Fame. The following extract is from the earlier portion of the Tale, where the rhythmical style is conceived to be most marked : — This Melibee answered unto his wife Prudence ; I purpose not, quod he, to werken by thy counsel for many causes and reasons, for certes every wight wold hold me than 1 a fool ; tills is to sayn, if I for thy counseling wold change things that been ordained and affirmed by so many wise men. Secondly, I say that all women ben wick, and none good of hem 2 all ; for of a thousand men. saith Salomon, I found o 3 good man ; but certes of all women good woman found I never. And also, certes, if I governed me v y thy counsel it should seem that I had yeve 4 thee over me the maistry ; and God forbid that it so were ; for Jesus Sirach saith, that if the wif have the maistry she is contrarious to her husband ; and Salomon sayeth, Never in thy life, to thy wife, ne to thy child, ne to thy friend, ne yeve nc power over thyself; for better it were that thy children ax 5 of thee thinges that hem needeth, than thou see thyself in the hands of thy children. And also, if I wol werch by they counselling, certes it must bf some time secree *' till it were time that it be knowen ; and this ne may not be if I should be counselled by thee. For it is written, tin 1 janglerj i Then. 2 Them. 8 One. * Givm. 6 Ask. G Secret CHAUCER'S PROSE. 367 of women ne can nothing hide, save that which they wot not. After, the philosopher sayeth, In wicked counsel women venquishen men. And fo r these reasons I ne owe not x to be counselled by thee. 2 Whan Dame Prudence, full debonairly and with great patience, had heard all that her husbond liked for to say, than axed she of him licence for to speak, and said in this wise : My lord, quod she, as to your firs* reason it may lightly been answered, for I say that it is no folly to change counsel when the thing is changed, or else when the thing seemeth other- wise than it seemed before. And moreover I say, though that ye have sworn and behight 3 to perform your emprise, and nevertheless ye waive to perform thilk same emprise by just cause, men should not say therefore ye were a liar ne forsworn, for the book saith that the wise man maketh no leasing when he turneth his courage 4 for the better. And, all be it that your emprise be established and ordained by great multitude of folk, yet thar 5 you not accomplish thilk ordinance, but you liketh, 8 for the truth oi things and the profit ben rather founden in few folk that ben wise and full of reason, than by great multitude of folk there 1 every man cryeth and clattereth what him liketh ; soothly swich 8 multitude is not honest. As to the second reason, whereas ye say that all women ben wick ; save your grace, certes ye despise all women in this wise, and he that all despiseth, as saith the book, all displeaseth. And Senek saith, that who so wol have sapience shall no man dispraise, but he shall gladly teach the science that he can 9 without presumption or pride, and swich things as he nought can he shall not be ashamed to lear hem, 10 and to inquere of less folk thar. himself. And, sir, that there hath ben full many a good woman may lightly be preved ; for certes, sir, our lord Jesu Christ wold never han descended to be born of a woman if all women had be wicked ; and after that, for the great bounty that is in women, our lord Jesu Christ, whan he was risen from death to life, appeared rather to a woman than to his apos- tles. And, though that Salomon said he found never no good woman, it followeth not therefore that all women be wicked ; for, though that he ne found no good woman, certes many another man hath found many a woman full good and true ; or else, peradventure, the intent n of Salomon was this, that in sovereign bounty 12 he found no woman ; this is to say, that there is no wight that hath sovereign bounty save God above, as he him- Eeif recordeth in his Evangelies ; for there is no creature so good that him ne wanteth somewhat of the perfection of God that is his maker. Yout 1 Ought not. 2 These three last sentences are not in the MSS., but are an insertion of Tjpr- whitt's, translated from the French Melibee. 8 Engaged, pledged yourself. * Heart, inclination. 8 It behooveth. ' Unless it liketh you. 7 Where. 8 Such. 9 Knows, undertsands. 10 Learn them. n Meaning 12 Goodness. 368 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. third reason is this : ye say that if that ye govern you by my counsel it should seem that ye had yeve me the maistry and the lordship of your person. Sir, save your grace, it is not so ; for, if so were that no man should be counselled, but only of hem that ban lordship and maistry of his person, men nold not be counselled so often ; for, soothly, thilk man that asketh counsel of a purpose, yet hath he free choice whether he wol werk after that counsel or none. And as to your fourth reason, there as yesain, 1 that the janglery of women can hide things that they wot not, as whoso saith that a woman cannot hide that she wot ; sir, these words ben understood of women that ben jangleresses and wicked, of which women men sain that three things driven a man out of his house, that is to say. smoke, dropping of rain, and wicked wives ; and of swich women Salomon saith, that a man were better dwell in desert than with a woman that is riotous ; and, sir, by your leave, that am not I ; for ye have full often assayed my great silence and my great patience, and eke how well that i can hide and hele a things that men oughten secretly to hiden. And soothly, as to your fifth reason, whereas ye say that in wicked counsel women venquishen men, God wot that thilk reason stant here in no stead ; for understondeth now ye axen counsel for to do wickedness, and if ye wol werken wickedness, and your wife restraineth thilk Avicked purpose, and overcometh you by reason and by good counsel, certes your wife ought rather to be praised than to be blamed : thus should ye understood the philosopher that saith. In wicked counsel women venquishen hir 3 husbonds. And there as ye blamen all women and hir reasons, 1 shall show you by many ensamples that many women have been full good, and yet ben, 4 and hir counsel wholesome and profitable. Eke some men han said that the counsel of women is either too clear or else too little of price ; but all be it so that full many a woman be bad, and hir counsel vile and nought worth, yet han men founden full many a good woman, and discreet and wise in counselling. Lo Jacob thorough the good counsel of his mother Rebeck, wan the benison of his lather and the lordship over all his brethren. Judith, by her good counsel, delivered the city of Bethuly, in which she dwelt, out of the bond of Holofern, that had it besieged and wold it all destroy. Abigail delivered Nabal, her housbond, fro David the king, that wold han slain him, and appeased the ire of the king by her wit, and by her good counselling. Hester, by her counsel, enhanced greatly the people uf God, in the reign of Assucrus the king. And the same bounty in good counselling of many a good woman moun 5 men read and tell. And, fur- ther more, whan that our Lord had created Adam, our form 6 father, he said in tins wise ; It is not good to be a man alone ; make we to him an help semblable to himself. Here moun ye see that if that women weren 1 Whereas you say ' Conceal. 8 Their. 4 Still are. 6 May. 6 First, original. CHAUCER'S PROSE. 3'JO not good, and hir counsel good and profitable, our Lord God of heaven wold neither had wrought hem ne called hem help of man, but rather con- fusion of man. And then said a clerk once in two verses, what is better than gold ? Jasper. What is better than Jasper ? Wisdom. And what is better than wisdom ? Woman. And what is better than a good woman ? Nothing. And, sir, by many other reasons moun ye seen that many women ben good, and hir counsel good and profitable. . . . Whan Melibee had heard the words of his wife Prudence, he said thus : I see well that the word of Salomon is sooth ; for he saith that words that ben spoken discreetly by ordinance ben honeycombs, for they yeven sweet- ness to the soul and wholesomeness to the body ; and, wife, because of thy sweet words, and eke for I have preved and assayed thy great sapience and thy great truth, I wol govern me by thy counsel in all thing. This is probably one of the passages that have been conceived to have most of a rhythmical character ; yet its balanced style does not go beyond what is not uncommon in rhetorical prose. Part of the measured march of the language may arise from the French tale, in perhaps its original form, having been in verse. What is called the Persones (or Parson's) Tale, which winds up the Can- terbury Tales, as we possess the work, is a long moral discourse, which, for the greater part, is not very entertaining, but which yet contains some passages curiously illustrative of the age in which it was written. Here is part of what occurs in the section headed I)e Superbia (Of Pride), the first of the seven mortal sins. Tyr- whitt justly recommends that the whole " should be read carefully by any antiquary who may mean to write De re Vestiaria of the English nation in the fourteenth century." Now ben there two manner of prides : that on of hem 1 is within the heart of a man, and that other is without ; of which soothly these foresaid things, and mo 2 than I have said, appertainen to pride that is within the heart of man. And there be other spices 3 that ben withouten ; but, natheless, that on of these spices of pride is sign of that other, right as the gay levesell 4 at the tavern is sign of the wine that is in the cellar. And this is in many tilings, as in speech and countenance, and outrageous array of clothing ; for certes if there had ben no sin in clothing Christ wold not so soon have noted and spoken of the clothing of thilk rich man 1 The one of them. 2 More. 3 Species, kinds. 4 The meaning of this word, which at a later date appears to have been pro- nounced and written tessel, is unknown. See Tyrwhitt's note to Cant. Tales, v. 4059, and Glossary, ad verbum; and note by the editor, Mr. Albert Way, on pp. 300, 301, of the Promptorium Parvulorum, vol. i., printed for the Camden Society, 4to. Lond. 1843. VOL. I. 47 '170 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. in the Gospel : and, as Saint Gregory saith, that precious clothing is cul pable, for the dearth of it, and for his softness, and for his strangeness and disguising, and for the superfluity or for the inordinate scantiness of it. Alas ! may not a man see as in our days the sinful costlew array of cloth- ing, and namely * in too much superfluity, or else in too disordinate scant- ness. As to the first sin, in superfluity of clothing, which that maketh it so dear, to the harm of the people, not only the cost of the embrouding, 2 the disguising, indenting or barring, ownding, 3 paling, 4 winding, or bending, and semblable waste of cloth in vanity ; but there is also the costlew fur- ring in bir gowns, so moch pounsoning 6 of chisel to maken holes, so moch dagging 6 of shears, with the superfluity in length of the. foresaid gowns, trailing in the dong and in the mire, on horse and eke on foot, as well .of man as of woman, that all thilk training is verily (as in effect) wasted, consumed, threadbare, and rotten with dong, rather than it is yeven to the poor, to great damage of the foresaid poor folk, and that in sondry wise ; this is to sayn, the more that cloth is wasted, the more must it cost to the poor people, for the scarceness ; and. furthermore, if so be that they Avolden yeve swich pounsoned and dagged clothing to the poor people, it is not convenient to wear for hir estate, ne suffisant to bote 7 hir necessity, to keep hem fro the distemperance of the firmament. . . . Also the sin of ornament or of apparel is in things that appertain to riding, as in too many delicate horse that ben holden for delight, that ben so fair, fat, and costlew ; and also in many a vicious knave that is sus- tained because of hem ; in curious harness, as in saddles, croppers, peitrels, and bridles, covered with precious cloth and rich, barred and plated of gold and of silver ; for which God saith by Zachary the prophet, I avoI confound the riders of swich horse. These folk taken little regard of the riding of God's son of heaven, and of his harness, whan he rode upon the ass. and had none other harness but the poor clothes of his disciples, ne we read not that ever he rode on ony other beast. I speak this for the sin of superfluity, and not for honesty whan reason it requireth. And, moreover, certes pride is greatly notified in holding of great meiny, 8 whan they ben of little profit, or of right no profit, and namely whan that meiny is felonious and damageous to the people by hardiness of high lordship, or by way of office ; for certes swich lords sell than hir lordship to the devil of hell, whan they sustain the wickedness of hir meiny ; or else whan these folk of low degree, as they that holden hostelries, sustainen theft of fiir hostellers, and that is in many manner of deceits ; thilk manner of oik ben the flies that followen the honey, or else the hounds that followec 1 Especially. 2 Embroidering. 3 Imitating waves. * Imitating pales. 5 Punching. ,; Slitting. 7 Help (boot). 8 Body of menials. UNIVERSITIES. 871 the carrain ; swich foresaid folk s'tranglen spiritually hir lordships ; for which thus saith David the prophet, Wicked death mot come unto thilk lordships, and God yeve that they mot descend into hell all down, for in hir houses is iniquity and shrewedness, and not God of heaven : and certes, but if they done amendment, right as God yave his benison to Laban by the service of Jacob, and to Pharaoh by the service of Joseph, right so wol God yeve his malison to swich lordships as sustain the wick- edness of hir servants, but they come to amendment. Pride of the table appeareth eke full oft ; for certes rich men be cleped 1 to feasts, and poor folk be put away and rebuked ; and also in excess of divers meats and drinks, and namely swich manner bake meats and dish meats brenning J of wild tire, and painted and castled with paper, and semblable waste, so that it is abusion to think ; and eke in too great preciousness of vessel, and curiosity of minstrelsy, by which a man is stirred more to the delights of luxury. LITERATURE AND LEARNING IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY. UNIVERSITIES. A few facts which are important rather as forming epochs in the chronology of our subject, and for the results by which they were followed, than in themselves, constitute the main part of the history of learning and literature in England during the fifteenth century. The actual contributions of this age to our national lit- erature are smaller in amount and value than those of any preced- ing space of time of the same length since the Norman Conquest. The ferment of studious enthusiasm which had been excited in men's minds in the beginning of the preceding century had, in a great measure, spent itself before the beginning of this. Accord- ing to an oration delivered before the pope and cardinals by Rich- ard Fitz-Ralph, Archbishop of Armagh, in 1357, the 30,000 stu- dents of the University of Oxford had even by that time decreased to about 6000. The popular veneration for learning had also, from various causes, undergone a corresponding decline ; and, in- stead of the honors formerly paid by all classes to talent and schol- arship, and the crowding of eager multitudes around every emi- nent; doctor wherever he appeared, we perceive now the aspect of a general indifference, and encounter occasional instances of the' 1 Called, invited 2 Burning. 372 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. votaries of science and letters begging their bread, and of their unappreciated acquirements being turned into matter of ridicule and mockerv by the insolence of rank and wealth. Anthony Wood, the quaint historian of the University of Oxford, relates a story of two itinerating students of this age, who, having one day presented themselves at a baronial castle, and sought an introduc- tion by the exhibition of their academical credentials, in which they were each described as gifted, among other accomplishments, with a poetical vein, were ordered by the baron to be suspended in a pair of buckets over a draw-well, and dipped alternately into the water, until each should produce a couplet on his awkward situa- tion ; it was not till after a considerable number of duckings that the unfortunate captives finished the rhymes, while their involun- tary ascents and descents during the process of concoction were heartily enjoyed by the baron and his company. It would be unfair, indeed, to judge of the general state of things from one or two anecdotes of this kind, although such consequences are only what might be expected when scholars took to perambulating the country as mendicants, with recommendations to the charity of the benevolent by the chancellors of their universities, as Ave are as- sured was now become customary ; but the circumstances of our own country at least, in this age, must have proved in no small degree depressing to all liberal pursuits. Although much of the popular effervescence had evaporated, however, the love of knowledge was still alive and active in many of the more select order of minds, prompting them to zealous exertions both in its acquisition and its diffusion. In the course of the fifteenth century, very nearly forty new universities were founded in the different countries of Europe. In our own, several new colleges were added both to Oxford and Cambridge. In the former university, Lincoln College was founded in 1430 by Richard Flemyng, Bishop of Lincoln, though only completed about 1475 by his successor, Thomas Kotherham ; All Souls was founded in 1437 by Chichelcy, Archbishop of Canterbury, with the design of pro- viding a perpetual service of prayers and masses for the souls of all the faithful departed, and especially of those who had fallen or should (iill in the French wars; and Magdalen, which soon became one of the wealthiest academical establishments in Europe, was founded by William Pattyn, or De Waynflete, Bishop of Winches- ter and Lord Chancellor of England, who began the erection of UNIVERSITIES. 373 the fabnc in 1458, and lived to witness its completion in 1479 Cambridge received the additions, of King's College, founded in 1441, on a scale of great liberality and magnificence, by Henry VI., who established, about the same time, the celebrated school of Eton, to be a nursery for his college ; of Queen's College, founded in 1446, by Henry's consort, Margaret of Anjou ; and of Catherine Hall, founded in 1475, by Robert Woodlark, the third provost of King's College. Extensive public buildings, which came tD be known by the name of the New Schools, were also erected at Oxford in 1439, by Thomas Hokenorton, Abbot of Osney, for the delivery of lectures in metaphysics, natural philosophy, moral phi- losophy, astronomy, geometry, music, arithmetic, logic, rhetoric, and grammar. The foundation of a divinity school and of a pub- lic library was laid in the same university about 1427 ; and, although the building was often interrupted, it was, at length, through the liberal donations of Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, Cardinal John Kemp, Archbishop of York, his nephew Thomas Kemp, Bishop of London, and other benefactors, completed in 1480, when it formed the most magnificent structure of which the university yet had to boast. The building of public schools was also begun at Cambridge, in 1443, at the expense of the uni- versity, and finished, by the aid of various contributors, about 1475. More interesting, however, than these extensions of former establishments, is the founding of a Temple to Learning in a part of the island in which no permanent abode had ever before been built for her. The first of the Scottish universities, that of St. Andrews, rose a few years after the commencement of the fifteenth century, out of the scheme of a few men of letters in that city, who, probably on the suggestion of the Bishop, Henry Wardlaw, formed themselves into an association for giving instruction in the sci- ences then usually taught in universities to all who chose to attend their lectures, and are supposed to have begun teaching about the year 1410. Their names, as recorded by the father of Scottish history, and eminently worthy to be preserved, were Lawrence Lindores, who undertook to explain the Fourth Book of the Mas- ter of the Sentences ; Richard Cornel, Archdeacon of Lothian, John Litster, canon of St. Andrews, John Shevez, official of St. 4ndrews, and William Stephen, who lectured on the civil and ■sanon laws ; and John Gyll, William Fowler, and William Cro- >>74 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. sier, who taught logic and philosophy. 1 The institution, with this apparatus of professors, was already, in everything but in form, a university, — and such it is styled in the charter or grant of priv- ileges which Wardlaw hastened to bestow upon it. In that instru- ment, which is dated the 27th of February, 1411, the bishop speaks of the university as having been already actually instituted and founded by himself, saving the authority of the apostolic see, and laudably begun by those to whom he addresses himself, the vener- able doctors, masters, bachelors, and scholars dwelling in his city of St. Andrews. He now proceeded more formally to endow the new seminary, in so far as his jurisdiction extended, with all the rights and liberties of a university. Two years afterwards, bulls of confirmation, &c, in the usual terms, were obtained from Ben- edict XIII., the one of the three contending popes who was ac- knowledged by the kingdom of Scotland. Benedict's bulls are six in number, all dated the same day, the 25th of August, 1418, at Paniscola, in Aragon, where that pope kept his court. They pro- fess to be granted at the request of the Scottish king (though James I. was then a prisoner in England), and of the bishop, prior, and chapter of St. Andrews, whose project of establishing a uni- versity, or stadium generate, in that city, is expressly stated to have been formed with the counsel, consent, and common participation of the three estates of the realm of Scotland.' 2 The bishop and his associates, it is declared, had been stirred up to the undertak- ing by the consideration of the many dangers and inconveniences to which the clergy of that kingdom who desired to be instructed in theology, the canon and civil laws, medicine, and the liberal arts were exposed, from wars and other impediments in their jour- neys to foreign studia generalia, in consequence of there being no such institution to which they might resort in their own country. The several papal bulls were brought to St. Andrews by Henry de Ogilby, M. A., on the 3d of February, 1414, when they were re- ceived with processions and ringing of bells, and every demonstra- tion of public joy. When King James returned ten years after this from England, he found the new seminary already firmly established, and still flourishing under the protection of its founder, 1 Fordun, Scotichronicon. - Quod olim de consilio, consensu, et communi tractatu trium statuum persona- mm regni Scotue — are the words of the bull of foundation. — See Evidence taken by the Commissioners for visiting the Universities of Scotland, vol. iii. p 171. UNIVERSITIES. 373 Wardlaw, who had also been the instructor of his own boyhood. James granted it a charter confirming all its privileges and immu- nities, dated at Perth, the 31st of March, 1432 ; and, if we may believe the historian Hector Boecius, it flourished so greatly under his patronage, that it soon came to have among its teachers no fewer than thirteen doctors of divinity, and eight doctors of laws, as well as a prodigious multitude of students. The good and en- lightened Bishop Wardlaw presided over the see of St. Andrews till the year 1444, when the university found in James Kennedy a worthy successor to his virtues and public spirit, as well as to his place. As yet the institution was little more than an incorporated association, without any permanent endowments, and with scarcely any buildings except a few public lecturing rooms ; it was a uni- versity, therefore, but as yet without a college. Its first college — that of St. Salvator — was built and endowed by Kennedy, whose original foundation charter was confirmed, in a bull no longer ex- tant, by Pope Nicholas V., who died in 1455. A second charter was granted by Kennedy, at his castle of St. Andrews, on the 4th of April, 1458, and confirmed by Pope Pius II., in a bull dated at Rome, the 13th of September, in the same year. In this the whole scheme of the establishment is minutely detailed, and a com- plete body of rules laid down for its government. One of the bishop's ordinances is curiously illustrative of the easy morality of the time. Having given some solemn directions as to the hours at which masses were to be said in all time coining by the mem- bers of the college, who were all to be clergymen, he proceeds to enjoin that all the members of the said college shall live decently as becomes ecclesiastics, "so as not," it is added, "to keep con- cubines publicly, nor to be common nightwalkers or robbers, or habitually guilty of other notorious crimes ; and if any of them is so (which it is earnestly hoped may not be the case) let him be corrected by his superior ; if he prove incorrigible, let him be de- prived and another put in his place." x By another bull, dated the 25th of February, 1468, Pope Paul II. granted to the Princi- pal and Masters of the college of St. Salvator the right of bestow- 'ng degrees in theology and the arts, " in consideration," as it is 1 Ordinamus insuper, quod omnes dicti collegii honeste vivant, ut decet ecclesi- asticos, ita quod non habeant publicas concubinas, nee sint communes noetivagi seu brigantes, aut aliis notoriis eriminibus intenti : et si talis sit (quod absit) per supe- .-iorem suum, &c. — See Evidence taken by the Commissioners for visiting the Uni- versities of Scotland, vol. hi. 272. 376 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. expressed, " of its high and well-known reputation among the other colleges of the realm of Scotland." l The other colleges here spoken of could be nothing more than grammar schools ; but the passage proves, what indeed is well established by other evi- dence, that such schools already existed in many of the monas- teries and principal towns. It was at these that the Scottish youth were prepared for their attendance upon foreign universities. Another of the Scottish universities — that of Glasgow — was also founded within this same century. The bull of foundation was granted at the request of James II. in 1450, by Nicholas V., who was " distinguished by his talents and erudition, and particu- larly by his munificent patronage of Grecian literature." 2 Other royal and episcopal charters were subsequently granted by King James II. (20th April, 1453) ; by Bishop Turnbull (1st Decem- ber, 1453) ; by Bishop Aluirhead (1st July, 1461) ; and by King James III. (10th December, 1472). 3 But, "in none of the papal, royal, or episcopal letters of privilege, of a date prior to the Refor- mation," observes the writer of the able and elaborate account of the University of Glasgow appended to the General Report of the late Commission of Inquiry into the State of the Universities of Scotland, " is there any distinct trace of the constitution of the university ; and it can scarcely be said that any of these documents refer to the existence of a college, or to the possession of any prop- erty. It does not appear that it was the intention of the founder of the university that the members should live collegialiter, main- tained at a public table, and resident within the walls of a separate building Universities might be established (and some still exist on the Continent) without having even class-rooms for the students. The University of Paris subsisted in great efficiency from the age of Charlemagne to the middle of the thirteenth cen- tury (a period of nearly five hundred years) without having any schools or places of auditory, except such as were hired in the houses of individuals. During the first twenty years after the foundation of the university of St. Andrews, great inconvenience ] Quod inter alia collegia regni Scotae collegium ejusdem ecclesiae egregium ac notabile reputatur. — See Evidence taken by the Commissioners for visiting the Universities of Scotland, vol. iii. 273. - Report of the Scottish University Commissioners, p. 21:1. See a character of l'ope Nicholas V. by Gibbon — who observes that his "tame has not been adequate *t Univ. Com. ii. 2:j0-263. REVIVAL OF LETTERS. 37" was suffered, not merely from the want of such rooms, but from the multiplicity of schools in the different religious houses, all of them claiming to be considered as constituent parts of the univer- sity ; and even after a Psedagogium was founded, in 1430, for the schools and halls of the Faculty of Arts, and for chambers to be used by the students in that Faculty, the studies of the Facul- ties of Theology and Law were conducted in other buildings ; and the congregations of the university continued for at least 130 years to be held in the Augustinian Priory." 1 A piece of ground, howaver, with the buildings upon it, in the High-street of the city, was granted to the University of Glasgow by James, the first Lord Hamilton, in 1460, being the site on which the college stands at the present day. REVIVAL OF LETTERS. — INVENTION OF PRINTING. Dark and unproductive as was the greater part of the fifteenth century in England and France, the revival of letters in the west- ern world dates from this age. For a considerable time before the 'capture of Constantinople by the Turks, in 1453, the course of political events in the eastern empire had led to a more frequent intercourse than heretofore between its subjects and their fellow- Christians of the West, and had not only drawn some of the most distinguished ornaments of the Byzantine court, including three of the emperors themselves, to visit the Latin kingdoms, but had induced several learned Greeks to come over and settle in Italy. " In their lowest servitude and depression," as Gibbon has said in one of his well-poised sentences, " the subjects of the Byzantine throne were still possessed of a golden key that could unlock the treasures of antiquity, — of a musical and prolific language, that gives a soul to the objects of sense, and a body to the abstractions of philosophy." It cannot, perhaps, be said that the knowledge of the Greek tongue was ever entirely lost in western Europe ; there were probably in every age a few scholars who had more than a merely elementary acquaintance with it. It is certain, however, that it was not a common study even among the most 1 Report, p. 214. vol. i. 48 378 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. learned. The most eminent universities — such as Bologna, Paris, and Oxford — were without any regular professor of Greek. Even the few who did read the language seem to have read only the writings in it on science and philosophy. Warton has shown that both the Iliad and the Odyssey were apparently wholly unknown, or at least not understood, in Europe from the fourth to the four- teenth century. 1 The renewed intercourse that has been men- tioned between the East and the West, beginning in the early part of the latter century, rapidly effected a great revolution in this respect. Petrarch, about the year 1340, began the study of the language of Homer, under the instructions of the learned Barlaam, who had come to Italy as ambassador from Andronicus the Younger ; and, although the separation of the two friends soon after stopped the Tuscan at the threshold of the new literature, his friend Boccaccio twenty years later was more fortunate in obtain- ing the assistance of Leontius Pilatus, a disciple of Barlaam, and, under his guidance, penetrated to its inner glories. At a still later date, the destruction of their ancient empire drove a crowd of illustrious Greek exiles to Italy, — the Cardinal Bessarion, Theo- dore Gaza, George of Trebizond, John Argyropulus, Demetrius Chalcondyles, Janus Lascaris, and others, — some of whom taught their native language in the universities and chief towns of that country, while the rest, by their translations, by their writings, and their converse with the public mind in various ways, assisted in diffusing a taste for it and a knowledge of it even beyond the Alps. Nor, as Gibbon has remarked, was the ardor of the Latins in receiving and treasuring up this new knowledge inferior to that of their Greek guests in imparting it. The merits of Pope Nicho- las V., in the patronage of Greek literature, have been already noticed. During the eight years that he wore the tiara (from 1447 to 1455) this active and liberal head of the Christian Church ;if the Royal MSS., marked 14 C vii. It appears, from an inscription in the author's >\vn hand, to have been a presentation copy from himself, probably to some church »r monastery. - Diss, on Introd. of Learning, p. cxiii TIPTOFT, EARL OF WORCESTER. 387 with the most elegant decorations, and written in Duke Hum phrey's age, evidently with a design of being placed in this sump- tuous collection. All the rest of the books — which, like this, being highly ornamented, looked like missals, and conveyed ideas of popish superstition — were destroyed or removed by the pious visitors of the University in the reign of Edward VI., whose zeal was equalled only by their ignorance, or perhaps by their avarice." 1 Several of the volumes of Duke Humphrey's library, however, still remain in various collections. In the library of Oriel College, Oxford, is a copy of John Capgrave's Commentary on Genesis, in the author's handwriting, preceded by a Dedication to the Duke, the beautifully illuminated initial letter of which represents Cap- grave humbly presenting his book to his patron. The volume contains also an entry, in French, in the handwriting of the Duke, recording it to have been presented to him in the year 1438. Warton goes on to state that the patronage of Duke Humphrey was not confined to English scholars. Many of the most cele- brated writers of France and Italy solicited his favor and shared his bounty. He also employed several learned foreigners in tran- scribing and in making translations of Greek works into Latin. The only literary production which has been ascribed to this distin- guished patron of letters is a small tract on Astronomy ; and it appears to have been only compiled at his instance, after tables which he had constructed. In the library of Gresham College, however, there is a scheme of astronomical calculations which bears his name. " Astronomy," says Warton, " was then a favorite science ; nor is it to be doubted that he was intimately acquainted with the polite branches of knowledge, which now began to acquire sstimation, and which his liberal and judicious attention greatly contributed to restore." 2 JIPTOFT, EARL OF WORCESTER. - WOODVILLE, EARL RIVERS. The most distinguished among the English nobility of this rude age for learning and intellectual tastes, was John Tiptoft, originally 1 Hist, of Eng. Poetry, ii. 355. 2 Ibid. 359. 388 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUACxE. Lord Tiptoft, who was created Earl of Worcester by Henry VI. He afterwards, however, attached himself to the Yorkist family, for which he was put to death by Warwick, during the short resto- ration of Henry VI., in 1470, — his execution being the only vin- dictive act of bloodshed by which that revolution was stained. The latest continuation of the history of the Abbey of Croyland (printed by Fulman, in his Rerum Anglic. Scriptor., pp. 449- 546) asserts that the Earl had, by his cruelty in the office of Con- stable of the Tower, acquired the hatred of the people, who called him " the Butcher " ; but general and passionate imputations of this kind cannot be allowed to go for much in the inflammation and ferocity of such a contest as then agitated men's minds. The more specific statement of other writers is, that Worcester was sent to the block under the pretence of punishing him for cruelty of which he had been guilty many years before, while exercising the government of Ireland, particularly towards two infant sons of the Earl of Desmond. As Walpole has well said, " it was an unwonted strain of tenderness in a man so little scrupulous of blood as Warwick, to put to death so great a peer for some inhumanity to the children of an Irish lord ; nor does one conceive why he sought for so remote a crime : he was not often so delicate. Tip- toft seems to have been punished by Warwick for leaving Henry for Edward, when Warwick had thought fit to quit Edward for Henry." l Others of the old chroniclers ascribe the charges brought against him to the malice of his enemies. He was prob- ably singled out for destruction as being the ablest and most dan- gerous man of his party ; for Worcester was distinguished for his political and military talents, as well as for his scholarship. It would be strange, at any rate, if his intellectual acquirements — which raised him so high above the herd of his fellow-nobles, and the great body of his countrymen — should, instead of softening and humanizing him, according to the ancient poet's celebration of the effect of " having faithfully learned the ingenuous arts," 2 have had an influence of the very opposite kind upon his nature and conduct. The Earl of Worcester was an ardent lover of books, and was, as well as Duke Humphrey, a liberal contributor to the shelves of the rising public library of the University of Oxford. On his retarn from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, after residing for 1 Royal and Noble Authors. 2 Ovid, Ex Ponto, Lib. ii. Ep. 9, v. 47. WOODVILLE, EARL RIVERS. 389 some years at Padua and Venice, and making great purchases of manuscripts in both those places, he repaired to Rome to satisfy his longing curiosity with a sight of the library of the Vatican, and drew tears of delight from Pope Pius II. (the learned iEneas Sylvius) by a Latin oration which he pronounced before him. Of his literary performances, the principal one that remains is the translation of Cicero's Treatise on Friendship, which was published by Caxton. He was one of the chief patrons of this earliest Eng- lish printer, who says of him that he was one " to whom he knew none like among the lords of the temporality for science and moral virtue," — a far better testimony to his worth than the party-spirit of the Croyland historian, or even the temporary clamor of the populace, if such did make itself heard against him in the triumph of the opposite faction, is of the reverse. He was only in his forty-second year when he was put to death ; " at which death," says Caxton, " every man that was there might learn to die, and take his death patiently." Fuller has said that " the axe then did at one blow cut off more learning than was left in the heads of all the surviving nobility." Yet there still survived a noble contemporary of Tiptoft, " by no means," to use the words of Walpole, " inferior to him in learning and politeness, in birth his equal, by alliance his superior, greater in feats of arms, and in pilgrimages more abundant." This was Anthony Widville, or Woodville, Lord Scales and Earl Rivers, the brother of the fair queen of Edward IV. By a fate closely resem- bling that of the Earl of Worcester, the brave and accomplished Lord Rivers was beheaded at Pomfret Castle, by order of the Pro- tector Gloucester, afterwards Richard III., along with the queen's son Sir Richard Grey, and other victims, on the 23d of June, 1483. The Earl, when he thus perished, had not completed his forty- first year. At a famous combat which took place in Smithfield, between Rivers, then Lord Scales, and Anthony the Bastard of Burgundy, in 1467, the Earl of Worcester presided as Lord High Constable ; so that two of the chief figures at this one of the latest real passages of arms held in England, were the two Eng- lishmen the most distinguished of their time for those intellectual tastes and accomplishments in the diffused light of which the empire of chivalry and the sword was ere long to fade away, as me stars disappear before the sun. Walpole has drawn the char- acter of Earl Rivers in his most graphic style : — " The credit of 890 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. his sister, the countenance and example of his prince, the boister- ousness of the times, nothing softened, nothing roughened the mind of this amiable lord, who was as gallant as his luxurious brother-in-law, without his weaknesses — as brave as the heroes of either Rose, without their savageness — studious in the intervals of business — and devout after the manner of those whimsical times, when men challenged others whom they never saw, and wont barefoot to visit shrines in countries of which they had scarce a map." He was also one of Caxton's great patrons, and was the author of several of those translations from the French which the latter printed. In a manuscript copy, in the arch- bishop's library at Lambeth, of one of these translations — that of the Diets and Sayings of the Philosophers (which Rivers exe- cuted for the instruction of his nephew, the young Prince of Wales, to whom he was governor) — there is an interesting illu- mination, in which the Earl is represented introducing Caxton to Edward IV., his queen, and the prince. In this instance, Earl Rivers condescended to translate a translation, for the original of the Diets and Sayings is in Latin. He was also the author of the metrical version of the Proverbs of Christine of Pisa, and of another of Caxton's publications named Cordial, or Memorare Novisima, both from the French. But these and the other trans- lations in which the art of printing, on its first establishment among us, exercised its powers of multiplying the fountains of knowledge and of mental gratification were, as Walpole observes, as much new and real presents to the age as original works would have been. To Lords Worcester and Rivers this writer conceives their country to have been in a great measure indebted for the restoration of learning. " The countenance, the example," he remarks, " of men in their situation, must have operated more strongly than the attempts of an hundred professors, benedictines, and commenta- tors." 1 SCIENCE IN ENGLAND.— ALCHEMISTS. Although Chaucer had already set the example of writing en scientific subjects in the mother-tongue by his treatise on the 1 Royal and Noble Authors, vol. i. SCIENCE IN ENGLAND. 39] Astrolabe, — the oldest work in English now known to exist on any branch of science, 1 — this department of study was but very little cultivated in England during the present period. The short list of English scientific works during the fifteenth century does not contain a single name remembered, or deserving of being remembered, in the history of science. 2 The dreams of astrology and alchemy still captivated and bewildered almost all who turned their attention either to mathematical or natural philosophy. The only difference of opinion with regard to these mysterious pursuits was whether they were or were not forbidden by the law of God. Nobody doubted the most marvellous of their pretensions ; but many thought a skill in them was rather an inspiration from the prince of darkness than light from heaven. Probably, however, it was not any feeling of this kind that occasioned an act of parlia- ment passed in the beginning of the reign of Henry IV., making it felony to practise the transmutation of metals, there designated "the multiplying of gold or silver, or the craft of multiplication:" 3 the prohibition has more the look of having been dictated by polit- ical or economical considerations, as if there had been some appre- hension that the operations of the multipliers might possibly affect the value of the king's coin. Henry IV., at any rate, with all his piety, was as great a patron of the alchemists as Edward III. had been before him. These impostors practised with abundant suc- cess upon his weakness and credulity, repeatedly inducing him to advance them money wherewith to prosecute their idle operations, as well as procuring from him protections, which he sometimes pre- vailed upon the Parliament to confirm, from the penalties of the statute that has just been mentioned. In one of these protec- tions granted to the three " famous men," John Fauceby, John Kirkeby, and John Rayny, which was confirmed by Parliament 31st May 1456, the object of the researches of the said philoso- phers is described to be " a certain most precious medicine, called by some the mother and queen of medicines ; by some the inesti- mable glory ; by others the quintessence ; by others the philoso ,pher's stone ; by others the elixir of life ; which cures all curable 1 See Book of Table Talk, i. 199. 2 See all those whose names have been recovered enumerated, with notices of their insignificant performances, in a paper on the English Mathematical and As- tronomical Writers between the Norman Conquest and the year 1600, in the Com' panion to the Almanac for 1837, pp. 22-26. 3 Stat Henry IV., c. iv. 392 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. diseases with ease, prolongs human life in perfect health and vigor of faculty to its utmost term, heals all healable wounds, ia a most sovereign antidote against all poisons, and is capable," the enumeration of virtues concludes, " of preserving to us, and our kingdom, other great advantages, such as the transmutation of other metals into real and fine gold and silver." 1 The philosopher's stone, and the elixir of life, it will be observed, are here spoken of as one and the same medicine, contrary, we believe, to the com- mon notion. The power attributed to the medicine, also, in the prolongation of life scai*eely goes the length of the accounts usu- ally given. Fauceby, here mentioned, is elsewhere designated the king's physician. Another of Henry's physicians was Gilbert Kymer, who was a clergyman, and, among other ecclesiastical promotions, held the offices of dean of Salisbury and chancellor of the University of Oxford. From this example we may per- ceive that the practice of medicine was still, to some extent, in the hands of the clergy. The art itself appears to have made little or no progress within the present period ; indeed it may be doubted if the knowledge that had formerly been derived from the Arabic authors and schools was not now diminished rather than increased. Almost the only medical work that appeared in England in the fifteenth century, even the title of which is now remembered, is the Dietarium de Sanitatis Custodia (or Dietary for the Preserva- tion of Health) of this Dr. Gilbert Kymer. It is a tract consist- ing of twenty-six chapters, and is dedicated, like so many others of the productions of the learned of this age, both in England and other countries, to the great patron of literature, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester. Surgery was also in as rude a state as ever. It appeal's, from a record in the Foedera, that in Henry V.'s army which won the battle of Agincourt there was only one surgeon, a certain John Morstede, fifteen assistants, whom he had pressed under a royal warrant, not having vet landed. Of these assistants three were also to act as archers, the whole number having the pay of common archers, and Morstede himself only that of a man-at- arms. The art, indeed, was hardly yet considered as anything more than a species of mechanical handicraft. It deserves to be noted, however, that the operation of lithotomy was successfully lerformed at Paris for the first time, at least by any modern sur- geon, in the year 1474, on a condemned criminal, whose life waa 1 Foedera, xi. 379. LATIN CHRONICLERS. 393 granted by the king to the petition of the physicians and surgeon? of the city, that he might serve, according to the philosophic maxim, as the corpus vile, or worthless subject, of the experi- ment. LATIN CHRONICLERS. Of the literary productions of this age the literary merits are in general of the humblest description. Among the Latin historians, or chroniclers, Thomas Walsingham may be accounted one of the best, if not the chief. He was a Benedictine of the Abbey of St. Albans, and is the author of two works : one, a History of Eng- land, entitled Historia Brevis, which begins at 1273, where Mat- thew Paris ends, and extends to the beginning of the reign of Henry VI. ; the other, a History of Normandy, under the title of Ypodigma Neustriae, from the first acquisition of the duchy by Rollo the Dane. The style of these chronicles is sufficiently rude and unpolished ; but they are very full and circumstantial ; and the English History, even in the earlier part of it, contains many things not mentioned by any contemporary writer. 1 The compilation of English History by Thomas Otterbourne, a Franciscan friar, from the landing of Brutus to the year 1420, is held in small estimation. 2 A much more valuable performance is the Chronicon of John de Whethamstede, Abbot of St. Albans, although it only extends from the year 1441 to 1461. 3 Whethamstede was a person of judgment as well as of considerable learning. He was an especial favorite with Duke Humphrey, who was accustomed to visit him in his monastery, where the monks, however, accused their abbot of spending too much of his time in study and in writing books, though he was a most liberal benefactor to their establishment. But probably neither the libraries he built and furnished both at St. Albans and at Oxford, the organs and pictures with which he adorned the church and chapels of his monastery, nor the extensive additions which he made to its buildings, compensated in their esti- i Published together by Archbishop Parker, fol. Lon. 1574. Also in Camden's Anglica, &c, fol. Francof. 1603. 2 Published by Hearne, in 2 vols. 8vo. Oxon. 1732. 8 Published by Hearne, along with Otterbourne. VOL. I. 50 394 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. mation for tastes and habits so different from their own. Anothei of the Latin historians of this period whose name is connected with Duke Humphrey is the Italian, Titus Livius Forojuliensis, as he calls himself, the author of a Life of Henry V. 1 He was invited to England by the Duke, who appointed him to be his poet and orator. His Life of Henry V., however, is very little else than an abridgment of the work on the same subject by Thomas de Elm- ham, 2 Prior of Linton, whose barbarous style does not prevent his performance from being one of great historical value. The Italian affects to imitate the style of the illustrious ancient whose name he assumes ; but he is, as may be supposed, a very modern Livy. Another of these annalists is William Botoner, or William of Worcester, the author of a chronicle extending from 1324 to 1491, which is nearly all a compilation, and of very little value. 3 Botoner is also the author of the translation of Cicero's Treatise on Old Age, already mentioned as one of Caxton's publications. The last of this class of writers we shall mention is John Rossus, or Rouse, of Warwick, the author of what he calls a History of the Kings of England, 4 which, nevertheless, commences with the creation of tho world. Although it does not contain much that is interesting till the author comes down to his own age, the latter part of the fif- teenth century, it furnishes some curious details both of the events and the manners of that time. FRENCH CHRONICLERS. Two French writers, Monstrelet and Comines, may be considered as in some sort belonging to this period of English history. Mon- strelet, whose narrative extends from 1400 to 1452 (with a supple- ment coming down to 1467 bv another hand), is a very faithful but not a very lively chronicler of the contentions of the houses of Orleans and Burgundy, and of the wars of the English in France, in his own day. Comines, an actor to a considerable extent in the 1 Published by Ilearne, 8vo. Oxon. 1716. a Ibid. 17'JT. 5 Published by Ilearne, in the Appendix to the Liber Niger Scaccarii, 2 vols. 8vo, Oxon. 1728. 4 Published by Hearne, 8vo. Oxon. 1716 ENGLISH CHRONICLERS. 395 affairs which he relates, is a writer of a superior stamp. Ilia Memoirs extend from 1464 to 1498, a period comprehending nearly the whole reign of Louis XI. of France, whom Comines may be said to make his hero, and whose singular character gives much of a dramatic life to the narrative of the historian. Comines has none of the chivalrous enthusiasm of Froissart, and no other excitement of a very warm or imaginative character to make up for the want of it ; but observation, sagacity, and an unaffected, straightforward way of writing, give him a great power of carrying his reader along with him. He is the best authority for the French transactions of the reign of our Edward IV. ENGLISH CHRONICLERS. This age also affords us two or three English chroniclers. The series of our modern English chronicles may perhaps be most prop- erly considered as commencing with John de Trevisa's translation of Higden, with various additions, which, as already mentioned, was finished in 1387, and was printed, with a continuation to 1460, by Caxton in 1482. After Trevisa comes John Harding, who be- longs to the fifteenth century ; his metrical Chronicle of England coming down to the reio-n of Edward IV. 1 The metre is melan- choly enough ; but the part of the work relating to the author's own times is not without value. Harding is chiefly notorious as the author, or at least the collector and producer, of a great num- ber of charters and other documents attesting acts of fealty done by the Scottish to the English kings, which are now generally ad- mitted to be forgeries. Caxton himself must be reckoned our next English chronicler, as the author both of the continuation of Tre- visa and also of the concluding part of the volume entitled The Chronicles of England, published by him in 1480, — the body of which is translated from a Latin chronicle by Douglas, a monk of Glastonbury, who lived in the preceding century. Neither of these performances, however, is calculated to add to the fame of the cel- abrated printer. To this period we may also in part assign the 1 First printed by Grafton in 1543. The most recent edition is that by Sir II Ellis, 4to. Lond. 1812. .396 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. better known Concordance of Histories of Robert Fabyan, citizen and draper of London ; though the author only died in 1512, nor was his work printed till a few years later. Fabyan's history, which begins with Brutus and comes down to his own time, is in the greater part merely a translation from the preceding chroni- clers ; its chief value consists in a number of notices it has pre- served relating to the city of London. 1 BISHOP PECOCK. — FORTESCUE. — MALORY. Of the English theological writers of the age immediately fol- lowing that of Wiclif, the most noteworthy is Reynold Pecock, Bishop of Asaph and afterwards of Chichester. As may be in- ferred from these ecclesiastical dignities, Pecock was no Wiclifite, but a defender of the established system both of doctrine and of church government : he tells us himself, in one of his books, that twenty years of his life had been spent for the greater part in writ- ing against the Lollards. But, whatever effect his arguments may have produced upon those against whom they were directed, they gave little satisfaction to the more zealous spirits on his own side, who probably thought that he was too fond of reasoning with errors demanding punishment by a cautery sharper than that of the pen ; and the end was that he was himself, in the year 1457, charged with heresy, and, having been found guilty, was first compelled to read a recantation, and to commit fourteen of his books, with his own hands, to the flames at St. Paul's Cross, and then deprived of his bishopric, and consigned to an imprisonment in which he was allowed the use neither of writing-materials nor of books, and in which he is supposed to have died about two years after. One especial heresy alleged to be found in his writings was, that in regard to matters of faith the Church was not infallible. Bishop Pecock's Life has been ably and learnedly written by the Rev. John Lewis, to whom we also owe biographies of Wiclif and of Caxton. His numerous treatises are partly in English, partly in Latin. Of those in English the most remarkable is one entitled 1 First published in 1516. The last edition is that of Sir H. Ellis, Lond. 4to. 1811. BISHOP PECOCK.-FORTESCUE. 397 The Repressor, which he produced in 1449. A short specimen, in which the spelling, but only the spelling, is modernized, will give some notion of his manner of writing, and of the extent to which the language had been adapted to prose eloquence or reasoning of the more formal kind in that ae;e : — " Say to me, good sir, and answer hereto : when men of the country upland bringen into London in Midsummer eve branches of trees fro Bishop's Wood, and flowers fro the field, and betaken tho * to citizens of London for to therewith array her 2 houses, shoulden men of London, receiving and taking tho branches and flowers, say and hold that tho branches grewen out of the carts which broughten hem 3 to London, and that tho carts or the hands of the bringers weren grounds and fundaments of tho branches and flowers ? God forbid so little wit be in her heads. Certes, though Christ and his apostles weren now living at London, and would bring, so as is now said, branches from Bishop's Wood, and flowers from the fields, into London, and woulden hem deliver to men, that they make therewith her houses gay, into remembrance of St. John Baptist, and of this that it was prophesied of him, that many shoulden joy of his birth, yet tho men of London, receiving so tho branches and flowers, oughten not say and feel that tho branches and flowers grewen out of Christ's hands. Tho branches grewen out of the boughs upon which they in Bishop's Wood stooden, and tho boughs grewen out of stocks or truncheons, and the truncheons or shafts grewen out of the root, and the root out of the next earth thereto, upon which and in which the root is buried. So that neither the cart, neither the hands of the bringers, neither tho bringers ben the grounds or fundaments of tho branches." The good bishop, we see, has a popular and lively as well as clear and precise way of putting things. It may be doubted, nevertheless, if his ingenious illustrations would be quite as con- vincing to the earnest and excited innovators to whom they were addressed as they were satisfactory to himself. Another eminent English prose-writer of this date was Sir John Fortescue, who was Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench under Henry VI., and to whom the king is supposed to have also confided the great seal at some time during his expulsion from the throne. Fortescue is the author of various treatises, some in English, some in Latin, most of which, however, still remain in manuscript. One in Latin, which was first sent to press in the reign of Henry VIII. , and has been repeatedly reprinted since, is commonly referred to v Take them, or those. 2 Their. 3 Them. 398 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. under the title of De Laudibus Legum Anglise. It has also been several times translated into English. This treatise is drawn up in the form of a dialogue between the author and Henry's unfor- tunate son, Edjvard Prince of Wales, so barbarously put to death after the battle of Tewkesbury. Fortescue's only English work that has been printed was probably written at a later date, and would appear to have had for its object to secure for him, now that the Lancastrian cause was beaten to the ground, the favor of the Yorkist king, Edward IV. It was first published, in 1714, by Mr. John Fortescue Aland, of the Middle Temple, with the title of The Difference between an Absolute and Limited Monarchy, as it more particularly regards the English Constitution, — which, of course, is modern, but has been generally adopted to designate the work. The following passage (in which the spelling is again reformed) will enable the reader to compare Fortescue as a writer with his contemporary Pecock, and is also curious both for its matter and its spirit : — And how so be it that the French king reigneth upon his people dominio regali, yet St. Lewis, sometime king there, ne any of his predecessors set never tallies ne other impositions upon the people of that land without the consent of the three estates, which, when they may be assembled, are like to the court of Parliament in England. And this order kept many of his successors till late days, that Englishmen kept such a Avar in France that the three estates durst not come together. And then, for that cause, and for great necessity which the French king had of goods for the defence of that land, he took upon him to set tallies and other impositions upon the commons without the assent of the three estates ; but yet he would not set any such charges, nor hath set, upon the nobles, for fear of rebellion. And, because the commons, though they have grudged, have not rebelled, nor be hardy to rebel, the French kings have yearly sithen 1 set such charges upon them, and so augmented the same charges as the same commons be so impoverished and destroyed that they may u neat h 2 live. They drink water, they eat apples, with bread, right brown, made of rye. They eat no flesh, but if it be selden 8 a little lard, or of the entrails or. heads of beasts slain for the nobles and merchants of the land. They Avear no woollen, but if it be a poor coat under their uttermost garment, made of great canvas, and passen not their knee ; wherefore they be gartered and their thighs bare. Their wives ami children gone barefoot. They may in none otherwise live ; for some of them that was wont to pay to his land 1 Since. 2 Scarcely, with difficulty (uneasily). 8 Seldom, on rare occasions. SIR JOHN FORTESCUE. — MALORY. 399 Jord for his tenement which he hireth by the year a scute 1 payeth now to the king, over 2 that scute, five scutes. Where-through they be artied 8 by necessity, so to watch, labour, and grub in the ground for their sus- tenance, that their nature is much wasted, and the kind of them brought to nought. They gone crooked, and are feeble, not able to fight nor to defend the realm ; nor have they weapon, nor money to buy them weapon, withal ; but verily they live in the most extreme poverty and misery ; and yet they dwell in one of the most fertile realms of the world. Where- through the French king hath not men of his own realm able to defend it, except his nobles, which bearen not such impositions, and therefore they are right likely of their bodies ; by which cause the king is compelled to make his armies, and retinues for defence of his land, of strangers, as Scots, Spaniards, Aragoners, men of Almayne, 4 and of other nations ; else all his enemies might overrun him ; for he hath no defence of his own, except his castles and fortresses. Lo ! this the fruit of his jus regale. It is in the same spirit that the patriotic chief justice elsewhere boasts, that there were more Englishmen hanged for robbery in one year than Frenchmen in seven, and that " if an Englishman be poor, and see another having riches which may be taken from him by might, he will not spare to do so." Fortescue was probably born not much more than thirty years after Pecock ; but the English of the judge, in vocabulary, in grammatical forms, in the modulation of the sentences, and in its air altogether, might seem to exhibit quite another stage of the language. Although both Pecock and Fortescue lived to see the great invention of printing, and the latter at any rate survived the intro- duction of the new art into his native country, no production of either appears to have been given to the world through the press in the lifetime of the writer. Perhaps this was also the case with another prose-writer of this date, who is remembered, however, less by bis name than by the work of which he is the author, and which still continues to be read, the famous history of King Arthur, commonly known under the name of the Morte Arthur. This work was first printed by Caxton in the year 1485. He tells us in his prologue, or preface, that the copy was given him by Sir Thomas Malory, Knight, who took it, out of certain books in French, and reduced it into English. Malory himself states al 1 An escut, or ecu (d'or), about three shillings and fourpenee. ' l In addition to, over and above. ' 6 Compelled. 4 Germany . 400 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. the end, that he finished his task in the ninth year of King Edward IV., which would be in 1-169 or 1470. The Morte Arthur was several times reprinted in the course of the following century and a half, the latest of the old editions having appeared in a quarto volume in 1634. From this, two reprints were brought out by different London booksellers in the same year, 1816 ; one in three duodecimos, the other in two. 1 But the standard modern edition is that which appeared in two volumes quarto in the following year, 1817, exactly reprinted from Caxton's original edition, with the title of The Byrth, Lvfe, and Actes of Kyng Arthur ; of his noble Knvffhtes of the Rounde Table, &c, with an Introduction and Notes, by Robert Southey. Malory, whoever he may have been (Leland says he was Welsh), and supposing him to have been in the main only a translator, must be admitted to show con- siderable mastery of expression ; his English is always animated and flowing, and, in its earnestness and tenderness, occasionally rises to no common beauty and eloquence. The concluding chap- ters in particular have been much admired. We extract a few sentences : — Then Sir Lancelot, ever after, eat but little meat, nor drank, but con- tinually mourned until lie was dead : and then he sickened more and more, and dried and dwindled away. For the bishop, nor none of his fellows, might not make him to eat, and little he drank, that lie was soon waxed shorter by a cubit than he was. that the people could not know him. For evermore day and night he prayed [taking no rest], but needfully as nature required; sometimes he slumbered a broken sleep; and always he was lyinil grovelling upon King Arthur's and Queen Guenever's tomb ; and there was no comfort that the bishop, nor Sir Bors, not none of all his fel- lows could make him ; it availed nothing. Oh! ye mighty and pompous lords, winning in the glorious transitory of this unstable lite, as in reigning over great realms and mighty great countries, fortified with strong eastles and towers, edified with many a rich city; yeaalso,ye fierce and mighty knights, so valiant in adventurous deeds of arm-, behold! behold! see how this mighty conqueror, King Arthur, whom in his human lite all the world doubted.' 2 yea also the noble Queen Guenever. which sometime sat in her chair adorned with gold, pearls, and precious stones, now lie full low in obscure Cos-, or pit. covered with clods 1 In Mr. Bonn's new edition of Lowndes's " Bibliographer's Manual " it is stated .hat the former was edited by Haslewood. Should it not be the latter? It is the more correct of the two, and forms part of the series known as Walker's Classics. 2 Dreaded (held as redouUable). SIR THOMAS MALORY. 401 of earth and clay ! Behold also this mighty champion, Sir Lancelot, peerless of all knighthood ; see now how he lieth grovelling upon the cold mould ; now being so feeble and faint, that sometime was so terrible : how, and in what manner, ought ye to be so desirous of worldly honour so dangerous ? Therefore, me thinketh this present book is right necessary often to be read ; for in all x ye find the most gracious, knightly, and vir • tuous war, of the most noble knights of the world, whereby they got prais- ing continually ; also me seemeth, by the oft reading thereof, ye shall greatly desire to accustom yourself in following of those gracious knightly deeds ; that is to say, to dread God and to love righteousness, faithfully and courageously to serve your sovereign prince ; and, the more that God hath given you the triumphal honour, the meeker ought ye to be, ever fearing the unstableness of this deceitful world. • a • • • And so, within fifteen days, they came to Joyous Guard, and there they laid his corpse in the body of the quire, and sung and read many psalters and prayers over him and about him ; and even his visage was laid open and naked, that all folk might behold him. For such was the custom in those days, that all men of worship should so lie with open visage till that they were buried. And right thus as they were at their service there came Sir Ector de Maris, that had sought seven years all England, Scot- land, and Wales, seeking his brother Sir Lancelot. . . . And then Sir Ector threw his shield, his sword, and his helm from him ; and when he beheld Sir Lancelot's visage, he fell down in a swoon ; and, when he awoke, it were hard for any tongue to tell the doleful complaints that he made for his brother. "Ah, Sir Lancelot," said he, " thou wert head of all Christian knights." — "And now, I dare say," said Sir Bors, " that Sir Lancelot, there thou liest, thou wert never matched of none earthlv knight's hands. And thou wert the courtliest knight that ever bare shield ; and thou wert the truest friend to thy lover that ever bestrode horse ; and thou wert the truest lover, of a sinful man, that ever loved woman ; and thou wert the kindest man that ever stroke with sword ; and thou wert the goodliest person that ever came among press of knights ; and thou wert the meekest man, and the gentlest, that ever eat in hall among ladies ; and thou wert the sternest knight to thy mortal foe that ever put spear in rest." i It? VOL. I. ftl 402 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. ENGLISH POETS. — OCCLEVE; LYDGATE. The most numerous class of writers in the mother-tongue belonging to this time are the poets, by courtesy so called. We must refer to the learned and curious pages of Warton, or to the still more elaborate researches of Ritson, 1 for the names of a crowd of worthless and forgotten versifiers that fill up the annals of our national minstrelsy from Chaucer to Lord Surrey. The last-men- tioned antiquary has furnished a list of about seventy English poets who flourished in this interval. The first known writer of any considei'able quantity of verse after Chaucer is Thomas Occleve. Warton places him about the year 1420. He is the author of manv minor pieces, which mostly remain in manuscript, — although " six of peculiar stupidity," says Ritson, " were selected and pub- lished " by Dr. Askew in 1796: — and also of a longer poem, en- titled De Regimine Principum (On the Government of Princes), chiefly founded on a Latin work, with the, same title, written in the thirteenth century by an Italian ecclesiastic Egidius, styled the Doctor Fundatissimus, and on the Latin treatise on the game of chess of Jacobus de Casulis, another Italian writer of the same age, — the latter being the original of the Game of the Chess, translated by Caxton from the French, and printed by him in 1474. Occleve's poem has never been published — and is chiefly remembered for a drawing of Chaucer bv the hand of Occleve, which is found in one of the manuscripts of it now in the British Museum.- Occleve repeatedly speaks of Chaucer as his master and poetic father, and was no doubt personally acquainted with the great poet. All that Occleve appears to have gained, however, from his admirable model is some initiation in that smoothness and rcgularitv of diction of which Chaucer's writings set the first great example. His own endowment of poetical power and feeling was very small, — the very titles of his pieces, as Warton remarks, in- dicating the poverty and frigidity of his genius. By far the most famous of these versifiers of the fifteenth cen- tury is John Lydgate, the monk of Bury, wh'Hii the Historian of 1 Bibliojrrnphia Poetica. 2 HarL MS. 1866. This portrait, which is a half-length, is colored. There is a full-length portrait in another copy of Occleve's Poems in Royal MS. 17 1). vi. — See Life of < lhaucer, by Sir Harris Nicolas, pp. 104, &c. SCOTTISH POETS. - WYNTON. 403 our Poetry considers to have arrived at his highest point of emi- nence about the year 1430. Ritson has given a list of about 250 poems attributed to Lydgate. Indeed he seems to have followed the manufacture of rhymes as a sort of trade, furnishing any quan- tity to order whenever he was called upon. On one occasion, foi instance, we find him employed by the historian Whethamstede, who was abbot of St. Albans, to make a translation into English, for the use of that convent, of the Latin legend of its patron saint. " The chronicler who records a part of this anecdote," observes Warton, " seems to consider Lydgate's translation as a matter of mere manual mechanism ; for he adds, that Whethamstede paid for the translation, the writing, and illuminations, one hundred shil- lings." ] Lydgate, however, though excessively diffuse, and pos- sessed of very little strength or originality of imagination, is a considerably livelier and more expert writer than Occleve. His memory was also abundantly stored with the learning of his age : he had travelled in France and Italy, and was intimately acquainted with the literature of both these countries ; and his English makes perhaps a nearer approach to the modern form of the language than that of any preceding writer. His best-known poem consists of nine books of Tragedies, as he entitles them, respecting the falls of princes, translated from a Latin work of Boccaccio's : it was printed at London in the reign of Henry VIII. A Selection from the Minor Poems of Dan John Lydgate, edited by Mr. Halliwell, has been printed for the Percy Society, 8vo. Lond. 1840. SCOTTISH POETS.— WYNTON; JAMES I.; HENRYSON; HOL- LAND; BLIND HENRY. The most remarkable portion of our poetical literature belonging to the fifteenth century (as also, we shall presently find, of that belonging to the first half of the sixteenth) was contributed by Scottish writers. The earliest successor of Barbour was Andrew of Wyntown, or Wynton, a canon regular of the Priory of St. Andrews, and Prior of the Monastery of St. Serf's Inch in Loch- leven, one of the establishments subordinate to that great house, 1 Hist. Eng. Poetry, vol. ii. p. 363. 404 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. who is supposed to have been born about 1350, and whose Original? Cronykil of Scotland appears to have been finished in the first years of the fifteenth century. It is a long poem, of nine books, written in the same octosyllabic rhyme with the Bruce of Barbour, to which it was no doubt intended to serve as a kind of introduc- tion. Wynton, however, has very little of the old archdeacon's poetic force and fervor ; and even his style, though in general suf- ficiently simple and clear, is, if anything, rather ruder than that of his predecessor, — a difference which is probably to be accounted for by Barbour's frequent residences in England and more ex- tended intercourse with the world. The Cronykil is principally interesting in an historical point of view, and in that respect it is of considerable value and authority, for Wynton, besides his merits as a distinct narrator, had evidently taken great pains to obtain the best information within his reach with regard to the events both of his own and of preceding times. The work begins (as was then the fashion) with the creation of the world, and comes down to the year 1408 ; but the first five books are occupied rather with general than with Scottish history. The last four books, together with such parts of the preceding ones as contain anything relating to British affairs, were very carefully edited by the late Mr. David Macpherson (the author of the well-la own Annals of Commerce and other works), in two volumes, 8vo. Lon. 1795. It is deserv- ing of notice that a considerable portion of Wynton's Chronicle is not his own composition, but was the contribution of another con- temporary poet ; namely, all from the 19th chapter of the Eighth to the 10th chapter of the Ninth Book inclusive, comprising the space from 1324 to 1390, and forming about a third of the four concluding books. This he conscientiously acknowledges, in very careful and explicit terms, both at the beginning and end of the insertion. We may give what he says in the latter place, as a short sain pie of his style : — This part last treated beforn. Fra Davy the Brus our king wes born, While l his sister son Robert The Second, our king, than called Stuert, That nest a him reigned successive, His days had ended of his live, Wit ye well, wes nought my dite ; 8 1 Till. 2 Next. 8 Writing. JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND. 40c Thereof I dare me well acquite. Wha that it dited, nevertheless, He showed him of mair cunnandness Than me commendis x his treatise, But 2 favour, wha 3 will it clearly prize. This part wes written to me send ; And I, that thought for to mak end Of that purpose I took on hand, Saw it was well accordand To my matere ; I wes right glad ; For I was in my travail sad ; I eked 4 it here to this dite, For to mak me some respite. Tins is interesting as making it probable that poetical, or at least metrical, composition in the national dialect was common in Scot* land at this early date. Of all our poets of the early part of the fifteenth century the one of greatest eminence must be considered to be King James I. of Scotland, even if he be only the author of The King's Quair (that is, the King's quire or boolc), his claim to which lias scarcely been disputed. It is a serious poem, of nearly 1400 lines, arranged in seven-line stanzas ; the style in great part allegorical ; the sub- ject, the love of the royal poet for the Lady Joanna Beaufort, whom he eventually married, and whom he is said to have first beheld walking in the garden below from the window of his prison in the Round Tower of Windsor Castle. The poem was in all probabil- ity written during his detention in England, and previous to his marriage, which took place in February 1424, a few months be- fore his return to his native country. In the concluding stanza James makes grateful mention of his maisters dear Gower and Chaucer, that on the steppes sate Of rhetorick while they were livand here, Superlative as poets laureate, Of morality and eloquence ornate ; and he is evidently an imitator of the great father of English poe- try. The poem too must be regarded as written in English rather 1 He showed himself of more cunning (skill) than I who commend. 2 Without. 3 Whosoever. 4 Added. 400 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. than in Scotch, although the difference between the two dialects, as we have seen, was not so great at this early date as it afterwards became, and although James, who was in his eleventh year when he was carried away to England in 1405 by Henry IV., may not have altogether avoided the peculiarities of his native idiom. The Quair was first published from the only manuscript (one of the Selden Collection in the Bodleian Library), by Mr. W. Tytler at Edinburgh, in 1783 ; there have been several editions since. The following specimen is transcribed from the text given by Mr. George Chalmers, in his Poetic Remains of some of the Scottish Kings, now first collected, 8vo. Lon. 1824 ; though without adhering in all cases either to his spelling, his pointing, or his explanations : — Where as in ward full oft I would bewail My deadly life, full of pain and penance, Saying right thus, What have I guilt to fail 1 My freedom in this world and ray pleasance ? Sen 2 every wight has thereof suffisance That I behold, and I a creature Put from all this, hard is mine aventure. 3 The bird, the beast, the fish eke in the sea, They live in freedom everich in his kind, And I a man, and lacketh liherty ! What shall I sayn, what reason may I find, That fortune should do so ? Thus in my mind My folk I would argue ; 4 but all for nought ; Was none that might that on my paines wrought. 6 Then would I say, Gif God me had devised To live my life in thraldom thus and.pine, What was the cause that he more me comprised 6 Than other folk to live in such ruine ? I suffer alone among the figures nine ; 7 1 What guilt have I (what have I been guilty of) so that I should want (be deprived of). 2 Since. s Hap, lot, fate. 4 According to Chalmers this means, "I would argue with my attendants — tha Earl of Orkney and others of his train." We suspect the word folk to be a mis- transcription — perhaps for fnte. 6 There was no one that might do what had any effect in relieving my suffer mgs ' — if the line be not corrupt. B Doomed, forced (compressed). 7 " Of all the nine numbers mine is the most unlucky."- Chalmers. JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND. 4Q7 Ane woeful wretch, that to no wight may speed, 1 And yet of every lives 2 help has need ! The longe days and the nightes eke I would bewail my fortune in this wise ; For which again 3 distress comfort to seek My custom was on mornes for to rise, Early as day ; O happy exercise ! By thee came I to joy out of torment : — But now to purpose of my first intent. Bewailing in my chamber thus alone, Despaired of all joy and remedy, Fortirit 4 of my thought and woe-begone, And to the window gan I walk in hy 5 To see the world and folk that went forby, 6 As, for the time though I of mirthes food Might have no more, to look it did me good. Now was there made, fast by the Toures wall, A garden fair, and in the corners set Ane herber 7 green, with wandes long and small Railed about ; and so with trees set, Was all the place, and hawthorn hedges knet, 8 That life 9 was none walking there forby That might within scarce any wight espy. So thick the bewes 10 and the leaves green Beshaded all the alleys that there were, And middes u every herber might be seen The sharpe, greene, sweete juniper, Growing so fair with branches here and there, That, as it seemed to a life without. The bewes spread the herber all about. And on the smale greene twistes sate The little sweete nightingale, and sung 1 To no man may do service. 2 Living person. 3 AgainsV 4 Tired. The termination here is Scotch. The MS. appears to have been writ- ten in Scotland. Other printed editions have Fortired. 6 Haste. 6 Past ? " Forby " in modern Scotch means besides. 7 Ellis says, " probably an arbor" : — Chalmers, " a garden plot set with plants and flowers ; a grove with an arbor railed with trellis-work, and close set about with trees." 8 Knit. 9 Living person. 10 Boughs. u Amidst 408 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. So loud and clear the hymnes consecrate Of loves use, now soft now loud among, That all the gardens and the walles rung Right of their song and on the couple next * Of their sweet harmony ; and lo the text : — "Worshippe, ye that lovers been, this May, For of your bliss the kalends are begun, And sing with us, Away, winter, away ! Come summer, come, the sweet season and sun ; Awake, for shame ! that have your heavens won, 2 And amorously lift up your heades all ; Hark Love, that list you to his mercy call. The description of the lady whom he afterwards sees " walking under the Tower," — at whose sudden apparition, "anon," he says, — — " astart 3 The blood of all my body to my heart " — is exceedingly elaborate, but is too long to be quoted. Ellis has given the greater part of it in his Specimens. 4 Two other poems of considerable length, in a humorous style, have also been attrib- uted to James I., — Peebles to the Play, and Christ's Kirk on the Green, both in the Scottish dialect ; but they are more probably the productions of his equally gifted and equally unfortunate de- scendant James V. (b. 1511, d. 1542). Chalmers, however, assigns the former to James I. As for the two famous comic ballads of The Gaberlunyie Man, and The Jolly Beggar, which it has been usual among recent writers to speak of as by one or other of these kings, there seems to be no reasonable ground — not even that of tradition of any antiquity — for assigning them to either. Chaucer, we have seen, appears to have been unknown to his contemporary Barbour ; but after the time of James I. the Scot- tish poetry for more than a century bears evident traces of the imitation of the great English master. It was a consequence of the relative circumstances of the two countries, that, while the literature of Scotland, the poorer and ruder of the two, could exert i Not understood. Tytler thinks " couple " relates to the pairing of the birds ; Ellis and Chalmers, that it is a musical term. 2 " Ye that have attained your highest bliss." — Tytler. 8 Started up. * Vol. i. pp. 305-300. ROBERT HENRYSON. - SIR JOHN HOLLAND. 408 no influence upon that of England, the literature of England coulci not fail powerfully to affect and modify that of its more backward neighbor. No English writer would think of studying or imitating Barbour ; but every Scottish poet who arose after the fame of Chaucer had passed the border would seek, or, even if he did not seek, would still inevitably catch, some inspiration from that great example. If it could in any circumstances have happened that Chaucer should have remained unknown in Scotland, the singular fortunes of James I. were shaped as if on purpose to transfer the manner and spirit of his poetry into the literature of that country. From that time forward the native voice of the Scottish muse was mixed with this other foreign voice. One of the earliest Scottish poets after James I. is Robert Henry son, or Henderson, the author of the beautiful pastoral of Robin and Makyne, which is popularly known from having been printed by Bishop Percy in his Reliques. 1 He has left us a continuation or supplement to Chaucer's Troilus and Creseide, which is commonly printed along with the works of that poet under the title of The Testament of Fair Creseide. All that is known of the era of Henryson is that he was alive and very old about the close of the fifteenth century. He may therefore probably have been born about the time that James I. returned from England. Henryson is also the author of a translation into English or Scottish verse of JEsop's Fables, of which there is a MS. in the Harleian Collection (No. 3865), and which was printed at Edinburgh in 8vo. in 1621, under the title of The Moral Fables of ^Esop the Phrygian, compyled into eloquent and ornamental meter, by Robert Henrison, schoolemaster of Dumferling. A reimpression of this edition (limited to 68 copies) was executed at Edinburgh, in 4to., in 1832, for the members of the Maitland Club. To Henryson, moreover, as has been already noticed, Mr. Laing attributes the tale of Orpheus and Eurydice contained in the col- lection of old poetry, entitled The Knightly Tale of Golagrus and Gawane, &c, reprinted by him in 1827. Contemporary, too, with Henryson, if not perhaps rather before him, was Sir John or Richard Holland, whose poem entitled The Buke of the Howlat (that is, the owl) was printed, under the care 1 Vol. ii. pp. 73-78. It was first printed in Ramsay's Evergreen, 12mo. Edin. 1724. (Or see second edition, Glasgow, 1824.) It is also in Lord Hailes's Ancient Scottish Poems (from the Bannatyne MS.) 8vo. Edin. 1770. And an edition of this Poem, and of the Testament of Creseide, hy the late George Chalmers, was orinted for the Bannatyne Club, in 4to. at Edinburgh, in 1824. VOL. I. 52 410 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. of Mr. Laing, in 4to. at Edinburgh in 1823 for the Bannatyne and Abbotsford Clubs. It had been previously printed, with less cor- rectness, by Pinkerton in liis Scotish Poems, 3 vols. 8vo. 1792 . and also in the first volume of Sibbald's Chronicle of Scottish Poetry, 4 vols. 8vo. 1802. Holland's poem, a wild and rugged effusion in alliterative metre, cannot be charged as an imitation of Chaucer, or of any other English writer of so late a date. Another Scottish poet of this time, the style and spirit as well as the subject of whose poetry must be admitted to be exclusively national, is Henry the Minstrel, commonly called Blind Harry, author of the famous poem on the life and acts of Wallace. The testimony of the historian John Major to the time at which Henry wrote is sufficiently express : " The entire book of William Wal- lace," he says, " Henry, who was blind from his birth, composed in the time of my infancy (meae infantiae tempore cudii), and what things used popularly to be reported wove into popular verse, in which he was skilled.'" Major is believed to have been born about 1469 ; so that Henry's poem may be assigned to the end of the third quarter of the fifteenth century. There is reason to believe that it was printed at Edinburgh as early as 1520 ; but the oldest impression now known is an Edinburgh one in 4to. of the year 1570. There were many reprints of it in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, some of them greatly modernized in the lan- guage and otherwise altered : the standard edition is that published from a manuscript dated 1488 by Dr. Jamieson along with Bar- bour's poem, 4to. Edin. 1820. The Wallace, which is a long poem of about 12,000 decasyllabic lines, used to be a still greater favorite than was The Bruce with the author's countrymen ; and Dr. Jamieson does not hesitate to place Harry as a poet before Barbour. In this judgment, however, probably few critical readers will concur, although both Warton and Ellis, without going so far, have also acknowledged in Avarm terms the rude force of the Blind Minstrel's genius. It may be remarked, by the way, that were it not for Major's statement, and the common epithet that has attached itself to his name, we should scarcely have supposed that the author of Wallace had been either blind from his birth or blind at all. He nowhere himself alludes to any such circumstance. His poem, besides, abounds in descriptive passages, and in allusions to natural appearances and other objects of sight : perhaps, indeed, it might be saia that there is an ostentation of that kind of writing, such HENRY THE MINSTREL. 411 as we meet with also in the modern Scotch poet Blacklock's verses and which it may be thought is not unnatural to a blind person Nor are his apparent literary acquirements to be very easily recon- ciled with Major's account, who represents him as going about reciting his verses among the nobility (coram principibus), and thereby obtaining food and raiment, of which, says the historian, he was worthy (victum, et vestitum, quo dignus erat, nactus est~). " He seems," as Dr. Jamieson observes, " to have been pretty well acquainted with that kind of history which was commonly read in that period." The Doctor refers to allusions which he makes in various places to the romance histories of Hector, of Alexander the Great, of Julius Caesar, and of Charlemagne ; and he conceives that his style of writing is more richly strewed with the more peculiar phraseology of the writers of romance than that of Bar- bour. But what is most remarkable is, that he distinctly declares his poem to be throughout a translation from the Latin. The statement, which occurs toward the conclusion, seems too express and particular to be a mere imitation of the usage of the romance- writers, many of whom appeal, but generally in very vague terms, to a Latin original for their marvels : — Of Wallace life wha has a further feel 1 May show furth mair with wit and eloquence ; For I to this have done my diligence, Efter the proof given fra the Latin book Wliilk Maister Blair in his time undertook, In fair Latin compiled it till ane end : With thir witness the mair is to commend. 2 Bishop Sinclair than lord was of Dunkell ; He gat this book, and confirmed it himsell For very true ; therefore he had no drede ; 8 Himself had seen great part of Wallace deed. His purpose was till have sent it to Rome, Our fader of kirk thereon to give his doom. But Maistre Blair and als Shir Thomas Gray Efter Wallace they lestit 4 mony day : Thir twa 5 knew best of Gud Schir William's deed, Fra sixteen year while 6 nine and twenty yeid. 7 1 Knowledge. 2 We do not profess to understand this line. Thir is Scotch for these. Mair u war in Jamieson. 3 Doubt. * Survived (lasted). 6 These two. 6 Till. 7 Went, passed. 412 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. In another place (Book V. v. 538 et seq.') he says : — Maistre John Blair was oft in that message, A worthy clerk, baith wise and right savage. Lewit 1 he was before in Paris town Amang maisters in science and renown. Wallace and he at hame in schul had been : Soon efterwart, as verity is seen, He was the man that principal undertook, That first compiled in dite 2 the Latin book Of Wallace life, right famous in renown ; And Thomas Gray, person of Libertown. Blind Harry's notions of the literary character are well exem- plified by his phrase of a " worthy clerk, baith wise and right savao-e." He himself, let his scholarship have been what it may, is in spirit as thorough a Scot as if he had never heard the sound of any other than his native tongue. His gruff patriotism speaks out in his opening lines : — Our antecessors, that we suld of read, And hold in mind their noble worthy deed, We lat owerslide, 3 through very sleuthfulness, And casts us ever till other business. Till honour enemies is our hail 4 intent ; It has been seen in thir times bywent : Our auld enemies comen of Saxons blud, That never yet to Scotland wald do gud, But ever on force and contrar hail their will, How great kindness there has been kythe 6 them till. It is weil knawn on mony divers side How they have wrought into their mighty pride To hald Scotland at under evermair : But God above has made their might to pair. 6 Of the fighting and slaying, which makes up by far the greater part of the poem, it is difficult to find a sample that is short enough for our purpose. The following is a small portion of what is called the battle of Shortwoodsliaw : — 1 Dr. Jamicson's only interpretation is "allowed, left." 2 Writing. 8 Allow to slip out of memory. * Whole. '- Shown. c Diminish, impair. HENRY THE MINSTREL. 412 On Wallace set a bicker bauld and keen ; A bow he bare was big and well beseen, And arrows als, baith lang and sharp with aw ; * No man was there that Wallace bow might draw. Right stark he was, and in to souer gear ; 2 Bauldly he shot amang they 3 men of wer.* Ane angel heade 5 to the huiks he drew And at a shot the foremost soon he slew. Inglis archers, that hardy war and wight, Amang the Scots bickered with all their might ; Their aweful shot was felon 6 for to bide ; Of Wallace men they woundit sore that tide ; Few of them was sicker 7 of archery ; Better they were, an they gat even party, In field to bide either with swerd or spear. Wallace perceivit his men tuk mickle deir : 8 He gart 9 them change, and stand nought in to stead ; 10 He cast all ways to save them fra the dead. 11 Full great travail upon himself tuk he ; Of Southron men feil 12 archers he gart dee. 13 Of Longcashier u bowmen was in that place A sair 15 ax-cher aye waitit on Wallace, At ane opine, 16 whar he usit to repair ; At him he drew a sicker shot and sair Under the chin, through a collar of steel On the left side, and hurt his halse 17 some deal. Astonied he was, but nought greatly aghast ; Out fra his men on him he followit fast ; In the turning with gud will has him ta'en Upon the crag, 18 in sunder straik the bain. It will be seen from this specimen that the Blind Minstrel is a vigorous versifier. His descriptions, however, though both clear and forcible, and even not unfrequently animated by a dramatic abruptness and boldness of expression, want the bounding airy 1 Dr. Jamieson's only interpretation is owe. It would almost seem as if we had here the modern Scottish ivitha' for withall. 2 In sure warlike accoutrements. 3 Those. 4 War. 5 The barbed head of an arrow. 6 Terrible. 7 Sure. 8 Took much hazard, ran much risk. 9 Caused. 10 Stand not in their place. Perhaps it should be " o stead," that is, one place. 11 Death. 12 Many. 13 Caused die. 14 Lancashire 15 Skilful. i 6 Open place ? 17 Neck. 18 Throat. 414 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. spirit and flashing light of those of Barbour. As a specimen of his graver style we may give his Envoy or concluding lines : — Go, noble book, fulfillit of gud sentence, Suppose thou be barren of eloquence : Go, worthy book, fulfillit of suthfast deed ; But in langage of help thou hast great need. Whan gud makers * rang weil into Scotland, Great harm was it that nane of them ye fand. 3 Yet there is part that can thee weil avance ; Now bide thy time, and be a remembrance. I you besek of your benevolence, Wha will nought lou, 3 lak nought 4 my eloquence ; (It is weil knawn I am a burel 5 man) For here is said as gudly as I can ; My sprite feeles ne termes asperans. 6 Now beseek God, that giver is of grace, Made hell and erd, 7 and set the heaven above, That he us grant of his dear lestand 8 love. FIRST HALF OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. — COLLEGES FOUNDED. In no age, as we have found, even the darkest and most barren of valuable produce, that has elapsed since learning was first planted among us, had there failed to be something done in the establishment of nurseries for its shelter and propagation. The fifteenth century, though it has left us little enduring literature of any kind, is distinguished for the number of the colleges that were founded in the course of it, both in this country and in the rest of Europe. This, indeed, was the natural and proper direc- tion for the first impulse to take that was given by the revival of letters : the actual generation upon which the new light broke was not that in which it was to be expected it should do much more than awaken the taste for true learning, or at most the ambition of 1 Poets. 2 Found. 3 Love ? 4 Scoff not at. 5 Boorish, clownish. 9 Understands no lofty (aspiring) terms. But it seems impossible that asperant can rhyme to grace. ' Earth. 8 Lasting. COLLEGES FOUNDED. 415 excellence ; the power of accomplishment could onty come in the next era. The men of the latter part of the fifteenth century, therefore, were most fitly and most usefully employed in making provision for the preservation and transmission to other times of the long-lost wisdom and eloquence that had been found again in their day, — in building cisterns and conduits for the precious waters that, after having been hidden for a thousand years, had burst their founts, and were once more flowing over the earth. The fashion of founding colleges, and other seminaries of learning, continued to prevail in this country both down to the Reformation in religion, and for some time after that mighty revolution. In the University of Oxford, Brazennose College was founded in 1511 by William Smith, Bishop of Lincoln, and Sir Richard Sutton, of Presbury, in Cheshire ; Corpus Christi in 1517, by Henry VII. 'p minister, Richard Fox, successively Bishop of Exeter, of Bath and Wells, of Durham, and of Winchester ; Cardinal College by Wol- sey in 1525, which, however, before the buildings had been half finished, was suppressed by the king on the cardinal's fall in 1529 ; the college of Henry VIII. by that king in 1532, a continuation, but on a much smaller scale, of Wolsey's design, which was also dissolved in 1545, when that of Christ Church was erected in its stead by Henry, to be both a college and at the same time a cathe- dral establishment for the new bishopric of Oxford ; Trinity, on the old foundation of Durham College, by Sir Thomas Pope, in 1554 ; St. John's, on the site of Bernard College, by Sir Thomas White, alderman and merchant-tailor of London, in 1557 ; and Jesus, by Dr. Hugh Price, Queen Elizabeth contributing part of the expense, in 1571. In Cambridge there were founded Jesus College, in 1496, by John Alcoek, Bishop of Ely ; Christ's Col- lege, in 1505, by Margaret, Countess of Richmond, the mother of Henry VII. ; St. John's, by the same noble lady, in 1508 ; Mag- dalen, or Maudlin, begun in 1519 by Edward Stafford, the unfor- tunate Duke of Buckingham, and, after his execution for high treason in 1521, completed by the Lord Chancellor, Thomas Lord Audley ; Trinity, in 1536, by Henry VIII., who at the same time endowed four new professorships in the University, one of theol- ogy, one of law, one of Hebrew, and one of Greek ; Caius Col- lege, properly an extension of the ancient foundation of Gonviile Hall, by Dr. John Caius, or Key, in 1557 ; Emanuel, in 1584, by Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster and 416 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. of the Exchequer ; and Sidney-Sussex College, in 1594, by the widow of Thomas Radcliffe, Earl of Sussex, originally the Lady Frances Sidney. In Scotland a new university was erected in Aberdeen, under the name of King's College, by a bull of Pope Alexander VI., granted at the request of King James IV., in 1494, the principal endower, however, being William Elphin- stone, bishop of the see ; a second college, that of St. Leonard's (now forming, with St. Salvator's, what is called the United Col- lege), was founded in the University of St. Andrews, in 1512, by Alexander Stuart, archbishop of the see, and John Hepburn, prior of the metropolitan church ; another college, that of St. Mary, now exclusively appropriated to the theological faculty, . was founded in the same university in 1537, by Archbishop James Beaton ; a fourth university, that of Edinburgh, was erected by King James VI. in 1582 ; and a fifth, that of Marischal College, Aberdeen, by George Earl Marischal, in 1598. In Ireland, the university of Trinity College, Dublin, was founded by Queen Elizabeth, in 1591. Along with these seminaries might be men- tioned a great number of grammar schools ; of which the chief were that of St. Paul's, London, founded by Dean Colet, in 1509 ; that of Ipswich, by Cardinal Wolsey, at the same time with his college at Oxford, the fate of which it also shared ; Christ Church, London, by Edward VI., in 1553 ; Westminster School, by Queen Elizabeth, in 1560 ; and Merchant Tailors' School by the London civic Company of that name, in 1568. In Scotland, the High School of Edinburgh was founded by the magistrates of the city in 1577. CLASSICAL LEARNING. Many of these colleges and schools were expressly established for the cultivation of the newly revived classical learning, the res- urrection of which in the middle of the fifteenth century revolu- tionized the ancient studies everywhere as soon as its influence came to be felt. It scarcely reached England, however, as we have already intimated, till towards the close of that century. In- deed, Greek is said to have been first publicly taught in this coun- try in St. Paul's school, by the famous grammarian William Lilly, CLASSICAL LEARNING. 417 who had studied the language at Rhodes, and who was appointed the first master of the new school in 1512. Dean Colet himself, the founder, although accounted one of the best-educated men of his time, had, during the seven years he spent at Magdalen College, Oxford, only acquired a knowledge of some of the Greek authors through the medium of Latin translations. Among the most dis- tinguished of the early patrons of the new learning after it had been thus introduced were the two prelates and statesmen Fox and his greater protege and successor Wolsey, both of whom, in the colleges founded by them that have just been mentioned, made especial provision for the teaching of the two classic tongues. The professor of Latin — or of Humanity, as he is designated — in Corpus Christi College, was expressly enjoined to extirpate barba- rism from the new society (barbariem a nostro alveario extirpei'). The Greek professor was ordered to explain the best Greek clas- sics ; " and the poets, historians, and orators in that language," observes Warton, " which the judicious founder, who seems to have consulted the most intelligent scholars of the times, recom- mends by name on this occasion, are the purest, and such as are most esteemed even in the present improved state of ancient learn- ing." J Wolsey evinced the interest he took in the new studies, not only by his great school at Ipswich and his college at Oxford, but by founding in that university some years before, along with various other professorships, one for Rhetoric and Humanity and another for Greek. " So attached was Wolsey," says the writer we have just quoted, " to the new modes of instruction, that he did not think it inconsistent with his high office and rank to publish a ffenei'al address to the schoolmasters of England, in which he orders them to institute their youth in the most elegant literature." And the high eulogium of Erasmus on the great cardinal is, that "he recalled to his country the three learaed languages, without which all learning is lame." A violent struggle, however, was for some time maintained against these innovations by the generality of those who had been educated in the old system, and by the always numerous and pow- erful host of the enemies and mistrusters of all innovation, whether from self-interest or other motives. Colet, in a letter to Erasmus, relates that one of the prelates of the church, esteemed among the most eminent for his learning and gravity, had, in a great public 1 Hist. Eng. Poet, Sect, xxxvi. VOL. I. 53 418 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. assemh" v, censured him in the severest terms for suffering the Latin poets to be taught in his new seminary, which on that account he styled a house of idolatry. This last expression would almost war- rant us in suspecting that the prelate, whose name is not mentioned, was one of those inclined to the new opinions in religion: and at this time the new learning was probably rather distasteful than otherwise to that class of persons, zealously patronized as it was by Fox., Wolsi'v, and others, the heads of the party attached to the ancient faith. A few years afterwards a change took place in this respect : the reformers in religion became also the chief supporters of the reformation in learning, as was fit and natural both from the sameness in the general character and direction of the two move- ments, and also for an especial reason, which operated with Very powerful effect. This was the surpassing importance speedily acquired in the contest between the two religions by the great principle on which the Reformers took their stand, of the omnipo- ace of the authority of the Scriptures in regard to all the points in debate between them and their opponents. Not custom or tra- dition, not the decrees of popes or councils, not even the Latin Vulgate translation, but the original text of the Greek New Tes- tament alone, necessarily became, as soon as this principle was pro- claimed, the grand ultimate criterion with them for the trial and decision of all doubts and disputes, and the armory from which they drew their chief weapons both of defence and of assault. At first, it is true, this view does not appear to have been generally taken either by the one party or the other. The first editions of the Greek Testament that were given to the world were that con- tained in the Comphitensian Polyglot, the magnificent present to literature of Cardinal Ximenes, printed in 1514, but not published till 1522, and that of Erasmus, which appeared in 1516, both of which may be said to have proceeded from the bosom of the ancient church. Even from the first, however, many of the clergy, though principally rather from their extreme ignorance and illiteracy than from any fears they entertained of its unsettling people's faith, raised a considerable outcry against the New Testament of Eras- mus: they seem to have seriously believed that the book was an invention of his own, and that he was attempting to establish a new religion. But the opposition to the Greek Scriptures, and tc Greek literature generally, assumed a much more decided charac- ter when it was seen what use th • friends of the new opinions in CLASSICAL LEARNING. 419 religion made of both, and how commonly an inclination in favor of the said new opinions went along with the cultivation of the new language. Erasmus for some time attempted to expound the Greek Grammar of Chrysoloras in the public schools at Cambridge ; but his lectures were nearly unattended, and a storm of clamor was raised against him on all hands. His New Testament was actually proscribed by the authorities of the University, and a severe fine was denounced against any member who should be detected in having the book in his possession. Both in England and through- out Europe the universities were now generally divided into Greeks and Trojans ; the latter class, who were those opposed to the new learning, usually comprehending all the monks and other most bigoted partisans of the old faith. 1 Although, however, the revolt of Luther and his followers against the authority of Rome and many of the established doc- trines in religion thus incidentally aided for a time the study and diffusion of classical scholarship, neither the subsequent progress of the Reformation in England nor its ultimate establishment operated with a favorable effect in the first instance upon the state of the universities or the general interests of learning. Henry VIII. himself, " from his natural liveliness of temper and love of nov- elty," as Warton puts it, or, as perhaps it might be more correctly expressed, from mere accident or caprice, was favorably disposed to the new studies, and his authority and influence were of consider- able use in supporting them at first against their numerous and powerful opponents. Erasmus relates that, in 1519, when one of the university preachers at Oxford had harangued with great vio- lence against the study of the Scriptures in their original languages, Henry, who happened to be resident at the time at the neighboring royal manor of Woodstock, and had received an account of the affair from his secretary, the learned Richard Pace, and Sir Thomas More, issued an order commanding that the said study of the Greek and Hebrew Scriptures should not only be permitted for the future, but made an indispensable branch of the course of academical in- struction. Some time after, one of the royal chaplains, preaching at court, having attacked the new Greek learning, was, after his sermon, commanded by the king to maintain his opinions in a solemn disputation with More, by whose wit and learning of course 1 The reader will recollect Addison's humorous notices of the modern Greeks irnl Trojans, in the Spectator, Nos. 289 and :il5. 420 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. he was very speedily vanquished, and forced to make a humiliating, admission of his errors and ignorance : he at last declared that he was now better reconciled to the Greek tongue, inasmuch as he found that it was derived from the Hebrew ; but, although he fel. upon his knees and begged pardon for any offence he had given, Henry dismissed him with a command that he should never again presume to preach before him. One of the first causes, however, although it was only of temporary operation, that interrupted the progress of classical learning at the universities, has been thought to have been the stir excited throughout Christendom by the ques- tion of Henry's divorce from Queen Katherine. " The legality of this violent measure," observes Warton, " being agitated with much deliberation and solemnity, wholly engrossed the attention of many able philologists, whose genius and acquisitions were destined to a much nobler employment, and tended to revive for a time the frivolous subtleties of casuistry and theology." Then, the still more eager and widely extended doctrinal discussions to which the prog- ress of the Reformation itself gave rise, came to operate over a much longer period with a similar effect. In this universal storm of polemics, " the profound investigations of Aquinas," continues Warton, "once more triumphed over the graces of the Ciceronian urbanity ; and endless volumes were written on the expediency of auricular confession, and the existence of purgatory. Thus the cause of polite literature was for a while abandoned ; while the noblest abilities of Europe were wasted in theological speculation, and absorbed in the abyss of controversy." Another great tem- porary check was now also given, Warton conceives, to the cause of the progress and diffusion of sound learning in England by the dissolution of the monasteries. " These seminaries," he observes, " though they were in a general view the nurseries of illiterate in- dolence, and undoubtedly deserved to be suppressed under proper restrictions, contained invitations and opportunities to studious lei- sure and literary pursuits. On this event, therefore, a visible rev- olution and decline in the national state of learning succeeded. Most of the youth of the kingdom betook themselves to mechanical or other illiberal employments, the profession of letters being now supposed to be without support or reward. By the abolition of the religious houses, many towns and their adjacent villages were utterly deprived of their only means of instruction. At the begir- ning of the reign of Elizabeth, Williams, Speaker of the House cf CLASSICAL LEARNING. 421 Commons, complained to her majesty, that more than an hundred flourishing schools were destroyed in the demolition of the monas- teries, and that ignorance had prevailed ever since. Provincial ignorance, at least, became universal, in consequence of this hasty measure of a rapacious and arbitrary prince. What was taught in the monasteries was not always perhaps of the greatest importance, but still it served to keep up a certain degree of necessary knowl- edge." The many new grammar schools that arose in different parts of the country after the destruction of the monasteries were partly, no doubt, called into existence by the vacuum thus created ; which, however, they did very little to fill up in so far as the rural population was concerned, although they may have sufficed for most of the great towns. Both the old monastic schools and the new foundations, however, being considered, to a certain extent, as charitable institutions, were principally attended by the children of persons in humble or at least in common life ; among the higher classes it seems to have been the general custom for boys as well as girls to be educated at home, or under the superintendence of private tutors. A notion of the extent and manner of training which youths of rank under- went in their earliest years may be obtained from some letters which have been printed, addressed to Henry's minister, Cromwell, by the tutor of his son Gregory. 1 This young man, whose capacity is described as rather solid than quick, divided his time under different masters among various studies and exercises, of which English, French, writing, playing at weapons, casting of accounts, and "pastimes of instruments," are particularly enumerated. One master is stated to be in the habit of " daily hearing him to read somewhat in the English tongue, and advertising him of the natu- ral and true kind of pronunciation thereof, expounding also and declaring the etymology and native signification of such words as we have borrowed of the Latins or Frenchmen, not even so com- monly used in our quotidian speech." According to a common practice, two other youths, probably of inferior station, appear to have been educated along with young Cromwell ; and between him and them, the account continues, " there is a perpetual con- tention, strife, and conflict, and in manner of an honest envy, who shall do best not only in the French tongue (wherein Mr. Vallance, after a wondrously compendious, facile, prompt, and ready way, 1 King Henrj the Eighth's Scheme of Bishoprics, &c, 8vo. Lond. 1838. i22 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. not without painful diligence and laborious industry, doth instruct them), but also in writing, playing at weapons, and all other theif exercises." In the end a confident hope is expressed that, " whereas the last summer was spent in the service of the wild goddess Diana," the present shall be consecrated to Apollo and the Muses, to the no small profit of the young man, as well as to his father's good contentation and pleasure. This letter is dated In April ; another, written in September (apparently of the same year), by which time the boy had begun the study of some new branches, especially Latin and instrumental music, enters into some more minute and curious details of how he spent his time. " First," says his tutor, " after he hath heard mass, he taketh a lecture of a dialogue of Erasmus' colloquium called Pietas Puerilis, wherein is described a very picture of one that should be virtu- ously brought up ; and, for cause it is so necessary for him, I do not only cause him to read it over, but also to practise the precepts of the same ; and I have also translated it into English, so that he may confer therein both together, whereof, as learned men affirm, cometh no small protect, which translation pleaseth it you to receive by the bringer hereof, that ye may judge how much profitable it is to be learned." From this it may be inferred that the original Latin would have been unintelligible to Cromwell, and that that ;ilile man was above being flattered by having a knowledge of the learned tongues ascribed to him which he did not possess. The letter o-oes on — " After that he exerciseth his hand in writing one or two hours, and readeth upon Fabian's Chronicles as long ; the residue of the day he doth spend upon the lute and virginal."' Vocal music at least, it may be observed, if not instrumental, was always one of the branches of education taught at the old monastic, cathedral, and other free schools ; a circumstance originating no doubt in the connection of those schools with the church, in the services of which singing bore so important a part. Lastly, the tutor gives an account of the out-of-door exercises followed by his pupil; intellectual instruction, however, being by no means disre- garded even in some of these. " When he rideth, as he doth very oft, I tell him by the way," he says, " some history of the Romans or the Greeks, which I cause him to rehearse again in a tale. For his recreation he useth to hawk, and hunt, and shoot in his long bow, which frameth and suceeedeth so well with him that lie seemeth to be thereunto given by nature." This training, sc CLASSICAL LEARNING. 42i] far as it is detailed, appears to have been judiciously contrived foi laying the foundation of a good and solid education both of the mental and physical faculties. The reforming spirit of the early part of the sixteenth centurj was, as always happens, in the shape it took in the popular mind, much more of a destructive than of a constructive character ; and even the wisest of the persons in authority, by whom the mighty movement was guided and controlled, were necessarily, to a certain extent, under the influence of the same presumptuous temper, without a share of which, indeed, they would not have been fitted to restrain the more impetuous multitude to the extent they did. But in its application to the universities, as in other cases, this spirit of mere demolition, and contempt for all that was old and established, displayed itself in some things in a very rampant style. The scorn, in particular, with which it treated the whole mass of the ancient philosophy of the schools was of the most sweeping description. The famous Duns Scotus, so long the lord of opinion, now underwent, in full measure, the customary fate of deposed sovereigns. A royal visitation of the two universities, by commis- sioners of Cromwell's appointment, took place in loo5, when injunctions were issued abolishing altogether the reading of the works of the most subtle Doctor. The tone of triumph in which Dr. Layton, one of the Oxford commissioners, announces this reform to Cromwell is highly characteristic. " We have set Dunce," he writes, " in Bocardo, 1 and have utterly banished him Oxford for ever, with all his blind glosses." The despised tomes, formerly so much reverenced, Layton goes on to intimate, were now used by any man for the commonest uses ; he had seen them with his own eyes nailed upon posts in the most degrading situa- tions. " And the second time we came to New College," he proceeds, " after we had declared your injunctions, we found all the great quadrant court full of the leaves of Dunce, the wind blowing them into every corner. And there we found one Mr. h-eenfield, a gentleman of Buckinghamshire, gathering up part the same book leaves, as he said, therewith to make him sewers blawnshers to keep the deer within his wood, thereby to have tne better cry with his hounds." 2 The scholastic philosophy, 1 A Figure or form of syllogism of the school logic, which terminated in a nega- tive conclusion. The expression, therefore, implies that Scotus was, as it were innihilated. 2 Strype, Eccles. Mem. i. 335. 424 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. however, which was thus banished from the universities, was in fact the whole philosophy, mental and physical, then taught, and its abolition consequently amounted to the ejection, for the time, of philosophical studies from the academical course altogether. The canon law was another of the old studies, hitherto of chief importance, that was at the same time put down : degrees in the canon law were prohibited ; and, in place of the canon lecture, a civil lecture, that is, a lecture on the civil law, was appointed to be read in every college, hall, and inn. For a short space, the excitement of novelty, and the exertions of a few eminent instructors, made classical learning popular at Oxford and Cambridge, and enabled it in some degree to serve as a substitute for those other abandoned studies to which it ought only to have been introduced as an ally. The learned Ascham boasts, in one of his letters, that, whereas almost the only classics hitherto known at Cambridge had been Plautus, Cicero, Terence, and Livy, all the chief Greek poets, orators, and historians — Homer, Sophocles, Euripides, Demosthenes, Isocrates, Herodotus, Thucyd- ides, and Xenophon — were now universally and critically studied. This prosperous state of Greek scholarship w T as principally owing to the example and exertions of the two distinguished professors of that language, Thomas Smith and John Cheke : even the con- troversy about the proper pronunciation of the language that arose between the latter and Bishop Gardiner, who, as Warton observes, " loved learning, but hated novelties," contributing its share to excite a general interest about Greek literature, as well as to throw new light upon the particular subject in dispute. But both Cheke and Smith were soon withdrawn from their academic labors to other fields ; and with them the spirit of true learning and taste, which they had awakened at Cambridge, seems also to have taken its departure. At Oxford the case was no better ; there, Ascham remarks that a decline of taste in both the classic tongues was decidedly indicated by a preference of Lucian, Plutarch, and Hero- dian, in Greek, and of Seneca, Gellius, and Apuleius, in Latin, to the writers of the older and purer eras of ancient eloquence. Even divinity itself, as Latimer complains, ceased to be studied. M It would pity a man's heart," he says, " to hear what I hear of the state of Cambridge : what it is in Oxford I cannot tell. There be few that study divinity but so many as of necessity must fur- nish the colleges." So true is it that no one branch of learning o; CLASSICAL LEARNING. 425 science can long continue to flourish amid the general neglect and decay of the other branches that compose along with it the system of human knowledge. The first establishment of the Reformation under Edward VI., instead of effecting the restoration of learning, only contributed to its further discouragement and depression. " The rapacious cour- tiers of this young prince," as Warton observes, " were perpetually grasping at the rewards of literature Avarice and zeal were at once gratified in robbing the clergy of their revenues, and in reducing the church to its primitive apostolical state of purity and poverty. The opulent see of Winchester was lowered to a bare title ; its amplest estates were portioned out to the laity ; and the bishop, a creature of the Protector Somerset, was contented to receive an inconsiderable annual stipend from the exchequer. The bishopric of Durham, almost equally rich, was entirely dissolved. A favorite nobleman in the court occupied the deanery and treas- urership of a cathedral, with some of its best canonries In every one of these sacrilegious robberies the interest of learning also suffered. Exhibitions and pensions were, in the mean time, subtracted from the students in the universities. Ascham, in a let- ter to the Marquis of Northampton, dated 1550, laments the ruin of grammar schools throughout England, and predicts the speedy extinction of the universities from this growing calamity. At Oxford the public schools were neglected by the professors and pupils, and allotted to the lowest purposes. Academical degrees were abrogated as anti-christian. Reformation was soon turned into fanaticism. Absurd refinements, concerning the inutility of human learning, were superadded to the just and rational purgation of Christianity from the papal corruptions. The spiritual reformers of these enlightened days, at a visitation of the last-mentioned university, proceeded so far in their ideas of a superior rectitude, as totally to strip the public library, established by that munificent patron, Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, of all its books and man- uscripts." A very curious account of the state of the University of Cam- bridge in this reign is contained in a sermon, preached in 1550, by a Thomas Lever, Fellow of St. John's College, some extracts from which Strype has preserved. Formerly '* there were," says Lever, " in houses belonging to the University of Cambridge, two hun- ired students of divinity, many very well learned, which be now vol. i. 54 42G ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. all clean gone home ; and many young toward scholars, and old fatherly doctors, not one of them left. One hundred also, of another sort, that, having rich friends, or being beneficed men, did live of themselves in hostels and inns, be either gone away or else fain to creep into colleges and put poor men from bare livings. These both be all gone, and a small number of poor, godly, diligent students, now remaining only in colleges, be not able to tarry and continue their studies for lack of exhibition and help." The description which follows of the studies and mode of living of the poorer and more diligent students is very interesting : — " There be divers there which rise daily about four or five of the clock in the morning, and from five till six of the clock use common prayer, with an exhortation of God's word in a common chapel ; and from six until ten of the clock use ever either private study or common lectures. At ten of the clock they go to dinner, whereas they be content with a penny piece of beef among four, having a few pot- tage made of the broth of the same beef, with salt and oatmeal, and nothing else. After this slender diet, they be either teaching or learning until five of the clock in the evening ; whenas they have a supper not much better than their dinner. Immediately after which they go either to reasoning in problems, or to some other study, until it be nine or ten of the clock ; and then, being without fires, are fain to walk or run up and down half an hour, to get a heat on their feet when they go to bed." 1 Latimer, in a sermon preached about the same time, expresses his belief that there were then ten thousand fewer students in the kingdom than there had been twenty years before. In the reign of Mary, who was herself a learned queen, and a considerable benefactress of both universities, classical learning had a distinguished patron in Cardinal Pole, who was as illustrious for his literary acquirements as he was for his birth and station. In his short tenure of power, however, he was not able to accomplish much against the adverse circumstances of the time. It appears that to him Sir Thomas Pope, the founder of Trinity College, < Oxford, which was endowed in this reign more especially for the cultivation of classical scholarship, submitted the statutes of his new institution. "My Lord Cardinal's Grace," says Sir Thomas, in a letter of his which has been preserved, "has had the oversee- ing of iny statutes, lie much likes well that I have therein ordered 1 Eccles. Mem. ii. 422. CLASSICAL LEARNING. 427 the Latin tongue to be read to my scholars. But he advises me U order the Greek to be more taught there than I have provided. This purpose I well like ; but I fear the times will not bear it now. I remember when I was a young scholar at Eton, the Greek tongue was growing apace ; the study of which is now alate much decayed." The fact here stated is especially honorable to Pole, seeing that by this time the Greek language, as that of the original text of the New Testament, to which the Reformers made all their appeals, had come to be regarded by the generality of Romanists as a pecul- iarly Protestant and almost heretical study. The return of the old religion, however, with its persecutions and penal fires, did not prove on the whole more favorable to the interests of learning than to any of the other interests of the national happiness and civili- zation. Nor did the final establishment of the reformed church, nor all the prosperity of the next reign, for a long time bring back good letters to the universities. A few facts will show their state through- out a great part of that reign. In the first place, so few persons now received a university education, that for many years a large proportion of the clergy of the new church were mere artificers and other illiterate persons, some of whom, while they preached on Sundays, worked at their trades on weekdays, and some of whom could hardly write their names. In the year 1563, we are informed by Anthony Wood, there were only three divines in the university of Oxford who were considered capable of preaching the public sermons. It has been sometimes alleged that the growing; influence of Puritanism was one of the chief causes of the continued neglect and depression in which learning was now left ; but it is a remark- able fact, that the three Oxford preachers were all Puritans, as were also many of the most distinguished ornaments of both universities at a later date. In 1567, so low was still the state of classical literature in the country, that when Archbishop Parker in that year founded three scholarships in Cambridge, the holders of which were to be " the best and ablest scholars " elected from the most considerable schools in Kent and Norfolk, all the amount of qualification he required in them was, that they should be well in- structed in the grammar, " and, if it may be," it was added, " such as can make a verse." As one instance of the extreme ignorance of the inferior clergy in the latter part of the sixteenth century Warton mentions, on the authority of the episcopal register, tha 428 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. " in the year 1570, Home, Bishop of Winchester, enjoined the minor canons of his cathedral to get by memory, every week, one chapter of St. Paul's Epistles in Latin ; and this formidable task, almost beneath the abilities of an ordinary schoolboy, was actually repeated by some of them, before the bishop, dean, and preben- daries, at a public episcopal visitation of that church." The anec- dote, at least, presents the bishops and minor canons of those times in a strange light. The accomplished critic we have just quoted is of opinion that the taste for Latin composition in the reign of Elizabeth had much degenerated from Avhat it was in that of Henry VIII. The Latinity of Ascham's prose, he maintains, has no eloquence ; and even Buchanan's Latin poetry, although he admits that its versification and phraseology are splendid and sonorous, he will not allow to be marked with the chaste graces and simple ornaments of the Augustan age. " One is surprised," he adds, " to find the learned Archbishop Grindal, in the statutes of a school which he founded and amply endowed (in 1583), recommending such barbarous and degenerate classics as Palingenius, Sedulius, and Prudentius to be taught in his new foundation. These, indeed, were the classics of a reforming bishop ; but the well-meaning prelate would have contributed much more to the success of his intended reformation by directing books of better taste and less piety." 1 The whole of the sixteenth century, however, will deserve the epithet of a learned age, notwithstanding the state of the schools and universities, and of what are called the learned professions, if we look either to the names of eminent scholars by which every portion of it is adorned, or to the extent to which the study of the learned languages then entered into the education of all persons, women as well as men, who were considered to be well educated. In the earlier part of it, besides Cranmer, Ridley, Tunstal, Gardi- ner, Pole, and other churchmen of distinguished acquirements, we have Richard Pace, Sir John Cheke, and Sir Thomas Smith, Colet the founder and Lilly the first master of St. Paul's School, — all already mentioned ; William Grocyn, another of the first and also one of the very greatest of the English Grecians ; the equally elegant and industrious John Leland, the father of English antiq- uities, and the chief preserver in his day of the old knowledge that would otherwise have perished, as well as one of the most 1 Hist, of Eng. l'oet. iii. 283. CLASSICAL LEARNING. 42C successful cultivators of the new ; Doctor Thomas Linacer, the first English physician, and as a scholar scarcely second to any, of his country or of his age ; and the all-accomplished Sir Thomas More, perhaps the happiest genius of his time, the one of its pro- found scholars, at all events, unless we are to except his illustrious friend Erasmus, whose natural genius was the least oppressed by his erudition, and whose erudition was the most brightened with wit, and informed by a living spirit better than that of books. Of somewhat later celebrity are the names of Roger Ascham, who is more famous, however, for his English than for his Latin writings ; of Dr. Walter Haddon, the most Ciceronian of English Latinists ; of Buchanan, perhaps the most of a poet of all the modern writers of Latin verse ; not to mention Archbishop Parker, Bishop An- drews, and other eminent churchmen. The number of very great English scholars, however, in the reign of Elizabeth was not sc considerable as in that of her father, when classical studies were not only cultivated with perhaps a truer appreciation of the highest models, but afforded, besides, almost the only field for intellectual exercise and display. Still this kind of learning continued to be fashionable ; and a familiar, if not a profound, acquaintance with both the Latin and the Greek languages was diffused to an unusual extent among persons of the highest rank. Henry VIII. was himself a scholar of considerable pretensions ; he is said to have, as a younger son, been educated for the church : and to this acci- dent, which gave the country its first pedant king, it may perhaps have been also indebted for its succession of learned princes, which lasted for more than a century, — Henry, as it were, setting the fashion, which it afterwards became a matter of course to follow. His son, though born to the throne to Avhich he succeeded, received a schoolmastering fit for a bishop ; and so also did both his daugh- ters. Erasmus has commended the Latin letters of Mary, some of which are preserved, as well as others, in French and in Spanish. Elizabeth was not only a Latin, French, Spanish, and Italian scholar, but also a proficient in Greek, in which language her tutor Ascham tells us she used, even after she came to the throne, to read more ld Harrison has a curious and characteristic passage on this learned court. "This further," he observes, " is not to be omit- ted, to the singular commendation of both sorts and sexes of our courtiers here in England, that there are very few of them which have not the us i and skill of sundry speeches, besides an excellent vein of writing, before-time not regarded.'' He does not, how- ever, seem to have a more favorable notion of the moral effect of these novel and showy accomplishments than Warton has expressed respecting their influence on the national literature and taste CLASSICAL LEARNING. 431 " Would to God," he exclaims, " the rest of their lives and con- versations were correspondent to those gifts ! For, as our common courtiers, for the most part, are the best learned and endued with excellent gifts, so are many of them the worst men, when they come abroad, that any man shall either hear or read of." Harri- son's words, which are surprisingly bold to have been published at the time, seem here to be gallantly confined to the men of the court ; but other contemporary testimonies do not disguise the fact that many of the women were as dissolute as their male associates. The honest old painter of the living manners of his time may be thought, perhaps, to hint at something of the kind in what follows : — " Truly it is a rare thing with us now to hear of a courtier which hath but his own language. And to say how many gentle- women and ladies there are that, beside sound knowledo-e of the Greek and Latin tongues, are thereto no less skilful in Spanish, Italian, and French, or in some one of them, it resteth not in me ; sith I am persuaded that, as the noblemen and gentlemen do surmount in this behalf, so these come very little or nothing at all behind them for their parts ; which industry God continue, and accomplish that ivhich otherwise is wanting." Yet he winds up his description with a very laudatory flourish. " Beside these things," he proceeds, " I could in like sort set down the ways and means, whereby our ancient ladies of the court do shun and avoid idle- ness, some of them exercising their fingers with the needle, others in caul-work, divers in spinning of silk, some in continual reading either of the Holy Scriptures, or histories of our own or foreign nations about us, and divers in writing volumes of their own, or translating of other men's into our English and Latin tongue, wdrilst the youngest sort in the mean time apply their lutes, cit- terns, pricksong, and all kind of music, which they use only for recreation sake, when they have leisure, and are free from attend- ance upon the queen's majesty, or such as they belong unto." Many o^ the elder sort he goes on to celebrate as " also skilful in surgery and distillation of waters, besides sundry other artificial practices pertaining to the ornature and commendations of their bodies ; " and " there are none of them," he adds, " but when they be at home can help to supply the ordinary want of the kitchen with a number of delicate dishes of their own devising." At last, coming directly to the morals of the court, he declares that, whereas some great princes' courts beyond the seas have been likened unto 432 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. hell on account of the dissipation and debauchery prevailing in them, all such " enormities are either utterly expelled out of the court of England, or else so qualified by the diligent endeavour of the chief officers of her grace's household, that seldom are any of these things apparently seen there without due reprehension, and such severe correction as belongeth to those trespasses." "Finally,'' he concludes, " to avoid idleness, and prevent sundry transgressions otherwise likely to be committed and done, such order is taken that every office hath either a Bible, or the Book of the Acts and Monuments of the Church of England, or both, besides some histories and chronicles, lying therein, for the exercise of such as come into the same ; whereby the stranger that entereth into the court of England upon the sudden shall rather imagine himself to come into some public school of the universities, where many give ear to one that readeth, than into a prince's palace, if vou confer the same with those of other nations." 1 1 Description of England, b. ii. c. 15. To this may be added a curious passage which Strype gives in his Life of Archbishop Parker, from an Epistle to Queen Katherine Parr by Nicholas Udall (of whom we shall have more to say some pages onward), found in a translation of The First Tome or Volume of the Paraphrase of Erasmus upon the New Testament, executed partly by himself, partly by others, among them the Princess Mary, who is said to have done part of the Gospel of St. John, which was published in 1549, in the reign of Edward VI. : — " But now in this gracious and blissful time of knowledge, in which it hath pleased God Almighty to reveal and show abroad the light of his most holy gospel, what a number is there of noble women, especially here in this realm of England, yea and how many in the years of tender virginity, not only as well seen and as familiarly traded in the Latin and Greek tongues as in their own mother language, but also both in all kinds of profane literature and liberal arts exacted, studied, and exercised, and in the Holy Scripture and Theology so ripe that they are able aptly, cunningly, and with much grace, either to indite or translate into the vulgar tongue, for the public in- struction arid edifying of the unlearned multitude. Neither is it now a strange thing to hear gentlewomen, instead of most vain communication about the moon shining in the water [so Ave still familiarly call a thing of no sense or significance a mat'er of moonshine], to use grave and substantial talk in Latin and Greek, with their husbands, of godly matters. It is now no news in England for young dam- sels, in noble houses and in the courts of princes, instead of cards and other instru ments of idle trifling, to have continually in their hands, either Psalms, homilies, and other devout meditations, or else Paul's Epistles, or some book of Holy Scrip- ture matters, and as familiarly to read or reason thereof in Greek, Latin, French, or Italian, as in English. It is now a common thing to see young virgins so nursed and trained in the study of letters, that they willingly set all other vain pastimes at nought for learning's sake. It is now no news at all to see queens, and ladies of mosi high state and progeny, instead of courtly dalliance, to embrace virtuous exercises of reading and writing, and with most earnest study, both early and late, to apply themselves to the acquiring of knowledge, as well in all other libera! arts and disciplines as also most or especially of God and his most holy word." PROSE WRITERS. 433 This flattering description of the English court is very different from that given by Ascham, in his Schoolmaster, who tells us that, although it did indeed contain many fair examples for youth to follow, yet they were, " like fair marks in the field out of a man's reach, too far off to shoot at well ; " while the generality of per- sons to be found there were the worst of characters. Some pri- vate letters of the time of Elizabeth, also, which have been printed, describe the court as a place where there was "little godliness and exercise of religion," and where " all enormities reigned in the highest degree." . But what it is more important for our present purpose to observe is, that the learning which existed in this age, however remarkably it may have shone forth in particular instan- ces, was by no means generally diffused even among the higher classes, while the generality of the lower and many even of the mid- dle classes remained to the end of the period almost wholly unedu cated and illiterate. It is a question whether the father of Shaks- peare, an alderman of Stratford, could write his name ; and prob- ably, throughout the community, for one that was scholar enough to subscribe his signature there were a dozen who could only make their marks. With all the advancement the country had made in many respects, it may be doubted if popular education was farther extended at the close of the reign of Elizabeth than it was at the commencement of that of her father or her grandfather. Even the length of time that printing had now been at work, and the multiplication of books that must have taken place, had probably but very little, if at all, extended the knowledge and the habit of reading among the mass of the people. The generation that grew up immediately after the discovery of the art of printing, and that first welcomed the Reformation and the translated Bible, perhaps read more than their grandchildren. PROSE WRITERS. — MORE ; ELYOT ; TYNDAL ; CRANMER ; LATIMER. The fact most deserving of remark in the progress of English literature, for the first half of the sixteenth century, is the cultiva- tion that now came to be bestowed upon the language in the form vol. i. 55 134 ENGLISH LITER ATTIRE AND LANGUAGE. of prose composition, — a form always in the order of time subse- quent to that of verse in the natural development of a national lan- guage and literature. Long before this date, indeed, Chaucer, in addition to what he did in his proper field, had given proof of how far his genius preceded his age by several examples of composition in prose, in which may be discerned the presence of something of the same high art with which he first elevated our poetry ; but, besides that his genius drew him with greatest force to poetry, and that the foreign models upon which he seems chiefly to have formed himself led him in the same direction, the state of the English lan- guage at that day perhaps fitted it better for verse than for prose, or, rather, it had not yet arrived at the point at which it could be so advantageously employed in prose as in verse. At all events Chaucer had no worthy successor as a writer of prose, any more than as a writer of poetry, till more than a century after his death. Meanwhile, however, the language, though not receiving much artificial cultivation, was still undergoing a good deal of what, in a certain sense, might be called application to literary purposes, by its employment both in public proceedings and documents, and also in many popular writings, principally on the subject of the new opinions in religion, both after and previous to the invention of printing. In this more extended use and exercise, by persons of some scholarship at least, if not bringing much artistic feeling and skill to the task of composition, it must, as a mere language, or system of vocables and grammatical forms, have not only sus- tained many changes and modifications, but, it is probable, acquired on the whole considerable enlargement of its capacities and pow- ers, and been generally carried forward towards maturity under the impulse of a vigorous principle of growth and expansion. But it is not till some time after the commencement of the six- teenth century that we can properly date the rise of our classical prose literature. Perhaps the earliest compositions that are enti- tled to he included under that name are some of those of Sir Thomas More, especially his Life and Reign of King Edward V., which Rastell, his brother-in-law, by whom it was first printed in 1557, from, as he informs us, a copy in More's handwriting, states to have been written by him when he was under-sheriff of Lon- .don, in the year 1513. 1 Most of More's other English writings • l Sir Henry Ellis, however, in the Preface to his edition of Harding's Chronicle (4to 1812), has called attention to what had not before been noticed, namely, that PROSE WRITERS. 435 are of a controversial character, and are occupied about subjects both of very temporary importance, and that called up so much of the eagerness and bitterness of the author's party-zeal as consid- erably to disturb and mar both his naturally gentle and benignant temper and the oily eloquence of his style ; but this historic piece is characterized throughout by an easy narrative flow which rivals the sweetness of Herodotus. It is certainly the first English his- toric composition that can be said to aspire to be more than a mere chronicle. The following is an extract from Sir Thomas M ore's Dialogue concerning Heresies (chap. 14), written in 1528 : — Some prieste, to bring up a pilgrimage in his parishe, may devise some false f'elowe fayning himselfe to come seke a saint in hys chyrch, and there sodeinly say, that he hath gotten hys syght. Than shall ye have the belles rong for a miracle. And the fonde folke of the countrey soon made foles. Than women commynge thither with their candels. And the Person byenge of some lame begger iii or iiii payre of theyr olde crutches, with xii pennes spent in men and women of wex, thrust thorowe divers places, some with arrowes, and some wyth rusty knyves, wyll make his offerynges for one vij yere worth tvvise hys tythes. Thys is, quoth I, very trouth that suehe thynges may be, and sometime so be in dede. As I remember me that I have hard my father tell of a begger, that in Kyng Henry his daies the sixt cam with his wife to Saint Albonis. And there was walking about the towne begging, a five or six dayes before the kinges commynge thither, saienge that he was borne blindc, and never sawe in hys lyfe. And was warned in hys dreame, that he shoulde come out of Berwyke, where he said he had ever dwelled, to seke Saynt Albon, and that he had ben at his shryne, and had not bene holpen. And therefore he woulde go seke hym at some other place, for he had hard some say sins he came that Sainct Albonys body shold be at Colon, and in dede such a contencion hath ther ben. But of troth, as I am surely informed, he lieth here at Saint Albonis, saving some reliques of him. \vhi;'h thei there shew shrined. But to tell you forth, whan the kyng was comen, and the towne full, sodaynlye thys blind man, at Saint Albonis the writer speaks as if he had been present with Edward IV. in his last sickness, which More could not have been, being then (in 1483) only a child of three years old; and Sir Henry infers that the manuscript from which the tract was printed by Rastell, although ir More's handwriting, could have been only a copy made by hiin if a narrative drawn up by some one else, very probably Cardinal Morton. But, although Morton was a person of distinguished eloquence, the style is surely far too modern to have proceeded from a writer who was born within ten years after the cIosj of the fourteenth century, the senior of More by seventy years. 436 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. shryne had his sight agayne, and a myracle solemply rongen, and Te Deutn songen, so that nothyng was talked of in al the towne, but this myracle. So happened it than that duke Humfry of Glocester, a great wyse man and very wel lerned, having great joy to se such a myracle, called the pore man unto hym. And first shewing him self joyouse of Goddes glory so shewed in the getting of his sight, and exortinge hym to mekenes, and to none ascribing of any part the worship to him self nor to be pronde of the peoples prayse, which would call hym a good and a godly man thereby. At last he loked well upon his eyen, and asked whyther he could never se nothing at al, in all his life before. And whan as well his wyfe as himself affermed fastely no, than he loked advisedly upon his eien again, and said, I beleve you very wel, for me thinketh that ye can- not se well yet. Yea syr, quoth he, I thanke God and his holy marter, I can se nowe as well as any man. Ye can, quoth the Duke ; what colour is my gowne ? Then anone the begger told him. What colour, quoth he, is this man's gowne ? He told him also ; and so forthe, without any stickinsr, he told him the names of al the colours that coulde bee shewed him. And whan my lord saw that, he bad him " walke faytoure," and made him be set openly in the stockes. For though he coukl have' sene soudenly by miracle the dyfference betwene divers colours, yet coulde he not by the syght so sodenly tel the names of all these colours but if he had known them before, no more than the names of all the men that he should sodenly se. Lo therfore I say, quod your frende, who may bee sure of such thynges whan such pageantes be played before all the towne ? l The letter which Sir Thomas More wrote to his wife in 1528, after the burning of his house at Chelsea, affords one of the best specimens of the epistolary style of this period : — Maistres Alyce, in my most harty wise I recommend me to you ; and, whereas I am enfourmed by my son Heron of the losse of our barnes and of our neighbours also, with all the corn that was therein, albeit (saving God's pleasure) it is gret pitie of so much good corne lost, yet sith it hath liked hym to sende us such a chaunce, we must and are bounden, not only to be content, but also to be glad of his visitacion. He sente us all that we have loste : and, sith he hath by such a chaunce taken it away againe, his pleasure be fulfilled. Let us never grudge ther at, but take it in good worth, and hartely thank him, as wed for adversitie as for prosperite. And 1 Sir Thomas More's Works, by Rastell, 4to. 1557, p. 134. This story, it may be remembered, is introduced in the second part of what is called Shakespeare's Henry the Sixth (Act ii., Scene i.). And it also occurs in the older version of that play, first published, Bo far as is known, in 1594, under the title of The first part ol the Contention between the two famous Houses of York and Lancaster. PROSE WRITERS. 437 peradventure we have more cause to thank him for our losse then for our winning ; for his wisdome better seeth what is good for vs then we do our selves. Therfore I pray you be of good chere, and take all the howsold with you to church, and there thanke God, both for that he hath given us, and for that he hath taken from us, and for that he hath left us, which if it please hym he can encrease when he will. And if it please hym to leave us yet lesse, at his pleasure be it. I pray you to make some good ensearche what my poore neighbours Lave loste, and bid them take no thought therfore : for and I shold not leave myself a spone, ther shal no pore neighbour of mine bere no losse by any chaunce happened in my house. I pray you be with my children and your household merry in God. And devise some what with your frendes, what waye wer best to take, for provision to be made for corne for our household, and for sede thys yere commmg, if ye tbinke it good that we kepe the ground stil in our handes. And whether ye think it good that Ave so shall do or not, vet I think it were not best sodenlve thus to leave it all up, and to put away our folke of our farme till we have somwhat advised us thereon. How beit if we have more nowe then ye shall nede, and which can get them other maisters, ye may then discharge us of them. But I would not that any man were sodenly sent away he wote nere wether. At mv comming hither I perceived none other but that I shold tary still with the Kinges Grace. But now T I shal (I think), because of this chance, get leave this next weke to come home and se you : and then shall we further devyse together uppon all thinges what order shalbe best to take. And thus as hartely fare you well with all our children as ye can wishe. At Woodestok the thirde daye of Septembre by the hand of your louing husbande Thomas Moke Knight. 1 o Along with More, as one of the earliest writers of classic Eng- lish prose, may be mentioned his friend Sir Thomas Elyot, the author of the political treatise entitled The Governor, and of various other works, one of which is a Latin and English Diction- ary, the foundation of most of the compilations of the same kind that were published for a century afterwards. More was executed in 1535, and Elyot also died some years before the middle of the century. William Tyndal's admirable translations of the New Testament and of some portions of the Old, and also numerous tracts by the same early reformer in his native tongue, which he tfrote with remarkable correctness as well as with great vigor and 1 Sir Thomas More's Works, by Rastell, 4to. 1557, pp. 1418, 1419. 488 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. eloquence, appeared between 1526 and his death in 1536. Next in the order of time among our more eminent prose writers may be placed some of the distinguished leaders of the Reformation in the latter part of the reign of Henry VIII. and in that of Edward VI., more especially Archbishop Cranmer, whose compositions in his native tongue are of considerable volume, and are charac- terized, if not by any remarkable strength of expression or weight of matter, yet by a full and even flow both of words and thought. On the whole, Cranmer was the greatest writer among the founders of the English Reformation. His friends and fellow- laborers, Ridley and Latimer, were also celebrated in their day for their ready popular elocution ; but the few tracts of Ridley's that remain are less eloquent than learned, and Latimer's dis- courses are rather quaint and curious than either learned or elo- quent in any lofty sense of that term. Latimer is stated to have been one of the first English students of the Greek language ; but this could hardly be guessed from his Sermons, which, except a few scraps of Latin, show scarcely a trace of scholarship or literature of any kind. In addressing the people from the pulpit, this honest, simple-minded bishop, feeling no exaltation either from his position or his subject, expounded the most sublime doctrines of religion in the same familiar and homely language in which the humblest or most rustic of his hearers were accustomed to chaffer with one another in the market-place about the price of a yard of cloth or a pair of shoes. Nor, indeed, was he more fastidious as to matter than as to manner: all the preachers of that age were accustomed to take a wide range over things in general ; but Lat- imer went beyond everybody else in the miscellaneous assortment of topics he used to bring together from every region of heaven and earth, — of the affairs of the world that now is as well as of that which is to come. Without doubt his sermons must have been lively and entertaining far beyond the common run of that kind of compositions ; the allusions with which they abounded to public events, and to life in all its colors and grades, from the palace to the cottage, from the prince to the peasant, — the anec- dotes of his own experience and the other stories the old man would occasionally intersperse among his strictures and exhorta- tions, — the expressiveness of his unscrupulous and often startling phraseology, — all this, combined with the earnestness, piety, and real goodness and simplicity of heart that breathed from every PROSE WRITERS. 439 word he uttered, may well be conceived to have had no little charm for the multitudes that crowded to hear his living voice ; even as to us, after the lapse of three centuries, these sermons of Latimer's are still in the highest degree interesting both for the touches they contain in illustration of the manners and social con- dition of our forefathers, and as a picture of a very peculiar indi- vidual mind. They are also of some curiosity and value as a monument of the language of the period ; but to what is properly to be called its literature, as we have said, they can hardly be con- sidered as belonging at all. The following extract from Latimer's third sermon preached before King Edward VI. at Westminster, 22d March, 1549, was contributed by Sir Henry Ellis to the Pictorial History of Eng- land. "We copy the original edition," says Sir Henry, "with all its spellings and provincialisms ; a volume of so great rarity as not to be found in any of the libraries which have been brought together at the British Museum:" — Syr, what forme of preachinge woulde you appoynt me to preache before a kynge ? Wold you have me for to preache nothynge as concernynge a kynge in the kynges sermon ? Have you any commission to apoynt me what I shall preach ? Besydes thys, I asked hym dyvers other questions, and he wold make no answere to none of them all. He had nothyng tc say. Then I turned me to the kyng, and submitted my selfe to his Grace, and sayed, I never thoughte my selfe worthy, nor I never sued to be a preacher before you re Grace, but I was called to it, would be wyllyng (if you mislyke me) to geve place to my betters. For I graunt ther be a great many more worthy of the rourae than I am. And, if it be your Grace's pleasure so to allowe them for preachers, I could be content to bere ther bokes after theym. But if your Grace allowe me for a preacher I would desyre your Grace to geve me leave to discharge my conscience. Geve me leve to frame my doctrine accordyng to my audience. I had byne a very dolt to have preached so at the borders of your realm as I preach before your Grace. And I thanke Almyghty God, whych hath alwayes byne remedy, that my sayinges were well accepted of the kynge, for like a gracious Lord he turned into a nother communicacyon. It is even as the Scripture sayeth Cor Regis in manu Domini, the Lorde dyrccted the kinges hart. Certaine of my frendes came to me wyth teares in their eyes, and told me they loked I should have bene in the Tower the same nyghte. Thus have I ever more bene burdened wyth the werde of sedition. I have offended God grevouslye, transgressyng hys law, and but for his remedy and his mercye I wold not loke to be 440 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. saved. As for sedicion, for oughte that I knowe, me thynkes I shoulde not nede Cliriste, if I might so saye. But if I be cleare in any tbynge, I am clear in thys. So farre as I knowe myne owne herte, there is no man further from sedicion then I, whyche I have declared in all my doynges, and yet it hath bene ever laved to me. An othher tyme, when I gave over myne offyce, I should have receyved a certaine dutye that they call a Pentecostall ; it came to the summe of fyftye and fyve pound, I sent my Commissarye to gather it, but he coulde not be suffered. For it was sayed a sedicion should ryse upon it. Thus they burdened me ever wyth sedicion. So thys gentilman conxmeth up nowe wyth sedicion. And wott ye what? I chaunched in my last Sermon to speake a mery worde of the Newe Shilling (to refreshe my auditory), howe I was lyke to put away my newe shillynge for an olde grote ; 1 was herein noted to speake sediciously. Yet I comfort my self in onethyng, that I am not alone, and that I have a fellowe. For it is consolatio miserorum, it is the comforte of the wretched, to have companye. When I was in trouble, it was objected an sayed unto me that I was syngular, that no man thought as I thought, that I love a syngularyte in all that I dyd, and that I tooke a way contrarye to the kynge and the whole parliamente, and that I was travayled wyth them that had better wyttes then I, that I was contrary to them al. Marve, syr, thys was a sore thunder bolte. I thought it an yrkesome thynge to be a lone, and to have no fellowe. I thoughte it was possyble it myghte not be true that they tolde me. In the vii of John the Priestes sente out certayne of the Jewes to bryng Christ unto them vyolentlye. When they came into the Temple and harde hym preache, they were so moved wyth his preachynge that they returned home agayne, and sayed to them that sente them, Nunquam sic locutus est Jiomo ut hie homo. There was never man spake lyke thvs man. Then answered the Pharysees, Num et vos seducti esfis? What ye braynsycke fooles, ye hoddy peckes, ye doddye poulles, ye huddes, do ye beleve hym? are ye seduced also? Nunquis ex Principibus credidit in eum ? Did ye see any great man or any great offycer take hys part ? doo ye se any buddy follow hym but beggerlye fyshers, and suche as have nothynge to take to ? Numquis ex Phariseis ? Do ye se any holy man? any perfect man ? any learned man take hys parte ? Turba que ignorat legem execrabilis est. Thys laye people is accursed ; it is they that knowe not the lawe that takes hys parte, and none. Lo here the Pharises had nothynge to choke the people wyth al but ignoraunce. They dyd as oure byshoppes of Englan.de, who jpbrayded tin- people alwayea with ignoraunce, where they were the cause of it them Belves. There were,sayeth St. John, Midti ex principibus qui crediderunt in eum : manye of the chyefe menne beleved in hym, and that was con- trarye to the Pharisyes saying, Oh then by lyke they belyed him, he wa? not ;iloue. PROSE WRITERS. 441 So, thoughte I, there be more of myne opinion then I ; I thought I was not alone. I have nowe gotten one f'elowe more, a companyon of sedytyon, and wot ye who is my felowe ? Esaye the prophete. I spake but of a lytle preaty shyllynge ; but he speak eth to Hierusalem after an other sorte, and was so bold to meddle with theyr eoine. Thou proude, thou covetous*e, thou hautye cytye of Hierusalem, Argentum tuum verstim est in scoriam ; thy sylver is turned into what ? into testyons ? Scoriam, into drosse. Ah sediciouse wretch, what had he to do wyth the mynte ? Why should not he have lefte that matter to some master of policy to reprove ? Thy silver is drosse, it is not hue, it is counterfaite, thy silver is turned, thou haddest good sylver. What pertayned that to Esay ? Mary he espyed a pece of divinity in that polici, he threateneth them Gods vengeance for it. He went to the rote of the matter, which was covetousnes. He espyed two poyntes in it, that eythere it came of covetousnesse whych became hym to reprove, or els that it tended to the hurte of the pore people, for the noughtynes of the sylver was the occasion of dearth of all thynges in the realme. He imputeth it to them as a great cryme. He may be called a mayster of sedicion in dede. Was not this a sedyciouse harlot to tell them thys to theyr beardes ? to theyr face ? Generally it may be observed, Avith regard to the English prose of the earlier part of the sixteenth century, that it is both more simple in its construction, and of a more purely native character in other respects, than the style which came into fashion in the latter years of the Elizabethan period. When first made use of in prose composition, the mother-tongue was written as it was spoken ; even such artifices and embellishments as are always prompted by the nature of verse were here scarcely aspired after or thought of ; that which was addressed to and specially intended for the instruc- tion of the people was set down as far as possible in the familiar forms and fashions of the popular speech, in genuine native words, and direct unincumbered sentences ; no painful imitation of anv learned or foreign model was attempted, nor any species of elab- oration whatever, except what was necessary for mere perspicuity", in a kind of writing which was scarcely regarded as partaking of the character of literary composition at all. The delicacy of a scholarly taste no doubt influenced even the English style of such writers as More and his more eminent contemporaries or imme- diate followers ; but whatever eloquence or dignity their composi- tions thus acquired was not the effect of any professed or conscious endeavor to write in English as they would have written m what were called the learned tongues. vol. i. 56 412 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. The aire, Indeed, of the critical cultivation of the language foi the purposes of prose composition had already commenced ; but at first that object was pursued in the best spirit and after the wisest methods. Erasmus, in one of his Lett ers, m entions that his friend Dean Colet labored to improve his English style by the diligent perusal and study of Chaucer and the other old poets, in whose works alone the popular speech was to be found turned with any taste or skill to a literary use ; and doubtless others of our earliest classic prose writers took lessons in their art in the same manner from these true fathers of our vernacular literature. And even the first professed critics and reformers of the lan- guage that arose among us proceeded in the main in a right direction and upon sound principles in the task they undertook. The appearance of a race of critical and rhetorical writers in any country is, in truth, always rather a symptom or indication than, what it has frequently been denounced as being, a cause of the corruption and decline of the national literature. The writings of Dionysius of Halicarnassiis and of Quintilian, for instance, certainly did not hasten, but probably rather contributed to retard, the decay of the literature of ancient Greece and Rome. The first eminent English writer of this class was the celebrated Roger Ascham, the tutor of Queen Elizabeth, whose treatise, entitled Toxophilus, the School or Partitions of Shooting, was published in 1545. The design of Ascham, in this performance, was not only to recommend to his countrymen the use of their old national weapon, the bow, but to set before them an example and model of a pure and correct English prose style. In his dedication of the work, To all the Gentlemen and Yeomen of England, he recommends to him that would write well in airy tongue the counsel of Aristotle, — "To speak as the common people do, to think as wise men do." From this we may perceive that Ascham had a true feeling of the regard due to the great fountain-head and oracle of the national language — the vocabulary of the common people. He goes on to reprobate the practice of many English writers, who by introducing into their composi- tions, in violation of the Aristotelian precept, many words of foreign origin, Latin. French, and Italian, made all things dark and hard. "Once," he says, " I communed with a man which reasoned the English tongue to be enriched and increased thereby, saying, Who will not praise that feast where a man shall drink at TROSE WRITERS. 443 a dinner both wine, ale, and beer? Truly, quoth I, they be all good, every one taken by himself alone : but if you put malmsey and sack, red wine and white, ale and beer and all, in one pot, you shall make a drink neither easy to be known, nor yet whole- some for the body." The English language, however, it raav be observed, had even already become too thoroughly and essentially a mixed tongue for this doctrine of purism to be admitted to the letter ; nor, indeed, to take up Ascham's illustration, is it univer- sally true, even in regard to liquids, that a salutary and palatable beverage can never be made by the interfusion of two or moie different kinds. Our tongue is now, and was many centuries ■ago, not, indeed, in its grammatical structure, but in its vocabu- lary, as substantially and to as great an extent Neo-Latin as Gothic ; it would be as completely torn in pieces and left the mere tattered rag of a language, useless for all the purposes of speaking as well as of writing, by having the foreign as by hav- ing the native element taken out of it. Ascham in his own writings uses many words of French and Latin origin (the latter mostly derived through the medium of the French) ; nay, the common people themselves of necessity did in his day, as they do still, use many such foreign words, or words not of English origin, and could scarcely have held communication with one another on the most ordinary occasions without so doing. It is another question whether it might not have been more fortunate if the original form of the national speech had remained in a state of celibacy and virgin purity ; by the course of events the Gothic part of the language has, in point of fact, been married to the Latin part of it ; and what God or nature has thus joined together it is now beyond the competency of man to put asunder. The language, while it subsists, must continue to be the product of that union, and nothing else^/iVs for Ascham's own style, both in his Toxophilus, and in his Schoolmaster, published in 1571, three years after the author's death, it is not only clear and correct, but idio- matic and muscular. That it is not rich or picturesque is the con- sequence of the character of the writer's mind, which was rather rhetorical than poetical. The publication of Ascham's Toxophilus was soon followed by an elaborate treatise expressly dedicated to the subject of English composition — The Art of Rhetorick, for the use of all such as are studious of Eloquence, set forth in Eng- lish, by Thomas Wilson. Wilson, whose work appeared in 1553, 444 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. takes pains to impress the same principles that Ascham had laid down before him with regard to purity of style and the general rule of writing well. But the very solicitude thus shown by the ablest and most distinguished of those who now assumed the guardianship of the vernacular tongue to protect it from having its native character overlaid and debased by an intermixture of terms borrowed from other languages, may be taken as evidence that such debasement was actually at this time going on ; that our ancient English was beginning to be oppressed and half suffocated by additions from foreign sources brought in upon it faster than it could absorb and assimilate them. Wilson, indeed, proceeds to complain that this was the case. While some " powdered their talk with over-sea language," others, whom he designates as " the unlearned or foolish fantastical, that smell but of learning," were wont, he says, " so to Latin their tongues," that simple persons could not but wonder at their talk, and think they surely spake by some revelation from heaven. It may be suspected, however, that this affectation of unnecessary terms, formed from the ancient languages, was not confined to mere pretenders to learning. Another well-known critical writer of this period, Webster Put- tenham, in his Art of English Poesy, published in 1582, but be- lieved to have been written a good many years earlier, in like manner advises the avoidance in writing of such words and modes of expression as are used " in the marches and frontiers, or in port towns where strangers haunt for traffic sake, or yet in universities, where scholars use much peevish affectation of words out of the primitive languages ;" and he warns his readers that in some books were already to be found "many inkhorn terms so ill affected, brought in by men of learning, as preachers and schoolmasters, and many strange terms of other languages by secretaires, and merchants, and travellers, and many dark words, and not usual nor well-sounding, though they be daily spoken at court." On the whole, however, Puttenham considers the best standard both for speaking and writing to be "the usual speech of the court, and that of London and the shires lying about London within sixty miles, and not much above." This judgment is probably correct, although the writer was a gentleman pensioner, and perhaps also a cockney by birth. SCOTTISH PROSE WRITERS. Before the middle of the sixteenth century a feAv prose writers had also appeared in the Scottish dialect. A digest of practical theology, composed for the use of King James IV. in his native tongue, by a priest called John de Irlandia, in the year 1490, still exists in MS. (apparently an autograph of the author), in the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh. " This work," says Leyden, who has given an account of it, with some extracts, in the Prelim- inary Dissertation prefixed to his edition of The Complaint of Scotland, " exhibits a curious specimen of the Scottish language at that period ; and the style as well as the orthography are more uniform, and approach nearer the modern standard, than those of some writers who lived almost a century later." A moral treatise entitled The Porteous [that is, the vade mecum or manual] of Nobleness, translated from the French by Andrew Cadiou was printed at Edinburgh in 1508. The conclusion of it, the only portion that is known to have been preserved, is reprinted by Leyden in his Dissertation (pp. 203-208) ; and also by Mr. David Laing, in his collection entitled The Knightly Tale of Golagrus and Gawane, &c, Edin. 1827. The Scottish History of Hector Boethius, or Boecius (Boece or Boyce), translated from the Latin by John Bellenden, was printed at Edinburgh in 1537 ; and a translation by the same person of the first Five Books of Livy remained in MS. till it was published at Edinburgh, in 4to. in 1829 ; a second edition of the translation of Boecius having also been brought out there, in 2 vols. 4to., the same year. But the most remarkable composition in Scottish prose of this era is The Complaynt of Scotland, printed at St. Andrews in 1548, which has been vai'iously assigned to Sir James Inglis, knight, a country gen- tleman of Fife, who died in 1554 ; to Wedderburn, the supposed author of the Compendious Book of Godly and Spiritual Sangs and Ballats (reprinted from the edition of 1621 by Sir John Grahame Dalzell, 8vo. Edinburgh, 1801) ; and by its modern editor, the late John Leyden, in the elaborate and ingenious Dis- sertation prefixed to his reprint of the work, 8vo. Edinburgh, 1301, to the famous poet, Sir David Lyndsay. This is a very extraor- dinary piece of writing, as a short extract or two will show. For the better comparison of the language in all respects with that 446 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. spoken and written in England at the same date, we shall, in out first specimen, preserve the original spelling. The following is from a long episode which occurs in the middle of the work, entitled Ane Monolog of the Actor: — ] There ei'tir i herd the rumour of rammasche 2 foulis ande of beystis that maid grite beir, 3 quhilk past besyde burnis 4 and boggis on grene bankis to seik tlier sustentatione. There brutal sound did redond to the hie skyis, quhil the depe liou 5 cauernis of cleuchis, and rotche ° craggis ansuert viiht 7 ane hie not, of that samyn sound as thay 8 beystis bed blauen. it aperit be presnmyng and presuposing that blaberand eccho had beene bid in ane hou hole, cryand hyr half ansueir, quhen narcissus rycht sorye socht for his aaruandis, 9 quhen he vas in ane forrest, far fra ony folkis, and there eftir for lone of eccho be drounit in ane drau vel. nou to tel treutnt of the beystis that maid sic beir, and of the dyn that the foulis did, ther syndry sound is hed nothir temperance nor tune, for f'yrst furtlit on the fresche feildis, the nolt 10 maid noyis vitht mony loud Ion. baytht horse and meyris did fast nee, and the folis nechyr. 11 the bullis began to buller, 18 quhen the scheip began to Wait, because the calfis began tyl mo. 13 quhen the doggis berkit. than the suyne began to quhryne u quhen thai herd the asse tair, 15 quhilk gart lt; the hennis kekkul 17 quhen the cokis creu, the chekyns began to pen 18 quhen the gled 19 quhissillit. the fox follouit the fed geise, and gart them cry claik. the gayslingis 20 cryit quhilk quhilk, and the dukis cryit quaik. the ropeen ' 21 of the rauynes gart the eras crope, the huddit crauis cryit varrok varrok, quhen the suannis murnit, be cause the gray goul 22 man pronosticat ane storm, the turtil began for to greit, quhen the cuschet 23 zoulit. 24 the titlene ' 25 follouit the goilk,' 2G ande gart hyr siuj: guk guk. the dou w croutit 28 hyr sad sang that soundit lyik sorrou. robeen and the litil vran var hamely in vyntir. the iargolyne ^ 1 But thi< appears to be ;i misprint (either of the original or of the modern edi- tion, or of both) for Auctor or Author. It it not noticed in the list of Errata; but the editor in his Preliminary Dissertation, p. 101, quotes the title as Monologue of the Author. 2 Collected. 8 Noise (birr). 4 Rivulets. 5 Hollow. ,; Rock; or, perhaps, rocky ? ' With. 8 Those. ■' Servants. 10 Neat. 11 An imitative word expressing the cry of a foal. 12 Roar. i:i Imitative word for cry of a calf. H Imitative word for cry of swine 16 Imitative word for cry of ass. 1; Caused. 17 Cackle. IS Imitative word for cry of young birds. 19 Glede, hawk. » Goslings. 21 Hoarse cry. 22 Gull. - :! Cushat-dove. 24 Rather youlit, thai is howled. . *' 5 The hedge-sparrow. 20 'flic cuckoo. '-' 7 Dove. ^ Imitative word for cry of the dove Jl Jargon ing. COMPLAYNT OF SCOTLAND. 447 of the suallou gart the iay iangil. 1 than the maueis 2 maid myiht, for to mok the merle. 3 the lauerok 4 maid melody vp in the skyis. the nyclit- ingal al the nycht sang sneit notis. tlie tuechitis 5 cryit cheuis nek 8 quhen the picttis 7 clattrit. 8 the garruling 9 of the stirlene 10 gart the sparrou cheip. 11 the lyntqnhit 12 sang enntirpoint quhen the oszil 13 zelpit. the grene serene 14 sang sueit quhen the gold spynk 15 chantit. the rede schank 16 cryit my fut my rut, and oxee 17 cryit tueit. the herrons gaif ane vyild skrech as the kyl hed bene in tier, quhilk gart the quhapis 1S for fleyitnes 19 fie far fra hame. A still more ostentations display of the wealth of the writer's native dialogue follows, in a description of a sea-scene, ending in a fight. Into tills he has poured a complete dictionary of naval terms, some of which set translation or explanation at defiance, but many of which are still in familiar use among the fishing population of the sea-coast of Fife, from whom either Lyndsay or Inglis would be likely enough to learn them. Leyden describes them generally as in part of Norman, in part of Flemish origin. We will pass on, and select for our next extract a portion of the author's natural philosophy ; and here we shall strip his clear and expressive style of the cumbrous and capricious old spelling, which makes it look as if it were all over bespattered with mud to the eye of a modern reader : — Now, to speak of the generation of the dew, it is ane humid vapour, generit in the second region of the air in ane fair calm night, and sine 20 descends in ane temperate caldness on the green erbs in small drops. The hair 21 rime is ane cald dew, the whilk falls in misty vapours, and sine it freezes on the eird. 22 The mist, it is the excrement or the superfluity of the cluds, the whilk falls fra the air in ane sweet rain, whilk rain can nought be persavit be the sight of men. Hail stones is ane congealit rain whilk falls on the eird be grit vehemence, and it falls rather on the daj light nor 23 on the night. The snaw is ane congealit rain, frozen and con gealit in the second region of the air, and congeals in divers massive cluds 1 Imitative word for cry of the jay. 2 Thrush. 3 Blackbird. 4 Lark. 5 Lapwings Imitative word for cry of lapwings. " Magpies. 8 Chattered. 9 Garrulous noise. 10 Starling. u Make a feeble noise. 12 Linnet. 13 The ouzle, which means sometimes the thrush, sometimes the blackbird, some times, as here, apparently a different bird from either. 14 Green Siren, or Green-finch. 15 GoMfinch. 16 Fieldfare. 17 Small hedge-sparrow. 18 Curlews. w Fear. 20 Then. 2i Hoar. ** Earth. 28 Than. 448 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. whilk stops and empeshes 1 the operation of the planets to exerce thoii natural course; than' 2 the vehemence of the planets braks thay 3 cluds ; fra the force of the whilk there comes fire, and ane grit sound, whilk is terrible to he hard, and that terrible sound is the thing that we call the thunder ; but or 4 we hear the thunder, we see first the fire, howbeit 5 that they proceed at ane instant time. The cause that we see the fire or we hear the thunder is be reason that the sight and clearness of onv thine is mair swift towart us nor is the sound. The evil that the thunder does on the eird, it is done or we hear the crack of it. Oft times we will see fire slaught, 6 how be it there be na thunder hard. The thunder slays mony beasts on the fields ; and when it slays ane man that is sleepand, he sail he funden dead and his een 7 apen. 8 The thunder is maist dangerous for man and beast when there comes na rain with it. The fire-slaught will consume the Avine within ane pipe in ane deep cave, and the pipe will resave na skaith. The fire-slaught slew ane man on the fields, and it meltit the gold that was in his bag, and it meltit nought the wax of ane seal that was in that samen bag. In Rome there was ane noble princess callit Martia grit with child ; she was on the fields for her recreation, where that the fire-slaught straik her, and slew her nought, but yet it slew the child in her Avoime. There is three things that are never in danger of thunder nor fire-slaught : that is to saj r , the laury tree ; the second is the selch, 9 whilk some men calls the sea Avolf ; the third thing is the eyrn, 10 that flees sa high. The historiographers rehearses that Tiberius Caesar, empiror of Rome, had ever ane hat of laure tree on his head, and als he gart mak his pailyons, 11 and tents on the fields of selch skins, to that effect that he might he furth of the danger of the thunder and fire-slaught. The best remede contrar thunder and fire-slaught is to men and women to pass in hou 12 caverns under the eird, or in deep caves, be cause the thunder does maist damage till high places. It is worthy of remark, that, although we have here unquestion- ably the Scottish dialect, distinctly .marked by various peculiarities (indeed the author, in his prologue or preface expressly and repeat- edly states that he has Avritten in Scotch, "in our Scottis langage," as he calls it), yet one chief characteristic of the modern Scotch i> ^till wanting — the suppression of the final / after a vowel or diphthong — just as it is in Barbour and Blind Harry. This change., as Ave before remarked, is probably very modern. It lias taken place in all likelihood since Scotch ceased to be generally used in writing; the principle of groAvth, which, after a language 1 Hinders. 2 Then. 8 Those. 4 Ere. 6 Although. Lightning. * Eyes. 8 Open 9 Seal. i° Eagle. 11 Pavilions 1 i- Hollo HAWES; BARKLAY. 449 passes tinder the government of the pen, is to a great extent sus- pended, having recovered its activity on the dialect being abandoned again to the comparatively lawless liberty, or at least looser guar- dianship, of the lips. ENGLISH POETS :- HAWES; BARKLAY. The English poetical literature of the first half of the sixteenth century may be fairly described as the dawn of a new day. Two poetic names of some note belong to the reign of Henry VII. — Stephen Hawes and Alexander Barklay. Hawes is the author of many pieces, but is chiefly remembered for his Pastime of Pleasure, or History of Grand Amour and La Belle Pucelle, first printed bv Wynkyn de Worde in 1517, but written about two years earlier. Warton holds this performance to be almost the only effort of imagination and invention which had appeared in our poetry since Chaucer, and eulogizes it as containing no common touches of romantic and allegoric fiction. Hawes was both a scholar and a traveller, and was perfectly familiar with the French and Italian poetry as well as with that of his own country. It speaks very little, however, for his taste, that, among the preceding English poets, he has evidently made Lydgate his model, even if it should be admitted that, as Warton affirms, he has added some new graces to the manner of that cold and wordy versifier. Lydgate and Hawes may stand together as perhaps the two writers who, in the century and a half that followed the death of Chaucer, contributed most to carry forward the regulation and modernization of the lan- guage which he began. Bai'klay, who did not die till 1552, when he had attained a great age, employed his pen principally in trans- lations, in which line his most celebrated performance is his Ship of Fools, from the German of Sebastian Brandt, which was printed in 1508. Barklay, however, besides consulting both a French and a Latin version of Brandt's poem, has enlarged his original with the enumeration and description of a considerable variety of follies which he found flourishing among his own countrymen. This gives the work some value as a record of .the English manners of the time ; but both its poetical and its satirical pretensions are of the very humblest order. At this date most of our writers of what VOL. 1 57 450 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. was called poetiy seem to have been occupied with the words in which they were to clothe their ideas almost to the exclusion of all the higher objects of the poetic art. And that, perhaps, is what of necessity happens at a particular stage in the progress of a nation's literature — at the Stage corresponding to the transition state in the growth of the human being between the termination of free rejoicing boyhood and the full assurance of manhood begun ; which is peculiarly the season not of achievement but of prepara- tion, not of accomplishing ends, but of acquiring the use of means and instruments, and also, it may be added, of the aptitude to mis- take the one of these things for the other. SKELTON. But the poetry with the truest life in it produced in the reio-n of Henry the Seventh and the earlier part of that of his son is undoubtedly that of Skelton. John Skelton may have been born about or soon after 1460 ; he studied at Cambridge, if not at both universities ; began to write and publish compositions in verse between 1480 and 1490 ; was graduated as poet-laureate (a degree in grammar, including versification and rhetoric) at Oxford before 1490 ; was admitted ad eundem at Cambridge in 1493 ; in 1498 took holy orders ; was probably about the same time appointed tutor to the young prince Henry, afterwards Henry the Eighth ; was eventually promoted to be rector of Diss in Norfolk ; and died in 1529 in the sanctuary at Westminster Abbey, where he had taken refuge to escape the vengeance of Cardinal Wolsey, originally his patron, but latterly the chief butt at which he had been wont to shoot his satiric shafts. As a scholar Skelton had a European reputation in his own day; and the great Erasmus has styled him Britaniiiearum literarum decus et lumen (the light and ornament of English letters). His Latin verses are distinguished by their purity and classical spirit. As for his English poetry, it is generally more of a mingled vain, and of a much coarser fabric. In many of his effusions indeed, poured forth in sympathy with or in aid of some popular cry of the day, he is little better than a rhyming buffoon ; much of his ribaldry is now nearly unintelligi- ble ; and it may be doubted if a considerable portion of his gro« SKELTON. 451 tesque and apparently incoherent jingle ever had much more than the sort of half-meaning with which a half-tipsy writer may satisfy readers as far gone as himself. Even in the most reckless of these compositions, however, he rattles along, through sense and non- sense, with a vivacity that had been a stranger to our poetry foi many a weary day ; and his freedom and spirit, even where most unrefined, must have been exhilarating after the long fit of somno- lency in which the English muse had dozed away the last hundred years. But. much even of Skelton's satiric verse is instinct with genuine poetical vigor, and a fancy alert, sparkling, and various, to a wonderful degree. It is impossible, where the style and manner are, if not so discursive, at least so rushing and river-like, to give any complete idea of the effect by extracts ; but we will transcribe a small portion of the bitterest of his attacks upon Wolsey, his satire, or " little book," as he designates it, entitled Why come ye not to court ? extending in all to nearly 1300 lines : — Our barons be so bold Into a mouse-hole they wold Rin away and creep, Like a meiny of sheep ; Dare not look out at dur For dread of the mastiff cur, For dread of the butcher's doer Wold wirry them like an hog. For an this cur do gnar They must stand all afar, To hold up their hand at the bar. For all their noble blood, He plucks them by the hood, And shakes them by the ear, And brings them in such fear; He baiteth them like a bear, Like an ox or a bull : Their wits he saith are dull ; He saith they have no brain Their estate to maintain, And maketh them to bow their knee Before his majesty. In the chancery where he sits, But such as he admits i*>2 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. None so hardy as to speak : He saith, Thou huddypeke, Thy learning is too lewd, Thy tongue is not well thewd, 1 To seek 2 before our grace ; And openly in that place He rages and he raves, And calls them cankered knaves. Thus royally doth he deal Under the king's broad seal ; And in the Checker he them checks ; In the Star Chamber he nods and becks, And beareth him there so stout That no man dare rowt. 8 Duke, earl, baron, nor lord, 4 But to his sentence must accord ; Whether he be knight or squire, All men must follow his desire. • • • • • But this mad Amalek Like to a Mamelek, 5 He regardeth lords No more than potshords ; He is in such elation Of his exaltation, And the supportation Of our sovereign lord, That, God to record, 6 He ruleth all at will, Without reason or skill ; 7 Howbeit the primordial Of his wretched original, And his base progeny, 8 And his greasy genealogy, He came of the sank royal 9 That was cast out of a butcher's stalk • • • He would dry up the streams Of nine kings' reams, 10 1 Well-mannered. * In original spelling seke. Qy. : A typographical error for spckc (or speak) ! 8 Snort. 4 That is, no duke, &c. 6 Mameluke 8 Witness. 7 Regard to propriety. ' Progenitorship? 9 Sangue royal, blood royal. 10 Realms. SKELTON 453 All rivers and wells, All water that swells ; For with us he so mells That within England dwells, I wold he were somewhere else For else by and by He will drink us so dry, And suck us so nigh, That men shall scantly Have penny or halfpenny. God save his noble grace, And grant him a place Endless to dwell With the devil of hell ! For, an he were there, We need never fear Of the feindes blake ; For I undertake He wold so brag and crake, That he wold than make The devils to quake, To shudder and to shake, Like a fire-drake,'' 4 And with a coal rake Bruise them on a brake, 8 And bind them to a stake, And set hell on fire At his own desire. He is such a grim sire, And such a potestolate, 4 And such a potestate, That he wold brake the brains Of Lucifer in his chains, And rule them each one In Lucifer's trone. 5 I wold he were gone, For among us is none That ruleth but he alone, Without all good reason, And all out of season, &c. 1 Meddles. 2 Fiery dragon. 8 Engine of torture * " Equivalent, I suppose, to legate." — Dyce. 5 Throne. 454 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. Another of Skelton's satirical invectives, his Bouse of Court (that is, Bouche a Court, diet allowed at court), which is written in the common stanza of seven decasyllabic lines, and altogether with much more sobriety, has some strong allegorical painting, but in a hard and heavy style ; and the force is also more con- spicuous than the invention. Another of his productions is a drama, entitled Magnificence, a Goodly Interlude and a Merry, in rhyme, and running to nearly 2600 long lines, the characters being Felicity, Liberty, Measure, Counterfeit Countenance, Crafty Conveyance, Cloaked Collusion, Courtly Abusion, and other such shadowy personages. But Skelton's brightest and in all respects happiest poetry is surely what of it is neither allegorical nor satiri- cal. The charm of his writing lies in its natural ease and freedom, its inexhaustible and untiring vivacity ; and these qualities are found both in their greatest abundance and their greatest purity where his subject is suggestive of the simplest emotions and has most of a universal interest. His Book of Philip Sparrow, for instance, an elegy on the sparrow of fair Jane Scroop, slain by a cat in the nunnery of Carow, near Norwich, extending (with the "commendation" of the " goodly maid ") to nearly 1400 lines, is unrivalled in the language for elegant and elastic playfulness, and a spirit of whim that only kindles into the higher blaze the longer it is kept up. The second part, or " Commendation," in particular, is throughout animated and hilarious to a wonderful degree : — the refrain, — For this most goodly flower, This blossom of* fresh colour, So Jupiter me succour, She flourisheth new and new In beauty and virtue ; Hac claritute gemina, Gloriosa femina, &c, — recurring often so suddenly and unexpectedly, yet always so natu- rally, has an effect like that of the harmonious evolutions of some lively and graceful dance. Have we not in this poem, by the by, the true origin of Skelton's peculiar dancing verse ? Is it not Anac- reontic, as the spirit also of the best of his poetry undoubtedly is ? * 1 A most valuable and acceptable present has been made to the lovers of our old poetry in a collected edition of Skelton's Poetical Works, 2 vols. 8vo. Lond. Rodd, 1843, by the Rev. Alexander Ityce, who has performed his difficult task iu a man- ner to leave little or nothing further to be desired. ROY ; JOHN HEYWOOD. Along with Skelton, vieAved as he commonly has been only as a satirist, is usually classed William Roy, a writer who assisted Tyndal in his translation of the New Testament, and who is asserted by Bale to be the author of a singular work entitled, Read me and be not wroth, For I say nothing but troth, which is supposed to have been first printed abroad about 1525. 1 This is also a satire upon Wolsey and the clergy in general, and is as bitter as might be expected from the supposed author, who, having begun his life as a friar, spent the best part of it in the service of the Reformation, and finished it at the stake. Among the buffoon- poets of this age is also to be reckoned John Heywood, styled the Epigrammatist, from the six centuries of Epigrams, or versified jokes, which form a remarkable portion of his works. Heywood's conversational jocularity has the equivocal credit of having been exceedingly consoling both to the old age of Henry VIII. and to his daughter Queen Mary : it must have been strong jesting that could stir the sense of the ludicrous in either of these terrible personages. Besides a number of plays, which are the most im- portant of his productions, Heywood also wrote a long burlesque allegory, which fills a thick quarto volume, on the dispute between the old and the new religions, under the title of A Parable of the Spider and the Fly ; where it appears that by the spider is intended the Protestant party, by the fly the Catholic, but in which, accord- ing to the judgment of old Harrison, " he dealeth so profoundly, and beyond all measure of skill, that neither he himself that made it, neither any one that readeth it, can reach unto the meaning thereof." 2 SCOTTISH POETS: — GAWIN DOUGLAS; DUNBAR; LYNDSA1. But, while in England the new life to which poetry had awak- sned had thus as yet produced so little except ribaldry and buf- foonery, it is remarkable that in Scotland, where general social civilization was much less advanced, the art had continued to bfl 1 Ritson's Bibliog. Poet., p. 318. 2 Description of England. 4,36 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. cultivated in its highest departments with great success, and the language had already been enriched with some compositions worthy of any age. Perhaps the Scottish poetry of the earlier part of the sixteenth century may be regarded as the same spring which had visited England in the latter part of the fourteenth, — the impulse originally given by the poetry of Chaucer oidy now come to its height in that northern clime. Gawin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, who nourished in the first quarter of the sixteenth cen- tury, and who is famous for his translation of the ^Eneid, the first metrical version of any ancient classic that had yet appeared in the dialect of either kingdom, affects great anxiety to eschew " Southron," or English, and to write his native tongue in all its breadth and plainness ; but it does not follow, from his avoidance of English words, that he may not have formed himself to a great extent on the study of English models. At the same time it may be admitted that neither in his translation nor in his original works of King Hart, and the Palace of Honour, — which are two long allegories, full, the latter especially, of passages of great descriptive beauty, — does Douglas convict himself of belonging to the school of Chaucer. He is rather, if not the founder, at least the chief representative, of a style of poetry which was attempted to 1 e formed in Scotland by enriching and elevating the simplicity of Barbour and his immediate followers with an infusion of something of what was deemed a classic manner, drawn in part directly from the Latin writers, but more from those of the worst than those of the best age, in part from the French poetry, which now began in like manner to aspire towards a classic tone. This preference, by the Scottish poets, of Latin and French to " Southron," as a source from which to supply the deficiencies of their native dialect, had probably no more reasonable origin than the political circumstances and feelings of the nation : the spirit of the national genius was antagonistic to it, and it therefore never could become more than a temporary fashion. 1 Yet it infected more or less all the writers of this age ; and amongst the rest, to a considerable extent, by far the greatest of them all, William Dunbar. This admirable master, alike of serious and of comic song, may justly be styled the Chaucer of Scotland, whether we look to the wide range of ' Douglas's Palace of Honour was reprinted for the Bannatyne Club, 4to. Edin. 1827 ; and two vols, of a new edition of his translation of the iEneid have also beet) produced by the same association, 4to. Edin. 1839. SURRFA'; WYATT. 457 his genius, or to his eminence in every style over all the poets of his country who preceded and all who for ages came after him. That of Burns is certainly the only name among the Scottish poets that can yet be placed on the same line with that of Dunbar ; and even the inspired ploughman, though the equal of Dunbar in comic power, and his superior in depth of passion, is not to be compared with the elder poet either in strength or in general fertility of imagination. 1 Finally, to close the list, comes another eminent name, that of Sir David Lyndsay, whose productions are not in- deed characterized by any high imaginative power, but yet display infinite wit, spirit, and variety in all the forms of the more familiar poetry. Lyndsay was the favorite, throughout his brief reign and life, of the accomplished and unfortunate James V., and survived to do perhaps as good service as any in the war against the ancient church by the tales, plays, and other products of his abounding satiric vein, with which he fed and excited and lashed up the popular contempt for the now crazy and tumbling fabric once so imposing and so venerated. Perhaps he also did no harm by thus takino; off a little of the acrid edo-e of mere resentment and indijr- nation with the infusion of a dash of merriment, and keeping alive a genial sense of the ludicrous in the midst of such serious work. If Dunbar is to be compared to Burns, Lyndsay may be said to have his best representative among the more recent Scottish 'poets in Allan Ramsay, who does not, however, come so near to Lyndsay by a mug way as Burns does to Dunbar. 2 SURREY; WYATT. Lyndsay is supposed to have survived till about the year 1567. a Before that date a revival of the higher poetry had come upon England like the rising of a new day. Two names are commonly 1 Portions of Dunbar's poetry had been previously published from the MSS. by Ramsay, Hailes, and Pinkerton ; but the only complete edition is that entitled The Poems of William Dunbar, now first collected, with Notes, and a Memoir of his 'jfe, by David Laing : 2 vols. 8vo. Edin. 1834. 2 The Poetical Works of Sir David Lindsay, with a Life, Glossary, and illustra- tive Dissertations and Notes, were published by the late George Chalmers, in 3 ^ols. 8vo. London, 1806. 3 Irving's Lives of the Scottish Poets. 2d edit. 1810, ii. 85. vol. I. 58 458 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. placed together at the head of our new poetical literature, — Lord Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt. Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, memorable in our history as the last victim of the capricious and sanguinary tyranny of Henry VIII., had already, in his short life, which was terminated by the axe of the executioner in his twenty-seventh year, carried away from all his countrymen the laurels both of knighthood and of song. The superior polish alone of the best of Surrey's verses would place him at an immeasurable distance in advance of all his immediate predecessors. So remark- able, indeed, is the contrast in this respect which his poetry pre- sents to theirs, that in modern times there has been claimed for Surrev, as we have seen, the honor of having been the first to introduce our existing system of rhythm into the language. The true merit of Surrey is, that, proceeding upon the same system of versification which had been introduced by Chaucer, and which, indeed, had in principle been followed by all the writers after Chaucer, however rudely or imperfectly some of them may have succeeded in the practice of it, he restored to our poetry a correct- ness, polish, and general spirit of refinement such as it had not known since Chaucer's time, and of which, therefore, in the lan- guage as now spoken, there was no previous example whatever. To this it may be added that he appears to have been the first, at least in this age, who sought to modulate his strains after that elder poetry of Italy, which thenceforward became one of the chief fountain-heads of inspiration to that of England throughout the whole space of time over which is shed the golden light of the names of Spenser, of Shakspeare, and of Milton. Surrey's own imagination was neither rich nor soaring ; and the highest qualities of his poetry, in addition to the facility and general mechanical perfection of the versification, are delicacy and tenderness. It is altogether a very light and bland Favonian breeze. The poetry of his friend Wyatt is of a different character, neither so flowing in form nor so uniformly gentle in spirit, but perhaps making up for its greater ruggedness by a force and a depth of sentiment occa- sionally which Surrey does not reach. The poems of Lord Surrey and Sir Thomas Wyatt were first published together in 1557. We uive one of Surrey's Sonnets in praise of his mistress, the Fair Geraldine, from Dr. Nott's edition of his Poems. 1 The spell- ing is modernized : — 1 Works of Henry Howard Earl of Surrey, and Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder ito. Lond. 1815 ; vol. i. p. 4. SURREY; WYATT. 159 Give place, ye lovers, here before That spent your boasts and brags in vain! My lady's beauty passeth more The best of yours, I dare well sayn. Than doth the sun the candle-light, Or brightest day the darkest night. And thereto hath a troth as just As had Penelope the fair ; For what she saith ye may it trust, As it by writing sealed were : And virtues hath she many mo Than I with pen have skill to show. I could rehearse, if that T would, The whole effect of Nature's plaint, When she had lost the perfit mould, The like to whom she could not paint : With wringing hands how she did cry,. And what she said, I know it, I. I know she swore with raging mind, Her kingdom only set apart, There was no loss by law of kind That could have gone so near her heart : And this was chiefly all her pain ; " She could not make the like again." '.-' Sith Nature thus gave her the praise, To be the chiefest work she wrought, In faith, methink, some better ways On your behalf might well be sought, Than to compare, as ye have done, To match the candle with the sun. To Surrey we owe the introduction into the language of our present form of blank verse, the suggestion of which he probably took from the earliest Italian example of that form of poetry, a translation of the First and Fourth Books of the iEneid by the Cardinal Hippolito de' Medici (or, as some say, by Francesco Maria Molza), which was published at Venice in 1541. A trans- lation of the same two Books into English blank verse appeared in the collection of Surrey's Poems published by Tottel in 1557. Dr. Nott has shown that this translation was founded upon the 460 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. metrical Scottish version of Gawin Douglas, which, although not published till 1553, had been finished, as the author himself informs us, in 1513. But it ought not to be forgotten that, as already remarked, we have one example at least of another form of blank verse in the Ormulum, centuries before Surrey's day. The following earnestly passionate lines by Wyatt are supposed to have been addressed to Anne Boleyn : — Forget not yet the tried intent Of such a truth as I have meant ; My great travail so gladly spent Forget not yet ! Forget not yet when first began The weary life, ye know since whan ; The suit, the service, none tell can Forget not yet ! Forget not yet the great assays ; The cruel wrong, the scornful ways, The painful patience in delays, Forget not yet ! Forget not ! oh ! forget not this ! How long ago hath been, and is, The mind that never meant amiss, Forget not yet ! Forget not then thine own approved, The which so long hath thee so loved, Whose steadfast faith yet never moved ; Forget not this ! THE ELIZABETHAN LITERATURE. Of what is commonly called onr Elizabethan literature, the greater portion appertains to the reign, not of Elizabeth, but of James — to the seventeenth, not to the sixteenth century. The common name, nevertheless, is the fair and proper one. It sprung up in the age of Elizabeth, and was mainly the product of influences which belonged to that age, although their effect extended into another. It was born of and ripened by that sunny morning of a new day, — "great Eliza's golden time," — when a general sense of security had given men ease of mind and disposed them to free- dom of thought, while the economical advancement of the countrv put life and spirit into everything, and its growing power and renown filled and elevated the national heart. But such periods of quiet and prosperity seem only to be intellectually productive when they have been preceded and ushered in by a time of uncer- tainty and struggle which has tried men's spirits : the contrast seems to be wanted to make the favorable influences be felt and tell ; or the faculty required must come in part ovit of the strife and contention. The literature of our Elizabethan age, more em- phatically, may be said to have had this double parentage : if that brilliant day was its mother, the previous night of storm was its father. THE MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES. Our classical Elizabethan poetry and other literature dates only from about the middle of the reign ; most of what was produced in the earlier half of it, constrained, harsh, and immature, still bears upon it the impress of the preceding barbarism. Nearly 2oincident with its commencement is the first appearance of a sin- gular work, The Mirror for Magistrates. It is a collection of nar- ratives of the lives of various remarkable Enghoii Historical p" 1 462 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. sonages, taken, in general, with little more embellishment than their reduction to a metrical form, from the common popular chron- icles ; and the idea of it appears to have been borrowed from a Latin work of Boccaccio's, which had been translated and versi- fied many years before by Lydgate, under the title of The Fall of Princes. It was planned and begun (it is supposed about the year 1557) by Thomas Sackville, afterwards distinguished as a statesman, and ennobled by the titles of Lord Buckhurst and Earl of Dorset. But Sackville soon found himself obliged to relinquish the execution of his extensive design, which contemplated a sur- vey of the whole range of English history from William the Con- queror to the end of the wars of the Roses, to other hands. The two writers to whom he recommended the carrying on of the work were Richard Baldwynne, who was in orders, and had already published a metrical version of the Song of Solomon, and George Ferrers, who was a person of some rank, having sat in Parliament in the time of Henry VIII., but who had latterly been chiefly known as a composer of occasional interludes for the diversion of the Court. It is a trait of the times that, although a me mber or' Lincoln's Inn, and known both as a legal and an historical author. Ferrers was in 1552-3 appointed by Edward VI. to preside over the Christmas revels at the royal palace of Greenwich in the office of Lord of Misrule : Stow tells us that upon this occasion he " so pleasantly and wisely behaved himself, that the king had great delight in his pastimes." 1 Baldwynne and Ferrers called other writers to their assistance, among whom were Thomas Church- yard, Phaer, the translator of Virgil, &c. ; and the book, in its first form and extent, was published in a quarto volume in 1559. " The work," says Baldwynne, in his Dedication " To the Nobility " of 1 " On Monday the 4th of January," the Chronicler adds, " the said Lord of Merry Disports came by water to London, and landed at the Tower-wharf, entered the Tower, and then rode through Tower-street, where he was received by Ser- geant Vawce, Lord of Misrule to John Mainard, one of the sheriffs of London, and so conducted through the city, with a great company of young lords and gentle- men, to the house of Sir George Barne, Lord Mayor, where he, with the chief of his company, dined, and after had a great banquet, and at his departure the Lord Mayor jjave him a standing cup with a cover of silver and gilt, of the value of ten pound, for a reward, and also set a hogshead of wine and a barrel of beer at his gate for his train that followed him. The residue of his gentlemen and servants dined at other aldermen's houses and with the sheriffs, and so departed to the Tower- wharf again, and to the Court by water, to the great commendation of the mayor ind aldermen, and highly accepted of the king and council." THE MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES. 463 a subsequent and enlarged edition of it in 1563, " was begun and part of it printed in Queen Mary's time, but hindered by the Lord Chancellor that then was ; 1 nevertheless, through the means of my Lord Statford, 2 the first part was licensed, and imprinted the first year of the reign of this our most noble and virtuous Queen, and dedicated then to your honours with this preface. Since which time, although I have been called to another trade of life, yet my good Lord Stafford hath not ceased to call upon me to publish so much as I had gotten at other men's hands ; so that, through his lordship's earnest means, I have now set furth another part, con- taining as little of mine own as the first part doth of other men's." The Mirror for Magistrates immediately acquired and for a consid- erable time retained great popularity : a third edition of it was pub- lished in 1571 ; a fourth, with the addition of a series of new lives from the fabulous history of the early Britons, by John Higgins, in 1574 ; a fifth, in 1587 ; a sixth, with further additions, in 1610, by Richard Nichols, assisted by Thomas Blenerhasset (whose contribu- tions, however, had been separately printed in 1578). 3 The copi- ousness of the plan, into which any narrative might be inserted belonging to either the historical or legendary part of the national annals, and that without any trouble in the way of connection or adaptation, had made the work a receptacle for the contributions of all the ready versifiers of the day, — a common, or parish green, as it were, on which a fair was held to which any one who chose might bring his wares, — or rather a sort of continually growing monument, or cairn, to which every man added his stone, or little separate specimen of brick and mortar, who conceived himself to have any skill in building the lofty rhyme. There were scarcely any limits to the size to which the book might have grown, except the mutability of the public taste, which will permit no one thing, good or bad, to go on forever. The Mirror for Magistrates, how- ever, for all its many authors, is of note in the history of our poetry for nothing else which it contains, except the portions con- tributed by its contriver Sackville, consisting only of one legend, that of Henry, Duke of Buckingham (Richard the Third's famous 1 He is supposed to mean Dr. Heath, Archbishop of York. 2 Henry Lord Stafford, son and heir of Edward, last (Stafford) Duke of Bucking- ham. He had been allowed, notwithstanding his father's forfeiture, to sit in Parlia- ment as Lord Stafford ; and lived till 1562. 3 A reprint of the Mirror for Magistrates, in 2 (sometimes divided into 8) vols ito., was brought out by the late Mr. Hazlewood in 1815. 464 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. accomplice and victim, and grandfather of Lord Stafford, the great patron of the work), and the introduction, or Induction, as it is called, prefixed to that narrative, which however is said to have been originally intended to stand at the head of the whole work. The Induction begins with a picture of winter, which is drawn with vivid colors and a powerful pencil ; then follow some brief reflections, suggested by the faded fields and scattered summer flowers, on the instability of all things here below ; but suddenly the poet perceives that the night is drawing on faster, and there* upon redoubles his pace ; when, he continues, In black all clad there fell before my face A piteous wight, whom woe had all forwast ; Furth from her eyen the crystal tears outhrast, And, sighing sore, her hands she wrong and fold, Tearing her hair that ruth was to behold. Her body small, forwithered and forspent, As is the stalk with summer's drought opprest ; Her wealked face with woful tears besprent, Her colour pale, and, as it seemd her best, In woe and plaint reposed was her rest ; And, as the stone that drops of water wears, So dented were her cheeks with fall of tears. I stood aghast, beholding all her plight, Tween dread and dolour so distrained in heart, That, while my knees upstarted with the sight, The tears outstreamed for sorrow of her smart. But, when I saw no end that could apart The deadly dole which she so sore did make, "With doleful voice then thus to her I spake : Unwrap thy woes, whatever wight thou be ! And stint betime to spill thyself with plaint : Tell what thou art, and whence ; for well I see Thou can'st not dure, with sorrow thus attaint. And with that word, of sorrow, all forfaint, She looked up, and, prostrate as she lay, With piteous sound, lo ! thus she gan to say : Alas, I wretch, whom thus thou see'st distrained, With wasting woes that never shall aslake. Sorrow I am ; in endless torments pained THE MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES. 465 Among the Furies in the infernal lake ; Where Pluto, God of Hell, so grisly blake, Doth hold his throne, and Lethe's deadly taste Doth reave remembrance of each thing forepast. "Whence come I am, the dreary destiny And luckless lot for to bemoan of those "Whom fortune in this maze of misery Of wretched chance most woeful mirrors chose ; That when thou seest how lightly they did lose Their pomp, their power, and that they thought most sure, Thou may'st soon deem no earthly joy may dure. Sorrow conducts the poet to the region of departed spirits; and then follows a long succession of allegoric pictures — including Remorse, Dread (or Fear), Revenge, Misery (that is, Avarice), Care, Sleep, Old Age, Malady, Famine, Death, War, Debate (or Strife), &c. ; all drawn with extraordinary strength of imagination, and with a command of expressive, picturesque, and melodious language, nothing equal or approaching to which had till now been seen in our poetry, except only in Chaucer, — and he can scarcely be said to have written in the same English the capabilities of which were thus brought out by Sackville. Both for his poetical genius, and in the history of the language, Sackville and his two poems in the Mirror for Magistrates — more especially this Induc- tion — must be considered as forming the connecting link or bridge between Chaucer and Spenser, between the Canterbury Tales and the Fairy Queen. For the sake of affording a means of comparison with the style and manner of the extracts we shall presently have to give from the latter work, we will add here another of Sackville's delineations : — And next in order sad Old Age we found, His beard all hoar, his eyes hollow and blind, "With drooping cheer still poring on the ground, As on the place where nature him assigned To rest, when that the Sisters had untwined His vital thread, and ended with their knife The fleeting course of fast-declining life. There heard Ave him, with broke and hollow plaint, Rue with himself his end approaching fast, And all for nought his wretched mind torment VOL. 1. 59 466 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. With sweet remembrance of his pleasures past, And fresh delights of lusty youth forwast ; 1 Recounting which how would he sob and shriek, And to be young again of Jove beseek ! But. an 2 the cruel fates so fixed be That time forepast cannot return again, This one request of Jove yet praved he — That, in such withered plight and wretched pain As eld, accompanied with her loathsome train, Had brought on him, all were it woe and grief, He might awhile yet linger forth his lief, And not so soon descend into the pit, Where Death, when he the mortal corpse hath slain, With reckless hand in grave doth cover it, Thereafter never to enjoy again The gladsome light, but, in the ground ylain, In depth of darkness waste and wear to nought, As he had ne'er into the world been brought. - But who had seen him sobbing how he stood Unto himself, and how he would bemoan His youth forepast, — as though it wrought him good To talk of youth, all were his youth foregone — He would have mused, and marvelled much, whereon This wretched Age should life desire so fain, And knows full well life doth but length his pain. Crook-backed he was, tooth-shaken, and blear-eyed, Went on three feet, and sometime crept on four ; With old lame bones, that rattled by his side ; His scalp all piled, 3 and he with eld forelore ; His withered fist still knocking at death's door ; Fumbling and drivelling as he draws his breath ; For brief, the shape and messenger of Death. Nothing is wanting to Saekville that belongs to force either of conception or of expression. In his own world of the sombre and sad, also, he is almost as great an inventor as he is a colorist ; and Spenser has been indebted to him for many hints, as well as for example and inspiration in a general sense : what most marks the immaturity of his style is a certain operose and constrained air, a 1 Utterly wasted and gone 2 If. 8 Peeled, bare, bald. ORIGIN OF THE REGULAR DRAMA. 461 stiffness and hardness of manner, like what we find in the works of the earliest school of the Italian painters, before Raphael and Michael Angelo arose to convert the art from a painful repetition or mimicry of reality into a process of creation — from the timid slave of nature into her glorified rival. Of the flow and variety the genuine spirit of light and life, that we have in Spenser and Shakspeare, there is little in Sackville ; his poetry — ponderous, gloomy, and monotonous — is still oppressed by the shadows of night ; and we see that, although the darkness is retiring, the sun has not yet risen. ORIGIN OF THE REGULAR DRAMA. From the first introduction of dramatic representations in Eng land, probably as early, at least, as the beginning of the twelfth century, down to the beginning of the fifteenth, or perhaps some- what later, the only species of drama known was that styled the Miracle, or Miracle-play. The subjects of the miracle-plays were all taken from the histories of the Old and New Testament, or from the legends of saints and martyrs ; and, indeed, it is probable that their original design was chiefly to instruct the people in relig- ious knowledge. They were often acted as well as written by clergymen, and were exhibited in abbeys, in churches, and in churchyards, on Sundays or other holidays. It appears to have been not till some time after their first introduction that miracle- plays came to be annually represented under the direction and at the expense of the guilds or trading companies of towns, as at Chester and elsewhere. The characters, or dramatis persona?, of the miracle-plays, though sometimes supernatural or legendary, were always actual personages, historical or imaginary ; and in that respect these primitive plays approached nearer to the regular drama than those by which they were succeeded, — the Morals, or Moral-plays, in which, not a history, but an apologue was repre- sented, and in which the characters were all allegorical. The moral-plays are traced back to the early part of the reign of Henry VI., and they appear to have gi'adually arisen out of the miracle- plays, in which, of course, characters very nearly approaching in f heir nature to the impersonated vices and virtues of the iipw 468 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. species of drama must have occasionally appeared. The Devil of the Miracles, for example, would very naturally suggest the Vice of the Morals ; which latter, however, it is to be observed, also retained the Devil of their predecessors, who was too amusing and popular a character to be discarded. Nor did the moral-plays alto- gether put down the miracle-plays : in many of the provincial towns, at least, the latter continued to be represented almost to as late a date as the former. Finally, by a process of natural transi- tion very similar to that by which the sacred and supernatural char- acters of the religious drama had been converted into the allegorical personifications of the moral-plays, these last, gradually becoming less and less vague and shadowy, at length, about the middle of the sixteenth century, boldly assumed life and reality, giving birth to the first examples of regular tragedy and comedy. Both moral-plays, however, and even the more ancient miracle plays, continued to be occasionally performed down to the very end of the sixteenth century. One of the last dramatic represen- tations at which Elizabeth was present w T as a moral-play, entitled The Contention between Liberality and Prodigality, which was performed before her majesty in 1600, or 1601. This production was printed in 1602, and was probably written not long before that time : it has been said to have been the joint production of Thomas Lodge and Robert Greene, 1 the last of whom died in 1592. The only three manuscripts of the Chester miracle-plays now extant were written in 1600, 1601, and 1007, most probably while the plays still continued to be acted. There is evidence that the ancient annual miracle-plays were acted at Tewkesbury at least till 1585, at Coventry till 1591, at Newcastle till 1598, and at Kendal down even to the year 160 3. 2 1 By Edward Phillips, in his Theatrum Poetarum, 1675. 2 The Townelcy Mysteries (so called after the MS. containing them, formerly belonging to Mr. P. Towneley), which are supposed to have been acted at Widkirk Abbey in Yorkshire, have been printed for the Surtees Society, under the care of the Rev. Joseph Hunter and J. Stevenson, Esq., 8vo. Newcastle, 1831 ; the Coventry Mysteries, under the care of J. O. Halliwell, Esq., for the Shakespeare Society, Bvo, Lond. 1841 ; and the Chester Mysteries, for the same society, under the care of Thomas Wright, Esq., vol. i. 8vo. Lond. 184:), and vol. ii. 1847. See also Mr. Wright's Early Mysteries, and other Latin Poems of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, 8vo. Lond. 1838. Mr. Collier, in a note to his Hist, of Eng. Dram. Poe- try, ii. 128, 124, observes, that, although miracle-plays were at a very early date called Mysteries in France, and the term has been adopted by Warton, Percy, Hawkins, Malone, and other modern writers among ourselves, it was, he appre- INTERLUDES OF JOHN HEYWOOD. 46b As has been observed, however, bv Mr. Collier, the latest and best historian of the English drama, the moral-plays were enabled to keep possession of the stage so long as they did, partly by means of the approaches they had for some time been making to a more improved species of composition, " and partly because, under the form of allegorical fiction and abstract character, the writers intro- duced matter which covertly touched upon public events, popular prejudices, and temporary opinions." x He mentions, in particular the moral entitled The Three Ladies of London, printed in 1584, and its continuation, The Three Lords and Three Ladies of Lon- don, which appeared in 1590 (both by R. W.), as belonging to this class. INTERLUDES OF JOHN HEYWOOD. Meanwhile, long before the earliest of these dates, the ancient drama had, in other hands, assumed wholly a new form. Mr. Col- lier appears to consider the Interludes of John Heywood, the earliest of which must have been written before 1521, as first exhibiting the moral-play in a state of transition to the regular tragedy and comedy. " John Heywood's dramatic productions," he says, " almost form a class by themselves : they are neither miracle-plays nor moral-plays, but what may be properly and strictly called interludes, a species of writing of which he has a claim to be considered the inventor, although the term interlude was applied generally to theatrical productions in the reign of hends, unknown in England in that or any similar sense till comparatively a recent period. According to Mr. Wright (Chester Plays, Introduction, pp. vii. viii. ), while dramatic performances representing the legendary miracles attributed to the saints were properly called Miracula, Miracles, or Miracle-plays, those which were founded on Scripture subjects, and which were intended to set forth the mysteries of revelation, were distinguished by the title of Mysteria, or Mysteries. " In France," he adds, " the distinction between Miracles and Mysteries was carefully preserved to the latest times. In England, as early as the fourteenth century, there appears to have been some confusion in the application of these terms, and the name of Miracles was given frequently to all kinds of Scripture plays as well as to plays of saints' miracles." This account would seem to refute the conjecture which has been hazarded, that Mysteries meant properly dramatic representations oy the trades of a town, and that the word was not mys/erium, but ministerium, the original of the Italian mestiere and the French metier, anciently mestier. 1 Hist, of Dramatic Poetry, ii. 413. 470 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. Edward IV." A notion of the nature of these compositions may be collected from the plot of one of them, A Merry Play betwene the Pardoner and the Frere, the Curate and neighbour Pratte, printed in 1533, of which Mr. Collier gives the following account : " A pardoner and a friar have each obtained leave of the curate to use his church, — the one for the exhibition of his relics, and the other for the delivery of a sermon, — the object of both being the same, that of procuring money. The friar arrives first, and is about to commence his discourse, when the pardoner enters and disturbs him ; each is desirous of being heard, and, after many vain attempts by force of lungs, they proceed to force of arms, kicking and cuffing each other unmercifully. The curate, called by the disturbance in his church, endeavors, without avail, to part the combatants ; he therefore calls in neighbor Pratte to his assist- ance, and, while the curate seizes the friar, Pratte undertakes to deal with the pardoner, in order that they may set them in the stocks. It turns out that both the friar and the pardoner are too much for their assailants ; and the latter, after a sound drubbing, are glad to come to a composition, by which the former are allowed quietly to depart." 1 Here, then, we have a dramatic fable, or incident at least, conducted not by allegorical personifications, but by characters of real life, which is the essential difference that dis- tinguishes the true tragedy or comedy from the mere moral. Hey- wood's interludes, however, of which there are two or three more of the same description with this (besides others partaking more of the allegorical character), are all only single acts, or, more properly, scenes, and exhibit, therefore, nothing more than the mere rudiments or embryo of the regular comedy. UDALL'S RALPH ROISTER DOISTER. The earliest English comedy, properly so called, that has yet I teen discovered, is commonly considered to be that of Ralph Rois- ter Doister, the production of Nicholas Udall, an eminent classical scholar in the earlier part of the sixteenth century, and one of the masters, first at Eton, and afterwards at Westminster. Its existence 1 Hist, of Dramatic Poetry, ii. 38G. UDALL'S RALPH ROISTER DOISTER. 471 was unknown till a copy was discovered in 1818, which perhapt (for the title-page is gone) was not printed earlier than 1566, in which year Thomas Hackett is recorded in the register of the Sta- tioners' Company to have had a license for printing a play entitled Rauf Ruyster Duster ; but the play is quoted in Thomas Wilson's Rule of Reason, first printed in 1551, so that it must have been written at least fifteen or sixteen years before. 1 This hypothesis would carry it back to about the same date with the earliest of Heywood's interludes ; and it certainly was produced while that writer was still alive and in the height of his popularity. It may be observed that Wilson calls Udall's play an interlude, which would therefore seem to have been at this time the common name for any dramatic composition, as, indeed, it appears to have been for nearly a century preceding. The author himself, however, in his prologue, announces it as a Comedy, or Interlude, and as an imitation of the classical models of Plautus and Terence. And, in truth, both in character and in plot, Ralph Roister Doister has every right to be regarded as a true comedy, showing indeed, in its execution, the rudeness of the age, but in its plan, and in reference to the principle upon which it is constructed, as regular and as complete as any comedy in the language. It is divided into acts and scenes, which very few of the moral-plays are ; and, according to Mr. Collier's estimate, the performance could not have been concluded in less time than about two hours and a half, while few of the morals would require more than about an hour for their representation. 2 The dramatis personal are thir- teen in all, nine male and four female ; and the two principal ones at least — Ralph himself, a vain, thoughtless, blustering fellow, whose ultimately baffled pursuit of the gay and rich widow Cus- tance forms the action of the piece ; and his servant, Matthew Merrygreek, a kind of flesh-and-blood representative of the. Vice of the old moral-plays — are strongly discriminated, and drawn altogether with much force and spirit. The story is not very ingeniously involved, but it moves forward through its gradual development, and onwards to the catastrophe, in a sufficiently bus- tling, lively manner; and some of the situations, though the humor is rather farcical than comic, are very cleverly conceived and managed. The language also may be said to be on the whole racy and characteristic, if not very polished. A few lines from a speecb i See Collier, ii. 446. 2 Ibid. 45. 472 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. of one of the widow's handmaidens, Tibet Talkapace, in a conver- sation with her fellow-servants on the approaching marriao-e of their masters, may be quoted as a specimen : — And I heard our Nourse speake of an husbande to-day Ready for our mistresse ; a rich man and a gay : And we shall go in our French hoodes every day ; In our silke cassocks (I warrant you) freshe and gay ; In our tricke ferdigews, and billiments of golde, Brave in our sutes of chaunge, seven double folde. Then shall ye see Tibet, sires, treade the mosse so trimme ; Nay, why said I treade ? ye shall see hir glide and swimme, Not lumperdee, clumperdee, like our spaniell Rig. 1 1 Udall (the name is otherwise written Uvedale, Owdall, Dowdall, Woodall, and Woddell) died in 1566. He was a zealous Lutheran, and one of the most active writers for the press in his day. We have already had occasion to notice the trans- lation brought out in 1548 under his care of Erasmus's Paraphrase of the New Testament. As an Eton master he appears to have been noted for his severity ; but the most remarkable fact belonging to this part of his history is, that in 1542 "he was dismissed on the charge of having been concerned in a robbery, and that in a letter in his own handwriting still preserved among the Cotton MSS. he seems, to a con- siderable extent at least, to admit his guilt. At this time, too, there is reason to believe that he held a living in the church. The probability is that the robbery, described as being of certain images of silver and other plate belonging to the col lege, may have been prompted by some impulse of anti-Romanist zeal. On the establishment, at any rate, of the reformed system under Edward, Udall was made first a prebend of Windsor and soon after was presented to the rectory of Calborne in the Isle of Wight; and at last he was appointed to the head-mastership of West- minster School, from which, however, and probably also from his ecclesiastical pre- ferments, he was again ejected under Mary, soon after the middle of whose reign he died. Upon the discovery of the printed copy of Ralph Roister Doister in 1818 by the Rev. Mr. Briggs, that gentleman had a limited reprint made of it, and then presented the original copy to the library of Eton College, where he had been edu- cated. He did not then know that the author had been one of the masters there, nor who the author was ; nor did Dr. Bliss, when he soon after inserted in his new edition of Wood's Athenae Oxonienses the quotation from the play given by Wil- son, know that ifwas from Ralph Roister Doister. Another edition, with notes, was produced in 1821 by Mr. F. Marshall ; and a third reprint by Mr. Thomas White, in his Old English Drama, in 1830. But the standard copy is now that edited for the Shakespeare Society in 1847 by Mr. William Durrant Cooper, with an elaborate Life of Udall prefixed, and occasional notes, in which Mr. Cooper states that he has largely availed himself of those accompanying the reprint of 1821. Accordi:^ to ")r. Cooper, the authorship of Ralph Roister Doister was first estab- ish«*l >" \ wr, in his History of English Dramatic Poetry (1831), vol. ii •» fcx t GAMMER GURTON'S NEEDLE. Ralph Roister Doister is in every way a very superior pro- duction to Gammer Gurton's Needle, which, before the disco s^ery of Udall's piece, had the credit of being the first regular English comedy. At the same time, it must be admitted that the superior antiquity assigned to Ralph Roister Doister is not very conclusively made out. All that we know with certainty with regard to the date of the play is, that it was in existence in 1551. The oldest edition of Gammer Gurton's Needle is dated 1575 ; but how long the play may have been composed before that year is uncertain. The title-page of the 1575 edition describes it as " played on the stage not long ago in Christ's College, in Cambridge ; " and War- ton, on the authority of a manuscript memorandum by Oldys, the eminent antiquary of the early part of the last century, says that it was written and first printed in 1551. 1 Wright also, in his His- toria Histrionica, first printed in 1669, states it as his opinion that it was written in the reign of Edward VI. In refutation of all this it is alleged that " it could not have been produced so early, because John Still (afterwards bishop of Bath and Wells), the author of it, was not born until 1543 ; and, consequently, in 1552, taking Warton's latest date, would only have been nine years old. 2 But the evidence that bishop Still was the author of Gammer Gur- ton's Needle is exceedingly slight. The play is merely stated on the title-page to have been "made by Mr. S., Master of Arts ; " and even if there was, as is asserted, no other Master of Arts of Christ's College whose name began with S at the time when this title-page was printed, the author of the play is not stated to have Deen of that college, nor, if he were, is it necessary to assume that he was living in 1575. On the whole, therefore, while there is no proof that Ralph Roister Doister is older than the year 1551, it is 1 History of English Poetry, iv. 32. He adds, that it was " soon afterwards acted at Christ's College in Cambridge." And elsewhere (iii. 205) he says, that it Was acted in that society about the year 1552. We do not understand how Mr. Collier (ii. 444) collects from a comparison of these two passages that " Warton states in one place that Gammer Gurton's Needle was printed in 1551, and in another that it was not written till 1552." Mr. Collier, it may be perceived, is also mistaken in adding, that Warton seems to have had no other evidence for these assertions than the opinion of Wright, the author of the Historia Histrionica. 2 Collier, ii. 444. VOL. i. 60 474 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. by no means certain that Gammer Gurton's Needle was not written in that same year. This " right pithy, pleasant, and merie comedie," as it is desig- nated on the title-page, is, like Udall's play, regularly divided into acts and scenes, and, like it too, is written in rhyme, — the lan- guage and versification being, on the whole, perhaps rather more easy than flowing, — a circumstance which, more than any external evidence that has been produced, would incline us to assign it to a somewhat later date. But it is in all respects a very tame and poor performance, — the plot, if so it can be called, meagre to insipidity and silliness, the characters only a few slightly distin- guished varieties of the lowest life, and the dialogue in general as feeble and undramatic as the merest monotony can make it.- Its merriment is of the coarsest and most boisterous description, even where it is not otherwise offensive ; but the principal ornament wherewith the author endeavors to enliven his style is a brutal filth and grossness of expression, which is the more astounding when we consider that the piece was the production, in all proba- bility, of a clergyman at least, if not of one who afterwards became a bishop, and that it was certainly represented before a learned and grave university. There is nothing of the same high seasoning in Ralph Roister Doister, though that play seems to have been intended only for the amusement of a common London audi- ence. The Second Act of Gammer Gurton's Needle is introduced by a song, I cannot eat but little meat, My stomach is not good, &c. which is the best thing in the whole play, and which is well known from having been quoted by Warton, who describes it as the earli- est chanson d boire, or drinking-ballad, of any merit in the language ; and observes that " it has a vein of ease and humor which we should not expect to have been inspired by the simple beverage of those times." But this song is most probably not by the author of the play : it appears to be merely a portion of a popular song of the time, which is found elsewhere complete, and has recently been so printed, from a MS. of the sixteenth century, by Dr. Dyce, in his edition of Skelton. 1 We will give, as a specimen of the language 1 See Account of Skelton and liis Writings, vol. i. pp. 7-9. Mr. Dyce states that the .MS. from which he has printed the song is certainly of an earlier date than thi oldest known edition of the play (1575). MISOGONUS. 475 :>t* Gammer Gurton's Needle, the introductory speech to the first Act, which is put into the mouth of a character called Diccon the Bedlam, that is, one of those mendicants who affected a sort of half- madness, and were known by the name of Bedlam Beggars : l — Many a myle have I walked, divers and sundry waies, And many a good man's house have I bin at in my dais : Many a gossip's cup in my tyme have I tasted, And many a broche and spyt have I both turned and basted . Many a peece of bacon have I had out of tbir balkes, In ronnyng over the countrey with long and were walkes ; Yet came my foote never within those doore cheekes, To seek flesh or fysh, garlyke, onyons, or leeket>, That ever I saw a sorte in such a plyght, As here within this house appeareth to my syght. There is howlynge and sehowlyng, all cast in a dumpe, With whewling and pewling, as though they had lost a trump: Syghing and sobbing, they weepe and they wayle ; I marvel in my mynd what the devil they ayle. The olde trot syts groning, with alas and alas, And Tib wringes her hands, and takes on in worse case ; With poore Cocke, theyr boye, they be dryven in such fyts I fear mee the folkes be not well in theyr wyts. Aske them what they ayle, or who brought them in this staye? They aunswer not at all, but alacke and welaway ! When I saw it booted not, out at doores I hyed mee, And caught a slyp of bacon, when I saw none spyed mee, Which I intend not far hence, unles my purpose fayle, Shall serve for a shoing home to draw on two pots of ale MISOGONUS. Probably of earlier date than Gammer Gurton's Needle is another example of the regular drama, which, like Ralph Roister 1 Diccon is the ancient abbreviation of Richard. It may be noticed that there is an entry in the Stationers' Books of a play entitled Diccon of Bedlam, under the year 1563 (see Extracts from the Registers of the Stationers' Company, edited by Mr. Collier for the Shakespeare Society, 1848, vol. i. p. 69), which is in all proba- bility the same piece we are now considering. If so, this fact affords an additional presumption that Gammer Gurton's Needle was printed, or at least written, some years before the date of the earliest edition of it now ey'ant. 476 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. Doister, has been but lately recovered, a play entitled Misogonus, the only copy of which is in manuscript, and is dated 1577. An allusion, however, in the course of the dialogue, would seem to prove that the play must have been composed about the year 1560. To the prologue is appended the name of Thomas Rych- ardes, who has therefore been assumed to be the author. The play, as contained in the manuscript, consists only of the unusual number of four acts, but the story, nevertheless, appears to be completed. For a further account of Misogonus we must refer the reader to Mr. Collier's very elaborate analysis ; l only remarking that the piece is written throughout in rhyming quatrains, not couplets, and that the language would indicate it to be of about the same date with Gammer Gurton's Needle. It contains a song, which for fluency and spirit may very well bear to be compared with the drinking-song in that drama. Neither in the contrivance and conduct of the plot, however, nor in the force with which the characters are exhibited, does it evince the same free and skilful hand with Ralph Roister Doister, although it is interesting for some of the illustrations which it affords of the manners of the time. One of the dramatis pe7'Sonw, in particular, who is seldom absent from the stage, Cacurgus, the buffoon or fool kept by the family whose fortunes form the subject of the piece, must, as Mr. Collier remarks, "have been a very amusing character in his double ca- pacity of rustic simpleton and artful mischief-maker." " There are few pieces," Mr. Collier adds, " in the whole range of our ancient drama which display the important character of the domestic fool in anything like so full and clear a light." CHRONICLE HISTORIES. — BALE'S KYNGE JOHAN, etc. If the regular drama thus made its first appearance among us in the form of comedy, the tragic muse was at least not far behind. There is some ground for supposing, indeed, that one species of the graver drama of real life may have begun to emerge rather sooner than comedy out of the shadowy world of the old allegorical repre mutations; that, namelv, which was long distinguished from both 1 Hist. Dram. Poet., ii. 463-481. TRAGEDY OF GOUBODUC. 471 comedy and tragedy by the name of History, or Chronicle History, consisting, to adopt Mr. Collier's definition, " of certain passages or events detailed by annalists put into a dramatic form, often with- out regard to the course in which they happened ; the author sacrificing chronology, situation, and circumstance, to the superior object of producing an attractive play." x Of what may be called at least the transition from the moral-play to the history, we have an example in Bale's lately recovered drama of Kynge Johan, 2 written in all probability some years before the middle of the six- teenth century, in which, while many of the characters are still allegorical abstractions, others are real personages ; King John himself, Pope Innocent, Cardinal Pandulphus, Stephen Langton, and other historical figures, moving about in odd intermixture with such mere notional spectres as the Widowed Britannia, Imperial Majesty, Nobility, Clergy, Civil Order, Treason, Verity, and Sedi- tion. The play is accordingly described by Mr. Collier, the editor, as occupying an intermediate place between moralities and histori- cal plays ; and " it is," he adds, " the only known existing speci- men of that species of composition of so early a date." The othei productions that are extant of the same mixed character are all of the latter half of the century ; such as that entitled Tom Tiler and his Wife, supposed to have been first printed about 1578, although the oldest known edition is a reprint dated 1661 ; The Conflict of Conscience (called a comedy), by Nathaniel Woods, minister of Norwich, 1581 ; &c. 3 TRAGEDY OF GORBODUC. — BLANK VERSE. But the era of genuine tragedies and historical plays had already commenced some years before these last-mentioned pieces saw the i Hist. Dram. Poet., ii. p. 414. 2 Published by the Camden Society, 4to. 1838, under the, care of Mr. Collier. 8 See an account of these and other pieces of the same kind in Collier, Hist. Dram. Poet, ii. 353, &c. In assigning the first publication of Tom Tiler and his Wife to the year 1578, Mr. Collier professes to follow Ritson (Ancient Songs, ii. 31, edit. 1829), who, he observes, was no doubt as correct as usual. But, whatever may have been Ritson's correctness in matters of mere transcription, it is proper to note that in the present case he me^ly offers a conjecture ; so that we are left to depend, not upon his correctness, but upon his sagacity. The dependence to be placed upon that is certainlv not great. 478 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. light. On the 18th of January, 1562, was " shown before the Queen's most excellent Majesty," as the old title-pages of the printed play inform us, " in her Highness' Court of Whitehall, by the Gentlemen of the Inner Temple," the Tragedy of Gorboduc, otherwise entitled the Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex, the produc- tion of the same Thomas Sackville who has already en" and he adds, " there is no such sweetness of versification and im- agery to be found in our blank verse anterior to Shakspeare." 1 David and Bethsabe was, in all probability, written not anterior to Shakspeare, but after he had been at least six or seven years a writer for the stage, and had produced perhaps ten or twelve of his plays, including some of those in which, to pass over all other and higher things, the music of the verse has ever been accounted the most perfect and delicious. We know at least that The Mid- summer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, The Merchant of Venice, Richard II., King John, and Richard III., wei'e all writ- ten and acted, if not all printed, before Peele's play was given to the world. 2 But, independently of this consideration, it must be admitted that the best of Peele's blank verse, though smooth and flowing, and sometimes tastefully decorated with the embellishments of a learned and imitative fancy, is both deficient in richness or even variety of modulation, and without any pretensions to the force and fire of original poetic genius. It maybe true, never- theless, as is conceded by Mr. Collier, one of the modern critics with whom Peele has not found so much favor as with Mr. Camp- 1 Spec, of Eng. Poet., i. 140. '-' This is established by the often quoted passage in Meres's Wit's Treasury, published in 15'J8, in which these and others of Shakspeare's plays are enumerated PEELE; GKLLN.&. 189 bell and with Mr. Dyce, to whom we are indebted for the first collected edition of his plays, 1 that " he had an elegance of fancy, a gracefulness of expression, and a melody of versification which, in the earlier part of his career, was scarcely approached." 3 Another of Peele's pieces, entitled The Old Wives' Tale, a Pleas ant conceited Comedy, printed in 1595, has excited some curiosity from a resemblance it bears in the story, though in little or nothing else, to Milton's Masque of Comus. 3 Contemporary with Peele was Robert Greene, the author of five plays, besides one written in conjunction with a friend. Greene died in 1592, and he appears only to have begun to write for the stage about 1587. Mr. Collier thinks that, in facility of expression, and in the flow of his blank verse, he is not to be placed below Peele. But Greene's most characteristic attribute is his turn for merriment, of which Peele in his dramatic productions shows little or nothing. His comedy, or farce rather, is no doubt usually coarse enough, but the turbid stream flows at least freely and abundantly. Among his plays is a curious one on the subject of the History of Friar Bacon and Friar Bungay, which is supposed to have been written in 1588 or 1589, though first published in 1594. This, however, is not so much a story of diablerie as of mere legerdemain, mixed, like all the rest of Greene's pieces, with a good deal of farcical incident and dialogue ; even the catastrophe, in which one of the characters is carried off to hell, being so managed as to impart no supernatural interest to the drama. 4 1 Dramatic Works of George Peele (with his Poems), by the Eev. Alexander Dyce, 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1829. 2 Mr. Hallam's estimate is, perhaps, not quite so high : " Peele has some com- mand of imagery, but in every other quality it seems to me that he has scarce any claim to honor ; and I doubt if there are three lines together in any of his plays that could be mistaken for Shakspeare's. . . . The versification of Peele is much inferior to that of Marlow ; and, though sometimes poetical, he seems rarely dra- matic." — Lit. of Eur. ii. 273. 8 This was first pointed out by Isaac Reed in the appendix to his edition of Baker's Biographia Dramatica, 1782, vol. ii. p. 441. The subject has been exam- ined at length by Warton in his Minor Poems of Milton, pp. 135, 136 ; and again, pp. 575-577 (2d edit. Lond. 1791). He observes, "That Milton had an eye on this ancient drama, which might have been the favorite of his early youth, perhaps may be at least affirmed with as much credibility as that he conceived the Paradise Lost from seeing a mystery at Florence, written by Andreini, a Florentine, in 1617, entitled Adamo." 4 Greene's plays are collected under the title of The Dramatic Works of Robert Greene, to which are added his Poems ; with some Account of the Author, aud Notes ; by the Rev. Alexander Dyce; 2 vols. 8vo. 1831. vol. I. 62 490 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. MARLOW. Of a different and far higher order of poetical and dramatic character is another play of this date upon a similar subject, the Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus, by Chris- topher Marlow. Marlow died at an early age in 1593, the year after Greene, and three or four years before Peele. He had been a writer for the stage at least since 1586, in which year, or before, was brought out the play of Tamburlaine the Great, his claim to the authorship of which has been conclusively established by Mr. Collier, who has further shown that this was the first play written in blank verse that was exhibited on the public stage. 1 " Marlow's mighty line " has been celebrated by Ben Jonson in his famous verses on Shakspeare ; but Drayton, the author of the Polyolbion, has extolled him in the most glowing description, — in words the most worthy of the theme : — Next Marlow, batbed in the Thespian springs, Had in him those brave translunary things That the first poets had : his raptures were All air and fire, which made his verses clear : For that fine madness still lie did retain, Which rightly should possess a poet's brain. 2 Marlow is, by nearly universal admission, our greatest dramatic writer before Shakspeare. He is frequently, indeed, turgid and bombastic, especially in his earliest play, Tamburlaine the Great, which has just been mentioned, where his fire, it must be con- fessed, sometimes blazes out of all bounds and becomes a mere wast- ing conflagration — sometimes only raves in a furious storm of sound, filling the ear without any other effect. But in his fits of truer inspiration, all the magic of terror, pathos, and beauty flashes from him in streams. The gradual accumulation of the agonies of Faustus, in the concluding scene of that play, as the moment of his awful fate comes nearer and nearer, powerfully drawn as it is, is far from being one of those coarse pictures of wretchedness that merely oppress us with horror: the most admirable skill is applied throughout in balancing that emotion by sympathy and even re- Bpect for the sufferer, — 1 Hist. Dram. Poet., iii. pp. 107-126. 2 Elegy, "To my dearly beloved friend Henry Reynolds, Of Poets and Preay." LYLY; KYD; LODGE. 40* for he was a scholar once admired For wondrous knowledge in our German schools, — and yet without disturbing our acquiescence in the justice of hia doom ; till we close the book, saddened, indeed, but not dissatisfied, with the pitying but still tributary and almost consoling words of the Chorus on our hearts, — Cut is the branch that might have grown full straight, And burned is Apollo's laurel-bough That sometime grew within this learned man. Still finer, perhaps, is the conclusion of another of Marlow's dramas — his tragedy of Edward the Second. " The reluctant pangs of abdicating royalty in Edward," says Charles Lamb, " fur- nished hints which Shakspeare scarce improved in his Richard the Second ; and the death-scene of Marlow's king moves pity and terror beyond any scene, ancient or modern, with which I am ac- quainted." 1 Much splendor of poetry, also, is expended upon the delineation of Barabas, in The Rich Jew of Malta ; but Marlow's Jew, as Lamb has observed, " does not approach so near to Shaks- peare's [in the Merchant of Venice] as his Edward the Second." We are more reminded of some of Barabas's speeches by the mag- nificent declamation of Mammon in Jonson's Alchymist. 2 LYLY ; KYD ; LODGE. Marlow, Greene, and Peele are the most noted names among those of our dramatists who belong exclusively to the age of Eliza- beth ; but some others that have less modern celebrity may perhaps be placed at least on the same line with the two latter. John Lyly, the Euphuist, as he is called, from one of his prose works, which will be noticed presently, is, as a poet, in his happiest efforts, ele- gant and fanciful ; but his genius was better suited for the lighter kinds of lyric poetry than for the drama. He is the author of nine dramatic pieces, but of these seven are in prose, and only one in 1 Spec, of Eng. Dram. Poets, i. 31. * The works of Christopher Marlow, with Notes and a Life, have been edited by Mr. Dyce, in 3 vols. 8vo. Lond. 1850. 492 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. rhyme and one in blank verse. All of them, according to Mr. Collier, "seem to have been written for court entertainments, although they were also performed at theatres, most usually by the children of St. Paul's and the Revels." They were fitter, it might be added, for beguiling the listlessness of courts than for the enter- tainment of a popular audience, athirst for action and passion, and very indifferent to mere ingenuities of style. All poetical readers, however, remember some songs and other short pieces of verse with which some of them are interspersed, particularly a delicate little anacreontic in that entitled Alexander and Campaspe, begin- ning — Cupid and my Campaspe played At cards for kisses, &c. Mr. Collier observes that Malone must have spoken from a very superficial acquaintance with Lyly's works when he contends that his plays are comparatively free from those affected conceits and remote allusions that characterize most of his other productions. Thomas Kyd, the author of the two plays of Jeronimo and the Spanish Tragedy (which is a continuation of the former), besides a translation of another piece from the French, appears to be called Sporting Kyd by Jonson, in his verses on Shakspeare, in allusion merely to his name. There is, at least, nothing particularly spor- tive in the little that has come down to us from his pen. Kyd was a considerable master of language ; but his rank as a dramatist is not very easily settled, seeing that there is much doubt as to his claims to the authorship of by far the most striking passages in the Spanish Tragedy, the best of his two plays. Lamb, quoting the scenes in question, describes them as " the very salt of the old play," which, without them, he adds, " is but a caput imortuum" It has been generally assumed that they were "added by Ben Jon- son, who certainly was employed to make some additions to this play ; and Mr. Collier attributes them to him as if the point did not admit of a doubt — acknowledging, however, that they repre- sent Jonson in a new light, and that " certainly there is nothing in his own entire plays equalling in pathetic beauty some of his cOn- ti ibutions to the Spanish Tragedy." Nevertheless, it does not seem to be perfectly clear that the supposed contributions by another hand might not have been the work of Kyd himself. Lamb says, "There is nothing in the undoubted plays of Jonson which would authorize us to suppose that he could have supplied the scenes in LYLY; KYD; LODGE. 493 question. I should suspect the agency of some ' more potent spirit.' Webster might have furnished them. They are full of that wild, solemn, preternatural cast of grief which bewilders us in the Duch- ess of Malfy." The last of these early dramatists we shall notice, Thomas Lodge, who was born about 1556, and began to write for the stage about 1580, is placed by Mr. Collier " in a rank superior to Greene, but in some respects inferior to Kyd." His principal dramatic work is entitled The Wounds of Civil War, lively set forth in the true Tragedies of Marius and Sylla ; and is written in blank verse with a mixture of rhyme. It shows him, Mr. Collier thinks, to have unquestionably the advantage over Kyd as a drawer of character, though not equalling that writer in general vigor and boldness of poetic conception. His blank verse is also much more monotonous than that of Kyd. Another strange drama in rhyme, written by Lodge in conjunction with Greene, is entitled A Look- ing-glass for London and England, and has for its object to put down the puritanical outcry against the immorality of the stage, which it attempts to accomplish by a grotesque application to the city of London of the Scriptural story of Nineveh. The whole performance, in Mr. Collier's opinion, " is wearisomely dull, although the authors have endeavored to lighten the weight by the introduction of scenes of drunken buffoonery between ' a clown and his crew of ruffians,' and between the same clown and a per- son disguised as the devil, in order to frighten him, but who is detected and well beaten." Mr. Hallam, however, pronounces that there is great talent shown in this play, " though upon a very strange canvass." 1 Lodge, who was an eminent physician, has left a considerable quantity of other poetry besides his plays, partly in the form of novels or tales, partly in shorter pieces, many of which may be found in the miscellany called England's Helicon, from which a few of them have been extracted by Mr. Ellis, in his Specimens. They are, perhaps, on the whole, more creditable to his poetical powers than his dramatic performances. He is also the author of several short works in prose, sometimes interspersed with verse. One of his prose tales, first printed in 1590, under the title of Rosalynde : Euphues' Golden Legacie, found in his cell at Silextra (for Lodge was one of Lyly's imitators), is famous as the source from which Shakspeare appears to have taken the story of his As You Like It. "Of this production it may be said," 1 Literature of Eur. ii. 274. 494 ENGLISH LITERATURE AND LANGUAGE. observes Mr. Collier, " that our admiration of many portions of it will not be diminished by a comparison with the work of our oreat dramatist." 1 It is worthy of remark, that all these founders and first biulders- up of the regular drama in England were, nearly if not absolutely without an exception, classical scholars and men who had received a university education. Nicholas Udall was of Corpus Christi Col- lege, Oxford ; John Still (if he is to be considered the author of Gammer Gurton's Needle) was of Christ's Colle